No one wants to let the poor starve. But there's a difference between handing them $1000/month and hoping they buy wholesome, nutritious food for them and their kiddies instead of smokes and beer (or worse), and saying "Here's your coupon for a 20 pound sack of rice, a 20 pound sack of beans, and some multivitamins. If you run out, we'll give you some more." The arbitrage value of rice and beans is pretty much nil, so gaming the system to get more rice and beans is unlikely to be an issue.
Hardly. Since well north of 40% of the population already pays zero or negative federal income taxes, any call to cut those taxes is always opposed as "Tax cuts for the rich", even as the net result is often a large increase in the number of people who are further exempted from paying those taxes and enter the zero or negative federal income tax domain. Cutting taxes for people who don't pay those taxes is a non-starter. Giving those same people free money is a different story altogether.
When my wife persuaded me to purchase a "farm" at the end of a dirt road off of another dirt road off of a two-lane paved road 11 miles outside a 1-stop-light town, one of the things we knew was going to be a problem was internet. Fortunately, we found a local provider who would raise a small microwave tower on a part of the property (about the size of a front-yard flagpole, not a huge thing) and if we would pay for the electric hookup and monthly electric (about $15/mo) they'd let us have free internet. The tower is line-of-sight to a water tower in town, where the main transmitters are located and our tower provides local access to our house and a few neighbors by small transceivers on our houses. I'm pretty sure I don't want to start a streaming video business from the house, but we can watch Netflix, Prime, ESPN 3 with no problems so that's a win. The alternative was Hughesnet or one of their competitors.
All I want from my TV is several fully capable HDMI ports and stunning display and a trivial way to switch between the inputs (heck my audio receiver probably will be handling that function anyway, so not so many HDMI inputs). Definitely no "smarts". Would likely live without speakers (sound provided by external receiver system) and tuner. I'll attach an AppleTV or Chromecast or even a laptop with my own selection of software when I want "smarts".
Read the NY Times articles about it? They pretty much said where's there's this much smoke, there's probably a fire...at the very least the optics were bad with the Clinton Foundation taking in 10s of millions of dollars from Russians connected with the deal and Bill personally raking in several hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches given to Russians connected with the deal, then having the deal get approved by Sec. Clinton.
"The New York Times confirmed Schweizer’s Uranium One revelations in a 4,000-word front-page story by a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter. It detailed how the Russian energy giant Rosatom had taken over the Canadian firm with three separate purchases between 2009 and 2013, largely coinciding with Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state.
"The Hill reported last week that ahead of the deal, the FBI had uncovered “substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering” to expand Russia’s nuclear footprint in the U.S. as early as 2009. The agency also found that Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. to benefit the Clinton Foundation. The Justice Department would sit on the evidence for four years before looking to prosecute, by which time the deal had been approved.
At least one difference, the laws regarding handling of classified materials explicitly does not require any intent to violate. Simple carelessness or negligence is sufficient. Intent only makes it worse. Despite the evidence, the FBI made up an intent requirement, but only for Sec. Clinton and her cronies.
"Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
"To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.
18 U.S. Code 793. Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information
(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
Here's some more opinions, where some of us noted that the presidential candidate should be in prison at worst, probably fined and stripped of her clearance. But other people (her friends and cronies, mostly) decided to have this other opinion, one which made up elements of the law to suit their opinion...
"Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent."
"Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
"For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.
"To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.
Juries are often filled with anti-corporate types who want to stick it to the man regardless of reality.
Might Roundup be carcinogenic? Sure. Did a guy who used it in his lawncare regime get exposed enough to *cause* his *particular* cancer? I hugely doubt it.
I mean, unless he filled his pool with it an swam around in it for a few days...the level of exposure with proper use is pretty much zero.
The CBO produced a report "THE INCIDENCE OF THE CORPORATE INCOME TAX" in which it states
"A corporation may write its check to the Internal Revenue Service for payment of the corporate income tax, but that money must come from somewhere: from reduced returns to investors in the company, lower wages to its workers, or higher prices that consumers pay for the products the company produces."
And it goes on to say
"Although economists are far from a consensus about exactly who bears how much of the burden of the corporate income tax, the existing studies highlight the significant types of economic mechanisms as well as the empirical estimates necessary for further quantifying the burdens. CBO's review of the studies yields the following conclusions:
o The short-term burden of the corporate tax probably falls on stockholders or investors in general, but may fall on some more than on others, because not all investments are taxed at the same rate.
o The long-term burden of corporate or dividend taxation is unlikely to rest fully on corporate equity, because it will remain there only if marginal investment is not affected by those taxes. Most economists believe that the corporate tax system has some effect on investment decisions.
o Most evidence from closed-economy, general-equilibrium models suggests that given reasonable parameters, the long-term incidence of the corporate tax falls on capital in general.
o In the context of international capital mobility, the burden of the corporate tax may be shifted onto immobile factors (such as labor or land), but only to the degree that the capital and outputs of different countries can be substituted.
o In the very long term, the burden is likely to be shifted in part to labor, if the corporate tax dampens capital accumulation.
o Most attempts to distribute the burden of corporate taxation have neglected the possible importance of effects on the relative prices of products.
"The Batman vs Superman in my head is a hell of a lot more interesting than that. The part where Batman has to choose between killing Superman and letting him save someone he loves is particularly gripping. It's a shock when he kills Superman, because it drives home how much of a threat he thinks he is. But what he didn't realize was how much the threat of Superman made people toe the line. With Superman dead, crime gets way worse, and when called on it he tries to argue that freedom is more important. But the mob doesn't get that, and turns on him. Batman flees and recruits a small army, and the city gets overwhelmed with crime. He sweeps back in and restores very brutal order, and there is a mix of cheer and despair. Gotham sort-of returns to normal, but at what price?"
So a minor variant on the general plot line of Miller's The Dark Knight? in which Batman and all the other supers except Big Blue himself are gone, or rendered moot (in at least one case by Supes himself), and even Supes is basically a political tool kept invisible to the populace. Gotham is a crime-filled cesspool run by gangs unchecked. Batman and Superman fight to the death, with Superman left knowing that Batman could have killed him, but chose not to. Batman's own death via heart attack, having been faked, is short lived, and he begins recruiting and training a new Batman army.
One thing the Batman vs Superman movie gave us was a glimpse into a (vision or dream?) future with a bad Superman and Batman's underground. One thing that always struck me in Miller's Batman was how BIG batman is relative to normal folks, a feature not normally included in any of the movies. But that future scene has Batman fighting Superman's ground troops and it was setup so that Batman looks huge compared to the troops. I appreciated that almost more than anything else in the movie.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd prefer 5th Element flight seating.
"I once had to fly to Toledo, Ohio."
I'm sorry.
Do msmash and beauhd not communicate?
Why do you think they'll suddenly stop lying, cheating, and stealing just because you hand them a stipend?
No one wants to let the poor starve. But there's a difference between handing them $1000/month and hoping they buy wholesome, nutritious food for them and their kiddies instead of smokes and beer (or worse), and saying "Here's your coupon for a 20 pound sack of rice, a 20 pound sack of beans, and some multivitamins. If you run out, we'll give you some more." The arbitrage value of rice and beans is pretty much nil, so gaming the system to get more rice and beans is unlikely to be an issue.
Does the study prove that the people who are footing the bill for it feel financially secure? Are they happier?
You're not supposed to ask that question.
Hardly. Since well north of 40% of the population already pays zero or negative federal income taxes, any call to cut those taxes is always opposed as "Tax cuts for the rich", even as the net result is often a large increase in the number of people who are further exempted from paying those taxes and enter the zero or negative federal income tax domain. Cutting taxes for people who don't pay those taxes is a non-starter. Giving those same people free money is a different story altogether.
Maybe someone will invent some sort of gas that can drug the populace to calm people and weed out aggression. Nothing could go wrong from that.
When my wife persuaded me to purchase a "farm" at the end of a dirt road off of another dirt road off of a two-lane paved road 11 miles outside a 1-stop-light town, one of the things we knew was going to be a problem was internet. Fortunately, we found a local provider who would raise a small microwave tower on a part of the property (about the size of a front-yard flagpole, not a huge thing) and if we would pay for the electric hookup and monthly electric (about $15/mo) they'd let us have free internet. The tower is line-of-sight to a water tower in town, where the main transmitters are located and our tower provides local access to our house and a few neighbors by small transceivers on our houses. I'm pretty sure I don't want to start a streaming video business from the house, but we can watch Netflix, Prime, ESPN 3 with no problems so that's a win. The alternative was Hughesnet or one of their competitors.
All I want from my TV is several fully capable HDMI ports and stunning display and a trivial way to switch between the inputs (heck my audio receiver probably will be handling that function anyway, so not so many HDMI inputs). Definitely no "smarts". Would likely live without speakers (sound provided by external receiver system) and tuner. I'll attach an AppleTV or Chromecast or even a laptop with my own selection of software when I want "smarts".
They just don't give a crap.
And use the spoons to dig ditches. That'll create the hell of of some jobs.
Why stay and get taxed punitively?
They borrow it. Running a deficit where tax revenues don't keep pace with spending is hardly new to governments.
Read the NY Times articles about it? They pretty much said where's there's this much smoke, there's probably a fire...at the very least the optics were bad with the Clinton Foundation taking in 10s of millions of dollars from Russians connected with the deal and Bill personally raking in several hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches given to Russians connected with the deal, then having the deal get approved by Sec. Clinton.
"The New York Times confirmed Schweizer’s Uranium One revelations in a 4,000-word front-page story by a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter. It detailed how the Russian energy giant Rosatom had taken over the Canadian firm with three separate purchases between 2009 and 2013, largely coinciding with Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state.
"The Hill reported last week that ahead of the deal, the FBI had uncovered “substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering” to expand Russia’s nuclear footprint in the U.S. as early as 2009. The agency also found that Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. to benefit the Clinton Foundation. The Justice Department would sit on the evidence for four years before looking to prosecute, by which time the deal had been approved.
At least one difference, the laws regarding handling of classified materials explicitly does not require any intent to violate. Simple carelessness or negligence is sufficient. Intent only makes it worse. Despite the evidence, the FBI made up an intent requirement, but only for Sec. Clinton and her cronies.
"Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
"To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.
18 U.S. Code 793. Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information
(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
Here's some more opinions, where some of us noted that the presidential candidate should be in prison at worst, probably fined and stripped of her clearance. But other people (her friends and cronies, mostly) decided to have this other opinion, one which made up elements of the law to suit their opinion...
"Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent."
"Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
"For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.
"To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.
Every single person who has or had cancer drank water.
Juries are often filled with anti-corporate types who want to stick it to the man regardless of reality.
Might Roundup be carcinogenic? Sure. Did a guy who used it in his lawncare regime get exposed enough to *cause* his *particular* cancer? I hugely doubt it.
I mean, unless he filled his pool with it an swam around in it for a few days...the level of exposure with proper use is pretty much zero.
OTOH, Trump is effectively subsidizing the liberal press by giving them something to sensationalize every day.
Aaahhhh ahhhhhh! Flash!
The CBO produced a report "THE INCIDENCE OF THE CORPORATE INCOME TAX" in which it states
"A corporation may write its check to the Internal Revenue Service for payment of the corporate income tax, but that money must come from somewhere: from reduced returns to investors in the company, lower wages to its workers, or higher prices that consumers pay for the products the company produces."
And it goes on to say
"Although economists are far from a consensus about exactly who bears how much of the burden of the corporate income tax, the existing studies highlight the significant types of economic mechanisms as well as the empirical estimates necessary for further quantifying the burdens. CBO's review of the studies yields the following conclusions:
o The short-term burden of the corporate tax probably falls on stockholders or investors in general, but may fall on some more than on others, because not all investments are taxed at the same rate.
o The long-term burden of corporate or dividend taxation is unlikely to rest fully on corporate equity, because it will remain there only if marginal investment is not affected by those taxes. Most economists believe that the corporate tax system has some effect on investment decisions.
o Most evidence from closed-economy, general-equilibrium models suggests that given reasonable parameters, the long-term incidence of the corporate tax falls on capital in general.
o In the context of international capital mobility, the burden of the corporate tax may be shifted onto immobile factors (such as labor or land), but only to the degree that the capital and outputs of different countries can be substituted.
o In the very long term, the burden is likely to be shifted in part to labor, if the corporate tax dampens capital accumulation.
o Most attempts to distribute the burden of corporate taxation have neglected the possible importance of effects on the relative prices of products.
Islam is a religion of peace...an Brutus is an honorable man.
"The Batman vs Superman in my head is a hell of a lot more interesting than that. The part where Batman has to choose between killing Superman and letting him save someone he loves is particularly gripping. It's a shock when he kills Superman, because it drives home how much of a threat he thinks he is. But what he didn't realize was how much the threat of Superman made people toe the line. With Superman dead, crime gets way worse, and when called on it he tries to argue that freedom is more important. But the mob doesn't get that, and turns on him. Batman flees and recruits a small army, and the city gets overwhelmed with crime. He sweeps back in and restores very brutal order, and there is a mix of cheer and despair. Gotham sort-of returns to normal, but at what price?"
So a minor variant on the general plot line of Miller's The Dark Knight? in which Batman and all the other supers except Big Blue himself are gone, or rendered moot (in at least one case by Supes himself), and even Supes is basically a political tool kept invisible to the populace. Gotham is a crime-filled cesspool run by gangs unchecked. Batman and Superman fight to the death, with Superman left knowing that Batman could have killed him, but chose not to. Batman's own death via heart attack, having been faked, is short lived, and he begins recruiting and training a new Batman army.
One thing the Batman vs Superman movie gave us was a glimpse into a (vision or dream?) future with a bad Superman and Batman's underground. One thing that always struck me in Miller's Batman was how BIG batman is relative to normal folks, a feature not normally included in any of the movies. But that future scene has Batman fighting Superman's ground troops and it was setup so that Batman looks huge compared to the troops. I appreciated that almost more than anything else in the movie.
Haven't you been paying attention?