Add to that some of the worst gerrymandering in the country, you have a remarkably stable slate of state politicians.
Yes and no.
Yes in that districts are solidly Democrat or Republican, but one of the big problems here is term limits. The state legislature is amazingly incompetent partially because everyone's a freshman.
This is one of the problems California has now. Thanks to Prop 13 passed in 1978, property taxes at capped at 1% of the property value.
There are a lot of good reasons to do that (I'm one of the people who strongly believe that people, especially the elderly, should not be taxed out of their homes), but it does have the unintended consequences that taxes must come from more unstable sources -- consumption, income, etc.
The property tax issue wouldn't be that much of a problem if politicians had the balls to create actual impregnable rainy-day funds for down years. But since that won't happen, maybe it's time for property taxes to go up again.
We have an easy citizen initiative process; if the state accumulated a billion dollar reserve I can guarantee there would be a ballot initiative to refund much of that to taxpayers and the initiative would have a very good chance of passing. Polls show consistently that our voters believe they can have both high spending and low taxes and are frustrated that the elected officials don't deliver it.
As a native Californian who has lived here all his life, I think this is one of the biggest problems with California politics today. Initiatives are easy, and there's a huge amount of pressure to just sign door-to-door signature drives: "It doesn't matter if you agree or disagree, this just sends it to the statewide election so 'the people' can decide the issue." Thus, we end up with a few dozen propositions per election cycle. Once that happens, the incredibly misleading commercials tell people that they can have very expensive projects that they don't have to pay for. "This will cost X billion dollars, but your taxes won't go up! Somehow, everyone wins!" This of course comes from bonds, and then every year we pay a larger and larger percentage of the budget paying back interest and principal on previous years' proposals. It's like a bad pension system -- works great for the first few years, but in the long run collapses under its crippling debt.
This is why, unless there is a very clear plan on how to pay for a proposition (something much much more solid than "we'll issue bonds to be paid back for this. Total cost: X dollars for the project, and X + Y dollars in interest over 20 years"), I vote no on all spending proposals.
Another big problem is term limits. If anyone wanted a proof for why term limits don't give the positive results they hope for, they need only to look at the terrible California legislature.
Maybe we could do the same thing as was described in Ecotopia (God, what a shitty book) and California, Oregon, and Washington could seceed together to form a new country! Whee!
>>>the entirety of the American people are helping to prop up this '8th largest economy'.
That's not really true. According to a study from 2005, for every dollar paid to the IRS in taxes, California only gets 81 cents back. If anything it's CA and other rich states (i.e. the northeast) that are propping-up the rest of the continent.
Not disagreeing with you, I just wonder what "for every dollar, California gets 81 cents back" really means. Does federal money spent on federal programs that only indirectly affect the people of California (say, the military, the IRS, the EPA, things of that nature) count?
(sigh). Okay. Let's assume that 10% of Americans, Europeans, Japanese are avid gamers, and that as China grows wealthier it will trend toward 10% too.
That's a huge, huge assumption. Even more important though is whether American/European and Chinese gamers will pay for games in the same manner (they currently do not). Blizzard liked to claim they had of World of Warcraft players worldwide, and various people started thinking that meant * of revenue, while not only is the cost different in asian countries, but so is the method of charging.
So a guy who wants to play a 15 year old game is somehow way above using a CRT to do so? Hmmm....
I know I am. These days I want my space to remain uncluttered. No way to I want to go back to staring at a CRT all the time, nor would I give up my 30" to do so anyway. And I don't want a second monitor, I just want one.
I use Nvidia's scaler to blow up Starcraft while keeping the aspect ratio the same. Sure, it's not perfect, but it gets the job done.
I would speculate that Apple is not really threatened by Frankenmacs in general. The kind of hobbyist who is technically inclined and is willing to put something like this together is probably outside of their target audience. I have known people who bought Macs not because they were fans of Apple, but because they were dissatisfied with PCs loaded with Windows.
No, I don't think Apple much cares, or at least they realize that suing users is a losing proposition.
I think Apple very much cares. I think they want to keep the Mac market locked up for themselves and avoid the mistakes of IBM in the 80s. They don't want to become just one of many hardware platforms for their OS, and they definitely don't want to have to deal with the variety (and instability) that leads to.
"Sounds like you're confusing education with schooling."
We all know dumb people with degree's, my point is just because someone went through school does not guarantee they are any good at what they do or that they learned much of anything while they were there.
The degree is about handing out marks of status, in my experience with people someone with a masters is not really better then someone with a bachelors. One simply had more persistance, endurance/ability to cheat amd money to pursue a mark of higher status.
A lot of them are "too busy" because that's what you do if you want the mortgage for the 5000 square foot house, the dual-SUVs, live in the hills, etc.
Of course, some of those debts are also from crushing health care bills. I believe it's the #1 cause of foreclosure in the US.
And you don't pay 60% in taxes either, unless you make 8 figures.
I've been hit riding my bike, which does not require a license, and was rushed to the hospital. Once I was unconscious and another tyme I was in a coma. Now would you require me to identify myself in order to get medical care? How would I do that when I'm in a coma? Would you require people to always carry their papers, Papers please?
I don't know that I would require people to carry their papers with them at all times, but I think it's pretty stupid to biking without any ID. At the very least, carry Road ID
I was just thinking the same thing about your post. Illegals hold a lot of jobs you say. But then you forget that our unemployment rate is above 10%. So wouldn't it be logical to remove the illegals, and hand those jobs to actual citizens? It would reduce unemployment below 5%.
However, employers don't want to hire people who are -immediately- going to be looking for other jobs. You can't just say "10000 jobs, 10000 people out of work... DONE!" It just doesn't work like that in the real world.
The worry is that the presence of universal coverage without regard for immigration status will draw even more people to cross the border illegally. I am one of those who does not believe that hospitals (or schools, for that matter) should be checking for legal status, and was fiercely against California's Prop 187.
Far better than the alternative: illegal aliens are moving back over the border the other way now because the US's economy is in such sad shape. I'd rather they be tempted to cross illegally because jobs are plentiful.
Government run monopolies, at least in the US, are all terribly inefficient. One big, shining example is public education - it's horrible and expensive. What ranking among 1st world countries are we down to now, 50th? Worse?
Although the US public school system does share a lot of the blame for this, so does the attitudes of our society and parents in general. It's the results of the "too cool for school," "studying is for losers" attitudes that have been pushed onto kids (often times by each other) for decades. Parents that are "too busy" to pay attention to childrens' academic performance or who side with a child's self-esteem over a teacher are also to blame.
Alright. I have two questions. Since government care is so damn wonderful, why is there a need for private car in the UK?
I realize that it's part of your agenda to argue that the government choice will crowd out and make available any other option, but that's just not the way things worked outside the US.
The Governor of California stated on "This Week" that "there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats". Refreshingly honest, for a politician.
That's because the Governor is in his second term and California has term limits (one the many flaws of the state government). After attempting and failing to break the stranglehold that the unions (particularly the teachers unions) have over the poor quality of education in California, he knows that he's not going to be elected to higher office again... regardless of the predictions in Demolition Man.
A politician who doesn't have to run for re-election only has to worry about getting impeached.
A line-item veto is, however, in no way constitutional. Many times, a clause in one bill is dependent on another clause in the bill, and if one clause is vetoed but the bill as a whole is otherwise approved, it can completely change the meaning of the bill. That allows, in a way, for the President to create/write the laws, a huge extension of presidential powers. We can argue that Congress shouldn't be sending Christmas Tree bills, but it's Congress's job to write the laws, not the President.
John McCain told the truth and was rewarded appropriately.
Oh, I wish.
Really, I wish the John McCain from the original Straight-Talk Express had run for president last year instead of the sellout-to-get-the-Republicans who ran instead.
Slashdot Mirror
Add to that some of the worst gerrymandering in the country, you have a remarkably stable slate of state politicians.
Yes and no.
Yes in that districts are solidly Democrat or Republican, but one of the big problems here is term limits. The state legislature is amazingly incompetent partially because everyone's a freshman.
This is one of the problems California has now. Thanks to Prop 13 passed in 1978, property taxes at capped at 1% of the property value.
There are a lot of good reasons to do that (I'm one of the people who strongly believe that people, especially the elderly, should not be taxed out of their homes), but it does have the unintended consequences that taxes must come from more unstable sources -- consumption, income, etc.
The property tax issue wouldn't be that much of a problem if politicians had the balls to create actual impregnable rainy-day funds for down years. But since that won't happen, maybe it's time for property taxes to go up again.
We have an easy citizen initiative process; if the state accumulated a billion dollar reserve I can guarantee there would be a ballot initiative to refund much of that to taxpayers and the initiative would have a very good chance of passing. Polls show consistently that our voters believe they can have both high spending and low taxes and are frustrated that the elected officials don't deliver it.
As a native Californian who has lived here all his life, I think this is one of the biggest problems with California politics today. Initiatives are easy, and there's a huge amount of pressure to just sign door-to-door signature drives: "It doesn't matter if you agree or disagree, this just sends it to the statewide election so 'the people' can decide the issue." Thus, we end up with a few dozen propositions per election cycle. Once that happens, the incredibly misleading commercials tell people that they can have very expensive projects that they don't have to pay for. "This will cost X billion dollars, but your taxes won't go up! Somehow, everyone wins!" This of course comes from bonds, and then every year we pay a larger and larger percentage of the budget paying back interest and principal on previous years' proposals. It's like a bad pension system -- works great for the first few years, but in the long run collapses under its crippling debt.
This is why, unless there is a very clear plan on how to pay for a proposition (something much much more solid than "we'll issue bonds to be paid back for this. Total cost: X dollars for the project, and X + Y dollars in interest over 20 years"), I vote no on all spending proposals.
Another big problem is term limits. If anyone wanted a proof for why term limits don't give the positive results they hope for, they need only to look at the terrible California legislature.
Maybe we could do the same thing as was described in Ecotopia (God, what a shitty book) and California, Oregon, and Washington could seceed together to form a new country! Whee!
>>>the entirety of the American people are helping to prop up this '8th largest economy'.
That's not really true. According to a study from 2005, for every dollar paid to the IRS in taxes, California only gets 81 cents back. If anything it's CA and other rich states (i.e. the northeast) that are propping-up the rest of the continent.
Not disagreeing with you, I just wonder what "for every dollar, California gets 81 cents back" really means. Does federal money spent on federal programs that only indirectly affect the people of California (say, the military, the IRS, the EPA, things of that nature) count?
There hasn't been (legal) WoW in China for over half a year now!
(sigh). Okay. Let's assume that 10% of Americans, Europeans, Japanese are avid gamers, and that as China grows wealthier it will trend toward 10% too.
That's a huge, huge assumption. Even more important though is whether American/European and Chinese gamers will pay for games in the same manner (they currently do not). Blizzard liked to claim they had of World of Warcraft players worldwide, and various people started thinking that meant * of revenue, while not only is the cost different in asian countries, but so is the method of charging.
Sorry, they've just declared Dance Dancing as activity against the State because it involves standing in a Square.
Does this mean they've banned square dancing as well?
And all Final Fantasy games?
So a guy who wants to play a 15 year old game is somehow way above using a CRT to do so? Hmmm....
I know I am. These days I want my space to remain uncluttered. No way to I want to go back to staring at a CRT all the time, nor would I give up my 30" to do so anyway. And I don't want a second monitor, I just want one.
I use Nvidia's scaler to blow up Starcraft while keeping the aspect ratio the same. Sure, it's not perfect, but it gets the job done.
Why is rationing by either acceptable
Because resources are, and always will be finite?
No, I don't think Apple much cares, or at least they realize that suing users is a losing proposition.
I think Apple very much cares. I think they want to keep the Mac market locked up for themselves and avoid the mistakes of IBM in the 80s. They don't want to become just one of many hardware platforms for their OS, and they definitely don't want to have to deal with the variety (and instability) that leads to.
"Sounds like you're confusing education with schooling."
We all know dumb people with degree's, my point is just because someone went through school does not guarantee they are any good at what they do or that they learned much of anything while they were there.
The degree is about handing out marks of status, in my experience with people someone with a masters is not really better then someone with a bachelors. One simply had more persistance, endurance/ability to cheat amd money to pursue a mark of higher status.
Indeed. Do you happen to have one?
No kidding. Talk about sour grapes.
A lot of them are "too busy" because that's what you do if you want the mortgage for the 5000 square foot house, the dual-SUVs, live in the hills, etc.
Of course, some of those debts are also from crushing health care bills. I believe it's the #1 cause of foreclosure in the US.
And you don't pay 60% in taxes either, unless you make 8 figures.
I've been hit riding my bike, which does not require a license, and was rushed to the hospital. Once I was unconscious and another tyme I was in a coma. Now would you require me to identify myself in order to get medical care? How would I do that when I'm in a coma? Would you require people to always carry their papers, Papers please?
I don't know that I would require people to carry their papers with them at all times, but I think it's pretty stupid to biking without any ID. At the very least, carry Road ID
>>>And your point was?
I was just thinking the same thing about your post. Illegals hold a lot of jobs you say. But then you forget that our unemployment rate is above 10%. So wouldn't it be logical to remove the illegals, and hand those jobs to actual citizens? It would reduce unemployment below 5%.
However, employers don't want to hire people who are -immediately- going to be looking for other jobs. You can't just say "10000 jobs, 10000 people out of work... DONE!" It just doesn't work like that in the real world.
The USA runs on oil, and though it *could* be reworked to run on coal, solar, hydro and other sources it would take way too long.
Eh. Still too many hippies in the US who think nuclear is the devil and if we build nuclear plants they'll all blow up.
The worry is that the presence of universal coverage without regard for immigration status will draw even more people to cross the border illegally. I am one of those who does not believe that hospitals (or schools, for that matter) should be checking for legal status, and was fiercely against California's Prop 187.
Far better than the alternative: illegal aliens are moving back over the border the other way now because the US's economy is in such sad shape. I'd rather they be tempted to cross illegally because jobs are plentiful.
Government run monopolies, at least in the US, are all terribly inefficient. One big, shining example is public education - it's horrible and expensive. What ranking among 1st world countries are we down to now, 50th? Worse?
Although the US public school system does share a lot of the blame for this, so does the attitudes of our society and parents in general. It's the results of the "too cool for school," "studying is for losers" attitudes that have been pushed onto kids (often times by each other) for decades. Parents that are "too busy" to pay attention to childrens' academic performance or who side with a child's self-esteem over a teacher are also to blame.
Alright. I have two questions. Since government care is so damn wonderful, why is there a need for private car in the UK?
I realize that it's part of your agenda to argue that the government choice will crowd out and make available any other option, but that's just not the way things worked outside the US.
There are liberals in the party but not nearly as many as conservative media would lead you to believe.
In the United States, "conservative media" would have you believe that anything to the left of far-right extremism is socialism.
Hey, at least we don't have a President renaming all the months of the year after himself. Yet.
The Governor of California stated on "This Week" that "there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats". Refreshingly honest, for a politician.
That's because the Governor is in his second term and California has term limits (one the many flaws of the state government). After attempting and failing to break the stranglehold that the unions (particularly the teachers unions) have over the poor quality of education in California, he knows that he's not going to be elected to higher office again... regardless of the predictions in Demolition Man.
A politician who doesn't have to run for re-election only has to worry about getting impeached.
He who has the power to destroy a thing has absolute control over it.
Not if the other side knows that it's only a bluff.
A line-item veto is, however, in no way constitutional. Many times, a clause in one bill is dependent on another clause in the bill, and if one clause is vetoed but the bill as a whole is otherwise approved, it can completely change the meaning of the bill. That allows, in a way, for the President to create/write the laws, a huge extension of presidential powers. We can argue that Congress shouldn't be sending Christmas Tree bills, but it's Congress's job to write the laws, not the President.
John McCain told the truth and was rewarded appropriately.
Oh, I wish.
Really, I wish the John McCain from the original Straight-Talk Express had run for president last year instead of the sellout-to-get-the-Republicans who ran instead.