Actually, I went back and re-read sribe's post. I short-changed it a bit with a knee-jerk reaction. I thought he was simply equating internships with slavery. I didn't read it very well. Sorry sribe, I mischaracterized what you were saying.
I always assumed interns actually performed services in relation to what their field of study is. Fashion students do fashion work like costumes, makeup, jewelry making, etc. Journalism students check facts, review articles, report on local/low importance stories. Other students perform tasks actually related to their future job. And these tasks for all interns include some grunt work such as cleaning up the shop, checking supplies, pumping the bellows at the forge, whatever is needed.
But I don't think anyone goes to college to be coffee-handler or floor-sweeper. If that is the extant of their internship experience, they should be paid like the other employees. Or better, they should report that to their professor/school, and that company should be excluded from the internship choices. When their free labor pool disappears, they will stop abusing the process.
I think we're drawing different conclusions from similar information.
Fukushima Diachi was a 1960's design that is considered quite dated and had a few known failure modes. The company operating the reactors basically refused to do all the expensive updates to improve the reactor's safety. They also ignored warnings that the sea wall was inadequate for worst case tsunami, which happened.
You seem to be saying nuclear power is safe because the risks were known, but nobody did anything about them. I say nuclear power is unsafe, for exactly the same reason.
Good day, good Sir.
I agree with both those viewpoints, as opposed as they are. But that is because I think everyone overlooks the easiest answer to the safety problem.
The safety problems highlighted by confused one were caused by government and industry being stupid, greedy, short-sighted, and conceited. But I think a good part of the blame should also go to the environmentalists who fought nuclear power so hard for decades, and who now realize it is a better option that fossil fuels, if only the safety issues could be remedied.
If those environmentalists had chosen the brightest among them, and sent them to college to learn nuclear energy, they could have managed to get a few dozen with the degrees and training needed to operate and oversee nuclear plants. Then they could have insisted that the nuclear industry use them as the plant safety officials. (The group would be small at first, but more each year could start college.) Rather than that, they spent years filing lawsuits (some bullshit, some genuine) that had the simple effect of making the process so expensive that the power companies cut corners to make a profit.
Rather than being children with no forethought or long term plans, the environmentalist groups could have given the ultimatum
Face endless lawsuits, or work with us to give a well educated and properly trained tree-hugger the power to enforce safety regulations.
So, now they realize their mistake. Now they support the industry that doesn't use fossil fuel, or dam rivers, or kill migrating birds. It's just too damn bad they don't have any among their ranks trained and educated to ensure the safety regulations are followed. For that, I can blame only them.
Exactly. I wonder how good they would be at identifying objects in a more natural environment. Drop a bunch of gamers off in the country, give them certain visual/memory tasks, and see if they perform better than a group of non-gamers.
"How many horses are standing in the shade under the tree?" "Is the corn crib to the right or left of the barn?" "What gauge shotgun is the farmer shooting at you with from his porch?
You can have your interpretation of the charts if you want. I say this in various ways all the time. The cost of the wars may or may not be in the chart, but I don't know how they wouldn't be in the "outlays" of government spending. They may not be in the official annual budget, but the chart does say that "outlays" includes on-budget and off-budget items. So I would say they are included in that chart.
As for Republican control of the Senate, Bush really didn't have a Republican Senate in his first term. The Democrats controlled the Senate during the Sept 11 attacks, up to the next change in 2003.
So you don't want to do any work yourself to see if my points were correct. You saw my reply to hondo77, and all you remember was a referrence to GDP, when that post was a rebuttal to using a GDP argument (by a linked site, not by hondo77 himself). You don't think I'm right, but wouldn't care even if I am, because you don't think I am.
So now that we've clarified you lack of comprehension and your robust willful ignorance, let's get to business.
I didn't "give Bush credit for a bubble". I gave Bush credit for getting the economy growing, rather than letting it continue into a years-long downturn. That is not the definition of "a bubble". It seems more like it would be a definition of "economic growth". The fact that a real estate bubble happened during that same time has no bearing on that definition.
You already have posted that the deregulation of the investment banking happened under Clinton. So now I'm at a loss as to what you would have rather Bush had done to prevent the bubble you focus on so much. Since you don't like that he grew the economy, apparently you wish he had done things that would have kept the economy down, with fewer people working, with fewer companies starting or expanding, with people who do have jobs getting fewer hours, and those same people getting their benefits cut. That would have surely prevented the bubble.
Maybe someday we will have someone in the White House who does something that accomplish those goals. You would be happy then since with a horrible economy, people who can't afford house payments won't buy a house, so a housing bubble will be avoided.
Now, as to your other ignorant claim, whether Bush warned about the bubble, and when, I don't feel like coddling you anymore, so go google it yourself. You'll find enough sites arguing both sides of the issue. But do notice when Bush first warned about the problems and tried to introduce reforms to avoid the bubble and its collapse (it was sooner than 2006).
I know that, I assumed you were one of the guys that thought that the Republicans had unfettered law making from 2000 until they lost both houses in 2006. That's what you post sounded like any.
By the way, the Patriot Act was signed into law in October 2001, when the Democrats controlled the Senate.
I don't speak bastardized metric. The proper terms for mass are gram, kilogram, megagram, and so on. There is no metric ton.
Also, I note you have violated the rule of referring to this measurement as "weight" as opposed to "mass".
As per official Internet rules regulating speech about metric measurements, I am not allowed to consider anything you said as valid arguments. Your post has been flagged for review, and the Metric Purity Organization (Organisation de Pureté Métrique) will monitor your future posts to ensure these transgressions do not get repeated.
You must not know that the Democrats controlled the Senate before and after the 9/11 attacks. Bush didn't have a crony republican congress, in any sense of the phrase.
And to inform everyone who hates my views and thinks I'm one of those hated right-wingers:
I don't hate your views based on their political flavor. I hate them because of their gross stupidity.
You hate them because you don't agree with them. Period.
See my response to hondo77 that shows you are wrong.
And you are informed enough to know that the "policy of lax oversight of the financial derivatives market started under Clinton", yet don't know that Bush warned about the effect of it, and tried to reform the situation before it came to "the inevitable collapse".
Honestly, it's like you don't even try to figure out what others say, and just have a reply waiting to roll off your fingertips whenever someone states something you don't like. You don't realize I've dealt with posters like this for years. Your tactics are nothing new, and certainly not convincing.
If you want, I will tell you the secret to having an informed conversation on these type of topics. Rather than reading my post and immediatly claiming it's BULLSHIT (or in your words, "gross stupidity"), read what I write with an open mind. That means having full acceptance of what you don't agree with. Then find actual facts, not opinion pieces from sites you agree with, and see if the facts back my point. For example, the charts I pointed hondo77 to show hard numbers for revenue and budget, and I even point out where they show changes that may invalidate my point.
Do all that, starting with an open mind, and then let your previous beliefs pick apart my argument. But if your previous beliefs are shown incorrect, you have to either cling to them or accept they were wrong. If your previous beliefs are validated by the facts, great, explain to me how, and then I will have to challenge my beliefs on the subject.
This is the method I use when I start debating topics. If I haven't looked at the evidence and interpretations others give, how can I possibly think I have the correct knowledge and interpretation?
First, your post has a couple charts of numbers that have no bearing on my claim. Second, I stopped reading after the third time Mr Bartlett used the phrase "percent of G.D.P.", because I made no reference to GDP in my argument.
I have tried this in both Firefox and IE8, and it brought me to a page with the Federal Finance section of September 2006 opened. The pdf link there is a single page chart of "receipts and outlays" for the previous few years.
It shows the receipts dramatically dropping in 2000, and not rising until 2003, which is when Bush's second round of tax cuts were passed. It also shows the lines converging into late 2006.
Go down to a chart from 2007, and you will see the result of the real estate bubble bursting in 2006, causing the economic freefall in 2008. Bush warned about the real estate bubble, and was shouted down by Democrats such as Barney Frank claiming there was no problem at all in the market.
You may have your own interpretation of Bush's actions, I have no issue with that. But the historical record as to tax revenue supports the interpretation that Bush's tax cuts brought the economy out of a depression/recession and back on the road to recovery. The real estate bubble itself, and its effect on the world economy when it popped, is not part of that argument. But if it was, Bush warned about it and tried to resolve the issue before it came to such a dramatic end.
Yet another clueless lefty, who can't see reality when it's shown to them.
Where were you in 2000? Just about to graduate college? Just a college sophomore? Certainly not a working adult, unless you were working as a Democrat operative.
Should I repeat my message with more pictures? Or just smaller words? What level of comprehension have you attained? (For you that means 'Are you an idiot, or just stupid?')
cutting taxes was treasonous, given how bad we were (and are), money-wise. but since his base is the powerful guys, he never had any fear of being punished.
great system we have here, huh?
No, I don't see your point. The economy was heading to a recession when Bush was elected. He lowered taxes to bring it back up. The next year, the economy wasn't falling, but was still flat, so he cut more taxes, and the economy improved. There are financial sites where you can make charts that plot the economy/GDP/taxes to see the effect.
If the real estate bubble hadn't popped in 2006, if it hadn't burst until 2008, Bush would have finished with a great economy and probably a budget surplus. That means that on the budget/taxes chart, the lines were converging quickly, and would have crossed. Unfortunately, that didn't happen that way, and Bush gets the blame for the collapse that he actually warned about, that his detractors said wouldn't happen.
Now, if you put Bush's method to grow the economy (which worked) against Obama's method (which have not worked (jobless recovery? what a fucking joke)), there is no question which one put more money into more American's (as in, the little guy's) pockets.
What are the chances that a plane carrying 100 terrorists gets off the ground? Because that would be the number needed to hijack a plane carrying 200 total passengers.
You may end up with a bunch of dead passengers, but you will end up with 100 dead terrorists too.
And since there would never be a full plane half full of terrorists, we don't have to worry about it.
You make a valid point. I guess it's more that 'the left' isn't really in power in large numbers. Or not larger numbers than 'the right' who oppose those issues. And even left-leaning politicians want to get reelected. But I do dispute that there are no people in the US, or in our government, who believe in those issues.
Also, looking at the long game, more of that will eventually come to pass here in the US, if we don't collapse first.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm taking back my original copies of Duke Nukem and Doom, and trading them in for a realistic game like Mortal Combat or World of Warcraft.
Oh come on. You can't play those games with only one thumb.
Actually, I went back and re-read sribe's post. I short-changed it a bit with a knee-jerk reaction. I thought he was simply equating internships with slavery. I didn't read it very well. Sorry sribe, I mischaracterized what you were saying.
I always assumed interns actually performed services in relation to what their field of study is. Fashion students do fashion work like costumes, makeup, jewelry making, etc. Journalism students check facts, review articles, report on local/low importance stories. Other students perform tasks actually related to their future job. And these tasks for all interns include some grunt work such as cleaning up the shop, checking supplies, pumping the bellows at the forge, whatever is needed.
But I don't think anyone goes to college to be coffee-handler or floor-sweeper. If that is the extant of their internship experience, they should be paid like the other employees. Or better, they should report that to their professor/school, and that company should be excluded from the internship choices. When their free labor pool disappears, they will stop abusing the process.
There are jobs that people really, really, really want to do for zero pay. Why wouldn't you allow them to make that decision for themselves?
Why don't we allow people to sell themselves into slavery?
Interns aren't allowed to walk away from a company that mistreats them? Modern slave owners are allowed to whip and kill their interns?
I did not know that.
I think we're drawing different conclusions from similar information.
You seem to be saying nuclear power is safe because the risks were known, but nobody did anything about them. I say nuclear power is unsafe, for exactly the same reason.
Good day, good Sir.
I agree with both those viewpoints, as opposed as they are. But that is because I think everyone overlooks the easiest answer to the safety problem.
The safety problems highlighted by confused one were caused by government and industry being stupid, greedy, short-sighted, and conceited. But I think a good part of the blame should also go to the environmentalists who fought nuclear power so hard for decades, and who now realize it is a better option that fossil fuels, if only the safety issues could be remedied.
If those environmentalists had chosen the brightest among them, and sent them to college to learn nuclear energy, they could have managed to get a few dozen with the degrees and training needed to operate and oversee nuclear plants. Then they could have insisted that the nuclear industry use them as the plant safety officials. (The group would be small at first, but more each year could start college.) Rather than that, they spent years filing lawsuits (some bullshit, some genuine) that had the simple effect of making the process so expensive that the power companies cut corners to make a profit.
Rather than being children with no forethought or long term plans, the environmentalist groups could have given the ultimatum
Face endless lawsuits, or work with us to give a well educated and properly trained tree-hugger the power to enforce safety regulations.
So, now they realize their mistake. Now they support the industry that doesn't use fossil fuel, or dam rivers, or kill migrating birds. It's just too damn bad they don't have any among their ranks trained and educated to ensure the safety regulations are followed. For that, I can blame only them.
Well, actually, a shotgun at that distance is more to scare off vegetable-stealing hobbits. It's not likely to hurt you badly.
Breaking news: gamers better at playing games.
Exactly. I wonder how good they would be at identifying objects in a more natural environment. Drop a bunch of gamers off in the country, give them certain visual/memory tasks, and see if they perform better than a group of non-gamers.
"How many horses are standing in the shade under the tree?"
"Is the corn crib to the right or left of the barn?"
"What gauge shotgun is the farmer shooting at you with from his porch?
Same here. Mt Dew for the win!!
Oh, hey. Hi!
Glad to know you liked it. But, yeah, no humor in some of those people.
Actually, I'm surprised no one really tore into you for the "weight" thing. That sets a few of them off all the time.
Anyhow, have a nice weekend.
It depended on how you looked at Janus, I think. But Janus certainly got elected.
Apparently not. He got modded Informative, and my humorous post got modded Flamebait.
Let this be a lesson: Don't dis the metric people, they are petty with no sense of humor.
You can have your interpretation of the charts if you want. I say this in various ways all the time. The cost of the wars may or may not be in the chart, but I don't know how they wouldn't be in the "outlays" of government spending. They may not be in the official annual budget, but the chart does say that "outlays" includes on-budget and off-budget items. So I would say they are included in that chart.
As for Republican control of the Senate, Bush really didn't have a Republican Senate in his first term. The Democrats controlled the Senate during the Sept 11 attacks, up to the next change in 2003.
So you don't want to do any work yourself to see if my points were correct. You saw my reply to hondo77, and all you remember was a referrence to GDP, when that post was a rebuttal to using a GDP argument (by a linked site, not by hondo77 himself). You don't think I'm right, but wouldn't care even if I am, because you don't think I am.
So now that we've clarified you lack of comprehension and your robust willful ignorance, let's get to business.
I didn't "give Bush credit for a bubble". I gave Bush credit for getting the economy growing, rather than letting it continue into a years-long downturn. That is not the definition of "a bubble". It seems more like it would be a definition of "economic growth". The fact that a real estate bubble happened during that same time has no bearing on that definition.
You already have posted that the deregulation of the investment banking happened under Clinton. So now I'm at a loss as to what you would have rather Bush had done to prevent the bubble you focus on so much. Since you don't like that he grew the economy, apparently you wish he had done things that would have kept the economy down, with fewer people working, with fewer companies starting or expanding, with people who do have jobs getting fewer hours, and those same people getting their benefits cut. That would have surely prevented the bubble.
Maybe someday we will have someone in the White House who does something that accomplish those goals. You would be happy then since with a horrible economy, people who can't afford house payments won't buy a house, so a housing bubble will be avoided.
Now, as to your other ignorant claim, whether Bush warned about the bubble, and when, I don't feel like coddling you anymore, so go google it yourself. You'll find enough sites arguing both sides of the issue. But do notice when Bush first warned about the problems and tried to introduce reforms to avoid the bubble and its collapse (it was sooner than 2006).
I know that, I assumed you were one of the guys that thought that the Republicans had unfettered law making from 2000 until they lost both houses in 2006. That's what you post sounded like any.
By the way, the Patriot Act was signed into law in October 2001, when the Democrats controlled the Senate.
You drive my mom to her doctor's appointments too?
I don't speak bastardized metric. The proper terms for mass are gram, kilogram, megagram, and so on. There is no metric ton.
Also, I note you have violated the rule of referring to this measurement as "weight" as opposed to "mass".
As per official Internet rules regulating speech about metric measurements, I am not allowed to consider anything you said as valid arguments. Your post has been flagged for review, and the Metric Purity Organization (Organisation de Pureté Métrique) will monitor your future posts to ensure these transgressions do not get repeated.
I agree that this should not be modded Troll. Goddamn right-wingers can't stand the spotlight either, I guess.
You must not know that the Democrats controlled the Senate before and after the 9/11 attacks. Bush didn't have a crony republican congress, in any sense of the phrase.
And to inform everyone who hates my views and thinks I'm one of those hated right-wingers:
I don't hate your views based on their political flavor. I hate them because of their gross stupidity.
You hate them because you don't agree with them. Period.
See my response to hondo77 that shows you are wrong.
And you are informed enough to know that the "policy of lax oversight of the financial derivatives market started under Clinton", yet don't know that Bush warned about the effect of it, and tried to reform the situation before it came to "the inevitable collapse".
Honestly, it's like you don't even try to figure out what others say, and just have a reply waiting to roll off your fingertips whenever someone states something you don't like. You don't realize I've dealt with posters like this for years. Your tactics are nothing new, and certainly not convincing.
If you want, I will tell you the secret to having an informed conversation on these type of topics. Rather than reading my post and immediatly claiming it's BULLSHIT (or in your words, "gross stupidity"), read what I write with an open mind. That means having full acceptance of what you don't agree with. Then find actual facts, not opinion pieces from sites you agree with, and see if the facts back my point. For example, the charts I pointed hondo77 to show hard numbers for revenue and budget, and I even point out where they show changes that may invalidate my point.
Do all that, starting with an open mind, and then let your previous beliefs pick apart my argument. But if your previous beliefs are shown incorrect, you have to either cling to them or accept they were wrong. If your previous beliefs are validated by the facts, great, explain to me how, and then I will have to challenge my beliefs on the subject.
This is the method I use when I start debating topics. If I haven't looked at the evidence and interpretations others give, how can I possibly think I have the correct knowledge and interpretation?
First, your post has a couple charts of numbers that have no bearing on my claim. Second, I stopped reading after the third time Mr Bartlett used the phrase "percent of G.D.P.", because I made no reference to GDP in my argument.
The rate of revenue growth was higher than the rate of budget growth after the tax cuts that Bush enacted. I don't remember the interactive chart I used a couple years ago to show it, but I have found a list of PDF files on gpo.gov that show the trend. Here is the link:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=ECONI&browsePath=2006%2F09%2F6&isCollapsed=false&leafLevelBrowse=false&isDocumentResults=true&ycord=371
I have tried this in both Firefox and IE8, and it brought me to a page with the Federal Finance section of September 2006 opened. The pdf link there is a single page chart of "receipts and outlays" for the previous few years.
It shows the receipts dramatically dropping in 2000, and not rising until 2003, which is when Bush's second round of tax cuts were passed. It also shows the lines converging into late 2006.
Go down to a chart from 2007, and you will see the result of the real estate bubble bursting in 2006, causing the economic freefall in 2008. Bush warned about the real estate bubble, and was shouted down by Democrats such as Barney Frank claiming there was no problem at all in the market.
You may have your own interpretation of Bush's actions, I have no issue with that. But the historical record as to tax revenue supports the interpretation that Bush's tax cuts brought the economy out of a depression/recession and back on the road to recovery. The real estate bubble itself, and its effect on the world economy when it popped, is not part of that argument. But if it was, Bush warned about it and tried to resolve the issue before it came to such a dramatic end.
Yet another clueless lefty, who can't see reality when it's shown to them.
Where were you in 2000? Just about to graduate college? Just a college sophomore? Certainly not a working adult, unless you were working as a Democrat operative.
Should I repeat my message with more pictures? Or just smaller words? What level of comprehension have you attained? (For you that means 'Are you an idiot, or just stupid?')
And to inform everyone who hates my views and thinks I'm one of those hated right-wingers:
I voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004.
I voted for Obama in 2008.
I voted for Jill Stein of the Green Party in 2012.
I'll accept that some of Bush's actions/policies were not good, but cutting taxes when he did so isn't one of them.
(see my point?)
cutting taxes was treasonous, given how bad we were (and are), money-wise. but since his base is the powerful guys, he never had any fear of being punished.
great system we have here, huh?
No, I don't see your point. The economy was heading to a recession when Bush was elected. He lowered taxes to bring it back up. The next year, the economy wasn't falling, but was still flat, so he cut more taxes, and the economy improved. There are financial sites where you can make charts that plot the economy/GDP/taxes to see the effect.
If the real estate bubble hadn't popped in 2006, if it hadn't burst until 2008, Bush would have finished with a great economy and probably a budget surplus. That means that on the budget/taxes chart, the lines were converging quickly, and would have crossed. Unfortunately, that didn't happen that way, and Bush gets the blame for the collapse that he actually warned about, that his detractors said wouldn't happen.
Now, if you put Bush's method to grow the economy (which worked) against Obama's method (which have not worked (jobless recovery? what a fucking joke)), there is no question which one put more money into more American's (as in, the little guy's) pockets.
What are the chances that a plane carrying 100 terrorists gets off the ground? Because that would be the number needed to hijack a plane carrying 200 total passengers.
You may end up with a bunch of dead passengers, but you will end up with 100 dead terrorists too.
And since there would never be a full plane half full of terrorists, we don't have to worry about it.
You make a valid point. I guess it's more that 'the left' isn't really in power in large numbers. Or not larger numbers than 'the right' who oppose those issues. And even left-leaning politicians want to get reelected. But I do dispute that there are no people in the US, or in our government, who believe in those issues.
Also, looking at the long game, more of that will eventually come to pass here in the US, if we don't collapse first.