Rand Paul is a Republican and if you expect any change by continuing to vote for the same two parties that have been in power since the beginning then you're insane. The clearest message you can send that you want change is to vote for another party.
they value individual rights more than overbearing 'nanny' governance
Here's some overbearing nanny governance for you: In Texas, the maximum penalty for possession of small amounts of marijuana is 180 days and the offense is treated as a misdemeanor while in California the maximum penalty is a ticket and the offense is treated as an infraction.
Obviously the Shah himself was Iranian and he had Iranian supporters who wanted to remain in power just as Kim Jong Il is Korean and has Korean supporters who want him to remain in power but the point is that those Iranians were a political minority just as I suspect that North Koreans who are in favor of the current regime are a minority.
Suppose that tomorrow North Koreans overthrow Kim Jong Il and a foreign government helps reinstate him against the will of the majority - do you not see anything wrong with that and how that could radicalize and unite his opponents? Your response seems to be "Well, it's not the foreign government's fault, it's Kim Jong Il's fault and that of his supporters after all they're Korean and they could have told the US gov't to "pound sand" - and yes, those Koreans that support Kim Jong Il's reinstatement would deserve blame but to completely absolve the foreign government of any responsibility isn't right.
Can you provide any citation that the 1979 revolution was supported by the US gov't because from what I've read the US gov't supported the Shah from the beginning to end - that is from overthrowing the democratically elected government and reinstating the Shah to providing CIA assistance to SAVAK in order to suppress dissidents all the way to providing asylum to the Shah when it all fell apart.
I don't think it's a stretch to say that by overthrowing a democratic government instated by moderates and helping suppress dissidents via a secret police that regularly resorted to torture, the US played a role in radicalizing the Shah's opposition and helped form the theocracy that's in power today.
That's just hogwash. If it isn't socially acceptable to pay only what's legal then obviously the laws need to be changed and I'm completely for that but any company that pays more than is legally required puts itself at a competitive disadvantage and may ultimately risk its survival when its competitors don't do the same. If Apple pays more taxes than it's legally required to do so while Microsoft and Google don't, then guess what, Google and MS now have, in relative terms, more money to spend on R&D, employees, or they could even simply reduce the prices of their products. Business is cut throat and to expect a businesses to pay more taxes out of "social" goodness is a pipe dream. I say fix the rules and apply them to everyone.
You're assuming that Foursquare will cost more and be less effective than local print media but I don't know if those assumptions are right because delivering coupons electronically can be cheaper and more effective than advertising in a paper. Foursquare can target their ads based on your check ins, so they should be able to achieve higher conversion rates and it's more convenient for users to just get a few targeted coupons vs having to find a paper and then searching through all coupons. If I were into using coupons I would definitely prefer getting my coupons electronically than from a paper.
I'm not saying that their model is a slam dunk but I can also see how they could provide a useful service that's more cost effective than what's currently out there.
You get free coupons to local businesses for checking in and local businesses pay Foursquare to distribute those coupons. If they can keep their costs low enough so small businesses can afford the service, they have a good chance of building a nice businesses.
You have to look at the costs. It may be that the gov't can provide better rail service but if they're investing 10x the amount of money over what a private operator would invest, then it's not necessarily more competitive. You have to remember that every dollar the gov't invests into rail, could be invested elsewhere, so it's not free money.
Business is adversarial. If you do not take advantage of a tax haven or tax loophole while your competition does, you will fall behind your competition, whether it's because they can now offer their product at a lower price or invest more in r&d and your chances of going out of business will increase. Therefore, it is not immoral for businesses to take advantage of tax loopholes.
The problem is the loophole, not the businesses or people that are using them. The playing field needs to be level by law.
“As a parent and a sister, I can only imagine the pain felt by the family and friends of Aaron Swartz, and I want to extend my heartfelt sympathy to everyone who knew and loved this young man. I know that there is little I can say to abate the anger felt by those who believe that this office’s prosecution of Mr. Swartz was unwarranted and somehow led to the tragic result of him taking his own life.
I must, however, make clear that this office’s conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case. The career prosecutors handling this matter took on the difficult task of enforcing a law they had taken an oath to uphold, and did so reasonably. The prosecutors recognized that there was no evidence against Mr. Swartz indicating that he committed his acts for personal financial gain, and they recognized that his conduct – while a violation of the law – did not warrant the severe punishments authorized by Congress and called for by the Sentencing Guidelines in appropriate cases. That is why in the discussions with his counsel about a resolution of the case this office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct – a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting. While at the same time, his defense counsel would have been free to recommend a sentence of probation. Ultimately, any sentence imposed would have been up to the judge. At no time did this office ever seek – or ever tell Mr. Swartz’s attorneys that it intended to seek – maximum penalties under the law.
As federal prosecutors, our mission includes protecting the use of computers and the Internet by enforcing the law as fairly and responsibly as possible. We strive to do our best to fulfill this mission every day.”
“As a parent and a sister, I can only imagine the pain felt by the family and friends of Aaron Swartz, and I want to extend my heartfelt sympathy to everyone who knew and loved this young man. I know that there is little I can say to abate the anger felt by those who believe that this office’s prosecution of Mr. Swartz was unwarranted and somehow led to the tragic result of him taking his own life.
I must, however, make clear that this office’s conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case. The career prosecutors handling this matter took on the difficult task of enforcing a law they had taken an oath to uphold, and did so reasonably. The prosecutors recognized that there was no evidence against Mr. Swartz indicating that he committed his acts for personal financial gain, and they recognized that his conduct – while a violation of the law – did not warrant the severe punishments authorized by Congress and called for by the Sentencing Guidelines in appropriate cases. That is why in the discussions with his counsel about a resolution of the case this office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct – a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting. While at the same time, his defense counsel would have been free to recommend a sentence of probation. Ultimately, any sentence imposed would have been up to the judge. At no time did this office ever seek – or ever tell Mr. Swartz’s attorneys that it intended to seek – maximum penalties under the law.
As federal prosecutors, our mission includes protecting the use of computers and the Internet by enforcing the law as fairly and responsibly as possible. We strive to do our best to fulfill this mission every day.”
When you can build a HSR train, not have it subsidized (heavily) by tax payers, have it affordable and convenient (fast) for people to use, THEN and only then will I accept it as an option.
If it's not subsidized by tax payers, it's none of your business, so making additional demands on top of that is silly.
No. If your product costs $1 to produce and people in country A are able to pay $1.50 while people in country B are able to pay $2 then you can charge people in each country accordingly. But when people from country A export to country B you end up losing the $.50 for each product that was exported.
and will probably end up costing much more than $140B.
According to your own source it's projected to lose $32B-$70B, so I'm not sure where you come up with "much more than $140B".
While the big banks have paid back their loans, the overall program is now projected to lose somewhere between $32 billion to $70 billion, with $109.1 billion owed as of June 30, according to SIGTARP.
The article doesn't take profits (dividends, interest) into account. The tarp amount disbursed was $417B, $345B was repaid and $42B in profits were made leaving a net of $30B. In the end, most of the tarp losses will come from bailing out the automakers - not wall street. http://projects.propublica.org/bailout/
Also, I would take the article you posted with a grain of salt because the author may be biased by his desire to sell his book.
The bailouts were loans that were repaid with interest the bailouts were not expenditures. I remember when the bailout first passed people kept on listing the different things the funds could buy i.e. # of schools, # of people fed, etc. but that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between lending someone money and giving it to them.
People love to complain about politicians and don't get me wrong, we definitely have our fair share of unethical and dumb politicians but for the most part politicians will just spout whatever they think gets them reelected, so I think most of the anger towards politicians I hear on a daily basis is misplaced. Let's use your war on drugs example. A marijuana legalization ballot failed in Oregon, which has a far more liberal attitude towards marijuana than most states. A medical marijuana ballot initiative failed in Arkansas and in Montana they passed a ballot measure restricting medical marijuana with 2/3 support. Although Colorado and Washington passed their legalization ballots, the reason legalization initiatives haven't appeared in other states is because they would clearly fail. Unfortunately, it seems that a majority of Americans are in favor of the war on drugs, so I don't think it's right to blame politicians when they're following the will of their voters.
The solution is to educate the voters and politicians will inevitably fall in line.
But they need a competitor to avoid a massive antitrust investigation.They need AMD as an enemy more than they need it as an asset.
With Qualcomm recently surpassing Intel as the most valuable chip maker by market cap and Apple announcing that they're considering moving their macs to ARM, I would argue that Intel no longer needs to allow AMD to survive like they used to.
It is. Suppose you lend me a dollar and the purchasing power of a dollar is one apple. Now suppose that due to inflation the purchasing power of the dollar decreases to 1/10 of an apple and I pay you back the dollar. In effect you lent me one apple and I paid you back with 1/10 of an apple.
$4 a unit is a huge amount in the manufacturing world where businesses try to reduce per unit manufacturing costs by fractions of a penny.
Apple sold 5 million units of the iphone 5 in the first 3 days of its release and last year Apple announced that they had sold over 100 million iPhone units world wide, so at a $4 per unit savings they paid nearly half a billion dollars less than what they would have at the new price.
With debt being the exception. If I owe you a dollar, the debt is an asset to you but a liability to me. Inflation reduces the purchasing power of the dollar I have to pay you back with, so it benefits the borrower. Likewise anyone with a mortgage, student loan, auto loan stands to benefit from inflation.
The question is who holds more debt? Is it the poor or the rich? And the answer isn't clear to me
Have you ever heard of after-hours trading? Stock prices react immediately after earnings release even when earnings are released at the closing bell. The next morning the market opens lower, so releasing after the close doesn't make any difference w/r allowing people to react at the same time.
The big deal isn't that it was announced during the day, the big deal is that it was announced before it was scheduled, so anyone who was planning to get out before the earnings release wasn't able to do so.
The fact that 2005 was the peak of oil consumption in the US is irrelevant. Oil prices are set on the global market so what you need to consider is how much oil is being consumed globally and it has almost consistently been higher every year.
Slashdot Mirror
Rand Paul is a Republican and if you expect any change by continuing to vote for the same two parties that have been in power since the beginning then you're insane. The clearest message you can send that you want change is to vote for another party.
By the way, http://www.theamericanconservative.com/rand-paul-learns-to-love-the-drug-war/.
they value individual rights more than overbearing 'nanny' governance
Here's some overbearing nanny governance for you: In Texas, the maximum penalty for possession of small amounts of marijuana is 180 days and the offense is treated as a misdemeanor while in California the maximum penalty is a ticket and the offense is treated as an infraction.
Obviously the Shah himself was Iranian and he had Iranian supporters who wanted to remain in power just as Kim Jong Il is Korean and has Korean supporters who want him to remain in power but the point is that those Iranians were a political minority just as I suspect that North Koreans who are in favor of the current regime are a minority.
Suppose that tomorrow North Koreans overthrow Kim Jong Il and a foreign government helps reinstate him against the will of the majority - do you not see anything wrong with that and how that could radicalize and unite his opponents? Your response seems to be "Well, it's not the foreign government's fault, it's Kim Jong Il's fault and that of his supporters after all they're Korean and they could have told the US gov't to "pound sand" - and yes, those Koreans that support Kim Jong Il's reinstatement would deserve blame but to completely absolve the foreign government of any responsibility isn't right.
Can you provide any citation that the 1979 revolution was supported by the US gov't because from what I've read the US gov't supported the Shah from the beginning to end - that is from overthrowing the democratically elected government and reinstating the Shah to providing CIA assistance to SAVAK in order to suppress dissidents all the way to providing asylum to the Shah when it all fell apart.
I don't think it's a stretch to say that by overthrowing a democratic government instated by moderates and helping suppress dissidents via a secret police that regularly resorted to torture, the US played a role in radicalizing the Shah's opposition and helped form the theocracy that's in power today.
That's just hogwash. If it isn't socially acceptable to pay only what's legal then obviously the laws need to be changed and I'm completely for that but any company that pays more than is legally required puts itself at a competitive disadvantage and may ultimately risk its survival when its competitors don't do the same. If Apple pays more taxes than it's legally required to do so while Microsoft and Google don't, then guess what, Google and MS now have, in relative terms, more money to spend on R&D, employees, or they could even simply reduce the prices of their products. Business is cut throat and to expect a businesses to pay more taxes out of "social" goodness is a pipe dream. I say fix the rules and apply them to everyone.
You're assuming that Foursquare will cost more and be less effective than local print media but I don't know if those assumptions are right because delivering coupons electronically can be cheaper and more effective than advertising in a paper. Foursquare can target their ads based on your check ins, so they should be able to achieve higher conversion rates and it's more convenient for users to just get a few targeted coupons vs having to find a paper and then searching through all coupons. If I were into using coupons I would definitely prefer getting my coupons electronically than from a paper.
I'm not saying that their model is a slam dunk but I can also see how they could provide a useful service that's more cost effective than what's currently out there.
You get free coupons to local businesses for checking in and local businesses pay Foursquare to distribute those coupons. If they can keep their costs low enough so small businesses can afford the service, they have a good chance of building a nice businesses.
You have to look at the costs. It may be that the gov't can provide better rail service but if they're investing 10x the amount of money over what a private operator would invest, then it's not necessarily more competitive. You have to remember that every dollar the gov't invests into rail, could be invested elsewhere, so it's not free money.
What a bunch of crap. The system allowed for Mrs. Ortiz to not Charge Aaron at all if she so chose. Certainly, she didn't have to charge him with a dozen of felonies. http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/18/aaron-swartz-and-prosecutorial-discretion/
The problem is the loophole, not the businesses or people that are using them. The playing field needs to be level by law.
oops - apologies for the double post!
“As a parent and a sister, I can only imagine the pain felt by the family and friends of Aaron Swartz, and I want to extend my heartfelt sympathy to everyone who knew and loved this young man. I know that there is little I can say to abate the anger felt by those who believe that this office’s prosecution of Mr. Swartz was unwarranted and somehow led to the tragic result of him taking his own life.
I must, however, make clear that this office’s conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case. The career prosecutors handling this matter took on the difficult task of enforcing a law they had taken an oath to uphold, and did so reasonably. The prosecutors recognized that there was no evidence against Mr. Swartz indicating that he committed his acts for personal financial gain, and they recognized that his conduct – while a violation of the law – did not warrant the severe punishments authorized by Congress and called for by the Sentencing Guidelines in appropriate cases. That is why in the discussions with his counsel about a resolution of the case this office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct – a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting. While at the same time, his defense counsel would have been free to recommend a sentence of probation. Ultimately, any sentence imposed would have been up to the judge. At no time did this office ever seek – or ever tell Mr. Swartz’s attorneys that it intended to seek – maximum penalties under the law.
As federal prosecutors, our mission includes protecting the use of computers and the Internet by enforcing the law as fairly and responsibly as possible. We strive to do our best to fulfill this mission every day.”
“As a parent and a sister, I can only imagine the pain felt by the family and friends of Aaron Swartz, and I want to extend my heartfelt sympathy to everyone who knew and loved this young man. I know that there is little I can say to abate the anger felt by those who believe that this office’s prosecution of Mr. Swartz was unwarranted and somehow led to the tragic result of him taking his own life.
I must, however, make clear that this office’s conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case. The career prosecutors handling this matter took on the difficult task of enforcing a law they had taken an oath to uphold, and did so reasonably. The prosecutors recognized that there was no evidence against Mr. Swartz indicating that he committed his acts for personal financial gain, and they recognized that his conduct – while a violation of the law – did not warrant the severe punishments authorized by Congress and called for by the Sentencing Guidelines in appropriate cases. That is why in the discussions with his counsel about a resolution of the case this office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct – a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting. While at the same time, his defense counsel would have been free to recommend a sentence of probation. Ultimately, any sentence imposed would have been up to the judge. At no time did this office ever seek – or ever tell Mr. Swartz’s attorneys that it intended to seek – maximum penalties under the law.
As federal prosecutors, our mission includes protecting the use of computers and the Internet by enforcing the law as fairly and responsibly as possible. We strive to do our best to fulfill this mission every day.”
When you can build a HSR train, not have it subsidized (heavily) by tax payers, have it affordable and convenient (fast) for people to use, THEN and only then will I accept it as an option.
If it's not subsidized by tax payers, it's none of your business, so making additional demands on top of that is silly.
No. If your product costs $1 to produce and people in country A are able to pay $1.50 while people in country B are able to pay $2 then you can charge people in each country accordingly. But when people from country A export to country B you end up losing the $.50 for each product that was exported.
and will probably end up costing much more than $140B.
According to your own source it's projected to lose $32B-$70B, so I'm not sure where you come up with "much more than $140B".
While the big banks have paid back their loans, the overall program is now projected to lose somewhere between $32 billion to $70 billion, with $109.1 billion owed as of June 30, according to SIGTARP.
The article doesn't take profits (dividends, interest) into account. The tarp amount disbursed was $417B, $345B was repaid and $42B in profits were made leaving a net of $30B. In the end, most of the tarp losses will come from bailing out the automakers - not wall street. http://projects.propublica.org/bailout/
Also, I would take the article you posted with a grain of salt because the author may be biased by his desire to sell his book.
The bailouts were loans that were repaid with interest the bailouts were not expenditures. I remember when the bailout first passed people kept on listing the different things the funds could buy i.e. # of schools, # of people fed, etc. but that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between lending someone money and giving it to them.
People love to complain about politicians and don't get me wrong, we definitely have our fair share of unethical and dumb politicians but for the most part politicians will just spout whatever they think gets them reelected, so I think most of the anger towards politicians I hear on a daily basis is misplaced. Let's use your war on drugs example. A marijuana legalization ballot failed in Oregon, which has a far more liberal attitude towards marijuana than most states. A medical marijuana ballot initiative failed in Arkansas and in Montana they passed a ballot measure restricting medical marijuana with 2/3 support. Although Colorado and Washington passed their legalization ballots, the reason legalization initiatives haven't appeared in other states is because they would clearly fail. Unfortunately, it seems that a majority of Americans are in favor of the war on drugs, so I don't think it's right to blame politicians when they're following the will of their voters.
The solution is to educate the voters and politicians will inevitably fall in line.
Wait, NASA doesn't encrypt its laptops?
What's even more shocking is that they steal laptops
But they need a competitor to avoid a massive antitrust investigation.They need AMD as an enemy more than they need it as an asset.
With Qualcomm recently surpassing Intel as the most valuable chip maker by market cap and Apple announcing that they're considering moving their macs to ARM, I would argue that Intel no longer needs to allow AMD to survive like they used to.
It is. Suppose you lend me a dollar and the purchasing power of a dollar is one apple. Now suppose that due to inflation the purchasing power of the dollar decreases to 1/10 of an apple and I pay you back the dollar. In effect you lent me one apple and I paid you back with 1/10 of an apple.
$4 a unit is a huge amount in the manufacturing world where businesses try to reduce per unit manufacturing costs by fractions of a penny.
Apple sold 5 million units of the iphone 5 in the first 3 days of its release and last year Apple announced that they had sold over 100 million iPhone units world wide, so at a $4 per unit savings they paid nearly half a billion dollars less than what they would have at the new price.
With debt being the exception. If I owe you a dollar, the debt is an asset to you but a liability to me. Inflation reduces the purchasing power of the dollar I have to pay you back with, so it benefits the borrower. Likewise anyone with a mortgage, student loan, auto loan stands to benefit from inflation.
The question is who holds more debt? Is it the poor or the rich? And the answer isn't clear to me
Have you ever heard of after-hours trading? Stock prices react immediately after earnings release even when earnings are released at the closing bell. The next morning the market opens lower, so releasing after the close doesn't make any difference w/r allowing people to react at the same time.
The big deal isn't that it was announced during the day, the big deal is that it was announced before it was scheduled, so anyone who was planning to get out before the earnings release wasn't able to do so.
The fact that 2005 was the peak of oil consumption in the US is irrelevant. Oil prices are set on the global market so what you need to consider is how much oil is being consumed globally and it has almost consistently been higher every year.
http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx