They didn't have to vote on it (PPACA) a second time. They didn't have the votes to put it through the Senate again, so they had the House pass the exact Senate bill. Then they made a new bill in the House amending what had already been passed, which was a number of tax increases to help offset the cost of the bill. Because this bill raised money, they could pass the amendments using reconciliation, requiring 51 votes.
2 separate bills, passed through the Senate via different means, but they end up with one law. This is not a correction so much as a clarification.
And don't give me that shit about a Democrat majority, the GOP could have filibustered it into the dirt and they did not.
This is just factually inaccurate. The GOP attempted to filibuster the PPACA, but the Democrats passed it through anyway. Scott Brown explicitly ran on the promise of being the 41st vote that would enable the filibuster for Republicans. By the time he was elected and sworn in, the Senate bill (the one that passed) was already voted on.
From about 8 seconds of google:
"On December 23, the Senate voted 60–39 to end debate on the bill, eliminating the possibility of a filibuster by opponents. The bill then passed by a vote of 60–39 on December 24, 2009, with all Democrats and two Independents voting for, all but one Republican voting against and one senator (Jim Bunning, R-Ky.) not voting."
Also, there's no budget, just a bunch of spending and taxing bills. Taxing bills have to originate in the House, but the President and the Senate have the same veto power.
When debating debatable points, at least PRETEND to be charitable to the other side. Historically, Presidents have huge influence on the budget, because they hold veto power and can use their influence to have members of Congress to put forth the President's position, even though they can't introduce legislation directly. Once the President signs a law (as opposed to having a veto over-ridden) it becomes his policy, too.
You should really look into what happens when a solar panel farm gets flooded.
When it comes to solar vs. nuke, nuke generation (because it's an industry obsessed with safety) claims far fewer lives per Watt-hour than solar, coal, even wind. It's just that when failures do happen, everybody notices. This is even if you include the deaths from the atomic bombs and their development.
Car Analogy - Think of it as the same as traveling by car or airplane. We know driving a car is much more dangerous than flying. But when a passenger jet goes down, it's news for weeks. When a fatal car crash happens, no one hears about it. No one cares when Lenny falls off a roof installing a solar panel that won't even produce enough energy savings over its life to pay for itself. If that same Lenny dies from radiation exposures expect a few weeks of nuclear radiation news.
$400 a month rent? Where have you been lately? In just about anything worth being called a city you are going to be spending more like $1000 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. Utilities are going to add another couple hundred onto that.
Outside of a city, there isn't going to be a bus. So now you have to have a car unless the weather is perfect all the time - and it isn't and no job lets you skip work because of bad weather.
No, trying to live on $20,000 a year in a city is a real challange today.
I rented a house in a city of 300K with 2 bedroom, one bath, attached garage for $600 a month.I then purchased a comparable house (3BR, 2BA) for what ends up after taxes to be a 1068 mortgage a month. Affordable housing does in fact exist. It's the urban centers with restrictive growth policies (to prevent sprawl) that keep housing prices up. It's a city, and I was on a bus line, but we allowed new construction.
Be sure not to mock the Brinks people too harshly, home invasions robberies are very very likely to be committed by a white guy. But I'm pretty sure he'd be white if the ad were for a device to protect against mugging, too.
Funny thing,
One of the reasons I went to this job is that my last one was consulting. I had to work "remote only" for a week after a fight while my face was bruised/swollen.
I think he was commenting on "Bay Area" more than "CA." And if they mean anywhere near the actual bay, that a VERY expensive place to put factories. Especially compared to random undeveloped area that only needs 2 miles of utilities put in. But if by Bay Area, they mean a short 20 minute drive from the nearest city limits, then it could well be more practical. I think the disagreement here in entirely over terms.
The problem with exempting certain classes of expenditures is the distortionary effects kick in really quickly. The most efficient allocation of resources comes when no good or service gets preferential treatment over another.
What the FairTax does is apply an across the board "prebate" that matches what the CPI says is the poverty level of consumption. This means that anyone living at the bare minimum will not pay taxes, and that consumption over the poverty level will be taxed at a 30% sales tax rate, the equivalent of a 23% income tax rate.
The FairTax doesn't just tax the poor. What it really does is tax the middle. The very poor (anyone living below the poverty line) pay no taxes. The very rich pay taxes commensurate with their consumption, which is almost always lower as a percentage of their income. But this isn't a bug, it's a feature. It encourages production, savings, and investment instead of consumption. This means that the guy who makes a billion dollars worth of widgets is paying no tax unless he spends at least 10,400 dollars of that widget wealth in a year. It encourages him to invest and save, rather than consume. And that is what we want wildly successful people to do. More startups and fewer yachts is a good thing for our economy in everything but the very short run.
I wouldn't be so sure that we got to the moon and haven't done anything with it. We've been able to go to the moon and back for 50 years, but we've already sent technology out of our solar system. Now technology and abundance is coming to the point where space travel is accessible to the masses. Soon, every person who is able to charter a jet will be able to visit space. Give it another 20 years and Joe the plumber will likely be able to visit space instead of taking his once in a lifetime cruise to Hawaii.
I agree that we haven't done anything with space technology in the short amount of time that it has existed, but I can't really imagine that if things keep going as they have been, that it will stay that way for another 50. While interstellar travel is still outside of our forseeable future, interplanetary or at the very least additional lunar travel seems quite likely. But, like all futurists who claim to know what they're talking about, I freely admit I'm riffing from the armchair.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's telling that even counting Chernobyl, the deaths per terawatt hour for nuclear is the lowest there is.
I think it's telling that even counting Chernobyl, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, the deaths per terawatt hour for nuclear is the lowest there is.
FTFY
They didn't have to vote on it (PPACA) a second time. They didn't have the votes to put it through the Senate again, so they had the House pass the exact Senate bill. Then they made a new bill in the House amending what had already been passed, which was a number of tax increases to help offset the cost of the bill. Because this bill raised money, they could pass the amendments using reconciliation, requiring 51 votes.
2 separate bills, passed through the Senate via different means, but they end up with one law. This is not a correction so much as a clarification.
And don't give me that shit about a Democrat majority, the GOP could have filibustered it into the dirt and they did not.
This is just factually inaccurate. The GOP attempted to filibuster the PPACA, but the Democrats passed it through anyway. Scott Brown explicitly ran on the promise of being the 41st vote that would enable the filibuster for Republicans. By the time he was elected and sworn in, the Senate bill (the one that passed) was already voted on. From about 8 seconds of google: "On December 23, the Senate voted 60–39 to end debate on the bill, eliminating the possibility of a filibuster by opponents. The bill then passed by a vote of 60–39 on December 24, 2009, with all Democrats and two Independents voting for, all but one Republican voting against and one senator (Jim Bunning, R-Ky.) not voting." Also, there's no budget, just a bunch of spending and taxing bills. Taxing bills have to originate in the House, but the President and the Senate have the same veto power. When debating debatable points, at least PRETEND to be charitable to the other side. Historically, Presidents have huge influence on the budget, because they hold veto power and can use their influence to have members of Congress to put forth the President's position, even though they can't introduce legislation directly. Once the President signs a law (as opposed to having a veto over-ridden) it becomes his policy, too.
Which is why we should all support taxing North Dakota for Japan's tsuami detection systems.
Paging Dostoevsky...
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
When it comes to solar vs. nuke, nuke generation (because it's an industry obsessed with safety) claims far fewer lives per Watt-hour than solar, coal, even wind. It's just that when failures do happen, everybody notices. This is even if you include the deaths from the atomic bombs and their development.
Car Analogy - Think of it as the same as traveling by car or airplane. We know driving a car is much more dangerous than flying. But when a passenger jet goes down, it's news for weeks. When a fatal car crash happens, no one hears about it. No one cares when Lenny falls off a roof installing a solar panel that won't even produce enough energy savings over its life to pay for itself. If that same Lenny dies from radiation exposures expect a few weeks of nuclear radiation news.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html The stats.
$400 a month rent? Where have you been lately? In just about anything worth being called a city you are going to be spending more like $1000 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. Utilities are going to add another couple hundred onto that.
Outside of a city, there isn't going to be a bus. So now you have to have a car unless the weather is perfect all the time - and it isn't and no job lets you skip work because of bad weather.
No, trying to live on $20,000 a year in a city is a real challange today.
I rented a house in a city of 300K with 2 bedroom, one bath, attached garage for $600 a month.I then purchased a comparable house (3BR, 2BA) for what ends up after taxes to be a 1068 mortgage a month. Affordable housing does in fact exist. It's the urban centers with restrictive growth policies (to prevent sprawl) that keep housing prices up. It's a city, and I was on a bus line, but we allowed new construction.
Be sure not to mock the Brinks people too harshly, home invasions robberies are very very likely to be committed by a white guy. But I'm pretty sure he'd be white if the ad were for a device to protect against mugging, too.
Funny thing, One of the reasons I went to this job is that my last one was consulting. I had to work "remote only" for a week after a fight while my face was bruised/swollen.
I'm more interested in which is least filling.
interestingly enough....
Discussing pay is a protected activity under the NRLA.
I'm 10.0.0.107. Spartacus can suck it. Anyone repping 172.16-32 range?
I think he was commenting on "Bay Area" more than "CA." And if they mean anywhere near the actual bay, that a VERY expensive place to put factories. Especially compared to random undeveloped area that only needs 2 miles of utilities put in. But if by Bay Area, they mean a short 20 minute drive from the nearest city limits, then it could well be more practical. I think the disagreement here in entirely over terms.
I thought it was "When God gives you AIDS, make lemonade."
In Soviet.. er... USSR, 2+2=5. Also in fictional England circa 1984.
Foolscap!
Was one mention of the blue penis not enough? Did we needed another, more descriptive, big blue penis?
We'll call them "attempted terrorists."
GPL can "infect" a company's IP. And that's not a bug, it's a feature. RMS has said so himself and others are also quite clear on this.
No.
6 digit UID? Don't get into a high UID pissing contest with me, old-timer.
The problem with exempting certain classes of expenditures is the distortionary effects kick in really quickly. The most efficient allocation of resources comes when no good or service gets preferential treatment over another.
What the FairTax does is apply an across the board "prebate" that matches what the CPI says is the poverty level of consumption. This means that anyone living at the bare minimum will not pay taxes, and that consumption over the poverty level will be taxed at a 30% sales tax rate, the equivalent of a 23% income tax rate.
The FairTax doesn't just tax the poor. What it really does is tax the middle. The very poor (anyone living below the poverty line) pay no taxes. The very rich pay taxes commensurate with their consumption, which is almost always lower as a percentage of their income. But this isn't a bug, it's a feature. It encourages production, savings, and investment instead of consumption. This means that the guy who makes a billion dollars worth of widgets is paying no tax unless he spends at least 10,400 dollars of that widget wealth in a year. It encourages him to invest and save, rather than consume. And that is what we want wildly successful people to do. More startups and fewer yachts is a good thing for our economy in everything but the very short run.
I wouldn't be so sure that we got to the moon and haven't done anything with it. We've been able to go to the moon and back for 50 years, but we've already sent technology out of our solar system. Now technology and abundance is coming to the point where space travel is accessible to the masses. Soon, every person who is able to charter a jet will be able to visit space. Give it another 20 years and Joe the plumber will likely be able to visit space instead of taking his once in a lifetime cruise to Hawaii.
I agree that we haven't done anything with space technology in the short amount of time that it has existed, but I can't really imagine that if things keep going as they have been, that it will stay that way for another 50. While interstellar travel is still outside of our forseeable future, interplanetary or at the very least additional lunar travel seems quite likely. But, like all futurists who claim to know what they're talking about, I freely admit I'm riffing from the armchair.
I'm thirsty for Brawndo right now...