The sugar tariff is because of the US sugar producers, not Iowan corn farmers. The US sugar industry makes a profit with the tariff in place. They would not if the tariff goes away. Therefore, they are incented to spend money, even large portions of their profits, to keep the tariff in place. The rest of the country spends small amounts more and does not notice any individual expense, so is not strongly incented to demand the end of the tariff. Thus, the tariff remains. Oddly enough, Johnny Mac did not propose ending the sugar tariff, and he received large donations from the US sugar industry. Yay, integrity!
This is the kind of right-wing idiocy that has left the Republican party in its current state. Democratic areas do have more access to abortion clinics as it stands now, and yet the demographics that associate with Democrats are growing faster than the demographics that associate with Republicans. Democrats, far from sobbing and calling it 'genocide,' actively seek to expand access to these clinics on the basis that government should not be intervening in a woman's personal medical decisions. The vast majority of pregnancies that become naturally viable are not terminated; most abortions are for cases where the fetus would not survive for one reason or another (including that the mother might not survive delivery). Most of the rest are because the prospective parent is not ready or able to provide a stable family life, but many do go on later in life to have a child when they are better able to provide for one with a decent quality of life. Republicans have a stupid idea that Democrats 'want' to have abortions. Democrats want to make it an option for people who, for whatever reason, need one.
Just because that's the experience in every other country that's implemented single-payer, why should anyone expect that's what might happen in the US? Really!
Ron Paul has a lot of good points. He was the only 'no' vote this week on a Congressional resolution slamming Iran for its voter fraud issue - and while denouncing the fraud seems like a good idea, it really hurts the anti-theocratic movement by letting the mullahs scream that the reformists are American stooges. But economics is not one of his good points. 'Unmanaged' economies are, at best, like the Gilded Age in the US, and at worst like Somalia. The boom-and-bust cycle of the Gilded Age was catastrophic for large percentages of the American population; toning it down via regulation and trust-busting was a major breakthrough in the development of the American economy.
They can go get other, more productive jobs. Since the rest of the country will have that extra 1/20th of the GDP floating around, there'll be money for investing and spending. They could get jobs flipping burgers and still be more productive than what they're doing now.
The problem with a state run insurance plan is that that the state has never made anything more efficient. Ever.
Yeah! Retirement savings were so much more efficient before Social Security! Sure, it meant lots of old people ended up begging on the streets, but those people didn't have any money by then, so they didn't count against the efficiency!
In the US, doctors also make money based on conducting tests. You have a cough? Well, your HMO covers X-rays, so you get an X-ray, even if you don't need one, because we can get the HMO to pay for that! There was a recent article on this topic, in fact, regarding a town in Texas with one of the highest per-capita health care rates in the country. Not because they had more expensive equipment or doctors or were more accident-prone or malpractice-prone; the doctors had just found the most efficient way to make money off of the HMOs was to run plausible-sounding but unneeded tests.
Except for the bit about not providing it to some people, or providing less of it. When the HMO demands that the doctor not spend the needed time with each patient, but shuttle them in and out as fast as possible - they're rationing the amount of care that doctor is allowed to provide, so that he can provide more people with less care.
You forgot the alien mind-control rays, unmarked helicopters, mention of 'jack-booted thugs,' and blaming the U.N. But otherwise, nice conspiracy rant!
Except that national health care is highly unlikely to be unpopular. In countries that have national health care, again such as Britain and Germany, the national health care program is enormously popular. This is part of why the Republicans are fighting the idea so hard; they know that, much like Social Security, once a large national program is established to provide for everyone something that they want (cheaper health care), it will be impossible to kill again later.
It's not about the machines that go beep. It's all about the machines that go 'Ping!' And the most expensive machines in the hospital, sold and then leased back so it comes out of the operating budget and not out of the capital budget.
So either this took place in another developed country, where national health care kept costs down, or it took place in a developing country, where costs are lower due to lower wages and costs of living? This fails to prove the claim that high quality of life + low bureacracy = cheap healthcare, only that a tradeoff between the three is possible.
Healthcare currently is costing America approximately 15% of GDP and getting poor results. A well-implemented national plan could bring that down into line with the other developed democracies of the world such as Germany and the U.K., or about 10% (your numbers may vary depending on calculation method, etc, and may be somewhat lower, but let's go with 10% for a rough estimate). This saves 5% of the current US economy that can be put to productive uses instead of pointless quality-of-life-diminishing health insurance bureaucracy. This also means many of the paper-pushers currently drawing down salaries denying people coverage will have to go do productive work instead, further improving the economic situation. Further, US companies will no longer be at a competitive disadvantage with their foreign competitors, who do not have to shell out for their workers' health coverage.
So, yes, fixing health care is a plausible means to repair the economy. It is entirely possible to fix two interrelated problems at once. Whether it is an economic issue is not really in question, given the size of the healthcare industry in the US. You might dispute the efficacy of a national healthcare plan, but it'll still have an economic impact one way or another, and President Obama has made it clear in previous statements that he believes that fixing the U.S. health system will have beneficial economic effects.
Psst! Your bias is showing! Progressives look at 'due process' and say "That includes fair access to the evidence, regardless of what the defendant thinks the evidence is good for" and then says "Therefore, since the Constitution says everyone should get their due process and this is part of due process, the prisoner should have a right to access the evidence for whatever purpose their defense might require." Just because you disagree with someone's conclusions does not mean they are not starting from the Constitution. Conservatives want the Constitution applied minimally; 'due process' cannot possibly include anything not known at the time of the writing of the Constitution, even if it logically falls under that umbrella. Progressives want the Constitution applied with the understanding that when the Founding Fathers used an umbrella term like 'due process', they were including everything that would generally fit under it.
"In the news today, the Windows Supreme Court threw out claims against Microsoft for monopolistic practices yet again, despite that the case before the All-Knowing System was in regards to water rights between Colorado and California..."
Actually, the case is more complicated than that. New Haven explicitly was throwing out the test results because under current law, results that display a distinct difference in outcome based on race are automatically assumed to have an invalid racial element to them. If they had not thrown out the test results, they would have been open to a lawsuit alleging that the test itself was racially biased, and under current law New Haven would have had a very hard time winning that case. The white firefighters need to prove that the test was not racially biased in order to make it acceptable.
The Supreme Court may well find that New Haven acted legally in assuming the test to be invalid, but remand the case to the lower courts anyhow with instructions to examine the test's contents for racial bias, and uphold the test if they don't find any and prior testing has not shown a pattern of racial bias. That would be a slight loosening of the current standard, but not throwing out the entire doctrine, which would be an incremental step very much in keeping with the Roberts court thus far. It would also loosen the states and municipalities a bit to demonstrate their ability to conduct their own affairs in a colorblind manner as required by law.
Souter's leaving, Ginsburg is likely to leave in the next two or three years (to ensure that Obama gets to choose her replacement), Stevens is likely to do the same... and all of them are considered likely at this point to be replaced by more distinctly progressive justices, since for the first time in decades there's a Democratic President with a Democratic Senate that can actually confirm his choices easily. None of the hard-right justices (Scalia, Alito, Thomas, or Roberts) is going to be stepping down voluntarily any time soon, but Kennedy might be getting some inclinations that way based on not being fond of being the constant swing vote, subject to pressures from all of his colleagues all the time.
Right before he added trillions to the national debt, sank the country into an extended and unpopular war in the middle east, ignored intelligence that warned of an attack of the World Trade Center via airplanes, wiretapped Americans illegally, and complacently watched the destruction of a major American city, apparently.
It's the same marketing department that decided to sell used panties from vending machines in Japan. Which, when you think about it, may be an insight into a couple of national psyches...
Slashdot moderation-based monetary policy. You get modded up, you get money. Modded down, you lose money. The monetary policy is then based off of the number of good (or at least popular) ideas and comments you make.
Something had to take the place of the real estate bubble. At least an ammo bubble mostly only hits people who're convinced that they're going to be living in a hellhole soon anyhow one way or another, so when the bubble pops and they're out several grand on overpriced ammunition, they'll be better off than they thought. So, a benefit to pessimism?
It's a Dungeons and Dragons reference. Before 3rd and 4th editions, electrum pieces were a form of in-game currency, worth five silver pieces or half a gold piece if I recall correctly.
It depends entirely on what your purpose for them is. You should have a good test suite that passes, good coverage, and have done some over-the-shoulder checks. Then the formal code review can be less about "Let's find bugs" as it is a style check and a chance for everyone else (who might get called upon to support the system later) to understand the general purpose, operation, and any clever bits. If your code review is supposed to be the bug hunt, then yeah, that's not efficient.
Slashdot Mirror
The sugar tariff is because of the US sugar producers, not Iowan corn farmers. The US sugar industry makes a profit with the tariff in place. They would not if the tariff goes away. Therefore, they are incented to spend money, even large portions of their profits, to keep the tariff in place. The rest of the country spends small amounts more and does not notice any individual expense, so is not strongly incented to demand the end of the tariff. Thus, the tariff remains. Oddly enough, Johnny Mac did not propose ending the sugar tariff, and he received large donations from the US sugar industry. Yay, integrity!
This is the kind of right-wing idiocy that has left the Republican party in its current state. Democratic areas do have more access to abortion clinics as it stands now, and yet the demographics that associate with Democrats are growing faster than the demographics that associate with Republicans. Democrats, far from sobbing and calling it 'genocide,' actively seek to expand access to these clinics on the basis that government should not be intervening in a woman's personal medical decisions. The vast majority of pregnancies that become naturally viable are not terminated; most abortions are for cases where the fetus would not survive for one reason or another (including that the mother might not survive delivery). Most of the rest are because the prospective parent is not ready or able to provide a stable family life, but many do go on later in life to have a child when they are better able to provide for one with a decent quality of life. Republicans have a stupid idea that Democrats 'want' to have abortions. Democrats want to make it an option for people who, for whatever reason, need one.
Just because that's the experience in every other country that's implemented single-payer, why should anyone expect that's what might happen in the US? Really!
Ron Paul has a lot of good points. He was the only 'no' vote this week on a Congressional resolution slamming Iran for its voter fraud issue - and while denouncing the fraud seems like a good idea, it really hurts the anti-theocratic movement by letting the mullahs scream that the reformists are American stooges. But economics is not one of his good points. 'Unmanaged' economies are, at best, like the Gilded Age in the US, and at worst like Somalia. The boom-and-bust cycle of the Gilded Age was catastrophic for large percentages of the American population; toning it down via regulation and trust-busting was a major breakthrough in the development of the American economy.
And yet, despite the right-wing horror stories (with their purely anecdotal basis), Canada's national healthcare system remains extremely popular, with Canadians expressing high levels of satisfaction with the care they're getting. See? Only about 90% of Canadians express satisfaction with their system! There has to be something wrong with it!
They can go get other, more productive jobs. Since the rest of the country will have that extra 1/20th of the GDP floating around, there'll be money for investing and spending. They could get jobs flipping burgers and still be more productive than what they're doing now.
The problem with a state run insurance plan is that that the state has never made anything more efficient. Ever.
Yeah! Retirement savings were so much more efficient before Social Security! Sure, it meant lots of old people ended up begging on the streets, but those people didn't have any money by then, so they didn't count against the efficiency!
In the US, doctors also make money based on conducting tests. You have a cough? Well, your HMO covers X-rays, so you get an X-ray, even if you don't need one, because we can get the HMO to pay for that! There was a recent article on this topic, in fact, regarding a town in Texas with one of the highest per-capita health care rates in the country. Not because they had more expensive equipment or doctors or were more accident-prone or malpractice-prone; the doctors had just found the most efficient way to make money off of the HMOs was to run plausible-sounding but unneeded tests.
Except for the bit about not providing it to some people, or providing less of it. When the HMO demands that the doctor not spend the needed time with each patient, but shuttle them in and out as fast as possible - they're rationing the amount of care that doctor is allowed to provide, so that he can provide more people with less care.
You forgot the alien mind-control rays, unmarked helicopters, mention of 'jack-booted thugs,' and blaming the U.N. But otherwise, nice conspiracy rant!
Except that national health care is highly unlikely to be unpopular. In countries that have national health care, again such as Britain and Germany, the national health care program is enormously popular. This is part of why the Republicans are fighting the idea so hard; they know that, much like Social Security, once a large national program is established to provide for everyone something that they want (cheaper health care), it will be impossible to kill again later.
It's not about the machines that go beep. It's all about the machines that go 'Ping!' And the most expensive machines in the hospital, sold and then leased back so it comes out of the operating budget and not out of the capital budget.
So either this took place in another developed country, where national health care kept costs down, or it took place in a developing country, where costs are lower due to lower wages and costs of living? This fails to prove the claim that high quality of life + low bureacracy = cheap healthcare, only that a tradeoff between the three is possible.
Healthcare currently is costing America approximately 15% of GDP and getting poor results. A well-implemented national plan could bring that down into line with the other developed democracies of the world such as Germany and the U.K., or about 10% (your numbers may vary depending on calculation method, etc, and may be somewhat lower, but let's go with 10% for a rough estimate). This saves 5% of the current US economy that can be put to productive uses instead of pointless quality-of-life-diminishing health insurance bureaucracy. This also means many of the paper-pushers currently drawing down salaries denying people coverage will have to go do productive work instead, further improving the economic situation. Further, US companies will no longer be at a competitive disadvantage with their foreign competitors, who do not have to shell out for their workers' health coverage.
So, yes, fixing health care is a plausible means to repair the economy. It is entirely possible to fix two interrelated problems at once. Whether it is an economic issue is not really in question, given the size of the healthcare industry in the US. You might dispute the efficacy of a national healthcare plan, but it'll still have an economic impact one way or another, and President Obama has made it clear in previous statements that he believes that fixing the U.S. health system will have beneficial economic effects.
Psst! Your bias is showing! Progressives look at 'due process' and say "That includes fair access to the evidence, regardless of what the defendant thinks the evidence is good for" and then says "Therefore, since the Constitution says everyone should get their due process and this is part of due process, the prisoner should have a right to access the evidence for whatever purpose their defense might require." Just because you disagree with someone's conclusions does not mean they are not starting from the Constitution. Conservatives want the Constitution applied minimally; 'due process' cannot possibly include anything not known at the time of the writing of the Constitution, even if it logically falls under that umbrella. Progressives want the Constitution applied with the understanding that when the Founding Fathers used an umbrella term like 'due process', they were including everything that would generally fit under it.
"In the news today, the Windows Supreme Court threw out claims against Microsoft for monopolistic practices yet again, despite that the case before the All-Knowing System was in regards to water rights between Colorado and California..."
Actually, the case is more complicated than that. New Haven explicitly was throwing out the test results because under current law, results that display a distinct difference in outcome based on race are automatically assumed to have an invalid racial element to them. If they had not thrown out the test results, they would have been open to a lawsuit alleging that the test itself was racially biased, and under current law New Haven would have had a very hard time winning that case. The white firefighters need to prove that the test was not racially biased in order to make it acceptable.
The Supreme Court may well find that New Haven acted legally in assuming the test to be invalid, but remand the case to the lower courts anyhow with instructions to examine the test's contents for racial bias, and uphold the test if they don't find any and prior testing has not shown a pattern of racial bias. That would be a slight loosening of the current standard, but not throwing out the entire doctrine, which would be an incremental step very much in keeping with the Roberts court thus far. It would also loosen the states and municipalities a bit to demonstrate their ability to conduct their own affairs in a colorblind manner as required by law.
Souter's leaving, Ginsburg is likely to leave in the next two or three years (to ensure that Obama gets to choose her replacement), Stevens is likely to do the same... and all of them are considered likely at this point to be replaced by more distinctly progressive justices, since for the first time in decades there's a Democratic President with a Democratic Senate that can actually confirm his choices easily. None of the hard-right justices (Scalia, Alito, Thomas, or Roberts) is going to be stepping down voluntarily any time soon, but Kennedy might be getting some inclinations that way based on not being fond of being the constant swing vote, subject to pressures from all of his colleagues all the time.
Right before he added trillions to the national debt, sank the country into an extended and unpopular war in the middle east, ignored intelligence that warned of an attack of the World Trade Center via airplanes, wiretapped Americans illegally, and complacently watched the destruction of a major American city, apparently.
It's the same marketing department that decided to sell used panties from vending machines in Japan. Which, when you think about it, may be an insight into a couple of national psyches...
Slashdot moderation-based monetary policy. You get modded up, you get money. Modded down, you lose money. The monetary policy is then based off of the number of good (or at least popular) ideas and comments you make.
You've lost a crown and aren't willing to wait for the dentist, so you're making it a DIY project, clearly.
Something had to take the place of the real estate bubble. At least an ammo bubble mostly only hits people who're convinced that they're going to be living in a hellhole soon anyhow one way or another, so when the bubble pops and they're out several grand on overpriced ammunition, they'll be better off than they thought. So, a benefit to pessimism?
It's a Dungeons and Dragons reference. Before 3rd and 4th editions, electrum pieces were a form of in-game currency, worth five silver pieces or half a gold piece if I recall correctly.
It depends entirely on what your purpose for them is. You should have a good test suite that passes, good coverage, and have done some over-the-shoulder checks. Then the formal code review can be less about "Let's find bugs" as it is a style check and a chance for everyone else (who might get called upon to support the system later) to understand the general purpose, operation, and any clever bits. If your code review is supposed to be the bug hunt, then yeah, that's not efficient.