And allowed significant developments of corporate personhood to take place on his watch, while simultaneously allowing individuals' rights to be weakened or nullified through the PATRIOT act, and the DMCA
You may not like the PATRIOT act or the DMCA (which was actually something Clinton did), but, do those really effect the economy? Are you really saying that, there's these companies out there, saying "OMG, PATRIOT ACT, time to start firing people".
By the way, those two wars, over 6 years, cost more than the Health Care Reform legislation will cost over the next ten years.
Dude, the cost scoring of the health care reform are a fantasy. Democrats once said that Medicare and Medicaid will only cost 10 billion a year, and look how that turned out.
He took the country into two wars while simultaneously lowering taxes.
Forgetting that one war was foisted on him, how does that actually break the economy. Are you saying that running a federal deficit is bad for the economy? Government spending is supposed to be stimulative, isn't it?
If the deficit is so terrible, and I agree that its bad, then, isn't Mr. Obama three times worse the President Bush was, just from the sheer weight of debt?
Airport security is stupid. I fail to see the logic of having a guard search my rear end in case I am one of the 1 in 10 billion airport travelers that decides to carry a bomb, so that I can get run over by a girl talking on her cell phone on my way home from the airport.
Americans have no way of measuring or comparing risks, and honestly I think every interest group wants it that way.
IF it wasn't for Ben Bernanke studying the Great Depressions, and seeing the liquidity crisis and the hardship that it caused, we would have not had "helicopters of money" and unemployment would be 20% nationally, and 50% in regions, and we would be working WPA jobs. Democracies would be toppled by desperate people, perhaps even our own, and the world would be lurching to war.
So, by far, Ben Bernanke is the right man in the right place at the right time. This recession sucks, but he kept it from getting a lot worse. The man should have his own fricking face on a coin, for what he did.
Seriously, this is what I would like to know. What policy decision of Bush was it that sunk the economy?
Did Bush deficits sunk the economy? Make that argument, but, most economists would say that deficits are Keynsien and stimulatory, and indeed, Bush's deficits, in particular, his stimulus package, had more of an immediate impact on GDP than Obama's stimulus did. If anything, Bush's 400B deficits should have proved that there was no way that Obama's 1.5T deficit could possibly work and Keynes is a fraud. Since we're 1.5T of stimulus and the economy is getting worse, that's probably it.
Did lax oversite sink the economy? I mean, the Bush administration was famously shot down on attempts to reel in Fannie Mae, and that right there is what really caused the banking collapse. There was Chris Dodd saying Fannie Mae is doing great, Maxine Waters saying that picking on Fannnie Mae is racist, right up until Fannie Mae went over the cliff and the Feds had to pony up 700B to cover for Fannie Mae's junk.
Did the war sink the economy? I don't think so. The war is only about 200B a year. It's a drain, to be sure, but on the flipside, the USA has 100,000 soldiers sitting on the last unexploited reserve of petroleum on the planet... so there's an upside to it.
Charges like this are routine, but the reality is, what sunk the economy is free trade. The grim reality is pretty simple. Every time you go to Walmart and buy something, you send a dollar overseas. That dollar is someone else's job, helps asian countries play games with our currency, and generally screws the country up. If anyone sank the economy, its people buying foreign products.
The thing is, yes, you could say Bush sank the economy because he was pro-free trade. But Free Trade is actually an invention of the Progressive Democrats - Wilson was pro-free trade, and made it a goal for WWI, Roosevelt was pro-free trade, and made it a goal for WWII, and got it. Really, all Bush did was follow along in the path all the other Presidents that kept expanding trade around the globe.
So yeah, bash Bush for being a free trader and sinking the economy, but remember that Truman let in the Europeans after WWII, so we have German cars and French stuff competing with American jobs, Johnson let in the Japanese, Clinton let in the Chinese and Bush Jr let in India. Every President has been doing it, and if you are going to blame Bush for it, blame him, yes, by all means, but lets have an admission that free trade failed and let me know Obama is putting up the barriers, like Reagan did.
H1-B is meant to bring Indians into the USA and have them by the short hairs. I rather think that if an employer wants to bring someone onboard to the USA, they can, and should, without restriction, but, once you work in the USA, and pay taxes for six months, you should be made a citizen already.
Taxation without representation is not fair.
I thought we revolted from GB over that very issue, and it is despicable that we even tolerate this modern form of indentured servitude.
Laws are as specific as the Congress cares to make them. While we think a lack of precision in law is a fault, sometimes they are buggy by design. Many a times, Congress will write something that is intentionally vague, hoping the courts will either sort it out, or go the right way, or essentially make new law as circumstances merit.
As much as we talk about Congress not doing what we want, they know exactly what we want, how we vote, how we feel about issues, etc. The disconnect is that you, me, or other people, all totally do not at all understand what the country as a whole wants, and that is something both political parties are extremely familiar with. They are politicians and they are good at what they do.
In short, we're not going to get better, more civic minded government, until we get better ourselves. I mean, come on, who wants to hear the truth that taxes need to go up and entitlements need to be capped to balance the budget in a meaningful way. WE've known this for 30 years, yet, the voters really do prefer, to buy all this stuff and not pay for it, so what do the pols do? Borrow it.
That's a rather extreme jump. So far I haven't seen anyone proposing that we surrender all of our Freedoms
Oh I think I've probably posted in favor of instituting IPV6 and mandatorily identifiable IP addresses, executing spammers, torture for passwords, and worse. Now I'm just arguing the opposite side of the coin as its worth exploring.
When does programs become taxable? Who will decided they are taxable, and how will you enforce this?
Tax the program when you file a copyright. If you want to keep the copyright, take it in to get it assessed by the property tax assessor for that software. You could do it like every couple of years, just like getting a driver's license, and even better, you could actually peg the amount you can sue for infringement to the taxes that you have paid. If you don't pay the taxes, then that copyright is reverted and the content is in the public domain. You could even cap the amount you can sue for damages for infringement - in total -, by the amount you claimed for your IP worth.
Admit it this is just a petty swipe at liberals and linux. Your still an idiot.
You only say I'm an idiot because I'm outlining a copyright scheme that can actually work, and I've figured out a way to shift the tax burden from center-right industries like manufacturing, mining and farming to liberal industries like intellectual property, and furthermore, use all of your social arguments against you.
In fact, I'm going to run as a Republican Candidate for US Senate, offering Canadian Style Single Payer Health Care, all financed by levying a copyright and patent property tax on every invention ever made and every book every written. The end result will be a sharp reduction of submarine patents, a greater churn of software, patents and legal paperwork into the public domain, and finally, universal health care for all Americans with no strings attached.
Seems to me, that your progressive self is simply being greedy, trying to avoid paying taxes so that people in need of medical care go starving. How could you do such a thing!
I'm only asking, because, as much as we hate botnets and trojans and malware, that, any sort of world capable of rapidly sniffing out and squelching "bad" content is a world that is capable of sniffing out and squelching out "any" content. Perhaps in this case, just as many of us accept some combination of deaths from gun violence, abortions, incendiary speech, and family breakdowns and other things, that come as a consequence of the misuse of freedom, might accept spam as a misuse of freedom too, rather than try and trade it all for a world that has no freedom at all.
I'm not sure what to make of your comment. Are you saying that it is human nature to be racist? If so, that's an incredibly cynical view (not to mention racist) and I'm struggling to figure out how I escaped such a cursed human nature.
Of course it is human nature to be racist. Racism is just like violence, adultery and every other vice that's out there. Humans will do it because it is the easy path, the dark path, and its built within us. Maybe you've got good economic circumstances or something, but I bet if we knocked your income down a few pegs and put you in some neighborhoods, you'd be dropping the n* bomb just as much as any trailer-boy would.
Racism isn't something that isn't going away, and anyone who says they are not racist, are like husbands that say they've never thought of being with another woman - simply unbelievable.
I'll take American food over French, any day of the week. We have the -best- food on the planet. Why else do you think we are so damned fat. If French food were so good, French people would be a lot heavier than they are.
Are you going to have Program assessors look at your source code and tell you to pay money
That is what they do with physical property. Businesses have to justify their inventories, and everyone has to have their property assessed for property taxes. Tis how schools work. Tell me, is big media now anti-school!
I always read it as another "white people suck" movie, but this time, "white people suck in space", which is equally weird, because Cameron is about as white as they come.
Basically, a self proclaimed IT efficiency expert writes that "the world is wasting TRILLIONS of dollars a year, because it has bad IT". The subtext is, you must hire an IT efficiency expert, and "um, I happen to be one".
It would be nice if people that publish all these shock numbers were not so transparently self motivated. It almost makes me not trust any number at all. It's like, if Newton were alive today, and published that Earth's gravity acceleration, I'd have to ask, well, what's in it for you, Isaac!
There is _nothing_ wrong with avoiding taxes. My God, if we have a right to an attorney to help us avoid jail time, we ought to have a right to avoid spending 1/3rd of our life working for the government.
Well, like everything, to a point. But in Delaware's case, the roads are paved on time, traffic is manageable, public services are good, and things are rolling along. Like, I have to ask, what exactly does New Jersey or Maryland do with all of their dough, because, in both cases, services are worse and the roads are worse.
I think what makes Delaware tick is that you have some genuine bipartisan centrist leadership. Democrats and Republicans alike are not the crazies that are in Washington DC.
Slashdot Mirror
And allowed significant developments of corporate personhood to take place on his watch, while simultaneously allowing individuals' rights to be weakened or nullified through the PATRIOT act, and the DMCA
You may not like the PATRIOT act or the DMCA (which was actually something Clinton did), but, do those really effect the economy? Are you really saying that, there's these companies out there, saying "OMG, PATRIOT ACT, time to start firing people".
I've flown with some really sketchy dudes and none of them ever received a cavity search. What the hell are you doing wrong?
I guess I should make it clear, that when I have a bomb in my rear, that I'm talking about McDonald's for lunch, not C4.
By the way, those two wars, over 6 years, cost more than the Health Care Reform legislation will cost over the next ten years.
Dude, the cost scoring of the health care reform are a fantasy. Democrats once said that Medicare and Medicaid will only cost 10 billion a year, and look how that turned out.
He took the country into two wars while simultaneously lowering taxes.
Forgetting that one war was foisted on him, how does that actually break the economy. Are you saying that running a federal deficit is bad for the economy? Government spending is supposed to be stimulative, isn't it?
If the deficit is so terrible, and I agree that its bad, then, isn't Mr. Obama three times worse the President Bush was, just from the sheer weight of debt?
Should probably hold off on the coins (unless they are gold coins). The Alan Greenspan coin has proven to be a poor investment
The price to be paid for Bernanke's helicopters is going to be pretty steep, for sure.
Airport security is stupid. I fail to see the logic of having a guard search my rear end in case I am one of the 1 in 10 billion airport travelers that decides to carry a bomb, so that I can get run over by a girl talking on her cell phone on my way home from the airport.
Americans have no way of measuring or comparing risks, and honestly I think every interest group wants it that way.
IF it wasn't for Ben Bernanke studying the Great Depressions, and seeing the liquidity crisis and the hardship that it caused, we would have not had "helicopters of money" and unemployment would be 20% nationally, and 50% in regions, and we would be working WPA jobs. Democracies would be toppled by desperate people, perhaps even our own, and the world would be lurching to war.
So, by far, Ben Bernanke is the right man in the right place at the right time. This recession sucks, but he kept it from getting a lot worse. The man should have his own fricking face on a coin, for what he did.
Seriously, this is what I would like to know. What policy decision of Bush was it that sunk the economy?
Did Bush deficits sunk the economy? Make that argument, but, most economists would say that deficits are Keynsien and stimulatory, and indeed, Bush's deficits, in particular, his stimulus package, had more of an immediate impact on GDP than Obama's stimulus did. If anything, Bush's 400B deficits should have proved that there was no way that Obama's 1.5T deficit could possibly work and Keynes is a fraud. Since we're 1.5T of stimulus and the economy is getting worse, that's probably it.
Did lax oversite sink the economy? I mean, the Bush administration was famously shot down on attempts to reel in Fannie Mae, and that right there is what really caused the banking collapse. There was Chris Dodd saying Fannie Mae is doing great, Maxine Waters saying that picking on Fannnie Mae is racist, right up until Fannie Mae went over the cliff and the Feds had to pony up 700B to cover for Fannie Mae's junk.
Did the war sink the economy? I don't think so. The war is only about 200B a year. It's a drain, to be sure, but on the flipside, the USA has 100,000 soldiers sitting on the last unexploited reserve of petroleum on the planet... so there's an upside to it.
Charges like this are routine, but the reality is, what sunk the economy is free trade. The grim reality is pretty simple. Every time you go to Walmart and buy something, you send a dollar overseas. That dollar is someone else's job, helps asian countries play games with our currency, and generally screws the country up. If anyone sank the economy, its people buying foreign products.
The thing is, yes, you could say Bush sank the economy because he was pro-free trade. But Free Trade is actually an invention of the Progressive Democrats - Wilson was pro-free trade, and made it a goal for WWI, Roosevelt was pro-free trade, and made it a goal for WWII, and got it. Really, all Bush did was follow along in the path all the other Presidents that kept expanding trade around the globe.
So yeah, bash Bush for being a free trader and sinking the economy, but remember that Truman let in the Europeans after WWII, so we have German cars and French stuff competing with American jobs, Johnson let in the Japanese, Clinton let in the Chinese and Bush Jr let in India. Every President has been doing it, and if you are going to blame Bush for it, blame him, yes, by all means, but lets have an admission that free trade failed and let me know Obama is putting up the barriers, like Reagan did.
H1-B is meant to bring Indians into the USA and have them by the short hairs. I rather think that if an employer wants to bring someone onboard to the USA, they can, and should, without restriction, but, once you work in the USA, and pay taxes for six months, you should be made a citizen already.
Taxation without representation is not fair.
I thought we revolted from GB over that very issue, and it is despicable that we even tolerate this modern form of indentured servitude.
Vagueness in law is a feature.
Laws are as specific as the Congress cares to make them. While we think a lack of precision in law is a fault, sometimes they are buggy by design. Many a times, Congress will write something that is intentionally vague, hoping the courts will either sort it out, or go the right way, or essentially make new law as circumstances merit.
As much as we talk about Congress not doing what we want, they know exactly what we want, how we vote, how we feel about issues, etc. The disconnect is that you, me, or other people, all totally do not at all understand what the country as a whole wants, and that is something both political parties are extremely familiar with. They are politicians and they are good at what they do.
In short, we're not going to get better, more civic minded government, until we get better ourselves. I mean, come on, who wants to hear the truth that taxes need to go up and entitlements need to be capped to balance the budget in a meaningful way. WE've known this for 30 years, yet, the voters really do prefer, to buy all this stuff and not pay for it, so what do the pols do? Borrow it.
And PS, keep the goddamned Feds out of search.
That's a rather extreme jump. So far I haven't seen anyone proposing that we surrender all of our Freedoms
Oh I think I've probably posted in favor of instituting IPV6 and mandatorily identifiable IP addresses, executing spammers, torture for passwords, and worse. Now I'm just arguing the opposite side of the coin as its worth exploring.
When does programs become taxable? Who will decided they are taxable, and how will you enforce this?
Tax the program when you file a copyright. If you want to keep the copyright, take it in to get it assessed by the property tax assessor for that software. You could do it like every couple of years, just like getting a driver's license, and even better, you could actually peg the amount you can sue for infringement to the taxes that you have paid. If you don't pay the taxes, then that copyright is reverted and the content is in the public domain. You could even cap the amount you can sue for damages for infringement - in total -, by the amount you claimed for your IP worth.
Admit it this is just a petty swipe at liberals and linux. Your still an idiot.
You only say I'm an idiot because I'm outlining a copyright scheme that can actually work, and I've figured out a way to shift the tax burden from center-right industries like manufacturing, mining and farming to liberal industries like intellectual property, and furthermore, use all of your social arguments against you.
In fact, I'm going to run as a Republican Candidate for US Senate, offering Canadian Style Single Payer Health Care, all financed by levying a copyright and patent property tax on every invention ever made and every book every written. The end result will be a sharp reduction of submarine patents, a greater churn of software, patents and legal paperwork into the public domain, and finally, universal health care for all Americans with no strings attached.
Seems to me, that your progressive self is simply being greedy, trying to avoid paying taxes so that people in need of medical care go starving. How could you do such a thing!
I'm only asking, because, as much as we hate botnets and trojans and malware, that, any sort of world capable of rapidly sniffing out and squelching "bad" content is a world that is capable of sniffing out and squelching out "any" content. Perhaps in this case, just as many of us accept some combination of deaths from gun violence, abortions, incendiary speech, and family breakdowns and other things, that come as a consequence of the misuse of freedom, might accept spam as a misuse of freedom too, rather than try and trade it all for a world that has no freedom at all.
I'm not sure what to make of your comment. Are you saying that it is human nature to be racist? If so, that's an incredibly cynical view (not to mention racist) and I'm struggling to figure out how I escaped such a cursed human nature.
Of course it is human nature to be racist. Racism is just like violence, adultery and every other vice that's out there. Humans will do it because it is the easy path, the dark path, and its built within us. Maybe you've got good economic circumstances or something, but I bet if we knocked your income down a few pegs and put you in some neighborhoods, you'd be dropping the n* bomb just as much as any trailer-boy would.
Racism isn't something that isn't going away, and anyone who says they are not racist, are like husbands that say they've never thought of being with another woman - simply unbelievable.
American ... Idol ?
I'll take American food over French, any day of the week. We have the -best- food on the planet. Why else do you think we are so damned fat. If French food were so good, French people would be a lot heavier than they are.
Ah yes. Because something is done by everybody, it is ok to do. Not only that, but it is encouraged to engage in it in every possible situation.
It's just mutual assured destruction.
Basically, don't make things about race when they're not.
It's America, everything is about race any more. It's identity politics.
Own the copy right to a song that isnt making any money? TOO BAD, pay up!
They do it for property. In case of the song, failure to pay property taxes would cause it to revert to the taxpayer, aka, public domain.
Are you going to have Program assessors look at your source code and tell you to pay money
That is what they do with physical property. Businesses have to justify their inventories, and everyone has to have their property assessed for property taxes. Tis how schools work. Tell me, is big media now anti-school!
I always read it as another "white people suck" movie, but this time, "white people suck in space", which is equally weird, because Cameron is about as white as they come.
like conservative economics works
Well I wouldn't go that far. Conservative stances on free trade are a national disaster.
Basically, a self proclaimed IT efficiency expert writes that "the world is wasting TRILLIONS of dollars a year, because it has bad IT". The subtext is, you must hire an IT efficiency expert, and "um, I happen to be one".
It would be nice if people that publish all these shock numbers were not so transparently self motivated. It almost makes me not trust any number at all. It's like, if Newton were alive today, and published that Earth's gravity acceleration, I'd have to ask, well, what's in it for you, Isaac!
There is _nothing_ wrong with avoiding taxes. My God, if we have a right to an attorney to help us avoid jail time, we ought to have a right to avoid spending 1/3rd of our life working for the government.
Well, like everything, to a point. But in Delaware's case, the roads are paved on time, traffic is manageable, public services are good, and things are rolling along. Like, I have to ask, what exactly does New Jersey or Maryland do with all of their dough, because, in both cases, services are worse and the roads are worse.
I think what makes Delaware tick is that you have some genuine bipartisan centrist leadership. Democrats and Republicans alike are not the crazies that are in Washington DC.
if there were no tax heavens anywhere in the world
I live in Delaware USA. There's no sales taxes, and low incomes taxes. I think its awesome. Please, raise your taxes.