I don't think the government is the best organization to build these things. In fact, the public schools, as a whole, absolutely suck! In a free society people exchange value for value, voluntarily. In a looter's society, those in power take what they want at the point of a gun, and give whatever they feel you need in order to keep providing them with your wealth.
So we all see what YOU think of democracy.
Just curious, what do YOU get out of it if we stop having public roads, schools, parks, libraries, etc.? The really, really rich have more money but the other 99% of us lose out.
So you suggest that just because he's got a lot of money, he shouldn't whine about having it stolen?
You're saying that making people pay their taxes is "stealing?"
Why don't you do something useful, invent a new product or improve a production process, make a bunch of money, and then you can give it away to whoever you choose. Many of the very rich in fact do this.
I wonder if you know, or care, that there is a nearly 100% correlation between geting rich and coming from a rich family. Almost NO ONE who isn't already rich from family is in the top 5%.
The first generation that received SS never paid into it. Think about that. It's literally a pyramid scheme based on population growth. The enormous SS taxes we pay aren't hanging around for us, they're already spent!
You might want to actually LOOK AT the numbers. Social Security is doing just fine. There is a very small shortfall that happens in about 38 years, and it happens FYI to be much less $$ than the Bush tax cuts during those years.
Hated by those who goofed off in high school, didn't go to college, didn't finish college, or took some lame major (liberal arts, anyone?) in college...then spent all their time partying, doing dope, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, got pregnant/got someone else pregnant, moved into a doublewide, bought a big screen TV to watch WWF, and now bitches an moans at all those nasty, awful rich folks who are just keepin' you down.
What are you TALKING about? Bush isn't bitching and moaning at rich people? He's PRESIDENT!
In 1993 Clinton's budget raised taxes only on the very rich. The Republicans SCREAMED! They insisted it would lead to a depression.
Clinton also raised the minimum wage and brought in the Earned Income Tax Credit which actually gave some cash to poor people who are raising kids.
The result was a HUGE economic expansion - high economic growth for the longest time in our country's history. (And not funded by borrowing money like Reagan's economic growth was.) The huge Reagan deficits went away and we started paying off the massive Reagan debt. (Which meant paying less interest which helped pay off even more debt.) (Bush has reversed this.)
Why did this happen? Think about it - we have a consumer economy. More money in the hands of the large numbers of regular people means they're able to buy more stuff. OBVIOUSLY things like increasing the minimum wage, paying off debt, and taxing the rich in order to recirculate the money in the economy are good for the economy. Just look at history, when these policies are in place we have economic growth, and when Republican policies are in place we have low growth. That's not to hard to look up - the highest economic growth has occurred when we have the highest taxes on the rich.
What makes you think that just because they have lots of money, that you're entitled to a single penny of it?
It's called society. You pay taxes and the country builds schools, roads, etc.
And in this case all of us working people are sending money to Social Security and Bush is now taking THAT money from OUR paychecks and giving it out to pay for the tax cuts that are going to the very rich, and to pay interest on the Reagan debt, which also goes to the very rich, and to pay defense contractors, which are the very rich...
tax the rich people into poverty so all of "us poor folk" can have rich people things too
Nonsense. Taxes are not "communism." In fact, responsibly taking care of our own people will PREVENT things like communism. Who is our country FOR, anyway? A few percent of income is not putting the rich "into poverty." How silly are you? And I'm not talking about "having rich people things", I'm talking about schools that aren't falling apart and health care. Like I said, who is our country for, anyway?
And if you're counting on social security to live on when you retire, you're a freaking idiot.
Why shouldn't I be thinking I'll get my Social Security? Until Bush came along Social Security was putting away HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars a year toward people's retirement - and that money was coming from OUR paychecks. Now it comes from our paychecks and is handed to the rich! Reagan started spending that money - Clinton fixed the problem - now Bush is spending the money. But with RESPONSIBLE leadership at the top, yes, I do think that the Social Security money will be there.
There is this huge gap between the rich, and everyone else. Things for the rich are selling really well, while the rest of us are living in a recession.
People don't understand just how rich the rich are in the U.S. The incomes at the top are in the hundreds of millions of $$ per year. The top 5% own more than 80% of everything in the country. That means that 95% of us are trying to get along with 20% of everything. (If you have a mortgage, you don't "own" your house.)
The Bush tax cuts, which go almost entirely to the top 1% (and were opposed by 70% of the public), cost TRILLIONS of dollars over this decade. It means we don't have medical care, prescription drug coverage, repairs in the nation's schools, repairs of our bridges, and now they are even cancelling student loan programs. AND because of this the government is now using our SOCIAL SECURITY money to cover the money going out to the tax cuts. And this is because a few people at the top are making SO MUCH MONEY that cancelling this small tax cut would pay for all these things!
If people undstood just how much money is now being moved from regular people to the few people at the top they might start talking about doing something about it.
Clinton signed the treaty knowing full well that the Republican-controlled Senate would never ratify it. It was a publicity ploy for him, and something he could lay on the Republicans.
Does this actually make sense to you? It's CLINTON'S fault because the REPUBLICANS are against it?
What was he supposed to do, NOT sign the treaty? THEN what would you be saying?
I don't pretend to understand all the ins and outs of the subject, but the increasing commercialization of linux scares me.
Well it means to me that we're finally going to see some good apps showing up, like Ximian and Gobe, and that Linux is going to be able to be used by regular people, which means that everyone is going to have CHOICES again.
I always like to point out that you can actually help do something about this. Contact your Senator and Member of Congress. IT WORKS. The more they hear from people onm an issue the more seriously they take it.
Go here: http://capwiz.com/nyt/dbq/officials/. Type in your zip code to see who to contact.
It makes a difference. Try it.
To really understand this, and to hear for yourself the difference between a great station and the canned corporate crap we get on most FM stations now, check out KPIG. They play such a variety of music, and the manager requires them to play NOTHING that is top 40.
KPIG is at http://www.kpig.com.
As a matter of fact, the Democrats did NOT try to exclude any of these absentee ballots, but if they had just how is it "dirty pool" to say that the RULES should be followed?
Not postmarked, or postmarked LATE means that the ballots could have been cast AFTER THE ELECTION -- after it was know that the vote was close!
In fact there is evidence that the Republicans worked with the military to get just such votes from ships and offshore bases.
So don't try this "Deomcrats are just as bad as Republicans" stuff. One party respected democracy and one party didn't. And the consequences of this have already shown up in places like Venezuela where we tried to overthrow the elected leader.
I was mistaken. The rule is that military absentee ballots mist be postmarket and dated no later than the date of the election -OR- signed and dated no later than the date of the election.
The problem I was referring to was military ballots that were NOT postmarked or NOT DATED AT ALL, and were collected AFTER the election.
Bush in office has little, if anything, to do with Microsoft's behaviour.
Are you aware of the settlement that the Bush administration made with Microsoft, after the Clinton Administration wond the anti-trust case?
The Bush settlement pretty much throws out the case agasint Microsoft, and allows them to continue to operate as they were before the case started, AFTER IT WAS ALREADY WON!
Aside from what the tobacco companies have gotten from the Republicans, this is one of the most obvious and clear cases of a trade-off of corporate benefits for campaign cash that the country has seen. Maybe not the worst, but just about the most obvious.
You are not correct. They are forcing schools to audit JUST BEFORE FINALS or pay a large fee instead of auditing. Of course, many schools can't do the audit now. They just don't have the people right now because of the time of year.
Listening to Rush Limbaugh can get you embarrassed if you try to go out in public and repeat the stuff he feeds you.
The Supreme Court vote to halt the recount was 5-4. Al Gore's MOTHER inherited $250,000 of Occidental stock, a minute fraction of the company, but what does this attempt at character assasination have to do with ANYTHING?
Top 10 Republican corporate donors: AT&T $2,302,451 Philip Morris Cos Inc 2,098,922 Bristol-Myers Squibb Co 1,518,019 Natl Rifle Assn 1,455,187 Enron Corp 1,433,850 Pfizer Inc 1,398,592 Freddie Mac 1,383,250 Microsoft Corp 1,296,079 AOL Time Warner 1,139,861 Amway Corp 1,138,500 MBNA Corp 1,035,905
Top 10 Democratic corporate donors: AT&T 1,457,469 AOL Time Warner 1,425,637 Ness Motley Loadholt Richardson & Poole 1,290,700 Williams Bailey Law Firm LLP 1,117,050 Joseph E Seagram & Sons Inc 1,100,794 Milstein Properties 1,084,389 Microsoft Corp 1,029,792 Freddie Mac 1,025,000 Global Crossing Development Co 1,007,768 SBC Communications Inc 895,718
Yeah, Bush sucks. I remember the good old days when Bill & Al were in the White House and Microsoft was just a socially conscious underdog struggling against the tyranny of Apple......um, or did I get that wrong?
The Clinton Adminitration brought the anti-trust suit against Microsoft, and persued it until Microsoft was found guilty.
The Bush administration came in and immediately "settled" with Microsoft, even though Microsoft had been found guilty. The settlement effectively lets them keep doing what they were found guilty of, and even extends that in the applications area. This is why we are seeing actions like the article this is all in response to.
Most of the country, not just some corporations (vastly more corporate cash went to Algore) voted for Bush.
You don't tend to keep yourself informed about current events, do you?
1) No, more corporate cash did not go to Gore. I think it was about 2/3 to the Republicans. (Recently all the Democrats and only a couple Republicans voted to get corporate cash out of our elections.)
2) Gore got over 500,000 more votes in the last election. But we use something called the Electoral College, which means that each state counts its votes and then all the Electoral votes of that state go to the winner in that state. So someone can win the election and not become president.
Gore was one Electoral vote short of winning, and Florida was not yet decided. More than 100,000 ballots were thrown out in Florida for various reasons, and several throusahd people, mostly black, were prevented from voting at all. Then hundreds of ballots from military voters were counted, even though they were not postmarked and many were mailed after the election. (Even though ballots in areas where black people lived were NOT counted if they were not correctly postmarked.)
After the election Gore was trying to get a recount, but the Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to stop the recount. Those 5 were all Republican appointees. The Justice who wrote the opinion said that recounting the voted would "harm" Bush because it might mean that he loses the election, so to prevent this harm they had to stop the recount. (There's a legal technicality that a court can't come in and make a ruling like that unless one of the parties involved will be harmed.)
Yes, the school districts have to commit to several years right now, during finals. Or else.
Also, corporations have until July 31 to commit to several years for a flat fee or lose thier right to get upgrades at a reduced cost. That's right, the next version of Office at full price regardless of whether they have Office now, and for some companies that is for thousands of computers. Or sign up for a flat per-year fee (which is ALSO higher than the upgrade price would have been) and commit to multi-years.
It completely locks out other OSes and productivity software. And they have to do it right away or pay up huge amounts.
Have you called your Member of Congress yet to discuss this? That REALLY CAN WORK.
Also, anyone reading this -- Go here: http://capwiz.com/nyt/dbq/officials/ and enter your zip code to find out who represents you in Washington. There will be two that say Sen. and one that says Rep. (For the engineers - that's Senator and Representative, for the Senate and the House of Representatives) Call ALL THREE at their Washington or Local office and leave a message about your concern with hte aide that answers.
This DOES GET NOTICED and DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE! Especially since it concerns education.
Part of the reason things happen the way they do in Washington is because so few people pay attention and let their representatives know what they are thinking.
Seriously, try it. Imagine if the phone lines of the politicians got/.ed, maybe something would get done about Microsoft.
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I don't think the government is the best organization to build these things. In fact, the public schools, as a whole, absolutely suck! In a free society people exchange value for value, voluntarily. In a looter's society, those in power take what they want at the point of a gun, and give whatever they feel you need in order to keep providing them with your wealth.
So we all see what YOU think of democracy.
Just curious, what do YOU get out of it if we stop having public roads, schools, parks, libraries, etc.? The really, really rich have more money but the other 99% of us lose out.
So you suggest that just because he's got a lot of money, he shouldn't whine about having it
stolen?
You're saying that making people pay their taxes is "stealing?"
Why don't you do something useful, invent
a new product or improve a production process,
make a bunch of money, and then you can give it
away to whoever you choose. Many of the very rich
in fact do this.
I wonder if you know, or care, that there is a nearly 100% correlation between geting rich and coming from a rich family. Almost NO ONE who isn't already rich from family is in the top 5%.
The first generation that received SS never paid into it. Think about that. It's literally a pyramid scheme based on population growth. The enormous SS taxes we pay aren't hanging around for us, they're already spent!
You might want to actually LOOK AT the numbers. Social Security is doing just fine. There is a very small shortfall that happens in about 38 years, and it happens FYI to be much less $$ than the Bush tax cuts during those years.
Hated by those who goofed off in high school, didn't go to college, didn't finish college, or took some lame major (liberal arts, anyone?) in college...then spent all their time partying, doing dope, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, got pregnant/got someone else pregnant, moved into a doublewide, bought a big screen TV to watch WWF, and now bitches an moans at all those nasty, awful rich folks who are just keepin' you down.
What are you TALKING about? Bush isn't bitching and moaning at rich people? He's PRESIDENT!
I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that the top 1% of earners pay over 30% of all income tax.
But they receive more than 30% of all income and own more than 80% of all wealth!
It's a response to a story about expensive new gadgets for the very rich.
In 1993 Clinton's budget raised taxes only on the very rich. The Republicans SCREAMED! They insisted it would lead to a depression.
Clinton also raised the minimum wage and brought in the Earned Income Tax Credit which actually gave some cash to poor people who are raising kids.
The result was a HUGE economic expansion - high economic growth for the longest time in our country's history. (And not funded by borrowing money like Reagan's economic growth was.) The huge Reagan deficits went away and we started paying off the massive Reagan debt. (Which meant paying less interest which helped pay off even more debt.) (Bush has reversed this.)
Why did this happen? Think about it - we have a consumer economy. More money in the hands of the large numbers of regular people means they're able to buy more stuff. OBVIOUSLY things like increasing the minimum wage, paying off debt, and taxing the rich in order to recirculate the money in the economy are good for the economy. Just look at history, when these policies are in place we have economic growth, and when Republican policies are in place we have low growth. That's not to hard to look up - the highest economic growth has occurred when we have the highest taxes on the rich.
What makes you think that just because they have lots of money, that you're entitled to a single penny of it?
It's called society. You pay taxes and the country builds schools, roads, etc.
And in this case all of us working people are sending money to Social Security and Bush is now taking THAT money from OUR paychecks and giving it out to pay for the tax cuts that are going to the very rich, and to pay interest on the Reagan debt, which also goes to the very rich, and to pay defense contractors, which are the very rich...
tax the rich people into poverty so all of "us poor folk" can have rich people things too
Nonsense. Taxes are not "communism." In fact, responsibly taking care of our own people will PREVENT things like communism. Who is our country FOR, anyway? A few percent of income is not putting the rich "into poverty." How silly are you? And I'm not talking about "having rich people things", I'm talking about schools that aren't falling apart and health care. Like I said, who is our country for, anyway?
And if you're counting on social security to live on when you retire, you're a freaking idiot.
Why shouldn't I be thinking I'll get my Social Security? Until Bush came along Social Security was putting away HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars a year toward people's retirement - and that money was coming from OUR paychecks. Now it comes from our paychecks and is handed to the rich! Reagan started spending that money - Clinton fixed the problem - now Bush is spending the money. But with RESPONSIBLE leadership at the top, yes, I do think that the Social Security money will be there.
There is this huge gap between the rich, and everyone else. Things for the rich are selling really well, while the rest of us are living in a recession.
People don't understand just how rich the rich are in the U.S. The incomes at the top are in the hundreds of millions of $$ per year. The top 5% own more than 80% of everything in the country. That means that 95% of us are trying to get along with 20% of everything. (If you have a mortgage, you don't "own" your house.)
The Bush tax cuts, which go almost entirely to the top 1% (and were opposed by 70% of the public), cost TRILLIONS of dollars over this decade. It means we don't have medical care, prescription drug coverage, repairs in the nation's schools, repairs of our bridges, and now they are even cancelling student loan programs. AND because of this the government is now using our SOCIAL SECURITY money to cover the money going out to the tax cuts. And this is because a few people at the top are making SO MUCH MONEY that cancelling this small tax cut would pay for all these things!
If people undstood just how much money is now being moved from regular people to the few people at the top they might start talking about doing something about it.
Clinton signed the treaty knowing full well that the Republican-controlled Senate would never ratify it. It was a publicity ploy for him, and something he could lay on the Republicans.
Does this actually make sense to you? It's CLINTON'S fault because the REPUBLICANS are against it?
What was he supposed to do, NOT sign the treaty? THEN what would you be saying?
Get a job somewhere else?
This has to have been written by a person who hasn't been to Silicon Valley lately!
Well it means to me that we're finally going to see some good apps showing up, like Ximian and Gobe, and that Linux is going to be able to be used by regular people, which means that everyone is going to have CHOICES again.
I always like to point out that you can actually help do something about this. Contact your Senator and Member of Congress. IT WORKS. The more they hear from people onm an issue the more seriously they take it. Go here: http://capwiz.com/nyt/dbq/officials/. Type in your zip code to see who to contact. It makes a difference. Try it.
To really understand this, and to hear for yourself the difference between a great station and the canned corporate crap we get on most FM stations now, check out KPIG. They play such a variety of music, and the manager requires them to play NOTHING that is top 40. KPIG is at http://www.kpig.com.
As a matter of fact, the Democrats did NOT try to exclude any of these absentee ballots, but if they had just how is it "dirty pool" to say that the RULES should be followed?
Not postmarked, or postmarked LATE means that the ballots could have been cast AFTER THE ELECTION -- after it was know that the vote was close!
In fact there is evidence that the Republicans worked with the military to get just such votes from ships and offshore bases.
So don't try this "Deomcrats are just as bad as Republicans" stuff. One party respected democracy and one party didn't. And the consequences of this have already shown up in places like Venezuela where we tried to overthrow the elected leader.
I was mistaken. The rule is that military absentee ballots mist be postmarket and dated no later than the date of the election -OR- signed and dated no later than the date of the election.
The problem I was referring to was military ballots that were NOT postmarked or NOT DATED AT ALL, and were collected AFTER the election.
Bush in office has little, if anything, to do with Microsoft's behaviour.
Are you aware of the settlement that the Bush administration made with Microsoft, after the Clinton Administration wond the anti-trust case?
The Bush settlement pretty much throws out the case agasint Microsoft, and allows them to continue to operate as they were before the case started, AFTER IT WAS ALREADY WON!
Aside from what the tobacco companies have gotten from the Republicans, this is one of the most obvious and clear cases of a trade-off of corporate benefits for campaign cash that the country has seen. Maybe not the worst, but just about the most obvious.
You are not correct. They are forcing schools to audit JUST BEFORE FINALS or pay a large fee instead of auditing. Of course, many schools can't do the audit now. They just don't have the people right now because of the time of year.
Listening to Rush Limbaugh can get you embarrassed if you try to go out in public and repeat the stuff he feeds you.
The Supreme Court vote to halt the recount was 5-4. Al Gore's MOTHER inherited $250,000 of Occidental stock, a minute fraction of the company, but what does this attempt at character assasination have to do with ANYTHING?
2000 corporate contributions:
Republicans: $201,484,694
Democrats: $143,617,773
Top 10 Republican corporate donors:
AT&T $2,302,451
Philip Morris Cos Inc 2,098,922
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co 1,518,019
Natl Rifle Assn 1,455,187
Enron Corp 1,433,850
Pfizer Inc 1,398,592
Freddie Mac 1,383,250
Microsoft Corp 1,296,079
AOL Time Warner 1,139,861
Amway Corp 1,138,500
MBNA Corp 1,035,905
Top 10 Democratic corporate donors:
AT&T 1,457,469
AOL Time Warner 1,425,637
Ness Motley Loadholt Richardson & Poole 1,290,700
Williams Bailey Law Firm LLP 1,117,050
Joseph E Seagram & Sons Inc 1,100,794
Milstein Properties 1,084,389
Microsoft Corp 1,029,792
Freddie Mac 1,025,000
Global Crossing Development Co 1,007,768
SBC Communications Inc 895,718
Yeah, Bush sucks. I remember the good old days when Bill & Al were in the White House and Microsoft was just a socially conscious underdog struggling against the tyranny of Apple... ...um, or did I get that wrong?
The Clinton Adminitration brought the anti-trust suit against Microsoft, and persued it until Microsoft was found guilty.
The Bush administration came in and immediately "settled" with Microsoft, even though Microsoft had been found guilty. The settlement effectively lets them keep doing what they were found guilty of, and even extends that in the applications area. This is why we are seeing actions like the article this is all in response to.
Most of the country, not just some corporations (vastly more corporate cash went to Algore) voted for Bush.
You don't tend to keep yourself informed about current events, do you?
1) No, more corporate cash did not go to Gore. I think it was about 2/3 to the Republicans. (Recently all the Democrats and only a couple Republicans voted to get corporate cash out of our elections.)
2) Gore got over 500,000 more votes in the last election. But we use something called the Electoral College, which means that each state counts its votes and then all the Electoral votes of that state go to the winner in that state. So someone can win the election and not become president.
Gore was one Electoral vote short of winning, and Florida was not yet decided. More than 100,000 ballots were thrown out in Florida for various reasons, and several throusahd people, mostly black, were prevented from voting at all. Then hundreds of ballots from military voters were counted, even though they were not postmarked and many were mailed after the election. (Even though ballots in areas where black people lived were NOT counted if they were not correctly postmarked.)
After the election Gore was trying to get a recount, but the Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to stop the recount. Those 5 were all Republican appointees. The Justice who wrote the opinion said that recounting the voted would "harm" Bush because it might mean that he loses the election, so to prevent this harm they had to stop the recount. (There's a legal technicality that a court can't come in and make a ruling like that unless one of the parties involved will be harmed.)
Yes, the school districts have to commit to several years right now, during finals. Or else.
Also, corporations have until July 31 to commit to several years for a flat fee or lose thier right to get upgrades at a reduced cost. That's right, the next version of Office at full price regardless of whether they have Office now, and for some companies that is for thousands of computers. Or sign up for a flat per-year fee (which is ALSO higher than the upgrade price would have been) and commit to multi-years.
It completely locks out other OSes and productivity software. And they have to do it right away or pay up huge amounts.
They would still have to license Office. Linux really is the answer.
Have you called your Member of Congress yet to discuss this? That REALLY CAN WORK.
/.ed, maybe something would get done about Microsoft.
Also, anyone reading this -- Go here: http://capwiz.com/nyt/dbq/officials/ and enter your zip code to find out who represents you in Washington. There will be two that say Sen. and one that says Rep. (For the engineers - that's Senator and Representative, for the Senate and the House of Representatives) Call ALL THREE at their Washington or Local office and leave a message about your concern with hte aide that answers.
This DOES GET NOTICED and DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE! Especially since it concerns education.
Part of the reason things happen the way they do in Washington is because so few people pay attention and let their representatives know what they are thinking.
Seriously, try it. Imagine if the phone lines of the politicians got