I won't dispute this is of low value to terrorists. But low value is not the same as no value. Look at the list. There are items on there you would probably never have considered if you were looking for a place to attack that would hurt the US. Even if they had plenty of other targets already, I know I'd feel pretty guilty if I released that and one of the locations on it was subsequently the target of an attack.
On the other hand, no value is exactly what this seems to the be to the general public. How does knowing "all installations whose loss could critically affect US national security" help me? I just don't see the benefit. It gets back to my point. I don't think leaked information should be published just because it can be. There should be some purpose behind it.
Yet it provides information that anyone seeking to harm the US would find quite valuable.
Value is related to scarcity or difficulty of acquistion. How exactly is it difficult to acquire information that any of the items on the list are important to the US?
Glancing over the list for Canada there is nothing but a bunch of bridges and dams and industrial facilities, including nuclear facilities, that are obviously important. But vital? Or secret? Don't make me laugh.
I agree that much of the information would be easily obtained by other means. However, I don't think that means we should hand on a silver platter to whoever wants it. Especially as I still don't see how leaking this benefits the public in any way.
I haven't been on the 'Wikileaks is a terrorist organization' bandwagon, understanding that it's important that crimes not be covered up. However, when I read earlier today about the leak of the list of vital US facilities, I had to wonder just what they're thinking. I honestly can't figure out how the release of that benefits the public in any way. Yet it provides information that anyone seeking to harm the US would find quite valuable.
I don't think information should be made public for the sake of making it public. There are some things that are better off kept secret.
I don't mind the contracts so much. You don't have to renew them when they're up (granted you'll be paying a monthly fee that's priced as if you had your phone subsidized.) And there are carriers out there that don't require any contracts at all, so you have options. What they really need to do is expand Wireless Local Number Portability. As it is, those of us who have moved out of our original Area Code are stuck with our carrier unless we want to go through the nightmare of changing our phone number.
Honestly, with more and more people ditching landlines and long distance calls becoming a thing of the past, I think we should get rid of region based area codes completely. Just give numbers to whoever wants them regardless of where they live.
By the way, Glenn Greenwald absolutely nailed it here.
I read the article and agree with much of what he says. Nevertheless, there's one point in particular on which I disagree. He admits that there are specific pieces of information we can argue shouldn't be released. However, he then tries to claim that because it's impossible to have a perfect selection of what to release, our choice is between Wikileaks or nothing.
Just because mistakes will be made, doesn't mean they shouldn't even try to come up with a system that does a better job of filtering leaks than Wikileaks does.
I tend to believe that the risk of hurting innocent people is overblown. We haven't had that happen yet from their previous release of documents. If there was, I'm sure the detractors would have kicked up a huge stink.
They've come right out and admitted there's no proof of anyone being killed as a result of the leaks. However, if I was one of the named informers on previous leaks, I don't think I'd be terribly forgiving just because I hadn't been killed yet. You can have your life ruined by living in fear without having been killed.
That said, they've already corrected the problem and have been taking steps that completely satisfy me to ensure no innocents have their lives put at risk as a result of the leaks. It was a mistake they made, and I'm not pleased they made it, but it's no longer a factor in releases as far as I'm concerned.
If General McCrystal was burning a Koran and laughing about it, that should be public too. His position of power is far too important to ignore something like that. The public needs to know what kind of people their rulers really are.
Here I disagree with you. MyCyrstal should be fired in such a situation, but making sure the higher ups in the government/military saw the video, along with the implied threat that the video could find its way to the public at any time should prove sufficient to get that accomplished.
I've never believed in a public right to know that outweighed even the right to life. If I'm left in the dark about such an action, but as a result spared from an attack made by a young man who would have been enticed into radical Islam by such a video, I'd happily consider it a good trade.
It is possible for the release of information to do more harm than good, and I think my example would likely be one such case.
I have mixed feelings about Wikileaks. On the one hand, I think abuses, crimes, and the like should be exposed in general. I do feel Wikileaks made a large blunder by releasing names that could put peoples' lives in danger in some of their releases, but it appears they're no longer making that mistake at least.
On the other hand, I think one must always consider the potential harm every leak could cause. For example, if you had a video of General McChrystal burning a Koran and laughing about it, you probably shouldn't make it public. Send a copy to some higher ups in the US government and make sure they know they should get a leash on him before he does cause an incident, sure, but releasing it will just stir up hatred and could lead to many deaths.
This is why I'm much more skeptical of the benefit of the more recent diplomatic leaks than I am of the Iraq/Aghanistan ones. Much of the information that was released revealed nothing criminal or even unethical but could still lead to international incidents. I believe secrecy does have it's use in diplomacy much as it does for individuals. Being able to frankly discuss opinions of foreign dignitaries without fear of word getting back to them could very well aid in the establishment of good diplomatic relationships with other countries.
Besides, while some people may hope for complete transparency in government, I don't think Wikileaks will lead to that in the long run. I suspect it will just mean billions upon billions being spent beefing up security and coming up with procedures making it easier to discover who it was who was behind a leak. If they stuck to releasing only actual crimes and abuses, it would be harder to justify such expenditures without looking like they have something to hide.
The article makes sense to me. Nothing like sitting down for a meal and being presented with a plate full of vegetables to send you into a rage. A nice roast turkey or the like, however, will have you thinking of little next to how much you're going to enjoy your meal.
We do, but doing it via phone or online can be cheated far more easily than a standardized test. And if you bring them in for the test, you either have to pay for it, or miss out on potentially good employees who can't/won't pay their own way out. Being able to just look up a person's scores saves time and money.
That said, I don't remember the details of the SAT security, but I do recall the AP exams, with proctors constantly walking down the rows of desks watching everyone. The security of our own exam is much more lax. If you can cheat an AP without getting caught, you'd have no problem cheating our version.
We know we could be more secure, but constantly looking over a person's shoulder as if expecting them to cheat isn't the best way to make a good impression on the applicant. It doesn't matter if you decide you like him if he doesn't accept the job.
I'll have to disagree on both points. First, I can't recall ever doing an interview where my skills weren't tested in some form as part of the process. Now, at the company I work for, we've had people interview where it was clear they knew next to nothing about software development, despite what they wrote on their resume.
If they'd had to take a test, they would have done horribly, and we wouldn't have wasted time and money bringing them in for an interview. We also wouldn't need to expend any effort on that portion of the interview ourselves if we could see they'd scored highly on a test.
As to the purpose of college, yeah, I'm pretty sure it's about training you for a career. The college basically wants as many of their students as possible to get good, high paying jobs so it'll look good for their statistics.
I also seem to remember that nearly every class I took was trying to teach me skills I'd need when I started working. My college even required a year's worth of internships as part of my degree program, so you'd have actual experience working in your field.
Some colleges may take different approaches, but I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say they should. How would a college even go about preparing one for life? Cut them off from financial aid/their parents' money and force them to support themselves if they want food and shelter?
I know it would work better in some fields than others, but what I'd like to see is national standardized testing. Ideally they would have a number of different tests for each degree program, so school curriculum could still vary. So you could take a database exam, an AI exam, an operating systems exam, and perhaps language specific exams for the more popular ones. Then potential employers could look at which tests the applicants took and how well they scored on them. This would allow them to get a far better idea of how well each applicant's skills fit for the position. Which college you went to would become all be irrelevant.
But it is available to all. Sure you have to at least visit the US if you want to use it, but they won't stop you from using it just because you aren't a US citizen. But more seriously, I read British news sites such as The BBC and The Guardian. Just because people from other countries read it, doesn't mean it isn't allowed to be country specific. That said, as much as I usually dislike the complaining on this topic, in this specific case I feel some sympathy to your cause, as the summary really could cause confusion.
Why do you typically vote Republican then?
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results". - Albert Einstein
Because there are far more issues than the one at stake, and if you look back at history as recent as Bill Clinton, you'll see that even Democrats aren't saints in this regard.
My largest concern is making sure power doesn't become too centralized. I'm a strong believer of the laboratory of democracy model where you try something out at the state level and see what unintended consequences come along before you roll it out to the national level. Plus, if you really don't like what your state is doing, you can simply move to another one.
So of course I am very determined not to let the UN get too much power, and while the Republicans aren't always very good at limiting the power of the federal government, I trust them more than the Democrats not to try to sign any power over to the UN.
More recently, it's been largely due to my strong opposition of the Energy Bill. I find it hard to believe it's so similar to the Spanish plan after seeing what their plan did to them. I can support some funds going to help build solar/wind farms, but I'll pass on regulation and carbon taxing.
I think we could have a greater impact on the climate at a lower cost by pushing for simple changes such as painting the roofs of buildings white, using single ply toilet paper, and encouraging people to have few pets and children.
Not to mention that trying to reduce the birth rate would address overpopulation, an issue I consider to be a far greater threat to civilization than climate change.
you don't have to be of any party affiliation to be tired of the pointless fucking wars the US has been waging for 40 years, and I haven't even been alive that long.
I'll agree to this. I'm fiscally very conservative, and typically vote Republican. Nevertheless, I wish the US would stop trying to police the world. I also consider the defense budget to be a juicy target to start the spending cuts I'd like to see.
Yes, thanks for that. It's already been pointed out I was wrong on this point, and further research on my own only confirms this. I appreciate your insight, however.
It can help the neighborhood in the right circumstances. However, I don't believe people who strategically default generally hand over their keys and leave the day they miss their first payment. It can take quite a while for a foreclosure to go through, and if you're willing to stick around until the police force you out, you can stay rent free even longer.
During this period they're even less likely to maintain their home than simply because it's underwater. And with the glut of foreclosed homes, there's not always a rapid turnaround from having the old family removed and having the place sold and moved into.
That said, it's not their disregard for their neighbors that is the main focus of my ire, but their disregard for their contractual obligations. I'm a firm believer that a contract is a contract is a contract, but only between Ferengi. (Couldn't resist finishing the quote.)
If you bought the home hoping to settle there, you still have the home and at a price you thought was fair when you got the loan. If you bought it as an investment, you lost money, but there's always risk with investments. I could understand the moral argument if you got tricked by some fine print or deceitful legal speak, but the concept that you got a loan and you agree to make regular payments on it is pretty basic. So everyone should have understood that when they signed their name on the bottom line.
In both cases it really depends on the contents of the contract. If there's a clause saying you have an option to give the asset to the lender to cancel the debt, then most of my problems with the action go away. If, as I'm sure is the case in nearly every mortgage, you agree to make payments until the debt is paid in full, and taking the house is merely a penalty for breach of contract, then I think an individual or business has an obligation to make a good faith effort to keep the contract.
But even in the former case, it's difficult to argue that a strategic default isn't a greedy and self-serving action. Considering that a foreclosure reduces the property value of other homes in the area, you're harming your neighbors for your own benefit. It can be argued that's still the prudent decision, or that it's more important to look after the financial well-being of your family than people you might barely even know. That doesn't change the fact that it's still greedy and self-serving.
My current favorite is to throw the money at jobs building solar and wind farms. At least, that way, we reap some long-term cost savings down the road.
I could go for this as long as we learn some lessons from the Spanish.
1. Make sure we have limits on how much we're going to spend. They vastly underestimated how many people would buy into the program and now they're finding they have financial obligations far beyond what they can comfortably pay unless they go back on their words.
2. Avoid subsidies on the generation of power. I'll support providing aid to build the solar/wind farms, but paying for power generated creates too much potential for corruption. It was supposedly calculated that subsidies were so much higher than the cost of receiving electricity, that setting up arc lamps to power solar panels at night would be profitable. That may have just been a joke though, I don't really recall.
Anyway, I do remember that there was real corruption in that green plants were setting up diesel generators to increase their output to get more subsidies. And that's something that can be hard to catch unless you want to be constantly doing surprise inspections. So at the very least, any subsidies we consider have to be less than the cost to generate electricity by other means.
I don't quite understand what voters are thinking myself. I'm not as much of a fan of stimulus as a Keynesian, but I admit I'm a bit worried by the Tea Party's insistence on cutting spending ASAP. Reducing spending when we're still in the early stages of an economic recovery seems risky at best and suicidal at worst. I do, however, believe the deficit can be addressed without pulling the rug out of the recovery. Mainly by making sure that all new spending is a one time deal, not a new program that becomes an indefinite drain on revenue.
You can even cut spending in areas that have less impact on the economy and replace them with targeted spending designed to encourage investment and job growth (still temporary of course.) Programs like making loans easier to receive for small business. Or perhaps suspending the capitol gains tax for a fixed number of years on investments in start-up companies made before a certain date. I have no idea if most of that money would actually go to encouraging investment or just to reducing taxes for people who were going to invest anyway, but it's just an example. The point is, programs that encourage businesses or consumers to spend their money in a way that will create jobs in order to magnify the effect of the government spending.
First off, you're obviously much more informed about the CRA than I am. I don't currently feel like doing the research necessary to debate the issue when it may only prove you right in the first place, so I'll defer to you on that and withdraw my argument on the CRA.
By 'openly deceitful', of course,you mean 'committing fraud on a massive never-before-seen level'.
I really can't a break. Even when we agree I take flak for not using harsh enough wording.:P Very well, they committed fraud on a massive level. I'm not quite sure I'm willing to go with never-before-seen, however. There's a lot of history and some pretty big frauds to compete with.
Our real estate broker is legally our agent. It is criminal fraud for them to work against our best interest. They are not allowed to sell people property they can't afford, anymore than your investment banker could sell you an investment he knew was going to decrease in value.
Believe me, I'm not trying to say that the person scammed is anywhere near as to blame as the person scamming. But for all the smooth talking and even outright lies, I wish a few more people had just sat back, looked at the price of the house, and said 'that's a really big number compared to how much I make.'
I am pretty with disgusted the prevailing American attitude of 'how much stuff can I possibly get myself?' without even considering the questions of 'what can I afford?' It almost goes without saying that very few people ask themselves the even more valuable question of 'what can I afford to live without? Living beneath your means was becoming an endangered philosophy and I'm glad to see it making a comeback.
Ah, the last Republican talking point. So, statically, the one out of ten thousand people who are doing this are important? Becuase no one's actually doing this.
I said I found them every bit as greedy and immoral as the bankers, not as harmful, and that statement I'm sticking to.
And immoral? Corporations have no morality, I don't really see why anyone has any morality when dealing with them. Corporation kick people of their house all the time when moral people would not.
Yes, why should we worry about morality concerning corporations when they don't show any to us? By the same reasoning, why should corporations worry about morality when dealing with when we don't show any to them? I'm just not a fan the 'he'd do it to me so it's okay for me to do it to him' philosophy.
Those people are agreeing with the terms of their loan agreement. Either they pay the money, or the bank gets the house.
I'd wager heavily that just about any load agreement you find you agree to pay the mortgage if you can. Giving them the house is not an option, but a penalty if you break the terms (or can't pay.) Choosing not to pay and forcing a foreclosure is a breach of a contract. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I believe that when you agree to a contract you try to follow through on it, even if it becomes rather unpleasant to do so.
There's no denying that banks played a major role in the collapse, largely due to not properly ensuring that borrowers were capable of repaying the loans. However, that's far from the only factor as there's an excess of blame to go around. It was laws such as the Community Reinvestment Act that encouraged banks to lend to low income consumers who were high credit risks to begin with. I think there's little doubt that fewer bad loans would have been made without pushing of these acts, ones that Republicans opposed.
So the Republicans get part of the blame for failing to recognize that sometimes regulation is needed and not allowing it to be properly implemented. The Democrats also get part of the blame for pushing so hard for loans to be made to low income borrowers and making it out to be all but a right to own your own home (renting is a perfectly acceptable alternative.) You have the bankers who were too short-sighted and optimistic about how those loans would play out in some cases, and openly deceitful in passing off packaged securities to investors while understating their risks in others.
The final piece of the blame puzzle of course goes to the American people. There is such a thing as personal responsibility. Americans shouldn't have tried so hard to get the best possible homes and realized when a something was simply more than they could afford. If there weren't any homes they could afford they should have stuck with renting. No matter how sleazy the salesman, you're at least partially to blame if you fall for a scam. Then there's all the people who made the situation worse by refusing to continue making mortgage payments they could easily afford simply because they owed more than the house was worth. I consider them every bit as greedy and immoral as most of the bankers we love to vilify.
I think many people are putting too much emphasis on the Republican takeover of the House. Yes it will mean that it will be difficult for Obama to get his agenda through for the next two years, but it's not like Republicans will be able to do much either. The democrats still have control of the Senate and veto power. However, since every House member goes up for election every two years, it could easily sweep back the other way then.
As much as people like to focus on national elections, it's the governor and state legislature elections that I think are the bigger deal. Republicans had very strong showings there as well. The reason this is critical is that we just had the once every ten years census. That means states are going to be up for redistricting. With the large gains republicans made, they'll have a huge advantage in gerrymandering. This could make a very significant difference in the 2012 election and for that matter every election for the next decade. It will be much harder to undo that than it will be for Democrats to recapture the House.
It is odd that they act as if these professional polling companies have no idea this is going on. Some of them may not be factoring it in, so you could argue that aggregate polls could be skewed by it. However, I think hoping for too much of a shift is just setting yourself up for a disappoint similar to the one Republicans faced in the 2008 election.
Remember all that talk about how it was shown more people would claim they were voting for a black candidate than would actually vote for him just so they wouldn't seem racist? Turns out, the polls were actually pretty accurate. Who would have thought that people who do these polls for living might actually come up with a decent model? I'd wager at least the big names such as Zogby, Rassmussen, and Gallup have done a great deal of research into how the rise of cell phones would skew their polling.
I'm a AGW skeptic myself, but I'm also of the opinion that one should always consider the possibility that they're wrong. That's why I feel everyone, whether a skeptic or not should take some simple steps to hedge their bets against climate change. Such as painting your roof white, using single ply toilet paper, living as close to work as possible, and having fewer pets and kids.
You'd be amazed how much of a difference some of those simple things I listed can make. I believe solutions like that make far more sense than regulation and carbon taxing that can have severe economic repercussions. Meanwhile we can also continue research into geoengineering in case things do get really bad and we have no other option. Granted, thanks to the law of unintended consequences, most of the ideas being floated around should only be used as measures of last resort, but having those options could be quite valuable.
Of course, that's the same reason I don't want to push through major economic changes. Just like with geoengineering, you have the potential to seriously mess things up in ways you didn't anticipate.
I tend to agree that they wouldn't attack Israel openly. The greater worry is that they might secretly funnel a nuke to a terrorist organization and let them use it. Not all of Israel is holy ground to Muslims. There are plenty of places where they could kill many people without damaging any sacred sites. Does that mean I support a preemptive attack? No. I just realize the risk is very real if Iran can start producing nuclear weapons.
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I won't dispute this is of low value to terrorists. But low value is not the same as no value. Look at the list. There are items on there you would probably never have considered if you were looking for a place to attack that would hurt the US. Even if they had plenty of other targets already, I know I'd feel pretty guilty if I released that and one of the locations on it was subsequently the target of an attack.
On the other hand, no value is exactly what this seems to the be to the general public. How does knowing "all installations whose loss could critically affect US national security" help me? I just don't see the benefit. It gets back to my point. I don't think leaked information should be published just because it can be. There should be some purpose behind it.
Yet it provides information that anyone seeking to harm the US would find quite valuable.
Value is related to scarcity or difficulty of acquistion. How exactly is it difficult to acquire information that any of the items on the list are important to the US?
Glancing over the list for Canada there is nothing but a bunch of bridges and dams and industrial facilities, including nuclear facilities, that are obviously important. But vital? Or secret? Don't make me laugh.
I agree that much of the information would be easily obtained by other means. However, I don't think that means we should hand on a silver platter to whoever wants it. Especially as I still don't see how leaking this benefits the public in any way.
I haven't been on the 'Wikileaks is a terrorist organization' bandwagon, understanding that it's important that crimes not be covered up. However, when I read earlier today about the leak of the list of vital US facilities, I had to wonder just what they're thinking. I honestly can't figure out how the release of that benefits the public in any way. Yet it provides information that anyone seeking to harm the US would find quite valuable.
I don't think information should be made public for the sake of making it public. There are some things that are better off kept secret.
I don't mind the contracts so much. You don't have to renew them when they're up (granted you'll be paying a monthly fee that's priced as if you had your phone subsidized.) And there are carriers out there that don't require any contracts at all, so you have options. What they really need to do is expand Wireless Local Number Portability. As it is, those of us who have moved out of our original Area Code are stuck with our carrier unless we want to go through the nightmare of changing our phone number.
Honestly, with more and more people ditching landlines and long distance calls becoming a thing of the past, I think we should get rid of region based area codes completely. Just give numbers to whoever wants them regardless of where they live.
By the way, Glenn Greenwald absolutely nailed it here.
I read the article and agree with much of what he says. Nevertheless, there's one point in particular on which I disagree. He admits that there are specific pieces of information we can argue shouldn't be released. However, he then tries to claim that because it's impossible to have a perfect selection of what to release, our choice is between Wikileaks or nothing.
Just because mistakes will be made, doesn't mean they shouldn't even try to come up with a system that does a better job of filtering leaks than Wikileaks does.
I tend to believe that the risk of hurting innocent people is overblown. We haven't had that happen yet from their previous release of documents. If there was, I'm sure the detractors would have kicked up a huge stink.
They've come right out and admitted there's no proof of anyone being killed as a result of the leaks. However, if I was one of the named informers on previous leaks, I don't think I'd be terribly forgiving just because I hadn't been killed yet. You can have your life ruined by living in fear without having been killed.
That said, they've already corrected the problem and have been taking steps that completely satisfy me to ensure no innocents have their lives put at risk as a result of the leaks. It was a mistake they made, and I'm not pleased they made it, but it's no longer a factor in releases as far as I'm concerned.
If General McCrystal was burning a Koran and laughing about it, that should be public too. His position of power is far too important to ignore something like that. The public needs to know what kind of people their rulers really are.
Here I disagree with you. MyCyrstal should be fired in such a situation, but making sure the higher ups in the government/military saw the video, along with the implied threat that the video could find its way to the public at any time should prove sufficient to get that accomplished.
I've never believed in a public right to know that outweighed even the right to life. If I'm left in the dark about such an action, but as a result spared from an attack made by a young man who would have been enticed into radical Islam by such a video, I'd happily consider it a good trade.
It is possible for the release of information to do more harm than good, and I think my example would likely be one such case.
I have mixed feelings about Wikileaks. On the one hand, I think abuses, crimes, and the like should be exposed in general. I do feel Wikileaks made a large blunder by releasing names that could put peoples' lives in danger in some of their releases, but it appears they're no longer making that mistake at least.
On the other hand, I think one must always consider the potential harm every leak could cause. For example, if you had a video of General McChrystal burning a Koran and laughing about it, you probably shouldn't make it public. Send a copy to some higher ups in the US government and make sure they know they should get a leash on him before he does cause an incident, sure, but releasing it will just stir up hatred and could lead to many deaths.
This is why I'm much more skeptical of the benefit of the more recent diplomatic leaks than I am of the Iraq/Aghanistan ones. Much of the information that was released revealed nothing criminal or even unethical but could still lead to international incidents. I believe secrecy does have it's use in diplomacy much as it does for individuals. Being able to frankly discuss opinions of foreign dignitaries without fear of word getting back to them could very well aid in the establishment of good diplomatic relationships with other countries.
Besides, while some people may hope for complete transparency in government, I don't think Wikileaks will lead to that in the long run. I suspect it will just mean billions upon billions being spent beefing up security and coming up with procedures making it easier to discover who it was who was behind a leak. If they stuck to releasing only actual crimes and abuses, it would be harder to justify such expenditures without looking like they have something to hide.
The article makes sense to me. Nothing like sitting down for a meal and being presented with a plate full of vegetables to send you into a rage. A nice roast turkey or the like, however, will have you thinking of little next to how much you're going to enjoy your meal.
We do, but doing it via phone or online can be cheated far more easily than a standardized test. And if you bring them in for the test, you either have to pay for it, or miss out on potentially good employees who can't/won't pay their own way out. Being able to just look up a person's scores saves time and money.
That said, I don't remember the details of the SAT security, but I do recall the AP exams, with proctors constantly walking down the rows of desks watching everyone. The security of our own exam is much more lax. If you can cheat an AP without getting caught, you'd have no problem cheating our version.
We know we could be more secure, but constantly looking over a person's shoulder as if expecting them to cheat isn't the best way to make a good impression on the applicant. It doesn't matter if you decide you like him if he doesn't accept the job.
I'll have to disagree on both points. First, I can't recall ever doing an interview where my skills weren't tested in some form as part of the process. Now, at the company I work for, we've had people interview where it was clear they knew next to nothing about software development, despite what they wrote on their resume.
If they'd had to take a test, they would have done horribly, and we wouldn't have wasted time and money bringing them in for an interview. We also wouldn't need to expend any effort on that portion of the interview ourselves if we could see they'd scored highly on a test.
As to the purpose of college, yeah, I'm pretty sure it's about training you for a career. The college basically wants as many of their students as possible to get good, high paying jobs so it'll look good for their statistics.
I also seem to remember that nearly every class I took was trying to teach me skills I'd need when I started working. My college even required a year's worth of internships as part of my degree program, so you'd have actual experience working in your field.
Some colleges may take different approaches, but I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say they should. How would a college even go about preparing one for life? Cut them off from financial aid/their parents' money and force them to support themselves if they want food and shelter?
I know it would work better in some fields than others, but what I'd like to see is national standardized testing. Ideally they would have a number of different tests for each degree program, so school curriculum could still vary. So you could take a database exam, an AI exam, an operating systems exam, and perhaps language specific exams for the more popular ones. Then potential employers could look at which tests the applicants took and how well they scored on them. This would allow them to get a far better idea of how well each applicant's skills fit for the position. Which college you went to would become all be irrelevant.
But it is available to all. Sure you have to at least visit the US if you want to use it, but they won't stop you from using it just because you aren't a US citizen. But more seriously, I read British news sites such as The BBC and The Guardian. Just because people from other countries read it, doesn't mean it isn't allowed to be country specific. That said, as much as I usually dislike the complaining on this topic, in this specific case I feel some sympathy to your cause, as the summary really could cause confusion.
Why do you typically vote Republican then? "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results". - Albert Einstein
Because there are far more issues than the one at stake, and if you look back at history as recent as Bill Clinton, you'll see that even Democrats aren't saints in this regard.
My largest concern is making sure power doesn't become too centralized. I'm a strong believer of the laboratory of democracy model where you try something out at the state level and see what unintended consequences come along before you roll it out to the national level. Plus, if you really don't like what your state is doing, you can simply move to another one.
So of course I am very determined not to let the UN get too much power, and while the Republicans aren't always very good at limiting the power of the federal government, I trust them more than the Democrats not to try to sign any power over to the UN.
More recently, it's been largely due to my strong opposition of the Energy Bill. I find it hard to believe it's so similar to the Spanish plan after seeing what their plan did to them. I can support some funds going to help build solar/wind farms, but I'll pass on regulation and carbon taxing.
I think we could have a greater impact on the climate at a lower cost by pushing for simple changes such as painting the roofs of buildings white, using single ply toilet paper, and encouraging people to have few pets and children.
Not to mention that trying to reduce the birth rate would address overpopulation, an issue I consider to be a far greater threat to civilization than climate change.
you don't have to be of any party affiliation to be tired of the pointless fucking wars the US has been waging for 40 years, and I haven't even been alive that long.
I'll agree to this. I'm fiscally very conservative, and typically vote Republican. Nevertheless, I wish the US would stop trying to police the world. I also consider the defense budget to be a juicy target to start the spending cuts I'd like to see.
Yes, thanks for that. It's already been pointed out I was wrong on this point, and further research on my own only confirms this. I appreciate your insight, however.
It can help the neighborhood in the right circumstances. However, I don't believe people who strategically default generally hand over their keys and leave the day they miss their first payment. It can take quite a while for a foreclosure to go through, and if you're willing to stick around until the police force you out, you can stay rent free even longer.
During this period they're even less likely to maintain their home than simply because it's underwater. And with the glut of foreclosed homes, there's not always a rapid turnaround from having the old family removed and having the place sold and moved into.
That said, it's not their disregard for their neighbors that is the main focus of my ire, but their disregard for their contractual obligations. I'm a firm believer that a contract is a contract is a contract, but only between Ferengi. (Couldn't resist finishing the quote.)
If you bought the home hoping to settle there, you still have the home and at a price you thought was fair when you got the loan. If you bought it as an investment, you lost money, but there's always risk with investments. I could understand the moral argument if you got tricked by some fine print or deceitful legal speak, but the concept that you got a loan and you agree to make regular payments on it is pretty basic. So everyone should have understood that when they signed their name on the bottom line.
In both cases it really depends on the contents of the contract. If there's a clause saying you have an option to give the asset to the lender to cancel the debt, then most of my problems with the action go away. If, as I'm sure is the case in nearly every mortgage, you agree to make payments until the debt is paid in full, and taking the house is merely a penalty for breach of contract, then I think an individual or business has an obligation to make a good faith effort to keep the contract.
But even in the former case, it's difficult to argue that a strategic default isn't a greedy and self-serving action. Considering that a foreclosure reduces the property value of other homes in the area, you're harming your neighbors for your own benefit. It can be argued that's still the prudent decision, or that it's more important to look after the financial well-being of your family than people you might barely even know. That doesn't change the fact that it's still greedy and self-serving.
My current favorite is to throw the money at jobs building solar and wind farms. At least, that way, we reap some long-term cost savings down the road.
I could go for this as long as we learn some lessons from the Spanish.
1. Make sure we have limits on how much we're going to spend. They vastly underestimated how many people would buy into the program and now they're finding they have financial obligations far beyond what they can comfortably pay unless they go back on their words.
2. Avoid subsidies on the generation of power. I'll support providing aid to build the solar/wind farms, but paying for power generated creates too much potential for corruption. It was supposedly calculated that subsidies were so much higher than the cost of receiving electricity, that setting up arc lamps to power solar panels at night would be profitable. That may have just been a joke though, I don't really recall.
Anyway, I do remember that there was real corruption in that green plants were setting up diesel generators to increase their output to get more subsidies. And that's something that can be hard to catch unless you want to be constantly doing surprise inspections. So at the very least, any subsidies we consider have to be less than the cost to generate electricity by other means.
I don't quite understand what voters are thinking myself. I'm not as much of a fan of stimulus as a Keynesian, but I admit I'm a bit worried by the Tea Party's insistence on cutting spending ASAP. Reducing spending when we're still in the early stages of an economic recovery seems risky at best and suicidal at worst. I do, however, believe the deficit can be addressed without pulling the rug out of the recovery. Mainly by making sure that all new spending is a one time deal, not a new program that becomes an indefinite drain on revenue.
You can even cut spending in areas that have less impact on the economy and replace them with targeted spending designed to encourage investment and job growth (still temporary of course.) Programs like making loans easier to receive for small business. Or perhaps suspending the capitol gains tax for a fixed number of years on investments in start-up companies made before a certain date. I have no idea if most of that money would actually go to encouraging investment or just to reducing taxes for people who were going to invest anyway, but it's just an example. The point is, programs that encourage businesses or consumers to spend their money in a way that will create jobs in order to magnify the effect of the government spending.
First off, you're obviously much more informed about the CRA than I am. I don't currently feel like doing the research necessary to debate the issue when it may only prove you right in the first place, so I'll defer to you on that and withdraw my argument on the CRA.
By 'openly deceitful', of course,you mean 'committing fraud on a massive never-before-seen level'.
I really can't a break. Even when we agree I take flak for not using harsh enough wording. :P Very well, they committed fraud on a massive level. I'm not quite sure I'm willing to go with never-before-seen, however. There's a lot of history and some pretty big frauds to compete with.
Our real estate broker is legally our agent. It is criminal fraud for them to work against our best interest. They are not allowed to sell people property they can't afford, anymore than your investment banker could sell you an investment he knew was going to decrease in value.
Believe me, I'm not trying to say that the person scammed is anywhere near as to blame as the person scamming. But for all the smooth talking and even outright lies, I wish a few more people had just sat back, looked at the price of the house, and said 'that's a really big number compared to how much I make.'
I am pretty with disgusted the prevailing American attitude of 'how much stuff can I possibly get myself?' without even considering the questions of 'what can I afford?' It almost goes without saying that very few people ask themselves the even more valuable question of 'what can I afford to live without? Living beneath your means was becoming an endangered philosophy and I'm glad to see it making a comeback.
Ah, the last Republican talking point. So, statically, the one out of ten thousand people who are doing this are important? Becuase no one's actually doing this.
I said I found them every bit as greedy and immoral as the bankers, not as harmful, and that statement I'm sticking to.
And immoral? Corporations have no morality, I don't really see why anyone has any morality when dealing with them. Corporation kick people of their house all the time when moral people would not.
Yes, why should we worry about morality concerning corporations when they don't show any to us? By the same reasoning, why should corporations worry about morality when dealing with when we don't show any to them? I'm just not a fan the 'he'd do it to me so it's okay for me to do it to him' philosophy.
Those people are agreeing with the terms of their loan agreement. Either they pay the money, or the bank gets the house.
I'd wager heavily that just about any load agreement you find you agree to pay the mortgage if you can. Giving them the house is not an option, but a penalty if you break the terms (or can't pay.) Choosing not to pay and forcing a foreclosure is a breach of a contract. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I believe that when you agree to a contract you try to follow through on it, even if it becomes rather unpleasant to do so.
There's no denying that banks played a major role in the collapse, largely due to not properly ensuring that borrowers were capable of repaying the loans. However, that's far from the only factor as there's an excess of blame to go around. It was laws such as the Community Reinvestment Act that encouraged banks to lend to low income consumers who were high credit risks to begin with. I think there's little doubt that fewer bad loans would have been made without pushing of these acts, ones that Republicans opposed.
So the Republicans get part of the blame for failing to recognize that sometimes regulation is needed and not allowing it to be properly implemented. The Democrats also get part of the blame for pushing so hard for loans to be made to low income borrowers and making it out to be all but a right to own your own home (renting is a perfectly acceptable alternative.) You have the bankers who were too short-sighted and optimistic about how those loans would play out in some cases, and openly deceitful in passing off packaged securities to investors while understating their risks in others.
The final piece of the blame puzzle of course goes to the American people. There is such a thing as personal responsibility. Americans shouldn't have tried so hard to get the best possible homes and realized when a something was simply more than they could afford. If there weren't any homes they could afford they should have stuck with renting. No matter how sleazy the salesman, you're at least partially to blame if you fall for a scam. Then there's all the people who made the situation worse by refusing to continue making mortgage payments they could easily afford simply because they owed more than the house was worth. I consider them every bit as greedy and immoral as most of the bankers we love to vilify.
I think many people are putting too much emphasis on the Republican takeover of the House. Yes it will mean that it will be difficult for Obama to get his agenda through for the next two years, but it's not like Republicans will be able to do much either. The democrats still have control of the Senate and veto power. However, since every House member goes up for election every two years, it could easily sweep back the other way then.
As much as people like to focus on national elections, it's the governor and state legislature elections that I think are the bigger deal. Republicans had very strong showings there as well. The reason this is critical is that we just had the once every ten years census. That means states are going to be up for redistricting. With the large gains republicans made, they'll have a huge advantage in gerrymandering. This could make a very significant difference in the 2012 election and for that matter every election for the next decade. It will be much harder to undo that than it will be for Democrats to recapture the House.
It is odd that they act as if these professional polling companies have no idea this is going on. Some of them may not be factoring it in, so you could argue that aggregate polls could be skewed by it. However, I think hoping for too much of a shift is just setting yourself up for a disappoint similar to the one Republicans faced in the 2008 election.
Remember all that talk about how it was shown more people would claim they were voting for a black candidate than would actually vote for him just so they wouldn't seem racist? Turns out, the polls were actually pretty accurate. Who would have thought that people who do these polls for living might actually come up with a decent model? I'd wager at least the big names such as Zogby, Rassmussen, and Gallup have done a great deal of research into how the rise of cell phones would skew their polling.
I'm a AGW skeptic myself, but I'm also of the opinion that one should always consider the possibility that they're wrong. That's why I feel everyone, whether a skeptic or not should take some simple steps to hedge their bets against climate change. Such as painting your roof white, using single ply toilet paper, living as close to work as possible, and having fewer pets and kids.
You'd be amazed how much of a difference some of those simple things I listed can make. I believe solutions like that make far more sense than regulation and carbon taxing that can have severe economic repercussions. Meanwhile we can also continue research into geoengineering in case things do get really bad and we have no other option. Granted, thanks to the law of unintended consequences, most of the ideas being floated around should only be used as measures of last resort, but having those options could be quite valuable.
Of course, that's the same reason I don't want to push through major economic changes. Just like with geoengineering, you have the potential to seriously mess things up in ways you didn't anticipate.
I tend to agree that they wouldn't attack Israel openly. The greater worry is that they might secretly funnel a nuke to a terrorist organization and let them use it. Not all of Israel is holy ground to Muslims. There are plenty of places where they could kill many people without damaging any sacred sites. Does that mean I support a preemptive attack? No. I just realize the risk is very real if Iran can start producing nuclear weapons.