"The MPAA wants a waiver on that restriction in the case of high-definition movies broadcast prior to their release as DVDs."
Currently, no movies are released on HDTV before DVD (except for some indies on HDNET). So consumers will lose nothing and gain restricted access to movies that they had no access to previously.
Strangely, I have seen no complaints anywhere about the lack of consumer access to movies on HDTV before their DVD release. But propose restrictions on content as an incentive to create content that currently does not exist and suddenly slashdot is outraged!
If scientists were allocating $3 billion in public funds for research then I doubt that embryonic stem cell research would be allocated very much. Energy research would be the highest priority. The demand for Bush bashing is far higher than the actual demand for embryonic stem cell research. The proposition was also sold on many false promises, like the promise that the research would pay for itself. If their promises were true than there would be no need for public funding. There are also constitutional problems with open meetings, conflict of interest, and the use of tax-exempt bonds for taxable assets.
We would be much better off if the funds raised to pass the initiative had been used for research instead.
FISA requires a warrant when the domestic party is "a particular, known United States person" and therefore does not require a warrant when the party is not a US person or is not known/anonymous. Since there is no probable cause to intercept anonymous communications we cannot get a warrant. It is likely that the warrant-less program was legally intercepting anonymous communications and there is no evidence that the law was broken. If we don't intercept anonymous communications then spies and terrorists can speak freely if they take proper precautions.
There is too much zero-sum thinking here. People are not worried that we are going to lose our scientific edge to secular Europe or Russia. We are worried about China and India because they have more people and graduate more scientists. Science is collaborative and advancement in science determined not by relative attitudes but by the absolute amount of scientists and research. Some pro-life and anti-environment policies may appear to be anti-science, but more children and more prosperity lead to more people, more scientists, and more money to fund more research in the future.
People's perceptions toward science are determined by education. That more people believe in creation than evolution is likely an effect of Sunday-school teaching religion better than public schools teaching science. Many people also pay good money to send their children to religious schools to learn science and everything else even when there are free public schools. It is ignorant to blame religion for our schools doing a poor job of teaching science. School reform, not silencing religion, is needed to improve science education.
Religious America rose from lowly colony to global superpower, science leader, and the model for most of the rest of the world. Religion has been a large net positive on science in America.
The same legislators who voted for AB 1179 are also opposed to all attempts at increased penalties for convicted sex offenders and other pro-family legislation. Who thinks video games are more dangerous than having sex offenders living next door?
But this is really an anti-business bill. The bill will over-regulate one of California's biggest growing industries. Even Silicon Valley's own legislators have reliable anti-business anti-technology voting records. Arnold's veto pen is California's tech industry's best friend.
You can call Schwarzenegger at (916) 445-2841, or email opposition. But if he does veto this, Democrats will claim that it is a conflict of interest because he appears in Terminator video games. Ignore them!
These studies are incomplete because they only track the effects on the living.
People who are dead or never born have zero fertility.
Without food, babies die or are not born.
Pesticides have a positive effect on food creation, and the effects of food on fertility vastly outweigh the effects of pesticides on fertility.
The harm caused by pesticides is much less than the harm caused by pests, which is why humans live longer and better with use of pesticides.
But we can do even better with GM crops that require less pesticides, because the harm of GM is less than the harm of pesticides.
Do you think taking an additional 5% from someone who makes $300,000 or more a year is going to cause them to stop saving and investing? Yes, for many of them. Maybe not for inheritees like Kerry, but definitely for entrepreneurs.
Money saved in bank accounts does help the economy directly, because banks do loan all of their money out (less the reserve requirement). Interest rates change so that the supply and demand for money are equal. No surplus savings are being kept from the economy, the surplus savings simply drives down interest rates until banks find borrowers for all their money.
If banks are not running short of money to loan, then the government can borrow it with minimal consequences. If the rich can afford to pay more taxes, than they can afford to buy more bonds. It is the amount of money that government takes and spends that clobbers the economy.
It is spending that matters most, not deficits. Government spending, whether financed from taxes or bonds, takes money from the private sector. The less money the government spends, the less harm to the economy from taking the money from the private sector. Bonds are voluntary, people want to buy them, but require interest payments. Taxes create deadweight losses and economic disincentives. A balanced budget should balance revenue between taxes and bonds to minimize the combined consequences of government spending. The optimum balance is not all taxes and no bonds.
Deficits are currently at about 3.5% of GDP, not over 5%. With nominal GDP growth around 6%, this is sustainable.
Lots of people save money in the US. Who's hard-earned money are you spending when you buy your house, car, education, and anything else you borrow for? People are saving so much money in the US that we can have record home ownership at record prices, and record consumer debt, and still have interest rates stay low. It is only net saving that is low, if it were higher it would mean money piling up uselessly in bank vaults.
a) The WTO violation is the 'Byrd Amendment', from our former KKK Democrat senator, that distributes anti-dumping fines to affected companies. It should be repealed.
b) It is China that maintains a undervalued currency peg against the dollar, and dumps products here. We are not doing anything artificial in trade with China. It is China that is hooked on dollars and export jobs.
You are not the only one who sees insane spending. The problem is that most other politicians want to spend even more. Getting china hooked on us and our dollars is a good idea. We benefit from their buying treasuries, it means we are free to invest more of our own money on innovation.
How about tolerance for parents and their desire to raise their children decently and to have time to do things other than monitoring their children's TV watching.
The hook to enforce TV standards for cable is the TV-ratings. Putting a rating on a TV program implies a trust that the program does not have content inappropriate for that TV rating, and violating that trust can warrant a fine. Enforcement of TV ratings can be done either publicly (FCC) or privately (like the MPAA movie ratings). Because TV programs are self rated unlike movies, complaints that are deemed to be violations would require a fine for misuse of their license to use the TV ratings (not for indecency). Fines should be small for one-off violations and larger for greater violations (like a man tearing a woman's clothes off at the super-bowl). That way parents could have confidence that they can program their box for content ratings and not need to spend as much time monitoring their children.
Yes, I believe that when consumers buy products they almost always need them more than other products that they don't buy. This applies to prescription drugs, nonprescription drugs and everything else available to the consumer.
I said that the FDA was a decent, not perfect watchdog. Drugs that are not on the market cannot help anyone. The FDA usually makes good decisions on whether allowing drugs on the market will do more help than harm. Requiring more proof of safety to approve drugs would cause more harm that could be prevented from drugs not on the market than harm from allowing drugs on the market. Even many of the 'independent' people on the FDA voted to allow the drugs with now very well known risks to be allowed back on the market.
It looks that you believe that people as consumers are incapable of making correct decisions involving the risks and benefits of prescription drugs yet you want people anointed as bureaucrats to make all of those decisions for us, and that anything that doesn't match your beliefs is a whopping lie.
In order to eliminate all possible side effects of drugs, the FDA now recommends that if you get sick you simply lie down until you get better... ...or die. Whichever comes first.
Advertising is good for drugs. Drug makers advertise because it will increase sales by more than they spend on advertising. Advertising increases profits so that the drug companies can and do spend more on R&D and safety testing. And drug advertising will not make people spend money for drugs they don't need any more than they will spend on other advertised products (cars, beer, etc.) that the may or may not need. And by restricting information to doctors, the drug makers and the doctors will have a monopoly on information, which will make drugs more expensive. Having competitors advertising to the public will increase competition and reduce the power of drug companies and doctors to collude to increase price. And there will not be any unbiased third parties with the amount of money in drug sales.
Even with publicly funded research, it still costs hundreds of millions of dollars for companies to bring new drugs to market. The costs of drug trials will not change if someone else pays for them. For profit companies will do better at reducing those costs than non-profits. The best way to reduce the costs of bringing new drugs to market is to reduce regulation.
The FDA is still a decent watchdog. The risks of Vioxx and Celebrex are now very well known, and there is no reason to prevent informed consumers from making the choice of the risks and benefits of those drugs against the competition.
"...I call you my base"
It was as much Al Gore and Hillary Clinton's base. They and others were also at the
Alfred E. Smith memorial dinner for charity.
This is a blow for open source journalism. If Gannon/Guckert, a reporter from an independent online non-mainstream news site, cannot get a White House press pass then no blogger/open source journalist will get a pass. Bloggers are non-mainstream media, they all have agendas, and many write under aliases.
His mistake was asking a lousy question. Yet many mainstream reporters are asking lousy non informative questions like asking for apologies.
That is the paleoconservative position. The deficit is so 'severe' that treasury interest rates, along with interest rates in general, have fallen and are hanging around all time lows. There is no cash flow problem, the deficit is tiny compared to the total volume of bond sales. The current Nobel Economist winner is calling the Bush tax cuts too small.
The World is now more peaceful than ever. Both the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and Project Ploughshares report that the number of conflicts and the total bloodshed declined to new lows in 2003. Bush has ended the 25 years of war in Afghanistan. The Administration has also negotiated a cease-fire in southern Sudan, ending a civil war that killed over two million people, and the Administration has kept Darfur from turning into a Rwanda. Bloodshed has also decreased in most of Africa, Kashmir has cooled significantly, and the disengagement policy in Israel/Palestine has reduced terrorist violence significantly. Iraq will soon become democratic and free, which will create peace.
While Clinton was busy negotiating "peace" with Arafat, 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda, 1 million died in war in Sudan, hundreds of thousands died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the world did not seem to care. With Bush as president, the rest of the world actually seems to care about innocent bloodshed. The more that war leads the news, the faster peace breaks out.
The increasing market-cap of Treasury bonds (deficit) is not a problem. Debt/GDP is the meaningful number, and it has a very small effect on interest rates.
Compulsory taxation is not earning money. Borrowing money is voluntary. The government doesn't earn very much money from voluntary exchange for goods and services. (that would be socialism) The budget is nothing close to balanced in a business sense, nor should it be. Why the libertarian party is debt-phobic and would rather fund the government with involuntary taxation instead of voluntary borrowing is a mystery to me.
Private accounts for Social Security is the only thing Bush can hope to pass with today's Congress. Fill the Senate with 100 L's and R's and let's see what happens.
The World is now more peaceful than ever. Both the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and Project Ploughshares report that the number of conflicts and the total bloodshed declined to new lows in 2003. Bush has ended the 25 years of war in Afghanistan. The Administration has also negotiated a cease-fire in southern Sudan, ending a civil war that killed over two million people, and the Administration has kept Darfur from turning into another Rwanda. Bloodshed has also decreased in Palestine, Kashmir, and Africa. Now Iraq is about to become an model of peace, democracy, and freedom.
While Clinton was busy negotiating "peace" with Arafat, 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda, 1 million died in war in Sudan, hundreds of thousands died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the world did not seem to care. With Bush as president, the rest of the world actually seems to care about innocent bloodshed. The more that war leads the news, the faster peace breaks out.
FDR was borrowing 30% of GDP during WWII, and left with public debt 110% of GDP, a much bigger 'mess' and we were just fine. We just grew the economy. The deadline to pay off the national debt is NEVER. The debt can keep growing forever as long as GDP grows more. It is spending that matters. Whether borrowing or taxing, spending takes the same amount out of the economy today. Borrowing just means that the debt will be transferred later from the public to the public. Borrowing is voluntary, while taxes are involuntary, and harm the economy.
Argentina collapsed because they pegged their currency to the dollar. Instead of simply devaluating everyone redeemed their pesos to dollars until their treasury was bare. The six depressions in the history of the USA (1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, and 1929) all began during or immediately following periods of budget surplus. Only Bush has had a big surplus not turn into a depression.
for insulting our allies, falsely calling them the coalition of the coerced and the bribed, or by calling our action unilateral.
for voting against funding our troops.
for missing almost all of his votes in the senate in the last two years, and not resigning so that someone else can be appointed who can do the job.
for missing all his Senate Intelligence committee meetings after the first World Trade Center bombing.
for voting against the first UN supported golf war.
for voting against military spending in the middle of the cold war.
for supporting the communist Sandinista government on the North American mainland and claiming that they would have nothing to do with the Soviets when Ortega was in Moscow signing a soviet aid package a week later.
for claiming the only 2000 people would be in danger if the North invaded South Vietnam, when over 2 million were killed, imprisoned, or had to flee.
for falsely accusing our troops of routinely committing war crimes in Vietnam.
No one has a worse record of failing accountability than John Kerry.
Just wait until al-jazeera starts playing tape of the leader of the Great Satan talking about how the army of the Great Satan "had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads...in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan...." That will play very well in the middle east.
A fiscal conservative's first priority is reduced spending. Anyone who calls them self a fiscal conservative because they call a vote for a tax increase a vote to reduce the deficit is a fraud. Kerry's health plan is less than half of the new spending he is proposing, and how can he get credit for both being better for health care and better fiscally because his health plan won't pass? The only spending Kerry has voted to cut recently is the $87 billion to support our troops.
And they mention the deficit but make no mention of Social Security. Kerry is completely unwilling to change our 1930's retirement program and believes that the government ponzi scheme cannot be improved upon. Social Security reform will reduce current revenue in order to reduce spending by more in the future. When Kerry compares the deficit of Social Security reform, which is a reduction in spending, to his deficit, which are an increase in spending, he is an even bigger fiscal conservative fraud.
And why does the Economist see our deficit as a threat? Our deficit is less than GDP growth, Europe's deficit is much greater than GDP growth, and our public debt is half that of Europe's total public debt. They should be looking in a mirror if they are worried about deficits.
Most companies use territorial taxation, and tax foreign income at foreign rates. The US taxes corporations at our higher tax rates and credits foreign taxes paid. In foreign countries, local and non-American companies pay the native corporate tax rate while US companies will have to pay the higher US tax rate unless they reinvest their earnings in that country. Kerry's plan will make US companies pay our higher tax rate whether they keep their profits there or bring them back to the US. This just makes US companies less competitive abroad and will cost American jobs at home. Kerry's tax plan will only encourage more US companies to re-incorporate in offshore tax havens.
Kerry's tax plan will also have no impact on outsourcing to India since the corporate tax rates are about the same. India has a 42% effective tax on foreign companies, California has 35% US + 8.84% state (deductible).
I have personally been involved in developing IT services for Foreign Companies, Foreign Governments, and International Organizations. Anyone who is against free trade in services loses my vote. And for the economy as a whole, service exports (insourcing) are increasing much faster than service imports (outsourcing).
Slashdot Mirror
"The MPAA wants a waiver on that restriction in the case of high-definition movies broadcast prior to their release as DVDs."
Currently, no movies are released on HDTV before DVD (except for some indies on HDNET). So consumers will lose nothing and gain restricted access to movies that they had no access to previously.
Strangely, I have seen no complaints anywhere about the lack of consumer access to movies on HDTV before their DVD release. But propose restrictions on content as an incentive to create content that currently does not exist and suddenly slashdot is outraged!
If scientists were allocating $3 billion in public funds for research then I doubt that embryonic stem cell research would be allocated very much. Energy research would be the highest priority. The demand for Bush bashing is far higher than the actual demand for embryonic stem cell research. The proposition was also sold on many false promises, like the promise that the research would pay for itself. If their promises were true than there would be no need for public funding. There are also constitutional problems with open meetings, conflict of interest, and the use of tax-exempt bonds for taxable assets.
We would be much better off if the funds raised to pass the initiative had been used for research instead.
FISA requires a warrant when the domestic party is "a particular, known United States person" and therefore does not require a warrant when the party is not a US person or is not known/anonymous. Since there is no probable cause to intercept anonymous communications we cannot get a warrant. It is likely that the warrant-less program was legally intercepting anonymous communications and there is no evidence that the law was broken. If we don't intercept anonymous communications then spies and terrorists can speak freely if they take proper precautions.
There is too much zero-sum thinking here. People are not worried that we are going to lose our scientific edge to secular Europe or Russia. We are worried about China and India because they have more people and graduate more scientists. Science is collaborative and advancement in science determined not by relative attitudes but by the absolute amount of scientists and research. Some pro-life and anti-environment policies may appear to be anti-science, but more children and more prosperity lead to more people, more scientists, and more money to fund more research in the future.
People's perceptions toward science are determined by education. That more people believe in creation than evolution is likely an effect of Sunday-school teaching religion better than public schools teaching science. Many people also pay good money to send their children to religious schools to learn science and everything else even when there are free public schools. It is ignorant to blame religion for our schools doing a poor job of teaching science. School reform, not silencing religion, is needed to improve science education.
Religious America rose from lowly colony to global superpower, science leader, and the model for most of the rest of the world. Religion has been a large net positive on science in America.
But this is really an anti-business bill. The bill will over-regulate one of California's biggest growing industries. Even Silicon Valley's own legislators have reliable anti-business anti-technology voting records. Arnold's veto pen is California's tech industry's best friend.
You can call Schwarzenegger at (916) 445-2841, or email opposition. But if he does veto this, Democrats will claim that it is a conflict of interest because he appears in Terminator video games. Ignore them!
The harm caused by pesticides is much less than the harm caused by pests, which is why humans live longer and better with use of pesticides. But we can do even better with GM crops that require less pesticides, because the harm of GM is less than the harm of pesticides.
Yes, for many of them. Maybe not for inheritees like Kerry, but definitely for entrepreneurs.
Money saved in bank accounts does help the economy directly, because banks do loan all of their money out (less the reserve requirement). Interest rates change so that the supply and demand for money are equal. No surplus savings are being kept from the economy, the surplus savings simply drives down interest rates until banks find borrowers for all their money.
If banks are not running short of money to loan, then the government can borrow it with minimal consequences. If the rich can afford to pay more taxes, than they can afford to buy more bonds. It is the amount of money that government takes and spends that clobbers the economy.
Deficits are currently at about 3.5% of GDP, not over 5%. With nominal GDP growth around 6%, this is sustainable.
Lots of people save money in the US. Who's hard-earned money are you spending when you buy your house, car, education, and anything else you borrow for? People are saving so much money in the US that we can have record home ownership at record prices, and record consumer debt, and still have interest rates stay low. It is only net saving that is low, if it were higher it would mean money piling up uselessly in bank vaults.
a) The WTO violation is the 'Byrd Amendment', from our former KKK Democrat senator, that distributes anti-dumping fines to affected companies. It should be repealed.
b) It is China that maintains a undervalued currency peg against the dollar, and dumps products here. We are not doing anything artificial in trade with China. It is China that is hooked on dollars and export jobs.
You are not the only one who sees insane spending. The problem is that most other politicians want to spend even more. Getting china hooked on us and our dollars is a good idea. We benefit from their buying treasuries, it means we are free to invest more of our own money on innovation.
How about tolerance for parents and their desire to raise their children decently and to have time to do things other than monitoring their children's TV watching.
The hook to enforce TV standards for cable is the TV-ratings. Putting a rating on a TV program implies a trust that the program does not have content inappropriate for that TV rating, and violating that trust can warrant a fine. Enforcement of TV ratings can be done either publicly (FCC) or privately (like the MPAA movie ratings). Because TV programs are self rated unlike movies, complaints that are deemed to be violations would require a fine for misuse of their license to use the TV ratings (not for indecency). Fines should be small for one-off violations and larger for greater violations (like a man tearing a woman's clothes off at the super-bowl). That way parents could have confidence that they can program their box for content ratings and not need to spend as much time monitoring their children.
I said that the FDA was a decent, not perfect watchdog. Drugs that are not on the market cannot help anyone. The FDA usually makes good decisions on whether allowing drugs on the market will do more help than harm. Requiring more proof of safety to approve drugs would cause more harm that could be prevented from drugs not on the market than harm from allowing drugs on the market. Even many of the 'independent' people on the FDA voted to allow the drugs with now very well known risks to be allowed back on the market.
It looks that you believe that people as consumers are incapable of making correct decisions involving the risks and benefits of prescription drugs yet you want people anointed as bureaucrats to make all of those decisions for us, and that anything that doesn't match your beliefs is a whopping lie.
In order to eliminate all possible side effects of drugs, the FDA now recommends that if you get sick you simply lie down until you get better...
...or die. Whichever comes first.
Even with publicly funded research, it still costs hundreds of millions of dollars for companies to bring new drugs to market. The costs of drug trials will not change if someone else pays for them. For profit companies will do better at reducing those costs than non-profits. The best way to reduce the costs of bringing new drugs to market is to reduce regulation.
The FDA is still a decent watchdog. The risks of Vioxx and Celebrex are now very well known, and there is no reason to prevent informed consumers from making the choice of the risks and benefits of those drugs against the competition.
"...I call you my base"
It was as much Al Gore and Hillary Clinton's base. They and others were also at the Alfred E. Smith memorial dinner for charity.
This is a blow for open source journalism. If Gannon/Guckert, a reporter from an independent online non-mainstream news site, cannot get a White House press pass then no blogger/open source journalist will get a pass. Bloggers are non-mainstream media, they all have agendas, and many write under aliases.
His mistake was asking a lousy question. Yet many mainstream reporters are asking lousy non informative questions like asking for apologies.
That is the paleoconservative position. The deficit is so 'severe' that treasury interest rates, along with interest rates in general, have fallen and are hanging around all time lows. There is no cash flow problem, the deficit is tiny compared to the total volume of bond sales. The current Nobel Economist winner is calling the Bush tax cuts too small.
Tariffs compromise free trade, and cannot raise near as much money as selling bonds.
The World is now more peaceful than ever. Both the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and Project Ploughshares report that the number of conflicts and the total bloodshed declined to new lows in 2003. Bush has ended the 25 years of war in Afghanistan. The Administration has also negotiated a cease-fire in southern Sudan, ending a civil war that killed over two million people, and the Administration has kept Darfur from turning into a Rwanda. Bloodshed has also decreased in most of Africa, Kashmir has cooled significantly, and the disengagement policy in Israel/Palestine has reduced terrorist violence significantly. Iraq will soon become democratic and free, which will create peace.
While Clinton was busy negotiating "peace" with Arafat, 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda, 1 million died in war in Sudan, hundreds of thousands died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the world did not seem to care. With Bush as president, the rest of the world actually seems to care about innocent bloodshed. The more that war leads the news, the faster peace breaks out.
Do you have a counterexample? I don't recall Kerry voting on much of anything in the last year, since the $87 billion.
What is stupid is the AC calling me a communist for wanting to cut taxes and cut spending.
The increasing market-cap of Treasury bonds (deficit) is not a problem. Debt/GDP is the meaningful number, and it has a very small effect on interest rates.
Compulsory taxation is not earning money. Borrowing money is voluntary. The government doesn't earn very much money from voluntary exchange for goods and services. (that would be socialism) The budget is nothing close to balanced in a business sense, nor should it be. Why the libertarian party is debt-phobic and would rather fund the government with involuntary taxation instead of voluntary borrowing is a mystery to me.
Private accounts for Social Security is the only thing Bush can hope to pass with today's Congress. Fill the Senate with 100 L's and R's and let's see what happens.
Tariff's
u pa/Abe/Recess ionsDepressionsPanics.asp
History of the Debt
http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opd.htm
History of Depressions
http://www.lexisnexis.com/academic/2
Check it out, It's really true.
The World is now more peaceful than ever. Both the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and Project Ploughshares report that the number of conflicts and the total bloodshed declined to new lows in 2003. Bush has ended the 25 years of war in Afghanistan. The Administration has also negotiated a cease-fire in southern Sudan, ending a civil war that killed over two million people, and the Administration has kept Darfur from turning into another Rwanda. Bloodshed has also decreased in Palestine, Kashmir, and Africa. Now Iraq is about to become an model of peace, democracy, and freedom.
While Clinton was busy negotiating "peace" with Arafat, 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda, 1 million died in war in Sudan, hundreds of thousands died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the world did not seem to care. With Bush as president, the rest of the world actually seems to care about innocent bloodshed. The more that war leads the news, the faster peace breaks out.
FDR was borrowing 30% of GDP during WWII, and left with public debt 110% of GDP, a much bigger 'mess' and we were just fine. We just grew the economy. The deadline to pay off the national debt is NEVER. The debt can keep growing forever as long as GDP grows more. It is spending that matters. Whether borrowing or taxing, spending takes the same amount out of the economy today. Borrowing just means that the debt will be transferred later from the public to the public. Borrowing is voluntary, while taxes are involuntary, and harm the economy.
Argentina collapsed because they pegged their currency to the dollar. Instead of simply devaluating everyone redeemed their pesos to dollars until their treasury was bare. The six depressions in the history of the USA (1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, and 1929) all began during or immediately following periods of budget surplus. Only Bush has had a big surplus not turn into a depression.
- for making false claims about Bush and the draft.
- for insulting our allies, falsely calling them the coalition of the coerced and the bribed, or by calling our action unilateral.
- for voting against funding our troops.
- for missing almost all of his votes in the senate in the last two years, and not resigning so that someone else can be appointed who can do the job.
- for missing all his Senate Intelligence committee meetings after the first World Trade Center bombing.
- for voting against the first UN supported golf war.
- for voting against military spending in the middle of the cold war.
- for supporting the communist Sandinista government on the North American mainland and claiming that they would have nothing to do with the Soviets when Ortega was in Moscow signing a soviet aid package a week later.
- for claiming the only 2000 people would be in danger if the North invaded South Vietnam, when over 2 million were killed, imprisoned, or had to flee.
- for falsely accusing our troops of routinely committing war crimes in Vietnam.
No one has a worse record of failing accountability than John Kerry.Just wait until al-jazeera starts playing tape of the leader of the Great Satan talking about how the army of the Great Satan "had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads...in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan...." That will play very well in the middle east.
A fiscal conservative's first priority is reduced spending. Anyone who calls them self a fiscal conservative because they call a vote for a tax increase a vote to reduce the deficit is a fraud. Kerry's health plan is less than half of the new spending he is proposing, and how can he get credit for both being better for health care and better fiscally because his health plan won't pass? The only spending Kerry has voted to cut recently is the $87 billion to support our troops.
And they mention the deficit but make no mention of Social Security. Kerry is completely unwilling to change our 1930's retirement program and believes that the government ponzi scheme cannot be improved upon. Social Security reform will reduce current revenue in order to reduce spending by more in the future. When Kerry compares the deficit of Social Security reform, which is a reduction in spending, to his deficit, which are an increase in spending, he is an even bigger fiscal conservative fraud.
And why does the Economist see our deficit as a threat? Our deficit is less than GDP growth, Europe's deficit is much greater than GDP growth, and our public debt is half that of Europe's total public debt. They should be looking in a mirror if they are worried about deficits.
Most companies use territorial taxation, and tax foreign income at foreign rates. The US taxes corporations at our higher tax rates and credits foreign taxes paid. In foreign countries, local and non-American companies pay the native corporate tax rate while US companies will have to pay the higher US tax rate unless they reinvest their earnings in that country. Kerry's plan will make US companies pay our higher tax rate whether they keep their profits there or bring them back to the US. This just makes US companies less competitive abroad and will cost American jobs at home. Kerry's tax plan will only encourage more US companies to re-incorporate in offshore tax havens.
Kerry's tax plan will also have no impact on outsourcing to India since the corporate tax rates are about the same. India has a 42% effective tax on foreign companies, California has 35% US + 8.84% state (deductible).
Bush is for it, he gets my vote.
I have personally been involved in developing IT services for Foreign Companies, Foreign Governments, and International Organizations. Anyone who is against free trade in services loses my vote. And for the economy as a whole, service exports (insourcing) are increasing much faster than service imports (outsourcing).