Care to advance an argument instead of an unsubstantiated claim? Call me pedantic.
Brick and mortar shops tend to have higher out-the-door prices because, among other reasons, there is often a sales tax attached to the purchase. Amazon doesn't. The playing field is leveled in this respect when the tax burden attached to the Amazon purchase is the same as for the B&M shop. This could be at a rate of zero, the current tax rate, something in between, or something greater.
I will then go on to speculate that he is arguing that money in the individual consumer's hands does far more to produce wealth because it is likely to be spent on something that individual actually wants than when it is funneled through the tax system (overhead) and subsequently given out for some boondoggle/bailout/subsidy/war/etc.
Professor Cronon did just that. It's not his personal correspondence that's at stake here.
His problem with the request is twofold:
1. It was clearly done in retaliation for his writing about the American Legislative Exchange Council, since what the request is looking for is information that could be taken out of context to portray him as a left-wing nutcase on the payroll of the unions that are opposing Scott Walker. He's not at all keen on attempts to create a chilling effect on free speech.
2. Much of his professional correspondence is expected to be confidential, such as conversations with students, working with colleagues on peer reviews of not-yet-published material, or work on the boards of professional organizations he belongs to. If he were working for a private company, he'd have confidentiality and trade secret laws to help protect that stuff.
I don't disagree with (1), but (2) is probably a non-issue since apparently the request is only for communications relating to particular subjects. FTFA:
Copies of all emails into and out of Prof. William Cronon’s state email account from January 1, 2011 to present which reference any of the following terms: Republican, Scott Walker, recall, collective bargaining, AFSCME, WEAC, rally, union, Alberta Darling, Randy Hopper, Dan Kapanke, Rob Cowles, Scott Fitzgerald, Sheila Harsdorf, Luther Olsen, Glenn Grothman, Mary Lazich, Jeff Fitzgerald, Marty Beil, or Mary Bell.
But conservatives dominate the mass media, so the socalled effort by dems to demand fairness is nothing but more right wing BS
Look at , say, Charlie Rose: as R Nader recently posted on www.commondreams.org, a majority of Rose's guests are right of center corporate spokespeople.
Look at , say, the N Y Times: it acted as a cheerleader in the lies leading up to the Iraq ware (I think lies is an accurate word here)
Look at how, say the leaders of BofAmerica, Goldman or Citi are portrayed in the media: are they protrayed as crimminals, who ran vast fradulent enterprises (yes, crimminally negligent loan practices) or are they portrayed, say by Obama, as people deserving of their salarys ?
The truth is that radical conservatives, backed by a handfull of ultra wealthy people (Kochs, Murdoch) dominate nearly everything in this country except universitys and unions; thats why the right is so bent on destroying tenure and collective bargining - it is the one area that is still outside their control.
And I think "radical conservative" is fair, because, by definition, something that is to the right of what a majority of people in this country think is rightwing; say the union thing in WI; a majority of Americans are opposed; if this were not driven by Koch like money, it would never have got as far as it has
Or to follow identical logic except attacking the other side, the entire media is left wing because the NYT (left wing) is a war-cheering bunch of corporate shills and so is Charle Rose. See what I did there?
Corporatism/cronyism, as you (unintentionally?) do a good job of pointing out, is common to both sides of the political coin. Don't worry about that though, its all the Other Team's fault. Also, just go ahead and ignore the fact that George Soros (basically the Koch brothers of the left) pours money into opposing causes like moveon.org (backing a lot of the pro-union stuff in WI) and the huffington post.
I kinda get what you are feeling, but in reality, the government DOES want people getting what they want. The happiest people are the easiest to control and manage. This is true in prison as it is true in society. "No way" all you like, but happy people don't protest, don't demonstrate, don't riot and certainly don't attempt to oust their leaders from office.
Absolute nonsense. If people being happy happens to coincide with whatever goals the government people have they are probably willing to let it be, but as soon as those two concepts come into conflict they have no problem shitting all over us. Examples - TSA, bank bailouts, Patriot Act, drug war to name just a few.
Holding onto their power is the only thing those in power care about. Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, Alexander Haig, summed it up nicely when he said "Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their taxes."
What are your intentions with this block of IP addresses, Microsoft? To whore them out, or help speed the adoption of ipv6 by sitting on them, or neither?
One would hope that Senators would refrain from publicizing personal opinions that might lead to inappropriate legislation. When they are described as $Senator_x rather than $Inconsequential_Person_x their opinions carry additional weight as public figures. Sucks to be them in some senses, but they do lose the opportunity to be 'private' citizens.
I wouldn't assume that everything a politician says has the weight of his office behind it. For example, if Harry Reid mentions to his family over dinner that he doesn't like soccer, that shouldn't (and probably wouldn't) be taken to mean that he has any policy goals in mind relating to soccer. However in the case at hand, the fact that these four Senators got together and wrote a letter (probably on some official Congressional letterhead, though I don't know for sure) and probably publicized the letter indicates to me that this opinion is their "official" one.
Unfortunately, the religious right who makes a habit of spitting on the constitution, want to make not drunk driving illegal, but drinking illegal. They want these checkpoint to infringe on the legal activity of law abiding citizens. They think that everyone should be forced, even at gunpoint, to follow all the social norms they believe are correct.
Nice. Just pin everything on the people you disagree with despite what TFA says:
Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Tom Udall (D-NM) asked Scott Forstall, the head of Apple's iPhone software group, to pull an unspecified number of apps from the company's App Store. The senators also made similar requests of Google's CEO Eric Schmidt and Research in Motion's (RIM) co-CEOs, James Balsillie and Michael Lazaridis.
Oppression is bipartisan, but in this case it is the Blue Team at work.
Personally, I have no problems with the Senators calling for this app to be removed, as long as they do not threaten to pass some law about it. The existence of this app is no business of the Federal Government. If the Senators want to express their personal opinion that this app is a bad idea, that is their right.
I guess I agree that, in principle, a senator is just like any other person and has the right to speak their mind about whatever they want. But on the other hand, they are not like any other person because they seem to generally feel like they have the right (the obligation even!) and means to interfere in other people's lives by enacting some kind of policy to give force to their ideas. It is what they do.
Given all this, I'd say that the prospect of the federal government at least trying to insert itself into this situation is likely.
It helps to remember that of any cohort, half are below average.
Not so! Consider the set of integers {1, 1, 1, 37}. How many of these are below average?
Your statement correctly applies to the median. Sorry for nitpicking.
To play devil's advocate for a moment on the health thing, what did you expect was going to happen?
I thought he would implement the exact plan he argues against in this Democratic Party primary debate with Clinton.
Why? Because it is the most straightforward way to transfer wealth directly from the poor/middle classes into the hands of insurance companies and because he is a corporate shill.
Finally, the professors quoted in the article are from U. of Tennessee and SMU, which are like 4th-tier universities. So don't take their word too seriously.
This comes off as a snobby, ad-hominem cheap shot. You made some strong points in the rest of your comment and I didn't see the need for it.
In the interest of full disclosure -- I hold a master's degree (CS) from a top 20 University; working on the PhD.
from TFA: "If the Republican-controlled House approves the resolution, it would then move to the Senate, where Democrats hold the majority. The Senate is unlikely to pass the resolution."
summary fails to mention how this vote probably won't actually go anywhere.
Perhaps. But the folks who define science as witch-craft, speak in tongues and handle snakes (Mike Huckabee), think that if you're a good boy you get your own planet when you die (Mitt Romney), these people run things now.
The Senate will fall to these fools in time, and than it's all over.
Yea. These beliefs are much sillier than those of the sitting president who believes in the invisible sky ghost.
You mean, the fact that there is a hidden cost of using a credit card built into your daily life doesn't bother you? Of course, you don't see the price increase, the merchants build it in. Generally speaking, you can get a cash discounted price at a mom and pop store for simply paying debit or cash - because then they don't pay the CC company and the related merchant fees.
So, yeah, I guess just so long as you don't actually *see* the increased cost, it won't bother you. And for big-box stores, those prices are part-and-parcel of their merch, so abstaining from using a CC may not help you there... but if you're okay promoting the practice, then keep on plastic-ing.
In addition to this flaw, from a psychological standpoint people also spend more when using a credit card.
This GPS thing is the beginning of a slippery slope. If the practice remains unchallenged, it may not be long before our children are wearing ankle monitors, as some criminals are required to wear. If you think this isn't the logical outome here, have a look at history, and read '1984' again while you're at it. Orwell's timeline was a few decades off, but his predictions were pretty much on target.
I agree with the rest of your comment, except that it isn't the beginning of the slope.
How can you be so sure that there is little we can do to stop it? The fact that we can't prove that we're responsible for global warming doesn't prove that we're not. And if you do a proper risk assessment, like this guy does in his series of videos that are very much worth viewing despite his silly hats, you'll find that the smart thing to do is to try and do something about it.
Your line of thought sounds like "the Earth is going to hell but we might not be responsible so let's just see where this goes". Consider the possibility that we are responsible, and/or (they don't even have to be connected) the possibility that we can do something about it.
I am astonished/appalled that people actually buy into the reasoning displayed in this video. Aside from him papering over some pretty important complexities in the problem, if we followed his logic we might as well spend all of our money on defenses in preparation for a Klingon invasion. After all, the consequences of Klingon invasion would be so severe (they're mean!) that we can't afford NOT to act on the threat.
I haven't been convinced either way on AGW at this point, but this video and the argument is poses are garbage.
After all, statistics says that if one flips a coin 10 times, one will get around 5 heads and 5 tails.
I would like to know where you took statistics. If you did a single trial of 10 coin flips and got 8 heads and 2 tails, would you regard statistics as a debunked science?
No, but I would be willing to wager on one against the other. As Bastardi is doing.
I love knowing how America keeps creeping to become more and more like the Soviet Union with a similar kind of loss of privileges.
Where the debate really needs to be centered is on two things:
What items ought to be kept secret?
Does the federal bureaucracy really need to be so big in the first place?
By far and away too much is classified material. I don't mind having things like the locations of military units and certain other generally time-sensitive information being classified, but there certainly is a whole bunch of stuff being labeled as classified material mainly because it would be embarrassing if the information was disclosed. That stuff should not be protected under an official secrets act and I wish that a harder evaluation would result in trying to decide what exactly should be considered classified material in the first place.
Speculating that the King of Saudi Arabia is an ass should not be considered an official secret.
DHS already works with a former head of the KGB to assist in fighting the war on terror. Cause, you know, that's what the KGB is famous for.
I see your point about how a reduction of options (of which a monopoly would be the degenerate case) could make something _seem_ compulsory. Eg, if you lived in an apartment building and therefore couldn't grow your own food, and there was only 1 grocery store within 50 miles you might as well have a gun to your head with respect to where you buy food.
So for the sake of argument suppose we equate a lack of options with compulsion. Still how does this apply to casinos? You don't need a casino to live or even to be entertained. Casinos have certain (state-granted) monopoly-like privileges to let them corner the gambling market in many ways, but they don't have a monopoly on anything critical like food, utilities, or entertainment.
Not trying to be argumentative or anything, just trying to see where you're coming from.
Slashdot Mirror
Alright. If ad hominem attacks are your thing, use this instead: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=TSA+lies&btnG=Google+Search
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
With your taxes you also buy body scanners that irradiate and invade your neighbors. Good work there.
The TSA has repeatedly lied about these scanners in the past, why should they be believed now?
Care to advance an argument instead of an unsubstantiated claim? Call me pedantic.
Brick and mortar shops tend to have higher out-the-door prices because, among other reasons, there is often a sales tax attached to the purchase. Amazon doesn't. The playing field is leveled in this respect when the tax burden attached to the Amazon purchase is the same as for the B&M shop. This could be at a rate of zero, the current tax rate, something in between, or something greater.
I will then go on to speculate that he is arguing that money in the individual consumer's hands does far more to produce wealth because it is likely to be spent on something that individual actually wants than when it is funneled through the tax system (overhead) and subsequently given out for some boondoggle/bailout/subsidy/war/etc.
Professor Cronon did just that. It's not his personal correspondence that's at stake here.
His problem with the request is twofold: 1. It was clearly done in retaliation for his writing about the American Legislative Exchange Council, since what the request is looking for is information that could be taken out of context to portray him as a left-wing nutcase on the payroll of the unions that are opposing Scott Walker. He's not at all keen on attempts to create a chilling effect on free speech.
2. Much of his professional correspondence is expected to be confidential, such as conversations with students, working with colleagues on peer reviews of not-yet-published material, or work on the boards of professional organizations he belongs to. If he were working for a private company, he'd have confidentiality and trade secret laws to help protect that stuff.
I don't disagree with (1), but (2) is probably a non-issue since apparently the request is only for communications relating to particular subjects. FTFA:
Copies of all emails into and out of Prof. William Cronon’s state email account from January 1, 2011 to present which reference any of the following terms: Republican, Scott Walker, recall, collective bargaining, AFSCME, WEAC, rally, union, Alberta Darling, Randy Hopper, Dan Kapanke, Rob Cowles, Scott Fitzgerald, Sheila Harsdorf, Luther Olsen, Glenn Grothman, Mary Lazich, Jeff Fitzgerald, Marty Beil, or Mary Bell.
But conservatives dominate the mass media, so the socalled effort by dems to demand fairness is nothing but more right wing BS
Look at , say, Charlie Rose: as R Nader recently posted on www.commondreams.org, a majority of Rose's guests are right of center corporate spokespeople.
Look at , say, the N Y Times: it acted as a cheerleader in the lies leading up to the Iraq ware (I think lies is an accurate word here)
Look at how, say the leaders of BofAmerica, Goldman or Citi are portrayed in the media: are they protrayed as crimminals, who ran vast fradulent enterprises (yes, crimminally negligent loan practices) or are they portrayed, say by Obama, as people deserving of their salarys ?
The truth is that radical conservatives, backed by a handfull of ultra wealthy people (Kochs, Murdoch) dominate nearly everything in this country except universitys and unions; thats why the right is so bent on destroying tenure and collective bargining - it is the one area that is still outside their control.
And I think "radical conservative" is fair, because, by definition, something that is to the right of what a majority of people in this country think is rightwing; say the union thing in WI; a majority of Americans are opposed; if this were not driven by Koch like money, it would never have got as far as it has
Or to follow identical logic except attacking the other side, the entire media is left wing because the NYT (left wing) is a war-cheering bunch of corporate shills and so is Charle Rose. See what I did there?
Corporatism/cronyism, as you (unintentionally?) do a good job of pointing out, is common to both sides of the political coin. Don't worry about that though, its all the Other Team's fault. Also, just go ahead and ignore the fact that George Soros (basically the Koch brothers of the left) pours money into opposing causes like moveon.org (backing a lot of the pro-union stuff in WI) and the huffington post.
I kinda get what you are feeling, but in reality, the government DOES want people getting what they want. The happiest people are the easiest to control and manage. This is true in prison as it is true in society. "No way" all you like, but happy people don't protest, don't demonstrate, don't riot and certainly don't attempt to oust their leaders from office.
Absolute nonsense. If people being happy happens to coincide with whatever goals the government people have they are probably willing to let it be, but as soon as those two concepts come into conflict they have no problem shitting all over us. Examples - TSA, bank bailouts, Patriot Act, drug war to name just a few.
Holding onto their power is the only thing those in power care about. Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, Alexander Haig, summed it up nicely when he said "Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their taxes."
What are your intentions with this block of IP addresses, Microsoft? To whore them out, or help speed the adoption of ipv6 by sitting on them, or neither?
Or both?
Who cares? Throw them out the window! Forcing people to accept a stupid corporation's stupid business model is all that matters!
I seriously can't tell if you are talking about Twitter or NYT here.
One would hope that Senators would refrain from publicizing personal opinions that might lead to inappropriate legislation. When they are described as $Senator_x rather than $Inconsequential_Person_x their opinions carry additional weight as public figures. Sucks to be them in some senses, but they do lose the opportunity to be 'private' citizens.
I wouldn't assume that everything a politician says has the weight of his office behind it. For example, if Harry Reid mentions to his family over dinner that he doesn't like soccer, that shouldn't (and probably wouldn't) be taken to mean that he has any policy goals in mind relating to soccer. However in the case at hand, the fact that these four Senators got together and wrote a letter (probably on some official Congressional letterhead, though I don't know for sure) and probably publicized the letter indicates to me that this opinion is their "official" one.
Unfortunately, the religious right who makes a habit of spitting on the constitution, want to make not drunk driving illegal, but drinking illegal. They want these checkpoint to infringe on the legal activity of law abiding citizens. They think that everyone should be forced, even at gunpoint, to follow all the social norms they believe are correct.
Nice. Just pin everything on the people you disagree with despite what TFA says:
Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Tom Udall (D-NM) asked Scott Forstall, the head of Apple's iPhone software group, to pull an unspecified number of apps from the company's App Store. The senators also made similar requests of Google's CEO Eric Schmidt and Research in Motion's (RIM) co-CEOs, James Balsillie and Michael Lazaridis.
Oppression is bipartisan, but in this case it is the Blue Team at work.
Personally, I have no problems with the Senators calling for this app to be removed, as long as they do not threaten to pass some law about it. The existence of this app is no business of the Federal Government. If the Senators want to express their personal opinion that this app is a bad idea, that is their right.
I guess I agree that, in principle, a senator is just like any other person and has the right to speak their mind about whatever they want. But on the other hand, they are not like any other person because they seem to generally feel like they have the right (the obligation even!) and means to interfere in other people's lives by enacting some kind of policy to give force to their ideas. It is what they do.
Given all this, I'd say that the prospect of the federal government at least trying to insert itself into this situation is likely.
Your statement correctly applies to the median.
Not so! Consider the set of integers {1, 1, 1, 37}. How many of these are below the median? Sorry for nitpicking.
And sorry for quote-fucking, it was just too tempting.
Touche! I definitely walked into that.
It helps to remember that of any cohort, half are below average.
Not so! Consider the set of integers {1, 1, 1, 37}. How many of these are below average? Your statement correctly applies to the median. Sorry for nitpicking.
To play devil's advocate for a moment on the health thing, what did you expect was going to happen?
I thought he would implement the exact plan he argues against in this Democratic Party primary debate with Clinton. Why? Because it is the most straightforward way to transfer wealth directly from the poor/middle classes into the hands of insurance companies and because he is a corporate shill.
Finally, the professors quoted in the article are from U. of Tennessee and SMU, which are like 4th-tier universities. So don't take their word too seriously.
This comes off as a snobby, ad-hominem cheap shot. You made some strong points in the rest of your comment and I didn't see the need for it. In the interest of full disclosure -- I hold a master's degree (CS) from a top 20 University; working on the PhD.
So you hate niggers, right?
Not sure if this is trolling or a clever parody of said trolling (I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter), but either way Bravo!
from TFA: "If the Republican-controlled House approves the resolution, it would then move to the Senate, where Democrats hold the majority. The Senate is unlikely to pass the resolution." summary fails to mention how this vote probably won't actually go anywhere.
Perhaps. But the folks who define science as witch-craft, speak in tongues and handle snakes (Mike Huckabee), think that if you're a good boy you get your own planet when you die (Mitt Romney), these people run things now. The Senate will fall to these fools in time, and than it's all over.
Yea. These beliefs are much sillier than those of the sitting president who believes in the invisible sky ghost.
You mean, the fact that there is a hidden cost of using a credit card built into your daily life doesn't bother you? Of course, you don't see the price increase, the merchants build it in. Generally speaking, you can get a cash discounted price at a mom and pop store for simply paying debit or cash - because then they don't pay the CC company and the related merchant fees. So, yeah, I guess just so long as you don't actually *see* the increased cost, it won't bother you. And for big-box stores, those prices are part-and-parcel of their merch, so abstaining from using a CC may not help you there ... but if you're okay promoting the practice, then keep on plastic-ing.
In addition to this flaw, from a psychological standpoint people also spend more when using a credit card.
This GPS thing is the beginning of a slippery slope. If the practice remains unchallenged, it may not be long before our children are wearing ankle monitors, as some criminals are required to wear. If you think this isn't the logical outome here, have a look at history, and read '1984' again while you're at it. Orwell's timeline was a few decades off, but his predictions were pretty much on target.
I agree with the rest of your comment, except that it isn't the beginning of the slope.
(Note 2: No, actually I'm lying. My first thought was of Ghengis Khan, since he was my contemporary)
Same here.
How can you be so sure that there is little we can do to stop it? The fact that we can't prove that we're responsible for global warming doesn't prove that we're not. And if you do a proper risk assessment, like this guy does in his series of videos that are very much worth viewing despite his silly hats, you'll find that the smart thing to do is to try and do something about it.
Your line of thought sounds like "the Earth is going to hell but we might not be responsible so let's just see where this goes". Consider the possibility that we are responsible, and/or (they don't even have to be connected) the possibility that we can do something about it.
I am astonished/appalled that people actually buy into the reasoning displayed in this video. Aside from him papering over some pretty important complexities in the problem, if we followed his logic we might as well spend all of our money on defenses in preparation for a Klingon invasion. After all, the consequences of Klingon invasion would be so severe (they're mean!) that we can't afford NOT to act on the threat. I haven't been convinced either way on AGW at this point, but this video and the argument is poses are garbage.
After all, statistics says that if one flips a coin 10 times, one will get around 5 heads and 5 tails.
I would like to know where you took statistics. If you did a single trial of 10 coin flips and got 8 heads and 2 tails, would you regard statistics as a debunked science?
No, but I would be willing to wager on one against the other. As Bastardi is doing.
I love knowing how America keeps creeping to become more and more like the Soviet Union with a similar kind of loss of privileges.
Where the debate really needs to be centered is on two things:
By far and away too much is classified material. I don't mind having things like the locations of military units and certain other generally time-sensitive information being classified, but there certainly is a whole bunch of stuff being labeled as classified material mainly because it would be embarrassing if the information was disclosed. That stuff should not be protected under an official secrets act and I wish that a harder evaluation would result in trying to decide what exactly should be considered classified material in the first place.
Speculating that the King of Saudi Arabia is an ass should not be considered an official secret.
DHS already works with a former head of the KGB to assist in fighting the war on terror. Cause, you know, that's what the KGB is famous for.
I see your point about how a reduction of options (of which a monopoly would be the degenerate case) could make something _seem_ compulsory. Eg, if you lived in an apartment building and therefore couldn't grow your own food, and there was only 1 grocery store within 50 miles you might as well have a gun to your head with respect to where you buy food.
So for the sake of argument suppose we equate a lack of options with compulsion. Still how does this apply to casinos? You don't need a casino to live or even to be entertained. Casinos have certain (state-granted) monopoly-like privileges to let them corner the gambling market in many ways, but they don't have a monopoly on anything critical like food, utilities, or entertainment.
Not trying to be argumentative or anything, just trying to see where you're coming from.