The fact is, while high speed limits may not have a direct impact on frequencies of accidents, they do have a significant impact on severity of an accident as well as overall societal fuel consumption.
The same fallacy can be applied to smoking or drinking or drug use or gun possession or almost any other element of society that has potentially dangerous results when used improperly. Making speeding illegal is akin to prohibition of alcohol. You're criminalizing something everyone does simply because it has even the slightest potential of doing harm to society.
because going 75 instead of 70 only saves you a theoretical 100 seconds (not even 2 minutes!) over 30 miles, which is generally erased by slowdowns at an interchange or a traffic light.
Slowdowns/traffic lights are a constant in that equation (whether you're doing 70 or 75). Therefore, the average time they subtract from the drive at either speed should be identical (i.e. sometimes speeding gets you through a light about to change before it changes, sometimes it doesn't). And I don't about you, but X minutes, 2X roundtrip, aggregated over the entire course of my life is significant. And anyways, I can't count the number of times I wish I had a few extra minutes to sleep, or prepare, or get to a meeting on time rather than late.
And it's also not the point. It's a matter of driving at a speed you feel comfortable driving at. If I forced you (and everyone else) to drive to work each day going exactly 15 miles per hour on the highway, don't you feel you would get a little annoyed/frustrated about halfway through the drive? (or prior?) I certainly know that traffic jams don't exactly leave me feeling pleasant. Well, that same experience extrapolated to higher speeds is what is feels like when people who normally do 70 or 80 are suddenly forced to do 50.
Merging in and out of traffic, for any reason is FAR more dangerous than me going a mere 5 mph over the speed limit. So to force me to merge because every asshole who thinks they're important wants to go 80mph is causing me to be reckless.
Soooo...you think the alternative of forcing them to merge in and out of traffic at higher speeds while passing you in the rightmost lanes of traffic is safer?
The alternative is for *me* to get stuck behind the asshole in the right lane doing 45mph in a 65mph zone.
If there's that much of a speed delta, you'd be passing them pretty quickly, at which time you could pull in front of them and let the faster traffic pass. The specific complaint here is side-by-side blocking at same speeds. What you bring up is not indicative of the same issue.
So what makes YOU more important that *I* have to get behind the slower guy so YOU can go faster?
And likewise, what makes YOU so important that you should be allowed to break the law at the speed YOU feel comfortable driving at while giving the big finger to anyone who wants to go faster? In other words, who declared you the official decider of the proper safe speed of the road? At least the people going the speed limit have a somewhat reasonable argument with "i was going the legal limit, and so should you". As far as I tell, you have no defense. In particular, the people that cheese me off the most are the people who are following someone fairly closely in the next-to-leftmost lane as I'm approaching in the left lane at a velocity far greater than theirs. This should be very obvious in the rear view mirror. However, they wait until the last possible second, just as I'm about to pass both of them, to decide to pass themselves. They hop into the next lane, quite often requiring me to slam on my brakes, and then proceed to execute the dog-slow pass at whatever speed they feel comfortable driving at. Whereas they could have taken even the most MINIMAL amount of consideration by waiting half a second to allow me to pass first (with no one behind me), they somehow feel in the right cutting me off and forcing me to wait for them to execute their pass. Many times this is also down with a perfectly empty thirdmost lane as well, which is especially infuriating.
It was the Austrians (e.g. the Randite moron Greenspan) who got us here while the Keynesians (who don't believe in central planning) predicted exactly what would happen.
Lemme get this straight. You're telling me the Austrians who are calling for the abolition of the Federal Reserve believe in central planning? Show me the Keynesian that says that the actions of the Fed triggered this mess.
The bailout was action to save the country from disaster.
Highly debatable, considering the current state of the country.. The savings and loan crisis (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis) of the 80s/90s saw 747 out of the 3,234 banks fail. And at worst we weathered the early 90s recession because of it: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Early_1990s_recession. The economy weathered that WAY better than it is weathering this clusterfuck of attempting to bailout/inflate our way out of a necessary correction. What has it been? 4 years now? And we're still at ~9% unemployment and the economy is still going at a snail's pace. There's frequent talk of a "double dip" and inflation is picking up heavily. Nor tell me how this bailout "saved us from disaster"?
Without the bailout, we'd be in the same damn place we are now. The only difference is that we wouldn't be battling a sovereign debt crisis, increasing inflation, and a bunch of pissed off OWS protestors due to bailouts. Oh yeah, and a bunch of crooked CEOs would be broke and out of business as well instead of having their malignant ways rewarded by the government.
But, perhaps more importantly, the end bill, and specifically the removal of the public option, was the result of several compromises with actual, real, elected Republicans.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mike_Ross_(politician)#The_Blue_Dogs_and_health_care
"Because many Blue Dogs, especially Ross, had serious concerns about the bill's potential harmful affects on rural doctors and rural hospitals, the group forced House leadership to accept that the government would negotiate rates with health care providers instead of using Medicare rates in any so-called public option."
"After Congress' August recess, Ross announced that he could not support a bill with a Public Option.[14] In a letter to constituents, he claimed that "An overwhelming number of you oppose a government-run health insurance option, and it is your feedback that has led me to oppose the public option as well."
Although Republicans opposed the public option, they were a nonfactor in any changes made to the bill. Those changes were made to appease blue dog democrats
Fourth, you idiot, the OWS protestors are not protesting the bailout. They're protesting the behavior of the banks who got the bailouts and then refused to loan anyone any money and handed the cash out to the presidents. They're protesting the fact that institutes exist that cannot be allowed to fail.
"Cannot be allowed to fail"? If there WAS NO BAILOUT, they WOULD HAVE FAILED. That means they are protesting the bailout. If you're going to give the banks a shit ton of free money with no strings attached, what do you expect? It's no different than any other government handout. Hell, the vast majority of Americans took their "tax stimulus" and shoved it into savings as well instead of spending it. How is this different? The government simply passed a shitty bill with no stipulations and people are directing their ire in the wrong direction.
one only has to look at copyrights and patents to see how nonsensical this statement is. As well as "software licensing" think about how many people just accept these things when they were bitterly argued over a long time ago.
Those are government advents, enforced by government. Capitalism, in its purest form, is not subject to "rules changes". This is all the more reason why the rage should be directed at the government regulation/actions people have a beef with rather than at capitalism.
What you have in the US approaches the textbook definition of unregulated capitalism, with the aid of the government.
*blink* Do you even understand the oxymoronic statement you just wrote write there? "aid of government" == regulated. Any situation where the government interferes in any fashion in the free market, be it in obstruction or support, it is no longer "unregulated" capitalism and no longer free.
Tens of milions of americans don't have health coverage to speak of. And many of those that do have health coverage are 1 sickness away from possibile bankruptcy.
This is not a society that cares for its citizens. It is not a social democracy
Despite the fact we spend more public money per capita than almost any other country out there? (we're in the top ten). Perhaps your complaining should be redirected towards the government that ineffectively attempts to fix a real problem, rather than at capitalism which is only stymied by its interference.
What you have is for all intents and purposes unregulated capitalism.
Uh huh, just like the "unregulated" bailout where capitalism was BLOCKED by the government who allowed a bunch of failing banks to continue to persist on taxpayer dollars? It's the government deciding who succeeds or fails (subsidies anyone?). And what system of government involves government control over the means of production? Think about that for a second. It isn't capitalism.
What does using an iPhone have to do with protesting inappropriate wages/bonuses/other exploitations?
They're protesting abuse, not the production of consumer goods o.O
Maybe because the government produced the abuse whereas the corporations produced the iphone? It's misplaced rage. Why aren't the people who can't afford healthcare bitching that the government is spending a trillion a year in healthcare spending and not getting anything done? Why aren't they _seriously pissed off_ about the Obama healthcare bill? (instead of the typical Democrat reaction "it's better than nothing"). Why are they crucifying the rich instead of their own goddamned liberal constituents who voted 75% in favor of TARP and all its non-accountability? Why aren't they swarming to the Republican side, over 50% of whom (in the House) voted against TARP and pushed for bank accountability and bankruptcy? Why don't they support the Tea Party, which has similar demands of accountability? Why don't they realize the ridiculousness of demanding more government involvement when government involvement got them into their predicament in the first place? Why are they blaming capitalism when capitalism was in fact derailed when the banks were not allowed to fail? These are oblivious fools with an axe to grind who have no idea how the system actually works or how to change it in any effective manner. All they want to to do is take money from the rich through any means and give it to themselves for any reason. "Specifics be damned" (I'm pretty sure that's actually a tenet of the movement)
And you have not been paying attention to what has caused the financial crisis in Europe - the strong ones such as Germany and France and generally the northen part of the EU are doing if not great at least surviving nicely
It's not exactly fair to pick and choose examples when attempting to justify the success of a given social system. The problem, as usual, is that no one is discussing the HOW in spending, they only discuss the WHERE. The US for instance spends a ton of government money on healthcare (more than Germany even, I believe, per capita) and yet our healthcare sucks. As such, it's an implementation problem. Which means private capitalism could very well solve this problem just as easy as socialism, if done right. Right now the system is an inefficient mess of poor capitalism (no choice, no mobility, no transparency) and poor socialism (multiple ineffective government healthcare programs). No one can make the claim that handing over healthcare to the government would "fix things" anymore than they can claim the current system is "free market in action". Similarly, you can't prop one European country up as a paragon example of efficiency while others with similar systems go bankrupt.
When they call the protesters scum, slackers, and anarchists, I point them to the We are the 99% blog [tumblr.com] and ask them to justify their position with references from that site.
Whereas I'm not quite as critical of the protestors, I have pointed out to others on several occasions what I've observed of the posts on that blog. Namely, the vast majority of posts there go something along these lines: "I have condition/disease/sickness and can't afford my bills". And I counter by saying that between Medicare, Medicaid, and Obama's new healthcare bill, taxpayers pay close to a trillion dollars a year on healthcare, and it STILL sucks. Yet people direct their complaints at the rich people and at capitalism, rather than at the GOVERNMENT that takes their money (in the form of taxes) and squanders it on ineffective programs that fail to provide adequate healthcare. Seriously, where's the rage against the liberal support of insurance company monopolies? (in particular, the aforementioned Obama "handout to insurance companies" bill)? If sickness is bankrupting you, it ain't the free market that did it. The healthcare business is FAR from a market and nowhere even remotely close to "free". When you can demonstrate consumer choice or competition in the system, you can blame capitalism. Until then, blame government.
Firstly, the Tea Party seems to had started in opposition to the bailouts. That is fine. I actually think the bailouts needed to happen
What I find funny is that Occupy Wall Street is targetting rich people with their protests instead of the people that actually bailed them out in the first place. In fact, they bitch about the rich people while opening supporting the democratic supermajority that voted in favor of TARP. Do they even know that TARP was opposed by over HALF the Republicans in the House? Hell no, it's a big Republican/capitalism bashfest. "Capitalism" was co-opted BY DEMOCRATS when those banks were not allowed to fail. The Tea Party AND the Republicans wanted the capitalist solution, which is NOT what occurred.
auditing the Fed isn't going to do anything. The Fed is doing nothing illegal.
Umm, you miss the point. "Auditing the fed" isn't about illegality, it's about TRANSPARENCY. It's about exposing all the secret money trading hands behind the scenes. I'd imagine this would be a worthwhile effort, and it's a sensible demand.
In fact, the cost of health care is the major cause of bankrupcy, so at this point the Tea Party is literally facing backwards in trying to make things better for themselves.
How do you figure? If healthcare costs are bankrupting the country and you introduce another ludicrously expensive government bill that does nothing to address the root causes, yet spends a shit-ton of taxpapyer dollars, I would say that FURTHERS the bankruptcy of our nation.
Thanks to that idiocrary, we ended up with a 'solution' that essentially let the insurance companies run it. Good work, Tea Party!
Congratulations, you're an idiot. The Democrats had a supermajority when the health care bill was passed. They didn't need a single Republican vote to pass the bill. This is braindead obvious when you look at the fucking voting record of the bill and see ZERO Republican "ayes" in favor of it. Every single compromise you bitch about that made the bill a pisspoor handout to insurance companies was done to appease your own base, primarily the Blue Dogs. The Tea Party had NOTHING to do with the resulting bill. Wake up and get your head out of your ass.
1) Roll the comments system version back like 6 years. Make it load fast. Make it load all the comments on a single page (according to your moderation score preferences) If i'm browsing at -1, I want to see it all.
2) Make it load faster. Sometimes pages take forever to load, then when they do load, they scroll slowly. I think this is caused by fancy javascripting or something. Just display the comments. We don't need/want any fancy web 2.0 features.
Seconded, whoreheartedly. AJAX is the bane of current web browsing -- everyone seems to think it's a "better way of doing things", when in reality it's slower, annoying, and godawful to deal with.
The problem with ObamaCare is that it represents the worst about American politics - namely, meaningless "compromises" between two fanatically hostile sides that "compromise" the very things that make something work, just so that they have the law passed and can boast such to their constituents
Blue Dog Democrats and non-Blue Dog Democrats are fanatically hostile to each other?
Look at how many Republican politicians believe in creationism
40% of all Americans believe that idiocy (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/20/40-of-americans-still-bel_n_799078.htmlhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/20/40-of-americans-still-bel_n_799078.html). And although 52% of the Republicans ascribe to creationism, so do 34% of Dems and Independents. Thus, I'd hardly say it's a fantastic yardstick in determining ability to govern. Hell, over 80-85% of this country believes in a mystical invisible being in the sky -- by the same logic, 80% of us are unfit to govern. Why don't we focus on things that are relevant (like actual politics) instead of finding "dumb things that people believe" and then using that to ignore everything they have to say.
scientific consensus about climate change
The AGW debate is flooded on both sides with misinformation, cult-like devotion, and miscommunication. I've yet to come across a single debate on the topic where massive assumptions weren't made when a single person opened their mouth. The very fact the word "denialist" even exists tells me that people have no interest in challenging their own beliefs. The only consensus made in any scientific literature I've seen is that the planet is warming and that man has some effect. Scope/degree and direct causal relationships are not proven science. It's at best correlation right now. And people have very good reason to demand extensive proof of "the sky is falling" before taking extreme action to address what may be a non-problem. I'm fed up with this issue being misconstrued as a sign of stupidity when the people making the extraordinary claim (that we're on a near-term global catastrophic event) are providing little more than "hey look, temperature is going up...and CO2 traps heat...Q.E.D".
I find it highly unlikely that a person could be a creationist and at the same time somehow have a good grasp of economic theory.
The fact you equate the two is sad -- it's a perfect example of Ad Hominem, and why such attacks have no place in debate. Anyone can find one idiotic thing another person believes. As I said, over 80% of the country is religious -- I find this idiotic. Can I then assume all their opinions are worthless and everything I have to say about everything is automatically correct?
I find it incredible that you don't think the Republican side is way, way more likely to disregard facts.
Like I said before, confirmation bias is the only reason one side believes itself to be "more reasonable"/"more intelligent"/"more informed". Based off what you told me originally, I can virtually guarantee that you get more of your research from left-leaning sources (Daily Show, DailyKos, Huffpo). It's textbook Selective Exposure Theory, and it's exactly as deplorable as a bunch of Republicans getting all their news from Fox News. And yes I recognize that a show like the Daily Show it at least a bit more honest than Fox News, but it doesn't change the fact that the bandwagon effect and general cognitive inertia is driving your beliefs. Someone willing to challenge preconceptions, a true skeptic, would welcome opposing opinions and would be eager to re-evaluate his own positions. If Dems were truly the "fact seekers" you claim they were, I'd see many more of them seeking unbiased sources of information, or avoiding flimflam spin artists like Michael Moore, or researching the actual voting history of someone like Obama before believing his lies and voting him into office. But the typical Democrat does none of these things, very much like the typical Republican shares a similar level of cognitive dissonance when they spout their own talking points.
But look at the totality of each party. Surely you can't say they have equal amounts of right and wron
The more I search for the data/studies describing what is 'talking pointed' and spewed out of politicians' mouths, the more liberal I become.
Congratulations, you've defined "confirmation bias".
he Republican party seems very happy to live in a perpetual state of contradiction. Their Ideology is more important to them than facts.
You're an absolute fool is you think this is isolated to one side. If I may give an example, liberals are quick to point out how low taxes haven't done anything to spur the economy. But then when using the exact same argmuent against them by saying "stimulus spending has done nothing to spur the economy", they hand-wave and make up some kind of bullshit excuse like "well, it would have been alot worse without it" or "well, we didn't do enough of it", the infamous tiger-repellant rock defense (not at all realizing the exact same defense defeats the whole ineffective low taxes argument.
The day you realize how blinded both sided are by ideology will be the day you can begin calling yourself a moderate.
Then there's Obama's more recent stimulus (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Tax_Relief,_Unemployment_Insurance_Reauthorization,_and_Job_Creation_Act_of_2010), costing 858 billion.
And just recently Obama has unveiled a new batch of spending (http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/20/smallbusiness/stimulus_plan_hiring/) with a 447 billion price tag.
So that's at like 1.8 trillion (1.6 of it Obama's) with another half trillion or so being proposed. And that's assuming you don't count any of the bailout bills as "stimulus", which are definitely suspect. And that's 2-3 years of spending. The wars you bring up, though equally costly, were expenditures over a decade (afghanistan was 2001, iraq was 2003). Now I'm no huge fan of the wars either, but in a straight "cost per year" comparison, they aren't comparable, especially given the fact the war expenses are winding down while even more stimulus is being proposed, however ineffective. It boggles my mind that people can attribute SOLE blame for the deficit to the Republicans for spending 2-3 trillion on a decade of war and give Obama a free pass on spending 2+ trillion (projected) in 2-3 years.
Talk to your Republican buddies about that as they are hell bent on keeping things the way they are...
I hate those fuckers as much as you do. I'm a Ron Paul advocate and would like a viable third party to rise to power.
Now, however, scientists from the Scott Polar Research Institute say those figures, based on data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, are wrong. 'Recent satellite images of Greenland make it clear that there are in fact still numerous glaciers and permanent ice cover where the new Times Atlas shows ice-free conditions and the emergence of new lands,' they say in a letter that has been sent to the Times.
Denialist trolls over at the Scott Polar Institute will believe whatever they want to. We all know all the "real" scientists have a consensus./sarcasm
For example, the issue of SSI solvency could be solved by eliminating the SSI tax limit at $106,800 - meaning, that at present only the first $106,800 of *earned* income is subject to SSI withholding.
Or how about they just eliminate this entire concept of a "separate tax" in the first place. Eliminate SSI withholding entirely and lump SS into the normal budget. Raise income taxes (or cut SS spending) to balance the budget as they do with any other program. Same goes for Medicare/Medicaid.
Eliminating the Bush tax cuts would also go a long way to reducing the debt over time
You never raise taxes during a recession. But more important, eliminating those taxes does nothing to address the root problem: loopholes, capital gains income tax dodging, etc etc. If you really want to make sure rich people "pay their fair share", eliminate the loopholes instead of trying to raise taxes on small business owners and non-millionaires by jacking taxes at the 250k line.
he upper tax rates have been lowered for *years*, yet where are the new jobs?
By the same argument, Obama/Bush have spent trillions and trillions on "stimulus" -- where are the jobs? Perhaps there's something to whole belief that the free market CAN'T be artificially controlled by government.
letting the Bush tax cuts expire would restore the highest tax bracket from 35% back to 39%
As already mentioned, I oppose tax hikes during a recession by principle. But I really can't stand misguided and misplaced targeting. The highest bracket is WAY too low, not to mention utterly irrelevant, if your intention is to address CEOs and tax dodgers. They get all their gains through capital gains (with $1 salaries). All the focus on the Bush tax cuts is stupid.
$250k is still rich, even today. A person with that yearly income is one of the richest people on the planet, and one of the richest people to ever live on planet Earth. The fact that people making that amount do not recognize and appreciate exactly how fucking lucky they are makes me sick. "It doesn't go as far as it used to." Seriously? $250k and you are not happy with what you have?
I think you're missing the point. Every argument I've seen about raising taxes on rich people boils down to two main arguments: 1) it won't impact their lifestyle, and/or 2) they're paying less taxes than middle class using tax loopholes and capital gains. NEITHER of these categories apply to the "lesser rich" segment you have no problem casually throwing under the bus simply because they earn more than you do. These people continue to work for their money, have families, jobs, expenses, etc etc -- basically they have far more in common with the middle class worker trying to make a living than they do the rich billionaire flying around in private jets. Yet people treat them like they're all flying around in private jets with a desire to take every scrap of income from them that they can get their hands onto. By the same logic, should someone making 70k a year be forced to live the lifestyle of someone making 30-40k a year just because they have more? Should we treat them like assholes for wanting to keep their hard earned money, for wanting to have something more than an average/below-average lifestyle? Should we tax them like crazy because they're making double what the others are? Because to someone making 30k, 70k is an extravagant fortune. Surely they can part with that wealth, right?
you're totally misconstruing the "movement". its not at all fuck rich people. its rich people should be equal to us.
False. There's a wide swath of people in the joint 250k+ income bracket that DON'T engage in tax shelters/loopholes to dodge taxes. These people ARE working class, albeit "wealthy working class". And Obama and the "fuck rich people movement" are all about sticking it to these people just as much as they are about sticking it to the true rich people (e.g. millionaires/billionaires). Believe it or not, the majority of people who don't have that much money have absolutely no qualms taking from anyone making any amount more than them with the justification of "meh, they can afford it".
Sure, and to troll a bit... why do you think the conservatives/Republicans are going nuts to lower spending on education, health and welfare; blasting that teachers are "under worked" and "overpaid", proposing "privatizing" of Medicare, Medicaid (which will really only help the private companies - see Medicare "Advantage"), and that Social Security is an illegal "ponzi" scheme?
My first guess would be because we have a huge sovereign debt problem and those programs you mentioned not only eat well over 50% of our current annual taxes, but are projected to eat exponentially more in the near future?
Slashdot Mirror
The same fallacy can be applied to smoking or drinking or drug use or gun possession or almost any other element of society that has potentially dangerous results when used improperly. Making speeding illegal is akin to prohibition of alcohol. You're criminalizing something everyone does simply because it has even the slightest potential of doing harm to society.
Slowdowns/traffic lights are a constant in that equation (whether you're doing 70 or 75). Therefore, the average time they subtract from the drive at either speed should be identical (i.e. sometimes speeding gets you through a light about to change before it changes, sometimes it doesn't). And I don't about you, but X minutes, 2X roundtrip, aggregated over the entire course of my life is significant. And anyways, I can't count the number of times I wish I had a few extra minutes to sleep, or prepare, or get to a meeting on time rather than late.
And it's also not the point. It's a matter of driving at a speed you feel comfortable driving at. If I forced you (and everyone else) to drive to work each day going exactly 15 miles per hour on the highway, don't you feel you would get a little annoyed/frustrated about halfway through the drive? (or prior?) I certainly know that traffic jams don't exactly leave me feeling pleasant. Well, that same experience extrapolated to higher speeds is what is feels like when people who normally do 70 or 80 are suddenly forced to do 50.
Soooo...you think the alternative of forcing them to merge in and out of traffic at higher speeds while passing you in the rightmost lanes of traffic is safer?
If there's that much of a speed delta, you'd be passing them pretty quickly, at which time you could pull in front of them and let the faster traffic pass. The specific complaint here is side-by-side blocking at same speeds. What you bring up is not indicative of the same issue.
And likewise, what makes YOU so important that you should be allowed to break the law at the speed YOU feel comfortable driving at while giving the big finger to anyone who wants to go faster? In other words, who declared you the official decider of the proper safe speed of the road? At least the people going the speed limit have a somewhat reasonable argument with "i was going the legal limit, and so should you". As far as I tell, you have no defense. In particular, the people that cheese me off the most are the people who are following someone fairly closely in the next-to-leftmost lane as I'm approaching in the left lane at a velocity far greater than theirs. This should be very obvious in the rear view mirror. However, they wait until the last possible second, just as I'm about to pass both of them, to decide to pass themselves. They hop into the next lane, quite often requiring me to slam on my brakes, and then proceed to execute the dog-slow pass at whatever speed they feel comfortable driving at. Whereas they could have taken even the most MINIMAL amount of consideration by waiting half a second to allow me to pass first (with no one behind me), they somehow feel in the right cutting me off and forcing me to wait for them to execute their pass. Many times this is also down with a perfectly empty thirdmost lane as well, which is especially infuriating.
Correction: If you are smart, non-white with poor parents, go to a good private school with a huge endowment: ~10k in debt
Lemme get this straight. You're telling me the Austrians who are calling for the abolition of the Federal Reserve believe in central planning? Show me the Keynesian that says that the actions of the Fed triggered this mess.
And Climate Science.
Highly debatable, considering the current state of the country.. The savings and loan crisis (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis) of the 80s/90s saw 747 out of the 3,234 banks fail. And at worst we weathered the early 90s recession because of it: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Early_1990s_recession. The economy weathered that WAY better than it is weathering this clusterfuck of attempting to bailout/inflate our way out of a necessary correction. What has it been? 4 years now? And we're still at ~9% unemployment and the economy is still going at a snail's pace. There's frequent talk of a "double dip" and inflation is picking up heavily. Nor tell me how this bailout "saved us from disaster"?
Without the bailout, we'd be in the same damn place we are now. The only difference is that we wouldn't be battling a sovereign debt crisis, increasing inflation, and a bunch of pissed off OWS protestors due to bailouts. Oh yeah, and a bunch of crooked CEOs would be broke and out of business as well instead of having their malignant ways rewarded by the government.
That is simply not true. http://benefitmatrix.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=154:health-care-reform&catid=41:top-headlines
"After a revolt by a conservative group of "Blue Dog'' Democrats that led to more exemptions for businesses, the plan was adopted by three committees without Republican support."
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/59839-pelosi-nixes-deal-with-blue-dogs-on-healthcare
"Democrats are to discuss the public option at a caucus meeting Thursday. That discussion will include replacing the public option with nonprofit "cooperatives" that would compete with private insurers but would not be run by the government"
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mike_Ross_(politician)#The_Blue_Dogs_and_health_care
"Because many Blue Dogs, especially Ross, had serious concerns about the bill's potential harmful affects on rural doctors and rural hospitals, the group forced House leadership to accept that the government would negotiate rates with health care providers instead of using Medicare rates in any so-called public option."
"After Congress' August recess, Ross announced that he could not support a bill with a Public Option.[14] In a letter to constituents, he claimed that "An overwhelming number of you oppose a government-run health insurance option, and it is your feedback that has led me to oppose the public option as well."
Although Republicans opposed the public option, they were a nonfactor in any changes made to the bill. Those changes were made to appease blue dog democrats
"Cannot be allowed to fail"? If there WAS NO BAILOUT, they WOULD HAVE FAILED. That means they are protesting the bailout. If you're going to give the banks a shit ton of free money with no strings attached, what do you expect? It's no different than any other government handout. Hell, the vast majority of Americans took their "tax stimulus" and shoved it into savings as well instead of spending it. How is this different? The government simply passed a shitty bill with no stipulations and people are directing their ire in the wrong direction.
Tea Partiers feel the same about OWS protestors.
Those are government advents, enforced by government. Capitalism, in its purest form, is not subject to "rules changes". This is all the more reason why the rage should be directed at the government regulation/actions people have a beef with rather than at capitalism.
*blink* Do you even understand the oxymoronic statement you just wrote write there? "aid of government" == regulated. Any situation where the government interferes in any fashion in the free market, be it in obstruction or support, it is no longer "unregulated" capitalism and no longer free.
Despite the fact we spend more public money per capita than almost any other country out there? (we're in the top ten). Perhaps your complaining should be redirected towards the government that ineffectively attempts to fix a real problem, rather than at capitalism which is only stymied by its interference.
Uh huh, just like the "unregulated" bailout where capitalism was BLOCKED by the government who allowed a bunch of failing banks to continue to persist on taxpayer dollars? It's the government deciding who succeeds or fails (subsidies anyone?). And what system of government involves government control over the means of production? Think about that for a second. It isn't capitalism.
Maybe because the government produced the abuse whereas the corporations produced the iphone? It's misplaced rage. Why aren't the people who can't afford healthcare bitching that the government is spending a trillion a year in healthcare spending and not getting anything done? Why aren't they _seriously pissed off_ about the Obama healthcare bill? (instead of the typical Democrat reaction "it's better than nothing"). Why are they crucifying the rich instead of their own goddamned liberal constituents who voted 75% in favor of TARP and all its non-accountability? Why aren't they swarming to the Republican side, over 50% of whom (in the House) voted against TARP and pushed for bank accountability and bankruptcy? Why don't they support the Tea Party, which has similar demands of accountability? Why don't they realize the ridiculousness of demanding more government involvement when government involvement got them into their predicament in the first place? Why are they blaming capitalism when capitalism was in fact derailed when the banks were not allowed to fail? These are oblivious fools with an axe to grind who have no idea how the system actually works or how to change it in any effective manner. All they want to to do is take money from the rich through any means and give it to themselves for any reason. "Specifics be damned" (I'm pretty sure that's actually a tenet of the movement)
It's not exactly fair to pick and choose examples when attempting to justify the success of a given social system. The problem, as usual, is that no one is discussing the HOW in spending, they only discuss the WHERE. The US for instance spends a ton of government money on healthcare (more than Germany even, I believe, per capita) and yet our healthcare sucks. As such, it's an implementation problem. Which means private capitalism could very well solve this problem just as easy as socialism, if done right. Right now the system is an inefficient mess of poor capitalism (no choice, no mobility, no transparency) and poor socialism (multiple ineffective government healthcare programs). No one can make the claim that handing over healthcare to the government would "fix things" anymore than they can claim the current system is "free market in action". Similarly, you can't prop one European country up as a paragon example of efficiency while others with similar systems go bankrupt.
Whereas I'm not quite as critical of the protestors, I have pointed out to others on several occasions what I've observed of the posts on that blog. Namely, the vast majority of posts there go something along these lines: "I have condition/disease/sickness and can't afford my bills". And I counter by saying that between Medicare, Medicaid, and Obama's new healthcare bill, taxpayers pay close to a trillion dollars a year on healthcare, and it STILL sucks. Yet people direct their complaints at the rich people and at capitalism, rather than at the GOVERNMENT that takes their money (in the form of taxes) and squanders it on ineffective programs that fail to provide adequate healthcare. Seriously, where's the rage against the liberal support of insurance company monopolies? (in particular, the aforementioned Obama "handout to insurance companies" bill)? If sickness is bankrupting you, it ain't the free market that did it. The healthcare business is FAR from a market and nowhere even remotely close to "free". When you can demonstrate consumer choice or competition in the system, you can blame capitalism. Until then, blame government.
What I find funny is that Occupy Wall Street is targetting rich people with their protests instead of the people that actually bailed them out in the first place. In fact, they bitch about the rich people while opening supporting the democratic supermajority that voted in favor of TARP. Do they even know that TARP was opposed by over HALF the Republicans in the House? Hell no, it's a big Republican/capitalism bashfest. "Capitalism" was co-opted BY DEMOCRATS when those banks were not allowed to fail. The Tea Party AND the Republicans wanted the capitalist solution, which is NOT what occurred.
Umm, you miss the point. "Auditing the fed" isn't about illegality, it's about TRANSPARENCY. It's about exposing all the secret money trading hands behind the scenes. I'd imagine this would be a worthwhile effort, and it's a sensible demand.
How do you figure? If healthcare costs are bankrupting the country and you introduce another ludicrously expensive government bill that does nothing to address the root causes, yet spends a shit-ton of taxpapyer dollars, I would say that FURTHERS the bankruptcy of our nation.
Congratulations, you're an idiot. The Democrats had a supermajority when the health care bill was passed. They didn't need a single Republican vote to pass the bill. This is braindead obvious when you look at the fucking voting record of the bill and see ZERO Republican "ayes" in favor of it. Every single compromise you bitch about that made the bill a pisspoor handout to insurance companies was done to appease your own base, primarily the Blue Dogs. The Tea Party had NOTHING to do with the resulting bill. Wake up and get your head out of your ass.
Seconded, whoreheartedly. AJAX is the bane of current web browsing -- everyone seems to think it's a "better way of doing things", when in reality it's slower, annoying, and godawful to deal with.
Blue Dog Democrats and non-Blue Dog Democrats are fanatically hostile to each other?
40% of all Americans believe that idiocy (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/20/40-of-americans-still-bel_n_799078.htmlhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/20/40-of-americans-still-bel_n_799078.html). And although 52% of the Republicans ascribe to creationism, so do 34% of Dems and Independents. Thus, I'd hardly say it's a fantastic yardstick in determining ability to govern. Hell, over 80-85% of this country believes in a mystical invisible being in the sky -- by the same logic, 80% of us are unfit to govern. Why don't we focus on things that are relevant (like actual politics) instead of finding "dumb things that people believe" and then using that to ignore everything they have to say.
The AGW debate is flooded on both sides with misinformation, cult-like devotion, and miscommunication. I've yet to come across a single debate on the topic where massive assumptions weren't made when a single person opened their mouth. The very fact the word "denialist" even exists tells me that people have no interest in challenging their own beliefs. The only consensus made in any scientific literature I've seen is that the planet is warming and that man has some effect. Scope/degree and direct causal relationships are not proven science. It's at best correlation right now. And people have very good reason to demand extensive proof of "the sky is falling" before taking extreme action to address what may be a non-problem. I'm fed up with this issue being misconstrued as a sign of stupidity when the people making the extraordinary claim (that we're on a near-term global catastrophic event) are providing little more than "hey look, temperature is going up...and CO2 traps heat...Q.E.D".
The fact you equate the two is sad -- it's a perfect example of Ad Hominem, and why such attacks have no place in debate. Anyone can find one idiotic thing another person believes. As I said, over 80% of the country is religious -- I find this idiotic. Can I then assume all their opinions are worthless and everything I have to say about everything is automatically correct?
Like I said before, confirmation bias is the only reason one side believes itself to be "more reasonable"/"more intelligent"/"more informed". Based off what you told me originally, I can virtually guarantee that you get more of your research from left-leaning sources (Daily Show, DailyKos, Huffpo). It's textbook Selective Exposure Theory, and it's exactly as deplorable as a bunch of Republicans getting all their news from Fox News. And yes I recognize that a show like the Daily Show it at least a bit more honest than Fox News, but it doesn't change the fact that the bandwagon effect and general cognitive inertia is driving your beliefs. Someone willing to challenge preconceptions, a true skeptic, would welcome opposing opinions and would be eager to re-evaluate his own positions. If Dems were truly the "fact seekers" you claim they were, I'd see many more of them seeking unbiased sources of information, or avoiding flimflam spin artists like Michael Moore, or researching the actual voting history of someone like Obama before believing his lies and voting him into office. But the typical Democrat does none of these things, very much like the typical Republican shares a similar level of cognitive dissonance when they spout their own talking points.
Oh, then poor people are starting businesses now? Fantastic! The wealth problem will solve itself.
Congratulations, you've defined "confirmation bias".
You're an absolute fool is you think this is isolated to one side. If I may give an example, liberals are quick to point out how low taxes haven't done anything to spur the economy. But then when using the exact same argmuent against them by saying "stimulus spending has done nothing to spur the economy", they hand-wave and make up some kind of bullshit excuse like "well, it would have been alot worse without it" or "well, we didn't do enough of it", the infamous tiger-repellant rock defense (not at all realizing the exact same defense defeats the whole ineffective low taxes argument.
The day you realize how blinded both sided are by ideology will be the day you can begin calling yourself a moderate.
It ain't that hyperbolic. Trilions were spent.
Bush's stimulus (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Economic_Stimulus_Act_of_2008) cost 152 billion.
Obama's Recovery Act (https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:itUEv7mOS_oJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009+&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a) cost 787 billion.
Then there's Obama's more recent stimulus (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Tax_Relief,_Unemployment_Insurance_Reauthorization,_and_Job_Creation_Act_of_2010), costing 858 billion.
And just recently Obama has unveiled a new batch of spending (http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/20/smallbusiness/stimulus_plan_hiring/) with a 447 billion price tag.
So that's at like 1.8 trillion (1.6 of it Obama's) with another half trillion or so being proposed. And that's assuming you don't count any of the bailout bills as "stimulus", which are definitely suspect. And that's 2-3 years of spending. The wars you bring up, though equally costly, were expenditures over a decade (afghanistan was 2001, iraq was 2003). Now I'm no huge fan of the wars either, but in a straight "cost per year" comparison, they aren't comparable, especially given the fact the war expenses are winding down while even more stimulus is being proposed, however ineffective. It boggles my mind that people can attribute SOLE blame for the deficit to the Republicans for spending 2-3 trillion on a decade of war and give Obama a free pass on spending 2+ trillion (projected) in 2-3 years.
I hate those fuckers as much as you do. I'm a Ron Paul advocate and would like a viable third party to rise to power.
Denialist trolls over at the Scott Polar Institute will believe whatever they want to. We all know all the "real" scientists have a consensus. /sarcasm
Or how about they just eliminate this entire concept of a "separate tax" in the first place. Eliminate SSI withholding entirely and lump SS into the normal budget. Raise income taxes (or cut SS spending) to balance the budget as they do with any other program. Same goes for Medicare/Medicaid.
You never raise taxes during a recession. But more important, eliminating those taxes does nothing to address the root problem: loopholes, capital gains income tax dodging, etc etc. If you really want to make sure rich people "pay their fair share", eliminate the loopholes instead of trying to raise taxes on small business owners and non-millionaires by jacking taxes at the 250k line.
By the same argument, Obama/Bush have spent trillions and trillions on "stimulus" -- where are the jobs? Perhaps there's something to whole belief that the free market CAN'T be artificially controlled by government.
As already mentioned, I oppose tax hikes during a recession by principle. But I really can't stand misguided and misplaced targeting. The highest bracket is WAY too low, not to mention utterly irrelevant, if your intention is to address CEOs and tax dodgers. They get all their gains through capital gains (with $1 salaries). All the focus on the Bush tax cuts is stupid.
I think you're missing the point. Every argument I've seen about raising taxes on rich people boils down to two main arguments: 1) it won't impact their lifestyle, and/or 2) they're paying less taxes than middle class using tax loopholes and capital gains. NEITHER of these categories apply to the "lesser rich" segment you have no problem casually throwing under the bus simply because they earn more than you do. These people continue to work for their money, have families, jobs, expenses, etc etc -- basically they have far more in common with the middle class worker trying to make a living than they do the rich billionaire flying around in private jets. Yet people treat them like they're all flying around in private jets with a desire to take every scrap of income from them that they can get their hands onto. By the same logic, should someone making 70k a year be forced to live the lifestyle of someone making 30-40k a year just because they have more? Should we treat them like assholes for wanting to keep their hard earned money, for wanting to have something more than an average/below-average lifestyle? Should we tax them like crazy because they're making double what the others are? Because to someone making 30k, 70k is an extravagant fortune. Surely they can part with that wealth, right?
False. There's a wide swath of people in the joint 250k+ income bracket that DON'T engage in tax shelters/loopholes to dodge taxes. These people ARE working class, albeit "wealthy working class". And Obama and the "fuck rich people movement" are all about sticking it to these people just as much as they are about sticking it to the true rich people (e.g. millionaires/billionaires). Believe it or not, the majority of people who don't have that much money have absolutely no qualms taking from anyone making any amount more than them with the justification of "meh, they can afford it".
My first guess would be because we have a huge sovereign debt problem and those programs you mentioned not only eat well over 50% of our current annual taxes, but are projected to eat exponentially more in the near future?