Except it doesn't seem to work that way. It's more like, "Oh, look, more tax revenue! We can create even more government bureauocracy and dig a bigger hole of debt!". No thanks, I'd rather keep my money and drop a lot of the useless crap that people think they need government to do.
I was a DirecTV customer from within the first year or so of its existence up until maybe 4 years ago, when I moved to an apartment where I couldn't have a dish. I was completely happy with them in every way. In the early days, you could buy your own equipment and it wasn't tied to a service contract. The service contracts were a year instead of two. Their customer service was pretty good. Their picture quality, channel selection, and early HD offerings were way ahead of local cable.
I've said many times that I'd go back to them tomorrow if I could, but I'm having to rethink that, based on the things I've been hearing in recent years. It's a shame that a company would take such a turn for the worse.
Thanks for coming by and adding to the discussion. Would you have preferred I phrase it differently? Would that change the original point? Would it help you get over the fact that the phrase accurately describes what happened here and what happens frequently elsewhere?
If the shoe fits, wear it. Oops, there I go parroting figures of speech again.
Not even eight months. As someone pointed out above, the deadline for nominations was February 1st. So we're talking days. Which makes this that much more of a joke. He certainly has accomplished nothing much in eight months, but the only thing he accomplished in those few days was taking office. Sure, I get the historical significance, but that wasn't *him* doing anything. Before election day, he played the role of master politician, which, in my opinion, no one should be proud of (not just him - McCain too). Between election day and Feb. 1, he did squat. So, there's really no way to spin this award that makes any sense in the world of common sense, and it insults winners from history that actually did deserve it.
Or maybe it's Modern Marvels. I've been seeing all kinds of robots over the last couple of years on these shows. I saw one that was like a little pair of wheels with a camera on the axle and what looked like a weighted antenna hanging off the back (to keep it oriented correctly). Soldiers would throw it into a room and drive it around looking for hidden bad guys or booby traps. Then, there was one that was a little track-driven thing that had a machine gun mounted on it. They were even talking about the possibility of making them rather autonomous at some point in the future.
All this stuff seems to be in the development pipeline, so I'm not exactly sure what they're asking for.
Maybe it's possible if we blend it into a slurry first and let it dry in some kind of thin, wafer-like form. But is it really worth it at that point? I mean I can get chips relatively cheaply these days and thus don't have to put brains into a food processor.
At first, I hated the ribbon interface, but I actually grew to like it. Really, because I knew where most stuff that I cared about was buried in the menus, but whenever I had to find something new or something I forgot about, it was a pain.
The ribbons give a little visual queue and pretty much everything I want is out there in a series of tabs.
It's not perfect, but I kind of like it. I like the idea of the ribbon, but maybe MS could have arranged theirs a little better.
Pardon me, I stand corrected. This is NOT the case. You're not limited to the $3,500/$4,500, but since the car will be scrapped, you're not likely to get more than the scrap value for the vehicle. So, while you won't get just the government rebate, you also won't get more than the scrap value on top of that - nothing near the value you'd get if the car was to be resold.
I would mod this up if I could. I continue to be amazed at middle class people living in huge McMansions and driving expensive cars. Until their ARMs adjust and they get foreclosed, that is. We live in a culture of debt in this country. You're exactly right that if people lived like they did previously, they'd actually have enough money to actually be prepared for retirement without clamoring for social security.
You're kidding, right? The program is a rebate in addition to whatever trade-in value the car/SUV already has. You'd get the $18,000 from the dealer for the trade-in as in any traditional car purchasing deal AND an additional $3,500 from Uncle Sam. Have a look at some of the YouTube videos earlier in this thread of some of the "clunkers" having their engines destroyed. They're NOT old, decrepit beaters.
Considering that I've been seeing car dealers on the evening news claiming that they've been unexpectedly inundated with customers in the past week, I'd say that the answer actually is "yes".
It has absolutely zero to do with environment. The guy was in possession of export-controlled material. I don't care if he was a defense contractor, a university professor, or a waiter. If you want to play ball on that field, then you follow the rules of that game. Period.
No one forced him down that path, and he was warned about the situation. There is simply no valid excuse.
Those of us who work in defense are trained until we're blue in the face about how to handle sensitive information, what is and is not releasable, and what an "export" is in defense terms (it's more than it sounds). My company trains us extensively on that, and maybe the company he founded didn't bother to pound these things into the heads of the people in the company, but it's just not a good excuse. If we are to be trusted to handle classified information, it's up to us to make sure we understand proper safeguarding of that info. Can I recite all the rules and regs? Hell no, but I guarantee I'm not taking any information anywhere or giving information to anyone without running it through proper channels first. That's not just common sense, but what we're trained to do on an ongoing basis.
If you're not using the highways often, then you're not buying much fuel, and thus you're already not paying much in the way of fuel tax, right?
Do you use public transportation? Is that not subsidized with tax dollars? How much of my tax dollars go to networks of buses spewing diesel exhaust that I'm probably never going to ride? We're all in this together, we just use different facets of the same infrastructure.
Behavior modification thorough taxation is one of the most vile governmental concepts imaginable in a free society. People clap and cheer as long as it suits their own beliefs about what's "right" or "wrong". Wait until it costs $87 for an order of fries or for a cup of coffee when someone decides that fat and caffeine are bad enough to warrant a sin tax.
A pack of cigarettes in NJ carries a tax of like over $5 per pack, but no one seems to mind except for smokers because smoking is universally recognized to be a bad thing. Wait until that list includes trans fats, caffeine, ammunition, fossil fuels, fireworks, etc. and things aren't so clear. Citizens of the United States are not ATM machines for governmental programs and pet projects.
Obviously, national infrastructure is important and we certainly need to pay for it. My only point is that governmental behavior modification through taxation is highly offensive to me.
Relax. No one is making a value judgment about the people holding those jobs.
The fact is, though, that those jobs exist because they have to, not because we necessarily want them to. Crime exists, so we need police. We don't have police because we just feel like having police. The world is a dangerous place so we have a military. If there was world peace, would we want a standing military? These things cost money, without returning much monetary value back to the economy. Therefore, they are a drain on taxpayers. A necessary drain, but a drain nonetheless. Don't confuse necessity and usefulness with desirability. I want corporations to come and pay people to make things and sell them and make profit and pay taxes. I don't like the idea of having to pay people to put their lives in danger, but realize it's a necessity.
Not only that, but if I don't feel like the police or military is using my money wisely, I have almost zero recourse. If I don't like the fact that some company treats employees poorly, I won't spend my money there. Period. Our elected officials have lost sight of the things are are absolutely necessary to keep society functioning and choose to employ people just for the sake of employing people. In a free society, that simply isn't right.
And since I can already predict the "but why should *you* get to decide what's necessary", I shouldn't. But if any of you can't already recognize large amounts of government waste, then you're either not paying attention or are part of the problem.
Taxation is not patriotic. It is a necessary evil that keeps society functioning smoothly. And now, we get to spend our tax dollars buying up auto makers and financial institutions aside from all the colossal wastes that government can think up.
The purpose of business is to make money. Not to be a patriotic cash funnel that supports governmental pet programs. Keep viewing corporations as ATM machines and they *will* relocate to more desirable locations because there are a lot of countries out there that see the benefits of all the jobs that large companies bring. We seem to have lost sight of that fact. Now watch as companies relocate and the country loses ALL of that tax revenue and ALL of those jobs.
Those in charge in government like to think they "create jobs". No, a government job is not a "good" job, it is a drain on the tax base because it generates no wealth. It only helps the individual at the expense of the rest of us. But when the government makes the business climate desirable, businesses come and create good jobs that help both the individual and the nation by generating wealth that feeds back in the economy. Then the government benefits from that added taxation. Everyone wins.
Also, are there many native-born Americans who are willing to pick fruit for $3/hour?
That argument is a complete fallacy. Just considering situations of which I have first-hand knowledge, around here, many illegals make about the same as American workers for the fields in question (golf course maintenance, landscaping). Employers are happy to pay them under the table because they save all the associated payroll taxes: unemployment ins., worker's comp, etc. The workers may see slightly lower wages, but they're also not paying taxes in many cases.
Is this true in all cases? Of course not, but the idea that there is a mass army of workers working for $3/hr. is utter b.s. It's virtually impossible to live in the state of NJ at that wage, no matter how they pool their resources. And estimates say there are between 250,000 and 800,000 illegals in this state. They come here because it's worth it. They're not brought here on slave ships.
Americans have this idea that everyone should use roads and that's somehow better than public transportation, which happens to be cleaner, cheaper, and safer.
I don't know about you, but I never hopped into my car and found a hobo pissing in the back seat.
I don't want internet service on my cellphone.
EVEN IF IT WAS FREE, I wouldn't want it.
I said that exact same thing 6 months ago when people I know were touting the iPhone. I was adamant. I now have one and absolutely love it. My co-workers really love to bring that one up all the time.
Not that I'm into pressuring people to get broadband. Just saying.
I hope reality never hits you with an unforseen catastrophe, because you'd never make it in the real world.
Ain't that the truth. Personal responsibility, living within one's means, and preparing oneself for the future of unforseen circumstances certainly doesn't happen much in the real world anymore.
Whew! At least the gubmint is here to bail me out!
If you work forty hours a week and can't support a family, you're being fucked over. Screwed. Cheated. Stolen from. Scammed.
That, or your "skills" are not marketable and you find that there are plenty of people willing to do the job for less.
If someone wants to support a family, then I suggest making plans for the future that include becoming skilled at something that someone is willing to pay for.
Slashdot Mirror
Except it doesn't seem to work that way. It's more like, "Oh, look, more tax revenue! We can create even more government bureauocracy and dig a bigger hole of debt!". No thanks, I'd rather keep my money and drop a lot of the useless crap that people think they need government to do.
I was a DirecTV customer from within the first year or so of its existence up until maybe 4 years ago, when I moved to an apartment where I couldn't have a dish. I was completely happy with them in every way. In the early days, you could buy your own equipment and it wasn't tied to a service contract. The service contracts were a year instead of two. Their customer service was pretty good. Their picture quality, channel selection, and early HD offerings were way ahead of local cable.
I've said many times that I'd go back to them tomorrow if I could, but I'm having to rethink that, based on the things I've been hearing in recent years. It's a shame that a company would take such a turn for the worse.
Thanks for coming by and adding to the discussion. Would you have preferred I phrase it differently? Would that change the original point? Would it help you get over the fact that the phrase accurately describes what happened here and what happens frequently elsewhere?
If the shoe fits, wear it. Oops, there I go parroting figures of speech again.
Bravo. You've shown considerable aptitude in your ability to parrot liberal (especially White House) talking points.
Underclass? Pfff.... Most of them probably earn more than I do.
Not even eight months. As someone pointed out above, the deadline for nominations was February 1st. So we're talking days. Which makes this that much more of a joke. He certainly has accomplished nothing much in eight months, but the only thing he accomplished in those few days was taking office. Sure, I get the historical significance, but that wasn't *him* doing anything. Before election day, he played the role of master politician, which, in my opinion, no one should be proud of (not just him - McCain too). Between election day and Feb. 1, he did squat. So, there's really no way to spin this award that makes any sense in the world of common sense, and it insults winners from history that actually did deserve it.
Or maybe it's Modern Marvels. I've been seeing all kinds of robots over the last couple of years on these shows. I saw one that was like a little pair of wheels with a camera on the axle and what looked like a weighted antenna hanging off the back (to keep it oriented correctly). Soldiers would throw it into a room and drive it around looking for hidden bad guys or booby traps. Then, there was one that was a little track-driven thing that had a machine gun mounted on it. They were even talking about the possibility of making them rather autonomous at some point in the future.
All this stuff seems to be in the development pipeline, so I'm not exactly sure what they're asking for.
Maybe it's possible if we blend it into a slurry first and let it dry in some kind of thin, wafer-like form. But is it really worth it at that point? I mean I can get chips relatively cheaply these days and thus don't have to put brains into a food processor.
At first, I hated the ribbon interface, but I actually grew to like it. Really, because I knew where most stuff that I cared about was buried in the menus, but whenever I had to find something new or something I forgot about, it was a pain.
The ribbons give a little visual queue and pretty much everything I want is out there in a series of tabs.
It's not perfect, but I kind of like it. I like the idea of the ribbon, but maybe MS could have arranged theirs a little better.
Pardon me, I stand corrected. This is NOT the case. You're not limited to the $3,500/$4,500, but since the car will be scrapped, you're not likely to get more than the scrap value for the vehicle. So, while you won't get just the government rebate, you also won't get more than the scrap value on top of that - nothing near the value you'd get if the car was to be resold.
I would mod this up if I could. I continue to be amazed at middle class people living in huge McMansions and driving expensive cars. Until their ARMs adjust and they get foreclosed, that is. We live in a culture of debt in this country. You're exactly right that if people lived like they did previously, they'd actually have enough money to actually be prepared for retirement without clamoring for social security.
You're kidding, right? The program is a rebate in addition to whatever trade-in value the car/SUV already has. You'd get the $18,000 from the dealer for the trade-in as in any traditional car purchasing deal AND an additional $3,500 from Uncle Sam. Have a look at some of the YouTube videos earlier in this thread of some of the "clunkers" having their engines destroyed. They're NOT old, decrepit beaters.
What a disgusting waste.
Considering that I've been seeing car dealers on the evening news claiming that they've been unexpectedly inundated with customers in the past week, I'd say that the answer actually is "yes".
It has absolutely zero to do with environment. The guy was in possession of export-controlled material. I don't care if he was a defense contractor, a university professor, or a waiter. If you want to play ball on that field, then you follow the rules of that game. Period.
No one forced him down that path, and he was warned about the situation. There is simply no valid excuse.
Those of us who work in defense are trained until we're blue in the face about how to handle sensitive information, what is and is not releasable, and what an "export" is in defense terms (it's more than it sounds). My company trains us extensively on that, and maybe the company he founded didn't bother to pound these things into the heads of the people in the company, but it's just not a good excuse. If we are to be trusted to handle classified information, it's up to us to make sure we understand proper safeguarding of that info. Can I recite all the rules and regs? Hell no, but I guarantee I'm not taking any information anywhere or giving information to anyone without running it through proper channels first. That's not just common sense, but what we're trained to do on an ongoing basis.
If you're not using the highways often, then you're not buying much fuel, and thus you're already not paying much in the way of fuel tax, right?
Do you use public transportation? Is that not subsidized with tax dollars? How much of my tax dollars go to networks of buses spewing diesel exhaust that I'm probably never going to ride? We're all in this together, we just use different facets of the same infrastructure.
Thank you for adding some sense to this.
Behavior modification thorough taxation is one of the most vile governmental concepts imaginable in a free society. People clap and cheer as long as it suits their own beliefs about what's "right" or "wrong". Wait until it costs $87 for an order of fries or for a cup of coffee when someone decides that fat and caffeine are bad enough to warrant a sin tax.
A pack of cigarettes in NJ carries a tax of like over $5 per pack, but no one seems to mind except for smokers because smoking is universally recognized to be a bad thing. Wait until that list includes trans fats, caffeine, ammunition, fossil fuels, fireworks, etc. and things aren't so clear. Citizens of the United States are not ATM machines for governmental programs and pet projects.
Obviously, national infrastructure is important and we certainly need to pay for it. My only point is that governmental behavior modification through taxation is highly offensive to me.
Let me know when to start and I'll be there with my sledgehammer.
Relax. No one is making a value judgment about the people holding those jobs.
The fact is, though, that those jobs exist because they have to, not because we necessarily want them to. Crime exists, so we need police. We don't have police because we just feel like having police. The world is a dangerous place so we have a military. If there was world peace, would we want a standing military? These things cost money, without returning much monetary value back to the economy. Therefore, they are a drain on taxpayers. A necessary drain, but a drain nonetheless. Don't confuse necessity and usefulness with desirability. I want corporations to come and pay people to make things and sell them and make profit and pay taxes. I don't like the idea of having to pay people to put their lives in danger, but realize it's a necessity.
Not only that, but if I don't feel like the police or military is using my money wisely, I have almost zero recourse. If I don't like the fact that some company treats employees poorly, I won't spend my money there. Period. Our elected officials have lost sight of the things are are absolutely necessary to keep society functioning and choose to employ people just for the sake of employing people. In a free society, that simply isn't right.
And since I can already predict the "but why should *you* get to decide what's necessary", I shouldn't. But if any of you can't already recognize large amounts of government waste, then you're either not paying attention or are part of the problem.
Taxation is not patriotic. It is a necessary evil that keeps society functioning smoothly. And now, we get to spend our tax dollars buying up auto makers and financial institutions aside from all the colossal wastes that government can think up.
The purpose of business is to make money. Not to be a patriotic cash funnel that supports governmental pet programs. Keep viewing corporations as ATM machines and they *will* relocate to more desirable locations because there are a lot of countries out there that see the benefits of all the jobs that large companies bring. We seem to have lost sight of that fact. Now watch as companies relocate and the country loses ALL of that tax revenue and ALL of those jobs.
Those in charge in government like to think they "create jobs". No, a government job is not a "good" job, it is a drain on the tax base because it generates no wealth. It only helps the individual at the expense of the rest of us. But when the government makes the business climate desirable, businesses come and create good jobs that help both the individual and the nation by generating wealth that feeds back in the economy. Then the government benefits from that added taxation. Everyone wins.
Also, are there many native-born Americans who are willing to pick fruit for $3/hour?
That argument is a complete fallacy. Just considering situations of which I have first-hand knowledge, around here, many illegals make about the same as American workers for the fields in question (golf course maintenance, landscaping). Employers are happy to pay them under the table because they save all the associated payroll taxes: unemployment ins., worker's comp, etc. The workers may see slightly lower wages, but they're also not paying taxes in many cases.
Is this true in all cases? Of course not, but the idea that there is a mass army of workers working for $3/hr. is utter b.s. It's virtually impossible to live in the state of NJ at that wage, no matter how they pool their resources. And estimates say there are between 250,000 and 800,000 illegals in this state. They come here because it's worth it. They're not brought here on slave ships.
Americans have this idea that everyone should use roads and that's somehow better than public transportation, which happens to be cleaner, cheaper, and safer.
I don't know about you, but I never hopped into my car and found a hobo pissing in the back seat.
I don't want internet service on my cellphone. EVEN IF IT WAS FREE, I wouldn't want it.
I said that exact same thing 6 months ago when people I know were touting the iPhone. I was adamant. I now have one and absolutely love it. My co-workers really love to bring that one up all the time.
Not that I'm into pressuring people to get broadband. Just saying.
I hope reality never hits you with an unforseen catastrophe, because you'd never make it in the real world.
Ain't that the truth. Personal responsibility, living within one's means, and preparing oneself for the future of unforseen circumstances certainly doesn't happen much in the real world anymore. Whew! At least the gubmint is here to bail me out!
If you work forty hours a week and can't support a family, you're being fucked over. Screwed. Cheated. Stolen from. Scammed.
That, or your "skills" are not marketable and you find that there are plenty of people willing to do the job for less. If someone wants to support a family, then I suggest making plans for the future that include becoming skilled at something that someone is willing to pay for.