Well, here's an example of what I saw working here... Wealthy clients: Average amount of income going to government: 50%+ This included 35% or more in income tax, 8% social security tax, 8% or so state income tax... then whatever sales tax they paid (which unless it was business related, we didn't see... but in my city normal sales tax is 7.5% plus whatever you pay in gas tax and sin tax...) Assets? In addition to the normal income tax if I remember correctly there was a 20% capital gains tax on all profit made on investments. I won't even consider the poor saps that got slapped w/ penalties for early withdrawls from IRAs to cover unexpected expenses...
Poor clients: Percentage of Income going to the government: Not sure, but I'd estimate it's in the single digits, and here's why: Income tax -%200 of paid (Most received EIC checks of 3k or more, in addition to getting back whatever income tax they paid into the system... This goes pretty far in offsetting what little else they paid) Sales tax: Food not taxed (food stamps), though any luxury items would have to be purchased w/ actual cash and therefore taxed... They would pay less gasoline tax (since poorer clients typically drove cars that burned less gas than a Suburban or similar vehicle) and did not have any capital gains tax or the like to pay.
Disposable income? That's an odd metric to consider... I've never considered money paid in taxes to be disposable income... normally when we'd calculate things like that we took money after taxes as disposable income. Will a wealthier person have more disposable income than a poorer person? Yes, of course... But this is simply because wealthier people have more money... If you count money before taxes as disposable income, I'd venture a guess that the wealthier client would pay a larger percentage of their disposable income as taxes since they pay a larger percentage of their income as a whole in taxes... For instance my parents are upper middle class (about 60k a year) that gives them a tax rate of 28 percent... Now they subtract about 10k in deductions and 13750 in exemptions... The money subtracted is money the government considers as being non-taxable because you had to spend it to survive (nevermind wether or not it is based on reality). For simplicity's sake let's round it up to 25k subtracted, leaving 35k. That means they pay 9.8k in Federal Income tax, nearly another 3k in state income tax, leaving let's say 23k... from this you subtract (I believe) 10 percent for Social Security and Medicaire (10 percent of 60k, that is), which is another 6k. Leaving 17k. Now you'd keep subtracting sales taxes etc from this amount and it'd continue to dwindle. My parents pay nearly 40% of their income to the government as an upper middle class family... And things are set to get worse here with some of the Legislation trying to pass in this state.
Things would be so much simpler if everyone paid 20% of their income and the first 35k of income was exempt from taxation... But simple systems don't lend themselves well to government beaurocracy;)
That's a new one... Anywho, if I refuse to pay my taxes, a few kind Marshalls will show up with GUNS and take me to the nice Federal prison for tax evasion. Hence I have the option to pay the Government, or face the guns...
I do believe that's the first time someone told ME to leave the country... Neat.
I'm not brainwashed... I realized this after I did income taxes for a year... And watched numerous individuals in the higher end of middle class ($60k+) and up pay over 50% of their income to the government... then watched other individuals walk in and get 3-4k more than they paid in taxes back. It's called Earned Income Credit. In addition, income taxes go towards Social Security, Medicare, Welfare, etc... Which are all paid out of the general fund, not out of special 'trust funds' as some people would have you believe. So you'll get your share of it when you're eligible for retirement. There's plenty of programs and grants, and unless you make over $30k a year you're probably eligible for a few if you look. If not... Find some way to hide enough income so that you claim to make $10k, have a few kids, and you'll be setup. If anything 90% of the American public would believe that money should be taken from the rich and given to everyone else... So I guess you're right, they are brainwashed.
So transferring money from the rich to the middle class is Flamebait but claiming it's done the other way around isn't? Ouch, that's my first negative mod ever on/.:(
However it is possible to make a profit w/ GPL'd software... Just more difficult. Look at MySQL AB for instance. While I have my issues w/ GNU/GPL (And especially RMS), it is an interesting way of going about things. A more BSD-like license is more conducive to a standard business model... but Capitalism speaks nothing of preserving old business models. If it did, Mom & Pop stores would rule our grocery needs instead of Super Wal Marts.
Calling the GPL a virus is a nasty thing to do, but by your inate Karma, I guess that you're a troll. The GPL is no more a virus than insane patents. There's plenty of Government code already released under the GPL and it hasn't lead to the end of the world (Someone offered the example of GNAT earlier, which is used to compile Ada code, the infamous language that most DoD systems ran off of). You should probably go on a Karma whoring spree to raise your 0 back to a 1, otherwise people might never read your comments.:)
Seriously, though, the GPL may not be the best license for ALL government software... But I could think of a few projects that it's ideal for (NSA SELinux comes to mind)... So they're just slightly misguided in banning it outright...
I am scratching my head at your comment 'the GPL is more of a Democratic licensing scheme.' It would seem to me that a Conservative belief in an Open and Free Market (ie: No one where entry is prevented by huge tariffs or unfair patent restrictions), belief in Individual Freedom and Liberty, and a Conservative belief in Openness of Government would be more befitting of the GPL. The usual "Republicans for 'big business'" rhetoric is just regurgitated media dribble... Democrats have just as many corporate sponsors (re: Global Crossings, Time Warner/AOL, Enron, Worldcom, Uncle Fritz...) as Republicans do...
How is it then that a Police Officer's job is more fulfilling? Killing people very often enters their job description. I wasn't trying to say that giving out food gives you the right to kill people, I was saying the scope of military operations goes FAR beyond simply killing people and breaking things. Especially for technicians. There are alot of unique challenges for someone w/ technical interests in the military that don't involve killing people. And very often, the people who are killed by the military make the decisions as to wether they deserve to be killed or not themselves. The gunmen in Kuwait that were killed recently are a good example of that.
1) I am a computer tech by trade, and I have to clean up after AOL when their crappy software has munged a PC. 2) It takes a everything short of a lawsuit to make them stop billing you. 3) AOL does not introduce people to the Internet, it dumbs down the Internet, thereby hurting the users in the process. 90% of the AOL users I've had to deal with think their Web Browser is the "Internet". And after years of thinking this, it is almost impossible to get them to understand the truth. 4) AOL harbors undesirable individuals much like certain middle eastern nations harbor militant terrorists. What's worse, with all the free 1000 hour disks floating about, individuals who mean ill to the 'Net at large can easily gain free access over and over to do more damage. 5) The service is crap. But since most AOL users have been coddled for so long, they CAN'T learn to use anything else; they are stuck w/ sub par service... 6) If I think of some more reasons (I know there's a few more)... I'll post another response...:P
So then you're saying police officers live an unfulfilling and meaningless life? Seriously, the whole "the US military is the great Satan" attitude is pretty pathetic. In the last decade, the US military has handed out a thousand times more food parcels and given out a thousand times more medicine and treatment than they've killed people.
And the people they have killed, in most cases, had it coming.
Destroying the environment? Pshaw... How many two mile thick clouds of smog that occlude 10% of the sun's light hang over the US? Oh that's right, it's over southeast asia, not the US... The US may of been guilty of environmental disasters in the past, but US industries are amongst the cleanest in the world. You can't even kill yourself in your garage w/ a car that meets CURRENT emission standards (not the insane ones that some people would like to impose) And what EXACTLY is wrong w/ genetically modified food? In the case of Argentina, it was a patent issue (which is the subject of a whole other argument and a whole other rant) and not the fact that it was genetically modified food... Oops, wait, I'm at work... shouldn't be ranting on/.
People posting rants about how bad the software is get +5 Informatives (twice even), people suggesting open source alternatives get insightfuls, and an actual cool hack to get around lazy/stupid programming that ANSWERS the question posed and involves actually getting down into the nitty gritty hidden details of how Linux handles system calls and ways to make bad programs behave using some neat coding goes UNMODDED!? Sheesh people! Why do my Mod points always expire when nothing interesting is going on...
Another good example would be the cases of scientists going insane/crushing themselves trying to decipher alien math and geometry symbols in Delta Green... The one who disemboweled himself and wrote the solution to the problem he'd been working on in his own cell wall also comes to mind.
I've got non-computer savvy users who blow me away with how far they push the functionality of Exchange and the calendar/meeting functions. It's been an incredible boon for us to have this system in place.
On the flip side it's horribly complicated, unreliable, resource intensive, and when it breaks it breaks BAD. But even with all those negative things going against it, there's NOTHING else we can use to replace it. There is no competition for our dollar in this area, commercial or free.
And as far as Microsoft support... try getting them to help you fix your broken Exchange 5.5 installation sometime. We don't call Microsoft for anything--we don't believe they could be of any real help. As with any software that the user has to modify after installation, there's not much a phone tech guy can do to help.
I fail to see what terrorism alerts have to do with any of this... I think you're a little too paranoid and/or crazy... Especially considering that this bill's introduction did NOT coincide with any major terrorist alert...
And I don't know about where you live, but where I live we have primaries and runoffs, so there's not even five candidates on the list, much less five candidates in addition to the one I voted for.:P
Chill out, drink some tea, lay around and sunbathe a bit this weekend, dude. You're way too stressed.
There's plenty of stories of Vietnam pilots being injured by small arms fire at low altitudes. And an F-16 is decidedly vulnerable to small arms fire. Compared to a plane designed solely for ground attack (ie: A-10), it has a very thin skin with very little in the way of pilot protection. Not to mention a rifle bullet could probably puncture a fuel tank very easily. But in this case I didn't hear what type of plane was involved in the incident.
True, the president can't pass laws. He however can write bills and have congress pass them. Which if I remember correctly, both the House and the Senate were in Democrat hands when he passed his tax increase ('93 I think?), so that's what happened. And as someone else pointed out, there ARE executive orders:)
He didn't cap salaries per se, he just capped the amount of money corporations could deduct. The way it used to be, when you'd pay your CEO 10 million dollars, you could deduct that 10 million from your profits to lower your tax liability. This was done because paying a CEO is a legitimate business expense, he's essentially an outside party (NOT an Employee) that is providing leadership for the corporation. It would be the same as if you paid a consultant to be your CIO, you'd pay him X dollars and deduct that because it would be a business expense. So once the salary deductions for CEOs were capped at 1 million dollars, corporations would lose exorbitant amounts of money if they paid the CEO over that amount. They'd be taxed on money they had already spent (kinda like taxing someone on the money they spend on their mortgage, or taxing a farmer on money he spends on fertilizer). So instead, they began giving CEOs stock options. Those could still be deducted. The problem is, the only way the stock has monetary value is if the CEO sells it, and he/she only makes money if it sells at a high price. So they begin fiddling with the books to drive stock prices up so they can actually make some money (nevermind the fact that capital gains taxes would still rip them a new one, but I digress). If CEOs were still paid in cash, there would be less incentive for them to 'cook the books'. And if they hadn't seen the President of the United States get convicted of a felony, disbarred, and then come out of it making millions off of speech deals, with a 12 million dollar book advance, and a 200 million dollar slush fund for his library... Well maybe they wouldn't think they could get away with it to.
Matrox used Quake 3 based games to show off their Parhelia 3 display feature. Something about the POV option, which causes the display to be spread out over multiple screens (increasing you're range of vision, not stretching the image). If I wasn't at work I'd look it up for you... might want to check Google and Matrox's site.:)
It was announced that the Homeland Security Department would lead to staff cuts due to consolidation of identical job titles across multiple departments and an increase in efficiency in the chain of command. So essentially the new department is kind've like a large company eating up a bunch of smaller companies, large staff cuts follow as duplicated resources are eliminated. And as for the 'secret shadow government' it was neither secret nor did it involve hiring new people. It simply involved moving officials who were already in place to safe locations so they could continue the functions of the government in case of disaster. It wasn't really that secret, as numerous members of Congress toured the facilities and knew about these already existing contingency plans. Nothing new was created; already decided plans were just carried out to assure Government function.
Excuse me, Senator Daschle would be the correct spelling.
Dissent would be one thing... Dissent would be bringing the candidates up to vote and then voting against them. However, Senator Daschle refuses to allow these appointees and bills to even come to a vote. This has nothing to do with the quality of the bills or the nominees and has everything to do with simply trying to muck things up until the next election so he can try to win a majority.
If he truly wants to be patriotic, go out and Evangelize his ideas as to what the Government should be doing. Convince the people that his party has superior ideas that will work better than the other party's. Instead, he offers no agenda (I've not seen anything resembling a party platform for this election from the Dems) and instead spends his time bashing the other side and repeatedly calling upon the old standbys of 'tax cuts for the rich' and 'starving senior citizens' to play on fears and class envy to drum up votes. I have no respect for fear mongers.
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Well, here's an example of what I saw working here...
;)
Wealthy clients: Average amount of income going to government: 50%+
This included 35% or more in income tax, 8% social security tax, 8% or so state income tax... then whatever sales tax they paid (which unless it was business related, we didn't see... but in my city normal sales tax is 7.5% plus whatever you pay in gas tax and sin tax...) Assets? In addition to the normal income tax if I remember correctly there was a 20% capital gains tax on all profit made on investments. I won't even consider the poor saps that got slapped w/ penalties for early withdrawls from IRAs to cover unexpected expenses...
Poor clients: Percentage of Income going to the government: Not sure, but I'd estimate it's in the single digits, and here's why:
Income tax -%200 of paid (Most received EIC checks of 3k or more, in addition to getting back whatever income tax they paid into the system... This goes pretty far in offsetting what little else they paid)
Sales tax: Food not taxed (food stamps), though any luxury items would have to be purchased w/ actual cash and therefore taxed... They would pay less gasoline tax (since poorer clients typically drove cars that burned less gas than a Suburban or similar vehicle) and did not have any capital gains tax or the like to pay.
Disposable income? That's an odd metric to consider... I've never considered money paid in taxes to be disposable income... normally when we'd calculate things like that we took money after taxes as disposable income. Will a wealthier person have more disposable income than a poorer person? Yes, of course... But this is simply because wealthier people have more money... If you count money before taxes as disposable income, I'd venture a guess that the wealthier client would pay a larger percentage of their disposable income as taxes since they pay a larger percentage of their income as a whole in taxes...
For instance my parents are upper middle class (about 60k a year) that gives them a tax rate of 28 percent... Now they subtract about 10k in deductions and 13750 in exemptions... The money subtracted is money the government considers as being non-taxable because you had to spend it to survive (nevermind wether or not it is based on reality). For simplicity's sake let's round it up to 25k subtracted, leaving 35k. That means they pay 9.8k in Federal Income tax, nearly another 3k in state income tax, leaving let's say 23k... from this you subtract (I believe) 10 percent for Social Security and Medicaire (10 percent of 60k, that is), which is another 6k. Leaving 17k. Now you'd keep subtracting sales taxes etc from this amount and it'd continue to dwindle. My parents pay nearly 40% of their income to the government as an upper middle class family... And things are set to get worse here with some of the Legislation trying to pass in this state.
Things would be so much simpler if everyone paid 20% of their income and the first 35k of income was exempt from taxation... But simple systems don't lend themselves well to government beaurocracy
How does the tax system favor the rich? I used to do taxes... I saw exactly the opposite...
That's a new one...
Anywho, if I refuse to pay my taxes, a few kind Marshalls will show up with GUNS and take me to the nice Federal prison for tax evasion. Hence I have the option to pay the Government, or face the guns...
I do believe that's the first time someone told ME to leave the country... Neat.
I'm not brainwashed... I realized this after I did income taxes for a year... And watched numerous individuals in the higher end of middle class ($60k+) and up pay over 50% of their income to the government... then watched other individuals walk in and get 3-4k more than they paid in taxes back. It's called Earned Income Credit.
In addition, income taxes go towards Social Security, Medicare, Welfare, etc... Which are all paid out of the general fund, not out of special 'trust funds' as some people would have you believe. So you'll get your share of it when you're eligible for retirement.
There's plenty of programs and grants, and unless you make over $30k a year you're probably eligible for a few if you look. If not... Find some way to hide enough income so that you claim to make $10k, have a few kids, and you'll be setup.
If anything 90% of the American public would believe that money should be taken from the rich and given to everyone else... So I guess you're right, they are brainwashed.
So transferring money from the rich to the middle class is Flamebait but claiming it's done the other way around isn't? Ouch, that's my first negative mod ever on /. :(
However it is possible to make a profit w/ GPL'd software... Just more difficult. Look at MySQL AB for instance. While I have my issues w/ GNU/GPL (And especially RMS), it is an interesting way of going about things. A more BSD-like license is more conducive to a standard business model... but Capitalism speaks nothing of preserving old business models. If it did, Mom & Pop stores would rule our grocery needs instead of Super Wal Marts.
:)
Calling the GPL a virus is a nasty thing to do, but by your inate Karma, I guess that you're a troll. The GPL is no more a virus than insane patents. There's plenty of Government code already released under the GPL and it hasn't lead to the end of the world (Someone offered the example of GNAT earlier, which is used to compile Ada code, the infamous language that most DoD systems ran off of). You should probably go on a Karma whoring spree to raise your 0 back to a 1, otherwise people might never read your comments.
You'll get 4 out of 4 that way. :)
Seriously, though, the GPL may not be the best license for ALL government software... But I could think of a few projects that it's ideal for (NSA SELinux comes to mind)... So they're just slightly misguided in banning it outright...
Nevermind the fact that huge amounts of money are taken at gunpoint from the wealthier citizens and redistributed to the poor and middle class...
I am scratching my head at your comment 'the GPL is more of a Democratic licensing scheme.' It would seem to me that a Conservative belief in an Open and Free Market (ie: No one where entry is prevented by huge tariffs or unfair patent restrictions), belief in Individual Freedom and Liberty, and a Conservative belief in Openness of Government would be more befitting of the GPL. The usual "Republicans for 'big business'" rhetoric is just regurgitated media dribble... Democrats have just as many corporate sponsors (re: Global Crossings, Time Warner/AOL, Enron, Worldcom, Uncle Fritz...) as Republicans do...
How is it then that a Police Officer's job is more fulfilling? Killing people very often enters their job description.
I wasn't trying to say that giving out food gives you the right to kill people, I was saying the scope of military operations goes FAR beyond simply killing people and breaking things. Especially for technicians. There are alot of unique challenges for someone w/ technical interests in the military that don't involve killing people.
And very often, the people who are killed by the military make the decisions as to wether they deserve to be killed or not themselves. The gunmen in Kuwait that were killed recently are a good example of that.
A few reasons:
:P
1) I am a computer tech by trade, and I have to clean up after AOL when their crappy software has munged a PC.
2) It takes a everything short of a lawsuit to make them stop billing you.
3) AOL does not introduce people to the Internet, it dumbs down the Internet, thereby hurting the users in the process. 90% of the AOL users I've had to deal with think their Web Browser is the "Internet". And after years of thinking this, it is almost impossible to get them to understand the truth.
4) AOL harbors undesirable individuals much like certain middle eastern nations harbor militant terrorists. What's worse, with all the free 1000 hour disks floating about, individuals who mean ill to the 'Net at large can easily gain free access over and over to do more damage.
5) The service is crap. But since most AOL users have been coddled for so long, they CAN'T learn to use anything else; they are stuck w/ sub par service...
6) If I think of some more reasons (I know there's a few more)... I'll post another response...
So then you're saying police officers live an unfulfilling and meaningless life? Seriously, the whole "the US military is the great Satan" attitude is pretty pathetic. In the last decade, the US military has handed out a thousand times more food parcels and given out a thousand times more medicine and treatment than they've killed people.
And the people they have killed, in most cases, had it coming.
Destroying the environment? Pshaw... How many two mile thick clouds of smog that occlude 10% of the sun's light hang over the US? Oh that's right, it's over southeast asia, not the US... /.
The US may of been guilty of environmental disasters in the past, but US industries are amongst the cleanest in the world. You can't even kill yourself in your garage w/ a car that meets CURRENT emission standards (not the insane ones that some people would like to impose)
And what EXACTLY is wrong w/ genetically modified food? In the case of Argentina, it was a patent issue (which is the subject of a whole other argument and a whole other rant) and not the fact that it was genetically modified food...
Oops, wait, I'm at work... shouldn't be ranting on
People posting rants about how bad the software is get +5 Informatives (twice even), people suggesting open source alternatives get insightfuls, and an actual cool hack to get around lazy/stupid programming that ANSWERS the question posed and involves actually getting down into the nitty gritty hidden details of how Linux handles system calls and ways to make bad programs behave using some neat coding goes UNMODDED!? Sheesh people!
Why do my Mod points always expire when nothing interesting is going on...
+5 Funny Man...
Another good example would be the cases of scientists going insane/crushing themselves trying to decipher alien math and geometry symbols in Delta Green... The one who disemboweled himself and wrote the solution to the problem he'd been working on in his own cell wall also comes to mind.
I've got non-computer savvy users who blow me away with how far they push the functionality of Exchange and the calendar/meeting functions. It's been an incredible boon for us to have this system in place.
On the flip side it's horribly complicated, unreliable, resource intensive, and when it breaks it breaks BAD. But even with all those negative things going against it, there's NOTHING else we can use to replace it. There is no competition for our dollar in this area, commercial or free.
And as far as Microsoft support... try getting them to help you fix your broken Exchange 5.5 installation sometime. We don't call Microsoft for anything--we don't believe they could be of any real help. As with any software that the user has to modify after installation, there's not much a phone tech guy can do to help.
I fail to see what terrorism alerts have to do with any of this... I think you're a little too paranoid and/or crazy... Especially considering that this bill's introduction did NOT coincide with any major terrorist alert...
:P
And I don't know about where you live, but where I live we have primaries and runoffs, so there's not even five candidates on the list, much less five candidates in addition to the one I voted for.
Chill out, drink some tea, lay around and sunbathe a bit this weekend, dude. You're way too stressed.
There's plenty of stories of Vietnam pilots being injured by small arms fire at low altitudes. And an F-16 is decidedly vulnerable to small arms fire. Compared to a plane designed solely for ground attack (ie: A-10), it has a very thin skin with very little in the way of pilot protection. Not to mention a rifle bullet could probably puncture a fuel tank very easily. But in this case I didn't hear what type of plane was involved in the incident.
True, the president can't pass laws. He however can write bills and have congress pass them. Which if I remember correctly, both the House and the Senate were in Democrat hands when he passed his tax increase ('93 I think?), so that's what happened. And as someone else pointed out, there ARE executive orders :)
He didn't cap salaries per se, he just capped the amount of money corporations could deduct. The way it used to be, when you'd pay your CEO 10 million dollars, you could deduct that 10 million from your profits to lower your tax liability. This was done because paying a CEO is a legitimate business expense, he's essentially an outside party (NOT an Employee) that is providing leadership for the corporation. It would be the same as if you paid a consultant to be your CIO, you'd pay him X dollars and deduct that because it would be a business expense.
So once the salary deductions for CEOs were capped at 1 million dollars, corporations would lose exorbitant amounts of money if they paid the CEO over that amount. They'd be taxed on money they had already spent (kinda like taxing someone on the money they spend on their mortgage, or taxing a farmer on money he spends on fertilizer). So instead, they began giving CEOs stock options. Those could still be deducted. The problem is, the only way the stock has monetary value is if the CEO sells it, and he/she only makes money if it sells at a high price. So they begin fiddling with the books to drive stock prices up so they can actually make some money (nevermind the fact that capital gains taxes would still rip them a new one, but I digress). If CEOs were still paid in cash, there would be less incentive for them to 'cook the books'. And if they hadn't seen the President of the United States get convicted of a felony, disbarred, and then come out of it making millions off of speech deals, with a 12 million dollar book advance, and a 200 million dollar slush fund for his library... Well maybe they wouldn't think they could get away with it to.
Matrox used Quake 3 based games to show off their Parhelia 3 display feature. Something about the POV option, which causes the display to be spread out over multiple screens (increasing you're range of vision, not stretching the image). If I wasn't at work I'd look it up for you... might want to check Google and Matrox's site. :)
'degradation, failure or other impairment of function of a computerised system.'
Isn't that kinda like installing Windows XP?
No need for apology, I appreciate your calm and collected response. Nice not to get flamed. :) Kudos.
It was announced that the Homeland Security Department would lead to staff cuts due to consolidation of identical job titles across multiple departments and an increase in efficiency in the chain of command. So essentially the new department is kind've like a large company eating up a bunch of smaller companies, large staff cuts follow as duplicated resources are eliminated.
And as for the 'secret shadow government' it was neither secret nor did it involve hiring new people. It simply involved moving officials who were already in place to safe locations so they could continue the functions of the government in case of disaster. It wasn't really that secret, as numerous members of Congress toured the facilities and knew about these already existing contingency plans. Nothing new was created; already decided plans were just carried out to assure Government function.
Excuse me, Senator Daschle would be the correct spelling.
Dissent would be one thing... Dissent would be bringing the candidates up to vote and then voting against them. However, Senator Daschle refuses to allow these appointees and bills to even come to a vote. This has nothing to do with the quality of the bills or the nominees and has everything to do with simply trying to muck things up until the next election so he can try to win a majority.
If he truly wants to be patriotic, go out and Evangelize his ideas as to what the Government should be doing. Convince the people that his party has superior ideas that will work better than the other party's. Instead, he offers no agenda (I've not seen anything resembling a party platform for this election from the Dems) and instead spends his time bashing the other side and repeatedly calling upon the old standbys of 'tax cuts for the rich' and 'starving senior citizens' to play on fears and class envy to drum up votes. I have no respect for fear mongers.