I read what you're writing but one thing doesn't make sense to me. If all they want is money, why aren't they working in Finance. They're smart enough to know they can make a lot more money in the Finance industry and they're probably smarter than three quarters of the people already working there. Frankly, if as you indicate the job is hard to get and hard to hold, why not aim for lower hanging fruit that pay as well in other industries.
I mean, the oil companies are having a damnable time finding enough people to work for them declaring that climate change isn't happening. I don't understand why that would be if what you think is true.
That's a possibility but not a necessity. You seem to have forgotten that the difference between oil, gas and coal energy generation and wind, solar, geothermal and hydro electric is that you have to pay for inputs to oil, gas and coal. If the plant costs are comparable, then the difference in jobs/MW only needs to be less than what the plant would spend on fossil fuels (and eventually carbon taxes).
What I think it means is instead of buying tonnes of coal to burn, solar plants pay people to inspect, clean and repair the solar panels.
As for government subsidies, as I understand there are far more subsidies for coal, gas and oil than there are for solar. I've read the difference is about 10 to 1 each. So for every $1 in government subsidies for solar, coal gets $10, and natural gas gets $10 and oil gets $10.
And this twisting of things by reporters is a relatively new thing, right? I'm sure it was coined since Harper came into office right? It's not older than that? I mean the rule about the PMO approving everything scientists are allowed to say the media is only 5 years old, so there must been tonnes of scandals and gotcha reporting on these topics six, seven or eight years ago, right? When the Liberals were in power it must have been a huge problem, right?
It is, in fact, Harper's fault. It's specifically his policy. It's specifically the Prime Minister's Office which has declared that she shall not speak to the press until after their arbitrary date. Furthermore, it exactly matches the way he treats the other members of his party (whom he can unilaterally fire by refusing to sign their nomination papers). Harper's a media control freak, this behavior shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, because it is typically Harper.
What if they won't do what they promised merely because the plan has been endorsed by the other side? Obama's plan included quite a bit in spending cuts, things that his own party isn't happy about. The Republicans however, seem to think compromise is when the other side agrees to do what you tell them to do.
Obama wants to raise taxes modestly to reduce the deficit, Grover Norquist has managed to convince 95% of the Republican to sign a pledge that they will never raise taxes or close tax loopholes (without an accompanying tax reduction to keep it revenue neutral). The Repbulicans are desperate to make Obama blink first so they don't get killed in the next round of primaries by Grover and his allies. I imagine many Republican congressmen think that abandoning that pledge will automatically mean the end of their political careers.
So what you're saying is that poor people should be subsidizing your job because you're more important them? Because a tax break is a wealthy transfer, and with the recent Republican tax code changes they are shifting the burden of taxes down the pyramid, moving the taxes away from the rich and towards the poor.
Is that really, what you're saying? That it's better to subsidize one pimped out private jet than several thousand washing machines? I'd be willing to bet the tax rebate on the jet could pay for a lot of washing machines. This is because a jet with gold fixtures is so much more important than a labor saving device for thousands of people?
Really?
Private jets are a luxury, they should be payed for in full. If anything, the washing machines should be subsidized because they actually help the economy by reducing the workload on families. They would actually allow people to spend more time with their children (higher achievement, less crime), working on their business (direct economic benefit), enjoying leisure time (less stress and crime, economic benefits from money spent on leisure).
There are many ways to transfer dollars, not all of them are ethical. Externalities are a huge concern, some people get rich by forcing other people to pay the real cost of their business. Cigarette manufacturers, oil companies, the mafia. Should they all be given larger voices because people give them money? Should the country be run by drug pushers and pimps if they have the most money?
It's not a plot, idiot, it's standard operating procedure for the "Harper Government", it's perfectly fine for research to be published in specialty journals with small readerships. It's quite another to allow the scientist to talk to reporters from media organizations that have large audiences.
I mean if you read the article you must have read:
Researchers, who used to be free to discuss their science, are now required to follow a process that includes "media lines" approved by communications officers, strategists and ministerial staff in Ottawa. They vet media requests, demand reporters' questions in advance and decide when and if researchers can give interviews.
and
To Hutchings, the muzzling of Miller is "all about control — controlling the message and controlling communication."
The article goes on a length about exactly what I wrote, that the hearing is being used as the excuse to muzzle her. I spotted that right off because it's standard operating procedure for the "Harper Government". I mean, how many god damn times do we have to see the exact same scenarios play out before we begin to recognize what is happening. This has happened over and over again, with the suppression of the study on the long gun registry, the lies about the census, the suppression of global warming research until after a major conference has passed. Harper is all about total control of the government. It is, by far, the simpler explanation that he is continuing in his own special brand of micromanagement, than it is to believe a scientist is being prevented from talking to the media or the public because what she says might impugn on the impartiality of a government inquiry. She's not the judge conducting the inquiry, she's an expert being called to testify before it. Are they going to toss out any evidence presented by the commercial interests because it might appear biased? Of course not.
As I understand it, Walmart is unlikely to have a better selection. The reason Netflix's selection is so poor is that American companies have been pretty much giving away multi-year exclusive digital rights to the Canadian networks. So Netflix's and (eventually?) Walmart's broadcast competitors get to decide whether they can show the movies and television shows that they control. Can you guess what their decision is?
This one appears to be "evidence indicates that fish farms are infecting wild fish with deadly diseases (because they're placed on the migration path of wild fish)".
Interesting, because deliberately concealing the research about the health effects of smoking is a big part of what enabled the lawsuits against the tobacco companies. So what you're saying is that it's not only unethical, it's also possibly illegal? Or were you trying to make some other point?
That is entirely dependent on the assumption that the the inquiry isn't just the excuse currently being used to muzzle her. The point isn't to suppress the information for ever, because that won't work, it's to mitigate the damage done by the report. Harper just needs to make sure that the media interest in the topic dies out first, then she'll be free to talk to all the reporters who no longer want to talk to her.
No, the rules about talking to news media without permission are a Harper invention. It was originally used to muzzle scientists who were critical of the oil sands and the government position on climate change. Since then they've discovered that it can be used in two ways, to keep all kinds of stories out of the national media through the threat of termination for unauthorized speaking, and through terminating the careers of anyone brave enough to rock the boat. They look at it is a zugzwang position, anyone who speaks out can be discredited by firing with cause, followed by anonymous slander and the rest will be kept in check by the fear of retaliation.
The people in charge don't care about the fishing industry in the long run. MBAs are taught that long term thinking is thinking about next quarter's results. Frankly, the people who own the fishing companies will sell them when their profits start to fall. The executives running the fishing industry will find jobs elsewhere, where they can maximize short-term profits. This is the problem with capitalism, so many externalities. The fluidity of capital allows the capitalist to ruin the industry he is exploiting and then cut and run to a different industry.
This is the true nature of unrestricted capitalism. Capitalism, by design, uses resources up as quickly as possible. That's why government regulation is required, because capitalists will destroy the common good in the pursuit of the personal profit. The problem, of course, is that if the capitalists have all the money, they will rule the government too.
Smartech was owned by Bush and Blackwell hired them to server as a "mirror" in case of failure, then when it looked like Bush wasn't going to win in Ohio even with the other dirty tricks he pulled, Blackwell sent the people responsible for running the systems home and moved operations over to the "failover", giving Bush (and more importantly Cheney) direct control over the machine where the vote counts were being stored. Yeah, I'm sure that's perfectly legit. There's absolutely no conflict of interest in the Head of the Ohio Campaign to elect Bush to unilaterally turn over the final vote counting to a company owned by Bush. Frankly, we may never know absolutely 100% sure if fraud occurred, but frankly, if it looks like fraud, smells like fraud, and sounds like fraud, it probably is fraud.
No, there already is a way to corrupt them centrally in an organized fashion: it's called political parties.
As long as the same parties are running in each state, then there will exist a central organization to corrupt them. In fact it's probably much easier to corrupt the election without anyone noticing when you have 50 different sets of arcane rules.
You do realize that the machines in question were owned by the State of Ohio and the machines for poor neighbourhoods were re-allocated by Kenneth Blackwell, the states returning officer and head of the state campaign to elect George Bush (an obvious conflict of interest that should never have been allowed) to more affluent neighbourhoods?
This decision was made by a guy who publicly promised that his state would vote for G.W.B. before voting had even started.
There are very big assumptions in the study. They modeled the behavior with a simulation which doesn't seem particularly relevant to the real world:
1) The created an initial population with no deeply held beliefs. 2) The inserted into the population people with deeply held beliefs which would never change and who were evangelistic about them 3) Any members of the initial population who talked to two people who had a different belief in a row changed their beliefs.
It's very artificial and doesn't seem to have made room for opposing viewpoins, I stopped reading about halfway through the article when I realize how incredibly artificial the conditions were.
There's a reason for the slew of origin stories... They're doing the origins of the Avengers so that don't have to cover that in the Avengers movie. Also they want to appeal to people who never read the comics too so they start with the origin story as a way of introducing the character. Then they can hopefully make 2 or 3 sequels before they burn out the lead actor(s) (or the audience) and have to start over again.
Of course, some people would argue that charging someone with "reckless endangerment" for shouting fire in a theatre IS criminalising speech and a restriction on free speech.
As a wise man once said "the Democrats are selling out to a slightly less scary group of special interests", of course he also said "in troubled times, the Democrats have moved to the right and the Republicans have moved to the crazy house".
Someone spent money, time, and creativity making that movie/song. You aren't entitled to get it for free just because you can copy it for free.
Except this is the natural state of the world. The only reason "you aren't entitled to get it for free" is because we, the people made a deal with the artists. They would produce art and we would give them a temporary monopoly on the right to make copies of that work. We, the people, have been cheated out of our side of the bargain. Copyright is now perpetual. It has become a never ending lock on our culture that robs us of our basic rights and give us nothing in return. Besides that our deal was with artists, musicians and writers. The MPAA and RIAA and none of the above, they are fat, lazy and stupid middle managers who treat both the artists and the public like criminals.
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I read what you're writing but one thing doesn't make sense to me. If all they want is money, why aren't they working in Finance. They're smart enough to know they can make a lot more money in the Finance industry and they're probably smarter than three quarters of the people already working there. Frankly, if as you indicate the job is hard to get and hard to hold, why not aim for lower hanging fruit that pay as well in other industries.
I mean, the oil companies are having a damnable time finding enough people to work for them declaring that climate change isn't happening. I don't understand why that would be if what you think is true.
That's a possibility but not a necessity. You seem to have forgotten that the difference between oil, gas and coal energy generation and wind, solar, geothermal and hydro electric is that you have to pay for inputs to oil, gas and coal. If the plant costs are comparable, then the difference in jobs/MW only needs to be less than what the plant would spend on fossil fuels (and eventually carbon taxes).
What I think it means is instead of buying tonnes of coal to burn, solar plants pay people to inspect, clean and repair the solar panels.
As for government subsidies, as I understand there are far more subsidies for coal, gas and oil than there are for solar. I've read the difference is about 10 to 1 each. So for every $1 in government subsidies for solar, coal gets $10, and natural gas gets $10 and oil gets $10.
And this twisting of things by reporters is a relatively new thing, right? I'm sure it was coined since Harper came into office right? It's not older than that? I mean the rule about the PMO approving everything scientists are allowed to say the media is only 5 years old, so there must been tonnes of scandals and gotcha reporting on these topics six, seven or eight years ago, right? When the Liberals were in power it must have been a huge problem, right?
It is, in fact, Harper's fault. It's specifically his policy. It's specifically the Prime Minister's Office which has declared that she shall not speak to the press until after their arbitrary date. Furthermore, it exactly matches the way he treats the other members of his party (whom he can unilaterally fire by refusing to sign their nomination papers). Harper's a media control freak, this behavior shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, because it is typically Harper.
What if they won't do what they promised merely because the plan has been endorsed by the other side? Obama's plan included quite a bit in spending cuts, things that his own party isn't happy about. The Republicans however, seem to think compromise is when the other side agrees to do what you tell them to do.
Obama wants to raise taxes modestly to reduce the deficit, Grover Norquist has managed to convince 95% of the Republican to sign a pledge that they will never raise taxes or close tax loopholes (without an accompanying tax reduction to keep it revenue neutral). The Repbulicans are desperate to make Obama blink first so they don't get killed in the next round of primaries by Grover and his allies. I imagine many Republican congressmen think that abandoning that pledge will automatically mean the end of their political careers.
So what you're saying is that poor people should be subsidizing your job because you're more important them? Because a tax break is a wealthy transfer, and with the recent Republican tax code changes they are shifting the burden of taxes down the pyramid, moving the taxes away from the rich and towards the poor.
Is that really, what you're saying? That it's better to subsidize one pimped out private jet than several thousand washing machines? I'd be willing to bet the tax rebate on the jet could pay for a lot of washing machines. This is because a jet with gold fixtures is so much more important than a labor saving device for thousands of people?
Really?
Private jets are a luxury, they should be payed for in full. If anything, the washing machines should be subsidized because they actually help the economy by reducing the workload on families. They would actually allow people to spend more time with their children (higher achievement, less crime), working on their business (direct economic benefit), enjoying leisure time (less stress and crime, economic benefits from money spent on leisure).
You're a real paragon of virtue, you are.
Why?
Fraud. Theft.
There are many ways to transfer dollars, not all of them are ethical. Externalities are a huge concern, some people get rich by forcing other people to pay the real cost of their business. Cigarette manufacturers, oil companies, the mafia. Should they all be given larger voices because people give them money? Should the country be run by drug pushers and pimps if they have the most money?
A a perfect example of Dunning-Kruger in action.
It's not a plot, idiot, it's standard operating procedure for the "Harper Government", it's perfectly fine for research to be published in specialty journals with small readerships. It's quite another to allow the scientist to talk to reporters from media organizations that have large audiences.
I mean if you read the article you must have read:
Researchers, who used to be free to discuss their science, are now required to follow a process that includes "media lines" approved by communications officers, strategists and ministerial staff in Ottawa. They vet media requests, demand reporters' questions in advance and decide when and if researchers can give interviews.
and
To Hutchings, the muzzling of Miller is "all about control — controlling the message and controlling communication."
The article goes on a length about exactly what I wrote, that the hearing is being used as the excuse to muzzle her. I spotted that right off because it's standard operating procedure for the "Harper Government". I mean, how many god damn times do we have to see the exact same scenarios play out before we begin to recognize what is happening. This has happened over and over again, with the suppression of the study on the long gun registry, the lies about the census, the suppression of global warming research until after a major conference has passed. Harper is all about total control of the government. It is, by far, the simpler explanation that he is continuing in his own special brand of micromanagement, than it is to believe a scientist is being prevented from talking to the media or the public because what she says might impugn on the impartiality of a government inquiry. She's not the judge conducting the inquiry, she's an expert being called to testify before it. Are they going to toss out any evidence presented by the commercial interests because it might appear biased? Of course not.
Stop being such a god damned gullible fool.
As I understand it, Walmart is unlikely to have a better selection. The reason Netflix's selection is so poor is that American companies have been pretty much giving away multi-year exclusive digital rights to the Canadian networks. So Netflix's and (eventually?) Walmart's broadcast competitors get to decide whether they can show the movies and television shows that they control. Can you guess what their decision is?
This one appears to be "evidence indicates that fish farms are infecting wild fish with deadly diseases (because they're placed on the migration path of wild fish)".
Interesting, because deliberately concealing the research about the health effects of smoking is a big part of what enabled the lawsuits against the tobacco companies. So what you're saying is that it's not only unethical, it's also possibly illegal? Or were you trying to make some other point?
I take it that in your world, a man can only ever start one fire.
That is entirely dependent on the assumption that the the inquiry isn't just the excuse currently being used to muzzle her. The point isn't to suppress the information for ever, because that won't work, it's to mitigate the damage done by the report. Harper just needs to make sure that the media interest in the topic dies out first, then she'll be free to talk to all the reporters who no longer want to talk to her.
No, the rules about talking to news media without permission are a Harper invention. It was originally used to muzzle scientists who were critical of the oil sands and the government position on climate change. Since then they've discovered that it can be used in two ways, to keep all kinds of stories out of the national media through the threat of termination for unauthorized speaking, and through terminating the careers of anyone brave enough to rock the boat. They look at it is a zugzwang position, anyone who speaks out can be discredited by firing with cause, followed by anonymous slander and the rest will be kept in check by the fear of retaliation.
The people in charge don't care about the fishing industry in the long run. MBAs are taught that long term thinking is thinking about next quarter's results. Frankly, the people who own the fishing companies will sell them when their profits start to fall. The executives running the fishing industry will find jobs elsewhere, where they can maximize short-term profits. This is the problem with capitalism, so many externalities. The fluidity of capital allows the capitalist to ruin the industry he is exploiting and then cut and run to a different industry.
This is the true nature of unrestricted capitalism. Capitalism, by design, uses resources up as quickly as possible. That's why government regulation is required, because capitalists will destroy the common good in the pursuit of the personal profit. The problem, of course, is that if the capitalists have all the money, they will rule the government too.
Seriously?
They faked the results of a recount to try and avoid a full recount.
Smartech was owned by Bush and Blackwell hired them to server as a "mirror" in case of failure, then when it looked like Bush wasn't going to win in Ohio even with the other dirty tricks he pulled, Blackwell sent the people responsible for running the systems home and moved operations over to the "failover", giving Bush (and more importantly Cheney) direct control over the machine where the vote counts were being stored. Yeah, I'm sure that's perfectly legit. There's absolutely no conflict of interest in the Head of the Ohio Campaign to elect Bush to unilaterally turn over the final vote counting to a company owned by Bush. Frankly, we may never know absolutely 100% sure if fraud occurred, but frankly, if it looks like fraud, smells like fraud, and sounds like fraud, it probably is fraud.
No, there already is a way to corrupt them centrally in an organized fashion: it's called political parties.
As long as the same parties are running in each state, then there will exist a central organization to corrupt them. In fact it's probably much easier to corrupt the election without anyone noticing when you have 50 different sets of arcane rules.
You do realize that the machines in question were owned by the State of Ohio and the machines for poor neighbourhoods were re-allocated by Kenneth Blackwell, the states returning officer and head of the state campaign to elect George Bush (an obvious conflict of interest that should never have been allowed) to more affluent neighbourhoods?
This decision was made by a guy who publicly promised that his state would vote for G.W.B. before voting had even started.
There are very big assumptions in the study. They modeled the behavior with a simulation which doesn't seem particularly relevant to the real world:
1) The created an initial population with no deeply held beliefs.
2) The inserted into the population people with deeply held beliefs which would never change and who were evangelistic about them
3) Any members of the initial population who talked to two people who had a different belief in a row changed their beliefs.
It's very artificial and doesn't seem to have made room for opposing viewpoins, I stopped reading about halfway through the article when I realize how incredibly artificial the conditions were.
There's a reason for the slew of origin stories... They're doing the origins of the Avengers so that don't have to cover that in the Avengers movie. Also they want to appeal to people who never read the comics too so they start with the origin story as a way of introducing the character. Then they can hopefully make 2 or 3 sequels before they burn out the lead actor(s) (or the audience) and have to start over again.
The difficulty with your proposition is making something that appeals to a good fraction of "everyone" is extremely difficult.
Avatar is the top grossing movie of all time, only about 40 million people saw it in the theatres. That's 0.7% of "everyone".
Of course, some people would argue that charging someone with "reckless endangerment" for shouting fire in a theatre IS criminalising speech and a restriction on free speech.
Any ranked or run-off voting system should meet the Condorcet Criterion to avoid the wonky results that can occur under IRV.
As a wise man once said "the Democrats are selling out to a slightly less scary group of special interests", of course he also said "in troubled times, the Democrats have moved to the right and the Republicans have moved to the crazy house".
Someone spent money, time, and creativity making that movie/song. You aren't entitled to get it for free just because you can copy it for free.
Except this is the natural state of the world. The only reason "you aren't entitled to get it for free" is because we, the people made a deal with the artists. They would produce art and we would give them a temporary monopoly on the right to make copies of that work. We, the people, have been cheated out of our side of the bargain. Copyright is now perpetual. It has become a never ending lock on our culture that robs us of our basic rights and give us nothing in return. Besides that our deal was with artists, musicians and writers. The MPAA and RIAA and none of the above, they are fat, lazy and stupid middle managers who treat both the artists and the public like criminals.