Yeah he seems just a little too slick for my liking. He has flip flopped on Immigration a few times as well. Of course, he is not alone in that respect. Hillary and Obama have done this as well. Gay marriage, middle east, immigration issues. Sadly it is more the exception than the rule these days.
Becoming wealthy (whatever "wealthy" is considered these days) comes with its own challenges.
People with no money have very specific challenges: find food and water and shelter for your family. Everything else is secondary.
People that have a job and shelter but not enough money have different challenges: Buying a car, paying for school, You have enough for basic necessities but not enough for aspiration items.
People with lots of money have unique challenges: Who do you trust? Taxes become problematic. Gold diggers. How do you raise kids without spoiling them?
It seems to me that the sweet spot is around 100K per year. You're not rich but you have enough. In many cities that is enough to buy a nice home and a new car every 4-5 years. It's a nice place to be.
It's worse than that. Corporations are playing both sides by giving money to both the Democrats and the Republicans. No matter who wins they are owed favors by someone.
The well publicized differences on Immigration, Abortion, etc. is just window dressing. Democrats and Republicans agree on more than you think. It's all about money and power.
and how many of those female profiles were just astroturf Ashley Madison profiles put there to entice men into joining?
The whole thing is just a sad commentary on the current state of affairs (no pun intended) of the world we live in. Who are the real villains here? The cheating husbands or the people at AM that set up this apparently honey pot of a web site to lure men in and then charge them to delete their profiles after the fact? A curse on all their houses I say.
Social media is for fools. It's not just Ashley Madison. It's Facebook too. It is just amazing to me how people will pony up so much personal information and entrust other people to "manage" it.
How long is it going to be before someone hacks into Facebook and steals millions of user account details? Email addresses, phone numbers (in some cases), family photos, where you work (in some cases), all your friends (in some cases), you name it.
It seems like every time this guy opens his mouth he makes another mistake. Trump is right about one thing - Bush is a low energy candidate. This guy looks like he has been dragged kicking and screaming into this campaign. He has little interest and fewer ideas. Anyone that is against encryption and in favor of expanding the Patriot Act won't get my vote. Time to hang it up Jeb.
Why is it that so many married people felt the need to cheat on their spouse? That's the real issue here I think. Putting aside for a moment the stupidity of signing up at a public website and entrusting them with your intimate and personal details. Kind of sounds like Facebook, but i digress.
Are there really that many married couples that are so unhappy that they feel the need to seek intimacy outside their marriage? Apparently so. This is just a theory but I think that some of this is due to punitive divorce settlements. A lot of people might say that if a guy is unhappy he should just get a divorce. OK, but then your ex gets half of your assets. And probably majority custody of the kids. You might even get stuck paying alimony as well. Not to mention attorney fees.
So for some guys (and women too) it's easier and far cheaper to get a piece on the side. I'm not condoning this behavior I'm just pointing out a possible reason as to why it is happening. If it were easier and less costly to get a divorce then maybe there would be less cheating?
Two aspects of it are completely off base: mass deportation and changing the rule for citizenship for those born in the USA.
Mass deportation - this plays well to his supporters but is completely impractical. Each person charged with deportation is allowed, by law, a hearing and an appeal. If there are 12M illegals then that means we would have to hold 24M hearings. It would take a lifetime to accomplish that.
14th Amendment - states that anyone born in the USA automatically becomes a US citizen. To change that would require a constitutional amendment. That requires 2/3 majority in both the House and the Senate and 3/4 of the States must ratify it after that. Good luck with that.
On the plus side, he is spot on about the H1-B visas. It is being abused by employers and is putting middle class Americans out of work. This notion that there are not enough STEM graduates is nonsense.
I like how he called out Rubio for supporting the bill to triple H1-B visas, backed by that sleazeball Zuckerberg. Let's see what Rubio has to say about that.
here we go again with the dire climate change proclamations. This is nothing more than an excuse to gin up more research money. The only "evidence" they have comes from highly suspect computer models that can be twisted this way or that to reach whatever conclusion furthers your agenda.
I also believe that there is an underlying anti-capitalism thread that blames all of this supposed climate change on human progress.
Are there things we can do to cause less pollution? Of course and we should be that where it is practical. I want to live in a clean world as much as the next person does.
Everyone just needs to take a deep breath and relax. The world is not going to end tomorrow, despite predictions to the contrary.
No kidding. I worked in Minneapolis one winter. Just about froze my nads off. Fortunately I was in a hotel and my customer was in an office building that was connected via a covered walkway.- I called it the human ant farm - so I could just zig zag through the walkways without having to go outside. But when I did have to outside - holy shit!
I couldn't wait for spring, which was nice but short. Then came summer and 90% humidity and giant mosquitoes. Almost all of the people I met had lived there for generations. They were used to the cold and it didn't bother them.
It seemed to me like a cleaner, nicer version of Chicago. Same crappy weather, just a little nicer in other ways.
that socialist utopias don't work. This idea that everyone should be paid the same is utter nonsense. In any given organization there are achievers and there are slackers. It has been my experience that the top 20% of workers often do at least 50% of the work. Many people will do just enough to get by. Others will find ways to get other people to do their work for them. Others will find their way into jobs that really are not needed but somehow exist anyway.
I'm not suggesting that all CEO's should be making 5000x the average workers salary (or whatever the actual figure is). But clearly there are people in an organization that simply contribute more than others and should make more money.
The problem becomes how do you measure productivity and worth? Traditional methods seem to leave themselves open to gaming the system, for those that are cunning enough to do so. Many people make big contributions but are not recognized sufficiently. Others take credit for the work of others. Management tends to attract self promoters and some of them get a disproportionate amount of credit (and therefore money) off the backs of others. Interesting problem.
"The difference I don't consider anything he did to be evil." - I'm not the first person to claim that. And you might feel differently if you were on the receiving end of his dirty tricks.
"Yeah improving lives, which is more than you've done. So where-ever you put Bill on the scale of contributions to humanity, you are a lot further down the list so hardly in any position to throw barbs." - Well thanks for the input Melinda. I'll certainly take that under advisement:-)
"Churchill, Jefferson, Newton, pretty much every major character in history broke some eggs to make their omelettes. " - You are forgetting Carnegie, Rockefeller, Kennedy, Venderbilt and others. They broke a lot of eggs too.
Gates also broke laws. You may remember that he is a convicted monopolist. Just like Rockefeller. And, just like Rockefeller, he turned to philanthropy late in life so that people like you would forget his evil deeds earlier in life. This is the Robber Baron playbook that I referred to.
Gates screwed over not only his rivals but his supposed partners too. He used Microsoft's monopoly position to sabotage competing products like Netscape. Does the "Microsoft Tax" ring a bell? It's a lot more than just forcing me install another browser.
His actions - not words but actions - show him to be untrustworthy. You can be sure he has something up his sleeve. I wouldn't trust him as far as I could spit.
this seems like a noble thing to do. So why am I left with this feeling that he is still a crooked, slimy sleazeball? I've said this before but this is straight out of the Robber Baron playbook.
Act 1 - make as much money as humanly possible. If you have to screw people over or even break laws along the way, so be it. Act 2 - turn into a philanthropist and give some of it back. Note: not ALL of it, SOME of it.
In the end, most people have short memories and will only remember the last act not the first.
I'm not saying that he hasn't done anything good with his money. He has. But he's still a crook.
Well, that raises a good point. How do we get competent people to work for the government by choice? I've done a lot of contracting work for government agencies and the like so I speak with some authority on this. There are some good, hard working, competent people in government. No really - there are.
The problem is that almost none of them - in my experience - are in management or leadership positions. Now some might say that is true in the private sector as well. No argument there - there are certainly a lot of idiots in management in the private sector as well. But not nearly as many as I have seen in government. It's not even close.
So the question becomes...why is that? Lots of reasons.
They have to deal with insane procurement regulations...the kind that lead to the $100 pencil. Unlike private companies, managers do not get rewarded for saving money. They get punished for it with a reduced budget for next year. So that leads to waste. It is difficult, or nearly impossible, to fire workers. Likewise, it's nearly impossible to get rid of incompetent managers. That leads to a lot of dead wood.
Many of the higher positions in government are either appointed (political cronyism) or elected (money/popularity contest). Neither of these methods addresses the issue of whether or not the person is actually qualified and has the skills for the position. So you end up with some people in way, way over their heads. The problem is that the government is so big that this rarely gets noticed unless there is some sort of colossal screw up.
Some government dimwit is going to cry over "chronic under funding" leading to this whole mess. Just like when the Amtrak train flew off the tracks. Never mind that the guy was driving the train at TWICE the speed he should have been. Noooooo....more money...that's what we need. Yeah, that'll fix everything.
When are people going to realize that more money is not the solution. The solution is to get rid of idiots that cannot/will not enforce policies.
You can look like your boss without having the same skin color. You can dress similarly for example.
Alcohol can be a problem if you don't partake. I don't drink either and it causes me to avoid social situations where I know that everyone is going to get smashed. If that's what it takes to get ahead then i guess I just won't get ahead. I prefer to be judged on what I do from 9-5 not 6 til closing.
If we are talking about having a certain percentage of blacks or hispanics or woman as a quota then, yes, we are talking about lowering standards. Because it, by definition, will exclude candidates that would otherwise be accepted. It means that you have to look further down the quality rankings to find someone that fills a given quota.
It is also discrimination against while males. But that conveniently seems to be missing from the conversation.
idiots that suggest there is a "diversity problem" in the first place. All this does is exclude better qualified candidates by lowering the entry standards by requiring a certain percentage of this or that group.
Here is a radical notion....if you want a job go out and fucking earn it. Go to school and get a degree so you can show potential employers that you have the skills necessary to perform the work. Get someone to proof read you resume so that it isn't full of spelling and grammatical errors. Show up at an interview dressed professionally. Ease up on the neck tattoos and body piercings. Show the interviewed that you want the job not that you are entitled to it.
Realize that in Corporate America if you want to get ahead you have to fit in. Fitting in has nothing to do with skin color or gender. It has everything to do with looking and acting like the bosses do. If that's not your thing then work for a small company. If that's not your thing either then work as a contractor or start your own business.
Robots do increase productivity. Often it opens up jobs in higher skilled areas, like QA people that check the jobs that the robots do to ensure quality. We see this a lot in the Auto industry.
The problem is what happens to the lower skilled people that get displaced by the robots? They may not have the skills, or the aptitude to learn those new skills, to do the new jobs that the robots make available. Now you have a bunch of people that used to be productive that are now unemployable.
What do we do with them? Sure, some of them might be old enough to retire. What about the person that went to work for GM right out of high school? Now they are 40 or 45 with no real skills other than what they learned on the assembly line. They probably earned a pretty good living on the assembly line. Now they are unemployed with no college degree.
Whose responsibility does it now become to support these people? The company? Not bloody likely. They put the robots in to save money. Robots don't get sick or go on maternity leave or get pensions or 401K matching. The government? Society at large? Who knows.
If anyone wanted to launch a terror type attack there is bugger all the TSA or Homeland Security or anyone else could do to stop it. That is the nature of Guerrilla type tactics and one of the reasons they are so effective. The only way you could stop it is to screen every single person that came into the USA every day. Not to mention everyone that is already living here. It is an impossible task.
The fact that it has not happened does not provide evidence that one has been stopped. It may make you feel better to think that all of these government agencies are preventing attacks but the facts do not bear that out.
Just take a look at Israel. They have been dealing with suicide bombers since the 70's. Their security is much, much tighter than ours in the USA but still people blow themselves up in crowded shopping areas and kill innocent people. All they can do is try to minimize the damage.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah he seems just a little too slick for my liking. He has flip flopped on Immigration a few times as well. Of course, he is not alone in that respect. Hillary and Obama have done this as well. Gay marriage, middle east, immigration issues. Sadly it is more the exception than the rule these days.
Becoming wealthy (whatever "wealthy" is considered these days) comes with its own challenges.
People with no money have very specific challenges: find food and water and shelter for your family. Everything else is secondary.
People that have a job and shelter but not enough money have different challenges: Buying a car, paying for school, You have enough for basic necessities but not enough for aspiration items.
People with lots of money have unique challenges: Who do you trust? Taxes become problematic. Gold diggers. How do you raise kids without spoiling them?
It seems to me that the sweet spot is around 100K per year. You're not rich but you have enough. In many cities that is enough to buy a nice home and a new car every 4-5 years. It's a nice place to be.
It's worse than that. Corporations are playing both sides by giving money to both the Democrats and the Republicans. No matter who wins they are owed favors by someone.
The well publicized differences on Immigration, Abortion, etc. is just window dressing. Democrats and Republicans agree on more than you think. It's all about money and power.
And Rubio supports increasing H1-B visas threefold. Coincidence? I think not.
Right - which evidently was part of the reason that the hackers got involved in the first place.
and how many of those female profiles were just astroturf Ashley Madison profiles put there to entice men into joining?
The whole thing is just a sad commentary on the current state of affairs (no pun intended) of the world we live in. Who are the real villains here? The cheating husbands or the people at AM that set up this apparently honey pot of a web site to lure men in and then charge them to delete their profiles after the fact? A curse on all their houses I say.
Social media is for fools. It's not just Ashley Madison. It's Facebook too. It is just amazing to me how people will pony up so much personal information and entrust other people to "manage" it.
How long is it going to be before someone hacks into Facebook and steals millions of user account details? Email addresses, phone numbers (in some cases), family photos, where you work (in some cases), all your friends (in some cases), you name it.
Buyer beware.
It seems like every time this guy opens his mouth he makes another mistake. Trump is right about one thing - Bush is a low energy candidate. This guy looks like he has been dragged kicking and screaming into this campaign. He has little interest and fewer ideas. Anyone that is against encryption and in favor of expanding the Patriot Act won't get my vote. Time to hang it up Jeb.
Why is it that so many married people felt the need to cheat on their spouse? That's the real issue here I think. Putting aside for a moment the stupidity of signing up at a public website and entrusting them with your intimate and personal details. Kind of sounds like Facebook, but i digress.
Are there really that many married couples that are so unhappy that they feel the need to seek intimacy outside their marriage? Apparently so. This is just a theory but I think that some of this is due to punitive divorce settlements. A lot of people might say that if a guy is unhappy he should just get a divorce. OK, but then your ex gets half of your assets. And probably majority custody of the kids. You might even get stuck paying alimony as well. Not to mention attorney fees.
So for some guys (and women too) it's easier and far cheaper to get a piece on the side. I'm not condoning this behavior I'm just pointing out a possible reason as to why it is happening. If it were easier and less costly to get a divorce then maybe there would be less cheating?
the whole thing is probably coded with a stone tablet and chisel.
Two aspects of it are completely off base: mass deportation and changing the rule for citizenship for those born in the USA.
Mass deportation - this plays well to his supporters but is completely impractical. Each person charged with deportation is allowed, by law, a hearing and an appeal. If there are 12M illegals then that means we would have to hold 24M hearings. It would take a lifetime to accomplish that.
14th Amendment - states that anyone born in the USA automatically becomes a US citizen. To change that would require a constitutional amendment. That requires 2/3 majority in both the House and the Senate and 3/4 of the States must ratify it after that. Good luck with that.
On the plus side, he is spot on about the H1-B visas. It is being abused by employers and is putting middle class Americans out of work. This notion that there are not enough STEM graduates is nonsense.
I like how he called out Rubio for supporting the bill to triple H1-B visas, backed by that sleazeball Zuckerberg. Let's see what Rubio has to say about that.
here we go again with the dire climate change proclamations. This is nothing more than an excuse to gin up more research money. The only "evidence" they have comes from highly suspect computer models that can be twisted this way or that to reach whatever conclusion furthers your agenda.
I also believe that there is an underlying anti-capitalism thread that blames all of this supposed climate change on human progress.
Are there things we can do to cause less pollution? Of course and we should be that where it is practical. I want to live in a clean world as much as the next person does.
Everyone just needs to take a deep breath and relax. The world is not going to end tomorrow, despite predictions to the contrary.
No kidding. I worked in Minneapolis one winter. Just about froze my nads off. Fortunately I was in a hotel and my customer was in an office building that was connected via a covered walkway.- I called it the human ant farm - so I could just zig zag through the walkways without having to go outside. But when I did have to outside - holy shit!
I couldn't wait for spring, which was nice but short. Then came summer and 90% humidity and giant mosquitoes. Almost all of the people I met had lived there for generations. They were used to the cold and it didn't bother them.
It seemed to me like a cleaner, nicer version of Chicago. Same crappy weather, just a little nicer in other ways.
that socialist utopias don't work. This idea that everyone should be paid the same is utter nonsense. In any given organization there are achievers and there are slackers. It has been my experience that the top 20% of workers often do at least 50% of the work. Many people will do just enough to get by. Others will find ways to get other people to do their work for them. Others will find their way into jobs that really are not needed but somehow exist anyway.
I'm not suggesting that all CEO's should be making 5000x the average workers salary (or whatever the actual figure is). But clearly there are people in an organization that simply contribute more than others and should make more money.
The problem becomes how do you measure productivity and worth? Traditional methods seem to leave themselves open to gaming the system, for those that are cunning enough to do so. Many people make big contributions but are not recognized sufficiently. Others take credit for the work of others. Management tends to attract self promoters and some of them get a disproportionate amount of credit (and therefore money) off the backs of others. Interesting problem.
"The difference I don't consider anything he did to be evil." - I'm not the first person to claim that. And you might feel differently if you were on the receiving end of his dirty tricks.
"Yeah improving lives, which is more than you've done. So where-ever you put Bill on the scale of contributions to humanity, you are a lot further down the list so hardly in any position to throw barbs." - Well thanks for the input Melinda. I'll certainly take that under advisement :-)
"Churchill, Jefferson, Newton, pretty much every major character in history broke some eggs to make their omelettes. " - You are forgetting Carnegie, Rockefeller, Kennedy, Venderbilt and others. They broke a lot of eggs too.
Gates also broke laws. You may remember that he is a convicted monopolist. Just like Rockefeller. And, just like Rockefeller, he turned to philanthropy late in life so that people like you would forget his evil deeds earlier in life. This is the Robber Baron playbook that I referred to.
Gates screwed over not only his rivals but his supposed partners too. He used Microsoft's monopoly position to sabotage competing products like Netscape. Does the "Microsoft Tax" ring a bell? It's a lot more than just forcing me install another browser.
His actions - not words but actions - show him to be untrustworthy. You can be sure he has something up his sleeve. I wouldn't trust him as far as I could spit.
this seems like a noble thing to do. So why am I left with this feeling that he is still a crooked, slimy sleazeball? I've said this before but this is straight out of the Robber Baron playbook.
Act 1 - make as much money as humanly possible. If you have to screw people over or even break laws along the way, so be it.
Act 2 - turn into a philanthropist and give some of it back. Note: not ALL of it, SOME of it.
In the end, most people have short memories and will only remember the last act not the first.
I'm not saying that he hasn't done anything good with his money. He has. But he's still a crook.
Maybe Hillary could conduct a pilot project in her own home. Throw a few panels on the roof. It might even generate enough to power an email server.
Umm...it appears that the email server has been disconnected. Well, never mind. It's the thought that counts :-)
Well, that raises a good point. How do we get competent people to work for the government by choice? I've done a lot of contracting work for government agencies and the like so I speak with some authority on this. There are some good, hard working, competent people in government. No really - there are.
The problem is that almost none of them - in my experience - are in management or leadership positions. Now some might say that is true in the private sector as well. No argument there - there are certainly a lot of idiots in management in the private sector as well. But not nearly as many as I have seen in government. It's not even close.
So the question becomes...why is that? Lots of reasons.
They have to deal with insane procurement regulations...the kind that lead to the $100 pencil. Unlike private companies, managers do not get rewarded for saving money. They get punished for it with a reduced budget for next year. So that leads to waste. It is difficult, or nearly impossible, to fire workers. Likewise, it's nearly impossible to get rid of incompetent managers. That leads to a lot of dead wood.
Many of the higher positions in government are either appointed (political cronyism) or elected (money/popularity contest). Neither of these methods addresses the issue of whether or not the person is actually qualified and has the skills for the position. So you end up with some people in way, way over their heads. The problem is that the government is so big that this rarely gets noticed unless there is some sort of colossal screw up.
Some government dimwit is going to cry over "chronic under funding" leading to this whole mess. Just like when the Amtrak train flew off the tracks. Never mind that the guy was driving the train at TWICE the speed he should have been. Noooooo....more money...that's what we need. Yeah, that'll fix everything.
When are people going to realize that more money is not the solution. The solution is to get rid of idiots that cannot/will not enforce policies.
You can look like your boss without having the same skin color. You can dress similarly for example.
Alcohol can be a problem if you don't partake. I don't drink either and it causes me to avoid social situations where I know that everyone is going to get smashed. If that's what it takes to get ahead then i guess I just won't get ahead. I prefer to be judged on what I do from 9-5 not 6 til closing.
If we are talking about having a certain percentage of blacks or hispanics or woman as a quota then, yes, we are talking about lowering standards. Because it, by definition, will exclude candidates that would otherwise be accepted. It means that you have to look further down the quality rankings to find someone that fills a given quota.
It is also discrimination against while males. But that conveniently seems to be missing from the conversation.
idiots that suggest there is a "diversity problem" in the first place. All this does is exclude better qualified candidates by lowering the entry standards by requiring a certain percentage of this or that group.
Here is a radical notion....if you want a job go out and fucking earn it. Go to school and get a degree so you can show potential employers that you have the skills necessary to perform the work. Get someone to proof read you resume so that it isn't full of spelling and grammatical errors. Show up at an interview dressed professionally. Ease up on the neck tattoos and body piercings. Show the interviewed that you want the job not that you are entitled to it.
Realize that in Corporate America if you want to get ahead you have to fit in. Fitting in has nothing to do with skin color or gender. It has everything to do with looking and acting like the bosses do. If that's not your thing then work for a small company. If that's not your thing either then work as a contractor or start your own business.
Robots do increase productivity. Often it opens up jobs in higher skilled areas, like QA people that check the jobs that the robots do to ensure quality. We see this a lot in the Auto industry.
The problem is what happens to the lower skilled people that get displaced by the robots? They may not have the skills, or the aptitude to learn those new skills, to do the new jobs that the robots make available. Now you have a bunch of people that used to be productive that are now unemployable.
What do we do with them? Sure, some of them might be old enough to retire. What about the person that went to work for GM right out of high school? Now they are 40 or 45 with no real skills other than what they learned on the assembly line. They probably earned a pretty good living on the assembly line. Now they are unemployed with no college degree.
Whose responsibility does it now become to support these people? The company? Not bloody likely. They put the robots in to save money. Robots don't get sick or go on maternity leave or get pensions or 401K matching. The government? Society at large? Who knows.
If anyone wanted to launch a terror type attack there is bugger all the TSA or Homeland Security or anyone else could do to stop it. That is the nature of Guerrilla type tactics and one of the reasons they are so effective. The only way you could stop it is to screen every single person that came into the USA every day. Not to mention everyone that is already living here. It is an impossible task.
The fact that it has not happened does not provide evidence that one has been stopped. It may make you feel better to think that all of these government agencies are preventing attacks but the facts do not bear that out.
Just take a look at Israel. They have been dealing with suicide bombers since the 70's. Their security is much, much tighter than ours in the USA but still people blow themselves up in crowded shopping areas and kill innocent people. All they can do is try to minimize the damage.