Yeah. It was only the most active and well-funded anti-AIDS campaign ever. But it wasn't perfect by every standard of everyone who ever lived. So no credit and not a second's pause in the Bush hatred from people who pretend to care about AIDS for profit.
It's also revealing that your criticism of some anti-AIDS efforts is that they stand in the way of promoting sexual promiscuity.
The groups you speak of in #4 and #5 simply do not exist. Feminist and disabled-advocacy groups are wholly partisan and would never support a Republican. You could have the Democrat candidate on video raping a mentally handicapped woman and they still wouldn't endorse the Republican opponent. These groups are about money and wielding power, not about helping women or disabled folks.
Bush had a huge, active effort to deal with AIDS in Africa - much more than Clinton or Obama. Did AIDS groups support Bush? And if they had, would it have been reported by anyone except Fox News or the conservative blogs?
Exactly. There's not a specific, long-term limited authority being asserted. It's just general authority. They'll expand it and really start bullying people in the future.
Bullying people is what government power is all about.
Limbaugh is right in general, though he may be wrong on the specifics -- for now. The government will eventually start bullying people based on the content of their message. It will be unconstitutional, of course. So the courts will make them stop after 10 or 20 years of oppressing viewpoints for political gain.
As if "dependence" on foreign products were a bad thing. I'm "dependent" on my grocer and some farmers for my food. But I guess that's bad and I should quit my engineering job and move into subsistence farming so I can grow all my own food. Then I'll be independent.
It's going to be even harder for me to become independent of doctors, dentists, and drug companies in the long term.
No. Buying a product benefits both parties in every free transaction. The seller values the cash more than the buyer. The buyer values the goods or services more than the cash. The transaction is an improvement for both buyer and seller, making them both wealthier than before. Interdependence creates wealth in this way.
Water transport pipelines will never be a big business. If anyone makes any real money transporting water, the government will "discover" some endangered bugs or amoeba in the water and shut the operation down. Or they'll simply prohibit it, deny permits, indefinitely delay permits, or wait for it to be built and seize it outright like they did with General Motors.
If people are fat because of HFCS, then it's not their fault for simply eating too much. It's someone else's fault. (Diet plan for weight loss: eat less. If it's not working, eat even less. Continue with these actions until you've reached your desired weight. End complete diet plan.)
Also, big companies make HFCS. So there's a long term benefit from demonizing it. Someday, some trial lawyers will find enough jurors who've been indoctrinated with enough hatred that they'll be able to cash in by suing food producers. It took 30-40 years for smoking, but the lawyers eventually made hundreds of billions of dollars.
Meanwhile, fructose is in your honey and your strawberries and most of the rest of your "healthy" fruits causing no particular harm. But since when were witch hunts about reality?
All the subsidies and tariff protections should be ended though. All of them.
If they were willing to either A) deliver all of us the kind of bandwidth promised in their Unlimited*** plans, or B) charge by the megabyte instead of by the month, this should be moot.
They aren't. Neither of those are efficient business models. That's not likely to change. Get over it.
Asking a company to lose money on the services it provides you is futile. Using the government to force the company to lose money on the services it provides you is ultimately futile too. Companies don't do business and won't continue to do business to lose money. (It's not a corporate thing, individuals don't work for free either.) They'll just stop.
I'm not sure why you cling to the fantasy that you deserve to get services at below the cost to produce them. Unfortunately, you're not alone.
Tell it to all the Bush haters. They were the ones who were (are ?) saying that concentrating power in government is a great idea, we just need "the right" person to be in charge of making all the decisions.
Some of us want smaller, less powerful government. If government can't do much, then it doesn't really matter who is in charge.
They probably just don't want to worry about getting sued.
I would expect most of these patents, and especially the ones that matter, will expire in the next couple years. Has Novell done anything worth a patent in the last 10 years? Patents only last 20 years.
Why are those innocent bystanders hiding behind a wall right next to the guy who was shooting at us 10 seconds ago?
That's why you keep noncombatants clear of the battlefield and try to engage the enemy in locations away from noncombatants. When terrorists use noncombatants as cover for their firing positions, sometimes noncombatants get hurt though. (Subsequently, the US and/or Israel is blamed.)
Is it such a slow news day that a finding in a health study is posted on Slashdot? There are zillions of studies of various quality with lots of different findings on lots of different health-related topics. What makes this one different from every other one?
Stuff like this is the best day-to-day indication of editorial bias in the news. But it's hard to guess the particulars of the bias involved in selecting this story.
Some people can't do anything that's worth $12/hour for anyone. You want to raise wages to $12.50 and put these people out of work? The same thing goes for every other wage level.
Teenage unemployment is near a record high right now, in part because of the last minimum wage increase. How is someone with no skills supposed to start at the bottom and work his way up if you cut off all the opportunities at the bottom?
What's a "living wage" for a teenager living with his parents anyway? What's a living wage for someone with 2 kids? Or someone with 12 kids? You want them each paid differently for the same work? (Why wouldn't an employer prefer to hire the teenager then? Anyone with kids can forget looking for an entry-level job I guess.)
The "living wage" has always been just a bunch of nonsense to trick rubes who can't think past their own petty bigotries.
Amazon and Amazon's employees pay property taxes for fire departments and police departments that protect their property. They pay fuel taxes for roads. They pay for hospitals with insurance premiums or direct payments for hospital services. They pay income taxes and sales taxes on their own purchases for national defense and courts and prisons and a few misc services.
What else does Amazon need? Why don't they just buy it for cash when they need it instead of using a redistributionist tax scheme? Maybe they've decided they don't benefit from government corruption and so they're trying to avoid funding it.
On a counter note to the pay-as-you-go scheme, the problem is that it wouldn't work...
Nothing "works" if "works" means "all of life's problems are solved for everyone". And nothing ever will work under that definition.
The idea that some action by free individuals didn't "work" is narcissistic. It "worked" to the extent the individuals involved were willing and able to make it work. If you wanted it to work better than that, then you didn't put in enough effort yourself, or you wanted something you weren't entitled to.
I wouldn't have to pay for the roads
The users of the roads pay for them with their fuel taxes and other car taxes. If all fuel and car taxes were all dedicated to roads, it would always be more than enough.
or schools I already have used, I would only pay for what I need, when I needed it, and expect my neighbor to take care of the incidentals while I just boguarded shit from society to get along in life.
How is that different from what we have now? You seem to be saying that the worst case for a voluntary system is the normal case for a tax system.
I would agree with that. We should start moving systems from tax-supported to voluntary so we can take advantage of the times when things go better than worst-case. And voluntary systems don't necessarily have to allow people to continue to abuse the system. Government systems reward and perpetuate abuses and corruption. Non-governments are better at saying "no".
So do it then. Write out an extra check to the treasury of your choice. Be happy that you paid. Reach into your own pocket and not your neighbor's pocket.
Give your neighbor the same option to pay more, or not, that you have. If your neighbors want what you want, and if they have the same desire to pay as you, then there will be no need to enact a tax to force your neighbors to pay against their will.
Then, together, you'll actually have a chance to get what you want. Since you are each free to pay again, or not, the people spending the money will be accountable to you. They'll have to do a good job or they'll lose their funding. If you enact a tax instead, that accountability will be mostly destroyed because the money will continue to arrive even though it's being spent poorly or stolen by corrupt government officials.
There's also the people that want to spend the money. They'll claim they're "happy to pay" higher taxes for service X. But what they really want is for you to pay higher taxes so they can enjoy service X. When they say they're "happy to pay", they're essentially saying "I'll pay an extra $10 so I can spend $10,000,000 on things that I want".
Meanwhile, there's nothing keeping them from paying as much extra tax as they want already. Your local, state, and national treasuries are happy to accept any additional amount you'd like to send them. But the "happy to pay" people don't send any extra money. Because "happy to pay" is a disingenuous fraud.
We need all the specifics to get our exact meaning across. I, for one, do not want my interpretive computer overlord to make any assumptions on where I wanted "Hello World" printed.
And that desire to micro-manage everything down to the most minute detail comes at an enormous cost: you are forced to micro-manage everything down to the most minute detail.
And if you forget a detail, your software has bugs or security holes.
And, as systems get more complex, the number of details increases faster than you can handle them.
And, as time passes, the details change. And now, with 12-core CPUs and GPU-like chips, the details have changed beyond the intended design of conventional languages.
The way to solve problem like this, where the tasks outpace ordinary human abilities, is either
A: Get a huge, super-expensive staff or B: automation. Let the software do the grunt work. You tell it where to go, when to arrive, and what to bring. It takes care of moving the feet, reading the map, and picking the route.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. It was only the most active and well-funded anti-AIDS campaign ever. But it wasn't perfect by every standard of everyone who ever lived. So no credit and not a second's pause in the Bush hatred from people who pretend to care about AIDS for profit.
It's also revealing that your criticism of some anti-AIDS efforts is that they stand in the way of promoting sexual promiscuity.
The groups you speak of in #4 and #5 simply do not exist. Feminist and disabled-advocacy groups are wholly partisan and would never support a Republican. You could have the Democrat candidate on video raping a mentally handicapped woman and they still wouldn't endorse the Republican opponent. These groups are about money and wielding power, not about helping women or disabled folks.
Bush had a huge, active effort to deal with AIDS in Africa - much more than Clinton or Obama. Did AIDS groups support Bush? And if they had, would it have been reported by anyone except Fox News or the conservative blogs?
Exactly. There's not a specific, long-term limited authority being asserted. It's just general authority. They'll expand it and really start bullying people in the future.
Bullying people is what government power is all about.
Limbaugh is right in general, though he may be wrong on the specifics -- for now. The government will eventually start bullying people based on the content of their message. It will be unconstitutional, of course. So the courts will make them stop after 10 or 20 years of oppressing viewpoints for political gain.
As if "dependence" on foreign products were a bad thing. I'm "dependent" on my grocer and some farmers for my food. But I guess that's bad and I should quit my engineering job and move into subsistence farming so I can grow all my own food. Then I'll be independent.
It's going to be even harder for me to become independent of doctors, dentists, and drug companies in the long term.
No. Buying a product benefits both parties in every free transaction. The seller values the cash more than the buyer. The buyer values the goods or services more than the cash. The transaction is an improvement for both buyer and seller, making them both wealthier than before. Interdependence creates wealth in this way.
Water transport pipelines will never be a big business. If anyone makes any real money transporting water, the government will "discover" some endangered bugs or amoeba in the water and shut the operation down. Or they'll simply prohibit it, deny permits, indefinitely delay permits, or wait for it to be built and seize it outright like they did with General Motors.
If people are fat because of HFCS, then it's not their fault for simply eating too much. It's someone else's fault. (Diet plan for weight loss: eat less. If it's not working, eat even less. Continue with these actions until you've reached your desired weight. End complete diet plan.)
Also, big companies make HFCS. So there's a long term benefit from demonizing it. Someday, some trial lawyers will find enough jurors who've been indoctrinated with enough hatred that they'll be able to cash in by suing food producers. It took 30-40 years for smoking, but the lawyers eventually made hundreds of billions of dollars.
Meanwhile, fructose is in your honey and your strawberries and most of the rest of your "healthy" fruits causing no particular harm. But since when were witch hunts about reality?
All the subsidies and tariff protections should be ended though. All of them.
If they were willing to either A) deliver all of us the kind of bandwidth promised in their Unlimited*** plans, or B) charge by the megabyte instead of by the month, this should be moot.
They aren't. Neither of those are efficient business models. That's not likely to change. Get over it.
Asking a company to lose money on the services it provides you is futile. Using the government to force the company to lose money on the services it provides you is ultimately futile too. Companies don't do business and won't continue to do business to lose money. (It's not a corporate thing, individuals don't work for free either.) They'll just stop.
I'm not sure why you cling to the fantasy that you deserve to get services at below the cost to produce them. Unfortunately, you're not alone.
Yep. Then the corporations screw us no matter who we elect, and they do it DIRECTLY that way. Brilliant plan!
Just don't buy from them or associate with them. Say no. They have no recourse and no way to force you to do anything.
Try saying no to the government a few times and see how long you stay out of prison.
Everyone understands the difference. Even you. But you're dishonest.
Tell it to all the Bush haters. They were the ones who were (are ?) saying that concentrating power in government is a great idea, we just need "the right" person to be in charge of making all the decisions.
Some of us want smaller, less powerful government. If government can't do much, then it doesn't really matter who is in charge.
They told me if I voted for President McCain that we'd see these kind of abuses from Homeland Security. And they were right!
More:
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/111785/
http://www.google.com/search?q=instapundit+they+told+me
They probably just don't want to worry about getting sued.
I would expect most of these patents, and especially the ones that matter, will expire in the next couple years. Has Novell done anything worth a patent in the last 10 years? Patents only last 20 years.
Why are those innocent bystanders hiding behind a wall right next to the guy who was shooting at us 10 seconds ago?
That's why you keep noncombatants clear of the battlefield and try to engage the enemy in locations away from noncombatants. When terrorists use noncombatants as cover for their firing positions, sometimes noncombatants get hurt though. (Subsequently, the US and/or Israel is blamed.)
Is it such a slow news day that a finding in a health study is posted on Slashdot? There are zillions of studies of various quality with lots of different findings on lots of different health-related topics. What makes this one different from every other one?
Stuff like this is the best day-to-day indication of editorial bias in the news. But it's hard to guess the particulars of the bias involved in selecting this story.
Some people can't do anything that's worth $12/hour for anyone. You want to raise wages to $12.50 and put these people out of work? The same thing goes for every other wage level.
Teenage unemployment is near a record high right now, in part because of the last minimum wage increase. How is someone with no skills supposed to start at the bottom and work his way up if you cut off all the opportunities at the bottom?
What's a "living wage" for a teenager living with his parents anyway? What's a living wage for someone with 2 kids? Or someone with 12 kids? You want them each paid differently for the same work? (Why wouldn't an employer prefer to hire the teenager then? Anyone with kids can forget looking for an entry-level job I guess.)
The "living wage" has always been just a bunch of nonsense to trick rubes who can't think past their own petty bigotries.
You're right. We should increase wages for everyone- oh wait, does that make me a communist?
You should personally increase wages for everyone. Write us all checks from your account every week.
Rather than a communist, you're more likely either a troll or a child. Grownups know that wages are earned.
Amazon and Amazon's employees pay property taxes for fire departments and police departments that protect their property.
They pay fuel taxes for roads.
They pay for hospitals with insurance premiums or direct payments for hospital services.
They pay income taxes and sales taxes on their own purchases for national defense and courts and prisons and a few misc services.
What else does Amazon need? Why don't they just buy it for cash when they need it instead of using a redistributionist tax scheme? Maybe they've decided they don't benefit from government corruption and so they're trying to avoid funding it.
So what? It's still unfair and unjust for government employees to be paid so much more than the public. However it happened, it needs to be corrected.
It's not that hard to figure out. We're looking at what a 30-year old black hole looks like, regardless of how long it took that light to get here.
But since it's a black hole, that means the light is actually going the other way, from here to there.
And the most important thing to know in these situations: stop digging.
On a counter note to the pay-as-you-go scheme, the problem is that it wouldn't work...
Nothing "works" if "works" means "all of life's problems are solved for everyone". And nothing ever will work under that definition.
The idea that some action by free individuals didn't "work" is narcissistic. It "worked" to the extent the individuals involved were willing and able to make it work. If you wanted it to work better than that, then you didn't put in enough effort yourself, or you wanted something you weren't entitled to.
I wouldn't have to pay for the roads
The users of the roads pay for them with their fuel taxes and other car taxes. If all fuel and car taxes were all dedicated to roads, it would always be more than enough.
or schools I already have used, I would only pay for what I need, when I needed it, and expect my neighbor to take care of the incidentals while I just boguarded shit from society to get along in life.
How is that different from what we have now? You seem to be saying that the worst case for a voluntary system is the normal case for a tax system.
I would agree with that. We should start moving systems from tax-supported to voluntary so we can take advantage of the times when things go better than worst-case. And voluntary systems don't necessarily have to allow people to continue to abuse the system. Government systems reward and perpetuate abuses and corruption. Non-governments are better at saying "no".
http://www.fms.treas.gov/faq/moretopics_gifts.html
For other levels of government, why not just ask them? You have elected local representatives. They will be happy to assist you.
So do it then. Write out an extra check to the treasury of your choice. Be happy that you paid. Reach into your own pocket and not your neighbor's pocket.
Give your neighbor the same option to pay more, or not, that you have. If your neighbors want what you want, and if they have the same desire to pay as you, then there will be no need to enact a tax to force your neighbors to pay against their will.
Then, together, you'll actually have a chance to get what you want. Since you are each free to pay again, or not, the people spending the money will be accountable to you. They'll have to do a good job or they'll lose their funding. If you enact a tax instead, that accountability will be mostly destroyed because the money will continue to arrive even though it's being spent poorly or stolen by corrupt government officials.
Are you certain of that?
Yes
Careful with that. They'll start calling you a racist.
"Racist" has become the all-purpose response when leftists are losing an argument.
There's also the people that want to spend the money. They'll claim they're "happy to pay" higher taxes for service X. But what they really want is for you to pay higher taxes so they can enjoy service X. When they say they're "happy to pay", they're essentially saying "I'll pay an extra $10 so I can spend $10,000,000 on things that I want".
Meanwhile, there's nothing keeping them from paying as much extra tax as they want already. Your local, state, and national treasuries are happy to accept any additional amount you'd like to send them. But the "happy to pay" people don't send any extra money. Because "happy to pay" is a disingenuous fraud.
We need all the specifics to get our exact meaning across. I, for one, do not want my interpretive computer overlord to make any assumptions on where I wanted "Hello World" printed.
And that desire to micro-manage everything down to the most minute detail comes at an enormous cost: you are forced to micro-manage everything down to the most minute detail.
And if you forget a detail, your software has bugs or security holes.
And, as systems get more complex, the number of details increases faster than you can handle them.
And, as time passes, the details change. And now, with 12-core CPUs and GPU-like chips, the details have changed beyond the intended design of conventional languages.
The way to solve problem like this, where the tasks outpace ordinary human abilities, is either
A: Get a huge, super-expensive staff or
B: automation. Let the software do the grunt work. You tell it where to go, when to arrive, and what to bring. It takes care of moving the feet, reading the map, and picking the route.