And an unfortunate number of Americans vote based on image alone, though at least they vote. I guess it is their vote too, they can vote on who's prettier if they like.
Stats show about 30% will always vote for a republican and about 30% will always vote for a democrat. The other 40% seem to be entirely at random. People will vote based on race, height, what color suit the candidate prefers, etc. VERY few people seem to actually know what it is the person their voting for fully believes and whether or not any of it fits the scope/purpose of their office.
But hey, its not often political opposites discuss politics on the internet without calling each other liberal pinko commies and fascist neo-con nazis
Much agreed. I love a good political debate that doesn't degenerate into name calling or demagoguing. Further kudos for the mods not moderating us down (and in fact actually moderating a couple of my posts up despite the fact that my politics and most other slashdotters don't mesh well).
I am simply saying that the candidate from the democrats should be out there saying "Bush should not be re-elected because he incites our enemies to attack our troops when he says 'Bring it On.' As President I would bring the proper solemnity to the office that it requires and leave displays of false machismo at home." Or something like that, I'm not Sam Seaborn, obviously.
The obvious question is "what would you do differently then?" That's what cost them in 2002 and what made people like me laugh at the antiwar protesters... "We shouldn't go after Saddam... solutions? Uh, I don't actually have any solutions. All I know is we just shouldn't go after Saddam." Wesley Clark would shore up some of Dean's weaknesses but I think the favorite for the lock on the VP nomination is Senator Graham because of Florida. It's worth noting that nobody was ever elected President based on their choice of VP though.
What the Democrats need is Bill Clinton with less of a wandering eye.
I, in all honesty and with my political beliefs aside, believe Bill Clinton was one of the most harmful and corrupt presidents in the history of our country. The success in the economy while he was in office was in spite of him, not because of him. He was offered Usama's head on a platter by Sudan 5 years after knowing he was behind the first World Trade Center attack and turned Sudan down despite the pleas from his cabinet's experts on the matter. There's also the issue of taking Chinese money and approving technology transfers to them that could be used in military applications. I could go on, but I don't want this to become about him.
I'm not exactly crying over someone making more than $60k/year not making overtime when I'm putting in 55 hours a week to make $25k and am glad to have the work.
Now... where is the money that business saving going to go to? Probably to hire someone else or maybe at the worst to pay a dividend to the people who invested in you in the hope that you could bring them profits (or even yourself if you're a shareholder). I don't see that as a particularly bad thing.
I've managed a restaurant for the last 9 years. I can tell you that every time the minimum wage goes up, it hurts the business (do more with less or raise prices and lose business/cause inflation)... and we do everything we can to avoid people working overtime since the profit margins are so low. Businesses need to stay healthy if the individual wants their job to be there so they can stay healthy. If you have a problem with not getting overtime, refuse the management position and see what that does for the individual. Accept that the tech industry is the way it is and enjoy the high wages compared to other industries or get out.
that said, I personally don't like the fact that some people make too much to qualify for overtime but again, it was their choice to take on that job. I think if you asked the average union guy if they thought office workers with flex time, the ability to work from home, who gets to go on the occassional junket and makes more than $60k a year was in desperate need of a union to come and make their job more safe/fair would laugh at you (the union bosses wouldn't... they'll take their cut).
The GOP field in 2000 is pretty comparable to the Dem field right now. Like I said, I doubt most of them will even make it to the first primary. Yeah, GWB was the favorite going in and then McCain shook things up, kinda like Dean is doing right now, but in the end, McCain didn't win (in his case, by being too much of a maverick for the national base).
The Dem's biggest problem in 2002 was that they didn't stand for anything... They were just against anything the republicans wanted. For the last 10 years or so(since HillaryCare), they've been out of ideas and simply defining themselves as "not the republicans." Doing that, unless the republicans severely screw things up, the dems aren't going to win. At this point, nothing is bad enough for them to win on that platform, even if Dean goes out and challenges everything like you said he should. He'd still be defining himself as not the republicans. The economy isn't nearly as bad as it may seem on it's surface, Iraq isn't a quagmire, etc.
Even the democratic establishment doesn't have faith in any of the current candidates and they're trying to either get Hillary Clinton (whom I honestly believe there's too much scandal around to win nationally), Wesley Clark (who's no Eisenhower) or Tom Brokaw (media personality != political viability) to run.
...yeah, it made it so people with management related jobs who make over $60,000/year don't qualify... but it made it so that guy managing McDonalds, making $18,000 a year, can qualify for overtime pay. I know, they should all unionize so that they can pay their overtime to the union as dues.
The day of the necessity of unions is over. Today, unions exist solely to give the union bosses a job
I suppose it's the buying power of corporate lobbies that I hold against them. No one/group should be able to buy government officials IMO.
what's the difference between shareholders asking for a cut/elimination of the dividend tax vs senior citizens asking for a handout in the form of prescription drugs? Both are made up of very large groups of motivated voters, which is why politicians listen to them and both are looking for something from the feds. In fact, I'd argue the senior citizens have less of a right to lobby since the federal government doesn't have the Constitutional power to create a heath care system of any kind, whereas corporations fall under the interstate commerce clause.
As for buying power... remember, those dollars go to campaign commercials and other advertising to try to get re-elected. No amount of money can get you into office if nobody will vote for you. Unions and their ilk are far more dangerous lobbyists than corporations because of that. My best friend got a union job when he was pretty young and he went from fairly apolitical to "only demcrats care about people. They even have him brainwashed to believe that a tax cut is bad for him personally.
The way I see it, is you need to let everyone lobby. You can't really restrict it just because you don't like some groups (ie, you and I probably would want to ban pretty nearly the exact opposite groups). The best thing you can do is simply put everything out in the open.
There can be a very big difference between lobby groups and corporations
Yes... lobbying groups are made up of people who pay donations or dues to join in order to persue some cause as a group... while corporations are made up of people who pay dues (buying stock) to join in order to persue some cause as a group.
Effectively, they're identical. Only their cause differs. Really, what your saying is there are some people that you don't believe should have a collective voice.
in comparison to the 9 dem candidates this year, do you think Al Sharpton or Dennis Kucinich or even Joe Lieberman etc are going to win any primaries? At best, there are 3 contenders for the dems right now: John Kerry, Howard Dean and John Edwards. Of those, I don't think John Edwards is going anywhere, he'll win his state at the most. Even if he did get nominated, he's too far to the left to get elected. So, that leaves the two big name guys who try to play to the middle. From what I've heard from Vermont, Dean's you're typical two faced, shady, sleeze ball politician... he's got things going for him right now simply because of his antiwar rhetoric... but he's peaking too soon, much like McCain did.
When the dems lost in 2002, they blamed themselves for being too centrist. What they fail to realize is that after the great depression, nobody has been been elected to the white house by running as a liberal instead of a centrist (OTOH, you have had conservatives win by running to the right, such as Reagan). Democrats also don't get elected because of foreign policy issues. The economy has been on the rebound for better than 2 years (again, despite the rhetoric) and post 9/11, America wants someone with a backbone. Barring a massive disaster with the economy, Dean doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning against Bush. Kerry is your best shot but he's got plenty of baggage of his own (since he's the wealthiest politician in DC, he can't say he's the average guy. He recently found out that he's of Jewish heritage and given the problems with the middle east, I'm not sure the average American wants to enflame the region more (I personally don't have a problem with this but there are a lot of people who would). He's flip flopping on the war, trying to play to public opinion, etc)
and I think it's a bogus amendment that needs to be repealed. Congress does make mistakes every now and then, even with amendments (see prohibition).
Poor people don't deserve help at the expense of everyone else. You shouldn't have to rob peter to bribe paul to be good, forcing peter to do paul's work because he made mistakes (either intentional or not) along the way. Neither of my parents have a high school education and neither will ever make a million dollars for the sum total of their life's work... but they instilled a work ethic in me that encouraged me to do better. Handing them a check for dropping out of school or not wanting to work just teaches their kid to do the same thing.
They don't all commit crime... but property crime and violent crime is committed more often by poor, uneducated people than by your average middle class suburbanite. There has been one single murder in the last 100 years in my entire township. Compare to the inner city of your choice. Take your pick of crime, I'm willing to bet that per capita, just about any HUD housing complex has more crime than my town.
Sure, the kids deserve an education... give them a voucher to go to the school of their choice. As it stands now, my school eliminated it's honors program because of budget constraints (it was suspended in 1991, while I was still in it). My school went from one of the best public schools in the state to below average in the last 15 years. Why? Because they *HAVE* to give the slower kids special education but they're not mandated to teach the smarter kids anything. Now, the honors program means you just get bumped ahead a year in a class or two. No creative learning or anything beyond what the average kid learns. Oh, no early graduation either, so you could get a jumpstart in a more free environment like college. Put a bunch of kids in the school that don't really care if they're there (because their parents don't care) and what's it going to do to the rest of the students? It was happening before I left and I can tell you first hand about it all. Mine was the last class to graduate with the class still fairly intact (1 dropout in a class of 120) and without major drug problems (some drinkers, but all the underclassmen were into just about anything they could get their hands on). The proposed housing project is just going to make things worse.
does your name appear on any tax filings (income, property, etc)? If you pay federal income tax, you can vote in the federal level elections (congress + president). If you pay state income taxes, you can vote in the state elections (if your state doesn't have income taxes, nobody gets to vote so a good system doesn't get broken). If you pay local property taxes, you can vote in local elections. The fact that I might drive to the next state and buy a pop doesn't grant me the right to vote there. Sales tax isn't a tax levied on you, it's a tax levied on consumption. If you don't spend anything, you don't pay any taxes. Income and property taxes, however, are a tax directly on you - no matter what you do (short of not working or owning anything significant), you can't avoid them.
GWB, McCain, Bauer, Keyes, Hatch, and Forbes off the top of my head. I seem to remember there being more that dropped out prior to the first actual primary as well. Several of the field of 9 democrats this time around won't make it to the ballot on the first primary.
...and, thus, very few people are currently contributing to GWB. They don't need to until later in the election cycle. Like I said, remember the 100k+ contributors GWB had in the last election. Compare to Gore (by far the favorite) in the same cycle (32292+66604) 98896. That's just over half of what GWB had despite GWB coming from a large pack republican candidates.
Re:Being bought
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Ancient Democracy was available only to property-holding males (something the republicans I'm sure would love to bring back
I bought my house in 1985 and my property taxes totalled about $600 per year. Today, my property taxes are $3800 per year and we've seen double digit increases in our school taxes the last 2 years alone (13% and 11%). Now, the town supervisor decided to approve a new massive low income housing project. These people are generally under educated, obviously don't have much money to contribute to the local economy, are prone to commit property crimes and will bring endless amounts of new kids to our school system while not having to pay a dime in school taxes.
Yes, I'd like to restrict voting to the people who actually pay taxes (regardless of race, sex or any other factor you want to accuse me of being evil for), otherwise, you have vast amounts of uneducated people voting with the wallets of other people. It's very easy to spend someone else's money, especially when you're taking their money to benefit yourself.
Re:Dean for President
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Saving the Net
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· Score: 5, Interesting
In the 2000 election, GWB collected $81,260,483 from contributors of more than $200 and another $20,260,290 from people contributing less than $200. That means at least 182563 (81261+101302) contributors. Seems like a pretty significant amount of people.
Looking at this year's race, GWB has 6996 contributors under the $2000 limit, compared to Dean at 8662. A difference of less than 1700 contributors isn't really that ground breaking, especially seeing as the campaign cycle hasn't gone into full swing yet.
The dirty little secret is GWB, and republicans in general, actually do better at collecting numbers of small donations than the democrats do. The vast majority of democratic hard money come from large donations by people in the entertainment and legal fields whereas republicans do better in the flyover country that the democrats often like to ignore. Yes... Dean has more non-limit contributors than GWB right now, but remember that 101302 figure at the end of the 2000 cycle as the election season begins to brew.
so, we should have simply surrendered the arms race and let the USSR continue to develop at whatever pace they wanted and let their aggressions go unchecked? After they took over the middle east, which they were attempting to move into via Afghanistan, the US would either have to tap our oil reserves or surrender to Russia for our energy needs, allowing them to dictate their terms to us.
Appeasement has been tried time and time again... and a bully will always thrive as long as nobody is willing to stand up to him. Russia needed to be stood up against, as did Saddam, as does Iran, North Korea, Charles Taylor and China as well. If the US did nothing, everyone would hates us because the superpower turns a blind eye to all the suffering and if we do anything, everyone hates us because the superpower is meddling in the affairs of others. Our foreign policy should be based on what impacts us. To that extent, Saddam Hussein's desire of WMD combined with his hatred of us and the importance of the region meant that we needed to go in. Even if he never planned to use the weapons against us directly, he did use them on his neighbors and his own people and given enough usage, you have a mini-russian control over the middle east scenario as above. Usama hates us for being involved in Saudi Arabia... why are we there? To make sure Saddam and the other warmongers of the area can't gain control over the entire region because we're dependent upon it. Get rid of the dictators, teach the citizens about self determination and self governance and maybe the next generation won't have to face the same problems we have.
...and I bet you are one of the ones that want to know what GWB knew before 9/11 and why he didn't do anything to stop it. You can't have it both ways - you can either take pre-emptive action when you know something is going to happen, like in Iraq, or you can take action after something has already happened.
Iraq has already used biochem weapons on his own people and his neighbors. He severely hates the US because we kicked him out of Kuwait after he invaded. It was only a matter of time before he achieved the means to deliver said weapons here (either by direct attack or more clandestine measures such as giving them to a terrorist cell, sneaking them into the country, etc).
The foremost job of the federal government, and the president in particular, is to defend our country to the best of their ability. Anything that poses a threat to the US must be dealt with in the way the people we elect best know how. The actions against Iraq were not only championed by Bush, but a majority of the Congress as well, including members that voted for it without a debate and are now trying to have a debate against it afterward. Again, you can't have it both ways - you need to take the information you have now and make a decision of what's best to do with the information you know. When JFK found out that missile were being installed in Cuba, should he have ignored it because it posed "no threat" on that particular day to our country and that submarines were a bigger threat, completely ingoring the threat those missiles would pose in the future?
if more than just your immediate family and friends are looking at it, then it is more than just a journal. Some might argue that slashdot is a nothing but a blog but because of the number of viewers and the fact that it made deliberately for people other than Rob's friends means that it IS different than just a regular journal. If slashdot gave editorial control over to a politician for a day, it's very different than running a series of interviews on that politician. My local paper will let political candidates write their own columns in the editorial section but it's open to ALL registered candidates, not just one.
Now... if a candidate wants to write in my diary that nobody will ever see, then it's not advertising. If they write on the whiteboard in my room and just my friends see it, it's not advertising. If I give him total access to my rant page on the internet, where EVERYONE can see it and it will get linked to (like slashdot and probably others linking to Lessig's blog noting Dean taking over), then it is advertising... and thus should be subjected to campaign finance laws.
no... I'm saying this amounts to a monetary donation since it's to a single candidate and that candidate has full control over the medium (ie, it's not an interview). Basically, it's a free commercial and the whole point of raising money is to help put commercials out there.
Slashdot has a ton of people who favor Campaign Finance Reform because they see the money as corrupting the system. This in't any different than a monetary donation and I would suspect that Lessig may have violated the new hard money limits on this if it were given as a direct monetary donation. If ABC goes over to George Bush and says "We're giving you a free half hour every day for a week to put any message you want out. We won't hold any editorial restrictions," everyone would go apeshit. This is the exact same thing, except it's a candidate they somewhat like on the blog of someone they like over a medium they like. So, since it's actually someone they like, the slashbots show their hypocrisy. It's not corruption in this case because it's the good guys doing it and they shouldn't have to be held to the same standards as everyone else.
no, but it is a media outlet... and the whole point of raising money is to get your name out there. Would you prefer this instead?
The New York Times announced today that Howard Dean will be given the front page to write about anything he likes but no other candidates will be afforded the opportunity. Buying a full page ad in the NYT would cost you tens of thousands of dollars normally. I can't imagine what a front page ad would go for. It's tantamount to a monetary donation and THAT is the point. Whether or not it's a public resource is secondary.
ok... so where are the people shouting about how Dean is getting the equivalent of a monetary donation that's not being given to other candidates? What is it that all the money that everyone on slashdot goes to fund? Media: ads, office staff, platform talks, getting their message out, etc. Lessig is more of less a political lobbiest of a special interest group, but many of the slashdotters believe the same thing he does, so it's ok in this case... we just need to shut up the ones we disagree with. If Rush Limbaugh were to run for office and stay on the air during campaign season, wouldn't all the CFR people whine that he has an unfair advantage? How about if he let a single candidate guest host his program for a whole week?
if the 2.5 synaptics driver picks it up, I know for sure that you can disable it under your synaptics settings in X. I had the time set too low on the touchpad on my laptop and tap to click didn't work
No more large changes are going to take place... just bug fixes, driver updates, etc. Today Linus said he would reject the HUGE (40k+ lines) ARM merge excepting stuff that only touched the ARM specific source (ie, arch/arm) even though ARM doesn't currently compile. The only thing he says must be working out of the box for 2.6.0 final is x86 and he doesn't care if other architectures are broken on release if fixing them destabilizes what's already there.
Some notes from my personal experiences with 2.5 on certain hardware:
Those of you who want to use the closed NVidia drivers with 2.5 can find the necessary patches here
2.5.71 also introduced a new native mode driver for synaptics touchpads. You'll need to download the X11 driver and I saw it mentioned that the cvs version of GPM has support if you use that as well.
I personally stay away from the K* apps because I don't want the bloat^ of the QT/KDE libraries installed in addition to the GTK/GNOME libraries. I've been happily using linux for years without ever having to use a KDE app (and thus install the associated libraries) and barring something groundbreaking, I expect it will stay that way for a long time.
Thus the G*/K* naming convention is handy for me. I don't need to download a couple meg pile of source code only to find out that it's a QT/KDE app when I try to compile it
^note, I'm not referring to the size of the libraries but I simply refuse to install half of another DE I don't use simply for the sake of a couple apps
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Stats show about 30% will always vote for a republican and about 30% will always vote for a democrat. The other 40% seem to be entirely at random. People will vote based on race, height, what color suit the candidate prefers, etc. VERY few people seem to actually know what it is the person their voting for fully believes and whether or not any of it fits the scope/purpose of their office.
But hey, its not often political opposites discuss politics on the internet without calling each other liberal pinko commies and fascist neo-con nazis
Much agreed. I love a good political debate that doesn't degenerate into name calling or demagoguing. Further kudos for the mods not moderating us down (and in fact actually moderating a couple of my posts up despite the fact that my politics and most other slashdotters don't mesh well).
The obvious question is "what would you do differently then?" That's what cost them in 2002 and what made people like me laugh at the antiwar protesters... "We shouldn't go after Saddam... solutions? Uh, I don't actually have any solutions. All I know is we just shouldn't go after Saddam." Wesley Clark would shore up some of Dean's weaknesses but I think the favorite for the lock on the VP nomination is Senator Graham because of Florida. It's worth noting that nobody was ever elected President based on their choice of VP though.
What the Democrats need is Bill Clinton with less of a wandering eye.
I, in all honesty and with my political beliefs aside, believe Bill Clinton was one of the most harmful and corrupt presidents in the history of our country. The success in the economy while he was in office was in spite of him, not because of him. He was offered Usama's head on a platter by Sudan 5 years after knowing he was behind the first World Trade Center attack and turned Sudan down despite the pleas from his cabinet's experts on the matter. There's also the issue of taking Chinese money and approving technology transfers to them that could be used in military applications. I could go on, but I don't want this to become about him.
Now... where is the money that business saving going to go to? Probably to hire someone else or maybe at the worst to pay a dividend to the people who invested in you in the hope that you could bring them profits (or even yourself if you're a shareholder). I don't see that as a particularly bad thing.
I've managed a restaurant for the last 9 years. I can tell you that every time the minimum wage goes up, it hurts the business (do more with less or raise prices and lose business/cause inflation)... and we do everything we can to avoid people working overtime since the profit margins are so low. Businesses need to stay healthy if the individual wants their job to be there so they can stay healthy. If you have a problem with not getting overtime, refuse the management position and see what that does for the individual. Accept that the tech industry is the way it is and enjoy the high wages compared to other industries or get out.
that said, I personally don't like the fact that some people make too much to qualify for overtime but again, it was their choice to take on that job. I think if you asked the average union guy if they thought office workers with flex time, the ability to work from home, who gets to go on the occassional junket and makes more than $60k a year was in desperate need of a union to come and make their job more safe/fair would laugh at you (the union bosses wouldn't... they'll take their cut).
The Dem's biggest problem in 2002 was that they didn't stand for anything... They were just against anything the republicans wanted. For the last 10 years or so(since HillaryCare), they've been out of ideas and simply defining themselves as "not the republicans." Doing that, unless the republicans severely screw things up, the dems aren't going to win. At this point, nothing is bad enough for them to win on that platform, even if Dean goes out and challenges everything like you said he should. He'd still be defining himself as not the republicans. The economy isn't nearly as bad as it may seem on it's surface, Iraq isn't a quagmire, etc.
Even the democratic establishment doesn't have faith in any of the current candidates and they're trying to either get Hillary Clinton (whom I honestly believe there's too much scandal around to win nationally), Wesley Clark (who's no Eisenhower) or Tom Brokaw (media personality != political viability) to run.
The day of the necessity of unions is over. Today, unions exist solely to give the union bosses a job
what's the difference between shareholders asking for a cut/elimination of the dividend tax vs senior citizens asking for a handout in the form of prescription drugs? Both are made up of very large groups of motivated voters, which is why politicians listen to them and both are looking for something from the feds. In fact, I'd argue the senior citizens have less of a right to lobby since the federal government doesn't have the Constitutional power to create a heath care system of any kind, whereas corporations fall under the interstate commerce clause.
As for buying power... remember, those dollars go to campaign commercials and other advertising to try to get re-elected. No amount of money can get you into office if nobody will vote for you. Unions and their ilk are far more dangerous lobbyists than corporations because of that. My best friend got a union job when he was pretty young and he went from fairly apolitical to "only demcrats care about people. They even have him brainwashed to believe that a tax cut is bad for him personally.
The way I see it, is you need to let everyone lobby. You can't really restrict it just because you don't like some groups (ie, you and I probably would want to ban pretty nearly the exact opposite groups). The best thing you can do is simply put everything out in the open.
Yes... lobbying groups are made up of people who pay donations or dues to join in order to persue some cause as a group... while corporations are made up of people who pay dues (buying stock) to join in order to persue some cause as a group.
Effectively, they're identical. Only their cause differs. Really, what your saying is there are some people that you don't believe should have a collective voice.
When the dems lost in 2002, they blamed themselves for being too centrist. What they fail to realize is that after the great depression, nobody has been been elected to the white house by running as a liberal instead of a centrist (OTOH, you have had conservatives win by running to the right, such as Reagan). Democrats also don't get elected because of foreign policy issues. The economy has been on the rebound for better than 2 years (again, despite the rhetoric) and post 9/11, America wants someone with a backbone. Barring a massive disaster with the economy, Dean doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning against Bush. Kerry is your best shot but he's got plenty of baggage of his own (since he's the wealthiest politician in DC, he can't say he's the average guy. He recently found out that he's of Jewish heritage and given the problems with the middle east, I'm not sure the average American wants to enflame the region more (I personally don't have a problem with this but there are a lot of people who would). He's flip flopping on the war, trying to play to public opinion, etc)
Poor people don't deserve help at the expense of everyone else. You shouldn't have to rob peter to bribe paul to be good, forcing peter to do paul's work because he made mistakes (either intentional or not) along the way. Neither of my parents have a high school education and neither will ever make a million dollars for the sum total of their life's work... but they instilled a work ethic in me that encouraged me to do better. Handing them a check for dropping out of school or not wanting to work just teaches their kid to do the same thing.
They don't all commit crime... but property crime and violent crime is committed more often by poor, uneducated people than by your average middle class suburbanite. There has been one single murder in the last 100 years in my entire township. Compare to the inner city of your choice. Take your pick of crime, I'm willing to bet that per capita, just about any HUD housing complex has more crime than my town.
Sure, the kids deserve an education... give them a voucher to go to the school of their choice. As it stands now, my school eliminated it's honors program because of budget constraints (it was suspended in 1991, while I was still in it). My school went from one of the best public schools in the state to below average in the last 15 years. Why? Because they *HAVE* to give the slower kids special education but they're not mandated to teach the smarter kids anything. Now, the honors program means you just get bumped ahead a year in a class or two. No creative learning or anything beyond what the average kid learns. Oh, no early graduation either, so you could get a jumpstart in a more free environment like college. Put a bunch of kids in the school that don't really care if they're there (because their parents don't care) and what's it going to do to the rest of the students? It was happening before I left and I can tell you first hand about it all. Mine was the last class to graduate with the class still fairly intact (1 dropout in a class of 120) and without major drug problems (some drinkers, but all the underclassmen were into just about anything they could get their hands on). The proposed housing project is just going to make things worse.
does your name appear on any tax filings (income, property, etc)? If you pay federal income tax, you can vote in the federal level elections (congress + president). If you pay state income taxes, you can vote in the state elections (if your state doesn't have income taxes, nobody gets to vote so a good system doesn't get broken). If you pay local property taxes, you can vote in local elections. The fact that I might drive to the next state and buy a pop doesn't grant me the right to vote there. Sales tax isn't a tax levied on you, it's a tax levied on consumption. If you don't spend anything, you don't pay any taxes. Income and property taxes, however, are a tax directly on you - no matter what you do (short of not working or owning anything significant), you can't avoid them.
GWB, McCain, Bauer, Keyes, Hatch, and Forbes off the top of my head. I seem to remember there being more that dropped out prior to the first actual primary as well. Several of the field of 9 democrats this time around won't make it to the ballot on the first primary.
...and, thus, very few people are currently contributing to GWB. They don't need to until later in the election cycle. Like I said, remember the 100k+ contributors GWB had in the last election. Compare to Gore (by far the favorite) in the same cycle (32292+66604) 98896. That's just over half of what GWB had despite GWB coming from a large pack republican candidates.
I bought my house in 1985 and my property taxes totalled about $600 per year. Today, my property taxes are $3800 per year and we've seen double digit increases in our school taxes the last 2 years alone (13% and 11%). Now, the town supervisor decided to approve a new massive low income housing project. These people are generally under educated, obviously don't have much money to contribute to the local economy, are prone to commit property crimes and will bring endless amounts of new kids to our school system while not having to pay a dime in school taxes.
Yes, I'd like to restrict voting to the people who actually pay taxes (regardless of race, sex or any other factor you want to accuse me of being evil for), otherwise, you have vast amounts of uneducated people voting with the wallets of other people. It's very easy to spend someone else's money, especially when you're taking their money to benefit yourself.
Looking at this year's race, GWB has 6996 contributors under the $2000 limit, compared to Dean at 8662. A difference of less than 1700 contributors isn't really that ground breaking, especially seeing as the campaign cycle hasn't gone into full swing yet.
The dirty little secret is GWB, and republicans in general, actually do better at collecting numbers of small donations than the democrats do. The vast majority of democratic hard money come from large donations by people in the entertainment and legal fields whereas republicans do better in the flyover country that the democrats often like to ignore. Yes... Dean has more non-limit contributors than GWB right now, but remember that 101302 figure at the end of the 2000 cycle as the election season begins to brew.
Appeasement has been tried time and time again... and a bully will always thrive as long as nobody is willing to stand up to him. Russia needed to be stood up against, as did Saddam, as does Iran, North Korea, Charles Taylor and China as well. If the US did nothing, everyone would hates us because the superpower turns a blind eye to all the suffering and if we do anything, everyone hates us because the superpower is meddling in the affairs of others. Our foreign policy should be based on what impacts us. To that extent, Saddam Hussein's desire of WMD combined with his hatred of us and the importance of the region meant that we needed to go in. Even if he never planned to use the weapons against us directly, he did use them on his neighbors and his own people and given enough usage, you have a mini-russian control over the middle east scenario as above. Usama hates us for being involved in Saudi Arabia... why are we there? To make sure Saddam and the other warmongers of the area can't gain control over the entire region because we're dependent upon it. Get rid of the dictators, teach the citizens about self determination and self governance and maybe the next generation won't have to face the same problems we have.
Iraq has already used biochem weapons on his own people and his neighbors. He severely hates the US because we kicked him out of Kuwait after he invaded. It was only a matter of time before he achieved the means to deliver said weapons here (either by direct attack or more clandestine measures such as giving them to a terrorist cell, sneaking them into the country, etc).
The foremost job of the federal government, and the president in particular, is to defend our country to the best of their ability. Anything that poses a threat to the US must be dealt with in the way the people we elect best know how. The actions against Iraq were not only championed by Bush, but a majority of the Congress as well, including members that voted for it without a debate and are now trying to have a debate against it afterward. Again, you can't have it both ways - you need to take the information you have now and make a decision of what's best to do with the information you know. When JFK found out that missile were being installed in Cuba, should he have ignored it because it posed "no threat" on that particular day to our country and that submarines were a bigger threat, completely ingoring the threat those missiles would pose in the future?
Now... if a candidate wants to write in my diary that nobody will ever see, then it's not advertising. If they write on the whiteboard in my room and just my friends see it, it's not advertising. If I give him total access to my rant page on the internet, where EVERYONE can see it and it will get linked to (like slashdot and probably others linking to Lessig's blog noting Dean taking over), then it is advertising... and thus should be subjected to campaign finance laws.
Slashdot has a ton of people who favor Campaign Finance Reform because they see the money as corrupting the system. This in't any different than a monetary donation and I would suspect that Lessig may have violated the new hard money limits on this if it were given as a direct monetary donation. If ABC goes over to George Bush and says "We're giving you a free half hour every day for a week to put any message you want out. We won't hold any editorial restrictions," everyone would go apeshit. This is the exact same thing, except it's a candidate they somewhat like on the blog of someone they like over a medium they like. So, since it's actually someone they like, the slashbots show their hypocrisy. It's not corruption in this case because it's the good guys doing it and they shouldn't have to be held to the same standards as everyone else.
The New York Times announced today that Howard Dean will be given the front page to write about anything he likes but no other candidates will be afforded the opportunity. Buying a full page ad in the NYT would cost you tens of thousands of dollars normally. I can't imagine what a front page ad would go for. It's tantamount to a monetary donation and THAT is the point. Whether or not it's a public resource is secondary.
ok... so where are the people shouting about how Dean is getting the equivalent of a monetary donation that's not being given to other candidates? What is it that all the money that everyone on slashdot goes to fund? Media: ads, office staff, platform talks, getting their message out, etc. Lessig is more of less a political lobbiest of a special interest group, but many of the slashdotters believe the same thing he does, so it's ok in this case... we just need to shut up the ones we disagree with. If Rush Limbaugh were to run for office and stay on the air during campaign season, wouldn't all the CFR people whine that he has an unfair advantage? How about if he let a single candidate guest host his program for a whole week?
if the 2.5 synaptics driver picks it up, I know for sure that you can disable it under your synaptics settings in X. I had the time set too low on the touchpad on my laptop and tap to click didn't work
No more large changes are going to take place... just bug fixes, driver updates, etc. Today Linus said he would reject the HUGE (40k+ lines) ARM merge excepting stuff that only touched the ARM specific source (ie, arch/arm) even though ARM doesn't currently compile. The only thing he says must be working out of the box for 2.6.0 final is x86 and he doesn't care if other architectures are broken on release if fixing them destabilizes what's already there.
Those of you who want to use the closed NVidia drivers with 2.5 can find the necessary patches here
2.5.71 also introduced a new native mode driver for synaptics touchpads. You'll need to download the X11 driver and I saw it mentioned that the cvs version of GPM has support if you use that as well.
Thus the G*/K* naming convention is handy for me. I don't need to download a couple meg pile of source code only to find out that it's a QT/KDE app when I try to compile it
^note, I'm not referring to the size of the libraries but I simply refuse to install half of another DE I don't use simply for the sake of a couple apps
yep... I'm an idiot. I was distracted when I RTFA and I missed that paragraph.