Whenever I speak about futzing with taxes I presume a revenue neutral policy. If the Government requires more money, there is already a method in place for raising taxes, and using some sneaky back door tax policy is certainly not the way to go.
In this case, with a goal of harmonizing states sales taxes and NOT increasing revenue for a given GDP, I was thinking that a national VAT would replace state sales taxes and the bulk of revenue returning to the states anyway.
I wouldn't support a broad replacement of income tax with sales tax because of the highly regressive nature of sales taxes.
If they substantially raised taxes as part of a budget compromise I missed it. The last news I read was along the lines of "There appears to be little chance that a compromise on how to solve a $24.3 billion budget will be made before the midnight deadline."
I think the attitude of "We should try to keep *things* cheap" has done a lot to destroy a lot of what was nice about the United States. I'd rather to see things cost a little as rational but not so little we're driving small businesses & communities to bankruptcy and supporting a permanent underclass.
Things not Thinks, I make that typo all the time:-)
Despite not living in California, I have been following this with great interest. What I am hoping to see, before the inevitable rise in taxes, is a real attempt to reduce government spending. My thinking is that at this point most of the spending by the state of California is on programs with broad support. And this Prop 12 business is just Republicans taking advantage of people wanting to have stuff and not wanting to pay for it. So... when the state begins to cut said programs, people will have a clearer idea what their taxes go to pay for.
Obviously to prevent the populace from staving and freezing to death. Clearly they're on the verge now. Clearly it's impossible to use "technology" and "culture" to reduce energy consumption and maintain a relatively similar quality of life.
. If you don't beleive me, just check out the Slashdot group think.
What complete bullshit. Interestingly enough the polluters said essentially the same tired bullshit when the Cap & Trade system for Sulfur Dioxide was setup. The economy did not collapse. The industry did not die. The United States of America did not descend into despair and anarchy.
So forgive me, when I do fall for your tired, whiny ass bullshit.
As far as I am concerned that is exactly the choice I made when I voted: a different set of freedoms to be eroded. I thought I made a good choice. The policies Obama has been supporting lately leave me to question my decision. Either he is making a deliberate effort to force the courts to acknowledge and rule on unconstitutional policies of, and the war crimes perpetrated by, the Bush Administration or I made a erroneous decision.
The way I see things, I will not know that for a while... at least until these issues run their way through the judicial system.
In any account... let me know when I can I vote for a someone running with Pirate Party in the US.
Ok: I guess I'm a little older than both of you... now I am wondering what the difference is between the collective creating a false narrative and Authority doing so. Obviously when you have men of power engaging in the deliberate re-writing of history you are soundly in George Orwell's 1984 scenario: "He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.". But how is that different than actions of Tobacco Industry 10 years ago or the deification of Ronald Reagan in popular conservative culture? Besides the obvious: Those in Authority do so to retain and extend power, those in industry do it to increase profit, and the proletariat do it because they are told to.
In the end the result is pretty similar, is it? Americans & The American Federal Government: made and broke treaties at whim; engaged in ethnic cleansing & genocide: and all the other horrific historical events surrounding our dealings with the native Americans. To this day native Americans are among the most disadvantaged, and the Federal Government 'lost' trillions of dollars which it was supposedly managing on their behalf. To this day the only real apology forthcoming was a symbolical statement of contrition and by now I think most rational people would say that it's too late for any real action.
Much the same can be said of the slavery in United States. Functional slavery was practiced in the United States up to the 2nd world war. The prevailing attitudes and policies of centuries created a culture within American Blacks which as best could be described as dysfunctional and self defeating. This is world that civil rights leaders of the '60s were born into. Yet this is completely unrecognized in popular history in the South Eastern United States.
In that light; I don't see the functional difference in the Chinese sitting on the Tienanmen Square Massacre until a generation or two has past. Perhaps I could also say that we in the west have no moral authority to voice a condemnation when we also do those things.
I should also add that in my opinion the Chinese Authorities have already created a dangerous nationalistic undercurrent which they neither fully understand or fully control. And it's that which posses the greatest threat to them... not anything out here in the rest of the world.
I am not convinced that an authoritarian government is so necessary to re-write the popular mythology of recent history. The US does not have a government which is strongly authoritarian, yet the re-writing of history is a prominent form of political speech in America.
I've come across several other examples: Japanese popular history of the nature of their involvement in WWII. Australian & American popular history of the treatment of Aboriginals / Native Americans. I am more familiar with American & Australian histories, so I could name many more... but I think that is beside the point. Someone with a solid knowledge of another country doubtless could list many other examples.
I really do care that people gamble or, for the poker fanatics, engage in a game of 'skill'. What I do care about is that companies do not engage in fraud. A trip into a casino can be a education of skillful and scientific application / implementation of fraud (or depending on the way you look at life, perhaps directly against the local legal line).
I recall several reports over the years of blatantly illegal activities on the part of these online operations which only came to light due to disgruntled employees, cheated customers, or hacker activists. Surely we can not rely on such random occurrences to provide equal protection of the law.
So... given a online corporation strategically located in the most liberal jurisdictions: who is providing legislation, oversight, and arbitration? And how do you pay for such things?
Infantile for sure but I generally I don't believe the kids that use such terms are consciously bigoted. My daughter's boyfriend comes up with such tidbits from time to time. I am determined to make him more aware of exactly what he is saying and more importantly exactly what people think when they hear it.
BTW: Wolfram|Alpha groks your sig... and for whatever reason I am amused.
I am a nature subscriber and I just read the letter which this crap is 'based on'. In what I find to be depressing regularity the content in Nature Magazine is misrepresented. Presumably because some of the content at Nature.com is only available to subscribers.
So the title of Slashdot submission is wrong. The summary and free article at deepseanews it is based on mischaracterize the content of the letter. And naturally most of the comments here on Slashdot don't take into account the article, the letter, or anything that smells to much like reality.
If anyone is particularly interested the study found additional new details about ocean currents which the suggest should be included in future model of global ocean currents. This isn't especially exciting but I suppose it's interesting from a point of view of making our understanding and models more complete.
So nothing there about ocean circulation not working the way scientists have described (or a "a major paradigm shift in ocean circulation theory.") Nothing there about failure of models. Nothing there about climate change being either true / not true or stronger / weaker.
This is just what most science is all about... making current understanding more complete or more correct. Below is the excerpt, which I believe to be publication available.
To understand how our global climate will change in response to natural and anthropogenic forcing, it is essential to determine how quickly and by what pathways climate change signals are transported throughout the global ocean, a vast reservoir for heat and carbon dioxide. Labrador Sea Water (LSW), formed by open ocean convection in the subpolar North Atlantic, is a particularly sensitive indicator of climate change on interannual to decadal timescales1, 2, 3. Hydrographic observations made anywhere along the western boundary of the North Atlantic reveal a core of LSW at intermediate depths advected southward within the Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC)4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. These observations have led to the widely held view that the DWBC is the dominant pathway for the export of LSW from its formation site in the northern North Atlantic towards the Equator10, 11. Here we show that most of the recently ventilated LSW entering the subtropics follows interior, not DWBC, pathways. The interior pathways are revealed by trajectories of subsurface RAFOS floats released during the period 2003â"2005 that recorded once-daily temperature, pressure and acoustically determined position for two years, and by model-simulated 'e-floats' released in the subpolar DWBC. The evidence points to a few specific locations around the Grand Banks where LSW is most often injected into the interior. These results have implications for deep ocean ventilation and suggest that the interior subtropical gyre should not be ignored when considering the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.
I have been going through this with my mother since they invented answer machines. She will call and just carry the same one sided conversation she had on her mind when she dialed. With the exception of putting the most important tidbit at the end (like the fact the family is getting together for dinner or whatever). I have not listened to recorded message start to finish since something like 1989... so I never hear these things.
I thought that email would help this. But she sends email like they are telegrams and she is paying per letter. And she treats her email like a postal box: She checks it once a month.
So these days I disable voice-mail on every device I come in contact with... just in case my daughter or my girlfriend begin to develop the same habit.
There are little or no subscribers of the so called "Austrian school of economics" left here in Austria. Without the nearby threat of communism, the reality of their ridiculous and shrill assertions became blatantly obvious... So we decided they were all kooks.
If it really is a weaponized strain, it's an extraordinarily poor one. I've just finished listening to "The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History" by John M. Barry.
The 1918 Influenza A strain was a subtype of avian strain H1N1, which spread & killed much faster.
One would expect by now even the most incompetent biotechnologist with an eye towards weaponizing could at least match the 1918 strain.
Slashdot Mirror
Whenever I speak about futzing with taxes I presume a revenue neutral policy. If the Government requires more money, there is already a method in place for raising taxes, and using some sneaky back door tax policy is certainly not the way to go.
In this case, with a goal of harmonizing states sales taxes and NOT increasing revenue for a given GDP, I was thinking that a national VAT would replace state sales taxes and the bulk of revenue returning to the states anyway.
I wouldn't support a broad replacement of income tax with sales tax because of the highly regressive nature of sales taxes.
If they substantially raised taxes as part of a budget compromise I missed it. The last news I read was along the lines of "There appears to be little chance that a compromise on how to solve a $24.3 billion budget will be made before the midnight deadline."
Doesn't go a long way to suggest a National VAT like tax?
I think the attitude of "We should try to keep *things* cheap" has done a lot to destroy a lot of what was nice about the United States. I'd rather to see things cost a little as rational but not so little we're driving small businesses & communities to bankruptcy and supporting a permanent underclass.
Things not Thinks, I make that typo all the time :-)
Despite not living in California, I have been following this with great interest. What I am hoping to see, before the inevitable rise in taxes, is a real attempt to reduce government spending. My thinking is that at this point most of the spending by the state of California is on programs with broad support. And this Prop 12 business is just Republicans taking advantage of people wanting to have stuff and not wanting to pay for it. So... when the state begins to cut said programs, people will have a clearer idea what their taxes go to pay for.
If we're asking questions I'd like to know just how recyclable all these things are.
Obviously to prevent the populace from staving and freezing to death. Clearly they're on the verge now. Clearly it's impossible to use "technology" and "culture" to reduce energy consumption and maintain a relatively similar quality of life.
.
If you don't beleive me, just check out the Slashdot group think.
You aren't spread "healthy fear" you are spreading the FUD cooked up by polluters.
What complete bullshit. Interestingly enough the polluters said essentially the same tired bullshit when the Cap & Trade system for Sulfur Dioxide was setup. The economy did not collapse. The industry did not die. The United States of America did not descend into despair and anarchy.
So forgive me, when I do fall for your tired, whiny ass bullshit.
I thought the Neo Runner guys went out of business
Very True... but that does not help when the authorities have control of cell towers.
"Orbo is based upon time variant magnetic interactions, i.e. magnetic interactions whose efficiency varies as a function of transaction timeframes."
So. Are they selling electric motors or perpetual energy devices?
Himself being chief among them?
You'd think there was a voting electorate between those extremes sufficiently sized to both win elections and effectively govern.
Overall, I'd say better than I expected and less than I hoped.
And more importantly, given the alternatives to Obama: Absolutely Fantastic.
As far as I am concerned that is exactly the choice I made when I voted: a different set of freedoms to be eroded. I thought I made a good choice. The policies Obama has been supporting lately leave me to question my decision. Either he is making a deliberate effort to force the courts to acknowledge and rule on unconstitutional policies of, and the war crimes perpetrated by, the Bush Administration or I made a erroneous decision.
The way I see things, I will not know that for a while... at least until these issues run their way through the judicial system.
In any account... let me know when I can I vote for a someone running with Pirate Party in the US.
Ok: I guess I'm a little older than both of you... now I am wondering what the difference is between the collective creating a false narrative and Authority doing so. Obviously when you have men of power engaging in the deliberate re-writing of history you are soundly in George Orwell's 1984 scenario: "He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.". But how is that different than actions of Tobacco Industry 10 years ago or the deification of Ronald Reagan in popular conservative culture? Besides the obvious: Those in Authority do so to retain and extend power, those in industry do it to increase profit, and the proletariat do it because they are told to.
In the end the result is pretty similar, is it? Americans & The American Federal Government: made and broke treaties at whim; engaged in ethnic cleansing & genocide: and all the other horrific historical events surrounding our dealings with the native Americans. To this day native Americans are among the most disadvantaged, and the Federal Government 'lost' trillions of dollars which it was supposedly managing on their behalf. To this day the only real apology forthcoming was a symbolical statement of contrition and by now I think most rational people would say that it's too late for any real action.
Much the same can be said of the slavery in United States. Functional slavery was practiced in the United States up to the 2nd world war. The prevailing attitudes and policies of centuries created a culture within American Blacks which as best could be described as dysfunctional and self defeating. This is world that civil rights leaders of the '60s were born into. Yet this is completely unrecognized in popular history in the South Eastern United States.
In that light; I don't see the functional difference in the Chinese sitting on the Tienanmen Square Massacre until a generation or two has past. Perhaps I could also say that we in the west have no moral authority to voice a condemnation when we also do those things.
I should also add that in my opinion the Chinese Authorities have already created a dangerous nationalistic undercurrent which they neither fully understand or fully control. And it's that which posses the greatest threat to them... not anything out here in the rest of the world.
I am not convinced that an authoritarian government is so necessary to re-write the popular mythology of recent history. The US does not have a government which is strongly authoritarian, yet the re-writing of history is a prominent form of political speech in America.
I've come across several other examples: Japanese popular history of the nature of their involvement in WWII. Australian & American popular history of the treatment of Aboriginals / Native Americans. I am more familiar with American & Australian histories, so I could name many more... but I think that is beside the point. Someone with a solid knowledge of another country doubtless could list many other examples.
I really do care that people gamble or, for the poker fanatics, engage in a game of 'skill'. What I do care about is that companies do not engage in fraud. A trip into a casino can be a education of skillful and scientific application / implementation of fraud (or depending on the way you look at life, perhaps directly against the local legal line).
I recall several reports over the years of blatantly illegal activities on the part of these online operations which only came to light due to disgruntled employees, cheated customers, or hacker activists. Surely we can not rely on such random occurrences to provide equal protection of the law.
So... given a online corporation strategically located in the most liberal jurisdictions: who is providing legislation, oversight, and arbitration? And how do you pay for such things?
Infantile for sure but I generally I don't believe the kids that use such terms are consciously bigoted. My daughter's boyfriend comes up with such tidbits from time to time. I am determined to make him more aware of exactly what he is saying and more importantly exactly what people think when they hear it.
BTW: Wolfram|Alpha groks your sig... and for whatever reason I am amused.
I am a nature subscriber and I just read the letter which this crap is 'based on'. In what I find to be depressing regularity the content in Nature Magazine is misrepresented. Presumably because some of the content at Nature.com is only available to subscribers.
So the title of Slashdot submission is wrong. The summary and free article at deepseanews it is based on mischaracterize the content of the letter. And naturally most of the comments here on Slashdot don't take into account the article, the letter, or anything that smells to much like reality.
If anyone is particularly interested the study found additional new details about ocean currents which the suggest should be included in future model of global ocean currents. This isn't especially exciting but I suppose it's interesting from a point of view of making our understanding and models more complete.
So nothing there about ocean circulation not working the way scientists have described (or a "a major paradigm shift in ocean circulation theory.") Nothing there about failure of models. Nothing there about climate change being either true / not true or stronger / weaker.
This is just what most science is all about... making current understanding more complete or more correct. Below is the excerpt, which I believe to be publication available.
To understand how our global climate will change in response to natural and anthropogenic forcing, it is essential to determine how quickly and by what pathways climate change signals are transported throughout the global ocean, a vast reservoir for heat and carbon dioxide. Labrador Sea Water (LSW), formed by open ocean convection in the subpolar North Atlantic, is a particularly sensitive indicator of climate change on interannual to decadal timescales1, 2, 3. Hydrographic observations made anywhere along the western boundary of the North Atlantic reveal a core of LSW at intermediate depths advected southward within the Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC)4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. These observations have led to the widely held view that the DWBC is the dominant pathway for the export of LSW from its formation site in the northern North Atlantic towards the Equator10, 11. Here we show that most of the recently ventilated LSW entering the subtropics follows interior, not DWBC, pathways. The interior pathways are revealed by trajectories of subsurface RAFOS floats released during the period 2003â"2005 that recorded once-daily temperature, pressure and acoustically determined position for two years, and by model-simulated 'e-floats' released in the subpolar DWBC. The evidence points to a few specific locations around the Grand Banks where LSW is most often injected into the interior. These results have implications for deep ocean ventilation and suggest that the interior subtropical gyre should not be ignored when considering the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.
I have been going through this with my mother since they invented answer machines. She will call and just carry the same one sided conversation she had on her mind when she dialed. With the exception of putting the most important tidbit at the end (like the fact the family is getting together for dinner or whatever). I have not listened to recorded message start to finish since something like 1989... so I never hear these things.
I thought that email would help this. But she sends email like they are telegrams and she is paying per letter. And she treats her email like a postal box: She checks it once a month.
So these days I disable voice-mail on every device I come in contact with... just in case my daughter or my girlfriend begin to develop the same habit.
There are little or no subscribers of the so called "Austrian school of economics" left here in Austria. Without the nearby threat of communism, the reality of their ridiculous and shrill assertions became blatantly obvious... So we decided they were all kooks.
I think that presupposes a certain set of strategies which probably aren't exactly so.
If it really is a weaponized strain, it's an extraordinarily poor one. I've just finished listening to "The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History" by John M. Barry.
The 1918 Influenza A strain was a subtype of avian strain H1N1, which spread & killed much faster.
One would expect by now even the most incompetent biotechnologist with an eye towards weaponizing could at least match the 1918 strain.