Conglomerates of unrelated products are generally "discounted" in the stock market. Altria (aka Philip Morris Tobacco) is in the process of splitting off Kraft Foods (as well as splitting tobacco into domestic and international) because investors want "pure plays" on goods. I.e., if you think that tobacco profits are going to go up (or down) substantially, Altria stock is currently an imperfect vehicle for betting on that thesis because it has Miracle Whip and Mac&Cheese attached to it. When you split these companies up, the parts are worth more than the whole, at least in terms of stock prices. It's called "creating shareholder value". A Dutch company, Ahold Group, owns a bunch of supermarkets, and is trying to sell their profitable foodservice distribution company (US Foodservice) because it's not quite the same as their other businesses.
Sure, you have your GE's and such, but those mega-conglomerates are the exception rather than the rule.
First, you seem to know little about American education.
Unions have done quite a bit of good for working conditions, as you have pointed out. However, their present usefulness does not even come close to the political and social power they currently possess. At present, it would seem that the job of the union is to extort money from their membership for political maneuvering that is well beyond the purview of worker protection. This is done in apparent conflict with American statute and legal precedent. In their spare time, the union exerts its collective bargaining power to the extreme detriment of both labor and industry by severely handicapping the ability of industry to remain competitive, leading to the "downsizing" (and eventual failure) of the industry on which labor relies. Case study: the American automobile industry. Now, I don't expect you Brits to understand this, as you live in an essentially socialist state with no real respect for the positive aspects of market forces.
The minimum wage, at best, is a worthless exercise in devaluing the nominal labor remuneration. At worst, it is an oppressive upheaval of the labor market hurting the most vulnerable wage earners, for whom the minimum wage is ostensibly created to help.
Regarding your rights here, could you please point me to the section of the constitution you are referring to? Are you speaking of the 10th amendment reserving of unmentioned rights, or of something more specific?
That would be the First Amendment to the US Constitution. (Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.)
By "the press", the authors of this amendment were certainly aware of pamphleteers as that was a very common method of "broadcasting" one's views. Inherently not free-as-in-beer.
IMO, the current campaign finance regime is blatantly unconstitutional. I have no idea how that garbage was upheld.
Also, they tried doing things without formal parties. Parties formed anyway. Political parties are a natural emanation of representative government, and thus, a necessary evil. Restricting parties only shifts the political dialog to third party groups. Anybody who wasn't in a coma for the last eight months knows how well third party ads respect civil discourse.
The unions shouldn't be allowed to solve the problem at all- individual people should instead. We've given the unions entirely too much power.
I say the living, breathing human citizens should have *SUPERIOR* rights to the invented body of collective action. And that merely giving unions a unfettered claim to one's job security invites such evil.
In college, I once made the mistake of retreating to the bowels of the library were there were about 4 other people on the whole floor. Almost no noise over the vent system. I was still distracted by the shuffling of papers, so I stuck my earplugs in. After a while I started to wonder what the heck I was still hearing.... my eyelids blinking. Jesus that was annoying.
Quickbooks is mostly self explanatory. However, I would suggest finding an accountant and paying him/her to consult for an hour or so to make sure you have things set up the way they want to have it when they do your taxes.
That's not to say that I love, or even like Quickbooks very much. However, most accountants worth a damn will want you to use QB.
So, step 1: Find an accountant. Step 2: Acquire whatever software they say. Step 3:... Step 4: Profit.
From what I gather, GWB's insistence that Rumsfeld would be staying on for the remainder of his term was supposed to deflate the idea that voting Dem would actually accomplish anything, thus suppressing Dem turnout. Instead, what I think actually happened is that it just pissed the Dems off even more, and made a lot of frustrated Republicans stay home.
I'm not sure what you mean by identifying the keygen.
If I write a keygen that randomly spits out valid CD keys, I'm going to eventually come up with somebody else's key. When I enter that generated key, in the system that has been suggested, the original owner of the key is screwed.
I can't be the only person who turns off almost all animations, right? I don't want Windows sucking even minimal performance out of my system. Animations are a pain when frequently switching programs, or when trying to use the UI when another program is taxing the system.
I stand corrected. I based this on an incident when some friends and I were in Toronto and the OPP needed to be called. A bystander who was talking to us made mention that she didn't have her ID (and she had moved, thus her address was also incorrect) and should probably go before the cops got there.
Voters in the US may choose to register with one of the two major parties, any number of third parties (whose official recognition may vary from state to state, the larger ones are pretty much everywhere), or as a pure independent. In most states, registering with a party allows one to vote in the primary election of that party to the exclusion of other parties' primaries. Some states allow some amount of "open primary" crossover voting, but not my state, nor most. In some "open primary states" the "openness" is only available to registered independents, who may chose one party's primary in which to vote. (The state of Louisiana has an election process unique among the states, in which a free-for-all election is held on the federal election day. If no individual gets a majority, a run-off is scheduled.)
ID checking is a contentious issue. Unlike Canada (or other places), US citizens are not required to have ID. Some view ID-checking as a barrier to poorer (and often racial minority) voters as poor people might be less likely to have a driver's license, passport, or official state ID. (I think this is BS, but what do I know?) In my state (and possibly in all states?) a first time voter must show ID to the poll worker. Non-first time voters must merely tell the poll workers his/her name (and possibly party affiliation and address), and the poll workers check the voter roll to see if such a person exists and has not already voted. The voter signs a register, and the signature is compared to a file signature.
Particular voting mechanisms vary down to the county level. In my area, paper ballots are counted by an optical scanner. These machines were purchased less than two years ago to replace the aging lever style mechanical voting machines.
I am more comfortable with this mechanism since a physical artifact of my vote exists and can be re-counted if needed. Some areas use touch-screen pure electronic voting, others use plain paper ballots. I'm not sure if any areas still use the hole-punch ballots that caused all the ruckus in Florida in 2000.
In at least some US states, a voter's name is removed from registration after failing to vote in several sequential major (ie, Congressional) elections. This is supposed to take care of the dead voter issue. However, an individual could request an absentee ballot using the name of a recently deceased person, and there is a very high probability that the local voter registration office would go ahead and mail out the ballot.
Then whoever mixed those albums onto CD ought to have included a few seconds of silence between "sides". Silence is used on current CDs, so it was merely an aesthetic mistake when the album was transferred. You could even correct this by ripping and burning your own customized "dark side" CD and inserting the silence where you deem it necessary.
I want a Social Security safety net. You are free to become a stain on life's floor if you don't.
No, I am currently not free to become a stain on life's floor. Under the Republican plan, you are just as free to keep your Social Security as is, and I would be somewhat more free to attempt to do better for myself than with a government-run pyramid scheme.
If you're a jihadist here on a student visa, and the gov is checking to make sure you're arriving at school, a good way to pay to stay at school would be with FinAid. Bin Laden Bucks are great, but even OBL could appreciate the irony of having the Great Satan help finance his own destruction.
Um... how is this an abuse of power? Seriously, what conceivable liberty could one lose if one wasn't a terrorist? This falls squarely into the "So F'ing what?!" category.
I've never had dialup connect faster than about 44kbps. 85 would be almost twice dialup for even some of the best connections. Not to say that it's broadband, just that it's better than a sharp stick in the eye.... for free.
I wonder if it would be possible to set up multiple systems and distribute the load? Six connections would do the trick.
My very-small-town local newspaper once had a lost and found number one could call to claim a certain amount of marijuana that had been found. Amusing, to say the least. Given the intelligence of criminals I always wondered if anybody tried to claim it.
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Sure, you have your GE's and such, but those mega-conglomerates are the exception rather than the rule.
which is why the video mentions the potential for assisting in more efficient ethanol production, which would then compete directly with oil.
Unions have done quite a bit of good for working conditions, as you have pointed out. However, their present usefulness does not even come close to the political and social power they currently possess. At present, it would seem that the job of the union is to extort money from their membership for political maneuvering that is well beyond the purview of worker protection. This is done in apparent conflict with American statute and legal precedent. In their spare time, the union exerts its collective bargaining power to the extreme detriment of both labor and industry by severely handicapping the ability of industry to remain competitive, leading to the "downsizing" (and eventual failure) of the industry on which labor relies. Case study: the American automobile industry. Now, I don't expect you Brits to understand this, as you live in an essentially socialist state with no real respect for the positive aspects of market forces.
The minimum wage, at best, is a worthless exercise in devaluing the nominal labor remuneration. At worst, it is an oppressive upheaval of the labor market hurting the most vulnerable wage earners, for whom the minimum wage is ostensibly created to help.
That would be the First Amendment to the US Constitution. (Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.)
By "the press", the authors of this amendment were certainly aware of pamphleteers as that was a very common method of "broadcasting" one's views. Inherently not free-as-in-beer.
IMO, the current campaign finance regime is blatantly unconstitutional. I have no idea how that garbage was upheld.
Also, they tried doing things without formal parties. Parties formed anyway. Political parties are a natural emanation of representative government, and thus, a necessary evil. Restricting parties only shifts the political dialog to third party groups. Anybody who wasn't in a coma for the last eight months knows how well third party ads respect civil discourse.
I say the living, breathing human citizens should have *SUPERIOR* rights to the invented body of collective action. And that merely giving unions a unfettered claim to one's job security invites such evil.
I'm guessing that's probably an "A-Team" reference, but I don't remember much about the episodes since they ran when I was quite young.
In college, I once made the mistake of retreating to the bowels of the library were there were about 4 other people on the whole floor. Almost no noise over the vent system. I was still distracted by the shuffling of papers, so I stuck my earplugs in. After a while I started to wonder what the heck I was still hearing.... my eyelids blinking. Jesus that was annoying.
That's not to say that I love, or even like Quickbooks very much. However, most accountants worth a damn will want you to use QB.
So, step 1: Find an accountant. Step 2: Acquire whatever software they say. Step 3:... Step 4: Profit.
As an aside, Saddam's Iraq has been shown (1),(2),(3) to have had widespread involvement with numerous terrorist groups.
From what I gather, GWB's insistence that Rumsfeld would be staying on for the remainder of his term was supposed to deflate the idea that voting Dem would actually accomplish anything, thus suppressing Dem turnout. Instead, what I think actually happened is that it just pissed the Dems off even more, and made a lot of frustrated Republicans stay home.
If I write a keygen that randomly spits out valid CD keys, I'm going to eventually come up with somebody else's key. When I enter that generated key, in the system that has been suggested, the original owner of the key is screwed.
Until somebody makes a keygen that comes up with "your" key, or somebody just steals your key outright (not impossible in a dorm setting.)
I can't be the only person who turns off almost all animations, right? I don't want Windows sucking even minimal performance out of my system. Animations are a pain when frequently switching programs, or when trying to use the UI when another program is taxing the system.
Some do. That's what I meant by "plain paper ballot", though these are certainly becoming rarer.
I stand corrected. I based this on an incident when some friends and I were in Toronto and the OPP needed to be called. A bystander who was talking to us made mention that she didn't have her ID (and she had moved, thus her address was also incorrect) and should probably go before the cops got there.
ID checking is a contentious issue. Unlike Canada (or other places), US citizens are not required to have ID. Some view ID-checking as a barrier to poorer (and often racial minority) voters as poor people might be less likely to have a driver's license, passport, or official state ID. (I think this is BS, but what do I know?) In my state (and possibly in all states?) a first time voter must show ID to the poll worker. Non-first time voters must merely tell the poll workers his/her name (and possibly party affiliation and address), and the poll workers check the voter roll to see if such a person exists and has not already voted. The voter signs a register, and the signature is compared to a file signature.
Particular voting mechanisms vary down to the county level. In my area, paper ballots are counted by an optical scanner. These machines were purchased less than two years ago to replace the aging lever style mechanical voting machines.
I am more comfortable with this mechanism since a physical artifact of my vote exists and can be re-counted if needed. Some areas use touch-screen pure electronic voting, others use plain paper ballots. I'm not sure if any areas still use the hole-punch ballots that caused all the ruckus in Florida in 2000.
... taste the same...
In at least some US states, a voter's name is removed from registration after failing to vote in several sequential major (ie, Congressional) elections. This is supposed to take care of the dead voter issue. However, an individual could request an absentee ballot using the name of a recently deceased person, and there is a very high probability that the local voter registration office would go ahead and mail out the ballot.
Then whoever mixed those albums onto CD ought to have included a few seconds of silence between "sides". Silence is used on current CDs, so it was merely an aesthetic mistake when the album was transferred. You could even correct this by ripping and burning your own customized "dark side" CD and inserting the silence where you deem it necessary.
No, I am currently not free to become a stain on life's floor. Under the Republican plan, you are just as free to keep your Social Security as is, and I would be somewhat more free to attempt to do better for myself than with a government-run pyramid scheme.
(playing my part here...)
Um... how is this an abuse of power? Seriously, what conceivable liberty could one lose if one wasn't a terrorist? This falls squarely into the "So F'ing what?!" category.
it didn't work too well in Ally McBeal. (God, what a terrible show.) The partners were sexist as ever.
I wonder if it would be possible to set up multiple systems and distribute the load? Six connections would do the trick.
My very-small-town local newspaper once had a lost and found number one could call to claim a certain amount of marijuana that had been found. Amusing, to say the least. Given the intelligence of criminals I always wondered if anybody tried to claim it.