Obama tried to close Gitmo, and congress wouldn't let him.
Sure he could have: "I swore a solemn oath to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. The Sixth Amendment specifically requires that all persons receive a speedy and public trial for any crimes they may have committed. Therefor, while I would have preferred to try the prisoners currently held in Guantanamo Bay for their crimes, with Congress preventing my from doing so in any court I am required by law to release them without charges."
That's the leverage that President Obama never used. If he had threatened to do so, Congressional Republicans would almost definitely have changed their tune about trying those prisoners. Ergo, he decided that there are prisoners in Guantanamo Bay that will under no circumstances be either released or tried in an open and fair court, but that the best way to avoid flak from loyal Democrats was to blame it on Congressional Republicans (who wanted to appear tough on terrorism to their constituents). The claim that Congress wouldn't let him, therefor, is a lie, albeit a very believable one.
He tried to include the public option, and congress wouldn't let him.
The health care act passed with absolutely no Republican support, including using budget reconciliation to get around Republican filibuster attempts in the Senate. If Obama had had a deal that the Republicans reneged on, he could have vetoed the bill and told his party allies in Congress to send him the bill he really wanted. Since he didn't, the only possibilities are (A) he got exactly the bill he wanted, and/or (B) he was not negotiating with congressional Republicans but congressional Democrats. As the sibling post alludes, it seems that the answer was that he got exactly the bill he wanted.
From my point of view as an independent, the battle in Washington is not Republicans versus Democrats or conservative versus liberal, but the 'bipartisan consensus' (forged in lobbying dollars) versus the people's real interests. And the people's real interests don't stand a chance.
Tim Berners-Lee: "Please show restraint with everyone's personal data." Shareholders: "Please find a way to monetize everyone's personal data as quickly as possible to increase our share price."
Last I checked, treaties are between governments. Between corporations, those are supposed to be contracts.
The difference is that treaties and governments are supposed to supersede any contracts (e.g. you can't expect a contract of indentured servitude to have any force in the US).
India is the closest thing that region has to a western democracy.
It of course depends a bit on how you define the region, but Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Nepal, and more recently Cambodia are all democracies largely modelled after the British government. Pakistan is at least in theory a democracy as well, although political violence is relatively common.
Always strikes me as funny that people who would happily pay a fortune for the right to drink from a spring that a bear shat in but refuse to drink tap water that has been filtered and monitored to hell and back.
If you're talking about bottled water, it's probably from a municipal water supply, just in a different part of the country. But you're right that tap water in developed countries is safer, cleaner, and (according to blind taste tests) tastier than any other kind of water you can get.
Most greywater systems focus on reusing the water for toilets. Who cares if it's safe to drink if you're just going to piss in it?
"consumers" and "employees" aren't separate groups. I'm not sure who suppliers are, but shareholders are also the first group when you consider that shareholders are just either individual investors or pools of retirement money.
This is flat wrong: - For a particular company, this is easy to tell: Lots of people buy Coca-Cola that don't work there. People who work making missiles for Lockheed don't buy missiles (at least not directly). Shareholders in Toyota don't necessarily buy Toyota cars and definitely don't all work there. - Even for the economy as a whole, the numbers don't work: 100% of Americans consume some things (e.g. food, clothing, shelter). 1% of Americans own nearly half of all investment instruments, another 19% own almost all of the rest, leaving 80% of Americans who are not shareholders in any significant way. Only about 65% of Americans over the age of 16 work, leaving 35% of Americans who are not employees.
So taxing shareholders is different than taxing employees is different than taxing consumers. Yes, in aggregate you are taxing people, but you are taxing different people based on what kind of tax you impose.
Actually, what really happened is that Tove threatened to kick the butt of everybody on the committee if they didn't pick Linus, because she's just that awesome.
But seriously, well-deserved, as the guy has had a huge impact on the future of operating systems and project management.
I don't understand corporate tax to begin with....I mean, it isn't something that a 'company' pays really, it just eventually falls through to the consumer of that company's product....
That's simply an oversimplification. Exactly who ends up paying what percentage of a tax varies a lot depending on the specific circumstances, and is an area of serious economic research. Wikipedia's article on tax incidence provides a pretty good overview, but the short answer is that extra taxes on corporations typically gets split between consumers (in the form of higher prices), employees (in the form of lower wages), suppliers (in the form of cuts), and shareholders (in the form of lower earnings).
This is important to point out, because the false belief that corporations just pass along all taxes benefits the minority of Americans who own significant amounts of stock. In 2007, 1% of Americans owned 43% of all financial assets, the next wealthiest 19% of Americans owned 50%, leaving just 7% for everybody else (source). So if you're a stockholder, you want taxes on corporations low, which means you'd really like to convince most people that taxes on corporations are just taxes on themselves so that they'll oppose taxes on corporations. In other words, it boils down to rich people saying "We want more money".
FOX=republican; NBC/CNN/CBS/ABC/PBS/NPR=democrat; talk radio=conservative; blogs reflect the views of the owner.
Actually, those don't seem to be quite right. Here are the biases I generally find in mainstream media: Fox - Republicans NBC, particularly MSNBC - Democrats CNN - Horse race: "Romney is polling at 48% and Obama is polling at 43%" "Romney has raised $X, Obama has raised $Y", etc without ever actually saying anything about why this might be true CBS, ABC - the Please Pay Attention To Us bias PBS, NPR - the Please Give us Money bias talk radio - conservative / libertarian Comedy Central - Somewhat liberal, but mostly funny bias
The reason why people might trust him is because he provided ammunition to those who believe that computer software should be proprietary products created by major corporations. Some people really think that, so they'd believe him because he confirmed their own biases which helped them prove to themselves how smart they are.
It would be sort of like believing somebody who claims (with no proof whatsoever) that Microsoft is using GPL'd code in its proprietary products and should be sued into oblivion - If I think that already, somebody else saying it gives me the feeling of "Hey, I'm right, and I'm smart!" (even though really I'm not necessarily right, and not smart about believing that person)
Here's where a CIO at a non-tech company can add value: By saving money in other departments. For instance, the CIO can come to the CEO and say "For $100,000, I can replace this process that's been handled by a team of 10 people with a computer and 1 person, resulting in an annual savings of $700,000." That should make the CEO very happy.
The problem, of course, is that that kind of work isn't as glamourous as pulling in new revenue, but reducing costs should be a good way to demonstrate value to the bottom line.
Here's some reasons that an executive needs at least a passable understanding of the skills of his subordinates: 1. Without that understanding, he's going to hire and promote the people with the skill to hoodwink the executive rather than the skill to lead the team they're in charge of. That not only means you end up with badly run departments, but also you end up with lousy morale from those who do actually know what they're doing. 2. The executive will have some clue what he's telling his subordinates to do, and what's feasible and what's not. That is vital to establishing his credibility with his subordinates, because without that credibility his subordinates won't follow him.
So I might not need to know all the intracacies of finance to manage the accounting department, but I absolutely have to know what the difference between EBIT and gross revenue is. I don't have to know all the techniques of sales to manage a sales team, but I should know enough about how salespeople work to be able to usefully direct them towards their goal. And with IT, I don't have to know how to correctly set up a firewall, but I should know what a firewall is and what it can and can't do for me. And if I'm a CEO, then I should have some of that knowledge about every department, so I can make sure that the team directly around me is one I can trust.
I should point out that the best CEOs did in fact make the effort to both understand the core of their business, and to know enough about the other departments to manage them effectively. For instance, Bill Gates really understands computer software, but he also has some knowledge of marketing techniques and reading balance sheets.
I'm at work, so I can't actually check the domain, but I'm guessing there's a Rule 35 opportunity lurking here (if it doesn't exist, it must be created).
Trouble is, that someone would have to make sure the law was really clear and covered all cases, which would start to look like legalese. And then introducing the bill would be suicidal.
The presumption is that some real estate developer wants the prime real estate the school sits on, and spread enough money around to make it happen.
So I assume the bribery investigation will be coming soon? I grant you, if you investigated public officials for taking bribes, there wouldn't be many left in office, but still...
Actually, it depends who they're talking to: To stockholders: "Yeah, we made millions" To anyone with a percentage of the profit: "Sorry, we lost $2 million on that one" To the IRS: "All our profits were in foreign countries, so we only have to pay taxes there"
In other words, their attitude should be something like this?
If the pilot's good, see. I mean, if he's really... sharp, he can barrel that baby in so low, you oughtta see it sometime, it's a sight. A big plane, like a '52, vroom! There's jet exhaust, flyin' chickens in the barnyard!
Unfortunately, skeptics also have a belief system with a problem: 1. By Godel Incompleteness Theorems, no matter what axioms you start with, there are unprovable but true statements to be made about mathematical systems. 2. Science can demonstrate that the universe follows laws which can be defined and understood mathematically. 3. By (1) and (2), there are true laws of the universe that can be defined mathematically but are not derivable from any mathematical understanding of the universe. 4. Ergo, believing only those things which can be demonstrated by science to be true necessarily means believing things to be not true that are in fact true.
I'm not saying that it's in any way wise to believe any old kook with an idea, but that you have to be skeptical of some skeptics. Specifically, beware the skeptic who refuses to believe that something happened that doesn't fit their worldview when there is strong evidence that it happened.
To give you an idea as to how important that essay was, it was specifically cited by Mohandes Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela. And of course the title has lent its name to most non-violent resistance movements.
it only takes one person with a cogent argument to disprove something. Science is not an exercise in consensus.
No, it takes one person with a demonstrably sound theory, plus repeated examination and testing by experiment from lots of other people.
For instance, it wasn't Einstein saying "Hey, look at me, I've explained the photoelectric effect". It was Einstein saying "Hey, I think I've got an explanation for the photoelectric effect. Is it right? Have at it." And it turned out that was right, and useful work. Einstein was wrong about some other things, which didn't in any way detract from the things he got right because he was willing to throw out ideas that were wrong.
It's not God, it's the Flying Spaghetti Monster pushing us down with his Noodly Appendages. That's why the first being created was a midget - he simply had more of the FSM's attention.
For what it's worth, my father and step-mother are in the north-eastern area of the country right now as a Peace Corps volunteer, and since they've settled in has had no real concerns about safety or riots or anything like that.
The basic problem in South Africa is that there are no jobs. And I don't mean 'no jobs' like the 20% unemployment that's common in US cities right now, I mean 'no jobs' like 80% unemployment, most people surviving off of government aid, and no startup capital available for investment. The private industries that have any presence at all in the area are tourism (hunting, safari adventures, etc), mining, and a few general stores. Now, the economy is growing, but it has a very very long way to go.
Slashdot Mirror
Obama tried to close Gitmo, and congress wouldn't let him.
Sure he could have:
"I swore a solemn oath to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. The Sixth Amendment specifically requires that all persons receive a speedy and public trial for any crimes they may have committed. Therefor, while I would have preferred to try the prisoners currently held in Guantanamo Bay for their crimes, with Congress preventing my from doing so in any court I am required by law to release them without charges."
That's the leverage that President Obama never used. If he had threatened to do so, Congressional Republicans would almost definitely have changed their tune about trying those prisoners. Ergo, he decided that there are prisoners in Guantanamo Bay that will under no circumstances be either released or tried in an open and fair court, but that the best way to avoid flak from loyal Democrats was to blame it on Congressional Republicans (who wanted to appear tough on terrorism to their constituents). The claim that Congress wouldn't let him, therefor, is a lie, albeit a very believable one.
He tried to include the public option, and congress wouldn't let him.
The health care act passed with absolutely no Republican support, including using budget reconciliation to get around Republican filibuster attempts in the Senate. If Obama had had a deal that the Republicans reneged on, he could have vetoed the bill and told his party allies in Congress to send him the bill he really wanted. Since he didn't, the only possibilities are (A) he got exactly the bill he wanted, and/or (B) he was not negotiating with congressional Republicans but congressional Democrats. As the sibling post alludes, it seems that the answer was that he got exactly the bill he wanted.
From my point of view as an independent, the battle in Washington is not Republicans versus Democrats or conservative versus liberal, but the 'bipartisan consensus' (forged in lobbying dollars) versus the people's real interests. And the people's real interests don't stand a chance.
Tim Berners-Lee: "Please show restraint with everyone's personal data."
Shareholders: "Please find a way to monetize everyone's personal data as quickly as possible to increase our share price."
Guess which one the CEO is going to listen to?
Last I checked, treaties are between governments. Between corporations, those are supposed to be contracts.
The difference is that treaties and governments are supposed to supersede any contracts (e.g. you can't expect a contract of indentured servitude to have any force in the US).
India is the closest thing that region has to a western democracy.
It of course depends a bit on how you define the region, but Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Nepal, and more recently Cambodia are all democracies largely modelled after the British government. Pakistan is at least in theory a democracy as well, although political violence is relatively common.
The first bio dome failed because the concrete consumed more oxygen then was previously believed.
And here I was thinking it was because Pauly Shore wasn't funny.
Always strikes me as funny that people who would happily pay a fortune for the right to drink from a spring that a bear shat in but refuse to drink tap water that has been filtered and monitored to hell and back.
If you're talking about bottled water, it's probably from a municipal water supply, just in a different part of the country. But you're right that tap water in developed countries is safer, cleaner, and (according to blind taste tests) tastier than any other kind of water you can get.
Most greywater systems focus on reusing the water for toilets. Who cares if it's safe to drink if you're just going to piss in it?
"consumers" and "employees" aren't separate groups. I'm not sure who suppliers are, but shareholders are also the first group when you consider that shareholders are just either individual investors or pools of retirement money.
This is flat wrong:
- For a particular company, this is easy to tell: Lots of people buy Coca-Cola that don't work there. People who work making missiles for Lockheed don't buy missiles (at least not directly). Shareholders in Toyota don't necessarily buy Toyota cars and definitely don't all work there.
- Even for the economy as a whole, the numbers don't work: 100% of Americans consume some things (e.g. food, clothing, shelter). 1% of Americans own nearly half of all investment instruments, another 19% own almost all of the rest, leaving 80% of Americans who are not shareholders in any significant way. Only about 65% of Americans over the age of 16 work, leaving 35% of Americans who are not employees.
So taxing shareholders is different than taxing employees is different than taxing consumers. Yes, in aggregate you are taxing people, but you are taxing different people based on what kind of tax you impose.
Actually, what really happened is that Tove threatened to kick the butt of everybody on the committee if they didn't pick Linus, because she's just that awesome.
But seriously, well-deserved, as the guy has had a huge impact on the future of operating systems and project management.
I don't understand corporate tax to begin with....I mean, it isn't something that a 'company' pays really, it just eventually falls through to the consumer of that company's product....
That's simply an oversimplification. Exactly who ends up paying what percentage of a tax varies a lot depending on the specific circumstances, and is an area of serious economic research. Wikipedia's article on tax incidence provides a pretty good overview, but the short answer is that extra taxes on corporations typically gets split between consumers (in the form of higher prices), employees (in the form of lower wages), suppliers (in the form of cuts), and shareholders (in the form of lower earnings).
This is important to point out, because the false belief that corporations just pass along all taxes benefits the minority of Americans who own significant amounts of stock. In 2007, 1% of Americans owned 43% of all financial assets, the next wealthiest 19% of Americans owned 50%, leaving just 7% for everybody else (source). So if you're a stockholder, you want taxes on corporations low, which means you'd really like to convince most people that taxes on corporations are just taxes on themselves so that they'll oppose taxes on corporations. In other words, it boils down to rich people saying "We want more money".
FOX=republican; NBC/CNN/CBS/ABC/PBS/NPR=democrat; talk radio=conservative; blogs reflect the views of the owner.
Actually, those don't seem to be quite right. Here are the biases I generally find in mainstream media:
Fox - Republicans
NBC, particularly MSNBC - Democrats
CNN - Horse race: "Romney is polling at 48% and Obama is polling at 43%" "Romney has raised $X, Obama has raised $Y", etc without ever actually saying anything about why this might be true
CBS, ABC - the Please Pay Attention To Us bias
PBS, NPR - the Please Give us Money bias
talk radio - conservative / libertarian
Comedy Central - Somewhat liberal, but mostly funny bias
The reason why people might trust him is because he provided ammunition to those who believe that computer software should be proprietary products created by major corporations. Some people really think that, so they'd believe him because he confirmed their own biases which helped them prove to themselves how smart they are.
It would be sort of like believing somebody who claims (with no proof whatsoever) that Microsoft is using GPL'd code in its proprietary products and should be sued into oblivion - If I think that already, somebody else saying it gives me the feeling of "Hey, I'm right, and I'm smart!" (even though really I'm not necessarily right, and not smart about believing that person)
Here's where a CIO at a non-tech company can add value: By saving money in other departments. For instance, the CIO can come to the CEO and say "For $100,000, I can replace this process that's been handled by a team of 10 people with a computer and 1 person, resulting in an annual savings of $700,000." That should make the CEO very happy.
The problem, of course, is that that kind of work isn't as glamourous as pulling in new revenue, but reducing costs should be a good way to demonstrate value to the bottom line.
We have a winner!
Here's some reasons that an executive needs at least a passable understanding of the skills of his subordinates:
1. Without that understanding, he's going to hire and promote the people with the skill to hoodwink the executive rather than the skill to lead the team they're in charge of. That not only means you end up with badly run departments, but also you end up with lousy morale from those who do actually know what they're doing.
2. The executive will have some clue what he's telling his subordinates to do, and what's feasible and what's not. That is vital to establishing his credibility with his subordinates, because without that credibility his subordinates won't follow him.
So I might not need to know all the intracacies of finance to manage the accounting department, but I absolutely have to know what the difference between EBIT and gross revenue is. I don't have to know all the techniques of sales to manage a sales team, but I should know enough about how salespeople work to be able to usefully direct them towards their goal. And with IT, I don't have to know how to correctly set up a firewall, but I should know what a firewall is and what it can and can't do for me. And if I'm a CEO, then I should have some of that knowledge about every department, so I can make sure that the team directly around me is one I can trust.
I should point out that the best CEOs did in fact make the effort to both understand the core of their business, and to know enough about the other departments to manage them effectively. For instance, Bill Gates really understands computer software, but he also has some knowledge of marketing techniques and reading balance sheets.
Wow, your post is a hoot! But what about homonyms of words I can't say such as 'you'?
I'm at work, so I can't actually check the domain, but I'm guessing there's a Rule 35 opportunity lurking here (if it doesn't exist, it must be created).
Trouble is, that someone would have to make sure the law was really clear and covered all cases, which would start to look like legalese. And then introducing the bill would be suicidal.
The presumption is that some real estate developer wants the prime real estate the school sits on, and spread enough money around to make it happen.
So I assume the bribery investigation will be coming soon? I grant you, if you investigated public officials for taking bribes, there wouldn't be many left in office, but still ...
Actually, it depends who they're talking to:
To stockholders: "Yeah, we made millions"
To anyone with a percentage of the profit: "Sorry, we lost $2 million on that one"
To the IRS: "All our profits were in foreign countries, so we only have to pay taxes there"
And so on.
In other words, their attitude should be something like this?
If the pilot's good, see. I mean, if he's really... sharp, he can barrel that baby in so low, you oughtta see it sometime, it's a sight. A big plane, like a '52, vroom! There's jet exhaust, flyin' chickens in the barnyard!
(reference)
Unfortunately, skeptics also have a belief system with a problem:
1. By Godel Incompleteness Theorems, no matter what axioms you start with, there are unprovable but true statements to be made about mathematical systems.
2. Science can demonstrate that the universe follows laws which can be defined and understood mathematically.
3. By (1) and (2), there are true laws of the universe that can be defined mathematically but are not derivable from any mathematical understanding of the universe.
4. Ergo, believing only those things which can be demonstrated by science to be true necessarily means believing things to be not true that are in fact true.
I'm not saying that it's in any way wise to believe any old kook with an idea, but that you have to be skeptical of some skeptics. Specifically, beware the skeptic who refuses to believe that something happened that doesn't fit their worldview when there is strong evidence that it happened.
I'm very surprised you haven't made mention of the guy who best articulated the importance of breaking unjust laws:
Henry David Thoreau: Civil Disobedience
To give you an idea as to how important that essay was, it was specifically cited by Mohandes Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela. And of course the title has lent its name to most non-violent resistance movements.
it only takes one person with a cogent argument to disprove something. Science is not an exercise in consensus.
No, it takes one person with a demonstrably sound theory, plus repeated examination and testing by experiment from lots of other people.
For instance, it wasn't Einstein saying "Hey, look at me, I've explained the photoelectric effect". It was Einstein saying "Hey, I think I've got an explanation for the photoelectric effect. Is it right? Have at it." And it turned out that was right, and useful work. Einstein was wrong about some other things, which didn't in any way detract from the things he got right because he was willing to throw out ideas that were wrong.
I'm confused: When did Miller, Bud and Coors start selling beer? I thought their product was slightly alcoholic water.
It's not God, it's the Flying Spaghetti Monster pushing us down with his Noodly Appendages. That's why the first being created was a midget - he simply had more of the FSM's attention.
For what it's worth, my father and step-mother are in the north-eastern area of the country right now as a Peace Corps volunteer, and since they've settled in has had no real concerns about safety or riots or anything like that.
The basic problem in South Africa is that there are no jobs. And I don't mean 'no jobs' like the 20% unemployment that's common in US cities right now, I mean 'no jobs' like 80% unemployment, most people surviving off of government aid, and no startup capital available for investment. The private industries that have any presence at all in the area are tourism (hunting, safari adventures, etc), mining, and a few general stores. Now, the economy is growing, but it has a very very long way to go.