Did you know that in 2000, Bush got more votes from working people than Gore did? Poor and middle-class voters who voted for Bush far outnumbered the wealthy who voted for him.
Sure they did. Many of those people were voting America's two big divisive issues: gun control and abortion. Dean takes the NRA endorsement back to the Democrats if he's nominated.
Add that to the 2,200,000 registered voters who had jobs in mid-2000 but now don't have anything better to do on a Tuesday than take out their frustration at the poling booth, along with their friends, neighbors, and families.
Dean is likely to capture the center in a broad-based political sense, too.
He's got better scores from the NRA (100%) than Bush.
He knows how to spin healthcare reform to people who are losing their health insurance.
If both Osama and Saddam aren't captured, and/or if that $87 billion runs out and the DoD needs more, next summer Dean can really twist the knife with very powerful ads.
And, I'm not sure I believe that 9/11 is going to make NASCAR dads the new soccer moms. Women are indicating an early increased interest in this election as much as men are.
Far from `forgetting' that jobless rates were getting worse.... Now, the economy is booming, and job creation... is occurring at record rates.
So, then, explain why the unemployment rate was lower in March than it is now. Must be all that trickle-down from the tax cuts.
I'm also fascinated by your insistence on pulling the word `socialism' into the debate. Why don't you tell us, then: Do you think socialism works? Do you think it is the solution the US should pursue? Do you think Dean will bring the US closer to socialism, if elected?
What the hell do you think Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are? Objectivism?
The United States is already socialist and has been since the imposition of the income tax. The only question is a matter of defgree, in particular, how regressive or progressive the socialist "redistribution of wealth" actually is in practice. Right now, it's about as regressive as it gets, and IMHO only our very strong but rapidly emigrating industrial base is proping us up.
You and your supply-side trickle-down ilk have been brainwashed by the rich to lobby for more tax cuts, for them, of course. They tell you all kinds of things about how you deserve a $300 check from a plan that gives them around 10% cut on their top bracket. Or perhaps you are one of those rich in question, in which case you are selling out the future of your country.
To answer your question directly, I think progressive socialism works, but the kind of regressive socialism we've had under Bush shrinks the middle class and balloons the debt. I think the U.S. should immediatly adopt a two-bracket income tax with (1) the bottom bracket being 0%, as in the Scandinavian countries, (2) the top bracket beginning at 10% above the median wage, as in Sweden's national income tax, and (3) the top bracket percentage set to the value that would balance the budget and pay down the national debt over ten years. Moreover, I think we should adopt a Canadian-style single-payer health care system, expand Head Start into universal daycare, and provide universal tuition grants for all public university students. Furthermore, I think we should also prop up teacher salaries in those areas where local property taxes are so sparse that they can't compete.
If you doubt my numbers, why don't you ask someone who lives there and isn't being paid by DCI to astroturf more tax cuts for the rich? There are plenty of Swedes on the net.
Sweden: 22 persons per square kilometer, mostly concentrated in cities
U.S.: 32 persons per square kilometer, mostly concentrated in cities (bigger cities)
You really think that explains why they have 3.5 more years of average lifespan? Why their infant mortality is a third of the U.S.'s? How can population density explain why they have less than 1% unsatisfied daycare demand? How does being more rural explain why they don't charge money for college education and comprehensive healthcare?
Oh, that's right, they get those things because they have that terrible scorge of socialism.
Perhaps you don't see the reasons why the U.S. is so "diverse" that Wal-mart can contract illegal immigrant labor being paid below minimum wage on a massive scale. If the U.S. had that dreaded socialism, there wouldn't be so much economic diversity.
If you and your trickle-down ilk continue to shrink the middle class and balloon the national debt, you consign us all to riots and massive interest rate spikes. Do you remember what David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's first budget director, said about supply side economics? "Pigs feeding at the public trough," IIRC.
Have you checked the value of the U.S. dollar lately? You might be surprised to note that your hallowed leader's spending and borrowing habits are beginning to be factored in by international currency traders.
what, exactly, as counter evidence?... A Reuter's report quoting ``Save the Children'', a left-wing NGO, and Joshua Micah Marshall, a democratic party blogger.
If you can't argue the facts, attack the messengers?
joblessness has dropped from 6.4% to 5.9% in just six months
One point you don't seem to be taking into account, Neocon, is that the "unemployment rate" as reported by the BLS only represents the number of people who are activly looking for work, and disregards those who have given up and gone on food stamps or moved back in with parents to live off eBay or Google Answers. There are 3,000,000 fewer jobs in the U.S. now than there were in 2000. Most of those people are no longer represented in the unemployment rate, but if history is any guide, they will vote against Bush in numbers far above the turnout percentages of the population at large. This against a backdrop of 50% approval ratings for Bush, the lowest since 9/11.
I hope those two quarters of growth with unemployment higher than it was in March keep away your nightmares of terrible, terrible socialism, Neocon.
In addition to the quality-of-life measures already pointed out (longevity, infant mortality, poverty, literacy, unemployment, inflation, debt, purchasing power, healthcare, daycare, college costs), I should also point out that socialist Sweden, with the top marginal tax rate in the world, has a vibrant economy at all business sizes, from sole-propietorships (i.e., no mom-and-pop-killing Wal-Marts because no lower class to exploit for cheap labor), up through multinationals (e.g. Ikea, Ericsson, Volvo, Saab.)
Look out! Socialism is gunna getcha, Neocon! Better find some more paid propagandists to brainwash you back into a Limbaughian oxycontin-fueled stupor!
your misreading of OMB figures (such as describing a nearly 10% decrease in unemployment as a `jobless recovery'
Those wishful OMB figures are projections, whereas the jobless recovery is the fact on the gound, right now. You can hope all you want that trickle-down policies will hire those newly unemployed three million by next November, but it's not looking good.
last year the government of Sweden admitted that Sweden's economy is in such bad shape that were Sweden to become the 51st state of the US, it would not only be the poorest state of the union, but Swedes as an ethnic group would be the poorest
Nonsense, the Swedish government said no such thing. Your right-wing propagandist on "Tech Central Station - where free markets meet technology" made the glaring error in his lede of comparing per-capita median income without denominating the comparison with the cost of living in the respective countries. If he had done so, he would have had to admit that Swedish household purchasing power is on par with that of the U.S. Reputable news organizations such as Reuters frequently report Sweden scoring tops on aggregate quality-of-life rankings.
But don't take my word for it, or Reuters, why don't you see what the CIA says about Sweden's poverty rate?
you're double counting here, since you already counted that $89 billion just two paragraphs earlier
Sorry, I don't follow you. Net interest on the national debt is projected by the OMB to be $260 billion in 2008. Subtract the $171 billion from FY2002 and you get $89 billion, a 50% increase.
All those T-bills will make the debt market look quite a bit different, and raise interest rates a lot more than 0.6%.
the last six months alone, joblessness has dropped from 6.4% to 5.9%, and there are no reasons to believe this drop won't continue apace.
Neocon, you didn't answer any of Khasim's questions.
I would be unimpressed with a six-month record over a ten-year period to begin with, but perhaps you should check the November unimployment initial claims numbers out yesterday before bragging on those numbers.
Your substantive errors in this thread are addressed in another post.
So projections of debt, based on assumptions that the economy will remain static, form the entire basis of your argument.... That is, after all, a more or less outright admission that you pick which statistics to believe....
Well, let's have a look at the OMB's own projections (table 4). There we see that the GDP growth in real dollars is expected to rise to, and then hold steady at, 4.9% to 5.0% (and the unemployment rate is expected to fall from 5.9% to 5.1%, ha ha.)
But have a look back at the bottom of table 4: even though the interest on the national debt increases $89 billion, or about 50%, the interest on 10-year Treasury bills only rises from 4.7% to 5.3%, or an increase of only 13%! Someone desperatly needs to get Robert Rubin back from Citibank -- at least he understood the extent that changes in the national debt put pressure on interest rates.
That this is so is confirmed by your repeating claims about jobless numbers which haven't been true for months now.
Look again, U.S. unemployment apparently gave back several months' gains if November's new claims numbers are to be believed. But even if the rate holds at October levels, you and your trickle-down ilk have engineered and amazingly jobless recovery. Congradulations and good luck with those 3 million newly jobless next November.
I would argue that when I work all day for money to feed, house, and clothe myself and my family, that money is mine, and if the government wants to take it away, it better have a... reason.
The reason is that your money isn't worth a thing if everyone is too sick to transact with it because of lack of health care, or too stupid to obtain the goods and services you want because of lack of education, or too afraid to go to the market because of lack of law enforcement, or it's too worthless because of inflation because of unsound fiscal policy. You can not economically ignore your environment, of which you are an integral part. Or: no man is an island.
And that's even before we consider the obvious fact that these dollars do a lot more for the economy and everyone else as well if they are left to the individual
Tell that to Sweden. They have the highest marginal tax rates of any country in the world (and interestingly, less than half of all Swedes pay income tax because of their progressive, two-bracket system which goes from 0% to 57% starting at salaries 10% above mean.) They also have the longest life expectancy and the lowest infant mortality in the world, along with low (4%) unemployment, low (2.2%) inflation, low national debt, free college education, free daycare, single-payer health care (no uninsured), poverty rates around 0.2%, literacy rates as high as they get in Europe, and per-capita spending power on par with the U.S.
Ooooh, it's scary Socialism, going to drive you out of house and home, run away!
Typical work-study students can shelf-read at around two feet per minute. If only one student is working shelfreading 2 hours per day, that's 1,200 shelf-feet per week, or 36,000 shelf-feet per academic year. U. Chicago holds 7 million volumes, so 20 years is about what that one 10 hr/wk job would take.
Sheesh, which is worse: lazy work-study students that don't reshelve properly, or a university administration that holds lavish parties for professors with huge salaries, but doesn't hire more than one 1/4-time shelf-reader at a time?
SCO filed a supplementary motion to expand the time (push back the deadline) for the discovery IBM is trying to compel. These kinds of things are almost always granted once, so forget about anything useful until the end of the month.
When I had trouble with Comcast billing (charged for a full-service PC install when I refused to let the tech put their crappy adware all over my PC) I went to the Yahoo Finance stock corporation profile for Comcast to find the name and FAX number for their executives. Then I started taking names: Call customer service, ask to be "reconnected" with supervisor, get call center location and supervisor's name for records, then explain that I'm taking notes and intend to FAX a copy of the results of my complaint to:
C. Michael Armstrong, Chairman
Brian Roberts, CEO
Phone: (215) 665-1700
Fax: (215) 981-7790
I was put on hold for about 4 minutes, then told I was being given a full credit for the disputed amount. I was actually given an additional credit for six months of service, and when I ended up moving before the end of that six months, I got a real refund check for the balance.
You've got to be quite threatening to get through to customer service call center attendants these days.
why do you need a law against doing unlawful things in the first place?
In this case, violators of California's "unfair business practices" statutes, which as you point out basically means a business violating nearly any other law, are subject to additional procedural remedies and methods of recovery.
In other words, that law makes it easier to sue and collect from businesses, especially when they are doing particularly nasty things.
Compare to Deleware, where it is almost impossible to sue and collect from a corporation, which is why it is such a popular state for incorporation.
Right, so I should have said: Just over half the Swedes don't pay national income tax, and in some regions, more than half don't pay any regional income tax either. I completely forgot about the VAT, which is a horribly regressive sales tax.
Re:When I remember Poland...
on
Who Owns The Facts?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
it wasn't freedom that people fought for. It was the shiny shop shelves bending under weight of wares, it was fast cars, big luxury houses that most of the people who fought thought they would have. Their mistake as to the character of capitalism appeared shortly after, and homeless, redundant, criminals came as a shock. Nobody who came from the US with a bag of dollars ever mentioned them. Nobody mentioned that people may die because they can't aford medicine; they can freeze to death because real estate agents get hold of empty houses and offer them for sale for the rich. Nobody thought they would burn alive because of home-made coal heating, because they can't afford gas for central heating.
Some people earned lots. Some lost all.
Not to mention most of state-funded institutions. Nowadays the best teenagers can do is to go and rob someone, watch TV, and drink beer. Build your own RC car? How? Tools! Parts! Knowledge! Cost! Completely beyond reach.
Most of Eastern Europe fell from inefficient communism into brutal capitalism because of all the money to be made (for the very few rich), when what they needed was the efficient socialism of, e.g., Sweden.
In Sweden, most people don't pay taxes, which are income based in two brackets -- the bottom bracket pays 0%, and the upper bracket, which begins at 10% above the mean wage earned amounts to a tax of 57% of the portion of income above that level. As you might imagine, Sweden's system compresses almost everyone into the middle class while still allowing for plenty of incentive. This has resulted in an economy that looks perfect from the perspective of a capitalist or communist nation, with ultra-low unemployment, inflation, national debt, poverty, and infant mortality, and ultra-high longevity, per-capita spending power, and literacy. They have a thriving economy at all sizes of business, from sole-proprietorships to multinationals (e.g., Ikea, Volvo, Ericsson.) Sweden frequently ranks as the #1 place in the world to live on aggregate quality-of-life rankings.
I don't understand why so many of the post-communist countries aren't following Sweden's lead.
Until we get good stellar-occluding interferometers and coronagraphs, we
can't be sure. Once we get those in place, it becomes possible to determine
the atmospheric composition (i.e., O2, H2O, N2, etc.)
The linkfarms have gotten incredibly good at appearing as legitimate sites to the pagerank algorithm. You might immediatly see that they are "really crappy," but try writing a computer program that can.
I've seen blogspam that plagerizes whole posts from other authors on other blogs with similar topics! That's pretty sophisticated, and nearly impossible to defeat.
Why did they pick Cuba for this purpose? I can understand them not taking the prisoners to the US, but, at a minimum, a nation that was a member of the "coalition" would be appropriate. Of all places to choose, Cuba seems to be among the most suspicious and most suceptible to contraversy, of practically anywhere in the world.
Republican hawks believe that using Guantanamo Bay "sends a message of strength." They make no secret that they want to continually push the boundaries of acceptable U.S. military behavior in many respects, from ignoring international laws (remember, Reagan's Navy mined Nicraguan harbors) to the occasional unilateral invasion now and then (Granada, Panama, Lybia, Iraq, etc.), and to make a big show of it. In doing so, they lower the acceptable standards of behavior of the U.S. so they can get away with more when it serves their purposes.
Some of us in the U.S. consider that kind of thing dispicable and against everything this country was founded to protect, but most people don't learn enough to care either way.
Japan, up until the past year, was more-or-less the opposite, where politicians could score points by arbitrarily constraining the JDF in some abstract way.
It's Fred's account. No law prevents AOL from telling Fred what number his account has logged in from.
I used to work as 3rd-level tech support at an American ISP, and I'd guess at AOL it is probably policy to divulge ANI phone numbers upon request when an account is reported compromised, as long as the caller can recite their credit card number or some other form of verbal ID. I bet AOL helps owners and cops find at least dozens of stolen laptops each year this way.
The laptop and its data was stolen from a contractor, who probably didn't have Entrust (or whatever) data encryption which is standard for corporate IT at financial institutions. It was probably just an ordinary personal laptop, or a loaner without Entrust activated, and Wells' only protection for the data was an ordinary NDA, which was probably adhered to by the contractor as long as he, for instance, "held the confidental data in the same confidence and with the same protections afforded contractor's own most confidential information."
I predict bank contractors all over the country are learning about Entrust over the next few weeks. It's like cfs, only under Win32 and with likely backdoors and corporate centralization of administration and key escrow and big brother (anyone's management chain can gets summaries of all their underling's files updated whenever they touch the server e.g.)
Slashdot Mirror
Sure they did. Many of those people were voting America's two big divisive issues: gun control and abortion. Dean takes the NRA endorsement back to the Democrats if he's nominated.
Add that to the 2,200,000 registered voters who had jobs in mid-2000 but now don't have anything better to do on a Tuesday than take out their frustration at the poling booth, along with their friends, neighbors, and families.
Dean is likely to capture the center in a broad-based political sense, too.
Maybe, maybe not:
And, I'm not sure I believe that 9/11 is going to make NASCAR dads the new soccer moms. Women are indicating an early increased interest in this election as much as men are.
Think again.
So, then, explain why the unemployment rate was lower in March than it is now. Must be all that trickle-down from the tax cuts.
What the hell do you think Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are? Objectivism?
The United States is already socialist and has been since the imposition of the income tax. The only question is a matter of defgree, in particular, how regressive or progressive the socialist "redistribution of wealth" actually is in practice. Right now, it's about as regressive as it gets, and IMHO only our very strong but rapidly emigrating industrial base is proping us up.
You and your supply-side trickle-down ilk have been brainwashed by the rich to lobby for more tax cuts, for them, of course. They tell you all kinds of things about how you deserve a $300 check from a plan that gives them around 10% cut on their top bracket. Or perhaps you are one of those rich in question, in which case you are selling out the future of your country.
To answer your question directly, I think progressive socialism works, but the kind of regressive socialism we've had under Bush shrinks the middle class and balloons the debt. I think the U.S. should immediatly adopt a two-bracket income tax with (1) the bottom bracket being 0%, as in the Scandinavian countries, (2) the top bracket beginning at 10% above the median wage, as in Sweden's national income tax, and (3) the top bracket percentage set to the value that would balance the budget and pay down the national debt over ten years. Moreover, I think we should adopt a Canadian-style single-payer health care system, expand Head Start into universal daycare, and provide universal tuition grants for all public university students. Furthermore, I think we should also prop up teacher salaries in those areas where local property taxes are so sparse that they can't compete.
Sweden: 22 persons per square kilometer, mostly concentrated in cities
U.S.: 32 persons per square kilometer, mostly concentrated in cities (bigger cities)
You really think that explains why they have 3.5 more years of average lifespan? Why their infant mortality is a third of the U.S.'s? How can population density explain why they have less than 1% unsatisfied daycare demand? How does being more rural explain why they don't charge money for college education and comprehensive healthcare?
Oh, that's right, they get those things because they have that terrible scorge of socialism.
Perhaps you don't see the reasons why the U.S. is so "diverse" that Wal-mart can contract illegal immigrant labor being paid below minimum wage on a massive scale. If the U.S. had that dreaded socialism, there wouldn't be so much economic diversity.
If you and your trickle-down ilk continue to shrink the middle class and balloon the national debt, you consign us all to riots and massive interest rate spikes. Do you remember what David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's first budget director, said about supply side economics? "Pigs feeding at the public trough," IIRC.
Have you checked the value of the U.S. dollar lately? You might be surprised to note that your hallowed leader's spending and borrowing habits are beginning to be factored in by international currency traders.
If you can't argue the facts, attack the messengers?
Are you forgetting that back in March before the Iraq war, the U.S. unemployment rate was 5.8% ?
One point you don't seem to be taking into account, Neocon, is that the "unemployment rate" as reported by the BLS only represents the number of people who are activly looking for work, and disregards those who have given up and gone on food stamps or moved back in with parents to live off eBay or Google Answers. There are 3,000,000 fewer jobs in the U.S. now than there were in 2000. Most of those people are no longer represented in the unemployment rate, but if history is any guide, they will vote against Bush in numbers far above the turnout percentages of the population at large. This against a backdrop of 50% approval ratings for Bush, the lowest since 9/11.
I hope those two quarters of growth with unemployment higher than it was in March keep away your nightmares of terrible, terrible socialism, Neocon.
Look out! Socialism is gunna getcha, Neocon! Better find some more paid propagandists to brainwash you back into a Limbaughian oxycontin-fueled stupor!
Those wishful OMB figures are projections, whereas the jobless recovery is the fact on the gound, right now. You can hope all you want that trickle-down policies will hire those newly unemployed three million by next November, but it's not looking good.
Nonsense, the Swedish government said no such thing. Your right-wing propagandist on "Tech Central Station - where free markets meet technology" made the glaring error in his lede of comparing per-capita median income without denominating the comparison with the cost of living in the respective countries. If he had done so, he would have had to admit that Swedish household purchasing power is on par with that of the U.S. Reputable news organizations such as Reuters frequently report Sweden scoring tops on aggregate quality-of-life rankings.
But don't take my word for it, or Reuters, why don't you see what the CIA says about Sweden's poverty rate?
Sorry, I don't follow you. Net interest on the national debt is projected by the OMB to be $260 billion in 2008. Subtract the $171 billion from FY2002 and you get $89 billion, a 50% increase. All those T-bills will make the debt market look quite a bit different, and raise interest rates a lot more than 0.6%.
Keep wishing. We'll see in November.
I would be unimpressed with a six-month record over a ten-year period to begin with, but perhaps you should check the November unimployment initial claims numbers out yesterday before bragging on those numbers.
Your substantive errors in this thread are addressed in another post.
Well, let's have a look at the OMB's own projections (table 4). There we see that the GDP growth in real dollars is expected to rise to, and then hold steady at, 4.9% to 5.0% (and the unemployment rate is expected to fall from 5.9% to 5.1%, ha ha.)
Even with these rosy assumptions, the deficit still only gets down to $213 billion, much larger than 2002 levels, and then starts rising again! Perhaps this is because those huge deficits cause the projected net interest to rise from $171 billion to $260 billion.
But have a look back at the bottom of table 4: even though the interest on the national debt increases $89 billion, or about 50%, the interest on 10-year Treasury bills only rises from 4.7% to 5.3%, or an increase of only 13%! Someone desperatly needs to get Robert Rubin back from Citibank -- at least he understood the extent that changes in the national debt put pressure on interest rates.
Look again, U.S. unemployment apparently gave back several months' gains if November's new claims numbers are to be believed. But even if the rate holds at October levels, you and your trickle-down ilk have engineered and amazingly jobless recovery. Congradulations and good luck with those 3 million newly jobless next November.
The reason is that your money isn't worth a thing if everyone is too sick to transact with it because of lack of health care, or too stupid to obtain the goods and services you want because of lack of education, or too afraid to go to the market because of lack of law enforcement, or it's too worthless because of inflation because of unsound fiscal policy. You can not economically ignore your environment, of which you are an integral part. Or: no man is an island.
Tell that to Sweden. They have the highest marginal tax rates of any country in the world (and interestingly, less than half of all Swedes pay income tax because of their progressive, two-bracket system which goes from 0% to 57% starting at salaries 10% above mean.) They also have the longest life expectancy and the lowest infant mortality in the world, along with low (4%) unemployment, low (2.2%) inflation, low national debt, free college education, free daycare, single-payer health care (no uninsured), poverty rates around 0.2%, literacy rates as high as they get in Europe, and per-capita spending power on par with the U.S.
Ooooh, it's scary Socialism, going to drive you out of house and home, run away!
This would be a dupe, if it weren't for the two different (nearby) universities.
Sheesh, which is worse: lazy work-study students that don't reshelve properly, or a university administration that holds lavish parties for professors with huge salaries, but doesn't hire more than one 1/4-time shelf-reader at a time?
SCO filed a supplementary motion to expand the time (push back the deadline) for the discovery IBM is trying to compel. These kinds of things are almost always granted once, so forget about anything useful until the end of the month.
Scientists might not be united that humans are the cause of global warming, but the U.S. government head atmospheric scientists are.
Phone: (215) 665-1700
Fax: (215) 981-7790
I was put on hold for about 4 minutes, then told I was being given a full credit for the disputed amount. I was actually given an additional credit for six months of service, and when I ended up moving before the end of that six months, I got a real refund check for the balance.
You've got to be quite threatening to get through to customer service call center attendants these days.
In this case, violators of California's "unfair business practices" statutes, which as you point out basically means a business violating nearly any other law, are subject to additional procedural remedies and methods of recovery.
In other words, that law makes it easier to sue and collect from businesses, especially when they are doing particularly nasty things.
Compare to Deleware, where it is almost impossible to sue and collect from a corporation, which is why it is such a popular state for incorporation.
At a rate of $25,000 per second the cents columns don't mean much.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm told that Sweden's unemployment is 4% and national debt is 30% of annual GDP, or about US$7500 per capita.
Right, so I should have said: Just over half the Swedes don't pay national income tax, and in some regions, more than half don't pay any regional income tax either. I completely forgot about the VAT, which is a horribly regressive sales tax.
Most of Eastern Europe fell from inefficient communism into brutal capitalism because of all the money to be made (for the very few rich), when what they needed was the efficient socialism of, e.g., Sweden.
In Sweden, most people don't pay taxes, which are income based in two brackets -- the bottom bracket pays 0%, and the upper bracket, which begins at 10% above the mean wage earned amounts to a tax of 57% of the portion of income above that level. As you might imagine, Sweden's system compresses almost everyone into the middle class while still allowing for plenty of incentive. This has resulted in an economy that looks perfect from the perspective of a capitalist or communist nation, with ultra-low unemployment, inflation, national debt, poverty, and infant mortality, and ultra-high longevity, per-capita spending power, and literacy. They have a thriving economy at all sizes of business, from sole-proprietorships to multinationals (e.g., Ikea, Volvo, Ericsson.) Sweden frequently ranks as the #1 place in the world to live on aggregate quality-of-life rankings.
I don't understand why so many of the post-communist countries aren't following Sweden's lead.
Here are Terrestrial Planet Finder links at:
I've seen blogspam that plagerizes whole posts from other authors on other blogs with similar topics! That's pretty sophisticated, and nearly impossible to defeat.
Republican hawks believe that using Guantanamo Bay "sends a message of strength." They make no secret that they want to continually push the boundaries of acceptable U.S. military behavior in many respects, from ignoring international laws (remember, Reagan's Navy mined Nicraguan harbors) to the occasional unilateral invasion now and then (Granada, Panama, Lybia, Iraq, etc.), and to make a big show of it. In doing so, they lower the acceptable standards of behavior of the U.S. so they can get away with more when it serves their purposes.
Some of us in the U.S. consider that kind of thing dispicable and against everything this country was founded to protect, but most people don't learn enough to care either way.
Japan, up until the past year, was more-or-less the opposite, where politicians could score points by arbitrarily constraining the JDF in some abstract way.
I used to work as 3rd-level tech support at an American ISP, and I'd guess at AOL it is probably policy to divulge ANI phone numbers upon request when an account is reported compromised, as long as the caller can recite their credit card number or some other form of verbal ID. I bet AOL helps owners and cops find at least dozens of stolen laptops each year this way.
I predict bank contractors all over the country are learning about Entrust over the next few weeks. It's like cfs, only under Win32 and with likely backdoors and corporate centralization of administration and key escrow and big brother (anyone's management chain can gets summaries of all their underling's files updated whenever they touch the server e.g.)