Do the "UC Officials" realize that J. does not use email? I suspect she doesn't even know how to use a computer. I'm not convinced someone like that is really suited to run a university system, where students should have those skills, and are in an environment where communicating electronically is essential.
The law is not supposed to punish the government for doing things we've authorized them to do.
I think the jury is still out over whether "we've" authorized them to do what they did or not. The secret court made a secret decision that expanded the original authorization to one that a lot more expansive. I think there is a good argument to be made that they went beyond their authorization.
Be that as it may, the insiders are never held accountable like the rest of us are. Do you think James Clapper will get the same punishment as Martha Stewart?
You HAVE to be kidding me. You do not think that AQ or taliban is a threat to America? You do not think that 9/11 occurred? And the fact that the Chinese, Iranian, North Koreans, and even Russians (quasi issue here) are spying on us with a full court press is not an issue? Seriously? If you think that they are not a threat, then you have an issue with your logic. Or should I be asking, what nation you are from?
Al Queida? Really? There are plenty of "threats" to national security. As I said, protecting from those threats must not compromise the rule of law, and the rights of American citizens. This level of domestic spying does just that. And since it's not even effective enough to prevent things like the Boston Marathon bombing, there is no reason to violate people's rights for it. In fact, there is no justification for violating the Constitutional restrictions on the Federal government's authority, even for the claimed purpose of "protecting the American people."
And you claim that the constitution has been violated, yet, you provide ZERO proof of it. All you have is a bunch of accusations, with no proof.
Apparently, you haven't read it. There is ample evidence that the Fourth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, the First Amendment, and the Enumerated Powers in Article 1 have all been violated.
The Fourth Amendment obliges the government to demonstrate probable cause before conducting invasive surveillance. The government has made a mockery of that protection by relying on select Supreme Court cases, decided before the era of the public Internet and cellphones, to argue that citizens have no expectation of privacy in either phone metadata or in e-mails or other private electronic messages that it stores with third parties. This hairsplitting is inimical to privacy and contrary to what at least five justices ruled just last year in a case called United States v. Jones. One of the most conservative justices on the Court, Samuel A. Alito Jr., wrote that where even public information about individuals is monitored over the long term, at some point, government crosses a line and must comply with the protections of the Fourth Amendment. That principle is, if anything, even more true for Americans’ sensitive nonpublic information like phone metadata and social networking activity.
BTW, I asked how YOU would safeguard this, and yet, you come up with NOTHING? Why not?
Safeguard what? America? That's up to the Americans, not secret spy networks. You know what it really takes to prevent another 9/11? Do it once. That's it. As soon as word got out on 9/11 of planes being flown into buildings, the fourth plane could not be used the same way. The so-called "shoe bomber" was stopped by citizens on the plane. Same thing for the underwear bomber. Secret spying and TSA didn't do anything to stop that, the People did. You should trust them, not the liars, thieves, and elitist bullies in the Federal government.
Sensenbrenner is trash, but I don't see where he really "claimed O was behind this", he is, however, claiming the program went too far, and he didn't know how far, apparently, because he wasn't in the right meetings. But Snowden's documents have shown that even the Intelligence committee was not informed about everything going on, although there were "lawmakers from both houses" briefed. A total of 8, according to leaked documents.
The interesting part about this is that even Sensenbrenner, who loved the PATRIOT ACT and all this federal power and secrecy, thinks the PRISM and NSA programs go too far. That's a pretty stunning indictment.
Rand Paul is not a neo-con. There is no credible definition of that term I have EVER seen that would apply to Rand Paul. I guess you're just using it to mean "anybody on the right," but that's not how it's typically used. Rand is on the side of liberal Democrats more often than he is on the side of the neo-cons.
That Piece of Trash
Paul? Fuck you, you piece of stinking garbage. I know Rand, and he has more honor in his pinky than you have ever thought of exhibiting in your entire life.
sits on Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (starting 2011). IOW, the senate version of what Sensenbrenner is on. He has almost certainly known for the last 2 years.
Nope, as pointed out, the NSA revealed this information very selectively, the committee did not know the extent of it. Didn't you hear about Clapper actually lying to committees when questioned about it?
I could continue on and on, but what is the point of it? The fact is, that the outrage by the neo-cons, is just another made up garbage.
It is, you made it up. There is no outrage from the neo-cons, only from the civil libertarians. You lumping the two together just shows your ignorance. You might as well stop now.
However, this one has backing with far left, and Libertarians, all of whom have NO idea of what is really going on.
I don't really know what you're trying to say, here.
And just because you say that is the case, does not make it so.
Back at you, with your "well there are safeguards and rules, they're secret, but they work." Because you say it is the case? I think there is ample reason not to trust those statements, considering the credibility of those such as Clapper and Pence, and other reasons, as I have pointed out.
Or are you trying to claim that we do not know if they are doing their job?
Of course we don't, and they claim they need privacy, not transparency. That's suspicious right there, and from a group that has a history of using secrecy to hide abuses.
Keep in mind that we do not want to tell those legitimate targets that we are looking in, that we are doing this.
What targets? Is that secret too? All Mike Pence says is that they are "bad guys." To me, the bad guys are mainly right there in the building where Mike Pence works. I think Mike Pence is talking about US Citizens, that seems to be the target. Irregardless of who they are trying to catch, the end does not justify the means. They claim to be "protecting the American people," but when they do that by lying, and hiding secrets, I doubt their sincerity. Besides, their sworn duty is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, first and foremost. Claiming it's okay to violate the Constitution for "public safety" is, itself, Treason.
Secondly, Snowden has made some accusations and sadly, others, mostly neo-cons, have taken those and blown them up much further than what he said.
Who the hell are you talking about? John McCain has defended the NSA, Lindsey Graham has defended the NSA and called for Snowden's head. Mike Pence has defended the entire regime and said Snowden is "with the bad guys." I can't think of a single neo-con that has done anything but defended the government and vilified Snowden. Pence even tried to claim Snowden must be lying because he didn't have access to the information he said he did. They've kissed Mueller's ass and refuse to say anything bad about Clapper. Maybe you just don't know what you're talking about. But, then, everyone in the political class is so isolated inside the groupthink that they can't even imagine the perspective of those outside.
Thanks for providing the view of the political class, which views all this as perfectly okay, and can't understand why anyone would be upset. After all, you have secretly decided that secretly keeping all this data is okay because there is a secret court that makes secret decisions and secret warrants and the people really need to just trust it all to be perfectly fine.
Of course there is abuse, just as Russ Tice has pointed out. That's easy because it's all in secret, and everybody is on the same team. You think if someone goes beyond the 7 days they are allowed to listen to calls without a warrant that anyone is going to raise a stink? The secret warrants are always granted anyway, and none of those guys are going to say anything about going beyond the secret rules. Hell, even when cops get caught on camera beating up citizens all the other cops circle the wagon and defend them and act like it was all perfectly okay - they were just "protecting the public". No wonder Snowden decided he had to get out of the country before he said anything. You deviate from being a team player in that environment and you're toast.
In the NSA game, there is NO scrutiny whatsoever. No citizen cell phones. No public court records. No accountability other than all the foxes pointing at all the other foxes going "No, no, we have rules and a system and we're all watching each other." Then a few hens go missing and SURPRISE! None of the foxes saw anything - must have been a terrorist that slipped through their oh-so-important net.
Those of us NOT part of your political class are pretty outraged, not just at what Snowden revealed (we pretty much knew it was happening), but the entire attitude of you and members of the political class entirely dismissing any complaints as unfounded, and telling people they need to just "trust" them. Clapper admitted to lying, and why isn't he in jail? Martha Stewart spent years in prison for less. Oh, but Martha isn't part of the club, is she? It's disgusting watching the entire federal apparatus lying and stealing and acting like it's all perfectly okay for them to do while they kill and imprison the people for lesser crimes, and damn Snowden for making them have to defend themselves.
And of course this is all backwards for a functional free society, which values personal privacy, but abhors government privacy. The US government is now advocating the opposite - that government should be doing all of these things in secret, and that the citizens should be okay with having no privacy at all. Transparency in government is the first requirement for a consensual governing. Without that, only tyranny can result.
The amount of stupidity in your post is too high. Why the hell are you not allowed to know how the law works? The law is public. You're just too lazy to study it.
To actually study and know all the laws that apply to you living in the US of today would require more than just not being lazy, it would require a full-time staff, at least. Even the so-called "representatives" voting on the laws don't have the time to study and understand them. And even if you could get to that point of knowing all the "public" laws (not to mention the ones you have to pay a license fee to even read, or the ones that are kept secret for "national security"), the amount of machinations you would have to go through to not break any of them would be outside the realm of feasibility. At times you will find yourself in a catch-22 where one law says you must do A, and another says you are not allowed to do A. Did you know if you toss out a piece of junk mail addressed to someone else you could be charged with a felony that carries 5 years in jail time? That law exists in spite of the fact that the post office cannot forward that mail anyway.
Harvey Silverglate estimates that the typical American unwittingly commits three felonies a day, and he backs it up very well. This is the infrastructure that police states are built upon. You don't need to look for crimes, you just pick someone and find some laws to charge them with violating.
See you posted AC because you know people can supply just as much evidence that Faux does the same thing.
All the legacy media is compromised. All of it. The redeeming characteristic of Fox News is that the bias and propaganda is so obvious you don't even have to pay attention to see it going on. Many of the legacy media outlets are very good at appearing neutral while they lie and twist facts to fit their agenda. You have to research or have knowledge of the topic to see it, they are some very good media experts in the field and they make it all seem completely reasonable on the surface.
If you are right of center than Big Government is out to make your lives worse. If your are left of center then it is those Corporations that are out to make your lives worse.
... And the extremists on both sides see the ever-increasing collusion between the two as the real culprit. There's still competition between corporations, but it's competition for influencing the right politicians or bureaucrats, instead of being better at serving customers.
Look at HK, look at Singapore. 15% and 9% flat rate income tax. The weather might be crap, but you can actually reach the standard of living your grandparents had back in the 1950's.
That is a gross misstatement. Income inequality (as per Mankiw et al) in the US is driven by lower redistribution than in other OECD countries.
Only if you define "income" to include government hand-outs for non-productivity. That is, you can claim that people being made dependent on welfare helps them, (that is false), and after you confiscate fruits of labor for nothing more than providing unearned, non-taxable income to others (and claim that it's part of their "income"), then, yea, of course shifting money around by coercion can make the "income disparity" seem smaller. It's not, it's actually worse, but you've hidden the class division in sleight-of-hand, all while making the lower classes even less independent and more docile.
But tax policy should not be a social engineering tool. That way lies tyranny. It's the reason for a tax code so complicated no one can understand it, other than the highly-paid accountants that ensure the wealthiest elites and large corporations can keep most of their money (overseas, if need be), while the burden falls heaviest on the middle class.
Income disparity widened as the share of tax payments came more and more from the top 1%. In 1985, the top 1% of earners payed about 25% of the total tax federal tax burden, while the bottom 95% payed 55%. That has swung the other way as Reagan, Clinton and W. Bush shifted greater portions of the share to the upper incomes. In 2007 the top 1% actually payed a greater share (40%) of the total receipts than the lowest 95%. That's a more progressive tax system and yet income disparity has continued to increase.
Yep. What a disappointment. "Oh, okay, here's your Start button back. What do you mean, menu? You just said "Start Button". There's your Start button, so shut up."
Yes, it's only in that inconvenient real world that it happens. In case you've forgotten, wages in the USA started stagnating in the 70s and the divide between wealthy and poor grows larger each year.
As long as the standard of living continues to grow for both, that divide is irrelevant. That is, it's irrelevant to all but the very wealthy.
Moreover, the real world examples of unregulated capitalism (e.g. Pakistan, Somalia, Mexico, the USA, China)
None of those are examples of unregulated capitalism (maybe Somalia, IDK, but they have a very low level of income inequality), those countries run on what is more closely termed Crony Capitalism, where the government picks certain companies and help them to success (US, China, Pakistan), or the companies have so much influence in the government it amounts to the same thing (Mexico).
Taxation of wages and income have very little impact on wealth disparity. The US has the most progressive tax system in the world (when all taxation is taken into account), yet income disparity seems to be positively correlated to the amount of progressiveness in taxation.
This isn't about protectionism though, it's about how tax money is spent. And tax money spent to improve job prospects for another country is questionable, especially considering the privacy implications of having all that personally identifying information and health records in the hands of a foreign power.
You won't see China contracting with Northrop Grumman to build Chinese submarines, and we shouldn't be seeing departments of health contracting with foreign firms to manage health care for Americans.
These basic life skills like having a bank account and managing money should be taught to kids in grade school and high school, and obviously that's not happening.
They were teaching that stuff in my grade schools back in 1981, and it was a working class are public school. I was under the impression that they pretty much all include some basic "personal finance" in the required curriculum these days.
UEFI so far is only a bad thing. I currently own a motherboard that claims to have "dual uefi" whatever that means, and I still can't disable secureboot even with a manual.
I haven't seen a motherboard yet without the option for disabling secureboot and managing the uefi with a shell. Maybe you could mention which board this is so the rest of us can avoid it.
...Obama is even now stating explicitly that he wants "the middle class" to "stay there."
As opposed to letting them continue to slide as a class into poverty, yep.
Oh, yes, can't "let" them move, can't "let" them get ahead, can't "let" them struggle, can't "let" anyone do anything to unbalance the status-quo, or challenge the elites that run everything. Already we have re-defined the "American Dream" - it now means "just getting by". Bread to eat, circuses to watch, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...
Otherwise known as the fallacious bootstraps argument. Hard work =/= getting ahead.
Whoosh! In fact it can, unless the government takes every little thing they deem "too much", and it becomes not even possible. Incestuous relations between big government and big business have virtually destroyed social mobility over the last 40 years, and Obama is even now stating explicitly that he wants "the middle class" to "stay there."
Funny how the bill does not apparently allow suing any data collector for inaccuracies, which might have already impacted somebody's life.
This. The whole idea is to sell it to the public as a "consumer protection" measure, but when the final passes it will actually do more to protect the credit bureaus and other corporations that collect data. Right now you have some ability to sue for damages from a company spreading inaccurate information - do doubt this bill will end up eliminating that with a liability waiver clause.
Slashdot Mirror
Do the "UC Officials" realize that J. does not use email? I suspect she doesn't even know how to use a computer. I'm not convinced someone like that is really suited to run a university system, where students should have those skills, and are in an environment where communicating electronically is essential.
Can the mods please bury this. It's full of unapproved opinion and inconvenient facts.
If they don't... what's cheaper than Windows 8?
Windows 7.
The law is not supposed to punish the government for doing things we've authorized them to do.
I think the jury is still out over whether "we've" authorized them to do what they did or not. The secret court made a secret decision that expanded the original authorization to one that a lot more expansive. I think there is a good argument to be made that they went beyond their authorization.
Be that as it may, the insiders are never held accountable like the rest of us are. Do you think James Clapper will get the same punishment as Martha Stewart?
And Clapper actually spoke the truth, as it is understood things.
WHAT!?!?! LOL!!! They must be paying you a lot for "coding" if it prompts you to defend their actions with this kind of BS. Clapper has admitted to lying, about the best he has done is claim that he used the least untruthful statement he could come up with. Those of us not lawyers or politicians call that "lying."
You HAVE to be kidding me. You do not think that AQ or taliban is a threat to America? You do not think that 9/11 occurred? And the fact that the Chinese, Iranian, North Koreans, and even Russians (quasi issue here) are spying on us with a full court press is not an issue? Seriously? If you think that they are not a threat, then you have an issue with your logic. Or should I be asking, what nation you are from?
Al Queida? Really? There are plenty of "threats" to national security. As I said, protecting from those threats must not compromise the rule of law, and the rights of American citizens. This level of domestic spying does just that. And since it's not even effective enough to prevent things like the Boston Marathon bombing, there is no reason to violate people's rights for it. In fact, there is no justification for violating the Constitutional restrictions on the Federal government's authority, even for the claimed purpose of "protecting the American people."
And you claim that the constitution has been violated, yet, you provide ZERO proof of it. All you have is a bunch of accusations, with no proof.
Apparently, you haven't read it. There is ample evidence that the Fourth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, the First Amendment, and the Enumerated Powers in Article 1 have all been violated.
The Fourth Amendment obliges the government to demonstrate probable cause before conducting invasive surveillance. The government has made a mockery of that protection by relying on select Supreme Court cases, decided before the era of the public Internet and cellphones, to argue that citizens have no expectation of privacy in either phone metadata or in e-mails or other private electronic messages that it stores with third parties. This hairsplitting is inimical to privacy and contrary to what at least five justices ruled just last year in a case called United States v. Jones. One of the most conservative justices on the Court, Samuel A. Alito Jr., wrote that where even public information about individuals is monitored over the long term, at some point, government crosses a line and must comply with the protections of the Fourth Amendment. That principle is, if anything, even more true for Americans’ sensitive nonpublic information like phone metadata and social networking activity.
BTW, I asked how YOU would safeguard this, and yet, you come up with NOTHING? Why not?
Safeguard what? America? That's up to the Americans, not secret spy networks. You know what it really takes to prevent another 9/11? Do it once. That's it. As soon as word got out on 9/11 of planes being flown into buildings, the fourth plane could not be used the same way. The so-called "shoe bomber" was stopped by citizens on the plane. Same thing for the underwear bomber. Secret spying and TSA didn't do anything to stop that, the People did. You should trust them, not the liars, thieves, and elitist bullies in the Federal government.
Go google for this. Then pull up the links: Ann Coulter did not object to the news about NSA phone snooping on principle, but does have a problem with it under this particular president.
I guess you could call Ann Coulter a "neo-con", but she is just a talking head, so she'll make hay out of anything that her audience wants to hear.
Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin asked: “How could the phone records of so many innocent Americans be relevant to an authorized investigation as required by the Act?” In a separate newspaper column, Sensenbrenner went further, claiming the administration was abusing the law. that piece of trash sat on Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security (Chairman) when all of this went down. He was right in the MIDST of it all, and then claims that he knew nothing about it, while claiming O is behind this.
Sensenbrenner is trash, but I don't see where he really "claimed O was behind this", he is, however, claiming the program went too far, and he didn't know how far, apparently, because he wasn't in the right meetings. But Snowden's documents have shown that even the Intelligence committee was not informed about everything going on, although there were "lawmakers from both houses" briefed. A total of 8, according to leaked documents.
The interesting part about this is that even Sensenbrenner, who loved the PATRIOT ACT and all this federal power and secrecy, thinks the PRISM and NSA programs go too far. That's a pretty stunning indictment.
On Sunday, the Republican senator and libertarian firebrand from Kentucky declared that he planned to file a class action lawsuit against the Obama administration, claiming the NSA surveillance programs that intercept internet communications (for supposedly foreign targets) and sweep up the phone records of Americans are "unconstitutional."
Rand Paul is not a neo-con. There is no credible definition of that term I have EVER seen that would apply to Rand Paul. I guess you're just using it to mean "anybody on the right," but that's not how it's typically used. Rand is on the side of liberal Democrats more often than he is on the side of the neo-cons.
That Piece of Trash
Paul? Fuck you, you piece of stinking garbage. I know Rand, and he has more honor in his pinky than you have ever thought of exhibiting in your entire life.
sits on Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (starting 2011). IOW, the senate version of what Sensenbrenner is on. He has almost certainly known for the last 2 years.
Nope, as pointed out, the NSA revealed this information very selectively, the committee did not know the extent of it. Didn't you hear about Clapper actually lying to committees when questioned about it?
I could continue on and on, but what is the point of it? The fact is, that the outrage by the neo-cons, is just another made up garbage.
It is, you made it up. There is no outrage from the neo-cons, only from the civil libertarians. You lumping the two together just shows your ignorance. You might as well stop now.
However, this one has backing with far left, and Libertarians, all of whom have NO idea of what is really going on.
I don't really know what you're trying to say, here.
I mean YOU have ma
Secondly, how do you know that every warrant is granted? Do you have proof of that? If so, I would like to see that.
It's stated in a report from the Justice Department, released by Harry Reid.
And just because you say that is the case, does not make it so.
Back at you, with your "well there are safeguards and rules, they're secret, but they work." Because you say it is the case? I think there is ample reason not to trust those statements, considering the credibility of those such as Clapper and Pence, and other reasons, as I have pointed out.
Or are you trying to claim that we do not know if they are doing their job?
Of course we don't, and they claim they need privacy, not transparency. That's suspicious right there, and from a group that has a history of using secrecy to hide abuses.
Keep in mind that we do not want to tell those legitimate targets that we are looking in, that we are doing this.
What targets? Is that secret too? All Mike Pence says is that they are "bad guys." To me, the bad guys are mainly right there in the building where Mike Pence works. I think Mike Pence is talking about US Citizens, that seems to be the target. Irregardless of who they are trying to catch, the end does not justify the means. They claim to be "protecting the American people," but when they do that by lying, and hiding secrets, I doubt their sincerity. Besides, their sworn duty is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, first and foremost. Claiming it's okay to violate the Constitution for "public safety" is, itself, Treason.
Secondly, Snowden has made some accusations and sadly, others, mostly neo-cons, have taken those and blown them up much further than what he said.
Who the hell are you talking about? John McCain has defended the NSA, Lindsey Graham has defended the NSA and called for Snowden's head. Mike Pence has defended the entire regime and said Snowden is "with the bad guys." I can't think of a single neo-con that has done anything but defended the government and vilified Snowden. Pence even tried to claim Snowden must be lying because he didn't have access to the information he said he did. They've kissed Mueller's ass and refuse to say anything bad about Clapper. Maybe you just don't know what you're talking about. But, then, everyone in the political class is so isolated inside the groupthink that they can't even imagine the perspective of those outside.
Thanks for providing the view of the political class, which views all this as perfectly okay, and can't understand why anyone would be upset. After all, you have secretly decided that secretly keeping all this data is okay because there is a secret court that makes secret decisions and secret warrants and the people really need to just trust it all to be perfectly fine.
Of course there is abuse, just as Russ Tice has pointed out. That's easy because it's all in secret, and everybody is on the same team. You think if someone goes beyond the 7 days they are allowed to listen to calls without a warrant that anyone is going to raise a stink? The secret warrants are always granted anyway, and none of those guys are going to say anything about going beyond the secret rules. Hell, even when cops get caught on camera beating up citizens all the other cops circle the wagon and defend them and act like it was all perfectly okay - they were just "protecting the public". No wonder Snowden decided he had to get out of the country before he said anything. You deviate from being a team player in that environment and you're toast.
In the NSA game, there is NO scrutiny whatsoever. No citizen cell phones. No public court records. No accountability other than all the foxes pointing at all the other foxes going "No, no, we have rules and a system and we're all watching each other." Then a few hens go missing and SURPRISE! None of the foxes saw anything - must have been a terrorist that slipped through their oh-so-important net.
Those of us NOT part of your political class are pretty outraged, not just at what Snowden revealed (we pretty much knew it was happening), but the entire attitude of you and members of the political class entirely dismissing any complaints as unfounded, and telling people they need to just "trust" them. Clapper admitted to lying, and why isn't he in jail? Martha Stewart spent years in prison for less. Oh, but Martha isn't part of the club, is she? It's disgusting watching the entire federal apparatus lying and stealing and acting like it's all perfectly okay for them to do while they kill and imprison the people for lesser crimes, and damn Snowden for making them have to defend themselves.
And of course this is all backwards for a functional free society, which values personal privacy, but abhors government privacy. The US government is now advocating the opposite - that government should be doing all of these things in secret, and that the citizens should be okay with having no privacy at all. Transparency in government is the first requirement for a consensual governing. Without that, only tyranny can result.
Will the NSA Controversy Drive People To Use Privacy Software?
No.
Not here in A-meh-rica.
The amount of stupidity in your post is too high. Why the hell are you not allowed to know how the law works? The law is public. You're just too lazy to study it.
To actually study and know all the laws that apply to you living in the US of today would require more than just not being lazy, it would require a full-time staff, at least. Even the so-called "representatives" voting on the laws don't have the time to study and understand them. And even if you could get to that point of knowing all the "public" laws (not to mention the ones you have to pay a license fee to even read, or the ones that are kept secret for "national security"), the amount of machinations you would have to go through to not break any of them would be outside the realm of feasibility. At times you will find yourself in a catch-22 where one law says you must do A, and another says you are not allowed to do A. Did you know if you toss out a piece of junk mail addressed to someone else you could be charged with a felony that carries 5 years in jail time? That law exists in spite of the fact that the post office cannot forward that mail anyway.
Harvey Silverglate estimates that the typical American unwittingly commits three felonies a day, and he backs it up very well. This is the infrastructure that police states are built upon. You don't need to look for crimes, you just pick someone and find some laws to charge them with violating.
See you posted AC because you know people can supply just as much evidence that Faux does the same thing.
All the legacy media is compromised. All of it. The redeeming characteristic of Fox News is that the bias and propaganda is so obvious you don't even have to pay attention to see it going on. Many of the legacy media outlets are very good at appearing neutral while they lie and twist facts to fit their agenda. You have to research or have knowledge of the topic to see it, they are some very good media experts in the field and they make it all seem completely reasonable on the surface.
If you are right of center than Big Government is out to make your lives worse. If your are left of center then it is those Corporations that are out to make your lives worse.
... And the extremists on both sides see the ever-increasing collusion between the two as the real culprit. There's still competition between corporations, but it's competition for influencing the right politicians or bureaucrats, instead of being better at serving customers.
Jeff Immelt has become very adept in this environment. Far from being vilified and sanctioned for the massive migration of GE jobs overseas, he actually has Obama going to foreign countries promising billions of dollars for infrastructure investments, of which the vast majority, of course, will not only go into GE's pockets, but actually create a huge new captured market for GE.
Your last paragraph means nothing without knowing the share of income of the 1 and 95 percent groups in those years.
Only if you assume that property rights don't exist - you know, like in Communist countries and feudal monarchies.
Look at HK, look at Singapore. 15% and 9% flat rate income tax. The weather might be crap, but you can actually reach the standard of living your grandparents had back in the 1950's.
I can support a 9% flat income tax in the US!
That is a gross misstatement. Income inequality (as per Mankiw et al) in the US is driven by lower redistribution than in other OECD countries.
Only if you define "income" to include government hand-outs for non-productivity. That is, you can claim that people being made dependent on welfare helps them, (that is false), and after you confiscate fruits of labor for nothing more than providing unearned, non-taxable income to others (and claim that it's part of their "income"), then, yea, of course shifting money around by coercion can make the "income disparity" seem smaller. It's not, it's actually worse, but you've hidden the class division in sleight-of-hand, all while making the lower classes even less independent and more docile.
But tax policy should not be a social engineering tool. That way lies tyranny. It's the reason for a tax code so complicated no one can understand it, other than the highly-paid accountants that ensure the wealthiest elites and large corporations can keep most of their money (overseas, if need be), while the burden falls heaviest on the middle class.
Income disparity widened as the share of tax payments came more and more from the top 1%. In 1985, the top 1% of earners payed about 25% of the total tax federal tax burden, while the bottom 95% payed 55%. That has swung the other way as Reagan, Clinton and W. Bush shifted greater portions of the share to the upper incomes. In 2007 the top 1% actually payed a greater share (40%) of the total receipts than the lowest 95%. That's a more progressive tax system and yet income disparity has continued to increase.
Yep. What a disappointment. "Oh, okay, here's your Start button back. What do you mean, menu? You just said "Start Button". There's your Start button, so shut up."
The fucking standard of living is not increasing for both the wealthy and the poor, asshole.
Oh, sure it is.
Yes, it's only in that inconvenient real world that it happens. In case you've forgotten, wages in the USA started stagnating in the 70s and the divide between wealthy and poor grows larger each year.
As long as the standard of living continues to grow for both, that divide is irrelevant. That is, it's irrelevant to all but the very wealthy.
Moreover, the real world examples of unregulated capitalism (e.g. Pakistan, Somalia, Mexico, the USA, China)
None of those are examples of unregulated capitalism (maybe Somalia, IDK, but they have a very low level of income inequality), those countries run on what is more closely termed Crony Capitalism, where the government picks certain companies and help them to success (US, China, Pakistan), or the companies have so much influence in the government it amounts to the same thing (Mexico).
Taxation of wages and income have very little impact on wealth disparity. The US has the most progressive tax system in the world (when all taxation is taken into account), yet income disparity seems to be positively correlated to the amount of progressiveness in taxation.
This isn't about protectionism though, it's about how tax money is spent. And tax money spent to improve job prospects for another country is questionable, especially considering the privacy implications of having all that personally identifying information and health records in the hands of a foreign power.
You won't see China contracting with Northrop Grumman to build Chinese submarines, and we shouldn't be seeing departments of health contracting with foreign firms to manage health care for Americans.
These basic life skills like having a bank account and managing money should be taught to kids in grade school and high school, and obviously that's not happening.
They were teaching that stuff in my grade schools back in 1981, and it was a working class are public school. I was under the impression that they pretty much all include some basic "personal finance" in the required curriculum these days.
UEFI so far is only a bad thing. I currently own a motherboard that claims to have "dual uefi" whatever that means, and I still can't disable secureboot even with a manual.
I haven't seen a motherboard yet without the option for disabling secureboot and managing the uefi with a shell. Maybe you could mention which board this is so the rest of us can avoid it.
...Obama is even now stating explicitly that he wants "the middle class" to "stay there."
As opposed to letting them continue to slide as a class into poverty, yep.
Oh, yes, can't "let" them move, can't "let" them get ahead, can't "let" them struggle, can't "let" anyone do anything to unbalance the status-quo, or challenge the elites that run everything. Already we have re-defined the "American Dream" - it now means "just getting by". Bread to eat, circuses to watch, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...
Otherwise known as the fallacious bootstraps argument. Hard work =/= getting ahead.
Whoosh! In fact it can, unless the government takes every little thing they deem "too much", and it becomes not even possible. Incestuous relations between big government and big business have virtually destroyed social mobility over the last 40 years, and Obama is even now stating explicitly that he wants "the middle class" to "stay there."
Funny how the bill does not apparently allow suing any data collector for inaccuracies, which might have already impacted somebody's life.
This. The whole idea is to sell it to the public as a "consumer protection" measure, but when the final passes it will actually do more to protect the credit bureaus and other corporations that collect data. Right now you have some ability to sue for damages from a company spreading inaccurate information - do doubt this bill will end up eliminating that with a liability waiver clause.