Nope you can't here, either. It's just that the people over here are morons, and still do business with companies that pretend they can, and also act as if they HAVE given up those rights. Most people here, if they signed their soul away, would only grumble about being forced to attend satanic rituals.
Hahaha! that's pretty funny. When has a conservative President helped the economy in say, the last 50 years?? Hell, even Reagan's actions (loosening credit, removing regulation) ended up with massive bank bailouts by his lackey, Bush Sr.
"everyone benefits from it by having cheaper goods"
Which they won't be able to buy as they lost their jobs at brick and mortar stores.
See, it's not as simplistic as the bugs-bunny economics being sold to people.
Manufacturing and shipping jobs don't exist in enough abundance to compensate, and by your own argument will never exist, as people, you know, the ones who make up the market ARE the 'market inefficiencies' you talk about. It would STILL be OK if we actually manufactured our own goods, but we don't (don't give me the 'we are the largest manufacturers in the world republitarian talking point, either - that's NOT per capita or the trade deficit would either a) not exist or b) be in our favor). The only way to bring THAT back in the current non-regulatory, non-tariff political environment would be to pay workers wages at below LIVING wages. The GDP (per capita) in India, for example, is $1371/year, or about $26 dollars a week. China? $4393 - or about $84/week. Making us 'competitive' by the republitarian plan (deregulate wages, remove benefits, but give tax breaks to the wealthy, so that financiers will lend the money the wealthy bank and companies will have more cash from investors - disregarding that by inserting a management layer you reduce the efficiency of such strategies, and that it doesn't work and hasn't worked in the past) with wages like that means, with no hyperbole, turning the US into a third-world country, with vastly wealthy 'overlords'. Starvation and disease would run rampant as there is no possible way to pay for medicine, food, or shelter at those rates. This is stark reality. THAT is how the current Republican/Libertarian axis (worst of both ideologies) want to make us 'competitive'.
And the wealthy will not escape either, the disappearance of the US market to sell to (I don't care how cheap it is, if you have no discretionary pay, you cannot buy) means that they will start losing money, too. Unless they leave for smarter, richer territory than here.
Is there a way out? Sure.
While there is still time, make sure there is a baseline of healthcare, food, education and shelter for citizens. You don't have to make it comfortable, just make it possible to live. Do this by taxing all Americans a flat tax - but ONLY on discretionary pay. Our HUD and Welfare bureaucracies can determine what that is (with ratification by the legislature of course). You want to give corporations the rights of citizens? Fine. Tax them the same way as above. Sure you will end up with more private companies, but then the abuses of 'compound people' are greatly reduced. Spend the money more on infrastructure and education than on defense in order to attract manufacturing to the US.
Only regulate non-luxury items (ie, things that affect health - shelter, minimum wages, foodstuffs, medicines), public goods (roads, parks, etc), public services (education), non-reversible transactions, and national treasures. Remove property taxes so that people can actually own property again rather than 'rent from the State'. Allow property owners to benefit from their property by stopping the abuse of 'eminent domain' for commercial development (this provides incentive to 'fix what's there' rather than abandon commercial/polluted properties and moving on). OK this last point is more of a quality of life issue, but just the same...
This way you end up with regulations that don't oppress, lower taxes, and an healthy base of workers and infrastructure for manufacturing. Of course, this will never happen as long as corporate interests have a say in government. The current overlords are perfectly happy with people so desperate they will do ANYTHING to keep their jobs as long as possible, and they don't care about the state of the nation more than one financial quarter out. It WILL get worse.
ROFL - _YOUR_ dogma built this mess. Regulations don't spontaneously generate, they are the result of demand. YOU just don't like that the labor market has a voice, and that the 'invisible hand' is actually the government (in democracies and republics, at least). Without regulation, the dogma you follow results in far worse abuse than exists now. THAT'S how we got here; THAT'S what you are trying to romanticize/gloss over.
ROFL on the exaggerated part. You MUST be a 'republitarian'; you just deny history in order to make your goals seem more laudable; you excise whole market segments that don't 'behave' the way you want a free market behave, and the economy you admire is one that never existed! Your dogma says that you can always get another job, even though reality disagrees... You think that I was trying to make US workers seem more 'desired'? Hahahaha! And folk with dogma like yours would take everything away from us, even hope for our children (unless you could afford a good school) because THAT would make US workers more 'desired'. I suppose it's true though. No corporation WANTS to pay any more expenses than they have to, and if you get your way, since the jobs don't exist, supply and demand would 'adjust' wages to third-world levels. And that would be a GOOD thing that would return us to days of gilded glory, right? RIGHT?
Yup. And the result of only a small proportion benefiting was laborers rioting with shotguns because they can't feed their families, children working in deadly mills because it's the only way to get fed, poisonous products and manufacturing processes, higher education out of the reach of 90% of the people, and unregulated unsafe healthcare for the vast majority. Those abuses resulted in the current regulatory environment and only liars, fools, and republicans say that removing those regulations wouldn't return us to those dark times.
Just because the 'invisible hand' wields a knife and a gun does NOT mean that it's attached to Indiana Jones! All of our regulations are the result of the market adjusting; that's what it means to be a democratic republic with a capitalistic economy. Workers vote. It's only the current batch or republicanized libertarians that want to unbalance the system towards corporations by denying workers any benefit of in fact comprising most of the market itself.
The labor market is NOT infinite, there are NOT always opportunities to leave abusive employers, and in many cases, survival depends on having a job (even now; if you don't have insurance to cover health problems, you AND your family stands one illness away from losing everything). Not all items are luxuries, and just because we represent values in terms of dollars does NOT make everything fungible; not all actions are reversible in this world.
Be honest now: What each righty wants is to return to some of the darkest, most evil periods in our history, in the vain hope that they would be one of the few at the top who benefit.
Funny that my post was about decreasing the power the the judiciary to make it a simple tool of the executive - although - handing judiciary power to the executive (the police) probably DOES increase executive power, wouldn't you agree? The exec is not just the President after all.
"Remember the recent "debt ceiling crisis"? What I remember about it was the calls from the left for Obama to unilaterally raise the ceiling through executive order, via some odd interpretation of the 14th amendment"
Did he? No? Well, that's almost one. As for 'signing statements', I hate the damned things - don't care who uses 'em. It's wrong for Obama to use them, even if they aren't his creation. Of course, not using a tool is not the same as creating it and expanding power in the first place, it's qualitatively different.
As for yucca mountain, the executive has always used refusal to act as a tool; from the smallest rural PD all the way up to the President. It's not right either, but this is not exactly an expansion of power.
"It's not a false equivalence - it only seems that way to you because you base your trust on the (D) behind politicians' names. I guess to you Rick Perry used to be a good guy but now he's evil? I see him as the same old self-serving statist he has always been."
Actually I'm not a (D), and would have been considered a fairly radical right-winger until the right exploded into insanity when Obama was elected - you know, when the main objective was declared to bring down a Presidency, rather than to address any other urgent issues.
I -WILL- say that I will be voting negatively according to party lines. The Republicans or anybody else who willingly associates themselves with them will never receive my vote again. Signing on to the current insanity, especially in a cynical bid for power, is evidence of a fundamental unfitness for governance, IMO.
You are incorrect. The type of law that you want to see is the type that is ALWAYS gamed; laws that disallow interpretation are the tools of tyranny. That's why the founders of the US specifically made the judicial system a separate branch of government on a par with the legislative and executive, rather than a simple tool of the executive, as the right would like it to be.
ROFL I live here. I came here to make money short term and never left; I'm a "carpetbagger". I also despair when I go to anyplace outside of Little 5 Points bars; the self-contradictory nonsense I hear makes me cringe. Outside of that it's pretty nice though. I tease my buddies up north that they should come down here and live in the land of the second amendment all the time - I really appreciate the gun laws here; a breath of fresh air compared to NJ! The only thing I don't like is that people don't seem as up front as they are in the north; they'll act like your buddy to your face and badmouth you as soon as your back is turned. I was also never burglarized up north, unlike here - but that is likely more due to luck than anything else. Housing is GREAT; I never thought I'd own my own house lock, stock and barrel before I retired, but here I am! I didn't have to (entirely) give up winter, either, and it's a lot less humid than 'Jersey in the summer. I griped a lot until I made some friends I could trust, but once I did, I have to admit this is a great place to live!
Atlanta needs this to fight against Obama and his Socialist Army who are Destroying Business by supporting Corporations in a Secret Islamic Kenyan Plan devised by Fundamentalist Christian Preachers and carried out by ACORN. Why, without heavy surveillance, Yankees might invade, with their cynical insistence on PAYING for Government Services via TAXES imposed by FORCE, instead of the Patriotic Ideal of paying for debts by using funds Dedicated to those non-productive sick and retired citizens looking for the Free Ride they already paid for.
Hey look - he can't spell his insults! And - 'focus any arguments'? ROFL. "Keep swinging mate?" Repeating my "Keep going though"? Well, I guess I can't expect originality. What's next? "I know you are but what am I"?
You guys ARE a hoot. Too bad your non-scientific 'reasoning' (where you start with a conclusion - 'we don't have to do anything' and use rationalizations as a 'reasoning' process) threatens western civilization...
Just because there are two sides to an argument does not make both sides equally weighted. But believe what you will and ignore what I actually said. Why am I not shocked? Keep going though!
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Nope you can't here, either. It's just that the people over here are morons, and still do business with companies that pretend they can, and also act as if they HAVE given up those rights. Most people here, if they signed their soul away, would only grumble about being forced to attend satanic rituals.
Hahaha! that's pretty funny. When has a conservative President helped the economy in say, the last 50 years?? Hell, even Reagan's actions (loosening credit, removing regulation) ended up with massive bank bailouts by his lackey, Bush Sr.
Right. Because many people haven't 'fallen for' the propaganda and know it for what it is - and still spread it.
And insufficient.
*chuckle* Not the power to abuse, but the act of abuse. Lawyers will get paid every time it happens. *cha-ching*
You can be a monopoly. It's not illegal.
It's illegal to abuse monopoly status, though.
*ding* The winnah!
Give this person a cookie. Well, if he wasn't posting AC.
Lemme guess: Tea Party.
"Brick and mortar stores WILL disappear"
True.
"everyone benefits from it by having cheaper goods"
Which they won't be able to buy as they lost their jobs at brick and mortar stores.
See, it's not as simplistic as the bugs-bunny economics being sold to people.
Manufacturing and shipping jobs don't exist in enough abundance to compensate, and by your own argument will never exist, as people, you know, the ones who make up the market ARE the 'market inefficiencies' you talk about. It would STILL be OK if we actually manufactured our own goods, but we don't (don't give me the 'we are the largest manufacturers in the world republitarian talking point, either - that's NOT per capita or the trade deficit would either a) not exist or b) be in our favor). The only way to bring THAT back in the current non-regulatory, non-tariff political environment would be to pay workers wages at below LIVING wages. The GDP (per capita) in India, for example, is $1371/year, or about $26 dollars a week. China? $4393 - or about $84/week. Making us 'competitive' by the republitarian plan (deregulate wages, remove benefits, but give tax breaks to the wealthy, so that financiers will lend the money the wealthy bank and companies will have more cash from investors - disregarding that by inserting a management layer you reduce the efficiency of such strategies, and that it doesn't work and hasn't worked in the past) with wages like that means, with no hyperbole, turning the US into a third-world country, with vastly wealthy 'overlords'. Starvation and disease would run rampant as there is no possible way to pay for medicine, food, or shelter at those rates. This is stark reality. THAT is how the current Republican/Libertarian axis (worst of both ideologies) want to make us 'competitive'.
And the wealthy will not escape either, the disappearance of the US market to sell to (I don't care how cheap it is, if you have no discretionary pay, you cannot buy) means that they will start losing money, too. Unless they leave for smarter, richer territory than here.
Is there a way out? Sure.
While there is still time, make sure there is a baseline of healthcare, food, education and shelter for citizens. You don't have to make it comfortable, just make it possible to live. Do this by taxing all Americans a flat tax - but ONLY on discretionary pay. Our HUD and Welfare bureaucracies can determine what that is (with ratification by the legislature of course). You want to give corporations the rights of citizens? Fine. Tax them the same way as above. Sure you will end up with more private companies, but then the abuses of 'compound people' are greatly reduced. Spend the money more on infrastructure and education than on defense in order to attract manufacturing to the US.
Only regulate non-luxury items (ie, things that affect health - shelter, minimum wages, foodstuffs, medicines), public goods (roads, parks, etc), public services (education), non-reversible transactions, and national treasures. Remove property taxes so that people can actually own property again rather than 'rent from the State'. Allow property owners to benefit from their property by stopping the abuse of 'eminent domain' for commercial development (this provides incentive to 'fix what's there' rather than abandon commercial/polluted properties and moving on). OK this last point is more of a quality of life issue, but just the same...
This way you end up with regulations that don't oppress, lower taxes, and an healthy base of workers and infrastructure for manufacturing. Of course, this will never happen as long as corporate interests have a say in government. The current overlords are perfectly happy with people so desperate they will do ANYTHING to keep their jobs as long as possible, and they don't care about the state of the nation more than one financial quarter out. It WILL get worse.
I was going to mod you insightful but want to speak in this thread, I hope somebody else does.
ROFL - _YOUR_ dogma built this mess. Regulations don't spontaneously generate, they are the result of demand. YOU just don't like that the labor market has a voice, and that the 'invisible hand' is actually the government (in democracies and republics, at least). Without regulation, the dogma you follow results in far worse abuse than exists now. THAT'S how we got here; THAT'S what you are trying to romanticize/gloss over.
ROFL on the exaggerated part. You MUST be a 'republitarian'; you just deny history in order to make your goals seem more laudable; you excise whole market segments that don't 'behave' the way you want a free market behave, and the economy you admire is one that never existed! Your dogma says that you can always get another job, even though reality disagrees... You think that I was trying to make US workers seem more 'desired'? Hahahaha! And folk with dogma like yours would take everything away from us, even hope for our children (unless you could afford a good school) because THAT would make US workers more 'desired'. I suppose it's true though. No corporation WANTS to pay any more expenses than they have to, and if you get your way, since the jobs don't exist, supply and demand would 'adjust' wages to third-world levels. And that would be a GOOD thing that would return us to days of gilded glory, right? RIGHT?
Yup. And the result of only a small proportion benefiting was laborers rioting with shotguns because they can't feed their families, children working in deadly mills because it's the only way to get fed, poisonous products and manufacturing processes, higher education out of the reach of 90% of the people, and unregulated unsafe healthcare for the vast majority. Those abuses resulted in the current regulatory environment and only liars, fools, and republicans say that removing those regulations wouldn't return us to those dark times.
Just because the 'invisible hand' wields a knife and a gun does NOT mean that it's attached to Indiana Jones! All of our regulations are the result of the market adjusting; that's what it means to be a democratic republic with a capitalistic economy. Workers vote. It's only the current batch or republicanized libertarians that want to unbalance the system towards corporations by denying workers any benefit of in fact comprising most of the market itself.
The labor market is NOT infinite, there are NOT always opportunities to leave abusive employers, and in many cases, survival depends on having a job (even now; if you don't have insurance to cover health problems, you AND your family stands one illness away from losing everything). Not all items are luxuries, and just because we represent values in terms of dollars does NOT make everything fungible; not all actions are reversible in this world.
Be honest now: What each righty wants is to return to some of the darkest, most evil periods in our history, in the vain hope that they would be one of the few at the top who benefit.
And it's bullshit too. If it ain't trauma and you don't have insurance, you get turned away. I know.
Funny that my post was about decreasing the power the the judiciary to make it a simple tool of the executive - although - handing judiciary power to the executive (the police) probably DOES increase executive power, wouldn't you agree? The exec is not just the President after all.
"Remember the recent "debt ceiling crisis"? What I remember about it was the calls from the left for Obama to unilaterally raise the ceiling through executive order, via some odd interpretation of the 14th amendment"
Did he? No? Well, that's almost one. As for 'signing statements', I hate the damned things - don't care who uses 'em. It's wrong for Obama to use them, even if they aren't his creation. Of course, not using a tool is not the same as creating it and expanding power in the first place, it's qualitatively different.
As for yucca mountain, the executive has always used refusal to act as a tool; from the smallest rural PD all the way up to the President. It's not right either, but this is not exactly an expansion of power.
"It's not a false equivalence - it only seems that way to you because you base your trust on the (D) behind politicians' names. I guess to you Rick Perry used to be a good guy but now he's evil? I see him as the same old self-serving statist he has always been."
Actually I'm not a (D), and would have been considered a fairly radical right-winger until the right exploded into insanity when Obama was elected - you know, when the main objective was declared to bring down a Presidency, rather than to address any other urgent issues.
I -WILL- say that I will be voting negatively according to party lines. The Republicans or anybody else who willingly associates themselves with them will never receive my vote again. Signing on to the current insanity, especially in a cynical bid for power, is evidence of a fundamental unfitness for governance, IMO.
Funny, the left hasn't been pushing to eliminate the judicial branch's power though mandatory sentencing, 3 strikes, etc, etc.
As for a 'clear record', examples, please. Count all the attempts on the right vs. all the attempts on the left.
Otherwise it's just another false equivalence, IMO.
You are incorrect. The type of law that you want to see is the type that is ALWAYS gamed; laws that disallow interpretation are the tools of tyranny. That's why the founders of the US specifically made the judicial system a separate branch of government on a par with the legislative and executive, rather than a simple tool of the executive, as the right would like it to be.
Unlimited as long as you only use those ones and zeroes the way Sprint says you can.
So fucking what? This is another company controlling what you do with ones and zeroes, while claiming to be 'unlimited'. You work for Sprint, or what?
ROFL you think THAT is a thread ending argument?
US government worker, are we?
ROFL I live here. I came here to make money short term and never left; I'm a "carpetbagger". I also despair when I go to anyplace outside of Little 5 Points bars; the self-contradictory nonsense I hear makes me cringe. Outside of that it's pretty nice though. I tease my buddies up north that they should come down here and live in the land of the second amendment all the time - I really appreciate the gun laws here; a breath of fresh air compared to NJ! The only thing I don't like is that people don't seem as up front as they are in the north; they'll act like your buddy to your face and badmouth you as soon as your back is turned. I was also never burglarized up north, unlike here - but that is likely more due to luck than anything else. Housing is GREAT; I never thought I'd own my own house lock, stock and barrel before I retired, but here I am! I didn't have to (entirely) give up winter, either, and it's a lot less humid than 'Jersey in the summer. I griped a lot until I made some friends I could trust, but once I did, I have to admit this is a great place to live!
Atlanta needs this to fight against Obama and his Socialist Army who are Destroying Business by supporting Corporations in a Secret Islamic Kenyan Plan devised by Fundamentalist Christian Preachers and carried out by ACORN. Why, without heavy surveillance, Yankees might invade, with their cynical insistence on PAYING for Government Services via TAXES imposed by FORCE, instead of the Patriotic Ideal of paying for debts by using funds Dedicated to those non-productive sick and retired citizens looking for the Free Ride they already paid for.
Hey look - he can't spell his insults! And - 'focus any arguments'? ROFL. "Keep swinging mate?" Repeating my "Keep going though"? Well, I guess I can't expect originality. What's next? "I know you are but what am I"?
You guys ARE a hoot. Too bad your non-scientific 'reasoning' (where you start with a conclusion - 'we don't have to do anything' and use rationalizations as a 'reasoning' process) threatens western civilization...
Sure - why don't you do this and see?
Thought so.
Just because there are two sides to an argument does not make both sides equally weighted. But believe what you will and ignore what I actually said. Why am I not shocked? Keep going though!