I realize I was mischaracterizing Kerry's position, but I completely disagree with his assertion that his belief is religious in basis.
How so? The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1990 edition, supports the concept of religious freedom- and how Kerry raised his girls (making sure they had NFP classes and the like) shows that he is indeed pro-life on a personal basis. A reading of the constitution shows that he's right about the basic flaw of not granting citizenship to the unborn, thus supporting Roe V. Wade. He definately has an informed moral conscience argument he can make in his favor.
Whether the Papal Nuncio will buy that argument during his tribunal, though, remains to be seen (and will likely occur before January).
You're missing a point - Kerry doesn't CARE why you vote for him, as long as you vote for him. So, you have your own agenda? Who cares, so long as your vote is going to the Dems?
True enough- which is why I'll be running myself in 2008.
I'm not, however, trying to imply that this is unique to Kerry. It is typical of all political figures. If you don't win the election, it doesn't really matter. If you do, it doesn't really matter that people voted against your opponent rather than for you.
And that's why Kerry, too, will be a one-term president.
This is a big problem with all special interests to a greater or lesser extent. They tend to be "safe". That is, they tend to vote either Democrat or Republican almost exclusively. The environmentalists vote Dem, so both sides can safely ignore them. The pro-lifers vote Rep, so both sides can safely ignore them.
I'm a Catholic Pro-lifer voting for Kerry because I believe he'll do a better job of reducing abortion than Bush has done. What does that make me?
The only time this changes is when one of these blocs refuses to come to the polls, or votes third party. Which tends to cause the D/R that they dislike even more to win. So they don't make that mistake again for a while, and the Dems and Reps ignore them for another twenty years or so.
Also true- which is why my signature may yet be a lie. If EITHER Bush or Kerry is winning my winner-take-all state, Peroutka will be getting my vote instead.
Only way it will ever change is if such a bloc splinters, or starts offering their vote to either side, depending on who makes the best offer. Which happens about once a century....
I think it may yet happen with Bush, based on This factoid
It obviously DOESN'T work, at least, not as self governance for most people. It works quite well as a dictatorship of the oligarchy of the rich, however.
The irony about the abortion issue is that it seems that more and more pro-abortion people (like John Kerry) are realizing they cannot win the "unborn babies aren't human" argument and are simply stating that "yeah, they're human, but I don't care".
That's not quite Kerry's argument. Kerry's argument is that the Constituation defines birth as the point in time that a human becomes a citizen and gains personhood. And he's right about that. It's not in keeping with modern thinking, and probably needs to be ammended.
This is different from the morality concerning capital punishment, which is not absolute and unchanging.
Also not quite true- our doctrine on abortion has changed over the centuries with the doctrine on infusion of the soul- in Augustine's time it was two weeks AFTER birth, in Aquanis it's Quickening (the first kicks felt by the mother) under modern genetics it's proveable to be conception.
In Catholic terms, capital punishment, as described by the Cathechism, is permissible when no other alternative exists to maintain safety and order.
True enough- but any society that has the ability to build with reinforced concrete and steel plate has other options avialable than the death penalty.
Historically, none of the pro-life issues have been absolute and unchanging in Catholic Doctrine. But the basic Dogma that human life is valueable and must be protected and that the right to life for persons should not be violated without just cause- that's what's unchangeable and absolute.
Well, it's marxists assholes like you who ran africa into the ground, resulting in the starvation deaths of millions... You, going by your username, are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
And by judging me on only HALF of my username- you've missed the entire point of my username. Marxist Hacker 42- it all has meaning. Marx pointed out that we could engineer economic systems just like we engineer buildings. Hacking points out that anything that can be engineered, can be hacked; white hat or black hat is the only question. 42 comes from the answer Deep Thought came up to the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Take it all together- not separately.
Africa should be providing a very large portion of the worlds food, but they don't because of marxists fighting.
I disagree- Africa's current population is unsupportable given the climates and areas. But I would agree that fake con artists pretending to be Marxists holding their little "revolutions" has prevented international aid from reaching famine areas.
For a suitcase dirty nuke, of the sort that terrorists are likely to use, you're not likely to be vaporized at all. These are not high explosives, they're high polutants. The answer is- wet down your shirt and breathe through it. Get away from the area. When you're in a non-contaminated area, take a shower immediately. Do not return to the original area for 160 years without wearing protective gear. Do not remove anything from the area.
Do all of this, and you'll likely survive. Fail in any point of it, and you've got a 100% chance of contracting lung, stomach, or colon cancer within a year, and dying of it.
Sanma is Salmon in English. They don't like warm water as well- and they're very common in the United States and Canada as a food fish source. The reversal of the standard Pacific Current would bring them down from Alaska to you in Japan.
First of all, I'd argue that Mr. Joy has certainly made the world better through the creation of a good chunk of the software that makes the internet work (or was used in the creation of the software that makes the internet work).
Really? How many people can eat IP packets? Is the world truly better for the internet existing, or are a few people richer and the rest poorer for the Internet existing? I don't deny that the internet is a good thing- but it hasn't been a good thing for say, independant collectible book resellers, who have been driven out of business by the likes of Amazon.com. This is NOT a universal good for the entire world.
No but he clearly has talents that few of us have (visualizing new methods of organizing data) and he spent years of his life refining those talents, to collect on them now.
Mr. Joy does not have those talents- his engineers and programmers beneath him do. He's living on their labor, and paying them a small pittance in comparison to his reward.
What you plan fails to account for is that some people can do in 10 hours that which others could spend 400 and still not accomplish.
Give human being the same training in being a con artist, and they can accomplish what Mr. Joy has accomplished.
Some jobs are interchangable, others are not. By that I am not arguing that every executive who makes more than $500k/yr is one of those people, but some of them certainly are.
Executives are nothing more than con artists, living on the labor of those beneath them. Don't be fooled by the rhetoric.
Ironic that you would complain about people starving, but also idealize a society that protects us from competition from overseas.
Not a bit, considering the ONLY reason why people starve in the United States is competition from overseas.
If you open up free trade with those overseas those other folks would do a whole lot less starving.
I don't give a damn about them- I care about the 12 million children in the United States who will die of malnourishment this year. Let their governments deal with their own starving people.
You'd never have car or computers or electricity in your society because no entity could afford to build the resources neccessary to make the factory.
Funny, Henry Ford did it back in the early 1900s just fine without help from India.
We can certainly argue about the relative advantages and disadvantages of these changes (perhaps that is your end goal and that's a fine viewpoint to hold, I'd prefer if you would just attack it directly).
My end goal is to create a new economic system that does not leave people behind. My goal is to create such a system where the resources to do so already exist- then take over the rest of the world by military force, expanding the system slowly as we go.
Ultimately, why do you want to benefit someone who applies the very minimum to improving their talents and resources at the cost of someone driven to make the very best of them.
Because all humans are in this world together- and those who understand that work for a system that understands that. Likewise, I don't buy the propaganda that some humans are driven to do an ammount of work that is mathematically impossible- that's nothing more than a lie.
Take two people Bill and Bob. Bill is a bright fellow who works his tail off all through school to get top marks and become an engineer. After school he develops a solar panel that is considerably more efficent than other panels and there is tremendous demand for the product, his boss would like to reward Bill for this invention but he already used his free royalty on a video game he and some friends make in college.
You failed to actually read the lifetime achievement loophole: you get a new free royalty for EVERY patent or copyright filed. Not one in your entire lifetime if you're smart enough to file a new patent o
No one believes life begins at conception. When was the last time anyone celebrated a conception-day? There you go. Proof positive, you're a human when you're born, no sooner (maybe later).
I celebrated the conception day of my son just last month! Got it pinpointed too- because we use Natural Family Planning and it's easy to see on the temperature/sex chart.
In addition- you're violating the human rights of the unborn. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 2 discrimination based on birth is as evil as racism.
Nobody I know- at least, not really reform. And the scientific evidence is against it, as well as the common sense evidence (can't teach an old dog new tricks).
The is perhaps the only time the Pope has ever said anything that I didn't agree with... and here's why:
The Pope seems to think we should treat the U.N. as what it's supposed to be, and not what it is, which is ineffectual, vascillating and corrupt. His theory is completely valid, but the application to this latter day League of Nations will only lead to more death and destruction. If there were any chance we could have relied on the U.N. for anything other than finger-waving, I would have been against the war.
The Pope is completely in Catholic Teaching on this- despite what I said earlier, Catholic teaching holds out the hope for an ideal solution. But I don't agree with you on Iraq particularily- if we had waited we would have found out that Saddam was a particularily ineffectual ruler when it came to creating NEW weapons of mass destruction- and the Joint Chiefs were right to put forth a plan that left him in power but demilitarized the country first. We didn't wait long enough- so we have the embarassing situation of having invaded a country on intelligence that was a lie.
Funny, I felt better about him after each debate. Kerry announced his "global test" concept and then spent the next two debates back-pedalling from it.
Funny how that keeps coming out- he backpedaled from it in the FIRST debate if you actually listened (or for that matter, can understand whole sentences instead of just phrases). In other words, the whole "Global Test" thing didn't mean what the Republicans spun it to mean. But that's where Kerry REALLY falls down- you've got to be able to listen to a sentence longer than two words to understand what he means.
Everything else he had to say was 10-figure give-aways and a bunch of empty platitudes or descrptions of best-case scenarios posing as some kind of "plan", oh yeah, and cheap shots.
Had you actually listened to those plans, you might have heard something more- but you didn't.
I don't even think he's even pretending that anything he's offering is even realistic any more.
Depends what you mean by realistic- it's not like Bush's denial that we have any war dead in Iraq or his mixing up of Saddam and Osama was any great shakes either.
Meanwhile, his snake-oil salesman shyster veep candidate is promising more miracles than Easter Sunday. I'm surprised he hasn't tried channelling Christopher Reeves... or raising him from the dead. The VP debate was a joke. It was like watching a professor debating a puppy.
All I heard from Cheney was "more of the same"- like he didn't realize that the current status quo wasn't working. I'll trust a man who fights for the people LONG before I'll trust a CEO.
Alright how about this. I earn 2x the average wage and save 40% of my salary earning 10% annually. After 30 years of this (assuming 2% wage inflation) I am now earning slightly more than 10x the average wage (even if I retire and begin drawing my annual salary at that wage I wil certainly hit the 10x number before I die.
If the controled inflation theory behind this is right, however, you would NEVER find anything to invest in that would get you 10% annually on your savings to begin with (because the 10x income would also apply to artificial people, that is, corporations- and they'd have to pay 100% taxes when they exceed 10x average profits). But beyond that- haven't you heard? Bush has exempted savings from any taxes whatsoever if you do it right.
What is fair about punishing me for saving for the future?
What is fair about allowing you to save for the future when there are still people starving in the world? Economics is inherently UNFAIR- the best we can do is choose between the good of the individual and the good of society.
What if instead of saving monetary resources, I expend time resources building a company from scratch that fills a useful need and produces significantly more value than that?
That's where my loopholes would come in- chances are in building such a company you'd be hiring people- with a tax free payroll- and raising the average wage of all workers. In return society would protect you from overseas competition and would reward you in porportion to the effort you put in- up to a point that is far beyond the effort you can PERSONALLY put in.
You cannot tell me that Sun has not made its customers better off by signficantly more than the wealth Mr. Joy has made from it.
Actually, Sun has made it's customers WORSE off by locking them into a proprietary technology. Just like Microsoft and Apple do. But it's not value out that counts- it's effort put in at the begining is the idea behind the Platonic Maximum Wage. You can't tell me that Mr. Joy works 400 hour weeks to justify a wage 10x the guy on the assembly line working 40 hour weeks.
Why shouldn't someone who makes the whole world better be compensated for it?
Nobody's powerfull enough to make the whole world better- and most ideas are merely a change for the worse anyway. Think about it this way- in the time before mechanical computers, anybody who could add could be a computer- companies would have to hire them by the droves. By producing a mechanical computer, there was a human cost that all of the human computers got thrown out of work. Yes, this makes the company using the mechanical computer more efficient- but there's a human cost to the equation that is rarely figured in. That's what the Platonic Maximum Wage attempts to remedy- making sure that for every increase in efficiency, there's an equal increase in production, even if that increase in production is only busy work done by the governmnet.
It all comes back to the purpose of having an economy to begin with, the reason why two human beings get together to trade their time. Some believe the reason for this is survival- and thus the purpose of a society-wide stable economy is to allow as many people to survive on their own as possible (thus ideas like the platonic maximum wage). Others believe the purpose is individual power- gaining an advantage over your neighbor. It's quite obvious from your aguments which axiom you hold to- and for you, the Platonic Maximum Wage is bad because it attacks the God of Greed, making it harder for you to gain an advantage over your neighbor. For me, the Platonic Maximum Wage is a good thing- it controls inflation and makes sure the lowest rung of the ladder is never far from the highest rung. It also gives a pressure release valve to the whole thing- by paying the workers more, the inventors and CEOs and owners earn 10x for every extra dollar they pay. That makes payroll DIRECTLY a 1000% return investment- the more peo
However- this started because somebody raised the point of 2008- so I'm comparing MY social conservativeism and fiscal liberalism to both candidates- and I think I can do a better job than either.
Damn, not true- I'm getting this thread mixed up with another one. Sorry.
And there's no room in the world for someone to reform himself?
Not past age 30- there's some real proof that once your brain cells begin to die of old age, you can't really form new behavior patterns. My guess is that the rumors about cocaine at Camp David and the pictures of Bush still drinking beer are more accurate than an actual reformation of his character- but that just paints him more as a puppet for the corporate interests behind the throne.
Depends on whom you ask.
Well, to me the very definition of all that is good in social conservativism is the Pope as head of the Roman Catholic Church- and it's hard to dispute that at least the Iraq front fails on porportionality and winnability in modern just war theory.
That's a valid point, although most conservatives are pro-capital punishment.
No-only the fake conservatives in the United States are.
Does he do that now? Or is this something like the drinking and drugs that he gave up when he realized it was wrong, and then amended his life.
Now this is a depends on whom you ask- last girlfriend was 1971, last daughter was 2003, if the rumor mill is accurate.
Just like liberals are all controlled by the unions and the trial lawyers?
Nah, the majority of the neo-liberals are controled by the same corporate interests as the neo-conservatives. Part of the reason why I want to break out and start a new party. Trial lawyers and unions have very little true control- if they had more it would be better for the average person.
Is he the perfect social conservative candidate? Hardly, but the alternative is the perfect social liberal candidate, despite his claims to the contrary. I would bet Kerry would be for gay marriage if he weren't running for President.
I wouldn't- considering that he's already stated his opposition to what the Massachusettes Supreme Court did (prefering instead that such questions be answered in the legislature). In addition, Kerry is very much a social conservative privately, to the point that he's stated that neither of his daughters will ever have an abortion if he can pay for the pregnancy instead.
However- this started because somebody raised the point of 2008- so I'm comparing MY social conservativeism and fiscal liberalism to both candidates- and I think I can do a better job than either.
Is Bush a fiscal liberal? Not really, because he failed at the "tax" part of "tax and spend".
He's also failed at the same things the neoliberals fail at- allowing corporations to overrun government and destroy the common man. It would take a populist to be a true fiscal liberal, and we haven't had one of those since Huey Long.
I've been following electoral-vote.com for weeks... two weeks ago it looked like today. A week ago the electoral projects were almost exactly reversed from what they are today. A week from now? Who knows.
The straight line regression, however, has been widening since mid September, when the straight lines crossed.
This is like measuring jelly with a caliper. It's extremely precise, but what can you learn from it.
Here's what I've learned from it- people like Bush until they can hear him. It flip-flops with every debate.
2)DC area Sniper terrorists. These guys terrorized the whole area from Richmond to Baltimore for months. They were caught, but only because they were stupid. What is to stop a smart terrorist from doing the same thing?
For those who doubt, here's my personal "smart terrorist" plan for doing the same thing in a way that would NEVER be caught (the problem is it would be MONTHS before the terror took hold, and of course, since I'm posting this on the net I'd never do it myself, but that should go without saying).
1. get an SUV, not a car. 2. Cut mansized trapdoor in roof 3. Get one of those long hard rooftop boxes shaped kind of like a Star Trek Photon Torpedo. 4. Cut matching hole in the bottom of the box, and gun hole in rear of box. 5. Tint rear windows. 6. Drive to public location on a hill with a nice view of a city or town. 7. Park with back of truck facing downhill. 8. Snipe random target 9. Drive to another state, to a county you've never been in before. 10. 48 hours after last shooting, Goto 6, NEVER repeating the same county twice.
The FBI will catch up eventually, but the damned randomness of it all means that it will be VERY hard catching up to you- and the first 20 or so shootings will be full of cops wanting the case for their own local jurisdictions. Best part is that your trial and eventual exectution will be drawn out until you die of old age because of all the different jurisdictions that will want to try you for the crimes. A GPS locator would be your friend while you're driving around, especially one with a full map of the United States listing altitude and public parks.
We've already got one. His name is President Bush...
Nope- fails on both counts. He fails at being a social conservative because he has no self control and spent half his life under the influence of various and sundry illegitimate mind altering drugs. He's failed at true social conservativism by championing an unjust war, being the governor who killed more prisoners than any in the history of the United States, and funding abortions of relatives and past girlfriends. He fails at being a fiscal liberal because like all neos his fiscal policy is not his, it's dicated by the corporations in the back pulling on the puppet strings, and many of those corporations are exactly the type of huge agribusiness that wants to take the family farm away. No, Bush is neither the social conservative he wants you to think he is, nor is he the fiscal liberal many think he is.
That isn't what they mean and you know that I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT EXECUTIVES AND/OR CEOS.
No I don't- you merely said business owners, and in most small businesses the owner and the executive are one and the same.
I am talking about a tax on anyone who make more than 10x the average income.
Ok- that's different than Platonic and I missed it the first time around- Platonic would be 10x the minimum income. Though I doubt for you would make any difference.
Say you spend 5 years writing a book and it becomes a best seller, well you would be unable to make more than 10 times the average income from your hard work.
And considering that you only put in 5x the effort, why would you deserve more than 10x the reward? Let's modify your thought experiment though- you spent 20 years writing the book, and thus truly did put in 20x the effort of a person working to earn a wage in a single year. That way we've got a true comparison of apples to apples instead of a bannana to the apple. In that case, I'd agree with you that such a system would be regressive on such a person- unless you added in a method by which one could amortize past years of making less than average for a big reward year.
What the green party platform has said is that if you make more than 10x the average wage in INCOME anything over that is taxed at 100%.
Which I now agree that the real key word there is AVERAGE as opposed to MINIMUM income. That means that unless you're working to increase the AVERAGE (which is much harder than increasing the minimum) you can't get a raise. The problem isn't necessarily one of effort put in vs reward for effort as it is the greed driven inflation inherant in the Platonic system is missing.
IOW, if you come up with a great idea you can only make 10 times they yearly income of the typical person by selling it to others, anything over that mark goes to the goverment.
Which I'd be fine with- because the effort of an idea is much less than the effort of say, digging ditches. What I'm NOT ok with is the idea of spending 20 years coming up with your great idea for only 10 years worth of reward. But since the sales would not likely come in that fast, it's an outside case anyway. Personally though, if such a thing were implemented, I'd like to see loopholes for the following:
1. Payroll- anything paid out to labor is tax free to the employer. This means that, say, you hit your $430,000/year- plenty to live on- and don't want to pay the government, all you do is hire somebody for $50,000/year- leaving you $380,000 to live on. Keep doing that with your excess, and eventually you'll be able to earn $500,000/year before having to hire- because you'll have raised the average wage.
2. Charity- if there's any loophole I like in the current income tax, it's the Nun's loophole- give away your income and you won't be taxed on it.
3. Lifetime Achievement Award- One tax free year per copyrighted work or patent successfully filed.
Between these three loopholes, all argument against the Platonic Maximum Wage goes away- even if you replace average with minimum.
I personally think Huey Long in 1932 could have- if it wasn't for that assassin's bullet (I'd say the assassin thought so too, as did whichever major party paid him, likely both).
I think a truly popular candidate running on a socially conservative, fiscally liberal agenda could well decimate the political system in America- because that's all that the people really want, a single candidate that covers what THEY care about. And that's the one set that both Red and Blue state voters care about- somebody who will hold up traditional values and respond to this out-of-control economy.
So tell me... how do you plan to vote in 2008 after four years of watching Kerry ignore progressives the way Clinton did?
For myself- I'll be old enough to run by then.
If Kerry won't say the things you want to hear before the election, why would he bother with your issues after he's already in office?
His goals are basically the same as mine- excpet for abortion- I just disagree with how to get there- except for abortion. Oddly enough, I've got a different goal than he does with abortion, but I think his plan will work towards my goal (by providing the same co-pay for abortion as birth in universal health care, he will cause the number of abortions to go down).
The odds of the Democrats nominating a non-incumbent candidate in 2008 are next to zero. So if Kerry fails to dazzle, you'll still have nowhere to go because any defection will only help a Republican win. And if that's the mood in 2008 the Republicans will run the most rightwing nutjob they can find. Then you'll be right back where you started.
Except for, in that election, I'll be running as well- not sure if on the Technocratic ticket anymore (the isolationism thing- I'm begining to think that international solidarity combined with isolationism for corporate trade makes more sense) but believe me, I'll be announcing a new web page to start gathering donations November 6th (this year) (maybe LATE on the 6th- but it will be up by midnight).
In short: voting for Kerry is voting for Kerry and continuing to move the Democratic party to the right. If you want an alternative you have to vote for an alternative. Now. There is never going to be a better time.
Yes there is- hundreds of laid off GenX computer programmers will be running in 2008- a great time to send a pointed barb at the Baby Boomers and neo* goofballs.
But if improvements are financed with low interests loans, and it's run near capacity, costs might well drop, and a profit made from the power sold, particularly if PGE ownes any dams.
PGE doesn't own any dams. Around here the Federal Government owns all of the hydropower through the Bonneville Power Administration. PGE used to own Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, and currently owns a subsidiary known as Clean Wind which owns a few windpower farms in Eastern Oregon, but no dams.
It's possible the public might be able to seize the assets as the result of Enron's wrong doing, which normally you'd think the Federal government wouldn't whole heartedly endorse.
With Bush's lack of accountability for corporations, not likely to happen.
Just from the Enron scandal alone, I can't imagine how Oregonians would vote for Bush considering it his appointee who endorses Enron's criminal business practices. That's the Bush energy policy in action. The manipulated spike in energy prices was every bit the tax Bush accuses Kerry of planning on the poor and middle class, only there were no exemptions.
The only way the Enron scandal actually hurt Oregonians was confined to employees of PGE who saw their retirement saving destroyed and ratepayers who were bilked out of taxes that we would have had to pay for a PUD anyway. It was California that was hit bad by Enron. Scottish Power, aka Pacific Power and Light, is the other major utility owner for the rest of Oregon (except for isolated PUDs like Corvalis Power and Telephone Co-Op and Lincoln City Power and Light).
Part of the problem with the Green Proposal is also that they're taking it county by county- and some counties have NO power generation ability at all.
used to part of the Green party platform to tax at 100% any income over 10x the typical wage so people who busted their ass and built up a business or made a great product would not be rewarded for their work.
Just how does somebody spend 400 hours a week working when there's only 168 hours in a given week? Or do you believe that some people should be compensated differently for equal effort than others?
BTW, this isn't Green Party, or even communist- it's Platonic and was originally proposed in The Republic 2500 years ago. It's the people who claim they are more important than everybody else merely because they *worked hard* when they really don't put in nearly as much effort to justify a wage that is 400x everybody else's that get me.
See my Journal Entry on a real thinking Catholic Voter Guide- I figure we DO have 6 candidates who are on the ballot in enough states got get 270 electoral votes (theoretically, and if the minor candidate pulls a major upset).
Portland General Electric is the name of the local electric company owned by Enron and figuring prominently in the crimes of that company. A Public Utility District is the communist/socialist answer to such crimes- turning ratepayers into stockholders and cutting the cost of the electricity by the profit margin of the company. The only problem I can see with this plan is that Enron has been running PGE as a debt sink for many years now- so profits are officially negative, thus rates might actually go up if the Green Party is successfull (instead of DOWN as is typical for a regulated public monopoly being turned over to public ownership).
Slashdot Mirror
At a rental of only $17,000/month, it's far more affordable than a Cray for small quick projects.
I realize I was mischaracterizing Kerry's position, but I completely disagree with his assertion that his belief is religious in basis.
How so? The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1990 edition, supports the concept of religious freedom- and how Kerry raised his girls (making sure they had NFP classes and the like) shows that he is indeed pro-life on a personal basis. A reading of the constitution shows that he's right about the basic flaw of not granting citizenship to the unborn, thus supporting Roe V. Wade. He definately has an informed moral conscience argument he can make in his favor.
Whether the Papal Nuncio will buy that argument during his tribunal, though, remains to be seen (and will likely occur before January).
You're missing a point - Kerry doesn't CARE why you vote for him, as long as you vote for him. So, you have your own agenda? Who cares, so long as your vote is going to the Dems?
True enough- which is why I'll be running myself in 2008.
I'm not, however, trying to imply that this is unique to Kerry. It is typical of all political figures. If you don't win the election, it doesn't really matter. If you do, it doesn't really matter that people voted against your opponent rather than for you.
And that's why Kerry, too, will be a one-term president.
This is a big problem with all special interests to a greater or lesser extent. They tend to be "safe". That is, they tend to vote either Democrat or Republican almost exclusively. The environmentalists vote Dem, so both sides can safely ignore them. The pro-lifers vote Rep, so both sides can safely ignore them.
I'm a Catholic Pro-lifer voting for Kerry because I believe he'll do a better job of reducing abortion than Bush has done. What does that make me?
The only time this changes is when one of these blocs refuses to come to the polls, or votes third party. Which tends to cause the D/R that they dislike even more to win. So they don't make that mistake again for a while, and the Dems and Reps ignore them for another twenty years or so.
Also true- which is why my signature may yet be a lie. If EITHER Bush or Kerry is winning my winner-take-all state, Peroutka will be getting my vote instead.
Only way it will ever change is if such a bloc splinters, or starts offering their vote to either side, depending on who makes the best offer. Which happens about once a century....
I think it may yet happen with Bush, based on This factoid
Absolutely true, except this last phrase:
their system of government works
It obviously DOESN'T work, at least, not as self governance for most people. It works quite well as a dictatorship of the oligarchy of the rich, however.
The irony about the abortion issue is that it seems that more and more pro-abortion people (like John Kerry) are realizing they cannot win the "unborn babies aren't human" argument and are simply stating that "yeah, they're human, but I don't care".
That's not quite Kerry's argument. Kerry's argument is that the Constituation defines birth as the point in time that a human becomes a citizen and gains personhood. And he's right about that. It's not in keeping with modern thinking, and probably needs to be ammended.
This is different from the morality concerning capital punishment, which is not absolute and unchanging.
Also not quite true- our doctrine on abortion has changed over the centuries with the doctrine on infusion of the soul- in Augustine's time it was two weeks AFTER birth, in Aquanis it's Quickening (the first kicks felt by the mother) under modern genetics it's proveable to be conception.
In Catholic terms, capital punishment, as described by the Cathechism, is permissible when no other alternative exists to maintain safety and order.
True enough- but any society that has the ability to build with reinforced concrete and steel plate has other options avialable than the death penalty.
Historically, none of the pro-life issues have been absolute and unchanging in Catholic Doctrine. But the basic Dogma that human life is valueable and must be protected and that the right to life for persons should not be violated without just cause- that's what's unchangeable and absolute.
Well, it's marxists assholes like you who ran africa into the ground, resulting in the starvation deaths of millions... You, going by your username, are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
And by judging me on only HALF of my username- you've missed the entire point of my username. Marxist Hacker 42- it all has meaning. Marx pointed out that we could engineer economic systems just like we engineer buildings. Hacking points out that anything that can be engineered, can be hacked; white hat or black hat is the only question. 42 comes from the answer Deep Thought came up to the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Take it all together- not separately.
Africa should be providing a very large portion of the worlds food, but they don't because of marxists fighting.
I disagree- Africa's current population is unsupportable given the climates and areas. But I would agree that fake con artists pretending to be Marxists holding their little "revolutions" has prevented international aid from reaching famine areas.
Before or after I'm vaporized...?
For a suitcase dirty nuke, of the sort that terrorists are likely to use, you're not likely to be vaporized at all. These are not high explosives, they're high polutants. The answer is- wet down your shirt and breathe through it. Get away from the area. When you're in a non-contaminated area, take a shower immediately. Do not return to the original area for 160 years without wearing protective gear. Do not remove anything from the area.
Do all of this, and you'll likely survive. Fail in any point of it, and you've got a 100% chance of contracting lung, stomach, or colon cancer within a year, and dying of it.
Sanma is Salmon in English. They don't like warm water as well- and they're very common in the United States and Canada as a food fish source. The reversal of the standard Pacific Current would bring them down from Alaska to you in Japan.
First of all, I'd argue that Mr. Joy has certainly made the world better through the creation of a good chunk of the software that makes the internet work (or was used in the creation of the software that makes the internet work).
Really? How many people can eat IP packets? Is the world truly better for the internet existing, or are a few people richer and the rest poorer for the Internet existing? I don't deny that the internet is a good thing- but it hasn't been a good thing for say, independant collectible book resellers, who have been driven out of business by the likes of Amazon.com. This is NOT a universal good for the entire world.
No but he clearly has talents that few of us have (visualizing new methods of organizing data) and he spent years of his life refining those talents, to collect on them now.
Mr. Joy does not have those talents- his engineers and programmers beneath him do. He's living on their labor, and paying them a small pittance in comparison to his reward.
What you plan fails to account for is that some people can do in 10 hours that which others could spend 400 and still not accomplish.
Give human being the same training in being a con artist, and they can accomplish what Mr. Joy has accomplished.
Some jobs are interchangable, others are not. By that I am not arguing that every executive who makes more than $500k/yr is one of those people, but some of them certainly are.
Executives are nothing more than con artists, living on the labor of those beneath them. Don't be fooled by the rhetoric.
Ironic that you would complain about people starving, but also idealize a society that protects us from competition from overseas.
Not a bit, considering the ONLY reason why people starve in the United States is competition from overseas.
If you open up free trade with those overseas those other folks would do a whole lot less starving.
I don't give a damn about them- I care about the 12 million children in the United States who will die of malnourishment this year. Let their governments deal with their own starving people.
You'd never have car or computers or electricity in your society because no entity could afford to build the resources neccessary to make the factory.
Funny, Henry Ford did it back in the early 1900s just fine without help from India.
We can certainly argue about the relative advantages and disadvantages of these changes (perhaps that is your end goal and that's a fine viewpoint to hold, I'd prefer if you would just attack it directly).
My end goal is to create a new economic system that does not leave people behind. My goal is to create such a system where the resources to do so already exist- then take over the rest of the world by military force, expanding the system slowly as we go.
Ultimately, why do you want to benefit someone who applies the very minimum to improving their talents and resources at the cost of someone driven to make the very best of them.
Because all humans are in this world together- and those who understand that work for a system that understands that. Likewise, I don't buy the propaganda that some humans are driven to do an ammount of work that is mathematically impossible- that's nothing more than a lie.
Take two people Bill and Bob. Bill is a bright fellow who works his tail off all through school to get top marks and become an engineer. After school he develops a solar panel that is considerably more efficent than other panels and there is tremendous demand for the product, his boss would like to reward Bill for this invention but he already used his free royalty on a video game he and some friends make in college.
You failed to actually read the lifetime achievement loophole: you get a new free royalty for EVERY patent or copyright filed. Not one in your entire lifetime if you're smart enough to file a new patent o
The cocaine posession arrest and the abortion he paid for were in Houston in 1971- a very confused year for our current President.
No one believes life begins at conception. When was the last time anyone celebrated a conception-day? There you go. Proof positive, you're a human when you're born, no sooner (maybe later).
I celebrated the conception day of my son just last month! Got it pinpointed too- because we use Natural Family Planning and it's easy to see on the temperature/sex chart.
In addition- you're violating the human rights of the unborn. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 2 discrimination based on birth is as evil as racism.
Nonsense. People do it all the time.
Nobody I know- at least, not really reform. And the scientific evidence is against it, as well as the common sense evidence (can't teach an old dog new tricks).
The is perhaps the only time the Pope has ever said anything that I didn't agree with... and here's why:
The Pope seems to think we should treat the U.N. as what it's supposed to be, and not what it is, which is ineffectual, vascillating and corrupt. His theory is completely valid, but the application to this latter day League of Nations will only lead to more death and destruction. If there were any chance we could have relied on the U.N. for anything other than finger-waving, I would have been against the war.
The Pope is completely in Catholic Teaching on this- despite what I said earlier, Catholic teaching holds out the hope for an ideal solution. But I don't agree with you on Iraq particularily- if we had waited we would have found out that Saddam was a particularily ineffectual ruler when it came to creating NEW weapons of mass destruction- and the Joint Chiefs were right to put forth a plan that left him in power but demilitarized the country first. We didn't wait long enough- so we have the embarassing situation of having invaded a country on intelligence that was a lie.
Funny, I felt better about him after each debate. Kerry announced his "global test" concept and then spent the next two debates back-pedalling from it.
Funny how that keeps coming out- he backpedaled from it in the FIRST debate if you actually listened (or for that matter, can understand whole sentences instead of just phrases). In other words, the whole "Global Test" thing didn't mean what the Republicans spun it to mean. But that's where Kerry REALLY falls down- you've got to be able to listen to a sentence longer than two words to understand what he means.
Everything else he had to say was 10-figure give-aways and a bunch of empty platitudes or descrptions of best-case scenarios posing as some kind of "plan", oh yeah, and cheap shots.
Had you actually listened to those plans, you might have heard something more- but you didn't.
I don't even think he's even pretending that anything he's offering is even realistic any more.
Depends what you mean by realistic- it's not like Bush's denial that we have any war dead in Iraq or his mixing up of Saddam and Osama was any great shakes either.
Meanwhile, his snake-oil salesman shyster veep candidate is promising more miracles than Easter Sunday. I'm surprised he hasn't tried channelling Christopher Reeves... or raising him from the dead. The VP debate was a joke. It was like watching a professor debating a puppy.
All I heard from Cheney was "more of the same"- like he didn't realize that the current status quo wasn't working. I'll trust a man who fights for the people LONG before I'll trust a CEO.
Alright how about this. I earn 2x the average wage and save 40% of my salary earning 10% annually. After 30 years of this (assuming 2% wage inflation) I am now earning slightly more than 10x the average wage (even if I retire and begin drawing my annual salary at that wage I wil certainly hit the 10x number before I die.
If the controled inflation theory behind this is right, however, you would NEVER find anything to invest in that would get you 10% annually on your savings to begin with (because the 10x income would also apply to artificial people, that is, corporations- and they'd have to pay 100% taxes when they exceed 10x average profits). But beyond that- haven't you heard? Bush has exempted savings from any taxes whatsoever if you do it right.
What is fair about punishing me for saving for the future?
What is fair about allowing you to save for the future when there are still people starving in the world? Economics is inherently UNFAIR- the best we can do is choose between the good of the individual and the good of society.
What if instead of saving monetary resources, I expend time resources building a company from scratch that fills a useful need and produces significantly more value than that?
That's where my loopholes would come in- chances are in building such a company you'd be hiring people- with a tax free payroll- and raising the average wage of all workers. In return society would protect you from overseas competition and would reward you in porportion to the effort you put in- up to a point that is far beyond the effort you can PERSONALLY put in.
You cannot tell me that Sun has not made its customers better off by signficantly more than the wealth Mr. Joy has made from it.
Actually, Sun has made it's customers WORSE off by locking them into a proprietary technology. Just like Microsoft and Apple do. But it's not value out that counts- it's effort put in at the begining is the idea behind the Platonic Maximum Wage. You can't tell me that Mr. Joy works 400 hour weeks to justify a wage 10x the guy on the assembly line working 40 hour weeks.
Why shouldn't someone who makes the whole world better be compensated for it?
Nobody's powerfull enough to make the whole world better- and most ideas are merely a change for the worse anyway. Think about it this way- in the time before mechanical computers, anybody who could add could be a computer- companies would have to hire them by the droves. By producing a mechanical computer, there was a human cost that all of the human computers got thrown out of work. Yes, this makes the company using the mechanical computer more efficient- but there's a human cost to the equation that is rarely figured in. That's what the Platonic Maximum Wage attempts to remedy- making sure that for every increase in efficiency, there's an equal increase in production, even if that increase in production is only busy work done by the governmnet.
It all comes back to the purpose of having an economy to begin with, the reason why two human beings get together to trade their time. Some believe the reason for this is survival- and thus the purpose of a society-wide stable economy is to allow as many people to survive on their own as possible (thus ideas like the platonic maximum wage). Others believe the purpose is individual power- gaining an advantage over your neighbor. It's quite obvious from your aguments which axiom you hold to- and for you, the Platonic Maximum Wage is bad because it attacks the God of Greed, making it harder for you to gain an advantage over your neighbor. For me, the Platonic Maximum Wage is a good thing- it controls inflation and makes sure the lowest rung of the ladder is never far from the highest rung. It also gives a pressure release valve to the whole thing- by paying the workers more, the inventors and CEOs and owners earn 10x for every extra dollar they pay. That makes payroll DIRECTLY a 1000% return investment- the more peo
Go ahead and make all the changes you like- it's a wierd idea to begin with.
However- this started because somebody raised the point of 2008- so I'm comparing MY social conservativeism and fiscal liberalism to both candidates- and I think I can do a better job than either.
Damn, not true- I'm getting this thread mixed up with another one. Sorry.
And there's no room in the world for someone to reform himself?
Not past age 30- there's some real proof that once your brain cells begin to die of old age, you can't really form new behavior patterns. My guess is that the rumors about cocaine at Camp David and the pictures of Bush still drinking beer are more accurate than an actual reformation of his character- but that just paints him more as a puppet for the corporate interests behind the throne.
Depends on whom you ask.
Well, to me the very definition of all that is good in social conservativism is the Pope as head of the Roman Catholic Church- and it's hard to dispute that at least the Iraq front fails on porportionality and winnability in modern just war theory.
That's a valid point, although most conservatives are pro-capital punishment.
No-only the fake conservatives in the United States are.
Does he do that now? Or is this something like the drinking and drugs that he gave up when he realized it was wrong, and then amended his life.
Now this is a depends on whom you ask- last girlfriend was 1971, last daughter was 2003, if the rumor mill is accurate.
Just like liberals are all controlled by the unions and the trial lawyers?
Nah, the majority of the neo-liberals are controled by the same corporate interests as the neo-conservatives. Part of the reason why I want to break out and start a new party. Trial lawyers and unions have very little true control- if they had more it would be better for the average person.
Is he the perfect social conservative candidate? Hardly, but the alternative is the perfect social liberal candidate, despite his claims to the contrary. I would bet Kerry would be for gay marriage if he weren't running for President.
I wouldn't- considering that he's already stated his opposition to what the Massachusettes Supreme Court did (prefering instead that such questions be answered in the legislature). In addition, Kerry is very much a social conservative privately, to the point that he's stated that neither of his daughters will ever have an abortion if he can pay for the pregnancy instead.
However- this started because somebody raised the point of 2008- so I'm comparing MY social conservativeism and fiscal liberalism to both candidates- and I think I can do a better job than either.
Is Bush a fiscal liberal? Not really, because he failed at the "tax" part of "tax and spend".
He's also failed at the same things the neoliberals fail at- allowing corporations to overrun government and destroy the common man. It would take a populist to be a true fiscal liberal, and we haven't had one of those since Huey Long.
I've been following electoral-vote.com for weeks... two weeks ago it looked like today. A week ago the electoral projects were almost exactly reversed from what they are today. A week from now? Who knows.
The straight line regression, however, has been widening since mid September, when the straight lines crossed.
This is like measuring jelly with a caliper. It's extremely precise, but what can you learn from it.
Here's what I've learned from it- people like Bush until they can hear him. It flip-flops with every debate.
2)DC area Sniper terrorists. These guys terrorized the whole area from Richmond to Baltimore for months. They were caught, but only because they were stupid. What is to stop a smart terrorist from doing the same thing?
For those who doubt, here's my personal "smart terrorist" plan for doing the same thing in a way that would NEVER be caught (the problem is it would be MONTHS before the terror took hold, and of course, since I'm posting this on the net I'd never do it myself, but that should go without saying).
1. get an SUV, not a car.
2. Cut mansized trapdoor in roof
3. Get one of those long hard rooftop boxes shaped kind of like a Star Trek Photon Torpedo.
4. Cut matching hole in the bottom of the box, and gun hole in rear of box.
5. Tint rear windows.
6. Drive to public location on a hill with a nice view of a city or town.
7. Park with back of truck facing downhill.
8. Snipe random target
9. Drive to another state, to a county you've never been in before.
10. 48 hours after last shooting, Goto 6, NEVER repeating the same county twice.
The FBI will catch up eventually, but the damned randomness of it all means that it will be VERY hard catching up to you- and the first 20 or so shootings will be full of cops wanting the case for their own local jurisdictions. Best part is that your trial and eventual exectution will be drawn out until you die of old age because of all the different jurisdictions that will want to try you for the crimes. A GPS locator would be your friend while you're driving around, especially one with a full map of the United States listing altitude and public parks.
We've already got one. His name is President Bush...
Nope- fails on both counts. He fails at being a social conservative because he has no self control and spent half his life under the influence of various and sundry illegitimate mind altering drugs. He's failed at true social conservativism by championing an unjust war, being the governor who killed more prisoners than any in the history of the United States, and funding abortions of relatives and past girlfriends. He fails at being a fiscal liberal because like all neos his fiscal policy is not his, it's dicated by the corporations in the back pulling on the puppet strings, and many of those corporations are exactly the type of huge agribusiness that wants to take the family farm away. No, Bush is neither the social conservative he wants you to think he is, nor is he the fiscal liberal many think he is.
and, well, he's probably going to win.
Also nope- mathematically he's doomed at least by the 30 day straight line regression (do not trust link past October 19th- when it will change with the date).
That isn't what they mean and you know that I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT EXECUTIVES AND/OR CEOS.
No I don't- you merely said business owners, and in most small businesses the owner and the executive are one and the same.
I am talking about a tax on anyone who make more than 10x the average income.
Ok- that's different than Platonic and I missed it the first time around- Platonic would be 10x the minimum income. Though I doubt for you would make any difference.
Say you spend 5 years writing a book and it becomes a best seller, well you would be unable to make more than 10 times the average income from your hard work.
And considering that you only put in 5x the effort, why would you deserve more than 10x the reward? Let's modify your thought experiment though- you spent 20 years writing the book, and thus truly did put in 20x the effort of a person working to earn a wage in a single year. That way we've got a true comparison of apples to apples instead of a bannana to the apple. In that case, I'd agree with you that such a system would be regressive on such a person- unless you added in a method by which one could amortize past years of making less than average for a big reward year.
What the green party platform has said is that if you make more than 10x the average wage in INCOME anything over that is taxed at 100%.
Which I now agree that the real key word there is AVERAGE as opposed to MINIMUM income. That means that unless you're working to increase the AVERAGE (which is much harder than increasing the minimum) you can't get a raise. The problem isn't necessarily one of effort put in vs reward for effort as it is the greed driven inflation inherant in the Platonic system is missing.
IOW, if you come up with a great idea you can only make 10 times they yearly income of the typical person by selling it to others, anything over that mark goes to the goverment.
Which I'd be fine with- because the effort of an idea is much less than the effort of say, digging ditches. What I'm NOT ok with is the idea of spending 20 years coming up with your great idea for only 10 years worth of reward. But since the sales would not likely come in that fast, it's an outside case anyway. Personally though, if such a thing were implemented, I'd like to see loopholes for the following:
1. Payroll- anything paid out to labor is tax free to the employer. This means that, say, you hit your $430,000/year- plenty to live on- and don't want to pay the government, all you do is hire somebody for $50,000/year- leaving you $380,000 to live on. Keep doing that with your excess, and eventually you'll be able to earn $500,000/year before having to hire- because you'll have raised the average wage.
2. Charity- if there's any loophole I like in the current income tax, it's the Nun's loophole- give away your income and you won't be taxed on it.
3. Lifetime Achievement Award- One tax free year per copyrighted work or patent successfully filed.
Between these three loopholes, all argument against the Platonic Maximum Wage goes away- even if you replace average with minimum.
I personally think Huey Long in 1932 could have- if it wasn't for that assassin's bullet (I'd say the assassin thought so too, as did whichever major party paid him, likely both).
I think a truly popular candidate running on a socially conservative, fiscally liberal agenda could well decimate the political system in America- because that's all that the people really want, a single candidate that covers what THEY care about. And that's the one set that both Red and Blue state voters care about- somebody who will hold up traditional values and respond to this out-of-control economy.
So tell me... how do you plan to vote in 2008 after four years of watching Kerry ignore progressives the way Clinton did?
For myself- I'll be old enough to run by then.
If Kerry won't say the things you want to hear before the election, why would he bother with your issues after he's already in office?
His goals are basically the same as mine- excpet for abortion- I just disagree with how to get there- except for abortion. Oddly enough, I've got a different goal than he does with abortion, but I think his plan will work towards my goal (by providing the same co-pay for abortion as birth in universal health care, he will cause the number of abortions to go down).
The odds of the Democrats nominating a non-incumbent candidate in 2008 are next to zero. So if Kerry fails to dazzle, you'll still have nowhere to go because any defection will only help a Republican win. And if that's the mood in 2008 the Republicans will run the most rightwing nutjob they can find. Then you'll be right back where you started.
Except for, in that election, I'll be running as well- not sure if on the Technocratic ticket anymore (the isolationism thing- I'm begining to think that international solidarity combined with isolationism for corporate trade makes more sense) but believe me, I'll be announcing a new web page to start gathering donations November 6th (this year) (maybe LATE on the 6th- but it will be up by midnight).
In short: voting for Kerry is voting for Kerry and continuing to move the Democratic party to the right. If you want an alternative you have to vote for an alternative. Now. There is never going to be a better time.
Yes there is- hundreds of laid off GenX computer programmers will be running in 2008- a great time to send a pointed barb at the Baby Boomers and neo* goofballs.
But if improvements are financed with low interests loans, and it's run near capacity, costs might well drop, and a profit made from the power sold, particularly if PGE ownes any dams.
PGE doesn't own any dams. Around here the Federal Government owns all of the hydropower through the Bonneville Power Administration. PGE used to own Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, and currently owns a subsidiary known as Clean Wind which owns a few windpower farms in Eastern Oregon, but no dams.
It's possible the public might be able to seize the assets as the result of Enron's wrong doing, which normally you'd think the Federal government wouldn't whole heartedly endorse.
With Bush's lack of accountability for corporations, not likely to happen.
Just from the Enron scandal alone, I can't imagine how Oregonians would vote for Bush considering it his appointee who endorses Enron's criminal business practices. That's the Bush energy policy in action. The manipulated spike in energy prices was every bit the tax Bush accuses Kerry of planning on the poor and middle class, only there were no exemptions.
The only way the Enron scandal actually hurt Oregonians was confined to employees of PGE who saw their retirement saving destroyed and ratepayers who were bilked out of taxes that we would have had to pay for a PUD anyway. It was California that was hit bad by Enron. Scottish Power, aka Pacific Power and Light, is the other major utility owner for the rest of Oregon (except for isolated PUDs like Corvalis Power and Telephone Co-Op and Lincoln City Power and Light).
Part of the problem with the Green Proposal is also that they're taking it county by county- and some counties have NO power generation ability at all.
used to part of the Green party platform to tax at 100% any income over 10x the typical wage so people who busted their ass and built up a business or made a great product would not be rewarded for their work.
Just how does somebody spend 400 hours a week working when there's only 168 hours in a given week? Or do you believe that some people should be compensated differently for equal effort than others?
BTW, this isn't Green Party, or even communist- it's Platonic and was originally proposed in The Republic 2500 years ago. It's the people who claim they are more important than everybody else merely because they *worked hard* when they really don't put in nearly as much effort to justify a wage that is 400x everybody else's that get me.
See my Journal Entry on a real thinking Catholic Voter Guide- I figure we DO have 6 candidates who are on the ballot in enough states got get 270 electoral votes (theoretically, and if the minor candidate pulls a major upset).
Portland General Electric is the name of the local electric company owned by Enron and figuring prominently in the crimes of that company. A Public Utility District is the communist/socialist answer to such crimes- turning ratepayers into stockholders and cutting the cost of the electricity by the profit margin of the company. The only problem I can see with this plan is that Enron has been running PGE as a debt sink for many years now- so profits are officially negative, thus rates might actually go up if the Green Party is successfull (instead of DOWN as is typical for a regulated public monopoly being turned over to public ownership).