Story on the news here the other day about an elderly woman who just lost her home after some mistake at the tax bureau left her owing less than 7 dollars on a property bill that she thought had been paid...
Sounds more like an elderly woman deprived of due process. "Property rights" is a catch-all justification for rent seeking and a general lack of regard for the society in which one lives.
Amazon has been selling their Kindle devices for a LOT less, given what you get for for the money. I'm not a Kindle zealot (I hate that they are totally locked down) but Apple needs to face the fact that there are now other options out there that do just about everything that IPad can and they are cheaper.
You get what you pay for. Sure, that Kindle costs less than an iPad, but it's heavier with a smaller screen and slower processing.
Add to that the large scale adoption of Android in both the handset and tablet market (including the Kindle, under the covers) and it is clear that Apple's dominance of this market is over.
It's clear you're chugging the Hatorade. Zombie Steve Jobs isn't holding a gun to your head; stop treating person product preferences as a religion and buy what you want that does what you want.
And, of course, it's the teacher's unions who are forcing high-performing charter schools to close, but that's hardly part of the Dem platform, just a consequence of seeking the public sector employee vote
So, not just the usual worker hating, democracy hating fascism, but now with some crazy BS pulled out of right field.
Not so. Nitrogen gas - cheap, effective, and painless - is specifically rejected by death penalty advocates because the victim feels no pain. They want the person to suffer as they die.
As the evidence was presented, I started to question my beliefs. The defendant was accused of murdering and raping a 12 year old boy, and was a twice-convicted sex offender (why he wasn't already in prison is an entirely different question). This person showed no remorse for the crime, and if given life imprisonment, would still be able to see his friends and family....something his victim could no longer do. It really made me question my thoughts on capital punishment.
Every person ever released from death row was horrible scum...up until their innocence was proven. Or some that were executed, like that father in Texas for burning up his three little girls in a house fire, when all modern science and experts say he never should have been convicted.
How about you list the countries that don't require ID to vote?
How about rummage through your list of "vote fraud" cases and find some that would have actually been prevented with ID? Nearly every case you trolls bring up was either registration fraud, or voting by absentee and in person, or illegible due to being a felon. None of which would have been prevented by requiring drivers license or even a passport.
Voter ID = a rational for disenfranchisement. Nothing more, nothing less.
Ah, the old elitism of "property rights". Unless you're a property rights activist who's demanding that land be returned to whatever Native American tribe it was stolen from, that'd be a first.
.that you disapprove just as much of Michael Bloomberg (another billionaire that spends a lot of money trying to influence politics) when he decides to buy a "grass roots" effort as you do when the Koch Brothers try to do so?
Bloomberg isn't going to make money off a gun ban. If he were pushing legislation to ban competing financial software, you might have an apples-to-apples analogy. And Bloomberg's express motivation is to counter the influence of the NRA, one of the most powerful domestic lobbies...as opposed to solar panel companies.
Not so much. Fukishima could have been a year old and it wouldn't have made much of a difference. Because it wasn't designed to handle the sort of disaster that was geologically common to the area.
Our population is stable and has been for some time.
The poor population would have to rise to over 70 billion to match the resource consumption of your population.
Further, those statistics (and the source, the tape-doctoring NYT) are suspect.
For the same reason you're probably a climate change denialist as well: it means you might, someday, have to take some responsibility for your actions. And we can't have that.
It's not social Darwinism, it's just Darwinism.
You can say that with a straight face when you demand universal housing, education, health care and job opportunities, as well as a 100% estate tax. But not before then.
I can see you are retreating to attemps at ridicul instead of addtessing the points made. Its clear that you are lost in this.
So, who opened the conversation with the following missive?
What you fail to realize is that most of them could care less if the oil companies get rich or not. They are more concerned with controlling you and getting your vote. The evil oil companies is just a windmill for you to tilt at while they cheer you on claiming to do something about it while you gladly vote for them.
Now, you were saying something about ridicule rather than address points being made?
It's clear that you are retreating to faux butthurt over sarcasm in order to ignore the holes in your reasoning opened up next to the sarcasm. No operations manager is going to mine the tar sands far beyond their capacity to transport materials. Having to choose between a gigantic leaking pipeline built on stolen land and trains that can derail is the definition of a false dilemma.
As for the town burning down. You are a complete idiot if you do not see how transporting oil away from other humans is safer to society snd those that inhabit it than what we have now which has already proven to be quite devistating when things go wrong.
Knock knock. Who's there? False dilemma....again.
If it appears a pipeline is completely out of the question then the answer is more trucks, more rail cars, more tanker ships, and a refinery.
Ah, the "this will happen anyway so we might as well help it along" canard. I was surprised you left out of the list of the standard-issue talking points the first time. Well, international child sex trafficking will still happen, even if the United States refuses to let it pass through it's borders. Therefore, the State Department should provide a transportation route through the middle of the country for child sex trafficking.
For the willfully obtuse out there on the 'Tubes, that isn't saying fossil fuels = trafficking. It's pointing out the fallacies in the logic used to support this pipeline.
You don't know WTF you're talking about. Neocons are all about extending the American Empire, not hating gays or banning abortions. This is remedial modern politics, here.
you = GOP troll
Yes, because sooooooooooooo many Republicans are angry with Obama's drone strikes, illegal invasions and support for coups against democratically elected governments for a lack of pro-west capitalism.
That's just throwing the question back because you can't answer it.
That's you projecting because your stance is unjustifiable. This isn't hard: attracting top talent requires good pay, same as any other profession, and students perform better with smaller class sizes and more teacher-hours per pupil, instead of more pupils per teacher. Which requires....wait for it...more money than skinflint social darwinists have been willing to spend.
tl;dr you get what you pay for
Yes all jobs have shitty aspects to them
Yes and again, you wouldn't touch this shitty job unless it paid six figures.
But, as I pointed out previously, the fares collected could NEVER cover the costs of mass transit. Which is the point I'm trying to make. The users do not pay the total costs. This is not true of roads.
And tolls NEVER pay for the whole cost of public roads. Nor do gas taxes, for that matter. So you're back to the start of your circle. Again.
Mining the tar sands is happening without the pipeline.
Scale. The lack of a pipeline is a hard limit on how much the tar sands production can ramp up. Lets say that you've won a secret Koch Bros raffle by posting your 5,000th hippie-punching comment, and are now in charge of the tar sands operation in Alberta. Are you going to start mining years beyond your transportation capacity? Store the semi-processed materials that you can't ship for another five years?
Of course not, that would be a waste of capital. The lack of a pipeline is a bottleneck on production. It means northern Alberta will be destroyed at a lower rate, and more time for a non-wingnut government to kick out the Tories and call a halt to the enterprise.
Thr only aregument you put forth that isn't already a reality is eminent domain.
Left out the part where this wont do anything to lower energy costs for Americans.
As for leaks, did you miss all the tanker fires or the town that burnt down from an accident while moving this oil already? That almost makes your pipeline fears a godsend if it makes large populattion areas safer.
Holy false dilemma, Batman! Do you also talk about how getting a powerhouse kick to the balls from someone wearing bunny slippers is awesome, because a powerhouse kick to the balls from someone wearing steel toed shoes would hurt more?
We stop eating meat, people breed until the damage is equivalent to what we're doing now.
Ah, westerner pretending the problem is poor people having babies, when you have to get 30 people from developing nations to match your narcissism.
The conservative vision is to keep around the useful people and make sure they're doing well.
The rest nature will sort out.
Social Darwinism isn't going to make conservatives appear less sociopathic, you know. Also nevermind that you define "useful" as in "how much money my daddy made."
You start running into the gold rush problem then. Pay too well for a job and you get people interested only in the pay, not doing the job well. This is especially true in jobs where it's difficult to measure performance.
That's the most imaginative reason I've heard of yet for continuing crappy teacher pay. But that must extend to other professions, no? Better cut the salaries of software engineers to $35k a year, stat, before the greedy people hear about it!
Throwing money at the problem is not the solution!
Neither is repeating a talking point that was baseless 30 years ago.
And exactly how much do teacher salaries have to be in order for them to properly educate children?
How much would you want to be paid to have a teachers job? Tens of thousands in student loans to get a masters degree, 50+ hour work weeks, playing babysitter/parent/disciplinarian/counselor/doctor for a bunch of kids before even starting the teaching part, putting up with shitty parents and administrators, spend your summers continuing your education, and finally be judged on student performance when the #1 correlation for that is what kind of home the student goes home to at the end of the day. Something you have no control over whatsoever.
Not one of you snobby snots would take a teaching job for less than six figures.
Slashdot Mirror
Was there powered human flight "from the earliest days of common law"? The willful obtuseness of libertarians/property "rights" zealots....
Sounds more like an elderly woman deprived of due process. "Property rights" is a catch-all justification for rent seeking and a general lack of regard for the society in which one lives.
You should check and see if there's some kind of prize for being the first person to complain about swappable batteries on a non-Apple product.
You get what you pay for. Sure, that Kindle costs less than an iPad, but it's heavier with a smaller screen and slower processing.
It's clear you're chugging the Hatorade. Zombie Steve Jobs isn't holding a gun to your head; stop treating person product preferences as a religion and buy what you want that does what you want.
Try harder.
So, not just the usual worker hating, democracy hating fascism, but now with some crazy BS pulled out of right field.
Not so. Nitrogen gas - cheap, effective, and painless - is specifically rejected by death penalty advocates because the victim feels no pain. They want the person to suffer as they die.
Every person ever released from death row was horrible scum...up until their innocence was proven. Or some that were executed, like that father in Texas for burning up his three little girls in a house fire, when all modern science and experts say he never should have been convicted.
How about rummage through your list of "vote fraud" cases and find some that would have actually been prevented with ID? Nearly every case you trolls bring up was either registration fraud, or voting by absentee and in person, or illegible due to being a felon. None of which would have been prevented by requiring drivers license or even a passport.
Voter ID = a rational for disenfranchisement. Nothing more, nothing less.
Ah, the old elitism of "property rights". Unless you're a property rights activist who's demanding that land be returned to whatever Native American tribe it was stolen from, that'd be a first.
Bloomberg isn't going to make money off a gun ban. If he were pushing legislation to ban competing financial software, you might have an apples-to-apples analogy. And Bloomberg's express motivation is to counter the influence of the NRA, one of the most powerful domestic lobbies...as opposed to solar panel companies.
And if you weren't pretending that a single billionaire has more influence than a million voters....
Because the taxpayers are notorious skinflints. You get what you pay for.
Not so much. Fukishima could have been a year old and it wouldn't have made much of a difference. Because it wasn't designed to handle the sort of disaster that was geologically common to the area.
The poor population would have to rise to over 70 billion to match the resource consumption of your population.
For the same reason you're probably a climate change denialist as well: it means you might, someday, have to take some responsibility for your actions. And we can't have that.
You can say that with a straight face when you demand universal housing, education, health care and job opportunities, as well as a 100% estate tax. But not before then.
So, who opened the conversation with the following missive?
Now, you were saying something about ridicule rather than address points being made?
It's clear that you are retreating to faux butthurt over sarcasm in order to ignore the holes in your reasoning opened up next to the sarcasm. No operations manager is going to mine the tar sands far beyond their capacity to transport materials. Having to choose between a gigantic leaking pipeline built on stolen land and trains that can derail is the definition of a false dilemma.
Knock knock. Who's there? False dilemma....again.
Ah, the "this will happen anyway so we might as well help it along" canard. I was surprised you left out of the list of the standard-issue talking points the first time. Well, international child sex trafficking will still happen, even if the United States refuses to let it pass through it's borders. Therefore, the State Department should provide a transportation route through the middle of the country for child sex trafficking.
For the willfully obtuse out there on the 'Tubes, that isn't saying fossil fuels = trafficking. It's pointing out the fallacies in the logic used to support this pipeline.
Double taxation = taxing money when it passes from rich person to rich person. Doesn't apply to working people earning a living, sales taxes, etc.
Damn kids.
You don't know WTF you're talking about. Neocons are all about extending the American Empire, not hating gays or banning abortions. This is remedial modern politics, here.
Yes, because sooooooooooooo many Republicans are angry with Obama's drone strikes, illegal invasions and support for coups against democratically elected governments for a lack of pro-west capitalism.
you = butthurt Obamabot reciting a script
That's you projecting because your stance is unjustifiable. This isn't hard: attracting top talent requires good pay, same as any other profession, and students perform better with smaller class sizes and more teacher-hours per pupil, instead of more pupils per teacher. Which requires....wait for it...more money than skinflint social darwinists have been willing to spend.
tl;dr you get what you pay for
Yes and again, you wouldn't touch this shitty job unless it paid six figures.
And tolls NEVER pay for the whole cost of public roads. Nor do gas taxes, for that matter. So you're back to the start of your circle. Again.
Scale. The lack of a pipeline is a hard limit on how much the tar sands production can ramp up. Lets say that you've won a secret Koch Bros raffle by posting your 5,000th hippie-punching comment, and are now in charge of the tar sands operation in Alberta. Are you going to start mining years beyond your transportation capacity? Store the semi-processed materials that you can't ship for another five years?
Of course not, that would be a waste of capital. The lack of a pipeline is a bottleneck on production. It means northern Alberta will be destroyed at a lower rate, and more time for a non-wingnut government to kick out the Tories and call a halt to the enterprise.
Left out the part where this wont do anything to lower energy costs for Americans.
Holy false dilemma, Batman! Do you also talk about how getting a powerhouse kick to the balls from someone wearing bunny slippers is awesome, because a powerhouse kick to the balls from someone wearing steel toed shoes would hurt more?
Ah, westerner pretending the problem is poor people having babies, when you have to get 30 people from developing nations to match your narcissism.
Social Darwinism isn't going to make conservatives appear less sociopathic, you know. Also nevermind that you define "useful" as in "how much money my daddy made."
That's the most imaginative reason I've heard of yet for continuing crappy teacher pay. But that must extend to other professions, no? Better cut the salaries of software engineers to $35k a year, stat, before the greedy people hear about it!
Neither is repeating a talking point that was baseless 30 years ago.
How much would you want to be paid to have a teachers job? Tens of thousands in student loans to get a masters degree, 50+ hour work weeks, playing babysitter/parent/disciplinarian/counselor/doctor for a bunch of kids before even starting the teaching part, putting up with shitty parents and administrators, spend your summers continuing your education, and finally be judged on student performance when the #1 correlation for that is what kind of home the student goes home to at the end of the day. Something you have no control over whatsoever.
Not one of you snobby snots would take a teaching job for less than six figures.