Paying for that "free" education is a key part of the educational experience.
And getting an annual colonoscopy is a key part of your life after turning 50. Doesn't mean that it's a pleasant part of life, and if it were to become unnecessary, why continue to do it?
The simplest way to lower the cost of higher education is not to set things up so that people can borrow tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for those high prices.
Or, we could realize that low taxes have high costs. Decades of propaganda and demagoguery from the anti-tax jihadists have indeed lowered taxes on the rich, but that's simply pushed more and more and more and more costs onto the middle class.
Look- if the professors were not making mid 100k incomes (yea, I know adjunct professors are poorly paid), if the universities were not funding research on the student's backs, if the university presidents were not making $350k!!! and if the universities JUST TAUGHT THE MATERIAL like they used to back in the 50's, then school wouldn't be so expensive.
Know what they had in the 50's? A top marginal tax rate of 84-91 PERCENT.
That and the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Complex are why we don't have the money for roads and schools: greed and waste. Or for short, Republicans.
Health care is super expensive for the same reason. People have shown that they *will* pay anything for it, so the providers have jacked up the bill.
Uh, no. Health care has gotten expensive because we have set up this middle man that profits by raising premiums while denying care. Health care has gotten expensive because people are denied treatments and are forced to go to the emergency room at 10x the cost, so the CEO of Wellpoint can be worth three quarters of a billion dollars.
...where far more higher education costs are covered and they have single payer health care. Under teh evil Socialism, college grads over there don't have to worry about 6 figure student loan debt or trying to start a business while having to deal with health insurance.
But we can't have that here, as elitism and ankle grabbing are as American as apple pie.
Not really. How about pushing for human rights and social advancement, and stop buddying up to whatever nasty dictator/regime is aiding us against the last dictator/regime we supported 10 years ago that turned around to bite us in the ass.
It's not about "handouts", fuckwit, it's about getting a fair deal. If you and John McCain go broke and are forced to declare bankruptcy tomorrow, he's free to seek new mortgage terms for his 11 secondary homes while you are Shit Out of Luck on your student loans. THAT'S what it's about.
Maybe you'd have an easier time seeing that if you weren't so enthusiastically grabbing your ankles for the rich and powerful while putting on airs of elitism.
They put Obama in as the Dem candidate, but, VOTERS put him in office, and I stick by my assertions on the Independents.
And who made up the vast majority of the VOTERS who put him in office? Democrats. And there is this fanciful idea that "independent" == the large middle between the Democratic and Republican parties, and that's just not the case. You have people who can't make up their minds, people who don't care about politics at all (but need to be categorized), conservatives who are consistent for two seconds at a time and thus can't vote GOP, and people who are pissed off at both parties for reasons both justified and not.
Wow..what polls are you getting this from??
The reputable ones. On the page they say "almost half" but it's actually 59%. LA Times: 53%. Hell, even a majority of Republican voters support a public option when separated from the lies about "Death Panels" and Concern trolling over the deficit which, funny enough, was never a concern with Iraq.
Not a single poll I've seen say the majority of US citizens want the public option
Maybe you should get out more; the reality-based community is a nice place to visit.
From what I've seen from multiple polls from multiple sources, it is quite the opposite of what you say.
That's because your poll is from Rassmusen, who are noted hacks.
Sure, I know one can search and find special polls and stats that will argue for any side of any case, but, from what I've seen, there is just not a majority support of the single payer option at all in the US.
The funny thing is that batshit crazy, immigrant hating, fascist, warmongering corporatist right wingers in other countries wonder what the hell is wrong with American conservatives for opposing single payer. For reasons like....single payer is the most fiscally conservative policy possible. The entire existence (and massive profits of) the health insurance industry depends on taking your premiums while doing their best to deny your claims. Which is why Medicare spends about 2 cents on the dollar in administrative costs, compared to 30-35% for private insurance.
And I thought conservatives wanted to hold onto their money...
You seem to think something is wrong with people protesting Obama's policies?
You seem to ignore that these protesters were didn't care about Bush doubling the national debt, lying us into a war, and shredding the Bill of Rights? You have Republican Congressmen calling for violent revolution, yet never gave a shit about NSA wiretapping?
One of the most glaring problems conservatives face is the complete inability to be consistent for two seconds. The other problem is that they are utterly divorced from reality. What SNL said: you guys can't complain about how Obama is a socialist, because he hasn't done anything yet.
I saw plenty of protest (and yes, some VERY distasteful things said too)
LOL. Not only are they not on the same page, they aren't on the same planet. Where were the liberals burning and hanging GOP congressmen in effigy? Were Democratic voters showing up to rallies headed by VP nominee John Edwards, yelling "kill him" about Bush? Republicans mocked liberal celebrities for saying they would leave the country if Bush was re-elected, yet were openly calling for secession the month Obama took office.
This large middle class tax cut you mention....where and when exactly did this occur?
I kind of see what you tried to do there... but if your fully patched legitimate copy is vulnerable
Because not every legit copy is fully patched? You have users who never update, users who can download hundreds of megabytes of updates on slow connections, and users who don't install updates because they don't want to patch production machines unless they have to.
And aside from all that, there's the issue of spam. How much time, bandwidth and money does Microsoft waste filtering out spam on Hotmail that originated from compromised PC's?
Yes, like that he was nominated based on race alone. Since you are so open to suggestion, I know this girl in Nigeria that needs some cash for a life-saving operation, if you could just send some money to the following address....
And "journalists" as a whole have YET to excoriate him for passing off as authentic documents in the exact same font as the default of MS Word that were faxed in from a random Kinkos by a nutcase with an ax to grind.
Those documents were never proven to be forgeries, and they were vetted by CBS, for content. If those memos were faked, they faked the truth. This is nothing more than another pathetic argument of convenience from Republicans, who invent a standard that applies to one person they don't like at one time (like Gore's taking credit for his role in creating the Internet) but never apply to anyone else.
Like you know, all the media sources that xeroxed the Bush Administration's claims of WMD's and ties between Iraq and Al Queda.
I must admit that getting elected as the first non-white ethnic to the office of US president is pretty interesting. Seems a weak justification in itself.
To be fair, the original Xbox had online gaming capability superior to that found in some PC games that ship today.
In return for some centralized laddering (which Blizzard had years earlier with Battlenet) you gave up modding. All the features added in Halo 2 and 3 could have been modded into the first game within a couple months after its release. Whoop de do.
To be fair, the original Xbox had online gaming capability superior to that found in some PC games that ship today.
In return for some centralized laddering (which Blizzard had years earlier with Battlenet) you gave up modding. All the features added in Halo 2 and 3 could have been modded into the first game within a couple months after its release. Whoop de do.
So rather than some lawyers taking some money, you'd rather grab your ankles for Sony? The cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face attitude towards class action lawsuits never ceases to amaze me.
Sony, the company that gave you a shitty product. You get some redress despite putting in zero effort with zero risk to yourself. The lawyers do indeed make money - because they took ALL of the risk in filing the suit.
Oh Lord, deliver us from ankle-grabbing Republicans.
Great -- so affected users have a shot at getting a check for like, eight dollars in acouple of years while some lawyer gets rich. Gotta love that...
That's 8 bucks you wouldn't have had otherwise, through zero effort or expense of your own. And the corporation that wronged you in the first place is punished. Yes, lawyers get most of the money, but they take all of the risk - if they don't win, they don't get paid. Don't like it, hire your own damn lawyer and file your own damn lawsuit.
Seriously, what's not to like here? Other than the Republican tendency to grab their ankles and proudly take it like a bitch, of course.
B5 helped break episodic television. Everything was like Seinfeld and Star Trek: the Next Generation. What happened last week doesn't have anything to do with whats going on this week, or next week. Whereas now you'll even see pre-planned story arcs on freaking prime time dramas (Desperate Housewives).
You can meet 90% of your customer's needs for X dollars, and 99% of your customer's needs for 10X dollars, and 99.9% of your customer's needs for 100X dollars, and 99.99% of your customer's needs for 1000X dollars... see the problem?
The problem is your nonsensical view of the situation. It's not a matter of serving 99% of the people vs 99.9% - that's a straw man. No, it's about companies that take billions in profits yet spend millions on improving infrastructure. Then they whine about how their under-funded infrastructure is overloaded, so they jack up rates and/or implement caps after advertising unlimited access.
Ah, but you have to realize that it wasn't the Democratic voters that put the current administration in office...
It wasn't independents who caucused for Obama over Hillary. It wasn't independents who max out their credit cards donating to Obama. It wasn't independents using their two weeks of yearly vacation to call for Obama and wear holes in their shoes canvasing for Obama.
It was the Democratic wing of the Democratic party that put Obama into office, period.
I'd dare say many of them weren't on board for as much 'change' as they are trying to accomplish
On what planet is that, exactly? Obama was quite clear in his policies, the problem is that...
and many thought Obama was a bit more moderate than he is turning out to be.
...Obama has been acting far too conservative on everything from taxes to regulation to HCR to continuing Bush's unjustifiable violations of the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments.
I'm just saying mainly...just because the Dems are in power, doesn't mean the majority of US citizens are supporting all their policies. By and large, I'd dare say the majority of the US population, is moderate to slighly conservative side of moderate.
Unfortunately, the facts don't match that storyline. A majority of Americans favor single payer, not just a "public option".
At least, that is the view of things from my part of the country.
Oh, so you have some of those teabagging protests in your area? You know, the ones where they thank Obama for making the largest middle class tax cut in history?
Don't project -your- perceptions onto the entire population that voted for Democrats over Republicans.
That's not projection, that's reality. The vast majority of Democratic voters oppose the Iraq war and support health care.
It is as much the problem of Republicans betraying their own constituents, who decided to not vote for them, or even vote against them.
Not really. Bush had 4 years to prove his reckless, bloodthirsty incompetence, and Republicans still overwhelmingly voted for him in 2004.
Don't be so vainglorious to assume that everything Pelosi, Reid, and the Media tell you about what the Democrat win in 2006 and 2008 meant is entirely accurate.
No but they might offer alloy wheels, metalic paint, a sun roof, cruise control, built in GPS, a Carlos Fandango trim kit, and an upgraded stereo at extra cost. Is that so different?
Uh, yeah? Alloy wheels, metalic paint, a sun roof, cruise control, built in GPS, a Carlos Fandango trim kit, and an upgraded stereo all cost more money than the base options. Whereas the cost difference between shipping a complete game and a crippled game is nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
Paying for that "free" education is a key part of the educational experience.
And getting an annual colonoscopy is a key part of your life after turning 50. Doesn't mean that it's a pleasant part of life, and if it were to become unnecessary, why continue to do it?
The simplest way to lower the cost of higher education is not to set things up so that people can borrow tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for those high prices.
Or, we could realize that low taxes have high costs. Decades of propaganda and demagoguery from the anti-tax jihadists have indeed lowered taxes on the rich, but that's simply pushed more and more and more and more costs onto the middle class.
Look- if the professors were not making mid 100k incomes (yea, I know adjunct professors are poorly paid), if the universities were not funding research on the student's backs, if the university presidents were not making $350k!!! and if the universities JUST TAUGHT THE MATERIAL like they used to back in the 50's, then school wouldn't be so expensive.
Know what they had in the 50's? A top marginal tax rate of 84-91 PERCENT.
That and the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Complex are why we don't have the money for roads and schools: greed and waste. Or for short, Republicans.
Health care is super expensive for the same reason. People have shown that they *will* pay anything for it, so the providers have jacked up the bill.
Uh, no. Health care has gotten expensive because we have set up this middle man that profits by raising premiums while denying care. Health care has gotten expensive because people are denied treatments and are forced to go to the emergency room at 10x the cost, so the CEO of Wellpoint can be worth three quarters of a billion dollars.
...where far more higher education costs are covered and they have single payer health care. Under teh evil Socialism, college grads over there don't have to worry about 6 figure student loan debt or trying to start a business while having to deal with health insurance.
But we can't have that here, as elitism and ankle grabbing are as American as apple pie.
Hey, I have a better idea.
Not really. How about pushing for human rights and social advancement, and stop buddying up to whatever nasty dictator/regime is aiding us against the last dictator/regime we supported 10 years ago that turned around to bite us in the ass.
You forgot the small fact that there has been less than a trillion dollars, in total, have been allocated in total for the wars.
You're forgetting two facts yourself:
1. You're an idiot
2. You're willfully ignoring the Hollywood Accounting used by the Bush Administration to spread out costs
Let's put your sentences together in a fashion that actually fits the facts:
It's not about "handouts", fuckwit, it's about getting a fair deal. If you and John McCain go broke and are forced to declare bankruptcy tomorrow, he's free to seek new mortgage terms for his 11 secondary homes while you are Shit Out of Luck on your student loans. THAT'S what it's about.
Maybe you'd have an easier time seeing that if you weren't so enthusiastically grabbing your ankles for the rich and powerful while putting on airs of elitism.
They put Obama in as the Dem candidate, but, VOTERS put him in office, and I stick by my assertions on the Independents.
And who made up the vast majority of the VOTERS who put him in office? Democrats. And there is this fanciful idea that "independent" == the large middle between the Democratic and Republican parties, and that's just not the case. You have people who can't make up their minds, people who don't care about politics at all (but need to be categorized), conservatives who are consistent for two seconds at a time and thus can't vote GOP, and people who are pissed off at both parties for reasons both justified and not.
Wow..what polls are you getting this from??
The reputable ones. On the page they say "almost half" but it's actually 59%. LA Times: 53%. Hell, even a majority of Republican voters support a public option when separated from the lies about "Death Panels" and Concern trolling over the deficit which, funny enough, was never a concern with Iraq.
Not a single poll I've seen say the majority of US citizens want the public option
Maybe you should get out more; the reality-based community is a nice place to visit.
From what I've seen from multiple polls from multiple sources, it is quite the opposite of what you say.
That's because your poll is from Rassmusen, who are noted hacks.
Sure, I know one can search and find special polls and stats that will argue for any side of any case, but, from what I've seen, there is just not a majority support of the single payer option at all in the US.
The funny thing is that batshit crazy, immigrant hating, fascist, warmongering corporatist right wingers in other countries wonder what the hell is wrong with American conservatives for opposing single payer. For reasons like....single payer is the most fiscally conservative policy possible. The entire existence (and massive profits of) the health insurance industry depends on taking your premiums while doing their best to deny your claims. Which is why Medicare spends about 2 cents on the dollar in administrative costs, compared to 30-35% for private insurance.
And I thought conservatives wanted to hold onto their money...
You seem to think something is wrong with people protesting Obama's policies?
You seem to ignore that these protesters were didn't care about Bush doubling the national debt, lying us into a war, and shredding the Bill of Rights? You have Republican Congressmen calling for violent revolution, yet never gave a shit about NSA wiretapping?
One of the most glaring problems conservatives face is the complete inability to be consistent for two seconds. The other problem is that they are utterly divorced from reality. What SNL said: you guys can't complain about how Obama is a socialist, because he hasn't done anything yet.
I saw plenty of protest (and yes, some VERY distasteful things said too)
LOL. Not only are they not on the same page, they aren't on the same planet. Where were the liberals burning and hanging GOP congressmen in effigy? Were Democratic voters showing up to rallies headed by VP nominee John Edwards, yelling "kill him" about Bush? Republicans mocked liberal celebrities for saying they would leave the country if Bush was re-elected, yet were openly calling for secession the month Obama took office.
This large middle class tax cut you mention....where and when exactly did this occur?
I kind of see what you tried to do there... but if your fully patched legitimate copy is vulnerable
Because not every legit copy is fully patched? You have users who never update, users who can download hundreds of megabytes of updates on slow connections, and users who don't install updates because they don't want to patch production machines unless they have to.
And aside from all that, there's the issue of spam. How much time, bandwidth and money does Microsoft waste filtering out spam on Hotmail that originated from compromised PC's?
"First to release" != "proprietary invention"
I'm open to suggestions.
Yes, like that he was nominated based on race alone. Since you are so open to suggestion, I know this girl in Nigeria that needs some cash for a life-saving operation, if you could just send some money to the following address....
Those documents were never proven to be forgeries, and they were vetted by CBS, for content. If those memos were faked, they faked the truth. This is nothing more than another pathetic argument of convenience from Republicans, who invent a standard that applies to one person they don't like at one time (like Gore's taking credit for his role in creating the Internet) but never apply to anyone else.
Like you know, all the media sources that xeroxed the Bush Administration's claims of WMD's and ties between Iraq and Al Queda.
I must admit that getting elected as the first non-white ethnic to the office of US president is pretty interesting. Seems a weak justification in itself.
Seems like a pretty weak straw man.
Dude, you could have just wrote "Republican" and saved yourself the long explanation.
The Floppy and CD were proprietary Sony inventions too.
Uh, no (that would be IBM) and no (was developed with Philips).
Preview FAIL.
To be fair, the original Xbox had online gaming capability superior to that found in some PC games that ship today.
In return for some centralized laddering (which Blizzard had years earlier with Battlenet) you gave up modding. All the features added in Halo 2 and 3 could have been modded into the first game within a couple months after its release. Whoop de do.
To be fair, the original Xbox had online gaming capability superior to that found in some PC games that ship today.
In return for some centralized laddering (which Blizzard had years earlier with Battlenet) you gave up modding. All the features added in Halo 2 and 3 could have been modded into the first game within a couple months after its release. Whoop de do.
So rather than some lawyers taking some money, you'd rather grab your ankles for Sony? The cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face attitude towards class action lawsuits never ceases to amaze me.
Sony, the company that gave you a shitty product.
You get some redress despite putting in zero effort with zero risk to yourself.
The lawyers do indeed make money - because they took ALL of the risk in filing the suit.
Oh Lord, deliver us from ankle-grabbing Republicans.
Great -- so affected users have a shot at getting a check for like, eight dollars in acouple of years while some lawyer gets rich. Gotta love that...
That's 8 bucks you wouldn't have had otherwise, through zero effort or expense of your own. And the corporation that wronged you in the first place is punished. Yes, lawyers get most of the money, but they take all of the risk - if they don't win, they don't get paid. Don't like it, hire your own damn lawyer and file your own damn lawsuit.
Seriously, what's not to like here? Other than the Republican tendency to grab their ankles and proudly take it like a bitch, of course.
B5 helped break episodic television. Everything was like Seinfeld and Star Trek: the Next Generation. What happened last week doesn't have anything to do with whats going on this week, or next week. Whereas now you'll even see pre-planned story arcs on freaking prime time dramas (Desperate Housewives).
You can meet 90% of your customer's needs for X dollars, and 99% of your customer's needs for 10X dollars, and 99.9% of your customer's needs for 100X dollars, and 99.99% of your customer's needs for 1000X dollars... see the problem?
The problem is your nonsensical view of the situation. It's not a matter of serving 99% of the people vs 99.9% - that's a straw man. No, it's about companies that take billions in profits yet spend millions on improving infrastructure. Then they whine about how their under-funded infrastructure is overloaded, so they jack up rates and/or implement caps after advertising unlimited access.
Ah, but you have to realize that it wasn't the Democratic voters that put the current administration in office...
It wasn't independents who caucused for Obama over Hillary. It wasn't independents who max out their credit cards donating to Obama. It wasn't independents using their two weeks of yearly vacation to call for Obama and wear holes in their shoes canvasing for Obama.
It was the Democratic wing of the Democratic party that put Obama into office, period.
I'd dare say many of them weren't on board for as much 'change' as they are trying to accomplish
On what planet is that, exactly? Obama was quite clear in his policies, the problem is that...
and many thought Obama was a bit more moderate than he is turning out to be.
...Obama has been acting far too conservative on everything from taxes to regulation to HCR to continuing Bush's unjustifiable violations of the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments.
I'm just saying mainly...just because the Dems are in power, doesn't mean the majority of US citizens are supporting all their policies. By and large, I'd dare say the majority of the US population, is moderate to slighly conservative side of moderate.
Unfortunately, the facts don't match that storyline. A majority of Americans favor single payer, not just a "public option".
At least, that is the view of things from my part of the country.
Oh, so you have some of those teabagging protests in your area? You know, the ones where they thank Obama for making the largest middle class tax cut in history?
Don't project -your- perceptions onto the entire population that voted for Democrats over Republicans.
That's not projection, that's reality. The vast majority of Democratic voters oppose the Iraq war and support health care.
It is as much the problem of Republicans betraying their own constituents, who decided to not vote for them, or even vote against them.
Not really. Bush had 4 years to prove his reckless, bloodthirsty incompetence, and Republicans still overwhelmingly voted for him in 2004.
Don't be so vainglorious to assume that everything Pelosi, Reid, and the Media tell you about what the Democrat win in 2006 and 2008 meant is entirely accurate.
Where's he doing that, exactly?
No but they might offer alloy wheels, metalic paint, a sun roof, cruise control, built in GPS, a Carlos Fandango trim kit, and an upgraded stereo at extra cost. Is that so different?
Uh, yeah? Alloy wheels, metalic paint, a sun roof, cruise control, built in GPS, a Carlos Fandango trim kit, and an upgraded stereo all cost more money than the base options. Whereas the cost difference between shipping a complete game and a crippled game is nothing.