Actually those regulations prevent us from putting BETTER safety equipment in cars. Some of the things mandated have even been proved to be HARMFUL. However, do we care? F*** no! As long as congress says we're good, we can't get suied no matter how bad it gets.
> were originaly supposed to be on the MONEY left behind
The only people I know who leave cash money behind are people who work for a living. Any middle class family will have most of their assets tied up in property (their homes, their cars, their businesses, stocks, bonds, etc.; anybody who has $10 million in cash is being catastrophically stupid). Again I see no useful benefit whatsoever to this tax pollicy. It appears to ignore in the realities of economics by attempting to skew them, and no matter how powerful the government thinks it is, economic reality is eventually going to set in.
> Specifically, to keep bubble headed kids from inheriting wealth they didn't do a damned thing to earn.
But owning a business or part of it does not equate to money. To get money you either have to sell it (at which point the government taxes you), or you continue to run it, help the economy and pay taxes (in which case you earn your money). I really don't see how the issue you keep citing is a problem .
I never said that you should or shouldn't vote for Bush. All I have maintained is that you were blaming the president for a call made by some officer who would have made that call no matter who was president. As I've repeatedly said, your refusal to acknoledge this is puzzling. There are plenty of good, valid reasons to not vote for Bush (along the same vein there are plenty of reason to not vote for Kerry, or any other politician for that matter), but some random miltary officer's call is not one of them.
Well it is family founed owned and operated and it's a little below average size for the types of businesses that do most of the employing in this country. So I guess it's a medium sized family bussiness. How does that change things? Because they ran the business better, the government should punish them and not punish their competitor who is worth only $9.5 million? So we are going to encourage business to not expand and create new jobs?
so you create one wealthy lawyer to deal with government BS by having the death tax instead of 2-3 productive working jobs and this is a good thing, especially from a liberal standpoint? Why bother having a such a tax?
You sir are a dip shit. It is clear you didn't bother to even TRY to understand my post.
FYI, Officers are paid to make tactical decisions. Part of the descision making processing is evaluating risks. Taking UNESSESSARY RISKS by putting soldiers in a situation where it's possible that MOST of them would DIE NEEDLESSLY is stupid. Had that happened you'd be on slashdot bitching about that.
Again, why not complain about any of the THOUSANDS of REAL problems instead of making up FAKE ones?
It's loophole, and it's based on stupid assumptions that arn't grounded in bussiness sense. It takes an unfair law and makes it more fair for some small portion of people. It also punishes thousands of other small family businesses that are worth more then $10 million. The result of the law is that families with good tax lawyers (read wealthy) get to pass their weath on, but small and medium business owners (who are the back bone of this economy) have to pay massive taxes on businesses.
Furthermore is a bad idea from an economics stand point. It's in the interest of the public to have these small and medium sized businesses (that are worth the income they make in about 10 years) to stay opened and locally owned. Taxing the family because a member dies (especially when family businesses are usually run by several family members) either forces them to close down or build into their budgets a death expense. Most choose planning on a death expense. This results in less money they could put into their business and into creating more jobs.
Example:
There is a family owned bussiness not far from my house. The brothers who own it each take home about $90,000 a year but because the business is capital intesive it's worth at least $12 million. If they have to pay a death tax, they either have to set asside a HUGE portion of their business income (and hence the bussiness, because it's captial intensive, will deteriorate) so that they can pass on an inferiour bussiness or sell it when they die, (and because of it's nature the buyer will close it and fire all 50 employees). In this case and other's like it the death tax COSTS JOBS.
Newpapers exist and are protected under the constitution because they are supposed to provide a public service. Am I to take away from this that you think it's acceptable for a newspaper owner to neglect that responsibility and just push his political agenda? Does that mean that selective news coverage to sway public opinion is acceptable? What about selectivly presenting the facts? How about bending them just a little? How far is it acceptable to go and when does it become wrong in your book?
Perhaps you'd care to explain why they let the 1,000 some-odd troops of the 10th Mountain Division sit idle in the same theater while we outsourced the Tora Bora job to the local warloads who completely failed to get the job done (in fact some of them actually helped Al Quada to escape).
According to the officer I bothered to track down and speak to before forming assinine opinions about something I know nothing about (unlike a certain other slashdot poster): the terrain was incredibly dangerous and air support wasn't an option, and our troops hadn't had time to do proper recon and the military felt (this is the key here, MILITARY EXPERTS, not some POLITICIAN, but an OFFICER DOING HIS JOB; the SAME OFFICER that will work for Kerry if he's elected) that the risk to our soldiers lives was far too great given our alternative options. I'd love to see you make better calls IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR.
Do you know anybody in the Army or National Guard (trained for Mountain Duty or not) that wouldn't have volunteered to go into that battle to try and kill that son of a bitch?
They didn't know the certain SoB was there until AFTER battle plans were drafted up and the fighting had started. Again you are making a call after the fact. The whole issue is moot however, No matter who was president, the call would have been the same because the president doesn't sit around micro-managing the military.
I mean Donald Rumsfeld ignored the advice of his generals
Maybe because others (including the General I spoke with and I'd presume other military advisors working with Rumsfeld) felt they had a better plan? Rumsfeld did his job: he made the call as to which plan to go with
As I stressed above, the real problem with the plan seems to be that Turkey jumped ship at the last minute and wouldn't let us lauch an assault from the north at the same time. That fubared the plan after it was too late to change. Turkey's pullout is a legitimate complaint against Bush, his team's diplomacy FAILED and cost our troops lives because it fubared the military plan.
How come everyone wants to throw out BS complaints when there are perfectly valid ones that can be made? Maybe just maybe it's because it's a lot easier tow some party line and quote sound bytes off of national TV then it is to find experts get their thoughts and make an informed decision independant of what the spin-masters tell you.
You can have the same opinion but writting it up the same way, and making the argument for it in the same fashion, are inappropriate for editorial pages of a serious paper when the point of view you are trying to promote is well known and understood. The point of the editorial page is to serve the community by allowing a rational discussion of opinion surrounding an issue. Copying from the Dems political play book defeats the purpose (too many papers do this on both sides, I'm sad to admit).
Anyone with a good tax lawyer can pass money off to the next generation. It's property that's hard to pass off: land, ownership in a business, etc. The sorts of things we want to pass on and encourage.
Basically I'm suggesting that we rework our liability to make our debt more flexible (see other comments above).
> How do you fund those that can't work, will never work (the disabled)?
This is currently a separate program, I presume it would stay that way.
> How do you resolve the fact that some people, even if forced to save a portion of their income, will never have enough money saved to be able to retire
I would strongly encourage those people to refuse to work in jobs that don't pay them subsistance (which should include an amount that you set aside from each pay check to continue your way of life). I would publicly denouce any employer who doesn't pay enough to allow their employee's to retire (they have more of a social responsibility to their employees then the public). I would encourage people to take business and accounting courses in high school so that they can better understand and plan for their retirement.
> I just don't see a way to transition (switching from a zero cash balance model to savings)
That's what I see as a problem with all of the privatization plans. That's why I came up with the debt restructuring idea.
> You've increased the National Debt by the $X of my savings bonds.
No I've consolidated the National Debt and the Social Security Debt. They both exist now. Afterward they'd be part of the same thing. People who have paid in for social security do have a legitimate claim against the government.
> You're funding the current retirees how again?
The same way we do now. We're just being explicit and efficient about it. I'm going to borrow money from you and agree to pay X, then I'm going to pay this other person like I promissed him. That's how the national debt works.
We already have a national debt of trillions of dollars that we have to service and pay down. Savings bonds tend to pay lower rates then Treasury bonds. So we are making it allowable for the goverment to use the money it OWES people more flexibly (in this case to pay down higher interest treasury bonds, as new money comes in) We'll also save money on administrative costs and overhead by not having to keep the S.S. money separate and have an entire department to manage. S.S. just becomes "I buy a savings bond every week and my employer matches me".
> So if I'm self-employed, I get twice as many Savings Bonds as the guy next door.
If you are doing your taxes correctly you pay S.S. from your pay check and then again as your own employer. So yes, you paid twice as much so you get twice as much.
> So, what do you do when, a few years from now, when the retired-and-now-broke me shows up at the emergency room (or the polling station) demanding that I be taken care of because I chose to cash-out years ago? And haven't we been here before?
Social Security has nothing to do with your hospital bill. That's a separate (equally f***ed program). Social Security as it is isn't going to pay you enough in most parts of this country to live anyway, and even if it did and you cashed out and were stupid enough to not budget you own money appropriately (after you've been told exactly how much you had), I don't think that's the government's problem. I'm sure some charitable organization will help such people (they existed before social security, and they exist now, so I see no reason to beleive they will cease to exist). If you really do think this is a problem then make the Social Securty bonds be a special class that matures slower so that people can't cash out as soon.
there is an implicit understanding that people need help in their retirement, and society has a responsibility to provide that.
I would say that's a false assumption, Americans don't need Daddy Government to take care of them, especially when Daddy Government can't get his own sh** together.
Social Security is a HORRIBLE retirement investment. Almost everyone gets out LESS then they put in. ANY financial advisor who recomended such a plan to his clients would be thrown in jail for FRAUD. Just because the government is doing the frauding doesn't make it right.
Yeah, that wasn't as clear as it could have been let's try again:
Right now the liability for Social security exists but isn't showing up. By issuing bonds it shows up. So it looks really bad (it is now) but it's better then hiding it. Issuing low interst rate savings bonds dosn't change anything other then it sets in stone that what the government is going to pay (this helps people plan). We would save on administrative costs (we're effectively getting rid of it) which are steep, and get the benefits of legitimate lower interest loans (on NEW money). Furthermore if people cash out their bonds we get to KEEP their penalty for cashing out early.
I'm not saying the solution is perfect. It has problems and risks, but unlike every other plan I've seen it is fair, and it does present a way for the government to keep social security long term (we have to borrow money from SOMEWHERE to keep this debt financed).
Please read my post above on the "death tax" and how it hurts small farmers before repeating this.
> such as the need for a homeland security department, the 9-11 investigation, etc.
This is one of Bush's biggest problems. he starts off in one possition that makes sense and then caves to pressure from the media, special interests, and other politicians.
> pulled the nation into a pointless misadventure of a war, wasting the lives of 1000+ American soldiers, billions of dollars and the US's credibility in the world community while letting the real dangers to our homeland (Al Queda and N. Korea) grow and prosper.
That statment shows you know nothing about the military realities of the situation.
Al Queda in Afganistan is hiding in very dangerous mountain terrain where providing sufficent air support is next to impossible. The mountain divisions and other special forces are still there fighting them. Putting an armored division or infantry in Afaganistan would be a huge waste of resources and serve only to risk the lives of the soldiers involved.
Invading North Korea (which you seem to be suggesting) would make Iraq look like a cake walk. We tried bi-lateral talks under Clinton and they resulted in the Korean's getting nuclear bombs. The unfortunate thing is, there isn't much we CAN do other then try to exert enough external pressure that the regeim there collapses. (and that's part of the point of the multi-lateral talks).
As for Iraq, I'll remind you that hindsight is 20/20. The consus of the intelligence community and the oppinion of the UN was that Iraq had WMD and would use them or sell them given the chance. That information may have been wrong (there are other equally plausible explinations), but at the time it was what we had to go on. The debate was what should we do about it. Try weapons inspectors again and hope it works or take the SoB out? It's easy enough for you to sit here knowing the consequenses to say you'd have done differently. But looking only at the information available at the time, you might have come to the same conclusion the President did.
The biggest problem in Iraq is that Turkey didn't help us had the 4th I.D. been able to come down through northern Iraq and meet the 3rd I.D. in Bagdad, a lot of these thugs would have been killed and a lot fewer Bathists would have escaped.
They are opinions and can be neither right nor wrong. They can however be original or copied. In this case they are copied and for a newspaper opinion page, which is supposed to be the home of original opinion, copied opinion should not be acceptable.
One thing that makes Bush popular here in the South is his opposal to the "death tax". Kerry claims that the "death tax" is to punish the rich, but anyone who's ever lived in a farming community knows that the death tax weighs very heavy on small farmers (who make far less money in a year then the land is worth). Sudenly being asked to pay 60+% of the value of your farm pretty much puts you out of business. The death tax is probably the single biggest factor in the rise of big agra-business in recent years.
When Democrats like Kerry come out talking about how eliminating the death tax was pandering to the rich. Farmers sitting at home trying to figure out how they are going to scrape by conclude that the Democrats have their head in the clouds.
I've known too many farmers get ruined by that tax to ever vote for anyone stupid enough to support it and I've got to conclude that if you can't (or won't) do simple research on this issue, you probably won't do it on others. I've even told some democrats about this problem and have met with nothing but name calling, denial, and rejection.
On a personal note, as someone who has personally spoken with many politicians on both sides I can at least say that whenever I've had a problem, the Republicans have listened and usually tried to help. I've NEVER had a democrat politician take the time of day to quit with their retoric and try and understand what I have to say.
That's not to say I don't disagree with the Republicans on many issues (I'm probably split about 50/50). But having repeated good experiences with them does influence my voting.
Try their platform (Political sites are blocked from work or I'd post a URL). Also if you don't realise that this is the democratic party's possition on these issues being quoted you've got your head shoved pretty far up....
The most disturbing thing about this article is it's point of view on social security. It shows a compleate lack of understanding and total disreguard for reality.
Social Security as it exists today is a massive government mandated pyramid scheme that lets politicians in Washington dupe millions of people out of hard earned money on the grounds that it's "for retirement". In truth had the government issued savings bonds (the lowest yeild investment you can get) to everyone on Social Security everybody would have been better off. The government could have used the lower interest debt to pay off higher interest debt and the retireees would have more money. Furthermore the retirees would know EXACTLY how much money they have for retirement and know it is gauranteed instead of having some vague promise subject to political whims. Instead, the current scheme was concocted where people working today pay for those who worked before them and they in turn will be paid for by those who work after them. Obviously this rely's on the pool of workers never dropping, a rediculous assumption. Furthermore, as it is, the payouts on Social Security for almost all beneficiaries are below inflation (that is they are getting less value out then they put in) and served as a worse investment than savings bonds (which is considered the lowest return you should every accept and then only in small ammounts). While this isn't that big of a deal for those of us making enough money to plan for retirement without social security, many people who are less fortunate then us NEED that money to be invested wisely so that they CAN retire. Ripping them off for political gains is amoral behavior and should stop.
What we need to do is get the government and it's bueracray out of running a retirement bussiness.
Steps:
Give everyone who has paid into social security savings bonds retroactively for all of the money they put in. Use this lower interest debt to pay off the higher interest debt the government already has. This should free up enough cash to deal with the people who choose to cash out of their savings bonds early.
The treasury deparment already has an automatic payroll program for savings bonds. Transition social security to this (including the employer matching).
Given any american who wants it, the option of opting out (and being responsible for themselves).
These steps can "privatize" social security without any added beuracracy, legislation, and little cost.
This junk is quoted from the Democratic Party's website and framed as the independant thoughts of the editors. If you want to slam someone at least be creative about it instead of committing plagarism.
I said this back at the beginning of the war when everyone was talking about Sadam using WMDs and everyone thought I was a kook:
Were I in Sadam's shoes, I'd be smart enough to realize that no amount of any weapon I could get was going to save me. So, since I'm going to die or be captured anyway I'd want to get one last laugh:
I'd either destroy all of my weapons or give them to other countries who were hostile to the US so that when the invasion was over no WMD would be found and it would look to the world that the US had decided to invade my country for oil. In preparation, I'd also try to convince as many civilians that oil was the cause of the war. Furthermore I'd have my army put up token resistance and then once the US declared victory start a gaurilla war from inside the cities to make it look like there was a popular uprising. If I was lucky I could hold off the US army and hide long enough to have the political will of the US break and make the army pull out. Then I could take the country back over and kill anyone who helped the US.
Actually in retrospect I'd have added one thing: I'd keep the capability to make more weapons so that once the US pulled out and the world was convinced I didn't have any, I could them make them with impunity.
Note: I have know way to know if this is what Sadam did or how smart the guy is, but since it's pretty much his best option; I wouldn't be surprised.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually those regulations prevent us from putting BETTER safety equipment in cars. Some of the things mandated have even been proved to be HARMFUL. However, do we care? F*** no! As long as congress says we're good, we can't get suied no matter how bad it gets.
The only people I know who leave cash money behind are people who work for a living. Any middle class family will have most of their assets tied up in property (their homes, their cars, their businesses, stocks, bonds, etc.; anybody who has $10 million in cash is being catastrophically stupid). Again I see no useful benefit whatsoever to this tax pollicy. It appears to ignore in the realities of economics by attempting to skew them, and no matter how powerful the government thinks it is, economic reality is eventually going to set in.
But owning a business or part of it does not equate to money. To get money you either have to sell it (at which point the government taxes you), or you continue to run it, help the economy and pay taxes (in which case you earn your money). I really don't see how the issue you keep citing is a problem .
I never said that you should or shouldn't vote for Bush. All I have maintained is that you were blaming the president for a call made by some officer who would have made that call no matter who was president. As I've repeatedly said, your refusal to acknoledge this is puzzling. There are plenty of good, valid reasons to not vote for Bush (along the same vein there are plenty of reason to not vote for Kerry, or any other politician for that matter), but some random miltary officer's call is not one of them.
Well it is family founed owned and operated and it's a little below average size for the types of businesses that do most of the employing in this country. So I guess it's a medium sized family bussiness. How does that change things? Because they ran the business better, the government should punish them and not punish their competitor who is worth only $9.5 million? So we are going to encourage business to not expand and create new jobs?
so you create one wealthy lawyer to deal with government BS by having the death tax instead of 2-3 productive working jobs and this is a good thing, especially from a liberal standpoint? Why bother having a such a tax?
FYI, Officers are paid to make tactical decisions. Part of the descision making processing is evaluating risks. Taking UNESSESSARY RISKS by putting soldiers in a situation where it's possible that MOST of them would DIE NEEDLESSLY is stupid. Had that happened you'd be on slashdot bitching about that.
Again, why not complain about any of the THOUSANDS of REAL problems instead of making up FAKE ones?
Furthermore is a bad idea from an economics stand point. It's in the interest of the public to have these small and medium sized businesses (that are worth the income they make in about 10 years) to stay opened and locally owned. Taxing the family because a member dies (especially when family businesses are usually run by several family members) either forces them to close down or build into their budgets a death expense. Most choose planning on a death expense. This results in less money they could put into their business and into creating more jobs.
Example:
There is a family owned bussiness not far from my house. The brothers who own it each take home about $90,000 a year but because the business is capital intesive it's worth at least $12 million. If they have to pay a death tax, they either have to set asside a HUGE portion of their business income (and hence the bussiness, because it's captial intensive, will deteriorate) so that they can pass on an inferiour bussiness or sell it when they die, (and because of it's nature the buyer will close it and fire all 50 employees). In this case and other's like it the death tax COSTS JOBS.
Newpapers exist and are protected under the constitution because they are supposed to provide a public service. Am I to take away from this that you think it's acceptable for a newspaper owner to neglect that responsibility and just push his political agenda? Does that mean that selective news coverage to sway public opinion is acceptable? What about selectivly presenting the facts? How about bending them just a little? How far is it acceptable to go and when does it become wrong in your book?
According to the officer I bothered to track down and speak to before forming assinine opinions about something I know nothing about (unlike a certain other slashdot poster): the terrain was incredibly dangerous and air support wasn't an option, and our troops hadn't had time to do proper recon and the military felt (this is the key here, MILITARY EXPERTS, not some POLITICIAN, but an OFFICER DOING HIS JOB; the SAME OFFICER that will work for Kerry if he's elected) that the risk to our soldiers lives was far too great given our alternative options. I'd love to see you make better calls IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR. Do you know anybody in the Army or National Guard (trained for Mountain Duty or not) that wouldn't have volunteered to go into that battle to try and kill that son of a bitch?
They didn't know the certain SoB was there until AFTER battle plans were drafted up and the fighting had started. Again you are making a call after the fact. The whole issue is moot however, No matter who was president, the call would have been the same because the president doesn't sit around micro-managing the military.
I mean Donald Rumsfeld ignored the advice of his generals
Maybe because others (including the General I spoke with and I'd presume other military advisors working with Rumsfeld) felt they had a better plan? Rumsfeld did his job: he made the call as to which plan to go with
As I stressed above, the real problem with the plan seems to be that Turkey jumped ship at the last minute and wouldn't let us lauch an assault from the north at the same time. That fubared the plan after it was too late to change. Turkey's pullout is a legitimate complaint against Bush, his team's diplomacy FAILED and cost our troops lives because it fubared the military plan.
How come everyone wants to throw out BS complaints when there are perfectly valid ones that can be made? Maybe just maybe it's because it's a lot easier tow some party line and quote sound bytes off of national TV then it is to find experts get their thoughts and make an informed decision independant of what the spin-masters tell you.
You can have the same opinion but writting it up the same way, and making the argument for it in the same fashion, are inappropriate for editorial pages of a serious paper when the point of view you are trying to promote is well known and understood. The point of the editorial page is to serve the community by allowing a rational discussion of opinion surrounding an issue. Copying from the Dems political play book defeats the purpose (too many papers do this on both sides, I'm sad to admit).
Except that Kerry's proposal doesn't do that. I just claims to.
Anyone with a good tax lawyer can pass money off to the next generation. It's property that's hard to pass off: land, ownership in a business, etc. The sorts of things we want to pass on and encourage.
> How do you fund those that can't work, will never work (the disabled)?
This is currently a separate program, I presume it would stay that way.
> How do you resolve the fact that some people, even if forced to save a portion of their income, will never have enough money saved to be able to retire
I would strongly encourage those people to refuse to work in jobs that don't pay them subsistance (which should include an amount that you set aside from each pay check to continue your way of life). I would publicly denouce any employer who doesn't pay enough to allow their employee's to retire (they have more of a social responsibility to their employees then the public). I would encourage people to take business and accounting courses in high school so that they can better understand and plan for their retirement.
> I just don't see a way to transition (switching from a zero cash balance model to savings)
That's what I see as a problem with all of the privatization plans. That's why I came up with the debt restructuring idea.
No I've consolidated the National Debt and the Social Security Debt. They both exist now. Afterward they'd be part of the same thing. People who have paid in for social security do have a legitimate claim against the government.
> You're funding the current retirees how again?
The same way we do now. We're just being explicit and efficient about it. I'm going to borrow money from you and agree to pay X, then I'm going to pay this other person like I promissed him. That's how the national debt works.
We already have a national debt of trillions of dollars that we have to service and pay down. Savings bonds tend to pay lower rates then Treasury bonds. So we are making it allowable for the goverment to use the money it OWES people more flexibly (in this case to pay down higher interest treasury bonds, as new money comes in) We'll also save money on administrative costs and overhead by not having to keep the S.S. money separate and have an entire department to manage. S.S. just becomes "I buy a savings bond every week and my employer matches me".
> So if I'm self-employed, I get twice as many Savings Bonds as the guy next door.
If you are doing your taxes correctly you pay S.S. from your pay check and then again as your own employer. So yes, you paid twice as much so you get twice as much.
> So, what do you do when, a few years from now, when the retired-and-now-broke me shows up at the emergency room (or the polling station) demanding that I be taken care of because I chose to cash-out years ago? And haven't we been here before?
Social Security has nothing to do with your hospital bill. That's a separate (equally f***ed program). Social Security as it is isn't going to pay you enough in most parts of this country to live anyway, and even if it did and you cashed out and were stupid enough to not budget you own money appropriately (after you've been told exactly how much you had), I don't think that's the government's problem. I'm sure some charitable organization will help such people (they existed before social security, and they exist now, so I see no reason to beleive they will cease to exist). If you really do think this is a problem then make the Social Securty bonds be a special class that matures slower so that people can't cash out as soon.
there is an implicit understanding that people need help in their retirement, and society has a responsibility to provide that.
I would say that's a false assumption, Americans don't need Daddy Government to take care of them, especially when Daddy Government can't get his own sh** together.
Social Security is a HORRIBLE retirement investment. Almost everyone gets out LESS then they put in. ANY financial advisor who recomended such a plan to his clients would be thrown in jail for FRAUD. Just because the government is doing the frauding doesn't make it right.
Right now the liability for Social security exists but isn't showing up. By issuing bonds it shows up. So it looks really bad (it is now) but it's better then hiding it. Issuing low interst rate savings bonds dosn't change anything other then it sets in stone that what the government is going to pay (this helps people plan). We would save on administrative costs (we're effectively getting rid of it) which are steep, and get the benefits of legitimate lower interest loans (on NEW money). Furthermore if people cash out their bonds we get to KEEP their penalty for cashing out early.
I'm not saying the solution is perfect. It has problems and risks, but unlike every other plan I've seen it is fair, and it does present a way for the government to keep social security long term (we have to borrow money from SOMEWHERE to keep this debt financed).
Please read my post above on the "death tax" and how it hurts small farmers before repeating this.
> such as the need for a homeland security department, the 9-11 investigation, etc.
This is one of Bush's biggest problems. he starts off in one possition that makes sense and then caves to pressure from the media, special interests, and other politicians.
> pulled the nation into a pointless misadventure of a war, wasting the lives of 1000+ American soldiers, billions of dollars and the US's credibility in the world community while letting the real dangers to our homeland (Al Queda and N. Korea) grow and prosper.
That statment shows you know nothing about the military realities of the situation.
Al Queda in Afganistan is hiding in very dangerous mountain terrain where providing sufficent air support is next to impossible. The mountain divisions and other special forces are still there fighting them. Putting an armored division or infantry in Afaganistan would be a huge waste of resources and serve only to risk the lives of the soldiers involved.
Invading North Korea (which you seem to be suggesting) would make Iraq look like a cake walk. We tried bi-lateral talks under Clinton and they resulted in the Korean's getting nuclear bombs. The unfortunate thing is, there isn't much we CAN do other then try to exert enough external pressure that the regeim there collapses. (and that's part of the point of the multi-lateral talks).
As for Iraq, I'll remind you that hindsight is 20/20. The consus of the intelligence community and the oppinion of the UN was that Iraq had WMD and would use them or sell them given the chance. That information may have been wrong (there are other equally plausible explinations), but at the time it was what we had to go on. The debate was what should we do about it. Try weapons inspectors again and hope it works or take the SoB out? It's easy enough for you to sit here knowing the consequenses to say you'd have done differently. But looking only at the information available at the time, you might have come to the same conclusion the President did.
The biggest problem in Iraq is that Turkey didn't help us had the 4th I.D. been able to come down through northern Iraq and meet the 3rd I.D. in Bagdad, a lot of these thugs would have been killed and a lot fewer Bathists would have escaped.
They are opinions and can be neither right nor wrong. They can however be original or copied. In this case they are copied and for a newspaper opinion page, which is supposed to be the home of original opinion, copied opinion should not be acceptable.
When Democrats like Kerry come out talking about how eliminating the death tax was pandering to the rich. Farmers sitting at home trying to figure out how they are going to scrape by conclude that the Democrats have their head in the clouds.
I've known too many farmers get ruined by that tax to ever vote for anyone stupid enough to support it and I've got to conclude that if you can't (or won't) do simple research on this issue, you probably won't do it on others. I've even told some democrats about this problem and have met with nothing but name calling, denial, and rejection.
On a personal note, as someone who has personally spoken with many politicians on both sides I can at least say that whenever I've had a problem, the Republicans have listened and usually tried to help. I've NEVER had a democrat politician take the time of day to quit with their retoric and try and understand what I have to say.
That's not to say I don't disagree with the Republicans on many issues (I'm probably split about 50/50). But having repeated good experiences with them does influence my voting.
Try their platform (Political sites are blocked from work or I'd post a URL). Also if you don't realise that this is the democratic party's possition on these issues being quoted you've got your head shoved pretty far up....
Social Security as it exists today is a massive government mandated pyramid scheme that lets politicians in Washington dupe millions of people out of hard earned money on the grounds that it's "for retirement". In truth had the government issued savings bonds (the lowest yeild investment you can get) to everyone on Social Security everybody would have been better off. The government could have used the lower interest debt to pay off higher interest debt and the retireees would have more money. Furthermore the retirees would know EXACTLY how much money they have for retirement and know it is gauranteed instead of having some vague promise subject to political whims. Instead, the current scheme was concocted where people working today pay for those who worked before them and they in turn will be paid for by those who work after them. Obviously this rely's on the pool of workers never dropping, a rediculous assumption. Furthermore, as it is, the payouts on Social Security for almost all beneficiaries are below inflation (that is they are getting less value out then they put in) and served as a worse investment than savings bonds (which is considered the lowest return you should every accept and then only in small ammounts). While this isn't that big of a deal for those of us making enough money to plan for retirement without social security, many people who are less fortunate then us NEED that money to be invested wisely so that they CAN retire. Ripping them off for political gains is amoral behavior and should stop. What we need to do is get the government and it's bueracray out of running a retirement bussiness. Steps:
- Give everyone who has paid into social security savings bonds retroactively for all of the money they put in. Use this lower interest debt to pay off the higher interest debt the government already has. This should free up enough cash to deal with the people who choose to cash out of their savings bonds early.
- The treasury deparment already has an automatic payroll program for savings bonds. Transition social security to this (including the employer matching).
- Given any american who wants it, the option of opting out (and being responsible for themselves).
These steps can "privatize" social security without any added beuracracy, legislation, and little cost.This junk is quoted from the Democratic Party's website and framed as the independant thoughts of the editors. If you want to slam someone at least be creative about it instead of committing plagarism.
DNA doesn't have meta-data? (i.e. Data about Data) You know this how?
That story was light on information about the game. Does anyone know more?
Actually in retrospect I'd have added one thing: I'd keep the capability to make more weapons so that once the US pulled out and the world was convinced I didn't have any, I could them make them with impunity.
Note: I have know way to know if this is what Sadam did or how smart the guy is, but since it's pretty much his best option; I wouldn't be surprised.