I don't know about the rest of the country but where I live the difference in sentences between a plea and a jury conviction is enough to make you plea guilty for a crime you didn't commit. For example, you get charged with manufacturing drugs. You make a plea deal with the prosecutor and you get a year. You get convicted in a jury trial and the judge hands you a 20 year sentence. The other problem is that even if you're innocent the prosecutor can make a deal with a convict where he gets years off his prison term to testify against you. The smart guy takes the deal.
We spend about $10,000 per student per year! Washington DC spends twice that. What the hell would you consider adequate funding?
And where do you get the idea that urban areas have less trouble with people 'getting along?' Have you looked at the violent crime rates in big Democrat cities?
If you're so worried about the transfer of wealth from blue to red states then oppose federal social programs.
We need authenticated transactions using public key technology so that an account number or routing number is not sufficient to charge an account. The technology is dirt cheap now and could be built into cell phones. When you make a purchase the vendor should send a payment request with a transaction number to you. You send a signed authorization back to the vendor who then checks it against your balance and public key at the finacial institution. Approval comes back and you're done. If someone uses the store records to get your account number they still don't have your authorization for further purchases.
There are long term effects of lowering taxes that take years to manifest. If Indiana lowers its tax rates and Ohio raises, not every business and worker can move out of Ohio to Indiana the next year.
Your point about the Laffer curve makes me wonder if I am the ONLY person that believes taxes should be the minimum required operate the government instead of maximum revenues...
Revenues were up 35% from 2003 to 2006. Bush raised taxes by lowering rates and growing the economy. Tricky to do with the 9/11 attacks, housing melt-down, and the global warm-mongers jacking up fuel and food costs, but he did it.
When people in politics talk about raising federal taxes it's not about balancing the budget or even raising revenues. It's about punishing groups that didn't give enough to their campaign.
The idea that more money coming into Washington DC will go towards the debt (helping the children) instead of finding new ways to burn cash is laughable. There are too many voters that have to be bought.
Defense spending is constitutional. Roads, schools, and social programs are all supposed to be state activities. Do you really think US infrastructure is that bad??
always mean lower taxes down the road! Good plan! I love the theory that once politicians get a certain amount of money, they just don't want any more. I'm guessing your kids will only have to pay 1-2% income tax.
Our metro areas already have drop out rates from 30-50%. It's time to open our minds to alternatives instead of covering our ears, closing our eyes, and shouting, "No free markets! No free markets!"
The wealth gap in the US is small enough that the richest quintile only outspend the poorest quintile by about 2.1 to 1. That's not really an obscene difference. Link.
We've not had a negative growth quarter under the Bush administration and CO2 emissions are down. You need to look outside of daily Kos and Slashdot for news once in a while.
The sanction were not working at all. Ever hear of the UN Oil-For-Food scandal?? Most likely the sanctions would have been dropped anyway and Saddam could develop whatever weapons he wanted at that time.
"So, Saddam was able to simply lie about WMDs and cause the US to waste hundreds of billions of dollars as a result?
He may have lost the battle, but damn! did he win that war."
He's dead and his people are liberated. Helluva a victory! Just like Hitler won WWII...
"O'really? Perhaps you are right. He never outright blamed 9/11 on Iraq, but he sure as shit intimated it on a frequent basis, making at least 28 false statements about Iraq's links to al qaeda. [publicintegrity.org] But at least he has plausible deniability - it wasn't his fault the public heard "al qaeda" and thought "9/11" no, no, no, no!"
Yes, I am right. That is why I said it. Can you name ONE person who thinks that it was Iraq behind 9/11? I live in Redneck Democrat Central where the most intelligent conversations about the War on Terror is not much better than "NUKE ALL THEM F***ING SAND N****RS!" and I still don't know ANYONE who thinks that Iraq was behind 9/11. You're just wrong, dude.
Most of your Center for Public Integrity quotes are intelligence failures, not lies. The same "lies" have been repeated by Clinton, Albright, and scores of senators.
Anyone saying that the President or Cheney were itching for war is stupid and mean. The parent post was right. Saddam wanted Iran to think he still had WMDs for his own security. No credible person disputes that. No matter how many times you retards repeat it, George W. Bush never blamed 9/11 on Iraq. You are too stupid to understand what everyone else in the country did: the threshold for dealing with threats dropped after a rag-tag group of terrorists managed to knock down the twin towers. Iraq was attacking our pilots on a nearly daily basis. The risk of Iraq engaging in a terrorist attack was very real and the scale could have been huge with state sponsorship.
The US is DESTROYING its stockpiles of chemical weapons. It's taking time with the environmental issues associated with tons of VX nerve agent but it is happening now and should be done before too long.
Didn't Iraq's UN sanctions come from invading Kuwait and USING chemical weapons? Did the US ever invade Kuwait or gas Kurds? It's apples and oranges.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about the rest of the country but where I live the difference in sentences between a plea and a jury conviction is enough to make you plea guilty for a crime you didn't commit. For example, you get charged with manufacturing drugs. You make a plea deal with the prosecutor and you get a year. You get convicted in a jury trial and the judge hands you a 20 year sentence. The other problem is that even if you're innocent the prosecutor can make a deal with a convict where he gets years off his prison term to testify against you. The smart guy takes the deal.
I have no problem with 86'ing the farm subsidies and drug laws...
We spend about $10,000 per student per year! Washington DC spends twice that. What the hell would you consider adequate funding? And where do you get the idea that urban areas have less trouble with people 'getting along?' Have you looked at the violent crime rates in big Democrat cities? If you're so worried about the transfer of wealth from blue to red states then oppose federal social programs.
We need authenticated transactions using public key technology so that an account number or routing number is not sufficient to charge an account. The technology is dirt cheap now and could be built into cell phones. When you make a purchase the vendor should send a payment request with a transaction number to you. You send a signed authorization back to the vendor who then checks it against your balance and public key at the finacial institution. Approval comes back and you're done. If someone uses the store records to get your account number they still don't have your authorization for further purchases.
What sense does that make? The government should improve efficiency like everyone else!
Your point about the Laffer curve makes me wonder if I am the ONLY person that believes taxes should be the minimum required operate the government instead of maximum revenues...
You'd whine louder than anyone if you actually went to work and paid taxes!
That was terrible but overall our infrastructure is among the best.
When people in politics talk about raising federal taxes it's not about balancing the budget or even raising revenues. It's about punishing groups that didn't give enough to their campaign.
The idea that more money coming into Washington DC will go towards the debt (helping the children) instead of finding new ways to burn cash is laughable. There are too many voters that have to be bought.
Defense spending is constitutional. Roads, schools, and social programs are all supposed to be state activities. Do you really think US infrastructure is that bad??
always mean lower taxes down the road! Good plan! I love the theory that once politicians get a certain amount of money, they just don't want any more. I'm guessing your kids will only have to pay 1-2% income tax.
The wealth gap in the US is small enough that the richest quintile only outspend the poorest quintile by about 2.1 to 1. That's not really an obscene difference. Link.
Washington DC is around $20,000/student/year. Half of that is average.
Society seems to have no tolerance for philatelists.
Because most doctors give a lot more to society than others and they had to work their asses off to be in a position to do so.
We've not had a negative growth quarter under the Bush administration and CO2 emissions are down. You need to look outside of daily Kos and Slashdot for news once in a while.
When has Bob Barr ever sought to limit the number of babies that women can have?
I don't know if it's justified but I have more respect for someone who says they were wrong than someone who says, "I never said that."
Isn't voting for Libertarian Bob Barr an option?
Actually, it does on mine, too. I suspect that they don't have to destroy stockpiles of agent orange because they used it all...
Who is making them?
The sanction were not working at all. Ever hear of the UN Oil-For-Food scandal?? Most likely the sanctions would have been dropped anyway and Saddam could develop whatever weapons he wanted at that time.
He's dead and his people are liberated. Helluva a victory! Just like Hitler won WWII...
"O'really? Perhaps you are right. He never outright blamed 9/11 on Iraq, but he sure as shit intimated it on a frequent basis, making at least 28 false statements about Iraq's links to al qaeda. [publicintegrity.org] But at least he has plausible deniability - it wasn't his fault the public heard "al qaeda" and thought "9/11" no, no, no, no!"
Yes, I am right. That is why I said it. Can you name ONE person who thinks that it was Iraq behind 9/11? I live in Redneck Democrat Central where the most intelligent conversations about the War on Terror is not much better than "NUKE ALL THEM F***ING SAND N****RS!" and I still don't know ANYONE who thinks that Iraq was behind 9/11. You're just wrong, dude.
Most of your Center for Public Integrity quotes are intelligence failures, not lies. The same "lies" have been repeated by Clinton, Albright, and scores of senators.
Anyone saying that the President or Cheney were itching for war is stupid and mean. The parent post was right. Saddam wanted Iran to think he still had WMDs for his own security. No credible person disputes that. No matter how many times you retards repeat it, George W. Bush never blamed 9/11 on Iraq. You are too stupid to understand what everyone else in the country did: the threshold for dealing with threats dropped after a rag-tag group of terrorists managed to knock down the twin towers. Iraq was attacking our pilots on a nearly daily basis. The risk of Iraq engaging in a terrorist attack was very real and the scale could have been huge with state sponsorship.
The US is DESTROYING its stockpiles of chemical weapons. It's taking time with the environmental issues associated with tons of VX nerve agent but it is happening now and should be done before too long. Didn't Iraq's UN sanctions come from invading Kuwait and USING chemical weapons? Did the US ever invade Kuwait or gas Kurds? It's apples and oranges.