If you think making a loan counts as bailing someone out, have you thanked all the corporations that bailed you out for school, auto, housing and simple credit cards? How has that averted global financial catastrophe worked out for Greece, Cyprus and the many millions of Americans who have given up on even looking for work? Is the left finally admitting that Obama is an unrepentant socialist? Did you have to fellate some Dem honcho to get such high-grade propaganda-laden crack?
Getting $100M from VCs to disrupt Google's business method is easier said than done.
But once the upstart proves its model, Google or Apple would probably buy it for $1.5B, making the VCs very happy -- and then the behemoth will wonder about what to do with the rest of the quarter's profits.
Are you suggesting that these protesters were limited to useless "free speech zones"? Which SF laws or regulations keep people from protesting on the sidewalks? Keep in mind that there is an important distinction between trying to make your message seen -- a speech-focused protest -- and trying to disrupt a person or business who you think is behaving unjustly -- a conduct-focused protest. Sit-ins are an example of conduct-focused protest. Conduct-focused protests are ineffective when either the conduct or the target is chosen poorly, and both conduct and target were chosen poorly by the protesters in this case.
If techies accepted jobs that were just barely above the poverty line, they wouldn't be able to afford expensive houses, and the protesters would focus their efforts on more deserving targets like all the bankers and lawyers who live and work in the city (and who would still be able to bid housing prices up).
You know, because this country's problems are caused by paying good wages to STEM workers, and the solution is clearly to not do that. Someone should let politicians know.
I will try to make this simple enough for you to understand it:
GWB's administration (not Bush himself, but I know you get confused when people start cooperating) extended something like $10B in loans to GM in Dec 2008-Jan 2009, with some strict conditions attached. Obama's administration came in and made more loans, and wrote big checks during GM's bankruptcy and restructuring. According to PolitiFact, GM's bailout totaled $67B. GM and Obama claim that GM has repaid all its loans -- although media factcheckers say that's a bit of a stretch -- but the point of this entire discussion is that the government[1] lost at least $10B because it paid a lot for stock, and sold the stock at a loss. GWB and his administration had nothing to do with buying shares in GM. That's all on you, the guy you voted into office, and the bunglers he appointed.
[1]- Maybe you think I personally lost the $10B, or that you did, or that taxpayers did, or that your creepy uncle Bob lost it. I assume you wouldn't accept saying that "the country" lost the $10B, for the same reason that you refuse to recognize the Federal government as an entity. I say "government lost" the money because everybody-except-you understands that saying that means that asshats in Washington decided to spend current-or-future taxpayer money on a deal that everybody in the private sector realized was a losing proposition.
GWB's administration gave GM and other companies emergency loans. Obama's administration intervened in GM's bankruptcy, giving unions a sweet deal that they never would have gotten in a normal bankruptcy (at the expense of other creditors, like GM's white-collar retirees), and buying oodles of stock as an indirect bailout. This wasn't that long ago -- you have no excuse for either forgetting, or for being unable to look it up.
Your insistence that a thing needs to have a color or be pointed to is a category error. Separately, everyone (except you) understands that talking about what goverment does is really a shorthand reference to the government officials who make decisions and carry out those actions. Voters didn't decide to bail out GM, and I certainly didn't decide to buy any of their stock. It is flatly wrong to say that when I blame government for those things, it is really my fault.
Even if you were right about Solyndra (fnj explained why you are wrong), it does not change that investing in the company was a horrible idea that the US government should have recognized as such.
If China wants to dump marginal-quality solar cells in the US market, I say let them. Technology is changing so quickly that today's solar cell factories will probably need multiple major refits over the next decade, and once things start to settle down, we can revisit whether the US should try to compete in that field. Using government money to prop up a long-term-money-losing venture for a short period is corporate welfare, plain and simple, and the US government does way too much of that.
I wasn't one of the suckers who voted for the current President. Were you? If so, I'll happily assign some of the blame for the Government Motors stock losses to you. You seem like an idiot, anyway, insisting that government isn't a thing.
That you believe those numbers is your fault. For example, when was the last time GM stock traded above $45? Why do you think one of today's shares will ever be worth more than $50?
Government is no better than other investors, and often worse. Take Solyndra as an example: private investors basically gave up on it until corruptocrats at DoE decided to funnel cash down that toilet. There's also a conflict of interest when government has a big stock position in certain companies. Given that the US has traditionally not made that kind of investment in private companies, I certainly do hold the government responsible for losing taxpayer dollars there. Do you think private investors are, or should be, off the hook when they make money-losing investments?
That GM lost money is their responsibility. That the dollars came from taxpayers, and the loss is now effectively part of the national debt, is the government's fault.
Re #1, GM is solvent *for now*, but it is far from clear that they have fixed the structural problems that led to their bankruptcy. The biggest effect of their bailout may simply have been to prolong the pain and economic dislocations due to their collapse, not to to prevent their collapse.
If you're so confident about the future price of GM stock, why don't you buy the stock, give the US enough cash to offset its losses, and sell the stock when you'll break even or make a profit?
Most of those people complained because the government doesn't know how to run a manufacturing business, and was bound to lose money in the process. Dear Leader kept insisting otherwise, although he got a little quieter after Solyndra and its ilk exposed government's general incompetence at distinguishing sustainable businesses from losers.
I'm sure the "disruption, not damage" thing is going to be very reassuring to the guy with a pacemaker.
More generally, it's going to be very hard to calibrate field strength for this kind of thing to shut down car electronics without damaging any electronics: it works by turning wires into antennas and inducing enough voltage to confuse the device on one end of that wire. Due to the range of normal operating voltages in different devices -- or even different circuits within one device -- one voltage level might be too low to confuse some devices but high enough to damage others.
You can make a pretty good estimate by dividing the cost of uncompensated care by total costs, and if I recall correctly, it would be well under two percent. At that level, you're probably paying much more for regulatory reporting and other forms of overhead, so it seems silly to only list uncompensated care as a "line item". (It wouldn't really be a line item, because that cost would already be included, and perhaps spread unevenly, across the other charges on the bill -- and if you have insurance that negotiates a reduced payment rate for some goods and services, that discount could make it more uneven.)
To make it all fair, government should also provide a detailed breakdown of where your particular tax dollars -- not just income and payroll tax, but duties, excise taxes, sales taxes, and all the rest -- went each year. Sound good?
Google patented a method to help cover the costs of free wireless access balloons. This of course makes a bunch of idiots very upset that Google would not just pay for the balloons out of their magic profit printing press, because Google forbid that people who use a service help pay for it.
If the executive isn't authorized to spend money, which is better: To post signs saying "This facility is closed and unstaffed", or to deploy armed guards in order to keep people away from open-air facilities that are usually unstaffed and unsupervised?
Exchanging keys over the longer-term communications medium makes it very easy to mount a man-in-the-middle attack. If you're concerned about such attacks, you need some trusted medium for key verification (or exchange) so that you and your communications partner know that each is using the same key as the other. Back in the 1990s, that medium was often key signing parties, where trust in someone's photo ID was backed up by using the social network (hey, Bob, is this really Charlie Doe?). Using a certificate authority is another way to do it... if you actually have good reason to trust both the particular CA and the chain of custody for what you think is the CA's public key.
Your response didn't highlight the bit that you claim you were rebutting, and it included a whole bunch of irrelevant (to that claim) cheerleading about the law that grossly misrepresented its size. Don't complain to me about stupidity when you don't have the brainpower to create a comment that clearly conveys your point.
In the US, police usually don't use subpoenas -- they use warrants instead, and a person has a Fifth Amendment right against being compelled to provide information in a criminal trial (which is where the police are usually involved). Subpoenas are an artifact of civil trials and regulatory actions that require someone to provide the requested evidence, and the Fifth Amendment still applies. Is there no way in the Netherlands for a regulator to compel (force) a company to turn over documents or other information that are relevant to the regulator's mission?
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If you think making a loan counts as bailing someone out, have you thanked all the corporations that bailed you out for school, auto, housing and simple credit cards? How has that averted global financial catastrophe worked out for Greece, Cyprus and the many millions of Americans who have given up on even looking for work? Is the left finally admitting that Obama is an unrepentant socialist? Did you have to fellate some Dem honcho to get such high-grade propaganda-laden crack?
Getting $100M from VCs to disrupt Google's business method is easier said than done.
But once the upstart proves its model, Google or Apple would probably buy it for $1.5B, making the VCs very happy -- and then the behemoth will wonder about what to do with the rest of the quarter's profits.
Are you suggesting that these protesters were limited to useless "free speech zones"? Which SF laws or regulations keep people from protesting on the sidewalks? Keep in mind that there is an important distinction between trying to make your message seen -- a speech-focused protest -- and trying to disrupt a person or business who you think is behaving unjustly -- a conduct-focused protest. Sit-ins are an example of conduct-focused protest. Conduct-focused protests are ineffective when either the conduct or the target is chosen poorly, and both conduct and target were chosen poorly by the protesters in this case.
If techies accepted jobs that were just barely above the poverty line, they wouldn't be able to afford expensive houses, and the protesters would focus their efforts on more deserving targets like all the bankers and lawyers who live and work in the city (and who would still be able to bid housing prices up).
You know, because this country's problems are caused by paying good wages to STEM workers, and the solution is clearly to not do that. Someone should let politicians know.
I will try to make this simple enough for you to understand it:
GWB's administration (not Bush himself, but I know you get confused when people start cooperating) extended something like $10B in loans to GM in Dec 2008-Jan 2009, with some strict conditions attached. Obama's administration came in and made more loans, and wrote big checks during GM's bankruptcy and restructuring. According to PolitiFact, GM's bailout totaled $67B. GM and Obama claim that GM has repaid all its loans -- although media factcheckers say that's a bit of a stretch -- but the point of this entire discussion is that the government[1] lost at least $10B because it paid a lot for stock, and sold the stock at a loss. GWB and his administration had nothing to do with buying shares in GM. That's all on you, the guy you voted into office, and the bunglers he appointed.
[1]- Maybe you think I personally lost the $10B, or that you did, or that taxpayers did, or that your creepy uncle Bob lost it. I assume you wouldn't accept saying that "the country" lost the $10B, for the same reason that you refuse to recognize the Federal government as an entity. I say "government lost" the money because everybody-except-you understands that saying that means that asshats in Washington decided to spend current-or-future taxpayer money on a deal that everybody in the private sector realized was a losing proposition.
GWB's administration gave GM and other companies emergency loans. Obama's administration intervened in GM's bankruptcy, giving unions a sweet deal that they never would have gotten in a normal bankruptcy (at the expense of other creditors, like GM's white-collar retirees), and buying oodles of stock as an indirect bailout. This wasn't that long ago -- you have no excuse for either forgetting, or for being unable to look it up.
Your insistence that a thing needs to have a color or be pointed to is a category error. Separately, everyone (except you) understands that talking about what goverment does is really a shorthand reference to the government officials who make decisions and carry out those actions. Voters didn't decide to bail out GM, and I certainly didn't decide to buy any of their stock. It is flatly wrong to say that when I blame government for those things, it is really my fault.
Even if you were right about Solyndra (fnj explained why you are wrong), it does not change that investing in the company was a horrible idea that the US government should have recognized as such.
If China wants to dump marginal-quality solar cells in the US market, I say let them. Technology is changing so quickly that today's solar cell factories will probably need multiple major refits over the next decade, and once things start to settle down, we can revisit whether the US should try to compete in that field. Using government money to prop up a long-term-money-losing venture for a short period is corporate welfare, plain and simple, and the US government does way too much of that.
I wasn't one of the suckers who voted for the current President. Were you? If so, I'll happily assign some of the blame for the Government Motors stock losses to you. You seem like an idiot, anyway, insisting that government isn't a thing.
That you believe those numbers is your fault. For example, when was the last time GM stock traded above $45? Why do you think one of today's shares will ever be worth more than $50?
Government is no better than other investors, and often worse. Take Solyndra as an example: private investors basically gave up on it until corruptocrats at DoE decided to funnel cash down that toilet. There's also a conflict of interest when government has a big stock position in certain companies. Given that the US has traditionally not made that kind of investment in private companies, I certainly do hold the government responsible for losing taxpayer dollars there. Do you think private investors are, or should be, off the hook when they make money-losing investments?
Smart money says GM stock (in constant dollars) will never exceed the price that the US paid.
That GM lost money is their responsibility. That the dollars came from taxpayers, and the loss is now effectively part of the national debt, is the government's fault.
Re #1, GM is solvent *for now*, but it is far from clear that they have fixed the structural problems that led to their bankruptcy. The biggest effect of their bailout may simply have been to prolong the pain and economic dislocations due to their collapse, not to to prevent their collapse.
If you're so confident about the future price of GM stock, why don't you buy the stock, give the US enough cash to offset its losses, and sell the stock when you'll break even or make a profit?
Most of those people complained because the government doesn't know how to run a manufacturing business, and was bound to lose money in the process. Dear Leader kept insisting otherwise, although he got a little quieter after Solyndra and its ilk exposed government's general incompetence at distinguishing sustainable businesses from losers.
I'm sure the "disruption, not damage" thing is going to be very reassuring to the guy with a pacemaker.
More generally, it's going to be very hard to calibrate field strength for this kind of thing to shut down car electronics without damaging any electronics: it works by turning wires into antennas and inducing enough voltage to confuse the device on one end of that wire. Due to the range of normal operating voltages in different devices -- or even different circuits within one device -- one voltage level might be too low to confuse some devices but high enough to damage others.
You can make a pretty good estimate by dividing the cost of uncompensated care by total costs, and if I recall correctly, it would be well under two percent. At that level, you're probably paying much more for regulatory reporting and other forms of overhead, so it seems silly to only list uncompensated care as a "line item". (It wouldn't really be a line item, because that cost would already be included, and perhaps spread unevenly, across the other charges on the bill -- and if you have insurance that negotiates a reduced payment rate for some goods and services, that discount could make it more uneven.)
Nice reading fail: I said your particular dollars, and appropriations bills neither fully specify spending nor match actual spending. Nice try, moron.
To make it all fair, government should also provide a detailed breakdown of where your particular tax dollars -- not just income and payroll tax, but duties, excise taxes, sales taxes, and all the rest -- went each year. Sound good?
Google patented a method to help cover the costs of free wireless access balloons. This of course makes a bunch of idiots very upset that Google would not just pay for the balloons out of their magic profit printing press, because Google forbid that people who use a service help pay for it.
If the executive isn't authorized to spend money, which is better: To post signs saying "This facility is closed and unstaffed", or to deploy armed guards in order to keep people away from open-air facilities that are usually unstaffed and unsupervised?
Exchanging keys over the longer-term communications medium makes it very easy to mount a man-in-the-middle attack. If you're concerned about such attacks, you need some trusted medium for key verification (or exchange) so that you and your communications partner know that each is using the same key as the other. Back in the 1990s, that medium was often key signing parties, where trust in someone's photo ID was backed up by using the social network (hey, Bob, is this really Charlie Doe?). Using a certificate authority is another way to do it... if you actually have good reason to trust both the particular CA and the chain of custody for what you think is the CA's public key.
Your response didn't highlight the bit that you claim you were rebutting, and it included a whole bunch of irrelevant (to that claim) cheerleading about the law that grossly misrepresented its size. Don't complain to me about stupidity when you don't have the brainpower to create a comment that clearly conveys your point.
In the US, police usually don't use subpoenas -- they use warrants instead, and a person has a Fifth Amendment right against being compelled to provide information in a criminal trial (which is where the police are usually involved). Subpoenas are an artifact of civil trials and regulatory actions that require someone to provide the requested evidence, and the Fifth Amendment still applies. Is there no way in the Netherlands for a regulator to compel (force) a company to turn over documents or other information that are relevant to the regulator's mission?
No, I wasn't one who bitched about Wall Street or the banks. Thanks for making an ass out of yourself by assuming, though!