When the fixes do not cost more, I will agree we could save money. But until then, that is all happy talk about savings I will never enjoy. Most of us will not be around when the dire catastrophes happen and time will have allowed those who are to make significant changes to mitigate the damages.
To be somewhat blunt, I really don't care if part of NYC is under water as it is all over priced land owned by rich fat cats who can more than afford putting up a retaining wall or losing a piece of property. As for the so called natural disasters being more potent, the only thing I can see that has changed in my lifetime is the amount of people living in areas already destined to be hit and the massive amounts of news coverage trying to sensationalize every person's worst misery when they are. I mean seriously, a news helicopter could fly a reporter to a bridge that people were stuck on during Katrina in order to show how everyone was suffering but could not drop off some bottled water and MREs or even medics to treat the ill?
I was thinking of more control over the back burn. Mostly to protect buildings and such in the path of the blaze. As far as unproven, if it is never explored and used, it will never be proven. For all I know, it could be a dud before any real effort is put into it.
There is a code you used to be able to play as the call was being answered. This code either signified the call was incorrect or something along the lines of an automated computer answering instead of a human. I forget the name of the device but my brother installed one and all the telemarketing calls think it's a bust call and disconnect the call. I asked him why he kept getting crank calls and he explained how it worked and why when I answered his phone, no one was on the other end but this was years ago (2000 or so).
I forget the name of the device he had but it would likely be quicker to just code something that did that and have it ask the person for a name or to push a number to have the call completed. If it got replied to, it wouldn't be most telemarketers. On the other hand, I never sign up for crap and don't have too many telemarketing calls. When I do, I demand they "take me off their list and any lists they have me associated with". They have to do so else face a fine each time they contact you after the request (document when this happens and with who they claim to be representing along with a number to report it). Most areas will give you a portion of the fines if it goes that far too (you may have to sue the company itself but its easily done). Even if your area doesn't allow the fines, telling them to take you off the list does two things, it first severs any existing permission like previous business and so on that could be used to get around do not call lists, and second, it establishes that you certainly will not purchase anything or donate anything to them and by removing you from the list or placing your number in their internal do not call list, it will be doing them a favor in conserving resources for more productive calls. So at minimum, that should get you out of some of the calls. On average, I get less then 2 telemarketing calls every month. Sometimes I go several months without any. And when the pissed off telemarketing drone start cussing you out, make a record of that and report it to the FCC or whatever regulating authority your area has.
I've kind of been thinking of something similar to that. I'm not sure it would have to instantly cause all combustible materials to burn up immediately, but suppose a strong laser was mounted to the back of trucks and they used them to sort of back-burn brush at the edge of cities and residential areas when a wild fire is encroaching. You could likely cover a large area and with the intense heat of the laser, possibly cause the fire to burn faster then normal and reduce the risk of it getting out of hand too. Just follow it up with a tanker spraying the burnt area with retardant.
The trucks could use roads and if perched on top of a hill, it should be able to get a good ways down the valley before becoming inefficient. And if the wild fire is large enough to have it's own weather system, the lasers could possibly be used to somewhat direct the heat and therefore disrupt the weather system to the advantage of fighting it.
You say that as if no one would join the military if they magically knew something. The fact of the matter is that most who join at that age have been talked into it by means other than a recruiter. In some cases, this is family like parents or other relatives who served, in some it might be to pay for college that they see no other way of getting, in some it might be to escape some reality in their hometown or life (lack of jobs, gang culture, the middle of nowhere and so on), in some it might simply be because they have a sense of duty.
18-20 year old are attractive to military recruiters because they are in their prime of being physically capable and fit which matches a lot of what the military requires out of a soldier. If it was because of some mental impairment, then people would be clamoring to raise the voting age to 21 or something.
When the government decides who is rich and who isn't, you end up finding people who would never consider themselves rich to be rather wealthy even when they are working and in the middle class.
If you taxed the truly wealthy, the 1% or even the 5% of top earners 100%, it wouldn't make much of an impact on our debt. It would be around 2.4 trillion dollars in total (about 1.9 trillion more then they are already paying) and it would drop as soon as the top 5% of earners stopped trying to make a paycheck they wouldn't ever see. The top 5% of income earners have about 31% of the adjusted gross income in the US and already pay more than 58% of the taxes collected. The top 10% of earners pay 70% and the top 25 earners pay roughly 87% of taxes collected already. And you can be in the top 25% if your adjusted gross income is just over $66K a year. Who would have thought 60,000 was rich? Well, the government does.
This problem is two folded. What you say isn't necessarily not true but education has been used to replace competency testing of the past.
In the past when higher education wasn't always accredited or common, companies would administer competency tests to application candidates and only the ones who could pass it were considered. In some cases, the higher the passing score was, the more consideration you received. This is where you find the ancient stories of people starting off in the mail room and making their way to a senior executive position years down the road. But the idea was that if you didn't have a high school diploma or other documentation describing your abilities, you could still possess the skills for doing the jobs.
The testing was eventually challenged as a method to discriminate against minorities. It became somewhat impossible from a liability standpoint to design a test that would not open legal problems down the road with this regard. Testing is still used to some degree but not with the emphasis it used to have. So businesses started using a high school diploma and in some cases a G.E.D as the basis of determining qualifications of a candidate. Then the high school systems broke down and started passing and graduating people who couldn't even read or distinguish the difference between 2+2 and 4-2 and businesses started resorting to college educations as markers indicating abilities. Some companies require any college degree, even if it is in Physical education or underwater basket weaving just to be employed there as it is a sign that the people are competent enough to read, write, do simple math and follow directions. It doesn't matter if the degree has anything to do with the actual job requirements or not, just that a degree is there indicating expected abilities.
Now obviously this has limitations in application as you are not going to hire a liberal arts major as an engineer or an engineer as a mental health coordinator without the field specific qualifications. But jobs like management of restaurants and clerical entry, accounts receivables and so on often require some sort of degree even if it has no bearing with the fields in which they are applying to. I worked with a trucking company for a while and they required a college degree to become one of the dispatchers (who made a salary plus a percentage of the loads they handled so it paid very well). You would find people who's degree was in music, art history, political science, phys ed and so on. It has nothing to do about distinguish one job candidate from another, just establishing the competency of the job candidates.
I'm not sure you can claim hidden costs as subsidies as we all pay for them to get the savings. Seriously, if the costs of power was as expensive as you suggest it would be, I doubt you would even have a computer right now to post that comment with. So while you can look at every aspect of anything and make crap up about the real costs, you cannot really claim it is a subsidy as it is largely a cost paid by means other than money. But more importantly, that process of cheap energy has contributed more to the ability to make a living then the costs of any negatives you can imagine as we wouldn't have the things we enjoy today largely because the costs would be prohibitive to operate them before they got developed.
So while your rant is well meaning, I think it is short sided on reality.
Lets round this fee to $5 a month. That's $60 a year for each of these houses. I'm not sure it would be cost sensible to run to batteries and back up generators to save that little fee. If the fees were greatly increased, I can see it as an option. But spending $2000 to save less than $100 seems to be counter productive.
People here also have backup generators. It generally costs more to run them then it does to get power off the grid which is why they are backup in nature.
As for the global warming denying... Assuming that global warming isn't real(it is though), you might get farther with politeness instead of calling us scum.
This is a two way street in which anyone who seems to question the global warming agenda is instantly vilified. Even people who bring up subjects that have later been declared valid and included or attempted to be included into the models remain vilified. I certainly can understand why someone would be quick to go to that edge.
The bad news is, whatever you believe, the earth is getting warmer, and we are going to have to deal with the consequences. I wish you'd help instead of sitting in the corner scream about Obamasitic Lies.
The problem is that proposed solutions contain little to no logic that actually addresses the problems. It all seems to boil down to excuses to tax the populous instead of addressing the underlying issues. These issues could be addressed by scientific research into technologies that could replace existing tech that is seen as contributing to the problem and it could be done in ways that actually make it cheaper without hiding more taxing and redistribution in order to pretend it is. The recent article about the government investing in battery research is a prime example of this. Investing in making ICE more efficient or less polluting or even capturing the pollution before it is emitted into the atmosphere is a lot more palatable then raising taxes with the idea that eventually someone will do that on their own when things get too unbearable which is the effect of a carbon tax.
In short, if government was actually trust worthy, we would be seeing investments into research that addresses these issues instead of attempts to prop up incomplete technology and raise costs of everything. We put a man on the moon in a relatively short time scale compared to our abilities to even get into space. We certainly can figure out ways of combating global warming that actually addresses the problem rather then propping up costs with the hopes someone else will eventually do it. The Kyoto accords for example was not supposed to fix global warming and it didn't. It was designed to spread wealth to less developed countries- most of whom signed the treaty with absolutely no restrictions on them in the hopes that first world nations would move some of their production and infrastructure to their areas in order to meet their restrictions. Last time I counted, of the over 150 countries who signed on to Kyoto, only 37 had restrictions and of those 37, 2 had a level of leeway before hitting them. Doing the science and developing answers that the public is allowed to access will do more then any of these convoluted schemes that keep coming down the pike.
The ACA itself is part of the problem because it invests so much power of the law to the interpretations of political appointments like Kathleen Sebelius and Marilyn Tavenner who are also subject to political ideals and the whims of the president. Several of the problems where specifically blamed on delays from these people along with changing specs and such late in the development because of seemingly political decisions.
Also, if the law was not found unconstitutional on the state exchanges mandate, the federal government's website would have had to only worry about a fraction of the traffic that was presented to it. Another problem discovered by the congressional investigations is that a lot of the problems seem to be the insistence of publishing rates adjusted by expected subsidies which is a political decision allowed by the law.
And that is not even getting into what was said about the law verses the reality of the law. Allowing such leeway by the heads of departments or Obama's constant changing of the law by executive order (which some claim is unconstitutional) is built into the law which is also part of the technical problems with the website's roll out.
The reason government contracts are broken is because they were used a tools in the past. Seriously, prevailing wage requirements were not originally there to ensure employees weren't being abused, they came about because most minority contractors weren't large enough to pay prevailing wages while waiting on the contract payouts so it would lock them out of competing for government contracts. Other rules regarding government contracting were in place to protect existing contractors or even government jobs or to bar others from competing also.
What we have is a mess surrounding a lot of playing with the rules for whatever agenda in the past. It actually takes more money to build an identical building if one was built for a government department verses a private sector business not because something will be different on the building but because the contract process has so many requirements to be met in order to do the exact same work. The same can be said about almost any government contract including IT.
No, that is a relatively new thing. Bush never blamed anything on Clinton and Clinton never publicly blamed anything on Bush or Reagan. This entire blaming the last guy is new. But do not confuse blaming the last guy with justifying their actions because the last guy did it too. That is another argument altogether where justifying something based on previous people doing it too doesn't place blame on them.
Actually, it is government that is incompetent. From the start there were problems with the law that Reid and Pelosi ended up making comments about not knowing or understanding what was in the law to the most recent comments made by President Obama in that nobody knew the law would cause people to lose their coverage when he signed it. Then you have decisions made not because they were technically sound, but because they were politically motivated by politically appointed personnel known to be loyal to party agendas. The company that got the job owed its fortune largely to politics as well. Even if we discount the ties Michelle Obama has with senior officials of CGI, the bidding process was expedited which locked out most of the competition to only 16 companies of which only 4 placed bids on. I'm not aware of any details of the other 3 bids or why CGI was selected over them.
This entire process has been ran as if the senior management held honorary positions with no intent on actually managing but rather just having a name associated with it. Sadly, Obama himself seems to have conducted quite a bit of his presidency in the same ways with everything that he knows nothing about until he reads it in the news paper.
Also, I don't think this is a fair comparison of government verses private sector. I can't find anything that CGI has been part of that wasn't government initiated or funded. It's like saying that if Microsoft was to spin off it's Microsoft Office department but still manage it, that it is a completely separate company competing with Microsoft. The only thing that seems to be private sector about this company is the fact that they work by contract with several different governments instead of being employed directly by one. But when you look at other areas where the private sector actually works in the private sector, you clearly see how the private sector does it better and cheaper then the government.
Road construction and maintenance is one of those areas. I used to work for one of the county engineers offices in my area (one political office that is actually expected to get results). The road crews were great at minor repairs and some projects where larger projects like bridge replacements were usually bid out at a lesser amount then it would take the road crew to do half of. But this also shows that it is important to have the abilities to do some stuff in house also, just not all one or the other. Filling pot holes being bid out would probably cause citizens to go postal. Digging up water or sewer lines and repaving after the repairs is another problem that cannot wait for a bidding process where in house shines the best. I seriously doubt there will ever be a private verses public sector argument that is always 100% correct unless it discounts stuff like that and even then, it is showing how both are needed to be efficient and competent.
It's that ThinkGeek seems to actively- and only- promote the idea of geekdom being something that revolves around however many spuriously intelligent toys you own and nothing more.
I would think they have to because that is how they make their money. I'm not sure anyone is looking at them for some moral guidance or anything, just to buy cool stuff and have fun. That is what I would expect from a company that sells things.
This is the type of stuff the governments all over the world should be doing to combat global warming if they actually thought it was real and a threat instead of using it as an excuse to raise taxes.
Now if we could just get them to extend this into other areas like internal combustion engines being more efficient while not tripling their costs or maybe even a drop in replacement for a standard ICE motor in existing vehicles as well as industrial processes and such and I don't think most people who think global warming is a crock would object so strongly.
Maybe moving this to areas other then just batteries is what the economy needs.
I put the part in bold from his comment but it seems it was masked by the quote.
"they're basically just a seller of novelty gadgets and boys toys with a geek-oriented marketing angle." is why.
It was the first popular one stop shop for most of the cool and interesting crap I could waste my money on. They seemed to focus more on fun then necessity too. They came up with witty slogans and put them on everything and it is something that a lot of geeks either "just got" or wondered why it wasn't obvious to them once they figured it out.
In short, the reason is because they are or were the Cabelas of the geek world even if their crap was cheaply made and overly priced.
But you are right, any lawyer could have a field day with them. Especially if the story summery is correct. If her husband purchased the gifts, then it would have been him not her that agreed to any EULA no matter how stupid it might have been. So by going after her, who hasn't even agreed to the terms, they are literally doing something fraudulent and possibly criminal to boot.
What's so great about ThinkGeek anyway? When it comes down to it, they're basically just a seller of novelty gadgets and boys toys with a geek-oriented marketing angle.
You really don't know?
I've ranted about them previously, but to tl;dr that, the problem is that in (rather successfully) using this angle to sell their gimmicks, they presented and promoted a relentlessly consumerist view of what it is to be a geek... both by exploting the need to identify and belong (show how much of a proud geek and/or fan of this geek-popular TV show you are by owning this gizmo!) and by flattery (owning this stuff shows that you're clever!).
They seem to have been one of the first places I know of to cater to geeks. They don't just have look it's shinny things, but things, even if they are toys, that are interesting in their own right.
Sorry about the delay in responding, I had to leave the country for a short bit and didn't have internet I could use.
Yes, for brevity and clarity. Taxes weren't a part of the discussion until afterward. The question was whether the government has the power, and the answer is "yes, under Article 1, Section 8".
Well, no. The government does not have the power and it will be challenged and overturned as soon as someone is subject to the fine (due to the rules on challenging a tax). The court said the government has the power to tax and pretty much that was it. It did not say the government could mandate anyone purchase anything and it did not say the tax was constitutional, it only changed a penalty to a tax and said the government can tax.
.But it didn't when it was already examined. The opinion of the Court was that the Taxing Clause allows the government to tax behaviors, and "not buying health insurance" is a taxable behavior. Other taxable behaviors are things like smoking tobacco, burning fuel, and importing foreign goods - things that Congress has determined to be detrimental to the general welfare of the United States.
It was never examined on the government's ability to tax. The court said the penalty was essentially a tax and the government can tax. It did nothing to determine if they government has absolute authority to tax or if taxes as penalties could negate the first, 4th, 5th, and 9th amendments which this tax does. As for comparing it to taxing tobacco, fuel and importing goods, you are off the point there. Those taxes happen because someone does something. The ACA penalty happens when you don't do something. If the penalty was an across the board increase in taxes with deductions or credits allowed if you purchased insurance, there would be no constitutional questions. But it doesn't, it says if you act in contrary to a law, you will have a penalty assessed by way of tax. This penalty has no due process, no first amendment exceptions, and clearly violates the 9th amendment that says no rights granted in the constitution can be construed to deny or disparage others.
...but there is no "fine". Failing to buy insurance isn't a crime. You have the choice whether to buy insurance or not, and no law enforcement personnel will likely ever know or care about your choice.
It is a fine. It is a penalty for not doing something a law claims you are supposed to do. No amount of slick talking can get rid of that fact until the actual law is changed. Law enforcement is government so attempting to distinguish between the two is moot.
Rather, the tax is applied along with income and other taxes by the IRS.
Nope. Count with me, 1,2,3,4... Notice something about those numbers? What's that, they are in succession. Good. Now, if the ACA penalties were just like any other income tax, you would be subject to it then deduct the amount when you show compliance. That is how every single other income tax has worked. All the sudden, you have a penalty or additional tax on top of your normal tax if you did not do something the government says you are supposed to do.
If you don't pay the tax, the IRS can do approximately nothing. They can withhold the amount from your refund, but the ACA tax itself has no provision for enforcement.
Lol.. So the government up and taking something from the refund or the amount of taxes that was over paid without your express permission, is not the government penalizing you by confiscating your money? And the so called no provision of enforcement is exactly why it is unconstitutional. You have a right to due process of law. Where can that happen when the government takes something from you without just compensation if there is no mechanism to redress it?
Now, I know you are going to go in circles and fall back to the entire it is a tax and the government can
It is interesting how tou insist an ideal you hold even after you already dismissed it when thinking yoy were discrediting me is so important. You yourself said it was about limiting influence and taxing. If that is true, then race would be ancilary to the point.
But your faillings csn easily be pointed our. What oppresion or hinderance would that clause create pertaining to race? There certainly were free blacks who counted as whole people at the time it was created and adopted and some of those free black owened property to5o. Do which was it, representation and raxes or race?
Well, that and the EPA rules over oxygenated fuels which threw a serious kink in imports from the country. Chavez blew a gasket and joined Iran's immadinnerjacket ( god i live spelling it that way) in calling bush evil incarnated. They even sued over it and failed.
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When the fixes do not cost more, I will agree we could save money. But until then, that is all happy talk about savings I will never enjoy. Most of us will not be around when the dire catastrophes happen and time will have allowed those who are to make significant changes to mitigate the damages.
To be somewhat blunt, I really don't care if part of NYC is under water as it is all over priced land owned by rich fat cats who can more than afford putting up a retaining wall or losing a piece of property. As for the so called natural disasters being more potent, the only thing I can see that has changed in my lifetime is the amount of people living in areas already destined to be hit and the massive amounts of news coverage trying to sensationalize every person's worst misery when they are. I mean seriously, a news helicopter could fly a reporter to a bridge that people were stuck on during Katrina in order to show how everyone was suffering but could not drop off some bottled water and MREs or even medics to treat the ill?
I was thinking of more control over the back burn. Mostly to protect buildings and such in the path of the blaze. As far as unproven, if it is never explored and used, it will never be proven. For all I know, it could be a dud before any real effort is put into it.
There is a code you used to be able to play as the call was being answered. This code either signified the call was incorrect or something along the lines of an automated computer answering instead of a human. I forget the name of the device but my brother installed one and all the telemarketing calls think it's a bust call and disconnect the call. I asked him why he kept getting crank calls and he explained how it worked and why when I answered his phone, no one was on the other end but this was years ago (2000 or so).
I forget the name of the device he had but it would likely be quicker to just code something that did that and have it ask the person for a name or to push a number to have the call completed. If it got replied to, it wouldn't be most telemarketers. On the other hand, I never sign up for crap and don't have too many telemarketing calls. When I do, I demand they "take me off their list and any lists they have me associated with". They have to do so else face a fine each time they contact you after the request (document when this happens and with who they claim to be representing along with a number to report it). Most areas will give you a portion of the fines if it goes that far too (you may have to sue the company itself but its easily done). Even if your area doesn't allow the fines, telling them to take you off the list does two things, it first severs any existing permission like previous business and so on that could be used to get around do not call lists, and second, it establishes that you certainly will not purchase anything or donate anything to them and by removing you from the list or placing your number in their internal do not call list, it will be doing them a favor in conserving resources for more productive calls. So at minimum, that should get you out of some of the calls. On average, I get less then 2 telemarketing calls every month. Sometimes I go several months without any. And when the pissed off telemarketing drone start cussing you out, make a record of that and report it to the FCC or whatever regulating authority your area has.
I've kind of been thinking of something similar to that. I'm not sure it would have to instantly cause all combustible materials to burn up immediately, but suppose a strong laser was mounted to the back of trucks and they used them to sort of back-burn brush at the edge of cities and residential areas when a wild fire is encroaching. You could likely cover a large area and with the intense heat of the laser, possibly cause the fire to burn faster then normal and reduce the risk of it getting out of hand too. Just follow it up with a tanker spraying the burnt area with retardant.
The trucks could use roads and if perched on top of a hill, it should be able to get a good ways down the valley before becoming inefficient. And if the wild fire is large enough to have it's own weather system, the lasers could possibly be used to somewhat direct the heat and therefore disrupt the weather system to the advantage of fighting it.
Of course this is already being investigated with electrical fields I guess.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110327191034.htm
Oh, I didn't notice the sarcasm... My bad.
I have a habit of missing things like that.
Actually, Obama was and is a supporter of no child left behind. His ACES program is nothing but a few tweaks to it.
You say that as if no one would join the military if they magically knew something. The fact of the matter is that most who join at that age have been talked into it by means other than a recruiter. In some cases, this is family like parents or other relatives who served, in some it might be to pay for college that they see no other way of getting, in some it might be to escape some reality in their hometown or life (lack of jobs, gang culture, the middle of nowhere and so on), in some it might simply be because they have a sense of duty.
18-20 year old are attractive to military recruiters because they are in their prime of being physically capable and fit which matches a lot of what the military requires out of a soldier. If it was because of some mental impairment, then people would be clamoring to raise the voting age to 21 or something.
When the government decides who is rich and who isn't, you end up finding people who would never consider themselves rich to be rather wealthy even when they are working and in the middle class.
If you taxed the truly wealthy, the 1% or even the 5% of top earners 100%, it wouldn't make much of an impact on our debt. It would be around 2.4 trillion dollars in total (about 1.9 trillion more then they are already paying) and it would drop as soon as the top 5% of earners stopped trying to make a paycheck they wouldn't ever see. The top 5% of income earners have about 31% of the adjusted gross income in the US and already pay more than 58% of the taxes collected. The top 10% of earners pay 70% and the top 25 earners pay roughly 87% of taxes collected already. And you can be in the top 25% if your adjusted gross income is just over $66K a year. Who would have thought 60,000 was rich? Well, the government does.
the sources for this came from here.
http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-individual-income-tax-data-0
This problem is two folded. What you say isn't necessarily not true but education has been used to replace competency testing of the past.
In the past when higher education wasn't always accredited or common, companies would administer competency tests to application candidates and only the ones who could pass it were considered. In some cases, the higher the passing score was, the more consideration you received. This is where you find the ancient stories of people starting off in the mail room and making their way to a senior executive position years down the road. But the idea was that if you didn't have a high school diploma or other documentation describing your abilities, you could still possess the skills for doing the jobs.
The testing was eventually challenged as a method to discriminate against minorities. It became somewhat impossible from a liability standpoint to design a test that would not open legal problems down the road with this regard. Testing is still used to some degree but not with the emphasis it used to have. So businesses started using a high school diploma and in some cases a G.E.D as the basis of determining qualifications of a candidate. Then the high school systems broke down and started passing and graduating people who couldn't even read or distinguish the difference between 2+2 and 4-2 and businesses started resorting to college educations as markers indicating abilities. Some companies require any college degree, even if it is in Physical education or underwater basket weaving just to be employed there as it is a sign that the people are competent enough to read, write, do simple math and follow directions. It doesn't matter if the degree has anything to do with the actual job requirements or not, just that a degree is there indicating expected abilities.
Now obviously this has limitations in application as you are not going to hire a liberal arts major as an engineer or an engineer as a mental health coordinator without the field specific qualifications. But jobs like management of restaurants and clerical entry, accounts receivables and so on often require some sort of degree even if it has no bearing with the fields in which they are applying to. I worked with a trucking company for a while and they required a college degree to become one of the dispatchers (who made a salary plus a percentage of the loads they handled so it paid very well). You would find people who's degree was in music, art history, political science, phys ed and so on. It has nothing to do about distinguish one job candidate from another, just establishing the competency of the job candidates.
I'm not sure you can claim hidden costs as subsidies as we all pay for them to get the savings. Seriously, if the costs of power was as expensive as you suggest it would be, I doubt you would even have a computer right now to post that comment with. So while you can look at every aspect of anything and make crap up about the real costs, you cannot really claim it is a subsidy as it is largely a cost paid by means other than money. But more importantly, that process of cheap energy has contributed more to the ability to make a living then the costs of any negatives you can imagine as we wouldn't have the things we enjoy today largely because the costs would be prohibitive to operate them before they got developed.
So while your rant is well meaning, I think it is short sided on reality.
Lets round this fee to $5 a month. That's $60 a year for each of these houses. I'm not sure it would be cost sensible to run to batteries and back up generators to save that little fee. If the fees were greatly increased, I can see it as an option. But spending $2000 to save less than $100 seems to be counter productive.
People here also have backup generators. It generally costs more to run them then it does to get power off the grid which is why they are backup in nature.
This is a two way street in which anyone who seems to question the global warming agenda is instantly vilified. Even people who bring up subjects that have later been declared valid and included or attempted to be included into the models remain vilified. I certainly can understand why someone would be quick to go to that edge.
The problem is that proposed solutions contain little to no logic that actually addresses the problems. It all seems to boil down to excuses to tax the populous instead of addressing the underlying issues. These issues could be addressed by scientific research into technologies that could replace existing tech that is seen as contributing to the problem and it could be done in ways that actually make it cheaper without hiding more taxing and redistribution in order to pretend it is. The recent article about the government investing in battery research is a prime example of this. Investing in making ICE more efficient or less polluting or even capturing the pollution before it is emitted into the atmosphere is a lot more palatable then raising taxes with the idea that eventually someone will do that on their own when things get too unbearable which is the effect of a carbon tax.
In short, if government was actually trust worthy, we would be seeing investments into research that addresses these issues instead of attempts to prop up incomplete technology and raise costs of everything. We put a man on the moon in a relatively short time scale compared to our abilities to even get into space. We certainly can figure out ways of combating global warming that actually addresses the problem rather then propping up costs with the hopes someone else will eventually do it. The Kyoto accords for example was not supposed to fix global warming and it didn't. It was designed to spread wealth to less developed countries- most of whom signed the treaty with absolutely no restrictions on them in the hopes that first world nations would move some of their production and infrastructure to their areas in order to meet their restrictions. Last time I counted, of the over 150 countries who signed on to Kyoto, only 37 had restrictions and of those 37, 2 had a level of leeway before hitting them. Doing the science and developing answers that the public is allowed to access will do more then any of these convoluted schemes that keep coming down the pike.
The ACA itself is part of the problem because it invests so much power of the law to the interpretations of political appointments like Kathleen Sebelius and Marilyn Tavenner who are also subject to political ideals and the whims of the president. Several of the problems where specifically blamed on delays from these people along with changing specs and such late in the development because of seemingly political decisions.
Also, if the law was not found unconstitutional on the state exchanges mandate, the federal government's website would have had to only worry about a fraction of the traffic that was presented to it. Another problem discovered by the congressional investigations is that a lot of the problems seem to be the insistence of publishing rates adjusted by expected subsidies which is a political decision allowed by the law.
And that is not even getting into what was said about the law verses the reality of the law. Allowing such leeway by the heads of departments or Obama's constant changing of the law by executive order (which some claim is unconstitutional) is built into the law which is also part of the technical problems with the website's roll out.
The reason government contracts are broken is because they were used a tools in the past. Seriously, prevailing wage requirements were not originally there to ensure employees weren't being abused, they came about because most minority contractors weren't large enough to pay prevailing wages while waiting on the contract payouts so it would lock them out of competing for government contracts. Other rules regarding government contracting were in place to protect existing contractors or even government jobs or to bar others from competing also.
What we have is a mess surrounding a lot of playing with the rules for whatever agenda in the past. It actually takes more money to build an identical building if one was built for a government department verses a private sector business not because something will be different on the building but because the contract process has so many requirements to be met in order to do the exact same work. The same can be said about almost any government contract including IT.
No, that is a relatively new thing. Bush never blamed anything on Clinton and Clinton never publicly blamed anything on Bush or Reagan. This entire blaming the last guy is new. But do not confuse blaming the last guy with justifying their actions because the last guy did it too. That is another argument altogether where justifying something based on previous people doing it too doesn't place blame on them.
Actually, it is government that is incompetent. From the start there were problems with the law that Reid and Pelosi ended up making comments about not knowing or understanding what was in the law to the most recent comments made by President Obama in that nobody knew the law would cause people to lose their coverage when he signed it. Then you have decisions made not because they were technically sound, but because they were politically motivated by politically appointed personnel known to be loyal to party agendas. The company that got the job owed its fortune largely to politics as well. Even if we discount the ties Michelle Obama has with senior officials of CGI, the bidding process was expedited which locked out most of the competition to only 16 companies of which only 4 placed bids on. I'm not aware of any details of the other 3 bids or why CGI was selected over them.
This entire process has been ran as if the senior management held honorary positions with no intent on actually managing but rather just having a name associated with it. Sadly, Obama himself seems to have conducted quite a bit of his presidency in the same ways with everything that he knows nothing about until he reads it in the news paper.
Also, I don't think this is a fair comparison of government verses private sector. I can't find anything that CGI has been part of that wasn't government initiated or funded. It's like saying that if Microsoft was to spin off it's Microsoft Office department but still manage it, that it is a completely separate company competing with Microsoft. The only thing that seems to be private sector about this company is the fact that they work by contract with several different governments instead of being employed directly by one. But when you look at other areas where the private sector actually works in the private sector, you clearly see how the private sector does it better and cheaper then the government.
Road construction and maintenance is one of those areas. I used to work for one of the county engineers offices in my area (one political office that is actually expected to get results). The road crews were great at minor repairs and some projects where larger projects like bridge replacements were usually bid out at a lesser amount then it would take the road crew to do half of. But this also shows that it is important to have the abilities to do some stuff in house also, just not all one or the other. Filling pot holes being bid out would probably cause citizens to go postal. Digging up water or sewer lines and repaving after the repairs is another problem that cannot wait for a bidding process where in house shines the best. I seriously doubt there will ever be a private verses public sector argument that is always 100% correct unless it discounts stuff like that and even then, it is showing how both are needed to be efficient and competent.
I would think they have to because that is how they make their money. I'm not sure anyone is looking at them for some moral guidance or anything, just to buy cool stuff and have fun. That is what I would expect from a company that sells things.
This is the type of stuff the governments all over the world should be doing to combat global warming if they actually thought it was real and a threat instead of using it as an excuse to raise taxes.
Now if we could just get them to extend this into other areas like internal combustion engines being more efficient while not tripling their costs or maybe even a drop in replacement for a standard ICE motor in existing vehicles as well as industrial processes and such and I don't think most people who think global warming is a crock would object so strongly.
Maybe moving this to areas other then just batteries is what the economy needs.
I put the part in bold from his comment but it seems it was masked by the quote.
"they're basically just a seller of novelty gadgets and boys toys with a geek-oriented marketing angle." is why.
It was the first popular one stop shop for most of the cool and interesting crap I could waste my money on. They seemed to focus more on fun then necessity too. They came up with witty slogans and put them on everything and it is something that a lot of geeks either "just got" or wondered why it wasn't obvious to them once they figured it out.
In short, the reason is because they are or were the Cabelas of the geek world even if their crap was cheaply made and overly priced.
Fuckedcompany seems to be down since 2007.
But you are right, any lawyer could have a field day with them. Especially if the story summery is correct. If her husband purchased the gifts, then it would have been him not her that agreed to any EULA no matter how stupid it might have been. So by going after her, who hasn't even agreed to the terms, they are literally doing something fraudulent and possibly criminal to boot.
You really don't know?
They seem to have been one of the first places I know of to cater to geeks. They don't just have look it's shinny things, but things, even if they are toys, that are interesting in their own right.
Sorry about the delay in responding, I had to leave the country for a short bit and didn't have internet I could use.
Well, no. The government does not have the power and it will be challenged and overturned as soon as someone is subject to the fine (due to the rules on challenging a tax). The court said the government has the power to tax and pretty much that was it. It did not say the government could mandate anyone purchase anything and it did not say the tax was constitutional, it only changed a penalty to a tax and said the government can tax.
It was never examined on the government's ability to tax. The court said the penalty was essentially a tax and the government can tax. It did nothing to determine if they government has absolute authority to tax or if taxes as penalties could negate the first, 4th, 5th, and 9th amendments which this tax does. As for comparing it to taxing tobacco, fuel and importing goods, you are off the point there. Those taxes happen because someone does something. The ACA penalty happens when you don't do something. If the penalty was an across the board increase in taxes with deductions or credits allowed if you purchased insurance, there would be no constitutional questions. But it doesn't, it says if you act in contrary to a law, you will have a penalty assessed by way of tax. This penalty has no due process, no first amendment exceptions, and clearly violates the 9th amendment that says no rights granted in the constitution can be construed to deny or disparage others.
It is a fine. It is a penalty for not doing something a law claims you are supposed to do. No amount of slick talking can get rid of that fact until the actual law is changed. Law enforcement is government so attempting to distinguish between the two is moot.
Nope. Count with me, 1,2,3,4... Notice something about those numbers? What's that, they are in succession. Good. Now, if the ACA penalties were just like any other income tax, you would be subject to it then deduct the amount when you show compliance. That is how every single other income tax has worked. All the sudden, you have a penalty or additional tax on top of your normal tax if you did not do something the government says you are supposed to do.
Lol.. So the government up and taking something from the refund or the amount of taxes that was over paid without your express permission, is not the government penalizing you by confiscating your money? And the so called no provision of enforcement is exactly why it is unconstitutional. You have a right to due process of law. Where can that happen when the government takes something from you without just compensation if there is no mechanism to redress it?
Now, I know you are going to go in circles and fall back to the entire it is a tax and the government can
As I said, I'm not spoon feeding you so look it up yourself.
Or you could sit there and remain purposely ignorant then complain about the world not being they way you imagine it. It doesn't matter much to me.
It is interesting how tou insist an ideal you hold even after you already dismissed it when thinking yoy were discrediting me is so important. You yourself said it was about limiting influence and taxing. If that is true, then race would be ancilary to the point.
But your faillings csn easily be pointed our. What oppresion or hinderance would that clause create pertaining to race? There certainly were free blacks who counted as whole people at the time it was created and adopted and some of those free black owened property to5o. Do which was it, representation and raxes or race?
Well, that and the EPA rules over oxygenated fuels which threw a serious kink in imports from the country. Chavez blew a gasket and joined Iran's immadinnerjacket ( god i live spelling it that way) in calling bush evil incarnated. They even sued over it and failed.