This problem started pretty much when the government got into health care in the first place. Medicare id paid out not on the actual bill, but on the average costs for the services provided in the area. These areas are divided over 5 or 6 sections of the United States so treatment in California might get a different payout then the same treatment in Ohio or New York.
Anyways, because this is an average pay out, it's in the medical industry's interest to raise rates as high as they can. This raises the average which by direct implication will eventually raise the government payout for these services. This is also probably a good reason why the majority of medical costs are spent in the final years of patients, they are typically either all covered by insurance or medicare.
Now the insurance providers got wise and said, We aren't paying for this. So the medical industry in turn offered them steep discounts based around the idea of preferred treatment. The system to determine the average payment for services counts these preferred treatment discounts at full price instead of at the actual paid prices as the medical providers didn't say this is the costs to everyone and this is the costs to insurance companies, they said this is the costs to everyone, but if we get most of your customers, this is the discount to you.
The entire concept has sort of worked against itself.
I don't think you have thought that through enough.
When the small ones fold up, the larger ones will just pick up the pieces. They won't all fold, just the majority of them. In the end, we will end up with one or two giants in some misconstrued oligopoly that really soaks us.
Well, it would run into consitutional problems too.
However, what I find most disturbing is all these scheemes to get single payer or some sort of government health care is all either trying to subvert the US constitution or ignore it altogether. What I don't get is why these people aren't attempting to change the constitution to make it possible if it's that important to them?
I mean most of the people who dislike Obamacare do so because of it's unconstitutional nature. Change the constitution and they will be on your side.
Actually, the medical industry started doing insanely high markups on about everything after the HMO act of 1964. In 1995, I was talking with a friend who told me I have to pick up my grandparents medication for them and take it to the nursing home he was staying in after a fall that fractured his hip. I knew the nursing home had a pharmacy service but my friend also worked there and told me that they phone the prescription in to another pharmacy, pay to have it delivered and then mark it up 150% as it leaves their counter.
So that is a markup by the manufacturer, by the distributor, by not one, but two pharmacies and the last one was 150%, plus a delivery fee in between each step and so on. If you doubt me, look at people's ER visit break downs and tell me if you see two Tylenol tablets costing about $4 each if they gave regular aspirin.
A friend broke his ankle and needed several pins put in. They MRIed it and that alone cost something like 8k. Now the MRI at the hospital is about a decade old, it should be paid for by now. Outside of some maintinence costs and the staffing costs, does it really cost more then $8000 to take an MRI of someone's leg (15-20 minutes in the machine)? Anyways, his total bill for the incident was a little over $20k. They knew he couldn't pay and offered him a reduced rate. He eventually ended up paying about $2,800 for the entire ordeal. Is that because they soaked the costs from someone else who visited? I tend to think that's the actual costs of services and they wanted to at least get that back instead of losing it all when he filed bankruptcy.
There is simply too much markup in the medical industry. A doctors visit is what now, about $80 to $120 a visit in which the doctor doesn't spend more then 5-10 minutes with you? And that's for a non-specialist? I'm all for paying someone for their knowledge, but it seems like it's a little too much.
There has been several GOP health care bills over the years. They all pretty much boil down to the same things though. This latest incarnation is somewhat of an extra with placing high risk patients on the state pools and prodding them to assist in the coverage fees.
In fact, I was under the impression they were trying to limit obmacare to that but the dems wouldn't let them be involved in the open and transparent government. You know, like Nancy said, we won't know what's in the bill until after we vote for it. Anyways, they prepared their own bill which has been available in summery form at their road map page since sometime last year. Here is a sample of their 1993-4 bill in full context.
In both examples, they provided for pre-exisitng conditions quite well.
They would most likely try to prosecute a couple/few of the people and get them to rat on the organization. From this, they will attempt to ascertain any command structure, when and where and even infiltrate the organization in some way. Sure, they will end up prosecuting someone in spectacular forms that get as much media coverage as possible to act as a deterrent, but attempting to knock the leadership out (and yes, there is always some sort of leadership- even if it isn't official), finding the ability to disrupt the organization, and perhaps even bending it to their own will would be the most probable course of action.
You see, when people get busted for smuggling drugs across the country, they generally get hit not because the cop said, he might have drugs, lets search him, but because they are speeding or sampling the merchandise and weaving or driving erratic or something. They failed to make themselves a small target.
The same goes with a concealed weapon. It's the people who show it to everyone who get busted for carrying it. Well, that unless they get busted for something else. In either case, they failed to make themselves a small target.
What he is saying is that if you don't want to get into trouble, don't do anything wrong. And if you do, do as little as noticeable so you don't become a big target on their radar.
Well, if it really was hacked, there will be evidence of it on the hard drive.
Unfortunately, you will likely have to get them to copy the drive and ship it to your own expert to determine this. If enough people do it, it might become easier- depending on how pissed the government or various governments are.
And yes, I say various governments because Mastercard and a couple of other targeted businesses actually operate in those other countries (they have a presence around the world). This means that other government's will likely have laws pertaining to the same as they need to protect their tax revenue from these companies doing business in those countries.
I'm not sure this would have the desired effect at these locations.
I have four or five offices I administrate that receives faxes and stores them without ever printing. It looks through the image for the attention tag and then the name after that and attempts to assign it to an email of a specific person. If that doesn't work right, it goes to one of the receptionists who sees the first page and manually determines who to send it too. If that can't be figured out from that little bit of information, it then goes to someone who views the entire fax to determine what to do with it.
In this situation, simply writing a script to detect more then so many black characters (more then say 80% or the fax) could automatically forward this to file 13.
I wouldn't think that large companies like Amazon or MasterCard have any less of a system. There might be certain offices that have direct fax lines but I would think that accountability laws and the nature of the business would require an automatic archive of all faxes in and out pertaining to any particular matter of business. This sort of makes it more likely that they are stored first and printed as/when needed. Perhaps in this day and age, all you can really do is tie up the fax lines and flood personnel with verification tasks.
I have never heard anyone attempt to explain any of the tenets of ID, the process or theory that has injected any religious content whatsoever at all outside of a creator of some sorts and that was even left open to a panspermia event or interference by aliens. Now I can understand that because religions latch onto it, and as you say, twist it and lie to make it fit their religious dogma, it is seen as an encroachment by churches on the state but that's not what I asked. I mean guilt by association is the reason why the swastika banned in certain freedom loving European nations but it doesn't make it any less valuable in the places it applied to before it was adopted by someone else in history.
BTW, the ID theory I have been made aware of more or less asks questions about the current state of science like the Precambrian explosions of life, how the findings of certain fossils go against conventional wisdom and how instead of dealing with that, it's being pushed aside in unexplained in favor of conventional theory, stratification of fossils and so on. None of this has any religious merit outside of the existing science may need to be corrected to some degree.
And if Xtian offends you sorry, but I cracked a finger this week moving a new desktop down a flight of stairs so I'm having to hunt and peck, anything that cuts down on typin I'm going for
I'm sorry to hear you hurt yourself. But my comment wasn't because I was offended, it was because I have never heard the term before and did not/do not know exactly what you meant by it. Can I assume you are speaking of christians when you say Xtians?
As for the first lets take a look at the definition of ID [wikipedia.org] shall we? "It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for the existence of God, but one which deliberately avoids specifying the nature or identity of the designer. Its leading proponents--all of whom are associated with the Discovery Institute, a politically conservative think tank--believe the designer to be the God of Christianity.. So you just added shinto, Sharia, and the Tora to the mix otherwise you are pushing a specific religion, a big no no in the constitution.
Wow.. Do you only see what you want to see? That's actually a sign of problems you know. When I followed your link, which wikipedia is probably the last place you want a definitive answer on anything from, I saw "Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." before all the crap you listed. On the surface, what is so wrong with that proposition that your fear of religion overrides the ability to recognize that?
What I mean is, why dismiss the content of the argument based on who is giving the argument? And it's leading proponents being a member of a single institution is more of a chicken and egg question then a guilt by association. You see, if a group of people think similarly, and notice another group has formed a club to further that through, then why wouldn't they join that institution?
And no, it's not a big no no with the constitution. The US constitution says congress shall make no law concerning the practice of religion. Not that religion can be no where at all in public schools. In fact, religious studies are in public schools right now with no problems at all. When I was in school, I studied- well attended classes anyways, the Roman and Greek gods, parts of the Old Testament, parts of the New testament, parts of Hinduism and Shintoism as part of either a social studies or history curriculum. And as far as I know, these are still studies in public schools today.
Now let us see which group you are throwing yourself in with, shal
I frankly don't care WHAT you or anyone else wants to believe in, hell believe in the great electron if that is what helps you get through your day. The problem I have with ID is the outright lies that HAVE to be taught to get religious dogma to fit the evidence.
What lies are those again?
Do you HONESTLY believe the world is 6000 years old?
I never said it was. However, I'm not aware that ID makes that claims. Young earth christians make that claim, but I haven't heard of any Ider claiming that. In fact, the ones I have heard of use the age of the earth and the lack of life specifically to justify intelligent design.
or that humans and dinosaurs lived side by side?
Well, there are indications that early man was well aware of Dinosaurs and even incorporated them into art used to decorate clothing and other things. There is supposed to be a few passages written in the bible about animals with tails the size of trees and so on. And all this was before modern anthropology or a basic subset of science which would allow the study of the subject. Humans probably weren't alive when all the dinosaurs were, but they got those ideas from somewhere. Are you saying it's impossible for them to get those ideas from real live dinosaurs? I'm not aware of any science that says it's impossible. I know science puts a date on what we have found but that doesn't rule out others does it?
Or that the entire fossil record was created by Satan to trick you?
Well, I don't think I have ever heard any IDers say this. Perhaps it's those people who attempt to bend ID in order to make it fit your religion or something giving you that impression. Or perhaps it's just you imagining things because you purposely refuse to examine what it's all about?
Because I have seen those very words spoken in favor of ID, and for strict Xtians every word in the bible is 100% true and factual, hence the huge logic hoops.
Strict Xtians? What the hell are those? And so what if someone thinks every word in the bible is true, we are talking about intelligent design being taught in school, not your exposure to the priests or whatever.
We have ample evidence of evolution if the fossil record, a million dead ends and false starts.Show me a SINGLE SHRED of evidence that gives us scientific proof of your beliefs other than some parchment written by goat herders 2000 years ago?
First of all, I didn't say they were my beliefs. I asked you to justify yours. The lack of evidence anywhere else does not mean something is false, it means there is no or little evidence to support it. The fossil record does not prove evolution either. It highly likely that it's true but it's not a fact. And when someone says it's a fact, it shows how little about science they actually understand.
Because if you can't then we might as well be arguing why we aren't teaching that Ra is the bringer of light, or that Zeus sits on Mount Olympus throwing lightning bolts at those that don't show him respect.
We do this already. Haven't you ever taken any social studies or mythology courses for an English credit?
After all those were written by goat herders 2000+ years ago too, right? Hell why not add Shinto, Sharia, and the Tora and teach those all as factual events as well?
OK, here is precisely where you fail. You first say that religion has to bend ID to fit the religion indicating it isn't really religious, then because some might have, you compare ID as a religion. Well, ID doesn't contain a religious word in it that I know of outside of some creator making complex things and that only in the abstract unless you impose your own bias to it.
Yawn.. Did you miss the part where the GP said "If you start handing out money you destroy its perceived value. The current understanding is that money is "hard to obtain" and requires effort."
I don't really care what you would rather see or not. I was speaking to the entire looses value thing which is true. Or do you not think there is any inflation at present?
I have never heard of anyone trying to through out science and teach ID instead. In fact, the worse they wanted to do was to teach them side by side.
But it doesn't really matter if people bend logic and jump through hoops to get their "theory" to fit their religious dogma. On the surface, that pretty much shows that ID isn't religious dogma but anyways, wouldn't it be important for a student to understand how a person thinks or how religions process thought??
You have showed no logical reason why teaching ID is a wacko theory outside you don't like it. And it's not like people can't learn and function properly doing things completely different. I mean look at the controls on a PC game and the controls on the same game on Xbox. They are different yet plenty of people are able to use the appropriate control given the appropriate context they are presented with.
And no BTW, ID doesn't involve the rejection of science. I places faith into the areas Science can't conclusively prove. That's not rejecting science, it's providing a divine answer until it's proven otherwise. You aren't one of those idiots who thinks the theory of evolution is 100% right are you? I mean it then stops being science if there isn't the possibility for it to be wrong right? It has to remain falsifiable in order to be scientific.
So you are saying that you intentionally added absolutely nothing with you post. Well, so much for being a valuable participate in a discussion. I guess maybe you will learn that once you learn that cussing doesn't effect people like you think it does.
I may be sumdumass, but I'm better and smarter then you. Just look at your posts this thread and it's obvious.
ou are basically saying we should spend all this extra capital on these extra measures so that the airline industry doesn't fall, and people will feel good about going to workThat's not what I'm saying at all. That's just your closed mind extrapolating from what you want me to say.
Here, I will keep it simple for you. The terrorist in 9/11 tried to instill terror into the people. These actions negate that to a point. Bringing up the airlines or the people going to work is only ancillary to it because it happens to be what was involved in the terror.
Even after all the accidents, disasters, and attacks in all of commercial aviation history, that round trip international flight half way around the world is many many times safer than the 15 minute car ride for the flight. Flight is already comparatively safe, but we redirect huge amounts of our capital which would otherwise go to economic growth endeavors into trying to make something that is already ridiculously safe just a fraction safer. Our "fear" has caused us more damage than 9/11 terrorists could have ever imagined. Bin-Laden should shoot himself with a smile on his face the next time on camera, cause it ain't gona get better than this.
Fail. You have no reason to believe that the so called diverted capitol would be used in any way that would promote any economic growth. In fact, hiring TSA agents and manufacturing machines that you don't think is needed is probably providing more economic growth then the alternative of not spending the money at all.
Also, quashing the fears of the public is a valid function of government who is supposed to provide for the defense of the public from attack. Otherwise having a standing army or even a police force would be a waste. This type of spending is nothing new so don't get your panties in a bunch when everything doesn't happen like it should in your ideal world.
There are a ton of much bigger and easier targets where this capital can be used to a FAR greater efficiency, benefit, and return to our society (ie: medical research, education, other transportation, infrastructure, etc).
Could be and will be are two separate things. You have no reason to believe this money would otherwise be spend on anything else. In fact, you have every reason to believe the money wouldn't be spend at all because we are deficit spending presently. It's not like anything else is not being funded because of this as the government just spends and spends anyways.
At the very least, our policies and reactions should not increase the danger we put our society as a whole in. Due to our adaptation to the events of 9/11, how many people do you think have switched to a more dangerous mode of transportation? How many new enemies around the world have we recently made? How many friends and allies around the world have we lost or never will be? How many lives have been lost in battle for that "feeling" of being safe? How many innocents have we turned into monsters for our future generations? How many rights and how much control over our lives have we lost? What kind of a precedent have we set for other situations in our lives (ex: texting ban while driving, new taboo words, etc.)?
First, you are arguing against yourself with your own arguments. Second, you are confusing the function of government with the reaction of people. In short, you are saying that the government shouldn't take action to quash the fear of the people but at the same time, should take action because the people are afraid of the hassles at the airports.
I really do not care how many people are taking more dangerous modes of transportation since 9/11.
As for the rest, you do not know the answer to that either. It's just a guess at best and my guess to all of it is not much and if so, from an insignificant factor of people and parties.
I don't know about manufacturing moving away from nations with SO2 regulations but the biggest source of SO2 emissions has always been power generation (coal and high sulfur petroleum). That isn't very movable. SO2 emissions have been curtailed for a fraction of the cost that power companies said it would when the regulations were first being proposed. The benefit to the country as a whole in reduced acid rain and reduced medical costs has been far greater than the cost to industry.
Most large scale manufacturing in the US created their own energy before the mid 1970's/1980's. This stopped when SO2 regulations started forcing them down and repairs started escaping grandfather clauses.
Well, my first premise of course is that it is necessary to stop CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels. The market method of doing that is to make it (eventually) prohibitively expensive to use them. Cap and trade is one method but I think a carbon tax is simpler and less subject to manipulation.
I agree with your premise, just not your methods. Well, sort of anyways. I'm not convince the Co2 is a large problem yet but I'm ready to support efforts to reduce it if they make sense and do not harm the citizens noticeably.
I guess I would just say it needs to become more expensive to use fossil fuels to reduce their use. You talk as if it isn't possible to do the things we do without fossil fuels. I have more faith in our inventiveness and ingenuity.
It's not that we cannot do things without fossil fuels, it's that there is no real incentive created by attempting to manipulate the costs of using them to start doing things without them. Further more, it can actually harm us if the scheme isn't put in place in a way that stops companies from relocating.
Everybody who is a legal resident of the USA is either eligible to file a tax return or to be claimed as a dependent by an eligible filer. The fact that some people don't need to file a return doesn't preclude them from doing so.
Lol.. This is rich. You are basically saying that because a US citizen can file a return, the government taking your money and you being forced to apply to get it back is acceptable. Well, I can see how you might think that. I still do not think it would have any effect at all on usage though.
Cap and trade or my preference, a carbon tax is a way to incentivize the R&D needed to get off of fossil fuel. If a company can find a way to produce their product with less carbon cost they have a competitive advantage.
Where exactly is the incentive coming from? As I already showed, if you increase the costs to all businesses, they will simply increase the costs to the consumer to recapture it. I for the life of me cannot find anywhere where there might be an incentive outside of the company relocating overseas or something. I mean even in the US, take Ohio for instance that gets most it's power from Coal, it will be adversely impacted compared to areas like Oregon or Florida who get most their electric from hydroelectric dams and Nuclear power. So what if the increase in costs doesn't cause research and development fast enough and all of Ohio's businesses are shit down because they can't compete with goods manufactured in Florida or Oregon? And if Florida and Oregon is already primarily off Fossil fuels and realizing a benefit from all of Ohio's non-essential industries shutting down, then why would they have an incentive to invest in alternative energy research? The government would have to step in and do something so why put some convoluted mess in place that attempted to hope companies would do something that is likely only going to be done by government anyways, when you can skip that all, raise their taxes by half a percent, and have the government do the R&D in the first place with open
That's because France was in a position to stop Germany PreWWII and instead, they buttered up to them hoping to avoid a war and keep their wealth. French politicians actually approved of German military conducting operation out of France before Rommel basically drives completely around their defenses and said We are here, all your based belong to us.
Hitler or his first officer, said that if someone would have stepped in when they militarized the rhine or something like that, they would have been stopped before they could get started. I could be bothered to google for the original quote but it's not anything new and everyone else has a google finger too.
Freedom Fries comes from France choosing to block political action on Iraq over fear of losing the secrete oil deals it made against the UN sanctions. France took the lucrative oil deals over actions to force Iraq into compliance and actually blocked harsher actions like threats of military action which probably created the entire situation in which war became inevitable. France has in at least two separate occasions looked out for it's own interests and actively argued against others intervening where it was proper in order to keep those interests alive.
aiding the US 2 centuries ago does not make what has happened within the last century ok. Freedom Fries it is. ok?
Buffet was only correct if you simplify it down to a specific entity paying taxes. However, all income he earned from investment has already been taxed once that year before he received it. So yes, while it's true that his effective tax rate was lower, the taxes paid per dollar earned was much higher over all. The difference is only in where you are looking at the tax being paid.
To illustrate this, suppose you owned a portion of a company and your dividend share of profits from that company before taxes is $100. After taxes paid by the company at 35%, your share is only $65 paid to you. You now have to pay 15% on top of that as dividend income, so you the money you were entitled to has effectively seen about a 45% (44.75%) tax. This means that out of original $100 owed to you, you are seeing only $55 and some change that is yours.
If that 15% dividend/capitol gains tax was like it used to be and mirrored your annual income tax rate, then it would be more like 65% or so tax on the money owed to you. So I guess the question might be, if Buffet was taxed more, would he have been in that investment in the first place?
well, lets see. If you invest $1000 expecting to make a 10% return, that would be $100 return. Of that return, you could keep $55 because it was already taxed at the corporate income level. This makes sense as it's still a 5.5% return on investment. But if your tax was at your normal income tax rate of another 35% instead of the 15%, then that $55 would actually be $42 and some change or a 4.2% return. Now we are encroaching territory barely keeping up with inflation. It would be much easier to find some municipal bond or something more safe and sock it away there for a period of time if your are just going to match inflation or do a little better. Meanwhile, the jobs your investment helped fund might not be there, the goods and services offered might not be there, and the inability to get anyone to invest for that little of a return might have the effect of the business closing down and impacting much more then just your investment.
Personally, I say get rid of corporate income taxes and raise the capitol gains and dividend taxes a bit. This would encourage more long term investment without impacting liquidity and cause the creation of more jobs which in turn cause more taxes to be collected. But back to your point, it's only true if you don't look at the taxes paid on the dollar he takes as income.
The recent drop in capitol gains and dividend tax has moved a lot of that around a bit. But you also have to recognize that the majority of capitol gains/dividend tax is income already taxed at one point in it's gain. The wealthy obtain more income from capital gains and dividend disbursements so to be fair, you really need to consider some of the corporate taxes on top of their personal income taxes if you are going to break it down like that.
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Well, nothing unless people rally and change the US constitution.
I'm not against single payer or government health care, I'm against violating the constitution to get it done. If we can change that, then I'm all in.
This problem started pretty much when the government got into health care in the first place. Medicare id paid out not on the actual bill, but on the average costs for the services provided in the area. These areas are divided over 5 or 6 sections of the United States so treatment in California might get a different payout then the same treatment in Ohio or New York.
Anyways, because this is an average pay out, it's in the medical industry's interest to raise rates as high as they can. This raises the average which by direct implication will eventually raise the government payout for these services. This is also probably a good reason why the majority of medical costs are spent in the final years of patients, they are typically either all covered by insurance or medicare.
Now the insurance providers got wise and said, We aren't paying for this. So the medical industry in turn offered them steep discounts based around the idea of preferred treatment. The system to determine the average payment for services counts these preferred treatment discounts at full price instead of at the actual paid prices as the medical providers didn't say this is the costs to everyone and this is the costs to insurance companies, they said this is the costs to everyone, but if we get most of your customers, this is the discount to you.
The entire concept has sort of worked against itself.
I don't think you have thought that through enough.
When the small ones fold up, the larger ones will just pick up the pieces. They won't all fold, just the majority of them. In the end, we will end up with one or two giants in some misconstrued oligopoly that really soaks us.
Well, it would run into consitutional problems too.
However, what I find most disturbing is all these scheemes to get single payer or some sort of government health care is all either trying to subvert the US constitution or ignore it altogether. What I don't get is why these people aren't attempting to change the constitution to make it possible if it's that important to them?
I mean most of the people who dislike Obamacare do so because of it's unconstitutional nature. Change the constitution and they will be on your side.
No it wasn't. The right wing bill counter to Hillary care did not force everyone to get insurance. It also did a few things differently too.
You can read it yourself. It's S.1770.PCS in the 103rd congress if the link doesn't work.
Actually, the medical industry started doing insanely high markups on about everything after the HMO act of 1964. In 1995, I was talking with a friend who told me I have to pick up my grandparents medication for them and take it to the nursing home he was staying in after a fall that fractured his hip. I knew the nursing home had a pharmacy service but my friend also worked there and told me that they phone the prescription in to another pharmacy, pay to have it delivered and then mark it up 150% as it leaves their counter.
So that is a markup by the manufacturer, by the distributor, by not one, but two pharmacies and the last one was 150%, plus a delivery fee in between each step and so on. If you doubt me, look at people's ER visit break downs and tell me if you see two Tylenol tablets costing about $4 each if they gave regular aspirin.
A friend broke his ankle and needed several pins put in. They MRIed it and that alone cost something like 8k. Now the MRI at the hospital is about a decade old, it should be paid for by now. Outside of some maintinence costs and the staffing costs, does it really cost more then $8000 to take an MRI of someone's leg (15-20 minutes in the machine)? Anyways, his total bill for the incident was a little over $20k. They knew he couldn't pay and offered him a reduced rate. He eventually ended up paying about $2,800 for the entire ordeal. Is that because they soaked the costs from someone else who visited? I tend to think that's the actual costs of services and they wanted to at least get that back instead of losing it all when he filed bankruptcy.
There is simply too much markup in the medical industry. A doctors visit is what now, about $80 to $120 a visit in which the doctor doesn't spend more then 5-10 minutes with you? And that's for a non-specialist? I'm all for paying someone for their knowledge, but it seems like it's a little too much.
There has been several GOP health care bills over the years. They all pretty much boil down to the same things though. This latest incarnation is somewhat of an extra with placing high risk patients on the state pools and prodding them to assist in the coverage fees.
In fact, I was under the impression they were trying to limit obmacare to that but the dems wouldn't let them be involved in the open and transparent government. You know, like Nancy said, we won't know what's in the bill until after we vote for it. Anyways, they prepared their own bill which has been available in summery form at their road map page since sometime last year. Here is a sample of their 1993-4 bill in full context.
In both examples, they provided for pre-exisitng conditions quite well.
They wouldn't.
They would most likely try to prosecute a couple/few of the people and get them to rat on the organization. From this, they will attempt to ascertain any command structure, when and where and even infiltrate the organization in some way. Sure, they will end up prosecuting someone in spectacular forms that get as much media coverage as possible to act as a deterrent, but attempting to knock the leadership out (and yes, there is always some sort of leadership- even if it isn't official), finding the ability to disrupt the organization, and perhaps even bending it to their own will would be the most probable course of action.
Actually, what he is saying is pretty smart.
You see, when people get busted for smuggling drugs across the country, they generally get hit not because the cop said, he might have drugs, lets search him, but because they are speeding or sampling the merchandise and weaving or driving erratic or something. They failed to make themselves a small target.
The same goes with a concealed weapon. It's the people who show it to everyone who get busted for carrying it. Well, that unless they get busted for something else. In either case, they failed to make themselves a small target.
What he is saying is that if you don't want to get into trouble, don't do anything wrong. And if you do, do as little as noticeable so you don't become a big target on their radar.
Well, if it really was hacked, there will be evidence of it on the hard drive.
Unfortunately, you will likely have to get them to copy the drive and ship it to your own expert to determine this. If enough people do it, it might become easier- depending on how pissed the government or various governments are.
And yes, I say various governments because Mastercard and a couple of other targeted businesses actually operate in those other countries (they have a presence around the world). This means that other government's will likely have laws pertaining to the same as they need to protect their tax revenue from these companies doing business in those countries.
I'm not sure this would have the desired effect at these locations.
I have four or five offices I administrate that receives faxes and stores them without ever printing. It looks through the image for the attention tag and then the name after that and attempts to assign it to an email of a specific person. If that doesn't work right, it goes to one of the receptionists who sees the first page and manually determines who to send it too. If that can't be figured out from that little bit of information, it then goes to someone who views the entire fax to determine what to do with it.
In this situation, simply writing a script to detect more then so many black characters (more then say 80% or the fax) could automatically forward this to file 13.
I wouldn't think that large companies like Amazon or MasterCard have any less of a system. There might be certain offices that have direct fax lines but I would think that accountability laws and the nature of the business would require an automatic archive of all faxes in and out pertaining to any particular matter of business. This sort of makes it more likely that they are stored first and printed as/when needed. Perhaps in this day and age, all you can really do is tie up the fax lines and flood personnel with verification tasks.
I have never heard anyone attempt to explain any of the tenets of ID, the process or theory that has injected any religious content whatsoever at all outside of a creator of some sorts and that was even left open to a panspermia event or interference by aliens. Now I can understand that because religions latch onto it, and as you say, twist it and lie to make it fit their religious dogma, it is seen as an encroachment by churches on the state but that's not what I asked. I mean guilt by association is the reason why the swastika banned in certain freedom loving European nations but it doesn't make it any less valuable in the places it applied to before it was adopted by someone else in history.
BTW, the ID theory I have been made aware of more or less asks questions about the current state of science like the Precambrian explosions of life, how the findings of certain fossils go against conventional wisdom and how instead of dealing with that, it's being pushed aside in unexplained in favor of conventional theory, stratification of fossils and so on. None of this has any religious merit outside of the existing science may need to be corrected to some degree.
I'm sorry to hear you hurt yourself. But my comment wasn't because I was offended, it was because I have never heard the term before and did not/do not know exactly what you meant by it. Can I assume you are speaking of christians when you say Xtians?
Wow.. Do you only see what you want to see? That's actually a sign of problems you know. When I followed your link, which wikipedia is probably the last place you want a definitive answer on anything from, I saw "Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." before all the crap you listed. On the surface, what is so wrong with that proposition that your fear of religion overrides the ability to recognize that?
What I mean is, why dismiss the content of the argument based on who is giving the argument? And it's leading proponents being a member of a single institution is more of a chicken and egg question then a guilt by association. You see, if a group of people think similarly, and notice another group has formed a club to further that through, then why wouldn't they join that institution?
And no, it's not a big no no with the constitution. The US constitution says congress shall make no law concerning the practice of religion. Not that religion can be no where at all in public schools. In fact, religious studies are in public schools right now with no problems at all. When I was in school, I studied- well attended classes anyways, the Roman and Greek gods, parts of the Old Testament, parts of the New testament, parts of Hinduism and Shintoism as part of either a social studies or history curriculum. And as far as I know, these are still studies in public schools today.
What lies are those again?
I never said it was. However, I'm not aware that ID makes that claims. Young earth christians make that claim, but I haven't heard of any Ider claiming that. In fact, the ones I have heard of use the age of the earth and the lack of life specifically to justify intelligent design.
Well, there are indications that early man was well aware of Dinosaurs and even incorporated them into art used to decorate clothing and other things. There is supposed to be a few passages written in the bible about animals with tails the size of trees and so on. And all this was before modern anthropology or a basic subset of science which would allow the study of the subject. Humans probably weren't alive when all the dinosaurs were, but they got those ideas from somewhere. Are you saying it's impossible for them to get those ideas from real live dinosaurs? I'm not aware of any science that says it's impossible. I know science puts a date on what we have found but that doesn't rule out others does it?
Well, I don't think I have ever heard any IDers say this. Perhaps it's those people who attempt to bend ID in order to make it fit your religion or something giving you that impression. Or perhaps it's just you imagining things because you purposely refuse to examine what it's all about?
Strict Xtians? What the hell are those? And so what if someone thinks every word in the bible is true, we are talking about intelligent design being taught in school, not your exposure to the priests or whatever.
First of all, I didn't say they were my beliefs. I asked you to justify yours. The lack of evidence anywhere else does not mean something is false, it means there is no or little evidence to support it. The fossil record does not prove evolution either. It highly likely that it's true but it's not a fact. And when someone says it's a fact, it shows how little about science they actually understand.
We do this already. Haven't you ever taken any social studies or mythology courses for an English credit?
OK, here is precisely where you fail. You first say that religion has to bend ID to fit the religion indicating it isn't really religious, then because some might have, you compare ID as a religion. Well, ID doesn't contain a religious word in it that I know of outside of some creator making complex things and that only in the abstract unless you impose your own bias to it.
Yawn.. Did you miss the part where the GP said "If you start handing out money you destroy its perceived value. The current understanding is that money is "hard to obtain" and requires effort."
I don't really care what you would rather see or not. I was speaking to the entire looses value thing which is true. Or do you not think there is any inflation at present?
I have never heard of anyone trying to through out science and teach ID instead. In fact, the worse they wanted to do was to teach them side by side.
But it doesn't really matter if people bend logic and jump through hoops to get their "theory" to fit their religious dogma. On the surface, that pretty much shows that ID isn't religious dogma but anyways, wouldn't it be important for a student to understand how a person thinks or how religions process thought??
You have showed no logical reason why teaching ID is a wacko theory outside you don't like it. And it's not like people can't learn and function properly doing things completely different. I mean look at the controls on a PC game and the controls on the same game on Xbox. They are different yet plenty of people are able to use the appropriate control given the appropriate context they are presented with.
And no BTW, ID doesn't involve the rejection of science. I places faith into the areas Science can't conclusively prove. That's not rejecting science, it's providing a divine answer until it's proven otherwise. You aren't one of those idiots who thinks the theory of evolution is 100% right are you? I mean it then stops being science if there isn't the possibility for it to be wrong right? It has to remain falsifiable in order to be scientific.
So you are saying that you intentionally added absolutely nothing with you post. Well, so much for being a valuable participate in a discussion. I guess maybe you will learn that once you learn that cussing doesn't effect people like you think it does.
I may be sumdumass, but I'm better and smarter then you. Just look at your posts this thread and it's obvious.
Do you think that intelligent design makes someone stupid or something?
Please tell my why teaching Intelligent Design in school is a wacko idea.
IF that's the most insightful thing you have to say, maybe we should switch names.
Most large scale manufacturing in the US created their own energy before the mid 1970's/1980's. This stopped when SO2 regulations started forcing them down and repairs started escaping grandfather clauses.
I agree with your premise, just not your methods. Well, sort of anyways. I'm not convince the Co2 is a large problem yet but I'm ready to support efforts to reduce it if they make sense and do not harm the citizens noticeably.
It's not that we cannot do things without fossil fuels, it's that there is no real incentive created by attempting to manipulate the costs of using them to start doing things without them. Further more, it can actually harm us if the scheme isn't put in place in a way that stops companies from relocating.
Lol.. This is rich. You are basically saying that because a US citizen can file a return, the government taking your money and you being forced to apply to get it back is acceptable. Well, I can see how you might think that. I still do not think it would have any effect at all on usage though.
Where exactly is the incentive coming from? As I already showed, if you increase the costs to all businesses, they will simply increase the costs to the consumer to recapture it. I for the life of me cannot find anywhere where there might be an incentive outside of the company relocating overseas or something. I mean even in the US, take Ohio for instance that gets most it's power from Coal, it will be adversely impacted compared to areas like Oregon or Florida who get most their electric from hydroelectric dams and Nuclear power. So what if the increase in costs doesn't cause research and development fast enough and all of Ohio's businesses are shit down because they can't compete with goods manufactured in Florida or Oregon? And if Florida and Oregon is already primarily off Fossil fuels and realizing a benefit from all of Ohio's non-essential industries shutting down, then why would they have an incentive to invest in alternative energy research? The government would have to step in and do something so why put some convoluted mess in place that attempted to hope companies would do something that is likely only going to be done by government anyways, when you can skip that all, raise their taxes by half a percent, and have the government do the R&D in the first place with open
Don't tell that to Nancy Pelosi who said the best way to create jobs is by paying unemployment benefits.
That's because France was in a position to stop Germany PreWWII and instead, they buttered up to them hoping to avoid a war and keep their wealth. French politicians actually approved of German military conducting operation out of France before Rommel basically drives completely around their defenses and said We are here, all your based belong to us.
Hitler or his first officer, said that if someone would have stepped in when they militarized the rhine or something like that, they would have been stopped before they could get started. I could be bothered to google for the original quote but it's not anything new and everyone else has a google finger too.
Freedom Fries comes from France choosing to block political action on Iraq over fear of losing the secrete oil deals it made against the UN sanctions. France took the lucrative oil deals over actions to force Iraq into compliance and actually blocked harsher actions like threats of military action which probably created the entire situation in which war became inevitable. France has in at least two separate occasions looked out for it's own interests and actively argued against others intervening where it was proper in order to keep those interests alive.
aiding the US 2 centuries ago does not make what has happened within the last century ok. Freedom Fries it is. ok?
Buffet was only correct if you simplify it down to a specific entity paying taxes. However, all income he earned from investment has already been taxed once that year before he received it. So yes, while it's true that his effective tax rate was lower, the taxes paid per dollar earned was much higher over all. The difference is only in where you are looking at the tax being paid.
To illustrate this, suppose you owned a portion of a company and your dividend share of profits from that company before taxes is $100. After taxes paid by the company at 35%, your share is only $65 paid to you. You now have to pay 15% on top of that as dividend income, so you the money you were entitled to has effectively seen about a 45% (44.75%) tax. This means that out of original $100 owed to you, you are seeing only $55 and some change that is yours.
If that 15% dividend/capitol gains tax was like it used to be and mirrored your annual income tax rate, then it would be more like 65% or so tax on the money owed to you. So I guess the question might be, if Buffet was taxed more, would he have been in that investment in the first place?
well, lets see. If you invest $1000 expecting to make a 10% return, that would be $100 return. Of that return, you could keep $55 because it was already taxed at the corporate income level. This makes sense as it's still a 5.5% return on investment. But if your tax was at your normal income tax rate of another 35% instead of the 15%, then that $55 would actually be $42 and some change or a 4.2% return. Now we are encroaching territory barely keeping up with inflation. It would be much easier to find some municipal bond or something more safe and sock it away there for a period of time if your are just going to match inflation or do a little better. Meanwhile, the jobs your investment helped fund might not be there, the goods and services offered might not be there, and the inability to get anyone to invest for that little of a return might have the effect of the business closing down and impacting much more then just your investment.
Personally, I say get rid of corporate income taxes and raise the capitol gains and dividend taxes a bit. This would encourage more long term investment without impacting liquidity and cause the creation of more jobs which in turn cause more taxes to be collected. But back to your point, it's only true if you don't look at the taxes paid on the dollar he takes as income.
The recent drop in capitol gains and dividend tax has moved a lot of that around a bit. But you also have to recognize that the majority of capitol gains/dividend tax is income already taxed at one point in it's gain. The wealthy obtain more income from capital gains and dividend disbursements so to be fair, you really need to consider some of the corporate taxes on top of their personal income taxes if you are going to break it down like that.
One things for sure, something is going to get screwed in the process.