If it was well disguised, people wouldn't be crying foul and discussing it's merits right now.
Perhaps you can get them to cover it up a little better.... Oh wait, that's what some who oppose it want, they want the discussion that is normally applied to things like this in order get it passes so it will by law either help the country or be removed.
Sure it's been a success at what it was "indented" for. How likely do you think that success rate for the death toll will be once it has been redesigned from within space and re-purposed for a mission it was never intended to carry out.
The ISS is sort of like the Ford Pinto or Chevete Citation of spacecraft in terms of convenience for a long term space flight. It's great for short trips around town and possible to the next town but it start taking it's toll on the passengers when you go much further then that.
Basically, there are some issues with taking it to mars. It would be packed with so much stuff that most of the room would be gone and you would basically be putting it on a trailer and hauling it behind another space vehicle that gas the appropriate thrust and such. Seriously, think about it, Imagine throwing enough stuff for a 6 month trip including food into a pinto or chevete then loading it on a trailer and riding in it from LA to NYC and back for 6 months in a row. Now imagine doing that with a Winnebago and not relying on the trailer. It's just not built for that kind of space travel. And by the time you start putting thing in to counter the effects of gravity, to back up the stuff that already breaks down regularly, and perhaps extra fuel in case someone makes a piloting error when the power system takes another crap and your literally cramming your life into an economy car and attempting to move to some place far away. It can be done but I don't think we should try it.
I wouldn't be to surprised if the air force didn't have something capable tucked away somewhere. Sure, it would be a last ditch, I finally got to let people know about it scenario but they already mirror a lot of what NASA does.
Just keep in mind that many fires are started from "repaired" space heaters getting too hot or bursting into flame. Of those fires, some of them take human lives with them.
I don't see anything wrong with fixing broken stuff and making them work again. However at some point in time, the efficiency or repair needs to be considered with replacement as well as the potential to cause more damage. A $50 space heater starts looking mighty cheap when it costs $20 to fix it twice a year or you have to replace a $100,000 home and pay rent on top of that for a year while waiting.
It depends on what their employment contract states. By default, works for hire end up being the person who hired the work but if his contract states that he retains the copyright for what he made, then he does.
More then likely, he is a small start up or something that he works at as well as owns or manages. In that case, he is both, the employee and owner which gives him the said control.
To date, the Obama administration has enacted rules then given himself exceptions to them, he has repaid Google for their support by giving them control over public videos, he has put two tax cheats up for cabinet posts, one of them to be in charge of the tax system. This stimulus bill rewards existing broadband companies, in order to get any of the broadband expansion provisions, you have to already be offering broadband service with at least 3 meg down and 1 meg up speeds for wireless or 5 down and 1 up for wired service. There's quite a bit more in there too like the requirement to use US steal and Iron on any projects created by the stimulus (business sectors that supported Obama's election). Of course I'm sort of confused on the education modernizing portions of the bill, I'm not sure if the computer cases need to be made with US steel or not.
Anyways, it look like Obama dipped his hand in the cookie jar. Everyone seems to be giving him a pass, so do you think under your intent, should he be tried for treason?
Actually, corporations are the collective of their owners (many people) that are run by other people. Their morals and values mirror those with the most influence in the process of running it.
Shareholders can impost values and ethics above those required by laws on them. Management can do the same. The idea that they are absent simply because they are a corporation is a fallacy, they are absent because their owners and management don't impress them enough.
A corporation does absolutely nothing without people. Or to put it another way, it takes people to make a corporation, to direct it in it's actions, and without people, it would neither exist (legally or functionally. A corporation can own another corporation but it's cannot own itself) and it would not act in any way at all. It couldn't produce anything, it couldn't sell anything, it wouldn't have waste, it would buy anything without people. It's morals and values directly reflect the most vocal of it's owners and management.
There is a practical limitation to a lot of things that are now considered neccecities. Many people live in areas that don't allow farm animals, don't have yards to turn into gardens or they aren't big enough to grow a years supply of food. And some of those areas that do, don't have the room or abilities to store the food for the duration necessary. This is where stores which originally came about from the term food stores crosses the line to a necessity.
Piped water and sewage is another one of those things that have become necessities because of how closely we have packed homes together. Generally speaking you need about 1.25 acres of land for a safe residential septic system and you need to go a certain distance from that to drill the wells. In large cities, you would have the neighbors shit in your well and your shit would be in someone elses. We have packed people too close together which makes what you would see others living perfectly fine with become a necessity for the city or some central management facility to implement.
As for doctors, I'm not sure the lack of health care justifies no health care but I will submit to the idea that some people use them when they don't need to.
However, water/sewage, electricity, and most of the utilities have become such a necessity that if your lacking any of them, the state can actually take your children away until you get running water or sanitation in doors or electricity or food on the shelves. I agree with your statement in general, I just wanted to point out that there are limits to what it can apply to based around other variables like government rules, availible land and so on.
Then amend the bill to have the effects only on Medicare and Medicade. The HMO is a contract between you and your provider and if they want to allow non-standard treatments or if they allow you to visit a clinical trial for a condition, then that's up to them and not the government to claim is wasteful or whatnot. I would also argue for a standard of care in Medicare and medicade seeing how I/We are paying the bills.
Now I didn't mean amend the bill as if you supported it or anything. I meant it as if the bill should have specifically said what it applied to instead of appearing to be applying to everything under the sun. I'm willing to bet that's how it would be applied without the specific connections.
This portion basically is a step towards the Universal heath that they ran on during the primaries and almost forgot about during the national elections. This is also a reason why they didn't want the house to have time to read the damn thing before requiring it's passage. I suspect the bill is loaded with goodies like this and it seems that every day, someone finds something else.
When the government want to act now and think later, you should be worried. When one party does it at the objections or in spite of the other party (parties) you should be scared.
I think your a little confused. The republicans had no part in shaping this bill until after it failed. Pelosi and the democrats whipped it together and thier "republican input" were nothing more then their interpretations of concerns expressed by republicans with sound bytes taken from the congressional record and/or TV shows. They talked to a few "republicans" who were economists but not legislatures. Pelosi said, they won the election, this is what the election was about, and it didn't matter. Obama has even claimed that they "invited" the republicans to come but none of them showed up when making the bill. That's because they didn't make the bill in the house or senate where the legislature is supposed to be.
Now a problem with this is the pork. There isn't a small amount of pork, there is a large amount of pork. You see, items not traditionally called pork is pork in this context because it doesn't follow the intentions of the bill. Money for streamlining the medical system is a good objective but it's pork in this case because the bill is supposed to create jobs tomorrow not cause long term spending or enact new spending, all of which needs the proper debate and consideration that they are attempting to completely avoid with this bill.
The house democrats have basically just voted for a bill that most of them have no idea what it says, not because they were lazy or complacent but because the leadership didn't give enough time for it to be read before the bill would have been voted on. From the introduction to the vote, you would have had to read, comprehend, and understand 2.5 pages per minute just to account for the time between the introduction and the vote. If that doesn't scare you, the premise that legislators cannot even read what they are voting on because someone is afraid it wouldn't pass if they could, then you deserve what is coming.
And Republicans held a majority in Congress for six of those eight years, and notoriously did whatever the President wanted. This does not bolster your counter-argument.
Actually, no they did not. From 2001-2003, it was an even 50-50 split in the senate and 212d to 221r with 2 I in the house. From 2003 to 2005, there was 48d to 51R with 1I in the senate and 204D to 229R with 1I in the house. From 2005-2006, it was 45D to 55R with 1I in the senate and 202D to 231R with 1I in the house.
In the senate, Lieberman was the independent at the end and a rhino-republican "Jim Jeffords" from VT was was the independent in the beginning. The republicans DID NOT hold a clear majority in congress for more then 1 year and the 2 years from 2003-2005, it was so close that none of the shenanigans could have happened without help from the democrats.
Also, seeing how we are talking about the budget, I hope you do realize that 98% of the deficit achieved under Bush was off budget spending on wars and natural disaster recovery with the exception of one stimulus pack and the bail out. Now it's important to note that these are off budget expenditures because it takes an act of congress to keep them going. If for some reason congress fails to act, the spending disappears. The current Stimulus contains over 80% of on budget entitlement items which means they will either need to be purposely cut or continuously have funding appropriated and spent on them. This bill can only be compared to 2% or less of the entire deficit under Bush.
Your probably sitting there thinking on budget off budget so? It was still spent, what makes the difference. The difference is how you stop spending it and if you can stop spending it. Off budget appropriations are used for disaster relief and wars or emergency spending that can't be normally accounted for in planning. Wars and military action is spent this war for a couple of reasons outside of that. One of which is that you don't want to endanger troops or the mission because you didn't spend enough and you don't want reoccurring expenditures for war without separate and proper debate on it's effectiveness and necessity. Anyways, the federal budget has never went down in your lifetime. Once something is on budget, the money is spent. Even if they remove the program entirely, the look at the savings as funding for something else. If you funded a 2 trillion dollar a year war on budget, when the war was over, they would have 2 trillion dollars per year that congress would attempt to spend somewhere else. With it being off budget, they would simply not appropriate funding to it and they would have to go through the normal challenges of new spending if they attempted to spend it somewhere else.
While that seems like semantics with the same end result, think about it like your own personal finance. When your budget spend most of your money and you need to buy a car or something, you take out a loan. You figure what your budget could handle to determine how expensive of a car you can afford. Now, suppose your budget didn't have room to purchase a car so you started pulling money from the portion that went to savings. When that car is paid off, you simple put that portion back to savings. If it came out of your normal budget, you all the sudden have an extra 3-5 hundred buck at your disposal so you start spending it as if it was extra money. You might splurge and go out to eat a couple of extra times a week, you might goto the movies more often, you might purchase a more expensive brand of something, you might decide to hire one of the neighboring kids to mow your lawn or something. That's fine because it's extra. However, when the spending was deficit spending in the first place, then it's not extra, it should either stop being spent when the need disappears or it should go to only what is necessary catch up on something else then stop completely. This is why there is a difference between on busget and off budget spending, especially when there is
BTW, one of the ways this happens if by on and off budget spending. The wars are prosecuted off budget and so have most of the natural disaster assistance funding.
When things are off budget, you can have a balanced budget and still run a deficit. Now my understanding is that the 2002 budget showed a plan to be balanced again but then 9/11 happened and we were forced to spend money in different ways.
I'm only bring this up to you because I agree with what you said I just wanted to show a little on how it is done. I also wanted to show the difference between this current "stimulus" deficit spending and most of Bush's deficit spending. Most of Bush's deficit spending has been off budget which means there was no permanent home for it. If congress did nothing but re-approved the previous years budget, 98 percent or more of the deficit spending would need additional laws passed to continue their spending after a year or two. With this current stimulus, the deficit spending is permenantly on the books and it will take an act of congress to stop spending it instead of the other way around where congress has to continually approve it's worth.
We are about to enter a time where congress's lack of action means deficit spending instead of having to rely on their actions. To me, that's scary when we are talking about numbers this big.
That wouldn't work. It would disconect a good portion of the people. Suppose your a convicted felon and your state took away your voting rights. It doesn't matter what the felony might be, it could be something resulting from teenage drug experimentation or perhaps something resulting from a drunken night of foolishness and you have learned your lessons now. Anyways, you still live in the area and you are still going to be effected by the policies of anyone who goes into office. You should have a right of speech to donate money to the guy you think will best serve your interest and the interest of the community.
Now lets take businesses. Suppose you own half of a company in another state, you can't vote in that state but you provide jobs and a tax base for it. Why shouldn't you be allowed to donate to candidates who will directly effect your operations in the area? All a company is BTW, is a collection of people doing business. So corporate donations are little more then people makeing donations in the name of their business. If I owned a company in another state and they attempted to stop me from participating in any political process that effects me, I would fight it tooth and nail and possibly remove that company from that state.
We recently (within the last 10 years) has a privately owned company that went bankrupt after losing a lawsuit and it closed it's doors displacing 5000 workers directly plus contractors and so on. The city lost something around the lines of 1.25 million in tax revenue immediately and then when the new owner of the site condemned all the buildings and tore them down, the property value dropped so much that they lost quite a bit more in revenue. Now that's just the city, the county and the state was effected too. Sales tax from purchased made by displaced employees dropped, the state had to pay in unemployment, retraining, many of the employees had to move to find jobs, some lost their homes, and so on. The loss of this company just shows how important businesses are to a community and they shouldn't be bared from supporting certain candidates or promoting ideas that could effect them.
And you want to know why McSame lost so badly? Two words: Caribou Barbie.
You think? There are many of us who didn't like McCain from the start. He was a better choice then Obama but that alone was enough motivation to get out the vote like the democrats did, Whether it was vote fraud in Ohio or whatever.
Which do you think would win an election, the wishy washy candidate that most people don't care about or the one who has everyone thinking he will change everything with massive support?
The funny thing here is that now that the honeymoon is over and people have to live with their choices, they are starting to realize all the Bullshit they don't like about the guy. Like the stimulus bill that had no bipartisan support and is loaded with a crap load of pork and new spending that's being rushed through without proper debate and avoiding normal processes and procedures. Or this crap where transparency and "openness" are up for grabs. Or the paying back of political supporters by locking government services into their business models. It's a load of fun watching the uncomfortable look on Obama Supporters faces as they attempt to explain how this is change or anything different other then the names of things.
According to Mastercard, they aren't supposed to do that. Visa had the same policy. You can probably contest the extra charge with your bank or complain to them and or mastercard and they will/should do something about it.
Mastercard can fine the merchant per the agreement and they can just take the ability to use the cards away from them. I can't speak for them directly but from my dealings with them, they aren't afraid to enforce their policies and it's clearly spelled out in that PDF I linked to.
Yawn... Externalities don't effect efficiency not do they create value. They are typically motivating factors that get people tuned to a specific area, not one that makes a bad deal good. I didn't address them because they are not important. Your comment was illogical and misguided. Here, lets look at it, "These shocks will add range to a battery-only car such as the Tesla, and that is a critical selling feature at this point, far beyond cost. They will also reduce the amount of fuel used by a hybrid, so your analysis should include the elimination of some CO2 emissions. What's the formula for that?"
You see, the problem with that is, if range is such a factor, then why don't they just increase the range and jack up the costs anyways? I mean what is this tech going to do if it is over priced that can't be done already? We can already throw 10 more batteries in the car and get the extra range, if putting shocks on the car costs more then that, then what is the benefit and will it magically work when 10 more batteries for the same or less costs won't? If it was going to costs $30 per 10 miles extra range with batteries or this device, and extra range is the magic bullet that makes people want to buy these cars regardless of the costs, then why havn't the $30 per 10 miles already spent to reach that magic range number that will be "critical selling feature at this point"?
Second, I never attempted to do a comprehensive cost analysis. Where did I say I did. I was attempting to show how narrow the range within there is a benefit other then just increasing the costs of something. You do understand that the cheaper something is, the easier it is for someone to buy right? If it costs X to own a car, and your bright Idea causes Y to be added, then it's just taking it out of the reach of other people. But when Y offsets long term costs, it's just a trade between when those costs are being paid. We currently have the tech for electric vehicles that get 500 miles per change, no one but millionaires xcan afford them though. So costs is an important issue here regardless of how much feel good you want to put into it.
Finally, the 65MPH average speed is just that. If it takes you 10 minutes to get to the freeway, it doesn't matter, I'm only talking about the 30 minutes at 65MPH. Many people in this nation have to drive like that. Sure, traffic and stuff can make it longer and bikes aren't allowed on the freeway but the point still stands. Not everyone can "ride a bike" like you suggested. Of course I already mentioned that there are "a lot of personal factors like how close to work you live and so on" before presenting that extreme example and in the next paragraph I talked about how it was an extreme example.
Given the facts, it seems your disagreements aren't with what was said because of factual issues, it is because they clash with your ideology and perhaps religious dogma. That doesn't make anything I said wrong and most likely it only makes you subjective and biased. So unless you find an error in my calculations or know something that no one else knows of, you might want to think a little longer about what you say before doing so.
There are some interesting ideas that the Neanderthal didn't die out, they just interbred with itself out of dominance. I was watching something on PBS (nova or something) a few months/year back that claimed contrary to previously held opinions, the Neanderthal genes are present in some Anglo Saxons.
Anyways, I'm no a paleontologist so I don't know or care to know the correct terms. But the gist was that instead of dieing out, they just took mates and we are largely the result of them. The movie also indicated that they had speech skills and could make tools and were in fact the same species, just a different ethnicity. It's probably more then likely that if one was cloned, we could interbreed with them.
I would think we would want to be really careful when labeling them a subspecies or a different species. We went though a pretty long history of Science claiming that different races were only "part human" and whites where pure human. Our views have completely changed now and looking back seems like we allowed some horrific things to happen because of it.
Yea, that was my intentions, costs above normal to save X.
Thanks for making that clearer.
It's all about spending over the normal costs for some savings that are more then the increased costs spent. I guess the easiest way to think about it is, if it will normally cost X, as long as X plus improvements is less then savings, you benefit where if X plus improvements costs more then savings, you have a Rube Goldberg machines that is actually wasteful.
I wish I could express it in some generic formula but my math sucks that bad.
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If it was well disguised, people wouldn't be crying foul and discussing it's merits right now.
Perhaps you can get them to cover it up a little better.... Oh wait, that's what some who oppose it want, they want the discussion that is normally applied to things like this in order get it passes so it will by law either help the country or be removed.
As if the troll mod makes it go away. Lol..
When will some people understand that ignoring reality doesn't make their views right or correct.
Sure it's been a success at what it was "indented" for. How likely do you think that success rate for the death toll will be once it has been redesigned from within space and re-purposed for a mission it was never intended to carry out.
It's just not the ideal craft for going to mars.
The ISS is sort of like the Ford Pinto or Chevete Citation of spacecraft in terms of convenience for a long term space flight. It's great for short trips around town and possible to the next town but it start taking it's toll on the passengers when you go much further then that.
Basically, there are some issues with taking it to mars. It would be packed with so much stuff that most of the room would be gone and you would basically be putting it on a trailer and hauling it behind another space vehicle that gas the appropriate thrust and such. Seriously, think about it, Imagine throwing enough stuff for a 6 month trip including food into a pinto or chevete then loading it on a trailer and riding in it from LA to NYC and back for 6 months in a row. Now imagine doing that with a Winnebago and not relying on the trailer. It's just not built for that kind of space travel. And by the time you start putting thing in to counter the effects of gravity, to back up the stuff that already breaks down regularly, and perhaps extra fuel in case someone makes a piloting error when the power system takes another crap and your literally cramming your life into an economy car and attempting to move to some place far away. It can be done but I don't think we should try it.
I wouldn't be to surprised if the air force didn't have something capable tucked away somewhere. Sure, it would be a last ditch, I finally got to let people know about it scenario but they already mirror a lot of what NASA does.
Just keep in mind that many fires are started from "repaired" space heaters getting too hot or bursting into flame. Of those fires, some of them take human lives with them.
I don't see anything wrong with fixing broken stuff and making them work again. However at some point in time, the efficiency or repair needs to be considered with replacement as well as the potential to cause more damage. A $50 space heater starts looking mighty cheap when it costs $20 to fix it twice a year or you have to replace a $100,000 home and pay rent on top of that for a year while waiting.
It depends on what their employment contract states. By default, works for hire end up being the person who hired the work but if his contract states that he retains the copyright for what he made, then he does.
More then likely, he is a small start up or something that he works at as well as owns or manages. In that case, he is both, the employee and owner which gives him the said control.
How can you define dip into the cookie jar?
To date, the Obama administration has enacted rules then given himself exceptions to them, he has repaid Google for their support by giving them control over public videos, he has put two tax cheats up for cabinet posts, one of them to be in charge of the tax system. This stimulus bill rewards existing broadband companies, in order to get any of the broadband expansion provisions, you have to already be offering broadband service with at least 3 meg down and 1 meg up speeds for wireless or 5 down and 1 up for wired service. There's quite a bit more in there too like the requirement to use US steal and Iron on any projects created by the stimulus (business sectors that supported Obama's election). Of course I'm sort of confused on the education modernizing portions of the bill, I'm not sure if the computer cases need to be made with US steel or not.
Anyways, it look like Obama dipped his hand in the cookie jar. Everyone seems to be giving him a pass, so do you think under your intent, should he be tried for treason?
Why would you want to jail a corporation?
A corporation doesn't act, people act on the corporations behalf. It's those people that need jailed, not some name that binds them together.
Actually, corporations are the collective of their owners (many people) that are run by other people. Their morals and values mirror those with the most influence in the process of running it.
Shareholders can impost values and ethics above those required by laws on them. Management can do the same. The idea that they are absent simply because they are a corporation is a fallacy, they are absent because their owners and management don't impress them enough.
A corporation does absolutely nothing without people. Or to put it another way, it takes people to make a corporation, to direct it in it's actions, and without people, it would neither exist (legally or functionally. A corporation can own another corporation but it's cannot own itself) and it would not act in any way at all. It couldn't produce anything, it couldn't sell anything, it wouldn't have waste, it would buy anything without people. It's morals and values directly reflect the most vocal of it's owners and management.
There is a practical limitation to a lot of things that are now considered neccecities. Many people live in areas that don't allow farm animals, don't have yards to turn into gardens or they aren't big enough to grow a years supply of food. And some of those areas that do, don't have the room or abilities to store the food for the duration necessary. This is where stores which originally came about from the term food stores crosses the line to a necessity.
Piped water and sewage is another one of those things that have become necessities because of how closely we have packed homes together. Generally speaking you need about 1.25 acres of land for a safe residential septic system and you need to go a certain distance from that to drill the wells. In large cities, you would have the neighbors shit in your well and your shit would be in someone elses. We have packed people too close together which makes what you would see others living perfectly fine with become a necessity for the city or some central management facility to implement.
As for doctors, I'm not sure the lack of health care justifies no health care but I will submit to the idea that some people use them when they don't need to.
However, water/sewage, electricity, and most of the utilities have become such a necessity that if your lacking any of them, the state can actually take your children away until you get running water or sanitation in doors or electricity or food on the shelves. I agree with your statement in general, I just wanted to point out that there are limits to what it can apply to based around other variables like government rules, availible land and so on.
What amendment made it the "government of the people, by the people, for the people" in the first place?
Then amend the bill to have the effects only on Medicare and Medicade. The HMO is a contract between you and your provider and if they want to allow non-standard treatments or if they allow you to visit a clinical trial for a condition, then that's up to them and not the government to claim is wasteful or whatnot. I would also argue for a standard of care in Medicare and medicade seeing how I/We are paying the bills.
Now I didn't mean amend the bill as if you supported it or anything. I meant it as if the bill should have specifically said what it applied to instead of appearing to be applying to everything under the sun. I'm willing to bet that's how it would be applied without the specific connections.
This portion basically is a step towards the Universal heath that they ran on during the primaries and almost forgot about during the national elections. This is also a reason why they didn't want the house to have time to read the damn thing before requiring it's passage. I suspect the bill is loaded with goodies like this and it seems that every day, someone finds something else.
When the government want to act now and think later, you should be worried. When one party does it at the objections or in spite of the other party (parties) you should be scared.
I think your a little confused. The republicans had no part in shaping this bill until after it failed. Pelosi and the democrats whipped it together and thier "republican input" were nothing more then their interpretations of concerns expressed by republicans with sound bytes taken from the congressional record and/or TV shows. They talked to a few "republicans" who were economists but not legislatures. Pelosi said, they won the election, this is what the election was about, and it didn't matter. Obama has even claimed that they "invited" the republicans to come but none of them showed up when making the bill. That's because they didn't make the bill in the house or senate where the legislature is supposed to be.
Now a problem with this is the pork. There isn't a small amount of pork, there is a large amount of pork. You see, items not traditionally called pork is pork in this context because it doesn't follow the intentions of the bill. Money for streamlining the medical system is a good objective but it's pork in this case because the bill is supposed to create jobs tomorrow not cause long term spending or enact new spending, all of which needs the proper debate and consideration that they are attempting to completely avoid with this bill.
The house democrats have basically just voted for a bill that most of them have no idea what it says, not because they were lazy or complacent but because the leadership didn't give enough time for it to be read before the bill would have been voted on. From the introduction to the vote, you would have had to read, comprehend, and understand 2.5 pages per minute just to account for the time between the introduction and the vote. If that doesn't scare you, the premise that legislators cannot even read what they are voting on because someone is afraid it wouldn't pass if they could, then you deserve what is coming.
Actually, no they did not. From 2001-2003, it was an even 50-50 split in the senate and 212d to 221r with 2 I in the house. From 2003 to 2005, there was 48d to 51R with 1I in the senate and 204D to 229R with 1I in the house. From 2005-2006, it was 45D to 55R with 1I in the senate and 202D to 231R with 1I in the house.
In the senate, Lieberman was the independent at the end and a rhino-republican "Jim Jeffords" from VT was was the independent in the beginning. The republicans DID NOT hold a clear majority in congress for more then 1 year and the 2 years from 2003-2005, it was so close that none of the shenanigans could have happened without help from the democrats.
Also, seeing how we are talking about the budget, I hope you do realize that 98% of the deficit achieved under Bush was off budget spending on wars and natural disaster recovery with the exception of one stimulus pack and the bail out. Now it's important to note that these are off budget expenditures because it takes an act of congress to keep them going. If for some reason congress fails to act, the spending disappears. The current Stimulus contains over 80% of on budget entitlement items which means they will either need to be purposely cut or continuously have funding appropriated and spent on them. This bill can only be compared to 2% or less of the entire deficit under Bush.
Your probably sitting there thinking on budget off budget so? It was still spent, what makes the difference. The difference is how you stop spending it and if you can stop spending it. Off budget appropriations are used for disaster relief and wars or emergency spending that can't be normally accounted for in planning. Wars and military action is spent this war for a couple of reasons outside of that. One of which is that you don't want to endanger troops or the mission because you didn't spend enough and you don't want reoccurring expenditures for war without separate and proper debate on it's effectiveness and necessity. Anyways, the federal budget has never went down in your lifetime. Once something is on budget, the money is spent. Even if they remove the program entirely, the look at the savings as funding for something else. If you funded a 2 trillion dollar a year war on budget, when the war was over, they would have 2 trillion dollars per year that congress would attempt to spend somewhere else. With it being off budget, they would simply not appropriate funding to it and they would have to go through the normal challenges of new spending if they attempted to spend it somewhere else.
While that seems like semantics with the same end result, think about it like your own personal finance. When your budget spend most of your money and you need to buy a car or something, you take out a loan. You figure what your budget could handle to determine how expensive of a car you can afford. Now, suppose your budget didn't have room to purchase a car so you started pulling money from the portion that went to savings. When that car is paid off, you simple put that portion back to savings. If it came out of your normal budget, you all the sudden have an extra 3-5 hundred buck at your disposal so you start spending it as if it was extra money. You might splurge and go out to eat a couple of extra times a week, you might goto the movies more often, you might purchase a more expensive brand of something, you might decide to hire one of the neighboring kids to mow your lawn or something. That's fine because it's extra. However, when the spending was deficit spending in the first place, then it's not extra, it should either stop being spent when the need disappears or it should go to only what is necessary catch up on something else then stop completely. This is why there is a difference between on busget and off budget spending, especially when there is
BTW, one of the ways this happens if by on and off budget spending. The wars are prosecuted off budget and so have most of the natural disaster assistance funding.
When things are off budget, you can have a balanced budget and still run a deficit. Now my understanding is that the 2002 budget showed a plan to be balanced again but then 9/11 happened and we were forced to spend money in different ways.
I'm only bring this up to you because I agree with what you said I just wanted to show a little on how it is done. I also wanted to show the difference between this current "stimulus" deficit spending and most of Bush's deficit spending. Most of Bush's deficit spending has been off budget which means there was no permanent home for it. If congress did nothing but re-approved the previous years budget, 98 percent or more of the deficit spending would need additional laws passed to continue their spending after a year or two. With this current stimulus, the deficit spending is permenantly on the books and it will take an act of congress to stop spending it instead of the other way around where congress has to continually approve it's worth.
We are about to enter a time where congress's lack of action means deficit spending instead of having to rely on their actions. To me, that's scary when we are talking about numbers this big.
That wouldn't work. It would disconect a good portion of the people. Suppose your a convicted felon and your state took away your voting rights. It doesn't matter what the felony might be, it could be something resulting from teenage drug experimentation or perhaps something resulting from a drunken night of foolishness and you have learned your lessons now. Anyways, you still live in the area and you are still going to be effected by the policies of anyone who goes into office. You should have a right of speech to donate money to the guy you think will best serve your interest and the interest of the community.
Now lets take businesses. Suppose you own half of a company in another state, you can't vote in that state but you provide jobs and a tax base for it. Why shouldn't you be allowed to donate to candidates who will directly effect your operations in the area? All a company is BTW, is a collection of people doing business. So corporate donations are little more then people makeing donations in the name of their business. If I owned a company in another state and they attempted to stop me from participating in any political process that effects me, I would fight it tooth and nail and possibly remove that company from that state.
We recently (within the last 10 years) has a privately owned company that went bankrupt after losing a lawsuit and it closed it's doors displacing 5000 workers directly plus contractors and so on. The city lost something around the lines of 1.25 million in tax revenue immediately and then when the new owner of the site condemned all the buildings and tore them down, the property value dropped so much that they lost quite a bit more in revenue. Now that's just the city, the county and the state was effected too. Sales tax from purchased made by displaced employees dropped, the state had to pay in unemployment, retraining, many of the employees had to move to find jobs, some lost their homes, and so on. The loss of this company just shows how important businesses are to a community and they shouldn't be bared from supporting certain candidates or promoting ideas that could effect them.
You think? There are many of us who didn't like McCain from the start. He was a better choice then Obama but that alone was enough motivation to get out the vote like the democrats did, Whether it was vote fraud in Ohio or whatever.
Which do you think would win an election, the wishy washy candidate that most people don't care about or the one who has everyone thinking he will change everything with massive support?
The funny thing here is that now that the honeymoon is over and people have to live with their choices, they are starting to realize all the Bullshit they don't like about the guy. Like the stimulus bill that had no bipartisan support and is loaded with a crap load of pork and new spending that's being rushed through without proper debate and avoiding normal processes and procedures. Or this crap where transparency and "openness" are up for grabs. Or the paying back of political supporters by locking government services into their business models. It's a load of fun watching the uncomfortable look on Obama Supporters faces as they attempt to explain how this is change or anything different other then the names of things.
According to Mastercard, they aren't supposed to do that. Visa had the same policy. You can probably contest the extra charge with your bank or complain to them and or mastercard and they will/should do something about it.
Mastercard can fine the merchant per the agreement and they can just take the ability to use the cards away from them. I can't speak for them directly but from my dealings with them, they aren't afraid to enforce their policies and it's clearly spelled out in that PDF I linked to.
Yawn... Externalities don't effect efficiency not do they create value. They are typically motivating factors that get people tuned to a specific area, not one that makes a bad deal good. I didn't address them because they are not important. Your comment was illogical and misguided. Here, lets look at it, "These shocks will add range to a battery-only car such as the Tesla, and that is a critical selling feature at this point, far beyond cost. They will also reduce the amount of fuel used by a hybrid, so your analysis should include the elimination of some CO2 emissions. What's the formula for that?"
You see, the problem with that is, if range is such a factor, then why don't they just increase the range and jack up the costs anyways? I mean what is this tech going to do if it is over priced that can't be done already? We can already throw 10 more batteries in the car and get the extra range, if putting shocks on the car costs more then that, then what is the benefit and will it magically work when 10 more batteries for the same or less costs won't? If it was going to costs $30 per 10 miles extra range with batteries or this device, and extra range is the magic bullet that makes people want to buy these cars regardless of the costs, then why havn't the $30 per 10 miles already spent to reach that magic range number that will be "critical selling feature at this point"?
Second, I never attempted to do a comprehensive cost analysis. Where did I say I did. I was attempting to show how narrow the range within there is a benefit other then just increasing the costs of something. You do understand that the cheaper something is, the easier it is for someone to buy right? If it costs X to own a car, and your bright Idea causes Y to be added, then it's just taking it out of the reach of other people. But when Y offsets long term costs, it's just a trade between when those costs are being paid. We currently have the tech for electric vehicles that get 500 miles per change, no one but millionaires xcan afford them though. So costs is an important issue here regardless of how much feel good you want to put into it.
Finally, the 65MPH average speed is just that. If it takes you 10 minutes to get to the freeway, it doesn't matter, I'm only talking about the 30 minutes at 65MPH. Many people in this nation have to drive like that. Sure, traffic and stuff can make it longer and bikes aren't allowed on the freeway but the point still stands. Not everyone can "ride a bike" like you suggested. Of course I already mentioned that there are "a lot of personal factors like how close to work you live and so on" before presenting that extreme example and in the next paragraph I talked about how it was an extreme example.
Given the facts, it seems your disagreements aren't with what was said because of factual issues, it is because they clash with your ideology and perhaps religious dogma. That doesn't make anything I said wrong and most likely it only makes you subjective and biased. So unless you find an error in my calculations or know something that no one else knows of, you might want to think a little longer about what you say before doing so.
Everyone kept getting distracted when making backups and for those that succeeded, they were afraid to touch afterwords.
There are some interesting ideas that the Neanderthal didn't die out, they just interbred with itself out of dominance. I was watching something on PBS
(nova or something) a few months/year back that claimed contrary to previously held opinions, the Neanderthal genes are present in some Anglo Saxons.
Anyways, I'm no a paleontologist so I don't know or care to know the correct terms. But the gist was that instead of dieing out, they just took mates and we are largely the result of them. The movie also indicated that they had speech skills and could make tools and were in fact the same species, just a different ethnicity. It's probably more then likely that if one was cloned, we could interbreed with them.
I would think we would want to be really careful when labeling them a subspecies or a different species. We went though a pretty long history of Science claiming that different races were only "part human" and whites where pure human. Our views have completely changed now and looking back seems like we allowed some horrific things to happen because of it.
Rain man or the Grifters?
I think one is about an autistic math guy and the other is about assuming identities, passing bad checks, and doing scams.
Yea, that was my intentions, costs above normal to save X.
Thanks for making that clearer.
It's all about spending over the normal costs for some savings that are more then the increased costs spent. I guess the easiest way to think about it is, if it will normally cost X, as long as X plus improvements is less then savings, you benefit where if X plus improvements costs more then savings, you have a Rube Goldberg machines that is actually wasteful.
I wish I could express it in some generic formula but my math sucks that bad.
Thank you, it really bugs me that I cannot get that straight.