Correction please: Why some of/. love her so much.
Personally: If this law is the only one they can find to get her under then so be it. Personally I'd rather it was something like manslaughter but this is better than nowt.
If the system works to protect even the most vile and reprehensible individuals from government tyranny, it should be capable of protecting the rest of us upstanding individuals. The more that the law bends and twists in the wind to the calls of public outrage and indignation to take down one person for whatever heinous yet non-criminal behavior they may have engaged in, the more easily it will be to do the same thing to someone exercising their inalienable rights (unpopular free speech? free speech critical of the government? etc). If her actions were not criminal, however awful, then this doesn't belong in a criminal court, period.
Could this be MS trying to reduce the stability of XP to lower it to the levels of XP, thus making Vista look better in comparison to XP? I mean when their inherently planned obsolecence of XP didn't fall into place as they had planned, perhaps they are taking matters into their own hands.
I have watched on Slashdot as people posted stories of Ron Paul breaking Internet fundraising records of most funds in a single day (twice!) and stories of how he has never voted to regulate the Internet etc. that were never accepted as stories (surely the previous two examples are of interest to geeks) and then this letter comes out which says he is going to fight all the way until the end and Slashdot quickly has it up on the front page with the interpretation that Ron Paul has called it quits. Furthermore one of the tags was "thankgod". I mean how insulting. Regardless of what ones opinion of a candidate is, shouldn't he/she still be treated with respect and courtesy?
His decision seems fairly logical to me when the main goal of an on the ground campaign is to get out the vote and most of the elections are over (there are still some late caucuses left though) that he should lean up his machine (less votes to get out).
Bah, people say that the media was totally fair with Dr. Paul. These people weren't paying attention. When the media did cover him, they only questions they asked him were whether or not he planned to run as a third party candidate or to paint him as a racist. Of course when the chairman of the NAACP refuted the claim that Dr. Paul was a racist, you didn't see that on the news.
I am just disgusted with this whole political process. You have both parties that are leading us down the path of a corporatist/fascist police state and the one man who calls a duck a duck is the crazy whacko. The one candidate who won't take corporate donations and he is called nuts and un-viable. Guess who are the ones calling him not-viable...the ones he won't take donations from...but whatever.
I've actually never been sure that it IS legal for a business not to accept larger bills. It certainly seems that, if I fill up my gas tank and try to pay with a $100 bill they can either accept the payment or forfeit the gas, not have me arrested for failure to pay.
Yeah, if you have already filled up your tank you now owe what you put in your tank. At that point, they HAVE to accept whatever denomination bill you present (in dollars of course). Now if you went in and asked them to turn on the pump and you presented a $100 bill, they could refuse. See this link on the treasury sight that clarifies this. It also implies acceptance of alternative currencies in that if you don't have to accept cash what else is there to accept?
As a constitutionalist, you must know that only the government is allowed to "print money", and while they have in some sense delegated that power to the Federal Reserve it is completely absurd to think that they would allow competing currencies.
There is a difference between a competing currency and a governmentally mandated legal tender. There are already other currencies already in existence. There are several currencies in New England based on an unskilled hour of labor (currently set at $10/hour). There is the liberty dollar (which admittedly is undergoing some legal trouble at the moment). Some vendors will actually accept foreign currencies, especially in area with large immigrant populations...all they have to do is get them converted to dollars at a currency exchanger. Credit cards and gift cards and even check's are essentially alternative currencies...vendors may or may not take them though. Would you consider trading someone a $100 Lowes gift card for a $100 home depot gift card? All a currency is is a unit of exchange and is the basis of voluntary association...one party agreeing that the items being exchanged has value and the other party agreeing on said value. I don't even have to accept the dollar as payment unless the other party already owes me money (thanks to the legal tender law). That is why it is legal for a business to not accept bills larger than a certain denomination. Some people and businesses even negotiate bartering agreements. There is nothing inherently illegal about any of these. The Constitution only gives the government the ability to regulate the dollar and mint coins which legally have to be silver or gold.
Previously if the government wanted to go into debt, it had to sell bonds. If the government wanted to finance a war, they had to sell bonds. The gov't was limited to how much debt it could incur based upon how much people supported what the government wanted to do which determined how much people would finance said activities by buying bonds. Now all the government has to do is send a requisition to the Federal Reserve who just loans out more money and voila, whatever the government wants to do is now funded. There has been a divorce from the will of the people. It was at that point that the government no longer really had to play to the will of the people, they could raise money without them. Its not really raising money though...its really just a hidden tax as it erodes the value of all of the outstanding dollars in existence.
So, if you concede that privatization is bad, does that mean that the Federal Reserve is bad?
By the way, thank you for carrying on a logical rational debate. Its much better than the folks on slashdot who say you suck you crazy *&@)% )(*@!@
The Federal Reserver is gov't mandated privatization and is not in any way regulated by the free market. Furthermore there is no government oversight. Lastly it performs a function that the government is capable of doing by itself without paying interest to private parties. Its a government sanctioned cartel. No other industries get this sort of treatment.
Any bank that is FDIC insured is part of the Federal Reserve system and a member of the Federal Reserve (most of them). I agree that it is actually fractional reserve banking which has caused us so much woe, but it is the Federal Reserve that has enabled us to gather 58 trillion in debt so easily.
It doesn't have to be gold, it could indeed be any tangible that has intrinsic value. Silver has wide manufacuring appeal, foodstuffs have intrinsic value as does energy. There is no reason that a currency has to be tied to one of these...you could have several currencies for each of these. Legalise competing currencies in the US. It makes sense to trade things based on tangible value instead of paper. The dollar is worth just that...the paper it was printed on.
If the government wants to maintain the rails in the railway system and fund them the same way they do highways (fuel taxes), fine, but the actual running of the business should be left to Amtrak.
I wonder how much each bottle of water that FEMA eventually provided cost the government? I have no idea but I could easily imagine it being at least $20 per 16oz bottle.
NASA's influence is now being eroded by private space corporations. Space travel would have come about anyway. The only real reason that we put so much into NASA in my opinion was as a propaganda weapon during the cold war. Its relevance is dwindling when other entities can launch payloads into space for far cheaper. I am not so attached to space travel that I would blindly support NASA, but historically speaking it has served a net positive for our country and the world, unlike some government organizations.
And this private organization with public authority is EXACTLY what Libertarians argue in FAVOR of in other areas. You complain that the Federal Reserve is exactly what you would like to turn other government action (e.g. Education, NASA, Amtrak, FEMA) into.
Umm, no. If you think that, then you really don't understand anything about the Federal Reserve bank. Explaining it in detail really isn't feasible in the context of this forum. Let me say though that for the first hundred or so years of America we had a very small Federal government and this country thrived. Since the income tax and Federal reserve came into existence about 90 years ago we have been through a gradual period of decline and government largess. The Federal Reserve literally has the ability to print money out of nothing. It sounds too incredible to believe, but its true. This ability to print money is what causes inflation. Our currency used to be based on gold and silver which were actual measures of wealth. The issuance of paper money during this time literally meant that the issuer of the paper actually owed you an amount of gold/silver. Now the issuance of a paper dollar really equates to the issuer "owing you nothing." The only real backing that the dollar has is the collective manpower of the United States which our government has decided it owns and can use however it wants. Sounds akin to slavery to me. The Federal Reserve has enabled horrible amounts of deficit spending which will have to be paid of by our generation and our children's generation and their children's generation and thats if we stop spending TODAY! Check out this Glenn Beck segment where David Walker (the comptroller general of the US) comments about where we are headed.
Education should be a local matter funded by local taxes. Amtrak is a private business, they have to compete on profitability or go out of business. Why do taxpayers have to pay for failing businesses?
FEMA is a joke. As a resident of New Orleans I can say with some measure of certainty that FEMA is worthless. This organization could not get bottled water to people for three days who were baking in the sun at the New Orleans Convention center with no food or water. I would wager that a for profit company could do their job cheaper and more efficiently.
As far as NASA is concerned, I have mixed feelings. I don't really look at NASA necessary government expenditure, but I am really am in favor of space exploration. I think that if NASA was really pushing the envelope of science and exploration instead of being a bureaucratic money pit that it would be tolerable. It has met this criterion with varying degrees of success over the years. Overall I think NASA is a net good in that any technology they develop is supposed to be made public.
Ok, well how far do you want to go with infrastructure? Ron Paul concedes that it is in governments purview to maintain highways and interstates. What else should the government oversee?
Perhaps you don't realize it, but the robber barrons are the the ones running things now. Our money system is outright controlled by them through the Federal Reserve bank (which most people don't know is a PRIVATE bank!). The Federal government is in bed with corporations. I can't convince you of that if you won't consider that it might be true, but that is the basis of where I am coming from.
You also have to consider that Ron Paul would not be able to wave a magic wand and just undo everything. For most of these changes he would have to elicit action from the legislature and even the populace both of which would be impossible without compromise. If you have ever played dungeons and dragons consider the alignments (and if you haven't this analogy won't make sense). Neutral good alignment believes in the balance between good and evil but that there is enough evil in the world that the character of neutral good works to achieve balance by doing good and thus balancing out the evil. Well apply that to Ron Paul, he would work to be a force for smaller government against the forces that are working towards larger government. All of the other candidates are working towards or continuing large government.
We are trending towards oppression. We need to reverse course.
Ron Paul issued the following statement:
"The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.
I am not saying to put it into private corporate interest's hands, I am talking about putting it into the hands of the people. The Federal government has become a sprawling bureauracracy that is more accountable to rules and regulations than it is to even our elected officials. The whole system is too large for any meaningful oversight. Bring government back to the people at local and state institutions.
So you are saying that if Ron Paul removes the department of homeland security or the department of agriculture or the department of education that corporations are going to assume the role of policing us and giving subsidies to farmers and interfering with our schools? No, corporations have no interest in doing those things...like you said, its not profitable. As for welfare, it belongs in the hands of locals. Federal welfare leaves your pocket in the form of taxes and enters the bureauacracy...how much is eaten by the inefficiencies of the system before it gets routed to a state government bureauacracy...how much more is eaten by the state system? Do the final welfare recipients get even ten cents on the dollar? Who at the Federal level decides what is and is not worthy of consideration for relief? The whole system is corrupt and inefficient. If welfare was performed at the local level, you could influence its effectiveness, you could influence what was funded and how it would work. I am not against social programs, just not the one size fits noone that the Federal government oversees.
My real problem with Ron Paul is his blind adherence to an idealized concept of the Free Market. He wants to completely disassemble the federal government and turn its powers and responsibilities over to private interests.
The Federal government is already owned by private interests! Are you aware the the Federal Reserve Bank is not actually a government bank? Lobbyists swarm to Washingtong because Washington is giving away handouts in the form of Government contracts and subsidies and tax code tweaking. If Washingtong was not as big and capable of handing out the dough, there would be no corporate interest in Washington. The more government becomes involved in regulation, the more it becomes a power broker which causes special interests to start influencing the whole show. If we get government out of business and back into the role of protecting the people from oppression then we get back on the right track. Ron Paul wants to disassemble the parts of the Federal government that are illegal as defined in the Constitution. All of these bureau's and departments are run by non-elected "officials" but they somehow get to make decisions about the way you run your life and teach your kids etc etc. We need to stop looking for government to solve all of our problems and start solving them ourselves. Maybe the world has outgrown self-government and freedom. Maybe freedom doesn't work, but thats what Ron Paul stands for and thats why I support him.
I mean this is what happens when we trust the government to make our decisions for us. Police don't knock on the door anymore and announce themselves...they burst in guns blazing, and over what??? Read the article.
Ok, so I should ignore the black people that support him (I know quite a few)? How about the gay people who support him (I know some of these people as well)? By that rational he is pro-black and pro-gay because he has black and gay supporters. The candidate is not the supporter and it is a logical fallacy to assume so. The Stormfront individual could support him for any number of reasons, the economy or Ron Paul's disapproval of the Patriot act or perhaps even to discredit him (it seems to have worked with you). So you are saying that one donation undermines 10 terms of Congressional record and a platform that is clearly non-racist and non-homophobic? That view is just a little myopic, eh? Ron Paul responded to the Stormfront individual by refuting support of Stormfront's views and that he would not give back the money because it would be better served promoting the message of freedom than in the hands of a known racist. If you don't want to support Ron Paul, that is fine, but don't use this as an excuse, your argument leaks like a sieve.
I signed up to make phone calls, hold signs, do anything. I was never contacted or asked to do anything.
OMG! Why are you waiting for someone to tell you what to do? Go find a meetup group (www.meetup.com) that supports Ron Paul in your area and if there isn't one, then go create one. Don't wait for someone to tell you what to do..you know what do do...call people hold sings...you just said so. Just go out and do it and other people will find you. Be a leader, get involved. I at first thought that Ron Paul would do very well because I just assumed that all of the people who saw his message of Freedom would leap up and be active and campaign for him like me, but it looks as though I was mistaken and that many of his "supporters" just expect other people to do it for them, they don't want to be involved in self government (which is really what our country was founded upon). There were originally never any career politicians, the legislature met several times a year and the people went back to their day jobs the rest of the time. Government has gotten too large and invasive and we literally have to take our country back. This is not going to happen with anyone sitting next to their phone waiting for someone to call to tell them what to do. I respect that you want Ron Paul to be president, but ask yourself if you really "support" him.
We invaded a sovereign nation in a war that has lasted longer than WWII. We went in there to depose Sadam Hussein and to make sure he had no WMD's. We have succeeded on both counts...WE WON the war. Its time to come home. We did not go to Iraq to combat terror. Sadam's regime was actually anti-terror because terrorists would have been a rogue element in his society that would have undermined his authority which was absolute. I am not saying the man was a nice guy, but he wasn't a terrorist. We went into and now occupy Iraq and terrorism has been pervasive as long as we have been in there. We are occupying a country. Would you be upset if China had troops all over America (don't just dismiss it as impossible...actually imagine it!)? I would certainly be upset if there were Chinese or German or any other nation's troops stationed in America for our supposed good. These people are upset that we are in their country and that we have been in interfering in their countries for the last sixty years. Our CIA has meddled and disrupted governments and caused revolutions and generally destabilized the whole region all without the general consent of the US populace. Some of these facts are verifiable from documents which have been declassified. One such event is in the 50's when we took the leader of Iran who was secular and pro-west and caused a revolution against him. In his place the west had installed a military dictator. People don't forget this sort of thing! We need to get out of Iraq because it was a mistake to go there, it costs us BILLIONS of dollars which we are getting from China and Japan in the form of loans and because we really aren't doing any good there. Our economy is literally being stretched to its limits (have you noticed the weak dollar of late?) over this war. We just can't afford it. Do some research on our financial system and the foundation of the Federal Reserve. You will find out just how our monetary system works and why its causing the country's economy to collapse.
He also opposes abortion rights, stem cell research, and net neutrality. Oh, and he doesn't 'believe' in evolution. What a great candidate.
And he also believes that the Federal government should have no say in any of these issues. These were the foundations that the country was founded upon, that the Federal government has very limited powers as stated in the Constitution and that the states and the people get the rest of the power. This is the very foundation of freedom. How free are you if you look to the government to decide everything for you? NOT FREE AT ALL! Oh sure, you are free to buy a television or go fishing or participate in any number of distracting pastimes, but how many things can't you do? Abortion rights and stem cell research should be decided by state and county governments. The Federal government should have no say in what is taught in schools...that should be decided by local school boards where people are most represented and the value system of a local area can be represented in a school. No child left behind equates to all children left behind! With all of the rules made at the Federal level you are lost to the tyranny of the masses as politicians bribe the populace into submission...at the local level you are most represented. Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding whats for lunch...thats why we live (supposedly) in a Republic, but more and more power has been consolidated at the Federal level and the Republic is going bye bye. But you are clearly going to accept the status quo that you grew up in and ignore the police state growing up around us. If you are actually open minded, you might check out Naomi Wolf's book: "End of America"
The KKK and the Communist party? What hole have you been buried in all year. You have clearly been taking someone else's account on this and have done NO research for yourself. Ron Paul is neither a Communist nor a racist. The man has a Congressional record going back 30 years that supports this. He wants to do away with the income tax (very Communist indeed!) He wants people to be treated fairly (very racist indeed). If he isn't for some government interference program like affirmative action, its because the very nature of that sort of program is RACIST. He wants the federal government out of your life (another of those communist themes he supports) and he wants you to be able to be free to decide for yourself how you conduct business and associate with others. These concepts are the very foundation of Freedom. Anytime an individual looks to the government he surrenders a little bit of that Freedom and cumulatively over the last hundred years we have lost ALOT of it. If you really were a libertarian, you would understand these concepts. It seems that you are just another government thrall. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you are my countryman!
Why not just stop it in its tracks before that happens? The senate bill is S1959. Write your senators and have them quash it. This is the land of the free, not the land of suspect your neighbor might be a terrorist just in case!
Americans who belong to third parties are exercising their Constitutional right of free association. Americans who vote for a third party's luck-to-get-one-percent candidates, though, are just being fools.
"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost."--John Quincy Adams
So you were smart. Big deal. Intelligence, by itself, is not that important -- it only provides potential. While it is a common amongst the youth to feel that their innate abilities and potential somehow deserve accolades and celebration, most learn quickly upon entering adulthood that accomplishment counts for far more. What saddens me is that, years after you have left physical childhood behind, you still think like a child
Perhaps there is a reason that children want attention and respect. We as humans have certain psychological needs that should at least be taken into account by our institutions of learning. Certainly not all children are they same and require the same amount of attention, but the point is that the needs of the smart child differed in this case. If the teacher had recognized that this student had different needs, he/she could have directed the child's attention towards something useful rather than "borrowing" the teacher's manual. I am not saying that the teacher had to respect the student, but why do we try to treat everyone the same when we are clearly all different with different abilities and different needs?
Completely clueless post. You DO NOT oversubscribe T1. T1 is dedicated pipe.
I think that he was not referring to the actual T1 bandwidth itself, but the amount of upstream bandwidth in front of the T1. ISP A sells 100 T1's to 100 customers, but then only buys 50Mbits of bandwitdh from their provider...guess what, they have oversubscribed all of their T1 customers.
Suppose i pay for my mmorpgs with game cards and use proxies to connect tot he game servers. how then can anyone be expected to track how much gold i have accumulated on my virtual d00d? I can see taxing the sale of virtual goods for real money (not that i agree with it), but it seems silly to expect purely in-game assets to be taxed.
The only time that this sort of thing should be taxable is when there is real income. IE someone farms up a horde of gold and then sells it for real money. That is income and should be reported as income (which consequently is taxable). The onus of reporting should be on the individual earning the income. The problem of someone not claiming said income should not be solved by legislating that the game administrators track these transactions, but by going to a tax collection scheme like the fair tax that collects tax from everyone at the cash register.
Once you get your degree (yup, go to college or some other form of post-high school training) then get your foot in the door somewhere doing something supporting the end devices first. It may seem like menial work, but you'll thank me for it 5 years from now....
I have to concur with this. I have seen network engineers who know nothing about the PC's or the applications that are transitting the network. They might be able to configure a tcp/ip stack, but when that application is having trouble over the network, knowing how it performs its handshake or what ports it needs opened on a firewall to work are all crucial tidbits of data. I started with PC support, then server/application support all the while learning about the network. After eight years, I am now a network engineer (with some college) who can administer just about any windows or *nix box running everything from firewalls to mail servers to dns/dhcp. Being about to troubleshoot a problem from the desktop all the way across the network to the server. Certs and an education are important for someone just starting out, but having 5+ years working in an enterprise environment says a whole lot too.
Why not have it be the AppleI Phone. Users would themselves abbreviate it to i phone themselves, but the official trademark would be AppleI...dunno a whole lot about trademark legal matters, but this seems reasonable to me. If that doesn't work, how about tweaking the spelling...lots of words in the English language have the same sound even though they are spelled differently. What exactly is trademarked...the word, the spelling, the sound?
the impetus of this bill was the New Orleans Katrina disaster. Everyone blamed Bush and the Feds for not doing enough, even though the responsibility for disaster planning and mobilizing the national guard rested solely with the local and state governments. Well, this bill fixes that
Hurricane Katrina wasn't a natural disaster...it was a government conspiracy to use as ammunition for the passage of this bill!
Slashdot Mirror
Correction please: Why some of /. love her so much.
Personally: If this law is the only one they can find to get her under then so be it. Personally I'd rather it was something like manslaughter but this is better than nowt.
If the system works to protect even the most vile and reprehensible individuals from government tyranny, it should be capable of protecting the rest of us upstanding individuals. The more that the law bends and twists in the wind to the calls of public outrage and indignation to take down one person for whatever heinous yet non-criminal behavior they may have engaged in, the more easily it will be to do the same thing to someone exercising their inalienable rights (unpopular free speech? free speech critical of the government? etc). If her actions were not criminal, however awful, then this doesn't belong in a criminal court, period.
His decision seems fairly logical to me when the main goal of an on the ground campaign is to get out the vote and most of the elections are over (there are still some late caucuses left though) that he should lean up his machine (less votes to get out).
Bah, people say that the media was totally fair with Dr. Paul. These people weren't paying attention. When the media did cover him, they only questions they asked him were whether or not he planned to run as a third party candidate or to paint him as a racist. Of course when the chairman of the NAACP refuted the claim that Dr. Paul was a racist, you didn't see that on the news.
I am just disgusted with this whole political process. You have both parties that are leading us down the path of a corporatist/fascist police state and the one man who calls a duck a duck is the crazy whacko. The one candidate who won't take corporate donations and he is called nuts and un-viable. Guess who are the ones calling him not-viable...the ones he won't take donations from...but whatever.
Yeah, if you have already filled up your tank you now owe what you put in your tank. At that point, they HAVE to accept whatever denomination bill you present (in dollars of course). Now if you went in and asked them to turn on the pump and you presented a $100 bill, they could refuse. See this link on the treasury sight that clarifies this. It also implies acceptance of alternative currencies in that if you don't have to accept cash what else is there to accept?
There is a difference between a competing currency and a governmentally mandated legal tender. There are already other currencies already in existence. There are several currencies in New England based on an unskilled hour of labor (currently set at $10/hour). There is the liberty dollar (which admittedly is undergoing some legal trouble at the moment). Some vendors will actually accept foreign currencies, especially in area with large immigrant populations...all they have to do is get them converted to dollars at a currency exchanger. Credit cards and gift cards and even check's are essentially alternative currencies...vendors may or may not take them though. Would you consider trading someone a $100 Lowes gift card for a $100 home depot gift card? All a currency is is a unit of exchange and is the basis of voluntary association...one party agreeing that the items being exchanged has value and the other party agreeing on said value. I don't even have to accept the dollar as payment unless the other party already owes me money (thanks to the legal tender law). That is why it is legal for a business to not accept bills larger than a certain denomination. Some people and businesses even negotiate bartering agreements. There is nothing inherently illegal about any of these. The Constitution only gives the government the ability to regulate the dollar and mint coins which legally have to be silver or gold.
Previously if the government wanted to go into debt, it had to sell bonds. If the government wanted to finance a war, they had to sell bonds. The gov't was limited to how much debt it could incur based upon how much people supported what the government wanted to do which determined how much people would finance said activities by buying bonds. Now all the government has to do is send a requisition to the Federal Reserve who just loans out more money and voila, whatever the government wants to do is now funded. There has been a divorce from the will of the people. It was at that point that the government no longer really had to play to the will of the people, they could raise money without them. Its not really raising money though...its really just a hidden tax as it erodes the value of all of the outstanding dollars in existence.
So, if you concede that privatization is bad, does that mean that the Federal Reserve is bad?
By the way, thank you for carrying on a logical rational debate. Its much better than the folks on slashdot who say you suck you crazy *&@)% )(*@!@
Any bank that is FDIC insured is part of the Federal Reserve system and a member of the Federal Reserve (most of them). I agree that it is actually fractional reserve banking which has caused us so much woe, but it is the Federal Reserve that has enabled us to gather 58 trillion in debt so easily.
It doesn't have to be gold, it could indeed be any tangible that has intrinsic value. Silver has wide manufacuring appeal, foodstuffs have intrinsic value as does energy. There is no reason that a currency has to be tied to one of these...you could have several currencies for each of these. Legalise competing currencies in the US. It makes sense to trade things based on tangible value instead of paper. The dollar is worth just that...the paper it was printed on.
If the government wants to maintain the rails in the railway system and fund them the same way they do highways (fuel taxes), fine, but the actual running of the business should be left to Amtrak.
I wonder how much each bottle of water that FEMA eventually provided cost the government? I have no idea but I could easily imagine it being at least $20 per 16oz bottle.
NASA's influence is now being eroded by private space corporations. Space travel would have come about anyway. The only real reason that we put so much into NASA in my opinion was as a propaganda weapon during the cold war. Its relevance is dwindling when other entities can launch payloads into space for far cheaper. I am not so attached to space travel that I would blindly support NASA, but historically speaking it has served a net positive for our country and the world, unlike some government organizations.
Umm, no. If you think that, then you really don't understand anything about the Federal Reserve bank. Explaining it in detail really isn't feasible in the context of this forum. Let me say though that for the first hundred or so years of America we had a very small Federal government and this country thrived. Since the income tax and Federal reserve came into existence about 90 years ago we have been through a gradual period of decline and government largess. The Federal Reserve literally has the ability to print money out of nothing. It sounds too incredible to believe, but its true. This ability to print money is what causes inflation. Our currency used to be based on gold and silver which were actual measures of wealth. The issuance of paper money during this time literally meant that the issuer of the paper actually owed you an amount of gold/silver. Now the issuance of a paper dollar really equates to the issuer "owing you nothing." The only real backing that the dollar has is the collective manpower of the United States which our government has decided it owns and can use however it wants. Sounds akin to slavery to me. The Federal Reserve has enabled horrible amounts of deficit spending which will have to be paid of by our generation and our children's generation and their children's generation and thats if we stop spending TODAY! Check out this Glenn Beck segment where David Walker (the comptroller general of the US) comments about where we are headed.
Education should be a local matter funded by local taxes. Amtrak is a private business, they have to compete on profitability or go out of business. Why do taxpayers have to pay for failing businesses?
FEMA is a joke. As a resident of New Orleans I can say with some measure of certainty that FEMA is worthless. This organization could not get bottled water to people for three days who were baking in the sun at the New Orleans Convention center with no food or water. I would wager that a for profit company could do their job cheaper and more efficiently.
As far as NASA is concerned, I have mixed feelings. I don't really look at NASA necessary government expenditure, but I am really am in favor of space exploration. I think that if NASA was really pushing the envelope of science and exploration instead of being a bureaucratic money pit that it would be tolerable. It has met this criterion with varying degrees of success over the years. Overall I think NASA is a net good in that any technology they develop is supposed to be made public.
Ok, well how far do you want to go with infrastructure? Ron Paul concedes that it is in governments purview to maintain highways and interstates. What else should the government oversee? Perhaps you don't realize it, but the robber barrons are the the ones running things now. Our money system is outright controlled by them through the Federal Reserve bank (which most people don't know is a PRIVATE bank!). The Federal government is in bed with corporations. I can't convince you of that if you won't consider that it might be true, but that is the basis of where I am coming from. You also have to consider that Ron Paul would not be able to wave a magic wand and just undo everything. For most of these changes he would have to elicit action from the legislature and even the populace both of which would be impossible without compromise. If you have ever played dungeons and dragons consider the alignments (and if you haven't this analogy won't make sense). Neutral good alignment believes in the balance between good and evil but that there is enough evil in the world that the character of neutral good works to achieve balance by doing good and thus balancing out the evil. Well apply that to Ron Paul, he would work to be a force for smaller government against the forces that are working towards larger government. All of the other candidates are working towards or continuing large government. We are trending towards oppression. We need to reverse course.
Ron Paul issued the following statement: "The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.
So you are saying that if Ron Paul removes the department of homeland security or the department of agriculture or the department of education that corporations are going to assume the role of policing us and giving subsidies to farmers and interfering with our schools? No, corporations have no interest in doing those things...like you said, its not profitable. As for welfare, it belongs in the hands of locals. Federal welfare leaves your pocket in the form of taxes and enters the bureauacracy...how much is eaten by the inefficiencies of the system before it gets routed to a state government bureauacracy...how much more is eaten by the state system? Do the final welfare recipients get even ten cents on the dollar? Who at the Federal level decides what is and is not worthy of consideration for relief? The whole system is corrupt and inefficient. If welfare was performed at the local level, you could influence its effectiveness, you could influence what was funded and how it would work. I am not against social programs, just not the one size fits noone that the Federal government oversees.
The Federal government is already owned by private interests! Are you aware the the Federal Reserve Bank is not actually a government bank? Lobbyists swarm to Washingtong because Washington is giving away handouts in the form of Government contracts and subsidies and tax code tweaking. If Washingtong was not as big and capable of handing out the dough, there would be no corporate interest in Washington. The more government becomes involved in regulation, the more it becomes a power broker which causes special interests to start influencing the whole show. If we get government out of business and back into the role of protecting the people from oppression then we get back on the right track. Ron Paul wants to disassemble the parts of the Federal government that are illegal as defined in the Constitution. All of these bureau's and departments are run by non-elected "officials" but they somehow get to make decisions about the way you run your life and teach your kids etc etc. We need to stop looking for government to solve all of our problems and start solving them ourselves. Maybe the world has outgrown self-government and freedom. Maybe freedom doesn't work, but thats what Ron Paul stands for and thats why I support him.
I mean this is what happens when we trust the government to make our decisions for us. Police don't knock on the door anymore and announce themselves...they burst in guns blazing, and over what??? Read the article.
And he also believes that the Federal government should have no say in any of these issues. These were the foundations that the country was founded upon, that the Federal government has very limited powers as stated in the Constitution and that the states and the people get the rest of the power. This is the very foundation of freedom. How free are you if you look to the government to decide everything for you? NOT FREE AT ALL! Oh sure, you are free to buy a television or go fishing or participate in any number of distracting pastimes, but how many things can't you do? Abortion rights and stem cell research should be decided by state and county governments. The Federal government should have no say in what is taught in schools...that should be decided by local school boards where people are most represented and the value system of a local area can be represented in a school. No child left behind equates to all children left behind! With all of the rules made at the Federal level you are lost to the tyranny of the masses as politicians bribe the populace into submission...at the local level you are most represented. Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding whats for lunch...thats why we live (supposedly) in a Republic, but more and more power has been consolidated at the Federal level and the Republic is going bye bye. But you are clearly going to accept the status quo that you grew up in and ignore the police state growing up around us. If you are actually open minded, you might check out Naomi Wolf's book: "End of America"
The KKK and the Communist party? What hole have you been buried in all year. You have clearly been taking someone else's account on this and have done NO research for yourself. Ron Paul is neither a Communist nor a racist. The man has a Congressional record going back 30 years that supports this. He wants to do away with the income tax (very Communist indeed!) He wants people to be treated fairly (very racist indeed). If he isn't for some government interference program like affirmative action, its because the very nature of that sort of program is RACIST. He wants the federal government out of your life (another of those communist themes he supports) and he wants you to be able to be free to decide for yourself how you conduct business and associate with others. These concepts are the very foundation of Freedom. Anytime an individual looks to the government he surrenders a little bit of that Freedom and cumulatively over the last hundred years we have lost ALOT of it. If you really were a libertarian, you would understand these concepts. It seems that you are just another government thrall. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you are my countryman!
Why not just stop it in its tracks before that happens? The senate bill is S1959. Write your senators and have them quash it. This is the land of the free, not the land of suspect your neighbor might be a terrorist just in case!
"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost."--John Quincy Adams
Perhaps there is a reason that children want attention and respect. We as humans have certain psychological needs that should at least be taken into account by our institutions of learning. Certainly not all children are they same and require the same amount of attention, but the point is that the needs of the smart child differed in this case. If the teacher had recognized that this student had different needs, he/she could have directed the child's attention towards something useful rather than "borrowing" the teacher's manual. I am not saying that the teacher had to respect the student, but why do we try to treat everyone the same when we are clearly all different with different abilities and different needs?
I think that he was not referring to the actual T1 bandwidth itself, but the amount of upstream bandwidth in front of the T1. ISP A sells 100 T1's to 100 customers, but then only buys 50Mbits of bandwitdh from their provider...guess what, they have oversubscribed all of their T1 customers.
The only time that this sort of thing should be taxable is when there is real income. IE someone farms up a horde of gold and then sells it for real money. That is income and should be reported as income (which consequently is taxable). The onus of reporting should be on the individual earning the income. The problem of someone not claiming said income should not be solved by legislating that the game administrators track these transactions, but by going to a tax collection scheme like the fair tax that collects tax from everyone at the cash register.
I have to concur with this. I have seen network engineers who know nothing about the PC's or the applications that are transitting the network. They might be able to configure a tcp/ip stack, but when that application is having trouble over the network, knowing how it performs its handshake or what ports it needs opened on a firewall to work are all crucial tidbits of data. I started with PC support, then server/application support all the while learning about the network. After eight years, I am now a network engineer (with some college) who can administer just about any windows or *nix box running everything from firewalls to mail servers to dns/dhcp. Being about to troubleshoot a problem from the desktop all the way across the network to the server. Certs and an education are important for someone just starting out, but having 5+ years working in an enterprise environment says a whole lot too.
Hurricane Katrina wasn't a natural disaster...it was a government conspiracy to use as ammunition for the passage of this bill!