"publicly finance all elections" is not a credible idea because it will never stop outside contributions which are protected as part of free speech. And PACs can always be started to launder more funds. In short, the pols will simply say, "Thank you very much, I'll just add to my PAC pile." And if you think shutting down PACs will help, it won't because they are protected by free speech as well and will just switch to running exclusively their own campaigns for or against "issues" which some of their favored candidates support.
"How many billions of dollars per year do we give the oil and natural gas industry in tax breaks every year?" Last figure I heard was about $4-5 Billion. They claimed they needed it for research. It's a dumb subsidy that should be removed. That was the overt subsidies. It turns out to be difficult to nail down hidden subsidies. The low end there is about $10 Billion. The high end, probably produced by Greenpeace or some similar organization, is around $52 Billion.
So, no naughy thinking you will balance the federal budget by taking away their subsidies...but they should be taken away anyhow since last we checked the industry was self-funded.
How come this notion that America doesn't make anything any longer gets repeated:
"According to the latest research from the United Nations, China has further outpaced its competitors in world manufacturing, generating $2.9 trillion in output annually versus $2.43 trillion from the U.S., the world’s second-largest manufacturing economy."
"They are still bitter that they had the idea for a tablet long before Apple", not really. They took a thing that had no keyboard and bunged window onto and then expected people to use it for...what precisely? Apple took a small energy sipping processor and combined it with an app store and a gui that didn't smell like dog's breath.
Bullshit. It is written into the law which parts of government get shutdown when a budget isn't passed.
And no government cannot afford it, they don't have authority by law to spend what they have, and they will blow through the debt ceiling in 2 weeks.
Yes, it will cost America money, but it won't cost the government money (the shutdown, that is). At least initially, it won't cost them money. It will cost them to restart the government.
And the first bozo to get injured in a Fed. park during the government shutdown will happily attempt to sue the government for the injury claiming that government didn't keep said bozo safe. So that's the reason parks and things are closed, i.e., to prevent our ambulance chasing populace from suing.
Anyhow, Congress closing down government and then screwing fed workers because they aren't working is unethical...so it isn't something they would readily recognize as being wrong. Rather they passed the bill in an effort to not make themselves look even dumber than they already do.
Well, when they are essentially ballless freaks who care more about their re-election than the country, then there's no chance reasonableness will prevail.
This is pretty much the result of Dems and Repubs using the last census to redistrict and gerrymander their districts for easier re-elect. So now all republicans in congress are in fear of the tea party mounting primary challenges. A similar dynamic occurs on the Dem side. So we can expect more polarized politics for the next 10 years.
I think those that are eaten in China are the non-weaponized kind. Eating jellyfish venom cannot be good for your circulatory system. And the ones that bite are the worst.
Sorry to pop your silly geopolitical bubble, but the U.S. does not pull S. Korea's wires and China does not pull the Norks. Both Ks are adamantly opposed to foreign manipulation by anyone. China recently had to impose trade blocks for certain goods to the Norks because they couldn't pull their wires any other way. The U.S. would much rather remove its troops but would also like a trading partner that was not glowing red, so they keep them there.
Not really. It depends on the reason the ocean temperatures rise. If it is because of increasing CO2, then the oceans become acidified thus killing reefs and destroying entire ecosystems. Even if CO2 doesn't make the temperature rise, it is bad news for ocean life.
I run into a few yellow jacket ground nests every year in my yard. Those little bastards hurt like hell when they get you. I tried the usual insect spray, I think they used to rub it all over their bodies as a sort of fragrant body lotion. It would kills the ones I hit directly...at least it seemed that way...maybe they were only play acting. My neighbor was encouraging me to pour a cup of gasoline down the holes and then light it but I didn't want to poison the ground.
So, I picked up a few cans of insulating foam...waited until they weren't buzzing and then foamed their entrance holes by sticking the straw in as far as it could go and pulling the trigger. That seemed to do the trick. They ones left outside buzzed around for several days not knowing quite what to make of it all. There was only one hole out of 5 where they managed to tunnel either in or out again but I got that one too and that was the end of that. I don't know, maybe I just had stupid yellow jackets, but I'll try it again next year.
Now I just have to pull off the yellow mushroom tops the foaming goo made when it dried. They made handy markers so I could keep clear while the orphaned ones buzzed for a few days.
"So the Government can send a few billion on a server farm in Utah for the NSA, but heaven help they send money on servers to handle 3 million people trying to log in at once."
Apples vs. Oranges. That's like saying the Government put a man on the moon, how come they cannot cure cancer. NSA didn't build their system overnight, it took years and they had to learn a lot in order to pull it off. Very few large IT projects ever come in on time and under budget. Not only that, most aren't directly facing your basic American. If you want to see how embarrassing your systems can be, open them up to the general public. They will do things of which you never thought. And each person has their notion of what they want out of that system.
Oh, let's cut America some slack. Name one other country that has as many ethnic groups and is diverse as the U.S. It is also a large country both geographically and economically, this latter is the more important; large countries do not change their direction overnight. The Euroweenies never quite got over the fact that they more or less don't count, they're too small to count. Their pops. are largely homogeneous and where they have any significant minorities, they always have major troubles with them. Getting a small, homogeneous country to agree on health care is easy. In the U.S., there are way more (maybe too many) competing interests.
No. the mandate effects young, healthy people who are convinced the country owes them health care should crisis suddenly arise for them. This lot also believes it shouldn't fund sick people. A country is a large insurance policy. Most Western countries have included health care in that policy. The U.S. stands out as one that believes it is okay for people to have a medical problem and shortly thereafter a financial problem because of the bill...presuming they survive.
This cuts to the core difference between the Democrats and Republicans. Most Republicans believe in a dog-eat-dog world. Democrats believe in BunnyWorld where we'll all part of one giant sticky wad called society. It didn't used to be like this, but after years and years of gerrymandering congressional districts, both parties got what they've always wanted, i.e., the ability to only talk and listen to their faction.
What's needed are compromises to tell us where we should draw the lines. This won't happen easily given the gerrymandering problem. Fix the gerrymandering problem and we'd get congresscritters who had to satisfy more than a blinkered faithful.
It might help if you understood how the government works before throwing stones at it. It is written into law which parts of government stay open and which close. Claiming some arbitrary website staying open won't cost the government much is entirely beside the point. Yes, you say, but then the law are not very good. Yes, I say, but no matter how you sliced it, some things you think are inessential are considered essential to others and vice versa. Hence we have legislators write them for us because having 300 million people *helping* to write laws is silly.
As the AC below said, there is no guarantee of pay. And given the way Republicans have pilloried the government workers, they probably won't. The government workers haven't had a pay raise in 3 years because some Republican organization ran numbers and decided they were overpaid. Gee, what a coincidence. And given the sequester, Government has been losing workers, but that doesn't lessen the amount of work that needs to be done.
Most government workers do not deal directly with the public, but those that do are saints. They are required to be polite at all times regardless of the abuse they receive. Listen to CSPAN's morning call in show to get an idea of just how whacked the American people are in general.
Really? Air traffic control, we could leave that to the airlines, right? Or maybe you'd like 50 different collections of rules. How about NIH, anyone in your family get a really nasty disease lately? Surely your state will fund and coordinate that research. How about the CDC? You like plagues like salmonella raging across the land with no agency in charge of nailing down the culprit so more people don't die. How about EPA? What do you need clean air and water for. How about Social Security, Grandma can come and live with you, right? Medicare? You'll be happy to afford her medications so she'll live to ripe old age under your tender loving care. NTSB ring a bell? They are the folks that figure out how companies managed to kill of your mother by not paying attention to safety.
The list goes on, but shut it all down because they are "non-essential" and "counterproductive". Your motto must be, "I don't think, therefore I am not".
Calm down, Snow Flake. To capture the kind of information you think is available isn't going to be ferreted out by algorithms. It would require humans looking at the data, understanding the connections, making inferences. There aren't enough people on the planet to do that much less employed by NSA.
Slashdot Mirror
"publicly finance all elections" is not a credible idea because it will never stop outside contributions which are protected as part of free speech. And PACs can always be started to launder more funds. In short, the pols will simply say, "Thank you very much, I'll just add to my PAC pile." And if you think shutting down PACs will help, it won't because they are protected by free speech as well and will just switch to running exclusively their own campaigns for or against "issues" which some of their favored candidates support.
Pols are oily characters.
"How many billions of dollars per year do we give the oil and natural gas industry in tax breaks every year?" Last figure I heard was about $4-5 Billion. They claimed they needed it for research. It's a dumb subsidy that should be removed. That was the overt subsidies. It turns out to be difficult to nail down hidden subsidies. The low end there is about $10 Billion. The high end, probably produced by Greenpeace or some similar organization, is around $52 Billion.
So, no naughy thinking you will balance the federal budget by taking away their subsidies...but they should be taken away anyhow since last we checked the industry was self-funded.
How come this notion that America doesn't make anything any longer gets repeated:
"According to the latest research from the United Nations, China has further outpaced its competitors in world manufacturing, generating $2.9 trillion in output annually versus $2.43 trillion from the U.S., the world’s second-largest manufacturing economy."
And the U.S. hasn't built any new refineries in quite awhile.
"They are still bitter that they had the idea for a tablet long before Apple", not really. They took a thing that had no keyboard and bunged window onto and then expected people to use it for...what precisely? Apple took a small energy sipping processor and combined it with an app store and a gui that didn't smell like dog's breath.
Bullshit. It is written into the law which parts of government get shutdown when a budget isn't passed.
And no government cannot afford it, they don't have authority by law to spend what they have, and they will blow through the debt ceiling in 2 weeks.
Yes, it will cost America money, but it won't cost the government money (the shutdown, that is). At least initially, it won't cost them money. It will cost them to restart the government.
And the first bozo to get injured in a Fed. park during the government shutdown will happily attempt to sue the government for the injury claiming that government didn't keep said bozo safe. So that's the reason parks and things are closed, i.e., to prevent our ambulance chasing populace from suing.
The House just passed a bill for back pay.
Anyhow, Congress closing down government and then screwing fed workers because they aren't working is unethical...so it isn't something they would readily recognize as being wrong. Rather they passed the bill in an effort to not make themselves look even dumber than they already do.
Well, when they are essentially ballless freaks who care more about their re-election than the country, then there's no chance reasonableness will prevail.
This is pretty much the result of Dems and Repubs using the last census to redistrict and gerrymander their districts for easier re-elect. So now all republicans in congress are in fear of the tea party mounting primary challenges. A similar dynamic occurs on the Dem side. So we can expect more polarized politics for the next 10 years.
I think those that are eaten in China are the non-weaponized kind. Eating jellyfish venom cannot be good for your circulatory system. And the ones that bite are the worst.
Sorry to pop your silly geopolitical bubble, but the U.S. does not pull S. Korea's wires and China does not pull the Norks. Both Ks are adamantly opposed to foreign manipulation by anyone. China recently had to impose trade blocks for certain goods to the Norks because they couldn't pull their wires any other way. The U.S. would much rather remove its troops but would also like a trading partner that was not glowing red, so they keep them there.
I've eaten pickled jellyfish at Chinese restaurant. They were okay but I doubt you'd get a lot of nutrients out of them.
Nah, it would be more impressive if they MATE with the jellyfish thus leading to more androidjellies.
Not really. It depends on the reason the ocean temperatures rise. If it is because of increasing CO2, then the oceans become acidified thus killing reefs and destroying entire ecosystems. Even if CO2 doesn't make the temperature rise, it is bad news for ocean life.
I run into a few yellow jacket ground nests every year in my yard. Those little bastards hurt like hell when they get you. I tried the usual insect spray, I think they used to rub it all over their bodies as a sort of fragrant body lotion. It would kills the ones I hit directly...at least it seemed that way...maybe they were only play acting. My neighbor was encouraging me to pour a cup of gasoline down the holes and then light it but I didn't want to poison the ground.
So, I picked up a few cans of insulating foam...waited until they weren't buzzing and then foamed their entrance holes by sticking the straw in as far as it could go and pulling the trigger. That seemed to do the trick. They ones left outside buzzed around for several days not knowing quite what to make of it all. There was only one hole out of 5 where they managed to tunnel either in or out again but I got that one too and that was the end of that. I don't know, maybe I just had stupid yellow jackets, but I'll try it again next year.
Now I just have to pull off the yellow mushroom tops the foaming goo made when it dried. They made handy markers so I could keep clear while the orphaned ones buzzed for a few days.
So, you are saying Congress was infected by giant foreign ignoramuses who crave Klieg lights and emit copious amounts of hot air. We're doomed!!!
No, venomous ducks.
"So the Government can send a few billion on a server farm in Utah for the NSA, but heaven help they send money on servers to handle 3 million people trying to log in at once."
Apples vs. Oranges. That's like saying the Government put a man on the moon, how come they cannot cure cancer. NSA didn't build their system overnight, it took years and they had to learn a lot in order to pull it off. Very few large IT projects ever come in on time and under budget. Not only that, most aren't directly facing your basic American. If you want to see how embarrassing your systems can be, open them up to the general public. They will do things of which you never thought. And each person has their notion of what they want out of that system.
Oh, let's cut America some slack. Name one other country that has as many ethnic groups and is diverse as the U.S. It is also a large country both geographically and economically, this latter is the more important; large countries do not change their direction overnight. The Euroweenies never quite got over the fact that they more or less don't count, they're too small to count. Their pops. are largely homogeneous and where they have any significant minorities, they always have major troubles with them. Getting a small, homogeneous country to agree on health care is easy. In the U.S., there are way more (maybe too many) competing interests.
No. the mandate effects young, healthy people who are convinced the country owes them health care should crisis suddenly arise for them. This lot also believes it shouldn't fund sick people. A country is a large insurance policy. Most Western countries have included health care in that policy. The U.S. stands out as one that believes it is okay for people to have a medical problem and shortly thereafter a financial problem because of the bill...presuming they survive.
This cuts to the core difference between the Democrats and Republicans. Most Republicans believe in a dog-eat-dog world. Democrats believe in BunnyWorld where we'll all part of one giant sticky wad called society. It didn't used to be like this, but after years and years of gerrymandering congressional districts, both parties got what they've always wanted, i.e., the ability to only talk and listen to their faction.
What's needed are compromises to tell us where we should draw the lines. This won't happen easily given the gerrymandering problem. Fix the gerrymandering problem and we'd get congresscritters who had to satisfy more than a blinkered faithful.
It might help if you understood how the government works before throwing stones at it. It is written into law which parts of government stay open and which close. Claiming some arbitrary website staying open won't cost the government much is entirely beside the point. Yes, you say, but then the law are not very good. Yes, I say, but no matter how you sliced it, some things you think are inessential are considered essential to others and vice versa. Hence we have legislators write them for us because having 300 million people *helping* to write laws is silly.
Oh c'mon, science is interesting regardless, especially here on slashdot.
So....the jellyfish are the global warming's answer to overfishing of the oceans. That's sublimely wonderful.
As the AC below said, there is no guarantee of pay. And given the way Republicans have pilloried the government workers, they probably won't. The government workers haven't had a pay raise in 3 years because some Republican organization ran numbers and decided they were overpaid. Gee, what a coincidence. And given the sequester, Government has been losing workers, but that doesn't lessen the amount of work that needs to be done.
Most government workers do not deal directly with the public, but those that do are saints. They are required to be polite at all times regardless of the abuse they receive. Listen to CSPAN's morning call in show to get an idea of just how whacked the American people are in general.
Really? Air traffic control, we could leave that to the airlines, right? Or maybe you'd like 50 different collections of rules. How about NIH, anyone in your family get a really nasty disease lately? Surely your state will fund and coordinate that research. How about the CDC? You like plagues like salmonella raging across the land with no agency in charge of nailing down the culprit so more people don't die. How about EPA? What do you need clean air and water for. How about Social Security, Grandma can come and live with you, right? Medicare? You'll be happy to afford her medications so she'll live to ripe old age under your tender loving care. NTSB ring a bell? They are the folks that figure out how companies managed to kill of your mother by not paying attention to safety.
The list goes on, but shut it all down because they are "non-essential" and "counterproductive". Your motto must be, "I don't think, therefore I am not".
Calm down, Snow Flake. To capture the kind of information you think is available isn't going to be ferreted out by algorithms. It would require humans looking at the data, understanding the connections, making inferences. There aren't enough people on the planet to do that much less employed by NSA.