FTFA: "a new program to help make travel carbon emissions analysis easier... for the businesses worldwide that use MasterCard corporate cards... to help businesses more efficiently manage their corporate card programs and meet current and future analytical needs"
This is a program that companies can sign up for, in which Mastercard will help them analyze their corporate travel programs. Al Gore isn't digging through your receipts at the sex toy shop. Ignore all the Republican trolls.
As a Libertarian/Republican, I have to agree with you somewhat. If MasterCard wants to offer a service their customers want, they are certainly welcome to do so. MasterCard is not a government agency. As long as data is kept private, they should be able to do whatever they want with the data. It's not like they don't have the data now. All they will be doing is a bit more data mining at the request of their customers. If I were a tree-hugging* company owner, I might be willing to pay for the data. (*"tree-hugging" is not meant to be an offensive term)
However, what happens when they release statistical information, intentionally or not, that shows that company A is producing 10x the carbon than similar company B? Might that peak the interest of government do-gooders who will want to see the data to see what company B is doing right (so they say)? Is it possible that this will uncover that some CO2 is getting out without being taxed by some future Cap-&-Trade laws, requiring government to start collecting this data themselves? I normally don't like slippery slope fallacies, but this is a really short, steep and well lubed incline that should be considered.
So, you could say I'm torn on this one. If government could keep their noses out of it, I have no problem with it. But you have to consider, when has government been able to keep its nose out of anything?
Finally, not all Republicans would oppose this and not all who oppose this will be Republicans. By accusing all who disagree with this of being "Republican trolls" you are employing a negative stereotype no different than someone claiming that Democrats are Communists, all Christians think the earth is 6000 years old, all Muslims are terrorists or Obama critics are racists. It makes you look like a bigot even though we know you are not because only those dirty Whigs are bigots.
if it is not independently testable, it is not science!
The big bang, string theory, evolution, the curvature of space/time, global warming/climate change, various theories proposed by relativity, etc are not all independently testable. Are they not science?
(Please do not troll with some test that produces evidence for one of above theories. For example, the only way to independently test the big bang would be to recreate the universe. Using an atom smasher to create a model doesn't cut it.)
Fact is that not everything in science is "independently testable", yet it is still science. And there are some theories that rely on probabilities that simply could not be reproduced, evolution, for example. You could not reproduce the conditions that made creature A evolve to creature B, and even if you could, you might end up with creature C. Inconsistent results do not necessarily violate the theory.
Great. Not one of those supported your(?) claim that "hordes of astroturfers came to tell us all that if we didn't see how a dumb-smartphone aimed at tweens with a plan of 80 dollars a month would succeed, we just didn't get it". Someone claiming "phones like this" are going to appeal to some group isn't really into advertising, unlike yourself.
No, it's marketing hype aimed at investors and stock holders. It was certainly not written by a "real" slashdotter. It was an attempted to make people believe this thing would sell and the type of drivel that marketing execs actually believe because they are optimistic to a fault by their very nature.
It's blatantly obvious that "...phones like this are going to have appeal to people who are looking one tier below a smart phone" is written by a marketing department lackey and not the type of person who would actually buy this phone.
"OMG!!! i hav to hav this to sent pony texts to my bff!!!"
That ^^^^ is the type of message an actual user of the Kin would send.
If Google was stealing from you, would you not enlist the forces of the government in getting your property back?
But that's just it. It's not like Google is going to allow me to listen to YOUR music. The only thing Google is doing is allowing me to store music that I have (presumably) already paid for. I buy a CD, rip it and upload it to Google where I can listen to it on my phone/tablet/notebook no matter where I am. How is that different than ripping my music to my MP3 player? The only thing that has changed is where the actual file is stored. If emailed my MP3 to my MSN account instead of putting it on Google's "cloud" servers, could the RIAA sue Microsoft for storing the file on their servers?
If Google is doing anything infringing, the RIAA will peel them like a baggie of crystal meth, and the sound they make on the way to the courthouse will set off car alarms on Neptune.
I don't think the RIAA would have a case unless they can show that users are storing pirated music on their servers, and even then it's not a sure thing. If the RIAA were to win based on that, they would win against every email provider that was used to email pirated material as well as any hardware manufacturers that play pirated media. That includes every computer, DVD player, tablet, smart phone and MP3 player.
I have an equally unrealistic goal of getting laid and having a larger cock.
Go to prison and you'll get both.
See, these things are possible if you just change the way you look at things. Unfortunately, like the example I gave, that's not what I had in mind when I asked for change.
It beats the hell out of the network news sites, with their pervasive cookies, auto-start videos, and general unwanted flash-a-palooza.
Drudge has a javascript refresh in place, which is how they get their massive page views every month. I really hate pointless page refreshing.
var timer = setInterval("autoRefresh()", 1000 * 60 * 3); function autoRefresh(){self.location.reload(true);}
This is not about how many page hits Drudge receives, but how many times someone clicks a link on Drudge that links to another site. Auto-refresh has no effect on that.
Also, it's not really "pointless" refreshing. The idea is to leave the page up in the background and it stays current. There is no restoring the window on Monday morning and seeing Friday's news.
Yeah. Everything to program the neanderthal Retardicans needs to be right at the front - they have a limited size buffer in those protohuman brains, if you overflow it everything else goes into the bit-bucket rather than into long-term storage.
Sorry, can't tax imports. That would be against WTO rules.
OK, then tax all oil and give however much you make off of domestic oil back to domestic oil companies in the form of subsidies. You know, like every country in the world that has state owned oil companies.
It's impossible to get cheaper prices by increasing prices (taxing imports). With the current rate of monetary expansion it's impossible for oil prices to go down. Unless the dollar stops falling in value we won't be getting cheap oil anytime soon.
Re-read my post. I said that prices will go down due to INCREASED PRODUCTION. Production goes up as a result of an artificial price floor.
I personally am not worried so much about how much oil is left. I'm worried about the pattern we're in with respect to it. It's polluting our planet and causing wars, regardless of the amount you say exists worldwide. I'm hoping we can get nuclear fusion working. Cheap, nearly unlimited energy would be a huge boon to all of us. Except the oil companies in the short run, but even they would benefit, taken as a collective of individuals.
Actually, it's your oil companies that are investing the most in other forms of energy. These guys know that as soon as a "better" form of energy is found, they are out of business. If they are the ones to discover this new form of energy, they put their competitors out of business.
I know everyone likes to call the "oil companies" or "big oil", but the fact is, these are "energy companies". Oil just happens to offer the best profit margin right now. If cars and plants start to run on milk, oil companies will gladly become dairy farmers.
134 billion barrels known, just requires more work/legislation to get at some of it. So 18 years. Still, your children would get to experience a Mad-Max style collapse of civilization.
Well, with the increase of production, oil prices would drop substantially. With lower oil prices, we could tax imported oil by the barrel and still have us paying less at the pump. Take the money you make from taxing imported oil by the barrel and invest that money into "green energy" research. With that much money invested, we will either find a cheap, sustainable energy source or it there's not one to be found and we're all screwed anyway.
*Note: The reason you tax imported oil only is to spur domestic production and offer some protection to those who are bit nervous about drilling. See, many years ago, the price of oil tanked (see what I did there?). It was so low, it actually cost more to pump it out of the ground than it was worth. Many wells were permanently capped off and investors lost their shirts. Investors have long memories and are still reluctant to drill for the hard to get at oil. Taxing imports will force a minimum price that will give investors some confidence to go ahead and drill without fear of prices dropping below their break even point.
Truth be told, I'm having a hard time believing that Pakistan didn't know he was there. I think the more likely scenario is he was there under house arrest as part of some deal he made with the Paki's. He did have access to quite a bit of money and giving the US access to Afghanistan via roadways and airspace for an extended period of time has proven to be quite lucrative to the Paki government. I think the Paki's full well knew he was there and kept pointing intel to the tribal regions for a variety of reasons.
I think the Pakistanis were keeping here there to keep the gravy train flowing. They knew that once Bin Laden was captured, our Afghanistan operations would be winding down. Now that Bin Laden is dead, expect our Afghanistan operations to be winding down within the next few years. With us not being in Afghanistan, we will have much less need for Pakistan. Since we will have no use for Pakistan, expect the funds to dry up.
you probably shouldn't be asking people to not get mad a the "facts" which are absent from your statement.
I said: unemployment was at 4.6% in Jan 2007 That is a fact.
Democrats took control of congress in Jan 2007. That is a fact.
So it appears that "facts" are not absent in my statement. The rest, correlation for sure. But sometimes, correlation really does equal causation. By decline, I mean general decline of the economy. Did it start in Jan 2007? I don't think so. There were things that happened before then that certainly contributed. THIS is a good example. But bad things happened before Jan 2007 that didn't wreck the economy. The economy tanked after September in 2001. It also took a hit due to things like hurricanes Katrina and Ike. The economy didn't tank is because congress usually acted quickly to minimize the damage. The congress before 2007 did things like pass budgets and create an economic and legislative atmosphere conducive to employment. Yes, that means business friendly. When congress does things like raise taxes on corporations, or the threatens to seize corporate profits (oil companies), corporations do things like slow investment and pass their increased costs onto consumers. These take a hit on the economy.
Fact: The principle driver of unemployment in this country right now is the construction industry. The near destruction of the housing market caused almost the total layoff of every single construction worker. Construction accounts for nearly 10% of GDP. If all the construction workers were put back to work the economy would likely come out of recession within a year.
Wasn't that $760 Billion stimulus for "shovel ready projects" supposed to take care of that? Has the problem been fixed?
Fact: Without firm long term commitments the states are unwilling to commit their own funds to projects where federal supplemental dollars aren't guaranteed.
How about we cut the gas tax to a level that will only maintain the US Interstate system and let the states fix their own roads? Why do all 50 states need to send their money to the feds so the feds can turn around and give it back? If the states don't want to pay for their road maintenance, then that state's roads will suck. What gives the feds the right to withhold federal road funds to a state for not raising the drinking age to 21 (See Louisiana)?
I think you were hoping for no change. Status quo would be what you were looking for. I'm guessing you voted with your wallet anyway and ticked off Palin/McCain which was going to be 100% status quo; more tax cuts for the rich and continuation of 0% taxes for mega corporations
Maybe they remembered the 4.6% unemployment rate in Jan 2007 when Pelosi and Reid took over congress. Maybe he was voting against this kinda thing here. You know, a tax hike on everyone, regardless of income. Maybe he thought Obama was lying when he said:
“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increases. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” --Barack Obama Sept. 12, 2008
Oh, and your "0% taxes for mega corporations" you mean like GE? If an oil company owned FoxNews and didn't pay taxes under Bush, your head would have exploded. But since it's GE that owned MSNBC and Obama, you don't care. Instead, you actually accuse Bush for "0% taxes for mega corporations".
How is forcing people to pay for the usage of the road a bad idea?
Sounds great to me, drive more pay more and if that's a problem find alternatives or live closer to where you work. I'll never understand this god give right to the automobile in this country.
Do you eat? Do you grow your own food? Well, if you eat and don't grow your own food, how does that food get to your grocery store?
You may bitch about automobiles all you want, but without them, you would starve to death.
Osama Bin Laden is dead, the economy is starting to recover after 8 years of Bush destruction, I can tolerate a bad idea or two that'll probably end up dead anywhere.
Tax vehicles flat rate per year based on their weight (as that's the true determining factor in how much damage they do to roads).
You do realize that unemployment was at 4.6% in Jan 2007, right? Do the years of sub 5% unemployment not count? Do you know what happened in Jan 2007 that started the decline? Democrats took control of congress*. Don't get mad. Those are just the facts. You can't get mad at the facts.
Don't blame Bush. Don't even blame Obama. Congress controls the economy. All the president can do is sign laws or bitch and moan until Congress forces him and calls it a compromise.
I don't know if I can blame "Democrats" necessarily for the decline in the economy. I can blame their leadership, however.
The churches my wife's dragged me to had people wearing anti-gay-marriage and pro-Prop 8 T-shirts, and the leadership openly spouted that philosophy. After getting sick of this kind of stuff, my wife's stopped dragging me to church at all.
You mean churches are teaching the Bible? For shame! How dare those evil Christians teach the book that their entire religion is based on!
Either way, opposing gay marriage is not "bashing homosexuals". Marriage is seen as a religious institution. Homosexuality is not. The two don't mix so churches tend to be against it. Churches bash homosexuality, not homosexuals, and they are against homosexuality because it's a sin in the eyes of the church. Churches tend to "bash" all sin. For example, my church has come out far more strongly against gossip than they have against homosexuality. Is the church bashing little old ladies now?
Also I have never heard of a church support "killing non-Christians, invading other countries to establish imperialism, etc." You're just making that up.
As for the Tea Partiers, all you have to do is look at what their representatives in Congress are voting for. I don't give a rat's ass what individual TPers at events are saying, you have to look at who they choose to represent them, and what they do. All I see is a lot of anti-abortion crap, no ending of funding for all these wars, and no real solutions to the budget problem.
You mean that REPUBLICANS are against abortions? Yes, I said Republicans because there is no one in Congress that lists their party affiliation as "T". How dare those bastards stand for something they got elected on!
Here's a hint for you. The TEA Party supported them because they are fiscal conservatives. That is the official TEA Party platform, or it would be if there was such a thing as the TEA Party. If there were any pro-choice Democrats or Republicans who were as adamant about following the 10th Amendment, then they would receive TEA Party support as well. For example, the TEA Party endorsed Walt Minnick, a pro-choice Democrat, because he voted against Obamacare and the stimulus. However, Minnick rejected the endorsement because the open minded Democrats like yourself would have used it against him, and the endorsement was recalled.
... and no real solutions to the budget problem.
What would you suggest? Cutting funding from unnecessary programs like Planned Parenthood and NPR? It was tried. Why didn't that pass? The government nearly shut down and all I heard about was how the Republicans were going to shut down the gov't over NPR and abortion. Strange how I never heard that DEMOCRATS were going to let the government be shut down over NPR and abortion. Maybe we could start small, like cutting a mere $60 Billion from the budget? Yeah, that didn't go over too well either.
So it appears that it doesn't really matter what plans TEA Party supported candidates suggest. None of it will pass. So rather than saying that TP supported candidates have no plans, why don't you look up those plans and find out whose keeping them from becoming law. Once that is done, you can come back and explain who has no plans to balance the budget.
Slashdot Mirror
FTFA: "a new program to help make travel carbon emissions analysis easier ... for the businesses worldwide that use MasterCard corporate cards ... to help businesses more efficiently manage their corporate card programs and meet current and future analytical needs"
This is a program that companies can sign up for, in which Mastercard will help them analyze their corporate travel programs. Al Gore isn't digging through your receipts at the sex toy shop. Ignore all the Republican trolls.
As a Libertarian/Republican, I have to agree with you somewhat. If MasterCard wants to offer a service their customers want, they are certainly welcome to do so. MasterCard is not a government agency. As long as data is kept private, they should be able to do whatever they want with the data. It's not like they don't have the data now. All they will be doing is a bit more data mining at the request of their customers. If I were a tree-hugging* company owner, I might be willing to pay for the data. (*"tree-hugging" is not meant to be an offensive term)
However, what happens when they release statistical information, intentionally or not, that shows that company A is producing 10x the carbon than similar company B? Might that peak the interest of government do-gooders who will want to see the data to see what company B is doing right (so they say)? Is it possible that this will uncover that some CO2 is getting out without being taxed by some future Cap-&-Trade laws, requiring government to start collecting this data themselves? I normally don't like slippery slope fallacies, but this is a really short, steep and well lubed incline that should be considered.
So, you could say I'm torn on this one. If government could keep their noses out of it, I have no problem with it. But you have to consider, when has government been able to keep its nose out of anything?
Finally, not all Republicans would oppose this and not all who oppose this will be Republicans. By accusing all who disagree with this of being "Republican trolls" you are employing a negative stereotype no different than someone claiming that Democrats are Communists, all Christians think the earth is 6000 years old, all Muslims are terrorists or Obama critics are racists. It makes you look like a bigot even though we know you are not because only those dirty Whigs are bigots.
if it is not independently testable, it is not science!
The big bang, string theory, evolution, the curvature of space/time, global warming/climate change, various theories proposed by relativity, etc are not all independently testable. Are they not science?
(Please do not troll with some test that produces evidence for one of above theories. For example, the only way to independently test the big bang would be to recreate the universe. Using an atom smasher to create a model doesn't cut it.)
Fact is that not everything in science is "independently testable", yet it is still science. And there are some theories that rely on probabilities that simply could not be reproduced, evolution, for example. You could not reproduce the conditions that made creature A evolve to creature B, and even if you could, you might end up with creature C. Inconsistent results do not necessarily violate the theory.
Great. Not one of those supported your(?) claim that "hordes of astroturfers came to tell us all that if we didn't see how a dumb-smartphone aimed at tweens with a plan of 80 dollars a month would succeed, we just didn't get it". Someone claiming "phones like this" are going to appeal to some group isn't really into advertising, unlike yourself.
No, it's marketing hype aimed at investors and stock holders. It was certainly not written by a "real" slashdotter. It was an attempted to make people believe this thing would sell and the type of drivel that marketing execs actually believe because they are optimistic to a fault by their very nature.
Wow again!
It's blatantly obvious that "...phones like this are going to have appeal to people who are looking one tier below a smart phone" is written by a marketing department lackey and not the type of person who would actually buy this phone.
"OMG!!! i hav to hav this to sent pony texts to my bff!!!"
That ^^^^ is the type of message an actual user of the Kin would send.
...so a starship caption can come back in time and save the world from an ambiguous dark-matter like blob from space.
Gracie is pregnant.
The title reads, "NASAsatellite Snaps First Image of Target Asteroid".
Is this a SATELLITE or a SPACECRAFT? If it's not orbiting anything, it's not really a satellite.
And, of course, it's missing a space (no pun intended) between NASA and Satellite.
If Google was stealing from you, would you not enlist the forces of the government in getting your property back?
But that's just it. It's not like Google is going to allow me to listen to YOUR music. The only thing Google is doing is allowing me to store music that I have (presumably) already paid for. I buy a CD, rip it and upload it to Google where I can listen to it on my phone/tablet/notebook no matter where I am. How is that different than ripping my music to my MP3 player? The only thing that has changed is where the actual file is stored. If emailed my MP3 to my MSN account instead of putting it on Google's "cloud" servers, could the RIAA sue Microsoft for storing the file on their servers?
If Google is doing anything infringing, the RIAA will peel them like a baggie of crystal meth, and the sound they make on the way to the courthouse will set off car alarms on Neptune.
I don't think the RIAA would have a case unless they can show that users are storing pirated music on their servers, and even then it's not a sure thing. If the RIAA were to win based on that, they would win against every email provider that was used to email pirated material as well as any hardware manufacturers that play pirated media. That includes every computer, DVD player, tablet, smart phone and MP3 player.
I just don't see that happening.
from old media, over me accessing songs I own from wherever I am, or any device I have.
What makes you think you "own" these songs?
I have an equally unrealistic goal of getting laid and having a larger cock .
Go to prison and you'll get both.
See, these things are possible if you just change the way you look at things. Unfortunately, like the example I gave, that's not what I had in mind when I asked for change.
It beats the hell out of the network news sites, with their pervasive cookies, auto-start videos, and general unwanted flash-a-palooza.
Drudge has a javascript refresh in place, which is how they get their massive page views every month.
I really hate pointless page refreshing.
This is not about how many page hits Drudge receives, but how many times someone clicks a link on Drudge that links to another site. Auto-refresh has no effect on that.
Also, it's not really "pointless" refreshing. The idea is to leave the page up in the background and it stays current. There is no restoring the window on Monday morning and seeing Friday's news.
Yeah. Everything to program the neanderthal Retardicans needs to be right at the front - they have a limited size buffer in those protohuman brains, if you overflow it everything else goes into the bit-bucket rather than into long-term storage.
THIS is for you!
Sorry, can't tax imports. That would be against WTO rules.
OK, then tax all oil and give however much you make off of domestic oil back to domestic oil companies in the form of subsidies. You know, like every country in the world that has state owned oil companies.
It's impossible to get cheaper prices by increasing prices (taxing imports). With the current rate of monetary expansion it's impossible for oil prices to go down. Unless the dollar stops falling in value we won't be getting cheap oil anytime soon.
Re-read my post. I said that prices will go down due to INCREASED PRODUCTION. Production goes up as a result of an artificial price floor.
I personally am not worried so much about how much oil is left. I'm worried about the pattern we're in with respect to it. It's polluting our planet and causing wars, regardless of the amount you say exists worldwide. I'm hoping we can get nuclear fusion working. Cheap, nearly unlimited energy would be a huge boon to all of us. Except the oil companies in the short run, but even they would benefit, taken as a collective of individuals.
Actually, it's your oil companies that are investing the most in other forms of energy. These guys know that as soon as a "better" form of energy is found, they are out of business. If they are the ones to discover this new form of energy, they put their competitors out of business.
I know everyone likes to call the "oil companies" or "big oil", but the fact is, these are "energy companies". Oil just happens to offer the best profit margin right now. If cars and plants start to run on milk, oil companies will gladly become dairy farmers.
You'd be wrong. Texas is actually a purple state, slightly blue, that was gerrymandered into a red state.
(but then I'm a Texan)
Yeah. That's why the state has voted for Republican candidates in statewide elections like senator or presidential for the last... what... 30 years?
Actually, I looked it up. The last time Texas went Democrat in a Presidential election was 1976.
Now, sure. No state is completely red or completely blue, but I think it's safe to say that Texas is has a LOT more red than blue mixed in.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_the_United_States
134 billion barrels known, just requires more work/legislation to get at some of it. So 18 years. Still, your children would get to experience a Mad-Max style collapse of civilization.
Well, with the increase of production, oil prices would drop substantially. With lower oil prices, we could tax imported oil by the barrel and still have us paying less at the pump. Take the money you make from taxing imported oil by the barrel and invest that money into "green energy" research. With that much money invested, we will either find a cheap, sustainable energy source or it there's not one to be found and we're all screwed anyway.
*Note: The reason you tax imported oil only is to spur domestic production and offer some protection to those who are bit nervous about drilling. See, many years ago, the price of oil tanked (see what I did there?). It was so low, it actually cost more to pump it out of the ground than it was worth. Many wells were permanently capped off and investors lost their shirts. Investors have long memories and are still reluctant to drill for the hard to get at oil. Taxing imports will force a minimum price that will give investors some confidence to go ahead and drill without fear of prices dropping below their break even point.
Lets get tax credits for every mile that we ride on a bicycle. That should help solve these problems.
Mark
Great idea! You could put an odometer on my bicycle and pay me for every mile I ride and save the world!
Pay no attention to that modified lawn mower engine hooked up to that bike over there.
Truth be told, I'm having a hard time believing that Pakistan didn't know he was there. I think the more likely scenario is he was there under house arrest as part of some deal he made with the Paki's. He did have access to quite a bit of money and giving the US access to Afghanistan via roadways and airspace for an extended period of time has proven to be quite lucrative to the Paki government. I think the Paki's full well knew he was there and kept pointing intel to the tribal regions for a variety of reasons.
I think the Pakistanis were keeping here there to keep the gravy train flowing. They knew that once Bin Laden was captured, our Afghanistan operations would be winding down. Now that Bin Laden is dead, expect our Afghanistan operations to be winding down within the next few years. With us not being in Afghanistan, we will have much less need for Pakistan. Since we will have no use for Pakistan, expect the funds to dry up.
Bin Laden was the golden goose for Pakistan.
Just wait until they figure out how to charge you for dark matter.
Why? Nibbler will fling it at you for free.
you probably shouldn't be asking people to not get mad a the "facts" which are absent from your statement.
I said:
unemployment was at 4.6% in Jan 2007
That is a fact.
Democrats took control of congress in Jan 2007.
That is a fact.
So it appears that "facts" are not absent in my statement. The rest, correlation for sure. But sometimes, correlation really does equal causation. By decline, I mean general decline of the economy. Did it start in Jan 2007? I don't think so. There were things that happened before then that certainly contributed. THIS is a good example. But bad things happened before Jan 2007 that didn't wreck the economy. The economy tanked after September in 2001. It also took a hit due to things like hurricanes Katrina and Ike. The economy didn't tank is because congress usually acted quickly to minimize the damage. The congress before 2007 did things like pass budgets and create an economic and legislative atmosphere conducive to employment. Yes, that means business friendly. When congress does things like raise taxes on corporations, or the threatens to seize corporate profits (oil companies), corporations do things like slow investment and pass their increased costs onto consumers. These take a hit on the economy.
Fact: The principle driver of unemployment in this country right now is the construction industry. The near destruction of the housing market caused almost the total layoff of every single construction worker. Construction accounts for nearly 10% of GDP. If all the construction workers were put back to work the economy would likely come out of recession within a year.
Wasn't that $760 Billion stimulus for "shovel ready projects" supposed to take care of that? Has the problem been fixed?
Fact: Without firm long term commitments the states are unwilling to commit their own funds to projects where federal supplemental dollars aren't guaranteed.
How about we cut the gas tax to a level that will only maintain the US Interstate system and let the states fix their own roads? Why do all 50 states need to send their money to the feds so the feds can turn around and give it back? If the states don't want to pay for their road maintenance, then that state's roads will suck. What gives the feds the right to withhold federal road funds to a state for not raising the drinking age to 21 (See Louisiana)?
I think you were hoping for no change. Status quo would be what you were looking for. I'm guessing you voted with your wallet anyway and ticked off Palin/McCain which was going to be 100% status quo; more tax cuts for the rich and continuation of 0% taxes for mega corporations
Maybe they remembered the 4.6% unemployment rate in Jan 2007 when Pelosi and Reid took over congress. Maybe he was voting against this kinda thing here. You know, a tax hike on everyone, regardless of income. Maybe he thought Obama was lying when he said:
“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increases. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”
--Barack Obama Sept. 12, 2008
Oh, and your "0% taxes for mega corporations" you mean like GE? If an oil company owned FoxNews and didn't pay taxes under Bush, your head would have exploded. But since it's GE that owned MSNBC and Obama, you don't care. Instead, you actually accuse Bush for "0% taxes for mega corporations".
How is forcing people to pay for the usage of the road a bad idea?
Sounds great to me, drive more pay more and if that's a problem find alternatives or live closer to where you work. I'll never understand this god give right to the automobile in this country.
Do you eat? Do you grow your own food? Well, if you eat and don't grow your own food, how does that food get to your grocery store?
You may bitch about automobiles all you want, but without them, you would starve to death.
Osama Bin Laden is dead, the economy is starting to recover after 8 years of Bush destruction, I can tolerate a bad idea or two that'll probably end up dead anywhere.
Tax vehicles flat rate per year based on their weight (as that's the true determining factor in how much damage they do to roads).
You do realize that unemployment was at 4.6% in Jan 2007, right? Do the years of sub 5% unemployment not count?
Do you know what happened in Jan 2007 that started the decline? Democrats took control of congress*. Don't get mad. Those are just the facts. You can't get mad at the facts.
Don't blame Bush. Don't even blame Obama. Congress controls the economy. All the president can do is sign laws or bitch and moan until Congress forces him and calls it a compromise.
I don't know if I can blame "Democrats" necessarily for the decline in the economy. I can blame their leadership, however.
The churches my wife's dragged me to had people wearing anti-gay-marriage and pro-Prop 8 T-shirts, and the leadership openly spouted that philosophy. After getting sick of this kind of stuff, my wife's stopped dragging me to church at all.
You mean churches are teaching the Bible? For shame! How dare those evil Christians teach the book that their entire religion is based on!
Either way, opposing gay marriage is not "bashing homosexuals". Marriage is seen as a religious institution. Homosexuality is not. The two don't mix so churches tend to be against it. Churches bash homosexuality, not homosexuals, and they are against homosexuality because it's a sin in the eyes of the church. Churches tend to "bash" all sin. For example, my church has come out far more strongly against gossip than they have against homosexuality. Is the church bashing little old ladies now?
Also I have never heard of a church support "killing non-Christians, invading other countries to establish imperialism, etc." You're just making that up.
As for the Tea Partiers, all you have to do is look at what their representatives in Congress are voting for. I don't give a rat's ass what individual TPers at events are saying, you have to look at who they choose to represent them, and what they do. All I see is a lot of anti-abortion crap, no ending of funding for all these wars, and no real solutions to the budget problem.
You mean that REPUBLICANS are against abortions? Yes, I said Republicans because there is no one in Congress that lists their party affiliation as "T". How dare those bastards stand for something they got elected on!
Here's a hint for you. The TEA Party supported them because they are fiscal conservatives. That is the official TEA Party platform, or it would be if there was such a thing as the TEA Party. If there were any pro-choice Democrats or Republicans who were as adamant about following the 10th Amendment, then they would receive TEA Party support as well. For example, the TEA Party endorsed Walt Minnick, a pro-choice Democrat, because he voted against Obamacare and the stimulus. However, Minnick rejected the endorsement because the open minded Democrats like yourself would have used it against him, and the endorsement was recalled.
... and no real solutions to the budget problem.
What would you suggest? Cutting funding from unnecessary programs like Planned Parenthood and NPR? It was tried. Why didn't that pass? The government nearly shut down and all I heard about was how the Republicans were going to shut down the gov't over NPR and abortion. Strange how I never heard that DEMOCRATS were going to let the government be shut down over NPR and abortion. Maybe we could start small, like cutting a mere $60 Billion from the budget? Yeah, that didn't go over too well either.
So it appears that it doesn't really matter what plans TEA Party supported candidates suggest. None of it will pass. So rather than saying that TP supported candidates have no plans, why don't you look up those plans and find out whose keeping them from becoming law. Once that is done, you can come back and explain who has no plans to balance the budget.