I would say that it is a much more serious problem, at least in the US, that most politicians have a poor grasp of the Constitution. I heard a story of a man asking a prominent senator what he thought of the 17th amendment. The senator had to ask which one is that and the man replied, "It is the one that says how you are elected."
I mostly agree. Having taught university courses I try to make it worth the students time to come and participate but I make sure to base none of my grading on attendance.
On the other hand students feel it is their money to waste and don't realize that they are only paying part of their education, my my university only 1/3, because of private donors and state tax money. How do you get these kids to avoid wasting resources? Personally, I tell them to drop if they aren't doing the work.
I am speaking from personal experience. I moved to CT a while ago and tried to get a drivers license. I waitied in various line for over 3 hours (even the wrong one because the info booth told us the wrong line), paid my fee(which I never got back), and was then told I didn't have the right stuff to get it(the website was incorrect). The employees were very rude. It took my wife several hours to register her car(she was told the wrong thing to do several times). When we moved back to Utah it took her 10 minutes to get a drivers licencse and 30 minutes to register 2 cars.
I got my citizenship and had to put up with INS for years. The virtual appointment thing is good now because you would have to go to SLC and wait an hour before it opened to get in that day. I also lost my naturalization certificate and applied for a new one. They cashed my check and I waited a year but nothing. I called and they had no clue what I was talking about. They had not record of my filing for a new certificate but they had cashed my check. They made me drive all the way to SLC ( 1 1/2 hr each way ) so I could talk to somebody. I even took my cashed check. They promised to call me but never did and after a few months the person at the national call center suggested I could either write a letter a pray for a response or go to SLC again. Finally, well after a year, the new certificate suddenly appeared in the mail.
Government is inefficient because there is no direct accountability or competition. If I don't like Dell tech support I can buy an HP next time. If I go to KFC and the employees are rude then you can bet the corporate office wants to know and will do something about it. If not I can go somewhere else.
My definitions are according to what James Madison meant. Modern defintions have merged the two terms. Political and major media leaders have pushed the idea that they are the same. It is not hard for leaders to scare and manipulate people into giving up their rights under a democracy and hence those in charge create an oligarchy just like every other form of government besides a republic.
I am not against government. Government is very necessary to protect rights and wealth. There are some things to government wants to do. The problem is that we have turned into a democracy instead of a republic. What is the difference? In a republic we follow law and in this constitutional republic we follow the Constitution. In a democracy the majority rules and quite frankly there are too many stupid people, including myself, who are too easily manipulated. Democracy has failed over and over again in history. Why? Because 51% soon realize that they can rob the public treasury. The 10th amendment in the Constitution limits the powers of the federal government. Unfortunately they have ignored this and gotten into things such as education, handouts, and many other unconstitutional things. Even if 51% want it it is illegal because the Constitution must be amended. Why have we become a democracy instead of a republic? That is a long story but it has a lot to do with the 17th amendment.
People in a job in private industy often work hard because they want their company to grow so they can gain financial rewards. They make things more efficient and come up with innovative ideas and they get a nice big bonus check because of this. Does this happen in government? No.
If the anybody can screw up a big project like that it is the government. If it was 170 million of somebody's own money I think that it would have been done a lot better but since it is only the taxpayers money they seem to really mess things up. Perhaps this is one of the many reason we should limit the federal govt to their proper role as given in the Constitution.
Well said. I also feel sorry for all those people living off of the government and becoming slaves to the government. Try reading http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/790.html
What is science? It is an attempt to explain natural phenomenon. Is it always correct? I would say that it is almost never correct in modeling nature but it is good enough at that point. Better models are continually developed. Some of this stuff doesn't even include a hypothesis and testing so it is really just philosophy and not even science. Does it contradict religion? Depends on your religion. Correct science never contradicts correct religious truths. Can we tell when science is correct? Not really because we are all too stupid. Can we tell when relgious truths are correct? Yes we can. We can ask communicate with God and ask him to tell us. Whether we chose to actually find out and then live those truths is up to us.
Actually the United States was set up a little differently. I think we all recognize the checks and balances that were put in to avoid the accumulation of power. What we don't realize is the seperation of power bases and how it has become warped. First we have Congress which is accountable to the people. All spending must start there. Then we have the Senate which was elected by the state legislatures. Before the income tax they got a lot of money from the states and that is who they were accountable to. This was done away with the 17th Amendment. Then the President was accountable to the Electoral College which is now warped.
Now the power base is the people and allows the fed to drive us trillions of dollars in debt promising everything to the people ( buying votes ).
We have lost our ability to chose on online gambling. Because congress had surrendered some of our sovergnty to the WTO. Some countries claim they export online gambling and claim that we must import it.
Ever heard of a company called cyberrebate? Everything was free after rebate and they sent rebates for a while and then went 'bankrupt'. They had artificially inflated prices and people would used credit cards with the cash back option and didn't mind until people lost thousands and some hundreds of thousands of dollars. I bet some people got really big bonuses right before they went under.
Here is a great analogy of Russian thinking vs US thinking.
Americans realized that they couldn't right with a pen in space so they spent millions of dollars developing one that could. The Russians just used a pencil.
Nobody does family history like the LDS church. Check out www.familysearch.org. You can even download free software. It is interesting some of the changes they are doing such as scanning in petabytes of microfilm and indexing it through thousands of volunteers. They are also going to try to make some sort of a world tree using a wiki-like format. I also believe they are going to incorporate GIS data so you can see where people have moved around.
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I would say that it is a much more serious problem, at least in the US, that most politicians have a poor grasp of the Constitution. I heard a story of a man asking a prominent senator what he thought of the 17th amendment. The senator had to ask which one is that and the man replied, "It is the one that says how you are elected."
You can read about Pete's online debate at www.utahdebate.org.
I once had an All Hands Meeting on a Friday the 13th. They laid off 20% of the work force.
You mean government doesn't have to fund all research by forcibly taking money from its citizens?
Where in the Constitution does it authorize him to spend many billions of dollars on the space program?
We cannot ban it according to the World Trade Organization. It seems that the US congress have given away some of their sovereignty.
Why are people always complaining about Vista breaking everything?
Unless somebody emailed to you.
It is interesting how much we blast China for not giving freedoms to its citizens. Do not US citizens realize the same thing is happening to them?
I ask them if they are interested in hearing about my church. It is suprising how many telemarketers are interested.
Then don't spend money that you can't pay back. Why do people without a job have credit when there isn't a way for them to pay it back?
I mostly agree. Having taught university courses I try to make it worth the students time to come and participate but I make sure to base none of my grading on attendance. On the other hand students feel it is their money to waste and don't realize that they are only paying part of their education, my my university only 1/3, because of private donors and state tax money. How do you get these kids to avoid wasting resources? Personally, I tell them to drop if they aren't doing the work.
I am speaking from personal experience. I moved to CT a while ago and tried to get a drivers license. I waitied in various line for over 3 hours (even the wrong one because the info booth told us the wrong line), paid my fee(which I never got back), and was then told I didn't have the right stuff to get it(the website was incorrect). The employees were very rude. It took my wife several hours to register her car(she was told the wrong thing to do several times). When we moved back to Utah it took her 10 minutes to get a drivers licencse and 30 minutes to register 2 cars. I got my citizenship and had to put up with INS for years. The virtual appointment thing is good now because you would have to go to SLC and wait an hour before it opened to get in that day. I also lost my naturalization certificate and applied for a new one. They cashed my check and I waited a year but nothing. I called and they had no clue what I was talking about. They had not record of my filing for a new certificate but they had cashed my check. They made me drive all the way to SLC ( 1 1/2 hr each way ) so I could talk to somebody. I even took my cashed check. They promised to call me but never did and after a few months the person at the national call center suggested I could either write a letter a pray for a response or go to SLC again. Finally, well after a year, the new certificate suddenly appeared in the mail. Government is inefficient because there is no direct accountability or competition. If I don't like Dell tech support I can buy an HP next time. If I go to KFC and the employees are rude then you can bet the corporate office wants to know and will do something about it. If not I can go somewhere else.
My definitions are according to what James Madison meant. Modern defintions have merged the two terms. Political and major media leaders have pushed the idea that they are the same. It is not hard for leaders to scare and manipulate people into giving up their rights under a democracy and hence those in charge create an oligarchy just like every other form of government besides a republic.
I am not against government. Government is very necessary to protect rights and wealth. There are some things to government wants to do. The problem is that we have turned into a democracy instead of a republic. What is the difference? In a republic we follow law and in this constitutional republic we follow the Constitution. In a democracy the majority rules and quite frankly there are too many stupid people, including myself, who are too easily manipulated. Democracy has failed over and over again in history. Why? Because 51% soon realize that they can rob the public treasury. The 10th amendment in the Constitution limits the powers of the federal government. Unfortunately they have ignored this and gotten into things such as education, handouts, and many other unconstitutional things. Even if 51% want it it is illegal because the Constitution must be amended. Why have we become a democracy instead of a republic? That is a long story but it has a lot to do with the 17th amendment. People in a job in private industy often work hard because they want their company to grow so they can gain financial rewards. They make things more efficient and come up with innovative ideas and they get a nice big bonus check because of this. Does this happen in government? No.
If the anybody can screw up a big project like that it is the government. If it was 170 million of somebody's own money I think that it would have been done a lot better but since it is only the taxpayers money they seem to really mess things up. Perhaps this is one of the many reason we should limit the federal govt to their proper role as given in the Constitution.
Well said. I also feel sorry for all those people living off of the government and becoming slaves to the government. Try reading http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/790.html
What is science? It is an attempt to explain natural phenomenon. Is it always correct? I would say that it is almost never correct in modeling nature but it is good enough at that point. Better models are continually developed. Some of this stuff doesn't even include a hypothesis and testing so it is really just philosophy and not even science. Does it contradict religion? Depends on your religion. Correct science never contradicts correct religious truths. Can we tell when science is correct? Not really because we are all too stupid. Can we tell when relgious truths are correct? Yes we can. We can ask communicate with God and ask him to tell us. Whether we chose to actually find out and then live those truths is up to us.
Actually the United States was set up a little differently. I think we all recognize the checks and balances that were put in to avoid the accumulation of power. What we don't realize is the seperation of power bases and how it has become warped. First we have Congress which is accountable to the people. All spending must start there. Then we have the Senate which was elected by the state legislatures. Before the income tax they got a lot of money from the states and that is who they were accountable to. This was done away with the 17th Amendment. Then the President was accountable to the Electoral College which is now warped. Now the power base is the people and allows the fed to drive us trillions of dollars in debt promising everything to the people ( buying votes ).
I love your sig.
We have lost our ability to chose on online gambling. Because congress had surrendered some of our sovergnty to the WTO. Some countries claim they export online gambling and claim that we must import it.
Ever heard of a company called cyberrebate? Everything was free after rebate and they sent rebates for a while and then went 'bankrupt'. They had artificially inflated prices and people would used credit cards with the cash back option and didn't mind until people lost thousands and some hundreds of thousands of dollars. I bet some people got really big bonuses right before they went under.
Here is a great analogy of Russian thinking vs US thinking. Americans realized that they couldn't right with a pen in space so they spent millions of dollars developing one that could. The Russians just used a pencil.
Nobody does family history like the LDS church. Check out www.familysearch.org. You can even download free software. It is interesting some of the changes they are doing such as scanning in petabytes of microfilm and indexing it through thousands of volunteers. They are also going to try to make some sort of a world tree using a wiki-like format. I also believe they are going to incorporate GIS data so you can see where people have moved around.
PAF is great. Not open source but is free from familysearch.org