That "same economic path" has been a Progressive path since the New Deal and the Great Society. Wealth redistribution has never worked. Never. Never, ever, ever, ever.
The new deal was an illusion? Neat trick.
Wealth redistribution is nothing more than lowering everyone's personal wealth and standards of living to the lowest common denominator no matter how much or little one contributes to society and the economy.
No, that would be socialism. Progressive taxation taxes the wealthy more, but not so much that it eliminates the incentive to work. Money makes money and that is unfortunate because it removes the incentive to work. Progressive taxation that balances wealth condensation gets us as close to a meritocracy as possible and maximizes incentive for everyone. By raising taxes on the high end we end wealth consolidation and the rich get poorer gradually... unless they actually get off their asses and do something useful.
You cannot equalize outcomes without removing individual freedom and the incentive to create wealth.
Which is why you don't equalize outcomes. Wealth should not be punished, but neither should it be the foremost factor in making more wealth. The trick is to balance it... but right now wealth is what matters, more than intelligence or hard work and THAT removes incentive for everyone.
I don't make $200K...less than that, but hell...I"m already paying about 33% in taxes...I don't need to pay more.
So tax increases for people above $200K wouldn't make a difference to you.
I don't see it as bad as you do no. Should a day laborer make near as much as I do? No.
How would tax raises on the high end make a difference to the relative income of either of you?
I think the Fair Tax has provisions for people that make under a certain level to get refunds, etc for the basics of life, so it isn't quite so regressive...
I'm not opposed to such a model, I just don't see it ever happening. I'm willing to settle for working models from recent history.
I know people that make in the $200K range.Sure, they have more than me, but not THAT much more where you want to soak them for tax money.
Yes, because right now they're paying less in taxes than their peers in the 60's, 70,s or 80's did and if you haven't noticed our economy is going down the shitter paying interest on deficit. Sorry, but we need to make sacrifices, and people at the top end (which I am some years) aren't feeling any pain while the rest of the country is really, really suffering, like standing on street corners with a sign and living in tents down by the expressway suffering.
But screw it...if you make $1M, you should not have to pay half of it in fucking taxes...that just kills incentive to make money.
No it doesn't. People always want to make more money, regardless of having to pay a portion of it in taxes. making a million and paying $500K in taxes is still better than making $750K and paying half in taxes.
Look back on what soaking the rich have done
Okay tax levels like we had in the 50's through much of the 80's were much, much higher for the rich than now and it was also some of the most prosperous ties for our economy. I don't see the downside.
You and so many other people for some reason thing[sic] it is wrong, almost sinful to make a lot of money and enjoy their means.
It's not wrong at all. When did I write that? Rather, I want a sustainable economy where wealth does not automatically result in more wealth. Rather, taxation should match the influence of wealth condensation. If a someone is born wealthy, fine, but that money should slowly piss away to taxes unless they work and make money, thus providing them with incentive to work. The situation we have now is that rich or poor, you're almost certain to end the same way. Working hard means next to nothing compared to being born wealthy and if you're wealthy you don't have to do anything except profit from your existing wealth. It leads to wealth consolidating more and more in an unsustainable fashion until the economy collapses upon itself, and we're almost there.
The US was built for equal opportunities to be out there...not that everyone would have equal access or a level playing field to start, nor a right to getting a piece of it if they were stupid, lazy, unsuccessful, unlucky..etc.
The closer we are to a meritocracy the closer we are to maximizing the incentive for everyone. If circumstance of birth is more important than intelligence or hard work (which without progressive taxation it is) then we reduce incentive for everyone. We're on the road to collapse and the level of progressiveness of our taxation is unsustainable. If we keep on this road we will fall hard, as we started to with our mini recession and as we did in the great depression.
$200K a year is NOT wealthy. In some cities...you can't get a dump of an apt on that salary (NYC for instance...SF another).
Median family income is $81136 in San Francisco and $48631 in New York City proper. You're telling me people making more than three times the median income of a household can't afford a crappy apartment? So by your estimation 75% or so of each city is homeless?
Maybe you don't feel wealthy but if you're making more than $200K, yeah you can afford more taxes than most everyone else.
If you're talking about hitting everyone..well, then lets hit EVERYONE. Lets throw some federal tax on those 49% or so that currently pay no taxes. I'm not talking milk them dry, but they should pay something...
You're an idiot. No really, you're an idiot. The bottom 50% of our society has NO net wealth. Their debt and assets balance out. They are already fucking bled dry by cost of housing (rent or mortgage interest), cost of schooling loan interest(which is still the best economic choice in many cases), credit card penalties and interest on the food and clothes and goods they buy, and cost of healthcare. These are just like taxes on being born poor, except they're paid to the wealthy who own the property and have the assets to loan instead of the government. They're already doing more than their share via sales tax, and most have no realistic prospect of ever gaining any real wealth. Meanwhile the people in the highest tax brackets are gaining wealth faster than ever before, even in this ruin of an economy. And then there's the waste of it all. If it were just wealth being transferred, well we could fix that. But it isn't. It is real wealth being destroyed in the process as homes are foreclosed on, sit empty, and deteriorate; as small business close and sit empty assets being thrown away in many cases; as farms are fallow and fill with weeds.
You need to pull your head out of your ass and take a look around at this country. Look at the distribution of wealth and the american dream that is upward mobility. 30 years ago we weren't like Europe where old money families ran the show and you were trapped in the strict social class in which you were born. Today much of Europe has significantly better upward mobility than the US. We're the stagnant country with laws written by elitist moneyed interests to tip the table so far in their direction few will ever succeed and in doing so they'll make more money for the established players than themselves. If you can look at the wealth disparity numbers for the US over the last 70 years and not see the problem, then you are hopeless.
The only thing the government can do is impede job creation and economic growth, or get out of the way so the private sector can.
I wonder if your realize what you wrote. Only the government can impede job creation or let the private sector impede job creation?
I suggest reading what I wrote again, only this time with comprehension as the goal. There's a difference between "government can only" and "only government can".
Yes there is a difference. So about that... perhaps you can tell me (with your vast knowledge of the english language) what is the subject associated with the clause you wrote, "...so the private sector can". So the private sector can what? You need to refresh your grammar skills.
Government job creation in the private sector through subsidies typically last only as long as the subsidies do.
Citation?
It also ties up money & credit in the government that the private sector could use to create wealth & jobs.
Could use... but almost certainly would not and would instead invest overseas or would use to take ever larger shares of the income of the poor, as through collection of rent and credit card interest and penalties.
Keynesian economics has been proven not to work. Even JFK understood this.
Modern descendants of Keynesian economics make up the most popular macroeconomic theories taught today.
By that logic does that mean that Windows, since it's the most popular, is the best operating system?
No, but seeing as it is the most popular operating system I think it's fair to say that it hasn't been proven that Windows 95 doesn't work. Please try not to misleadingly take things out of context, it just muddies the argument and gives me the impression you're trying not to answer questions directly, but just defend your ego, in which case there is no point in discussion as it can never be productive.
It has never been shown to work on any significant scale or over any significant length of time. Government spending intended to create jobs suffers from the "broken window" fallacy.
The broken window fallacy only applies if you're talking about the government making work that is not useful, i.e. digging a ditch then filling it back in. If, however, you're talking about useful projects like creating the internet, hydroelectric dams, locks, bridges, roads, rails, researching new technologies, curing people of illnesses, or building needed homes it is often the case that it is needful for society in order to build up resources needed to move the economy forward. Maybe you need to revisit the broken window fallacy again. Your understanding of economics seems a bit poor.
The sad fact of it is, wealth in this country has consolidated to such levels that in the 60's we would have labelled ourselves a banana republic. Like during the great depression wealth condensation is out of control and upward mobility is plummeting. Back then, eventually the wealthy became scared enough that the new deal was brokered, wealth was redistributed via public works and progressive taxation. But we did not learn from history and since Reagan we've been back on the same economic path until things came to a head with the banking and housing collapses. More of the same does not fix anything. Cutting spending would be disastrous in the short term as any economist you consult will tell you, and we may never pull back out of it, at least not without real economic collapse. You had your wake up call, now you just need to understand what happened and why. I suggest you start by looking at tax rates across the history of our nation.
Well, first, if you example is using Grandpa as the US federal govt...not valid.
Nope, try again.
And in a family situation...if Mom and Junior have run the family so far into debt, yes..sacrifices need to be made to get out of it.
You are redefining the analogy. The family is not in debt. Mam and Junior are. The family is wealthy, just like the US. It's just half the family has negative or no wealth while one member of the family is filthy rich.
Happens all the time in the real world...yes, Suzie might have to drop outta college if the family made such poor decisions.
Clearly you're a republican:) Cut education and investment in the children, so the one rich guy in family can pay less than his share supporting the family. That's been working swimmingly eh?
Also, they may need to sell a car...
They don't own a car, remember they're taking the bus.
Ok..well, raising taxes, as many call for...income taxes from working people, never really ever touches those extremely wealthy people you talk about. Guess what? They don't work, they don't earn a paycheck to tax.
Wow, that's really a weird idea you have there. Income is the result of much more than paychecks, like investments and interest and rental income. Taxing the wealthy does work WHEN YOU TAX THE WEALTHY which we haven't been doing. We just had to give them another huge tax cut just to keep taxes from going up on the poor because our legislators are so corrupt. Taxes on the highest brackets were 20-30% higher during good economic times and were were not going into debt, you think that's a coincidence?
If you can figure a way to just hit them....let me know
Are you shitting me? Obama proposed renewing the tax cuts for everyone making less than $200K a year and could not get it through because the corrupt dirtbags in charge filibustered it. Reform voting rules in congress, get rid of tax havens and loopholes for the rich, and pass a fucking tax increase for people making more than a few hundred grand a year and use it to pay of the national debt. That ONLY targets the rich and every fucking economist and his brother has been saying we need to do just that (with the exception fo a few bought and paid for quote makers at GOP thinktanks who for some reason think we need to keep lowering taxes for the high end just like we have been for the last 20 years).
In a free country like this, I honestly can't think of a way to just target the extreme wealthy who are the ones who have the disproportionate amount of the wealth in the US.
You clearly haven't been paying any attention to economics or politics then.
"Cutting government spending basically means punching the economy in the nose. It needs to be done, but not right now. We need to spend smarter in ways that will bring the economy back first. "
Yeah, that worked out SO well the first two years of the current administration, eh?
What are you babbling about? No administration has ever significantly cut spending regardless of who's running what parts of the executive and legislature.
Government does not create jobs...not sustainable ones.
Never heard of the military eh? It's these guys in camouflage... well you can look it up.
We need to govt to get the hell OUT of the attempted job creation market.
Because that's worked so well in the past?
Let the citizens keep more of their OWN money to spend it on businesses and jobs...the private sector creates the jobs that pay the taxes to keep the govt afloat, not the other way around.
Seriously? You're arguing for trickle down economics? Seriously? I'm flabbergasted. Even Greenspan has walked away from that turd by now.
I mean, what logical person looks and sees they are heavily in debt from spending $10K a year on CC's with only minimal payments, and thinks to themselves..."Hey...I need to control this and get outta debt...I'll promise myself not to spend any more than $10K next year, and I'll make sure to spend less on booze and more on food in this next year too...yeah, that'll do it...that's the ticket..."
There are many significant differences between an individual's accounts and that of a country. You can begin to get an idea if you look at a family's accounts. So mom and junior have high credit card debt, but at the same time grandpa is a multimillionaire. Does it then make sense as a family to stop spending on things like bus fare to get to work and thus stop working? Shouldn't we stop spending until the credit cards are paid off? Or you know, grandpa could pay off the credit cards at the same time as we continue spending bus fare to get to work, keep paying for young Suzie's education and keep paying for brother Tim's antibiotics until he's well enough to go back to work.
The problem isn't that the US is lacking in wealth. It's that the wealth has all moved into the hands of a few people who pay a smaller percentage of their wealth as taxes than they used to and don't reinvest it in the US anymore, all while racking up debt on behalf of everyone and the interest that goes with it. Trickle down doesn't work because it is really trickle out of the country and/or hoard it. We tried it for decades and it drove us right into the shit we're in now, just as most economists said it would.
"Cutting government spending basically means punching the economy in the nose."
Government does not create jobs nor grow the economy in any meaningful and lasting way.
Not in the long term particularly, but it absolutely does in the short term. Cutting government funding cuts jobs because it is employing people and that's all there is to it. Cutting jobs leads to less people with real income which leads to less spending. In the long term it might even out, but we don't have that luxury as we're starting to come out of a depression.
The only thing the government can do is impede job creation and economic growth, or get out of the way so the private sector can.
I wonder if your realize what you wrote. Only the government can impede job creation or let the private sector impede job creation?
The government absolutely can help job creation and often does.
Keynesian economics has been proven not to work. Even JFK understood this.
Modern descendants of Keynesian economics make up the most popular macroeconomic theories taught today. Oh, and citing JFK as your authority on the economy isn't exactly convincing.
Quite simply, for me, titling his book with the pejorative "The God Delusion" directly demonstrates he tries in no way whatsoever to "separate his role as a scientist and educator from his role as an advocate for the atheist belief system".
What does that have to do with it? That's a book about the philosophy of theology, not the science of biology. If someone writes bout their theological beliefs that means they can't separately act a a teacher that does not push those beliefs in an educational setting?
He wants to be in the theology "space", in the form of denying any validity to theology.
Yes he does. He is also in the science and education space. That doesn't mean one always has to interfere with the other.
As far as the evidence, the evidence calls for a conclusion of "evolution occurs", as I've stated.
Which as an educator is exactly what he says.
This qualification does not help with his "delusion" polemic, though, so he just extends his position beyond what's scientifically valid as a testable claim.
Which is him speaking as a philosopher, not just a scientist, although one might say it would be unscientific to form a belief with no scientific support.
And to that I have to object from a standpoint of respect for science.
Object all you like, but don't go forming completely incorrect opinions about the beliefs of others and then telling others that is what Dawkins or someone else says when, in fact, you're saying just the opposite of what he's actually said (as demonstrated by the video I linked to). It seems it is you that is having trouble separating your scientific and religious beliefs as you're failing to recognize his contributions as a scientist and educator in the field of science and making unfounded suppositions about his beliefs as biased by your opinions of his philosophical beliefs and your assumptions about how you wrongly think that influences him.
In short, you need to be more careful about slandering people when you tell us all what someone "and his ilk" believe. Do your research first.
Putting a huge tax on gas will get you voted out of office in the next election, put a slow but steady tax in and it will just change buying habits over time.
I think it is even more palatable to the people to cut the government subsidies first.
Trouble is...even shifting money around is not what we need to be doing right now. We need to CUT spending...and drastically!! Cut things and use that to pay down the debt.
Cutting government spending basically means punching the economy in the nose. It needs to be done, but not right now. We need to spend smarter in ways that will bring the economy back first. Also, we need to raise tax rates on the high end and get rid of tax loopholes for corporations and high end individuals. Simply restoring tax rates to sane levels like we had in the 60's would allow us to start paying off the deficit.
Now that's not to say we shouldn't cut any particular spending. Much of what we're spending on now is not needed and can be cut, but the tertiary effects of government spending create a lot of jobs and we NEED those jobs right now a lot more than the ultra wealthy need a larger chunk of their income or corporations need to be able to park their assets offshore. No corporation with any sense is walking away from the US market and they're already walking away for manufacturing to cheaper places. How exactly does making them pay their taxes hurt the US?
If I had the power to set curriculums but didn't have the balls/backing to take a stand against mystics, here's what I'd do. Don't stress evolution. Instead, talk about how science works. Explain what a "theory" is, how they come into being and how they're tested. And then do not move on until the student understand these basics. Make it 50% of their grade if you have to.
I absolutely agree. After having met an engineer with a B.S. who didn't know what the scientific method was or how to apply it, it became clear to me this is seriously lacking in our education system.
If the mystics demand that faith be taught as a rival to evolution, let it happen; all you have to do is frame the issues in scientific terms.
I disagree with this. If you're a teacher, this is possibly an acceptable method. As an administrator, however, you're reliant upon teachers to implement this. Sadly, a great many teachers have religious beliefs that conflict with properly educating children and those teachers can easily sabotage this. Even if the teacher is not a problem, you have parents, religious leaders, and other influences undermining the process and not just with regard to evolution, but in the process science altogether. When a kid learns science and then evolution as an example, it is far to easy for any of the above people to miseducate them by attacking the methodology and thus discrediting all of science in the eyes of an impressionable youth talking to authority figures.
The nuts are able to get away with saying, "science class should expose our children to all the possibilities," but they won't get away with "science class should teach our kids to ignore their observations" or "science class should not explain how theories are tested."
Right now, yeah they do because most people don't understand the scientific method. They might as well be saying "science class should teach our kids observation sycophant mammalian". People don't care and they tune it all out except the vitriol about how schools are attacking god. If it conflicts with their belief about god or they think it does, many people just don't care what it is conflicting unless it is something they already understand and is obvious to them.
I agree with your goals and much of your methodology but I seriously disagree with the idea that evolution should be an example of the scientific method until much, much later in the educational process. Make sure kids have the basics and are using and apply the method and understand how it has been applied to non-controversial theories in basic science classes. Teach evolution as a another theory in biology later on, and then is the appropriate time to see how it applies in that case.
Religious nutbags need to be suppressed for the good of human kind. And to be perfectly clear, if you believe in a god at all, you are, in my opinion, a religious nutbag.
You were fine until you proved yourself an extremist.
Sometimes it's okay to be an extremist; when you're extremely correct on a topic. Sometimes extremes are vital to society, extremes like separation of church and state. The government should not be favoring any one religion nor have any part in pushing religion. Hell, I don't even think they should be involved in marriages. It makes for a more free and more diverse and robust society. If a political appointee or member of government cannot separate their religious beliefs from their job as a member of the government they should be removed from office for violating this basic principal of our government and for incompetence.
It seems that we as a country would be better served if teachers were required to major in some subject matter and take a couple of courses, like a minor, in managing the classroom, etc. Maybe then, we wouldn't have biology teachers unsure of things like evolution.
I don't know that most biology teachers are unsure of evolution, just they don't teach it. Lots of people believe in evolution but aren't going to challenge their bosses or make a lot of extra work for themselves or risk their career in order to make sure others get it. As to your second point, I've been on both sides of your hypothesis. I've had great teachers who really knew their material, like a high school chem teacher with an advanced degree that really was great at explaining things to advanced students. I also had a high school trigonometry teacher that was a lightning calculator and absolutely brilliant at math, but completely unable to express these topics in a way that made sense or to apply basic methods of teaching so that kids could learn them. I took college courses from some of the brightest minds in their field, but who had no real interest in teaching nor any aptitude in being able to explain their ideas or even basic concepts in their field in the english language.
Teaching is a field of study in and of itself. Ideally we would have brilliant, dedicated teachers cross trained in education and in the subject matter. If we have to pick one or the other, maybe it should be on a case by case basis where their ability to actually teach is measured by the performance of their students (realtive to those students' performance other years).
Science is doing fine in schools... You can teach kids that the Easter bunny made the world but when they go to compete in the global science arena they don't bring him along.
The problem is, most of our society never moves along to compete in the global science arena. Most of our populace is responsible for voting in people who have huge influence on how much opportunity we have to compete in the global science arena. The US turns out many of the best scientific minds in the world. A few of them stay in the US. But the rest of our society is sliding further and further into ignorance compared to the rest of the world and that does make a big difference in our society.
Why is it always evolution? Seriously. Why do you care whether people understand biological evolution?
It's always some topic: evolution, heliocentrism, round earth, germ theory. The pushback isn't always about just that theory. Whether or not people accept that the earth is round has little effect upon most people's lives. It's about science and logical, scientifically founded belief systems as a value for our culture. It's about what acceptance or rejection of such a well supported theory implies about acceptance of other theories and about scientific decision making going forward. If people don't accept evolution, what will they think of scientific opinions about the dangers of biotechnology. What will they think about scientific determinations about the dangers of global warming? What will they think about the possibility of pollution and deforestation making our grandchildren's lives horrible? Do those same people making illogical and unscientific opinions and pushing for those opinions to be taught to everyone also think some magical god will save us from the consequences of our actions or that that magical being will end the world and take us to magic land? Do we want that sort of decision making being taught?
In order to reject evolution, you have to either reject or fail to understand logical thinking and the scientific method. I think most everyone would agree both those topics are more important to our culture than just one theory, but it's the same people pushing against that one theory that are undermining the former concepts in order to do it. They don't want their kids to understand science, because the magic man will punish them. They don't want your kids to understand science, because the magic man will punish them. They want the results of science, but they don't want people to be able to apply the scientific method because doing so might result in punishment by the magic man.
We want a society where kids are taught logic and science such that they apply them in their lives and the theory of evolution, like most any other very well supported theory, is a no-brainer. Other elements in our society don't know what science or logic is. They are synonyms for "smart stuff" or "book lernin'" or "correct". They want people to believe what they believe and they're happy to redefine science as "memorize this book of facts we decided are good, but don't learn any methods that will lead you into the arms of the bad magic man with horns". There really isn't a lot of middle ground. Either we teach the scientific method and evolution is obvious to students, or we don't teach the scientific method and we kowtow to people's superstitions and fall behind the world technologically, as many other societies have in the past.
I find it ironic that scientific people, that pride themselves on being open minded, are so willing to be closed minded when it comes to the THEORY of evolution. Nothing is conclusive about it.
Scientists use science to form mutable beliefs. A scientist believes whatever the best supported theory is, best supported by scientific testing. Evolution has been tested and slightly altered and tested again and again and again to the point where, while there are still details that are in question, you'd have to be a complete moron to have actually studied the data and think that it will ever be "disproven". For all practical intents and purposes, it is a fact.
In fact, there have been numerous scientific studies on the possibility of creation.
There has not been a single scientific study I know of that presents any support for creation of our species being guided by an intelligent being. You claim there have been "scientific studies". Fine, what experiment was performed, what test, what study that would falsify intelligent design? That is a requirement for a scientific test you know. Evolution would have been disproven if we had found the mechanism for coding human growth and it was not inherited directly. Evolution would have been disproven if there had not been a mechanism that inserted random errors into DNA. Evolution would have been disproven if all the DNA we found was not related in a hierarchy. Evolution would have been disproven if the rate of changes and the age of the planet had conflicted. Evolution would have been disproven if fossils with intermediate characteristics between other fossils could not be found to have ages consistent with the change. Evolution would have been disproven if studies of environmental stressors did not lead to predictable changes in characteristics for quick breeding populations. I could go on, but there really isn't a lot of point.
You cannot dismiss creationism simply because it is associated with religion.
Agreed. You can dismiss it because it has no scientific support as a hypothesis.
The fact that the earth revolves around the sun has been proven. Period.
No it hasn't. You can prove math and formal logic. You can only find overwhelming support for a theory such as heliocentrism. Also, typing a period, then the word 'period', then another period is idiotic and redundant. Please stop doing it.
I find that species that evolve into completely different species requires more "faith" on my part than believing in a creator.
If faith enters into it at all, you're not forming beliefs scientifically and you're just another irrational person forming your beliefs based upon emotion and trying to justify them with rationalizations. Please take the time to learn the scientific method as it is probably the most useful intellectual tool of the last millennium and responsible for pretty much every technological advance you rely upon today. Your ignorance is dragging the rest of us down.
"Evolution occurs" should not pose any issue to any theists.
"-Only- evolution occurs" as a complete, exclusive causal explanation for intelligent life does, but it also is an unscientific, untestable premise, and for these reasons shouldn't be taught as "science" anyway.
The latter equivocation is, unfortunately, the only form of the premise Dawkins et al care about...
I don't know where you formed this belief, but it seems completely wrong. Watch this discussion between Dawkins and one of those nutjobs from a group trying to force creationism to be taught in schools. In it Dawkins explains how he tries to separate his role as a scientist and educator from his role as an advocate for the atheist belief system. He goes on to explain why it's important to him that she accept evolution as fact, even if she does so believing that it was all guided by her christian god. This is because as a scientist and educator it is his responsibility to get people to look at and understand the evidence instead of dismissing belief and refusing to look at evidence. He calls the evidence elegant and seems honestly passionate about helping people to educate themselves, even if they hold irrational beliefs about things that can never be proven or disproven.
60% teach both evolution and ID and do not make claims as to their validity.
The article does not say that. It says they avoid the topic altogether, which likely means they don't teach the theory of evolution at all and I don't even know how you'd teach the hypothesis of intelligent design.
I don't think the type of person who will want this car cares about driving super fast, and the type of person that does want a fast car won't want this one. Why try catering to both markets?
Maybe it is a single market but that market uses it in two different ways. For example, as a commuter car this might make for real savings, but not have quite enough top end to make everyone comfortable driving on the expressway where the flow is going 80 and you might need to accelerate to get out the way in some circumstance. As a result, you make a dual mode car that saves the most gas, around town and saves a lot of gas and can still be safe on expressway trips. Calling it a "sport" mode does seem a little over the top though.
This shouldn't even be an issue for Corporate networks as both of those sites are probably blacklisted on the proxy server.
I don't think this is true. Most corporations these days have twitter and Facebook accounts as marketing tools. Also the execs like to go one there and spout nonsense and us it for recreation In many companies employees are encouraged to visit both sites during the day. I'm not sure of the reasoning for this (other than to make them seem more popular?) but I've seen it at several corporations.
Anyway, this example fails, because newpapers aready refuse to print things they don't agree with, regularly.
As is their right, but there are a lot of newspapers and people subscribe to a variety of them. You'll note the post office, UP, and even Fedex cannot and does not refuse to transport those newspapers. It's called being a "common carrier" which grants particular privileges and restrictions. Privileges granted to current ISPs, but without the corresponding protections for the people... which is what net neutrality is trying to fix.
Free speech is about protecting citizens from the government.
In a legal sense you're right... of course corporations are government charters so free speech does apply somewhat in that regard.
Internet access isn't a free speech issue unless the government is your ISP.
So, if a single company had a monopoly on paper and telephones and that company was the only one given access to the resources needed to make paper as a result of laws passed by the government; and that company restricted free speech, the one layer of distance between the government and company would be enough so that you wouldn't consider free speech to be infringed despite your being unable to print a newsletter that says what you want?
If people's ability and individual choice of being able to say what they want is threatened, I consider it a free speech issue, even if it is not necessarily a violation of the first amendment in legal terms.
Sysadmins running a private network at a commercial ISP can limit the traffic of any client on that network that they wish. . You're just a customer paying for access to get an IP from their server.
Corporations including ISPs exist only for the good of the people. They are legal constructs of our government. Further, ISPs in particular have been given billions of taxpayer dollars to improve the internet on behalf of the people and have been granted both exclusive access to certain government owned right of ways and given exemptions to copyright law like those given to common carriers.
If as you claim ISPs have no responsibility to protect free speech, then they are completely undeserving of exemptions to copyright law and should be help criminally liable for making copies of other people's data in the process of moving it about their network. Their responsibility is the result of their special privileges and that responsibility now needs to be encoded into law since they've started to work against them best interests of the public; or they need to have their rights revoked, their corporate charters revoked and have the government reclaim all those billions in subsidies.
If the government is so concerned...then why do they pass laws and ordinances mandating their existence?
Some things like the mail system are simply too important to a functioning democracy and national security to leave unregulated. We can't let "the market" just solve the problem because an important player could one day decide to not deliver the newspapers thus changing the results of an election by hiding important information from the public. Telephones are the same way and I'd argue the internet is too. What we really need to do is (as with telephone and post) require them to act as common carriers with all the same restrictions. Either that or bite the bullet and spend the money to undo the damage we did when we first subsidized the telecos building IP networks. I agree getting rid of monopolies is good, but we don't want lots of redundant network lines to every home and in every right of way. We tried that with electrical distribution and it resulted in a nightmare of constantly broken lines as companies lined up to take turns digging to fix their gear, breaking other gear in the process.
IP networks should be considered a necessary service, vital US infrastructure (as it is in many other countries). We should be funding them to stay ahead of other countries as an investment in our technological future. We just shouldn't let private companies have as much influence over the process as they do. Here's an idea, let's ban lobbying.
When the FCC starts censoring content, you'll be sorry.
WTF? How does proposing a specific law that prevents ISPs from interfering with free speech lead you to lame slippery slope fallacy assertion that the FCC will be censoring content?
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That "same economic path" has been a Progressive path since the New Deal and the Great Society. Wealth redistribution has never worked. Never. Never, ever, ever, ever.
The new deal was an illusion? Neat trick.
Wealth redistribution is nothing more than lowering everyone's personal wealth and standards of living to the lowest common denominator no matter how much or little one contributes to society and the economy.
No, that would be socialism. Progressive taxation taxes the wealthy more, but not so much that it eliminates the incentive to work. Money makes money and that is unfortunate because it removes the incentive to work. Progressive taxation that balances wealth condensation gets us as close to a meritocracy as possible and maximizes incentive for everyone. By raising taxes on the high end we end wealth consolidation and the rich get poorer gradually... unless they actually get off their asses and do something useful.
You cannot equalize outcomes without removing individual freedom and the incentive to create wealth.
Which is why you don't equalize outcomes. Wealth should not be punished, but neither should it be the foremost factor in making more wealth. The trick is to balance it... but right now wealth is what matters, more than intelligence or hard work and THAT removes incentive for everyone.
I don't make $200K...less than that, but hell...I"m already paying about 33% in taxes...I don't need to pay more.
So tax increases for people above $200K wouldn't make a difference to you.
I don't see it as bad as you do no. Should a day laborer make near as much as I do? No.
How would tax raises on the high end make a difference to the relative income of either of you?
I think the Fair Tax has provisions for people that make under a certain level to get refunds, etc for the basics of life, so it isn't quite so regressive...
I'm not opposed to such a model, I just don't see it ever happening. I'm willing to settle for working models from recent history.
I know people that make in the $200K range.Sure, they have more than me, but not THAT much more where you want to soak them for tax money.
Yes, because right now they're paying less in taxes than their peers in the 60's, 70,s or 80's did and if you haven't noticed our economy is going down the shitter paying interest on deficit. Sorry, but we need to make sacrifices, and people at the top end (which I am some years) aren't feeling any pain while the rest of the country is really, really suffering, like standing on street corners with a sign and living in tents down by the expressway suffering.
But screw it...if you make $1M, you should not have to pay half of it in fucking taxes...that just kills incentive to make money.
No it doesn't. People always want to make more money, regardless of having to pay a portion of it in taxes. making a million and paying $500K in taxes is still better than making $750K and paying half in taxes.
Look back on what soaking the rich have done
Okay tax levels like we had in the 50's through much of the 80's were much, much higher for the rich than now and it was also some of the most prosperous ties for our economy. I don't see the downside.
You and so many other people for some reason thing[sic] it is wrong, almost sinful to make a lot of money and enjoy their means.
It's not wrong at all. When did I write that? Rather, I want a sustainable economy where wealth does not automatically result in more wealth. Rather, taxation should match the influence of wealth condensation. If a someone is born wealthy, fine, but that money should slowly piss away to taxes unless they work and make money, thus providing them with incentive to work. The situation we have now is that rich or poor, you're almost certain to end the same way. Working hard means next to nothing compared to being born wealthy and if you're wealthy you don't have to do anything except profit from your existing wealth. It leads to wealth consolidating more and more in an unsustainable fashion until the economy collapses upon itself, and we're almost there.
The US was built for equal opportunities to be out there...not that everyone would have equal access or a level playing field to start, nor a right to getting a piece of it if they were stupid, lazy, unsuccessful, unlucky..etc.
The closer we are to a meritocracy the closer we are to maximizing the incentive for everyone. If circumstance of birth is more important than intelligence or hard work (which without progressive taxation it is) then we reduce incentive for everyone. We're on the road to collapse and the level of progressiveness of our taxation is unsustainable. If we keep on this road we will fall hard, as we started to with our mini recession and as we did in the great depression.
$200K a year is NOT wealthy. In some cities...you can't get a dump of an apt on that salary (NYC for instance...SF another).
Median family income is $81136 in San Francisco and $48631 in New York City proper. You're telling me people making more than three times the median income of a household can't afford a crappy apartment? So by your estimation 75% or so of each city is homeless?
Maybe you don't feel wealthy but if you're making more than $200K, yeah you can afford more taxes than most everyone else.
If you're talking about hitting everyone..well, then lets hit EVERYONE. Lets throw some federal tax on those 49% or so that currently pay no taxes. I'm not talking milk them dry, but they should pay something...
You're an idiot. No really, you're an idiot. The bottom 50% of our society has NO net wealth. Their debt and assets balance out. They are already fucking bled dry by cost of housing (rent or mortgage interest), cost of schooling loan interest(which is still the best economic choice in many cases), credit card penalties and interest on the food and clothes and goods they buy, and cost of healthcare. These are just like taxes on being born poor, except they're paid to the wealthy who own the property and have the assets to loan instead of the government. They're already doing more than their share via sales tax, and most have no realistic prospect of ever gaining any real wealth. Meanwhile the people in the highest tax brackets are gaining wealth faster than ever before, even in this ruin of an economy. And then there's the waste of it all. If it were just wealth being transferred, well we could fix that. But it isn't. It is real wealth being destroyed in the process as homes are foreclosed on, sit empty, and deteriorate; as small business close and sit empty assets being thrown away in many cases; as farms are fallow and fill with weeds.
You need to pull your head out of your ass and take a look around at this country. Look at the distribution of wealth and the american dream that is upward mobility. 30 years ago we weren't like Europe where old money families ran the show and you were trapped in the strict social class in which you were born. Today much of Europe has significantly better upward mobility than the US. We're the stagnant country with laws written by elitist moneyed interests to tip the table so far in their direction few will ever succeed and in doing so they'll make more money for the established players than themselves. If you can look at the wealth disparity numbers for the US over the last 70 years and not see the problem, then you are hopeless.
The only thing the government can do is impede job creation and economic growth, or get out of the way so the private sector can.
I wonder if your realize what you wrote. Only the government can impede job creation or let the private sector impede job creation?
I suggest reading what I wrote again, only this time with comprehension as the goal. There's a difference between "government can only" and "only government can".
Yes there is a difference. So about that... perhaps you can tell me (with your vast knowledge of the english language) what is the subject associated with the clause you wrote, "...so the private sector can". So the private sector can what? You need to refresh your grammar skills.
Government job creation in the private sector through subsidies typically last only as long as the subsidies do.
Citation?
It also ties up money & credit in the government that the private sector could use to create wealth & jobs.
Could use... but almost certainly would not and would instead invest overseas or would use to take ever larger shares of the income of the poor, as through collection of rent and credit card interest and penalties.
Keynesian economics has been proven not to work. Even JFK understood this.
Modern descendants of Keynesian economics make up the most popular macroeconomic theories taught today.
By that logic does that mean that Windows, since it's the most popular, is the best operating system?
No, but seeing as it is the most popular operating system I think it's fair to say that it hasn't been proven that Windows 95 doesn't work. Please try not to misleadingly take things out of context, it just muddies the argument and gives me the impression you're trying not to answer questions directly, but just defend your ego, in which case there is no point in discussion as it can never be productive.
It has never been shown to work on any significant scale or over any significant length of time. Government spending intended to create jobs suffers from the "broken window" fallacy.
The broken window fallacy only applies if you're talking about the government making work that is not useful, i.e. digging a ditch then filling it back in. If, however, you're talking about useful projects like creating the internet, hydroelectric dams, locks, bridges, roads, rails, researching new technologies, curing people of illnesses, or building needed homes it is often the case that it is needful for society in order to build up resources needed to move the economy forward. Maybe you need to revisit the broken window fallacy again. Your understanding of economics seems a bit poor.
The sad fact of it is, wealth in this country has consolidated to such levels that in the 60's we would have labelled ourselves a banana republic. Like during the great depression wealth condensation is out of control and upward mobility is plummeting. Back then, eventually the wealthy became scared enough that the new deal was brokered, wealth was redistributed via public works and progressive taxation. But we did not learn from history and since Reagan we've been back on the same economic path until things came to a head with the banking and housing collapses. More of the same does not fix anything. Cutting spending would be disastrous in the short term as any economist you consult will tell you, and we may never pull back out of it, at least not without real economic collapse. You had your wake up call, now you just need to understand what happened and why. I suggest you start by looking at tax rates across the history of our nation.
Well, first, if you example is using Grandpa as the US federal govt...not valid.
Nope, try again.
And in a family situation...if Mom and Junior have run the family so far into debt, yes..sacrifices need to be made to get out of it.
You are redefining the analogy. The family is not in debt. Mam and Junior are. The family is wealthy, just like the US. It's just half the family has negative or no wealth while one member of the family is filthy rich.
Happens all the time in the real world...yes, Suzie might have to drop outta college if the family made such poor decisions.
Clearly you're a republican :) Cut education and investment in the children, so the one rich guy in family can pay less than his share supporting the family. That's been working swimmingly eh?
Also, they may need to sell a car...
They don't own a car, remember they're taking the bus.
Ok..well, raising taxes, as many call for...income taxes from working people, never really ever touches those extremely wealthy people you talk about. Guess what? They don't work, they don't earn a paycheck to tax.
Wow, that's really a weird idea you have there. Income is the result of much more than paychecks, like investments and interest and rental income. Taxing the wealthy does work WHEN YOU TAX THE WEALTHY which we haven't been doing. We just had to give them another huge tax cut just to keep taxes from going up on the poor because our legislators are so corrupt. Taxes on the highest brackets were 20-30% higher during good economic times and were were not going into debt, you think that's a coincidence?
If you can figure a way to just hit them....let me know
Are you shitting me? Obama proposed renewing the tax cuts for everyone making less than $200K a year and could not get it through because the corrupt dirtbags in charge filibustered it. Reform voting rules in congress, get rid of tax havens and loopholes for the rich, and pass a fucking tax increase for people making more than a few hundred grand a year and use it to pay of the national debt. That ONLY targets the rich and every fucking economist and his brother has been saying we need to do just that (with the exception fo a few bought and paid for quote makers at GOP thinktanks who for some reason think we need to keep lowering taxes for the high end just like we have been for the last 20 years).
In a free country like this, I honestly can't think of a way to just target the extreme wealthy who are the ones who have the disproportionate amount of the wealth in the US.
You clearly haven't been paying any attention to economics or politics then.
"Cutting government spending basically means punching the economy in the nose. It needs to be done, but not right now. We need to spend smarter in ways that will bring the economy back first. "
Yeah, that worked out SO well the first two years of the current administration, eh?
What are you babbling about? No administration has ever significantly cut spending regardless of who's running what parts of the executive and legislature.
Government does not create jobs...not sustainable ones.
Never heard of the military eh? It's these guys in camouflage... well you can look it up.
We need to govt to get the hell OUT of the attempted job creation market.
Because that's worked so well in the past?
Let the citizens keep more of their OWN money to spend it on businesses and jobs...the private sector creates the jobs that pay the taxes to keep the govt afloat, not the other way around.
Seriously? You're arguing for trickle down economics? Seriously? I'm flabbergasted. Even Greenspan has walked away from that turd by now.
I mean, what logical person looks and sees they are heavily in debt from spending $10K a year on CC's with only minimal payments, and thinks to themselves..."Hey...I need to control this and get outta debt...I'll promise myself not to spend any more than $10K next year, and I'll make sure to spend less on booze and more on food in this next year too...yeah, that'll do it...that's the ticket..."
There are many significant differences between an individual's accounts and that of a country. You can begin to get an idea if you look at a family's accounts. So mom and junior have high credit card debt, but at the same time grandpa is a multimillionaire. Does it then make sense as a family to stop spending on things like bus fare to get to work and thus stop working? Shouldn't we stop spending until the credit cards are paid off? Or you know, grandpa could pay off the credit cards at the same time as we continue spending bus fare to get to work, keep paying for young Suzie's education and keep paying for brother Tim's antibiotics until he's well enough to go back to work.
The problem isn't that the US is lacking in wealth. It's that the wealth has all moved into the hands of a few people who pay a smaller percentage of their wealth as taxes than they used to and don't reinvest it in the US anymore, all while racking up debt on behalf of everyone and the interest that goes with it. Trickle down doesn't work because it is really trickle out of the country and/or hoard it. We tried it for decades and it drove us right into the shit we're in now, just as most economists said it would.
"Cutting government spending basically means punching the economy in the nose."
Government does not create jobs nor grow the economy in any meaningful and lasting way.
Not in the long term particularly, but it absolutely does in the short term. Cutting government funding cuts jobs because it is employing people and that's all there is to it. Cutting jobs leads to less people with real income which leads to less spending. In the long term it might even out, but we don't have that luxury as we're starting to come out of a depression.
The only thing the government can do is impede job creation and economic growth, or get out of the way so the private sector can.
I wonder if your realize what you wrote. Only the government can impede job creation or let the private sector impede job creation?
The government absolutely can help job creation and often does.
Keynesian economics has been proven not to work. Even JFK understood this.
Modern descendants of Keynesian economics make up the most popular macroeconomic theories taught today. Oh, and citing JFK as your authority on the economy isn't exactly convincing.
Quite simply, for me, titling his book with the pejorative "The God Delusion" directly demonstrates he tries in no way whatsoever to "separate his role as a scientist and educator from his role as an advocate for the atheist belief system".
What does that have to do with it? That's a book about the philosophy of theology, not the science of biology. If someone writes bout their theological beliefs that means they can't separately act a a teacher that does not push those beliefs in an educational setting?
He wants to be in the theology "space", in the form of denying any validity to theology.
Yes he does. He is also in the science and education space. That doesn't mean one always has to interfere with the other.
As far as the evidence, the evidence calls for a conclusion of "evolution occurs", as I've stated.
Which as an educator is exactly what he says.
This qualification does not help with his "delusion" polemic, though, so he just extends his position beyond what's scientifically valid as a testable claim.
Which is him speaking as a philosopher, not just a scientist, although one might say it would be unscientific to form a belief with no scientific support.
And to that I have to object from a standpoint of respect for science.
Object all you like, but don't go forming completely incorrect opinions about the beliefs of others and then telling others that is what Dawkins or someone else says when, in fact, you're saying just the opposite of what he's actually said (as demonstrated by the video I linked to). It seems it is you that is having trouble separating your scientific and religious beliefs as you're failing to recognize his contributions as a scientist and educator in the field of science and making unfounded suppositions about his beliefs as biased by your opinions of his philosophical beliefs and your assumptions about how you wrongly think that influences him.
In short, you need to be more careful about slandering people when you tell us all what someone "and his ilk" believe. Do your research first.
Putting a huge tax on gas will get you voted out of office in the next election, put a slow but steady tax in and it will just change buying habits over time.
I think it is even more palatable to the people to cut the government subsidies first.
Trouble is...even shifting money around is not what we need to be doing right now. We need to CUT spending...and drastically!! Cut things and use that to pay down the debt.
Cutting government spending basically means punching the economy in the nose. It needs to be done, but not right now. We need to spend smarter in ways that will bring the economy back first. Also, we need to raise tax rates on the high end and get rid of tax loopholes for corporations and high end individuals. Simply restoring tax rates to sane levels like we had in the 60's would allow us to start paying off the deficit.
Now that's not to say we shouldn't cut any particular spending. Much of what we're spending on now is not needed and can be cut, but the tertiary effects of government spending create a lot of jobs and we NEED those jobs right now a lot more than the ultra wealthy need a larger chunk of their income or corporations need to be able to park their assets offshore. No corporation with any sense is walking away from the US market and they're already walking away for manufacturing to cheaper places. How exactly does making them pay their taxes hurt the US?
If I had the power to set curriculums but didn't have the balls/backing to take a stand against mystics, here's what I'd do. Don't stress evolution. Instead, talk about how science works. Explain what a "theory" is, how they come into being and how they're tested. And then do not move on until the student understand these basics. Make it 50% of their grade if you have to.
I absolutely agree. After having met an engineer with a B.S. who didn't know what the scientific method was or how to apply it, it became clear to me this is seriously lacking in our education system.
If the mystics demand that faith be taught as a rival to evolution, let it happen; all you have to do is frame the issues in scientific terms.
I disagree with this. If you're a teacher, this is possibly an acceptable method. As an administrator, however, you're reliant upon teachers to implement this. Sadly, a great many teachers have religious beliefs that conflict with properly educating children and those teachers can easily sabotage this. Even if the teacher is not a problem, you have parents, religious leaders, and other influences undermining the process and not just with regard to evolution, but in the process science altogether. When a kid learns science and then evolution as an example, it is far to easy for any of the above people to miseducate them by attacking the methodology and thus discrediting all of science in the eyes of an impressionable youth talking to authority figures.
The nuts are able to get away with saying, "science class should expose our children to all the possibilities," but they won't get away with "science class should teach our kids to ignore their observations" or "science class should not explain how theories are tested."
Right now, yeah they do because most people don't understand the scientific method. They might as well be saying "science class should teach our kids observation sycophant mammalian". People don't care and they tune it all out except the vitriol about how schools are attacking god. If it conflicts with their belief about god or they think it does, many people just don't care what it is conflicting unless it is something they already understand and is obvious to them.
I agree with your goals and much of your methodology but I seriously disagree with the idea that evolution should be an example of the scientific method until much, much later in the educational process. Make sure kids have the basics and are using and apply the method and understand how it has been applied to non-controversial theories in basic science classes. Teach evolution as a another theory in biology later on, and then is the appropriate time to see how it applies in that case.
Religious nutbags need to be suppressed for the good of human kind. And to be perfectly clear, if you believe in a god at all, you are, in my opinion, a religious nutbag.
You were fine until you proved yourself an extremist.
Sometimes it's okay to be an extremist; when you're extremely correct on a topic. Sometimes extremes are vital to society, extremes like separation of church and state. The government should not be favoring any one religion nor have any part in pushing religion. Hell, I don't even think they should be involved in marriages. It makes for a more free and more diverse and robust society. If a political appointee or member of government cannot separate their religious beliefs from their job as a member of the government they should be removed from office for violating this basic principal of our government and for incompetence.
It seems that we as a country would be better served if teachers were required to major in some subject matter and take a couple of courses, like a minor, in managing the classroom, etc. Maybe then, we wouldn't have biology teachers unsure of things like evolution.
I don't know that most biology teachers are unsure of evolution, just they don't teach it. Lots of people believe in evolution but aren't going to challenge their bosses or make a lot of extra work for themselves or risk their career in order to make sure others get it. As to your second point, I've been on both sides of your hypothesis. I've had great teachers who really knew their material, like a high school chem teacher with an advanced degree that really was great at explaining things to advanced students. I also had a high school trigonometry teacher that was a lightning calculator and absolutely brilliant at math, but completely unable to express these topics in a way that made sense or to apply basic methods of teaching so that kids could learn them. I took college courses from some of the brightest minds in their field, but who had no real interest in teaching nor any aptitude in being able to explain their ideas or even basic concepts in their field in the english language.
Teaching is a field of study in and of itself. Ideally we would have brilliant, dedicated teachers cross trained in education and in the subject matter. If we have to pick one or the other, maybe it should be on a case by case basis where their ability to actually teach is measured by the performance of their students (realtive to those students' performance other years).
Science is doing fine in schools ... You can teach kids that the Easter bunny made the world but when they go to compete in the global science arena they don't bring him along.
The problem is, most of our society never moves along to compete in the global science arena. Most of our populace is responsible for voting in people who have huge influence on how much opportunity we have to compete in the global science arena. The US turns out many of the best scientific minds in the world. A few of them stay in the US. But the rest of our society is sliding further and further into ignorance compared to the rest of the world and that does make a big difference in our society.
Why is it always evolution? Seriously. Why do you care whether people understand biological evolution?
It's always some topic: evolution, heliocentrism, round earth, germ theory. The pushback isn't always about just that theory. Whether or not people accept that the earth is round has little effect upon most people's lives. It's about science and logical, scientifically founded belief systems as a value for our culture. It's about what acceptance or rejection of such a well supported theory implies about acceptance of other theories and about scientific decision making going forward. If people don't accept evolution, what will they think of scientific opinions about the dangers of biotechnology. What will they think about scientific determinations about the dangers of global warming? What will they think about the possibility of pollution and deforestation making our grandchildren's lives horrible? Do those same people making illogical and unscientific opinions and pushing for those opinions to be taught to everyone also think some magical god will save us from the consequences of our actions or that that magical being will end the world and take us to magic land? Do we want that sort of decision making being taught?
In order to reject evolution, you have to either reject or fail to understand logical thinking and the scientific method. I think most everyone would agree both those topics are more important to our culture than just one theory, but it's the same people pushing against that one theory that are undermining the former concepts in order to do it. They don't want their kids to understand science, because the magic man will punish them. They don't want your kids to understand science, because the magic man will punish them. They want the results of science, but they don't want people to be able to apply the scientific method because doing so might result in punishment by the magic man.
We want a society where kids are taught logic and science such that they apply them in their lives and the theory of evolution, like most any other very well supported theory, is a no-brainer. Other elements in our society don't know what science or logic is. They are synonyms for "smart stuff" or "book lernin'" or "correct". They want people to believe what they believe and they're happy to redefine science as "memorize this book of facts we decided are good, but don't learn any methods that will lead you into the arms of the bad magic man with horns". There really isn't a lot of middle ground. Either we teach the scientific method and evolution is obvious to students, or we don't teach the scientific method and we kowtow to people's superstitions and fall behind the world technologically, as many other societies have in the past.
I find it ironic that scientific people, that pride themselves on being open minded, are so willing to be closed minded when it comes to the THEORY of evolution. Nothing is conclusive about it.
Scientists use science to form mutable beliefs. A scientist believes whatever the best supported theory is, best supported by scientific testing. Evolution has been tested and slightly altered and tested again and again and again to the point where, while there are still details that are in question, you'd have to be a complete moron to have actually studied the data and think that it will ever be "disproven". For all practical intents and purposes, it is a fact.
In fact, there have been numerous scientific studies on the possibility of creation.
There has not been a single scientific study I know of that presents any support for creation of our species being guided by an intelligent being. You claim there have been "scientific studies". Fine, what experiment was performed, what test, what study that would falsify intelligent design? That is a requirement for a scientific test you know. Evolution would have been disproven if we had found the mechanism for coding human growth and it was not inherited directly. Evolution would have been disproven if there had not been a mechanism that inserted random errors into DNA. Evolution would have been disproven if all the DNA we found was not related in a hierarchy. Evolution would have been disproven if the rate of changes and the age of the planet had conflicted. Evolution would have been disproven if fossils with intermediate characteristics between other fossils could not be found to have ages consistent with the change. Evolution would have been disproven if studies of environmental stressors did not lead to predictable changes in characteristics for quick breeding populations. I could go on, but there really isn't a lot of point.
You cannot dismiss creationism simply because it is associated with religion.
Agreed. You can dismiss it because it has no scientific support as a hypothesis.
The fact that the earth revolves around the sun has been proven. Period.
No it hasn't. You can prove math and formal logic. You can only find overwhelming support for a theory such as heliocentrism. Also, typing a period, then the word 'period', then another period is idiotic and redundant. Please stop doing it.
I find that species that evolve into completely different species requires more "faith" on my part than believing in a creator.
If faith enters into it at all, you're not forming beliefs scientifically and you're just another irrational person forming your beliefs based upon emotion and trying to justify them with rationalizations. Please take the time to learn the scientific method as it is probably the most useful intellectual tool of the last millennium and responsible for pretty much every technological advance you rely upon today. Your ignorance is dragging the rest of us down.
"Evolution occurs" should not pose any issue to any theists.
"-Only- evolution occurs" as a complete, exclusive causal explanation for intelligent life does, but it also is an unscientific, untestable premise, and for these reasons shouldn't be taught as "science" anyway.
The latter equivocation is, unfortunately, the only form of the premise Dawkins et al care about...
I don't know where you formed this belief, but it seems completely wrong. Watch this discussion between Dawkins and one of those nutjobs from a group trying to force creationism to be taught in schools. In it Dawkins explains how he tries to separate his role as a scientist and educator from his role as an advocate for the atheist belief system. He goes on to explain why it's important to him that she accept evolution as fact, even if she does so believing that it was all guided by her christian god. This is because as a scientist and educator it is his responsibility to get people to look at and understand the evidence instead of dismissing belief and refusing to look at evidence. He calls the evidence elegant and seems honestly passionate about helping people to educate themselves, even if they hold irrational beliefs about things that can never be proven or disproven.
60% teach both evolution and ID and do not make claims as to their validity.
The article does not say that. It says they avoid the topic altogether, which likely means they don't teach the theory of evolution at all and I don't even know how you'd teach the hypothesis of intelligent design.
I don't think the type of person who will want this car cares about driving super fast, and the type of person that does want a fast car won't want this one. Why try catering to both markets?
Maybe it is a single market but that market uses it in two different ways. For example, as a commuter car this might make for real savings, but not have quite enough top end to make everyone comfortable driving on the expressway where the flow is going 80 and you might need to accelerate to get out the way in some circumstance. As a result, you make a dual mode car that saves the most gas, around town and saves a lot of gas and can still be safe on expressway trips. Calling it a "sport" mode does seem a little over the top though.
This shouldn't even be an issue for Corporate networks as both of those sites are probably blacklisted on the proxy server.
I don't think this is true. Most corporations these days have twitter and Facebook accounts as marketing tools. Also the execs like to go one there and spout nonsense and us it for recreation In many companies employees are encouraged to visit both sites during the day. I'm not sure of the reasoning for this (other than to make them seem more popular?) but I've seen it at several corporations.
So, we should nationalize newspapers?
Is that what I said?
Anyway, this example fails, because newpapers aready refuse to print things they don't agree with, regularly.
As is their right, but there are a lot of newspapers and people subscribe to a variety of them. You'll note the post office, UP, and even Fedex cannot and does not refuse to transport those newspapers. It's called being a "common carrier" which grants particular privileges and restrictions. Privileges granted to current ISPs, but without the corresponding protections for the people... which is what net neutrality is trying to fix.
Free speech is about protecting citizens from the government.
In a legal sense you're right... of course corporations are government charters so free speech does apply somewhat in that regard.
Internet access isn't a free speech issue unless the government is your ISP.
So, if a single company had a monopoly on paper and telephones and that company was the only one given access to the resources needed to make paper as a result of laws passed by the government; and that company restricted free speech, the one layer of distance between the government and company would be enough so that you wouldn't consider free speech to be infringed despite your being unable to print a newsletter that says what you want?
If people's ability and individual choice of being able to say what they want is threatened, I consider it a free speech issue, even if it is not necessarily a violation of the first amendment in legal terms.
Sysadmins running a private network at a commercial ISP can limit the traffic of any client on that network that they wish. . You're just a customer paying for access to get an IP from their server.
Corporations including ISPs exist only for the good of the people. They are legal constructs of our government. Further, ISPs in particular have been given billions of taxpayer dollars to improve the internet on behalf of the people and have been granted both exclusive access to certain government owned right of ways and given exemptions to copyright law like those given to common carriers.
If as you claim ISPs have no responsibility to protect free speech, then they are completely undeserving of exemptions to copyright law and should be help criminally liable for making copies of other people's data in the process of moving it about their network. Their responsibility is the result of their special privileges and that responsibility now needs to be encoded into law since they've started to work against them best interests of the public; or they need to have their rights revoked, their corporate charters revoked and have the government reclaim all those billions in subsidies.
If the government is so concerned ...then why do they pass laws and ordinances mandating their existence?
Some things like the mail system are simply too important to a functioning democracy and national security to leave unregulated. We can't let "the market" just solve the problem because an important player could one day decide to not deliver the newspapers thus changing the results of an election by hiding important information from the public. Telephones are the same way and I'd argue the internet is too. What we really need to do is (as with telephone and post) require them to act as common carriers with all the same restrictions. Either that or bite the bullet and spend the money to undo the damage we did when we first subsidized the telecos building IP networks. I agree getting rid of monopolies is good, but we don't want lots of redundant network lines to every home and in every right of way. We tried that with electrical distribution and it resulted in a nightmare of constantly broken lines as companies lined up to take turns digging to fix their gear, breaking other gear in the process.
IP networks should be considered a necessary service, vital US infrastructure (as it is in many other countries). We should be funding them to stay ahead of other countries as an investment in our technological future. We just shouldn't let private companies have as much influence over the process as they do. Here's an idea, let's ban lobbying.
When the FCC starts censoring content, you'll be sorry.
WTF? How does proposing a specific law that prevents ISPs from interfering with free speech lead you to lame slippery slope fallacy assertion that the FCC will be censoring content?
Zooming works perfectly in Opera...
If, by "perfectly", you mean "zooms both text, graphics and other elements
Some browsers offer a zoom option for everything and zoom for just text. Both seem to work fine.