Contrary to this picture of dispassionate scientists under assault by the Neanderthal NRA and its know-nothing allies in Congress, serious scholars have been criticizing the CDC's "public health" approach to gun research for years. In a presentation at the American Society of Criminology's 1994 meeting, for example, University of Illinois sociologist David Bordua and epidemiologist David Cowan called the public health literature on guns "advocacy based on political beliefs rather than scientific fact." Bordua and Cowan noted that The New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, the main outlets for CDC-funded studies of firearms, are consistent supporters of strict gun control. They found that "reports with findings not supporting the position of the journal are rarely cited," "little is cited from the criminological or sociological field," and the articles that are cited "are almost always by medical or public health researchers."
Further, Bordua and Cowan said, "assumptions are presented as fact: that there is a causal association between gun ownership and the risk of violence, that this association is consistent across all demographic categories, and that additional legislation will reduce the prevalence of firearms and consequently reduce the incidence of violence." They concluded that "[i]ncestuous and selective literature citations may be acceptable for political tracts, but they introduce an artificial bias into scientific publications. Stating as fact associations which may be demonstrably false is not just unscientific, it is unprincipled." In a 1994 presentation to the Western Economics Association, State University of New York at Buffalo criminologist Lawrence Southwick compared public health firearm studies to popular articles produced by the gun lobby: "Generally the level of analysis done on each side is of a low quality. The papers published in the medical literature (which are uniformly anti-gun) are particularly poor science."
As Bordua, Cowan, and Southwick observed, a prejudice against gun ownership pervades the public health field. Deborah Prothrow-Stith, dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, nicely summarizes the typical attitude of her colleagues in a recent book. "My own view on gun control is simple," she writes. "I hate guns and cannot imagine why anybody would want to own one. If I had my way, guns for sport would be registered, and all other guns would be banned." Opposition to gun ownership is also the official position of the U.S. Public Health Service, the CDC's parent agency. Since 1979, its goal has been "to reduce the number of handguns in private ownership," starting with a 25 percent reduction by the turn of the century.. . . more
. . . According to the GAO report, some 30,000 firearms were seized from criminals by Mexican authorities in 2008. Of these 30,000 firearms, information pertaining to 7,200 of them (24 percent) was submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for tracing. Of these 7,200 guns, only about 4,000 could be traced by the ATF, and of these 4,000, some 3,480 (87 percent) were shown to have come from the United States.
This means that the 87 percent figure relates to the number of weapons submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF that could be successfully traced and not from the total number of weapons seized by Mexican authorities or even from the total number of weapons submitted to the ATF for tracing. In fact, the 3,480 guns positively traced to the United States equals less than 12 percent of the total arms seized in Mexico in 2008 and less than 48 percent of all those submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF for tracing. This means that almost 90 percent of the guns seized in Mexico in 2008 were not traced back to the United States. . ..more
If any of you fucking traitors ever use your guns to subvert our democratically elected government, I promise to be among the first to defend our country.
If the United States descends into actual, genuine tyranny, it very likely won't have a democratically elected government anymore - maybe a "President for life." How are you not tracking with that?
And you can't get precise figures because the NRA lobbied congress to forbid government funding from paying for research into gun fatalities
That is false. Law enforcement agencies, you know, the ones that normally deal with crimes like murder, can engage in research and statistical analysis. The CDC was restricted. And why?
There are some huge gaps in the facts you present. Lets add in a bit more for people to see:
Contrary to this picture of dispassionate scientists under assault by the Neanderthal NRA and its know-nothing allies in Congress, serious scholars have been criticizing the CDC's "public health" approach to gun research for years. In a presentation at the American Society of Criminology's 1994 meeting, for example, University of Illinois sociologist David Bordua and epidemiologist David Cowan called the public health literature on guns "advocacy based on political beliefs rather than scientific fact." Bordua and Cowan noted that The New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, the main outlets for CDC-funded studies of firearms, are consistent supporters of strict gun control. They found that "reports with findings not supporting the position of the journal are rarely cited," "little is cited from the criminological or sociological field," and the articles that are cited "are almost always by medical or public health researchers." . ..
Further, Bordua and Cowan said, "assumptions are presented as fact: that there is a causal association between gun ownership and the risk of violence, that this association is consistent across all demographic categories, and that additional legislation will reduce the prevalence of firearms and consequently reduce the incidence of violence." They concluded that "[i]ncestuous and selective literature citations may be acceptable for political tracts, but they introduce an artificial bias into scientific publications. Stating as fact associations which may be demonstrably false is not just unscientific, it is unprincipled." In a 1994 presentation to the Western Economics Association, State University of New York at Buffalo criminologist Lawrence Southwick compared public health firearm studies to popular articles produced by the gun lobby: "Generally the level of analysis done on each side is of a low quality. The papers published in the medical literature (which are uniformly anti-gun) are particularly poor science."
As Bordua, Cowan, and Southwick observed, a prejudice against gun ownership pervades the public health field. Deborah Prothrow-Stith, dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, nicely summarizes the typical attitude of her colleagues in a recent book. "My own view on gun control is simple," she writes. "I hate guns and cannot imagine why anybody would want to own one. If I had my way, guns for sport would be registered, and all other guns would be banned." Opposition to gun ownership is also the official position of the U.S. Public Health Service, the CDC's parent agency. Since 1979, its goal has been "to reduce the number of handguns in private ownership," starting with a 25 percent reduction by the turn of the century. . ..
As Bordua and Cowan noted, one hallmark of the public health literature on guns is a tendency to ignore contrary scholarship. Among criminologists, Gary Kleck's encyclopedic Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America (1991) is universally recognized as the starting point for further research. Kleck, a professor of criminology at Florida State University, was initially a strong believer that gun ownership increased the incidence of homicide, but his research made him a skeptic. His book assembles strong evidence against the notion that reducing gun ownership is a goo
Preach it brother. No commie faggot is going to tell me what side of the road to drive on. How fast I can drive in a school zone. Make me have working brakes.
. . . or prescribe an adequate dose of medication.
The militia kept their muskets locked up in an armory away from home until they were needed. We still have that, it's called the National Guard. Go sign up if you want to, but you don't get to bring your service rifle home with you.
You're wrong on several points there. Historically it was common for local militia members to be expected to furnish their own weapon.
(a)The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b)The classes of the militia are— (1)the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2)the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
So how do you explain the current government tyranny? According to you there should be none.
If you look closely you'll see that actual government tyranny occurs outside the United States, not inside. Americans still select their leaders by voting in free and fair elections. Laws are enacted by Congress, not by decree. The Army defends the republic, not oppresses the people. Contrary to common exaggeration on Slashdot, corporations and the rich can do no more than try to influence voters, not actually stuff money into ballot boxes and have it counted as a vote.
When did it become right to not help other people?
When they need to learn independence? When they need to use their own abilities? If you ever have children, will they ever learn to walk? Or will you carry them for the rest of their life? What happens when you die and they still haven't learned to walk? Who will carry them then?
When exactly did we reach the utopia that you preach about where people collect their wealth and give nothing back to society?
When exactly did we reach the utopia that you preach about where people collect their benefits and nothing is expected of them?
Try being born to rich parents... Nobody has less incentive to work than somebody who is just handed millions of dollars.
That is called a parenting failure, not an entitlement program. Like winning the lottery, there is a significant chance that it won't go well. . . . although that might make you feel better.
So long as we have an income tax (that's another conversation...) I say with a resounding YES: the ultra-rich (>10 million "net worth") should pay much more (as a percentage) of their income in taxes than do the working poor ($0 "net worth"). It's called progressive taxation, and it's ABSOLUTELY necessary so long as there is such a HUGE chasm between the top 0.1% and the bottom 50%, financially speaking. Granted, the culture of greed that dug that chasm is a social issue, and cannot be solved politically. Progressive taxation is treating the symptom.
That's great. Just one problem, the US tax system is already the most progressive - two different studies.
Income taxes in America are more progressive than in other rich countries--according to an authoritiative official study which, to my knowledge, has not been contradicted. The OECD's report "Growing Unequal", on poverty and inequality in industrial countries, includes a table that provides two measures of income tax progressivity in 2005. This is evidently the source of de Rugy's numbers. Here they are in an excel file. According to one measure, America's income taxes were the most progressive of the 24 countries in the sample, except for Ireland. According to the other, they were the most progressive full stop. (A more recent OECD report, "Divided We Stand", uses different data, a smaller sample of countries and a different measure of progressivity: the results are similar.) . . . more
America leads the world in many fields, but for those keeping score, the nation apparently has yet another superlative to add to its column. According to The Tax Foundation, the U.S. currently can lay claim to having the most progressive income tax among all industrialized nations.
In the mid-2000s, the top 10 percent of households in the U.S. were responsible for 45.1 percent of all income tax revenues, according to numbers compiled by the foundation. That same decile, however, only earned 33.5 percent of the market income – which makes the ratio of income tax paid to market income earned the highest of any industrialized country, at a whopping 1.35. For comparison, France stands at 1.10, Belgium at 0.94 and Switzerland at 0.89.
American Enterprise Institute economist Alan Viard told The Daily Caller that while America’s tax code is extremely progressive, it is not as redistributive as many other nations because the overall tax system is smaller.
“As a country imposes a larger volume of taxes and as the public sector gets bigger, it is almost certain that they are not going to remain as progressive in how they raise their revenue,” Viard said. “Progressivity has certain economic costs. It tends to undermine incentives to work and to save It will be more and more costly for a country to stay that progressive as their tax system gets bigger. ” . . . more
Will raising taxes pull in more revenue? Not necessarily.
The intelligentsia of the Democratic Party is growing increasingly enthusiastic about raising the highest federal income tax rates to 70% or more. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich took the lead in February, pro
If that is true, and the only factor, then how did the Democrats lose control of the House? Democrats had control of the House for 40 years, and lost it during the Clinton administration . I'm sure you've heard of that famous and popular Democratic president? If you are going to try to claim that the Democrats didn't structure districts to their advantage, would you at least have the common decency to throw up a little as you type it?
The GOP has now won control of the House in eight of the past 10 congressional elections, dating back to 1994. When I began following politics it seemed like that would never happen. Republicans failed to win a majority in the House in the 20 elections between 1954 and 1992. Political scientists wrote articles about how the Democrats would always have a lock on the House. . . more
The issue is that a frightening portion of the USA's domestic economy is beholden to government and military contracts. Without the spending, a huge part of the domestic economy will suffer implosions. . ..
This is what happens when the majority of an economy becomes dominated by a small handful of very large players; the system becomes far more vulnrable to a major upheval by a shift in conditions, much like the recently infamous banking disaster.
"Just quitting" on major war expenditures would be catastrophic. A huge portion of the USA's economy is built around war profiteering.
The truly frightening thing is that there are people ignorant enough to believe what you wrote, and engage in advocacy based on that ignorance.
The author of that article you link to is also either badly confused, or trying to mislead the reader. Elections for representatives in the House are on a per-district basis only, it isn't based on some sort of national tally. A heavy Democratic party vote in a couple of large states could easily result in an aggregate house vote count nationally for Democrats well above that for Republicans, but that is meaningless nationally since each district votes to elect its own representative. A million to 1 Democratic votes in San Francisco, California, doesn't help a Democrat running in Reno, Nevada.
There is a lot more to it than that. Of course, even then it isn't quite so fun when the shoe is on the other foot, it is?
The GOP has now won control of the House in eight of the past 10 congressional elections, dating back to 1994. When I began following politics it seemed like that would never happen. Republicans failed to win a majority in the House in the 20 elections between 1954 and 1992. Political scientists wrote articles about how the Democrats would always have a lock on the House. . .
Democrats seem to have a structural advantage these days in the Electoral College. . .
The House is another matter. Here the Republicans have some structural advantages which, with good luck, have given them House majorities eight of the last 10 times. That is important, because since the mid-1990s Americans have become straight-ticket voters, seldom voting for candidates of different parties.
One structural advantage is demographic. Democratic voters tend to be clustered in black, Latino and gentry-liberal neighborhoods in metropolitan areas. Republican voters are more spread out. In 2008, Mr. Obama carried 28 congressional districts with more than 80% of the vote. John McCain carried zero congressional districts by that margin; Mr. Romney may have gotten that much in a couple of districts in Utah.
Those heavily Democratic neighborhoods contribute to the landslide margins candidate Obama has won in states like California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Illinois. But their voters don't do as much to elect Democratic House members as they would if they were spread randomly through the population. In addition, many such areas have been losing population and therefore representation in the House.
On top of this is another Republican structural advantage: the Voting Rights Act. The prevailing interpretation of this otherwise benign law is that redistricters must maximize the number of "majority-minority" congressional districts. That means packing blacks and Latinos into certain districts and keeping them out of adjacent districts that tend to go Republican. This results in districts with grotesque and elongated boundaries to fit the bill of majority-minority. . .
A third Republican structural advantage used to belong to the Democrats: the South. . . . The Solid South helped Democrats maintain House majorities in the 1960s, '70s and '80s. . . But as the Democratic Party became more liberal, white Southerners started voting Republican for president in the 1960s, and in the straight-ticket 1990s Republicans replaced white Southern Democrats in droves. . . more
This is what always made me LMAO at these chuckleheads, they can't say what they really want which is "He's a nigger!" so they try to find another reason to get rid of him,. . .
Is that so? So I guess that means you would also be implying that John McCain is simply "passing" for white?
I didn't see a single news service say a fucking word about the revelation that Blackwater was selling kids as fuck toys to get better deals in both Kosovo and Afghanistan
The allegation is actually against DynCrop, and you're kidding, right? The media is full of that allegation, but what you don't see is this:
This spring, the State Department inspector general began investigating whether DynCorp ignored signs of drug abuse among expatriate employees in Afghanistan. A related review into the dancing incident is "substantially completed" and "at this point, no criminal activity has been discovered," said Douglas Welty, State Department inspector general spokesman. -- Amid Reviews, DynCorp Bolsters Ethics Practices
(If I recall correctly, the Dallas Morning News had quoted a State Deptment IG spokesman that made a stronger statement, unfortunately that story appears to be not online anymore.)
Dear America . . . Stop it. . . . There is no sympathy from the rest of the world. Here in Canada . . . in Europe its way worse . . . Pick some other non-issue to cry about
Dear Canadian (NIK282000), Canada, Europe, and the rest of the world that agrees with above - if you can come here and complain about everything said or done by Americans and the United States, then Americans have the same right to complain about things in America, especially when it effects their lives. If you want to say that Americans have less of a right to complain about things about or in American than you have, I think you can stick that one in your ear. By the way, if you think energy prices are a non-issue - you're building a case that you're a nitwit. And shouldn't you really be bragging yet again about how high taxes, the primary driver of the price difference, provide you a superior civilization - that makes it more expensive to travel by car? What you wrote doesn't really seem like bragging, more like complaining, just like you don't want Americans to do.
How much does it cost to blow up innocent people (women and children included though I value them neither more nor less than males) by drone just about every day of the year.
I really don't know where my priorities are at -- what the fuck is wrong with me for valuing interesting scientific data over blowing up random people and making enemies of the survivors.
The vast majority of people being killed by drone strikes are members of terrorist groups (note that is terrorist, not "terrorist."), and not innocent people, nor are they random people. Any survivors are likely to already be our enemies.
So, what you are suggesting is that paying more taxes in a week that what you are today is not an increase as long as you aren't paying as much as you might be. Quite right, Comrade. I'll help you spread the word - Good news citizens! Your tax rates have been reduced from the old rate of 25% to a new rate of 35%! Likewise the chocolate ration has been increased from 50g to 40g!
It's always good to hear from the Comrades from the Ministry of Truth.
. . . it can;t come from the Senate, it can't come from the President . ..So can we please drop this bullshit about how it's Harry Reid's fault for not coming up with a budget. The blame falls clearly on the House and thus on Boehner's lap
If we were to dispense with the bullshit, your post would be blank. How is it that you either don't know this, or expect everyone to be so ignorant as to not call you on it? Well, to your credit, you did suck in 3 moderators.
Once the president lays out his proposal, the House and Senate budget committees can begin writing their budget resolutions. The budget resolution sets targets for spending and tax revenue and identifies any policies that will need to move through reconciliation. The resolutions are sent to the floor for a vote, and differences are resolved in conference.
The House has produced and passed budgets, the Senate hasn't. The Senate has voted plenty down though.
President Obama proposed a FY2012 budget last year, and the Senate voted it down 97–0. (And that budget was no prize—according to the Congressional Budget Office, that proposal never had an annual deficit of less than $748 billion, would double the national debt in 10 years and would see annual interest payments approach $1 trillion per year.) -- 1,000 Days Without a Budget: Facts on the Senate’s Failure
Congress has spent $11.2 trillion since passing its last budget on April 29, 2009, according to the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee. The new debt since that date is $4.8 trillion.
"Since the last budget resolution was passed 1,200 days ago, the government has borrowed 42 cents of every dollar spent," the chart notes. The chart is based on Treasury Department figures.
The Senate obviously has no problem passing bills to spend money - why can't they pass a budget?
Slashdot Mirror
You also have to remember that schools are bomb-free zones. How could anything possibly happen there?
Well, we can't analyze statistics intelligently and act on them, because the NRA lobbied Congress to prevent us from doing so.
Rubbish. The Department of Justice can perform statistical analysis as well as anyone.
Bureau of Justice Statistics
You are leaving out some inconvenient facts there about the Center for Disease Control, not firearms control . . . .
Public Health Pot Shots - How the CDC succumbed to the Gun "Epidemic"
Contrary to this picture of dispassionate scientists under assault by the Neanderthal NRA and its know-nothing allies in Congress, serious scholars have been criticizing the CDC's "public health" approach to gun research for years. In a presentation at the American Society of Criminology's 1994 meeting, for example, University of Illinois sociologist David Bordua and epidemiologist David Cowan called the public health literature on guns "advocacy based on political beliefs rather than scientific fact." Bordua and Cowan noted that The New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, the main outlets for CDC-funded studies of firearms, are consistent supporters of strict gun control. They found that "reports with findings not supporting the position of the journal are rarely cited," "little is cited from the criminological or sociological field," and the articles that are cited "are almost always by medical or public health researchers."
Further, Bordua and Cowan said, "assumptions are presented as fact: that there is a causal association between gun ownership and the risk of violence, that this association is consistent across all demographic categories, and that additional legislation will reduce the prevalence of firearms and consequently reduce the incidence of violence." They concluded that "[i]ncestuous and selective literature citations may be acceptable for political tracts, but they introduce an artificial bias into scientific publications. Stating as fact associations which may be demonstrably false is not just unscientific, it is unprincipled." In a 1994 presentation to the Western Economics Association, State University of New York at Buffalo criminologist Lawrence Southwick compared public health firearm studies to popular articles produced by the gun lobby: "Generally the level of analysis done on each side is of a low quality. The papers published in the medical literature (which are uniformly anti-gun) are particularly poor science."
As Bordua, Cowan, and Southwick observed, a prejudice against gun ownership pervades the public health field. Deborah Prothrow-Stith, dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, nicely summarizes the typical attitude of her colleagues in a recent book. "My own view on gun control is simple," she writes. "I hate guns and cannot imagine why anybody would want to own one. If I had my way, guns for sport would be registered, and all other guns would be banned." Opposition to gun ownership is also the official position of the U.S. Public Health Service, the CDC's parent agency. Since 1979, its goal has been "to reduce the number of handguns in private ownership," starting with a 25 percent reduction by the turn of the century.. . . more
Maybe you've heard wrong?
Mexico's Gun Supply and the 90 Percent Myth
. . . According to the GAO report, some 30,000 firearms were seized from criminals by Mexican authorities in 2008. Of these 30,000 firearms, information pertaining to 7,200 of them (24 percent) was submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for tracing. Of these 7,200 guns, only about 4,000 could be traced by the ATF, and of these 4,000, some 3,480 (87 percent) were shown to have come from the United States.
This means that the 87 percent figure relates to the number of weapons submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF that could be successfully traced and not from the total number of weapons seized by Mexican authorities or even from the total number of weapons submitted to the ATF for tracing. In fact, the 3,480 guns positively traced to the United States equals less than 12 percent of the total arms seized in Mexico in 2008 and less than 48 percent of all those submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF for tracing. This means that almost 90 percent of the guns seized in Mexico in 2008 were not traced back to the United States. . . .more
If any of you fucking traitors ever use your guns to subvert our democratically elected government, I promise to be among the first to defend our country.
If the United States descends into actual, genuine tyranny, it very likely won't have a democratically elected government anymore - maybe a "President for life." How are you not tracking with that?
And you can't get precise figures because the NRA lobbied congress to forbid government funding from paying for research into gun fatalities
That is false. Law enforcement agencies, you know, the ones that normally deal with crimes like murder, can engage in research and statistical analysis. The CDC was restricted. And why?
There are some huge gaps in the facts you present. Lets add in a bit more for people to see:
Public Health Pot Shots - How the CDC succumbed to the Gun "Epidemic"
Contrary to this picture of dispassionate scientists under assault by the Neanderthal NRA and its know-nothing allies in Congress, serious scholars have been criticizing the CDC's "public health" approach to gun research for years. In a presentation at the American Society of Criminology's 1994 meeting, for example, University of Illinois sociologist David Bordua and epidemiologist David Cowan called the public health literature on guns "advocacy based on political beliefs rather than scientific fact." Bordua and Cowan noted that The New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, the main outlets for CDC-funded studies of firearms, are consistent supporters of strict gun control. They found that "reports with findings not supporting the position of the journal are rarely cited," "little is cited from the criminological or sociological field," and the articles that are cited "are almost always by medical or public health researchers." . . .
Further, Bordua and Cowan said, "assumptions are presented as fact: that there is a causal association between gun ownership and the risk of violence, that this association is consistent across all demographic categories, and that additional legislation will reduce the prevalence of firearms and consequently reduce the incidence of violence." They concluded that "[i]ncestuous and selective literature citations may be acceptable for political tracts, but they introduce an artificial bias into scientific publications. Stating as fact associations which may be demonstrably false is not just unscientific, it is unprincipled." In a 1994 presentation to the Western Economics Association, State University of New York at Buffalo criminologist Lawrence Southwick compared public health firearm studies to popular articles produced by the gun lobby: "Generally the level of analysis done on each side is of a low quality. The papers published in the medical literature (which are uniformly anti-gun) are particularly poor science."
As Bordua, Cowan, and Southwick observed, a prejudice against gun ownership pervades the public health field. Deborah Prothrow-Stith, dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, nicely summarizes the typical attitude of her colleagues in a recent book. "My own view on gun control is simple," she writes. "I hate guns and cannot imagine why anybody would want to own one. If I had my way, guns for sport would be registered, and all other guns would be banned." Opposition to gun ownership is also the official position of the U.S. Public Health Service, the CDC's parent agency. Since 1979, its goal has been "to reduce the number of handguns in private ownership," starting with a 25 percent reduction by the turn of the century. . . .
As Bordua and Cowan noted, one hallmark of the public health literature on guns is a tendency to ignore contrary scholarship. Among criminologists, Gary Kleck's encyclopedic Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America (1991) is universally recognized as the starting point for further research. Kleck, a professor of criminology at Florida State University, was initially a strong believer that gun ownership increased the incidence of homicide, but his research made him a skeptic. His book assembles strong evidence against the notion that reducing gun ownership is a goo
Preach it brother. No commie faggot is going to tell me what side of the road to drive on. How fast I can drive in a school zone. Make me have working brakes.
. . . or prescribe an adequate dose of medication.
The militia kept their muskets locked up in an armory away from home until they were needed. We still have that, it's called the National Guard. Go sign up if you want to, but you don't get to bring your service rifle home with you.
You're wrong on several points there. Historically it was common for local militia members to be expected to furnish their own weapon.
And the current militia is:
10 USC 311 - Militia: composition and classes
So how do you explain the current government tyranny? According to you there should be none.
If you look closely you'll see that actual government tyranny occurs outside the United States, not inside. Americans still select their leaders by voting in free and fair elections. Laws are enacted by Congress, not by decree. The Army defends the republic, not oppresses the people. Contrary to common exaggeration on Slashdot, corporations and the rich can do no more than try to influence voters, not actually stuff money into ballot boxes and have it counted as a vote.
Funny? Try insightful.
It's GNU/Linux, not GUN/Linux.
Depends on who you bought it from. If you bought it from Red Hat, its GNU/Linux. If you bought it from Red Jacket, it's Gun/Linux.
Do you get depressed seeing Obama double down on that?
Just assuming all your points are correct, and the bottom half of the country can't pay taxes.
He isn't right - they don't pay income tax. Don't != Can't.
I assume that is because they just can't survive on their current incomes and pay taxes.
In some cases that is justified, in others it doesn't seem to be. Welfare recipients take out cash at strip clubs, liquor stores and X-rated shops
Does that sound like a situation where the people that can pay should pay as little as possible and cut every social program we can find?
Should the people receiving aid be expected to do what they can? Under the current administration, no.
Obama's End Run on Welfare Reform, Part Two: Dismantling Workfare
When did it become right to not help other people?
When they need to learn independence? When they need to use their own abilities? If you ever have children, will they ever learn to walk? Or will you carry them for the rest of their life? What happens when you die and they still haven't learned to walk? Who will carry them then?
When exactly did we reach the utopia that you preach about where people collect their wealth and give nothing back to society?
When exactly did we reach the utopia that you preach about where people collect their benefits and nothing is expected of them?
Try being born to rich parents... Nobody has less incentive to work than somebody who is just handed millions of dollars.
That is called a parenting failure, not an entitlement program. Like winning the lottery, there is a significant chance that it won't go well. . . . although that might make you feel better.
Cash windfall can lead to downfall
Do you want to know what the biggest entitlement program in America is?
You need to check your source - you are WAY OFF.
More than Half of All Federal Spending Will Be on Entitlement Programs in 2012
So long as we have an income tax (that's another conversation...) I say with a resounding YES: the ultra-rich (>10 million "net worth") should pay much more (as a percentage) of their income in taxes than do the working poor ($0 "net worth"). It's called progressive taxation, and it's ABSOLUTELY necessary so long as there is such a HUGE chasm between the top 0.1% and the bottom 50%, financially speaking. Granted, the culture of greed that dug that chasm is a social issue, and cannot be solved politically. Progressive taxation is treating the symptom.
That's great. Just one problem, the US tax system is already the most progressive - two different studies.
U.S. Taxes Really Are Unusually Progressive
Income taxes in America are more progressive than in other rich countries--according to an authoritiative official study which, to my knowledge, has not been contradicted. The OECD's report "Growing Unequal", on poverty and inequality in industrial countries, includes a table that provides two measures of income tax progressivity in 2005. This is evidently the source of de Rugy's numbers. Here they are in an excel file. According to one measure, America's income taxes were the most progressive of the 24 countries in the sample, except for Ireland. According to the other, they were the most progressive full stop. (A more recent OECD report, "Divided We Stand", uses different data, a smaller sample of countries and a different measure of progressivity: the results are similar.) . . . more
America has industrialized world’s most progressive income tax, says The Tax Foundation
America leads the world in many fields, but for those keeping score, the nation apparently has yet another superlative to add to its column. According to The Tax Foundation, the U.S. currently can lay claim to having the most progressive income tax among all industrialized nations.
In the mid-2000s, the top 10 percent of households in the U.S. were responsible for 45.1 percent of all income tax revenues, according to numbers compiled by the foundation. That same decile, however, only earned 33.5 percent of the market income – which makes the ratio of income tax paid to market income earned the highest of any industrialized country, at a whopping 1.35. For comparison, France stands at 1.10, Belgium at 0.94 and Switzerland at 0.89.
American Enterprise Institute economist Alan Viard told The Daily Caller that while America’s tax code is extremely progressive, it is not as redistributive as many other nations because the overall tax system is smaller.
“As a country imposes a larger volume of taxes and as the public sector gets bigger, it is almost certain that they are not going to remain as progressive in how they raise their revenue,” Viard said. “Progressivity has certain economic costs. It tends to undermine incentives to work and to save It will be more and more costly for a country to stay that progressive as their tax system gets bigger. ” . . . more
Will raising taxes pull in more revenue? Not necessarily.
Why 70% Tax Rates Won't Work
The intelligentsia of the Democratic Party is growing increasingly enthusiastic about raising the highest federal income tax rates to 70% or more. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich took the lead in February, pro
If that is true, and the only factor, then how did the Democrats lose control of the House? Democrats had control of the House for 40 years, and lost it during the Clinton administration . I'm sure you've heard of that famous and popular Democratic president? If you are going to try to claim that the Democrats didn't structure districts to their advantage, would you at least have the common decency to throw up a little as you type it?
The GOP has now won control of the House in eight of the past 10 congressional elections, dating back to 1994. When I began following politics it seemed like that would never happen. Republicans failed to win a majority in the House in the 20 elections between 1954 and 1992. Political scientists wrote articles about how the Democrats would always have a lock on the House. . . more
The issue is that a frightening portion of the USA's domestic economy is beholden to government and military contracts. Without the spending, a huge part of the domestic economy will suffer implosions. . . .
This is what happens when the majority of an economy becomes dominated by a small handful of very large players; the system becomes far more vulnrable to a major upheval by a shift in conditions, much like the recently infamous banking disaster.
"Just quitting" on major war expenditures would be catastrophic. A huge portion of the USA's economy is built around war profiteering.
The truly frightening thing is that there are people ignorant enough to believe what you wrote, and engage in advocacy based on that ignorance.
More than Half of All Federal Spending Will Be on Entitlement Programs in 2012 - 62% entitlement programs, 19% defense.
Defense Spending as Percentage of GDP Well Below Historical Average
It looks like that "frightening" portion of spending you worry about shouldn't be defense, but entitlements.
More American voted for Democrats than for Republicans in the house. The only reason the kept the house is because of gerrymandering.
The author of that article you link to is also either badly confused, or trying to mislead the reader. Elections for representatives in the House are on a per-district basis only, it isn't based on some sort of national tally. A heavy Democratic party vote in a couple of large states could easily result in an aggregate house vote count nationally for Democrats well above that for Republicans, but that is meaningless nationally since each district votes to elect its own representative. A million to 1 Democratic votes in San Francisco, California, doesn't help a Democrat running in Reno, Nevada.
There is a lot more to it than that. Of course, even then it isn't quite so fun when the shoe is on the other foot, it is?
Michael Barone: Republicans Find Refuge in the House
The GOP has now won control of the House in eight of the past 10 congressional elections, dating back to 1994. When I began following politics it seemed like that would never happen. Republicans failed to win a majority in the House in the 20 elections between 1954 and 1992. Political scientists wrote articles about how the Democrats would always have a lock on the House. . .
Democrats seem to have a structural advantage these days in the Electoral College. . .
The House is another matter. Here the Republicans have some structural advantages which, with good luck, have given them House majorities eight of the last 10 times. That is important, because since the mid-1990s Americans have become straight-ticket voters, seldom voting for candidates of different parties.
One structural advantage is demographic. Democratic voters tend to be clustered in black, Latino and gentry-liberal neighborhoods in metropolitan areas. Republican voters are more spread out. In 2008, Mr. Obama carried 28 congressional districts with more than 80% of the vote. John McCain carried zero congressional districts by that margin; Mr. Romney may have gotten that much in a couple of districts in Utah.
Those heavily Democratic neighborhoods contribute to the landslide margins candidate Obama has won in states like California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Illinois. But their voters don't do as much to elect Democratic House members as they would if they were spread randomly through the population. In addition, many such areas have been losing population and therefore representation in the House.
On top of this is another Republican structural advantage: the Voting Rights Act. The prevailing interpretation of this otherwise benign law is that redistricters must maximize the number of "majority-minority" congressional districts. That means packing blacks and Latinos into certain districts and keeping them out of adjacent districts that tend to go Republican. This results in districts with grotesque and elongated boundaries to fit the bill of majority-minority. . .
A third Republican structural advantage used to belong to the Democrats: the South. . . . The Solid South helped Democrats maintain House majorities in the 1960s, '70s and '80s. . . But as the Democratic Party became more liberal, white Southerners started voting Republican for president in the 1960s, and in the straight-ticket 1990s Republicans replaced white Southern Democrats in droves. . . more
Al Jazeerah is BBC . . . It was formed when BBC closed it Arabic division. Those folks went and started Al Jazeerah.
That makes perfect sense.
Electing a New People: The Leftist - Islamic Alliance
Islamist-Left Alliance A Growing Force
(BBC Director General) Mark Thompson: “There was massive left-wing bias at the BBC”
The BBC's Left-wing bias isn't in its news coverage; it's in everything else that it does
BBC bias - The BBC has managed to flabbergast even those Israelis who hadn’t expected minimal fairness from it.
More absurd anti-Israel bias from BBC MidEast editor
For once, there is no ambiguity: the Today programme's report on Gaza this morning was totally and utterly biased
This is what always made me LMAO at these chuckleheads, they can't say what they really want which is "He's a nigger!" so they try to find another reason to get rid of him,. . .
Is that so? So I guess that means you would also be implying that John McCain is simply "passing" for white?
McCain's citizenship called into question - Candidate, born in Panama Canal Zone, may not qualify as 'natural born'
Why Senator John McCain Cannot be President: Eleven Months and a Hundred Yards Short of Citizenship
McCain’s Canal Zone Birth Prompts Queries About Whether That Rules Him Out
I didn't see a single news service say a fucking word about the revelation that Blackwater was selling kids as fuck toys to get better deals in both Kosovo and Afghanistan
The allegation is actually against DynCrop, and you're kidding, right? The media is full of that allegation, but what you don't see is this:
This spring, the State Department inspector general began investigating whether DynCorp ignored signs of drug abuse among expatriate employees in Afghanistan. A related review into the dancing incident is "substantially completed" and "at this point, no criminal activity has been discovered," said Douglas Welty, State Department inspector general spokesman. -- Amid Reviews, DynCorp Bolsters Ethics Practices
(If I recall correctly, the Dallas Morning News had quoted a State Deptment IG spokesman that made a stronger statement, unfortunately that story appears to be not online anymore.)
To quote the late Bill Hicks . . .
Must you?
Given that the price of gas keeps going up, isn't every year a record year for gas prices?
When adjusted for inflation, no. Are price increases really a given? Price decreases also happen. Supply and demand.
Dear America . . . Stop it. . . . There is no sympathy from the rest of the world. Here in Canada . . . in Europe its way worse . . . Pick some other non-issue to cry about
Dear Canadian (NIK282000), Canada, Europe, and the rest of the world that agrees with above - if you can come here and complain about everything said or done by Americans and the United States, then Americans have the same right to complain about things in America, especially when it effects their lives. If you want to say that Americans have less of a right to complain about things about or in American than you have, I think you can stick that one in your ear. By the way, if you think energy prices are a non-issue - you're building a case that you're a nitwit. And shouldn't you really be bragging yet again about how high taxes, the primary driver of the price difference, provide you a superior civilization - that makes it more expensive to travel by car? What you wrote doesn't really seem like bragging, more like complaining, just like you don't want Americans to do.
Terrifying: Increases in Real Per Capita Federal Spending Over The Past 35 Years
It appears the Federal government is hiring again under the Obama administration.
Historical Federal Workforce Tables - (In thousands)
Year.Civ.. Mil..L/J*.Total
2008 2,692 1,450 64 4,206
2009 2,774 1,591 66 4,430
*Legislative & Judicial
How much does it cost to blow up innocent people (women and children included though I value them neither more nor less than males) by drone just about every day of the year.
I really don't know where my priorities are at -- what the fuck is wrong with me for valuing interesting scientific data over blowing up random people and making enemies of the survivors.
The vast majority of people being killed by drone strikes are members of terrorist groups (note that is terrorist, not "terrorist."), and not innocent people, nor are they random people. Any survivors are likely to already be our enemies.
Pakistani General: Actually, The Drones Are Awesome
I doubt very much that the cost of drone strikes will be anywhere near the cost of a satellite and space launch.
So, what you are suggesting is that paying more taxes in a week that what you are today is not an increase as long as you aren't paying as much as you might be. Quite right, Comrade. I'll help you spread the word - Good news citizens! Your tax rates have been reduced from the old rate of 25% to a new rate of 35%! Likewise the chocolate ration has been increased from 50g to 40g!
It's always good to hear from the Comrades from the Ministry of Truth.
. . . it can;t come from the Senate, it can't come from the President . . .So can we please drop this bullshit about how it's Harry Reid's fault for not coming up with a budget. The blame falls clearly on the House and thus on Boehner's lap
If we were to dispense with the bullshit, your post would be blank. How is it that you either don't know this, or expect everyone to be so ignorant as to not call you on it? Well, to your credit, you did suck in 3 moderators.
The Federal Budget Process
Once the president lays out his proposal, the House and Senate budget committees can begin writing their budget resolutions. The budget resolution sets targets for spending and tax revenue and identifies any policies that will need to move through reconciliation. The resolutions are sent to the floor for a vote, and differences are resolved in conference.
More: The Congressional Budget Process: A Brief Overview
The House has produced and passed budgets, the Senate hasn't. The Senate has voted plenty down though.
President Obama proposed a FY2012 budget last year, and the Senate voted it down 97–0. (And that budget was no prize—according to the Congressional Budget Office, that proposal never had an annual deficit of less than $748 billion, would double the national debt in 10 years and would see annual interest payments approach $1 trillion per year.)
-- 1,000 Days Without a Budget: Facts on the Senate’s Failure
'1,200 Days and $5 Trillion in New Debt Since Senate Dems Passed a Budget'
Congress has spent $11.2 trillion since passing its last budget on April 29, 2009, according to the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee. The new debt since that date is $4.8 trillion.
"Since the last budget resolution was passed 1,200 days ago, the government has borrowed 42 cents of every dollar spent," the chart notes. The chart is based on Treasury Department figures.
The Senate obviously has no problem passing bills to spend money - why can't they pass a budget?
If this continues, it can't end well.
'U.S. Per Person Debt Now 35 Percent Higher than that of Greece'
If something cannot go on forever, it will stop. --Stein's Law