The former is absolutely necessary in my mind. Execs should be fired, not given bonuses. As for non-bailout companies, it is attacking the very real wealth disparity problem, but I agree it is a misguided approach to it. It is much more of a "looks good" solution to appease the people than a real, workable solution. I'm not worried about us becoming less capitalist though, as we've swung too far towards extreme capitalism in the last decade.
That's so ridiculously untrue I literally LOLed. There's more government interference now than there's ever been before in the U.S - even before all of Obama's new bullshit. I can hardly even believe someone could say something like that.
The reality is, some level of government interference is necessary for a stable economy. It was moving away from that that destabilized our economy in the first place. We need to restore it to sane levels and methods of interference, primarily taxation and social safety nets.
No, what "destabalized" the economy was the government fucking around with financial markets trying to provide a "social safety net" for poor people by encouraging banks to make bad loans. See this, for example.
Also, providing a "social safety net" isn't really the government's job.
Mostly, I'm hoping we move back to sane levels of taxation at the high end and redirect that in sane ways to prevent the lower economic classes from growing any more, the middle class from vanishing, and the ultra-wealthy from gaining ever larger shares.
Maybe the "lower economic classes" should do the rest of us a favor and take responsibility for themselves?
Dur, the government "made it profitable" by deregulating the mortgage industry in the 1990s. There (likely) would not have been a housing bubble if the government had maintained its pre-Clinton housing regulations.
No, the deregulation in the 90s was just so they could make it profitable later. They made it profitable later on, by having Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "secure" bad mortgages, in the name of helping poor people buy houses. Previously, the banks wouldn't give loans to people unlikely to pay them back. But once Fannie and Freddie were volunteering to secure the loans, the banks didn't have to give a fuck any more. If the poor people paid off the loans, they (banks) made money, just like any other loan. If the poor people didn't pay off the loans, then it became Freddie and Fannie's problem.
Also, as the recent events have shown, making bad loans was not profitable.
Maybe you didn't get the memo, but the banks aren't really losing money because we're bailing them out... We (taxpayers) are getting fucked, but the banks are basically getting a blank check from the government.
Re:If you didn't vote libertarian, you ASKED FOR T
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Obama DOJ Sides With RIAA
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· Score: 5, Insightful
It's really depressing that so many people are this stupid. Every argument against voting third party eventually boils down to "third parties can't win" which completely misses the point.
If you're voting against what you really want just so you can brag that you voted for the winner, then you're doing it wrong. Do us all a favor and stay home next election day.
You can't have a free market and regulation at the same time. It doesn't even make sense - laws and regulation are the opposite of free. You might as well say "We'll have free speech right after we stop people from communicating."
The real markets only collapsed because the government messed with them. If the government hadn't made it profitable to make bad loans, the banks wouldn't have done it.
Had the US let AIG, Citi, JPG, GS, BoA and others drown in their own cesspool it wouldn't have changed much.
I agree with this, but I don't think you took it far enough. The government (via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) shouldn't have been encouraging bad loans in the first place. That would make it far easier to tell them to fuck off when they came around asking for money.
I distinctly remember a pie chart on one of those sites showing how the bailout money was going to be spent. The biggest category was something ridiculous like "tax relief", so I used the feedback link to ask why they bothered collecting the money at all if they were just going to use it to relieve taxes. I never got a response, but I'm absolutely sure the graph was there and that I sent the "feedback" on it.
The problem with Reagan and Bush is that they didn't really practice what they preached. There are two sides to "Lower taxes and smaller government" and they only did one of them.
Second, fixing the economy isn't really the government's job. They just shouldn't be screwing with it. In fact, it's probably only as bad as it is because the government was interfering with it so much in the first place.
The truth is that the economy will go back up despite the damage Bush and Obama have done with their stupid bail outs. Going up and down is just part of what economies do.
It's really a bit disappointing that Obama is going to take all the credit when things start going back up because the coincidence is going to reinforce his plans for even bigger, more intrusive government.
He should not be Swift-Boated for the actions of others.
I have to disagree. If he's such a poor manager that he missed something like his direct report having "ghost employees" and taking kick backs then I don't think he's competent enough to be the federal CIO. Five years is a long time to not notice something was up.
If he's not corrupt then he's incompetent. Either way, he's not qualified.
If it were, we wouldn't be finding out about this corruption until two years into their term, just like any other democrat.
Actually, I think you're wrong. He's appointing people *SO* corrupt they can't even hide it until two years into their term. And that's with a majority in congress and a "cheerleading media". I cringe to think of what's actually getting through while everyone focus on these blatant cases.
If it's in their best interest, then why are they suing innocent people, and why when shown that their victims couldn't possibly be the ones they're after do they drag the suits out?
The funny thing is, your links actually support the idea of having the RIAA request disconnects from ISPs. If they were sending disconnect notices to ISPs about specific IPs it would be impossible for them to bother the innocent people in your articles because those people didn't have internet access and thus no IP to disconnect.
And that still leaves the question of why you think the ISPs and the RIAA would want to conspire together to kick random people off of the internet. Hell, don't most ISPs put it in their terms of service that they can cut off your service at their discretion? If they really wanted to randomly cut innocent people's service, why bother with the RIAA at all?
This is precisely why nobody is taking the opposing viewpoint very serious. Sadly, I almost wish you were right so the RIAA could start cutting idiots like you off of the internet.
One one side there's copyright law and thousands of torrent sites with millions of torrents for RIAA and MPAA copyrighted music and movies. Obviously, the RIAA and MPAA are at least a little right that there are a lot of people downloading their content illegally.
On the opposing side you have idiots with absolutely no evidence crying "This isn't happening, the RIAA is just trying to shut down the internet to make money!".
Seriously, do you have even the tiniest shred of evidence supporting your claim?
I don't understand the conspiracy theory here. It just doesn't make sense.
It's in the RIAA's best interest to provide accurate time stamps because they gain nothing by having the wrong people's connection cut. If the real offender is still uploading then the RIAA has just wasted time and money and achieved nothing.
It's in the ISP's best interest to keep accurate time stamps so they can cut the right person's connection because each customer they turn off is $60 a month they stop making - that adds up after a while. Not to mention that shutting down the wrong people means the RIAA will keep coming back telling them to shut off even more people.
Not to mention all the negative publicity they would get if they shut down the wrong people.
You got DHCP? You're pretty much guaranteed to get someone else's notice. And as you pointed out, a lot of stuff gets done over the internet. Including my job. The Recording associations are essentially killing off the ability of anyone but large corporations to use the internet. Of course they're happy with that. The questions is - are you? Can you be?
You do realize DHCP requests and responses can be logged, right? If the RIAA tells an ISP they saw 12.34.56.78 sharing copyrighted material at a certain time, the ISP will look at the DHCP logs to find out which customer had 12.34.56.78 at that time and send them the notice. I'm not seeing the problem you're talking about.
Due to the current economic crisis, hopefully they can't afford to come up with a replacement.
Have you been paying attention? With the "current economic crisis" they'll just print some money to cover the costs. Printing money to bail out banks and printing money to buy nukes are about equally stupid ideas, and we're already doing one of them, so why not the other?
Circuit City only went out of business because most consumers already realized Best Buy, Walmart and the Internet offered better deals. In other words, they weren't even competing when they were in business. If they were offering a decent alternative they'd have been able to get enough customers to stay in business. If anything this just forces Circuit City's few remaining customers to wake up and realize what everybody else already knew: better deals can be had else where.
And I wouldn't worry about Best Buy becoming a monopoly. There's still Walmart, Target, Fry's and Ultimate Electronics. And then there's the Internet with hundreds of websites competing against Best Buy and each other.
Well that just make's his claim that much more dubious. Assuming the people in question were already able to buy a TV, and most of a converter box, I don't see why they can't just bite the bullet and pay for the remaining tiny fraction of the conveter box.
But people will die without tornado information, among other things.
If the actual people involved don't value their lives enough to buy a TV for tornado reports, I certainly don't value their life enough to buy a TV for them. Let them die for all I care.
The real problem is that we have an Office of Information Technology at all. The entire department shouldn't exist. Complaining that they've done something stupid on their website is missing the forest for the trees.
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If you're fucked either way, why vote at all?
Like I said before, next election stay home. If enough people like you stay home, maybe the rest of us can have a decent election for a change.
That's so ridiculously untrue I literally LOLed. There's more government interference now than there's ever been before in the U.S - even before all of Obama's new bullshit. I can hardly even believe someone could say something like that.
No, what "destabalized" the economy was the government fucking around with financial markets trying to provide a "social safety net" for poor people by encouraging banks to make bad loans. See this, for example.
Also, providing a "social safety net" isn't really the government's job.
Maybe the "lower economic classes" should do the rest of us a favor and take responsibility for themselves?
No, the deregulation in the 90s was just so they could make it profitable later. They made it profitable later on, by having Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "secure" bad mortgages, in the name of helping poor people buy houses. Previously, the banks wouldn't give loans to people unlikely to pay them back. But once Fannie and Freddie were volunteering to secure the loans, the banks didn't have to give a fuck any more. If the poor people paid off the loans, they (banks) made money, just like any other loan. If the poor people didn't pay off the loans, then it became Freddie and Fannie's problem.
Maybe you didn't get the memo, but the banks aren't really losing money because we're bailing them out... We (taxpayers) are getting fucked, but the banks are basically getting a blank check from the government.
It's really depressing that so many people are this stupid. Every argument against voting third party eventually boils down to "third parties can't win" which completely misses the point.
If you're voting against what you really want just so you can brag that you voted for the winner, then you're doing it wrong. Do us all a favor and stay home next election day.
You can't have a free market and regulation at the same time. It doesn't even make sense - laws and regulation are the opposite of free. You might as well say "We'll have free speech right after we stop people from communicating."
The real markets only collapsed because the government messed with them. If the government hadn't made it profitable to make bad loans, the banks wouldn't have done it.
I agree with this, but I don't think you took it far enough. The government (via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) shouldn't have been encouraging bad loans in the first place. That would make it far easier to tell them to fuck off when they came around asking for money.
I distinctly remember a pie chart on one of those sites showing how the bailout money was going to be spent. The biggest category was something ridiculous like "tax relief", so I used the feedback link to ask why they bothered collecting the money at all if they were just going to use it to relieve taxes. I never got a response, but I'm absolutely sure the graph was there and that I sent the "feedback" on it.
That's not really an "Ayn Rand-ish mentality".
The problem with Reagan and Bush is that they didn't really practice what they preached. There are two sides to "Lower taxes and smaller government" and they only did one of them.
Second, fixing the economy isn't really the government's job. They just shouldn't be screwing with it. In fact, it's probably only as bad as it is because the government was interfering with it so much in the first place.
The truth is that the economy will go back up despite the damage Bush and Obama have done with their stupid bail outs. Going up and down is just part of what economies do.
It's really a bit disappointing that Obama is going to take all the credit when things start going back up because the coincidence is going to reinforce his plans for even bigger, more intrusive government.
I have to disagree. If he's such a poor manager that he missed something like his direct report having "ghost employees" and taking kick backs then I don't think he's competent enough to be the federal CIO. Five years is a long time to not notice something was up.
If he's not corrupt then he's incompetent. Either way, he's not qualified.
Why do you think the "neo-cons" were trying to "destroy America"?
If anything it would seem the problem was that they were so gung-ho about protecting America that they just started making shit up.
Actually, I think you're wrong. He's appointing people *SO* corrupt they can't even hide it until two years into their term. And that's with a majority in congress and a "cheerleading media". I cringe to think of what's actually getting through while everyone focus on these blatant cases.
No, actually, I didn't, because the connection you made between "free markets" and "advertising" doesn't really even make sense.
Perfect example of why we're moving to socialism. You're demonizing something you clearly don't even understand.
It's called "sarcasm."
The funny thing is, your links actually support the idea of having the RIAA request disconnects from ISPs. If they were sending disconnect notices to ISPs about specific IPs it would be impossible for them to bother the innocent people in your articles because those people didn't have internet access and thus no IP to disconnect.
Hasn't it?
And that still leaves the question of why you think the ISPs and the RIAA would want to conspire together to kick random people off of the internet. Hell, don't most ISPs put it in their terms of service that they can cut off your service at their discretion? If they really wanted to randomly cut innocent people's service, why bother with the RIAA at all?
I already explained why it doesn't make any sense to fake the files here.
If you have a more sensical explanation than the "RIAA is trying to shut down the entire internet" bullshit, I'd love to hear it.
This is precisely why nobody is taking the opposing viewpoint very serious. Sadly, I almost wish you were right so the RIAA could start cutting idiots like you off of the internet.
One one side there's copyright law and thousands of torrent sites with millions of torrents for RIAA and MPAA copyrighted music and movies. Obviously, the RIAA and MPAA are at least a little right that there are a lot of people downloading their content illegally.
On the opposing side you have idiots with absolutely no evidence crying "This isn't happening, the RIAA is just trying to shut down the internet to make money!".
Seriously, do you have even the tiniest shred of evidence supporting your claim?
I don't understand the conspiracy theory here. It just doesn't make sense.
It's in the RIAA's best interest to provide accurate time stamps because they gain nothing by having the wrong people's connection cut. If the real offender is still uploading then the RIAA has just wasted time and money and achieved nothing.
It's in the ISP's best interest to keep accurate time stamps so they can cut the right person's connection because each customer they turn off is $60 a month they stop making - that adds up after a while. Not to mention that shutting down the wrong people means the RIAA will keep coming back telling them to shut off even more people.
Not to mention all the negative publicity they would get if they shut down the wrong people.
So, what devious hijinks are you expecting?
You do realize DHCP requests and responses can be logged, right? If the RIAA tells an ISP they saw 12.34.56.78 sharing copyrighted material at a certain time, the ISP will look at the DHCP logs to find out which customer had 12.34.56.78 at that time and send them the notice. I'm not seeing the problem you're talking about.
Have you been paying attention? With the "current economic crisis" they'll just print some money to cover the costs. Printing money to bail out banks and printing money to buy nukes are about equally stupid ideas, and we're already doing one of them, so why not the other?
Circuit City only went out of business because most consumers already realized Best Buy, Walmart and the Internet offered better deals. In other words, they weren't even competing when they were in business. If they were offering a decent alternative they'd have been able to get enough customers to stay in business. If anything this just forces Circuit City's few remaining customers to wake up and realize what everybody else already knew: better deals can be had else where.
And I wouldn't worry about Best Buy becoming a monopoly. There's still Walmart, Target, Fry's and Ultimate Electronics. And then there's the Internet with hundreds of websites competing against Best Buy and each other.
Well that just make's his claim that much more dubious. Assuming the people in question were already able to buy a TV, and most of a converter box, I don't see why they can't just bite the bullet and pay for the remaining tiny fraction of the conveter box.
If the actual people involved don't value their lives enough to buy a TV for tornado reports, I certainly don't value their life enough to buy a TV for them. Let them die for all I care.
The real problem is that we have an Office of Information Technology at all. The entire department shouldn't exist. Complaining that they've done something stupid on their website is missing the forest for the trees.