> Discrimination in price, services, or facilities ( 2 of the Clayton > Act) (a) Price; selection of customers It shall be unlawful for > any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such > commerce, either directly or indirectly, to discriminate in price > between different purchasers of commodities of like grade > and quality,
Thanks for looking that up. You are correct; the example of price discrimination you gave is illegal.
I don't think I was clear enough about what I meant. Price discrimination simply means providing different levels of goods to people with different levels of price sensitivity. Price discrimination is used all the time, but the discrimination must be for commodities of different grades or qualities. But what you can't do is change the price for the same good or service depending on what the buyer is willing/able to pay.
Price discrimination is done all the time. For example, with the movie theater I talked about, that's a good example of price discrimination. It's the same movie, the same seat, but the time of day in which the consumer wishes to see the movie is the discrimination (in the non pejorative sense).
What would be wrong (and discrimination in the pejorative sense) is if I charged more for black people to see the movie than white people. Or for women to see the movie than men. Or for someone wearing a Rolex watch than someone wearing a Casio. That's what's illegal, and I believe that's what the Clayton Antitrust Act that you quoted above is talking about.
For the movie example, the movie time is the different grade. Price discrimination is used for airline tickets, where the discriminator is how far in advance you pay for the ticket.
So the big problem is, for the example I gave, how could you set up a pricing scheme to discriminate for the rich and poor person? Obviously the only way to do it is a tiered pricing structure, but how would that work? Remember, having substandard 911 service is like having a substandard parachute -- if you can't count on it working when you absolutely need it, you are better off having not purchased it to begin with.
One way to solve the problem is to use the solution I provided. I know that a tax/regulation scheme makes quasi-religious free marketers grumpy, but the solution works. And for that example, there's no solution that works better for that example. Just because some people are ideologically against it doesn't make it any less optimal.
As for your claims of the government's "cost structure" somehow being higher, I'm not sure what you mean. In the example, strictly speaking the cost structure is C = 1000+10x. One could argue that since AC >> MC, then the greater the number of users (x), the higher the operating leverage, and thus the lower the cost structure (assuming that the fixed cost is actually variable for large numbers of users). Therefore, a single entity (e.g., the government) would have a more efficient cost structure than any smaller organization.
> Hank would do is engage in price discrimination and charge > the rich one price and the poor another. > But wait, this is an anti-trust violation.
Price discrimination (in the non pejorative sense) is perfectly legal when the basis for the discrimination is objective and nondiscriminatory (in the pejorative sense). There's no need for "anti-trust" to even come into it. However, price discrimination isn't the answer to this problem, as I describe here. In short, the problem is how to you "charge the rich one price and the poor another" and prevent arbitration at the same time? That is, how do you know that a given rich person won't try to game the system to pay the "poor" price?
With the movie theater example, it's easy because the consumer is buying a specific time to see the movie. So they can't purchase a matinee movie ticket and then go show up during the regular full-pricing viewing. Thus there is an objective basis for the price discrimination. But with 911 services-- where substandard service might be worse than no service at all-- how could you do that?
And even more important, is that solution somehow more economically and socially optimal than the simple tax-regulation example I gave? Or is this the case of someone searching for a non-optimal solution because they have an emotional problem with the optimal one? The problem with that is Hank likes it that way, remember?
> There's no reason you can't have multiple services with > different qualities based on
You're describing tiered services using a price discrimination model. That works for some situations, such as for movie theaters (you spend more to see a movie during prime time than during a matinee). However, it won't work if you don't have an objective basis for the price discrimination. How do you determine the basis for price discrimination for a service? It's not like you can ask the person what their income is and charge them based on that.
So you'd be left with providing "tiered services": you pay a little for "economy service" and more for higher levels of service. The problem with that how it would even be possible to provide tiered services? It's not like emergency services are like cable television where you can have premium services (that have a low variable cost, but you can charge a lot for). Would the "economy version" only respond to every other call? Maybe they'd send someone out within 24 hours instead of immediately? No, I can't think of a way to make tiered services work for 911 services. And certainly not in a way that would be more optimal for the example I described.
A second concern is with the problem as I outlined it is that the fixed costs are much larger than the marginal costs. Therefore cost savings do not come from reduction in the marginal costs; they come from per unit reductions in the fixed costs; i.e., spreading the fixed costs across more users.
The solution I provided required a roughly equal tax with no need for price discrimination. Assume the poor person has income of around $11,400, and the rich person has income of $1,000,000 (obviously an extreme example, but unfortunately not unheard of in the U.S. today). That makes the $1 "911 tax" on the poor person of to be around 0.008% of their income. On the rich person the $91 "911 tax" would be of around 0.009% on their income.
You tax based on income, then you charge $10 for the service. So no price discrimination is necessary.
> Moreover, if the poor truly couldn't pay for even the lowest- > priced service, the government could supply "911 vouchers"
How would you pay for that? It's easy to throw out a "solution" that fits a particular ideology, but working the numbers is when the rubber meets the road.
I described a revenue neutral 911 program that actually minimizes the price for 911 services for both rich and poor people (for my example). So for you to propose "vouchers", how would you make sure those 90 poor people were served without making the rich people pay more than $101 (or $110 for that matter) given the constraints of the problem? I don't think you can.
> There's absolutely no reason that the government needs to > supply a monopoly service.
That sounds less like reasoning, and more like dogma. As my admittedly simple example illustrated, it's clear that any case where the average cost is significantly larger than the marginal cost is a candidate for regulation. To say otherwise is to rely less on rational thought and more on ideology.
Note that this example is even more telling. The rich and the poor people benefit from the regulation. The government is indifferent because the 911 service is revenue neutral. The only person who would be against this idea is someone who notices that the rich people are willing to pay up to $200 for the service. Let's call this guy Hank.
So if Hank were to set up a parallel service and charge $200 for it, his profit will be as follows: ($200 x 10 users) - ($1000 + $10 x 10 users) = $900. So instead of this being a break-even service where the rich pay $101 and the poor pay $11, Hank charges the rich $200 and doesn't serve the poor at all, and he makes $900. Obviously this goes against the best interest of the rich and the poor, so Hank handles this by railing indiscriminately against "regulation" and the like.
So when he gets his service set up, he uses the fear of taxation and this newly created hatred for "regulation" to make the rich and poor think they would pay more if the government stepped in, when actually, they would pay less.
Since the government is generally indifferent (it was a revenue neutral program), it doesn't matter if Hank does this. In fact, if Hank is a large contributor to party in power, they might even encourage it.
> Why make it a "tax"? > Blood money is a lousy way to pay for anything. > If this is a a cause you think is "worthy", just make an extra > payment into a "needy get the service free" fund.
Whether one emotionally doesn't believe in taxes and price regulation for essential services is irrelevant; it makes sense from an economic perspective, as well as from a social contract perspective.
As macroeconomics theory states, it makes sense to look towards a tax in several cases, one of which is when the marginal costs (MC; the incremental cost to add a single additional consumer to an existing service) is much less than the average cost (AC; the total cost for the service divided by the total number of users). In other words, the fixed costs for a particular service is very high compared to the marginal costs.
So let's say the fixed costs for providing the 911 service is $1000 (costs for infrastructure, monitoring, etc). Let's say that the marginal cost for providing the 911 service to a given subscriber is $10.
Assume that we have 10 rich people who are willing to pay $200 for the service. We have 90 poor people who are willing to pay $11 for the service.
We want to supply all 100 people with the service, so to do that, we have to charge a max of $11 for the service. The marginal price is $11, and the marginal cost is $10, so we're okay from an efficient price perspective.
The problem is that at this price, we're losing money: ($11 x 100) - ($1000 + $10 x 100) = -$900. So it makes sense to allow the 911 service to have a monopoly, but use regulation to set the price at a level that has MR > MC, but subsidize the fixed costs with taxes.
For this example, let say there's a $91 tax that only the rich people pay, and a $1 tax that the poor people pay. Pretend that the tax rate is progressive enough to cover this with the difference in income. So in taxes, we collect ($91 x 10) + ($1 x 100) = $1000. Okay, the fixed costs are covered. Now we charge $10 for each user that uses the service. For 100 users, we generate (100 x 10) = $1000 in revenue, which covers all of our costs. The 911 service is exactly breaking even.
Moreover, each group is paying equal to or less what they were willing to pay. The poor people are paying $10 for the service + $1 in "911 tax" = $11. The rich people are paying $10 for the service and $91 tax = $101 for the service, which is less than the $200 they were willing to pay for the service.
Is this more efficient? Macroeconomics theory says yes. If the rich people had been the only ones served, they would have have had to pay [$1000 + ($10 x 10 users)] / 10 users = $110 for the service to just break even. This price would be even higher if a private company had been running the service, since they would have to do more than break even; they'd have to turn a reasonable profit. So from the rich people's perspective, the regulated, taxed price of $101 is less than the case where they were the only ones served ($110) as well as being lower than the maximum price they're willing to pay ($200).
So in conclusion, in the regulated case, everyone gets service (social contract and altruism benefit), both the rich and poor people pay equal to or less than what they were willing to pay (maximize the served base), the marginal price is higher than the marginal cost (efficient price), and the 911 service is break even (so we're not charging too much). Everybody wins.
This example is a little simplified because the marginal costs are too close to the fixed costs (1% for this example). The fact is the marginal costs for providing 911 service is nearly $0, but the fixed costs are very high.
Of course, unnecessary taxes are outrageous, particularly when spent on pork spending bills. Yes, Dubya, I'm looking at you and your damn yacht.
> I paid out a lifetime subscription. > If it does interfere, I don't really have any recourse.
Wow, thanks for the warning. I was thinking about buying a Tivo this year, but I hate the idea of yet another annual subscription. So, I was thinking about buying the unit lifetime subscription.
It didn't occur to me that if I did so, Tivo could change their terms at any time, and I would be stuck. I'm not convinced that Tivo won't change the service to make me not like it.
I know plenty of people who love their Tivo (or ReplayTV), but it starting to feel like a deal with the devil -- it's great at first, but then you're hooked.
Do members of each party do things we don't like? Sure. Does that mean the parties are the same? Of course not.
It's really easy to say (or moderate, for that matter) that there's no difference between the two major parties. However, one would have to be incapable of recognizing the difference between 1996 and 2004, in the economy, the current state of peace/war, the current state of civil liberties, and the national mood.
There's a difference between budget surpluses and budget deficits.
There's a difference between a booming economy and a stagnant one.
There's a difference between working internationally for peace and lying about reasons to go to war.
There's a difference between hopeful exuberance and rampant jingoism and McCarthyism.
If you can't tell the difference between Republicans and Democrats, that says less about the parties and more about you.
> Toy Story 2 was supposed to be the typical low-budget > straight-to-video Disney sequel, but thanks to the way > technology was moving, Pixar was able to do even better work > with less money, and the early dailies looked so good that > they convinced Disney to do it as a full theatrical release.
Actually, it wasn't the technology that sold it. Originally Toy Story 2 was supposed to be direct to video, but when Pixar worked out the story and started animating it, they found that it was actually a very good story (even better than the original).
So Pixar went back and had to redo all the animation to make it more appropriate for a theater release. And it was a good idea, too. It's important to remember that Pixar may make CG movies, but they're about more than the CG; Lasseter makes sure that the story comes first.
Usually Disney's direct to video stuff sucks quite hard. I'm impressed that it seemed that Pixar couldn't suck like Disney even if they tried.
> I call on all slashdotters to join me in a protest against the > sucky star wars prequels
I call on all slashdotters who want to protest the Star Wars prequels to boycott all future Star Wars-related stories on Slashdot. That will really show George Lucas. Show him good.
Plus, it will increase the signal to noise ratio for the community as a whole.
The first 45 seconds are from the previous movies (Episode 1, 2, and 4), but the rest looks really cool. Looks like Yoda gets to fight some more, and apparently Darth Sideous has a lightsaber, too. Obi Wan looks like he gets his ass handed to him by Anakin.
I hope the entire movie won't have that yellow "H" in the bottom right hand corner, though. Kinda distracting.
> people take their cues from others around them in weighing > how safe a decision is
This is correct. Psychology called this "Informational Social Influence," which is the idea that you look towards what the crowd of people are doing to determine what is correct or proper.
There is a related effect called "Normative Social Influence" which means that you follow what other people do so you don't stand out.
I took a Marketing Consumer Behavior class last semester and I was amazed how applicable to politics the entire course was. For example, you're not a "single issue voter"; you're a consumer using a noncompensatory decision model based on lexicographic choice with a single salient attribute. Political campaigns have got this stuff down to a science; that's why the polls are so close these days.
> I vaguely recall hearing on the news a couple of years ago that > some local candidate got caught personally removing his > opponent's signs.
Here in Dallas, Tom DeLay, the Republican Speaker of the House, forced redistricting in Texas in order to shore up more seats for Republicans. This blatant gerrymandering resulted in two incumbents being in the same district: Democrat Martin Frost and Republican Pete Sessions.
Earlier this year, a bunch of Frost's signs were found all over Pete Sessions' son's school. Frost accused Sessions of stealing his signs and sticking them at his son's school. Sessions conversely accused Frost of putting his signs at his son's school for reasons unknown.
It appeared to be a classic example of he said - he said. That is, until the Frost campaign released a police report that indicated that a few years before, the Republican had been pulled over with his vehicle full of his opponent's yard signs! The police officer let Sessions off with a warning.
Sessions had a lot of explaining to do after that.
> If we can't criticize him because he's on Comedy Central, then > why should we listen to any serious arguments from him, > seeing as he's on Comedy Central?
On one hand, I think you're correct. Jon Stewart should be careful, or he will end up embracing cynicism or nihilism of not standing for anything (I'm looking at you, Colin O'Quinn). However, there is a major difference.
I see Jon Stewart doing to Journalism what James Randi does for pseudoscience, like psychic powers, telekinesis, Creationism, "faith healing", and other decidedly non-scientific endeavors.
James Randi is a magician, but he exposes pseudoscientists and people who try to fake out the public. He clearly understands scientific concepts, and he understands the scientific method. His purpose is not to be a scientist, but to be a sort of referee, since many scientists do not wish to even address the pseudoscientists, because they see pseudoscience as clearly outside the realm of science. But that means that the pseudoscientists can work to deceive the public. James Randi works to both entertain and educate the public. For a great read, check out his book, The Truth About Uri Geller or Flim Flam! [neither are referral links].
As a comedian, Jon Stewart (like Al Franken) isn't required to be a journalist. But he implicitly understands journalism and what it's supposed to be about. It's not supposed to be about entertainment; it's supposed to be about educating the public. That's why our Constitution protects it.
So today when we have politicians and pundits who are willing to resort to sophism, it's important that we have the journalists do what our Constitution protects them to do. Unfortunately, we don't see enough of that these days.
Although theoretically, that is true, I would say that in this case, the major media heavily wants George W. Bush to win, so they tend to lean towards him. A great example is the fact that Kerry-Edwards won all four debates, but all the television pundits are now saying the debates don't really matter. If Bush had won (even just the last one), we would have heard about it non-stop.
Why would the major media prefer Bush? I read an interview in either Newsweek or Businessweek with the CEO of Viacom, who owns CBS among other outlets. In the interview, he was asked about the amount of money he personally has given to John Kerry, and he said something along the lines of I'm personally for Kerry, but as head of Viacom, when he votes, he votes in Viacom's interest. He said, "I don't want to denigrate Kerry, but from a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on."
When he says "deregulation" for his industry, he's talking about how the Bush administration has been heavily for media consolidation.
I think the reason why the Bush administration is for media consolidation is because, much like how Wal-mart prefers to work with a relatively small number of large vendors (so they can put pressures on them), the Bush administration knows that if there is a relatively small number of large media companies, they can put more pressure on them. If one of these companies puts out a movie critical of the president (let's say, Disney allowing "Fahrenheit 9/11" to be released), the White House can declare that ABC News (owned by Disney) doesn't get any embedded reporters during the war and they lose their space in the media entourage. Thus, since the large media company has lots to lose, they will practice self-censorship.
John Kerry has recently spoken out against media consolidation, as well as other Democrats and even some Republicans (I believe Kay Bailey Hutchinson IIRC), because they know that media consolidation will result in self-censorship, rendering it ultimately ineffective. Another interesting example is that Howard Dean was the media darling, until he spoke out against media consolidation. Soon after that, Dean was "Gored" by the media.
Jon Stewart is right. The media pretends to provide balance, but the truth is, they're no longer serving the public. They're really just serving the politicians.
> though he didn't get to push his book, I'm going to seek it > out and buy it;
I highly recommend the AudioBook version available on iTunes Music Service (no, that's not a referral link). It's got the whole cast of The Daily Show (Stewart, Colbert, Bee, Cordory, etc), so it's like listening to four hours of The Daily Show, commercial free.
> It isn't even a Bush Jr issue. When Clinton needed to deflect > some attention from the fact that the president lied in court > (which was the real issue, not the BJ) he went and bombed > someone.
Clinton certainly did not "bomb someone" to deflect attention. If he had, that would have been an impeachable offense. When it comes to attacking the president on something as important as that, the rule is "put up or shut up". The fact that the Republicans were on a witch hunt and throwing everything they could at Clinton, and they didn't raise that as a official charge (instead, they chose to accuse Clinton of this in the press and with pundits) means there is absolutely no evidence for it.
The press was so excited about trying to push a narrative that this was "Wag the Dog", that they irresponsibly pushed that idea, and they did not inform the public about the issue.
As CNN reported, Clinton's Defense Secretary Cohen had to defend the use of military force to Republican lawmakers:
================ Clinton came under intense criticism in 1998 by the GOP after he launched an attack on suspected terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. Intelligence indicated bin Laden and his top associates were meeting at a training camp when U.S. missiles were fired at it, just weeks after al Qaeda terrorists bombed U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.
The attack was launched on the same day Lewinsky, a former White House intern, wrapped up her testimony before a grand jury investigating whether Clinton lied under oath about their relationship or encouraged anyone else to do so.
"During that time when the attack was launched in Afghanistan and Sudan, there was a movie out called 'Wag the Dog,' " Cohen testified Tuesday. In the movie, an administration launched a fake war as a political ploy. "There were critics of the Clinton administration that attacked the president, saying this was an effort on his part to divert attention from his personal difficulties.
Cohen said the the military objective on August 20, 1998, was "to kill as many people in those camps as we could" and to "take out" a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that was believed to have been used by terrorists. ================ [Source = CNN, March 23, 2004]
It was reported back then, too, but people thought the "Wag the Dog" story was too good to drop it. The article back then stated this, but most people didn't know or care who Osama bin Laden was:
================ American cruise missiles pounded sites in Afghanistan and Sudan Thursday in retaliation for the deadly bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7.
"Let our actions today send this message loud and clear -- there are no expendable American targets," U.S. President Clinton said in a televised address to the American people Thursday evening. "There will be no sanctuary for terrorists. We will defend our people, our interests and our values."
Clinton said that information gathered by American intelligence showed that a network of terrorists affiliated with bin Laden was responsible for the bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, which killed 257 people, including 12 Americans.
National Security Adviser Sandy Berger said that American intelligence had also turned up "very specific" information that the bin Laden network was planning additional attacks, which Thursday's missile launches were designed to prevent.
Bin Laden has been given shelter by Afghanistan's Islamic rulers, the Taliban, and may have been in the area targeted by U.S. missiles. Taliban officials said bin Laden survived the attack, but U.S. officials said they did not know if he survived.
Pentagon sources confirmed to CNN that the attacks were made with Tomahawk cruise missiles, not aircraft. The missiles were fired from U.S. Navy ships in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. The simultaneous attacks took place about 1:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT).
> people would actually credit Bush with an Osama capture. He, > himself, did nothing - it would all be the work of troops or > foreign fighters
I'm sure you didn't mean the past tense.
My understanding is that we have few, if any, troops actively searching for Osama bin Laden. During active military options, we had only 12,000-15,000 troops in Afghanistan (as opposed to more than 140k in Iraq). The Bush administration has outsourced that job to Pakistan, which is disturbing. As Bill Clinton said in August, "Why did we put our No. 1 security threat in the hands of the Pakistanis, with us playing the supporting role, and put all our military resources into Iraq -- which was I think at best our No. 5 security threat?"
Bush moved many of the Arab-speaking translators from the Osama search efforts and put them in Iraq. Bob Graham said that General Tommy Franks lamented the fact that predator drone craft were being shifted towards Iraq as early as February 2002 [Source: Miami Times, September 5, 2004].
So if any U.S. troops are left looking for Osama, and they find him, it will be in spite of Bush, not because of him.
> So my own guess for the October Surprise 2004 is that Kerry > gets shot, Bush gets re-appointed
I'm no Bush fan, but I think it's offensive and unfair to suggest that the Bush campaign, or even any typical Bush supporter, wants Kerry dead in order to win the election.
Bush has and will do any dirty trick to win, but assassination is a whole different thing. I don't think it does much to help today's savagely polarized public discourse to suggest otherwise.
What's scary is that Osama bin Laden has the capability to speak to us from the dead!
Because Colin Powell told a senate panel in 2003 that Osama bin Laden was still alive, and the hunt for him continues, although Bush has outsourced the search effort to Pakistan for some reason.
The fact is on September 17, 2001, Bush told the American people "I want justice. And there's an old poster out West, I recall, that says, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.'" [Source: ABC News, Sept 17, 2001]
In March of 2003, Bush significantly reversed this position, saying, "I don't know where he is. I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not that important." [referenced in the Boston Globe, 6/5/2004]
Since then, Bush worked to forget Osama bin Laden, or at least get the American people to. As was reported in the Washington Post on Aug 12, 2004, since the beginning of 2003, Bush mentioned Osama bin Laden's name on only 10 occasions, but not at any length. In contrast, he mentioned Saddam Hussein's name on more then 300 occasions.
In fact, during the first Presidential debate. Kerry talked directly about Osama bin Laden, which forced Bush to finally do so.
=================== BUSH: Never...when I was running -- when we had the debate in 2000, never dreamt I'd be doing that.
But the enemy attacked us, Jim...
KERRY: Jim, the president just said something extraordinarily revealing and frankly very important in this debate. In answer to your question about Iraq and sending people into Iraq, he just said, "The enemy attacked us."
Clearly, Bush's scheme of trying to get the public to forget about Osama bin Laden who attacked us on 9/11 unraveled during the debate.
As for an October surprise, if Bush has avoided capturing Osama bin Laden in order to score political points just before the election, then I can think of nothing more despicable. That would be politicizing the 9/11 attacks in a way that I think even Bush is incapable of.
> Once you get to understanding the relationship dogs have > with their pack leader -- whether two- or four-legged -- then > it all makes sense.
That was a really good post.
It's very difficult to interpret the behavior of an animal that can't talk. Many of us would like to perform a Turing test on the person in the cube next to us, so how could we expect to easily answer the question of whether dogs are intelligent?
People who like dogs are going to interpret their intelligent-seeming behaviors positively and people who don't like dogs are going to interpret those same behaviors neutrally.
I've had dogs all my life -- first Sheltland Sheepdogs and now Collies (despite the AKC links, our two Collies are from Collie Rescue; we don't breed or show).
With my experience, I tend to agree with the idea that dogs are intelligent and far from "a program". Part of that comes from the fact that all of my dogs have had very different personalities. Yes, dogs are often driven by their instincts (marking trees, etc), but so are people. That doesn't make them bereft of intelligence.
As for outfitting our dogs with electronic gear, I guess I'll be a luddite. We've tagged our dogs with the electronic chip (in case they get lost), but I'm not sure watching a dog-produced web cam will be more than a novelty for most people.
> Gillette laid off thousands just after the election but before > Bush took office, and that's when I knew we were in for some > problems. I'm willing to bet that those companies waited to > lay people off until after the election
Huh?
I admit that I know little about the Gillette company, but if I read what you wrote correctly, you're suggesting that Gillette specifically waited until after the 2000 election to lay off employees to make Bush look bad? That would imply that Gillette did not lay off employees before that (otherwise there would be no help there). It would also imply that Gillette as a company wanted to delay their layoffs until after the election to avoid the unpleasant connotations of doing a layoff while Clinton was in office. I assume that would help Gore. Am I correct in assuming this is what you're suggesting?
I checked over recent articles, and I don't think the facts support this.
Gillette's previous CEO Michael C. Hawley was CEO until around June 2000. He was faulted in March of 2000 for having a $7.6M increase in compensation, even as Gillette was cutting earnings forecasts. His salary alone increased 27% [Boston Herald, March 2000]. Under Hawley, Gillette laid off 4,700 workers in a plan announced in September 1998 [USA Today, September 29, 1998]
Hawley was replaced by Edward F. DeGraan, who served as acting CEO until he was succeeded by James Kilts in January 2001.
Through 2002, James Kilts laid off an additional 3,000 employees. Kilts was brought in from Nabisco, so it would have been impossible for him to have "delayed" layoffs until he actually became CEO, which was in January 2001.
So it seems that Gillette had a significant change in leadership between 2000 and 2001. They also did layoffs before the 2000 election (4,700) and after the 2000 election (3,000).
> (recall that Gillette > donated razor blades to DNC attendees who were then > promptly pulled aside by security guards).
I was unable to find any article that supported this. Searching on Lexis-Nexis found no hits for "Gillette" and "Democrat" or "Gillette" and "Democratic Party".
I did find that Gillette has a Political Action Committee, and they support Republicans and some Democrats. As for Mr. Kilts, although he contributes to both parties, his contributes far more to Republicans than Democrats [source = fundrace.org and sdrdc.com]. So I find it unlikely that Gillette would delay layoffs in order to help the Democratic Party.
Re:The logistics of building the Death Star
on
Star Wars Minutiae
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· Score: 0, Redundant
> "Yep. Biggest self-sufficient disco ball in the universe!"
> 1. Don't give people what they want, give them something you > want. > 2. Insult customers. > 3. What do you mean "no profit!"???
Sounds like extortion to me. "Give me what I want, or I will take it by force."
Having a few... let's be charitable... hundred people say they want to purchase a DVD does not make a viable market.
It's Lucas's movie; he's allowed to release any version he sees fit.
Having said that, I do recognize the desire for someone to have the original version or the original version but restored, but with no new elements or scenes. But again, Lucas has every right to release a movie as he sees fit.
Slashdot Mirror
> Discrimination in price, services, or facilities ( 2 of the Clayton
> Act) (a) Price; selection of customers It shall be unlawful for
> any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such
> commerce, either directly or indirectly, to discriminate in price
> between different purchasers of commodities of like grade
> and quality,
Thanks for looking that up. You are correct; the example of price discrimination you gave is illegal.
I don't think I was clear enough about what I meant. Price discrimination simply means providing different levels of goods to people with different levels of price sensitivity. Price discrimination is used all the time, but the discrimination must be for commodities of different grades or qualities. But what you can't do is change the price for the same good or service depending on what the buyer is willing/able to pay.
Price discrimination is done all the time. For example, with the movie theater I talked about, that's a good example of price discrimination. It's the same movie, the same seat, but the time of day in which the consumer wishes to see the movie is the discrimination (in the non pejorative sense).
What would be wrong (and discrimination in the pejorative sense) is if I charged more for black people to see the movie than white people. Or for women to see the movie than men. Or for someone wearing a Rolex watch than someone wearing a Casio. That's what's illegal, and I believe that's what the Clayton Antitrust Act that you quoted above is talking about.
For the movie example, the movie time is the different grade. Price discrimination is used for airline tickets, where the discriminator is how far in advance you pay for the ticket.
So the big problem is, for the example I gave, how could you set up a pricing scheme to discriminate for the rich and poor person? Obviously the only way to do it is a tiered pricing structure, but how would that work? Remember, having substandard 911 service is like having a substandard parachute -- if you can't count on it working when you absolutely need it, you are better off having not purchased it to begin with.
One way to solve the problem is to use the solution I provided. I know that a tax/regulation scheme makes quasi-religious free marketers grumpy, but the solution works. And for that example, there's no solution that works better for that example. Just because some people are ideologically against it doesn't make it any less optimal.
As for your claims of the government's "cost structure" somehow being higher, I'm not sure what you mean. In the example, strictly speaking the cost structure is C = 1000+10x. One could argue that since AC >> MC, then the greater the number of users (x), the higher the operating leverage, and thus the lower the cost structure (assuming that the fixed cost is actually variable for large numbers of users). Therefore, a single entity (e.g., the government) would have a more efficient cost structure than any smaller organization.
> Hank would do is engage in price discrimination and charge
> the rich one price and the poor another.
> But wait, this is an anti-trust violation.
Price discrimination (in the non pejorative sense) is perfectly legal when the basis for the discrimination is objective and nondiscriminatory (in the pejorative sense). There's no need for "anti-trust" to even come into it. However, price discrimination isn't the answer to this problem, as I describe here. In short, the problem is how to you "charge the rich one price and the poor another" and prevent arbitration at the same time? That is, how do you know that a given rich person won't try to game the system to pay the "poor" price?
With the movie theater example, it's easy because the consumer is buying a specific time to see the movie. So they can't purchase a matinee movie ticket and then go show up during the regular full-pricing viewing. Thus there is an objective basis for the price discrimination. But with 911 services-- where substandard service might be worse than no service at all-- how could you do that?
And even more important, is that solution somehow more economically and socially optimal than the simple tax-regulation example I gave? Or is this the case of someone searching for a non-optimal solution because they have an emotional problem with the optimal one? The problem with that is Hank likes it that way, remember?
> There's no reason you can't have multiple services with
> different qualities based on
You're describing tiered services using a price discrimination model. That works for some situations, such as for movie theaters (you spend more to see a movie during prime time than during a matinee). However, it won't work if you don't have an objective basis for the price discrimination. How do you determine the basis for price discrimination for a service? It's not like you can ask the person what their income is and charge them based on that.
So you'd be left with providing "tiered services": you pay a little for "economy service" and more for higher levels of service. The problem with that how it would even be possible to provide tiered services? It's not like emergency services are like cable television where you can have premium services (that have a low variable cost, but you can charge a lot for). Would the "economy version" only respond to every other call? Maybe they'd send someone out within 24 hours instead of immediately? No, I can't think of a way to make tiered services work for 911 services. And certainly not in a way that would be more optimal for the example I described.
A second concern is with the problem as I outlined it is that the fixed costs are much larger than the marginal costs. Therefore cost savings do not come from reduction in the marginal costs; they come from per unit reductions in the fixed costs; i.e., spreading the fixed costs across more users.
The solution I provided required a roughly equal tax with no need for price discrimination. Assume the poor person has income of around $11,400, and the rich person has income of $1,000,000 (obviously an extreme example, but unfortunately not unheard of in the U.S. today). That makes the $1 "911 tax" on the poor person of to be around 0.008% of their income. On the rich person the $91 "911 tax" would be of around 0.009% on their income.
You tax based on income, then you charge $10 for the service. So no price discrimination is necessary.
> Moreover, if the poor truly couldn't pay for even the lowest-
> priced service, the government could supply "911 vouchers"
How would you pay for that? It's easy to throw out a "solution" that fits a particular ideology, but working the numbers is when the rubber meets the road.
I described a revenue neutral 911 program that actually minimizes the price for 911 services for both rich and poor people (for my example). So for you to propose "vouchers", how would you make sure those 90 poor people were served without making the rich people pay more than $101 (or $110 for that matter) given the constraints of the problem? I don't think you can.
> There's absolutely no reason that the government needs to
> supply a monopoly service.
That sounds less like reasoning, and more like dogma. As my admittedly simple example illustrated, it's clear that any case where the average cost is significantly larger than the marginal cost is a candidate for regulation. To say otherwise is to rely less on rational thought and more on ideology.
> Everybody wins.
Note that this example is even more telling. The rich and the poor people benefit from the regulation. The government is indifferent because the 911 service is revenue neutral. The only person who would be against this idea is someone who notices that the rich people are willing to pay up to $200 for the service. Let's call this guy Hank.
So if Hank were to set up a parallel service and charge $200 for it, his profit will be as follows: ($200 x 10 users) - ($1000 + $10 x 10 users) = $900. So instead of this being a break-even service where the rich pay $101 and the poor pay $11, Hank charges the rich $200 and doesn't serve the poor at all, and he makes $900. Obviously this goes against the best interest of the rich and the poor, so Hank handles this by railing indiscriminately against "regulation" and the like.
So when he gets his service set up, he uses the fear of taxation and this newly created hatred for "regulation" to make the rich and poor think they would pay more if the government stepped in, when actually, they would pay less.
Since the government is generally indifferent (it was a revenue neutral program), it doesn't matter if Hank does this. In fact, if Hank is a large contributor to party in power, they might even encourage it.
> Why make it a "tax"?
> Blood money is a lousy way to pay for anything.
> If this is a a cause you think is "worthy", just make an extra
> payment into a "needy get the service free" fund.
Whether one emotionally doesn't believe in taxes and price regulation for essential services is irrelevant; it makes sense from an economic perspective, as well as from a social contract perspective.
As macroeconomics theory states, it makes sense to look towards a tax in several cases, one of which is when the marginal costs (MC; the incremental cost to add a single additional consumer to an existing service) is much less than the average cost (AC; the total cost for the service divided by the total number of users). In other words, the fixed costs for a particular service is very high compared to the marginal costs.
So let's say the fixed costs for providing the 911 service is $1000 (costs for infrastructure, monitoring, etc). Let's say that the marginal cost for providing the 911 service to a given subscriber is $10.
Assume that we have 10 rich people who are willing to pay $200 for the service. We have 90 poor people who are willing to pay $11 for the service.
We want to supply all 100 people with the service, so to do that, we have to charge a max of $11 for the service. The marginal price is $11, and the marginal cost is $10, so we're okay from an efficient price perspective.
The problem is that at this price, we're losing money: ($11 x 100) - ($1000 + $10 x 100) = -$900. So it makes sense to allow the 911 service to have a monopoly, but use regulation to set the price at a level that has MR > MC, but subsidize the fixed costs with taxes.
For this example, let say there's a $91 tax that only the rich people pay, and a $1 tax that the poor people pay. Pretend that the tax rate is progressive enough to cover this with the difference in income. So in taxes, we collect ($91 x 10) + ($1 x 100) = $1000. Okay, the fixed costs are covered. Now we charge $10 for each user that uses the service. For 100 users, we generate (100 x 10) = $1000 in revenue, which covers all of our costs. The 911 service is exactly breaking even.
Moreover, each group is paying equal to or less what they were willing to pay. The poor people are paying $10 for the service + $1 in "911 tax" = $11. The rich people are paying $10 for the service and $91 tax = $101 for the service, which is less than the $200 they were willing to pay for the service.
Is this more efficient? Macroeconomics theory says yes. If the rich people had been the only ones served, they would have have had to pay [$1000 + ($10 x 10 users)] / 10 users = $110 for the service to just break even. This price would be even higher if a private company had been running the service, since they would have to do more than break even; they'd have to turn a reasonable profit. So from the rich people's perspective, the regulated, taxed price of $101 is less than the case where they were the only ones served ($110) as well as being lower than the maximum price they're willing to pay ($200).
So in conclusion, in the regulated case, everyone gets service (social contract and altruism benefit), both the rich and poor people pay equal to or less than what they were willing to pay (maximize the served base), the marginal price is higher than the marginal cost (efficient price), and the 911 service is break even (so we're not charging too much). Everybody wins.
This example is a little simplified because the marginal costs are too close to the fixed costs (1% for this example). The fact is the marginal costs for providing 911 service is nearly $0, but the fixed costs are very high.
Of course, unnecessary taxes are outrageous, particularly when spent on pork spending bills. Yes, Dubya, I'm looking at you and your damn yacht.
> I paid out a lifetime subscription.
> If it does interfere, I don't really have any recourse.
Wow, thanks for the warning. I was thinking about buying a Tivo this year, but I hate the idea of yet another annual subscription. So, I was thinking about buying the unit lifetime subscription.
It didn't occur to me that if I did so, Tivo could change their terms at any time, and I would be stuck. I'm not convinced that Tivo won't change the service to make me not like it.
I know plenty of people who love their Tivo (or ReplayTV), but it starting to feel like a deal with the devil -- it's great at first, but then you're hooked.
Do members of each party do things we don't like? Sure. Does that mean the parties are the same? Of course not.
It's really easy to say (or moderate, for that matter) that there's no difference between the two major parties. However, one would have to be incapable of recognizing the difference between 1996 and 2004, in the economy, the current state of peace/war, the current state of civil liberties, and the national mood.
There's a difference between budget surpluses and budget deficits.
There's a difference between a booming economy and a stagnant one.
There's a difference between working internationally for peace and lying about reasons to go to war.
There's a difference between hopeful exuberance and rampant jingoism and McCarthyism.
If you can't tell the difference between Republicans and Democrats, that says less about the parties and more about you.
> Toy Story 2 was supposed to be the typical low-budget
> straight-to-video Disney sequel, but thanks to the way
> technology was moving, Pixar was able to do even better work
> with less money, and the early dailies looked so good that
> they convinced Disney to do it as a full theatrical release.
Actually, it wasn't the technology that sold it. Originally Toy Story 2 was supposed to be direct to video, but when Pixar worked out the story and started animating it, they found that it was actually a very good story (even better than the original).
So Pixar went back and had to redo all the animation to make it more appropriate for a theater release. And it was a good idea, too. It's important to remember that Pixar may make CG movies, but they're about more than the CG; Lasseter makes sure that the story comes first.
Usually Disney's direct to video stuff sucks quite hard. I'm impressed that it seemed that Pixar couldn't suck like Disney even if they tried.
> I call on all slashdotters to join me in a protest against the
> sucky star wars prequels
I call on all slashdotters who want to protest the Star Wars prequels to boycott all future Star Wars-related stories on Slashdot. That will really show George Lucas. Show him good.
Plus, it will increase the signal to noise ratio for the community as a whole.
The first 45 seconds are from the previous movies (Episode 1, 2, and 4), but the rest looks really cool. Looks like Yoda gets to fight some more, and apparently Darth Sideous has a lightsaber, too. Obi Wan looks like he gets his ass handed to him by Anakin.
I hope the entire movie won't have that yellow "H" in the bottom right hand corner, though. Kinda distracting.
> he'll receive some federal funding for the next
> campaign
The Libertarian Party receiving money from the Federal government?
That sound you heard was of thousands of Libertarians suddenly crying out in terror, and suddenly silenced.
> people take their cues from others around them in weighing
> how safe a decision is
This is correct. Psychology called this "Informational Social Influence," which is the idea that you look towards what the crowd of people are doing to determine what is correct or proper.
There is a related effect called "Normative Social Influence" which means that you follow what other people do so you don't stand out.
I took a Marketing Consumer Behavior class last semester and I was amazed how applicable to politics the entire course was. For example, you're not a "single issue voter"; you're a consumer using a noncompensatory decision model based on lexicographic choice with a single salient attribute. Political campaigns have got this stuff down to a science; that's why the polls are so close these days.
> I vaguely recall hearing on the news a couple of years ago that
> some local candidate got caught personally removing his
> opponent's signs.
Here in Dallas, Tom DeLay, the Republican Speaker of the House, forced redistricting in Texas in order to shore up more seats for Republicans. This blatant gerrymandering resulted in two incumbents being in the same district: Democrat Martin Frost and Republican Pete Sessions.
Earlier this year, a bunch of Frost's signs were found all over Pete Sessions' son's school. Frost accused Sessions of stealing his signs and sticking them at his son's school. Sessions conversely accused Frost of putting his signs at his son's school for reasons unknown.
It appeared to be a classic example of he said - he said. That is, until the Frost campaign released a police report that indicated that a few years before, the Republican had been pulled over with his vehicle full of his opponent's yard signs! The police officer let Sessions off with a warning.
Sessions had a lot of explaining to do after that.
> If we can't criticize him because he's on Comedy Central, then
> why should we listen to any serious arguments from him,
> seeing as he's on Comedy Central?
On one hand, I think you're correct. Jon Stewart should be careful, or he will end up embracing cynicism or nihilism of not standing for anything (I'm looking at you, Colin O'Quinn). However, there is a major difference.
I see Jon Stewart doing to Journalism what James Randi does for pseudoscience, like psychic powers, telekinesis, Creationism, "faith healing", and other decidedly non-scientific endeavors.
James Randi is a magician, but he exposes pseudoscientists and people who try to fake out the public. He clearly understands scientific concepts, and he understands the scientific method. His purpose is not to be a scientist, but to be a sort of referee, since many scientists do not wish to even address the pseudoscientists, because they see pseudoscience as clearly outside the realm of science. But that means that the pseudoscientists can work to deceive the public. James Randi works to both entertain and educate the public. For a great read, check out his book, The Truth About Uri Geller or Flim Flam! [neither are referral links].
As a comedian, Jon Stewart (like Al Franken) isn't required to be a journalist. But he implicitly understands journalism and what it's supposed to be about. It's not supposed to be about entertainment; it's supposed to be about educating the public. That's why our Constitution protects it.
So today when we have politicians and pundits who are willing to resort to sophism, it's important that we have the journalists do what our Constitution protects them to do. Unfortunately, we don't see enough of that these days.
> The only side the media is on is the media's.
Although theoretically, that is true, I would say that in this case, the major media heavily wants George W. Bush to win, so they tend to lean towards him. A great example is the fact that Kerry-Edwards won all four debates, but all the television pundits are now saying the debates don't really matter. If Bush had won (even just the last one), we would have heard about it non-stop.
Why would the major media prefer Bush? I read an interview in either Newsweek or Businessweek with the CEO of Viacom, who owns CBS among other outlets. In the interview, he was asked about the amount of money he personally has given to John Kerry, and he said something along the lines of I'm personally for Kerry, but as head of Viacom, when he votes, he votes in Viacom's interest. He said, "I don't want to denigrate Kerry, but from a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on."
When he says "deregulation" for his industry, he's talking about how the Bush administration has been heavily for media consolidation.
I think the reason why the Bush administration is for media consolidation is because, much like how Wal-mart prefers to work with a relatively small number of large vendors (so they can put pressures on them), the Bush administration knows that if there is a relatively small number of large media companies, they can put more pressure on them. If one of these companies puts out a movie critical of the president (let's say, Disney allowing "Fahrenheit 9/11" to be released), the White House can declare that ABC News (owned by Disney) doesn't get any embedded reporters during the war and they lose their space in the media entourage. Thus, since the large media company has lots to lose, they will practice self-censorship.
John Kerry has recently spoken out against media consolidation, as well as other Democrats and even some Republicans (I believe Kay Bailey Hutchinson IIRC), because they know that media consolidation will result in self-censorship, rendering it ultimately ineffective. Another interesting example is that Howard Dean was the media darling, until he spoke out against media consolidation. Soon after that, Dean was "Gored" by the media.
Jon Stewart is right. The media pretends to provide balance, but the truth is, they're no longer serving the public. They're really just serving the politicians.
> though he didn't get to push his book, I'm going to seek it
> out and buy it;
I highly recommend the AudioBook version available on iTunes Music Service (no, that's not a referral link). It's got the whole cast of The Daily Show (Stewart, Colbert, Bee, Cordory, etc), so it's like listening to four hours of The Daily Show, commercial free.
Your ideas intrigue me, and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter!
> It isn't even a Bush Jr issue. When Clinton needed to deflect
> some attention from the fact that the president lied in court
> (which was the real issue, not the BJ) he went and bombed
> someone.
Clinton certainly did not "bomb someone" to deflect attention. If he had, that would have been an impeachable offense. When it comes to attacking the president on something as important as that, the rule is "put up or shut up". The fact that the Republicans were on a witch hunt and throwing everything they could at Clinton, and they didn't raise that as a official charge (instead, they chose to accuse Clinton of this in the press and with pundits) means there is absolutely no evidence for it.
The press was so excited about trying to push a narrative that this was "Wag the Dog", that they irresponsibly pushed that idea, and they did not inform the public about the issue.
As CNN reported, Clinton's Defense Secretary Cohen had to defend the use of military force to Republican lawmakers:
================
Clinton came under intense criticism in 1998 by the GOP after he launched an attack on suspected terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. Intelligence indicated bin Laden and his top associates were meeting at a training camp when U.S. missiles were fired at it, just weeks after al Qaeda terrorists bombed U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.
The attack was launched on the same day Lewinsky, a former White House intern, wrapped up her testimony before a grand jury investigating whether Clinton lied under oath about their relationship or encouraged anyone else to do so.
"During that time when the attack was launched in Afghanistan and Sudan, there was a movie out called 'Wag the Dog,' " Cohen testified Tuesday. In the movie, an administration launched a fake war as a political ploy. "There were critics of the Clinton administration that attacked the president, saying this was an effort on his part to divert attention from his personal difficulties.
Cohen said the the military objective on August 20, 1998, was "to kill as many people in those camps as we could" and to "take out" a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that was believed to have been used by terrorists.
================
[Source = CNN, March 23, 2004]
It was reported back then, too, but people thought the "Wag the Dog" story was too good to drop it. The article back then stated this, but most people didn't know or care who Osama bin Laden was:
================
American cruise missiles pounded sites in Afghanistan and Sudan Thursday in retaliation for the deadly bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7.
"Let our actions today send this message loud and clear -- there are no expendable American targets," U.S. President Clinton said in a televised address to the American people Thursday evening. "There will be no sanctuary for terrorists. We will defend our people, our interests and our values."
Clinton said that information gathered by American intelligence showed that a network of terrorists affiliated with bin Laden was responsible for the bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, which killed 257 people, including 12 Americans.
National Security Adviser Sandy Berger said that American intelligence had also turned up "very specific" information that the bin Laden network was planning additional attacks, which Thursday's missile launches were designed to prevent.
Bin Laden has been given shelter by Afghanistan's Islamic rulers, the Taliban, and may have been in the area targeted by U.S. missiles. Taliban officials said bin Laden survived the attack, but U.S. officials said they did not know if he survived.
Pentagon sources confirmed to CNN that the attacks were made with Tomahawk cruise missiles, not aircraft. The missiles were fired from U.S. Navy ships in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. The simultaneous attacks took place about 1:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT).
The supreme leader of the Taliban said they
> people would actually credit Bush with an Osama capture. He,
> himself, did nothing - it would all be the work of troops or
> foreign fighters
I'm sure you didn't mean the past tense.
My understanding is that we have few, if any, troops actively searching for Osama bin Laden. During active military options, we had only 12,000-15,000 troops in Afghanistan (as opposed to more than 140k in Iraq). The Bush administration has outsourced that job to Pakistan, which is disturbing. As Bill Clinton said in August, "Why did we put our No. 1 security threat in the hands of the Pakistanis, with us playing the supporting role, and put all our military resources into Iraq -- which was I think at best our No. 5 security threat?"
Bush moved many of the Arab-speaking translators from the Osama search efforts and put them in Iraq. Bob Graham said that General Tommy Franks lamented the fact that predator drone craft were being shifted towards Iraq as early as February 2002 [Source: Miami Times, September 5, 2004].
So if any U.S. troops are left looking for Osama, and they find him, it will be in spite of Bush, not because of him.
> So my own guess for the October Surprise 2004 is that Kerry
> gets shot, Bush gets re-appointed
I'm no Bush fan, but I think it's offensive and unfair to suggest that the Bush campaign, or even any typical Bush supporter, wants Kerry dead in order to win the election.
Bush has and will do any dirty trick to win, but assassination is a whole different thing. I don't think it does much to help today's savagely polarized public discourse to suggest otherwise.
> Osama bin Laden is dead.
...
What's scary is that Osama bin Laden has the capability to speak to us from the dead!
Because Colin Powell told a senate panel in 2003 that Osama bin Laden was still alive, and the hunt for him continues, although Bush has outsourced the search effort to Pakistan for some reason.
The fact is on September 17, 2001, Bush told the American people "I want justice. And there's an old poster out West, I recall, that says, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.'" [Source: ABC News, Sept 17, 2001]
In March of 2003, Bush significantly reversed this position, saying, "I don't know where he is. I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not that important." [referenced in the Boston Globe, 6/5/2004]
Since then, Bush worked to forget Osama bin Laden, or at least get the American people to. As was reported in the Washington Post on Aug 12, 2004, since the beginning of 2003, Bush mentioned Osama bin Laden's name on only 10 occasions, but not at any length. In contrast, he mentioned Saddam Hussein's name on more then 300 occasions.
In fact, during the first Presidential debate. Kerry talked directly about Osama bin Laden, which forced Bush to finally do so.
===================
BUSH: Never...when I was running -- when we had the debate in 2000, never dreamt I'd be doing that.
But the enemy attacked us, Jim
KERRY: Jim, the president just said something extraordinarily revealing and frankly very important in this debate. In answer to your question about Iraq and sending people into Iraq, he just said, "The enemy attacked us."
Saddam Hussein didn't attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us.
===================
Clearly, Bush's scheme of trying to get the public to forget about Osama bin Laden who attacked us on 9/11 unraveled during the debate.
As for an October surprise, if Bush has avoided capturing Osama bin Laden in order to score political points just before the election, then I can think of nothing more despicable. That would be politicizing the 9/11 attacks in a way that I think even Bush is incapable of.
> Once you get to understanding the relationship dogs have
> with their pack leader -- whether two- or four-legged -- then
> it all makes sense.
That was a really good post.
It's very difficult to interpret the behavior of an animal that can't talk. Many of us would like to perform a Turing test on the person in the cube next to us, so how could we expect to easily answer the question of whether dogs are intelligent?
People who like dogs are going to interpret their intelligent-seeming behaviors positively and people who don't like dogs are going to interpret those same behaviors neutrally.
I've had dogs all my life -- first Sheltland Sheepdogs and now Collies (despite the AKC links, our two Collies are from Collie Rescue; we don't breed or show).
With my experience, I tend to agree with the idea that dogs are intelligent and far from "a program". Part of that comes from the fact that all of my dogs have had very different personalities. Yes, dogs are often driven by their instincts (marking trees, etc), but so are people. That doesn't make them bereft of intelligence.
As for outfitting our dogs with electronic gear, I guess I'll be a luddite. We've tagged our dogs with the electronic chip (in case they get lost), but I'm not sure watching a dog-produced web cam will be more than a novelty for most people.
> Gillette laid off thousands just after the election but before
> Bush took office, and that's when I knew we were in for some
> problems. I'm willing to bet that those companies waited to
> lay people off until after the election
Huh?
I admit that I know little about the Gillette company, but if I read what you wrote correctly, you're suggesting that Gillette specifically waited until after the 2000 election to lay off employees to make Bush look bad? That would imply that Gillette did not lay off employees before that (otherwise there would be no help there). It would also imply that Gillette as a company wanted to delay their layoffs until after the election to avoid the unpleasant connotations of doing a layoff while Clinton was in office. I assume that would help Gore. Am I correct in assuming this is what you're suggesting?
I checked over recent articles, and I don't think the facts support this.
Gillette's previous CEO Michael C. Hawley was CEO until around June 2000. He was faulted in March of 2000 for having a $7.6M increase in compensation, even as Gillette was cutting earnings forecasts. His salary alone increased 27% [Boston Herald, March 2000]. Under Hawley, Gillette laid off 4,700 workers in a plan announced in September 1998 [USA Today, September 29, 1998]
Hawley was replaced by Edward F. DeGraan, who served as acting CEO until he was succeeded by James Kilts in January 2001.
Through 2002, James Kilts laid off an additional 3,000 employees. Kilts was brought in from Nabisco, so it would have been impossible for him to have "delayed" layoffs until he actually became CEO, which was in January 2001.
So it seems that Gillette had a significant change in leadership between 2000 and 2001. They also did layoffs before the 2000 election (4,700) and after the 2000 election (3,000).
> (recall that Gillette
> donated razor blades to DNC attendees who were then
> promptly pulled aside by security guards).
I was unable to find any article that supported this. Searching on Lexis-Nexis found no hits for "Gillette" and "Democrat" or "Gillette" and "Democratic Party".
I did find that Gillette has a Political Action Committee, and they support Republicans and some Democrats. As for Mr. Kilts, although he contributes to both parties, his contributes far more to Republicans than Democrats [source = fundrace.org and sdrdc.com]. So I find it unlikely that Gillette would delay layoffs in order to help the Democratic Party.
> "Yep. Biggest self-sufficient disco ball in the universe!"
That was hilarious!
> 1. Don't give people what they want, give them something you
... let's be charitable ... hundred people say they want to purchase a DVD does not make a viable market.
> want.
> 2. Insult customers.
> 3. What do you mean "no profit!"???
Sounds like extortion to me. "Give me what I want, or I will take it by force."
Having a few
It's Lucas's movie; he's allowed to release any version he sees fit.
Having said that, I do recognize the desire for someone to have the original version or the original version but restored, but with no new elements or scenes. But again, Lucas has every right to release a movie as he sees fit.