Since the far-left fanatics on Slashdot have moderation points, I am once again reminded that no matter how obvious the facts are, proof that the sky is blue must be given nonetheless.
1.) Halliburton, Bechtel and Exxon did not order the invasion of Iraq.
2.) As such, Halliburton, Bechtel and Exxon are not directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of over 2,000 American soldiers, and are most certainly not responsible for Iraqi civilian deaths.
3.) Not even Iraq Body Count claims "hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's dead. They arrive at figures between 26,797 and 30,163, and most of those are the result of car bombings and shootings by terrorists.
Halliburton, Bechtel, Exxon and NeoConservatives have caused
Halliburton, Bechtel and Exxon have "caused" nothing. They are contractors. They do what the government tells them to do, and they get paid public money for it.
And lets amend your historical corrections. Anyone with any degree of intellectual honesty credits the Clinton Administration with balancing the budget. Since I'm not going to make that assertion without facts to back it up...
The "balanced budget" was only "balanced" using accounting tricks that would probably result in felony convictions if done in the private sector.
2 - Plame WAS undercover at the time, according to ABC News.
That's an Associated Press article, and it does not say that Plame was undercover at the time. The article does say, however:
The notes also contain no suggestion that Cheney or Libby knew at the time of their conversation of Plame's undercover status or that her identity was classified, the paper said.
Disclosing the identify of a covert CIA agent can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent is classified as working undercover.
Well, there is this thing call anonymity.... Oh, don't forget free speech. Last time I checked, there is no clause in the Constitution saying anything about how old you have to be to qualify for the First Amendment.
The Bill of Rights is a restriction on government action. As a private institution, Pope John XIII Regional High School can set requirements for their students as they see fit. If these requirements are too strict, the school will soon find itself losing students and money.
I would be shocked if I met anyone in the UK who valued the 'right' to own a machine designed specifically for killing people over the right to communicate privately and frankly it still suprises me that some people in any country would do.
"I would be shocked if I met anyone in any civilized country who valued the 'right' to use the tools of drug-dealing terrorist child-pornographers, and frankly, it would still suprise me if people in any country did."
"What do you have to hide?"
The arguments of the enemies of liberty are not compelling.
Sorry, under your new All-American Forever Patent (tm) laws, they own your soul.
As written in Article I, section 8, paragraph 8 of the united States Constitution:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Therefore, any such "Forever Patent" laws, as you so eloquently put it, are unconstitutional, and hence, un-American.
In fact, U.S. patents have a term of 20 years from the earliest claimed filing date, or 17 years from the issue date. Given that German patents enforced through international treaties are probably subject to the same terms, your claim about "Forever Patent" laws is nonsense.
Man, whenever I hear stupid drivel like this I'd like to remind the poster that the Otto internal combustion engine, the Diesel motor and the Wankel engine all were invented by German engineers, funded by German money and patented in Germany.
And then the people who patented these engines presumably sold the rights to build them to various manufacturers, including American manufacturers.
Since the patents expired long ago, no American manufacturer owes shit to any German.
If you use stupid designs like Chernobyl the above is true. If you use intelligent designs that cannot happen. Nuclear power plants are governed by the laws of physics, not your imagination.
And even then, the operators of Chernobyl had to go out of their way in order to cause the accident.
I've seen it mentioned elsewhere that disposing of high-level waste is actually rather simple. Take the waste to a desert, dilute it with cement and dump it into a deep hole. Jerry Pournelle's solution went something along the lines of cordoning off an area with fencing and keeping the waste above ground in watertight concrete casks. If a better solution for waste disposal is discovered in a hundred years or so, the waste is still relatively accessible.
We don't need this multi-billion dollar Yucca Mountain crap.
They're the sort of people who openly claim that intelligent design is even worth considering in science classes. They even go so far as to have tested scientific theories, such as evolution, removed from science curricula.
The right wants intelligent design mentioned as a side note during biology class in the public schools.
The left already has outright Gaia worship in the public schools.
I'm talking about subsidies, the lobbyists who get special favors in the form of laws that the rest of us don't get, relaxed environmental regulations, etc.
If you want to talk about real, direct subsidies and unconstitutional copyright laws, fine. But when you argue that lower taxes and less regulation is a form of "corporate welfare", you're using the logic of statists.
Also, how often does it happen that a multi-billion dollar corporation makes it a year without paying any taxes at all? More often than it should. And people with lots of money to invest can easily walk away with zero or little in taxes. Look at John Kerry and his extremely wealthy wife. He paid a higher tax rate than she did! Using various tax shelters, she only had to pay 11.5%.
Tax cuts are not "corporate welfare". This falls into the category I mentioned of people being "allowed" to keep a good deal of their money and property without being tortured and murdered.
Gee, maybe the industrialists were acquitted because "fascism" wasn't "the enemy", when the industrialists could turn fascism to American advantage, instead of threatening to conquer us?
It's more likely that industrialists were given light prison terms and acquitted because they weren't the ones in charge; that they reluctantly went along with the plans of the State out of fear for what would happen to them if they didn't. Fritz Thyssen ended up in a concentration camp.
You'll happily insist that Hitler and Stalin were opposites, rather than Coke/Pepsi twins.
On the contrary; Hitler and Stalin were both totalitarian socialists, more alike than different.
Taxpayers fund roads, that corporations use to truck their goods.
In the vast majority of cases, other taxpayers are using these roads regularly every day. This is not a form of "corporate welfare". There are roads that were arguably built as forms of corporate welfare, such as Interstate 180 in Illinois, but these are rare.
We pay to educate their workers.
Except for those whose parents have paid tens of thousands of dollars in property taxes for the public schools and universities they've attended and paid tuition for, or those who attended private schools and universities.
We pay to defend their assets in foreign countries (in the form of wars, and defense spending).
The nations the U.S. has gone to war in over the past 60 years have not been nations where American business had any significant investment.
We pay to clean up the environment they pollute.
Corporations that release contaminants into the water and air as a byproduct of production are mandated to pay for pollution controls. And then there's "Superfund", which has charged companies large sums of money for having some relatively small amount of waste inadvertently disposed of in "Superfund" sites.
We pay for courts and prosecutors to jail the white collar criminals.
Real white collar crimes involving actual fraud is rare, as is the case with other real crimes. I'll bet the cost of prosecution and imprisonment is far offset by the fines imposed for these crimes.
There is so much public wealth flowing to corporations in this country, and much of it is difficult to measure, but you can tell it's there.
But the examples you listed aren't real examples at all.
They talk of trickle economics for the the poor getting money from the wealthy, but it's quite the reverse.
Only the advocates of slavery use terms like "trickle-down economics".
If what people like you have been saying was true, the "poor" in America would be living below Third World levels.
I'm not an advocate of pure communism, but what we have today isn't really capitalism, it's a crappy corporate welfare system that intentionally pisses on the poor.
Business subsidies are a fraction "social welfare" payouts. If you want to argue that unconstitutional copyright laws are a form of "corporate welfare", you may have a point, but that's not what you're arguing.
It's likely that you're not referring to subsidies, but rather to the fact that people are "allowed" to keep a good deal of their money and property without being tortured and murdered.
Fascism is the takeover of government by business. Ask Daimler or DeutscheBank about the "triumph of socialism" under their fascists.
If that's true, then why were top leaders of the Nazi government executed and given life sentences, while major industrialists were either acquitted, or given prison sentences of only a few years?
Democrats might have proposed it in the 1990s, but I'm not interested in a politicial philosophy debate.
You're right. You're not interested in the facts. You simply have a pathological hatred of Bush.
The US government built and owned the servers years ago - not any more. Since, in fact, it doesn't don't own those servers now, why should it control them, by your logic?
By "we", I mean the US government, who owns servers E, G and H, the universities who own B and D, and various private organizations who own the rest.
The US is holding on to its unilateral control by force. "Posession is 9/10s of the law", "we were here first", "we pay the bills", "we've got the UN building", "we've got the Security Council veto", "we've got the big bombs". Where's the "we're the most trustworthy, the most reliable party to keep this essential system running"?
How about:
"We built the servers, we own the servers, and therefore, we'll be running the servers. If you don't like it, set up your own damn servers. Fuck off."
Fascists favor monopoly corporations fronted by corrupt authoritarian governments underwritten by a cult of personality, and protected by endless propaganda guile.
Fascism is a socialist ideology. As such, business corporations have nothing to do with it.
(like his latest feint at martial law)
Bush is not the first. Democrats proposed getting rid of Posse Comitatus back in the 1990s.
Slashdot Mirror
1.) Halliburton, Bechtel and Exxon did not order the invasion of Iraq.
2.) As such, Halliburton, Bechtel and Exxon are not directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of over 2,000 American soldiers, and are most certainly not responsible for Iraqi civilian deaths.
3.) Not even Iraq Body Count claims "hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's dead. They arrive at figures between 26,797 and 30,163, and most of those are the result of car bombings and shootings by terrorists.
Yes. Destroying private property rights in the means of production requires the killing of large numbers of people.
Yes.
Halliburton, Bechtel and Exxon have "caused" nothing. They are contractors. They do what the government tells them to do, and they get paid public money for it.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's dead
Absolute bullshit.
The "balanced budget" was only "balanced" using accounting tricks that would probably result in felony convictions if done in the private sector.
2 - Plame WAS undercover at the time, according to ABC News.
That's an Associated Press article, and it does not say that Plame was undercover at the time. The article does say, however:
The Bill of Rights is a restriction on government action. As a private institution, Pope John XIII Regional High School can set requirements for their students as they see fit. If these requirements are too strict, the school will soon find itself losing students and money.
"I would be shocked if I met anyone in any civilized country who valued the 'right' to use the tools of drug-dealing terrorist child-pornographers, and frankly, it would still suprise me if people in any country did."
"What do you have to hide?"
The arguments of the enemies of liberty are not compelling.
As written in Article I, section 8, paragraph 8 of the united States Constitution:
Therefore, any such "Forever Patent" laws, as you so eloquently put it, are unconstitutional, and hence, un-American.
In fact, U.S. patents have a term of 20 years from the earliest claimed filing date, or 17 years from the issue date. Given that German patents enforced through international treaties are probably subject to the same terms, your claim about "Forever Patent" laws is nonsense.
And then the people who patented these engines presumably sold the rights to build them to various manufacturers, including American manufacturers.
Since the patents expired long ago, no American manufacturer owes shit to any German.
And even then, the operators of Chernobyl had to go out of their way in order to cause the accident.
(Note: Link is from another Slashdot post.)
We don't need this multi-billion dollar Yucca Mountain crap.
The right wants intelligent design mentioned as a side note during biology class in the public schools.
The left already has outright Gaia worship in the public schools.
The 105th U.S. Senate, from 1997 to 1999, was composed of 45 Democrats and 55 Republicans.
That is not a "vastly Republican" Senate.
The list of those not voting is as follows:
Bryan (D-NV)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Grams (R-MN)
Harkin (D-IA)
Reid (D-NV)
If you want to talk about real, direct subsidies and unconstitutional copyright laws, fine. But when you argue that lower taxes and less regulation is a form of "corporate welfare", you're using the logic of statists.
Also, how often does it happen that a multi-billion dollar corporation makes it a year without paying any taxes at all? More often than it should. And people with lots of money to invest can easily walk away with zero or little in taxes. Look at John Kerry and his extremely wealthy wife. He paid a higher tax rate than she did! Using various tax shelters, she only had to pay 11.5%.
Tax cuts are not "corporate welfare". This falls into the category I mentioned of people being "allowed" to keep a good deal of their money and property without being tortured and murdered.
It's more likely that industrialists were given light prison terms and acquitted because they weren't the ones in charge; that they reluctantly went along with the plans of the State out of fear for what would happen to them if they didn't. Fritz Thyssen ended up in a concentration camp.
You'll happily insist that Hitler and Stalin were opposites, rather than Coke/Pepsi twins.
On the contrary; Hitler and Stalin were both totalitarian socialists, more alike than different.
In the vast majority of cases, other taxpayers are using these roads regularly every day. This is not a form of "corporate welfare". There are roads that were arguably built as forms of corporate welfare, such as Interstate 180 in Illinois, but these are rare.
We pay to educate their workers.
Except for those whose parents have paid tens of thousands of dollars in property taxes for the public schools and universities they've attended and paid tuition for, or those who attended private schools and universities.
We pay to defend their assets in foreign countries (in the form of wars, and defense spending).
The nations the U.S. has gone to war in over the past 60 years have not been nations where American business had any significant investment.
We pay to clean up the environment they pollute.
Corporations that release contaminants into the water and air as a byproduct of production are mandated to pay for pollution controls. And then there's "Superfund", which has charged companies large sums of money for having some relatively small amount of waste inadvertently disposed of in "Superfund" sites.
We pay for courts and prosecutors to jail the white collar criminals.
Real white collar crimes involving actual fraud is rare, as is the case with other real crimes. I'll bet the cost of prosecution and imprisonment is far offset by the fines imposed for these crimes.
There is so much public wealth flowing to corporations in this country, and much of it is difficult to measure, but you can tell it's there.
But the examples you listed aren't real examples at all.
The poor are not the ones who supported and took part in imposing communism.
Only the advocates of slavery use terms like "trickle-down economics".
If what people like you have been saying was true, the "poor" in America would be living below Third World levels.
I'm not an advocate of pure communism, but what we have today isn't really capitalism, it's a crappy corporate welfare system that intentionally pisses on the poor.
Business subsidies are a fraction "social welfare" payouts. If you want to argue that unconstitutional copyright laws are a form of "corporate welfare", you may have a point, but that's not what you're arguing.
It's likely that you're not referring to subsidies, but rather to the fact that people are "allowed" to keep a good deal of their money and property without being tortured and murdered.
If that's true, then why were top leaders of the Nazi government executed and given life sentences, while major industrialists were either acquitted, or given prison sentences of only a few years?
Democrats might have proposed it in the 1990s, but I'm not interested in a politicial philosophy debate.
You're right. You're not interested in the facts. You simply have a pathological hatred of Bush.
By "we", I mean the US government, who owns servers E, G and H, the universities who own B and D, and various private organizations who own the rest.
How about:
"We built the servers, we own the servers, and therefore, we'll be running the servers. If you don't like it, set up your own damn servers. Fuck off."
Fascism is a socialist ideology. As such, business corporations have nothing to do with it.
(like his latest feint at martial law)
Bush is not the first. Democrats proposed getting rid of Posse Comitatus back in the 1990s.
You seem to contradicting yourself.
You're right. Their conduct was worse.
You're delusional. Please seek psychiatric help.