"I wonder what's next."

The Nationalization Ghost.

Look for it to become a household word just in time for the healthcare reform debate.

CIA, FBI, Jeb Bush, Janet Reno, Florida Supreme Court, Florida Bar Association, 2 Live Crew, Ice-T, Take Two Interactive, Rockstar Games, Paul Eibeler, Paula Eibel, tin foil manufacturers, ...

Damn it, I could go on forever.

This must not be a real Jackhole sponsored bill. Too few targets.

You really sure they actually deleted it?

I've had pretty poor results with requests to delete my account information in the past with various online entities. Buy.com, for example, never deletes anything...I am still getting spammed by them to four disabled accounts years after they were supposedly gone.

There you go again with straw man arguments.

Hiring H1B workers requires the companies to pay prevailing wages. If they not doing so, then they're breaking the law.

The H1B program does not reduce the prevailing wage. H1B workers do not reduce the prevailing wage.

Companies who abuse the H1B program and the Government who is failing to adequately oversee their own program are reducing the prevailing wage.

The H1B program has all the sageguards in place to prevent this. If it's happening it's not the fault of the program or the temporary workers working in this country because of it.

From the few English language translations it seems as if the study was limited to studying the economic impact of file sharing to content publishing businesses (Seagate products store a lot of porn, you know, their CEO said so).

Nor did it seem to address the economic impact of reinventing/remixing/reusing/repackaging/redistributing/mashing up digital content available for free (legally or illegally)

If so, then the study, by no means, is an accurate depiction of the economic impact of file sharing.

If you actually go through the list, the comments on all of the companies listed state they're not going out of business in 2009.

What was the point of this again?

"They ended collecting *so* much information, that they couldn't analyze it all:"

Which is precisely the problem in the US right now. Or at least was immediately after 9/11, when the Government outsourced data collection to private companies as documented by No Place to Hide.

Yes, but that's not the same as cutting funding on it, which was what I replied to.

Obviously the programs being funded should actually work. Why would you fund them if they didn't?

You're not really seeing the forest from the trees.

Obviously it's not police alone. Crime is a multi-faceted problem caused by many issues (poverty, education, abusive environment, policing, justice system, etc.), but all other things being equal increased police force DOES reduce crime.

A comment about linear gains...that was kinda my point. Investing in preventive programs doesn't have to produce linear gains, because they are usually preventing problems that are MUCH costlier than the investment in the preventive programs.

The problem is that when people are talking about cutting government spending on social programs, it's not just the "ineffective" welfare program(s) that get cut.

My wife works at a non-profit in NYC that specializes in issues relating to problem youth (education, juvenile justice system, home situation, childhood poverty, etc. etc.) and deals with the New York State (NYS) and City (NYC) budget decisions a lot. NYS and NYC fund all kinds of community programs that you describe as "progressive" (and a lot of them are). Most of them work better than the actual welfare program, usually because they're more targeted and smaller in scale.

When budget cuts happen, THOSE programs get cut first regardless of their effectiveness. That's how it always happens.

In any case, that wasn't really my point. The real point was that most social programs, even those with issues, are preventive in nature and produce cost reductions in the long run. Programs should obviously always be improved and the programs that truly do not benefit anyone should be eliminated.

Well, yes. Framing the budget discussions in this manner would be great. Most people don't. All they spout is "Government spending bad. No spending good.", just like the comment I was responding to did.

Depends on the tax rates. Obviously an oppressive tax would, but a small one probably wouldn't.

It's debatable.

He set up his investment advisory business in a manner that it wasn't subjected to the same sort of regulatory oversight as mutual funds and even hedge funds are while operating in much the same way.

But I agree that enforcing regulations already in affect is a bigger problem than lack of regulation.

Taxing consumption as a whole unduly affects poor people, because a larger percentage of their income goes to necessary consumption (food, clothes, transportation, etc.) than rich people. It would hit the poorest people the hardest.

That's why taxing consumption is not a good idea. As a whole.

However, taxing unnecessary (or luxury) consumption, like the proposed tax on iTunes downloads, doesn't have the same negative effect.

"Go ahead, tax the rich. And, as in the case of NYC, they are moving out in droves."

Do you have any data to back that off, or are you just inventing facts to support your ideology?

The rich are moving out? I sure as hell haven't noticed. In fact, Manhattan real estate market for upscale (as in multi-million) homes is still very healthy. Meanwhile the real estate market in the burbs for working class homes is not. It's the poor and middle class people who can't afford to live in New York City. It's been this way for a LOOOONG time, but it's getting increasingly worse in recent times.

As for the rest of your post, a lot of the social/welfare program funding is cost effective, because it's preventive in nature.

For example, funding healthcare makes sense, because it improves the general health of the population reducing the need for REALLY expensive healthcare options (ER visits, hospitalization, etc.) and reduces the rates of serious illnesses (diabetes being #1 in NYC right now). It also reduces business losses by reducing the amount of sick days.

Funding the police prevents crime, which is MUCH cheaper than housing criminals in prisons.

It's exactly the same for practically every single social program that's government funded. It's a fairly simple cause and effect formula. You don't even have to think really hard about it. You just have to think.

I'm really sick and tired of hearing people complain about governments spending money on welfare programs. It's typically coming from neo-cons and other free markets advocates who don't seem to understand, or conveniently omit mentioning, the fact that most government funded welfare and social programs are cost effective on the long run.

I really don't understand the rationale of these people. You want governments to cut costs, but yet you advocate policies that would increase costs in the long run. What is it that you really want? I have a pretty good idea, but I still want to believe that people are fundamentally good, so I'm trying to not think about it.

Increased regulation causing the State budget shortfalls? How is making decisions on tax rates regulation?

You might also want to read up on a certain Mr. Madoff, who took full advantage of a regulatory vacuum. This is the world you want?

Private right of action got stripped out of it due to complaints from the direct marketers. That was strike one. With so much spam it's completely unreasonable to expect anyone to enforce the law. Crowdsourcing the enforcement through private right of action would've worked. And the direct marketers knew it...

The second strike was that the bill didn't anticipate the success of botnets and Russian organized crime. The law doesn't do jack s*** about that problem.