Actually, the money is coming out of Social Security not the general budget. The argument for SS is that it is a government managed retirement fund and that what you get out is based on what you put in. Receiving SS benefits is equivalent to a 401k or pension in that you get what you earned.

Making millionaires contribute to SS is changing the meaning of what it is, from something I earned to getting other peoples' money. This actually makes it less secure because it takes away the moral aspect of receiving SS benefits. It goes from something I earned to wanting other peoples' money. Which makes it easier for politicians to cut benefits in the future.

Quote from Obama

"[On] Tuesday, we asked folks to tell us what would it be like to lose $40 out of your paycheck every week. "
Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/12/22/president-obama-discusses-what-40-means-americans-families

A more important deception is that it is a reduction in the amount taxpayers pay into Social Security--NOT the general budget. This is more akin to reducing the amount of 401k withholdings than a tax break because you will have to make it up later one way or another--either through reduced SS benefits or increased SS taxes to make up for the deficit.

Wait, I thought the protest was called "Occupy Wall Street" not "Occupy the Overpriced Universities". Sadly, while I keep hearing about the 1% and evil Capitalists I don't hear anything about the Universities charging hundreds of thousands for a worthless piece of paper and a watered-down education.

1. Since when do corporations control education? Education is dominated by liberal progressives who are, if anything, anti-corporate. If anything, it is the generally left-wing educational establishment which is discouraging critical thinking. See http://thefire.org/ for numerous examples of the suppression of free speech at college campuses.
2. The term "Bread and Circuses" refers to the Roman government buying off the citizens, and is more analogous to politicians buying off their constituency with pork and other handouts than anything else.

The dose makes the poison. http://learn.caim.yale.edu/chemsafe/references/dose.html

Your body is ~60% water, but you can die by drinking too much: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication. Every day we are bathed in DNA-damaging ionizing radiation called sunlight, yet we somehow don't all get skin cancer. And yes, you can drink safe amounts of water and receive unsafe amounts of radiation. But understanding the difference between A causing B "always" and the messy reality that it involves a safe and unsafe range is the difference between being a paranoid lunatic and a sane and educated person.

Wait, computer labs? Your kidding right? Because for 150K of debt, you think that a school could afford 1/100th of it to get each student a very nice 1000 laptop. Neuton microscope? Ha, I'm sure universities are buying dozens. Can't actually find one (they are still experimental), but you can get a scanning electron microscope for 350K http://www.technicalsalessolutions.com/item_description.php?IID=155. That would take a whole 10 students at Harvard to fund. http://www.gse.harvard.edu/admissions/financial_aid/tuition/

Meanwhile, how many undergrad students actually benefit from a Neuton microscope? Has to be close to zero, unless they are doing very advanced grad research. So the university is making students take out the equivalent of a house mortgage for something that has absolutely no benefit for them. This higher-ed bubble is about to bust, and I'm glad because my kids won't be subjected to these inflated prices.

Yes, like paying for buildings or funding Departmental Chair, etc. All things that tuition would be paying for if the money wasn't endowed. If endowments are not used towards university education, what good are they?

1. College tuition inflation has been going up 2x to 4x the rate of inflation since the early 80s good or bad economy. http://www.finaid.org/savings/tuition-inflation.phtml. So don't blame "the economy".
2. Are you actually arguing that the AVERAGE tuition per student should go 2x to 4x over the rate of inflation because more people are entering college? Education, like all other information fields, benefits from economies of scale. What is actually happening is that universities are gouging students because of the rise of demand.

They were jacking up the cost of tuition well before their investments were wiped out, and would still jack them up even if they weren't. And there are 63! universities whose endowments are > 1 Billion dollars. http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?s=192&f=2495&t=7127853.

Are you kidding me? Really? Yea, the universities are spending tens of billions sifting through information to present just the interesting points to students? Have you actually been to a class the past 15 years? You are lucky to actually be taught by a professor rather than a TA who barely speaks English and is making less than minimum wage. And while I'm sure "womyn's studies" may have changed a great deal there hasn't been much change in Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, etc. I would bet a lot of money that the vast majority of professors barely change their curriculum from year to year.

You are being duped by an industry even greedier than any corporation. They prey on people's dreams, take all the money they possibly can, and don't care if you spent 150K on a degree that is worthless. Universities should be forced to back student loans--if a student defaults it is the university who is responsible. Instead of holding them accountable, people like you are part of the problem by being their apologists.

Really? Then why aren't the protesting their University for putting them tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for a degree that isn't worth a tenth of that? You know, the universities sitting on multi-billion dollar endowments yet are raising tuition many times the rate of inflation? In an age where information is vastly cheaper and easier to acquire, they are making it much harder and more expensive.

The fact they are blaming Wall St, which has absolutely nothing to do with their degrees' cost, shows their university did not provide them with the necessary critical thinking skills to make it in the world.

Wow, I cannot believe this distortion got marked as "Informative". By saying "TV-psychic" it makes it sound like he was a 1-800 number psychic and he was chosen for that ability. It would be more accurate to describe him as competing on a magician/illusionist game show/reality TV show.

I don't know how good of a security researcher he is, but I sure as heck hope you don't judge everyone this way. His abilities as a security expert are completely unrelated to his abilities as an illusionist. To think otherwise is just ugly prejudice. Just because you are a techie, doesn't mean that if you have a non-tech related hobby you lose your "tech card". In fact, it opens your mind to an entirely different world---and maybe his knowledge of misdirection and subtle deception gives him a different way of thinking about security.

There are several reasons that people are skeptical of global warming:

1. The current global warming evangelists are the equivalent of a Christian televangelist who gets caught with hookers and blow. If you believe that carbon is killing the planet, then don't buy giant mansions and yachts and have Global Warming conferences in Cancun. Live in modest houses and teleconference.

2. Environmentalists should go out of their way in supporting every alternate energy source, including nuclear. However, instead of working on answers they are always presenting roadblocks--even in technologies like wind and solar. http://solarpowernews.org/environmentalists-mojave-desert/ If you are serious about global warming, you will take some risks on desert animals to save all the rest of them.

3. Climate science seems like a bit circular---All scientists believe in AGW, but to be accepted as a scientist you need to believe in AGW. And it isn't a "hard" science in that you can experiment and see the results because, well, if AGW is occurring you can't wait till everyone is dead. On the other hand, we are aware of significant climate change in relatively recent human history (Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age, etc) that are not related to humans. And AGW isn't a new idea--Edward Gibbon blamed deforestation for Germany's warming in HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

Personally, when I hear the science is settled, everyone agrees 100%, and if you don't believe you are like a holocaust denier I get quite skeptical because NOTHING in science is that clear cut. It feels like all this pressure to agree and submit is because someone is hiding something.

4. Based on above, AGW seems to many like a profit scam and a means to control people. It is a little too convenient that some of the evangelists are getting very rich off of AGW and also a convenient way of keeping people "in their place". Gore and Bono can fly private jets, because they are important. I can't, because I'm not. The lesser classes can't have too much or otherwise the planet with burst into flames. The rich, however, never need to change--they just way their indulgences and go on their merry way.

I personally actually *believe* that we need to be carbon neutral, and am angry that the very people who should be moving society in that direction are some of the biggest obstacles to change. If environmentalists can't tell a bunch of obscenely rich and powerful people in Nantucket to suck it up and allow a wind farm to be built to help save the planet, how can you ask millions to reduce their entire standard of living to do the same?

From a few weeks back. XKCD even did a comic on it.
http://www.xkcd.com/938/

From the article:
"If you were to put the lithium-ion battery of the Nissan Leaf in the 1908 Fritchle, the vehicle would have a range of about 644 km (400 miles). "

Don't be so negative. It hasn't that battery tech hasn't advanced in 100 years, it's that it hasn't kept pace with the demand for faster, safer, bigger vehicles. The advancement in any technology is rarely a big bang. Take the lithium-ion battery in this laptop I am typing on for example, and look at the series of advanced necessary to give me a 6 hour battery in a high performance laptop: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#History. From wikipedia:

"In 1979, John Goodenough demonstrated a rechargeable cell with high cell voltage in the 4V range using lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2) as the positive electrode and lithium metal as the negative electrode."

"In 1991, Sony and Asahi Kasei released the first commercial lithium-ion battery."

It took 12 years from discovery to the first commercial battery, and another 5 to 10 years for them to be widely used. Yet on a supposed "tech" site all I read about are people critiquing any battery tech discovery as lame if it doesn't allow for a plug-in to be driven 500 miles on a charge. This discovery may turn out to not be practical, or may turn out to be THE discovery that leads to a battery revolution.

And even if we didn't get a 500 mile per charge battery, but instead got some tech that allowed the Volt to be at the same price point as a current Prius? Or even got it from 40 miles to 60 miles in a charge. These relatively modest advancements could start a major revolution where liquid fuels are only used for long-haul travel.