So what? I don't expect everything to last forever. Read something else and move on. If the WSJ lost a bunch of readership, then it wouldn't matter that it has slid so much.

Well, that and their ability to regenerate crime sprees on the fly. I've seen a number of such stations which don't go beyond reading the local crime blotter and cute pet stories.

Well, we sure didn't get into it to write boring business applications except a few in the dotcom years who quickly moved on when it went bust. As I remember it though, there were many who just wanted to play games and only a few who wanted work with code and I don't think pushing them to play more would have brought them over. Of course you needed the opportunity, but there are a lot of games that are mod-friendly if you're so inclined. I'd sure encourage and test if tweaking a game peeks their interest, but if it doesn't I wouldn't try with more game time.

Which is a remarkably underwhelming number.

But that is a considerable part of the reason we don't normally consider gold to be a pollutant. Dose makes the poison and there just isn't a lot of dose here.

LOL. That's a lot of unintentional comedy right there, 7300 plates worth. I guess the California government is good for something.

Well, I've been READing and UNDERSTANDing you and I have yet to see an actual fact backing your assertion that the tax is regressive. If we actually look at the proposed mechanics of the tax, it's a a flat tax on everything past a certain base amount. That right there makes it slightly progressive. And that's pretty much it.

It doesn't help that so many of Rand Paul's opposition are twirling their well-oiled mustaches like a Ayn Rand cartoonish villain.If you're a plug in replacement for a "looter" in Atlas Shrugged, then Ayn Rand's stilted writing and logic is the least of your troubles.

Except by taking their stuff or putting people in jail, of course. The thing missing in your argument is the vast power differential between even a "weak, decentralized" government and a corporation.

Sure, it does. A business's power is far easier to break. Just destroy or take their capital or stop buying their stuff, then they stop making a profit. That jackboot goes away when the business can no longer pay for it. For better or worse a small group of people can considerably harm even a large business, if they target it with effective sabotage or high profile bad publicity.

Sure, they do. But over the lifespan of the US the "moderation" usually favors the wealthy and connected. It's only when the public gets particularly outraged that the moderation has anything to do with creating a better society.

The obvious rebuttal is twofold. First, one would expect in a democracy for those who don't desire government action in their lives to require a larger bribe than those who do. It's standard supply and demand in a democracy.

Second, where is the money going? Just because, say, West Virginia gets money for a high tech emergency command center or money to back bonds for an interstate (hypothetical examples) doesn't mean that the money goes to West Virginia networking equipment manufacturers or the fees for managing the sale of said bonds go to West Virginia brokers. There's a lot of blue state participation in red state spending.

I call your bluff here. By all means, cut funding to those disrespectful, slothful red states. Of course, your "moderation of society" will be cut in retaliation. That's win-win for me.

I think the previous poster was thinking of stuff like the "nuclear option", the blocking of filibustering (like what Paul did just now) on a variety of US Senate activities. That wasn't done by the "right wing" though admittedly they were blamed for it.

Except for the obvious bit about not actually being regressive. The actual regressive tax problem I see with a flat tax is that they can't permanently eliminate tax loophole creation. That's what creates localized regressive tax situations today.

Funny, how people are more concerned about hypocrisy, real and imagined, than about genuine evil. Perhaps you ought to look into what it takes to be an elected politician. The key thing for purposes of considering your empty accusations of hypocrisy is that his job is to represent the interests of his constituents, which aren't mostly not libertarian in viewpoint, not merely advocate a particular ideology with pure consistency.

I notice that no one bothers to point out the hypocrisy of the vast majority of US politicians here. Somehow Rand's hypocrisy is far more significant than the hypocrisy of a Reid or Shelby, to name a couple which I've noticed. I think it's a terrible idea to leave politics to the completely venal, but this sort of attitude remains strangely commonplace.

One would have to be a fool to eschew a strong libertarian (or whatever philosophical traits one deems desirable) candidate on the basis that he isn't ideologically pure while ignoring that he has a job that demands a lot of things over ideological purity. Especially when his supposed hypocrisy is not notable compared to background noise of the group he is part of.

How about about a nice bonus for those in charge for firing those horrrible cost centers who provide no value and caused the leak. So smart. Not all scarce talent can be so gifted.

Well, one thing going for him. He wins at Bingo.