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Comment Re:This is great! (Score 3) 353

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_%28epithet%29
Use of the term has been a point of contention within the Republican Party. In 1984, when a delegate of the Republican platform committee asked unanimous consent to change a platform amendment to read the Democrat Party instead of Democratic Party, New York Representative Jack Kemp objected, saying that would be "an insult to our Democratic friends" and the committee dropped the proposal.[2] In 1996, the wording throughout the Republican party platform was changed from "Democratic Party" to "Democrat Party": Republican leaders "explained they wanted to make the subtle point that the Democratic Party had become elitist".[19] A proposal to use the term again in the August 2008 Republican Platform for similar reasons was voted down with leaders choosing to use "Democratic Party". "We probably should use what the actual name is," said Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, the panel's chairman. "At least in writing."

Yeah, Jack Kemp and Haley Barbour, flaming libruls both. Got it. Nice try though.

Comment Re:This is great! (Score 1, Informative) 353

"Democrat Party" is a slur, originally developed by Jesse Helms and later picked up and expanded upon by Karl Rove, intended to take away from Democrats - that is, members of the Democratic Party, the right to choose their own name.

As Theon can tell you having an entity that is attempting to obtain dominance over you impose a name not of your choosing is not a good thing. Members of the Democratic Party have been pretty vigilant about this since George W. Bush started doing it regularly. Hard right wing radicals don't like to be called out on their attempts though for some weird reason.

sPh

Comment Re:Just in tech? (Score 1) 349

= = = Women make less than men over their careers because they have babies, = = =

Last time I checked, the vast majority of people in the US who have babies are married. It takes two to have a baby, and care of the child is both parents' responsibility. So you're basically saying that men in the tech industry shirk their childrearing responsibilities too.

Comment Re:Just in tech? (Score 1) 349

= = = Then men and women hit their 50s. Kids are out of the house and on their own. Men starting taking months at a time off for prostate cancer and heart surgery, while women are hitting their stride at work. And yet oddly the salaries and titles of the 50-something men are never reduced to match their lower productivity. What a meritocracy! = = =

Ouch.

Comment Re:Just in tech? (Score 0) 349

Then men and women hit their 50s. Kids are out of the house and on their own. Men starting taking months at a time off for prostate cancer and heart surgery, while women are hitting their stride at work. And yet oddly the salaries and titles of the 50-something men are never reduced to match their lower productivity. What a meritocracy!

sPh

Comment Tax Net Assets, Not Actions (Score 2) 79

The primary function of government is protection of property rights. Early anarcho-capitalist Lysander Spooner described all legitimate government as a mutual property insurance company. Guys like Gates, and now Zuckerberg, should be taxed on their net assets, not on their actions (ie: not on income, capital gains, sales, value added, inheritance, etc...) as that is the closest thing to a property insurance premium.

Comment Re: Invisible hand (Score 4, Insightful) 536

Another problem are price controls.

Often the local franchise authority (set up by the city or state or county) sets prices for services.

If the price is set too low, then the cable company can't legally charge enough to pay for the infrastructure to reach certain customers, even if those customers are willing to pay more to get service.

Comment Re:LARD from Duke Nukem (Score 1) 160

New York is another. Ultra-high-density communities may not be common in the US -- but the ones that do are exist are, well, kinda' a big deal.

But -- oh, yeah! -- we were talking about city planning as relates to lower-income folks. And the thing is, even though you and I might consider it impossible to get to work, buy groceries, &c. in much of the country without a car, there are still people doing that by necessity. My brother-in-law used to take his bicycle on the bus and sleep on a bench until his shift started, because the bus routes he needed shut down long before his shift started. When city planning is done in a way that assumes everyone is going to have a car, what you get is people left behind by the system. If you're lucky, they can manage to hold down jobs anyhow -- if you aren't, you have more folks who need safety-net features much more expensive than public transportation.

Comment Re:LARD from Duke Nukem (Score 1) 160

Don't know why I want to feed the troll -- and explicitly not accepting the assertions I don't challenge here, but...

You talk about "traffic flow" -- but think about this for a minute. You're proposing to take a very high-population, dense chunk of city -- plugged into the rest of that city's transportation network -- and move it out into the middle of nowhere.

Have you looked at the level of car ownership in high-density areas recently -- particularly in lower-income high-density areas? How exactly do you expect folks to get to work or school when they're suddenly no longer in an area with transit access? (And without that, how do you expect folks to work, or go to school to improve their circumstances? Would you rather be buying the same number of heads worth of homeless shelter, and getting no tax base at all)?

Hell. I'm in the rich part (financial district) of downtown Chicago, and less than half my neighbors if that own cars if that; being in walking distance from work (and directly next to a stop for every single L line) is why people pay to live in the Loop. Owning a vehicle is expensive in a city -- heck, parking wherever you're going to is expensive in and of itself, as is having a place to park that vehicle at home (in my building, a parking spot costs about $30k to buy, or rents for upward of $200/mo). You can't take folks who can't afford decent housing unassisted, move them away from their jobs, and expect them all to be able to buy, maintain and fuel vehicles -- and park those vehicles near their jobs in the city -- when they were only barely making ends meet beforehand. It's insane.

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