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Comment Re:Why is this legal in the U.S.? (Score 1) 149

You can only lower taxes if you lower your spending. I have yet to see any government entity, Federal or State, do so.

Further, if you have read The Federalist Papers you will see both how naive Madison, Hamilton and Day were on the tax issue, as well as their ideas on taxes in general. They square, more or less, with how things are done in that those who make more should pay more not as a form of punishment but only because they can.

However, this should be taken in context as in their day the difference between the rich and everyone else was just as wide as it is today but it was somewhat easier for a person to move up the financial ladder than it is today for numerous reasons.

As to taxing the rich, see above. It's not a punishment, regardless of what some on the left will say, but only the fact that they can afford to pay more without that extra money affecting their lifestyles. Compare someone making $50K/year who has a 2% increase in their federal tax rate to someone making $250K/year. That 2% impacts them significantly more than the second person even though the amount is more in the latter case.

If we're going to lower taxes we need to make across the board cuts. There are no sacred cows. Reduce the Social Security programs, cut out military projects, stop most food and fuel subsidies, remove tax loopholes and tax benefits to a bare minimum (mortgage deduction, depreciation, etc), and so on.

At this point there is no other way to lower taxes other than cutting what we spend and having, in this case Nevada, spend over $1 billion of its taxpayers money does not help the matter. That lost money has to come from somewhere and it will not be made up by those employed at the plant, those who build the extra road and development, the ones who feed these people and everything else. It won't happen. A large portion of that money will never be recovered in any form.

So the argument becomes, if we want to lower taxes we have to cut our spending or if not, the tax code needs to be rejiggered so more money can be found to keep paying for all the subsidies and the like we keep spending money on.

Comment Re:Why is this legal in the U.S.? (Score 5, Insightful) 149

It happens regularly in this country. The taxpayers get the shaft so private industry doesn't have spend their money. Our football teams (U.S. football, not your football), when they need a new stadium, threaten to take their team to another city unless the taxpayers cough up their money to build the new stadium and related matters, while the team continues to charge exorbitant prices.

This country wastes hundreds of billions of dollars each year by making sure private industry doesn't have to suffer the pangs of going out and getting financing for its projects like the rest of us do when we want to buy a home or do major repairs.

Don't forget we used several trillion dollars to prop up our banks and financial firms when, through their own incompetence, our financial system went into meltdown. These folks then used the taxpayer money to give themselves bonuses for the great job they did AND have told us taxpayers to go pound sand any time it is mentioned they should thank us for protecting them.

For all our talk about free markets and capitalism, we are incrementally closer to fascism than we are to a representative democracy. Industry, as a whole, gets what it wants, even if it means the taxpayers have to bend over and take it.

Comment Of course they don't need the full spectrum (Score -1, Troll) 80

digital TV broadcasts don't need the full 6MHz of broadcast spectrum that was used for analog TV.

Which is why the signal is worse than analog. Clipping, blocky shadows, dropped signals.

The only time digital has been better was the move to DVD from VHS/Beta and CDs from tape. 78s and 45s are still better than digital.

Comment Re:Right. (Score 2, Interesting) 140

Or he's taking personal responsibility and accepting whatever awaits him because he knew what he did was wrong.

Unlike the guy who deliberately put his equipment in someone else's closet, attempted to hide that equipment, then whined when he was caught and tried to claim he was the victim before he killed himself.

Comment Re:Thermodynamic equilibrium is not required (Score 1) 211

What about the tons of dust and debris that fall to Earth every single day? What about the heat this planet radiates out, the loss of gases that occur naturally?

We do not have a closed system. Period. You can be ignorant and attempt to argue it all you want, but you will always be wrong.

Always.

Comment Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" (Score 1) 1134

I always like it when the gays come out. That's always their first thought.

It's like Fred Phelps and his obsession with gays. I mean gees guy, give it a rest (technically he is because he's dead). We understood you were a closeted gay, but did you have to overcompensate so much?

Comment Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" (Score 0, Troll) 1134

She even admitted flat out on twitter to having sex for publicity

Apparently there are some desperate people in the gaming industry because speaking for myself, she is not attractive. Not hideous but not someone I'd consider, even when drunk.

But each to their own, right? More power to them if they felt the only way to get the goods on her games was to sleep with her.

Comment What if no phone? (Score 1) 137

What if someone doesn't have a smart phone but a solid, reliable "dumb" phone? What then? Are they going to be penalized because they can't be tracked?

Bite me. Insurance is enough of a scam now as it is. Having them track you in real time is pathetic. If they want to see how good a driver I am, see how many accidents I've had.

None? Well guess what, I must be pretty damn good not to have hit anyone in the decades I've been driving so stop raising my rates every year.

Comment Re:Au contraire! (Score 1) 129

They provide this crappy support because they can get away with it.

You're lying. Everyone knows private industry is so much more efficient and responsive than the government so you're just making up this shit.

Private industry would NEVER treat their customers in the manner you described. They would bend over backwards, expending all needed time, effort and money to make sure your problem is resolved quickly and efficiently.

For those who don't grasp sarcasm, this was it. I work for a government agency and while we have all the people described in this thread, I can assure you, the private sector is just as incompetent and slow moving as anything the government does. The stories I could tell you about slow response, pawned off troubles and general incompetence. . .

Comment Re:G'Day Valve, (Score 0) 139

That said, since the majority of people who do this likely are attemtping to cheat because they couldn't afford many games anyway, the loss of money is likely actually very small since the alternative would be, they don't play the game or download it some other way.

So you're admitting that people are too cheap to buy a game yet somehow can afford all their other shiny toys such as phones, computers, most likely cigarettes and alcohol and a whole host of other items.

The loss of money by people stealing a copy of a game is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is they're trying to justify their theft by claiming poverty while they have all those other gizmos or miraculously find money to spend on other non-essential items.

Comment Re:Slashdot comments indicative of the problem (Score 3, Insightful) 1262

Why is it, when faced with stories like this, is your first instinct to claim that the woman lied or made it up?

For the same reason when a woman is raped they immediately blame her for getting herself in that situation.

She shouldn't have gotten drunk.

She shouldn't have worn that short skirt.

She shouldn't have been walking alone at night.

I once worked with a guy who said if a girl in college got raped when she was drunk it was her fault, except of course if it was his daughter in which case he'd shoot the guy.

There will always be those who will blame the women just because they can, without considering any other option because their mindset is such that women are always to blame.

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