Iowa courts issued a ruling and opinion that's at odds with earlier legislation... which the court says is at odds with more fundamental legal issues. That's a far cry from saying the state "could agree on" gay marriage.

The above rhetorical question implies, the submitter/editor disagree with mathematical methods.

Actually, I think the basic objection may not be so much modeling itself as putting models in the hands of "professionals" who routinely do things like ask for 5+ years of Java Development experience... in 1998.

There's an argument floating around that what caused the financial system mess wasn't so much the mathematical models and the quants who invented them, but the higher ups who built on them as tools without understanding them. It doesn't take a lot of imagination or, unfortunately, a ton of experience, to visualize suits and mid-level management who *may* get the broad details (more likely may not) of a model but be completely lacking in the expertise to really wrap their head around the stuff.

With HR? I guarantee you it will be worse. Human Resources is a barely skilled profession, and the kind of people who work it are nearly to a person EXACTLY the kind of people who simply do not have the equipment to understand the principles behind and limits of a mathematical model. They're more the kind of people who are likely to say "these are the rules, that's what the system says, here are the dictated consequences."

"Federal Reserve Board data show that:

*More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.
*Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.
*Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics."

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/53802.html

It doesn't take much poking around to see some serious holes poked in the idea that the CRA caused this mess:

http://www.ptmortgage.com/blog/2008/10/01/pointing-fingers-was-it-cra-and-minority-lending-that-caused-the-mortgage-mess/
http://debatebothsides.com/showthread.php?t=73500
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=did_liberals_cause_the_subprime_crisis
http://www.frbsf.org/news/speeches/2008/0331.html

But, let's not get those pesky facts get in the way, shall we?

US corporate taxes are the second-highest in the world behind Japan.

Is that statutory rates, or effective rates?

Also note that we're pretty solidly on the low end in personal income tax.

You can call US taxes a lot of things, but "low" is not one of them, especially considering the services what we get from the government in exchange for the taxes we pay.

If you want to argue that we could potentially be getting a better return on our tax dollars, then I'll agree. If nothing else, the example of per-capita public health spending comes to mind -- for a smaller amount, many other countries pull off universal insurance coverage. And I'm sure that aside, there's always work to do -- I think it'll be a long time before either by active policy study or by the evolutionary algorithm of competitive markets we've discovered most of the easy efficiency gains.

But if you want to argue that the U.S. isn't a pretty good place to live or do business, or if you want to argue that tax contributions to that are negligible, I'm off that boat.

Funny--last time I checked, the President didn't have a f*cking checkbook. It was the liberal senators that took over in the last 2 years that passed the bailouts.

The poster wasn't talking about TARP, he was talking about our misadventure in nation building known as the Iraq war.

Although it's worth noting most of congress, including the Democrats, went along.

Although Bush doesn't get off scot-free--he didn't veto the f*cking thing.

  Not only did he not veto it, his administration (primarily the Treasury folks, headed by Goldman Sachs alumni Paulsen) basically went to Congress and said "The economy will die within weeks (if not days) if you don't give us this program." So, again, you can fault the Democrats for not having the backbone to tell them to go to hell or even that they had better damn well be reporting back weekly for approval, but placing primary responsibility on them is incorrect.

If nothing else, the depression length information is pretty informative, and the argument about public vs private investment is pretty close to the heart of the matter...

The compliant makes it sound like she was in a pissing contest with the network administrator. Not a good person to piss off if you want to send email.

How pissed off the sysadmin should be completely irrelevant to the situation. Yes, he can and should exercise some discretion in execution of policy, but it's either reasonable application of real policy or it's personal retaliation.

And If personal retaliation is the rule for disputes, then I'm sure some enterprising recipient is more than capable of thinking up some effective and fun ways of their own to play that game. Maybe this student is one of them.