Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Nuclear1 on May 18, 2010, 09:10:02 pm
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Alright, so the big news.
For those not familiar with recent American politics, the massive protest movement known as the Tea Party has essentially won its first primary election in Kentucky--Ron Paul's son just beat out of the more moderate and mainstream Republican candidate in that election.
Updated 19 May
Pennsylvania -- Arlen Specter is out. Retired Admiral Joe Sestak has taken the Democratic Primary in a 53-47 victory. Sestak has very, very liberal leanings.
Arkansas -- There's going to be a runoff between Democratic incumbent Sen. Blanche Lincoln and her opponent, Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. 44.5% for Lincoln, 42.5% for Halter.
Indiana -- In addition to the retirement of long-time conservative Democrat Sen. Evan Bayh, Rep. Mark Souder (R) of Indiana's 3rd has resigned in light of a sex scandal. The 3rd includes Indiana's northeast, including Fort Wayne. No candidates have been announced yet.
November 2010 is looking to be interesting. Thoughts?
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So Fox News is going to be running the US?
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If Paul wins in Kentucky and that trend goes through in other states...Fox will certainly have a couple seats in Congress.
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Thinking about that makes me tired. -.-;
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Well...good news comes in. Joe Sestak has officially defeated Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania primary.
For the record, Sestak is very, very liberal--pro-choice, gun control, pro-healthcare reform, and a hardcore environmentalist. This all in addition to his military experience.
If he can win in November...the US will have an awesome new Senator.
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gun control
That's awesome? :confused:
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An assault weapons ban is, which is what he's most in favor of.
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Eh, aren't those so-called assault weapons really just civilian rifles that happen to look like military weapons?
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Many semi auto rifles, like the civy version of the M-16 can be easily modified to full auto weapons.
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Last I checked, the assault weapons ban targeted features that lay people associate with fully automatic weapons, but aren't actually technically related to them.
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Last I checked, the assault weapons ban targeted features that lay people associate with fully automatic weapons, but aren't actually technically related to them.
Right you are.
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So Fox News is going to be running the US?
If Paul wins in Kentucky and that trend goes through in other states...Fox will certainly have a couple seats in Congress.
:wtf:
Seriously? Since when does Fox News have anything to do with this?
As far as I can tell, public sentiment is mostly just anti-incumbent. People are sick of congress, period, and are much more willing than usual to try someone or something new.
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...
I call bull**** on that, sushi. That was the exact opposite of "public sentiment" last election.
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Actually, Tea Partiers are thoroughly convinced that their representatives in Congress aren't loony to the right enough, and the only reason they've survived to this point is the media coverage they've been given, mostly by Fox News.
Hence, Tea Party candidates for Congress are essentially Fox News candidates for Congress.
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I highly doubt that any teabagger is going to vote out a republican infavor of a democrat in the name of "vote out all the incumbents!!!"
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Many semi auto rifles, like the civy version of the M-16 can be easily modified to full auto weapons.
Unless you know EXACTLY what you're doing with it, you're more likely to kill yourself than modify those weapons into full auto rifles. The easiest and cheapest (and therefore, most common) way is to file away at the part of the receiver that keeps the weapon from firing the second round with out another pull from the trigger. When you do that, the next time you just let go of the bolt to load the weapon, it will go off if you're not careful, and it will not stop until the feed of ammunition is disabled.
Unless you actually have the parts to do it, and know very well how, those civvy versions will never be reliable full auto weapons.
Tl;dr: Don't. You'll just hurt yourself. And I guess kind of a "No, it's not easy" comment.
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I highly doubt that any teabagger is going to vote out a republican infavor of a democrat in the name of "vote out all the incumbents!!!"
Well...the teabaggers of the New York 21st apparently weren't too bright in that manner...
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I highly doubt that any teabagger is going to vote out a republican infavor of a democrat in the name of "vote out all the incumbents!!!"
Well...the teabaggers of the New York 21st apparently weren't too bright in that manner...
The 21st District's already got a new congressperson in 2008. The 20th too (where Kirsten Gillibrand is from, before she stepped into Clinton's vacant seat in the Senate).
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The people in this country are just plain fed up with everyone in office and will continue to vote them out hoping for change that will never happen. New people come in, get money shoved in their face and cast their votes accordingly. Why else would someone spend millions to win a job that doesn't even pay a quarter million? It's a broken system that no one is willing or able to fix.
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I highly doubt that any teabagger is going to vote out a republican infavor of a democrat in the name of "vote out all the incumbents!!!"
Well...the teabaggers of the New York 21st apparently weren't too bright in that manner...
The 21st District's already got a new congressperson in 2008. The 20th too (where Kirsten Gillibrand is from, before she stepped into Clinton's vacant seat in the Senate).
Damn, I misspoke. I meant the 23rd. :nervous: The one that had the special election last year.
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Many semi auto rifles, like the civy version of the M-16 can be easily modified to full auto weapons.
Unless you know EXACTLY what you're doing with it, you're more likely to kill yourself than modify those weapons into full auto rifles. The easiest and cheapest (and therefore, most common) way is to file away at the part of the receiver that keeps the weapon from firing the second round with out another pull from the trigger. When you do that, the next time you just let go of the bolt to load the weapon, it will go off if you're not careful, and it will not stop until the feed of ammunition is disabled.
Unless you actually have the parts to do it, and know very well how, those civvy versions will never be reliable full auto weapons.
Tl;dr: Don't. You'll just hurt yourself. And I guess kind of a "No, it's not easy" comment.
Fully automatic weapons are overrated anyway. The M1A would make a perfect battle rifle or sniper rifle and it's not a so-called "assault weapon."
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Wasn't the 23rd district the one with Scozzoforza or whatever-name-was? She happened to be a moderate Republican up against a Democrat who was on both the Liberal and Democrat lists and she was facing a conservative on the Conservative list who I believe got a larger percentage of the vote than Scozzoforza did.
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Yeah, it was because the Conservative candidate got the endorsement of Limbaugh, Palin et al. that Scozzafava had to drop out. Of course, people still voted for Scozzafava, and that divided the Republican vote enough that a Democrat won the 23rd for the first time since the Civil War.
Brilliant move, Teabaggers.
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The people in this country are just plain fed up with everyone in office and will continue to vote them out hoping for change that will never happen. New people come in, get money shoved in their face and cast their votes accordingly. Why else would someone spend millions to win a job that doesn't even pay a quarter million? It's a broken system that no one is willing or able to fix.
My sentiments exactly. I'm not going to vote until our campaign financing system gets cleaned up and taken away from lobbyists. Until that happens votes wont matter one way or the other. When they fix it I'll be ready and able to register to vote, fat chance of that happening anytime soon.
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I highly doubt that any teabagger is going to vote out a republican infavor of a democrat in the name of "vote out all the incumbents!!!"
Well...the teabaggers of the New York 21st apparently weren't too bright in that manner...
The 21st District's already got a new congressperson in 2008. The 20th too (where Kirsten Gillibrand is from, before she stepped into Clinton's vacant seat in the Senate).
Damn, I misspoke. I meant the 23rd. :nervous: The one that had the special election last year.
I live right along the border between the 20th & 21st districts. It's literally under a mile away as the crow flies.
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I didn't even know that Sestak had beaten Specter until reading it in here. I was far more interested in hockey tonight. :p
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Well, Rand Paul won his primary. :yes:
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Well, Rand Paul won his primary. :yes:
Are you sure his last name isn't al-Thor?
because then he could be a really enduring figure in government but die in office and leave his constituents disappointed and unfulfilled even though everyone of taste really didn't like him anyway but never mind
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Well, Rand Paul won his primary. :yes:
Are you sure his last name isn't al-Thor?
Hahahaha battman's funny
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The actual election is on 2 November, right? I'll probably need to send an absentee ballot in if it is.
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Rand Paul probably has little chance of actually winning. His numbers don't appear to match up well with any of the Democrats, even those that lost the primary.
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The actual election is on 2 November, right? I'll probably need to send an absentee ballot in if it is.
Yep. I'm in the same boat, since I'll be deployed around that time.
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First post updated...Indiana's 3rd district is up for grabs now.
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The actual election is on 2 November, right? I'll probably need to send an absentee ballot in if it is.
Yep. I'm in the same boat, since I'll be deployed around that time.
I'll have two congresspeople, two senators, and a governor to elect. Gov. Patterson has already made it clear that he won't run for another term (he'd wouldn't stand a chance in the primary). Andrew Cuomo will probably get his seat.
Gillibrand is going to face tough opposition thanks to her being 2nd-Amendment-friendly. She's up for special election. Clinton won in 2006, Gillibrand was appointed in 2008 and is up for special election this year. The seat will be back to normal come 2012. So far, it's been 2 years of Clinton, 2 years of Gillibrand, and the possibility of 2 years of someone else entirely.
Rep. Scott Murphy (D) won the special for Gillibrand's former seat by less than half a percent, out of 161k votes. That may be a tough battle for him to keep the seat. The 20th district has had quite a few Republican reps. While most of NY is strong Democratic, there are a few districts that lean Republican.
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My state has Boxer, Pelosi, and Feinstein representing all or some of us. :ick:
Frankly, I don't give a damn which Republican wins the Senate primary here as long as they win the general and Boxer gets kicked out onto her ass.
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Speaking as a foreigner albeit in a country that is extremely closely linked with the United States, the current level of polarization in American politics is ****ing terrifying. The fact that a movement like the Tea Party is getting both support and media coverage and is actively seeking to remove candidates because they aren't right-wing enough is absolutely astonishing.
The ironically hilarious part is that they believe they're fighting for freedom and against societies like the corrupt fundamentalism in Iran, yet if they have their way the US is going to look far more like a fundamentalist religious society than it has in its history.
It would appear that the "center" in US politics has entirely disappeared.
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It would appear that the "center" in US politics has entirely disappeared.
That's one of the most depressing statements I've heard all day.
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It would appear that the "center" in US politics has entirely disappeared.
That's one of the most depressing statements I've heard all day.
I'm reading a third well-cited academic essay in as many months that concludes this phenomenon is the internet's fault. Filled with bubbly happiness again?
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It may have disappeared in the political discourse, but the electorate itself is still pretty centric.
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Many semi auto rifles, like the civy version of the M-16 can be easily modified to full auto weapons.
Anyone who knows anything about weapons will agree that full auto fire is nearly useless in assault rifles anyway. Multiple well placed single shots in a short time is what makes assault rifle more effective for warfare than earlier bolt lock rifles that require the operator to cycle next round in. With magazine capacity of dozens of rounds (usually around 30) and gas-operated cycle, an assault rifle is just as dangerous whether it has full auto enabled or disabled, because practically everyone with any weapons training will forgo the full auto option anyway in all but very specialized situations.
If you think about it, a nutcase with good aim can pop off a cap in 30 people's ass in a minute, while a nutcase who watched too many rambo movies will spew all 30 rounds from the magazine in less than three seconds and be less than likely to hit any but the first few rounds with any semblance of accuracy.
So, that said, for the feared worst case scenario, a civilian model of M1 carbine or M16 rifle or any other similar weapon is just as dangerous, if not more so, than the full-auto military version, since it doesn't offer the possibility for said nutcase to use the full auto option in the first place. For the purposes of limiting this sort of threat, limiting the magazine capacity of civilian weapons is one option to reduce lethality and the other is limiting civilian weapons to manually cycled weapons (ie. the operator must cycle the empty shell out of chamber and new round in).
I live in a country that has technically bigger firearm density per capita than the United States of A (based on registered. However, this mainly consists of hunting weapons - shotguns and rifles, rather than personal sidearms or full auto disabled assault rifle models (which are mainly used by people involved in voluntary defence associations, which actually co-operate their courses and events with the Finnish Defence Force to some degree) and the majority of violent crimes does not include firearms. In most cases of armed robberies, manslaughter et al, a bladed weapon or some improvised weapon such as a hammer, baseball bat or other blunt object. So, I wouldn't say the amount of guns per ce is the problem, but if the population continuously misuses their privileges, then the privileges should be reduced.
Note that privileges are not the same thing as rights. Privileges correspond to certain responsibility. For example, a license to drive a motor vehicle requires that one does it according to the traffic rules in a a responsible manner. Failing to do so will cause the loss of the privilege to drive a car - it is not a self-explanatory civil right to drive a car.
Early in the history of automobiles, their use was not licensed per ce - the owners of automobiles simply applied for and typically were granted to use their vehicles on public roads. The first country to start using tests to issue driver's licenses was Prussia, though they were mainly concerned about drivers' mechanical aptitude to maintaining their vehicles.
As the number of automobiles in use rised, fatalities started to occur and eventually all drivers were required to have passed a driving education and test to have a license. And so the privilege to drive a car with no special permissions was lost from the populace, replaced by a license-regulated privilege that has to be gained.
No one I know thinks of this as a bad thing. However, it is exactly the same as gun regulation; irresponsible use of automobiles led to fatalities, which led to tighter control over who is allowed to drive one. Why is there no public outcry against controlling government in this case? After all, the American people are about as enthusiastic about their cars as they are about their guns...
Aside from that, I know very little of day-to-day American politics and make random guesses.
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The people in this country are just plain fed up with everyone in office and will continue to vote them out hoping for change that will never happen. New people come in, get money shoved in their face and cast their votes accordingly. Why else would someone spend millions to win a job that doesn't even pay a quarter million? It's a broken system that no one is willing or able to fix.
I'll be happy if the incumbent reelection rate dips below 70%. It'd absolutely be a dream come true if someone managed to fix the budget and entitlements, but it's not going to happen no matter who you vote in.
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It may have disappeared in the political discourse, but the electorate itself is still pretty centric.
The trouble is, as the center opts out of the political discourse, those left behind establish echo chambers, further polarizing themselves and compounding the loss of moderate voices. Moreover, while voter turnout has seen a net gain in the past decade, exit polls show more and more people voting straight tickets, indicating that moderates are not just opting out of political discussion, but out of the political process altogether.
Polarization of the electorate poses multiple problems. For one, representatives themselves take more extreme positions to match those of their constituents. More importantly, though, as polarization increases, minority political movements, unable to gain/hold political power, begin to behave as disenfranchised extremists. Recall the death threats and vandalism that high-profile supporters of the healthcare bill were subjected to, after the bill's passage. That phenomenon may not be new, but the pervasiveness has and is likely to continue to increase.
For the purposes of limiting this sort of threat, limiting the magazine capacity of civilian weapons is one option to reduce lethality and the other is limiting civilian weapons to manually cycled weapons (ie. the operator must cycle the empty shell out of chamber and new round in).
Worth noting that the assault weapons ban that we had in the 1990's did limit magazine sizes to ten rounds. Quite a lot of handguns, such as the Beretta 9mm, nevermind assault rifles or SMGs, were produced in civilian and military/law enforcement versions, with the former accepting only a smaller magazine.
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Herra, most gun owners here do realize they have a lethal weapon, and do make sure they are kept away from anyone who could accidentally hurt themselves with it.
That being said, I do believe most gun crimes are committed with firearms that are already illegal in some manner, so tightening the laws wouldn't do much.
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Herra, most gun owners here do realize they have a lethal weapon, and do make sure they are kept away from anyone who could accidentally hurt themselves with it.
Well, except themselves. Gun suicides outnumber gun homicides by a fair margin.
The question, as always, is whether these suicides would just go to a different method if guns weren't available. Unfortunately the data from the gender method differential seems to say no.
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The ironically hilarious part is that they believe they're fighting for freedom and against societies like the corrupt fundamentalism in Iran, yet if they have their way the US is going to look far more like a fundamentalist religious society than it has in its history.
Please describe the Tea Party plank that incorporates religious fundamentalism.
In contrast to your inaccurate knee-jerk categorization, the most salient Tea Party plank is the economy, and in particular, the national debt.
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The ironically hilarious part is that they believe they're fighting for freedom and against societies like the corrupt fundamentalism in Iran, yet if they have their way the US is going to look far more like a fundamentalist religious society than it has in its history.
Please describe the Tea Party plank that incorporates religious fundamentalism.
In contrast to your inaccurate knee-jerk categorization, the most salient Tea Party plank is the economy, and in particular, the national debt.
In a sense MP-Ryan's characterization is a somewhat relevant one. In the human mind, categories are defined by the prototype, not by algorithmic-rule based distinctions. Whether or not this movement's stated goals involve religion, the prototypic member is probably religious and likely fundamentalist.
This will probably render the religious fundamentalist aspect pretty salient to the description of the movement, since fundamentalist attitudes will be conflated with Tea Party membership and become tied up in their actions. Even if every single Tea Party member joins because of the economy, if most of them are also religious fundamentalists (which they might be, or might not), those attitudes will become incorporated into the party's prototype, which shapes not just perception of the party but the party's actual decisions and outcomes.
I don't have a particular opinion on it myself - as far as the models I'm aware of predict, it's just part of the endless back-and-forth cycle of a two-party system - but it's a mechanism you should be aware of.
tl;dr version: the party's planks don't matter, it's the party's membership that does.
(And this is backed up by the fact that the Tea Party didn't spring into life in the Bush Years, when the national debt first started to explode. Clearly there's another factor here.)
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The ironically hilarious part is that they believe they're fighting for freedom and against societies like the corrupt fundamentalism in Iran, yet if they have their way the US is going to look far more like a fundamentalist religious society than it has in its history.
Please describe the Tea Party plank that incorporates religious fundamentalism.
In contrast to your inaccurate knee-jerk categorization, the most salient Tea Party plank is the economy, and in particular, the national debt.
In a sense MP-Ryan's characterization is a somewhat relevant one. In the human mind, categories are defined by the prototype, not by algorithmic-rule based distinctions. Whether or not this movement's stated goals involve religion, the prototypic member is probably religious and likely fundamentalist.
This will probably render the religious fundamentalist aspect pretty salient to the description of the movement, since fundamentalist attitudes will be conflated with Tea Party membership and become tied up in their actions. Even if every single Tea Party member joins because of the economy, if most of them are also religious fundamentalists (which they might be, or might not), those attitudes will become incorporated into the party's prototype, which shapes not just perception of the party but the party's actual decisions and outcomes.
I don't have a particular opinion on it myself - as far as the models I'm aware of predict, it's just part of the endless back-and-forth cycle of a two-party system - but it's a mechanism you should be aware of.
tl;dr version: the party's planks don't matter, it's the party's membership that does.
(And this is backed up by the fact that the Tea Party didn't spring into life in the Bush Years, when the national debt first started to explode. Clearly there's another factor here.)
What you won't admit to is that the initial packing of the powder has been going on for years, probably a decade or more. The fuse was lit during Bush 2, and it's going off during Obama's lone term.
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Well, in one sense, Ryan's wrong on that point. The Teabaggers are angry about a lot of things--whether they're actually warranted or not--but there's not really any major religious fundamentalism backdrop to it.
But in another sense, Ryan's absolutely correct. The atmosphere that the Teabaggers are creating where it's seemingly acceptable to bring firearms to town hall meetings and otherwise resort to violence and a loss of self-control, will simply aid the rise of all sorts of angry fundies and crazies. Take a look around at the reborn militia movement, birthers, and the Christian terrorists who murdered George Tiller.
Clearly there's another factor here.)
A liberal being elected President. A guy with a funny name being elected President. A black guy being elected President. Widespread lies about a "socialist takeover" (like democratic socialism is a bad thing or something) or their beloved guns being taken away.
Or they're just ****ing morons.
What you won't admit to is that the initial packing of the powder has been going on for years, probably a decade or more. The fuse was lit during Bush 2, and it's going off during Obama's lone term.
Yeah, sorta. It wasn't because of Bush's policies though...it was the last couple months or so of the election when Republicans starting trying to stir up their constituents against Obama. I actually remember a whole lot of McCain and GOP rallies where people actually screamed out "Traitor!" "Commie!" and "Kill him!" whenever Obama's name was mentioned. McCain just lost control of them, and unleashed a monster.
Stupid people + old Cold War sentiments + stupid people's predilection for violence = Teabaggers
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The ironically hilarious part is that they believe they're fighting for freedom and against societies like the corrupt fundamentalism in Iran, yet if they have their way the US is going to look far more like a fundamentalist religious society than it has in its history.
Please describe the Tea Party plank that incorporates religious fundamentalism.
In contrast to your inaccurate knee-jerk categorization, the most salient Tea Party plank is the economy, and in particular, the national debt.
In a sense MP-Ryan's characterization is a somewhat relevant one. In the human mind, categories are defined by the prototype, not by algorithmic-rule based distinctions. Whether or not this movement's stated goals involve religion, the prototypic member is probably religious and likely fundamentalist.
This will probably render the religious fundamentalist aspect pretty salient to the description of the movement, since fundamentalist attitudes will be conflated with Tea Party membership and become tied up in their actions. Even if every single Tea Party member joins because of the economy, if most of them are also religious fundamentalists (which they might be, or might not), those attitudes will become incorporated into the party's prototype, which shapes not just perception of the party but the party's actual decisions and outcomes.
I don't have a particular opinion on it myself - as far as the models I'm aware of predict, it's just part of the endless back-and-forth cycle of a two-party system - but it's a mechanism you should be aware of.
tl;dr version: the party's planks don't matter, it's the party's membership that does.
(And this is backed up by the fact that the Tea Party didn't spring into life in the Bush Years, when the national debt first started to explode. Clearly there's another factor here.)
What you won't admit to is that the initial packing of the powder has been going on for years, probably a decade or more. The fuse was lit during Bush 2, and it's going off during Obama's lone term.
Who's 'you'?
Why wouldn't I want to admit to that?
I'd completely agree with it - the Tea Party movement is similar to a lot of home-grown militia movements and the like with similar rhetoric, and those go back decades. (Again, I don't really have a strong opinion about the Tea Party one way or another, since it's just another manifestation of deeper political cycles.)
Except maybe the fuse being lit during Bush 2. I think the behavior now being considered unacceptable was considered okay when a conservative white guy was doing it.
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None of the big names I know of may have been denouncing the Bush spending except Rush (oh yeah, he opposed it), but when Bush 41 went ahead and announced the bailouts the Opinion section of my local newspaper was flooded with letters denouncing what he was doing.
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A few things to add...
1) Had Bush not invaded Iraq, he'd probably go down as one of the better presidents.
2) The Tea Party thing is basically people pissed at both parties, but see the conservative side as closer to their ideals. In simplest terms, they hate the Democrats because Health Care has been rammed down their throats and they hate the Republicans because they try to stall even the smallest bill, to the point where the legislature can barely function.
3) The only thing that will change the current bipartisan dysfunctional would be to have a revolution. A small or even medium-sized revolt would be scoffed at.
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None of the big names I know of may have been denouncing the Bush spending except Rush (oh yeah, he opposed it), but when Bush 41 went ahead and announced the bailouts the Opinion section of my local newspaper was flooded with letters denouncing what he was doing.
That's not a bad point.
3) The only thing that will change the current bipartisan dysfunctional would be to have a revolution. A small or even medium-sized revolt would be scoffed at.
Question. Is the current setup actually dysfunctional? It seems like, in terms of corruption and the like, we're doing better than we used to.
I feel like we need some data before concluding 'things are worse than they once were'.
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So, uh... what about the whole "Obama death councils" nonsense, and general fearmongering?
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that was one argument for one issue that some elements of the movement were opposed to, derived from the intuitive concept that if the government is running health care, and at some point treatment will be too costly to continue, then there will have to be some bureaucratic mechanism that makes the determination of when that point has come.
the foundations for tea movement started about two years before the end of Bush, they are disillusioned with the republican party and conservative, the democrats will get a few years of split tickets out of this so stop riding there asses so hard, you should be encouraging them.
also glen beck was very brutal towards bush, in particular towards spending, so was michael 'banned in brittan' savage, and bill o'reily for a time and to a lesser degree. most of the rest of the talkshow guys were bush yesmen though.
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What you won't admit to is that the initial packing of the powder has been going on for years, probably a decade or more. The fuse was lit during Bush 2, and it's going off during Obama's lone term.
Eh? The majority of the shadowy you that you talk about not only admit it but openly blame Bush for lighting it. :p
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Aardwolf, you watch the election scene in Gangs of New York where everyone is trying to vote as many times as they can?
Yeah, we're much less corrupt than back then where that stuff actually happened.
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The ironically hilarious part is that they believe they're fighting for freedom and against societies like the corrupt fundamentalism in Iran, yet if they have their way the US is going to look far more like a fundamentalist religious society than it has in its history.
Please describe the Tea Party plank that incorporates religious fundamentalism.
In contrast to your inaccurate knee-jerk categorization, the most salient Tea Party plank is the economy, and in particular, the national debt.
It's not a coincidence that the Tea Party movement is comprised entirely of purported conservatives, heavily backed by Fox News (Murdoch), and geographically situated in the most traditionally conservative and religiously-minded of the American States.
While their platform does not currently overtly discuss fundamentalist principles, we need only look at the core values of their chosen candidates (http://www.randpaul2010.com/issues/a-g/abortion-2/) to see the correlation between the Tea Party movement and fundamentalist, often religiously-based, ideology. That's one example, but it's not an outlier. For an example of it in legislation, take a good hard look at some of the reasons that the recent health care changes were opposed in some circles: concerns over abortion, the definitive religious issue in public policy, ranked right at the top. As I recall, a handful of elected representatives received death threats as "babykillers" in the aftermath. Were the responsible individuals Tea Partiers? We don't know - but we do know that the Tea Party movement in general vehemently opposed the health care reforms and that religious concerns were incorporated into their reasoning, along with issues like the economy and expansion of federal authorities. This, I argue, will be the continuing trend - religious fundamentalism appended to conservative policymaking. The Tea Party movement is essentially taking the most authoritative, restrictive, and fundamentalist characteristics of libertarianism, conservatism, and religious morality and actively promoting that toxic mix in candidates under the guise of economic reform.
The economy is a focal point, but it essentially a red herring. Tea Party support isn't going to candidates that have the most sound understanding of economics - it's going to the candidate that can out-conservative their rivals, no matter how bat**** insane their platform.
So, I reiterate: if the Tea Party loons get their way, the cascade effect of the ideologies voted into office will conceivably reshape US policy to the most fundamentalist and religiously-based that it has been in its entire history. That's not hyperbole, it's the inevitable consequence of the continuing polarization occurring in American politics.
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Aardwolf, you watch the election scene in Gangs of New York where everyone is trying to vote as many times as they can?
Yeah, we're much less corrupt than back then where that stuff actually happened.
Never seen it. Anyway, my main gripe is with the misinformation. Consider this: the republicans1) were saying that they would do everything they could to kill the healthcare bill, because the people they represented wanted them to. Now either that's a lie2, or a result of the people they represent being told that the bill is bad, being told to call their senators to tell them to vote against the healthcare bill, etc.
1I can't give specifics, I heard it on WETA radio though, supposedly said by someone important in the Republican party (possibly the senate minority leader?)
2Though it could possibly have been a misinformed statement. Heck, I'm even willing to concede that they might have fallen prey to the dreaded availability heuristic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic), and started to actually believe they had popular support when people started calling their senators (as per the instructions of various bits and pieces of propaganda) to tell them to do so.
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Well, the long and short of that scene was the Irish and the natives trying to get as many votes as possible in order for their favored candidate to win. It had people voting, shaving their beards, then voting again, and someone being told voting twice wasn't enough and he had to vote again. That sort of stuff actually happened back then.
EDIT: Oh, and I believe there was a presidential election where there were more votes counted than eligible voters.
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Were the responsible individuals Tea Partiers? We don't know - but we can ever so cleverly imply that they are and use that as further justification to demonize them.
polarization in progress.
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I heard something interesting earlier that seems to be pertinent to the way the thread has gone. California, particularly LA, has made a big deal about "boycotting" Arizona in response to Arizona's immigration enforcement law. Arizona has retaliated, proclaiming that "If you want to boycott us, we'll boycott you and turn off the electricity you get from us."
The fuse is more than lit people, there's a full fledged war going on at the border between Drug Cartels and Mexican Law Enforcement(what's left of it, they're getting shredded) and there are American citizens getting caught in the middle. Meanwhile, Washington seems about as interested in these events as Nancy Pelosi is in NASCAR, instead focusing on some amorphous healthcare bill that is ridiculously unpopular and making excuse after excuse as to why they aren't doing anything to tighten the border. They have even gone so far as to have the current President of Mexico, Mr. Calderone to come up and BAW at the combined Congress in what could only be described as a political maneuver.
I'm sad to say that there is a civil war brewing in the USA, and most of it is because of politicians who would rather work people up into a tizzy so they are easier to manipulate than for any really good reason.
Had I my way, K Street and all the other lobbiest holes would be emptied, the people there brought up on charges of sedition and undermining the rightful goverment of the USA, ALL the politicians sent back to their districts and into forced retirement(most of them are WAY over 65) and any and all replacement public servants given a very short leash of 2 terms maximum service after which they also will return to their home districts and resign from public life. That is the one place the founders failed totally, they could not forsee a time when men(and women) would take a seat in government and then not give it up until death or old age forced them to. Yes I am well aware that such sharp term limits would hurt the "good" guys as much as the "bad" but I don't see another alternative.
In short I would see the current ruling hydra of bull**** shoveling and manipulation of the populace to give up more and more power to them cut off and seared so it won't(hopefully can't) grow back.
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It's not a coincidence that the Tea Party movement is comprised entirely of purported conservatives, heavily backed by Fox News (Murdoch), and geographically situated in the most traditionally conservative and religiously-minded of the American States.
The tea party may not have initially intended to be that way, but without a doubt it was fairly quickly co-opted by the republicans.
What I suspect will happen to most tea party backed candidates is they will do what the democrats did to the anti war movement in 2006: use them as tools to get elected and back into power, then abandon them.
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I don't know why people are so unhappy about Obama on healthcare; the problem is that he's the bank and copyright industry's *****.
I am looking forward to the tea party candidates gaining some power and the whole movement imploding as the religious crazies and the ron paul crazies realise they have nothing in common other than their opposition of the incumbents (and fear of "communism" etc.)
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fox talk show talking points
you make me so... tired
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It's not a coincidence that the Tea Party movement is comprised entirely of purported conservatives, heavily backed by Fox News (Murdoch), and geographically situated in the most traditionally conservative and religiously-minded of the American States.
The tea party may not have initially intended to be that way, but without a doubt it was fairly quickly co-opted by the republicans.
What I suspect will happen to most tea party backed candidates is they will do what the democrats did to the anti war movement in 2006: use them as tools to get elected and back into power, then abandon them.
best analysis I've seen of the situation on this board or any other I frequent. congratulations.
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The tea party should have done more to reach accross the isle to form a broadbase anti-establishment movement, but interference from the republican party and fox has turned it into yet another whacko right wing group. They are just tools, and when the republicans get back into power they will be thrown away, and they'll have no one but themselves to blame for falling into the republican's lap.
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How can they form an anti-establishment movement by reaching across the aisle? Large portions of the Democratic party are pro-establishment, and the Tea Party movement is totally incompatible with that. The best reaching out to moderates and undecideds the Tea Party could do is what Reagan did and talk about individual freedom and small government and entice them to join that way, and it worked for Reagan as he won two landslide elections (counting by states and Electoral College votes won).
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fox talk show talking points
you make me so... tired
Nah, can't be Fox talk show talking points. He didn't mention Obama by name or associate him with communism/whathaveyou at all.
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How can they form an anti-establishment movement by reaching across the aisle? Large portions of the Democratic party are pro-establishment, and the Tea Party movement is totally incompatible with that. The best reaching out to moderates and undecideds the Tea Party could do is what Reagan did and talk about individual freedom and small government and entice them to join that way, and it worked for Reagan as he won two landslide elections (counting by states and Electoral College votes won).
The exploding deficits and debts under the last two presidents (Bush and Obama) is very much a bipartisan issue. The lobbyists stranglehold on our political process is another bipartisan issue (every attempt at reform was either toothless or was sunk by republicans and a number of democrats). The tea party's unwillingness to build on this has ensured its inevitable failure in the future.
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Most guys here are somewhat reasonable with regards to spending, but the other couple forums I browse on the Internet I hear the lefties crying for more spending and more entitlements, despite those things causing Greece to implode and threatening the economic security of the EU.
I also checked some stuff on Wikipedia, and the United States does much, much better than some people would think considering our lack of "proper civilized socialism".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Competitiveness_Report#2009-2010_rankings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Competitiveness_Report#2009-2010_rankings)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index#Rankings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index#Rankings)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom_historical_rankings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom_historical_rankings)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index#Very_high_human_development_.28developed_countries.29 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index#Very_high_human_development_.28developed_countries.29)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_Doing_Business_Index#Ranking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_Doing_Business_Index#Ranking)
Overall I would say capitalism and free markets work pretty damn well.
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Most guys here are somewhat reasonable with regards to spending, but the other couple forums I browse on the Internet I hear the lefties crying for more spending and more entitlements, despite those things causing Greece to implode and threatening the economic security of the EU.
I also checked some stuff on Wikipedia, and the United States does much, much better than some people would think considering our lack of "proper civilized socialism".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Competitiveness_Report#2009-2010_rankings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Competitiveness_Report#2009-2010_rankings)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index#Rankings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index#Rankings)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom_historical_rankings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom_historical_rankings)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index#Very_high_human_development_.28developed_countries.29 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index#Very_high_human_development_.28developed_countries.29)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_Doing_Business_Index#Ranking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_Doing_Business_Index#Ranking)
Overall I would say capitalism and free markets work pretty damn well.
I don't think you fully appreciate that the Republican party was equally responsible for getting us into this mess. In the past 30 years we've only had one president who did anything about the deficit, and he was a democrat. Since most of those presidents were republicans that says quite a lot about their so called "small government" and "fiscally responsible" policies.
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Well, you just illustrated a main problem with big government in all forms. When Congressmen can do whatever spending they want to buy votes, **** happens. Unfortunately most people in Washington seem to have an entitlement mentality of their own which tells them we exist to serve them, not the other way around.
This is going to seem radical, but nuking the site from orbit just to be sure we killed off all the lobbyists and politicians is probably the best option.
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I live within the danger range of the capitol :(
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I live within the danger range of the capitol :(
DANGER ZONE
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Well, you just illustrated a main problem with big government in all forms. When Congressmen can do whatever spending they want to buy votes, **** happens. Unfortunately most people in Washington seem to have an entitlement mentality of their own which tells them we exist to serve them, not the other way around.
This is going to seem radical, but nuking the site from orbit just to be sure we killed off all the lobbyists and politicians is probably the best option.
I fully endorse this plan.
Of course, since most some politicians barely show up to congressional meetings....
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I live within the danger range of the capitol :(
DANGER ZONE
Since when does Shepherd care about danger close?
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In a sense MP-Ryan's characterization is a somewhat relevant one. In the human mind, categories are defined by the prototype, not by algorithmic-rule based distinctions. Whether or not this movement's stated goals involve religion, the prototypic member is probably religious and likely fundamentalist.
...
tl;dr version: the party's planks don't matter, it's the party's membership that does.
The problem is, what IS the "prototypic member"? Depends on who you ask, and everybody is handpicking people to show trying to shape the perceived prototype in their favor.
This isn't just about the Tea Parties, it's a problem in general, and why an official "platform" is still a useful tool. If you have a formal, well-defined platform, then IMO it gives you a better idea of the "mean" value for the party/organization than whatever handpicked examples get shown to you, even if there was a media outlet that could be trusted to choose a truly representative individual instead of choosing people who generate the most money-generating news stories.
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The prototype is usually generated as a sort of average of all exposed examples of group members.
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The prototype is usually generated as a sort of average of all exposed examples of group members.
Scientifically, maybe. But what about the rest of us? When the only "exposed" examples of a group you see are from the news, you can bet solid money that the examples are chosen to be interesting and sell news more than to be truly representative. When you get them from blogs, they're even more likely to be picked (positive or negative) to promote said blog's agenda.
What I mean is that although we certainly work based on prototypes, and those prototypes are based on what we are exposed to, there's still the problem that what gets exposed to people is always being slanted by someone, purposefully or not.
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oh, ok so all the people who were protesting the war were communist vegans who wanted America to burn? cause that's the 'prototype' I would see in the media back during the anti-war protests, which BTW were totally not organized by politically active organizations (astroturfed as it's now known).
I like how we are now endorsing believing what ever the media shows us over looking into what a group actually represents now.
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What? Just because I'm a commie doesn't mean I'm a vegan!
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Yeah, I like my meat how I like my flag...nice and red. :p
oh hai fbi it's a joke
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Yeah, I like my meat how I like my flag...nice and red. :p
oh hai fbi it's a joke
We at the FBI do not have a sense of humor that we are aware of.
Quoting from memory, no guarantee of accuracy
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Well, you just illustrated a main problem with big government in all forms. When Congressmen can do whatever spending they want to buy votes, **** happens. Unfortunately most people in Washington seem to have an entitlement mentality of their own which tells them we exist to serve them, not the other way around.
This is going to seem radical, but nuking the site from orbit just to be sure we killed off all the lobbyists and politicians is probably the best option.
Yes and from 1994 until 2006 which party was in charge? The Republicans. When Clinton was running a surplus, instead of advocating the debt to be paid down, what did they want? Tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. Grossly irresponsible. So on one side there's borrow and spend and on the other side there's tax and spend.
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Well, the tax cut thing is in line with the basic platform of the party: Lower taxes = good. The thing about the federal budget running with a surplus means that the government took too much money from the citizens so the logical thing to do would be lower taxes so that they don't have to get it taken in the first place. It's also logical that the ones paying the most taxes would also receive the largest reductions, of course that's politically uncomfortable for those of us who what to get their way by demonizing and running down the reputations and integrity of the people that are essentially bankrolling your vote-buying...er, welfare programs.
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Lib, we've been over and over this.
The rich aren't suffering from a tax increase. They still control 50% of the wealth in the country. They can afford to bankroll welfare programs, since they've got the means to do so.
It's easy to demonize the rich because they essentially set themselves up for it. Golden parachutes and private jets just don't make me shed a tear for them. Now, if the wealthy were more generous willingly, through charity and philanthropy, I believe they should get a significant tax credit on that, but as it stands, they can suck it up and pay for it.
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Liberator highlights the biggest problem with America. It's not that the American Dream makes everyone believe that one day they might be rich and a tax on everyone with $50m worth of assets might hurt them, it's that everyone believes that one day they might be super-rich and a tax on people who earn $50m in some ridiculously short period of time would hurt them.
The majority of the money in the country is not in the professions you might one day have like doctor or lawyer. It's not even in the hands of people with the sort of money a lottery winner might have. It's all in the hands of a few ultra rich people who can easily afford to make $400m a year rather than $500m. Why the **** anyone would be against a tax increase on those who earn over $10m a year is beyond me but opposition to that sort of change is astounding.
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Well, the tax cut thing is in line with the basic platform of the party: Lower taxes = good. The thing about the federal budget running with a surplus means that the government took too much money from the citizens so the logical thing to do would be lower taxes so that they don't have to get it taken in the first place. It's also logical that the ones paying the most taxes would also receive the largest reductions, of course that's politically uncomfortable for those of us who what to get their way by demonizing and running down the reputations and integrity of the people that are essentially bankrolling your vote-buying...er, welfare programs.
Clinton did cut back spending on welfare programs, as well as early on raise taxes somewhat. The result? Surpleses that should have been used to pay back the debt. Did the economy collapse as the republicans predicted from the tax hike? No.
In reality a great deal of tax dollars (IIRC 1/3 of the federal budget) go to just paying the interest on the debt, if we pay off a significant portion of the debt, then we can look at lowering taxes because we wouldn't have to shell out so much. Funny thing about debt, if you spend more to pay down the principle you actually save money becaue it lowers interest payments. So why aren't we doing this?
And BTW, if you're going to have a tax cut, cut it for the middle class. They are the ones getting squeezed by inflation and out of control healthcare, university, and housing costs. Under the Bush tax cuts large swaths of the middle class got nothing. If things continue this way we'll be facing an enormous sovereign debt crisis sometime in the next 5-10 years, and when that happens the implosion will make what happened in Argentina in '99 look like a firecracker.
Liberator highlights the biggest problem with America.
Another big problem is the total lack of leadership on both sides of the isle to actually deal with this situation. It's going to take a combination of tax increases AND spending cuts in order to properly reign in the deficit and actually start paying off the debt, but no one is interested in doing that.
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I believe the top tax bracket for the federal income tax starts at $250,000 for joint filers. Not exactly the "ultra rich".
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So make a new bracket.
They won't of course, cause it's wrong to have a bracket at, let's say, $2m and $20m
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The prototype is usually generated as a sort of average of all exposed examples of group members.
Scientifically, maybe. But what about the rest of us?
No, what I'm saying is, that's actually how the human brain constructs prototypes. It's not a conscious process.
What I mean is that although we certainly work based on prototypes, and those prototypes are based on what we are exposed to, there's still the problem that what gets exposed to people is always being slanted by someone, purposefully or not.
That's definitely true.
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I believe the top tax bracket for the federal income tax starts at $250,000 for joint filers. Not exactly the "ultra rich".
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25143640/
Democrat Barack Obama said Friday he would apply the Social Security payroll tax to all annual incomes above $250,000, which would affect the wealthiest 3 percent of Americans.
Yeah, actually, it is. No need for a new bracket...there's barely enough at the >$250K level already.
Look, my mom has a master's degree in business and marketing from one of the best non-Ivy League Business schools in the country...she's been working at Eli Lilly since she was 30...20 years later, she still only makes $100K. Just because $250K isn't in the millions, doesn't mean it's not a whole hell of a lot of money.
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Why can't just have a flat tax?
Seriously. Someone with a background or knowledge of econimics please explain why.
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30% of $30,000 leaves $20,000
30% of $250,000 leaves $175,000
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I'd much prefer a Fair Tax (http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer).
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30% of $30,000 leaves $20,000
30% of $250,000 leaves $175,000
That doesn't exactly answer my question. Why does it have to be 30%? Why not 15%? (30% leaves $21,000, by the way.) 15% would leaves $25,500. I know for a fact that that level of income is livable. I live on it.
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my point is that at low incomes, a flat tax is going to be significant, and at very high incomes, a high percent barely makes a difference. take 90% of $100 million and you still have $10 million left, which is more than most of us will make in our lifetimes. at our level of national debt, it makes no sense to pass up that kind of tax revenue.
we as a country racked up trillions in debt, we as a country have to pay it off.
it's like we think ignoring debt makes it go away.
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Also, the G'Ment has to start learning to operate within it's means, NO MORE DEFICITS!
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we as a country racked up trillions in debt, we as a country have to pay it off.
it's like we think ignoring debt makes it go away.
However, "the rich" did not rack up those trillions in debt, but we're making them pay it off.
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well, okay then, our options are
1) have everyone from every income level pay the same amount (a very small amount, because we'd have to accommodate the ability of poorer people to pay)
2) have everyone pay based on their ability (a little from poorer people, a lot from tremendously wealthy people & corporations)
guess which one will take many generations longer...
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2) have everyone pay based on their ability (a little from poorer people, a lot from tremendously wealthy people & corporations)
That's exactly what a flat tax is. It's a percentage, not an amount. That equates to a little from poorer people and a lot from tremendously wealthy people and corporations.
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2) have everyone pay based on their ability (a little from poorer people, a lot from tremendously wealthy people & corporations)
That's exactly what a flat tax is. It's a percentage, not an amount. That equates to a little from poorer people and a lot from tremendously wealthy people and corporations.
It's not proportional to their ability to pay without compromising their lifestyle, though.
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But what would you call compromising their lifestyle? I can think of more than a few people where simply taking away a credit card would compromise their lifestyle. It's not as if living beyond one's means is uncommon, these days.
However, I can see how that is a valid point.
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Living beyond our means is exactly what got us into trouble in the first place though.
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but it's our culture, and everybody knows Western culture is superior to other cultures
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but it's our culture, and everybody knows Western culture is superior to other cultures
Nonsense. Lactobacillus culture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoghurt) is clearly the most superior-est.
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but it's our culture, and everybody knows Western culture is superior to other cultures
Nonsense. Lactobacillus culture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoghurt) is clearly the most superior-est.
Ba dum tsh (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yl3UMO-TkE)
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but it's our culture, and everybody knows Western culture is superior to other cultures
Nonsense. Lactobacillus culture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoghurt) is clearly the most superior-est.
Ba dum tsh (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yl3UMO-TkE)
Thank you very much. I'll be here all night, try the veal.
:p
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Why do you want the rich to pay more, simply because they can? Isn't that a bit arbitrary?
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Why do you want the rich to pay more, simply because they can? Isn't that a bit arbitrary?
Because the government gets more money that way, and it doesn't hurt them nearly as much as they like to whine about it.
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Why do you want the rich to pay more, simply because they can? Isn't that a bit arbitrary?
Because the government gets more money that way, and it doesn't hurt them nearly as much as they like to whine about it.
Government getting more money is nothing but an excuse for it to spend more money, often on earmarks and pork for vote-buying.
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Why do you want the rich to pay more, simply because they can? Isn't that a bit arbitrary?
The rich get major advantages from the state and federal government simply due to the amount of money they have. For instance, take a rich and a poor family. Who gets to send their kids to a better school? Why should a poor person have to pay the same amount of tax in order to get a ****tier service?
Now apply that to other government services. Who has better policing? Cleaner streets? The list goes on and on.
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Government getting more money is nothing but an excuse for it to spend more money, often on earmarks and pork for vote-buying.
Substitute in place of "excuse for" the phrase "necessary precondition in order to".
As for earmarks and pork, if people disliked the fact that the people they elected were finding ways to soak up federal tax dollars to spend on stupid in-state projects, they'd stop voting for candidates who did that... but that's not gonna happen. Problem is, people like pork, as long as it's their pork. Reducing federal tax revenue isn't going to convince to stop acting like sheep.
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Why do you want the rich to pay more, simply because they can? Isn't that a bit arbitrary?
The rich get major advantages from the state and federal government simply due to the amount of money they have. For instance, take a rich and a poor family. Who gets to send their kids to a better school? Why should a poor person have to pay the same amount of tax in order to get a ****tier service?
Now apply that to other government services. Who has better policing? Cleaner streets? The list goes on and on.
The rich gets to send their kids to a better school by paying more for it. Better schools are fairly expensive, at least around my part of the U.S.
That's still leaving aside that while the tax rate may be the same, that is in no way besides that the same amount of tax. It's not like they're both paying a flat $5000 each or some strange sum like that. They would pay the same proportion of their income, which would necessarily be different in they earn different amounts.
Say there was a flat tax of, say, 20%. A person making $30,000 would pay $6,000, leaving $24,000, which is still 80% of his/her income. A person making $250,000 would pay $50,000, also leaving 80%, but paying in an absolute sense a whole hell of a lot more. $24,000 is still enough to live on, so it's not as if it isn't fair to anyone.
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But what if the person making $30,000 pays his 20% and the person making $250,000 pays 50%. the person making $250k still keeps $125k, which is (i think) twice what the average family makes. and then the person making $1 million pays 75%, keeps $250,000, which makes him in the top 3% *after* taxes.
so that's either $264k or $899k towards a debt-free country.
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Have an exponential taxing bracket?
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Ooo, I got an idea! Tax everyone so they have exactly $5,000 to spare.
Scale it up or down if that's more/less money than there exists.
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Ooo, I got an idea! Tax everyone so they have exactly $5,000 to spare.
Scale it up or down if that's more/less money than there exists.
:lol:
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Why do you want the rich to pay more, simply because they can? Isn't that a bit arbitrary?
The rich get major advantages from the state and federal government simply due to the amount of money they have. For instance, take a rich and a poor family. Who gets to send their kids to a better school? Why should a poor person have to pay the same amount of tax in order to get a ****tier service?
Now apply that to other government services. Who has better policing? Cleaner streets? The list goes on and on.
To be fair, most of the advantages you've listed come from local property taxes (schools, etc. are all funded chiefly by property tax). Bigger home fund better schools and cops. ****ty system, but it has very little to do with the federal income tax we're discussing.
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Actually, at least in California, cities get more money from sales tax revenue (80% of sales tax money sent to the state comes back) than property tax revenue (20% comes back), which is why eminent domain abuse is common here.
Yes, school districts get more money via property taxes, but school districts are state agencies that happen to have local elections for their boards and they are not run or controlled by the municipalities they encompass.
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Why do you want the rich to pay more, simply because they can? Isn't that a bit arbitrary?
Because the government gets more money that way, and it doesn't hurt them nearly as much as they like to whine about it.
Government getting more money is nothing but an excuse for it to spend more money, often on earmarks and pork for vote-buying.
1. Raise taxes on rich
2. Revive the Line Item veto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_Item_Veto_Act_of_1996)
3. ????
4. Enjoy surpluses from now on
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I'll accept a line-item veto only if it applies solely to federal appropriations.
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Living beyond our means is exactly what got us into trouble in the first place though.
Do I need to remind you that the number one cause of bankruptcy in the US before the financial crisis was medical costs? For some that's definately true, they have been living beyond their means, but for many it is just because of inflation.
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My father is currently during bankruptcies to earn our family's daily bread, and a fair amount of clients come in with $500k in debt paying for their two houses, boat, and presumably credit cards, with all that debt obtained thanks to easy credit and low lending standards. Even if there hadn't been a recession, sooner or later the piper would have had to been paid.
I'll need to ask him how many clients of his have had trouble paying medical bills, but chances are it is much lower than those living beyond their means.
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Oh snap, Sparda has anecdotes! Whatever shall the people who disagree with his viewpoint do??!
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Cite a summary of the report (http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2005/02/03_bankruptcy.php)
Post Date: February 3, 2005
Nearly half of all Americans who file for bankruptcy do so because of medical expenses, according to a new study released jointly by researchers at Harvard Law School and Harvard Medical School this week. The study, which is based on surveys of 1,771 individuals filing for bankruptcy, is the first of its kind to gather extensive information on the correlation between medical conditions and expenses and bankruptcy.
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The trouble with surveys is that the surveyor can get pretty much whatever results they want if they are so inclined. Polls/Surveys/insert"objective" scientific measure of something here are pretty well meaningless these days. Now I would accept an summary of bankruptcy filings for, say 5000, or so, people over a given period during the last 2 years as meaningful data. Even that is really too small a sampling to make a sound argument from.
Mildly off-topic:
The solution to people filing bankruptcy for medical bills is not to have Big Papa Fed come in and pay for everything. It's to fix an obviously broken system so that people can afford health care again without having to auction off their belongings and mortgage they're house twice.
Slightly more on-topic:
Bankruptcy should be the last chance shotgun blast for when the debt zombie just won't die any other way. I suspect if you were to look a little more closely at those filings, most of the filing parties did so before they explored any other options they might have had.
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Bankruptcy should be the last chance shotgun blast for when the debt zombie just won't die any other way. I suspect if you were to look a little more closely at those filings, most of the filing parties did so before they explored any other options they might have had.
Bankruptcy originally was that, but under the bankruptcy reform act of 2005 the debt collection will continue no matter what either until you die or somehow pay off all of it.
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The trouble with surveys is that the surveyor can get pretty much whatever results they want if they are so inclined. Polls/Surveys/insert"objective" scientific measure of something here are pretty well meaningless these days. Now I would accept an summary of bankruptcy filings for, say 5000, or so, people over a given period during the last 2 years as meaningful data. Even that is really too small a sampling to make a sound argument from.
Statistics FAIL.
1771 is a massive sample and completely representative. Bumping N up to 5000 would not get you any significant changes in terms of representativity.
In fact, 200 people would have probably been big enough to make this sample representative. 1771 is overkill.
This can be mathematically proven.
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he's talking about bias in the sampling process, not sufficient size of a sample.
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he's talking about bias in the sampling process, not sufficient size of a sample.
If he is, he's doing a poor job of it - he talked about increasing the sample size as a way to resolve his complaint.
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Sorry I'm not a statistics nazi?
Also, since I'm not edumacated, explain to me how 1771 is a sufficient sample size for a population topping 300 million most of which do not live in the likely sampling area?
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Sorry I'm not a statistics nazi?
Also, since I'm not edumacated, explain to me how 1771 is a sufficient sample size for a population topping 300 million most of which do not live in the likely sampling area?
1771 people is not a sample from a population of 300 million, since (or at least I hope) there aren't 300 million people declaring bankruptcy.
And according to this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size), a sample size of 1771 is enough to have about 2.3% as a margin of error.
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Statistics FAIL.
1771 is a massive sample and completely representative. Bumping N up to 5000 would not get you any significant changes in terms of representativity.
In fact, 200 people would have probably been big enough to make this sample representative. 1771 is overkill.
This can be mathematically proven.
Care to explain this a little bit better? I deal with uniform Monte-Carlo statistics every day when I want to get a simulated image with any sort of accuracy, I need tens of thousands of samples per channel, as the statistical error behaves as 1/sqrt(N). However, I don't see much connection between Physical simulation and this.
1771 samples out of how many bankcrupties?
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well without knowing the standard deviation it's a little hard to tell for sure I'd think
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The trouble with surveys is that the surveyor can get pretty much whatever results they want if they are so inclined. Polls/Surveys/insert"objective" scientific measure of something here are pretty well meaningless these days. Now I would accept an summary of bankruptcy filings for, say 5000, or so, people over a given period during the last 2 years as meaningful data. Even that is really too small a sampling to make a sound argument from.
Statistics FAIL.
1771 is a massive sample and completely representative. Bumping N up to 5000 would not get you any significant changes in terms of representativity.
In fact, 200 people would have probably been big enough to make this sample representative. 1771 is overkill.
This can be mathematically proven.
Well there's no need to be rude about it. I'm sure that most people in the world would have said the same, and a few months ago I might have too.
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I think GB could have been a little more rude, actually. Lib's response demonstrates that.
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Lib's response demonstrates that he thought GB was being rude. No more than that. Saying GB could have been more rude with his original post when looking at the response to that post as evidence strikes me as... unsound (that word doesn't really describe it, but meh).
1771 is a massive sample and completely representative. Bumping N up to 5000 would not get you any significant changes in terms of representativity.
In fact, 200 people would have probably been big enough to make this sample representative. 1771 is overkill.
I believe the question directed at this is "how can we know this isn't a biased sample."
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Lib's response demonstrates that he thought GB was being rude. No more than that. Saying GB could have been more rude with his original post when looking at the response to that post as evidence strikes me as... unsound (that word doesn't really describe it, but meh).
1771 is a massive sample and completely representative. Bumping N up to 5000 would not get you any significant changes in terms of representativity.
In fact, 200 people would have probably been big enough to make this sample representative. 1771 is overkill.
I believe the question directed at this is "how can we know this isn't a biased sample."
That's a separate issue from the one Liberator brought up. You'll need to find the original paper and look at the sampling methodology. Liberator explicitly targeted sample size and made the mistake of citing an arbitrary value (5000), clearly not having done any math to arrive there.
Sorry I'm not a statistics nazi?
Also, since I'm not edumacated, explain to me how 1771 is a sufficient sample size for a population topping 300 million most of which do not live in the likely sampling area?
No need to Godwin yourself. You made an extraordinary claim about how survey measures were meaningless. You were wrong - or, at least, you cited terrible reasons for your argument. I'm here to correct you.
The population being sampled is not 300 million. The population in question is 'people going bankrupt'.
You only need to draw enough samples from the population to get a representative sample. Assuming your population sampling is truly random, you will reach a reasonable degree of representativeness very quickly, even if the population is enormous. For a given effect, we could confidently construct a sample representative of everyone on earth using a logistically feasible number of people.
It's much more important to have good sampling design (which would be something you could reasonably critique, though you'd have trouble doing it on every study done, which is a requirement for your argument) than a large sample, since the benefits of sample size shrink rapidly.
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I just read the original paper.
The research design used a true random sampling of all bankruptcy filings that year (118,308 of them.) The only possible source of sampling error I can see in the design is non-response bias. However, the researchers compared a sample of non-respondents to respondents on a number of dimensions and found no significant differences. That bias is therefore controlled for.
Sampling error for a sample of this size out of a population of 118,308 is less than 1%.
Any questions?
So let me quote Liberator for a second...
Even that is really too small a sampling to make a sound argument from.
Could you please present to me the chi-squared test or forward stepwise logistic regression analysis that you used to reach this conclusion?
Oh, and just to further address your objections -
They used cohorts from multiple years.
The sample was truly random, so geographic bias is impossible.
They intentionally set their detection thresholds for a medical bankruptcy high, just to further lower the chance of a false positive.
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General statistics says a "large sample" is 30. However, 30 participants wouldn't accurately show bankruptcy rates. Expanding that to 300 would be more accurate. If the sample could be 3000, you'd probably have a pretty darn accurate sample though it'd take much longer. Even so, if 3000 participants are available, "go for it". A sample of 200 showing bankruptcy rates would probably be reasonably accurate but wouldn't be high-confidence. Sampling 200 of 118,308 would probably be accurate so long as the participants are accurately surveyed. Quantifying 10% of the reasons or even 1% of the reasons (or a fraction of a percent; 1/2%) would be even more accurate for such a large sample.
For example, if I were in a bank and we had 1,000 customers with a specific type of account. I am given a task to review those thousand customer accounts and report on any sales we'd lose by discontinuing service for that type of account. If I were to review 100 of the customers and present my findings, my boss would probably be happy that my sample is accurate and that high confidence can be placed. It's also a lot easier to sample 100 instead of 1000.
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General statistics says a "large sample" is 30. However, 30 participants wouldn't accurately show bankruptcy rates. Expanding that to 300 would be more accurate. If the sample could be 3000, you'd probably have a pretty darn accurate sample though it'd take much longer. Even so, if 3000 participants are available, "go for it". A sample of 200 showing bankruptcy rates would probably be reasonably accurate but wouldn't be high-confidence. Sampling 200 of 118,308 would probably be accurate so long as the participants are accurately surveyed. Quantifying 10% of the reasons or even 1% of the reasons (or a fraction of a percent; 1/2%) would be even more accurate for such a large sample.
For example, if I were in a bank and we had 1,000 customers with a specific type of account. I am given a task to review those thousand customer accounts and report on any sales we'd lose by discontinuing service for that type of account. If I were to review 100 of the customers and present my findings, my boss would probably be happy that my sample is accurate and that high confidence can be placed. It's also a lot easier to sample 100 instead of 1000.
While this is nice, I hope you actually read the methodology used in this study, which is significantly better than anything you outlined here.
Also, I hope you're not relying on your boss being 'happy' or this kind of ballpark estimate of confidence. You can calculate very precise confidence, so your best bet is to choose a reasonable confidence interval and then select a sample size to get that confidence. Not vice versa.
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Heh, I'm happy enough to make you think a bit more about what you posted, all I wanted was more information and you provided it, thank you.
That said, I don't understand why we don't have a simple bar chart available somewhere that is the totality of the subject. You said the total number of people filing bankruptcy in the sample time frame was 118,000 and change. So why not take 6 months and make a bunch of calls to whatever agency is responsible for recording all the various information that would be useful in this issue. And don't say it's too much work for no reason. The reason is to provide a basis of fact to proceed from. I'm tired of the world running on guesses. No matter how educated a guess is, it's always eclipsed by the fact that you are guessing about. We need facts to make world shattering decisions. As far as the work goes, it wouldn't be too difficult to write a program to coalate, organize and tabulate the data in question and while the contents of the filings are certainly private, the nature of court filings are not except in certain circumstances. I can pick up a trashy tabloid and know what Tom Cruise had for supper 3 nights ago, why is it so hard to compose an easy to read and understand document that doesn't take a PH'D in Statistics to understand?
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Probably because it's a waste of time and effort to get information that can be found using a less costly and time-consuming method.
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I was actually roundabout suggesting that there be an indexed database of legal filings.
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Probably because people would object to it for privacy reasons.
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Privacy reasons? I'm not talking about indexing the contents of the cases themselves, just the filings, the public stuff. I could give a rats ass if someone doesn't want me to know they're filing bankruptcy because they have $300k in credit card debt from buying a hole in the wat, er a boat, or because they have failed in a monumental way at business and have no recourse to get on with they're lives. I don't care about that. What I am talking about is a paid access database of legal filings updated automatically every 2 weeks or 2 days or whatever. The only real problem is getting the infrastructure in place to handle it. Besides, for most people, there is no reasonable level of privacy outside your own home anymore anyway, between cameraphones, traffic-cams, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc where we record (almost) every second of our lives to expect that someone somewhere can't find out anything about you they want is the very epitome of burying your head in the sand.