From the Record:
North Jersey home prices rise, still less than national average
Home prices in the region ticked up 2.1 percent in the New York metropolitan area, including North Jersey, in the 12 months ended in January, the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index reported Tuesday. That was less than half the national increase of 4.5 percent.
The numbers point to a housing market that is still slowly recovering from the worst downturn since World War II. Home values are no higher than they were in 2004, both nationally and in the region. Single-family prices in the area are almost 19 percent below their peaks in mid-2006, while national values are about 17 percent below their peaks.
“Despite price gains, the housing market faces some difficulties,” said David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “Home prices [nationwide] are rising roughly twice as fast as wages, putting pressure on potential homebuyers and heightening the risk that any uptick in interest rates could be a major setback. Moreover, the new home sector is weak; residential construction is still below its pre-crisis peak.”
In Bergen County, the median price of a single-family home dropped 8.6 percent in January from a year earlier, to $425,000. In Passaic County, the median dropped 1.8 percent, to $275,000. Those numbers are from the New Jersey Realtors and reflect the mix of properties sold in the month; Case-Shiller does not track prices on a county-by-county basis.
New Jersey’s housing market faces several challenges, including the state’s employment market, which has not been creating jobs as fast as the nation as a whole. In addition, the state has one of the nation’s highest rates of properties in the foreclosure pipeline, because it slowed the eviction process after questions arose about mortgage industry abuses.
frist
Interesting take on health care spend and a very interesting site that will appeal to some of the data geeks here. Not sure that I agree with the headline clickbait or the implicit causation argument but the premise as a whole makes sense–greater healthcare spend has to come from somewhere.
http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2015/03/a-direct-cause-of-declining-quality-of.html#.VRvai_nF-Sp
Iranian Defector: US Working ‘On Behalf’ of Iran
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/amir-hossein-motaghi-defector-working-behalf/2015/03/29/id/635149/
Striking any kind of deal with Iran is akin to giving a heroin addict your credit card number.
When it’s all said and done, the progressives will be kissing the asses of the Israeli government that they’ve been wrongfully condemning with regularity.
Christie announces Presidential run. Carly Fiorina is His running mate. Slogan: Who Doesn’t Love New Jersey?
This article is dead on.
“America didn’t used to be run like an old Southern slave plantation, but we’re headed that way now. How did that happen?
It’s been said that the rich are different than you and me. What most Americans don’t know is that they’re also quite different from each other, and that which faction is currently running the show ultimately makes a vast difference in the kind of country we are.
Right now, a lot of our problems stem directly from the fact that the wrong sort has finally gotten the upper hand; a particularly brutal and anti-democratic strain of American aristocrat that the other elites have mostly managed to keep away from the levers of power since the Revolution. Worse: this bunch has set a very ugly tone that’s corrupted how people with power and money behave in every corner of our culture. Here’s what happened, and how it happened, and what it means for America now.”
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10126-how-a-brutal-strain-of-american-aristocrats-have-come-to-rule-america
6- This is exactly how I feel about the role of the wealthy.
“Michael Lind first called out the existence of this conflict in his 2006 book, Made In Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics. He argued that much of American history has been characterized by a struggle between two historical factions among the American elite — and that the election of George W. Bush was a definitive sign that the wrong side was winning.
For most of our history, American economics, culture and politics have been dominated by a New England-based Yankee aristocracy that was rooted in Puritan communitarian values, educated at the Ivies and marinated in an ethic of noblesse oblige (the conviction that those who possess wealth and power are morally bound to use it for the betterment of society). While they’ve done their share of damage to the notion of democracy in the name of profit (as all financial elites inevitably do), this group has, for the most part, tempered its predatory instincts with a code that valued mass education and human rights; held up public service as both a duty and an honor; and imbued them with the belief that once you made your nut, you had a moral duty to do something positive with it for the betterment of mankind. Your own legacy depended on this.
Among the presidents, this strain gave us both Roosevelts, Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, and Poppy Bush — nerdy, wonky intellectuals who, for all their faults, at least took the business of good government seriously. Among financial elites, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet still both partake strongly of this traditional view of wealth as power to be used for good. Even if we don’t like their specific choices, the core impulse to improve the world is a good one — and one that’s been conspicuously absent in other aristocratic cultures.”
6- Yup!!
“Which brings us to that other great historical American nobility — the plantation aristocracy of the lowland South, which has been notable throughout its 400-year history for its utter lack of civic interest, its hostility to the very ideas of democracy and human rights, its love of hierarchy, its fear of technology and progress, its reliance on brutality and violence to maintain “order,” and its outright celebration of inequality as an order divinely ordained by God.
As described by Colin Woodard in American Nations: The Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, the elites of the Deep South are descended mainly from the owners of sugar, rum and cotton plantations from Barbados — the younger sons of the British nobility who’d farmed up the Caribbean islands, and then came ashore to the southern coasts seeking more land. Woodward described the culture they created in the crescent stretching from Charleston, SC around to New Orleans this way:
It was a near-carbon copy of the West Indian slave state these Barbadians had left behind, a place notorious even then for its inhumanity….From the outset, Deep Southern culture was based on radical disparities in wealth and power, with a tiny elite commanding total obedience and enforcing it with state-sponsored terror. Its expansionist ambitions would put it on a collision course with its Yankee rivals, triggering military, social, and political conflicts that continue to plague the United States to this day.
David Hackett Fischer, whose Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways In America informs both Lind’s and Woodard’s work, described just how deeply undemocratic the Southern aristocracy was, and still is. He documents how these elites have always feared and opposed universal literacy, public schools and libraries, and a free press. (Lind adds that they have historically been profoundly anti-technology as well, far preferring solutions that involve finding more serfs and throwing them at a problem whenever possible. Why buy a bulldozer when 150 convicts on a chain gang can grade your road instead?) Unlike the Puritan elites, who wore their wealth modestly and dedicated themselves to the common good, Southern elites sank their money into ostentatious homes and clothing and the pursuit of pleasure — including lavish parties, games of fortune, predatory sexual conquests, and blood sports involving ritualized animal abuse spectacles.
But perhaps the most destructive piece of the Southern elites’ worldview is the extremely anti-democratic way it defined the very idea of liberty. In Yankee Puritan culture, both liberty and authority resided mostly with the community, and not so much with individuals. Communities had both the freedom and the duty to govern themselves as they wished (through town meetings and so on), to invest in their collective good, and to favor or punish individuals whose behavior enhanced or threatened the whole (historically, through community rewards such as elevation to positions of public authority and trust; or community punishments like shaming, shunning or banishing).
Individuals were expected to balance their personal needs and desires against the greater good of the collective — and, occasionally, to make sacrifices for the betterment of everyone. (This is why the Puritan wealthy tended to dutifully pay their taxes, tithe in their churches and donate generously to create hospitals, parks and universities.) In return, the community had a solemn and inescapable moral duty to care for its sick, educate its young and provide for its needy — the kind of support that maximizes each person’s liberty to live in dignity and achieve his or her potential. A Yankee community that failed to provide such support brought shame upon itself. To this day, our progressive politics are deeply informed by this Puritan view of ordered liberty.
In the old South, on the other hand, the degree of liberty you enjoyed was a direct function of your God-given place in the social hierarchy. The higher your status, the more authority you had, and the more “liberty” you could exercise — which meant, in practical terms, that you had the right to take more “liberties” with the lives, rights and property of other people. Like an English lord unfettered from the Magna Carta, nobody had the authority to tell a Southern gentleman what to do with resources under his control. In this model, that’s what liberty is. If you don’t have the freedom to rape, beat, torture, kill, enslave, or exploit your underlings (including your wife and children) with impunity — or abuse the land, or enforce rules on others that you will never have to answer to yourself — then you can’t really call yourself a free man.
When a Southern conservative talks about “losing his liberty,” the loss of this absolute domination over the people and property under his control — and, worse, the loss of status and the resulting risk of being held accountable for laws that he was once exempt from — is what he’s really talking about. In this view, freedom is a zero-sum game. Anything that gives more freedom and rights to lower-status people can’t help but put serious limits on the freedom of the upper classes to use those people as they please. It cannot be any other way. So they find Yankee-style rights expansions absolutely intolerable, to the point where they’re willing to fight and die to preserve their divine right to rule.
Once we understand the two different definitions of “liberty” at work here, a lot of other things suddenly make much more sense. We can understand the traditional Southern antipathy to education, progress, public investment, unionization, equal opportunity, and civil rights. The fervent belief among these elites that they should completely escape any legal or social accountability for any harm they cause. Their obsessive attention to where they fall in the status hierarchies. And, most of all — the unremitting and unapologetic brutality with which they’ve defended these “liberties” across the length of their history.
When Southerners quote Patrick Henry — “Give me liberty or give me death” — what they’re really demanding is the unquestioned, unrestrained right to turn their fellow citizens into supplicants and subjects. The Yankee elites have always known this — and feared what would happen if that kind of aristocracy took control of the country. And that tension between these two very different views of what it means to be “elite” has inflected our history for over 400 years.”
6- Welcome to plantation America. I’ve got mine, who cares about you!!
“Plantation America
From its origins in the fever swamps of the lowland south, the worldview of the old Southern aristocracy can now be found nationwide. Buttressed by the arguments of Ayn Rand — who updated the ancient slaveholder ethic for the modern age — it has been exported to every corner of the culture, infected most of our other elite communities and killed off all but the very last vestiges of noblesse oblige.
It’s not an overstatement to say that we’re now living in Plantation America. As Lind points out: to the horror of his Yankee father, George W. Bush proceeded to run the country exactly like Woodard’s description of a Barbadian slavelord. And Barack Obama has done almost nothing to roll this victory back. We’re now living in an America where rampant inequality is accepted, and even celebrated.
Torture and extrajudicial killing have been reinstated, with no due process required.
The wealthy and powerful are free to abuse employees, break laws, destroy the commons, and crash the economy — without ever being held to account.
The rich flaunt their ostentatious wealth without even the pretense of humility, modesty, generosity, or gratitude.
The military — always a Southern-dominated institution — sucks down 60% of our federal discretionary spending, and is undergoing a rapid evangelical takeover as well.
Our police are being given paramilitary training and powers that are completely out of line with their duty to serve and protect, but much more in keeping with a mission to subdue and suppress. Even liberal cities like Seattle are now home to the kind of local justice that used to be the hallmark of small-town Alabama sheriffs.
Segregation is increasing everywhere. The rights of women and people of color are under assault. Violence against leaders who agitate for progressive change is up. Racist organizations are undergoing a renaissance nationwide.
We are withdrawing government investments in public education, libraries, infrastructure, health care, and technological innovation — in many areas, to the point where we are falling behind the standards that prevail in every other developed country.
Elites who dare to argue for increased investment in the common good, and believe that we should lay the groundwork for a better future, are regarded as not just silly and soft-headed, but also inviting underclass revolt. The Yankees thought that government’s job was to better the lot of the lower classes. The Southern aristocrats know that its real purpose is to deprive them of all possible means of rising up against their betters.
The rich are different now because the elites who spent four centuries sucking the South dry and turning it into an economic and political backwater have now vanquished the more forward-thinking, democratic Northern elites. Their attitudes towards freedom, authority, community, government, and the social contract aren’t just confined to the country clubs of the Gulf Coast; they can now be found on the ground from Hollywood and Silicon Valley to Wall Street. And because of that quiet coup, the entire US is now turning into the global equivalent of a Deep South state.
As long as America runs according to the rules of Southern politics, economics and culture, we’re no longer free citizens exercising our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as we’ve always understood them. Instead, we’re being treated like serfs on Massa’s plantation — and increasingly, we’re being granted our liberties only at Massa’s pleasure. Welcome to Plantation America.”
Aw come on Blumpkin. Stop reading propaganda written from the extreme left. Unless you are on board with subscribing to the Koch Brothers quarterly newsletter. Baa.
Hey,
?#@*&%!
For christ sake, read the entire article before you post a snippet. I can picture you after reading one paragraph thinking “OMG OMG OMG i have to post this section” … and then you go back to reading and it hits you again.
We alllll get it
“The military — always a Southern-dominated institution — sucks down 60% of our federal discretionary spending, and is undergoing a rapid evangelical takeover as well.”
Will you still consider military spending discretionary when ISIS is raping your daughter while you are burning in a cage next to your bed?
JACKSON, Miss. (Reuters) – The family of a University of Mississippi student withdrew him from the school on Tuesday after a video appearing to show him biting the head off a hamster while on spring break this month was posted online.
Brady Eaves, 18, appears in the video to snap the neck of the hamster before he bites off its head, spits it on the ground and throws the body into the distance. The crowd around him reacts with screams and cheers.
Before withdrawing from the school, Eaves, who was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, had been expelled from its local chapter over the incident, the fraternity said.
The incident occurred in Florida during the school’s spring break from March 9 to 13, and did not take place at a fraternity-sponsored function, University of Mississippi Phi Delta Theta chapter President William Kneip said.
Eaves will have his behavior professionally assessed, his family said in a statement.
“As parents we are obviously and very seriously concerned about the well-being of our son,” the family’s statement said.
12
Libturd,
It is pretty pathetic that defense spending is labeled discretionary (though there is plenty of bloat, abuse, and outright fraud). Which is every govt department of course.
one of the great things about America is that we don’t need anyone to protect us.
we can Nuke Iran in a heartbeat
those other countries should kiss my ass because my taxes pay for their protection
Libturd in the City says:
April 1, 2015 at 8:17 am
Striking any kind of deal with Iran is akin to giving a heroin addict your credit card number.
When it’s all said and done, the progressives will be kissing the asses of the Israeli government that they’ve been wrongfully condemning with regularity.
The next time you b*tch about your property tax bill, just remember it’s going to pay for the retirement of folks like this.
Atlantic City fire chief resigns following pants-dropping incident, report says
ATLANTIC CITY — After being placed on administrative leave, the chief of the city’s fire department has resigned following a February incident where he dropped his pants at security check point, according to 6ABC.
Dennis Brooks, who had been on leave since March 5, is seen on surveillance video as he appears to unfasten his belt and drop his pants in front of a female security guard inside the Atlantic City Fire Department building.
What prompted his decision to resign was not immediately clear.
According to previous reports, a female security guard asked Brooks while at the check point to remove metal objects from his pockets. He reportedly told the woman he was “having a bad day.”
Brooks was facing allegations of s*xual harassment as a result. The security guard had retained a lawyer following the incident, however previous reports indicated she had not yet decided to file a lawsuit.
According to the city’s website, Brooks started in Atlantic City in 1979, and is a military veteran.
http://www.nj.com/south/index.ssf/2015/04/atlantic_city_fire_chief_resigns_following_pants-d.html?ath=f726b0d853a5870fcb62a5fc7e195e19#cmpid=nsltr_stryheadline
and Egypt ain’t the largest recipient of my taxes
@WSJPolitics: Obama to send F-16 attack aircraft, missiles and $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt that was stopped in 2013 coup.
Joyce…agreed.
It just drives me absolutely batty when people give any credence to such obviously slanted drivel as the krap that the idiot just posted. And of course, I’d argue the same thing if it came from the extreme right. Though I should not be taking sides, I do have higher expectations of the left-leaning than I do of the right-leaning. Gator always reminds me of this inconsistency. But I just expect more of the team that claims they represent the little guy, when in actuality I need to remember that they are only placating the little guy to get their vote so they can behave like the big guy that they supposedly denigrate.
[18] Libturd
Well said. The real story is that both sides spend $1.50 on crap for every $1.00 they pull any. And looking at the data (changes in the deficit) you can infer that Dems get their funding from raising taxes and Repubs get their funding from borrowing.
However the media has everyone discussing how they are utilizing the funds. And none of kids will be able to take advantage of (social programs) or join the military (latest defense item).
These doctors probably saw the housing scam stories where you got inner city people to buy flipped homes and thought they should get in on the action.
New York doctors accused of using free shoes offer to defraud Medicaid
(Reuters) – Twenty-three New York City doctors and medical workers have been charged with running an insurance fraud scheme in which they persuaded homeless and poor people to get unnecessary medical testing with promises of free shoes, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
Nine doctors and other employees of eight city medical clinics are accused of fraudulently billing Medicaid $7 million in expenses for patients recruited from homeless shelters and welfare centers between October 2012 and September 2014, Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson said in a statement.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/03/31/us-usa-new-york-fraud-idUKKBN0MR2J420150331
Consumer Appetite for HELOCs Increased in 2014
Home equity lines of credit originations have increased 21.5% in 2014 from a year earlier, according to Equifax’s National Consumer Credit Trends Report.
Approximately $120 billion in HELOCs was originated in 2014, the Atlanta-based data provider revealed. Additionally, more than 1.2 million new HELOCs were opened last year, which is up 16% from the previous year.
There are more borrowers attracted to HELOCs now because they have “sizeable equity” in their homes since property values have risen nearly 26% on average since January 2011, said Equifax Chief Economist Amy Crew Cutts.
http://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/news/origination/consumer-appetite-for-helocs-increased-in-2014-1047646-1.html
In other news, my niece has taken the smart path and just accepted enrollment into Rutgers Honor Program. She was just rejected at Stanford, but could have attended any number of fancy overpriced schools. She wants to become a teacher, so my brother convinced her that he’d be wasting his money to send her to a fancy liberal arts school to learn how to teach. I’m sure he promised a down-payment on a home in exchange for getting off cheap. I have no issue with this since she is a hard worker and overachiever. His oldest kid who went to Trenton State College followed my path. He is now paying for his own college and living at home after focusing more on rugby than academics his first year.
In Bergen County, the median price of a single-family home dropped 8.6 percent in January from a year earlier, to $425,000.
This is impossible. The prices are warranted. But, can you imagine this is happening with no inventory and lending rates that are dead?
And, on top of it all, we’re currently at 2004 prices, 19% below peak theft prices. I’ll say it again for those who may have missed the other 467 times I said it: There are so many f.ucked bagholders in these “to die for” towns, unable and unqualified to sell, that it’s nauseating.
New Jersey’s housing market faces several challenges, including the state’s employment market, which has not been creating jobs as fast as the nation as a whole. In addition, the state has one of the nation’s highest rates of properties in the foreclosure pipeline, because it slowed the eviction process after questions arose about mortgage industry abuses.
And the biggest culprit, property taxes, doesn’t even get a nod. It’s getting harder and harder for you house cheerleaders to defend a very sick market. The playbook only has so many options.
Home values are no higher than they were in 2004, both nationally and in the region.
So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
Propaganda, yes, but she makes some good points. There def is two types of rich, one focused on helping society and the other focused on themselves. I would rather subscribe to someone trying to generally help society, like gates, than follow some greedy lunatics trying to control everything like the koch bros. Big difference between the two. Both are wealthy, but both have totally different outlooks and philosophies on what to do with their wealth. Koch is obsessed with power and control while gates is focused on trying to make this world a better place with his wealth. We need more gates, not more kochs in this world. Unfortunately, most wealthy follow the path of the koch brothers, the money has corrupted them and they now only yearn for power. The more money you have, the more power you have. If they weren’t interested in power, they wouldn’t be trying to control politics with their money. Simple as that.
Libturd in the City says:
April 1, 2015 at 8:34 am
Aw come on Blumpkin. Stop reading propaganda written from the extreme left. Unless you are on board with subscribing to the Koch Brothers quarterly newsletter. Baa.
Just buy her a Boars head route or something useful.
Libturd in the City says:
April 1, 2015 at 9:39 am
In other news, my niece has taken the smart path and just accepted enrollment into Rutgers Honor Program. She was just rejected at Stanford, but could have attended any number of fancy overpriced schools. She wants to become a teacher, so my brother convinced her that he’d be wasting his money to send her to a fancy liberal arts school to learn how to teach. I’m sure he promised a down-payment on a home in exchange for getting off cheap. I have no issue with this since she is a hard worker and overachiever. His oldest kid who went to Trenton State College followed my path. He is now paying for his own college and living at home after focusing more on rugby than academics his first year.
26, no only 1 type of rich differing views on how to stay in power. One views keeping the masses in line as a matter of using force, one sees the solutions as appeasing the masses by giving the poor slobs some hope but is really just protecting the wealthy class by stealing from the professional class, the rich never pay for the largess of government to the poor it is always the most productive in society who pay. Neither group has any altruistic ideals it is all a matter of how they want to protect themselves from the masses.
Who’s obsessed with power and control?
Which party is pushing people to eat certain foods, and limiting others? Banning lightbulbs, raising energy costs, taxing, regulating, indocrinating children, implimenting speach codes etc. etc.?
I’m not for the bogus spending that happens in that field. 60% of my tax money goes to the military. That’s a lot of the budget. At that cost point, you better be as efficient as you can with spending that money. One can even say, if you took that military budget and spent it on actually improving america as opposed to weapons that become obsolete, it would go much further in the protection of america. Give people a society worth fighting for, and you have all the protection you will ever need. Spending a ton of money on the military and police makes no sense when it results in an angry class of citizens that must be controlled by these same military and police.
Bottom line, fighting wars since the beginning of time is a waste of time. You are just doing the bidding of some elite class. There is no need to fight or wage war this day and age. ISIS is no different. Those idiots are fighting for some religious elite that has brainwashed them into fighting for them. Fighting so that this religious elite can have more power. Wars are stupid and a waste of time and resources. You are only doing the bidding of the elite who seek to maintain or gain power. Nothing good comes from war, anyone promoting it should be shot. That would make this world a better place.
Libturd in the City says:
April 1, 2015 at 8:37 am
“The military — always a Southern-dominated institution — sucks down 60% of our federal discretionary spending, and is undergoing a rapid evangelical takeover as well.”
Will you still consider military spending discretionary when ISIS is raping your daughter while you are burning in a cage next to your bed?
Blumpy…
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/06/25/msnbc-host-discovers-koch-brothers-arent-so-evil-n1855665
You are taking the bait. The only reason the Koch brothers are evil is because they support conservative causes. If you were a conservative, you would harbor the same ill feelings toward the author of that terrible piece you posted above.
It’s sad that you don’t understand this. Keep on reading the propaganda.
Soros is just as evil as any Koch.
The real fight should be for the elimination of campaign contributions, PACs, lobbyists, etc. Will never happen. NEVER! And this issue is non-partisan.
But to say that someone is evil for trying to buy an election? Well it truly makes you sound the fool. I’m actually surprised that the left hasn’t made an effort to convert more of the ulta-rich into ultra-donors. Then again, it would be hard to convince their largest voting block (the poor) that they support them while visibly paying back the rich in political favors. Baa!
http://nypost.com/2014/09/10/those-evil-koch-brothers-9/
“Wars are stupid and a waste of time and resources. You are only doing the bidding of the elite who seek to maintain or gain power. Nothing good comes from war, anyone promoting it should be shot. That would make this world a better place.”
So you would be in support of nuking Syria or any other country that does not support religious freedom?
#30…let’s just stop using “discretionary 60%”and just say Defense is 17% of the budget.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2011.png
Condo…Blumpy,
The real truth of the matter is that the government should collect no taxes to be used for discretionary purposes. Could you imagine how returning those dollars to the wallets of the taxpayer would juice the economy?
35
And immediately fire all “non-essential” personnel. Their term, not mine.
And then fire 3/4 of what’s left.
and do so at the federal, state, county, and local levels
You don’t want to control what people eat, but then you want to complain about the costs associated with this later on in life, right? Why not try to prevent the issue before it happens. It’s been proven over and over again, that certain individuals can not be trusted to do the right thing. So you have no choice but to live with the consequences, or make a stupid law to prevent it.
Don’t we want to become energy efficient? Should we just keep using inefficient technology that wastes resources because people want to make their own choices and want what’s cheap now? If you don’t start using efficient products now, then it will cost you much more down the road in wasted resources, but you are incapable of thinking of long term costs or consequences. You just want to live in the “now”. Can’t have a govt trying to help me live a longer and healthier life, that’s blasphemy.
Thomas says:
April 1, 2015 at 10:30 am
Who’s obsessed with power and control?
Which party is pushing people to eat certain foods, and limiting others? Banning lightbulbs, raising energy costs, taxing, regulating, indocrinating children, implimenting speach codes etc. etc.?
http://tinyurl.com/here-is-a-clue-anon
Gates is really improving this world. It’s not just a front. He has made huge gains.
“There’s no single lightbulb moment when I changed my mind about that, but I tend to trace it back to a trip Melinda and I took to Africa in 1993. We went on a safari to see wild animals but ended up getting our first sustained look at extreme poverty. I remember peering out a car window at a long line of women walking down the road with big jerricans of water on their heads. How far away do these women live? we wondered. Who’s watching their children while they’re away?
That was the beginning of our education in the problems of the world’s poorest people. In 1996 my father sent us a New York Times article about the million children who were dying every year from rotavirus, a disease that doesn’t kill kids in rich countries. A friend gave me a copy of a World Development Report from the World Bank that spelled out in detail the problems with childhood diseases.
Melinda and I were shocked that more wasn’t being done. Although rich-world governments were quietly giving aid, few foundations were doing much. Corporations weren’t working on vaccines or drugs for diseases that affected primarily the poor. Newspapers didn’t write a lot about these children’s deaths.
This realization led me to rethink some of my assumptions about how the world improves. I am a devout fan of capitalism. It is the best system ever devised for making self-interest serve the wider interest. This system is responsible for many of the great advances that have improved the lives of billions—from airplanes to air-conditioning to computers.
But capitalism alone can’t address the needs of the very poor. This means market-driven innovation can actually widen the gap between rich and poor. I saw firsthand just how wide that gap was when I visited a slum in Durban, South Africa, in 2009. Seeing the open-pit latrine there was a humbling reminder of just how much I take modern plumbing for granted. Meanwhile, 2.5 billion people worldwide don’t have access to proper sanitation, a problem that contributes to the deaths of 1.5 million children a year.
Governments don’t do enough to drive innovation either. Although aid from the rich world saves a lot of lives, governments habitually underinvest in research and development, especially for the poor. For one thing, they’re averse to risk, given the eagerness of political opponents to exploit failures, so they have a hard time giving money to a bunch of innovators with the knowledge that many of them will fail.
By the late 1990s, I had dropped the idea of starting an institute for basic research. Instead I began seeking out other areas where business and government underinvest. Together Melinda and I found a few areas that cried out for philanthropy—in particular for what I have called catalytic philanthropy.”
http://www.wired.com/2013/11/bill-gates-wired-essay/
jcer says:
April 1, 2015 at 10:27 am
26, no only 1 type of rich differing views on how to stay in power. One views keeping the masses in line as a matter of using force, one sees the solutions as appeasing the masses by giving the poor slobs some hope but is really just protecting the wealthy class by stealing from the professional class, the rich never pay for the largess of government to the poor it is always the most productive in society who pay. Neither group has any altruistic ideals it is all a matter of how they want to protect themselves from the masses.
County government, don’t get me started. Gator Jr. is in Tier 1 hockey tryouts this week at Codey Arena in West Orange. Joe D’s county funded disneyland resort has grown again. Now there is another huge parking deck between the arena and the zoo. There’s also a huge environmental education facility next to the zipline course and the fanciest playground money could ever buy. Then there is the county owned gourmet restaurant and mini golf course. Glad to see that none of my county tax dollars are going towards unnecessary luxuries. I’m sure that McLoone’s Boathouse is really helping the most needy of Essex County’s residents.
http://tinyurl.com/joey-d-wasting-again
38-With beliefs such as Pumps, how can anyone dispute that this Country is not in deep trouble?
Blumpy,
You do realize that Bill Gates is a Republican (evil).
They are evil. Their actions dictate it. Donating 65 million doesn’t make up for all the other harm they have done to our world.
Sounds like good guys to me.
“Having paid more than $50 million in fines for violating the Clean Air Act, Koch Industries has used the Koch brothers’ vast network of think tanks to fight for the removal of the Act.
In late 2000, as the Clinton administration was preparing to leave, Koch was served with a 97-count indictment for covering up the discharge of more than fifteen times the legal limit of benzene, a known carcinogen, from an oil refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas. The company faced penalties of more than $350 million and four employees were criminally charged, facing up to 35 years in prison. Three months after the Bush administration took office the case was settled out of court. Koch Industries agreed to pay $20 million and plead guilty to one count of concealment of information; in return, the Justice Department dropped all criminal charges against Koch and its employees. In the 2000 elections, Koch contributed more than $424,000 (roughly 80% of Koch’s contributions for the election cycle) to Republican candidates, including presidential nominee George W. Bush.”
Libturd in the City says:
April 1, 2015 at 10:33 am
http://nypost.com/2014/09/10/those-evil-koch-brothers-9/
It’s not a left or right issue. It’s about right and wrong.
Libturd in the City says:
April 1, 2015 at 11:08 am
Blumpy,
You do realize that Bill Gates is a Republican (evil).
What is wrong with my beliefs? How are my beliefs related to this country being in deep trouble?
Thomas says:
April 1, 2015 at 11:05 am
38-With beliefs such as Pumps, how can anyone dispute that this Country is not in deep trouble?
Your beliefs are in direct conflict with freedom.
45- Anyone that knowingly poisons the land and air is evil to me. Why would I want them to remove air standards? What kind of people would want the removal of laws that protect the air that we breath or the water we drink? These guys are the definition of evil.
Where do you live? I will practice my rights of freedom to dump my dirty oil in your vegetable garden? Freedom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (william wallace voice)
Thomas says:
April 1, 2015 at 11:17 am
Your beliefs are in direct conflict with freedom.
Apple Offers free IWatch with Purchase of IPhone, Ipad, and Mac.
Calling the offer ISuite.
Thomas, why should someone have the rights to freedom if it affects others in a negative way? Please explain. Are you okay with me dumping benzene in your drinking water? Is that freedom? Does freedom mean smoking 2 packs a day and then forcing everyone else to cover your medical costs? I’m all for letting people get fat and smoke to no end, as long as I don’t have to pay for it down the road. Unfortunately, everyone that does the right thing ends up paying for these idiot’s decision down the road.
So if the government demands that you downsize your house, downsize your car, tells you what to eat, how much to exercise, what you can and cannot say, what you read what you watch, etc., you’re good with that?
If it is for the good of society, why not? I could understand if they were telling you what to eat, but they are not. They are just eliminating practices that will bring harm to society. Do you want little kids smoking cigarettes and doing lines of coke? Well, don’t cry about laws that help you then. It’s not affecting your freedom in a negative way. It’s helping you to live longer. Why is that bad thing? You are taking this issue to extremes. Giving people the freedom to do whatever they want will end in disaster. Go live in somalia if you want that type of lawless life. I don’t.
April 1, 2015 at 11:28 am
So if the government demands that you downsize your house, downsize your car, tells you what to eat, how much to exercise, what you can and cannot say, what you read what you watch, etc., you’re good with that?
OMG what about the children!
Earth to Michael: you live in the United States which, by design, protects and upholds INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS…..not the good of society, not the will of the masses….Individual Rights. It was a novel idea when it was conceived, and still is…..and is what makes the United States unique and great in the world and in history.
Why should their safety be the priority and that of ordinary citizens secondary (at best)? Does this question occur to anyone anymore?
I vaguely remember an old saying: To Serve and Protect. It implied the reverse of today’s dynamic. That our safety was the object of the exercise. That to be a cop meant putting oneself in harm’s way for the sake of the citizenry. To take risks, to put one’s life on the line if need be.
Whatever happened to that?
Is it not ironic? We’re pressured to regard these obsessed-with-their-safety/over-armed/over-reacting men-in-black as – of all things – “heroes.” It’s as bizarre and double-thinkian as referring to people trapped at the DMV as “customers.” Only worse, because at least the DMV only wants your money.
These guys want your submission – immediately.
And very possibly, your life.
http://ericpetersautos.com/2015/03/31/hands-up/
Gator [16];
What prompted his decision to resign was not immediately clear.
>8-O
Holy lack of awareness, Batman…
Plumpy,
I bet I can find similar actions performed by many dem donors. Get off your high horse.
FWIW: McLoone runs his little mini-empire down in Monmouth County…..his business model is put all the money into location, finishings and furnishings…..serve microwaved food, canned tuna, bags of chips, and tasteless mystery meat at haute cuisine prices…..hire high schoolers and GED’s for wait staff……
To that point, Tim McLoone’s son had his wedding reception at the Pier Village restaurant, and the mother of the bride demanded that the event be catered from outside…….nuff said….
Libturd in the City says:
April 1, 2015 at 11:04 am
County government, don’t get me started. Gator Jr. is in Tier 1 hockey tryouts this week at Codey Arena in West Orange. Joe D’s county funded disneyland resort has grown again. Now there is another huge parking deck between the arena and the zoo. There’s also a huge environmental education facility next to the zipline course and the fanciest playground money could ever buy. Then there is the county owned gourmet restaurant and mini golf course. Glad to see that none of my county tax dollars are going towards unnecessary luxuries. I’m sure that McLoone’s Boathouse is really helping the most needy of Essex County’s residents.
re # 60 – Chi – McLoone’s replaced the old LUA in the Hoboken by the North Ferry last year. LUA went under do to the road collapse a few years back which shut down their entrance.
Pumps [47];
What is wrong with my beliefs? How are my beliefs related to this country being in deep trouble?
First of all, you believe that the “Clean Air Act” is really about clean air, and not about shaking down moneyed interests. You also apparently believe that without a “Clean Air Act” there would be no clean air.
Clean air is not a God-given right; it is a luxury of a wealthy society. Compare with the industrial revolution, or modern day India and China, for example.
I have never heard good things about the Boathouse. I can only imagine what percentage of the restaurants overall purse is from Essex County government diners.
Damn this stock market. Every time JJ dons his Dow 18K hat, it gets blown off his head the next morning.
I’m all for individual rights. At the same time, I understand that there has to be limits on some rights. I’m not making this a left or right issue, but I want to make a point. Republicans want to eliminate pollution laws, but then they want to uphold drug laws. So it’s okay to have laws taking away people’s rights to drugs, but not okay to protect people’s rights to clean water and land. It’s never a two way street. They want the govt to have laws to take away people’s right to steal, but at the same time, they advocate for the elimination of laws that protect the consumer from getting robbed by bad business practices.
Maybe, I’m wrong, but this is how I see it. They don’t play fair.
Toxic Crayons says:
April 1, 2015 at 11:50 am
Earth to Michael: you live in the United States which, by design, protects and upholds INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS…..not the good of society, not the will of the masses….Individual Rights. It was a novel idea when it was conceived, and still is…..and is what makes the United States unique and great in the world and in history.
See, this is where we differ. I believe it is our god given right to have access to clean water and air. No one should have the right to take those things away from humans or any life form on this planet. It’s not all about money. It’s about survival. If surviving means destroying the planet you live on, how is that surviving?
Anon E. Moose says:
April 1, 2015 at 12:42 pm
Pumps [47];
What is wrong with my beliefs? How are my beliefs related to this country being in deep trouble?
First of all, you believe that the “Clean Air Act” is really about clean air, and not about shaking down moneyed interests. You also apparently believe that without a “Clean Air Act” there would be no clean air.
Clean air is not a God-given right; it is a luxury of a wealthy society. Compare with the industrial revolution, or modern day India and China, for example.
2.5 stars on Yelp for McCloone’s. ‘Nuff said.
Sh1t stirrer.
65 – The limit is the infringement of someone else’s rights.
And there is no “right to steal”. That has to be hands down the dumbest thing anyone has ever said here.
Proper staging is extremely important.
Hilarious Grandma Poses In Real Estate Staging Photos, Becomes Hot Property
No, she doesn’t come with the house.
Yolie Ball, an 86-year-old grandmother who’s selling her home in Davenport, Florida, is now a hot property after posing in some adorable real estate photos. They went viral courtesy of a tweet from her granddaughter, Makenzie Ball. (Our personal favorite: peeking through the doorway.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/31/grandma-real-estate-photos_n_6977456.html
So the Puerto Rico Electric Company was supposed to go Bankrupt in 2015. One year ago when oil prices were skyhigh and muni bond yields higher the Electric company which mainly uses Oil powered electric plants were caught in not being able to raise rates meanwhile cost of fuel doubled. Oil prices fell like a Brick since January 2014 along with muni bond yields. So a new lifeline was worked out. I hope the borrow a ton at lower rates and hedge hedge and hedge oil prices because rates will go back up next year along with oil prices. Current bond holders only need a few more good years of payments.
At least someone had good fortune with falling oil prices. A totally unhedged electric company buying oil at market rate prices about to go BK.
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–
The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) bondholder group has developed a detailed revitalization plan for PREPA that provides for nearly $2 billion in new capital to be invested in PREPA for new infrastructure investment, with bondholders and their capital partners backstopping the riskiest portion of this new investment. This new capital would allow PREPA to generate electricity at lower and more stable rates, create hundreds of new jobs, stabilize electricity rates below the 2014 average, while continuing to service contractual debt obligations and allow a workout of over $700 million that Commonwealth government entities owe to PREPA. Additionally, a significant number of jobs could be created by the plan’s renewable energy projects and energy efficiency initiatives. The bondholder plan is not an operational restructuring plan, but additional savings to rate payers could be achieved through a comprehensive operational plan at PREPA.
China, for example, is it their right to have as many children as they want? Should everyone be allowed to have 10 kids each, even if it will cost us our survival? You guys take the issues to extreme. Govt wants to put restrictions on people harming themselves and you claim it’s a bad thing.
Screw it. Let companies pollute all they want. Let people do whatever harm they want to their bodies and the future will pick up the cost. Just don’t cry when your taxes are insane due to the funding needed to clean up the pollution and pay for their healthcare costs.
I was making a point. There is no right to steal, but eliminating consumer protections will result in the business doing exaclty what to the consumer? STEALING! Same thing with labor. Without labor protections, the worker will get robbed beyond belief, but that’s okay, isn’t it? That form of theft is okay, right?
Toxic Crayons says:
April 1, 2015 at 1:05 pm
65 – The limit is the infringement of someone else’s rights.
And there is no “right to steal”. That has to be hands down the dumbest thing anyone has ever said here.
Please explain how a clean air law is really used to shake down money interests. Why, because the business owner has to pay more to keep the environment clean? That’s a shake down? The owner just passes the costs onto the consumer anyway, so who is getting the shake down?
Anon E. Moose says:
April 1, 2015 at 12:42 pm
Pumps [47];
What is wrong with my beliefs? How are my beliefs related to this country being in deep trouble?
First of all, you believe that the “Clean Air Act” is really about clean air, and not about shaking down moneyed interests. You also apparently believe that without a “Clean Air Act” there would be no clean air.
Clean air is not a God-given right; it is a luxury of a wealthy society. Compare with the industrial revolution, or modern day India and China, for example.
When I can drink unfiltered water instead of bottled water, I will have no problem eliminating pollution laws. Do you know how much that costs our society, that we have to purchase bottled water because we ruined all the natural sources. Can’t wait for people to start posting propaganda that we don’t want pollution laws. Let’s rally around the koch bro’s cries to eliminate environmental laws. These guys rule. Great ideas.
fake.
I drink tap water.
Ugh!
Me too.
Michael, if you are wrongfully or negligently harmed by a product then sue or press charges. If you are a victim of fraud, do the same. No one is advocating that you do anything differently.
Yes, they should be allowed to have as many children as they like. It is a bad thing. The law in China is a violation of their basic human rights. Not to mention it’s caused an age demographic problem in that country.
I’ve posted it many times here, even directed it at you, but there is a statistician who has proven that improvements in the infant death rate, and industrialization of nations, causes the birth rate to decrease (naturally) without government intervention. I won’t go on further about it because you’ve either forgotten it or chosen to ignore it and I’m just tired of saying the same thing to you.
The Great Pumpkin says:
April 1, 2015 at 1:10 pm
China, for example, is it their right to have as many children as they want? Should everyone be allowed to have 10 kids each, even if it will cost us our survival? You guys take the issues to extreme. Govt wants to put restrictions on people harming themselves and you claim it’s a bad thing.
I guess there is nothing wrong with the water.
Toxic Crayons says:
April 1, 2015 at 1:37 pm
I drink tap water.
Pumpkin don’t waste your breath. You are not going to change anyone’s mind. The POS Koch brothers are like gods to them. It’s an absolute joke. Not sure why you even bother.
Your tap is filtered. Michael wants to fill up his canteen at the Great Paterson Falls for free.
Ccb223 – Gods? I think they are scum just like many rich people from the left.
Yup, nothing to worry about with the populations of india and China.
I understand that. The problem is, people have to get wealthy and educated for that to happen. So you expect this to happen to everyone in china and India? They are a long way away from having any type of control over their population. They came up with the laws for a reason. The population was out of control.
Toxic Crayons says:
April 1, 2015 at 1:52 pm
Yes, they should be allowed to have as many children as they like. It is a bad thing. The law in China is a violation of their basic human rights. Not to mention it’s caused an age demographic problem in that country.
I’ve posted it many times here, even directed it at you, but there is a statistician who has proven that improvements in the infant death rate, and industrialization of nations, causes the birth rate to decrease (naturally) without government intervention. I won’t go on further about it because you’ve either forgotten it or chosen to ignore it and I’m just tired of saying the same thing to you.
86 –
You do realize the Population Control Policy was enacted to counteract the government’s own prior and overzealous attempts to encourage rapid population growth that was started when a noticed decline in child birth occurred earlier in the century, correct?
Pendulum… Swing.
The POS Koch brothers are like gods to them. It’s an absolute joke. Not sure why you even bother.
I honestly never heard of them until the name was discussed here. And at first, I thought they might have been related to Mayor Ed Koch.
When I see the idiots here fall lockstep (or perhaps in goosestep) with the garbage that sells magazines (and web advertising) for the left and right. I develop a real appreciation of this countries willingness to spend such huge tax dollars on our military. People really are as dumb as sheep and all it takes is one charismatic Collie somewhere to drive large masses of asses into doing things that are incomprehensible. I only hope that our foolish leaders here in America do not become the Collie.
I like most of the organizations the Kock brothers endorse. They’re backing institutions supporting entrepreneurship, education, human services, at-risk youth, arts and culture, and medical research among just a handful. Why is this an issue?
another one? this site can’t get enough extreme right wingers
Thomas says:
April 1, 2015 at 11:05 am
38-With beliefs such as Pumps, how can anyone dispute that this Country is not in deep trouble?
World population is growing around the rate of 10% every decade now. That in-itself is unsustainable. Once the Dino juice runs out we will no longer have the industrialization capacilty we once had to sustain the population let alone transport the goods we grow and make around the world. Globalization will be doomed. We will all go back to being dirt farmers just like our ancestors.
And the Anons of the world will go back into the closet for you see their ideals do not exist in a post apocalypse, post industrial, post oil world.
@MarkRuffalo: Pot holes on your road? Bridges falling? Here’s why…US Companies Are Won’t Repatriate
It’s a measure of accumulated profits, including those reinvested in active businesses and factories. The companies say they won’t repatriate these profits, and they haven’t assumed that they will pay future U.S. taxes that would be owed if they did.
“One of the reasons that they’re holding the hoards of cash abroad is they don’t want to pay the repatriation tax when they bring it back,” said Rosanne Altshuler, a Rutgers University economist who studies international taxation.
The analysis starts with corporations in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and excludes purely domestic firms, real estate investment trusts and companies with headquarters outside the U.S. It includes each company’s most recent annual report, many of which were filed over the past month.
The companies owe taxes at the full U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent on profits they earn around the world. They get tax credits for payments to foreign governments and don’t have to pay the residual U.S. tax until they bring the money home.Stashing $2.1 Trillion Overseas to Avoid Taxes
re #92 Mark Ruffalo for President, we could use another mediocre moron actor in the White House.
As if your local roads and bridges are fully paid for by the Federal Government and as if full 35% statutory corporate tax rate would apply on offshore repatriation of money earned offshore and not in the 50 states.
that is complete bullsh1t. (with all due respect)
Juice Box says:
April 1, 2015 at 2:36 pm
World population is growing around the rate of 10% every decade now. That in-itself is unsustainable. Once the Dino juice runs out we will no longer have the industrialization capacilty we once had to sustain the population let alone transport the goods we grow and make around the world. Globalization will be doomed. We will all go back to being dirt farmers just like our ancestors.
Honestly, if entire middle east and asia would just voluntarily just take a decade long break on having children it would really help the planet.
Toxic Crayons says:
April 1, 2015 at 1:52 pm
Yes, they should be allowed to have as many children as they like. It is a bad thing. The law in China is a violation of their basic human rights. Not to mention it’s caused an age demographic problem in that country.
re # 94 – yes, yes yes oil will never run out!
anon: I don’t really have an axe to grind here…..I just want to point out how the following post is slanted……”The companies owe taxes at the full U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent on profits they earn around the world. ” This statement is false. The companies have nothing to do with the United States financially. They are simply controlled by U.S. domiciled firms. It is media pundits and various opportunists who have levied a tax on something where there is no jurisdiction. There is no business or moral justification for bringing the money into the country…..the better question to ask is how and why is there such a taxation chasm between the rest of the world and the U.S., and in the long run, what kind of position (i.e. risk) we place ourselves long-term………..it used to be imperative to be educated and domiciled in the U.S. to be global dominant……with the advent of technology, education and globalization of resources, the dynamic is different………..please note, there is no black and white here……one side is not right and the other wrong………just appreciate that there are excellent, possibly stronger, counterarguments for every point raised about this issue…..
anon (the good one) says:
April 1, 2015 at 2:43 pm
@MarkRuffalo: Pot holes on your road? Bridges falling? Here’s why…US Companies Are Won’t Repatriate
It’s a measure of accumulated profits, including those reinvested in active businesses and factories. The companies say they won’t repatriate these profits, and they haven’t assumed that they will pay future U.S. taxes that would be owed if they did.
“One of the reasons that they’re holding the hoards of cash abroad is they don’t want to pay the repatriation tax when they bring it back,” said Rosanne Altshuler, a Rutgers University economist who studies international taxation.
The analysis starts with corporations in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and excludes purely domestic firms, real estate investment trusts and companies with headquarters outside the U.S. It includes each company’s most recent annual report, many of which were filed over the past month.
The companies owe taxes at the full U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent on profits they earn around the world. They get tax credits for payments to foreign governments and don’t have to pay the residual U.S. tax until they bring the money home.Stashing $2.1 Trillion Overseas to Avoid Taxes
@BreakingNews:
McDonald’s to raise pay for US restaurant workers by more than 10%,
@WSJbreakingnews reports
“The companies have nothing to do with the United States financially. ”
Kind of an awkward statement that should be attacked………my point is viewing things through the filter of taxation…..I deserve the loss of style points…..
BREAKING
MENENDEZ INDICTED!
Wow, someone that sees what I’m trying to say. I start to feel like I’m crazy for wanting the greater good for society. Why are pollution laws a bad thing? Why are consumer protections a bad thing? Why are worker’s rights a bad thing?
As soon as I see people start rallying around getting rid of pollution laws, I have to question their intelligence level. It’s insanity. I want to laugh, but I cant. I’m trying to figure out why you would think this way. Screw left or right, why would you want to eliminate these protections. To save money? Is money that important to you?
ccb223 says:
April 1, 2015 at 1:55 pm
Pumpkin don’t waste your breath. You are not going to change anyone’s mind. The POS Koch brothers are like gods to them. It’s an absolute joke. Not sure why you even bother.
re # 100 – Melgen as well. I gather he will be offered a deal to squeal?
Really, doubt it. Then how do you explain the population in India.
A Home Buyer says:
April 1, 2015 at 2:11 pm
86 –
You do realize the Population Control Policy was enacted to counteract the government’s own prior and overzealous attempts to encourage rapid population growth that was started when a noticed decline in child birth occurred earlier in the century, correct?
Pendulum… Swing.
re # 103- They don’t watch enough TV.
Great guys!!
Fast Eddie says:
April 1, 2015 at 2:18 pm
I like most of the organizations the Kock brothers endorse. They’re backing institutions supporting entrepreneurship, education, human services, at-risk youth, arts and culture, and medical research among just a handful. Why is this an issue?
fanatics, fundamentalist
The Great Pumpkin says:
April 1, 2015 at 4:02 pm
Wow, someone that sees what I’m trying to say. I start to feel like I’m crazy for wanting the greater good for society. Why are pollution laws a bad thing? Why are consumer protections a bad thing? Why are worker’s rights a bad thing?
As soon as I see people start rallying around getting rid of pollution laws, I have to question their intelligence level. It’s insanity. I want to laugh, but I cant. I’m trying to figure out why you would think this way. Screw left or right, why would you want to eliminate these protections. To save money? Is money that important to you?
ccb223 says:
April 1, 2015 at 1:55 pm
Pumpkin don’t waste your breath. You are not going to change anyone’s mind. The POS Koch brothers are like gods to them. It’s an absolute joke. Not sure why you even bother.
There should be a large tax credit for US born, college educated couples who have children who make over a certain amount of income and a penalty for foreign born lower income folks for having kids.
Pumps, we all want clear air and clean water, but recognize if we’re going to remain a first-world country there is going to be some trade-offs. You’re not willing to put up with any contamination. Fine, sell your house, sell your car and move into a tent.
[107] JJ
Its already in place…a W2 and a tax preparer.
I would if I had any chance at survival. Capitalism has altered the landscape. There is not enough wild life for large groups of people to survive off of. Why do you think so many Somali fisherman turned into pirates? They couldn’t survive off of fishing anymore, the ocean is wiped out by commercial fishermen. You have no choice, but to be a part of the economic system if you want to survive. Just think how much water would cost you if you had to live off the land. How the hell will you pay for water? Can’t just go to the river or dig a well, it’s all screwed. Juice is right, when oil is gone, shit will get real.
Thomas says:
April 1, 2015 at 4:15 pm
Pumps, we all want clear air and clean water, but recognize if we’re going to remain a first-world country there is going to be some trade-offs. You’re not willing to put up with any contamination. Fine, sell your house, sell your car and move into a tent.
[97] Chi
These profits that are generating in the US and are booked in a subsidiary that is located in a country with tax advantages that are greater than the US. All legally done I might add. I totally agree there is no incentive for these companies repatriate these profits but I imagine they are waiting for a changing of the guard and hoping for a more favorable tax rate when they repatriate. The past year, the US has stepped up efforts against individuals who have set up similar structures offshore.
Are you saying that the subsidiary wasn’t created with the sole purpose of avoiding paying taxes in the US?
ccb223 [83];
It’s an absolute joke.
The joke is crying about the Koch brothers while sucking on Soros’ t!t, as every leftist SJW of any note does. You just don’t recognize the joke is on you.
Nom [100];
Well, at least NJ’s streak of indicted senators is still in tact. I was worried for a little while we’d lose out reputation.
re #110 – re: “There is not enough wild life for large groups of people to survive off of”
You are missing something here Mikey. People are food too..
Menendez indicted? I’m shocked.
Did I really read Blumpkin pleaing for the environment while stating he is forced to drink bottled water?? Holy Jesus..Blumpkin, do you shower with bottled water too? News flash – your body soaks in water through the skin as well.
Overpopulation is a myth.
Juice Box says:
April 1, 2015 at 3:43 pm
re # 94 – yes, yes yes oil will never run out!
finite resources is not a mYth
Anon (the bad one) … how exactly am I sucking on Soros’s tit? Not a fan of any super wealthy individual trying to buy control of the government and our laws…but the scope and scale of Soros’s “influence” pales in comparison to the Koch-sucker brothers. Just use “the google” — I don’t have the energy to explain to you what an absolute affront to democracy they are.
yes
Toxic Crayons says:
April 1, 2015 at 5:42 pm
Overpopulation is a myth.
Juice Box says:
April 1, 2015 at 3:43 pm
re # 94 – yes, yes yes oil will never run out!
@AASLH: Scientists to Smithsonian: Cut ties with Koch brothers
“Kremer told the Loop that they wouldn’t be supporting the museum if they “did not understand the science behind our public programs.” (The Smithsonian has been unequivocal in its belief that climate change is man made.)”
If there is a god, Menendez becomes Mandingo bait.
Comrade. My post last night was made while thinking back to my youth (particularly while in the armed forces) after reading your line about getting into clubs. Just joking after a long day, good dinner and a Booker’s on the rocks.
That guy deserves to live Shawshank-style for the rest of his days.
Need to hit me with the extremes to make a point.
First, I don’t drink bottled water. I drink from a brita. My wife and the rest of my family only drink bottled water. I told them how it’s wrong. Explained to them that they are supporting the waste of precious resources to transport water when you already have access to filtered water through the tap. Long story short, they don’t trust the tap water. I gave up trying to convince them.
Now what does taking a shower with tap water have to do with drinking water. How much can be absorbed?
Bystander says:
April 1, 2015 at 5:33 pm
Did I really read Blumpkin pleaing for the environment while stating he is forced to drink bottled water?? Holy Jesus..Blumpkin, do you shower with bottled water too? News flash – your body soaks in water through the skin as well.
I agree. Take oil out of the equation and there is no way in bloody hell that we can support 7 billion people. Simply impossible. Fertilizers are made with oil. No fertilizer, no way to get current crop yields.
Juice Box says:
April 1, 2015 at 5:47 pm
finite resources is not a mYth
I know some of you fall in the disbelief of man made climate change, but I think you are lost.
“As humans continue to transform the planet at an increasingly rapid rate, the need to inform and encourage change has become ever more urgent. The situation is becoming critical for wild species and for the preservation of human civilization. Recognizing this urgency, the Smithsonian Institution has formulated its first official statement about the causes and impacts of climate change.
With special emphasis on the Smithsonian’s 160-year history and tradition of collection, research and global monitoring, the statement delivers a bold assessment: “Scientific evidence has demonstrated that the global climate is warming as a result of increasing levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases generated by human activities.”
“The 500 Smithsonian scientists working around the world see the impact of a warming planet each day in the course of their diverse studies,” reads the statement. “A sample of our investigations includes anthropologists learning from the Yupik people of Alaska, who see warming as a threat to their 4,000-year-old culture; marine biologists tracking the impacts of climate change on delicate corals in tropical waters; and coastal ecologists investigating the many ways climate change is affecting the Chesapeake Bay.””
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/smithsonian-institution-announces-official-climate-change-statement-180952822/#dTp8XIfdOYrA4Mjw.99
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
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For lack of care on my part to research your opinions, here is Wikipedia.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy
During the period of Mao Zedong’s leadership in China, the crude birth rate fell from 37 to 20 per thousand,[10] infant mortality declined from 227/1000 births in 1949 to 53/1000 in 1981, and life expectancy dramatically increased from around 35 years in 1948 to 66 years in 1976.[10][11] Until the 1960s, the government encouraged families to have as many children as possible[12] because of Mao’s belief that population growth empowered the country, preventing the emergence of family planning programs earlier in China’s development.[13] The population grew from around 540 million in 1949 to 940 million in 1976.[14] Beginning in 1970, citizens were encouraged to marry at later ages and have only two children.
Soros is probably worse than the Koch brothers, there is a warm place in hell for that guy. The amount of human suffering caused by his misadventures is pretty much unmatched by anyone not directly involved in a government. As I stated before, left vs. right is simply a differing opinion as to how you are going to achieve dominance it doesn’t change the intention and doesn’t differ in how both groups intend to enslave the masses.
How billionaires Nompound.
http://www.forbes.com/2008/05/09/billionaires-security-buffett-biz-billies-cx_af_0509wealthysecurity.html
Koch bros should be a positive for repubs, because they generally support pro freedom causes without worrying much about the religion. Thus the left sees them, properly, as a bigger competitive threat to win young minds, and thus demonize them even harder than the Religious Right.
41. Remember, when approaching a pig, put the lipstick on lightly at first…
131. Freedom works when you got nuthin’ left to lose…
Fkuc the Yupic of Alaska. Too bad your igloos might melt. Move to Antarctica and start eating penguins if you like. Or try catching squirrels in the Appalachians. These people have been traveling for millenia, as climate has changed and food sources shifted. Now we’re supposed to stop human progress to make a handful of people don’t have to relocate their tepees?
punkin (126)-
Yet, you’re so full of it, your eyes are turning brown.
“Fertilizers are made with oil. No fertilizer, no way to get current crop yields.”
I don’t mind running out of oil, it’s running out of gunpowder that scares me.
Only thing that never runs out around here are idiots.
And liquid brown stuff.
I think I’ll switch to bottled water.
135-
“Conventional fertilizers are commonly derived from petroleum. In fact, a single 40-pound bag contains the equivalent of 2.5 gallons of gasoline.”
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/green-guide/buying-guides/fertilizer/environmental-impact/
“Worstall misses the point that whether we use oil, natural gas or coal to deliver our energy supplies, we are not creating energy, we are converting one form of energy into another. That’s called the first law of thermodynamics, which even economists and the most rampant deniers can’t subvert.
When man first lit a fire under the boiler in a steam engine, we began the process of releasing 150 million years of stored sun-energy. Humanity is no different to any other species, our prime function is eating and procreation; converting fossil fuel energy into food-energy by various processes enabled us to do that and grow our numbers to unsupportable levels.
We have converted oil into food, the odd error in writing about it won’t alter reality.
Less than a billion people were here when we began our energy-release, there are now 7 billion, all courtesy of the energy boost provided by our hydrocarbon legacy. It doesn’t matter how you factor it in: the oil in the tractor that ploughs the field, the truck that delivers your food, the fuel in your car when you go shopping, and a hundred other oil-use aspects of food production. Our economic system is the means by which we change one form of energy into another, nitrate fertilizer is just a part of it.
Unfortunately we have deluded ourselves that this is a wealth creation system, when in fact it is a survival system. It’s no different to having a bank loan and then telling everyone you’ve won the lottery.
Oil is our life support system and without it those 6 billion extra people who have shown up since we started using it don’t have much of a future.”
“I think you issue a bit of a red herring here. The environmental movement doesn’t typically claim that fertilizer is directly tied to oil, just petro-chemicals which come from fossil fuels (nat gas included, as you cite). The issue is that much of farming is fossil-fuel based and that fossil fuels deplete. So, eventually, if you’ve farmed on marginal lands and you have a larger population than you would have had otherwise, you put yourself into an unsustainable situation.
In the mainstream media, Forbes, elsewhere, there has been a massive overestimation of new potential oil and gas supply gains. For example, you have the gas industry claiming we now have more than 100 years of nat gas. This is complete misinformation. Proven + probable supplies yield 22 years at current consumption rates. But if we start exporting and shifting a substantial portion of our transportation to nat gas, that supply lifetime goes down. Even by the most optimistic of all estimates you have proven + probable + potential + possible (stuff some geologist made up) supplies at maybe 95 years. A pie in the sky number which rapidly gets cut down if demand is increased as many are currently pushing.
Fracking, though it supplies us with more fertilizer now, relies on more expensive, higher CO2 emitting, and harmful to water and farmland, production processes. Further, the wells deplete extremely rapidly. And this calls into question the validity of new supply gains.
The fact that we have bought ourselves time is not in dispute. It is what we should do with our time. Should we push an irrational increase in dependence on a resource that is currently showing one of its last gasps in supply while creating powerful amplification to climate change, or should we use the economic strength afforded to us by that access to reasonably transition to long-term energy sources while husbanding the nat gas for fertilizer and raw materials? One choice is wise, the other is a rush to crash that would make the housing boondoggle look tame. I would hope Forbes writers would caution for rationality, not a brief time of excess followed by systemic failure.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/04/07/were-not-going-to-run-out-of-oil-based-fertilizer/
Shame it takes so much oil and pollution to manufacture those Brita containers.
Why no tweets about Menendez Anon?
Just think of how much oil we could have saved had we not polluted our water supply. What a shame.
Libturd at home says:
April 1, 2015 at 9:51 pm
Shame it takes so much oil and pollution to manufacture those Brita containers.
Not to worry. You’ve only polluted China.
Libturd at home says:
April 1, 2015 at 9:51 pm
Shame it takes so much oil and pollution to manufacture those Brita containers.
I read somewhere that if we keep fracking, our water will catch fire.
Try putting some in the gas tank of your car Michael.
Researchers have calculated that the energy required to produce bottled water is up to 2,000 times more than the energy required to produce tap water.
Drinking bottled water is mostly an American phenomenon. Though are tap water is some of the cleanest in the world. Dumb, dumb Americans. But I am not surprised. Marketing is a powerful thing. Just look at how easily Anon is fooled.
A 26-year-old MIT graduate is turning heads over his theory that income inequality is actually about housing (in 1 graph)
https://medium.com/the-ferenstein-wire/a-26-year-old-mit-graduate-is-turning-heads-over-his-theory-that-income-inequality-is-actually-2a3b423e0c