Bernie Sanders, Presidential Candidate and H-1B Skeptic 395
Presto Vivace writes: The H-1B visa issue rarely surfaces during presidential races, and that's what makes the entrance by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) into the 2016 presidential race so interesting. ... ...Sanders is very skeptical of the H-1B program, and has lambasted tech firms for hiring visa workers at the same time they're cutting staff. He's especially critical of the visa's use in offshore outsourcing.
Can he win? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does Sanders have any chance to become president? Bush and Clinton... been there, done that, both long term disasters.
Sanders can win (Score:2)
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And what has Obama done with the national debt? Hmmmm?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's not true: the President is perfectly free to veto all spending until Congress is willing to give him a sane budget (or 2/3 of it is insane enough to override him).
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Contrary to popular belief, the president has no power at all to deal with the national debt.
Technically true but not in practice. The President does propose a budget to Congress each year, which the House and Senate are free to embroider upon as they wish. Others have mentioned the fact that the President can veto the budget approved by Congress until they have the 2/3 majority for an override.
But most importantly, the President can commit the US to unwarranted, falsely justified conflicts overseas that eat up $2 trillion in budget over 10 years [reuters.com] and duly expect a rubber stamping from Congress. (Be
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Re:Can he win? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Can he win? (Score:5, Informative)
Bullshit.
Clinton (both of them) is a centrist, a "new democrat", almost identical politically to the moderate republicans of the 50s, with the biggest exceptions being things like gay rights. He was only "liberal" in comparison to the extreme conservatism the GOP has carved out for itself as it pushed ever more rightward.
National debt (Score:5, Informative)
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Second, I am still royally pissed at Bush for blowing up the deficit to 500 billion.
Re:National debt (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, there were a lot of people complaining about the deficit in Bush's last two years in office.
Let's look at all the numbers and not just your cherry-picked selection (these numbers are total - both on- and off-budget, source is the GPO [gpo.gov]):
2002 - 157 billion
2003 - 377 billion
2004 - 412 billion
2005 - 318 billion
2006 - 248 billion
2007 - 160 billion
2008 - 458 bilion
2009 - 1,412 billion
What, you might ask, happened in 2008? Oh yeah, that's the first fiscal year where the budget was passed by a Democratic controlled Congress. There were plenty of us begging that Bush veto those Congressional bills and he failed to do so in order to keep up the support he needed for the war.
The last year of the Bush presidency is very interesting as it relates to the budget. At the time there were a number of companies failing. Obama had been elected and Bush asked Obama what he wanted to have done. The incoming Obama administration had a lot of say in what was passed and Bush gave him full support. Even more interesting is that the TARP fund was fully funded in that budget and, hence, the huge number. However, the repayments of TARP were accounted for in the fiscal years in which they occurred. In essence, much of the budget deficits until TARP was repaid were artificially lower because they, in essence, borrowed from fiscal year 2009.
Re:Can he win? (Score:5, Insightful)
And what has Obama done with the national debt? Hmmmm?
I don't recall bringing Obama into this but since you have done that for me he is not what I'd call a competent president. However, ham-handed Obama may be he is also saddled with the legacy of what is arguably the biggest incompetent among a long sequence of incompentents evert to take up residence in the White House: Nixon, the blessed Saint Ronal Reagan, Bush the elder, Clinton, Bush the younger and now Obama. The last president the USA had that was worth his salt was Dwight D. Eisenhower. Bush Jr. not only doubled the national debt he violated one of the longest standing axioms of US foreign policy 'never fight a land war in Asia' (and did not do it once, he did that twice), went on record as saying God had told him to do it and openly referred to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as crusades. That man is probably the biggest gift radical militant Islam has ever gotten. A man really has to be a special kind of moron to accomplish all that in his first term of office.
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And what has Obama done with the national debt? Hmmmm?
Obama is not running.
Re:Can he win? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, to be fair he did want to let the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010, which would have cut the deficit considerably. These were sunsetted when they were put into effect so that the Bush administration could claim minimal impact on long-term debt.
It was a deal with Congressional Republicans. Obama got a reauthorization and extension of unemployment benefits (this was in the Great Recession), an inflation adjustment for the alternative minimum tax so it wouldn't bite middle income people, an extension of the child tax credit and earned income credit. Congressional Republicans got an extension of Bush tax cuts on people making more than $250,000 and a reduction of the estate tax.
Basically when push came to shove, both parties preferred to kick the debt can down the road for a few more years. It may have even been the right choice at the time given the weak private sector spending. Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no deficit hawks during recessions.
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Here we go again. The deficit from Clinton's years was due to Republican Congress setting the budget. It was also disappearing by time he left office. Bill Clinton did not leave a thriving economy that George W. Bush simply pissed away. Or did you not hear about the Dot Com Bubble, and a slight economic road bump in September of W's first year in office? Bush did a lot wrong, but the economy wasn't one of them.
You guys are so transparent. The same old mistaken arguments every time, yet you ignore any bad ne
Re:Can he win? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Can he win? (Score:5, Insightful)
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As a consequence this country is a withered husk of what it used to be.
That's a very good description ...
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Yeah, this country was so great when we were the only superpower that was rebuilding the world after we bombed it halfway to hell in World War II. We were strong, and no one could tell us what to do.
It's funny that you look back at that situation with nostalgia.
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You're damn right this country was great back when we had strong union jobs and a family could live comfortably on a single income. There were strong regulations and the top tax bracket was near 90%. Things weren't great for everyone but at least we weren't fucked like we are now.
Re:Can he win? (Score:4)
You're damn right this country was great back when we had strong union jobs and a family could live comfortably on a single income. There were strong regulations and the top tax bracket was near 90%. Things weren't great for everyone but at least we weren't fucked like we are now.
Unfortunately, the period you're referring to was an inherently unsustainable one caused by the fact that the US emerged as a victor from a World War, and coincidentally the only one of the major powers in that war whose population and infrastructure were not seriously ravaged by it. Even among the victors - Britain, China, France, let's not even mention the Soviets - all paid a heavy price on their home territory. The losers received economic support from the magnanimous Western powers, but that was cold comfort to a populace largely bombed into ruins.
So the US got to live in a bubble for a decade or two where the rest of the world didn't have the technology or the infrastructure to compete with us in any meaningful economic area. (They either were rebuilding it, never had it in the first place, or were too busy tearing themselves apart in postcolonial revolutions.) As a result, we had near-autarky in an industrial economy buoyed by barely sustainable Cold War military and aerospace spending. Times were good.
But you do get that it was never going to stay that way, right? Eventually the US was going to have to compete with the rest of the world for things. And lo and behold, they could make transistors cheaper in Japan, then they could make automobiles cheaper (and noticeably better!) there, too. Textiles disappeared to Southeast Asia, and steel and other raw materials manufactures moved to Asia as well. By the time the '90s and NAFTA rolled around, it was pretty clear that American consumers would much rather pay a quarter for a can of Coke made in Mexico than 50 cents of one bottled in Virginia. Unless it shut itself off from the world completely - thereby hosing its own exports market - the US could not sustain living wages in low skill jobs forever. The modern equivalent of $55/hour for high school graduates in Detroit who welded three car doors together an hour between smoke breaks was never, ever going to last.
Re:Can he win? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the period you're referring to was an inherently unsustainable one caused by the fact that the US emerged as a victor from a World War, and coincidentally the only one of the major powers in that war whose population and infrastructure were not seriously ravaged by it. Even among the victors - Britain, China, France, let's not even mention the Soviets - all paid a heavy price on their home territory. The losers received economic support from the magnanimous Western powers, but that was cold comfort to a populace largely bombed into ruins.
So the US got to live in a bubble for a decade or two where the rest of the world didn't have the technology or the infrastructure to compete with us in any meaningful economic area.
And you'd be right on that if you weren't so wrong. I understand, it's a common talking meme of people who never learned the recent history of countries other than the US, but.....
The Marshall Plan helped reconstruction for most of western Europe (including West Germany) and by the time funding for the plan ended in 1952, the economies of all 18 countries had surpassed pre-war levels. 1951 was more than 1/3 better than 1938 for all countries involved. This idea that the US was the only ones around doing anything is not only absurd, but incredibly wrong.
The poster you replied to had it right.... our growth in the 50's and 60's also had 90% top marginal tax rates attached to them. People didn't "gain" as much wealth by pulling it out of companies then, because so much of it was consumed by taxes. It was better to reinvest it into the business to avoid those high taxes, and play the long game by growing the business. As soon as it became less of a tax burden to remove money (profits) from businesses, that's what owners did.. preferring the get-rich-right-now approach instead of actually growing businesses.
Higher tax rates made reinvesting profit into the businesses preferred, the GI bill was turning out hundreds of thousands of higher educated individuals, that damn socialized national roadways thing the commie lover Eisenhower pushed seemed to explode the growth potential of pretty much everything (other than horse and buggy sales), and then that other socialist kid Kennedy said "lets go to the moon," which helped do a number on pretty much every piece of solid state electronics EVER (and we just happened to have hundreds of thousands of highly educated people hanging around just looking to do something.... odd how that worked out).
But all that growth for those decades had dick to do with western Europe rebuilding, because that took a lot less time than most realize.
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I'd like to see where you're getting your numbers.
So tell me, how do tax cuts for the rich translate into lower deficits? Repubs have been promising that for decades and it has never worked. It's fools math the repubs like to sell to folks who don't know any better. The government requires money to run. If you're not getting the money from taxes, it needs to come from someplace else. You either need to borrow it to pick up the slack (deficit) or do cuts (which affects most people rather badly). So where do
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2001 $170.19 Billion Surplus
2002 $207.63 Billion Deficit
2003 $485.97 Billion Deficit
2004 $517.54 Billion Deficit
2005 $385.45 Billion Deficit
2006 $291.42 Billion Deficit
2007 $183.79 Billion Deficit
2008 $504.95 Billion Deficit
Basically, 2007 was a blip on the radar - the economy was fueled by the skyrocketing home prices.
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I do not believe that the war debt was being recognized in those numbers either
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And you think the Sept 11 attacks are completely unrelated to (at least of of) those two wars you keep mentioning.
Your comments spread across this thread are quite reasonable but here you fail both logic and common sense. Sept 11 attacks preceded the two wars often mentioned here and, unless you've been living under a rock in the past 14 years, you should know that the I war had nothing to do with Sept 11 while the A war was mostly a knee-jerk reaction to said attacks. Both shameful mis-uses of the US military resources and complete failures by any metric.
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Interesting theory, that.
Oddly enough, a quick check shows that the Democrats controlled Congress during the only part of Clinton's Presidency that the deficit increased.
The deficit began decreasing pretty much as soon as the Republicans took over...
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You are aware that budgets take effect the *following year*, right? The US fiscal year X starts in October of X-1.
The 103rd Congress was elected in November 1992, convened in Jan 1993, so they had input into the FY 1994 and FY 1995 budgets. In FY 1994 the federal deficit went down by 52 billion, and in FY 1995 the federal deficit went down by 39 billion. This means the deficit went down by about 20% in both the 103rd Congress/Clinton budgets.
But to be fair to George H.W. Bush the deficit was already comin
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Bush did a lot wrong, but the economy wasn't one of them.
Are you counting things like the Iraq war from the economic perspective?
Re:Can he win? (Score:4, Informative)
Here we go again. The deficit from Clinton's years was due to Republican Congress setting the budget.
Then explain why it is that the first year Bush is elected, with that SAME republican controlled congress, they pissed away a projected 5.7 trillion dollar 10 year projected surplus? The last 4 years of Clinton budgets resulted in: 1998 - $69.3 billion budget surplus, 1999 - $125.6 billion budget surplus, 2000 - $236.2 billion budget surplus, and 2001 - $128.2 billion budget surplus; the first four years of Bush's budgets...with that same republican controlled congress... netted us this: 2002 - $157.8 billion budget deficit, 2003 - $377.6 billion budget deficit, 2004 - $412.7 billion budget deficit, 2005 - $319 billion budget deficit.... and it only got worse from there.
A 5.7 trillion dollar surplus over the next 10 years would have come very close to eliminating ALL US debt... instead, Bush and the rest of his party of fiscal irresponsibility chose to ignore the debt, and give (most of) that money to the wealthiest.
Bush did a lot wrong, but the economy wasn't one of them.
Bullshit. Pure and utter bullshit. Two wars paid for by deficit spending, tax cuts that wiped out our surplus and transferred even more deficit spending directly to the wealthiest, and a massive unfunded (yes, MORE deficit spending) give-away to big pharma. There wasn't a thing Bush touched involving the economy that he did fuck up like a 5 dollar whore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.... [nytimes.com]
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10... [nytimes.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
You guys are so transparent. The same old mistaken arguments every time, yet you ignore any bad news from 'your team'.
Perhaps you should be looking in the mirror when you say that. It would take a fucking idiot to not see the damage Bush did to this country.
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They held the line on his spending. Welfare reform was a big part of it, but also just generally not letting him buy votes with giveaways. (Unlike the current GOP when facing Obama's spending.)
The tech boom was the other thing driving the surplus, and after the bubble burst that source of revenue disappeared, as I said.
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No, you can thank increased tax receipts due to the dot-com boom. Government had damn near nothing to do with it.
He's also an interesting candidate for this (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:He's also an interesting candidate for this (Score:5, Insightful)
I could certainly see myself voting for Bernie Sanders. And I tend to vote conservative. I would rather have an honest socialist in office than a chameleon who claims to agree with me.
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The problem is that no leftist/socialist/whatever would vote for that unless their guy has the headliner. You would have to let them get top-billing, with a guaranteed libertarian presence in the administration.
My sig isn't just for laughs, after all.
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Rand Paul is just more of the same. He pays lip service to liberty.
Sanders, on the other hand, might actually believe what he says. It certainly looks like it, all the time.
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This kind of reminds me of the interest Ron Paul generated a generation ago among some liberal-leaning voters.
Even if you're generally a straight-line party voter, if you have a brain you don't agree 100% with the party line. In a two-party system you have to make do with whatever centrist mush the least objectionable party is serving up. So when someone comes along who declines to squeeze himself into one or the other mold, he's bound to say a lot of things that people who really don't agree with him ve
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I'm generally in favor of free market capitalism, but sometimes I'm not sure that's what I'm seeing right now. I also think that problems arise when revenue and profit become the number one goal, especially at the expense of the products and services that are supposedly being sold for that revenue and profit.
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The free market is ultimately self-destroying - a monopoly is a very stable situation. Once one company achieves dominant status there are all sorts of underhanded tricks they can use to beat back any smaller competitors. Exclusive deals at retail or on raw materials, selling at a loss to undercut a competitor on price until they go out of business. If you don't limited that freedom a little with regulation, it ends up being not free at all.
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There s debate as to whether a Free Market can ever truly exist at all. To fulfill the definition, in a Economics sense, you need things like instantaneous information spread all across the market. In addition if you look at the NYSE, often touted as approaching an dealized free market, you will find it covered by three layers of regulation; the exchange regulations and by laws, the NY state regulations, and the SEC. So it seems you can't even get close to a free market with out regulation and government in
Re:He's also an interesting candidate for this (Score:5, Informative)
While he calls himself a democratic socialist, I'd think more in the vein of Scandinavia and less of a Marxist dictatorship (ie, in Soviet Russia...). He's not anti-capitalistic, but he is anti-crony capitalistic. The difference is important-- he thinks that without government maintaining a fair playing field, those who have economic and political advantages will further tip the scales against those who don't.
To say he's not a capitalist though is misleading. He wants a free market, but one that works for all and isn't consistently being rigged by those who accumulate more power/wealth in a feedback loop of wealth leads to power leads to advantage leads to wealth leads to power leads to advantage leads to wealth ad infinitum as we have in our current U.S. system.
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To say he's not a capitalist though is misleading. He wants a free market, but one that works for all and isn't consistently being rigged by those who accumulate more power/wealth in a feedback loop of wealth leads to power leads to advantage leads to wealth leads to power leads to advantage leads to wealth ad infinitum as we have in our current U.S. system.
The think is, the current loop needs the government to keep it going. Making the government a bigger player in the loop does not mean the loop is destroyed.
The government has been able to destroy wealth/power/advantage loops in the past. But lately, they just raise the costs of maintaining them.
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Making the government a bigger player in the loop does not mean the loop is destroyed.
But it doesn't mean it's not either.
Most of Europe demonstrates that you can achieve a stable free market by having the government in the loop.
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And those markets actually benefit a wider portion of the population. Economic mobility is far greater in many parts of Europe than in the US.
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What kind of Socialist is very important. Sweden-socialist, or Venezuela-socialist, or Great Leap Forward socialist, or Pol-Pot socialist? Only one of those four flavors can be claimed to work at all.
Re: He's also an interesting candidate for this (Score:2, Interesting)
There is nothing "free market" about corporate welfare, off-shore bank accounts, tax loopholes and bank bailouts.
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Republicans aren't interested in free markets. Just look at how they push bills to ban car manufacturers from selling cars directly to consumers, so that they can prop up the antiquated independent dealership business model.
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I always enjoy posts like this. Please tell me one thing. If the Democrat party advocates national health care, pro-choice, pro-union, racial equality and justice, gay marriage, college tuition support, market regulation, and all their other policies (not that they all get implemented), what do they have to add to that list to get on the left side of the political divide?
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Thank you for your response.
Bernie Sanders (any real shot at winning?) (Score:4, Interesting)
Just a personal opinion, so take it for whatever you think it's worth. But IMO, Sanders is more of a campaign disruptor than a serious contender for the next presidential election.
He's known as a political "Independent" but as others have already noted, he's more of a Socialist really. I see some value in him wanting to bring up the H1-B VISA issue, but primarily so it encourages the other candidates to debate it.
I also hear quite a few comments from those supposedly disillusioned with "free market capitalism", so some of these people will surely find Sanders an interesting alternative. I find that quite unfortunate though. Personally, I'm still pretty firmly convinced that free market concepts really never got a fair shake in the U.S. in the first place. So often, we're sold that label while reality is quite different. Heck, I was just debating the whole issue with a friend of mine last week about the deregulation of the power companies and the disaster that created for California. He used it as a prime example of why free markets aren't really viable or desirable. I countered that actually, that was FAR more an example of fraud than anything else -- a problem that transcends politics or the type of marketplace you're working with. In fact, much of the scamming going on with all of that was only made possible because GOVERNMENT was still expected to make payments towards keeping the infrastructure working! (They had legislation in place where government would start paying out money whenever the utilization of the power lines went above a certain percentage of their maximum capabilities. Therefore, crooked businesses like Enron would create false entries, reserving utilization that was never really happening to fake capacity limits being hit and profit from the govt. funding that was theoretically going to upgrading that infrastructure.)
Time and time again, this is what I really see happening.... People get frustrated or disgusted at something that supposedly happens because of a lack of governmental controls. But a closer look makes you realize it was only due to government interference or control in the FIRST place that the scenario was set up. The net neutrality debates would probably be another example of this. Sure, we need government to step in and tell Comcast, "No! You can't merge with Time Warner!" now. BUT that scenario was QUITE unlikely to have ever happened in the first place if broadband internet service was handled in the private sector in the first place, minus govt. regulated monopolies getting preferential treatment when the services were first getting built out.
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I'm still pretty firmly convinced that free market concepts really never got a fair shake in the U.S. in the first place.
until someone figures out how to make sociopaths act honestly, the free market will always be doomed to be governed by anti-competitive behavior.
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Re:Bernie Sanders (any real shot at winning?) (Score:5, Interesting)
He calls himself a socialist, but most self-avowed socialist wouldn't consider him one because he doesn't favor compulsory worker ownership, production for use, or any of the usual socialist agenda. He's basically what in Europe would be called a "social democrat" -- pro welfare and collective bargaining within a capitalist production system. He'd fit in with the old UK Labour Party or the contemporary Scottish National Party.
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No, that is not it. If he'd call himself European style, he'd call himself a social democrat, not democratic socialist. It is not the same.
Counterexample, plenty of private power (Score:2)
Private power companies don't work because they don't add value.
That is kind of a ridiculous statement. If nothing else they can add value simply by producing power cheaper than other companies, or provide power where public utilities will not.
There are private power companies in the U.S. you know... if they "do not work" how do they exist?
Re:Ah Free Market Capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
Within 400 yards of my front door is a hydro power plant owned by a paper mill. That power plant is one of the main reasons the paper mill is one of the few remaining mills in New England. Big value added to my town. Private power companies are continuing to be created these days, offering cheaper or "greener" power than existing companies, fueled by the sun, natural gas, water, biomass, wood chips, etc..
Complete non sequitur and contrary to fact. Everyone needs food, you want to buy it at GUM? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUM_(department_store) [wikipedia.org]. Most people want cars, do you want to have to buy a Trabant? Everyone needs shelter, do you want to live in a "project"? Everyone needs clothes, do you want to be limited to what the government supplies? (Good luck if you need orthopedic shoes.)
Government control allows the appointment of political hacks to jobs that they're not competent to perform. Fortunately, they often don't bother to show up. There's no pressure to control costs; there's no pressure to perform maintenance, there's no financial motive to hire competent or productive people. Why be safe? Are your customers going to sue a government power company in government court? Even if they do, even if they win, who in the government cares?
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The way I see Free Market Capitalism is this: When have you ever had a difficult problem that got better by leaving it the fsck alone?
I think this is the core question. The answer is that these problems happen all the time. For example, there's a large category of perceived problems which aren't actual problems. For example, your claim that power companies don't "add value" when in the next sentence you state exactly the value they provide - power that _everyone_ wants. Since they are actually adding considerable value, the difficult problem of the valueless power companies is easily adverted by not having existed in the first place.
Se
I WISH he was a candidate (Score:3)
The funny thing is, he is the liberal democrat that the conservative majority in this country always try to paint every other democrat to be. I would love to see what they would do if he actually gained power beyond his seat in the Senate.
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Nader got fewer votes from registered Democrats in Florida than Bush did. By an order of magnitude.
So no, Nader wasn't the cause of Bush's victory. Gore's terrible campaign was. According to Al Gore himself.
The One Percent will not allow it (Score:3)
Therefore, in my opinion, he just guaranteed he will not get elected.
The One Percent will not support it.
Bernie, You Earned My Vote (Score:3)
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You might be surprised...
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What, how many masochists and suckers there are. No, you can't suprise anyone with that.
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He's doubly stupid. Not only is he stupid enough to expose his bigotry, he can't even get the correct ethnic group. The majority of H1-Bs are most likely from India. India is not known for deserts (quite the opposite in fact, it has jungles and is famous for tigers). The slur he used is a reference to middle easterners, but those aren't a majority of imported tech workers by a long shot.
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India is not known for deserts (quite the opposite in fact, it has jungles and is famous for tigers).
India is a big place. It includes both jungles and deserts, including the Thar Desert [wikipedia.org] in Rajasthan, along the border with Pakistan.
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I'm on the "Lets elect someone who was smart enough to oppose the Iraq war" band wagon. Right now Bernie's all I've got. So glad we got Obama instead of Clinton.
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Don't be silly.
They are "economic conservatives." That means the thing they most want from government is that it be very very cheap, and not pay for nice things for the middle class. Bernie agrees with them on some foreign policy issues (particularly the ones where they can bitch about Obama for Unconstitutional power-grabs), but he disagrees with them on others (partricularly the ones where they bitch about how Obama's weakness is hurting America).
They ain't voting Bernie. Might give him money in hopes of
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The liberals won't like him because he's "anti-immigration" since he's an H1-B skeptic.
They also won't like that he voted against the big bank bailout.
Re:Sanders amazes me (Score:5, Informative)
but then goes for batshit insane politics that would push us back to the worst part of the soviet experiment.
Examples?
I looked him up [wikipedia.org] to see what was so crazy, and all I found was:
None of that seems all that crazy or dangerous to me
Re:Sanders amazes me (Score:4, Insightful)
by in practice, i simply mean the methods that he himself want to try
Re:Sanders amazes me (Score:5, Insightful)
Paying for them is a simple matter of raising taxes on wealthy people.
You think we can't afford to pay for health care? We're paying for it now through a combination of taxes and premiums, just in a less efficient system than what Sanders wants.
What other thing is it you think we can't afford that Sanders wants?
Re:Sanders amazes me (Score:5, Insightful)
Who would say we're worse off today than in the 1930s?
Re:Sanders amazes me (Score:4, Insightful)
we're not.
specifically because of the programs we created since the 1930s.
without those programs the 2008 shitstorm would have made the 1930s look like a damp fart.
but the programs did their job: they arrested the fall and kept money moving in the system and reduced the severity of the crash.
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Re:"Tax the rich" canard (Score:5, Interesting)
This year's deficit is about $750 billion. I think you're emboldened quote is a little out of date.
Well, I don't really think rich people should pay for it ALL. Just a lot of it.
But let's look at that math. According to http://www.forbes.com/sites/mo... [forbes.com]
the top 1% average in 2012 was $717,000 per household and there are roughly 1.2 million such households. Their income was therefore about $880 billion. Figures aren't in for last year but it's safe to say they're considerably higher.
The deficit last year was $564 billion. So yes, they could pay the deficit and have money to spare.
If you recognize that nobody's proposing that they do it without help from the moderately well-off, it starts looking not at all out of reach.
But paying the deficit wasn't even my point. If you want to nationalize health care, you do it with taxes. INSTEAD of the health-insurance premiums and all the nickel and your-whole-bank-account charges we pay now. Not in addition, INSTEAD.
Re:Sanders amazes me (Score:5, Informative)
This is an outright lie. You probably don't even realize it's a lie because you've bought into the propaganda. Every person who hold a job pays taxes including those on income. Social security and medicare taxes are NOT exempt-able and they ARE income taxes. The only way to not pay social security and medicare/medicaid taxes is to not have income, something the wealthy are remarkably good at not paying for. On top of this they pay their state taxes, including income, cigarette, alcohol, gas, sales and property along with all the other miscellaneous taxes and fees. In fact as a percentage of their income the poorest among us pay the highest proportion of their income in taxes than anyone else.
The nugget of truth that makes your lie so insidious is that the poorest among us don't pay FEDERAL income tax but they still pay taxes and they still pay income taxes. This little lie and deception allows you to paint entire segments of our society as non-contributing freeloaders and it's NOT TRUE.
All your bullshit numbers are based solely on federal income tax. They disregard all the other taxes entirely as if they don't exist and it's complete and utter horseshit. The most important fact, the one you completely ignore is that the poorest among us pay something like 50% of their income in various federal, state and local taxes. As a percentage of income they are the highest taxed individuals in this country.
Personally I'm a big believer that those people who have benefited the most from the system and have the means to support it should be the ones that have the highest burden in paying for it. That is NOT asking a lot.
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how much do they pay you to write this shit for them?
That's a very insightful way to address the substance of the matter. Obviously you're not willing to say the actual numbers or description of the situation is incorrect ... you're just mad at someone for pointing it out? I get that. But you're not really making any sort of lucid point.
Re:Sanders amazes me (Score:5, Informative)
For instance, "top 5% of earners pay 60% of income tax" is true, but entirely misleading, because we're only talking about INCOME tax. That's the people who get paychecks. We're not talking about the truly rich, who don't have to work for a living, they make their money in investments - that is, capital gains. Now, capital gains is taxed, but at a much lower rate. This is why Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. There are also other taxes that people pay, but income and capital gains are the biggest chunks when we're talking about an individual (depending on where you live at least, some states don't have an income tax and use sales/etc tax instead, so YMMV).
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"To make our health care system efficient, the system needs to be more market oriented: a health savings account started at birth with some kind of catastrophic insurance coverage. That's the only way to make it work."
That's your response to the US spending more per capita than the UK? You're incoherent. The UK has a much more socialized system that makes them much less sensitive to cost of services than US consumers.
If you want it to cost like the UK system, design it like the UK system. THAT is at leas
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'ER' Dude you are electing a representative president that is meant to implement and administer the laws provide by the senate and the congress, not fucking god. What the fuck are you talking about except typical PR=B$ hyperbole ad hominem attacks. Yeah sure, a bunch of very corrupt rich exploiting the poor laws need to change in order to rebuild the core, the middle class, but all the president can do is implement the policies provided and either do that well or do it incompetently or do it some what comp
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To the religious conservatives and libertarians who make up the bulk of this site's demographics, those things are all "crazy" and "dangerous" and "soviet-like". Especially the LGBT equality thing; Slashdotters really hate that.
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Yeah those damn legless lizards, geckos, beaded lizards and tegus need to stay out of the house.
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[LBGT] are perfectly equal already — there are no laws singling them out in any way.
Nope, there are hundreds, if not thousands of laws that single them out, whether by name or omission. There are piles of laws on housing and other things that state you can't discriminate on race, gender, age, family status, religion, and/or other factors, but very few of them extend anti-discrimination laws to LBGT. This is singling them out as one of the non-protected classes is singling them out.
Re: Sanders amazes me (Score:2, Insightful)
Such as? He strikes me as a moderate on the world political spectrum: free education, universal healthcare, strong privacy protections, support for unions, regulating financial markets and banks: all things that are considered 'normal' in the developed world. I haven't heard him ask for gulags or socializing private enterprise, although personally I would be in favor of socializing the infrastructure utilities use and allowing private enterprise to all have equal opportunity at providing services over sa
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He strikes me as a moderate on the world political spectrum: free education, universal healthcare, strong privacy protections, support for unions, regulating financial markets and banks: all things that are considered 'normal' in the developed world.
Yes, he would be considered a moderate in France, or Italy. Unfortunately, he is running for president of America, where his chance of winning is infinitesimal. But he could have a big impact: by steering the Democratic primaries sharply to the left, he may compel Hillary to take positions that will make it harder for her to win the general election. We may end up with Jeb in the White House.
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No, he would be considered pretty right wing in France, the UK, Italy, Germany, in fact... pretty much all of Europe.
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He makes a lot of very rational statement, but then goes for batshit insane politics that would push us back to the worst part of the soviet experiment.
So he's for establishing a gulag, is he? Citations please.
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I'm a pro-H1B redneck enjoying watching you nerdlings getting you jobs taken and wages debased after decades of being called racist by your lot for daring to questioning uncontrolled immigration along our southern border.
Hows that shit sandwich taste now?
You may be a troll (or may not), but you make a valid point.
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the problem is, Bernie's "truth" is poison to a free country.
No, "truth" is the poison in an unfree country, which is why he will be so vehemently opposed.
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Well to be fair the man calls himself a socialist; he's just wrong about that. You're spot on about the bailout though. It's like my Bolshie Uncle Ivan used to say. "Kid," he'd say, "nobody really believes in socialism. Nobody believes in capitalism either. It's 'socialism for me, capitalism for you!'"
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No, he calls himself a democratic socialist. That isn't socialist. It's more-or-less the mainstream "left" party in most countries in Western Europe. And he'd fit well in those parties.