TomAiello

Hey, what's the big deal? I mean it would only take two hours or so to drive the length of that stack of 1000 dollar bills, at freeway speeds. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Here's another one that defines a Trillion dollars in a way that you can comprehend: A Trillion dollars is equivalent to a stack of thousand dollar bills (a stack--not end to end) 67.9 miles high. It would take you a little more than an hour to drive the length of that stack. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

You are consistently and needlessly condescending in your replies to lots of people in this forum. There is no need for that. BTW, I am neither Democrat nor Republican. It makes him feel better if he can label anyone who disagrees with him as a Republican. I'm not sure why, but I think it has to do with a lifetime spent building up his hate for that specific group. The flipside is that anyone who throws out a particularly wild conspiracy theory, or makes an overtly racist comment, or does anything else easy to hate, also gets labelled as a Republican. That way you can always say that the Republicans are worth hating, and go on building up that internal rage, which you can retarget by branding anyone who disagrees with you as a Republican. It's classic group identity politics at it's finest. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Here you go. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Who, Kallend? Deliberately misconstruing a point just to be argumentative? Who'd have ever thought? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

But he's so dreamy... -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

OK, I give up. Which ones? Obama's own budget numbers predict that his administration will accumulate more debt than Reagan and H.W. Bush combined. Calling "he hasn't done it yet" is pretty lame, considering that he has announced his intention to do so, and laid out a plan for doing so. Personally, I'd prefer to stop before we dig ourselves any deeper into debt. Also, the "hey, the other side did it too" stuff sounds really dumb to those of us who aren't happy with either side. I don't give a rats ass if you mortgage our future to support a nice little war off in the mideast or a nice new welfare program in the US, or (in the case of W. Bush and Obama, both at the same time). I'm not giving a free pass to the other guys here. Reagan, in particular, pretty much invented the now commonplace practice of "borrow and spend to buy votes". If you were to rank the presidents since 1980 according to their debt accumulation (best, meaning least debt, first), Clinton would come first, followed by Reagan (really only because he hadn't imagined the scale we've gotten to now), then George H.W. Bush, then George W. Bush, then Obama. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Another one of those ... I've heard an audible before, and had it deliver me from ground rush. Does that count? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

It's actually well documented that this is a lie. Michelle Obama worked as in-house counsel for a for profit hospital system, earning $250,000 per year. I'm not sure what part of that she thinks is "public service," exactly. Lots of lawyers make the same decision she did, generally when they get passed over for partner (or around that time in their career), and leave the pressure cooker of corporate law for relatively easier jobs (they're still plenty of work) as in-house counsel in the private sector. I don't think that I've ever heard any of them (aside from Michelle Obama) describe this as "public service." As to the actual substance of the article? I doubt Michelle Obama has a significantly larger (or smaller) staff than any other modern first lady. The position has become something of a presidential "extender," where the first lady basically has to take on a bunch of duties because the job of running the world's largest bureaucracy only gets bigger (matching the size of the bureaucracy) with each passing year. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Speak for yourself, dude. I've got no evidence of any kind on any of those belief systems (christian or otherwise). For all I know, Ron's belief system is exactly correct. But without any evidence, I'm going with my own (atheistic) one. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I thought that was what you meant by selling your soul? Not really. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Sure it would. The JAG is offering a special--they'll pay for law school and all you have to give them is a few years of your life. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

[Dredd] I AM THE LAW! [/Dredd] -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Not just no, but hell no? The healthcare field is so full of bureaucratic over-regulation (both from the government and the insurance companies) that I'd have trouble saying there's much free market influence at all, especially on a macro level. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Anybody remember the 1992 democratic primary debates? Jerry Brown: During a single year of my term as governor of California, we created more jobs than there are people in the state of Arkansas. Bill Clinton: Uh... -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I'm not sure that you're right. Virtually every large corporation gets benefits from the system. Even if they're not getting direct cash payments, they get things that smaller businesses don't (or can't take advantage of). The system is basically stacked to favor them, largely because it was created at the lobbying behest of similarly situated corporations. How many smaller governments (state or local) bend over backward to attract big corporations? Do they ever do the same things for small, local businesses? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Yes. The problem is systemic. The system itself would have to be changed to alter the incentives. If the golden egg that everyone is lobbying for their share of is eliminated, that changes the incentives. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

No, in both cases. Anyone who wants to purchase them has a right to own them. Well, I suppose if as "capital" you count their own labor, then sure. People who work to earn things are the people who have a right to them. But that's not a "select few." It's more like virtually everyone. How are you defining the term capital? I think there is a way that every person can purchase some amount of health care (that's distinct from health insurance--the two are not interchangeable). The problems start when you begin to investigate just exactly how much health care each person is entitled to have. The argument is about whether the amount that they purchase is sufficient, or whether additional amount should be given to them. The issue is further clouded when you realize the price they are paying is actually quite inflated, and that the use of the "health insurance" system is one of the main reasons for that. By bundling together all of your health care into one opaque "health insurance" package, it ensures that you cannot accurately assess the costs of different components, and will never make a well informed, reasonable decision about purchasing health care. Then when you take the massive bundle that is "health insurance" and further bundle that in with employment, the picture gets really hazy, and people have an even harder time making good decisions. The key to controlling costs is being able to make rational decisions about care. In our current system, that's virtually impossible because all of the information needed to make those decisions is hidden from people/patients/consumers. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Fraud is a crime. It's not a regulatory issue. If someone has defrauded people, you can go after them for recompense. Piercing the corporate veil is pretty easy in that kind of case, which means you just end up recovering from the underlying people, who committed the fraud (and made the gains from it). That's a pretty good argument for having a financial system that doesn't depend on consumer confidence, then, isn't it? Use a gold standard, for example, and only allow loans that are actual backed by hard (meaning metallic, in this example) currency. The susceptibility to consumer fear is a major flaw in our current financial system. It's fairly easy to design one where that's not an issue, but unfortunately there are too many people with a vested interest in the current one, and they've bought too many politicians (who, coincidentally, handed over billions of taxpayer dollars to them--have I mentioned that yet in this post? ) -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Well, had I "crashed" I'm sure I would have gotten some scrapes and bruises. Did I mention that I ran? As in, moved my legs in a repetitive motion to propel my body forward? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Ok, let's jump to the "Jack Bauer" scenario; You see suspects fleeing the scene where a nuclear time bomb has been left. Only "they" know the code to stop the bomb from going off. The suspects are driving in an industrial area with no bystanders in danger of getting hurt by a stray bullet. Would it hurt to try to disable the vehicle by shooting at it? Only if you get to torture them for the codes afterward. Did you say there were two of them? Will I get to kill one in front of the other, in a particularly horrible fashion, to coerce him? Oh, this is going to be fun! -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

As a generalization, you're right. There are definitely counter-examples of companies that realize good people are their most important resource, and cultivate them accordingly (Google springs to mind, for example). The major problem is that the larger a company is, the more leverage it has to lobby the government for special benefits. Which means that in our current system, bigger businesses tend to be the beneficiaries of government action, while smaller businesses (the kind that tend to treat their employees better) mostly get screwed. Just to sound a bit like a broken record: the problem here is the government power that's up for sale to the highest bidder--I mean campaign contributor. Get rid of that power for sale, and you see a different sort of system evolving, one that values people more, and tends to smaller businesses rather than larger ones. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

??? I don't understand. Can you explain what you mean? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

The problem is pretty systemic. There's so much money washing through the system that it's impossible to really reform it. Which makes sense. Anytime there's a quick, easy profit to be made, there will be people trying to make it. The problem is that this particular profit is made by lobbying the government to convince it to give you the taxpayers' money. So long as that prize is there for the winning, you're going to see people spending money chasing it. It's a pretty good example of "real world" compromises ending up in exactly the opposite place of the theoretical systems on either end, with the opponents of both getting the bad part of what they wanted. Libertarians see an excessively powerful (and in some senses corrupt) government that is takes from the taxpayers and rewards it's supporters with the money. Socialists see a corporate lobby that basically dictates policy to the government, to benefit it, at the expense of the common man. In fact, both are right. Edit to add: and the pure version of either system is likely to be better than the "real world" compromise system that we have now. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

The bundling of employment and health insurance is a historical abberation (and error) created as a result of wage controls during WW II. Employers, unable to compete on price (i.e. higher wages) struggled to attract employees by offering larger benefit packages. One of the things they offered was health insurance. Unfortunately, this system, which was never supposed to last beyond the end of the war, was made virtually permanent in the mid 50's when health benefits were exempted from taxation. Here's an interesting article on the subject. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com