wow, this is neat in the sense that for once our justice system seems to be working. but this line right here made me think of something: "If you ask the people of Chowchilla, the answer is life without parole. On one hand, the crime as planned was horrific. On the other hand, no one was seriously hurt in the end. Many people convicted of murder receive lighter sentences. On the other hand, this crime could have ended as a mass murder."

i envision the two hands being weights that will be dropped at the same time on a lever, the heavier weight will toss the lighter(therfore weaker) weight up in the air. one weight is "no one was serously hurt in the end". we'll call that one maybe 50 lbs because its A)true and B) 35 years is a while. now on the other hand "bury a man and 26 children alive in a quarry and hope to make $5 million off it, and in the subsequent lawsuit fail to convince a SINGLE(remember appealling cases) judge or jury that you had ANY intention of letting them out". if that weight isnt over 27,000 times heavier, than your outlook into the world is A)flawed and B)dagerously scary.

these men may have changed, 35 years is a long time to live in such a gloomy place as prison. but the fact remains i dont care how much it costs the taxpayer(ME), i WANT my tax money spent on keeping these types of people in jail. as noted in the thread, there are many flaws in our system of justice and such, but lets all just act Happy when it is working EXACTLY as we want it in this case

I simply think that the way our tax code was created a century ago is the reason we are so screwed today. The progressive era of American history led to the addition of the 16-18th amendments. First, the established the income tax, and for the first time the government had the "right" to look into each and every person's wallet and take a "fair" amount out. The second one was the abolishment of the way senators were elected. Prior to the 17th amendment senators were elected by state representatives and not by popular vote. and finally, these progressive minded individuals passed the 18th amendment, and for the first time americans were denied a comodity.

This isn't right vs left, its reason vs progressive thinking. All progressive thinking can be summed up in one sentence. "I am a progressive, I believe that a person should recieve something for nothing." The only problem is absolutely nothing in this world is free. charity for those less fortunate should be given freely, and not taken by force from people who truely fund everything.

those on this board that argue the rich should pay more can simply not suggest a way to do just that without adding to our overburdoned tax code. Take this example: General Electric has not payed a dime in corporate taxes in the last three years, the simple reason why is that they have an army of lawyers and payed for politicians that created the loopholes all of you guys are screaming about. a small buisnessman can not afford an army of lawyers, and therefore pays a larger percentage of his earnings in taxes than those ridiculously wealthy individuals who can get around everything. He does it simply because he's not thinking about taxes all the time like the lawyers, he's thinking about his buisness. ALL OF THIS IS BECAUSE OF THE 16th FREAKING AMENDMENT!!!!!

Here is an idea for everyone, i hope alex can read this and post it as a simple compromise to our insane tax system.

The government can only issue sales taxes. sales taxes can not excede 10% on purchases less than or equal too $500,000 dollars, can not exceded 15% on purchases less than or equal too $5,000,000 dollars, can not excede 20% on purchases less than $10,000,000. and can not exceded 25% of any purchase made legally through the united states of america.

i think that would be a great way of doing things, the government would not have the right to see how much money you make. it can only have the right to tax you on what you BUY. rich people buy EXPENSIVE THINGS, therefore they will spend MORE money than the poor will and therefore pay EXPONETIALLY more money in taxes. all staying legal of course.

the tax problem is so confusing nowadays but it can truely be simplified to what i was just suggesting. "I am buying supplies for my factory, i need to spend 50K on supply X, well, now i as a small buisness KNOW that I will not spend more than 10% on taxes." no lawyers, no four hour a sleep nights reading every inch of law to make sure you're not liable for 8 years in prison.

seems pretty fairminded to me, and while those who scream for class warfare continue their sprint off the cliff of insolvency, i want to find those willing to admit A) we need to change the way things are run, B) give individuals more freedom over their finacial lives, and C) create simple systems of governance that do not favor anyone over anyone else.

we currently live in a world where C) is openly laughed at by those with the correct connections, we have to change this with reason and not with handouts, welfare, and sob stories.

we should be a nation of laws not men, where everyone has the same opportunity to both succeed AND fail.

and for everyone who still thinks our problems and debt can be payed for by the rich, whats plan B?

youre going to first tax the rich, whos next? its the middle class, and even then we cant cover everything, so whos next?

we need to shake things up in america, i think this article is perfect for highlighting the number one flaw in our system of governance, and that is how we collect taxes.

^^ the thing that makes Ghengis Kahn a ruthless leader was the shear number of people he killed. in a time where the most technological weapon was a horse with an archer on it, he butchered 40,000,000 people with swords and arrows. one pyramid a general of his built was over 50 feet high, made entirely of heads.

however, the radical enviornmental movement today sees people as disposible too. take this ad for instance:

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/10/01/video-the-dumbest-most-self-defeating-ad-campaign-ever/

this organization 1010, has connections to nearly every government in the industrialized world, and their ad department truely didn't see a problem with what they made.....until other people watched it.

no pressure

Men usually deal with stress better than women because since we have less complicated emotions it takes less complicated means to make us satisfied, calm, anything. haha

but with college, its turning into a waste of time in this country. adding stress to a degree is the fact that jobs are leaving this country, FAST. companies are cutting back and saving cash, all entirely due to an uncertain economic future set by laws and regulations made by washington in the last 4 years. since the bailouts under bush the government has voided Private civilian contracts and they continue to do it to this day. wait for the majority of obamacare regulations to hit in 2013. companies can not print money like the government, so they are saving for future regulations, taxes, and costs associated with trade, building, and maitnence.

believe it or not, american companies are sitting on more cash than at any other point in our history, cold hard money that will not move one inch until they know theirs and their own are taken care of.

now, you can see this in one of two ways, either A) you believe that if the government took that money, it can spend it better than they can and we will have prosperity again.

or B) you understand that people look out for their own self interests, and that the money will be used when the regulations, taxes, and cost of government go down.

as for college students, here is a commencement speach made in 2010 for the future of our country, great stuff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83P11kZuMtQ

i obviously didn't proof read my comment, but the biggest mixup i did was that i put at the end, "over 40% of our corn crops are grown for food", i meant to say fuel, the link i have for that is http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/us-ethanol-consumes-40-corn-crop---gore-admits-us-corn-ethanol-was-not-a-good-policy/question-1348947/

ethonol will go down as one of the sickest, saddest, and most retarted scams in history. fully 15% of the world's corn is used as fuel, and it dosnt even cut carbon emmisions. oh, it makes a car burn CLEANER air, but not that much less, but the real carbon costs of ethonol come from growing it, feeding it, watering it, moving it, using bacteria to biodegrade it into a low octane fuel that is mixed with regular gasoline. lower octane fuels produce less power, so after all the carbon is emmited producing enough ethonol that 10% of our tanks are filled with it, it still dosnt produce as much energy as high octane distilled gasoline.

if ethonol was removed tomorrow, cars would get an average of 5 more miles per gallon, gas prices would actually go down, and the food market would be flooded with crops, litterally crashing prices. we have the technology to feed the world, its when people become dependent on government handouts that starvation becomes commonplace, the examples of this are nearly endless, when people expect and demand to get something for nothing, the whole system will slow down until it collapses.

DDT, your ideas are only persued in government by people who will promise safety at the cost of individual freedom and dependence.

^DDT, you are saying that "in the future" china will lead the world in enviornmental protection, china dosnt care about the enviornment, and they dont care about the well being of their own citizens.

china is the world's largest poluter, and since their way of life is stedily growing, it dosnt matter how many kids they abort, its only going to grow.

you are activly supporting a country that killed anywhere between 50-60 million of its own citizens in the last century, you are also supporting a law limiting population growth by killing unborn fetuses, that produces a really really really really freaking bad situation.

take europe for example, their workforce to retiree ratio is nearly 1:1, their governments confiscate over 50% of their citizen's paychecks in taxes, and STILL can not meet their obligations and promises on entitlements, thats because despite over spending, their is a lack of revenue and availible workforce in europe, due to family planning over the last 50 years. that gap in workforce and manpower has been filled by muslim immigrants, who are litterally destroying, both indirectly and directly, the culture of europe. it will be a muslim dominated continent within 100 years, wonder how they will treat the enviornment based on how their homelands look.

and now you have the other problem with population control, CHINA. since the 70's chinese families have had the one child law, and since then the ratio of male to female babies has been sharply cut to males to the point that within 20 years, there will be more than THIRTY MILLION chinese male teenagers than females, thirty freaking million teens raised in an ambitious country that praises groupthink and sacrifice for the state, yea, wonder how well that will go over if you include the fact that during their most impressionable, frustraiting, and hormone crazed years they wont even have girls to look at.

also, the reckless spending here in america has led to the largest debt in the world, we pay interest on that debt, in the hundreds of billions of dollars. guess how large china's military budget is, its a little more than half of what we pay for interest on our debt. This Isn't By Accident DDT, they are using our money to fund their military, so when china attacks and takes taiwain, which they've been salivitating to do for more than you've been alive, it will be entirely funded by the US government, isnt it ironic?

include the fact that green technology and the majority of green legislation in the world is bogus and full of SH*T. there is an acronym in the energy industry call EROEI, Energy Returned On Energy Invested. that basically means that for every unit of energy you spend in mining, processing, and moving energy you get so many units of energy that can be sold. the EROEI for oil is in the mid-high 30's, depending on the part of the world its in, coal is in the lower 30's, nuclear is around 50, and biofuel is a whopping 1.05. you support culling a population and i guarentee you'd mention food shortages, well, because of biofuels britain needs to import grain to feed its population. because of biofuels and ethonol(america needs 2 million gallons a day) over 40% of our corn crops are grown for food, and get this, it dosnt cut polution or carbon output at all, it actually adds to it.

DDT, this is incoherant and full of spelling mistakes and such, but I will provide anylink to facts I've stated, and provide any direction needed to prove what i've said is real. you have to understand that what you're supporting is not going to work

it

just

won't

work

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/01/comparing_us_states_countries

this is a cool map comparing states to countries via GDP and population, just something to ponder when thinking about the US vs the World in terms of wealth.

You know, the sad thing is, the only jobs availible for their country are pot farmers, goat farmers, soldier for a warlord, and thats about it.

In 2007, the US geological society did a survey of the mineral reserves of afghanistan, and estimate that the total reserves are worth "1-2.5 TRILLION dollars"

thats 1,000,000,000,000 to 2,500,000,000,000 worth of wealth in their ground, but, since there is no coastline, no infrastructure, and no stability, they cant even put themselves on their feat.

also, as a side note, what if america helped them build and mine their own country, using our technology and their manpower. we've done it for the last 70 years since WW2 was over in everywhere from south africa to japan and saudi arabia in between. but the sad realization is the modern progressive american liberal would say we are an oppressive empire.

sad, that the policies of freedom and progress are thwarted by those who scream bloody murder for freedom and progress.

Dude, what a freaking waste of money. Higher education in the US and the rest of the world is so screwed up. Can you post this neat little ONT from ace.mu.nu(found this site btw through this blog's links, its great)

http://minx.cc/?post=309695

An arguement I'll paste here. After providing evidence that nearly 60% of jobs people get out of college don't even require a college degree, the blogger provides this viewpoint.

"Even worse than all the money wasted is the waste of student time and the opportunity costs. If instead of spending four years indebting themselves in college, the students had picked a profession and spent four years immersed in it, they could have already put in the requisite Gladwell 10,000 hours to become accomplished in the field. And would have made money the entire time without any debt hanging over their future.

I remember one of the things that the Soviet Union always boasted about was the high percentage of their citizens had a post-secondary school education and how this made them a better workforce. Most of this was in vocational and trade studies and the average Soviet worker had something like 2+ years of post-high school training.

Well after the Soviet Union collapsed it came out that most of this training was utterly worthless - the 'trained' workers were only about 1% more efficient at their jobs despite spending three years in a trade school. Basically the state authorities were using the schools to make themselves look good and as a way to hide the real unemployment among young people. I wonder if we aren't doing the same thing."

-this is 100% correct in how freaking crazy higher education is. For two years I went to a $44 thousand a year school, my major was geology with a minor in engineering, it was a complete waste of time and money. Every nonscience class was a joke for me and the people taking them, one professor with tenure missed 14 classes in one semester, for a course that met three times a week. Another four days of that course were spent watching a movie that did not add to a single, solid point of your final and did absolutely nothing to help with your understandment of the the subject she was paid for to teach.

as the bloggers at neatorama can check, my mailing address is the school I mention. the validity of my story is only enforced with the more people you meet.

I know a TON about rocks, chemistry, physics, and sciences in general, but that is because those professors were able to make the gap between the knowing(them) and the stupid(the students). they were able to make us work harder and want to succeed. Most of these ethics classes nowadays are jokes, cruel, expensive, useless jokes.

The average college student gets out of school with about $30 grand in debt, without any realworld experience and absolutely no real qualifications to do anything. Sorry for this rant, but I assure you college education in America will pop just like housing, banking, inflation, and oil. The difference in this bubble is it is designed to take people at their most productive and active years and turn them into debt riddled, inexperienced dependents.

introspective, every single one of those circles was a nucluar bomb detonated underground. almost all nuclear tests done in NV since the 80s has been underground. that is a very large satallite image. most of our testing was done to ensure they will work 100% of the time in a real world action. what was also tested were different warhead structures and reliability models. and most of the explosions wernt even full bombs, but only fractions.

if you were to take the hiroshima bomb and blow it up in the middle of the tarmat at Los Angeles International airport, the blast wouldnt even leave the boundaries of the airport. nowadays, the US nuclear arsenal can put a warhead 25 times bigger on top of a trident II missil, launched at three times the speed of sound, and blow up a target over 9000 miles away in less than 7 minutes. i dont care what your beliefs are "I don't hide", you cant even RUN from that type of power. lucky that we live in such a great nation, which is truely one of a kind in history.

to begin a rant of how great america is, we couldve leveled every city in china when they sent troops to north korea, but we didnt. a great president stopped general mcarther from killing litterally millions of chinese civilians. we couldve used neautron bombs in the jungles of vietnam, but we didnt, we couldve, and still can, turn the entire middle east into one large continuous piece of glass, but we wont. any true empire in history (rome, britan, france, mongols, turks, egypt, aztecs, etc) wouldve used our once in all of history chance at the end of WW2 and conquered the world. instead of taking, we gave the world life after the entire world was burned to the ground.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U8CZAKSsNA

this may have been posted on neatorama. but this video created by a japanese peace activist is astonishing. the US has even allowed the british to detonate a nuclear bomb on our soil, its fantastic.

this post reminded me of this.

I can't agree with you three about wars always being useless. The number one thing that a country has a right to is to defend its way of life, for better or for worse. What comes with that responsibility is the united states spends half a trillion dollars a year making sure that our citizens arnt forced to be in the military. we are safe enough that our high school graduates do not NEED to go to places like iraq and afghanistan if they dont WANT too.

What this money goes into directly affects civilian life, just usually a few years later. half the industrial machinery has arrived due to a demand met in wartime. computers were developed at the end of WW2 to calculate artillery strikes and bombing missions. The internet itself was thought up of to provide a form of communication even if half the country was nuked by russia. Wars provide the largest catalist for government and civilian money to be used for lasting impacts. This skin graphing is just one of litterally thousands of medical impacts being implimented since the wars in iraq and afghanistan.

The number one focus for the us military is survivability. in the last decade we have placed nearly half a million american lives in one of the most hostile places in the world, yet less than five thousand have been killed. now, i agree with everyone that five thousand is still five thousand too high. but just read history and look at the pure amount of human life lost in each campaign, war, etc.

now, as keith mentioned, why does the money go to "soldiers on the battlefield" rather than hospitals, communities, etc.... well keith, during LBJ's term as president he started the war against poverty. he believed, as most americans do, that poverty is too high in our nation. and as the greatest nation on earth we should provide care for our lowely, cast outs, and others. well keith, since LBJ started that in the 60s the US civilian population, as well our government, has spend over $12,000,000,000,000 for the causes of fighting poverty.

do you think if you went to brooklyn or south side of chicago it would look any different than it did 12 trillion ago? no, it wouldnt.

now, look at the US military of the vietnam era, where 58 thousand americans lost their lives, and look at iraq, where less than 10% that number have parished. i see a big freaking difference.

this technology is truely a miracle, and we should be greatful for every advancement of medicine, whether its for "troops on the battlefield" or for the poor of LA.

I was wondering around best buy the other day and i was just looking at every pc and mac they had availible. i was there originally looking for a new pci express fitting graphics card that had at least 520MB of ram. anywho, i was wondering around the mac section, awed at the clean tables with the shinny crap and covers. and i saw it.

i saw, in my local best buy, a mac that would set you back a cool $2,400. two freaking thousand four hundred dollars.

this thing was awesome, BUT. after looking at it's specs i turned around and went through the store looking at a bunch of pc parts to see how much of bang i could get with twenty four hundred in my pocket.

after finding a nVidea graphics card that was twice as good, a 1TB harddrive with twice as much memory, a four hundred dollar pci express motherboard, a windows 7 ultimate edition, a soundcard twice as good,hundred dollar speakers, and a 30" dell widescreen. as well as two hundred bucks for spec keyboard and WOW mouse, i still wouldve had 600 dollars in my pocket.

i could by a computer that is twice as good as that mac, and still save enough money to buy an entire PS3 with a few games.

that right there is why macs are driving customers away. i can litterally spend 20 mins in my local best buy and find parts to make a computer twice as fast for only 2/3rds the cost