Dan J

Why? Who are you benefiting in the long run? Making work wastes resources and capital.

Supporting people who's jobs have been shipped overseas also wastes resources. Its better they are productive in some way than not?

If the worker does not have the knowledge and experience necessary to do the job, why should an employer be forced to hire or retain the person? You just made the best argument possible why unions have made themselves irrelevant: They can no longer provide the skilled workers that employers are looking for.

You missed the point. Employees in low end jobs are replaceable because they often don't need much training. Our economy needs these people to earn a living wage to sustain the rest of the economy.

In other words: People are inherently stupid/incapable of thinking for themselves?

That is a blunt way to put it, but in some cases, yes.

But even if everyone were trained as a knowledge worker, how many can the economy actually sustain? There is a limited demand for accountants or engineers. Right now in many fields, the demand exceeds supply, but if we expect everyone to be trained in a knowledge field, the reverse will probably happen.

Of sorts. If this company doesn't pay me what Prudential will, I'll go to Pru. If Pru screws me over on raises a few years in and AIG will do good by me, I go AIG. It's collective bargaining of sorts, without all the bureaucracy of a union.

But its only really knowledge workers that really have that ability. Your bargaining power is your knowledge and experience. Most workers are not really in this position. Any job that can be automated will or be replaced by the lowest cost of labour possible. This potentially leaves a lot of people out of work.

You can look at that issue in different ways. A worker should be competitive and better themselves as much as possible to better themselves and their standard of living. However, not everyone will have the opportunity to do this, and even knowledge workers depend on a strong consumer economy to buy the products they create.

Lets not forget unions either....

Lets go back to the era before unions, when America was great. 80 hours, 7 days a week, getting paid just enough to buy from the company store and living in company provided housing, and working in very unsafe conditions. Weekends, living wages, workers rights are all communist.

am i eligible for student loans once i arrive there?

i am on cr1

another thing i want to know is how to get an international drive permit from egypt to use in CA.

i already googled and was not able to get any info.

Yes you are eligible for student loans. What you can get and what types of loans you will qualify for depends on your income, assets and credit worthiness. You should at least complete the FAFSA process to see what sorts of subsidized loans you might qualify for. However, in the US, student loans are the only type of loan that you cannot discharge with bankruptcy. Be careful how much you take on.

Each state has its own licensing laws, and they may or may not recognize drivers permits from other countries. You may have to go through the permit licensing process in California to be able to drive in that state.

17% of 300 million is 50 million. Are you claiming that 50 million people are uninsured?

Even Obama is using a lower figure of "30 million" (which is probably too high since politicians

tend to exaggerate facts somewhat.)

Your mixing up the numbers. 30 million is the number of uninsured that the proposals were expected to help. It was never suggested that it would help everyone get coverage.

Although you would have to pay a tiny fine if you chose not to get coverage. Which is still cheaper than buying coverage for many.

Who's "we"? California?

The US overall.

Why are they increasing their premiums by that amount?

Its a combination of boosting profits, and healthy people leaving the insurance pool because its too expensive.

Probably. Why risk it? Seems like we have a plan in place for people that do not have health insurance. Why do we need to overhaul everyone else's because of 10% of the population (probably less than 10% if we do not count illegal aliens) ???

"We sre spending the money anyway's, let's just let the government control all of our health care" is not a good argument. I prefer to pay the way I do now and keep the government OUT of my business.

We are at about 17% percent without insurance. We also have another 20% or more people who are under insured, but with deductibles they cant afford, or just without sufficient coverage.

When we have Wellpoint in California raising rates by 39%, those numbers will just keep growing.

Illness prevention is a myth.

In reality, emergency treatments (once in a blue moon) cost less than routine care (all year round.)

The CBO has confirmed that preventive services cost more than they save.

In some cases yes, if you screen the entire population for particular risk factors, it can be more costly than treating the few cases that result out of not screening.

If you can narrow down screening to just the high risk populations, than it can be worth it. Which is difficult to do in some cases.

Brits to throw a Boston tea party in Brighton

By Kerry Picket on Feb. 25, 2010 into Water CoolerSubscribe

Our Founding Fathers would have never thought that over two hundred years later, British subjects would be throwing a "Tea Party" after being inspired by American activists overseas who demanded smaller government from their own policy makers in Washington.

The Freedom Association is sponsoring a tea party event this Saturday in Brighton. Their website gives the following information:

Join DANIEL HANNAN MEP at the Brighton Tea Party at 5.30 p.m. this Saturday 27 February at the Best Western Hotel, 143-145 King's Road, Brighton BN1 2PQ

The event will take place on the Conservative Party Spring Forum fringe, but is outside the secure zone, so all members of the public are very welcome to attend. Admission is free. Tea and other refreshments will be available at a small charge. Cash bar.

The Tea Party Movement in the USA has demonstrated the huge scale of public opposition to excessive taxation. In the UK, tax is much higher and, in addition, British membership of the democratically unaccountable EU raises the issue of "no taxation without representation". From the Boston Tea Party to the Brighton Tea Party, it's time to demonstrate our opposition to excessive taxation.

See you there!

Mr. Hannan is the same MEP who gave the famous tongue lashing to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown last year and became a you tube sensation.

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It's a great bit of speech making but, I think it is too late.

http://washingtontimes.com/weblogs/waterco...party-brighton/

The only thing the modern tea party shares with the tea party of the past is the name and name only.

The original tea party was to protest taxation without representation. Today's tea party is to protest everything from supposed excessive taxation, to czars in the white house, to Obama being a muslim. In other words, the tea party is mostly a manifestation of conservative frustration.

Please, Americans aren't exploited as many make them out to be. A Wal-Mart employee actually does pretty decently compared to many other 'minimum wage' jobs. Hell, most Wal-Mart employees make a little more than minimum wage even.

You mean horrible companies like Best Buy who pay more than minimum wage and train their employees very well in the electronics world? That offer stock options to their seniors and supervisors for FREE.

You mean horrible companies like Costco where the starting wage at minimum is $10 an hour in most areas.

The only corporation that I know of that actually treats its employees and is unethical in their business practices and isn't some 'stereotype' enhanced by rare cases is Macys... You want to see a company that doesn't take care of their employees at all and has the most expendable ones, it's them.

Walmart doens't really pay for health insurance that is worth a damn. If you are making only 20 to 25k a year, how the hell do you afford a $4k a year deductible? A lot of their employees don't even sign up for it, or Walmart tries to hire people who get insurance through parents or spouses.

How useful are stock options when you are worried about how you are going to pay for next months rent, or buy next weeks groceries? Best buy does a pretty horrible job training, with the exception of the mobile department, which is not actually run by best buy, thier employees are the laughing stock of the computer and electronics world. Very few of them actually know what they are talking about.

In what city is $10 an hour a good wage? Maybe if you are still living at home for free with parents, but who wants to live a life like that? $10 might be ok in a small town well outside of a metro area, but Costco does not open stores there.

What part of child care spending do they mean? If you consider all the spending on early childhood education and childcare it comes out to around $25 billion with the largest chunk of going towards education programs.

How many people use reusable bags when they go out shopping?

When i go to Cub foods, which is a big supermarket chain here in Minnesota, we are often the only ones with reusable bags. At Trader Joe's people using reusable bags is much more common.

We need to get away from plastic, but i don't think people are going to do it themselves. Either a retailer needs only make reusable bags available like IKEA, or we need to make plastic bags cost enough to use, that people will be encouraged to change their behaviour.

I think you will find that pretty much every other civilized first world country does not permit the propagation or access to numerous questionable things that are freely available here.

The thought that anything on the net like children being abused, graphic photos or videos of people being killed, instructions on carrying out illegal actives etc should be accessible by all, is lunacy. Certainly not what you would expect in a civilized and educated first world country. That is not what I am arguing anyway. My point is that those nations that restrict such filth, support their police over the so-called rights of criminals, and don't allow some ACLU to call the shots, also have a higher quality of life. Countries have choice, they can either go down the libertarian / third world / US style of do as you please society or they can use a modern yet realistic approach towards a society, evidently the majority of the first world has chosen the latter. I'm not saying at all that the US should follow anyone, however, don't deny which approach is delivering the goods.

Everything is evil or bad to you.

http://www.refused-classification.com/Games_A-Z.htm All the games that have been refused classification in Australia. Under the prosed internet filter for Australia, any website that hosts content related to any of those games would be subject to being blocked. Which is just about every single gaming site out there. Along with a bunch of e-commerce sites that might sell those games to audiences outside of Australia. If its all to protect the children than anything might be justified.

The government does not need to go out and actively filter all the content you have trouble with. Most adults will not go seek that kind of content out. Those who do, have psychological problems that are not going to be solved by an internet filter.

As much as you hate civil rights, the ACLU does not call the shots. But the ACLU and other organizations like them such as the EFF, do challenge the law when it might be violating the civil rights of citizens. Those challenges are fought out in court, and sometimes they win, sometimes they don't. But i suppose you would rather not have that, and let corporations and corrupt politications call the shots on what should be legal and illegal. There is a story this morning about a US lobby group trying to make using open source software equivalent to piracy.

I don't agree with that at all. It's honestly laughable to think that legal systems abroad are anything close to that of the US. No ACLU group gets to influence public policy in Australia as they do here. They're allowed to voice their opinion, but that is about it. They sure as hell are not permitted to sue a school for millions solely because they 'disagree' with something and feel it's 'unconstitutional'. Heck, I had not even heard of that term used prior to moving here. Sorry but that is not a democracy. Rather than decisions being made behind the closed doors of courtrooms, we the people decide our country's fate in Australia. Furthermore, we don't even have a bill of rights yet are still ranked second in the world, as the best overall country to live in, judged by the world.

This attitude towards the world is my biggest pet peeve with this country and a good reason why so many things are they way they are. Many here just don't have any common sense or deductive reasoning to ponder that if our approach is so great, why does no other country use it? Why are we not winning any international accolades for it? etc etc All I hear is denial and excuses; or my favorite, the 'you're being anti-America / get out' rhetoric.

Which is why the internet censorship is being expanded to include any site that hosts material to anything that has been refused classification. Which includes quite a few mature video games.

I guess playing a mature video game is a crime of some sort, so you would be all for it.

You also don't have some sort of ACLU crying murder regarding rights and amendments in Sweden. The police also have the power to do their job in most other countries.

Police should be there to uphold law and order. Police should not be required to walk around with lawyers, in order to insure they don't use the wrong color pen when filling out a form, which would result in a case being thrown out of court because of a technicality. It's just bizarre to me that Americans prefer to allow criminals roam freely, than police be given the tools necessary for them to do their job. People seem to forget they are dealing with criminals here, rather than some honest Samaritan that works at UNICEF.

There are civil rights groups in just about every country. Most developed countries do a pretty good job protecting civil rights and may not need a group as aggressive as the ACLU to defend them.

We do have the right for an accused to be considered innocent until proven guilty. But for you everyone is guilty of something unless proven otherwise.

Not true. Police DUI checkpoints work well in AUS and are quite effective in catching drunk drivers. The police can and will setup a checkpoint at anytime, at any place, and will usually pick random places that are inconspicuous to drivers. Furthermore, they have police patrolling the area just in case some get word and think about taking the backstreets or decide to u-turn.

It's interesting you raised this point as when I speak with police here, I am amazed to find out the red-tape they have to go through. They are still not allowed to check for alcohol without probable cause. Many still carry out a range of manual tests, rather than use a breathalyzer, as do cops in Australia. Not to mention, they also have on-the-spot saliva drug tests; which test for a range of amphetamines. You won't find anyone complaining about this there, as they'd rather be inconvenienced for a few minutes, than end up dead or in rehab for months because of some drugged up driver.

It's like everything here relating to law enforcement. First off, it's clear that the power rests in the hands of the criminals, particularly organized crime, rather than 'we the people'. Next you will hear that the war on this and that has failed, when in reality what has failed is the tools and approach used to defeat it. Furthermore, Police are clearly portrayed to be the bad guys throughout America, therefore, even on a psychological level, they are made out to be in the wrong rather than be supported.

What do you guys think this does for morale? How effective would anyone of us do our job if the people we work for told us daily that we're a piece of ######?

Police are suppose to be servants of the people. but with too much power, they become the bane of the people.

You can easily reduce drunk driving by making the consequences of drunk driving much more severe. In Sweden, it is illegal to have a BAC of .02 or higher, and a BAC of .10 will result in a punishment of 2 years or more in jail. Compared to the US, Sweden has a fraction of the traffic accidents that we do.

Handing over your problems to the government to fix will not solve most problems.

Neither will private companies, so i guess we are just screwed no matter what we do.

I'm 53 years old and a lot of my old peer group that were liberal hippie types in the early 1970's came to their senses when they finally got out into the real world. I see a lot of my old high school classmates of that ilk that now proclaim their conservatism on their Facebook profile.

I will admit I was the same and have grown considerably more conservative in my views as I got older. Although I'm skeptical of government in general and refuse to align with any party because I don't trust any of them.

I think you are putting too much weight on individual political values without acknowledging that the values of a particular party changes over time. What it means to be "conservative" in the future will probably be a bit more liberal than what it means to be "conservative" today.

You glossed over some stuff here, there is the rebellious teenager but there is also the never ending stream of teenagers and college kids that want to fix the real world and dont realize that it takes real world solutions to fix real world problems and it doesnt always leave you with that warm fuzzy feeling there looking for, upon growing up they start to see the big picture and realize that the problems are more complex and not everybody is going to win. I believe thats why some kids turn to conservatism when they grow up.

Just cutting taxes is not a solution that will solve a lot of problems.

I have more info. I called the USCIS here in the US and they said basically its in Jakarta's hands now. They said the May 25 deadline cannot be extended and she must get the visa by then; at which time a new 90 day clock will start meaning we must marry here in the US within 90 days. Believe me, that part will not be a problem. She emailed Jakarta embassy about what they want (as of now she has not recieved packet 3 in the mail yet) and they said among other things they want the 2008 tax return, not 2009. Now, I am completely confused, as I was under the impression that the current year(2009) was what they wanted. 2009 was better for me than 2008, I would much rather use that. I am self-employed. I do have assets. Anybody have recent personal experience with the Jakarta Embassy? Please help us.

Provide both years. There is no harm in providing extra documentation.

He probably wasn't the best person to take on the issue. As an already polarized political figure, and ended up making the debate more polarized than it should have been.

Most of the opposition is not based on any science, or if it is, the scientific argument is pretty weak and or produced by unqualified or biased individuals. Its driven by an business to create enough doubt to derail any legislation that would shift the environmental costs of doing business onto the businesses themselves. Since science education in this country is poor and most people are incapable of seeing beyond their own circumstances, this sort of thing can persist.

Paying for the environmental cost of doing business = scam

I guess who cares when you probably are not going to be around to have to deal with the problems.

"When you can't get enough money out of the taxpayers, then the

political formula is to confiscate private money by the back door,

by imposing price controls on businesses. Media pundits seem utterly

uninterested in the actual economic consequences of price controls,

even though the history of such consequences goes back for centuries

in countries around the world. Those consequences have repeatedly

included shortages and quality deterioration -- which can be matters

of life and death when it comes to medical care. But who has time to look

up facts when there are exciting political strategies to chatter about?"

-- Dr. Thomas Sowell

"Asking liberals where wages and prices come from is like asking

six-year-olds where babies come from." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell

http://freedomkeys.com/pricecontrols7.htm

Just study your history and see what Nixon's price controls did to the economy.

Its sucks when you can't gouge sky high profits any longer doesn't it?

A business can still succeed with price controls, It just creates more incentive to be efficient. Without some sort of price pressure, the incentive just is not there and it will never happen.

I really don't expect competition to solve it in this case, as up to now, there is very little competition in the health care market. Between the anti-trust exemption and the lobby power of the health insurance providers is probably not going to change.