 |
US Debt Clock
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Cut and Paste Links: Exploited bugs and other 'you-didn't-built-that, somebody-else-made-that-happen' rights of way.
[T]he fundamental division in U.S. politics is between those who take their bearings from the individual’s right to a capacious, indeed indefinite, realm of freedom, and those whose fundamental value is the right of the majority to have its way in making rules about which specified liberties shall be respected.
[T]he problem, Mr. Raymond and other open-source advocates say, boils down to mismatched incentives. Mr. Raymond said firms don’t maintain OpenSSL code because they don’t profit directly from it, even though it is integrated into their products, and governments don’t feel political pain when the code has problems.
US Debt Clock
US Debt Clock
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
15 comments:
I plucked it from the internet.
Tortured phrasing from George Will for a simple conflict: those who love liberty versus those who hate it. The utopia crazed MUST stamp out liberty. Why? Because you can't have a utopia where there is liberty.
The fundamental divide so often referred to in American politics is bogus.
On the one hand, we've got the party of racial, sexual and ethnic grievance.
On the other hand, we've got the party of cartel capitalism.
Upon closer inspection, both parties seem to be working toward the same ends, and succeeding.
I can't find a party or a candidate that wants to, or adequately does, represent my interests. Both parties colluded with the financial industry to pull off the great mortgage/derivatives Ponzi scam.
Am I missing something here?
re: US Debt Clock, does not include $70.1 trillion in off-balance sheet debt
True enough that there is no political divide in the capitals - state and federal, but among the people there most certainly is a great divide. I see it and fight it everyday face to face with friend and acquaintances. It is real and it is huge. Both sides are convinced they are righteous, and both are right. We all want the same things: justice, fairness, freedom, prosperity, and equality. All we really disagree about is how we get there, and that is everything. When you are lost in the woods, everyone wants to get home, but there is a right direction and a wrong one. The opinions are not equal, but everyone gets a vote anyway, so you just have to change minds about methodology. It really should not be that hard once you get everyone to accept we want the same things. Too many think we don't.
What would be interesting and enlightening would be if someone would create an online calculator where you would go through a series of national elections over a period of years and check off who you voted for in each one. Then it would calculate the total cost in debt that the laws voted for by your candidates add up to. I have no idea what it would reveal, but it might change some voting patterns. The debt is the collective result of our votes together. We did build that.
Of course with the government or even with your own personal finances there are times you need to go into debt and when it can even make good sense in the long run, but a debt so large and unrelenting that it cannot foreseeably ever be paid off, continually grows, and is certain to lead to collapse is not something that you can say makes sense even if what you bought with that debt is desirable. Sometimes to survive you have to say "no" to what you want when you want it, even when it's noble. If you imagine yourself or your nation to be a good thing then keeping it sustainable is paramount.
Lem,
That photo is a perfect representation of what you get for your tax dollars. The labor was paid, material bought and used, and yet the result is worse than nothing. Now imagine the crew who laid that line down, what their pay was for the day, their expenses, their benefits, and their pension for 30 years when they finish that fine career. Thanks guys - wish I could fire you, but even though the people who pay you will be regularly reminded of your dedication and quality work, you will certainly get a nice COLA raise this year. Congratulations - you should be proud.
"The deep dignity of human decisions"
Let's aim for that.
Okay then, I'm going to defend the paint line driver on the vague notion that it's probably not possible to stop the truck and move the branch without totally screwing up the paint application.
OTOH, it's an awesome picture.
We painter types do like to jump right in without preparing our canvas, that whole preparing the surface to apply paint thing is for amateurs.
That's some pretty good driving.
I'm certain the truck stops all the time to move things or wait for traffic. Surely they don't paint right over road kill. Someone was just lazy. They didn't respect their own work or the people paying them.
Oh wait ...
"This was no boating accident."
Look, government is an obese, bloated and intrusive mess. It rarely does anything right. If you want to make something complicated, expensive, and painful, then let government set it up and run it. Obamacare for example would have been cheaper and easier to implement if the government simply paid for peoples premiums without setting up a new system to capture uninsured. The government could have set up a system with current insurers to have uninsured go to them, have the government pay for their premiums, use the system already in place and just pay the insurance companies directly instead. but nope. We have the disaster that is ACA.
Post a Comment