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 Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 7:04 pm
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Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 12:30 pm
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Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 4:06 pm
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I kind of swing both ways when issues change.
I hate goverment subisdiaries. I like america because we're supposed to be free, why the goverment mandates our personal habbits and feels the need to pay for people to eat and have medicine and prop up stuff is beyond me.
I likewise perfer goverment to stay out of buisnesses other then regulating safety and standards of work.
That said, things like homosexual marriages being illegal or destroying endangered animals habbitat or..well, OIL, never cease to get a burr up my butt, as is this bizzare belief that I've seen alot of republicans have that they where doing JUST fine.
I also hate wars. Or more how we fight wars. I'd rather they just destroy them utterly, you know, round the clock carpet bombing, the whole shabooy.
I also think prisoners should be sold to corporations whom will take responsibility with them for their incarceration, and could use them as a labor force. They learn a trade and a skill, which hopefully they could apply to society, they get cheaper employees. Everyone wins!
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Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 6:29 pm
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Most of you know me already.
If you don't, I'd describe myself as personally conservative, politically liberal.
I'm all for socially liberal legislation, but at the same time, some famous guy once said something like, "The purpose of government is to provide to the people what it is needful for the people to have, but which they cannot provide for themselves individually or in groups."
So. Health care? How's it right that people should go without treatment for lack of cash? Rather, do like France, and put blood suckers private health insurers largely out of business. And that's not even touching how disgraceful it is that people go hungry for lack of cash.
You know the city S'dom, mentioned in the Bible as a wealthy military power, that got blown up? It's now an exporter of salt, you might know? What they were guilty of, despite what most bible-thumpers will tell you, was being wealthy without bothering to help anyone less well-off. Any time that any person in our country (that we know about) goes hungry and is unfed, naked and is not clothed, homeless and is not sheltered, or sick and is not treated, everyone in the country is guilty of the same sin that led to the destruction of that legendary city.
Let's stop selling defective cluster munitions. Let's put pressure on our allies to behave properly. Let's end DADT. Let's stop working on billion-dollar boondoggles (SDI, I'm looking at you!) and put that money toward actual real priorities, like the surface Navy, forget about domestic concerns.
Let's get some economic policy that doesn't look like it was made to help the same people who hollered to be allowed to screw up our national economy in the first place, and screw everyone else.
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Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 8:34 pm
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Pixeliciousness I hate goverment subisdiaries. I like america because we're supposed to be free, why the goverment mandates our personal habbits and feels the need to pay for people to eat and have medicine and prop up stuff is beyond me.
I don't care for government mandating private things either. However, I believe that in order to move forward as both a nation and a civilization, we should strive to better ourselves as a whole, not just those who can afford it. I could try to argue a lot of points, but I'll just leave it at that. It's short and sweet.
Pixeliciousness I also hate wars. Or more how we fight wars. I'd rather they just destroy them utterly, you know, round the clock carpet bombing, the whole shabooy.
Wars of any kind are generally horrible and useless...and... I'll just try to keep this short with two videos and a link.
The billions spent on the US Military could be put to better use, such as what a book I discovered talks about.
https://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/PB3ch13_ss6.htm
The specific numbers have probably changed somewhat since the last time they gathered them, but it still is a very important read. It's amazing what such a small portion of just the US military budget could do for the entire world.
In addition, other nations seeing the US bullying other nations will be more inclined to get nuclear weapons...which is illustrated quite well in this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRLON3ddZIw
And hey, why not, another video on US policy abroad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93n-EmGknEU&feature=related
Sure is as true today as ever.
Edit: Just for fun, one more.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrbv40ENU_o&feature=related
I love Tom Lehrer.
Pixeliciousness I also think prisoners should be sold to corporations whom will take responsibility with them for their incarceration, and could use them as a labor force. They learn a trade and a skill, which hopefully they could apply to society, they get cheaper employees. Everyone wins!
Most jobs in the US are unskilled service sector jobs. I don't think that will promote a good image for McDonalds to have convicts serving you, and most people wouldn't like the idea either. Although that would make for a great delivery system for drugs!
"Sir, there's a packet of white power in my burger!"
"Oh, I'm sorry, that was for the dude with ...uh..a cold. He's got the sniffles you see..."
Just playing, but it would be -very- unlikely that these people would be employed in ways that would give them real skills. Although, I will mention that when people become college educated in prison (or was it jail?) their recidivism rate (being back in jail/prison after their sentence) drops significantly. However, this is free education and people don't like this so they prefer their convicts to be dumped onto the street with no money or skills or even a place to stay. 3nodding Somehow jail/prison went from something designed to rehabilitate people back into society into something that is meant to hold these people there 'til they die. ...At least, that's what I recall the original intent of such institution in the US being...
And this one's for Shaviv! biggrin
Shaviv You know the city S'dom, mentioned in the Bible as a wealthy military power, that got blown up? It's now an exporter of salt, you might know? What they were guilty of, despite what most bible-thumpers will tell you, was being wealthy without bothering to help anyone less well-off.
I just want to add that they were also inhospitable towards strangers. Something that many people within the US do on a regular basis towards anyone who comes from South of the border (grouped together as "Mexican" whether they come from Mexico or not). |
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Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2009 3:52 pm
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Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2009 6:18 pm
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Pixeliciousness Oh no intention of beliving I -support- wars. You'd think we'd be beyond that. You don't need to try to convince me there, my grandpa was in WW2, Korea and briefly in Nam. I came to the decission at an early age that wars are the single most horrible thing a civilization can do. That said: Look at WW2 compared to Vietnam/our current war. All we're doing is wasting money and lives due to..whatever logic train our leaders belive their following.
Ahh, that's what you meant. Okay, I misunderstood. Sorry about that. sweatdrop
Pixeliciousness The welfare state of america and..well, most of the world, is rather appaling to me. Charity is incredibly important. Belief your entitled to charity is another matter.
Well, it's not so much entitlement rather that it's an improvement for the entire population. It would be like...taking all electronic devices that have a sleep mode in the US and making them not need such a feature. Just to explain, while in sleep mode (sometimes called "instant on") the device isn't really "off" when you turn it off. It's usually indicated by TV's and DVD players with a little red light. Instead of being off, it's sucking power for either no good reason (do you often pay any attention to the microwave clock?) or for something that could be better handled. For example, if you were to unplug a TV entirely, you run the risk of having to have it search for all the local channels each time you turn it on. However, this could be fixed by including a small amount of hard memory or whatever it's called that can store information while off. The savings can be incredible.
I did a report on this for my own house...well, my room, for an environmental science class. Now, there were a lot of assumptions, but my findings were that if enough people were to turn off certain devices entirely, they could have a HUGE savings. Here's a few numbers (And there are lots of assumptions, I really want to emphasize this):
Quote: -If people did exactly what I did in my report-5 People would save 275.15 kWh $62.50 1000 People would save 55,029.98 kWh $12,496.21 1 Million would save 55,029,977.17 kWh $12,496,207 US Population (303,824,646) 16,719,463,333 kWh $68,992,500.61
-If people did even more than what I did-5 People would save 2,293.83 kWh $520.88 1000 People would save 458,766.78 kWh $104,176.76 1 Million would save 458,766,780.8 kWh $104,176,760.59 US Population (303,824,646) 139.385 Terawatt hours [ 1 Terawatt = 1 Million Megawatts ] $31,651,467,407.39
Now on to what I was getting at. My ideas of helping the entire population is similar to this. By making a small impact on everyone, you make a huge impact over all. It's easier to come up with comparisons with the environment and the problems creeping up because of the small things people do that harm the environment. However, the reverse is true too. Making good choices improves things over all.
For healthcare, having the entire population healthy helps prevent disease that would otherwise cause more devastation in economic losses (which can be pretty high with things as simple as the cold and flu since they effect so many people).
For education, its...well, harder to argue for... Having an educated population may help in unforseen ways, such as having more high tech jobs and research (and this is more of just my opinion as I can't back it up, but I noticed that more research seems to be done in Europe than in the US).
Anyway, my position is...well...broad. Probably too broad to make it nice and short. I just believe that if we help better everyone, then everyone benefits. That's the best I can sum it up to.
Pixeliciousness However, I also loath our School systems. Especially colleges, whom I see as effectivly greedy money eating monuments of inefficency.
There are ways of fixing that system outside of making it free or very cheap for everyone. However, I personally believe that the best way to do it is to make it socialized so everyone has a chance at education.
Pixeliciousness Educate prisoners? Sign me up. Make their sentance based on their grade. Then we're open up for prison school fan fics.
... xd : Sorry, I can't help but think that most of those would be adult stories.. Just my dirty mind. razz
Pixeliciousness Garek your views are well researched. You even provided some work sited. I like you. Thanks for taking the time to reply to me, and to reply so intelligently and thoughtfully:3
I did all that? >.>;
Well, thanks for replying back. I try to make it short and quick and easy to read. It's hard though when I could go on and on about totally off topic things. I sort of did it this time too, but I tried to tie it in to what I was talking about. sweatdrop |
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Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2009 7:17 pm
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Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2009 7:59 pm
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I touch briefly. People tend to get annoyed with me when I speak to much, which I do in depth, especially if I have no one to talk to! Which is frequent.
Most of my MSN and stuff are me talking 300 times for them one time, I feel like either I prattle or...anyway!
I'm going to go back to schools, briefly.
I think part of the problem is they have..well, lobbies. The whole 'you need a degree to get a job' came about because school boards stated IQ testing, or aptitude testing, was 'racist'. That was around the 70s.
Now their unions and lobbys are very powerful and they get alot of influence for 'free' education.
And colleges are monsterous, I don't even like to talk about them. its why I went to Uni out of america. Gogo Calgary~
Making them 'free' I don't know. I think simple, honest to god merit pay would work. Its what Big O wants, too.
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 2:53 pm
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Isaol-the-wolf *Looks Up* HOLY!!! eek Dang...This must be a very touchy subject.
The original was longer and I've written very very long posts before, some taking over an hour just to compose.
Pixeliciousness And colleges are monsterous, I don't even like to talk about them. its why I went to Uni out of america. Gogo Calgary~ Making them 'free' I don't know. I think simple, honest to god merit pay would work. Its what Big O wants, too.
Mine's not so bad... I guess... I would like it more if they ran things more efficiently and intelligently. It's not really a matter of wasting money as much as it's "WTF it would make way more sense to do it this way" or "why can't they just align these two events up so that they don't conflict with each other?" ...uh...just as an example, the time to sign up for the next quarter occurred during classes and particularly close to finals. I'm not sure if there were tests or not, but I got lucky in that the time I was scheduled to sign up for classes didn't conflict with my current classes. You can see how this is very annoying. razz
I also may like my college more if the major I was in had more funding and ran better, but that's an entirely different and very long story. (Basically it's just too many students, not enough funding, and [in my opinion] bad planning.)
...And the fact that I hardly talk to or hang out with anyone is a very important factor too. Don't really have a life on campus, so I don't have much attachment to there. sweatdrop
...So anyway, what's this about Oprah's magazine (It's got a big O on it!) covering merit pay? surprised |
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 3:06 pm
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 6:39 pm
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Pixeliciousness I also think prisoners should be sold to corporations whom will take responsibility with them for their incarceration, and could use them as a labor force. They learn a trade and a skill, which hopefully they could apply to society, they get cheaper employees. Everyone wins!
I don't like the word "sold", and I fear that if this were to happen, the prisoners may be treated no better than slaves.
In many prisons out there, people can take GED or college classes or even get a "job" of sorts, which pays a very tiny amount, like 50 cents an hour or a dollar an hour or some crap amount. And you would think "Why would they need money in prison" but you can buy stuff while in prison, food, snacks, tvs and cd players, clothing...
Not everyone takes advantage of the work or the schooling, and I agree with Garek about prisons not doing enough to rehabilitate prisoners that will eventually get out again, and just tossing them out on their asses. Michigan's only now starting a just-out-of-prison program which seems to be showing good success.
I also agree with getting rid of sleep mode. Maybe I should go out and invent an energy-saving TV with no sleep mode. Could make a killing. |
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Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2009 8:17 pm
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Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 6:30 pm
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Pixeliciousness And no, it would be terrible. However those people have sort of....I don't know. Drug dealers and murderers and thieves and wife beaters...
Well, you kinda lumped together several different kinds of issues.
Drug dealers get into the business only because it's so profitable. Not many people get into the business solely to hurt people. It's all about money. One way to curb this is to just have a good enough living wage so that people aren't barely scrapping by. Another way to curb this is to offer high paying unskilled jobs like they had long ago with the automotive industry. Jobs that pay well and don't require education used to exist in large numbers, but not anymore.
However, this is only half of it because other parts can't be addressed easily by legislation. A very very big component is a matter of consumption. In a consumerist society, having more comes before just about everything else. If there was less emphasis on having more, then there would be less theft and most importantly less drive for the common scenario of, "I sell things people buy, so I can buy, which drives the economy, of people buying." (I don't know how to separate that out how I want it to be, because this was in a comic strip about this subject that I can't find anymore.) Theft also ties into this idea too.
Murderers...whole other subject, that's for sure.
Wife beaters obviously should be punished, however they can be rehabilitated. It's possible that they grew up in a home where the father beat their mother, so that's all they know. It's possible it stems from being beaten as a child. It's very complex, but it is possible for rehabilitation.
Pixeliciousness I think prison should be a punishment. Something you fear. Something you -never- want to return to. I feel like right now, its a vacation with a chance of rape, apparently.
This goes into another problem I'm against which is capital punishment. If you make prison so unbearably terrible, then you reach a point where potential convicts have a "nothing to loose" mentality and thus they will do whatever they can to prevent that. It may involve suicide, or it may involve a risky escape involving shooting any witnesses to a crime they just committed.
While I do think there should be a punishment at least a little harsher than this idea, I am pretty sure that one of the early ideas of what prisons/jails would be to take away your freedoms as a form of punishment so that you wouldn't do the crime again. That sounds like more of a slap on the wrist by many today. Maybe it's because freedoms are taken and given at the drop of a hat every day, whether you're a criminal or not? Or maybe it's because people want to ostracize criminals so much from society, they're willing to get rid of freedoms in order to make crime "impossible". Though it should be noted that even in Orwell's 1984, crime still existed. No matter how much freedom you give away, it doesn't stop crime.
...I think I rambled off topic a lot there now that I look back. sweatdrop |
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Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 6:54 pm
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Pixeliciousness I feel like right now, its a vacation with a chance of rape, apparently.
I think the man-rape would be torture enough.
It depends on the prison. At some prisons and some places, it's a breeze. At others, it's like a living hell (or the ghettos of LA) with gangs, rape, beatings, and the constant fear you'll be ********, stabbed to death, beaten half to death, or tortured unless you align yourself with a gang for protection (and give the gangleader your s**t and blowjobs to be in the gang, ect). |
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