News Stories

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by Mystique

Actually Don, the thing that surprised me the most is that only 1 dude in south London got shot. The thugs didn't have guns, that perhaps was the biggest, luckiest thing to have happened in all of this despite many people sadly turned homeless and have lost their livlihoods...

Isn't it great that we have Gun laws? Imagine if all these guys managed to get their hands on guns. As it is they don't usually have the wherewithal to ever go to the bother of trying to get one. They probably wouldn't have the means(or intelligence...) to smuggle an illegal weapon.

If any on you met Chavs you'd know why it's so important to keep guns out

[GundamFan0083]

Appeals court rules against Obama healthcare law


http://ca.news.yahoo.com/appeals-cou...171829777.html

[cors8]

Getting rid of the individual mandate wouldn't make much of a difference since the costs still get passed down to the rest of us anyway.

[Endless Soul]

Originally Posted by FateAnomaly

I don't think your 1 pen can stab multiple groins at the same time.

That's why they're sold in packs.

[SaintessHeart]

CEOs and tea partiers:
Shut up and pay taxes

FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) — As I sit here in Germany’s financial capital, a few hours by train from where my forbearers set out for the United States a century ago, I’m remembering what antitax Americans are forgetting: Living in a stable and free society that supports economic initiative isn’t a given.

Those who think that U.S. corporations and wealthy individuals already pay too much in taxes and get too little in return are taking for granted social order and economic opportunity. Keeping the peace costs money, and paying police, fire and other emergency personnel requires tax revenue. Just ask U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, whose plan to make substantial cuts in London’s Metropolitan Police budget now looks ill-timed, amid pictures of looters making off with stolen goods.

U.S. corporations benefit every day from operating in an environment where bricks aren’t flying through windows and gunshots aren’t going off in parking lots. Civil unrest can be expensive, as executives at Sony Corp. SNE +0.01% learned this week after its London warehouse went up in flames.

Billionaire investor weighs in on the fluctuating market and says he’s investing in volatility. Cuban also says "buy and hold is a crock of $%#!" that patent law stifles creativity, but won’t address the NBA lockout.

It also costs money to educate a workforce, something that also seems glossed over by those who want to slash money for federal education grants.

When I first arrived in Germany, people asked me whether the news they saw on TV is true, that “everyone in the United States is lining up for food stamps,” as one Frankfurter put it. Their questions were a reminder that even though Germany’s tax burden is higher than that in the United States, its economy weathered the global recession of 2008-09 better than America’s did, and its unemployment rate today, at 7%, is significantly lower than ours at 9.1%.

People like Grover Norquist, who claim that high taxes are the root of all our economic problems, have no answer for facts like these.

Those who want to lower business taxes often say that the U.S. corporate tax rate of 35% is higher than the 25% average of the world’s developing economies. But that argument ignores the long list of tax loopholes that allow U.S. companies to pay much lower rates in actuality.

Go down the list of second-quarter earnings reports for companies in the S&P 500 Index SPX +0.53% , and stop when you get to one that paid 35% of earnings. That might take a while.

What the United States needs isn’t more tax cuts, but tax reform to eliminate the many loopholes that create an uneven playing field.

Given the sluggish pace of U.S. economic growth, perhaps such reform could include a tax on the enormous amounts of cash that American companies now have sitting on their balance sheets.

Nonfinancial companies in the S&P 500 are sitting on more than $1 trillion in cash right now — an absurd amount given that many of those same companies are laying off workers. Some estimates put the total closer to $2 trillion.

Forcing corporations to spend that money, either by hiring workers or paying investor dividends, would go a long way toward spurring growth.

When I hear Norquist — along with the candidates active in the tea-party movement that are too weak to resist signing his so-called loyalty oath — complain about actually having to pay for government services, I think we’ve come to take those services for granted.

I also think such whining is the exact opposite of the can-do attitude of the waves of immigrants who helped build the U.S. economy and continue to do so today. I’d like to introduce them to some of the start-up CEOs that I interview every week in Silicon Valley.

AllThingsD's Drake Martinet talks with founder Eugene Woo about merging data visualization with résumé building in his new app.

During the past few months, I’ve been writing a series of profiles on tech entrepreneurs for the site Entrepreneur.com. Neither I nor my editors planned it this way, but given that recent immigrants tend to be among the hardest-working Americans, perhaps it’s no surprise that none of the first four that I’ve written about are native to the United States.

These executives are people who, like generations of immigrants before them, came to the States and put their energy into building companies, rather than sitting around complaining how terrible a place this is to do business. They also, by the way, create jobs.

They come from across the globe: Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard of Wildfire Interactive grew up in New Zealand and Switzerland, respectively; Mikkel Svane and his Zendesk co-founders hail from Denmark; Rahim Fazal of Involver is from Vancouver, B.C.

Yet all of them came to the United States to build their businesses. Why would they do that if it’s so hostile to their efforts, as the antitax extremists claim the country to be?

The answer is it’s not. On the contrary, America’s still the most attractive country for entrepreneurs. Keeping it that way costs money — something that tax haters seem to forget.

[Decagon]

Originally Posted by Mark Duggan death: IPCC says it inadvertently misled media

The police watchdog investigating the death of Mark Duggan, whose shooting by police sparked the first bout of rioting in London on Saturday, has said it may have "inadvertently" misled journalists into believing the Tottenham man had fired at police.

Responding to inquiries from the Guardian, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said in a statement: "It seems possible that we may have verbally led journalists to believe that shots were exchanged".

...

The IPCC statement said: "Analysis of media coverage and queries raised on Twitter have alerted to us to the possibility that we may have inadvertently given misleading information to journalists when responding to very early media queries following the shooting of Mark Duggan by MPS officers on the evening of 4 August."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/au...c-misled-media

Maybe they need watchdogs for the watchdogs.

[RandySyler]

Google and Facebook face-off in social games

So now there's going to be a social network war for the best game? Interesting enough.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Decagon

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/au...c-misled-media

Maybe they need watchcats for the watchdogs.

Fixed

Originally Posted by RandySyler

Google and Facebook face-off in social games

So now there's going to be a social network war for the best game? Interesting enough.

Not new. A dotcom bubble is brewing itself anyway.

[DonQuigleone]

Originally Posted by RandySyler

Google and Facebook face-off in social games

So now there's going to be a social network war for the best game? Interesting enough.

Social Gaming is the new MMO. Anyone noticed how there haven't been many high profile MMOs released recently?

[flying ^]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

CEOs and tea partiers:
Shut up and pay taxes

... another link that complements the above OP/ED

http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/0...58761720110812

[ganbaru]

Norway names commission to judge attack response
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...77B2GE20110812
What's the probability than it end up with no real result ?

[solomon]

Originally Posted by GundamFan0083

Appeals court rules against Obama healthcare law


http://ca.news.yahoo.com/appeals-cou...171829777.html

This wasn't a huge surprise frankly.

[synaesthetic]

The individual mandate was pretty ridiculous to begin with. I liked the original healthcare bill, with the public option that would force the private insurers to stay competitive.

[FDW]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

The individual mandate was pretty ridiculous to begin with. I liked the original healthcare bill, with the public option that would force the private insurers to stay competitive.

Frankly, I'd accept nothing else but single payer at this point.

[Vexx]

The "individual mandate" wasn't some "socialist scheme", it was what the insurance industry demanded/lobbied before they'd agree to cover anyone who wanted a policy. The new law means they can't deny you because you have a pre-existing condition and they can't drop you because you actually use the service.

A single payer system could still make them a lot of money... who the hell do you think would bid on contracts to operate pieces of the single payer system?

[FDW]

Originally Posted by Vexx

The "individual mandate" wasn't some "socialist scheme", it was what the insurance industry demanded/lobbied before they'd agree to cover anyone who wanted a policy. The new law means they can't deny you because you have a pre-existing condition and they can't drop you because you actually use the service.

A single payer system could still make them a lot of money... who the hell do you think would bid on contracts to operate pieces of the single payer system?

You have a point there, still It'd far easier to control costs through a single payer system than any other system out there.

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by FDW

You have a point there, still It'd far easier to control costs through a single payer system than any other system out there.

Sorry if I sounded grumpy... yes it would because it would actually be accountable to the public. I was just annoyed because the bill got so eviscerated and hijacked.

[synaesthetic]

Originally Posted by FDW

Frankly, I'd accept nothing else but single payer at this point.

Me and my ruined teeth (genetic condition, nothing I can do) are going to have to agree with you on that one.

Originally Posted by Vexx

Sorry if I sounded grumpy... yes it would because it would actually be accountable to the public. I was just annoyed because the bill got so eviscerated and hijacked.

You aren't the only one.

[GundamFan0083]

Originally Posted by Vexx

Sorry if I sounded grumpy... yes it would because it would actually be accountable to the public. I was just annoyed because the bill got so eviscerated and hijacked.

Did you expect anything else out of our congress and President?
Wallstreet owns them, and the Fed Reserve owns Wallstreet.

If they were actually serious about creating a government health care system for the poor (since that what Pelosi billed this law as) then they should have just used the old 1778 Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen (warning PDF file) as a foundation from which to build a government program for the poor.

Basically just a sales tax of say 2%-5% on goods and services to pay for the poor.
If in fact the basic argument for government run health care is true, that being the large number of poor people using emergency rooms causing prices of health care to rise, then providing a government program for the poor seems like a feasible alternative.

However, if such a law attempts to mandate participation in such a program by all citizens in the USA, then no way.
The corruption, abuse of power, and costs will skyrocket.
Hell, the cronyism is already starting with businesses getting exemptions, 1168 companies are already exempt from Obamacare.
And on top of that, Obamacare is going to cost far more than first thought.

From Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypip...ost-inflation/

The whole thing is a bad joke...on us.

[Ithekro]

However, I am not laughing.