America works?

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Re: America works?

Postby malosaires » Thu Apr 25, 2013 2:04 am

The problem with getting this done is tied up in what Aviel brought up in another thread about the Republicans gerrymandering control of the House. The 2009 stimulus did do some good, but it was way too small, and spent way too much on tax cuts. Obama wants more stimulus (though again not nearly enough), but of course we won't get it, because any money he asks for will be taken out of the budget by the House Republicans, if not the Senate.

The problem isn't general political resistance to infrastructure spending. Infrastructure used to pass easily, because politicians generally like to be able to point to things when asked by voters what they've done, and infrastructure projects provide nice, tangible things to point at.

The Problem is that the Republican Party has decided that it's better for them to derail any attempt at governance by the Democrats and make them look ineffective than to have bridges to point at, since they've gerrymandered their way into districts where their only electoral risk is a primary challenge.

Until we solve the Problem, or the Republican base starts demanding infrastructure spending, we'll get nothing.
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Re: America works?

Postby Learned Nand » Thu Apr 25, 2013 7:25 am

I'm curious as to how the Republicans will respond (if indeed they will at all) to the ASCE's poor grade of American infrastructure. Can they really look at this and say "we don't need this fixed" when we have tens of thousands of structurally deficient bridges around the country? They'll probably just rant about the debt without considering the consequences of their actions. The tea partiers got elected on a platform of job creation and now they're deficit hawking at the expense of jobs.

One of these days I'll write a huge blog post about how people don't consider the consequences of their philosophies.
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Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

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He tested with Turing,
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and now we'll have peace for a spell.
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Re: America works?

Postby bayonet » Thu Apr 25, 2013 8:01 am

aviel wrote:
Vordr wrote:Nonsense, Aviel. We have phone coverage and TV on par with much smaller countries. The problem isn't size.

This is a good point. Now, I don't know if state-enforced monopolies are why our internet access is shit, but I am open to that possibility, and it would be great if you could find some evidence to substantiate that opinion.


I can vouch for that.... my grandmother lives in Arnold, California waayy up in the mountains where there is a real sparse population, thanks to state-enforced monopolies she finally got an upgrade from her dial-up internet to broadband 2 years ago and that is after a lot of bickering and fighting. The best internet that was available in her area till the year 2011 was a dial-up connection.
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Re: America works?

Postby Learned Nand » Thu Apr 25, 2013 8:07 pm

Yeah, well that's awful, it's just that I'm not sure that the reason we have poor internet across the entirety of America is state-enforced monopolies. Though I find it rather likely that that is the cause.
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Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Click for a Limerick
OrangeEyebrows wrote:There once was a guy, Aviel,
whose arguments no one could quell.
He tested with Turing,
his circuits fried during,
and now we'll have peace for a spell.
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Re: America works?

Postby Lindvaettr » Fri Apr 26, 2013 5:00 am

I'll mention that it's not only state-enforced monopolies, but also just free-market economics. The big corporations get bigger and squash the little guys. They don't always need the state to enforce the monopolies. They just need the state to not enforce fair business practices. It has the same effect. Very few, very large ISPs that have no real competition and so have no drive to improve.
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Re: America works?

Postby Learned Nand » Fri Apr 26, 2013 5:29 am

Honestly, if we're going to have monopolies, I think we should just let Google monopolize everything, including Internet Service Provision. I mean, they already know everything about us, and they aren't going to sell it to anybody because they're the ones who use it to make money. Basically what I'm saying is that the best form of Orwellian dictatorship would be one run by Google.
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Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Click for a Limerick
OrangeEyebrows wrote:There once was a guy, Aviel,
whose arguments no one could quell.
He tested with Turing,
his circuits fried during,
and now we'll have peace for a spell.
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Re: America works?

Postby Lindvaettr » Fri Apr 26, 2013 5:51 am

I guess. Can't we just go back to having lots of small companies? Where's a Roosevelt when you need one?
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Re: America works?

Postby Learned Nand » Fri Apr 26, 2013 6:01 am

Lindvaettir wrote:I guess. Can't we just go back to having lots of small companies? Where's a Roosevelt when you need one?

Honestly, America was never without monopolies. The courts used to do a bit better of a job making sure they didn't happen, though that's largely because we have a particularly conservative court right now. Seriously though, we've had these problems since the early 19th century. They are not likely to disappear any time soon. Which is why we should just let Google take over and stop worrying.
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Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Click for a Limerick
OrangeEyebrows wrote:There once was a guy, Aviel,
whose arguments no one could quell.
He tested with Turing,
his circuits fried during,
and now we'll have peace for a spell.
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Re: America works?

Postby malosaires » Sun Apr 28, 2013 6:47 am

I can't accept that. Obviously there have been monopolies for a long time, and the conservative court is a problem (Reagan: making our lives difficult even in death), but we did better with this in the first half 20th century, and I don't think we should accept going backwards culturally. I want a free and open internet so that we can learn and grow as a society, and so that better companies can come along. And if we give Google the internet, good things that could have happened won't

The conservative Court is another part of the problems of the Senate, and one not easy to get around, but I still think we should be working to fight monopolies, and as it seems all things at some point do, that requires us getting the republicans out of power and reforming our electoral process to take money out of politics. God help us.
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Re: America works?

Postby Learned Nand » Sun Apr 28, 2013 10:11 am

Well hopefully a conservative court member retires (preferably rather than dying). But regardless, it would be nice to have a court where each decision isn't a potentially country damaging nailbiter.
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Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Click for a Limerick
OrangeEyebrows wrote:There once was a guy, Aviel,
whose arguments no one could quell.
He tested with Turing,
his circuits fried during,
and now we'll have peace for a spell.
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Re: America works?

Postby D-LOGAN » Sun Apr 28, 2013 4:51 pm

Man, America sounds complicated. I'm not sure I could get my head around any of this stuff, I'd probably get kicked out if I was born over there.
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Re: America works?

Postby bayonet » Sun Apr 28, 2013 7:08 pm

D-LOGAN wrote:Man, America sounds complicated. I'm not sure I could get my head around any of this stuff, I'd probably get kicked out if I was born over there.


Well in my experience American politics is a lot like french food, it seems really complicated by the sound of it and you almost never get what you ordered..
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Re: America works?

Postby Learned Nand » Sun Apr 28, 2013 9:33 pm

D-LOGAN wrote:Man, America sounds complicated. I'm not sure I could get my head around any of this stuff, I'd probably get kicked out if I was born over there.

If it were that complicated, American politicians couldn't do it. And they can't. Which is why our infrastructure is shit.
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Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Click for a Limerick
OrangeEyebrows wrote:There once was a guy, Aviel,
whose arguments no one could quell.
He tested with Turing,
his circuits fried during,
and now we'll have peace for a spell.
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Re: America works?

Postby iMURDAu » Mon Apr 29, 2013 6:36 pm

It still boils down to the basic interaction between our 2 major parties.

Dems: We can work together to make America great.
GOP: Fuck that we want to make you look ineffective and that's about it.
Dems: Well we'll trust you not to, this one time, again.
GOP: LOL dumbasses.

Also as a person who drives on the highway everyday to commute to work going over a few bridges and under some of them, two of which I get to sit under while waiting to get on the highway going home from work, its a little discomforting to hear Colbert say there's a 1 in 4 chance that any of those bridges are structurally deficient.

I would also advocate an increase in federal and state education spending even if it costs tax money. Where I used to live was totally against this sort of thing. The state had to take control of the schools and busing was reduced to kids who lived 3 miles from the nearest school before that even happened. All due to people who had the attitude of "I don't have kids why should I pay a few extra dollars in property tax to fund our schools?".

Yeah if my post is gonna get changed to say "laughing out loud and too lazy to type it dumbasses" instead of what I originally posted it would make more sense to me if the person who changed it wasn't making what seems like a personal dig at me. Kind of loses the whole aura of play nice we will be watching.
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Re: America works?

Postby Learned Nand » Tue Apr 30, 2013 12:23 am

iMURDAu wrote: All due to people who had the attitude of "I don't have kids why should I pay a few extra dollars in property tax to fund our schools?".


Those are people are morons, and here's why.
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Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Click for a Limerick
OrangeEyebrows wrote:There once was a guy, Aviel,
whose arguments no one could quell.
He tested with Turing,
his circuits fried during,
and now we'll have peace for a spell.
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