I have yet to hear a logical reason people crap on Carter...they invariably just say 'Carter, if you don't understand why he sucked, I just can't talk to you', never ' Carter, this is why he sucked'.
EDIT: If it's all about leadership, stability, and helping, you must be conflicted that Tricky Dick is republican, huh? The Bushes can't help either. It's a wonder you can stick with your party, I quit the republicans when they quit being republican, before I could vote, during Regan.
Carter provided leadership in a responsible direction, but idiots desired placation rather than leadership and didn't follow. Regan placated his base, and we nearly had a depression. Carter started us on a non-interventionist foreign policy, because he personally understood the short and long term repercussions of intervening, now we've shit in their pot so hard and long that we CAN'T just go hands off anymore, we've already created our enemy. That said, it's like a junkie going cold turkey, it hurts them, may kill them, but if they survive they have a chance of life, if they don't stop, they die soon anyway. If we could find a good foreign policy methadone, we should use it at every turn and start worrying about us, IMO. If we had not installed our leaders and otherwise interfered in the first place, everyone would be better off, but that ship has sailed (in many cases because we didn't follow Carter's suggestion to stay out, I might add).
OK, got me with Boston. Ft Hood is a lone gunman, and those stopped prove my point. I think you know I meant foreign spawned terrorist attacks, but I grant I did not say that. But then you have to admit there were other successful attacks under Bush AFTER 9/11, like the guy who flew his plane into the IRS building in Texas.
Agreed, the spread of religion is always terrible, no matter which religion, some are worse than others at times, none are good. I could support outlawing organized religion, but grant that most would not.
Obama did not create radical Islam. If anyone did, it's Regan, by arming them to the teeth against the red menace, then just walking away.
I also disagree that Obama's the 'my way or the highway' guy/side. Please recall, "You're either with us or against us" is a republican slogan. The republicans stated before Obama was inaugurated that he was already the worst president ever, and their plan for the next 4-8 years was 'just say no' to everything, even to plans they designed, but they have never come up with any alternatives, just "not Obama's way" over and over, that's real 'not leading' as opposed to the type they accuse Obama of.
4.5 years of shitty economy, but trending up, not down even then.
Where I live, jobs have been an issue since Regan/Bush 1, so I don't think you want to point that finger here.
Not true, stagnant over the last 14+ years. They certainly went up in the 90's.
Once again, Bush economics caused the recession, salaries went down during the recession/depression. Salaries are on the way up now...not fast enough, granted, but up.
Obama has NEVER been able to do whatever he thinks/wants. That is delusional. Even when the democrats had the votes to do so, they didn't, because they suck donkey dicks. Happy? ;-)
Times were better for a special few under Regan, not most. Times got better for most everyone under Clinton.
We agree on your final point, the Bushes sucked, lets build on that and not make that mistake again.

When you say .." I have consistently said Carter was my favorite recent president.." That all I need to know how lost you are with reality.

The president provides leadership for USA and for the world. The world looks to us for stability and he provider of help when others are in need.

I didn't know what to think of Ron Paul idea about being a non interventionist. Obama has lifted the hand of interventionism off Arab nations and now we have a shit storm of assassins and killers who desire to kill everyone. Everyone knows this But OBAMA who for what ever reason fails to see this world danger. Now it will take the world decades to fight is battle. Sure these might have had a shitty American backed leader but their peoples were not mass murdered on wholesale levels like ISIS is doing.

We had domestic terrorist attacks. Fort Hood shooting (13 killed) , Boston bombing, and the car bomb that was defused in NYC. Many more stopped. There will be more blood shed on our soil in the name of ALLAH. This is a world wide problem.

Obama is the worst because of this and on domestic side he is a failure because he is steadfast with my way or the highway approach. 6 years and still a shitty economy, real employment is hovering just below 10%, IF you lost you job today do you think you would be able to get another straight away at the same pay? I don't

Salaries have continued to stagnate over last 20 years but under this leadership salaries have lost 4K.

Democrats got a historic spanking this recent midterm and Obama still thinks he can do what ever he thinks. He is delusional.

Times did get better with Regan and Clinton, The Bushes sucked.



History will be the judge, we are just spectators.

This video lacks a lot of salient details.

Yes, the F35 is aiming at the A10 because contractors want jobs (something to do).

However, the strength of the A10 is also its weakness. Low and slow also means that it takes you a long time to get to your troops. Fast jets arrive much sooner (significantly so). A combination of both would be ideal. F35 to get there ASAP, and A10 arriving later to take over.

It's not really worth debating the merit of new fighters. You don't wait for a war to start developing weapons.

Yes, our recent enemies are durkas with small arms, and you don't need an F35 to fight them - but you also don't even need to fight them to begin with - they aren't an existential threat. Terrorist attacks are emotionally charged (well, until they happen so often that you get used to hearing about them, and they stop affecting people), but they are nothing compared to say, a carpet bombing campaign.

The relevance of things like the F35 is to have weapons ready and able to face a large national power, should a nation v nation conflict arise with a significant other nation. In the event that such a conflict ever does, you don't want to be caught with your pants down.

Defense spending costs scale with oversight requirements.

Keep in mind that money pays people. Even materials are simply salaries of the material suppliers. The more people you put on a program, the more that program will cost.

Yes, big contractors make big profits - but the major chunk of their charges is still salaries.

Let me explain what is going on.

Remember the $100 hammers?
In fact, the hammer still cost a few bucks. What cost 100+ bucks was the total charges associated with acquiring a hammer.
Everything someone does in association with acquiring the hammer, gets charged to a charge code that's specific for that task.

Someone has to create a material request - $time.
Someone has to check contracts for whether or not it will be covered - $time.
Someone has to place the order - $time.
Someone has to receiver the package, inspect it, and put it into a received bin - $time.
Someone has to go through the received items and assign them property tags - $time.
Someone has to take the item to the department that needed it, and get someone to sign for it - $time.
Someone has to update the monthly contract report - $time.
Someone has to generate an entry in the process artifacts report, detailing the actions taken in order to acquire the hammer - $time.
Someone on the government side has to review the process artifacts report, and validate that proper process was followed (and if not, punish the company for skipping steps) - $time.

Add up all the minutes here and there that each person charged in association with getting a hammer, and it's $95 on top of a $5 hammer. Which is why little things cost so much.

You could say "Hey, why do all that? Just buy the hammer".
Well, if a company did that, it would be in trouble with govt. oversight folks because they violated the process.
If an employee bought a hammer of his own volition, he would be in trouble with his company for violating the process.
The steps are required, and if you don't follow them, and there is ever any problem/issue, your lack of process will be discovered on investigation, and you could face massive liability - even if it's not even relevant - because it points to careless company culture.

Complex systems like jet fighters necessarily have bugs to work out. When you start using the system, that's when you discover all the bits and pieces that nobody anticipated - and you fix them. That's fine. That's always been the case.



As an airplane example, imagine if there's an issue with a regulator that ultimately causes a system failure - but that issue is just some constant value in a piece of software that determines a duty cycle.

Say for example, that all it takes is changing 1 digit, and recompiling. Ez, right? NOPE!

An engineer can't simply provide a fix.

If something went wrong, even unrelated, but simply in the same general system, he could be personally liable for anything that happens.

On top of that, if there is no contract for work on that system, then an engineer providing a free fix is robbing the company of work, and he could get fired.

A company can't instruct an engineer to provide a fix for the same reasons that the engineer himself can't just do it.

So, the process kicks in.

Someone has to generate a trouble report - $time.
Someone has to identify a possible solution - $time.
Someone has to check contracts to see if work on that fix would be covered under current tasking - $time.
Say it's not covered (it's a previously closed [i.e. delivered] item), so you need a new charge code.
Someone has to write a proposal to fix the defect - $time.
Someone has to go deal with the government to get them to accept the proposal - $time.
(say it's accepted)
Someone has to write new contracts with the government for the new work - $time.
To know what to put into the contract, "requrements engineers" have to talk with the "software engineers" to get a list of action items, and incorporate them into the contract - $time.
(say the contract is accepted)
Finance in conjuration with Requirements engineers has to generate a list of charge codes for each action item - $time.
CM engineers have to update the CM system - $time.
Some manager has to coordinate this mess, and let folks know when to do what - $time.
Software engineer goes to work, changes 1 number, recompiles - $time.
Software engineer checks in new load into CM - $time.
CM engineer updates CM history report - $time.
Software engineer delivers new load to testing manger - $time.
Test manager gets crew of 30 test engineers to run the new load through testing in a SIL (systems integration lab) - $time.
Test engineers write report on results - $time.
If results are fine, Test manager has 30 test engineers run a test on real hardware - $time.
Test engineers write new report - $time.
(assuming all went well)
CM engineer gets resting results and pushes the task to deliverable - $time.
Management has a report written up to hand to the governemnt, covering all work done, and each action taken - documenting that proper process was followed - $time.
Folks writing document know nothing technical, so they get engineers to write sections covering actual work done, and mostly collate what other people send to them - $time.
Engineers write most the report - $time.
Company has new load delivered to government (sending a disk), along with the report/papers/documentation - $time.
Government reviews the report, but because the govt. employees are not technical and don't understand any of the technical data, they simply take the company's word for the results, and simply grade the company on how closely they followed process (the only thing they do understand) - $time.
Company sends engineer to government location to load the new software and help government side testing - $time.
Government runs independent acceptance tests on delivered load - $time.
(Say all goes well)
Government talks with company contracts people, and contract is brought to a close - $time.
CM / Requirements engineers close out the action item - $time.

And this is how a 1 line code change takes 6 months and 5 million dollars.

And this gets repeated for _everything_.

Then imagine if it is a hardware issue, and the only real fix is a change of hardware. For an airplane, just getting permission to plug anything that needs electricity into the airplanes power supply takes months of paper work and lab testing artifacts for approval. Try getting your testing done in that kind of environment.



Basically, the F35 could actually be fixed quickly and cheaply - but the system that is in place right now does not allow for it. And if you tried to circumvent that system, you would be in trouble. The system is required. It's how oversight works - to make sure everything is by the book, documented, reviewed, and approved - so no money gets wasted on any funny business.

Best part, if the government thinks that the program is costing too much, they put more oversight on it to watch for more waste.
Because apparently, when you pay more people to stare at something, the waste just runs away in fear.
Someone at the contractors has to write the reports that these oversight people are supposed to be reviewing - so when you go to a contractor and see a cube farm with 90 paper pushers and 10 'actual' engineers (not a joke), you start to wonder how anything gets done.

Once upon a time, during the cold war, we had an existential threat.
People took things seriously. There was no F'ing around with paperwork - people had to deliver hardware. The typical time elapsed from "idea" to "aircraft first flight" used to be 2 years. USSR went away, cold war ended, new hardware deliveries fell to a trickle - but the spending remained, and the money billed to an inflated process.

-scheherazade

Coincidentally, North Carolina also has a state-run monopoly on its liquor sales, and NC average teacher salaries have declined by fifteen percent over the past decade.

If I were cynical, I might even say NC is deliberately cultivating stupid people as a resource.

It's always hilarious to me how the 'rich' convince themselves that they made their wealth in a vacuum once they've made the wealth, but on the way up they're right there with their hand out any time there's a possibility of getting 'something for nothing' (like tax breaks amounting to 0% tax, exemptions from regulations at taxpayer expense, use of public services they don't pay for, public education for their workforce, etc....).
In America at least, business all stand on the shoulders of both industry/innovation that came before them AND (crumbling, ignored) infrastructure paid for and 'maintained' by taxpayers (taxpayers that didn't use every possible method to avoid paying their share...and the obligation shirking industries' share as well). Zuckerberg and Gates are two fine examples of this, both their companies are built on an industry created by the government/taxpayers...computers...and also of people profiting exorbitantly from other people's work product while the actual 'creators' are salaried lower middle class at best that don't own their own creations.

Congratulations @Jerykk you now have a firm grasp of the the term 'anecdotal'.

Assuming you were in a position to be aware of all the individuals salaries in your specific situation, and they were indeed fair and as you described in that specific situation, in no way is that representative of anything other than that specific situation.

I'm aware of no study anywhere, nor even any claim that every woman everywhere is underpaid in relation to her male counterparts.

Assuming all of the above, congrats on working somewhere that pays its employees appropriately and fairly.

Just seems really odd how you'd so rapidly dismiss literally dozens of studies and yet hold up one anecdotal experience as evidence.

Take a look at the Wikipedia page on the topic. There are literally HUNDREDS of studies on this from countries all over the world. And they all show the same thing--women get shafted on salary pretty much whether they live in the developed or developing world.

It's interesting you bring up the video game industry example, because I'm sure you're aware of the huge controversy in the games industry right now about the general lack of female designers, programmers, etc. as well as the misogyny that often rears its ugly head in the industry (and among gamers). I worked in games 5 years and I saw this first-hand.

On one team I worked with we had a female programmer (the only female programmer I met while working in the industry) and she was pretty good. But you know what? These rumors started going around that she used to be a man and got a sex change. Because, you know, a woman couldn't possibly be that good of a programmer.

It has been argued before that women "choose" lower paying jobs (like being game artists, or teachers, etc.) but this begs two important questions. First, why are jobs that are traditionally associated with women paid less than those traditionally associated with men and second, can we really say women "chose" those jobs if they were actively discouraged from pursuing anything else due to societal pressure, discriminatory hiring practices, or hostility (both thinly veiled and open) in the male-dominated workplaces?

Simply by having the same education level does not grant you equal pay (unless you're working in government). You're paid for the supply and demand of your skills. There are by far MANY more men than women in engineering and physical sciences, and those fields pay rather well. There are by far MANY more women than men in veterinary and educational fields, and those fields pay atrociously.

It is indeed unfortunate if any discrimination occurs, and even if women achieve 99% of men, it is still not nice. However, recognize that nobody is particularly certain about these numbers. I see numbers ranging from 87% to 103% in this video, so our certainty is horrible. Inequality is bad, but if you're going to get particularly opinionated about it, crunch the numbers for yourself instead of letting other boneheads skew the numbers for you.

The statistics can be pulled either way by horrible analyses, and trying to compare 'equal jobs' can be hard...particularly when you factor in cost of living differences, seniority, relative success of different companies, etc. The most compelling evidence was the Yale study where identical resumes with different names were awarded different amounts of speculative money. That was the only real telling evidence that, at least among the people in that study, there is a bias towards paying women less for exactly the same job. However, the statistics can be pulled either way in a study like that as well; what is the uncertainty of the pay level for that poll? Is it random chance and statistical noise happened to end up with the woman paid less in that study? If they surveyed an order of magnitude more people, would the average salaries converge to the same value? In most polls and studies like this, the sampling size is usually quite poor, and getting such an exact dollar figure difference with high certainty is nearly impossible. It would be great to see that study to make an assessment of how much uncertainty was present for myself.

This is not as relevant as the rest of the discussion here, but an interesting addendum to the clip: the President doesn't set the salaries of White House staffers - they're set according to a schedule established by an administrative affairs body. The President has some say, though, in who gets hired to senior positions, and whether it's mostly men or women in the high-paying positions. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/14/obama-is-nudging-the-white-house-toward-gender-pay-equity.html

@ChaosEngine

A bit off-topic, but you can get access to Netflix in pretty much any country that has internet access if you use the Hola unblocker extension for either Firefox or Chrome. We use it here in Japan with my old PC hooked up to our HDTV via HDMI and love it.

More on-topic, this video is specifically addressing news--no one is willing to pay for news because thanks to the Internet and all the ways we can interact with it (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), "news"--as in just the facts--is freely available in seconds moments after it occurs.

Of course, really good reporters don't just provide the facts but also provide background, context, and sometimes insightful analysis of the situation. But I'm not sure the majority of people care about that stuff which is why hiding it behind a paywall just isn't profitable.

I don't know what the solution to this problem is. We need veteran reporters who are free to report on the happenings in the world without external pressure to change or hide facts. Someone has to pay their salary. Right now it's corporate sponsors that are ponying up. Even NPR receives a pretty hefty chunk of its funding from corporate sponsors. Like John is saying in this video, it's not really a problem if there's a wall between the sponsors and the news.

Maybe publicly funded news is the way to go? Something akin to BBC but that's legally insulated from government influence and provides "free" (you'd technically be paying for it with your taxes) news reporting.

[Hook x2]
Clap
Magic Clap

It's like a hotwire, baby
When we put it together
When the sparks fly
We'll ignite the future forever
This is the last kiss Martin ever gave to Coretta
It's like a paparazzi picture when I flash my Beretta
I got scars on my back
The truth on my tongue
I had the money in my hand when that alarm got rung
We wanna breathe fire and freedom from our lungs
Tell Homeland Security
We are the bomb

[Hook x2]

Hurry up, get in, close the do'
This here the meeting for the overthrow
Waiting on that concrete rose to grow
Doing lines that ain't quotable
Counting up all that dough you owe
You ain't sposed to know its opposable
We are not disposable
Muscle up kid
We got blows to throw
Til the folks have risen
There'll be no decision
We make the motor move
They chauffer driven
Right now we can't shine right like a broken prism
I figured out the 14th is a broke amendment

[Hook x2]

Good evening
Tonight we bring to you
Worn out streets that'll sing to you
.45 shells that'll dance to the beats
Stomachs so loud it'll cancel the speech
Checks that vanish if you blink an eye
Grace getting locked in the clink to die
A salary cap on a birth certificate
Notarized lies that burst in triplicate
Morning prayers for the car to start
A man and a whiskey in a heart-to-heart
Hope in a track suit to flash and run
While agony chases with a badge and gun
Poetry shouted from the squeal of the bus breaks
Hands in the air try to feel for an escape
Flash in my eyes like candid snaps
When we slap back, it's the magic clap

Saw in the news the Supreme Court upheld the right to restrict cover (5:4), for "closely-held" corporations based on a 1993 law that limited the ability to restrict religious freedoms.

I kind of see the logic of saying that if non-profits corporations can already avoid providing it (which seems to be the case), then for profit corporations should have the same rights. But then I don't see why non-profits should have had the right to deny it either.

Either way though, I agree with John Oliver's bit. Plenty of people would have liked to veto funding for the Iraq war but obviously never had the option. To say that religious objections are specifically excluded is highly arbitrary. No employees who receive a salary should be excluded.

The "closely-held" provision is also highly arbitrary, almost implying that the court doesn't like the law and are trying to limit it's impact. Maybe it was some kind of compromise to get a majority. Either way, I imagine the notion of "closely-held" will be stretched as loosely as possible in practice.

http://time.com/2940577/supreme-court-hobby-lobby-contraception-obamacare/

Not for nothing, but Rick serves as yet another "poster boy" for how there will never be income "equality." Mr. Rubin would not be "equal" in salary to most people, whether there's a free market, a crony capitalist market, a socialist non-market, or a communist non-market.

Eminem, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Beastie Boys, Sir Mix-a-Lot, Lana Del Rey, Krishna Das, Johnny Cash, Adele, Rage Against the Machine, Run DMC, Danzig, Slayer, the (extremely versatile) list of course goes on and on (and on). That's why Mr. Rubin is in the 1%.. Because you (and tens or hundreds of millions of others) listen and like the albums that he produces and not the ones produced by most of the other wanna-be (or actual) "music producers."

But, of course, the envy-fiends have their "reasons" as to why they think they should be paid that kind of money and/or deserve (like mobsters do) to have a a piece of his pie.

Or that if you could only get others to vote in a certain way, you'd be Rick Rubin, or in his shoes. Such a conceit reinforces the obvious: you can only control your self. Little-to-no benefit comes from worrying about or trying to influence what other people do or don't do (especially when it has nothing to do with you and you can't do anything about it anyway). The conceit that anything else is the case leads to profound suffering on both the personal as well as on the social and political levels.

The Basel 3 accords are essentially doing this. Basel and its previous incarnations are essentially non-binding guidelines established by an international agency for banks that domestic regulatory agencies in countries then enact. Even if they don't, banks follow these anyway because it's effectively an international standard.

Basel 2 (which we had prior to the GFC), had 2 tiers of capital that could be held. The actual shareholder stock capital that is rock solid (tier 1) and various loose definitions (including at the time AAA rated mortage backed securities) - tier 2. The last I heard, that 2nd tier has essentially been done away with and the overall capital requirements (%) required to be held, has been raised.

The problems though are:

1 - Unless you raise capital to stupendous levels (like seriously inhibiting bank lending), you wouldn't have anywhere near the buffer to prevent another 2008. The problem then was not insufficient capital. It's that the industry as a whole made a large judgement error in valuing mortgage backed securities.

2 - This also highlights the problem that breaking up the banks wouldn't solve the issue of groupthink because availability of credit and economic conditions are a universal thing. An analogy is the oil price. Even though the US is a major oil producer in it's own right, events like Iraq recently still heavily impact prices in the US because global prices don't change in a vacuum.

3 - As far Glass Steigel, even if investment and traditional banks were separate, operating in the same field, if credit dries up (say because a investment bank made a bad decision), that will still affect the traditional merchant banks.

All banks work through fractional lending. You take a deposit, keep a buffer for capital. You lend out the rest. Some returns back as a deposit, again you keep a buffer and lend out the rest. In bad economic conditions, regardless of whether caused by them or other players in the finance industry, some of their lenders default and there is potential for their entire capital buffer to collapse and the bank to default if the crisis is bad enough. Even if it's purely a merchant bank.

-

What splitting the banks probably would do is increase competition, and lower banking costs as well as salaries, which is generally a good thing and I would agree here that this is something that banks have lobbied heavily against (as well as things like the Consumer Protection Agency, for the same reason, margins). Having said that, there are a lot much more monopolistic companies with lower risk and much more stable margins (e.g. Wallmart).

Stop banking in the 19th century people. I can honestly count the number of times I've used cash in the last year on one hand.

I constantly see credit card companies attempt to prey on people in malls or with mailouts. Hell, they did it to me when I was young and stupid. When I started work, I got a credit card with a $500 limit on it for travel and expenses, etc. Less than 6 months later the bank had increased the limit 4 times to over $3000. If I was smart I should have refused each increase, but like an idiot I basically looked on it as free money. Suddenly I was paying a fortune in interest and struggling to clear the card. Every penny I earned went on it, and then I'd rack up the bills over the next month again just to live.

But credit cards are great if you know how to use them. Eventually I paid mine off and now I live completely off it; fuel, groceries, the works. I pay for everything on it, and I get reward points that easily cover the cost of the annual card fee. I make sure it's cleared every month. Meanwhile, my salary sits in my bank account offsetting my mortgage. Now it literally is free money.

I actually feel kinda bad, because essentially people who are bad with money and run up credit card bills at 20% interest are basically subsidising my card for me.