An extraordinarily simplistic and misleading discussion of tax laws. They very cleverly point out the disparity between the benefits of tax deductions between those with annual incomes over $400K and those below, but neglect to mention what fraction of the total tax payments each group provides.

Also suffers from the implied perspective that all the money actually belongs to the government and it's the government's right and duty to determine how much of it you get to have...

Would rather spend a trillion on Cancer cure than a Trillion on war.

Top fund raiser -- for last 25 years -- Rush Limbaugh
Annual on-air Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Cure-A-Thon.
1 day a year he asks for donations.
Last year raised 3.3 million
Over the years 47 Million raised.

Yes, 15k soldiers is the number I have seen as well.

The other factor is the question about what that $8.4m is being used for. It sounds like you are assuming that it is for hormone replacement and/or gender reassignment, but I haven't heard if that is explicitly what the $8.4m is for, or if is the sum total of all annual trans health care in the military. That is something I would like clarified. It has only been stated as "the cost for health care for the 15k trans soldiers", so it is not clear.

I, too, would like to hear what is the Viagra "head" count. Hooooo!

I just think that it is a small price to pay (0.0017 %) of a $500b annual military budget, for people that are braver than myself, and willing to serve.

Great write-up here.

http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/news/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com/news/the-three-hours-of-lemelons-the-annual-alberta-race-that-pits-300-beaters
-against-each-other

*quality amazing and bump the *music selection for this *actionpack while we're at it.

Fixes to the ACA should have been happening all along. Annual tweaks and adjustments would have prevented most or all of the problems it's experiencing right now.

Of course, the conservatives in Congress only benefited from letting all those people suffer through the widening cracks in the system.

Even now, it would be easier and more cost effective to fix the system but once again, the conservatives would rather cut off their own nose to spite their face rather than look out for the best interest of the people who trust them to do the right thing.

This TrumpCare is going to explode in the Republican's faces. Hubris is a helluva drug. (And cheaper if you buy it in Canada.)

If this is true -- which seems fair to say by looking at this ---- WOW FUCK

But then I ask how can this bee if he got an economics degree from Wharton. No small feat.

Plus as a kid he was on the NY military academy During his senior year attained the rank of captain.


That all said It wold seem that he could read... not necessarily guarantee it


Reading Statistics

Total percent of U.S. population that has specific reading disorders 15%

Total percentage of U.S. adults who are unable to read an 8th grade level book 50%

Total amount of words read annually by a person who reads 15 minutes a day 1 million

Total percent of U.S. high school graduates who will never read a book after high school 33%

Total percentage of college students who will never read another book after they graduate 42%

Total percentage of U.S. families who did not buy a book this year 80%



Total percentage of books started that aren’t read to completion 57%

Total percent of U.S. students that are dyslexic 15%
Total percentage of NASA employees that are dyslexic 50%
Total number of U.S. inmates that are literate 15%

The Gates Annual Letter here: http://b-gat.es/2lhhtmJ

May want to put this into the description

Your point is moot though. At any given period of time, everything man does is a product of the civilisation that surrounds him. Nobody lives in a vacuum.

"What has that got to do with this video."
The water supply grid was one of the important "grids" you forgot. It may be trivial in a water rich region of the world, but, for example, living off of the water grid in the middle of Australia is hard work.

" That doesn't mean that he's living some kind of noble 'off the grid life style'".
I'm pretty sure you're the only one who has mentioned this. I think the point of the video is that he's doing something out of the ordinary that he really enjoys. I wouldn't mind living a step up from what he does (access by road). It would be very satisfying.

Do you have an opinion on living like that? Would you do it?

"I don't live on the water supply grid."
Cool! Is it by choice? Do you use the newer poly tanks? What's the annual rainfall you need to stay water positive each year? Do you use filters or a pump? Have you drilled for underground water (we call it "bore water" here in Aus). What region of the world are you in?

Holy cow!

So anyone with a history of having health insurance over the past decades knows the pain of annual rising costs and plan changes that offer less and less coverage.

But here we have people newly signed up on health care through the ACA, who experience rising costs and deductibles for the first time and believe it's because the program is no good.

It never even occurred to me that all the pre-existing problems in the health insurance industry would be viewed as unique to ACA.

We are ALL unhappy with what's been happening to our health insurance for the past couple of decades...you're experiencing the same pain we've all been dealing with for long before the ACA was created. This didn't start the day you first qualified for health insurance. How did the message get so mixed up?

And wtf!
You've never had a car...here's a car.
"The cost of gas keeps going up....the car you gave me is horrible."

It's exactly like north America, they just get serious discounts off insurance to use cameras. More cameras, more video of idiots.

If Geico knocked $250 off your annual charges, wouldn't you go buy a dashcam?

I remember getting introduced to this show while volunteering at the local PBS (Public Broadcasting Station) annual fund drive in '92. Brilliant.

(I edited, and some stuff pertains to your reply)

Regarding well regulated, here's the sauce :
http://www.constitution.org/cons/wellregu.htm

Keep in mind that the 2nd amendment is 2 part.
1st the motivation for why the rule exists, 2nd the rule.

The rule exists, whether or not the motivation is provided (and it's nice of them to provide context - but not necessary).

Even if regulation was meant in the modern sense, it would not change the fact that the rule does not depend on the motivating factors.

But if you insist on motivational prerequisite, here's Hamilton regarding individual right to bear :

"The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious, if it were capable of being carried into execution. A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, or even a week, that will suffice for the attainment of it. To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss. It would form an annual deduction from the productive labor of the country, to an amount which, calculating upon the present numbers of the people, would not fall far short of the whole expense of the civil establishments of all the States. To attempt a thing which would abridge the mass of labor and industry to so considerable an extent, would be unwise: and the experiment, if made, could not succeed, because it would not long be endured. Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year. "
[etc]

(That last sentence - there's your training requirement, tee hee. Not only that, but that they should assemble people 1-2 times a year to make sure that everyone is armed and equipped. That's more than an individual right to bear, that's an individual requirement to bear. Let's just be happy with it being a right.)


Laws are supposed to be updated by new laws via representative legislators (who may need to be coerced via protest facilitated by freedom of assembly).
Or challenged by juries (i.e. citizens, i.e. members of the state) via jury nullification (i.e. direct state democracy). That's why there are juries. You need direct state involvement so that the legal system can not run amok independent of state sanction. It's not just for some group consensus.
The system was architected to give the state influence, so that government can't run off and act in an independent non-democratic manner.

-scheherazade

You can own an AR15 in NZ.

You can have high capacity magazines in NZ.

It is a popular 3-gun competition and hunting firearm.

"but our average annual firearm homicide rate for the last 30 years or so is ~0.2 deaths per 100k people."

Yet you still allow ownership of these items, and still have murder rates by firearm (and in general) lower than most of the world.

NZ's laws work because they stop criminal and crazy people from owning these items.

Australia banned semi auto rifles of all types and high capacity magazines outright (except for some very exceptional circumstances) yet our firearm homicide rate (and general murder rate) is on average worse than NZ's.

One can allow these items to be owned, they just need to be the right people (you already alluded to that).

Forget about the old armed populace vs tyrannical government trope. Unless you want to admit that there would be a civil war at that point (large amounts of the armed forces would revolt, military weapons in hand, against attacking their own families).

Slippery slope fallacy.
"If we allow gays to marry, what's next? Can I marry my dog?"

No-one is talking about banning guns. I wouldn't support that myself. I have friends who are hunters and target shooters.

But be reasonable; you can have a gun for target shooting or hunting or even "home defence" (if you're really that paranoid), but you don't need an AR-15 or anything with a high capacity magazine and it's not unreasonable to make sure that people who own guns aren't complete nutjobs.

NZ is in the top 15% of gun ownership rates per capita (22 guns per 100 people), but our average annual firearm homicide rate for the last 30 years or so is ~0.2 deaths per 100k people.

Compare that to the USA. The US tops the chart of gun ownership with 112 guns per 100 people. So the gun ownership rate is 5 times that of NZ, but the average annual firearm homicide rate is 4 deaths per 100k people. That's 20 times the number of murders. Even if you allow for the higher gun ownership rate, you're still 4 times worse than NZ.

And the difference is simple: we have sensible gun ownership laws.

I saw a great post the other day.
"The conservative mind:
Abortions? BAN THEM!
Gay Marriage? BAN IT!
Marijuana? BAN IT!
Guns? eh, banning things never works"

But hey, you're gonna need those guns for when Donary Trumpton ushers in a tyrannical dictatorship. Good luck with that; let me know how you get on with an AR-15 versus a predator drone.

I never paid much attention to my employer's 401k administrative fees until they recently changed 401k providers. I was blown away that our new CFO with the company for the last year, not only fought to introduce Vanguard funds as investment choices, which offered significant cost savings, changed our 401k provider. When I looked into the paperwork to try to figure out why, it became abundantly clear - he saved 1% in annual administrative fees on the plan.

Kudos to him! I sent him an email immediately thanking him for doing an awesome thankless job hardly anyone will likely appreciate.