US tax redistribution is greatest by absolute volume from the middle class to the middle class, although the per person benefits the wealthier get through subsidies and deductions are higher.

The issue is, a lot of them are not explicitly specified and are not large programmes but form various subsidies already built into prices such as the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction.

Comparing to Australia, the actual tax take is 25% of GDP for both, yet the expenditure is roughly 40% for the US and 35% for AU, despite the fact we both have a generous welfare which doesn't expire and a public health care system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending#As_a_percentage_of_GDP

The Submerged State is a good book on this from what I've heard, here's a summary:

http://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2012/04/our-%E2%80%98submerged-state%E2%80%99-invisible-government-policies-may-surprise-you

This is what happens when the 4th amendment is misunderstood. There is no such thing as a "right to privacy"...unless you have a right to control what other people do with their property, or you have entered into some explicit contract with defined terms. The 4th amendment is a "right" that government grants you in a shallow attempt to limit its own power. It is not a "right" that somehow gives you the control of other people and what they can or can't do with their own property in all places and all times.

Not at all. I certainly did not say it doesn't count. I said it's different.
You said yourself you moved away from there. Minorities can't move away from being refused a loan, getting a better job, or abuses of power. They can't run away from TV hosts seemingly amazed that black people know how to use a fork. They have to deal with more than explicit manifestation of discrimination.
That does in no way diminishes what you had to live through.

To quote Louis CK:
"I'm not trying to say that if you're white you can't complain. I'm just saying that if you're black you get to complain more."

I also want to stress, in line with my previous remark on "labels", that the vocabulary we use to discuss these issues is often not good enough, or at least not precise enough. We want to use (or claim) the word 'racism' because it carries that emotional weight needed to make a statement, even though it obviously means different things to different people. Should we instead use qualifiers like "community discrimination", "systemic discrimination"? Probably. But it's not likely to happen. To me the important point is not how it's called, but that people who are not confronted with this reality understand what effects it has on those who have live it.

I'm with @newtboy. Do you actually read the responses or just cherry pick the parts that suit your agenda? Christ, even in the part you quoted I said "the first step". The paragraph before that explicitly outlined how that there were huge challenges to overcome.

And you're posting links from an organisation that

worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question serious cancer risks to secondhand smoke, and to lobby against government public-health reforms... and is known "for its persistent questioning of climate science, for its promotion of 'experts' who have done little, if any, peer-reviewed climate research, and for its sponsorship of a conference in New York City in 2008 alleging that the scientific community's work on global warming is fake."

Well, a little context is in order here. I wonder if Reg even knows where this comes from. There was a very popular movie in Ireland called The Commitments, about a working class Dublin band who play soul music. (Great movie btw, I'd recommend anyone checking it out)

There's a scene where one of the musicians asks if they're not "a bit white" to play soul music. The manager responds that "The Irish are the blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once and say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud."

Everyone in Ireland over 20 will have either seen this movie or heard this quote.

Ireland has a really weird relationship with race. If you grew up in Ireland before the 2000s, you literally never saw anyone who wasn't white. Yes, literally. As such, Irish people will say casually racist things all the time. Sometimes, like anywhere, it's malicious, but most of the time, it's genuinely not meant as offensive.

One of the reasons I sifted this is that I actually went to see Reg this weekend. He was freaking hilarious, and in fact his entire message was explicitly stated to be one of unity.

I'm paraphrasing here, but his closing line was something like
"There is no black pain, or gay pain or female pain. There is only human pain, and when people do bad shit to other people, it hurts us all."

Stating explicitly that you are only seeing what you want to see is exactly why we can't give you any credence. When I wear beer goggles, I see exactly what I want to see as well, only difference being, I sober up after a while.

Just because some book says one thing, doesn't mean someone else's book doesn't have other magical stories that discredit yours. You picked the one you want to believe in, and you'll find any imaginary evidence to back up your stance. Reality won't change that. And this video won't make the rest of us believe in fairy tales.

Well, it has been confirmed: GHCQ is indiscriminatly vacuuming webcam footage as well.

Remember when folks said that meta data doesn't bother them, it's not as if they were being spied upon when they're at home, naked? It's not as if they'll mind this time...

Ironically, being naked in front of your webcam might be the way to avoid ending up in their database.

"The documents also chronicle GCHQ's sustained struggle to keep the large store of sexually explicit imagery collected by Optic Nerve away from the eyes of its staff"

Peeping toms and wankers, the lot of 'em. So in order to have a private video chat, just use the chatroulette method and focus the camera on your genitals.

I don't consider invoking *ban on someone to be a douche move when they explicitly ignored all these ridiculously blatant warnings:



But maybe that's just me.

I can't wait for Fox News to denounce Madison as a pinko-commie-marxist for explicitly stating that there are social classes.

"The other day I saw a film called The Edge, which I regarded as the best thing to come out of Hollywood since The Silence of the Lambs. Perhaps not coincidentally, this flick also starred Anthony Hopkins. In one scene, Hopkins and his co-star, Alec Baldwin, seem in an absolutely hopeless situation, lost in the Arctic, stalked by a hungry bear, without weapons, seemingly doomed. Baldwin collapses, and Hopkins has a magnificent monologue, talking Baldwin out of his despair. The speech runs, roughly, like this: "Did you know you can make fire out of ice? You can, you know. Fire out of ice. Think about it. Fire out of ice. Think. Think."

This riddle has both a pragmatic and symbolic (alchemical) answer. The pragmatic answer you can find in the film, explicitly; and it might prove useful if you ever get lost in the north woods; and the alchemical, or Zen Buddhist, answer is also in the film, implicitly, and only perceptible to those who understand the dense character Hopkins plays in the story. It might prove useful whenever despair seems to overwhelm you. So, to those who at the end of this book still can't understand or sympathize with my Nietzschean yea-saying, I quote again: "Fire out of ice. Think. Think."

Who was that Prometheus guy and why did he give us fire in the first place?"

~Robert Anton Wilson

Watch Brazil and/or Repo Men for that. Maybe Total Recall too, but that's less explicit.

Oh man, the spoilers, the spoilers!

This is clearly not snuff.

"Please do not post pornography or "snuff" films (which we define as the explicit depiction of loss of human life displayed for entertainment).

Note: The presence of human fatality is acceptable and not considered "snuff" if presented as a limited portion of a lengthy educational, informative news report or documentary. Our definition of "snuff" does include but is not exclusive to any short clip in which a human fatality occurs whether or not any victims are actually visible on camera."

Look, I provided a link to a peer-reviewed journal publication showing that Golden Rice is an extremely good source of vitamin A, with one cup providing 50% of the recommended daily amount. I can also provide other citations supporting this claim if you'd like. So, if you have references to actual peer-reviewed scientific research (rather than unfounded claims by anti-GM activists) refuting the efficacy of Golden Rice, let's see them.

As for your claim that the initially free distribution will be rescinded, that seems unlikely. The licenses under which Golden Rice is being distributed explicitly allow farmers to freely save, replant and sell the seeds from their crop for as long as their annual income remains under $10,000. Also, most of the patents relevant to the production of Golden Rice are not internationally valid, so they cannot be used to sue people in third world countries. And all the patents that are internationally valid have been explicitly waived by the patent holders. Is there still some remote possibility that poor farmers will end up getting screwed? I guess. But it seems bizarre to me to just hold up potentially life-saving technology because its possible (though highly unlikely) that it will be used to exploit farmers. Also, I should note that Monstanto does not own Golden Rice. They merely own one of the patents for a process involved in the creation of Golden Rice.

On your third point, Rachel explicitly says "You know that GMO’s actually don’t have higher yields either." It's in the video, at 5:45. Watch it again. So she is claiming quite clearly that they do not produce higher yield, which is false. And it is simply not true that all the research showing higher yield comes from corporations. For instance, see this paper published in Science. The authors do not claim affiliation with any major GM corporation. That's just the tip of the iceberg. There has been volumes of independent research on GMOs.

On your last claim, about monocultures, you are again mistaken. Golden Rice is not a single variety. The International Rice Research Institute (a non-profit, not owned by any major corporation) has created "Golden" versions of hundreds of different rice varieties, so potentially Golden Rice can be as diverse as regular rice. Also, if rice plants are separated by a few feet, then cross-pollination becomes extremely unlikely. Rice is typically self-pollinating. So as long as a small separation is maintained, GM and non-GM crops can be grown in the same location without any significant gene flow between them.

Anyway, gene flow is only a danger if the GM plant has a clear adaptive advantage in its environment (if its pest resistant, e.g.), but that is not the case with Golden Rice, so even with gene flow Golden Rice won't end up dominating non-GM rice evolutionarily.

Also, note that nobody in the video explicitly claims that vaccines are the vanguard effort of a reptilian infiltration of the highest echelons of power, even though that's self-evident. Unless of course you're a statist reptilian tool.

Here are the sift guidelines when it comes to "snuff"

Please do not post pornography or "snuff" films (which we define as the explicit depiction of loss of human life displayed for entertainment).

Note: The presence of human fatality is acceptable and not considered "snuff" if presented as a limited, incidental portion of a lengthy educational, informative news report or documentary that encompasses a much broader narrative. Our definition of "snuff" does include but is not exclusive to any short clip in which a human fatality occurs whether or not any victims are actually visible on camera.
http://videosift.com/faq#posting_guidelines

To remove the video just put *kill or *discard in the comments and it will be removed.