795 Forum Posts by "RWT"
At 5/14/12 05:31 PM, Ketamine4Life wrote: =
Get it?
No I Do Not Get It.
Bottom to top, I see a useless piece of plastic, a ridiculous knife, and an entrenching tool.
Ah, the Corps.
I once asked a girl out with a message encoded in an integral... good times.
Here're my two cents:
1. Military spending could use a trim. The federal budget for 2011 projects $553 billion for the Department of Defense, about a quarter of total revenue and 20% of the total budget. Add to that the money it gives various other agencies that don't fall under Defense but still do counter terrorism, like, say, NASA (half of who budget is for spy satellites and other defense-minded projects). Then add the hundreds of billions of dollars paid in interest for loans used to purchase materiel and to finance last year's war, and which is surreptitiously counted as 'discretionary spending' outside of security. That brings the number a good bit over a $1 Trillion, roughly half of the U.S. budget.
One Trillion USD is a fuckload of money, especially considering that it's more than is spent on anything else, combined, in a fiscal year; hell, it's like 10% of the entire GDP, public and private. But that's not more than has been spent in years past. The military budget has stayed over 50%, even without all the corrections I noted, since World War II. More importantly, nations like Russia, China, and India devote comparable percentages of their budget to military spending. Is it true that cutting their military budget by half over the last ten years would have obliterated the American current deficit? Pretty much. Would Finland have invaded us then? Maybe. A straight 50% cut is obviously inadvisable, but billions of dollars stand to be gained once everyone gets over sacred cow syndrome.
2. That brings me to another sacred cow: entitlement programs. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, while essentially good programs, are responsible for most of your debt. If you subtract the money the U.S. government has paid out to aging baby boomers in the last ten years from the deficit, there is no more deficit. Retirement needs to be raised, and Medicare and Medicaid need to have a lot of fat trimmed. Viagra and Hoverounds, while nice and not necessarily used together, don't belong in the same program that gives insulin to diabetics.
Either of those areas, together making up over three-quarters of spending, could be cut hugely to erase the United States' public debt. There's a better way than throwing National Security and making sure people don't die of the flu entirely to the wolves, though:
3. Raise taxes. Fuck Grover Norquist, fuck his entire flock of libertarian nut-jobs. The average American earning less than $100,000 a year doesn't even have to worry; across-the-board tax hikes are not the kind of tax reform Congress or I are talking about. The average American citizen pays around 30% in income taxes; last year, Warren Buffet, a man with billions of dollars, said that he paid around 14%. The reason: deductions. Giving money to charity, among hundreds of other ways to make income non-taxable that lurk in the 16,000 page tax code, allows billionaires to pay a much lower percentage of their income than people making $15,000 annually, well below the poverty line. That, incidentally, is what one makes at a steady single job making minimum wage; I'll get to that later.
Simplest solution: do away with pretty much all of these damn deductions. Giving people a break for doing good things is a nice thought, but virtually everyone uses these, intentionally or not, as a tax shelter. Warren Buffet sent a letter to Congress begging them to tax him more; that's a rather obvious clue. Even better, Capital Gains Tax -that is, money made by buying or selling stock or other financial instruments- is only 15% for all investments held for at least a year. Anyone who gets paid in stock or who principally makes a living by trading on the stock market, like, say, Warren Buffet, only pays 15% on that income.
By comparison, people who make over 300,000 Pounds ($475,000) a year in Britain pay a flat 50% tax on their income. What could the U.S. do with that money?
4. The United States has terrible infrastructure and public services problems. Physical infrastructure, in the form of roads and railroads, is deteriorating. Interstates built 60 years ago haven't been upgraded; hell, even new roads are woefully over-used. New rail systems are promising, but ideally, better-facilitated public transit is in order. Clean buses, pedestrian areas- hell, even bike lanes- are clear-cut ways to improve the flow of people as well as commerce.
The U.S. also ranks 14th in world educational systems. That's below Estonia and Poland, to name two former Soviet Republics who can read and do math better than America. The United States spends far less money on education, at the lowest levels, than Europe or the rising nations of East Asia do. Funding comes mostly from local sources, giving places like Detroit schools that are more like day cares than places of higher learning. Teachers are woefully underpaid by international standards. An average school runs understaffed and under-financed; for the last few years, there has been a freeze on new textbook purchases for lack of anything approaching funding from the States. The reason: when the budget takes a blow, the first thing to be axed is education spending. Schools, particularly those in districts outside of a particular voting bloc, are easy to throw under the bus. That's an unfathomable mistake.
The United States is losing jobs not just in manufacturing and low-grade labour, but also now in skilled industries. Schools and colleges in places like China are catching up with or outdoing their American counterparts. Asian technicians and doctors are better trained and more prepared than they used to be. Companies move off-shore and managers turn ex-pat not just because of lower standards for labour in the other half of the world, but also for the more skilled workforce they find there. Education is important; it builds jobs, it builds businesses, and it builds leaders.
To finance all of that? Deficit spending. It's exactly what it sounds like; spending more money than is taken in as revenues. The deficit isn't all bad; it's part of a healthy, Keynesian economy. Economic stimulus is always in order, and funding things like Obama's Jobs Plan is worth the red balance book. There's not actually anything wrong with a government taking on debt; assuming it doesn't metastasise to the point where it can't get backing to finance its budget, the U.S. is perfectly fine running at a slight loss.
5. Stop the current monetary policy. Interest rates do not need to go any lower, even if they could. Low interest rates can spur an economy, but they require initial activity on the part of investors. Right now, it's just killing the bond market and ruining bank-held savings accounts.
So, in short: You bastards need to get your act together. Cut non-stimulus spending, cut the tax code, and cut the damn tinkering with benchmark interest rates. Long term growth and confidence is going to come from better investment in the people of the United States, through job creation and improving education. That's all.
Her initials are EZ? And it took you this long to come up with a nickname?
I love reading, and I hate seeing threads get derailed. So here I am!
Title - Frangipani: A Novel
Author - Celestine Vaite
Publication Date - February 2006
ISBN - 978-0316114660
I found this book at Barnes & Noble with a sticker that said "On Sale- $3.95." The cover was what really caught my eye, and I started flipping through it. I was immediately hooked.
The story is the second, but only one published in the U.S., in a trilogy about Materena Mahi, a typical Tahitian woman. The book covers her travails in raising her first daughter and her attempts to impart her traditional and common-sense knowledge gathered as a cleaning woman. The story within is packed with little parables ranging from the hilarious to the heart-string tugging. While it is a book about a mother and a daughter, there was plenty to entertain anyone, and enough humour to keep the tone light. The entire novel is happily and lovingly written, with a million fascinating insights into life on the island of Tahiti. I'd reccomend it to anyone, especially anyone who wants to understand mothers or daughters better.
In the long run, 'green' and efficient are almost always synonymous. That is, while it might be cheaper to make a product this way as opposed to doing it in an environmentally friendly way, the clean-up costs and waste often make the cheap way more expensive all told. Just like eating junk food as opposed to cooking for yourself might be cheaper or less time-consuming now, you could also end up with diabetes or heart disease.
Some of the high costs of 'green' products are legitimately due to the fact that it is expensive to make things differently from how they've always been made. Others, however, are just scams. Do a little research, and it pays to find out which brands are actually truly environmentally friendly. They're often the cheaper ones.
At 6/26/11 09:22 AM, Newgrundling wrote: I grew up in a primarily Jewish town in New England
Is it called Manhattan?
Learn to accept Ayn Rand like the rest of us have.
Since the opportunity cost of having sex with someone is generally equatable to say, having sex with a model, the average total cost of having sex is always going to be higher than the marginal benefit you derive from sex, particularly if you have sex with the same person more than once, and you should stop having sex altogether in order to maintain equilibrium.
Sorry to say, this sounds too good to be true. 141 is good, but not worth a free ride at an Ivy of your choice. I know a lot of people who have had to work to get into those schools despite being profoundly gifted.
At least your fags don't have pictures of cadavers and diseased lungs on them.
Words can't describe how intense this party is.
At 6/24/11 12:55 PM, Gimmick wrote: CAPITAL WALL OF TEXT
Stop it next time.
.
Hello, everyone. ^_^
If you don't remember me, that's cool. For anyone who does, I've decided to return after around a year. I'm about 10,000 words into a fun new novel, too. I haven't exactly written anything in over a week and a half, but I can fix that, hopefully.
He opens the box on the altar, and a great golden arc of light comes out. His family, which has been trapped inside, appears in the light. They all have a big, happy group hug and you fade out to credits.
It depends on where you're going with the story, mate. If you're hung up on picking one before you write the rest of the story, you're going to keep hitting walls. Just keep writing and go back and edit it afterwards. Even the best writers do massive re-writes of the text, particularly something as key as the first paragraph.
Oxycodone and vodka. Crazy shit.
I hereby decree that the rights to extract any useful organs or minerals from people like the OP be reserved by the Canadian government.
That should take twenty years to be debated in parliament.
I cannot believe how much fun I am having in this room.
You need a torsion wrench; something to stick into the lock to put pressure on, to keep the chamber turned the right way. A screwdriver works, as does a small Alan wrench. Then you need a small, pointed instrument to push the pins up. Alternatively, just straighten a paperclip and work (rake) it back and forth against the pins in the lock. They should be on the upper part.
You can also get into your car by busting the trunk lock open, prying a door loose, smashing a window, or calling AAA.
At 6/25/11 04:19 PM, DonCarrera wrote:At 6/25/11 04:17 PM, Dew wrote:Stupid 11'ers... oh wait.At 6/25/11 04:13 PM, SizzleBolt wrote: War bring's justice; Justice is good so therfore war is good.Please leave newgrounds and don't come back.
; Too tired to think of something witty.
That brings up a good point- I can say whatever the hell I feel like, but I have a 4-year pedigree, so I'm cool.
Though, really, even say, Piss, couldn't get away with making this thread without being a tool.
I want to see how Newgrounds would fill out a mad lib. Pick one from here, or just use Google to find one.
Post the results. Bonus points for anyone who doesn't put penis for every word.
To start:
Communist Juan Valdez Brothers is a popular video game where you control a cocaine grower as he runs through levels bumping and grinding on enemies and eating tacos to get portabello and fireflowers so that he can throw Matt Damons at enemies. He does all this to save the funk from the evil Diana.
Note- I searched the BBS to find a thread like this. All I could find were half a dozen threads in which the OP didn't grasp that you aren't supposed to give people the story first. I don't *think* there's a thread like this.
"Madness!" - Alec Guinness, The Bridge on the River Kwai
or maybe "Okaa! Okaa!" - Hiroshi Tachikara, Yojimbo
Oddly enough, this is exactly what I expected what this thread would be.
Begging the question of why I clicked on it
At 6/24/11 11:10 PM, C-Doodlez-Man wrote: Broke. That word doesn't begin to describe the situation. Try fucked. Fucked. Just plain fucked.
We're fucked
^ Why it's fun to still ask questions like this in General.
Meh, I'll go back to watching TV now.
