perhaps i am confused lets start from the top the contentious point... Similar factors have driven the number of race-based hate groups, as distinct from Patriot groups, from 602 in 2000 to 926 in 2008, according to research by the Southern Poverty Law Center. i would like to see the study but have not made the effort to track it down. yet here is a proposition.... during that most of that decade (2000) race-based hate groups remained relatively stable in number. the obama candidacy and subsequent election spurred a growth of these groups. that is... 600 odd for the most part of the decade and an rapid increase in number (926 in 08) during the latter part the alleged (pending verification) increase is not required to have a constant and stable rate of growth during that decade some of the increase could well be attributed to a reaction to bush's big govt policies. that is, the patriots rather than the racists fueling this growth
Oh.. My... God... Sarah Palin endorsed the same thing the house health care plan does, which she called "death panels"!!!! From ThinkProgress: However, on April 16th 2008, then Gov. Sarah Palin endorsed some of the same end of life counseling she now decries as a form of euthanasia. In a proclamation announcing “Healthcare Decisions Day,” Palin urged public facilities to provide better information about advance directives, and made it clear that it is critical for seniors to be informed of such options: WHEREAS, Healthcare Decisions Day is designed to raise public awareness of the need to plan ahead for healthcare decisions, related to end of life care and medical decision-making whenever patients are unable to speak for themselves and to encourage the specific use of advance directives to communicate these important healthcare decisions. [...] WHEREAS, one of the principal goals of Healthcare Decisions Day is to encourage hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, continuing care retirement communities, and hospices to participate in a statewide effort to provide clear and consistent information to the public about advance directives, as well as to encourage medical professionals and lawyers to volunteer their time and efforts to improve public knowledge and increase the number of Alaska’s citizens with advance directives. WHEREAS, the Foundation for End of Life Care in Juneau, Alaska, and other organizations throughout the United States have endorsed this event and are committed to educating the public about the importance of discussing healthcare choices and executing advance directives. Though this proclamation is now deleted from the Alaska governor’s website, it shows that Palin’s current fear-mongering is purely political.
I think this "Death Panel" is going to backfire on the so called conservatives and dittoheads. It is so outrageous and ourtrageously false.
...??? What are you talking about? THAT WAS YOU. FFS. I was discussing the fact that there exists, still, a real "left" in Western civ. Ask anyone from Socialist International. There's ample lies on the Republican side, and I simply don't fathom their objection to universal health care. BUT - the nonsense and opportunism and intolerance are being emitted from both sides. The new change in tone of the Democrats is as alarming as anything Bush ever brayed - that the leaders of the protests are, in effect, traitors and need to be reported to the government. Good god, man. Those of us with an appreciation of the historical perspective can find things to worry about, and possibly far more dire than the Patriot Act.
Mod Note: Team, we only need ONE health care debate thread. All others will be closed or merged into this one.
Then why is it always needing more money every year in order for it to continue operating at the level it was at? There sems to be a BIG problem with cost effectivness with ANY government program, always on the verge of collapse because of mismangement, corrurtion or other serious financial problem. Look at Amtrack, it too is always just about to fai and needs more billions to salvage itself year to year.
The problem is simple: the post office succumbs to government pressure to keep prices unreasonably low. Try sending a letter through DHL, FedEx or UPS for $.43! The fact is, and I'm a proponent of this: a post office supported--somewhat--by tax dollars is good for industry (just look at all that junk mail that you get) and it's good for many businesses, the nation and international commerce. The USPS is actually a very efficient corporation, it just charges far too little. Even Microsoft would collapse under such circumstances. In this case, however, it's politically expedient to just pay the USPS a few billion a year to keep the franchise working. And it does. ~String
Well, it's not for profit for one thing. They often fail to spend on technology upgrades because of short term thrift, and energy costs are rising.
I was responding to your post, bringing that stuff in, which I quoted. I have never met or seen or heard of anyone from Socialist International. Which is my point. No screaming gangs of thugs from Socialist International have been a factor anywhere in the US, about anything, for many, many years. I await your comparable examples of thuggery and lies from the wimp side, currently engaged in "responsible governance" and "bipartisan compromise" with Palin's Party. I can't think of any. There's no symmetry here. It's not two sides on a teeter totter. The corporate alliance with the 27% is not "balanced" by its mirror image among the forces of light and truth and beauty. Health care and gasoline, plus the loss of volume to spread large fixed costs (recession and email, package competition).
ja i agree This is actually the 1st proposed USPS rate change since 2001; the 2006 rate change was a result of a 2003 law requiring the USPS to place $3.1 billion in escrow. This new, USPS proposed, Shape-Based Pricing initiative is scheduled to go into effect in May 2007. The USPS is migrating to a Shape-Based Pricing structure to create a more efficient mail system. The USPS has assessed their operation, identifying the items that both add and reduce costs, and have built their Shaped-Based price structure accordingly, thereby introducing a rate change for different mail types and classes. The USPS has stated that these changes will position themselves positively for future growth. Overview of Changes in Rate Structure The proposed 2007 rate change is structured to encourage customers to prepare mail in ways that increase efficiency for USPS' processing capabilities. Essentially, mail items that are easier for the USPS to process will be rated lower than items that are not. This approach results in pricing that will be affected also by the size and shape of the item, with less emphasis being placed on weight. Key Initiatives: · Because of their shape differences, letters, flats and parcels will now all be priced differently because they are all handled and processed differently. · To encourage address quality and efficiency, reducing ACS fees and proposing a new, lower-priced OneCode ACS using the 4-state barcode. Pricing incentives to increase USPS efficiency, including container types, drop shipping locations, and mailpiece sorting Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! now that is a very interesting graphic. the blue boxes are particularly cute
Well, I'm not talking bail-outs. I'm talking in an actual non-interventionist environment. But your point actually supports mine: a government bail-out would be needed to survive in such an environment. ~String
email killed the usps email killed the usps. In my mind and in my car, we can't rewind we've gone to far Oh-a-aho oh, Oh-a-aho oh USPS may close 1,000 post offices The U.S. Postal Service is studying roughly 1,000 of its 37,000 post offices for possible closure — the latest cost-cutting step from an agency scrambling to deal with a projected $7 billion deficit this year and larger losses in 2010. The agency started its review earlier this year with approximately 3,200 post offices, and decided about 1,000 of them are “candidates for further review.” Postal managers say they will consider several factors in deciding whether to close those facilities: mail volume, proximity to other post offices and the potential savings in labor and utility costs. Post offices generate about 71 percent of the Postal Service’s revenues each year; the rest comes through alternative channels, particularly the Postal Service’s Web site. “Each year more and more postal transactions are now accomplished online,” said Jordan Small, the Postal Service’s acting vice president for network operations. “We consider this a success ... [but we need] to determine if there is, indeed, excess capacity in the network.” efficient my ass it is a goddamn relic 1st Mailman: A dog bit me on the leg this morning! 2nd Mailman: Did you put anything on it? 1st Mailman: No, he liked it plain! ja archaic jokes
Another Palin Moment An interesting moment. Marc Ambinder, at The Atlantic, notes: In an essay posted last night to her Facebook page, ex-AK Gov. Sarah Palin and her research staff responded last night to criticism from — well, she says President Obama, but it's actually criticism from sensible circles on the right and the left — that she misstated the facts when she wrote last Friday about "death panels" being given the power to decide whether her son Trig's life was valuable. The essay doesn't seem to be in Palin's voice; it is more dispassionate and analytical than anything she has previously written, much less said, in recent memory. It includes 11 footnotes, linking to bill texts, government reports, articles and supportive commentary. Turns out that Palin's argument IS about the advance directive provision of HR 1233. "With all due respect, it's misleading for the President to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients. The issue is the context in which that information is provided and the coercive effect these consultations will have in that context." (qtd. in Mudede°, boldface accent added) It's a strange argument, even in an intellectual context: Ensuring that doctors get paid for a consultation with their patient will have a coercive effect that convinces people to commit suicide. I'm still not sure what to do with that one. I'd laugh, but it's not funny. At any rate, The Stranger's Charles Mudede makes a curious point: Palin should not try to sound smart (or hire people to make her sound smart). This approach will backfire. Not because it sounds phony but because it sends confusing codes to those in the base .... Obama represents state power as a domain of reason rather than feeling. This is why the death panel thing will only work if Palin plays dumb, which has these codes: innocent, commonsensical, god-fearing. Do not confuse the codes. Keep them clear and distinct. It's true, to the one, that this does not sound like the Sarah Palin we've come to know in the last year or so. And, to the another, it certainly discredits her to be denouncing governmental support of end-of-life counseling when she authorized a special day in Alaska advocating end-of-life counseling. But she does, also, run a risk in this tactical switch. She has built her national persona as an opponent of intellect. Suddenly she's playing according to the rules she has denounced as elitist. Her supporters will likely cheer the change, but they will find themselves further alienated from American political culture when she has to speak for herself, and cannot hide behind a ghostwriter. They may find this foray into the realm of intellectual discourse problematic, because an intellectual response might well tax their comprehension. Anti-intellectualism has a deep history in the United States. The nineties saw former New Republic writer Michael Lind publish an essay called "The Death of Intellectual Conservatism", discussing declining intellectual standards in conservative politics. The next year, he published Up From Conservatism, in which he wrote: For the foreseeable future ... the honorable name of conservatism is likely to remain the property, in the United States, of shifting coalitions of libertarians, racists, medievalists, Protestant fundamentalists, supply-siders, flat-taxers, isolationists, gun fanatics, anti-Semites and eugenics theorists. (qtd. in Staples) And this is the coalition to whom Palin plays. It is a risky move to attempt to raise them out of it. Of course, a bunch of them like her because they think she's hot, so maybe raising intellectual standards isn't so offensive coming from someone you want to fuck as it is coming from someone you already hate. We'll see how it goes, eh? _____________________ Notes: ° qtd. in Mudede — As of posting time, Ambinder's post for The Atlantic was not loading properly. Perhaps I'll be able to dredge it up tomorrow, or something. Works Cited: Mudede, Charles. "The Palin". Slog. August 13, 2009. Slog.TheStranger.com. August 15, 2009. http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/08/13/the-palin Palin, Sarah. "Concerning the 'Death Panels'. August 12, 2009. Facebook.com. August 15, 2009. http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=116471698434 Staples, Brent. "Zeal of a Convert". The New York Times. August 4, 2009. NYTimes.com. August 15, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/04/books/zeal-of-a-convert.html
Your post, being right about a great many things, seems to point out that the post office is a dieing breed. Which it may well be. But I'm talking about the business end of it, and again, it's run quite efficiently. That it performs an archaic business is neither here nor there. How it's run, it's numbers, is generally considered quite good. At this point in history, efficient or not, it's still a vital part of the America. ~String
