No, a Christian would not be in favor of a system in which people's money is taken by them by force.

At church, they pass the collection hat where people voluntarily give money.  They don't, by contrast, frisk people as they enter the church and take money from them.

I work hard, earn a lot of money, and have millions each year taken from me. I certainly don't see the benefit. I see it squandered and I see the consumers of my confiscated property screaming that I'm not generous enough, that I'm not "patriotic" enough, that I'm not "paying my fair share" while they sit back and pay little to nothing.

My patriotic duty is to try to pay as little in taxes as I can legally get away with. The more money I keep, the more good I can do with it for my community, my company, and my country. Because unlike the federal government, I'm not incompetent with money.

O come now, you are being unfair to Obama, the guy got into Harvard and was at the top of his class so thats gotta be worth something.  Look Republicans and Democats nominate differen candidate types.  Republicans nominate old guys who been in Washington forever democrats nominate young people who can make changes otherwise they lose.  We conservatives must be truthful to ourself and not get tricked into towing the party line. 

The media has not been "in the tank" for Obama, during the primaries I saw reverend wright on tv for two months straight and that surely cost him votes especially in ohio and appaliacha.  If anyone is getting special treatment it is mccain and palin who seem to get a free ride by pre-emptive accusations against the media of bias.  Look if Palin has a messed up life then the media ought to expose it, they did it to obama and clinton already, if palin wants to be a star it should happen to her to.

Seems to me recently they decided to start using the same collection agency.

I encouraged a friend of mine to post here, but since he still hasn't, I will post a couple of his points.

Here is a list of Obama's accomplishments while in the state and US Senate: http://www.statesurge.com/members/923-barack-obama-federal
From a Digg discussion about this:
In eight years in Illinois, State Senator Obama sponsored 820 bills that became law. The Illinois Times, in a cover story, labeled Obama as “Head Of The Class” for his legislative abundance.

And in just four years as a U.S. Senator, Obama has sponsored 427 bills, and authored 152 bills. For a detailed list, follow the link (really, click on the link and scroll down, way down his list of legislative accomplishments)."

Researching the claim that "accomplishments should be listed separately", my friend looked at several professional resume sites, and none of them had any bullet points for "accomplishments" as a separate category.  They listed experience, but none where you'd list individual accomplishments that were not in the context of a job.  Since we're talking about Circuit City managers being more experienced than Obama, here's a sample resume at monster.com for the role of Customer Service Manager: http://career-advice.monster.com/sample-resumes/administrative-support/resume-customer-service-manager/home.aspx

Note the distinct lack of an "accomplishments" category.  I flipped through some of the pile of resumes that come my way, and indeed, every single one lists accomplishments at each job (e.g. "optimized some core algorithm and improved performance by 5X" or "scaled up server infrastructure to handle 1000 times more traffic", etc.).

And we shouldn't get lost in the weeds here, but this entire tanget about resumes and stems from the claim that "accomplishments are different from education and are different from getting a job".  Dr. Guy claims resumes as evidence that accomplishments are a distinctly different thing from "stuff you did while at your job" or "stuff you did while in school".  We see now that this is just false, and  reinforces my personal experience with them.  (Most resumes I have seen list notable achievements while in school under the appropriate institution in the Education section, and list notable accomplishments while at a job under the appropriate job in the Work History section.)

Just to be clear: you are in effect saying "AA is offensive precisely because of people like me and my the previous statements I've made doubting the accomplishments of underrepresented people."



How about looking at his *actual* credentials?  AA will get in you into a place, but won't get you out of it, and certainly won't get you a magna.  You have to do the same due diligence with non-minority doctors, too.  You don't seem to understand that the offensive thing is the notion that a white person *must* have earned his credentials, whereas with a minority, you just don't know.  In truth, in both cases, *you don't know* unless you look at their actual performance.



Again, AA is a hiring/admissions policy, not a grading or graduation policy.

Does the list of legislation in my previous post count?  There also seems to be a bit of misunderstanding about "creating something of value", and I can't tell if it's intentional.  Michael Phelps has created nothing tangible, but no one would argue that he has not accomplished anything.



What about the government spending transparency issue?



Top McCain advisor and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina just recently stated that she wouldn't hire *any* of the people on either ticket to run a company, because the skillsets for CEO and POTUS are different.



I think more folks have been dragged off to jail by men with guns for filesharing music and DVDs than have been dragged off to jail for failing to pay taxes.  Microsoft paid no taxes for about 5 years or so in the early 2000s.  The Church of Scientology pays no taxes even though it's a giant for-profit pyramid scheme.

Libertarians love to trot out the "mens with guns will take you away" as an scary strawman (scarecrow?) argument against The Big Bad Government.  They fail to point out that in even in a Free Market Dream World, there would still have to be legal jurisdiction and executive power to enforce those legal decisions.  So, the RIAA can send Jean Valjean off to the work camps for sharing a song, but hey, at least you're free!



Do they pay little to nothing because they *have* little to nothing compared to yo, or because they have a *lot more* than you and had a loophole written in to the (now inscrutable) tax code?

Did you support the Iraq War?  That stuff is expensive.  Do you support the development of super duper stealth fighter jets and $100 billion missile defense shields?  That stuff is expensive.  How many interstates and highways do you drive on?  That stuff is expensive.

Even if you *want* the overhead of privatising all this stuff and dealing with separate tollway, police, fire, EMS, defense, food safety, pharma safety, chemical safety, nuclear safety, environmental monitoring, land management, science research, and foreign diplomacy companies, these things will still cost money.  Pro-privatization folks like to talk about government waste as if corporate America is a paragon of efficiency.  Sometimes I wonder if these folks have actually *been* inside the belly of the any Fortune 500 beasts to see how much ineptitude and waste pervades even the most profitable companies at the top of the food chain.

The bottom line is that there is a Gaussian distribution of work ethic among the general population, and when you assemble enough people together into a group (public or private), there will be slack and inefficiency and people who don't pull their weight.  Privatization is mostly a phantom silver bullet.  (Multiple private, competing entites *can* sometimes lead to more efficiency, but only if there was enough "slack" in the economy to support multiple concurrent efforts.)

I am not arguing that *at all*.  I *am* arguing that winning an election for the US Senate and then winning a primary bid to be President demonstrates that Obama is *way* more qualified to hold the top political position in the country than a random Circuit City or IBM manager.

That was your original claim, and you have reiterated it several times in the course of the ensuing discussion.  However, whenever any of Obama's credentials are trotted out, they are judged, discussed, and usually trivialized and dimissed, but they are *not* compared to the credentials of a CC or IBM manager.  I don't know if this is a deliberate rhetorical tactic, but it certainly has been how things have played out here.



This is an example of the "tactic" I mentioned above.  It is claimed, "Obama doesn't measure up in these ways!"  Well, does an average Circuit City manager?

pwang - You don't seem to understand the difference between positions in the private sector and positions in the public sector.

In the private sector, positions are generally earned by merit.  In the public sector, one gets elected which reqires a totally different set of talents.

As an employer,  someone who actually hires people, I find Obama's "resume" to be quite unimpressive.  If Obama were white, Republican and named Quayle, I suspect (know) that his "accomplishments" would be viewed very differently.

I do agree that liberals tend to view accomplishments differnetly than conservatives which is probably why conservatives run the world and liberals seek elected office.

Michael Phelps isn't running for President.  If he was, the same issues would come up.

You think so? Can you name ONE person who has been sent to jail for file sharing music and DVDs? ONE person would do. And be specific.

I don't even know what to say to this statement.  It makes it hard to continue this conversation is you're really implying that people can choose not to pay taxes.  Are you suggesting that paying taxes is voluntary now?

 

First, the federal government is not responsible for police, fire, schools, or roads.  The federal government keeps trying to involve itself increasingly in these areas (which is very unfortunate) but historically has not.  To be sure, the federal government does spend in all these areas but largely because it's nosing itself into these areas that are historically local issues.

Second, there is a big difference between taking the property of one person to give to another and contributing to a service explicitly listed in the constitution (defense/miliary) that provides a common benefit.

I don't have any objection to paying taxes to support community resources.  I do object to paying taxes that go to some other individually in which no service is rendered in return that the original tax payer makes use of.

List them.  If you can.

You may be the best engineer in the world, bu tyour reading and writing leave a lot to be desired.

You got offended by your false assumption that I was insinuating that you had gotten your job through affirmative action (job or education, you pick).  So who was offended?  you were.  Why?  You thought someone was questioning your qualifications. so that does beg the question - since you have your degree, and have your job, why should you care what anyone thinks?  Unless it really does offend you that you believe that you did not EARN what you have. 

So the question again is - are you offended that someone questions your competancy because you earned what you have?  Or did you get what you have by special favors (AA)?  Now answer that question and we can go on with the education of the new slave masters - the Snake oil AA pushers.

Really?  YOu can walk into a doctors office (or lawyers) and see the actual college transcripts and records?  Well , gorrrrleeee!  Shazam! 

So tell me how you do that.

And all Med and Law schools have limits, and when you use a position to a less qualified minnority, a more qualified student is turned away.  But that "more qualified student" is not really the issue.  The issue is the "not qualified" that made it in, now isn't it?  And I ask the question again.

Looking at the person, how do you KNOW they made it on merits and not special favors?

(Oh, and just so you know I pay no attention to the ego wall - after all, what we do lknow is that many have lied, and plagarized, and falsified that wall - but they cant falsify the actual college transcript, now can they? So how do you know?)

Wrong!  They have had their pants sued off, but so far, I have not heard of any SS storm troopers carting them off to jail with guns.  There is still (probably not much longer especially if Castro II gets elected) rules about measured use of force.  Not always followed, but not universally (as you claim) violated either.

    salute:  Nice thread.  Clinton wasnt ever in the military either. Except for his initatives to weaken freddie and fannie mae's financial postition thru forced lending (CRA) to unqualified borrowers,  most americans believe, rightly or wrongly, he did a good job on the economy.

 

I doubt anyone could govern well in the coming 4-yr term due to the economic straits we are under.  Maybe we will get some decent choices next time.