No.  The founders guarded against the tyranny of the majority by making the changing of the constitution require a super majority.  Yet neither Congress, the Dems or the courts have ever addressed that issue.  Now we know how the snake oil salesman got around it. Packing the court (FDR's tactic).  But it still does not say that "we the people" can change the constitution on a whim.  And it actually has been done 27 times.  I am sure if congress could figure out how to make women interstate commerce, they would never have tried the ERA amendment since it had no chance in hell of passing.

But dont let facts stop you.  You seem to like to spout irrelevancies and then try to defend them with a statement about posting a fact (the sky is blue I think was the one you did post) that has nothing to do with your attempt at making a point of your opinion.

Get it straight.  No one alive did that so there is no we.  And no American did that, so it still cant be an historical we.

WHich is a tax increase.

You continue to make the assumption that this is a pissing contest.  It isn't.  

But I am sad to see you keep bringing this up, as if this is the measure by which you judge yourself against other men.  By all accounts you are a reasonably prosperous small business owner with your own home and I assume a loving family.  Kudos to you for that and I hope, for the sake of your customers, your employees, and your family that your success continues.

I bring it up because YOU keep implying how you're unselfish purely because you support higher taxes.

Supporting higher taxes doesn't make you unselfish. It's what you DO, not what you BELIEVE that makes you unselfish or not.

Now, getting back to the point about company size - Stardock's growth obviously has been because of its market success.  But I am telling you, flat out, that without the Bush tax cuts, we would not have been able to hire as many people as we have hired.

Waiting on yours.

If I were the first man I would stop picking apples. The freeloaders would have to find someone else to rip off.

That would seem to make sense.

And add to that the other two argue that the first man is "greedy" for objecting to having the apples he picked distributed to them and that they are being compassionate and caring for taking those apples to give to themselves.

Actually, this is another one of those easy to find on Snopes emails.  And, of course, it's utter horseshit. Olson denies it, the facts are actually inverted, etc. etc.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp

How stupid do you think we are that we're not going to follow this up with the whole and unvarnished truth?

And just how could you put your faith into something like this without following it up?  It is easily disproven in a 1 second Google search.

Honestly...

No, I'm pointing out that the right wing here seems to have one thing in common - me, me, me.  And I believe it's time to talk about we, we, we the people for a change.

[quote]Supporting higher taxes doesn't make you unselfish. It's what you DO, not what you BELIEVE that makes you unselfish or not.[quote]

You have post after post about Ayn Rand level "every man fend for themselves" and "you can't take MY money to help THEM" (which represent your BELIEFS), yet you keep posting how much you give to charity and how much you pay in taxes (which represents your ACTIONS).

I respect your actions (and I've said so many times now) but I definitely have disagreements with your beliefs.  And, unlike you, there is no contradiction between my actions and my beliefs.

I don't dispute that, since more money in your hands is a good thing, if you indeed pass it down to your employeers.  No disagreement there.

And yet, how many employees have you lost the ability to hire because of runaway health care costs?  You seem to have ignored my entire point about this.  My guess would be that a 2% shift in net taxation is far less money than the doubling and tripling of health care premiums has cost you.  I assume you provide a full benefits package to your employees, of course.

So, I'd argue this is a penny-wise, pound foolish position for any businessman to take.  I'd gladly like to see more income and lower health care costs in exchange for a POSSIBLE return to a "not nearly as onerous as you are stating" pre 2000 tax rate.

Considering that Bush has utterly tanked the economy, I'm not sure how you can support the lower taxation as a proven remedy to financial downturns.  The bottom line is we borrowed $7 trillion from the Chinese et al. and the piper has now come to be paid.  And I believe that is going to affect you, your company, and your employees in the negative far more than the Bush tax cut affected you in the positive.

I think Obama knows this and will be addressing things in a manner that will be a NET POSITIVE for all businesses.

Ya know, a lot of small companies don't even have health care.  When I worked for the P.O. and my health care went up to $85 every 2 weeks, I cancelled it.  The deductable went up and the coverage went down.

I did state that it was an email..........

Obviously you didn't read the snopes page...Snopes says they have NOT vetted the email and they include a statement by an individual named Mike Powell who makes certain claims including having contacted Olson. Having said that most, of the info turns out to be fairly accurate. None of the facts are shown to be "Inverted". The statements included look to contain a bit of validity when compared with the link which Zubaz posted showing voting by county.

Additionally, the one news source quoted made a statement that the muder rate data was incorrect but provided no proof or basis for the statement. The Calcs done by Mr. Powell show that Gore counties did have a singnificantly higher murder rate but he used a limited study.

"We the people" is the historical "we".  Q.E.D.

Neither have the Republicans.  What's your point in this apparently irrelevant digression?  Welfare has remained the law of the land for 70+ years.  I think it's safe to say that the American people as a whole are behind it by now.  Don't you?

I'm not sure what regime you are talking about. Is this another Obama misdirection or are you ranting about Brad/Stardock here?  Sorry for being confused here.

Only if you are measuring since 2001.  I've been an American much longer than that and so I only see this as repealing the first of Bush's soon-to-be-many gifts to his cronies and supporters.

Recessions happen, as do booms.  And yet Clinton's era is objectively and universally remembered as one of peace and prosperity with falling federal deficits and balanced budgets. 

Regardless, our system of checks and balances, risks and regulations, rewards and punishments, evolved over the past 200 years to soften these and to minimize shocks to the system.  It takes HUGE incompetence and corruption to get us into the situation we are in now.

I've already addressed the dot com bust in a previous post.

You're assuming that Obama is going to be able to top Bush here?   Obama is, by all accounts (time will tell), one of the most intelligent, thoughtful, and well-spoken men ever to be elected President.  Really?!  You think that's going to happen?

No, I think this will be the one place where Bush will remain unchallenged as the finest gaffer our nation has ever placed into high office.  History has a special place for George W. Bush...our very Special President.

Not a good start when he mistakenly suggested that Nancy Reagan had seances in the White House. 

That doesn't remove your responsibility for promulgating it.  It was designed to foster half-truths and lies and you become complicit in those by presenting them unchallenged.  It's easier to regurgitate the lie than to actually critically examine it and find its inherent flaws.

And yes, I didn't say that the snopes page countered every piece of it.  Other studies have used wider studies to disprove that email completely.  In fact, I think in one of the earlier posts in this thread someone challenged that murder rate crap effectively.

I just think it's hard enough to find a consensus even when we all can agree on the facts.  Thowing utter horseshit into the mix just makes it so much harder. 

Nice try, but wrongo!

Nancy Reagan DID do the whole spiritual mumbo jumbo thing.  All Obama APOLOGIZED for was the perceived slight to someone that people respect, Nancy Reagan, in SPITE OF her mumbo jumbo-ness.

So, his apology was not a gaff.  He was dead on correct to say he won't be turning to that ignorant, scam, cold reading, lies for money, new age, astrology, pseudo-science utter garbage.  He was just making sure it wasn't perceived as an insult to an eldery old first lady.

I personally don't think he needed to apologize at all.  It wasn't personally directed at her.  And I'd even hold Hillary to account for that crap. 

Precisely.  How f--cked up is THAT?!  It's LONG overdue to address this on the national level.  It'll be better for businesses AND citizens in the long run.  We should have never let it happen, of course, but, that's blood under the bridge now.

PS I don't this applies to Stardock though.  That business article I quoted earlier said that Brad expected to gross $18 million in 2008.  So I'm sure he's got his people covered by a solid group plan.  I've owned and headed up companies much smaller (and MUCH larger) and we've never been so small we couldn't cover our people.  It's just that these days, as Brad said, it can mean hiring fewer people.   Which SUCKS, since we all know that the care is getting worse and worse in every way as the prices go through the roof.

I'm sorry. Of course you would have first hand knowledge of anything that happened in the White House as you seem to believe you know everything else that has happened in America's past as well as what will happen in the future.

Can you tell us what numbers will be selected on this saturday's LOTTO?