Someone please tell me why there's back to back debates.

This is not very new, but it is pretty good--from the recent demonstrations in Russia (I think). Someone with better Russian-speaking skills than I have should translate; I can only pick out a few names/words.

Shortened schedule due to the lockout I believe.

:-D

easiest recession ever?

especially on a Sunday morning at 9am. Them are church going hours.

Lol Georgia, just LOL. Who the hell comes up with this stuff.

Standard third grade math problem? You be the judge...lol

moar you ask




http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headline...homework-asks/

lololololol

NHers are godless yankees.

Why CA is so ****ed: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...,2041880.story

a) she gets it all at her final salary and b) why the **** is some lieutenant making $147k?

But there's more govt porn:

Yay the prison guards union which pretty much buys every election. Awesome.

Come on.

$139k. For life. I really need to work for the sheriff's department.

Someone (I think MissileDog) was trying to find the liberals' version of getting roped into defending slavery. It's getting roped into defending this stuff imo.

In before rjoe tells me this seems like perfectly reasonable salaries and retirement plans for a mid-level civil servant. And pvn lauds this as clearly unfixable and proof that govt should simply be abolished.

Good article about Gitmo laying out the facts and current situation: http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/0...ees/?hpt=hp_t3

Before anyone freaks out I am not pro-Gitmo. I just think it would help if everyone at least knows the basic facts.

I have an uncle who just retired from being a ca prison guard. He is very healthy, like just over 50, and gets to collect I think 90% of his last years salary for the rest of his life (of course he worked mega overtime his last year). It is such a drain on society to have someone who is still in productive working years sitting on their ass while the tax payers finance their retirement.

I'm probably going to just be getting out of debt by the time I'm 50

Huge failing of Obama that this is even still something to discuss. The suggested difference in policy between Obama and Republicans?

"a Republican president would resume capturing senior al Qaeda terrorists and bring them to Guantanamo for interrogation [whereas]...Obama administration policy has emphasized killing suspected terrorists...no additional detainees have been taken to Guantanamo since Obama took office."

While I agree with you that this has been one of Obama's biggest failures. I would like to see a really in-depth analysis of what he could have done given Congress' staunch opposition to moving these guys, trying them in the US, etc.

Would he have had to make closing Gitmo a big signature issue and use a big chunk of his political clout on it? Keep in mind that other than liberals, the general public does not care about Gitmo. Well libertarians care about it, but they're still not going to support Obama. So going to the public (ala debt ceiling showdown and payroll tax showdown) would be minimally effective imo and probably scare the **** out of republican voters, not to mention provide endless fodder for his opponents.

I'm not saying there's not a lot more he could have done. I would imagine there is. I just would like to hear actual ideas and analysis other than "this is immoral Obama should make it his biggest issue and fall on his sword at all costs, I don't care if it's political suicide" which is the general attitude of the liberal/libertarian faction on this forum. I'm not saying you can't have that position. Just that I would be a lot more interested in anyone can find a sober analysis of realistically what Obama could have done differently.

Well, we've done this in past low content threads, and I'm sure I wrote more complete answers then, so I'll be brief here.

Obama is the President. He gets to set the agenda. To make the case to the public. It's sort of a moot point--Obama has clearly made the choice that "security" is more important than civil liberties, not just on Gitmo, but a whole host of things. The main reason that he didn't do more isn't because he was stymied by those crafty Republicans, it's because he decided that this wasn't an issue he really cared about.

And now you can click on that link and relive the last time we have this conversation at your leisure :-)

(As an aside, it would be great to have a national conversation about our entire criminal justice system too, at some point. Fear of recidivism alone does not justify indefinite detention, neither of terrorists nor of common criminals. There, I said it.)

suzzer, it's not just CA, it's government everywhere.

cops where i live make $108,000 after 5 years on the job, and then 50% of them go on to make over $200,000 per year.

sorry buddy, this is the system you think is so amazing.

Maybe so, but that wasn't my question. What specifically would you have him do differently on Gitmo once congress started blocking his attempts to close it and bring a bunch of them to the US for trial?

Suzzer- I'll step up and defend that horrible story of a woman cashing out her vacation time when she leaves. Civil service jobs are pretty much the only jobs that even pretend to be a meritocracy in America. Stories like those are planted by anti-union people and written so that no matter what number is at the end it's supposed to angry up your blood. Remember when everybody got a bad case of the vapors about Wisconsin teachers having a halfway decent health care plan?

None of those figures are remotely unusual for comparable private sector jobs. No, you might not have a comparable plan. That's your employer screwing you.

It's peasant thinking:
You should not demand that public employees give up their retirement plans so they can subsist off SSI like you will be forced to, you should be furious at your employer for treating you like ****.

Yeah, for "public safety" unions (police, fire, corrections officers, etc.) almost everywhere, the system is broken -- who's going to vote against giving cops a raise. (Almost no one, it turns out. Unlike teachers, people outside of this forum like cops.)

Tsao happens to live in a location with the highest(?) salaries for police officers nationwide, but pretty much everywhere they have incredible pension and retirement benefits.

Yes clearly no amount of public education holding politicians accountable, or campaign finance reform could ever fix this. Unsolvable problem.

Fly taking the bait like a libertarian defending slavery...

Civil service jobs are a meritocracy? Wtf? No one thinks that. Literally no one.

There is no way a mid-level civil servant should make several times more than a scientist. Or be able to retire at 50. Or be able to basically accrue unlimited overtime in the form of deferred vacation days. Or get 90% of their final year's salary for life - including all the overtime they work that year (wait does that count in their pension payout?) .

This is just not a productive way of running a society, and it's choking the life out of states and cities right now. And by defending it you are adding fuel to the fire of the Tsao's of this world that this is an unsolvable problem. We need to reign in excess on both sides of the political spectrum.

As a web developer I am in one of the highest-paying skilled professions, and these people are still destroying me in every metric. Nobody in the private sector gets to retire at 50 or accrue unlimited vacation days. Most max out at like 5 weeks then you stop accruing. Nor do they make $150k for some mid-level job that tons of people could do.

Suzzer, I just saw your post about the sheriff. Outside of the amount of pay all sick/time off type pay is paid out at the current rate of pay. How is that weird to you?