so, there’s this article that was posted on slashdot today. anyone want to explain how this will really make a difference? you have the government policing itself. there’s also the obvious problem that’s mentioned in the article about looking at projects and saying, “you can’t see it, but if you could you would know there’s nothing to worry about. trust me”. bush has already said on multiple occasions that he something was ok because he said so because congress gave him basically unlimited power when saying he could fight the “war on terror”. see n.s.a. spying and unclassifying information regarding the plame case for examples. an institution cannot police itself.
at any rate, i don’t really want to hijack this blog into being all political and bush bashing. i will say, for the record, that the bush tax cut on capital gains and dividends is a good thing. i didn’t realize it was only 15% capital gains tax for stocks held 1 year. it’s only 5% if you’re in the 10% bracket (of course, if you are, you probably don’t have any capital gains or dividends because you’re spending all your money on food, rent and a cell phone). if you only have capital gains income (day trader? rich guy with no w-2?) you would only be paying 15% taxes. i should probably become a day trader. i guess it’s not really much of an endorsement of bush since i’m generally in favor of lower taxes and won’t vote only on that one non-essential issue. relatively speaking, taxes aren’t really going to get that much lower until the federal government is drastically smaller. which isn’t going to happen. i would really only prefer a tax code change that removes all the exceptions and makes it simple. that’s not going to happen either.
no more politics.
I have no problem with politics on the 37.
No easy answers here. We all want security. I heard more BS about prevention after 911 that I could stand. You can’t truly prevent all possible ways we can be attacked by those determined enough to die to hurt us. However, if you’re messing around with terrorists, you deserve what you get. The only thing baffling me is why the government doesn’t go for the delayed warrant or whatever. They supposedly can do their eavesdropping apriori and then go to the judge and explain themseleves afterward -while still disturbing – I think we all realize there are Jack Bower moments when action is prudent regardless of paperwork – however, why not do the paperwork afterwards? Not doing so is what causes me the most concern, as I simply cannot understand the reasons behind the reluctance to do so. If it’s a pure power play (I don’t have to!
), all the more reaon for concern.