When will voters get it: we live in a Corporatocracy!

My blood boiled just a little bit when I read about the idea of a $1.2T tax holiday on foreign earnings.  In other words, big multinational companies will reap all of the benefits of this.  Small and medium size businesses will be screwed.  At a time when unemployment is pretty high, the state governments are in dire straights, this is what they come up with?

I liked this reddit comment:

Man I can't wait for all that money to trickle down to the middle class, it's going to be SO GREAT!

Exactly.  Reagan would be proud.

UPDATE 3/25/11: an now the news the largest US corporation GE will pay no taxes this year.  In fact, they have a $3.2B tax credit.

John Stossel is an idiot

From time to time, I run into people on the intertubes using John Stossel pieces as argument fodder.  It's really hard to argue with these people.  While I agree, a broken clock is right twice a day, and I'll agree that Stossel can accidentally be on the correct side of an argument, I really just can't take anything he says seriously.  Ever.  Here's an example:

"Why is there a Bureau of Indian Affairs?" he said. "There is no Bureau of Puerto Rican Affairs or Black Affairs or Irish Affairs. And no group in America has been more helped by the government than the American Indians, because we have the treaties, we stole their land. But 200 years later, no group does worse."

And there you have it, the stunning stupidity of John Stossel.  Indians and Blacks and the Irish have equivalent histories in America.  Of course, there could be another reason instead of stupidity, that Stossel took this position: he could just be an asshole.  I actually tend to believe he's more asshole than idiot.  And, by asshole I mean this: he's taking a position he knows to be false merely to push his (and Fox News') agenda, in order to whip his viewers into an anti-Obama frenzy.

By the way, the context of this comment was this question: which group has the U.S. government helped out the most?  I think this tips the scales very much to the side of asshole.

Pop quiz on net neutrality

Scenario: Comcast decides that Netflix doesn't deserve the same treatment on their network (which services your house) and decides to slow down their traffic, so that movies are unwatchable.  You either must get the DVD from Netflix or watch it on Comcast's video on demand service.

True or false: net neutrality will allow Comcast to legally do the above.

If you said "true", then you watch FauxNews or have been listening to the GOP or their operatives.

If you said "false", then you've been paying attention and good for you.