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ParanoiA, isn't part of the reason we have favorable interest rates on 401ks in the first place due to their longer term investment nature? That is a simple free market force, and the penalties increase the market's confidence in those funds to mature as expected, instead of being prematurely raided by their holders. Otherwise, we would see those interest rate gains in everyday free checking bank accounts. I definitely agree with you that over-regulation and complex tax laws do hobble people striving for some level of upward mobility, including those at the lowest income levels. The fact that only some marginal percentage of poor people will be "financially fortunate" enough to attempt to start a business at any given time does not change the fact that of those who do, the regulatory maze alone can break them before they even get the chance to be horribly unsuccessful at business. Overall, I have to give the regulations on-balance credit for maintaining an environment where business owners have common expectations and civil remedies, but it does not excuse the damage they can cause. I think all this is beside the point though - while it is an important topic - it does not address the fact that the tax breaks given for capital gains rarely benefit working class people as much as the very wealthy. Right now, the majority of Americans do not have the financial flexibility an accountant needs to finagle their income into sweet capital gains territory where the sky's the limit. So - yes, I can see how some aspects of capital gains breaks can make sense on a small scale but as a means to game the system the rich have broken it for everyone by pushing it into a defacto regressive tax. We can wish for a smaller government that needs less money all we want - today, we have a budget we have to deal with, and a tax rate that's supposed to cover it. When anyone uses schemes to shelter their income from taxation, they are playing a zero-sum game of tug-a-war with the rest of the tax paying public, and the wealthy are far better equipped in that struggle.

This guy cracks me up on a regular basis, always has good sciencey humor.

Yet, if you want to open a business that includes even a subset of abortion related services, you can't even name all the conservatives trying to kick you out of town for your beliefs Constitution be damned. I am not equivocating evils here (that's non-productive) and even though I have no patience for bigots I have even less for selective bigotry - we can't be a tolerant society if we are selectively tolerant, period. Jokes aside, I think Jon Stewart says it pretty well in this clip and he's often called a pretty far left guy, at least from the far right.

Sometimes I look at modern protest signs (both left and right) and wonder how "Four legs good, two legs bad!" manages to actually pack more math and tangible claims than the vast majority of them. My bet is the Constitution is far too sacred to toss any parts out, at least until the next five minute outrage video de jour.

Just for the record, I don't think that's a fair "either or" comparison - the term "inevitable" implies inescapable, which pretty much nothing in life or history ever is. It may be more pragmatic to ask if that philosophy contributed significantly to the radical consolidation of executive power and subsequent actions of Nazi leaders, and whether the legacy of how those philosophies have impacted American society puts us at greater risk of the consolidation of executive power through popular consent. I don't think this is guilt by association and often serious conversations will require a bit more nuance than tongue-in-cheek laws like Godwin's can cover - no matter how valuable that law is to help deal with ridiculous or blatantly idiotic conversations. I think there are better explanations for the observations and concerns she has raised, but determining that will require a somewhat more in depth conversation about the details. I may agree that as a general rule, when someone says "[politician|party] is [as bad|worse than|acting like] a [insultingly offensive hyperbolic murderous authoritarian regime, usually Nazis or Soviets]!" the answer usually is "thread over" because no good will ever come from that. However, an honest attempt to examine similarities (even if they turn out to be entirely superficial) towards the end of better understanding is an entirely different animal.

No, Rubio simply decided to turn this into political hay, regardless of chaff and the Democrats aren't dumb enough to openly critique a bill that will undoubtedly boost everyone's approval ratings this November left or right. I am not even all that bothered by the principle of the matter - if we as a nation do want to add more exceptions to enlarge the income tax code for groups that inspire an emotional response, we can do that. What I find troubling is the fact that this "story" broke about a week ago, and we already have a bipartisan bill that will appeal to the emotion of the moment. This means it will be rushed through without much constructive criticism because any criticism taken out of context will be election ad fodder. That suggests to me that most of the time and energy going into this bill focused on using it as a political strategy, which means likely very little due consideration will actually take place.

Well, the simple answer is: If they are American, and earn a taxable income, then yes - if not, then no. Everything I've read about American Olympic athletes suggests that the vast majority get by on very little income, and those that do become successful through exceptional performance have a very short window to capitalize on it before age and chronic stress injuries erode their advantage. While I understand the emotional sentiment that struggling American Olympians don't need "the additional insult" of a larger tax bill on top of all the other challenges they face - I think it is misplaced and the correct approach is to address those underlying factors that precede the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back", not the final tax bill which frankly, is small potatoes as far as straws are concerned relative to the weight they already shoulder. Point of clarification - I'd say I've been successful, and still pay the bills but I'm not exactly living the dream again just yet. For me - my concern over taxes is not that I want to pay more or less - I just want to be sure we pay enough. It literally upsets my stomach to think about how on the one hand we have a generation of children inheriting an immense and unmanaged national debt and their own parents standing up screaming "But it's our money! We made it! Don't punish our success with a small marginal upper bracket tax increase!" We borrowed money during the Cold War, on the promise that either we or our children would eventually pick up the bill. That's an understandable trade for keeping the Soviets in check for nearly half of a century without a nuke fired. What is unconscionable in my opinion, is to grand stand on tax and "Giving Americans their hard earn money back!" when we know perfectly well every dollar we "give back" is a dollar that should be replacing one of the fifteen trillion still missing from our children's collective piggy bank. I find that far more obscene than Olympians paying higher taxes following successful years. To be clear - I'm not saying any and all taxes are justified as long as there's a national debt, or that tax increases are the only necessary tool (massive budget cuts are very important too) to repair our budget, I simply find it disingenuous when someone complains about being taxed for success when the very free market system that rewarded their hard work would have been impossible without borrowed money that still hasn't been paid back, and now resides around our children's necks. While the game of thermonuclear chicken did keep global Soviet influence in check and allowed us to profitably expand our access to free markets the world over, it wasn't cheap. That bill is still out there.

Personally Athena, I think your comments about Hitler, science, education and the US comparisons are valid for discussion - they don't go "full Godwin" because (if I read you right) you are actually examining US parallels in aspects of policy and philosophy, not condemning US policies as paralleling Nazi Germany to poison the well. I really can't get into the more detailed aspects of German philosophical influences because I am quite out of my depth, but I am tempted to say in a general sense that you may be too focused on key details with the one case (Germany) and its impact on American culture: I would like to argue it's a far more common symptom of simply being in the shadow of one's own success - it plagued Rome and Athens long before America or Germany were cursed with a distracting level of success. It may sound quaint but "Success can be the biggest distraction to the activity of being successful" and the US has been very successful. We've had to try and make sense of it, explain it (often simplistically but still in good faith), and more recently ask why it feels like our long advantageous position is slipping away. This is even true in town halls, co-ops, businesses, political parties, government departments and even advocacy groups. Upon becoming successful, the emerging sense of identity of the successful group becomes central to manage, and especially when the identity becomes contested by partisan bickering, can even steal the show to such a degree that the capacity for success becomes nonviable. To apply this to Rome just prior to the Caesar and the Rubicon; it wasn't that the Empire failed to continue to produce educated people... Cicero made many great speeches in that era, but it was how political positions (senators, tribunes, praetors, consuls, etc) became little more than a way for powerful people to out maneuver each other, instead of producing necessary rulings and decisions to ensure the Republic's stability. In other words it was successful as long as the people in those positions got them with the intention of achieving personal success through successful execution of the office for the Greater Glory of Rome - when politicians started to identify with power blocks and used those positions to fight partisan battles almost exclusively, it was an inevitable decline after that. More and more of the Republic's checks and balances were either gutted or twisted to "save" the Republic from opposing political opponents... on both sides, leading to the state of atrophy and popular discontent and the growing reliance on executive power to get critical decisions made. I think we are in a similar state today, in that political parties have such a strong sense of identity they elevate themselves beyond their actual roles. Instead of two parties working out how to draft meaningful legislation through a combination of critical constructive rivalry and good old fashioned compromise, both are far too distracted by the "meta partisan battle" and all the various ways the entire system can be gamed. Instead of political strategies that are liable to appeal to voters as realistic solutions, we get political strategies that attempt to stack the Supreme Court, or beat the "magic numbers" in the Senate and House for control - with no plans on what to really do with that control other than "not have to compromise with the opponents anymore" as the end all be all. Our Republic was not founded on "Winner takes all" partisan unilateralism. We used to meet in the House and Senate so opposing political viewpoints could be argued, discussed and refined and contribute to proposed solutions - now partisans hold closed meetings beforehand so they can tell the other side they already made up their minds. This makes it easier for individuals to protect, defend, and expand whatever they "identify" as their power-base to "do the peoples work" but they never actually get any of it done because cut-throat partisan rivalry is a full time job, and partisan threats are always immediate and unavoidable. Even our news has succumbed to this affect - they aren't all politically partisan, but they are so self conscious about ratings and ad revenues (the self-identity issue) they've mostly replaced in depth reporting for sensationalism and hyperbole. I believe these are the factors that have led us to our current incapacity for real legislative progress, and that has contributed greatly to our current sense of "being in our own former shadows." To tie this into Germany and the US - I don't know if this was the state of affairs when Hitler gave up on art school, but Germany was definitely in its own former shadow with many seemingly intractable political problems at that time. The danger in this scenario is eventually citizens get tired of suffering under the partisan-induced stagnancy, and begin to see the straight forward granting of extended executive power as the only means to break the impasse - especially when played on by a trusted charismatic leader who originally only promises to restore the proper state of affairs but gains great aspirations as power becomes consolidated. The US is not there yet. We are still thankfully far too partisan to trust any one leader, but I am willing to bet that many Obama supporters and many Romney supporters have very little faith in either candidate overcoming our current partisan gridlock and would consider "some" additional executive power as the only way anything will get done. Many liberals (myself included at times) often fault Obama for not using executive orders to break impasses more often. It's less that German philosophies have impacted our culture for the worse, but more than we're suffering the common pitfalls of success and stagnation which holds many historical parallels, all of which are worth avoiding if at all possible.

To expound on the "everyone has a Ph.D" syndrome, there are two basic reasons for getting a Ph.D: 1) To learn something tangible and useful to yourself, your life, your career aspirations 2) To get a leg up on the competition who may not stick it out for a Ph.D. People have both goals in mind when they plan their education, but it can be really hard to gauge the "leg up" part. It's more like a bell curve with no passing grade, just very smart people you have to out compete in the job market. By the time you've distinguished yourself with an exceptional education it may not be that exceptional anymore in terms of competition relative to how much everyone else stepped up their own game while you were doing the same. Everyone benefits from the general "raising of the bar" that continuing competition produces, since the tangible baseline of acquired skills goes up the more education people get. Where we get into trouble, is poor planning on the competition part because it's not only a moving target, but it moves entirely based on how you (and everyone else) moves in the struggle of job competition and career strategy. (Ironically, a basic understanding of calculus really does make it easier to asses these sorts of "moving target" situations, even if you never use calculus.) Where I worry about college kids today, is they seem to plan to be able to pay college loans by making a "highly competitive wage" in a highly competitive field, despite the fact that they can't all end up at the top - half by definition will be average or less... still better qualified for lesser jobs but not likely to pay those loans. To play devil's advocate on the Republican agenda point - I can understand how some people feel like they should be teaching their own kids how to think for themselves, even if I think many of those people just happen to be deluded. If you ask almost anyone if they want their child to be able to think critically they'll say "yes" but they'll take issue with you over what critical thinking means. None of those people consider themselves "intellectually crippled adults" simply because they didn't take some critical thinking classes - they feel in charge of their lives and like they know what they need to know and how to make sure their kids are well equipped to deal with the world. As a result, I'd say parents need to be educated on the benefits of critical thinking skills because Republican or Democrat, most parents genuinely don't want their kids to have "less" skills than other kids - even kids in other countries. The only thing they are missing is that these skills actually do have a big impact - and (gosh) even help conservative kids excel as better conservative adults. So in short - I don't think it's fair to say they want kids to be dumb, or want their kids to have faith in a lion king like leader... I think most just don't understand how these classes mattered when they were kids, and it's easy to play on their fears that "liberals are indoctrinating their youth with innocent sounded classes" if they are already concerned. I think that sort of fear mongering is both overplayed and deplorable, but it's a far cry from simply trying to dumb people down so they'll play follow the leader.

That's not a reason to trust someone, many untrustworthy people know what it's like to be on the bottom. I do think Obama is the far more responsible choice than Romney, but the above statement is a really bad reason to trust anyone, let alone only them.

Even during the Bush years when I had my most crippling tax bill (the year I actually made .com money... the same year of the .com bomb) I honestly felt proud to cut my first 5 digit check to the IRS, even though my income dropped by more than a factor of 10 by the time I had to write it. I had been making $12 an hr up to that point and no shift in the tax margin was going to erase how bloody good it felt to be done with that entire exhausting mess of scrapping by every month. Before then I benefited immensely from programs like ARPANET and because of them, I had the opportunity to create new things that were valuable to people and generated wealth. I even got to be my own boss, and have been since. There is something very rewarding about paying back into the very fund that paid for my entire chosen industry's very early existence. But if you want to talk to a serious businessman about taxes, try Warren Buffett.

I'm not sure, but I think this might be a documentary about them.

Why the heck would we want to try banning Olympic participation from this country??? Are you truly so upset that American Olympians pay income tax (and always have no less!) that it's not worth participating at all??? In that case, why don't we all just wallow in muddy rivers all day and ban all music containing vowels? While I don't advocate Olympic athletes as the defacto final authority on economic issues... which athletes are getting screwed by paying taxes on cash prizes? How many of them feel ripped off because of those taxes, versus how many of them feel thankful and happy to pay their taxes? Are you just assuming they feel all sorts of beat up and kicked around by Big Government... or are you in any sense of the word "in touch" with these athletes? Just because you feel like you're acting as a selfless advocate and champion of their sufferings doesn't mean they feel that way. It's "just a theory" but it really sounds like your projecting your own feelings about taxes on them, and that's really not fair to them. It's disrespectful and dehumanizing, and that's another reason Rubio can get bent. You could ask me - I'm a business man.

This guy is an opportunist tilting at windmills while giants ravage the landscape, pure and simple. It is bills exactly like this that result in the horrid mess and travesty of a tax code - how much does it cost to add an exemption to tax law? Olympics are once every two years with a finite number of US participants; how much money is really being discussed here, and how much is it going to cost the government to get even more invasive, playing Caesar and pointing its thumb up or down depending on whether, at the given moment, the fervent mob is cheering athletic exceptionalism over that of our soldiers or the other way around. If the Olympics weren't happening this year, the outrage would be over veterans having to pay full price for pork flavored gum at the convenience store. Why does Rubio think more government involvement and oversight is the answer, when he rails against it the rest of the time? You'll notice even in your article the News makes no comment on whether the figures are real: This is complete theater, and it could just as easily be this: I'll see your Olympic athletes and raise you two chemo patients with organ failure. The fact of the matter is, when viewed as an isolated case - every American struggle is an example of exceptionalism, every tax dollar is a "punishment" for breathing and the only "moral" thing to do is reduce everyone's taxes to zero. Yet the world doesn't operate like a bunch of separate isolated issues, we have to pay for things, and every exception we make may very well cost more for the government to manage than the exception saves all the individuals affected combined - especially when dealing with a pool as small as the American Olympics team.

The problem is any wide sweeping tax reforms would require a team of tax surgeons with both Ds and Rs after their names... and neither side trusts the other with a scalpel - even while watching over each other's shoulders. Most Republicans want tax loopholes closed on principle, but don't want Democrats to use that as an excuse to generate higher overall tax payments - ie, that the loopholes need to be closed and offset with an overall lowered tax burden. Most Democrats want tax loopholes closed on principle too, and largely don't mind if that all goes back to the taxpayers (the debate on how much tax revenue is actually needed federally is a completely separate issue from tax code implementation), but they don't want it tied to legislation specifically designed to "starve" federal social programs that are already strained. Of course both have constituents and deep pocketed campaign contributors that want most loopholes closed, just not theirs. Most Democrats would even support massive budget cuts if they could be paid for through improved efficiency (reducing waste while not reducing deliverable services), but that conversation cannot even be opened without Republicans attempting to intentionally sabotage the process scorched-earth style under the guise that all (non-Republican approved) government spending is waste.

The sad thing is the main reason everyone is "emotionally charged" on this topic is because our tax system is a festering mess, which everyone hates across the board. Both liberals and conservatives tend to agree entirely on the need to simplify the tax code, which includes clearing out a lot of complex tax breaks. We all feel somewhat cheated by the tax system, because we know the opaque complexity is unnecessary and wasteful. But instead of discussing the root issues, we are talking about whether Olympic cash prizes should be taxed, and by proxy it seems whether or not this is an indictment against Obama that he did not immediately issue an executive order to remedy this long standing travesty his first day in office.

You need to see how these guys work - I'll break it down for you: First, a Fox News link to the story: The title of this story is "ATR Calculates Huge Tax Burden For American Olympic Gold Medalists" First, it's nice they got the "You didn't build that!" text right at the start (Search engine optimization for an already discredited sound bite) but nicely sidesteps the actual meat of the story: 1) The "ATR Calculates" - that means Grover Norquist... (the guy George Bush Sr. was quoted talking about in the other thread as a complete ninny*) has released this "news" and 2) It's just a calculation that they came up with - no evidence the IRS has ever harassed anyone over medals. 3) The real question is whether they pay taxes on the cash prizes from the U.S. Olympic Organizing Committee: $25,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze. 4) How did they get those numbers? $5,300 on $10,000 is 53%, and $9,000 out of $25,000 is 36%. Where did they get that from?? They don't cite that in their post. In fact, a better article can be found here, which is linked from the ATR page: The short answer is: they may have some liability from income on cash prizes, it's not new, isn't not news. I have never heard of medals themselves being taxed and I have never heard of US Olympic Athletes taking issue with the cash prizes. These cash prizes are very small compared to the endorsement deals gold medalists usually get. If you are especially moved by this however, I recommend you ask some actual American Gold Medalists what they think, because I doubt many of them really want yet another thousand pages added to the IRS tax code simply to reduce the few percent potentially shaved from a cash prize. If you find this especially troubling though - why didn't it bother anyone during the Salt Lake Olympic games? I don't recall Romney saying anything... *to paraphrase GHB Edit: just to be clear about the breakdown: 1) reuters blog posted on July 30, 2012 A rather benign article that covers a few more interesting components, but not hyperbolic 2) ATR website posted on July 31, 2012 A rather badly done scare-piece that cites ridiculous figures "calculated" by a Washington lobby group, no less. 3) ATR website posted on July 31, 2012 Fox does their own article citing their "friends" at the lobby group as if it was actual news If they really thought any of this was true, they would have researched it can come up with at least some evidence of it being true. Since they couldn't, they used words like "Calculated" and fail to mention that their "friends" are full time lobbyists. Sadly, not even faking news is considered news anymore.

Interestingly, I don't think any conservatives on this board care about what religion Romney espouses - the concern is about the Palin crowd, and the more hardline Protestant/Catholic Christian religious conservatives (in the media, in the voting population) and what they may feel about his religion. And to be fair in modern politics, it's really hard to classify the "mild conservative" because, when viewed in any variation of angle they are indistinguishable from "crazy liberal wingnuts" like Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and George Bush Sr. It feels like according to the GOP unless you agree with 100% of the platform as it stands right now, you are a RINO and probably traitor on the level of Chief Justice Roberts. So, I really have no idea where you'd find "mild conservatives" in general as per how conservatives today would define them, because I have no idea how they would define them with any consistently at all. Actually, who do the GOP consider mild conservatives? Are they still in that tent?

White politicians do it just as often - Romney's own speech at the is no less demographic-centric than Obama's video. You can find a plethora of campaign speeches in Spanish, or addressing specific religious denominations... and frankly I don't think a white person saying "White people, stand behind me, I need your vote to throw this black man out of office" is a fair equivalent to Barack's statements. What's more, there is very little difference in much of this country between saying "White people, stand behind me, I need your vote to throw this black man out of office" and "[Christian|Earth Salty|Real American|Patriotic] people, stand behind me, I need your vote to throw this [random pejorative] out of office" I don't care if the addressed "rallied base" is Black, White, Hispanic, Catholic/Mormon/Baptist/Etc, Jewish, Muslim or 1%ers. Politicians need to be able to recognize that some groups face slightly different common concerns and problems - addressing them isn't uncommon. The only real issue is A) the content of the statement and B) whether it contradicts (ie, is mutually exclusive with) other statements.

From the video link: "President Obama Announces the 2012 Launch of African Americans for Obama" Just a friendly note Rigney - especially for a new thread it helps to have at least the title or topic behind a video link, instead of just your question about the video link. No need to go full-quote I just did that for my benefit. As to your first question I don't think he is addressing his overall constituency but reaching out to a specific demographic - something both sitting and potential presidents have always done during campaigns. What specifically bothers you about it? To the second question, what is the self induced strawman? I don't see it on the face of that video, so you'll have to be a bit more specific. As to "other videos" there are millions of them, not sure which out of those you're referring to.

Cronyism is not the reason higher income tax payers "get more benefit" they just use more. I could get renter's insurance to cover my assets through the private sector, and I have maybe $2000 worth of total assets, all in my apartment. Should my rate be the same as what someone with $1,000,000 of assets in their home would pay? I would suspect not, as the million dollar plan gives the millionaire a whole lot more. Same product, different benefit levels. Of course, if someone was getting $1,000,000 of coverage for the same price as $2000, I would suspect someone influenced the local government and got laws like passed. I do not like the idea of picking the rich apart under a microscope every time [we decide] we need to pay more for something and I would say that it's wrong, but some of the current tax laws are just wrong period. They were passed by wrong people for wrong reasons, and have aggravated much of our budget problems at this point. Not all the rich people asked for those laws or celebrated them, and many who have been trying to do nothing but mind their business(es) will suffer from the umpteenth update on whatever bureaucracy of forms are now required and how much income has to go with them. These aren't "villainous rich" out to screw people - just people worried about how to keep their businesses afloat, if not grow. The problem is when they get breaks that are unfair to everyone because they happen to share a demographic with those who do completely game the system every chance they get and we have to say "no" and fix those breaks, and that does disrupt the tax code for everyone in the bracket, not just those trying to dodge their fair share of taxes. It sucks that they did nothing wrong and will suffer over the tax code disruptions, but the alternative to is leave the festering bad tax laws on the books. Honestly, they should be angry that Bush singled them out for that ridiculous wartime tax break in the first place and angry that it ended up being extended so long. After all, if it's prejudicial to target people making over a specific income bracket for tax hikes, then it should be equally prejudicial to target them for tax breaks.

Out of curiosity, would a staffer or even patron would have been more effective in this situation with a high pressure fire hose than a firearm, especially if you threw a taser on top of the soaking gunman trying to keep on his feet (and breathing enough under exertion) in bulky gear? Honestly when it comes to security - I just don't trust the "American Security Improvement Process" which, seems like a really expensive way to not improve safety. That's not to say it can't be done right... I just don't think this sort of security is something we have the skill set or mindset for at the moment, and personally I think there are far more effective ways of preventing massacres than the bottleneck points. I am not that educated on the topic - but domestically, we don't tend to deal with foreign terrorists trying to attack the country - we mostly deal with people who loose it. As a specific case type, can the state of the "social community" be partly at fault here? What I mean is: people snap, break down, and occasionally loose it. Most people tend to drink themselves into dysfunctional states or otherwise get in yelling matches with neighbors, police... essentially little more harm is done than disturbing the peace and while some form of embarrassing rock bottom tends to follow there's the person's social support group of friends and family to both help them and make sure they get help if they start acting mentally unhinged. I don't mean people should "drop a dime" on their friends to the Men In White with butterfly nets the moment they vent a little and whatnot... but taking an interest in how friends and family are doing are another matter, where people can be supportive in a complementary way. To apply this to guns: Just an odd thought - what if we had higher rates, taxes etc on loose firearms, but allow gun clubs to get discounts for their members based on the club's safety track record? It wouldn't have to be socially oriented like a typical club (I mean it could be too) but really exists more as a framework for helping people who do want to own guns, to be part of a "well regulated" community that is effectively self regulated not by the government per se but by the members' peers. There would be federal or state operating requirements to get the tax breaks etc, but for the most part it would be self regulating. If members report higher than average stolen guns or accidents or criminal activity using guns, it would reflect on the club's community - giving them the incentive to self-manage. I wouldn't even have a problem with club members having access to assault rifles if they are part of a responsible community - I don't even need that community to "answer" to me as long as "answering to themselves" keeps them responsible. It would allow a crazy group of terrorists to all get together and form a club (even inner city gangs could, technically) - but I do think we could pick that up on the DHS/FBI/ATF/police radars. Most importantly though, through clubs - when somebody sees someone just becoming more unstable, and fail to steadily keep things together, there's a personal sense of connection both to the harm that person could do and to that person's well being. There will always be loners, and sometimes crazy ones. I think we can though, improve our capacity for strong communities enough to both help and catch a lot of these cases before they turn into massacres.

Why is it every time we discuss how to pay our "national utilities bill this year" we get accusations of "hatred for the rich" being the deciding factor in how to split it? It's a bloody bill - we wanted all these bombs, troops, police, courts, social programs and infrastructure (at least we live in a democracy where we have some choice in the matter) and whatnot... but when it comes to pay the bill suddenly all the wealthy people (not really - just a few who pretend to speak for all of them) freak out and play the victim card. It's a bill. It has to be paid. We all benefit from these expenditures, and we can discuss how best to cover this bill without resorting to either (A) calling people evil or (B) pretending the only reason we want to talk about the bill is to "hurt those much hated rich people" I don't mind giving rich people a break where possible, but bottom line is they need infrastructure as much as anyone and they wouldn't have made a bloody dollar somewhere like Somalia. If they want to get something out, they have to put something in. The only real topic is what's "fair" to put in, and we have to be able to talk about this without it turning into a game of recriminations. Sadly, the less capable we are of discussing the issue as adults, the more we actually deserve the treatment we get... which won't be that great coming from Dems or Republicans if it's born out of this much wharrgarbl.

EratosthenesII, I think it is fair for a banker to make money on loans that are inherently at risk - it's also the only way for him to draw a salary. The problem I have is when the banker knows he can bundle the loans into whatever number of schemes are necessary to transfer risk. The fact of the matter is - if I loan you money and then transfer ownership of my interest in your debt to a third party, it no longer affects me whether you make your long term payments or not. It will impact whatever suckers Wall Street got to buy into the scheme, but my life will get better the more loans I am able to write. I really haven't done enough research to say that is what's happening - it's more my concern, given what's popped up on the news so far.

I'm am pretty ignorant on the topic of student loans, but it sounds like it's headed in the same direction as the mortgage fiasco - in that, the people who make money issuing loans are almost entirely insulated from the risk of those loans going bad, and not enough emphasis is applied to ensuring student loans will either be paid back or even are in the disciplines our economy demands. I think real concerns like the raising cost of tuition is being aggravated by the "but getting a loan is so easy now so it doesn't matter" mentality in much the same way that sub-prime mortgages aggravated conscientious buyers dealing with inflated housing values. I don't know what to make of it all, but I am really glad I am not going to college right now. Personally, while the "can't be discharged in bankruptcy" clause on student loans is somewhat understandable, it's a solution that is only going to put a lot of young adults in serious financial distress and cause more volatility down the line. I don't think student loans are bad in principle but I don't have a good feeling about the current situation. That said, scholarships exist for a reason, and shouldn't be seen as handouts for the pitiful - people donate to scholarship programs all the time to recognize excellence, perseverance and unique qualities or challenges. I definitely recommend those wherever available.