Jim

Let me give you a real world hypothetical: Company A earns net income of $20MM annually. Company B has $100MM in net operating losses that it will never be able to offset against profits. Company B files bankruptcy with no net worth. Company A purchases Company B out of bankruptcy for $5MM and merges Company B into Company A. The trustee in bankruptcy disburses the $5MM net of administration expenses to Company B's creditors. Company A, after consulting a tax lawyer, does what is necessary so the merged entity can carry forward Company B's old $100MM in net operating losses. The result? Company B's creditors get $5MM they never would have received had the company continued to operate. Company A doesn't pay corporate taxes for the next five years but is also liable for any Company B liabilities which might surface. Is this "taking advantage" of the tax laws?

True, yet I can see how it would be tough to survive making only minimum wage. I certainly do not begrudge the tax breaks and most other benefits if an unskilled person is doing what they can to earn a living. Whether we can afford to increase minimum wage is another issue. There is no guarantee that our country will be able to afford any given standard of living.

Let's all pause for a minute to imagine an alternate reality where Saddam still sat astride the reserves of both Iraq and Kuwait. Oh yes, I forgot. Kerry was going to negotiate Saddam out of Kuwait and he had a "plan" for Iraq today. Er... right.

Heh, I think we've succeeded in dating ourselves. I met Pres. Carter when only 2% of the population knew his name. Rosalyn came to our small rural town of 4,000 and her husband spoke at a small gathering in Tulsa well before New Hampshire. He was very impressive in a small group but did not translate to television. In my defense, I was only 17 at the time and very gullible.

Here are the poverty thresholds used by the Census Bureau for 2004: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/threshld/thresh04.html . It's not to hard to see how anyone with kids earning no more than minimum wage would be in "poverty." This seems to circle back to the minimum wage issue. The concern, of course, is that on a global scale unskilled American labor is overpaid currently, hence the outsourcing.

Chilling, if true: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L30516921.htm http://washingtontimes.com/national/20060323-114842-5680r.htm http://www.theepochtimes.com/211,111,,1.html http://www.nationalreview.com/nordlinger/nordlinger200603300722.asp

Do any non-democratic systems on the planet allows gay marriage? You don't really mean this, do you?

Are you by any chance a scientist or doctor? Those irksome humans always gumming up the works. Don't forget to put GPS tags, bar codes and an electric shock mechanisms on all of the non-scientists.

Hmmm... how about $20/hour? That will help our outsourcing problem for sure.

Casper "Cap" Weinberger did this country much good but was treated shabbily by a process run amok. Here is an excellent article summarizing the pressures and temptations influencing independent prosecutors such as Lawrence Walsh. The most damning indictment against Walsh was the indictment Walsh filed against Weinberger the week before the 1992 presidential election. Nothing could more clearly prove that this was a man clinging to national relevance. Casper Weinberger, in my view, deserves no asterisks by his name in today's obituaries. May he rest in peace.

Economists don't often agree but they are virtually unanimous that rising productivity is a win/win situation which lowers inflation to allow for the creation of more jobs. They also agree that restricting trade is destructive. Meaningless and destructive.

Lol. I actually watched 10 minutes of Red Dawn the other in a fit of channel surfing insomnia. I'm not proud of it but nothing else was on....

Lol. Ah well. Makes me wonder if I saw that thread the opening list and the idea planted itself subconsciously. Or, maybe I'm getting old...

I ask this question as the risk of being OT (i) to find out more about where eveyone is coming from and (ii) to get some good picks. My list would be, although not necessarily in this order: 1. The Navigator (not Flight of the Navigator-it was a complete suprise to me) 2. To Kill A Mockingbird (no one did decency like Gregory Peck) 3. House of Games (the characters were so appealingly twisted); 4. Saving Private Ryan (I thought I appreciated the Greatest Generation but after the first few minutes I knew my gratitude did not run deeply enough; any movie that can instantly change your POV within the first few minutes is a great movie); and, 5. Contact (not as good as the book but you've got to love a movie for a mass audience which intelligently talks about the issues we deal with here and, wow, that opening scene was amazing; again, another opening scene that changed my POV). Anyone else?

Ditto, God yes, ditto. . The public thinks better of the individual service member than at any time since WWII. The greatest threats to America are external. Our institutions are fundamentally healthy and it will take a huge shock to cause a social collapse. If we lost a city not to weather but to terrorism, I do not know what we would become. It is historically ignorant to believe this can not happen. No country can play perfect defense forever. I am also worried how China will exploit GNR in the coming twenty years. Whereas we can't even agree on stem cell research, China in its current form should have no problem exploiting GNR to the fullest.