• I personally don’t see why I or anyone reading FDL would have a problem with dropping our pants for business if and only if we could trust that any tax reforms enacted would be directly and irrevocably tied to American jobs. Why can’t they just add (or add to) a small percent amount of every paycheck dollar up to a moderately high amount and call that an employer tax credit? Seems simple enough, though with so many of our largest companies not paying any taxes at all already it’s only a partial solution.

  • The military has a point, but they have misidentified it as “spirituality”. I recently read in wikipedia that political activists exhibit less PTSD (and in fact fewer psychological illnesses generally) after torture than other prisoners, despite frequently tortured worse. Imprisoned and tortured political activists aren’t necessarily “spiritual”, but they do have a belief in something outside themselves which gets them through the tough times. This is what the military actually needs from their soldiers on the front-line: the belief that the danger and the death they face has purpose and meaning. Exactly how a soldier gets to that belief, can be either spiritual or philosophical.

    But as long as we’re still using the poverty-draft scheme of filling our ranks, the military is going to have to accept that some people are out there risking life and limb just because enlisting was the best choice out of a bunch of bad ones. They’re not doing it for their crappy family, theyr’e not doing it for America, they’re doing it because it’s the only way they’ll ever get into college.

  • Thomas in SF commented on the blog post Scalia Kills Corporate Personhood

    2011-01-05 17:31:29View | Delete

    Perris I love everything about your posts in this comment section…except for one teeny little piece of grammar nazi-ism which I feel compelled to share; it’s a “moot point”, not a “mute point”. That mistake is so common I wonder if I’m witnessing english changing right before my eyes, but as far as I know it’s still “moot”, a word which is synonymous with “irrelevant”.

    The irony of a grammar nazi post about a word which means “irrelevant” is not lost on me.

  • Thomas in SF became a registered member

    2011-01-05 17:19:07View | Delete