NY Times Story on Pilot Population Decline

So better minds than ours have hashed this issue out long ago, and
come to the conclusion that SSI was a beneficial plan in the '30s, and
I don't see how the situation has fundamentally changed from that
time.

The population distribution has changed, and the number of entitled
people has changed.

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 03:06:08 GMT, "Steven P. McNicoll"
wrote in
et:

FDR was wrong.

Oh, that completely explains it then.

Thanks to your comment, I understand the issue much more fully now.
How silly of me to respect the judgment of only U.S. president to have
been elected to more than two terms by our nation's people, guided our
nation through recovery from the Great Depression, and through World
War II. Your opinion clearly trumps FDR's. I forgot how omnipotent
ATC controllers are. Sorry. :-(

In article ,
Larry Dighera wrote:

The Federal government is not the only possible provider for senior
citizens (notice I didn't say the Feds were a solution).

The federal government is the only entity that is not subject to
Enronization of workers retirement funds. Or do you know of others?

1) Your faith in the federal government is not justified. There is nothing that
absolutely guarentees that the Feds won't stop social security (after all,
social security is not a constitutional requirement of the federal government).

2) Protection from "Enronization" is a requirement? what would constitute
such protection?




Do you (Larry) really think that only Social Security prevents the streets
from being awash in homeless retirees?

I believe that most workers are too shortsighted to provide for their
old age themselves. I have no source to support that, but I have
lived long enough to understand human behavior a bit.

You didn't answer the question. Do you believe that ONLY social security
prevent the streets from being awash in homeless retirees?




Maybe families should care for each other. nah, that couldn't possibly work.


And what do you propose for those without families, or whose families
are unable to afford supporting older workers?

Charities (which are NOT subject to the bureaucratic nonsense of DC).
I, for one, would have more money to give to charities, if my tax burden was
lower.

Neighbors (haven't you ever seen people helping people?)



That's not the way FDR saw it.

so what?

So better minds than ours have hashed this issue out long ago, and
come to the conclusion that SSI was a beneficial plan in the '30s,

hmmm, "beneficial" to who?

Are you seriously suggesting that everything decided 70 years ago
can't be reevaluated in the context of today's needs and abilities?


and
I don't see how the situation has fundamentally changed from that
time.

"I don't see how the situation..." no kidding that you don't see it.

--
Bob Noel
(goodness, please trim replies!!!)

How silly of me to respect the judgment of only U.S. president to have
been elected to more than two terms by our nation's people,

Bush was wrong too, and he was re-elected by the American People.

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Larry Dighera wrote:
On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 21:30:29 -0400, Bob Noel
wrote in
:

In article ,
Larry Dighera wrote:

Wouldn't you characterize streets awash in homeless retirees a burden
on society?
it's not an either-or situation...
What is your rationale for that statement?
The Federal government is not the only possible provider for senior
citizens (notice I didn't say the Feds were a solution).

The federal government is the only entity that is not subject to
Enronization of workers retirement funds. Or do you know of others?
Your right, if people make stupid choices in their selections of
retirement funds they can get hurt. Putting all your money into a
single company is a bad idea but it's your choice as opposed to SS where
your still putting your money into a single company ( US GOV ) but you
have to hope it's going to be ok. From what I know, none of the Enron
employees lost their retirement money if it was not in Enron stock.

Do you (Larry) really think that only Social Security prevents the streets
from being awash in homeless retirees?

I believe that most workers are too shortsighted to provide for their
old age themselves. I have no source to support that, but I have
lived long enough to understand human behavior a bit.

Maybe families should care for each other. nah, that couldn't possibly work.


And what do you propose for those without families, or whose families
are unable to afford supporting older workers?


That's not the way FDR saw it.
so what?

So better minds than ours have hashed this issue out long ago, and
come to the conclusion that SSI was a beneficial plan in the '30s, and
I don't see how the situation has fundamentally changed from that
time.

Jose writes:

Bush was wrong too, and he was re-elected by the American People.

Unfortunately, in a democracy, there is no requirement that the voters be
right. In fact, very often there are no competency requirements at all,
although age and (sometimes) gender restrictions are common enough (and
ironically these often have nothing to do with competence).

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 13:42:54 GMT, Jose
wrote in :

How silly of me to respect the judgment of the only U.S. president to have
been elected to more than two terms by our nation's people,

Bush was wrong too, and he was re-elected by the American People.

Bush wasn't wrong; he was deceitful. Bush administration former CIA
director George Tenet claims, that:

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60mi...main3415.shtml
In the midst of the al Qaeda threat, Tenet says he was astonished
and mystified when the White House turned its aim to Iraq.

The truth of Iraq begins, according to Tenet, the day after the
attack of Sept. 11, when he ran into Pentagon advisor Richard
Perle at the White House.

"He said to me, 'Iraq has to pay a price for what happened
yesterday, they bear responsibility.' It’s September the 12th.
I’ve got the manifest with me that tell me al Qaeda did this.
Nothing in my head that says there is any Iraqi involvement in
this in any way shape or form and I remember thinking to myself,
as I'm about to go brief the president, 'What the hell is he
talking about?'" Tenet remembers.

"You said Iraq made no sense to you in that moment. Does it make
any sense to you today?" Pelley asks.

"In terms of complicity with 9/11, absolutely none," Tenet says.
"It never made any sense. We could never verify that there was any
Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al Qaeda
for 9/11 or any operational act against America. Period."

"The president, in October of 2002, quote: 'We need to think about
Saddam Hussein using al Qaeda to do his dirty work.' Is that what
you're telling the president?" Pelley asks.

"Well, we didn't believe al Qaeda was gonna do Saddam Hussein's
dirty work," Tenet says.

"January '03, the president again, [said] quote: 'Imagine those 19
hijackers this time armed by Saddam Hussein.' Is that what you're
telling the president?" Pelley asks.

"No," Tenet says.

The vice president upped the ante, claiming Saddam had nuclear
weapons, when the CIA was saying he didn’t.

"What's happening here?" Pelley asks.

"Well, I don't know what's happening here," Tenet says. "The
intelligence community's judgment is 'He will not have a nuclear
weapon until the year 2007, 2009.'"

"That's not what the vice president's saying," Pelley remarks.

"Well, I can't explain it," Tenet says.

Tenet says he sometimes warned the White House its statements were
false, but he admits that he missed a big one in the 2003 State of
the Union address, when the president said, "The British
government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa."


Further, Bush was not re-elected; he was declared the winner of the
election by the Judicial branch of government. Bush is the only US
president that wasn't elected.

(A few months before the election, his brother, the governor of
Florida, employed a private firm to expunge that state's voter rolls
of felons. When asked to provide evidence to support the selection of
those expunged voters, that firm didn't, and it subsequently came to
light that less than 5% of those voters removed from Bush's brothers
state voting rolls had actually committed any crime, but they were 95%
registered Democrats. At least that's what was purported in the video
Orwell Rolls In His Grave available he
http://www.freespeech.org/fscm2/contentviewer.php?content_id=1166)

Unfortunately, Bush was able to mask his lies from the American
electorate until after being declared president. FDR served four
consecutive four-year terms. If he'd been caught lying, that wouldn't
have occurred.

To compare that duplicitous recovering alcoholic from Midland, Texas
with FDR is an affront to thinking people everywhere.

Brash humorist Bill Maher had this to say about our Commander And
Chief on the February 27, 2007 Tonight Show hosted by Jay Leno:

This man. I mean, come on. Let's get real... The science is in
on this question...

The people who were defending him were saying he was just
inarticulate, but 'inarticulate' doesn't explain foreign policy.
I mean, it's not that complicated.

The man is a rube. He is a dolt. He is a yokel on the world
stage, a Gilligan who cannot find his ass with two hands. He is a
vain halfwit, who interrupts one incoherent sentence with another
incoherent sentence. I hope I'm not piling on...

I'm just saying... Here's George Bush, the 'decider, deciding all
on his own, that this is a good idea. This was not a
recommendation from our commanders on the ground. This was not a
recommendation from the Iraq Study Group, as you know. It's not
supported by the American people. It's not supported by the Iraqi
people.

It's just President Charles-in-Charge, spitballin', thinkin'
outside the bun, and saying to himself, "Everybody else is wrong.
I alone know what the right answer is. I got everybody else's
recommendations. I, you know, I talk to the Big Guy, so I
know..." And even the Pope said he was wrong... This recovering
alcoholic from Midland, Texas, he cannot be wrong, at any point.


Bush is so bad, that:

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,...613120,00.html
Friday, Apr. 20, 2007
Vermont Senate: Impeach Bush
By AP/ ROSS SNEYD
(MONTPELIER, Vt.) — Vermont senators voted Friday to call for the
impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney,
saying their actions have raised "serious questions of
constitutionality."

The non-binding resolution was approved 16-9 without debate — all
six Republicans in the chamber at the time and three Democrats
voted against it.

The resolution says Bush and Cheney's actions in the U.S. and
abroad, including in Iraq, "raise serious questions of
constitutionality, statutory legality, and abuse of the public
trust."

"I think it's going to have a tremendous political effect, a
tremendous political effect on public discourse about what to do
about this president," said James Leas, a vocal advocate of
withdrawing troops from Iraq and impeaching Bush and Cheney. ...

More than three dozen towns voted in favor of similar nonbinding
impeachment resolutions at their annual town meetings in March.
State lawmakers in Wisconsin and Washington have pushed for
similar resolutions.


And it's gathering momentum.

Ohio Congressman Rep. Dennis Kucinich filed articles of impeachment
against Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday April 24, 2007.

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
Jose writes:

Bush was wrong too, and he was re-elected by the American People.

Unfortunately, in a democracy, there is no requirement that the voters be
right. In fact, very often there are no competency requirements at all,
although age and (sometimes) gender restrictions are common enough (and
ironically these often have nothing to do with competence).


Typical Mx conclusion. If someone doesn't agree with you, their incompetent.

On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:06:06 GMT, Jose
wrote in :

That is my point. Today's Capitalism demands that producers meet the
lowest price in the marketplace, or face insolvency. That means that
if one producer is willing to reduce the cost of production through
unethical or immoral means, all the other producers are FORCED to do
the same or go broke. The cost-cutting efficiency of Capitalism is
commendable, but Capitalism's continual dive to the bottom begins to
cause problems after a certain point. That issue should be addressed.
Surely, even you can see the truth in what I'm saying.

Hmmm. In light of a prevous post about arbitrary groupings, I find what
you say interesting.

Groupings? Are you referring to the report about living organisms'
innate discrimination against members of groups other than their own?

What is the difference between outsourcing from
California to Nevada, and outsourcing from California to Korea?

I would assume that there is a difference in labor pay rates between
those that prevail in California and Korea, as well as a difference in
working conditions and benefits. There is likely a difference in the
environmental standards between the US and second or third world
countries also. Due to these differences a producer might reduce his
production costs (at the expense of the other factors I mentioned, and
US jobs), and that might enable him to undersell his competition (for
awhile until they start doing the same). At that point, there is
little ethical means available to reduce production costs further, so
if a producer desires to do so he must pursue even less attractive
(from the standpoint of exploitation and environmental impact) labor,
or compete on the basis of something other than price, or resort to
unethical practices.

But during the period that his prices in the marketplace are below his
competition's, he has the potential to reap significant revenue.

It is this desperate drive to the bottom that unrestrained capitalism
imposes to which I object. Fair completion based on innovation and
creativity is far preferable to exploitation, and it is that which
should be rewarded instead of rewarding the exporting US jobs to
foreign countries, IMO.

I for one, would be willing to pay a little more for goods produced in
the USA, wouldn't you?

No. I'd pay more for higher quality (where quality matters).

And I believe your attitude is representative of the majority of
consumers. But things are changing, and hopefully a future, more
patriotic, humane, and environmentally conscience class of consumers
can find products on the market that meet their expectations in other
areas beside price.

Higher quality is often foreign.

It depends on the product. Who is currently making a better product
than Boeing? The problem with US goods is that they are more often
than not assembled from foreign made goods, so it's difficult to
assess the true quality of US goods.

Higher quality per dollar is also often foreign.

That is probably true, but it is also probably because the working
conditions, worker skill level and wage, and environmental impact are
significantly different from those in the US.

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 18:00:46 +0200, Martin Hotze
wrote in :

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 15:10:07 GMT, Larry Dighera wrote:

That is my point. Today's Capitalism demands that producers meet the
lowest price in the marketplace, or face insolvency.

And that, my friend, is exactly how it is supposed to work. MArxism
see things totally differently... the way you do in fact.

Unfortunately, you seem to be unable to understand my point of view at
all. I don't know how to make it any clearer for you.

Larry, what you try to explain is a system that some countries in Middle
Europe tried and still try. It is called something like social free-market
economy (it might got lost in translation).

Thank you for your input.

Unfortunately, I seem to not have made myself clear at all. I'm
describing the shortcomings of pure capitalism. I'm not advocating
any particular system or remedy. I'm just interested in discovering
how those shortcomings a of capitalistic system I mentioned might be
mitigated, so that ALL benefit, producers and consumers alike. After
all, producers are victims of ever decreasing prices just as consumers
are victims of the loss of US jobs.

As it is, the producer who is able to offer a product at the lowest
prices in the marketplace, regardless of the consequences to society
and the environment as a result of the methods used to achieve that
price reduction, effectively dictates the quality and ethics for ALL
producers of that product if they want to remain solvent.

Free market and capitalism at every price is not always the best way to go.

I have no problem with free-market capitalism if it doesn't drive
better and more responsibly produced products from the marketplace and
export US jobs to other countries.

As you stated, in some cases
it might make sense to buy local (for different reasons: to save jobs and
generate money locally, to cut transportation, to cut down emission on
transport, ...). Some people go directly to the farmer and buy their
products off the farm at higher prices than the 'same' product would cost
in the supermarket. There are different reasons for doing so.

Yes. Recently consumers have begun so have the choice of buying the
at the lowest price, or buying the best or most responsibly produced
product. I would like to find a way to reward those producers who
want to produce quality, responsibly produced goods made with US
labor, so that impact of their reduced market share is mitigated.