Leader: Non-moralistic arguments on Big Brother

Grok Headline matches for Leader: Non-moralistic arguments on Big Brother

Leader: US Big Brother plans panned

Leader: US Big Brother plans panned 07/29/2004 04:47 PM
Silicon.com Jul 29 2004 7:45PM GMT

Schroeder's half-brother joins Big
Brother (Reuters)

Schroeder's half-brother joins Big
Brother (Reuters) 04/17/2004 11:21 AM
Reuters - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's half-brother is set to feature on Germany's version of the worldwide reality television hit "Big Brother", newspaper Bild has said.

Brother Bear, oh brother!

Brother Bear, oh brother! 11/14/2003 07:32 PM
Canadian Press via Canada.com Nov 14 2003 6:26PM ET

Arguments

Arguments 07/23/2004 11:08 AM
I didn't have time to read all the Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About, but it seems to capture a side of life a little too accurately. And compulsively. (Thanks to Mike O for the link.)...

Tripping on their own feeble arguments

Tripping on their own feeble arguments 02/01/2005 09:42 PM
The Social Security debate continues to be infuriating. Pardon me while I release some smoke from the top of my pate.

There are a number of strange arguments floating around out there as part of the desperate effort to try to get the American people to buy President Bush's Social Security pig-in-a-fiscal-poke. Something happens when you put these arguments side by side: They undermine one another.

Consider, if you will, this comment from someone named Craig on my most recent Social Security post. As far as I can tell, Craig has cut-and-pasted big chunks of long quotes from two different Washington Times columns into his comment, one by Thomas Sowell and another by John Palffy. (I'll write off the failure to attribute these quotes to oversight since the commenter does say "Please read the following info.")

Sowell argues that the Social Security Trust Fund is a mere "legal and accounting fiction" because one arm of the government is putting its excess cash into the hands of another, in the form of the IOUs known as Treasury bonds. As I and others keep noting, the idea that Treasury bonds are mere fictions is one that would be news to the vast number of institutions and individuals around the world who consider them the bluest of blue chip investments. What this argument really says is that the government doesn't have to make good on those bonds -- they're just a "fiction" -- when they're purchased with our Social Security taxes, set aside to handle the future shortfalls of the system, and held in trust for the retirements of America's working people. The U.S. government would never default on the bonds purchased by another country's central bank -- but hey, if the American people put their retirement money in such a form, the government is sure to renege on the debt. We're so sure it's going to renege that we're getting ready to ditch the most successful and beloved U.S. government program in history.

Why will the government default? Apparently, we're to believe, because it can. "Liberals are desperate to keep Social Security as it is, because that would mean they can continue spending your money as they see fit," Sowell writes. Funny, though; the money was fine until Bush's conservatives started cutting taxes four years ago. "Our money" was frittered away not by "liberals" but by the current administration -- on dividend tax cuts, estate tax cuts, wars of choice and other elective policies. Those policies could be reversed as easily, maybe more easily, than privatizing Social Security.

But this all gets more interesting in the second half of Craig's post, where he moves from Sowell's argument to Palffy's. Palffy wants us to put aside the silly notion that privatization means our retirement funds will be at risk. How foolish to imagine that there is any reason to worry about placing Social Security money in private markets rather than in the government's hands! But since the pesky AARP is stirring up those excitable seniors again, Palffy has a plan to soothe our graying hairs: Why, we can require that all those private (excuse me, "personal") accounts invest their money in one safe place. That ultra-reliable investment? Inflation-protected Treasury bonds!

So much for the idea that private accounts restore free-market choice. Under this plan, Social Security pretty much remains exactly the same, except that there are little chunks of money in Treasury bonds that have our names on them instead of one big chunk of bonds with Social Security's name on it. The government is still holding all that money for us, and if we're to believe Sowell and his ilk, the government can't resist getting its greedy Big Government paws on any money in sight, so there's just as much reason under the new plan as under the existing one to expect the perfidious liberals in Congress (despite their minority status!) to default on its obligations.

This round-trip doesn't get us very far at all, does it? The spinning is desperate, contradictory, ultimately inane. That's what happens when your stated plans of "reform" don't match your actual goal (eliminating Social Security). Or maybe the Washington Times' columnists, and their advocates among the population of blog commenters, need new marching orders from the White House: They did such a good job on the "private/personal" switcheroo.

In the end, there's one thing I can agree with the conservatives on: Social Security is only as safe as the lawmakers in Washington allow it to be. Sowell & co. say we must fear because we can't trust the government to keep Social Security afloat. But the government he is telling us will betray Social Security isn't in the hands of the "liberals" upon whom his finger points. It is the Bush administration that has endangered Social Security, and it is the Bush administration that now wishes to end Social Security as we know it. It may get its way. But let's make sure the American people understand who's responsible for the ensuing debacle.

Homework causes family arguments

Homework causes family arguments 02/10/2004 02:55 AM
Homework causes so much stress in families it can do more harm than good, says research.

Search Arguments Used in Adsense

Search Arguments Used in Adsense 10/29/2003 01:14 AM
"I just added the argument?srcheng=foo to a page previously showing international travel related adsense..."

Arguments against Capital Punishment

Arguments against Capital Punishment 07/19/2004 01:08 PM
While reading the news recently, I have found two things that depress me more than any others. They make me doubt my faith in human nature. They are (1) the crimes people commit; and (2) the desire for vengeance of the victims. That (2) depresses me as much as (1) has led to several heated arguments with friends and family. Therefore I should like to set down the major reasons why I believe capital punishment to be a fundamentally Bad Idea. There are the usual arguments. "Capital punishment is the mark of barbarism", "Deterrence doesn't work", "We routinely convict innocent people", etcetera. These are all valid. They are not the arguments that affect me the most. I prefer the (not-so-simple) calculus of the general good. In other words, can we arrive at a punishment that is constructive for the society that administers it, instead of arbitrarily causing more harm? In light of this, I propose the following arguments: Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right Vengeance Is Not Restitution The Paradox of 'Restitution'

New U.S. Memo Backs Off Torture
Arguments

New U.S. Memo Backs Off Torture
Arguments 12/31/2004 06:48 PM
The Justice Department said President Bush could ignore domestic and international prohibitions against torture in the name of national security.

Scorching critique of some arguments for
copyright

Scorching critique of some arguments for
copyright 05/25/2004 10:22 AM
Mark Lemley, a UC Berkeley law prof, has just published a paper on copyright called "Ex Ante Versus Ex Post Justifications for Intellectual Property," that's a good, fast read. Lemley says that in copyright's early days, the justificaiton for the auhtor's monopoly was to give authors the incentive to crete new works, but that today, we have the "ex ante" arguments that copyright also gives authors the incentive to exploit their creations -- to make more of them once they are created -- and to "steward" them by ensuring that only good, quality derivative works enter the market.

Without saying much about the idea that copyright can be a good incentive to create, Lemley tears these other arguments for copyright to shreds, in a highly entertaining fashion:

The argument that a single company is better positioned than the market to make efficient use of an idea should strike us as jarringly counterintuitive in a market economy. Our normal supposition is that the invisible hand of the market will work by permitting different companies to compete with each other. It is competition, not the skill or incentives of any given firm, that drives the market to efficiency. Nothing about the fact that a work was once subject to copyright or patent protection should change our intuition here. It is hard to imagine Senators, lobbyists, and scholars arguing with a straight face that the government should grant one company the perpetual right to control the sale of all paper clips in the country, on the theory that otherwise no one will have an incentive to make and distribute paper clips.24 We know from long experience that companies will make and distribute paper clips if they can sell them for more than it costs to supply them. The market for paper clips functions just fine without this type of government intervention. We can also predict with some confidence that if we did grant one company the exclusive right to make paper clips, the likely result would be an increase in the price and a decrease in the supply of paper clips. Yet supporters of the CTEA confidently predict exactly the opposite in the case of copyrighted works from the 1920s.

164k PDF Link (via Freedom to Tinker)

Oracle, DOJ Present Closing Arguments

Oracle, DOJ Present Closing Arguments 07/20/2004 09:36 PM
Delivering the final blows in an often-dramatic legal battle, Oracle and the Justice Department sparred again as they summed up the fine points of a pivotal trial challenging the software maker's $7.7 billion takeover bid for rival PeopleSoft.

Judge hears Novell-SCO arguments

Judge hears Novell-SCO arguments 05/12/2004 09:50 AM
ZDNet May 12 2004 2:12PM GMT

Oracle, U.S. Prepare Closing Arguments
(AP)

Oracle, U.S. Prepare Closing Arguments
(AP) 07/20/2004 04:37 PM
AP - Oracle Corp. and the Justice Department prepared Tuesday for pivotal closing arguments in the government's dramatic antitrust case challenging the software maker's $7.7 billion takeover bid for rival PeopleSoft Inc.

Oracle, U.S. Present Closing Arguments
(AP)

Oracle, U.S. Present Closing Arguments
(AP) 07/20/2004 09:09 PM
AP - Delivering the final blows in an often-dramatic legal battle, Oracle Corp. and the Justice Department sparred again Tuesday as they summed up the fine points of a pivotal trial challenging the software maker's $7.7 billion takeover bid for rival PeopleSoft Inc.

FDA to Hear Arguments Over Breast
Implants (AP)

FDA to Hear Arguments Over Breast
Implants (AP) 04/12/2005 02:31 AM
AP - Newer generations of silicone-gel breast implants are less prone to break and leak than earlier versions, argue two companies seeking an end to the nation's 13-year near-ban on the devices.

CNN.com - Government wants ID arguments
secret - Sep 6, 2004

CNN.com - Government wants ID arguments
secret - Sep 6, 2004 09/07/2004 03:50 PM
is secret .. reports .. CNN

cnn.com/2004/LAW/09/06/airline.id.ap/index.html
track this site | 4 links

Arguments due in MS antitrust settlement
appeal

Arguments due in MS antitrust settlement
appeal 11/04/2003 01:23 PM
A Washington, D.C. appeals court is set to hear oral arguments Tuesday over whether the U.S. government's antitrust settlement with Microsoft Corp. was adequate. Microsoft is returning to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, where it has already won a smattering of favorable rulings in the U.S. government's case against it, to defend itself against an appeal of the settlement by the state of Massachusetts.

Closing Arguments Set for Terror Trial
(AP)

Closing Arguments Set for Terror Trial
(AP) 12/29/2004 10:11 AM
AP - After nearly six months of testimony, closing arguments were set to begin Wednesday in the trial of civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart and her two co-defendants, all of whom were members of a legal team that represented imprisoned Egyptian Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman in the 1990s.

Bryant Hearings Closing Arguments Filed
(AP)

Bryant Hearings Closing Arguments Filed
(AP) 01/11/2004 06:00 PM
AP - There is no way to hold public court hearings on the medical records of Kobe Bryant's alleged sexual assault victim without violating her privacy rights, lawyers for the prosecution and the woman say in court filings.

Command-line Arguments for the Watch
Function

Command-line Arguments for the Watch
Function 03/06/2004 02:09 AM

Oracle v. DOJ: Written arguments focus
debate

Oracle v. DOJ: Written arguments focus
debate 07/13/2004 06:43 PM
special coverage The Justice Department and Oracle take the written test ahead of July 20 closing arguments.

Judge quizzes Oracle, DOJ during closing
arguments

Judge quizzes Oracle, DOJ during closing
arguments 07/21/2004 07:48 AM
The judge overseeing the U.S. government's case to block Oracle Corp.'s hostile bid for PeopleSoft Inc. quizzed both sides during closing arguments Tuesday, emphasizing market definition and customer testimony.

Justices Hear Arguments on Internet
Pornography Law

Justices Hear Arguments on Internet
Pornography Law 03/06/2004 01:53 AM
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments about Internet pornography, one of the most vexing issues at the intersection of technology and First Amendment rights.

Arguments with Teenage Daughters Can Be
Good? (Reuters)

Arguments with Teenage Daughters Can Be
Good? (Reuters) 04/16/2004 08:53 AM
Reuters - Mothers exasperated by petty arguments with their teenage daughters should take heart from new research in Britain which shows arguing may actually be good for their relationships with moody offspring.

Closing Arguments Begin in Kazaa Trial
(AP)

Closing Arguments Begin in Kazaa Trial
(AP) 03/23/2005 12:20 AM
AP - The owners of global file-sharing company Kazaa told a court Wednesday they should not be held liable for copyright infringements by network users because the company cannot control how the software is used after it is downloaded.

Commentaries on Iraq lack cohesive
arguments

Commentaries on Iraq lack cohesive
arguments 02/08/2003 04:29 PM
Before accusing President Bush of spewing propaganda, it may help to have someone familiar with Google check your facts before submitting them to public ...

Closing arguments begin in Kazaa trial

Closing arguments begin in Kazaa trial 03/23/2005 08:02 AM
San Jose Mercury News Mar 23 2005 10:13AM GMT

Oracle judge hears closing arguments

Oracle judge hears closing arguments 07/21/2004 05:55 AM
Judge takes no prisoners

Government Asks Court to Keep ID
Arguments Secret

Government Asks Court to Keep ID
Arguments Secret 09/07/2004 02:03 PM

Justices Seem Responsive to Arguments on
File Sharing

Justices Seem Responsive to Arguments on
File Sharing 03/29/2005 08:19 PM
The Supreme Court was surprisingly responsive to warnings from Grokster that a broad definition of copyright infringement could curtail innovation.

Closing Arguments Made in Suit Over
Oracle's Bid

Closing Arguments Made in Suit Over
Oracle's Bid 07/20/2004 10:59 PM
Lawyers presented vastly different views of the software market when they presented closing arguments in the government's lawsuit to block Oracle's takeover of PeopleSoft.

Judge hears arguments in Novell-SCO suit

Judge hears arguments in Novell-SCO suit 05/11/2004 08:44 PM
A federal judge heard arguments from Novell Inc. and The SCO Group Inc. in a Utah court Tuesday in the "slander of title" case brought by SCO against Novell last January.

Court Hears Arguments About
Guantánamo Bay Detainees

Court Hears Arguments About
Guantánamo Bay Detainees 04/20/2004 10:00 PM
The Supreme Court seemed unreceptive to the argument that federal courts must remain closed to foreign detainees held in Cuba.

Oracle case judge quizzes DOJ in opening
arguments

Oracle case judge quizzes DOJ in opening
arguments 06/08/2004 04:53 PM
The U.S. Department of Justice argued in court yesterday that an Oracle/PeopleSoft merger would reduce competition in the market for a type of "high-function" enterprise application used by large corporations, leading to in higher prices for customers.

Using Named Arguments to retrieve
command line parameters

Using Named Arguments to retrieve
command line parameters 07/13/2004 05:18 PM

Closing Arguments for Oklahoma City
Bombing Case

Closing Arguments for Oklahoma City
Bombing Case 05/24/2004 03:10 AM
Reuters via Wired News May 24 2004 6:18AM GMT

High Court Mulls Arguments On Library
Internet-Filter Law

High Court Mulls Arguments On Library
Internet-Filter Law 09/15/2004 05:24 PM
Education Week Sep 15 2004 8:48PM GMT

Arguments Before the Supreme Court to
Shape the Future of Internet Speech

Arguments Before the Supreme Court to
Shape the Future of Internet Speech 04/02/2005 04:12 PM
NYC Independent Media Center Apr 2 2005 7:54PM GMT

Supreme Court hears arguments with
next-gen enterprise service impact

Supreme Court hears arguments with
next-gen enterprise service impact 04/07/2005 04:54 AM
Plus: Session border controllers a Juniper priority; EC recommends price caps for leased lines
Grok Description matches for Leader: Non-moralistic arguments on Big Brother
GrokA matches for Leader: Non-moralistic arguments on Big Brother

Leader: Non-moralistic arguments on Big Brother

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