An economics major. I assume you didn't graduate with an economics degree otherwise you'd either be working at McDonalds or CNN either way you wouldn't be having this chat right now.

It's typically been the Gov't's job to stimulate the economy when businesses and individuals won't buy.

As long as a less than free market economy like China can flood markets with its slave labor products we will spend decades recovering from the debt and lack of actual production.

As long as those in Washington DC blame each other for the nations problems thing are unlikely to recover

Gov't spending leads to economic growth. If the fed were to stop spending we'd have economic turmoil in no time.

I'd love to see all sorts of entitlement reform -- INCLUDING 'rich corporation and rich people' entitlement reform.

If you shrink governments enough, you will shrink the US economy and then you will need to shrink governments (federal, state and local) further - which will shrink the economy further -- you get the drift here right.

Which of course is very much what the Norquistian/Tea Party cabal running the Republicans in Congress definitely wants to see.

I for one would rather see Oil and other Big business pay it's fair share before Soc. Sec. takes a hit so in this one I believe I blame the Republicans the most. I don't really understand the whole thing so I won't take a stand quite yet...Like to hear what others with more knowledge think.

Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program. He promised:

1.) That participation in the Program would be Completely voluntary.
-- It is no longer Voluntary


2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual Incomes into the Program.
-- Now participants must pay 7.65% on the first $90,000


3.) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year.
-- It is no longer tax deductible


4.) That the money the participants put into the independent 'Trust Fund' rather than into the general operating fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other Government program.
-- Under Johnson the money was moved to The General Fund and Spent


5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income.
-- Under Clinton & Gore, up to 85% of your Social Security can be Taxed

--------- --------- --------- ---------

Many people have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month -- and then finding that they are getting taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the Federal government to 'put away'.

A lot of the media is pointing fingers at the Republican Party, but the history books are pretty clear on who enacted all of this:

--------- --------- --------- ---------

Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the
independent 'Trust Fund' and put it into the
general fund so that Congress could spend it?

A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the democratically
controlled House and Senate.

--------- --------- --------- ---------

Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax
deduction for Social Security (FICA) withholding?

A: The Democratic Party.

--------- --------- --------- ---------

Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social
Security annuities?

A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the
'tie-breaking' deciding vote as President of the
Senate, while he was Vice President of the US

--------- --------- --------- ---------

Q: Which Political Party decided to start
giving annuity payments to immigrants?

A: Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party.
Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65,
began to receive Social Security payments! The
Democratic Party gave these payments to them,
even though they never paid a dime into Social Security.

Just passed 50 million :-)

(he says, with 9,009,394 now showing below his name :-) )

I think now I did some bad math and the time one way at 30% of lightspeed not allowing for acceleration or decelleration would be 15 years for the crew.

Never underestimate dumb! Will a toothpick fit through the mesh? Where there's stupidity there's a way! :-)

Dumb question: What's the purpose of the glass door ?

A rack or two of fully-populated C7000 enclosures might come in pretty handy.

Total cost?

And on the thread topic, have no problem uploading and reporting. Downloads failing, stuck in retry and project backoffs.

before we consider that, we need to answer a basic question; are we crunching faster than data is being collected at the telescope? I think the three day outage is a pretty good indication that we are.