Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (366463)	1/11/2008 2:03:55 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1571642

First of all, just because you have more money does not necessarily mean you will have more influence I stopped reading your post right at the above statement. There is no need to go any further. You're already spinning down primrose lane.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (366463)	1/11/2008 3:40:03 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571642

"As long as We The People are diligent enough to smell the B.S. and vote the bums out of office, democracy will take care of itself." That is the problem. Most people rely on liberally partisan media for their daily instructions on what to think.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (366463)	1/11/2008 4:22:21 PM
From: SilentZ	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1571642

>First of all, just because you have more money does not necessarily mean you will have more influence. Even if I had a billion dollars to spend on public service ads, there is no way I can convince anyone to eat razor blades for breakfast. That's an extreme example, but one which should illustrate how the quality of the message itself still matters more than how many people you can reach. I just can't agree. I've been hanging with 9-10-11 figure types a lot lately, and it's amazing to me how many of them have photos of themselves with Presidents, VPs, and how many sit down to dinner with U.S. world leaders on a regular basis. They don't have more influence than you and I do? And the razor blade example is completely absurd. A well-orchestrated, often-repeated message can get people to do and believe an awful lot of things. >Secondly, the traditional means for the poor to take on the rich is to band together, pool their resources, and present a united front. That in itself should be more than sufficient to level the playing field. There used to be a mechanism for that. We called them, um, "unions." But the rich have, in most cases, overpowered the unions and made them irrelevant since the days of Reagan. >And third, we have more means of communication and networking than any other time in the history of humanity, especially with the Internet. The barriers to entry are low. That to me is the most level playing field I have ever seen. Unfortunately, most people have been jaded to politics. >Hence, I agree that no one really ought to give a f--- about how much money Soros pumps into 527s. It's his money, he is free to spend it on whatever socialistic crusade he believes in. Same thing applies to those funding the Swifties. Or the oh-so-non-partisan think tanks trying to influence public policy. As long as We The People are diligent enough to smell the B.S. and vote the bums out of office, democracy will take care of itself. But the system is set up to keep us disinterested in nothing but the most superficial aspects. I think you're totally wrong on this. -Z

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (366463)	1/12/2008 10:11:45 PM
From: steve harris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571642

Liberals favorite leftie... Message 24208651 From The Sunday Times TimesOnLine January 13, 2008 timesonline.co.uk Anti-war Soros funded Iraq study Brendan Montague A STUDY that claimed 650,000 people were killed as a result of the invasion of Iraq was partly funded by the antiwar billionaire George Soros. Soros, 77, provided almost half the £50,000 cost of the research, which appeared in The Lancet, the medical journal. Its claim was 10 times higher than consensus estimates of the number of war dead. The study, published in 2006, was hailed by antiwar campaigners as evidence of the scale of the disaster caused by the invasion, but Downing Street and President George Bush challenged its methodology. New research published by The New England Journal of Medicine estimates that 151,000 people - less than a quarter of The Lancet estimate - have died since the invasion in 2003. “The authors should have disclosed the [Soros] donation and for many people that would have been a disqualifying factor in terms of publishing the research,” said Michael Spagat, economics professor at Royal Holloway, University of London. The Lancet study was commissioned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and led by Les Roberts, an associate professor and epidemiologist at Columbia University. He reportedly opposed the war from the outset. His team surveyed 1,849 homes at 47 sites across Iraq, asking people about births, deaths and migration in their households. Professor John Tirman of MIT said this weekend that $46,000 (£23,000) of the approximate £50,000 cost of the study had come from Soros’s Open Society Institute. Roberts said this weekend: “In retrospect, it was probably unwise to have taken money that could have looked like it would result in a political slant. I am adamant this could not have affected the outcome of the research.” The Lancet did not break any rules by failing to disclose Soros’s sponsorship