If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.
You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!
"When I was running for office I had a debate as you may recall, actually five of them. Don't know whether you saw the one where Tim Russert was the moderator. He wondered how we were going to be able to close a $1 billion budget gap. And I had to lay out what my plans were for doing so. When I got in office, my Secretary of Finance came to me and said, I've got great news and bad news. The great news is we don't have a one billion budget gap. The bad news is we have a $3 billion budget gap. And there were some people that said all we have to do is raise taxes. And I said, look, if you raise taxes you kill jobs and you hurt working families. There were some other people that said why don't we just raise debt. We can just borrow our way out of this. But if you raise debt you just put our problems on the backs of our kids. I said no, we're going to go back to government, we're going to cut out the waste and inefficiency and duplication. We're going to do the job we were elected to do. And Republicans and Democrats came together and made a lot of that happen.
But Romney said the overall level of spending growth in the budget “is simply too high.” He lamented the fact that it relies on $550 million in rainy day funds at a time when the state is experiencing record high revenue collections. Source: 07-08-2006 Press Release
“Rainy day funds should not be spent during periods of robust revenue growth to support a level of spending that is not sustainable,” Romney said. “We are repeating the mistakes of the past, and it would be irresponsible to allow this budget to become law without making significant reductions.”
“Two years ago, the state budget was out of balance and the economy was in a deep recession. Working together, the Executive Branch and Legislature took decisive action to control costs and manage the budget without raising taxes Today, our economy is strong and producing jobs and the budget outlook is positive.”
He added that his budget will not raise taxes on the working families of Massachusetts and that he will propose a modest increase in local aid. “I will present a balanced budget. And in case anybody has any other ideas, let me be clear about one more thing: I will not raise taxes.”
“Being fiscally responsible isn’t easy – and it’s not always popular – but it has its rewards. If we continue the hard work of reform, we can do even more for the people of Massachusetts.”
"A true partnership means sharing in good times and bad. In good times, the Commonwealth shared its prosperity with cities and towns," said Romney in an address to the Massachusetts Municipal Association. "Now that the state has hit hard times, we need cities and towns to join us in tightening their belts," Romney said. "Our problem is simple: spending is high and cash is low. When we began our transition two months ago, every indication was that the current budget was balanced. That is not the case, and immediate, hard action is required to achieve fiscal balance," said Romney. According to Romney, his current "9C authority" would force disproportionate cuts on the elderly, poor and disabled. "If we are forced to balance this budget on the backs of our seniors and the poor, we will expose the core services of government to disproportionate cuts," said Romney. "That is not fair. The best solution is to spread the burden."
While he is sacrificing $2 million in savings by blocking some of the proposed changes, Romney said programs that provide shelter to the homeless “should not be gutted,” calling them “essential services.”
“The current communications structure in government makes no sense. It grew over time without any planning or thought. It’s an extremely wasteful system,” said Romney. “By streamlining our communications function, we can do a better job with less people for the taxpayers of Massachusetts.”
“Throughout this process, we have been guided by a desire to simplify our health and human services agencies to better serve recipients. Rather than requiring families to navigate the current red tape jungle, we are consolidating functions to better help those who cannot help themselves,” Romney said. Families requiring HHS services now face a confusing alphabet soup of state agencies to access the help they need.
Romney said the HHS agencies would be divided into four different groups – Children, Youth and Families; Disabilities and Community Services; Health; and Elder Affairs – based on their common functions. Romney said, “We want to make sure that any person or family in need of an HHS service will be able to get that service easily. Under my plan, the bureaucracy will be simpler to navigate while saving significant time for state employees and significant money for taxpayers.”
“It would be impossible to reach unanimity on every aspect of our budget, but it’s clear there is widespread support for the concept of change. We face a choice between either cutting waste out of government, or facing a new job killing tax increase every year from here on out,” said Romney.
“We will continue to be a generous state when it comes to caring for the poor, the disabled and the elderly. We will be far less generous when it comes to patronage, waste and inefficiencies.”
“The members of the Legislature and the Administration have successfully closed the $650 million budget gap and set a precedent of cooperation that will help us produce a fair and balanced budget for the next fiscal year.”
Einstein said, “You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it.” Similarly, we won’t improve our country until we improve our level of public debate. On these pages I outline how we can automate conflict resolution and cost-benefit analysis and solve our problems at a level higher than how they were caused.
To start, we will break our problems down into their sub-components, including beliefs, supporting, and weakening evidence, and arguments. This will allow thousands or millions of us to evaluate each part of an argument and evidence one at a time. We will group beliefs by topic and sort them by their positivity, strength, and level of specificity. This will prevent duplication and allow us to focus on one issue at a time.
The Idea Stock Exchange (ISE) proposes a groundbreaking framework for tackling complex issues, resolving conflicts, and fostering informed decision-making. Here's a detailed breakdown of its key features:
Evidence-driven: Prioritizes verifiable data and logical reasoning, ensuring well-informed conclusions.
Dynamic Ranking System: Inspired by Google's PageRank, it evaluates arguments based on the strength of their evidence, dynamically adjusting as new information emerges.
2. Multi-faceted Evaluation Metrics:
Cost-Benefit Analysis: Assesses proposed solutions by examining potential costs, benefits, likelihoods, and impact.
Argumentative Strength Assessment: Categorizes arguments based on logical consistency, evidence, relevance, and significance.
Maslow's Hierarchy Integration: Aligns the evaluation with fundamental human needs for a broader perspective.
3. Sophisticated Scoring and Ranking Protocols:
Precision Scoring Formula: Combines argument scores with evidence assessments to determine argument validity.
Evidence-Based Ranking System: Leverages algorithms to rank solutions based on predicted costs and benefits, with dynamic updates based on new information.
4. Uniqueness and Redundancy Scores:
Equivalency Score: Identifies similar arguments using semantic similarity metrics and machine learning, coupled with community feedback, to reduce redundancy and develop unique scores.
"Better Ways of Saying the Same Thing": Helps users find alternative expressions of the same idea, enhancing clarity and reducing duplication.
5. Logical Fallacy and Argument Evaluation:
Fallacy Detection: Implements algorithms to identify and flag potentially fallacious arguments, promoting rational discourse.
User-Contributed Evidence Assessment: Allows the community to contribute evidence supporting or weakening arguments for collaborative verification.
6. Technological Integration and User Interaction:
Database Tools: Proposes building tools to map conclusions, assumptions, and their relationships for deeper understanding.
Interactive Interface: Users can actively participate by submitting evidence, voting on argument strength, and suggesting alternative viewpoints.
7. Promoting Quality Debate:
Separating Argument Types: Distinguishes between truth, importance, and relevance arguments for a more nuanced debate structure.
Encouraging Constructive Dialogue: Aims to shift focus from emotional responses to evidence-based reasoning, fostering meaningful discourse over sensationalism.
8. Community-Driven Evolution:
Open-Source Development: Encourages community involvement in refining and evolving the platform, ensuring its adaptability and relevance.
Additional Considerations:
Data Quality and Bias: Implementing robust measures to ensure data accuracy and mitigate potential biases in algorithms and user contributions.
Transparency and Explainability: Providing clear explanations of scoring methods and decision-making processes to build trust and understanding.
User Engagement and Education: Fostering active participation and educating users on the platform's functionalities and responsible use.
We are a political party that organizes all the ideas and arguments by subject, and lets them battle in a survival of the fittest death-match.
We are a political party that supports candidates that promises to make their decisions based on online cost benefit and idea evaluation algorithms. They just have to use a forum that ties the strength of their conclusion to the strength of their assumption, so that when you strengthen or weaken an assumption you also strengthen or weaken conclusions based on the assumption.
We have had the technological ability to create a world based on logic for too long. It is about time we build a rational political party based on the assumption that we support plans, conclusions, activities, and policies that can gather evidence based support, and that we don't do things that don't stand up to analysis.
We will conduct open, online, cost/benefit analysis of each issue. It is about time.
Welcome to the website for the best political party of all time, and the future of reason based decisions making.
"No concept you form is valid unless you integrate it without contradiction into the sum of human knowledge."
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.