Wall Street is basically organized gambling, but all of life is a gamble. If you write a poem, it's a gamble that it will come up a seven or an eleven, but odds are it's snake eyes. If you start a business most of them fail. The markets have to pay off if people are going to pay to play. Some guy in this town bought IBM stock in 1930 for three thousand dollars and now owns half of the town. Good for him. He supports the hospital, the local journal called Kaatskill Life, and gives money to my college. People think it's wrong for him to have so much money. Why?
The other idea is that the government owns all the money and redistributes it to each according to their need, from each according to their ability. There is no risk, and no gain. So, people do nothing. Result: inertia.
If a raccoon wants to live it has to go down to the river and bet it can catch a fish. If the gamble doesn't pay off, it dies. This is the basis of life.
When I watch the Wall St. occupiers I want to tell them that they are their own worst enemy. These are the people who voted for Obama, and he wrecked the economy by trying to take all risk out of it. He had no idea what he was doing, but people thought it would be nice if the lion would lie down with the lamb and everything was hunky dory. The lion chasing the lamb is the basis of the economy.
That's how this kingdom is. Obama forced Obamacare down the throats of the country, thinking he would make this world into heaven, and he made it into hell, and now no one wants to start new businesses or hire people because the risk is too high and the chance of gain is too small. Obama wrecked the economy, and these people are out complaining in what strikes me as a circular and incoherent manner. I wish they'd wake up and see that their president wrecked their chance to work.
There's only one way out of the problem: Herman Cain. I don't really understand his 9-9-9 plan, nor do I understand Bachman's statement that if you turn the numbers upside down you get 666. All I know is I like Herman Cain. Cain is able. He got companies going based on simple goodtime rhythms of providing a service for people at a price they like. I also like how he's managed to get his 9-9-9 plan out by repeating it over and over, like advertising. I still don't know what it means, but I'm beginning to get interested. Laffer (a Reagan economist) approved of it the other day. Basically the idea is to take the risk of payouts off of businesses so that businesses will get back into the game. He will get rid of Obamacare, and get the markets working again by lowering the risk not of workers, but of employers.
It's like we're playing a game of Monopoly and nobody is buying hotels or motels because it costs more to buy one than any possible rent you'd get out of them.
I understood the Tea Party folks. I think they got that Obamacare would drive the country out of business. I think they also didn't like Obama's bailouts because they wrecked the risk of doing business. If you put money into the wrong thing, you deserve to go bankrupt. If the government bails out bad businesses and bad housing decisions, then the government itself will go bankrupt.
The Wall Street occupiers want to make money without risk. They just want to seize the money of the rich. None of them seem to actually want to work, or realize what it means. When you take a job you are taking a risk that the company you work for will provide a decent benefit to the community which will then pay you for what the company does. This circulation of interests pays the bills. Americans are soft and don't want to work. Or don't know what it means. We've lost this sense.
It isn't clear to me if people in the Wall Street Occupation understand that you work for money, just as a raccoon takes a risk to get a fish. It seems they just feel entitled to money.
I honestly don't understand the economy in its overall sense. I have read Marx and I've read Hayek. Marx was nuts. Hayek was at least sane. I think Marx's basic insanity is that he thought that good people deserved money for being on the right side of history, as if history has an obvious progressive pattern in it (it doesn't). Hayek thought that people deserved money if they could provide a good product that others would buy at a price that seemed reasonable. At every moment, the economy and what people want might change course -- like a river. Rivers are unpredictable. They flip back and forth on maps and if they move, all the stuff downsteam dies, or has to figure out how to get back in business.
Hayek seemed reasonable, and to have a flexible notion that would work. The Tea Party people wanted to fight for that not because they could get something out of it, but because it made sense in the overall. The Wall Street occupation instead is just based on the belief that they should be given money because they're entitled to it, because they want it, because they feel entitled to it, because they want it, because they're entitled to it, because they voted for Obama. I don't know if Obama is a Bolshevik or a Maoist or some kind of idealist, or just what he is. He's a drip. He's a dried up drip. He's dried up the rivers of money that used to run through the country. If you're downstream from that guy, you have to run upstream and get him out. He's an enormous sponge. A kind of SPONGEMAN who has turned the country into a desert. It's mysterious that one man could do this. I think he did it partially by scorning the laws, and the Law. God has turned his back on America because of Obama. But the economy has also disappeared. Somehow it's all connnected.
I think the guy who can get it going again is Cain. He's able. All this is a bit over my head, to be honest, but the main thing is we have to get Obama out of the White House. He has no leadership and no business sense, and doesn't believe in God, or if he does, it's no God I recognize.
157 comments:
"Cain is [A]ble."
Ha! Nice.
Yeah, "Cain is able" is brilliant.
The 999 plan means a national 9% sales tax, a 9% flat income tax and a 9% corporate income tax. It would generate as much or nearly as much as the current tax system while having the benefit of simplicity.
thanks for the kind note on my pun.
I think Cain's problem will be that he thinks he is going to scrap the existing tax code (10,000 pages with 1000s of exemptions and exceptions) BEFORE he can pass the 9-9-9 plan.
How can we be WITHOUT a tax code??
Maybe the same bill can wipe out the existing tax code and propose the new one?
9-9-9 is really wonderfully thought out -- it proposes a maximum number that is still not a ten! It's classic!
Some screech that it won't give us quite as much of a revenue stream as currently exists.
But if the business community starts to budge again (Obama has given it the look of the Medusa and frozen it to stone), then there will still be prosperity, and with increased prosperity there will be more purchasing and thus better income streams for everyone.
Do people want to work? I think they do. Aside from a hand ful of idiots who think that reenacting the 60s seems like fun, even down to spreading diseases and throwing things at the police, most people in this country still have a work ethic, and take pride in their work.
Why wouldn't they?
The idea, I believe, is that the law would replace the current tax code.
There were eighty arrests so far. One thug broke a police officer's jaw. The 4th commandment is in abeyance at such rallies as is Christianity generally. The idea that we should obey parents is also included in respect for authorities generally. This is turned into not only "question" authorities, but "attack" them. It's sad to watch the breakdown of law and order. I think it's exactly what Obama represents. He is in favor of this. He doesn't want law or order. He wants a kind of matriarchal whim to rule. Desire itself should rule.
If I were a police officer I would far rather have to supervise a Tea Party event.
One of the tenets of Christianity is that we submit to the State.
Now, that does NOT mean that we obey the state--simply that we submit to whatever the state wishes to do--so if we go against the state we take our licks (or our lives) like Paul and Jesus.
That very tenet is the reason Democracy is such a problem w.r.t. Christianity--it gives us a false entitlement over the state that we are directly instructed not to concern ourselves with.
Many Christians used to be more fervent in their political alienation but I think in the 60s a countervalent movement toward conservatism emerged within Christianity that resulted in the Moral Majority and other movements. I watched Geraldo Rivera interview some of the Wall St. Occupiers this evening and none of them have any kind of Christian ideals, which we did see in the Tea Party. So I would say that these people are Satanists, or at least non-Christian.
But the Republicans have many Christians. Herman Cain has been a devout Baptist all his life. So has Bachman, and Santorum is a straight-up Catholic, at least from how he sounds. Paul has three brothers who are Lutheran pastors.
It doesn't always translate directly into political action, but it does translate into an ethos. Moses was certainly political. St. Paul was political.
Where do you see the strongest push in Christianity toward the non-political, GM?
Paul and Peter urge us to see our political leaders as godly, but both of them failed to see this in NEro, and were in fact martyred (in the same year). Many on the left want a separation between church and state, but without a faith of some kind most people are just paralyzed or turn to crazy preoccupations like drug use, or weird sexual stuff, or some other kind of collapse. I think the Wall St. Occupiers are Exhibit A of what happens when people collapse. When they speak it's vague generalities. It's empty drama of some kind. They have this imaginary notion that there is somewhere 1% who rules the rest.
Isn't it just Obama who rules? I'm not so sure who is in charge. I thought he was. And I think it's Obamacare that threw everybody out of work.
Most of Wall Street's problems right now derive from their reliance on derivatives. I've got mixed feelings about derivatives. I remember taking first year calculus and deciding that derivatives were a nightmare I wasn't prepared or willing to handle and from which I have still not managed to awaken. But I can understand how the finance people got sucked into believing in them and buying into them. It's the same principle as the mutual fund, overcoming risk though industrial strength diversification. I'm comfortable with mutual funds and I think I could be amenable to derivatives if I was convinced that the investment world had figured out a way to manage their downside. I have a feeling that this recession has been necessary so that the derivative downside from the mortgage bubble can be calibrated. None of the OWS protesters are ranting about derivatives. Maybe they should be.
I like Wall Street. I watch Bloomberg on my flat screen. I hate waking up in the morning to learn I lost ten grand overnight in a massive selloff, but not as much as I love watching a rally where I get that ten grand back in three days and make another five grand by the end of the week. It makes me feel like such an entrepreneur.
You do continue to make statements, Kirby, that are obviously false and which you already know are false, so maybe you're still trolling more than I realize.
In an earlier post, you mentioned the Obama bailouts...of course, it was Bush who passed the bailouts.
In this, you mention that the passage of Healthcare is what threw people out of work.
You can make a nuanced argument, perhaps, that after the financial collapse, the uncertainty caused by HCR stalled hiring After unemployment went sky-high - You can even make a probably-correct argument that it would have been better to spend time/money/energy on job creation instead of the longer-term, less-immediately-beneficial HCR...
but you and I both know that the employment rate dropped like a rock well before HCR passed.
Brett, I think the timeline is more of a curve rather than one steep drop at one point in time. Under Bush employment was I think about 6%. It's now closer to 10%. Part of that decline is obviously linked to the uncertainties caused by HCR and the weirdness of that vast bill. If Obama were to scuttle it, employment all over the country would rise. But Obama doesn't care. He's proud of the bill, and even if it ruins America, he will try to keep it, because it's something that the Democrats have wanted for a long time and now that they have it, they won't back off on it. Bachman claims that business owners tell her they won't hire anyone at all until HCR is reversed. It places an unacceptable burden on employers, and they'd rather close their businesses or move overseas rather than pony up the draconian amounts HCR demands.
Remember, too, that there were two bailouts. W's was passed just before he left office. The next one is widely considered unnecessary, and was a massive tamale containing tons of pork. In SF, there were 30 million dollars for the salt marsh harvest mouse, for instance -- something that Pelosi wanted -- to bail out some mouse in her district. No one was able to connect it to job creation.
Obama's new bill had as its ostensible symbol the Brent Spence bridge between Cincinnati and Coventry, Kentucky. A quick internet search reveals that the bridge is intact, and already scheduled for repair. So it's a symbol that was chosen for political reasons, but very quickly even the MSM was able to see that BO had chosen it not because it was actually in need of repair but because he thought the pork he was handing to Boehner and Mitchell would get them to side with his new 500 billion dollar spending bill. However, the Brent Spence isn't actually in the bill.
Obama was throwing another head fake on the way to the hoop.
Many in the far right believe that Obama's true intention is to ruin America. I think it's more fair to say that he just doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't have much of an idea what money is, or how to create a job, or how to do anything at all. He does seemingly know how to kill opponents -- he took out OBL and now the other guy in Yemen. He can take out opponents -- somewhat as Al Capone could.
As for derivatives, Craig, they are rarely if ever mentioned in the media outlets as the source of all our downturn. Could you explain why you think they are and provide a few reasons for this? I'm interested.
I think the housing bubble with Fannie and Freddie (which continues unabated even though the media doesn't pay any attention any longer), the HCR bill, and the trade imbalance with China, are far more important. We also have probably twenty million people here who are working illegally, and taking jobs that would otherwise go to Americans, and using resources such as schools and hospitals, that aren't budgeted.
The protesters -- I think -- probably had weak educations in the state our schools have arrived at in which crypto-Marxists spout nonsense from pulpits and the kids are too lame to think otherwise. Thus, what emerges is that there is a 1% that secretly wants to crush them, and is indifferent to the masses.
More likely that would be Obama himself, but the schools aren't going to go in that direction. The befuddled fools on the village greens have it all wrong.
They have the wrong description of the problem, and also the wrong prescription. They think it's one percent of the rich who are causing the problem (but it's Obama who has kept the employers from hiring) and they think that if they were to tax the rich more excessively then they would all have jobs (they would be even less likely to have jobs).
The correct description is to scrap HCR for a simpler clearer plan or to leave in place the one that exists. Let the states take care of immigration. Build a better wall (this will create jobs for actual Americans). Straighten out the currency. Ban trade with China, just as we've banned it with Cuba and North Korea, on account of communism, which is always already an abuse of human rights (China has more journalists in prison than any other country on earth, and plus they have an illegal occupation of Tibet). Then, scuttle Fannie and Freddie. Clarify the tax laws through a plan like 9-9-9, and begin to make the universities hire for diversity of viewpoint, rather than rgc. This would be the beginning of a resurgence at every level.
The Marxist idea that there is 1% that needs to be crushed and hated (it is true that 1% of Americans hold about 37% of wealth in America but it doesn't mean that this 1% either hates or is indifferent to the rest), is twaddle that the left uses to rally its base, much as the Nazis used a similar idea to rally Germans against the Jews. I don't like it because it sets up the wrong description of the problem and thus sets in motion the wrong prescription (kill the geese that lay the golden eggs, rather than coax them to lay more).
The fact is that the entrepreneurial class are our real poets and geniuses. Henry Fords don't come along every day. Bill Gates or the Jobs guy are the guys that make our jobs and build our gates and we can't afford to dispense with them or hate them.
It's Obama that has caused all these problems. He's a mindless amateur in a slick suit and he only has one skill -- to wipe out his opposition. I grant that he's been good at this, and OBL and the Anwar El-Sadat guy (I forget his name) are the proof of this. HBO is a slick operation in at least the killing department.
He can neutralize and destroy his opposition. Unfortunately, he's also killed the economy, and tarnished our national credit in so doing.
It may be impossible to get him oiut, and he may well end up dictator for life (I think he believes he should be president in perpetuity much like Kim Jung-Il in North Korea). It may even be impossible at this point to make certain that the voting machines will still work next November! But probably they will. And maybe he's not as evil as he seems.
Perhaps he's just an amateur with no real experience. That's Herman Cain's claim about Obama, and I'm beginning to trust Cain's judgement. He's Able.
The Marxist idea that there is 1% that needs to be crushed and hated (it is true that 1% of Americans hold about 37% of wealth in America but it doesn't mean that this 1% either hates or is indifferent to the rest), is twaddle that the left uses to rally its base, much as the Nazis used a similar idea to rally Germans against the Jews. I don't like it because it sets up the wrong description of the problem and thus sets in motion the wrong prescription (kill the geese that lay the golden eggs, rather than coax them to lay more).
The fact is that the entrepreneurial class are our real poets and geniuses. Henry Fords don't come along every day. Bill Gates or the Jobs guy are the guys that make our jobs and build our gates and we can't afford to dispense with them or hate them.
It's Obama that has caused all these problems. He's a mindless amateur in a slick suit and he only has one skill -- to wipe out his opposition. I grant that he's been good at this, and OBL and the Anwar El-Sadat guy (I forget his name) are the proof of this. HBO is a slick operation in at least the killing department.
He can neutralize and destroy his opposition. Unfortunately, he's also killed the economy, and tarnished our national credit in so doing.
It may be impossible to get him oiut, and he may well end up dictator for life (I think he believes he should be president in perpetuity much like Kim Jung-Il in North Korea). It may even be impossible at this point to make certain that the voting machines will still work next November! But probably they will. And maybe he's not as evil as he seems.
Perhaps he's just an amateur with no real experience. That's Herman Cain's claim about Obama, and I'm beginning to trust Cain's judgement. He's Able.
Kirby,
You'll never gestalt the "Occupy" movement because it's essentially the Tea Party of the left, and you gave up any honest analysis of the left long ago, because you find it easier to argue against strawmen.
But I think the parallel is a good one. The occupiers and the tea baggers are reacting to much the same issue -- an economic malaise that was caused by collapse of a speculative bubble and economic irresponsibility -- they just ascribe different causes. This isn't to say that there aren't differences. There's an astroturf aspect to the 'baggers that doesn't seem present in the occupiers.
I must say that I find your base assumption that people who are presently out of work have categorically chosen that state to be evidence of a willful ignorance. Certainly, I know some very hard working people who are out of work through no fault of their own, and who are actively seeking employment. The truth is that there are three subpopulations that are having a particularly difficult time right now: people over 55 (who are especially vulnerable because being forced into early retirement means an old-age of poverty, which they're no longer physically capable of working out of), young people entering the job market (because experience is often a key differentiator in hiring decisions), and the long-term unemployed (who might or might not be work evaders, but who employers will generally assume are).
As for the issues of violence -- there have been well-covered police assaults against the protesters, so there's a certain amount of tit-for-tat on both sides. The police in general have more sympathy for the tea baggers, and hence there's less friction there. But if you want any proof that our democracy has been degraded into little more than a protective association for the rich -- look no further for proof.
I honestly don't understand the economy in its overall sense.
Well, at least you admit it. Doesn't stop you from playing judge, though.
BTW, in your "Delhi" thread, you suggest that Cain might blow up Obama's support, which you see as based solely on identity politics. It's been tried: cf., Alan Keyes in the 2004 Illinois Senate Campaign. You might want to check out how that turned out.
This isn't to claim that Cain is this year's Keyes. That's clearly wrong. He's this year's Ross Perot.
I think Cain is this year's Reagan.
Kirby,
I think Cain is this year's Reagan.
Nah. Cain was a political unknown. Reagan had previously served as governor of California, and moreover, he'd had experience as President of the Screen Actors Guild. Yes, Reagan was a union man, indeed a union official, which I guess the 'bagger hagiagraphies omit.
And like Perot, Cain is pushing a radically oversimplified economic vision, and he's not being particularly honest about it.
Here's a question for you Kirby, will you pay more or less in Federal Taxes under the 9-9-9 plan than you do at present? Hint: the 9% business tax is really a VAT, so the plan might more honestly be presented as a 9% tax on income, and an 18% sales tax, of which 9% appears on the receipt, and 9% is hidden in the price. Since you're spending pretty much everything you're earning, your effective federal tax rate under Cain's plan would increase from somewhere around 15% to somewhere around 27%. I'd say that the punishment (paying more taxes) would fit the crime (basing your intuitive assessment of the economic impact of Cain's proposal on wishful thinking rather than actual facts), but it would actually be far worse. Are you prepared for a 12% cut in disposable income, just so that the Cains and Romneys of the world can get a tax cut? Because that's what's Cain is proposing.
He's just another thief, and you're just another eager victim.
Cain has the charm and humor of Reagan and is certainly not unknown now. He's surging and Rasmussen says he would beat Obama today by 44% to 42%. Cain has a wonderful sense of humor and is one of the few politicians now who can take a joke at his own expense.
Your math somehow manages to make 27% add up to 100%. That is interesting in itself.
As for Perot he was a little curmudgeon who insisted that no one at his work places could have facial hair, for instance.
Cain hasn't micromanaged anything in that light to my knowledge.
It is also true that the left has built up this giant myth of the minority figure with all the hidden wisdom. Since Cain is blacker than Obama (Cain himself has said, "This time send a real black man to the White House," which is hilarious itself) he should get all the votes of the Marxist rabble. His parents were actual American blacks.
Obama's dad was a part of the Kenyan elite, and his mother was white. He's not really black at all. As Reid said, he can pretend to be black, and yet actually speak in regular American English, plus he's clean.
But he's thrown almost his entire constituency out of work with his ridiculous policies. His constituency can't really deal with this reality and prefer to pretend that some mysterious 1% if properly denuded of their income by the Fed, that they would somehow have jobs.
This notion of killing the wealthy and nationalizing industry didn't work in Cambodia or in Russia under Stalin, but the halfwits who occupy Wall St. aren't familiar with this failing. Let them flail some more.
All they have to do is listen to Cain once and they'll go home and vote for him. Right now there are many who've been "educated" to believe that there is a mean vicious wealthy group that runs everything. You're one of them, Stu.
Cain will lead you out of this mental bondage back to sanity. Just listen to him with an open mind. It will be like going with Moses toward the Promised Land.
Cain wasn't born rich. He was born poor, and worked his way up. It's quite a different philosophy from the blame the rich for our problems philosophy, but it's more functional.
It's not a black or a white philosophy. It's red white and blue!
cain is a bell a noisy gong signifying nothing i mean what difference would it make if he had some substance nobody can hear anything anymore anyway we're all to quickly distracted
hey i gotta go
i'll pick up on this later.................................................
Kirby,
Your math somehow manages to make 27% add up to 100%.
That's a lie, and I resent it. I'm honest in debate, and I'd thank you to remember it.
I never claimed 100%: 9% + 9% + 9% is 27% (actually, it's 25.38%, because the sales taxes are applied sequentially to the income tax, but that's a small second order effect, and I didn't want to confuse you). I do think that folks who have a limited economic understanding (like you) are inclined to misinterpret Cain's proposal, and will compare 18% from Cain's proposal (sum of the income tax and direct sales tax) with their current marginal tax rate (which I would guess in your case to be somewhere between 25% and 28%), and think that they'll be better off.
This makes two big mistakes. The first is to confuse the impact of a tax on profits with a VAT (which is essentially a sales tax, and so applies to all income), and where the burden of each will lie. The tax burden on profits lies with the investors, whereas the tax burden of a VAT must be passed onto end consumers. The second is to confuse current marginal rates with the much lower effective rates. Again, I expect that your effective federal tax rate is around 15%. This is pretty typical for middle-income folks.
Of course, Cain doesn't lie about this. He doesn't need to. He's elliptical, and he relies on his listener's willingness to read their hopes into his proposals. This is pretty stock-in-trade for a politician, and I'm not arguing otherwise. But I am arguing that the real impact that his proposals will have on folks who aren't rich, folks like you.
What you're not comprehending is that Cain's proposal removes taxes from income that isn't directed to immediate consumption. You don't have a lot of that, but rich folks do. They're the folks who benefit.
Obama's dad was a part of the Kenyan elite, and his mother was white. He's not really black at all. As Reid said, he can pretend to be black, and yet actually speak in regular American English, plus he's clean.
I'm appalled that you wrote this. Sure, Harry Reid said some inappropriate, racist things privately that he's subsequently apologized for in public. And now you quote in a public venue those very same ill-considered private words as if they can stand on their own without comment, and with evident approbation. I'll give you a chance to reconsider your words before I say more.
But he's thrown almost his entire constituency out of work with his ridiculous policies.
Garbage. Obama won the popular vote. His constituency is manifestly much broader than your view of it. And the unemployment rate is a consequence of the narrowly averted collapse of the financial sector, and a subsequent lack of confidence that has little to do with governmental policy and a lot to do with a deficit in aggregate demand.
Right now there are many who've been "educated" to believe that there is a mean vicious wealthy group that runs everything. You're one of them, Stu.
There is some truth to this. Drop the weasel scare quotes, dilute the word vicious a bit, and limit everything to most everything, and you're there. But that's because it is so, not because I'm brainwashed.
Cain wasn't born rich. He was born poor, and worked his way up.
So was/did Obama. Do you think you have a point?
Some people advance substantially over the course of their life. Of these, some are perceptive enough and honest enough to recognize the helping hands that have blessed them; others are so self-centered that they believe themselves to be solely responsible for the change in their conditions. You think that you're arguing that we should follow the rich, the successful. But there are rich and successful of both parties. In fact, you're arguing that we should follow and reward the assholes.
Kirby,
Cain has the charm and humor of Reagan and is certainly not unknown now. He's surging and Rasmussen says he would beat Obama today by 44% to 42%.
It's a bit early to be putting your confidence in polls, cf., On the trail.
Obama was hardly "born poor."
He was born middle-to-upper-middle class (remember, private school in Hawaii and what-not).
Stu, the numbers are being debated night after night on all the channels. Herman has also had to defend his numbers on even the evil channels like CNN. There are a variety of assessments. Yours isn't universal.
I haven't heard anyone but you call Mr. Cain a thief.
This is not a very nice term. One could even call it "somewhat" unfair.
I never heard ANYONE complain about Reid's comment from the left side of the continental divide. I had fun quoting them from the other side since they were so completely bizarre.
Meanwhile, Cain is called a thief.
Does this play into any enthymemes?
Kirby,
Stu, the numbers are being debated night after night on all the channels.
The fact that both the truth and lies have entered the public discourse does not absolve anyone of the responsibility to discern which is which. Truth is not a social construct. If you have an interpretation of Cain's proposal that is different from mine, bring it forward. I'll enjoy eviscerating it.
I haven't heard anyone but you call Mr. Cain a thief.
He's telling you that he's going to save you money, while planning to take it from you. That's a con, and it's well within the linguistic norms of American English to refer to con men as thieves.
But I find it amusing that you go all PC over my discourse, when you are so dismissive of PC restraints on speech, and are so intentionally provocative and negligent with your own. You set the standards here, I'm just following them. I hope you like them.
I never heard ANYONE complain about Reid's comment from the left side of the continental divide.
That says a heck of a lot more about you and the filters you accept than it does about what the left did or said. Reid didn't apologize because he spontaneously saw the light. He apologized because the left dragged him into the light, and applied heat until he cried "uncle." In the meantime, you've dragged racist speech into this discourse, and you've shown no sign of repenting of it.
Obama's dad was from the top 1% of Kenyan society: remember he went to school in the states, including a stint at Harvard. Obama is a second-generation Harvard student. Hardly what I would call underprivileged. Plus his mother had a Ph.D. and had the luxury of doing field work for many years in Indonesia.
Cain had a very different experience. His father was a porter on a train. His mother was a maid. Cain's family moreover came from Baptist but hardworking stock. He identifies closely with Clarence Thomas -- another hardworking son of the very poor in rural Georgia who has received short shrift at the hands of the media elite.
The elite of this country try very hard to keep the truly poor down while raising up mediocre "representatives" from other races and genders. Cain is a totally different kind of black person than Obama. His ancestry were slaves.
Obama never had any slaves in them and for the most part never did anything like real work. His dad had four or five wives and knocked up his mom while married to another woman back in Kenya after doing innumerable women in Hawaii.
Cain's dad was a different kind of person who raised him as a Baptist.
Obama learned about the efficacity of Christianity while working with ACORN and other community organizations in Chicago. He realized there must be something to it. Otherwise, it was Marxist thought -- a worldview that naturally appeals to the elite because it allows them a permanent lock on power.
Pol Pot was from the aristocracy of Cambodia, as was Stalin from the aristocracy, and Trotsky. It's not a middle class or lower class ideology or religion like Christianity which has always been for the poor (I would exempt the Episcopalians from this).
I wonder how many of the Occupiers are Christians. So far, I haven't seen a single cross or a single reference to Christ.
On the other hand, the Tea Party folks were mainly Christian.
The Republicans are mostly just nice Christian people.
The Democrats are the devil's party to a large degree and always have been. They supported slavery in the Civil War. They didn't want to fight for the freedom of the Vietnamese from Communist slavery. This isn't to say that there aren't a few nice Christian Democrats who've fallen in with that group by virtue of the Sermon on the Mount taken out of context and presented to them as a kind of solicitation.
"We will help the poor, sure, in exchange for their votes. And waltz into power and office thereby."
Is this the truth of the Democrats?
historically, it often has been.
The truth of the Occupiers is still not clear, I think, even to them. But I think it's basically: someone owes me a living, and it isn't me.
GM and Kirby,
Obama's father skipped out on his mother soon after Barach was born. So the wealth and/or standing of Barach Sr. had little practical relevance to Barach Jr. If you look at her wiki page, you'll see that his mother, Ann Dunham worked while in Indonesia. Her field work wasn't a "luxury," it was how she she chose to spend many of her non-working hours. It's a strategy that Kirby is personally quite familiar with.
It's not clear why she sent Barach to live with her middle-class parents. But wiki says that the tuition at Punahou School were paid by scholarships (cf., the page on Stanley Armour Dunham). As such, it seems unlikely that either they (or their mother) had the financial resources to pay for Columbia or Harvard. I don't have a source that describes his financial aid at either place, but it seems likely that it was substantial, but there was also substantial family sacrifice involved. It is the way the aid system works.
And it worked for Cain in much the same way. He was an undergrad math major at Morehouse, which is one of the most prestigious of the historically black colleges. Undoubtedly, this involved the same sorts of sacrifice on the part of his family and the same sort of financial aid. Columbia is more expensive than Morehouse, but Morehouse is substantially more expensive than a state school. They're more alike than different in this respect.
Both have come from families with below median income. Both are millionaires today. Neither is wholly self-made -- both have benefited from sacrifices and opportunities that others have provided.
I'm just recycling the idiotic speech I've heard over the years from the left about race and gender. I've always found that logic ridiculous -- from Sotomayor's imbecilic self-congratulatory remarks on her race and gender "wise Latina" to Obama's own "Yes we can!" ... elect a black man. I mean, wasn't that always the real subtext of that unfinished phrase?
But can we define black? I think if we do, Obama doesn't fit. Clinton is somewhat closer. Clarence Thomas is closer yet. And Herman Cain, at least as close as Clarence Thomas.
It was never part of my thinking that we ought to seek a demographic notion of who's "turn" it is, but rather to simply seek the most competent. The whole notion of affirmative action has always seemed like a crock, especially when it comes to the presidency. We need a qualified business leader because business is the business of America.
Or at least it used to be before America was turned into another amusement park with idle hands looking for handouts.
I'm not certain anyone understands working for a living any longer. That is, performing a service for other people in exchange for money. If anyone does, though, it's Cain. He's able.
I do still like Romney, and I agree that he will probably be the nominee. The MSM will cream Cain. They always necklace women or minorities who step off the plantation.
So it will probably be Romney by default, and he will almost certainly win. Then of course there's the problem that he's not terribly conservative. That might be good. We sort of need to stop fighting, and get on with getting the country back to work, and money back into the people's pockets, clarifying and simplifying our laws, and perhaps developing a rational truce between the communists and the Calvinists who have no known common lingo, but if anyone could find it that might be Romney.
Cain's family may have sacrificed somewhat more since he almost certainly didn't receive any kind of affirmative action help at Morehouse. Plus, insofar as I know, Cain has never broken the fourth commandment with regard to his parents or grandparents, or thrown them under the bus. In spite of the massive help they gave to him, and which you rightly acknowledge, Stu, Obama shamed his grandmother on national television and has apparently never felt a moment's remorse about it. It wasn't a spur of the moment idea but a prepared speech in which he told the nation that his grandmother was a racist. This is apparently the only way he ever saw her, or the only way we've ever seen her through his eyes. Even though her only real crime was to be somewhat afraid at a bus stop. She's an elderly lady in a public transportation situation where muggers are rife and looking to mug little old lady's like his grandma. But all he can think is that she's a racist to be worried about a crime that was quite likely to happen to her.
Obama's an ingrate, and I think he shamed his grandmother in a shameless way for which any ordinary person would feel shamed. Obama is, in this sense, an extraordinary human being.
Kirby,
Your recklessness with the truth continues unabated.
Let's review what Obama actually said about his grandmother, this in the context of Rev. Wright, in his speech on race:
I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed her by on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are part of America, this country that I love.
This is honesty. It's clear that there's a tremendous amount of love between his grandmother and him -- "she loves me as much as she loves anything in this world," "These people are a part of me. And they are part of America, this country that I love."
There's not disrespect in what Obama said. There is disrespect in your dishonest representation of what he said.
But he lied, because he definitely did disown Pastor Wright, which meant that his affiliation with his grandma was just exactly as opportunistic, according to his own comparison.
His love is apparently completely a fair-weather phenomenon. He's a very dangerous man!
Probably the reason we don't hear much about people in his past is because they're scared of what he will do to them.
I do think he's very very good at destroying opponents. He got OBL and he got this guy in Yemen.
But is he for the Jewish people or not? The people down in the Occupied Zones in Wall St. have been screaming against the Jews again. Is Obama on the side of the Jews or not?
Is this a fair weather phenomenon? If he could toss off his pastor of twenty years, who wouldn't he wipe out if the person wasn't convenient? He did compare his grandmother to Wright, and said they were both equally priceless to him. It turned out that he threw Wright under the bus. Doesn't that mean that his grandmother was just as disposable?
This is an uncomfortable truth, I suppose.
Politicians are tricky, and Obama's horde obviously could use some free money -- redistribution of the 1%'s money. I think this is dangerous since it sets in motion a socialist government. We;ve seen where that leads -- in its worst departures it leads to North Korea or Cambodia or Red China (more imprisoned journalists in Red China than anywhere else on earth).
I know you believe that Red China will democratize under the pressure of competition with the free west. Some thought that would happen eventually in Nazi Germany, too.
But if democratization is not part of your core thinking, it just never happens.
Stealing other people's property is wrong. I agree with this. If Cain is sliming me, as I don't think he is (although his math may be off -- but like you, since he's a math prof, I would rather doubt this). If Obama feels the government has the right to seize the assets of the wealthy and redistribute that money in exchange for votes, I think it threatens all of us. You can make scapegoats of a few and no one blanches. The Nazis proved this. But eventually the socialists will get to you, and yours.
It's far better to protest their seizure of goods and their depradations of a smaller class right at the beginning, before it's too late.
Kirby - Obamacare was signed into law on March 23 2010.
Look at this link:
http://tinyurl.com/kirbystopbeingdumb
Here you will see what we call 'data' that refers to unemployment rates.
You will see that when HCR passed, the unemployment rate was Higher than it is now.
You will see that the unemployment fell drastically at the end of '08 and the beginning of '09, well before HCR.
What's the second bailout you're thinking about? Is that what you're calling the stimulus bill? Or do you mean the auto bailouts?
Kirby, I come here to hear from intelligent conservatives.
When you say stupid, obviously false, totally illogical things, it kinda pisses me off, cause you're smarter than that, and I can get idiot conservatism pretty easy.
Look, anyone who says that Obama caused our economic ship to sink is lying, misled, ignorant, or stupid.
You can say that he became captain of a sinking ship and didn't do much to get it afloat again.
But if you say that the things that happened Before he came into office were his fault, you are, literally, insane.
Yes, Kirby, we've seen where slightly higher tax rates on the rich leads -
It leads to the prosperity of post WWII America.
It leads to the prosperity of the 90s.
You are tilting at windmills.
Or just trolling at them.
Are you falling into the old conservative radio talk show host thing where your goal is to 'rile up' liberal by lying and saying outrageous statements?
I don't need you to be Rush Limbaugh, mmkay? Rush is Rush enough.
Here's a nice link with numbers and stats and charts that might be helpful to you Kirby:
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1
The problem is that stable economies are Not healthy when they are so top-heavy.
Stable economies are not built on having
kirby
do you sit in your living room looking out the window from behind the curtain
scoping the scene
spotting potential communists
maybe you need a small pack of semi domesticated dogs
get one of those new remote opening gates and let the neighbors know where justice lies
when did people start naming the dogs
communists everywhere
their parents were blue color union people their kids i guess just can't help it
keep high levels of hightoned high pitched bright glitzy beyond belief tv and ipod things going
you'll control the people
give 'em lots to do lots of money that is not theirs money lots of money to spend they'll be good
yo
they call it stormy monday
but tuesday's twice as bad
jh
It is amusing to think of what Obama's grandmother might have said about Obama had she not conveniently died (or was she liquidated?) after his bizarre attack on his grandmother's character -- which could be paraphrased thusly ("I love her even though she was a racist monster because I am so tolerant and understanding and perfect in every way").
Here's what she might have said had she not died shortly after his vicious attack:
"My grandson the ingrate was a racist rugrat who tarnished the entire neighborhood with his feeble-minded characterizations and invective and that was before breakfast. By noon he had smelled up the whole house and left his socks and toys everywhere. I never wanted the kid in my house but my lazy promiscuous daughter dropped him on us and took off to the furthest jungles she could find in order to avoid having anything more to do with the idiot as it might have spoiled her fun. His father left almost the minute he was born as he sensed that he had given birth to the anti-Christ. I love BO, as I love other diseases, but I love my country more, and I was proud of this country until it nominated my grandson to be president -- somethng for which I want to wretch and puke, because it means the nation's credit-rating is about to sink into oblivion. Even when he was small BO couldn't live on a budget. Couldn't organize anything, even his own socks drawer. I encourage the nation to commit suicide, or wait, it just did by electing my grandson. Which isn't to say that I don't love the goddamned racist thug. I just wish he would have gone off to the jungle with his mother and been eaten by cannibals or something rather than eat me out of house and home and then compare me to a preacher who isn't one, and then thrown me under the bus. But what else do you expect from a kid who is basically a bastard?"
I mean we never did get to hear her response, or her husband's response, to BO's stinky characterization of his grandparents, but I imagine it would have been something along those lines. Just sayin'.
Obama.
go kirby go
Brett, we don't know for sure what led to to the downturn. There were many factors. Obama has no clear lineage. He said he sought out Marxist professors. His mother was a communist. His dad was a communist. He claims to be something else, but no one knows what it might be, least of all him. His high school mentor Frank Marshall Davis belonged to the CPUSA. Obama clearly mentions him in Dreams From MY FATHER.
When it looked like Obama might get in, there was already a business collapse. This is because businesses were already planning to stay out of the market until they could either read Obama or until he made himself clear. He hasn't done this. We think he's about redistribution of wealth (he said as much) and we think he doesn't like law (he doesn't honor it, and he explicitly called the Cambridge police department stupid).
Romney has a clear lineage as does Cain. Even Hillary has a clear lineage.
Obama is an enormous unknown, even, I think, to himself. No one knows what he's going to do or say. I don't even think he knows.
He doesn't have any kind of experience in business, and no one at his inner table of mentors to whom he turns has any business experience.
So of course the business community can't plan. This means they will stay out until someone they can rely on gets in. Obama pays lip service to business because he's realized he causes them jitters.
He's also giving Israel jitters.
To his credit, I think he's probably giving Al-Qaeda the jitters, too.
He's a very unpredictable man. This is probably especially good on the basketball court.
But he's a huge mystery.
I think this is the main reason the economy has disappeared.
We don't know who he is, and he doesn't either. But all indications reveal a guy who is up to his neck in radical associations. Marxism, Maoism (his denunciation of his grandma would appear to be a Maoist deal -- this is wha tthe Maoists asked little kids in China to do during the cultural revolution -- and it often led to their parents being mutilated and tortured in front of their children).
That Obama would hand his grandmother over to the media for such a thing speaks volumes about his character and his background.
I'm frightened by him, and am just glad I don't know him.
He's a major menace not just to business but to the rest of us. I wish the OWS people would see this.
As for the timeline and the names of bailouts and stimulus, there are many floating around. Some call the stimulus the second bailout.
Some call the first bailout the first stimulus.
I had a certain faith in 2nd Bush because of Bush 1. I have no faith whatsoever in Obama because I can't see any lineage to anything but wastrels, gadabouts, and Marxists.
Even he himself has had to cut ties with most of his friends and mentors including Pastor Wright, and the terrorist Ayers, and he's thrown peole like van Jones out of his governmnent (he was a green czar even though he was quite violently red). It's just not clear that Obama has any sane or balanced friends or associates or mentors. I can't think of any. His parents were nutjobs. And the things Obama does!
who would have thought of taking helicopters into sovereign Pakistan to take out OBL! It's weird. Even Osama himself did not predict this. It's as weird as Osama hijacking planes and smashing them into the WTC.
Normal people think in terms of the law.
Obama doesn't seem to have any concern for the law. He has overridden the constitution with his healthcare plan, and he doesn't enforce immigration and refuses to allow the states to pick up the slack.
It's as if we're all in suspense wondering what on earth this man will do next.
He stands in front of a bridge in Cincinnati and says it's because he wants it fixed. However, the Brent Spence wasn't in his Jobs bill at ALL.
It was a kind of head fake.
This guy has the whole world trembling at what on earth he will do next. He's like the Cat in the Hat, but I'm not sure he's going to be around at the end to clean up the mess. He's probably not certifiable. He's just very very very unpredictable and his lineage is probably straight Marxist thought. But even he probably isn't terribly aware of this.
I just wish we had someone we could count on -- Romney, Cain, or Hillary -- people who come out of a clear family, and have a background that is comprehensible.
Obama is the son of whack jobs, who both seem to have been completely erratic and abnormal.
Who would leave their son and go off and do research in a strange country? Who would marry another when already married and have a child?
It's all so fly by night.
We've never had a president like this.
No one can plan anything as long as we have this freaky impulsive lawless man in the White House.
He just does whatever he likes without regard to tradition or custom or belief system. It's the weirdest thing I could ever imagine, and what's even weirder is that seemingly sane people like you and Stu and JH stand by this Goofy gus as do 44% of other americans.
Kirby,
Your rant I find both dangerous [because you violate the commandment of "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour," only God can judge the innermost motives of every human being. As Lutherans, we believe we're simul justus et peccator, simultaneously saint-sinners, & sinner-saints] and in another sense humorous [because I rather like your flair for the pun i.e. cain & able, bill gates and steve jobs, especially when the puns are not engaged in character assasination].
May God grant you peace,
Dim Lamp
In America we are allowed to speak even if it's just a tad dangerous. I don't think my own writing here will do much to change the history of America, or even to change anyone's minds. The crazy assertions that are coming out of OWS likewise will mostly be dismissed. But Obama can't be dismissed. We have to think about his problems and try to fill in what he must be thinking. It's dangerous to give him a free pass, Dim Lamp!
Now he's signed on with OWS and encourages them!
It's horrifying.
Today in the Wall Street Journal a pollster named Doug Schoen came out with a poll with regard to the belief system of the OWS crowd. It's morbidly fascinating. I first found this at Ann Althouse's blog (which is a link, and probably the one blog I visit daily). She's a law prof at UW Madison. Here is this among Schoen's findings:
"Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn't represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda...."
And Obama feels a natural affinity for these clowns!
It's scary beyond believe.
Hwoever, you didn't say which rant of mine you found dangerous.
At least you did also find it humorous.
In America we are permitted to discuss our presidents and celebrities in the name of the first amendment. I think we can also speculate based on the associations a person has chosen to make. Many of Obama's assocations, and his parents as well, have been linked to extreme radicalism. Scofflaws and actual terrorists have been among his close friends and associates.
This doesn't necessarily mean that he is one. It does indicate a propensity, I believe --
a propensity that is again reinforced by his willingness to endorse a bizarre crowd with bizarre beliefs in the OWS group. OWS has been characterized as "hippies," by some elements in the media. "Hippies" were a large element in the 1960s which were later seen to morph into SDS, and various other groups.
Hippies were largely peaceful (Manson excepted).
But this group openly endorses violence and "civil disobedience" which couild include everything from breaking laws against vagrancy to committing violence against the police officers.
This, in turn, is a breach of the fourth commandment that tells us we must obey our parents. The civil authorities are in turn much like our parents.
Now it's true that Obama himself (parentless as he himself largely was) is now in essence a kind of parent. I do think we have to respect him, but it doesn't mean that we can't bemoan his own seeming inability to respect law and order not only at a national and a state level but an international level.
Even above the likes of Obama is still a God, and the norms he gave us still should be respected, especially insofar as he claims to be Christian.
Thank you for your intervention here, Dim Lamp. I wish you'd be just a tad more specific about which rant and which element of the rant you found dangerous.
We ARE permitted in this country to use dangerous speech. It is our right (we are not in Canada where the rules regarding speech are far tighter). Here you can basically say anything you like with almost no restrictions, especially if you regard it to be true, based upon inference or even intuition. We are especially able to criticize our political leaders because of the kinds of tricks we feel they may be up to.
Some here think I am knowingly defaming the left.
But I was part of the left for decades. I'm all too familiar with that bunch. In fact, most of my friends are leftists. It's because of the trends of the left that I'm now on the other side. I am still an old-fashioned liberal, as I always was (this used to mean I was more linked to the left, but now it no longer does as more and more of them are outright Marxists and anarchists with which I would not have anything to do --!) but that to me means now that I must align myself with Republicans. It is now the Republicans who believe in free speech and conversation.
The matriarchal horde of the left no longer even believes (to a great extent) in the norms of the law. Many of them aren't even believers in God any longer. they are busy overturning every norm they can find in the bible and putting personal whim over God's laws (they aren't suggestions, because they use the word SHALL). they're COMMANDMENTS for heaven's sake. I would hazard a guess that the majority of the OWS people have never been in a church in the last two years, don't pray, and think God is a social construct, or a sock puppet, as William Blake thought. I know the left, and that's quite a general set of beliefs among them!
They will use anything including terror to accomplish their ends, which they justify using I WANT THIS BECAUSE IT SUITS ME as their sole criteria of credence.
In addition to OBama and Pelosi, the AMerican Nazi party has also signed on to the OWS movement, as has Hamas and other anti-JHewish groups, claiming that Wall St. is run by "Judeo-capitalism" which sounds like a phrase from our erstwhile contributor, J.
Here is an article from Israel Today. Maybe Dim Lamp will like to see this?
http://www.israeltoday.co.il/News/tabid/178/nid/22978/language/en-US/Default.aspx
Kirby just jumped the shark.
Good lord I miss Picklesworth and JADL - when you're lonely in your conservatism, Kirby, you fall off of a cliff.
It's kinda sad, really.
Your ability to reason seems to have deteriorated. You've got some sort of weird, half-schizophrenic, anger-and-fear based thing going on now.
It's not as cute and funny as it used to be. Either I'm getting tired of it, or you're getting worse (I think it's a mix of both, but largely the latter? Or maybe you've just always gone through phases...)
Stu, is there any other blog / website you know of where there are conservatives to interact with?
If I wanted Michael Savage, I'd turn on the radio.
Kirby of fall '011 is just a headache at this point.
(Oh, and Kirby, yes, in America, you have freedom of speech.
But having freedom and using it wisely / productively / sanely are different things).
And finally, Kirby, there are lots of factors for the economic meltdown and the unemployment rate, which happened at the end of 08, and the beginning of 09, and which came prior to HCR.
Now it's logical to argue from one side that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were responsible, and from the other that it was a lack of regulation on Wall Street... Because those things preceded the effect. (The answer of course is 'both, and more stuff too')
Causes have to come before effects.
To give causality to something that comes After the effect is insane.
It means you don't believe in time.
Or logic or reason.
So you're no longer existing on the same plane as the rest of us, apparently.
You might want to try taking some Alpha Lipoic Acid.
Kirby,
Thanks for the link, I read it. It is quite disturbing. The Jewish community, given the history of antisemitism and scapegoating the Jews for the world's problems, is rightly concerned about this escalating into something much worse. Such hate-mongering against the Jews is slander and needs to be condemned. If the world ignores such antisemitism and scapegoating of the Jews, we know what can happen and has happened.
Regarding your comments - you say that they will not change history or convince other people. Maybe not, however what then are your intentions? Just to rant for rant's sake? Or...?
Dim Lamp, I was teasing Stu.
Brett, whenever you ask me to blog about something I do. However, I often am not paying attention to popular phenomena such as this mess of the OWS. My real thought is that they are paid activists.
I haven't had time to pay particular attention to this group. I assume since Obama so swiftly endorsed them that he also paid for them through some third party.
He wants a popular uprising that will rival the Tea Party, and make him look like part of a big gang.
This is the kind of thing that parties do, to build up their confidence, I suppose.
the problem is that the Nazi party, Iran, and Hamas among other groups has also endorsed this crowd.
We don't know who they are, but yesterday's WSJ poll gave us some inkling. That inkling is quite worrisome, and their anti-Jewish agenda is really really worrisome. I think it will be bad for Obama. But he's pretty good at dumping people when he needs to.
There's a growing meme that the OWS movement is paid for by Obama through secret gifts. It seems a reasonable hunch since the president has already endorsed the group, as have many top Democrats. But are they really paid for? If so, the money is probably going through third parties. In this blog (perhaps a contender for Brett's attempt to find a new conservative blog!):
http://sharprightturn.wordpress.com/2011/10/17/use-of-occupied-zuccotti-park-in-nyc-is-bought-and-paid-for-by-obama-with-your-tax-dollars-occupywallstreet-ows-barackobama-obamacorruption/?like=1
There you find the assertion made that the owners of the Zuccotti Park are being gifted in other ways by Obama in exchange for providing a large space for a spectacle that would show the left has some support similar to that of Tea Party.
But in addition I'm now hearing many many conservatives blowing the horn with the fact that the American Nazi Party has officially endorsed the OWS movement. What an endorsement! And this is probably something that Obama will find sits uncomfortably with his own image, and the increasingly uncomfortable Jewish community both here and abroad as Obama has made it widely known that he is not on their side in the Middle East or any where else. This doesn't mean that he's anti-Semitic, but could just mean that Edward Said and other Marxist Palestinians got to him first.
Personally, I think all of human rights comes out of the OT, and especially out of the covenant God made with Moses and later on renewed via other figures, including Jesus Himself.
Whenever and wherever it's possible (around the world) Christianity is a growing faith. The Chinese and Indians and others are experiencing huge new groups of faithful Christians.
Inside of Arabic and Islamic borders these people are often getting smashed and killed. In Iran just now there is a Christian pastor who faces the death penalty simply on account of being Christian.
Here's a link (I found it first through Dim Lamp's blog):
http://www.amnesty.ca/iwriteforjustice/take_action.php?actionid=769&type=Internal
The fact is that worldwide there is a growing hatred of Jews and Christians precisely because so many people are beginning to find their own faith to be less than worthy. And so dying religions like Marxism and Islam have to clamp down on those within their borders that spread other faiths. In Egypt we've seen the Copts take a beating, and in the Darfur it's been the same thing. In Iran, and in Afghanistan, there ahve been faithful Christians who face the death penalty exactly as if they lived in ancient Rome.
Even on American campuses, the communists have attempted to silence Christians.
The OWS people blame Wall St.'s excesses on Jews, and have increasingly been doing this. I think it's horrifying, and am amazed that anyone would want to associate with such a movement, or to defend it. That President Obama himself has endorsed the occupations just as the American Nazi party has done it, is extremely worrisome.
Huffington Post has an article about the Occupation. It offers close-up interviews with some of the people (some of whom just seem like charming dingbats, which are always acceptable to LS):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-relentless-conservative/occupy-wall-street-at-6am_b_1017824.html
On the other hand, the American Nazi Party and the CPUSA have also joined hands in endorsing the OWS movement, along with Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi (who has said God Bless Them!):
http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/17/red-white-and-angry%E2%80%A8-communist-nazi-parties-endorse-occupy-protests/
Most worrisome has been the vicious anti-Semitism among many of the Protesters:
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/10/19/alongside-anti-semitism-occupy-judaism/
Signs with things like ZIONISTS CONTROL WALL ST. have been prominent.
We have to worry that these giant protests are starting to spew familiar venom of a kind that we never saw with the Tea Party. The American Nazi Party never endorsed the Tea Party, and the CPUSA did not either, nor did Obama, or Pelosi.
The left's strange bedfellows are beginning to emerge from the sewers to attack capitalism itself. This idea is emerging from Proudhon's early work, some instigators say. (Proudhon was a French anarchist who worked briefly with Marx and then later broke with him, but is responsible for the phrase, 'Property is Theft.' which he penned when he was about 28 years old.).
What apparently no one realizes (except me) is that Prouidhon wrote a later book called Theory of Property in which he realized that INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY is the ONLY STAY against the overweening POWER OF THE STATE. This is why Marx broke with him.
But think about it! If all property belongs to the state to redistribute at will, this includes even food, and it means that everyone is at the mercy of the state! This is what communism IS, people!
It's a juggernaut of power that comes as a kiss and ends as a curse.
Leave capitalism and the capitalists ALONE. Individual property and individual rights are closely related. Without one, you can't have the other.
Brett,
I wrote Kirby offline last night, amplifying the arguments you made in yesterday's post along the lines of the comments you made today. I agree, this little corner of the internet is quickly losing its allure.
As I see it, the tension that's defined this venue has been not that we come at the discussion as stereotypic liberals and stereotypic conservatives, but that we come at this discussion with broadly similar faith commitments that undergird some our (often very different) political and social commitments. Our lives are a working out of our faith. It is this shared perspective that has so often given this venue its distinctive character. And it is this character that we've lost over the past few months.
Fundamentally, though, there's nothing new about Kirby's jumping of the shark. He's never been willing to grant any sort of legitimacy to Obama. He's just become progressively more strident, monotonous, and reckless about it. Repeating other people's lies doesn't make them into truths, and I'm tired of dealing with it. And there's not much point investing energy in rebuttal, because there's little evidence that my arguments are being engaged from his side.
This venue is dying, and Kirby's the one who's doing the killing. And it's sad, because I don't know another venue that has the characteristics that once made it so great.
I tried to be open-minded about Obama and did read four or five books from various viewpoints that would hopefully shed more light on his character. Unfortunately, each book in its own way was a nail in his coffin. Even Kloppenberg's book, which was devoted to freeing Obama from the charge that he is a communist, and developing the notion that he is a liberal and moderate, convinced me that Kloppenberg had confused the two terms (as is the American left's wont), and that Obama is in fact a hardcore Marxist thinker, and has no other rubric by which to guide his thought. The moment when Kloppenberg discussed Frank Marshall Davis' "training" of Obama sealed the deal for me.
Kloppenberg's historicization also really angered me: historicization is Marxist maneuver that "progressives" have taken up as a mantle, and which I find is completely at odds with Christianity. Christianity is about sudden miraculous openings as wehn John baptizes Christ in the opening of Matthew 3:16-17:
"and jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightaway out of the water: and lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he was the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him, And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."
This kind of lyrical aperture doesn't exist in Marxism.
Marxism has a ridiculous and prosaic notion that God is finding Himself in the natural world through a progressive unfolding in which the working class finds itself at the helm of history. The vicious stupidity of this just amazes me as it hijacks the Christian message.
christianity isn't for groups. It's about individuals, and families.
It is never about races or classes or genders. These huge and ungainly divisions are from the devil, as they have no FACE. It is the FACE of God that enlightens us.
Race and gender and class instead point us to skin, to sexual differentiation, and to wallets.
What about the FACE?
Obama is in the devil's camp. I don't think he realizes this. Like all "progressives," he's steeped in Marxist thought, and he's devoted to it. It isn't Christian. It's satanic and distracts men and women from the truly miraculous nature of the love that can only be individual, and only momentary, and tries to harness it (as it tries to harness the fine arts) and turns everything into the worst kind of fallenness, including that of turning us toward scapegoating on the basis of race, gender, and class, instead of uniting us through the possibility of individual friendship and affiliation.
For a long time I struggled to pull you guys over to the individual, and I could do it at times, but you're getting heavier and heavier and heavier and HEAVIER.
You are all too willing to even dispense with the law.
Matthew 5: 18:
"For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."
You call me out for reminding you of how Obama has scorned his own family in public -- using Maoist means to destroy the fabric of his grandmother's reputation and not even for what amounted to a cause that he was devoted to.
He uses head fakes and outright lies when he refers to the Brent Spence bridge. He is just a huge liar and he will burn in hell. More and more when I look at him I see an outrageous zombie from a movie like the Night of the Dead.
But I am not sure I can keep you guys any longer from this. I apologize. I am only a lone voice here, and am trying to do too many other things. If you want to leave, you certainly don't have to ask for permission!
When Satan tempted Jesus he tempted him with worldly power, which is all that the OWS people want. They want the wrong things. And they are joined in wanting these things by the American Nazi Party and the CPUSA and by Obama.
It's all the wrong stuff.
they admit that they think it's ok to use violence to get what they want.
They admit that they think it's ok to break the laws.
their problem is they do not seek the face of God, or the face of those with whom they are angry. they have a strange abstract notion of time and peoples, and all too often they have an increasingly rabid notion that they must kill the Jews.
They hate "Wall St."
But what about their neighbors? they trash the bathrooms at the Burger King. They trash a park. They trash bankers. Are these not individuals, deserving of an individual trial? This is more like an insane tantrum that baby can't have what he wants.
Matthew 6:19: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth."
These folks attack some faceless neighbor for holding on to too much, but they themselves have no answers, and don't realize that it's really Obama with Healthcare Reform that has caused the blockage in terms of employment. He wanted to steal the money from the 1% -- another disembodied abstraction. When you ask the left to get more specific, unfortunately they begin to mention the Jews.
You guys are marching with a dangerous mob, and have cast your pearls with swine, and who are acting like pigs. Not once have I even heard any of the OWS crowd invoke Christianity. Have they built their houses on a rock? The rock is the law. And most of these people do not see any kind of reason for following the law, except the law of desire. It's not right.
Watch out for how they use abstractions to invoke hatred of faceless groups. That's the main sign of a Marxist devil.
and now you say you wish to abandon me because I am not serving your immediate need for someone to convert into a Marxist devil. Sorry!
It won't happen.
Kirby jumped the shark because he called out OWS on being supported and populated by crazies?
I mean, they are.
Moreover, it has been clear since 2007 that Obama's key ideology is Marxism. One simply had to read through his senatorial speeches to see this (as I did, having at one time been the head of the Florida arm of republicans for Obama). All the ayers and that poet stuff just confirmed what was clear: that and Rahm's book The Big Plan or whatever it is called. Obama, like Bush, sides with increasing the power of the state. The OWS folk don't seem to get that replacing wall street means empowering some other group. They are naive in the main if they think it will be the protesters themselves unless they have some cushy political jobs lined up a la the aging hippies.
Stu and Brett, don't leave because you don't like kirby's comments regarding OWS. While they and the tea party make it clear that the us is suffering from a general malaise, pointing fingers is pointless unless they are pointed at the right folk, which must, in a regulated market, begin with the regulators.
christianity set a paradigm for community based on what was known of the jews very early on the acts of the apostles is allabout community building
but it was community above all
which characterized the phenomenon
the "saints" are people who are immersed in community
the body of christ is the community gathered
every individual is held above the tendencies of the community to some degree but at the same time that individual must acknowledge formation within the community
jesus was a marxist fair and simple
he was willing to die (well not completely willing as the garden of gesthemane drama unfolds)
for his version of marxism
if marx had loved jesus a little more he wouldn't see it so much as class conflict as simply people being inhuman as they have always tended to be
now i think we're at a perfect crossroads where it is possible to gain complete mindcontrol over the people with computers and of course drugs in the water systems
and mindless television and more and more shopping potential can't have enough of that now can we
i'm really digging into the archives of this blog
going back and weighing in on the foundational expressions which mark this insane effort the forcing of surrealism with lutheranism which is by it's very nature almost completely iconoclastic
in the old days of this blog one could detect a rather innocent approach to matters
but yeah
kirbyeez gotten sort of serious and he's willing to push all the buttons in the effort to prove himself righteous
that almost nobody bites or bytes anymore tells us something
but not very much
blog life is shorter than dog life
i surmise
one day is a year in the life of a blog and then it gets stuck in cyber space until the electricity shuts off
it seems to me kirby is reaching out for chirstian love but he's incapable of saying that
he really wants us to hug him and feel with him the great pain of so much misunderstanding
and he wants to be able to forgive us too but basically we work that out between god and satan
who dance together in the lutheran
sanctuary like lady gaga and st francis doing the twist or maybe that's lady gaga and melanchthon
i suggest kirby that you take a month off - regroup - and come out with fingers flaming with sparklers and whoopi cushions and
marx brothers masks for everyone
but i would not feel so all alone
everybody must get stoned
i think it's time for all of us to tell kirby how much we love him and smother him with empathy and understanding and recognize that his call for insanity is really a call to be loved
i mean we don't want him to be perceived as a child whining and screaming from within the playpen of his own making now....do we??
lost in an escher labyrinthe
do we?
or
do we???
hmnh
i may have to think about that
maybe it's time for a catholic republican president
newt the newt for president
and martha nussbaum for vicepresident
the system has gone berzerk and kirby may be simply just one pathetic voice...the computer is finally shorting out
but his effort here begs the issue of merit
zzzzzttt clikkkkk zztzzzztttzzzzt
the computer screen is going to sleep
rockabye baby
jh
Brett wrote this:
"Good lord I miss Picklesworth and JADL - when you're lonely in your conservatism, Kirby, you fall off of a cliff."
Generally I'm moderate/leaning right, but I'll jump in here on the conservative side. But I think Kirby prefers to argue alone...stokes his ego. How many of the 55 comments on this post are actually his???
Anyway, I like Cain. After the first debate I told my hubby that, and he just about divorced me. (He's an Obamaphile)
If Stu wants to discuss why Cain's 999 plan is/is not a VAT, I would be happy to do so in another post. (it's not a VAT)
There is an issue that Cain's plan addresses: our tax code punishes savings and investments, and rewards debt. We fixed some of this when deductions for interest on credit card debt were eliminated. We tax interest earned on savings. Why? I would extend that to capital gains as well. In addition, we reward special interests and in effect discriminate against others.
I agree with Gingrich last night in Las Vegas, we can give Cain credit for bringing this into the national discussion.
Personally I think that if Cain is elected his plan would see some revision: a tiered flat income tax most likely. And I'm not completely comfortable with the national sales tax he proposed. I'm ok with with his plan to tax only new items (if you buy a house on the secondary market or a used car, it's exempt) But his plan would tax food. That's hard to swallow.
Anyway, the kid is waking up from his nap. I'll check back later.
Wendy
At least JH owns up and says he's an out and out communist. It would be easier if Brett and Stu would come clean on this front. JH says the early Jewish communities were communists (he might have meant Christian communities but let's just assume he is an inerrant as the Pope when he types), and therefore we too should be communist. I suppose that's the idea of the monastery: to reflect communism. Still, authority isn't equally shared in the monastery or in Catholicism. But is this a problem? No, because Marxism also has a top-down structure of authority.
But for the rest of us, especially for Brett (not sure about Stu) the notion of an economy that matters still matters. Brett says the economy began to tank before the end of '08. What could have caused this?
The Democrats getting hold of the House again, and congress generally getting into their grubby lil' mitts?
"The victory of the Democratic Party in the 2006 Congressional elections was a major milestone for an additional reason: it saw the election of the first woman to serve as the Speaker of the House. Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, became the highest-ranking woman in the history of the government of the United States upon her election as Speaker in January 2007. In the United States, the Speaker is not only the presiding officer and leader of the majority party, the Speaker also directly follows the Vice President of the United States in the line of succession to the presidency. It was also the first election in U.S. history in which the losses for one side were so lopsided that the victorious party did not lose a single incumbent or open seat in Congress or governor's mansion."
I personally don't see Christianity as a communal deal. Christ says we will go to heaven via the small door (one at a time, or not at all), and that we will not have our families or communities any longer to hang on to, but shall all be atomized individuals. It's true that there was sharing of the loaves, and of the fishes, but only in a couple of moments. He didn't make fish and bread generally available, as he could have done.
All the rules remained in force.
All the laws.
And he never took away free will or made us into automatons, and never took the ability to choose evil out of us. This means that each moment is individual (they're not necessarily connected, as the progressives believe, into a fascistic whole), and we are each separate, alone with our conscience.
Paul is more or less alone when he gets the call.
Christianity is about individuals.
If the people at OWS had stayed home and prayed they would all be fine. But they decided to force the issue. God hates that. God hates communists. We can only love individuals.
No one gets a race or gender tattooed on their ribs.
It's always a specific individual.
We can only love individuals, and we were made in God's image.
John Hanson no.
Jesus wanted nothing to do with the state or coercion. Marxism is based on control and coercion, both of the state and its people.
GM,
Your claim that the OWS is supported and populated by crazies is an incomplete truth, and misleading to that degree. Yes, there are crazies both in OWS and supporting it. But this doesn't mean that there's all that there is. There are reasonable people supporting OWS, and there are reasonable people in it. As many have said before, there's a useful parallel between OWS and the Tea Party; and what we're seeing here is a tactical reversal of position by both sides on the question of populism. We're each happier if the populists are on our side, and we're each more willing to excuse the excesses of "our" populists. But frankly, any large populist movement is going to accumulate undesirable attachments, like the overt racists who are a part (but I would agree, not the whole) of the Tea Bagger movement.
Second, I think your argument that Obama is Marxist rests on a fundamental error. Does Obama support a larger/more interventionist government? In many ways, yes. I agree, he does. As did Bush. Federalism has a long history. There's plenty of grey room in arguing about the right amount of government in between having the government be anything and nothing, and that grey area is where most of American political discourse has taken place. After all, without government, there wouldn't be public roads, canals, airports, libraries, public schools, etc., and the great majority of the electorate believes that these are good things to have, although there are honest disagreements as to where the crossover point is between beneficial and wasteful. Trying to reframe this historical centrist grey-area debate as a binary question that pits communism (or more properly, unrestrained state collectivism) against freedom (or more properly, unrestrained anarchic individualism) is dishonest, although sadly, not uncommon.
And Obama has hardly been a collectivist. Consider, specifically, the recent trajectories of GM and Chrysler. Both went bankrupt. Both were nationalized as a part of an expedited bankruptcy, and both have been subsequently re-privatized. The nationalization part of this narrative is consistent with a Marxist agenda, but the re-privatization is unimaginable from a Marxist perspective. So it is manifest that Obama has behaved in a way that no Marxist would, with the obvious corollary apparently beyond the logical reach of your side.
As for the issue of regulation, you have a point, although perhaps not the point you intend. The financial collapse of 2008, which we're still mired in, and the Great Depression, represent bookends on a long era that was characterized both by far greater economic stability, and by far more stringent financial regulation. And it is worth remembering that the Great Depression wasn't a historical singularity -- it was just the last of a long run of busts in a long sequence of boom and bust cycles that occurred in a largely unregulated market. At this point, we have considerable observational evidence that removing certain types of regulation can and has destabilized the economy.
As for our friend Kirby, he has jumped the shark. I'd point to his quoting of private, racist statements that Harry Reid made in early 2008, and his unwillingness (in contrast to Reid himself) to back down from them. Honestly, this means that he's either racist himself, or playing the troll, and there's not much benefit of doubt to be given either way. I'd point also to his fixation on part of Obama's speech on race, which he insists on reading in an extraordinarily tortured way, and a way that shows an utter absence of a willingness to impugn anything but the basest motivations to someone he opposes. I see no point in engaging anyone who is simultaneously so delusional, self-righteous, and ungenerous. It is increasingly the case that the worst of Kirby is all of Kirby—the best of him, the honest, playful, generous aspects are nowhere to be found.
really kirby
you can't be serious
god hates communists
wiley e coyote just scampered over the edge of a cliff and
is suspended in mid air when he realizes......
i guess if everyone has guns then everyone is a potential enemy
is that the logic yoou're using
or
if you read a book you're a completely distinct individual
or
watching tv affects the brain cells
so
don't vote
i'm just trying some things on here
if you gather together with likeminded people and exercise you're constitutional right to complain against the govt you're a communist
ok i think i'm getting it now
jesus loves you
even though you bear no relationship whatsoever to anyone else in the world
you're alone you're in the dark you're one of kind of many who are jut like you alone everyone shoulder to shoulder and completely strange to everyone else no one even thinking about being elated in any way just millions of individuals without any inherent commonality without any claim to being united in principle if not by covenant
every coveneant with god is an individual covenant nobody gets to have the luxury of communal association
i'm getting it now
this is great
america is the place where
everyone gets to break free from every presumption of ethnicity and relation where a man can stand free at the edge of the ocean and fart like a unique person well because he can
and claim no identity with any other social structure
ok
i go to the church of me
i sing the hymn of me
i am one
i am invincible
i am alone in this
very special love god has for me
i am at the circus
i hear the clowns crying
the geeks are coming
the fat lady sings out of her vagina
snocones for sale
children vomitting after the rollercoaster ride
midgets smirking
cotton candy for the first course
rubbery hot dogs for the second
candy bars cigarette smoke
or maybe it's just like on tv now with all the bright colors
o kirby
you are so desperate
i hate to see you like this
i hope you'll be OK
maybe ron silliman
has some advice for you
breathe the crisp autumn air
and claim universal individual identity politics
we each need a representative in washington to represent our individual parties
o wait
i gotta go
somebody help me finish this
it's all finnish to me
yo
jh
Stu, how is your dismissal of Cain different from my dismissal of Obama? You characterize him with one word: thief.
Wendy's attempt to discuss his plan will I hope urge you to show your most generous self, which has not been very visible of late either.
We're both short on time.
Cain has been extremely temperate with his intemperate questioners. I think Wendy is correct to like him and to think he offers us a way out of the labyrinth of race AND phynances so that everyone wins.
Plus, he's a serious Baptist and a mathematician. What's not to like?
GM likes him.
We haven't heard from JH yet on Cain.
The problem with communism is that it doesn't work. Even in the Bible Paul says that the Christian groiups in Greece are having to send whopping sums of money to the nonfunctional proto-Communists that JH likes.
Lutherans believe that everyone should stand on their own two feet. Communism impales the economy as the individual loses all property before the state, and all plans for new ideas have to go through a politburo which means the kleptocracy steals even those.
Communism would work if everyone were a risen saint, but I think in Protestantism we've agreed that this is impossible.
We're all fallen. Therefore, we have to work WITH selfishness and WITH the notions of SEPARATION of powers that we get in Montesquieu and later on in the likes of Madison. We have the problem of monopolies in the country now -- Obama pressing to kill off the insurance companies with stealth, and from the other side the communists trying to force banks to dispense with redlining, which means in a sense that they've already nationalized the banks in several areas: we're bleeding from bad real estate investments, bad insurance ideas, and too much multiplication of bureaus. Paul suggests that we dispense with at least five.
He's the true visionary in the Republican ranks, but his stinging style doesn't warm hearts it instead rankles. Cain on the other hand is warm and pleasant.
Of course the whole left loves Romney because he's their stealth candidate. We may end up with an agreement on him.
I'm afraid the evangelicals will blow cold on Mormonism.
Republicans need the Calvinists on board, while Democrats need the communists.
Kirby,
Stu, how is your dismissal of Cain different from my dismissal of Obama? You characterize him with one word: thief.
I've explained and justified my use of the word "thief" in the context of Cain's 9-9-9 proposal. But I would hardly call that a characterization, it is a sketch of one aspect of Cain's political manipulation of the electorate. In any event, I'm hardly inclined to dwell on it, except in as much as to point out that his proposal benefits the rich to an unseemly degree, and would greatly increase the taxes on almost all of the readers of this blog.
But I'm perfectly willing to admit that Cain has some virtues, including a grounding in the faith that I've argued is a common denominator in our discussion here. Yes, I disagree with his policies, some quite fervently. But I see no need to characterize him as a tool of the devil, nor to question the authenticity of his faith, as you do routinely with Obama. Fundamentally, I see him as mistaken, but not as evil.
Wendy's attempt to discuss his plan will I hope urge you to show your most generous self, which has not been very visible of late either.
I'll be happy to address Wendy's comment. As I understand matters, the current corporate income tax generates $225B/year at a nominal rate of 38%, whereas Cain's proposal is expected to generate $800B/year at a nominal rate of 9%. This is not a loaves-and-fishes scenario in which the economy suddenly grows by a factor of 15, instead, the taxes are computed on a very different basis. Our current tax is applied to profits. Cain's tax, per his own website, is applied to "Gross income less all purchases from other U.S. located businesses, all capital investment, and net exports." This is a 9% VAT plus a 9% tariff.
Plus, he's a serious Baptist and a mathematician. What's not to like?
I like the mathematician part, and I'm ok with the Baptist part. After all, Carter, Clinton, and Gore are serious Baptists themselves :-). But I don't like his policies, which I believe will drive increasing income disparity in this country without having a compensatory benefit in overall prosperity.
And I find his recent comment that Jesus was crucified by the liberals to theologically and historically dimwitted, as well as offensive and intentionally so. I do not find the experience of being singled out for a sin that we're all equally guilty of to be either warm or pleasant.
Stu, have you factored in how Cain believes that prices in general will come down because of the declining costs of production since the taxes of the producers will be lowered? There are many other variables he's changing.
Other than that, I will bow out here for a bit except to say that yes, I have gotten to the very end of my rope with Obama. I wish I had some semblance of belief in the man.
I do think that he is probably a good dad. It's not something I've witnessed, and since he had no dad, it requires a leap of faith on his part to achieve this. The biggest correlation between criminals is their status of not having had adequate parenting. I'm relatively certain that Cain had this. He speaks well of his parents and his relatives and I can't imagine him demeaning them in any context. The ability to honor the 4th commandment is the ability to honor the law itself, I think.
This is why I'm so frightened by Obama's savage and uncalled for attack on his grandma. I thought it was horrid, even when correcting for how it was to exonerate his psychotic pastor.
I do think that your characterization of Cain as "mistaken" in his math is far different from characterizing him as a knowing and ardent thief.
Wendy's right that about half of the comments here are mine. So I will attempt to cork it. I do miss JADL and also, Coitus, but also think that as the kaleidoscope turns we will get new constellations of discussants. For years and years there was actually no one here but me. And besides, I do rather like talking to myself, but I think it's more fun when we get a lot of new and different viewpoints.
Kirby,
Stu, have you factored in how Cain believes that prices in general will come down because of the declining costs of production since the taxes of the producers will be lowered? There are many other variables he's changing.
As I've said, I believe him to be mistaken, but not evil.
It is possible that he believes that adapting his plans will result in greater overall prosperity. I just think he's mistaken. I honor his position that our current tax code is too complicated and cumbersome, and that it often results in distortions because the tax consequences of alternative financial strategies can easily become a first-order term. But I don't believe that the advantages of the simpler system he proposes is an adequate compensation for the inequities introduced by replacing a progressive income tax system (i.e., one in which the marginal rate increases with income) with a regressive income tax system (i.e., one in which the marginal rate decreases with income).
Increasing the effective federal income tax rate on the poor from 0% to 25% is punative without being effective. [The fiscal teeth to Cain's proposal comes from shifting taxes from the rich to the middle class, e.g., from Romney to Kirby. We could tax the poor at 100% without having much of an impact on the federal budget because poor folk don't have much money to take.]
This is why I'm so frightened by Obama's savage and uncalled for attack on his grandma. I thought it was horrid, even when correcting for how it was to exonerate his psychotic pastor.
Again, I think you've chosen a remarkably ungenerous interpretation of what happened. Do you really believe that Obama made these remarks without clearing them with his grandmother first? That's just crazy talk. It shows no understanding of the way families work, especially black families. And yes, I know that you don't consider Obama to be truly black, but even you have to admit that Michelle is, and if Mamma's black, the family's black.
The truth is Obama's speech on race was an apocalypse in the literal sense: it was a revealing of things that were previously hidden. Part of this was an honest exposition of words and attitudes. Pretty much everyone who drew a breath in the '60's invoked wince-worthy ethnic or racial stereotypes, and that includes you and me buddy.
And there has been a sad history of racial violence in our country, and individuals and small groups can be unpredictable. Have I ever felt threatened by black men on the other side of the street? In 1969, my family moved into a house that was less than one block from Detroit. You bet your ass there were times I felt threatened. And you've told your story of busing, so we both know that this is true of you too. And what of black men? Do you think that there's a black man alive who hasn't felt fear at some time on seeing a white cop? Heck, I live in an integrating suburb right now, and you'd have to be blind not to see that DWB is still a ticketable offense around here.
And you know something? Saying stupid things, or feeling fear because someone of a different race is in unexpected proximity, are not signifiers of racism. We're human. Flawed, but still striving. And Obama, in recognizing this in his grandmother, was giving all of us -- men, women, white, black, hispanic, whatever -- the license to recognize it in ourselves. To say, "Yeah. Me too." But more than that, to say, "But I am sorry for these things, and I can do better." And as a nation, by imperfect fits and starts, we are.
And you know something else? Obama never, never, never accused his grandmother of racism. Your quote above embodies a contemptable lie that you're trying to force down Obama's mouth out of your own twisted reading of his generous words. This is false witness on your part, repeated false witness, and truly offensive. You need to recognize this, repent, and move on.
i think marx wanted the same sort of freedom for leisure that he had i think he wanted people to spend their days writing political socialist tracts in the public library so that people could one day be free and not slaves to the man all he really meant to do was create a prototype so that more and more people would write astounding social theory and die angry
i don't believe that jesus was a marxist gm
i was merely trying to extend the pitch and tension in kirby's rhertoric to a higher more shrill tone
he didn't bite
i listened to terry eagleton recently he didn't actually come out and say that jesus was a marxist but he did say that jesus bore a more striking resemblance in his social bearing to che guevara
than to say a pope benedict
the 16th
this received a huge applause and i was startled by that
i heard cain say on television something to the effect that americans want to know what works not what vision somebody has and businessmen know what works
what a jerk
business men don't know jack merde
if you want to jynx a whole civilization hand it over to the businessmen they can't tell value from price they don't know the ass from the elbow nope those guys are deluded superficial sociopaths every last one of 'em and somehow they'vve been exhalted in our culture to near godlike status o so dang cool you can move money around and you know how to buy low and sell high and screw the little guy and run all over govt sanctions just because you think they're stupid no this guy is dangerous we're much better off with a chieftain who elicits profound admiration fear and is cloaked in a suave international mystery we need a prince a tribal prince a warrior for the good things in life a guy who knows how to put the presumptuous bydniss wonks in their place ( i mean they're just glorified paper pushers who think they've got the most practical plan o sure 9999((9((99(9( us to death make everything 999 that's going to help easy answer to a complex problem) what the hell the only other way is complete ruin here we teeter on the edge of complete ruin and who's to blame who the phuq is to blame che guevara is he to blame mao tse tung is he to blame marx and engels yeah they're to blame because nobody gets out alive under marxist totalitarian rule i've said it once and i'll say it again if the marxists would just kneel down to rome and accept that set of social principles everything would be alright but then of course the corporate globale economy idiots who think money is like blood and you just tranfuse it here and there
take some plasma from india and put it in drip bags in africa take some type a from indonesia and let the swedes have some of that blood transfusion economics
.
let the young people scream and yell for godz sake encourage them to continue stick with it for years if they must fight for leisure that's the fight i should go there and tell them to fight for leisure that's what we all want more of -------less hectic consumption and more leisure fewer cops abolish homeland security let's live dangerously i mean iran doesn't have a homeland security india doesn't have homeland security finland doesn't have homeland security samoa doesn't have homeland security what iz the big friggin deal with ahmuhrikah this o so sensitive country o so right and just needs big fences and thousands of overpaid underworked fat security gaurds we should fire all those people have them get other work somewherelse or just take it easy for a few years and give all the saved revenue to the OWS folks just give them big financial gifts for being so honest and then tell them to get on with their lives now
anyone who is more than three quarters through a mortgage is exempted from paying the rest ok the banks take a bit of a fall on that so what all banking should be strictly local anyway none of this big corporate hyped money blood money banking just local funding lending and giving of money
yeah forgive the schooloan debts go ahead what's the problem let a huge group of people out from under a heavy chain call it govt charity
money
some you work for some you don't
everybody needs some gambling flow
i mean it's all a gamble anyway isn't it isn't the casino the new national paradigm for sensible financial policy
there should be two national capitals one should be in washington and the other should be in nevada
wall streat weak
think of all those silly people claiming o so important status pushing money around the globe stealing and cyphering hedging and sucking ass (that's a new wall street practice if anyone wants me to explain i will) and gambling and living high on the hawg setting some idiotic business standard like we should all want to be these slick manhattaners or something wearing slinky jewelry and having anorexic mistresses and calling it all good business sense no thanks not for me
we need to get the women out of wall street that's really what's messing up the scene all these babble babble money money money expert women these days i mean women never used to talk about money on tv now they're everywhere get them out of there we need to re-establish the homefront the neighborhoods those women are yayhoos more interested in their leather boots than in financial justice of any kind
the future of america lies in leisure in people knowing how to kick back and tell the economy to go phuq itself
like a good neighbor
conspicuous consumption has morphed into
absurd acquisition
old chinese saying
is not too much also enough
nee how
jh
Something has to be done about the current tax system.
Continuing to complicate it is not the answer.
Perhaps 9-9-9 isn't either--but, as was said last night, at least it has people talking.
I would certainly pay more taxes under 9-9-9 as I currently am one of those folks Ron Paul likes (i.e. I pay no federal income taxes--and indeed, "make money" at tax time [nb: Paul might not like that so much]) as I would under a flat income tax scenario.
I don't think 9-9-9 is really a VAT unless it's a VAT on foreign-bought products (which is, as you say, a tariff). It is certainly a regressive tax--which I would rather see as a flat tax. This is hard to do, however, because of the inherent difficulties in equalizing taxation.
I think the fairest way to tax is by property taxes.
However, with a residential value of ~20 trillion and a commercial value of ~5 trillion to match current revenue you'd need a 8.8% property tax to match current revenue (2.2 trillion) with no exemptions. This would mean I would pay an extra $7480 a year in taxes, or $625 a month on my mortgage (increasing it by more than 50%).
Now, one would assume I would no longer have taxes taken out which would increase my paycheck by about $300 a month--making my taxes go up by only $325 a month.
Of course, this would eliminate the 18.4 cents I pay per gallon for gas and 24.4 cents I pay per gallon for diesel--I go through about 60 gallons of gas and 80 gallons of diesel per month which would save me another $30 a month. Woo.
This could arguably be eliminated by giving every residential property a $50,000 exemption. This would make the taxable residential property approximately 13 trillion dollars, which would mean you'd need a 12.5% property tax.
This would change my taxes to $4375 a year which would be offset by $3600 a year in take-home pay, making my new effective tax burden $775 a year.
I'd be willing to support this.
I did my math a little better (including home ownership rates and the proper calculation of gas taxes):
Eliminate all current national taxes. Institute a 11% property tax with a $50,000 homestead exemption. This would raise 2.2 trillion dollars in revenue, matching current receipts (of course, one would want to lower this--and a property tax only system would put that pressure in the hands of the right people). It would not be a regressive tax and it would ensure that those benefiting most from the government are paying for the government.
I would save $50 a year, not counting fuel tax, which would raise my savings to $400 a year.
More info:
Average tax burden per US tax filer (144 million) is $8162. Average Median Home Value is $170,000. Average tax burden under my scheme would be $13,200 per homesteaded household. Many of these are two-income families--these would see a tax savings of $3000 (not including savings under other taxes like fuel taxes).
GM, Cain also claims the cost of all products woiuld go way down, because the 37% taxes on production costs would be cut, which would free many corporations to begin to do business here again. Remember, the big problem we have here is with companies moving overseas. Obama only accelerated that with HCR and other regulatory problems that he's set in motion with environmental regulation and being mean ot business people and calling bankers fat cats. Nobody likes to be called fat. That's why Chris Christie wouldn't even run. Letterman was calling him fat.
Stu, I think Obama probably killed his grandmother with his remarks. She was fine before he said them and died shortly after. This may be a case of post hoc, but I would look into it if I had the ability.
The thing is not that what he said she said is so horrific. Like you said, many people in America on all sides of the divide are somewhat racist. Black people are, as Spike Lee proves every time he opens his mouth. Asian people are (but are very very quiet about it -- but this came out quite clearly in Spike Lee's movie Do the Race Thing). White people are probably no different in this regard, and even within the white groups there are people who don't like southern Europeans or eastern Europeans, or for heaven's sake maybe there's even someone somewhere who has something against the Finns or the Norwegians.
Like the Swedes.
Obama may have asked his grandmother whether she would mind if he dragged her through the mud and accused her of the kind of atrocities that his pastor had spewed from the pulpit. And maybe she said yes. Was this true consent? Didn't it maybe still make her sick that he did this to her? I think it was a weird Maoist thing to do to Grandma.
In Beijing in the Maoist cultural revolution kids would out their mothers and father and then the Red Guards would beat them to death right in front of the children. This was the tradition I saw Obama participating in. Perhaps it was the wrong framework.
I have some pretty ugly frameworks for the left. I admit this. However, they've worked hard to earn them. They really did these things.
At this juncture I see two legitimate possibilities:
1. Marxism (I consider it illegitimate, but many continue to consider it legitimate). (Marxist economics, closed markets, everything belongs to the state, only the ruling party can speak, rule by whim of the party.)
2. Classical liberalism (Austrian school economics, open markets, private property, freedom of speech, rule of law).
I see the Democrats as leaning toward door #1.
I see the Republicans as leaning toward door #2.
I see only one of them as legitimate.
With the Austrian school I see anyone who wants to blend them as actually choosing door #1.
I see Obama as forcing us through the eye of the needle of the first door. I also don't see him as legitimating his mother's speech, but as completely desecrating such speech, and desecrating his grandmother in the process. He was saying that such speech, and such mental actions, are not acceptable, and the people who engage in them should be outted in the media, and destroyed, or forced to repent.
I consider what she said in the privacy of her own home and car to be private.
What a person says on the other hand from the pulpit is quite different.
OBama hasn't got normal boundaries. He's very good at killing people. I will say that. He got OBL by disrespecting Pakistani boundaries. Oops he did it again in Yemen last week. But I think he also wiped out his grandmother.
Who's he going to hit next?
The creeps at OWS believe at the rate of 31% that it's ok to use violence according to Schoen's study (Democratic pollster).
That would have been 0% at a Tea Party rally.
This is because the Tea Party wants Door #2: liberalism. In that view, the police have a monopoly on violence.
But radicals and Marxists believe that the ends justify the means. And I think that's where Obama is, too. I just really think this: in no way do I wish to defame him. I wish it was different. He's now down to 38% approval and sinking. As he allies himself with OWS, and we continue to see rapes and other violence in that group (the ends justify the means) I think his popularity and his character will continue to be revealed. Obama's a madman.
GM - it's nothing to do with OWS, really -it's Kirby going off, in the year 2011, on Obama's grandma, and blaming the financial crisis on HCR, when HCR came two years after the financial crisis, and generally his posts just being lists of the kinds of shit I listen to from conservative talk radio hosts on the road to school every day.
Stu--you can't honestly argue that the prevailing archetype of Obama's relationship with his lily-white Irish-American grandparents was that of the common Black American matriarchal family, can you?
The Youngers the Dunhams were not.
Brett, you pulled me into the OSW crowd to make me comment. Honestly I don't listen to crowds. I only believe in individuals. But if I sound like I'm part of a crowd, I guess I could say that great minds think alike. When I am on a road trip and get to listen to talk radio it is always astonishing to me that their rants are so much like mine -- only they have these deep growly fascinating voices.
It's only in a few areas that it's possible for me to go far deeper into a thought -- but if you have me talk about a contemporary phenomenon that hasn't been well-formed I suppose my ideas will be fairly similar to those of others, as will my emotions.
Human nature is pretty much a universal. I think all people who put a high priority on the family were flummoxed by Obama's mistreatment of his grandmother, a mistreatment that seemingly led to her early death.
As I recall, he couldn't be bothered to go to her funeral to see his handmarks still around her neck. I know, I'm pushing this image a bit far -- but I thought I would give you some extra value that you can't find in the talk radio programs. This is a kind of writing radio program.
what say you?
GM,
you can't honestly argue that the prevailing archetype of Obama's relationship with his lily-white Irish-American grandparents was that of the common Black American matriarchal family, can you?
That's not what I'm arguing. I would expect the elder Dunham's raised BHO as the white, middle class folk they were.
No, what I was talking about was Barach's current nuclear family: him, his wife, his daughters. And the clear fact that whatever racial/cultural ambiguities may be present in Barach by genetics and upbringing, he made a choice to live as a black man, and to marry a strong black women who came from a strong black family. And one of the more attractive aspects of strong black families in my experience is their exuberant openness. Barach's choice to live as a black man would not have come at the cost of ditching his grandmother. Instead, she'd have been received as an elder and as the woman who raised him. "Hey, get Barach's gram' a chair and a plate." And they'd have snapped to.
When I was referring to a black family, I wasn't referring to the Dunhams, I was referring to the Robinsons. And you don't "do" relatives. If Kirby's theory was true, it would have alienated Barach from his wife and his in-laws.
Regarding income taxes: that $8162 isn't the average tax per individual, it's the average tax per return. [And I actually get $8156.80, by using the figures here -- http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=102886,00.html -- still, let me credit you with citing a statistic that is basically correct (modulo the aforemented issue of interpretation of the denominator) and verifiable. Were that everyone here was so careful with their facts.] My point being that many of these returns would have been "married filing jointly," so you may need to rethink your claims regarding two-income families.
As for property taxes, a major practical problem is that of valuation. I live in a state with a fairly heavy property tax burden, and there are major problems with the assessment process. This is far more prone to corruption than income based systems, which at least link into W4s, and can be checked against banking records, etc.
As for Cain's 9% corporate tax, let's remember first of all what a VAT is. Per wiki: The "value added" to a product by a business is the sale price charged to its customer, minus the cost of materials and other taxable inputs.
Cain's proposal is this, per his web site: "Gross income less all purchases from other U.S. located businesses, all capital investment, and net exports", and "Empowerment Zones will offer deductions for the payroll of those employed in the zone."
The first part is clearly a VAT -- cost of materials and capital expenses match up with "cost of materials and other taxable inputs." After all, the builders would have been charged the tax for their services. The second part is frankly worrisome. I've seen how this sort of thing works in practice: we have "tax abatement districts" in Illinois a plenty. This might be a mechanism for incentivizing investment in poor communities, in which case it's the sort of social engineering via the tax code that conservatives are supposed to loathe. Or, it might be a mechanism for corruption. It would certainly be an ongoing temptation for whomever was in power, and that's going to flip back and forth.
You may be correct regarding returns & filing jointly.
At any rate, a property tax only code is 1) supported by Adam Smith 2) non-regressive and 3) something that would cause prices to drop and incomes to rise.
well kirby i must say you have found an interesting wave of ludicrosity upon which to surf
at the level of pure rhetorical idiocy at least for today you may be unmatched
something to be proud of
we should have daily inanity awards
who gets the prize today
sometimes in the cause of being an international image for the return of tribal chiefdom as the standard political leadership roles it requires some quick court moves the truth is obama mastered the shuffle pioneered by the harlem globetrotters and that's really all that matters i mean nobody can touch him the pundits can't touch him they try and try rush brush assrush limbaugh can't touch him profannity hannity can't touch him they all sound - now let's all get together on this issue - they all sound like whining little babies they all sound like disgruntled schoolyard kids who can't seem to get the teacher to give them more recess time
kirby is starting to sound dangerous i'm glad he doesn't like guns - postal comes to mind but then it makes sense i guess we've almost done away with the letter the idea of needing a postal service is all but obsoltetetetetet
you get the idea -- so postal is a defunct word we need to come up with a better word to describe kirbyeez rhetoric it's more like what happened in ohio when the zoo walls collapsed everyone run america is being attacked by zoo animals and kirby can't stand it any more -- yikes the possibilities are rife
ho hum time for a nap
politics is a mis que
i don't know
there's really nothing to talk about
it's like comparing the social benefits of reality tv showws
how much can any of it matter
kim kardashian for president
i mean
why not
just pushin some big nice armenian ass around the oval office in the name of world order and peace cannot be a bad episode
i suspect even the intellegentsia would watch that
o well
time to ring the bell
buy and sell
hustle for the trustle
maybe we need to build blood transfusion lines between all the cities so you can just give blood into a machine and it goes directly to other cities over a big blood pipeline that way we could save on gas on the blood mobile thing ... economically speaking that's what computers do
is it not
well i gotta go
i have yoga today and acupuncture and i'm sharing a peach smoothy with someone special
and i think i'm gong to take up smoking
the prez smokes a little
i may just have a cigarette in the clear bright light of day take it easy for when you come right down to
there's really nothing left to do
imgine myself in the movies back in the 60s
go kids go
topple wall street if you can
you know
in a former day some of those kids would be employed as money runners
maybe that's the real upsetting thing
computers have taken over their jobs
cash flows like binary blood transfusions
gotta goe
jh
JH,
who let the leopards out?
who?
who?
I'm enjoying the argument over 9-9-9.
Just remember that all the other taxes are going to say bye-bye, and he's even going to get rid of the IRS.
Is that really possible?
The other fellow Paul wants to get rid of 5 whole departments: commerce, education, and three others.
Is it the president's right to just close up entire departments?
Depends on the economy next year at this time, but it looks like Repubs may also get the Senate back, and a strong majority in the House.
Which means we may be able to turn around some of the wrong-doing. Obama's grandmother will never get her life back, though.
It's sad. That family put up with so much. He even admitted he used cocaine on national TV. they had to listen to that. How many shades of blush are there. I'd say the final stage is pomegranete and they must have reached it about fifty times before they finally died of shame.
All the departments are part of the executive branch so one would assume yes. There would, of course, be blowback but Ron Paul wouldn't be concerned with that.
This would presumably throw a lot of people out of work but would free up lots and lots of money, which is I think Ron Paul's central idea.
One thing we haven't much met yet is the possible first Ladies of the Republican set. I don't know their families.
I am hoping that they are at least truly in love. The First couple should be a romantic couple! This is what was so depressing about the hillbilly Clintons!
W. and Laura were a magnificent couple, and we could understand why he would admire a librarian! Since he could barely read or write!
But Stu posits that Barack chose Michelle solely on account of her race and the political advantages this would give him within the Chicago political machine. I want it to be love at first sight or nothing! what's the matter with people today!
Love love love love love!
If Barack chose Michelle simply because of the political connections he could get through her church and family, he's even more Machiavellian than I ever imagined!
OMG, say it ain't so!
Even with the Clintons I suppose that at first Bill lusted after Hillary! At least they must have had that. Some of the other women he rutted after were ten times uglier and only half as civilized! So there must have been love there! Plus, Hillary is beautiful in person! (The TV monitor brings out all the golf balls!)
Michelle has nice arms! Aren't those enough for Barack!
are you telling me there was neither love nor lust but merely political calculation! And are you saying she saw him as a meal ticket?
Say it ain't so, Stu!
I thought this was the one area where he had acted spontaneously and nicely, but now even this area it turns out is all strategy and gain. If so, I'm even more peeved.
Love should be love!
Kirby,
But Stu posits that Barack chose Michelle solely on account of her race and the political advantages this would give him within the Chicago political machine.
I did no such thing. Do you have no shame?
Kirby, we lost our wifi service for several weeks, so my apologies for not contributing for a bit. And it took me a while to read through all the messages on this thread.
It's no great consolation to see the somewhat dire predictions about an Obama presidency we made during the 2008 campaign come true.
While the economic malaise the country is suffering through at present isn't all attributable to the President and his party's policies, only a fool like President Obama could claim a few days ago that "[a]ll the choices we've made have been the right ones." This sort of political hubris and its attendant folly (Gr "ate") I'm hopeful will lead to the political nemesis of the President and his party next year.
I think these sorts of comments in addition to the bold-faced hysterical demonisations of Republicans by Democrat leaders is probably a sign of desperation and I hope presages Democrat defeat next year. No wonder that Black conservatives like Herman Cain et al should be treated with scorn and contempt by the MSM left.
President Obama and Democrat leaders may praise the OWS rabble, but everyone knows Wall Street finaciers and bankers made (and are still making) deep pocket contributions to Obama's reelection campaign; likewise, a number of Obama appointees have come right out of the banking/finance industry, so his sympathy for the OWS rabble (the Fr "canaille" has a bit more punch) is worthy of little more than a louche sneer.
It's amusing to read of stu's comparisons of the OWS crowd to the Tea Party supporters given his past cold fury over their peaceful, patriotic, orderly, and clean public demonstrations. Imagine what propaganda mileage the MSM would have gotten from an educator who is an OWS supporter calmly asserting that Jews ought to be run out of the country! And a mouthpiece for the OWS rabble there who won't denounce this open Jew-hating bigot. . . .
http://lafantintheroom.blogspot.com/2011/10/jews-have-been-run-out-of-109-countries.html
At any rate it's good to be back and to enter once more into the fray. . . .
JADL is back! Hurray!
Stu, you wrote this paragraph:
"And the clear fact that whatever racial/cultural ambiguities may be present in Barach by genetics and upbringing, he made a choice to live as a black man, and to marry a strong black women who came from a strong black family."
I don't think he married two black women, but the plural I take as a typo. But you say he made a choice not to accept Michelle because she was a BEAUTIFUL woman (which would be acceptable and normal in my eyes) but because she was a "strong black woman" which means he wanted her strength (presumably political strength would be one aspect of this) AND because of her RACE. He wanted to marry INTO her race, is what I thought you said.
He wanted to do this in order to assert his right to their votes, in other words.
That's way too strategic for my taste, and shows a fairly Machiavellian character. You've said this before as have various BO biographer types -- that he wanted to assert HIS own black identity by MARRYING her.
I think this is a very weird and dubious reason to get married. The only acceptable reason to marry someone is because you're besotted with them, and can't stand not to be around them because you love them so much.
If that's not BO's reason, then you really have to wonder about this guy!
JADL, I've noticed that you have pretty good math skills. Could you give your breakdown of what you think of the 9-9-9 plan?
I'd like your viewpoint.
Also, who are you rooting for of the Republicans at this point, and who don't you like, praytell.
Kirby,
There is an unbridgeable gap between what I wrote, and what you've read into it. What you're doing isn't arguing, and it isn't honest. There is no proper response to such utter crap.
Kirby, I'll pass on these two links for, first, a favourable description of the Cain 9-9-9 tax reform proposal by the supply-side economist, Arthur B Laffer:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204346104576637310315367804.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_News_BlogsModule
I like Cain's plain-spoken good sense and his candour, though I suppose Romney will probably have the party edge, barring some damaging mistakes on his part. I think Gingrich a good debating match for the glib and endlessly prevaricating Obama, but the MSM will tirelessly attempt to blacken his character and legislative record. Still, whomever the Rs pick, above all, Nobama!
Second, here's a link for a report on how far, in this case the Occupy Oakland crowd, the "occupiers'" and their enablers have sunk into vileness, squalor, viciousness, and criminality:
http://bigjournalism.com/abreitbart/2011/10/20/source-abc-reporters-life-allegedly-threatened-at-occupy-oakland-we-shoot-white-bitches-like-you-around-here/
michelle bachman said that if you turn 999 upside down you get 666
we're gettin into the good stuff now
i heard she got an endorsement from wayne newton too
the tension is almost too much the whole thing is up for grabs
and truth be told
not enough attention can be given to all this important stuff
when it comes to politics there's no such thing as too much information
welcome back jadl
you're sort of the
jacques cousteaudian
of this blog
bringin stuff up from the deeps
nice to see wendy pipe in too
while she breastfeeds
this is great
jh
My point about the VAT is not about the math....whether VAT takes in more tax than other methods. The math that is important here is how to figure net income before taxes, and that can vary.
The consumption tax methods apply tax at various points in the production line/supply chain. But a national sales tax puts the tax onto the end user. As I pointed out, our current tax code promotes
consumption and debt and penalizes savings and investment. Cain's plan eliminates those disincentives. In addition his plan would make US companies more competitive in a global market and more likely to hire and stay at home.
Besides, what's wrong with a flat corporate tax? Wouldn't it have been nice if GE had paid 9% income tax on their $14.2 billion in net profit in 2010 instead of zero??
Wendy
"an educator who is an OWS supporter calmly asserting that Jews ought to be run out of the country"
"Educator" = substitute teacher.
I live in L.A. now, and this is the only thing the conservative talk radio host that's on when I drive to school talks about.
Hardly representative, though I would posit that the anti-Jew sentiment in OWS is probably equivalent to the anti-black sentiment in the Tea Party.
Not big, but there.
yippeee!
Wendy,
With respect, I believe you're misconstruing Cain's proposal. Let's review the bidding. There are three components: (a) a 9% individual income tax, (b) a 9% national sales tax, and (c) a 9% "corporate income tax."
It is the (c) component that is structured as a VAT. Cain's proposal basically creates two sales taxes, the explicit 9% of (b), and the implicit, hidden 9% of (c). Both taxes go to the end user. Thus, I think it is fair to characterize the Cain proposal as a 9% tax on personal income, and an 18% tax on personal consumption -- half VAT, half surcharge.
Thus, poor and middle class families, who are essentially consuming all their income, are taxed at roughly 25%. Whereas a hypothetical rich family that devotes a 1/3 of it's income to consumption would have an effective tax rate of 14%. It seems to me that the first-order effect of such a tax code is to accelerate weath disparities between the lower and upper classes.
And you're confused about GE. The taxes on their profits under the Cain plan would have been $0, too, because Cain's plan does not tax corporate profits.
Wendy and Gm, read the article forwarded by JADL from Laffer. He says the plan will work and get the unemployed back to work again. We have to do something. This country is collapsing and becoming more like Zimbabwe every day. I listened to a story coming back to town on NPR that was about how campuses are instituting soup kitchens and food programs for staples like potatoes and bread. Churches are supplying most of the stuff.
Not only are students poor now but many of their parents are losing their homes and their jobs and living in cars. People under 25 have a catastrophic rate of employment. They're the ones who jumped on the bandwagon for the Big O three years ago, and now they see they've destroyed the economy in doing so.
In my opinion nothng Obama has done since he's gotten in has been the right thing. Stimulus: no. HCR: huge mistake. Shooting OBL: good, but done in the wrong way. Crowley: verbally abusive. Giving money to the IMF: really dumb. The jobs bill: his latest idea of a giveaway.
Maybe he's at least putting his socks away at home. That was Michelle's complaint about him back in the day: smells bad in the mornings, and throws his socks every which way. Illegals pour over the border and he gives them automatic weapons to gun down our border agents. I have no idea what he thinks he's doing. If it isn't an attempt to completely unravel the nation what is it?
I wish I could still say I was proud of our country. I just feel like the country is being stolen out from under me. If he gets four more years there'll be nothing left when he's done. IT's like the day of the locusts.
At any rate I did read the Laffer approval of the Cain plan. He claims it will be good for everyone. It's also clear.
So far the clearest assessment I've read here is Wendy's: but Laffer's is even clearer. All those 9s can get pretty curvy.
We need a president who won't make half of us throw the napkin whenever his name is mentioned.
We should raise Cain to the rank if you ask me.
Stu: they won't pay sales taxes on their rent--nor if they buy a "used" home or used car (which poor families are wont to do).
So the 25% is a bit spurious.
But we should head for the 11% property tax.
It's the future.
I thought it was the accepted view that BO's marriage like his religion were calculated political gambits. If that's not true in the case of his marriage at least then at least there's one way in which he's not compromised.
What do we know of the other possible First Ladies? Are there any actual love stories among them? I like love stories.
i raised a lot of cane
in my younger days
and momma used to pray
my crops would fail
now i'm a wanted fugitive
with just two ways
outrun the law
or spend my life in jail
- merle haggard
leave it to brett
to initiate a 100 comments post
you gotta like those rebel folks
real democrats
they are the people
we the people
reserve the right to cajole the govt
why not
maybe we need a yearly festival
whereby we take a few weeks to poke fun and bitch about everything
then back to what we were doing
kirby sometimes you sound downright
angry
which coming from you borders on the surreal
maybe obama would be your friend
if you lived next to him
i think you believe
stuff that isn't necessarily true
and let's be fair
not all grandmothers are nice ladies
sometimes theye grow old and angry
maybe she didn't do the cookies and milk thing with barack man i'd be pissed too
kirby what would you do if you were presidenT would you preside over the dents
as we get older the republicans become more and more surreal
as the nation becomes smarter
and more people are thinking things through
the republicans sound counterproductive
and reactionary
good night
jh
GM,
Your point re: rent is a good one, although I don't think it's so perfectly clear cut. Owners of new rental properties will have had to pay both sales tax and VAT in acquiring the property, and they'll need to recoup those expenses, and the only means of doing so will be by higher rents. Even so, I'll grant that there is likely some relief here, in that in the long run, I'd expect that rents will tend to reflect the sale value of the property (i.e., what the owner would realize by selling) rather than the acquisition cost (i.e., what the buyer would have to pay). The difference, of course, being the sales tax component. The VAT component should get baked into market value, and would remain a part of the rent basis.
As for cars, it's a lot less clear cut. The argument against taxing private party sales is that it's practically impossible to enforce, and it has the effect of criminalizing a lot of ordinary folks. But cars are different in a couple salient regards: they're relatively expensive (so sales taxes would generate significant revenue), and they require registration. States today have no difficulty collecting sales tax on vehicles purchased out-of-state because registration forces the buyer into contact with the government, and to document the sale price of even a private party sale. In effect, the burden of reporting the tax moves from the seller (who has little incentive for doing so) to the buyer (who has a big incentive -- they want plates and stickers so that the cops don't hassle them!). I don't see used cars coming out of the legislative process tax-free. It's just too easy for the state to collect, and too valuable not to.
Kirby,
I thought it was the accepted view that BO's marriage like his religion were calculated political gambits.
Neither is an accepted view, except perhaps among the paranoid end of the right-wing commentariat. Certainly, neither is grounded in fact. Obama's constructive engagement with Christianity began while he was a community organizer, and he was baptized before entering law school in '88. He met his future wife in '89, while working as a summer intern at a Chicago law firm (she'd graduated from Harvard Law School the year before), and they were married in '92. At that point, Obama was working as a civil rights lawyer and as a lecturer at UC. His first political office (as an Illinois State Senator) wasn't until '97, nine full years after his baptism, eight years after he started dating his future wife, and six years after he married her.
Brett has done this before. I think it was he that suggested I write something about the legislator who got popped in Arizona. The problem with these posts for me is that I don't have the last word before the thing starts. I had only the haziest impression of the OWS movement. I do have a strong impression that more and more the left wants OTHER people to be responsible for them. This is why I like Cain. He says get up and do something for yourself. Stu has an impressive post over at his blog where he actually argues that the job of the rich is to employ the poor whether they want to or not.
"Matthew, in material unique to him, tells a parable known as “the Workers in the Vineyard,” but it's actually about the owner of the vineyard:
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” (Matthew 20:1–16 NRSV)
Why does the owner of the vineyard go out to the market at noon, at three, and again, finally, at five? Does he expect that their work will provide as much value to him as that of the men he hired early in the morning? Of course not. For he is not hiring men, early or late, for the value they can provide to him. He is hiring men out of his abundance for the value he can provide to them, a wage sufficient for the day in return for honorable service. He understands the responsibility of the rich in society: it is neither to hoard wealth, nor to dissipate it, but instead to use it purposefully to advance the health of society.
Let us consider our society today, a society beset with sustained high unemployment. We hear from the voices privilege that the problems our our society are due to to the poor. It is the poor who don't contribute enough. Yet the poor still seek work, and if they don't find it, it's not because God has not provided. It is because those he's entrusted with wealth have nurtured the delusion that their wealth is a reward for their own merit, and its sole purpose is their self-indulgence. The problem we have today isn't that the poor aren't working, it's that the rich aren't hiring. It's that the rich aren't doing their job.
Let us pray:
Dear Lord, Heal our society. Call the rich to their duty, or give us new rich who will do it in their stead. In Jesus's name we pray. Amen."
This thinking seems completely inane to me and completely unlike ANYTHING that would have seemed sensible to Locke or Smith.
I've never heard of a kind of economics that is anything like the one that Stu describes. What even is it? After reading it late last night I actually had nightmares about it. It just seemed to make everything topsy turvy. What has happened to Two Kingdoms in this thinking? If Stu is thinking like this, what on earth are the people at the OWS thinking? They want the productive and enterprising people to do their work for them.
What happened to the parable of the Little Red Hen which used to be the secret and true story of the American economy?
man the african art of wooing is present in every aspect of chief warrior obamas social disposition man he's like this smiling young poet begging the girl to dance with him he's like this o baby i am going to dress you up and take you out to dinner sort of guy no man i just know that barack and michelle they be hangin out in the white house get it white house all mornin' long listenin to isaac hayes and norah jones and makin love on the couch while the girls are at their riding lessons for a few days just turning the whole house into a love castle for a day or two then barack steps outside after a whole morning of love and has a private conversation with rahm emanuel those two workin it out and barack is lightin up a cigarette and yells into the house hey michelle let's order out for lunch yes baby she replies and honey let's put on some lenny kravitz isaac is getting a little too sweet if you know what i mean
i'm your lover baby she replies
and puts on some kravitz
yo
so they be talkin rahm and baraack and they agree that indeed the world is their cookie and all they have to do is keep it from crumblin all they have to do is keep the rich people happy and the poor people hopeful
hey rahm baraack says
what about a fast fast train linking all the big cities of america
rahm says i am on that train with you pal
i am on it
michelle coos from the kitchen
hey my sweet hawaiian warrior prince come and get your lunch
it's chinese from
lin hao down the street
i gotta go rahm
michelle is tempting and taunting me with greasy chinese noodles
you two take it easy he says rahm says i don't want to see you ending up naked and crazy on the kitchen floor
talk to me tonite
click click
yeah
life is good
in da white HOUSE
in da white HOUSE
little love shuffle in the kitchen
lights out
next scene
obama is a love poet
he loves his lady
you can see it
have i ever mentioned that it is my sincere belief that she is actually running the country
and barack is like the voicebox
don't disregard the eyecandy
one of the basic working principles
101
jh
JH, I do have friends like Obama. I've always had friends like this. But my friends are lunatics for the most part, and can't believe someone like that should be in the White house. You need someone who's a drip in the White House, someone who takes care of business. I don't have any friends like that. My friends are nutcases quite simply.
And Obama is a nutcase. The one thing that stuns me about him is that he has kept his marriage together. Most of my friends are so volcanic that they don't manage this. It's weird. Maybe it means he has a practical side. I hope he's at least a good dad.
I mean even Tony Soprano and probably even Pablo Escobar cared about their children and were decent dads, so it's possible. I like one side of Obama. The good dad, and the one that wrote the early poem about Frank Marshall Davis.
What on earth happened to him?
I like how he dresses. He's a very good looking man. Most of my friends aren't too goodlooking. Obama is a GQ sort. I guess I don't have any friends like that.
I like goodlooking women, but in general I don't care what men look like as long as they are interesting.
Obama is a mess.
He could never be my friend.
but maybe he's at least a friend to his children. Tony Soprano was at least that much. He loved his children and his family.
Well, maybe Tony Soprano was mean to his own children because he was a bad role model.
What concerns me now about the left which includes Stu is how they don't take care of the structure they take care instead of individuals and they've lost a sense of the forest for the trees.
This is wrong and will get us all killed. It's so stupid. We're going to end up owned by the Chinese if I can't wake people. This is why I'm raising Cain.
Stu: Cain has clearly stated that sales tax will only be collected on an item the first time it is sold (so a used car or a used house would not incur sales tax and neither would rent or mortgage payments).
M
the little red hen is the name of a casino on a long lonely road in nevada
the economy is acting like the little red hen with her head cut off
try not to get sprayed
sooner or later you're going to get some nice fried chicken
if your numbers come up
it's all in the numbers
why does it feel like we're all getting plucked alive
jh
GM,
Stu: Cain has clearly stated that sales tax will only be collected on an item the first time it is sold (so a used car or a used house would not incur sales tax and neither would rent or mortgage payments).
President's aren't dictators. They don't always get their ideas passed, and when they do, they rarely get them passed without legislative perturbation. And politicians often promise more than they give away. Maybe if he's elected, it will come out the way he says. I'd bet not, though, and an obvious way to "enhance" revenues relative to his base plan revolves around large purchases that require governmental registration. Like deeds and cars.
This is what happens at the state level, in states that are dependent on sales taxes. It seems reasonable to me to expect that if the federal government adapts a tax system similar to that of the states, it's going to eventually make the same kind of adjustments that the states have made.
For a short piece on the Zuccotti Park(AKA "Obamatown," "Pissville," etc.) "occupiers'" farcical attempts to govern themselves, fights over their "stuff," bickering over what some feel is the unassailable "right to drum," etc.:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/10/occupy_animal_farm_the_organiz.html
One of the best "Occupy" videos yet (large woman mocks the protests by joining in):
http://blazingcatfur.blogspot.com/2011/10/best-occupy-movement-vid-yet.html
But the point of the 9-9-9 plan is that it doesn't need "massaging" as it is revenue neutral (though regressive, as we've said).
And a President can certainly be a dictator--the Roosevelts were good at showing this.
Stu claims that GE would have paid no taxes under Cain's plan because the $14.2 billion was net profit, not net income.
Sorry, there is no difference between the two. I'm with Kirby here, I don't know what kind of economics Stu is promoting.
Income minus expenses....that is exactly what net profit/income is. They are both the same thing.
The problems arise in defining income and expenses. And that is where our absurb tax code comes into play. Accounting techniques such as accelerated depreciation, accelerated losses/gains, losses to offset profits between divisions, etc....that's all performed on the IRS tax forms, not on the income statement. So GE with its exemplary tax accounting department utilized the tax code to evade taxes legally but still posted a net income of $14.2 billion. Call it profit if you want to, but they are the same.
Any flat tax that removes most or all deductions/exemptions will drastically reduce a company's opportunity for doing so. It also levels the playing field for companies in the US.
Besides Stu, the current corporate tax rate is 35%. But since you call a 9% corporate tax rate a VAT, then by extension you are calling the 35% rate a VAT. And since you are against a VAT, then you must be against any corporate taxes at all. That's the logic I'm seeing in your arguments.
I have to commend Cain for his tenacious campaign to bring this into the national limelight. Gotta admire his hutzpah at least, even if you fundamentally disagree with his 9-9-9 plan.
************
On a different subject, I think Kirby suggested that Obama married Michelle as a calculation. (with a toddler running around, it's hard to keep up with each argument)
I don't think so. Obama proposed 3 times to Michelle. Do men really risk the ultimate rejection a third time for calculating reasons? Or would it be more probable that he truly loves her? I vote for the latter.
Wendy
GM,
And a President can certainly be a dictator--the Roosevelts were good at showing this.
Both Teddy and Franklin got a lot of latitude, but neither got everything they wanted. I'm remembering specifically FDR's attempt to pack the Supreme Court, which failed.
In the meantime, the Republicans have decided that it's going to take 60 votes to get anything through the Senate by an unprecedented use of the filibuster. I don't know why anyone would expect it will take any less for the next Republican President.
Wendy,
Profit is income minus expenses. But that is not what Cain is proposing. He's proposing income minus taxed expenses, and taxed expenses are much smaller than expenses.
Let's boil this down to a simple, and critically important, example. Under current law, payroll is a deductable expense. Under Cain's 9-9-9 plan, payroll is not a deductable expense (because it hasn't been subject to the 9% VAT).
And before you argue otherwise, I suggest you review Cain's proposal on enterprise zones, which would have two major features: (1) payroll is deductable, and (2) the minimum wage law is not in force. Why state (1) if it's true everywhere?
I expect that for most businesses, payroll (which includes salary, benefits, and payroll taxes) is a major component of their expenses, the deductability of which goes away under Cain's plan.
Again, let me point out the huge increase in realized corporate income tax that Cain is anticipating, $800B/year vs. $225B/year, all while lowering the nominal rate from 38% to 9%. This is only possible because Cain's tax is apply his tax to roughly 15x the number of dollars that are taxed under the current code. The definition of income being used are most definitely not the same.
And no, I didn't claim that GE would pay no taxes, I claimed that it would pay no taxes on its profit. Under Cain's proposal, GE's economic activities would have generated large VATs (although not as large as you might thing -- much of GEs activity is through GE Finance). My claim is that the VATs would have been passed along to end consumers, and not to stockholders.
I think what's confusing you is that our current corporate tax is really a profit tax, although it is often described as an income tax; where Cain's proposal really is an income tax. And this is why the current tax isn't a VAT, but Cain's tax is.
i can't believe that wendy wouldn't respond to my description of the white house as a castle of love
<:> <:>
. /
........//
jh
JH, we all read your comments but few respond to them because they aren't arguments with evidence. They don't attempt to persuade us that we should either do something different or think differently. Or they don't use the usual protocol for doing so.
This makes them unique and valued, but difficult for the rest of us to directly respond.
Your strange and lyrical description of the love fest at the White House was a kind of tongue-in-cheek version of the Jeffersons when young or something, and was quite fun to read. Lacking any kind of data of what's going on in there, or any sense of the culture of the Obama's: we don't know how they talk to one another or if they talk, or what they listen to, or whatever.
We just know that she was only proud of America when he was first nominated.
We only know that he thinks the Cambridge police are buffoons out of a Keystone Kops scenario.
We don't know if they read to their children, or what food they eat, or who their friends are. It's all very secretive.
Cain is much more wide open. We can learn about him from his accent and his sense of humor.
Obama has no natural sense of humor, and no one seems to know what he's really like. He came on as a kind of mythical lyrical dream but of course we know that wasn't true.
Michelle informed us he threw his socks everywhere and stank in the morning.
But this all seems researched in advance and staged. Your attempt to depict the inner life of the White House is as good as any, but not one that anyone could argue with except insofar as Rahm is now the Mayor of Chicago, so the info felt a bit dated.
Still, it was mad fun to read, as is all your stuff.
JH,
I'm sorry to have missed your description of the White House as a castle of love.
It's hard to really read every comment with Mack trying to bang away on the keyboard with me. So sometimes I pick one or two themes and skip the rest.
BTW: Mack is 18 months now....so the breastfeeding is out....those teeth would hurt!
Wendy
The Cain rates that you guys are discussing is still pie in the sky to me as I don't think we are looking at common data. And we are probably getting twists from different news sources, few of which are reliable any longer, or even try to be.
Fox is perhaps the only one that even checks its facts any longer because they are the most scrutinized. The others just check to make sure it's good for Obama, and if it is, it's news.
Biden's bizarre charge that unless Obama's jobs bill passes rape will triple and homocide too was a jaw dropper. It turns out the Washington Post did some fact-checking and discovered he was discussing some fudged statistics from Flint, Michigan -- hometown of Michael Moore.
Here's a bit of the story. What's funny is how completely warped all the data is. It's getting to be like listening to Pravda on LSD with this administration:
"However, a check of statistics by the Post found that “murder did go up — though the rate did not double from 2009 to 2010, as Biden claimed. But rape has gone down. Biden actually asserted it had tripled.”
Biden’s office referred the Post to the Flint police for the numbers, which issued a statement from Public Safety Director Chief Alvern Lock.
The statement said: “The City of Flint stands behind the crime statistics provided to the Office of The Vice President . . . This information is the most accurate data and demonstrates the rise in crime associated with the economic crisis and the reduced staffing levels.”
Police officials blamed the discrepancy in numbers on clerical errors and different methods of counting crimes, according to the Post. “Interestingly, Flint Police Chief Lock has repeatedly asserted that cuts in staffing had little effect on the crime rate.”
“Clearly, the city of Flint supplied bad data, and either Biden or someone in Biden’s office should have caught it,” the Post added.
I did find this through a conservative news site called Newsmax and have been unable to open the original WaPo article in order to cite it directly. Maybe someone else could run it down. Biden is such an amusing guy. He really is Keystone Kops, but I bet Obama wishes it was still the silent era.
Kirby,
The Cain rates that you guys are discussing is still pie in the sky to me as I don't think we are looking at common data. And we are probably getting twists from different news sources, few of which are reliable any longer, or even try to be.
Just to be clear here, I've read about Cain's proposals on a number of sites, but I'm basing my argument explicitly on his description of his his plan, at Herman Cain for President: 9-9-9 Plan. I'm a scholar, and trained to go to the sources. FWIW, Fox isn't a source for this.
Kirby, I read the Glenn Kessler Fact Check story on Biden's absurd claims this morning at WaPo here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker
I don't know if Vice-President Biden will answer this expose, but given his distinguished record as blowhard, liar, plagiarist, movie gangster imitator, buffoon, and all-around bs-er, I shouldn't hold my breath. I expect he'll just go on to his next opportunity to mouth more nonsense. . . .
Scholars frequently choose the details that tend to favor their hypotheses. Almost everyone does this. There's no way you could, Stu, ever look at any Republican data and find it superior to Democrat data. It's not possible for you. If it is, in several years I've never once seen it.
You will say that this is because the Democrats are superior in every instance and also in general. So, as for Brett, all data gets skewed to show this prejudice. It is almost as if we might as well dispense with the data and just point to ourselves and say, I, am, superior, and thus, the candidates with whom I identify are superior.
But I think it's a deeper problem than that. The problem is one of identification with a group that we consider to be scapegoated.
In your case, Stu, it's the poor.
You think they deserve a free pass and shouldn't have to work.
Or if they do work, they should get all the money no matter what they do.
You don't say this, but it's your bias. You're bizarrely one-sided. Nothing can seemingly prevent this bias.
You even read Christianity as if it's exclusively for the poor. And you're not alone in this.
The entire left seems to do it.
The right on the other hand wants the system to work well enough that enough people can make a decent living and pay taxes so that our communities can survive. It's about the overall structure.
But as soon as another method of gleaning taxes is mentioned you immediately leap to the paranoid possibility that Cain has to be a "thief" (your immediate term) and that he is a "liar" your term, and finally that he is just misled, and then you read the data in such a way that this conclusion becomes "proven."
Still, I think the main thing is to make sure the system is working.
If you're going to play baseball, no one should get on base free. But your side will let all the poor and all the illegals get to first base and be declared safe. Because the rules don't apply to them.
Then you point to a few rich people who you never name (they have no face) and start to scream, "But why do they get to hit home runs!"
So then you make it impossible for the game itself to survive by suspending all the rules of law.
Obama, as the nation's top authority, simply suspends laws whenever he doesn't like them. He declares this law unconstitutional and that law unconstitutional. He's like the red queen.
What we need is to get some rules by which all sides agree to play. This means we need the rule of law.
Only true classical liberals continue to believe in this idea, which is why I'm with them, and can no longer abide with the left. JH even suspends the rules of grammar.
It's a funny mess.
The OWS people also believe that violence is ok (31%, according to Democratic pollster Schoen), and that civil disobedience is ok (98%) when they don't believe in laws.
They illegally occupy another person's park and can't even agree to be civil between themselves.
I'm glad we're all still talking, but I don't think there's ANYTHING we can agree on.
Wendy, I appreciate your efforts to chime in in spite of your obvious challenges with your child. Ouch, as they say.
I suppose your kid has his own 9-9-9 plan.
9% of your calories, 9% of your sleep, 9% of your mental state. Or maybe that would be 90.
Still, they're worth it.
Other people's children? Not so much.
at any rate, I'm interested in your real world perspective, as you are probably the only one who comes here who has an actual background in day to day business reality, and have been successful in that world. I think that's what the country needs.
GE would pay 9% tax on revenue of 150 billion dollars minus
1) purchases from US located businesses
2) capital investment
3) net exports
this should be their net income (yes?) of 12 billion dollars (plus a bit more).
Wendy & Stu: correct or no?
Kirby,
Scholars frequently choose the details that tend to favor their hypotheses.
What a pathetic way to argue. Don't even try to engage the content argument, just claim that I'm hopelessly biased. Claim that there are no good sources, except of course for FOX, and so there's no point in arguing content with anyone. Maybe it's time to turn in your scholar card.
Let me suggest that you redeem yourself just a bit by answering a few simple questions, with sources.
1. Are payroll expenses deductable under Cain's 9-9-9 Plan? Hint: the answer is clearly available on his web site, op. cit.
2. Are payroll expenses deductable under the prevailing federal corporate income tax? Hint: IRS form 1120 (US Corporation Income Tax Return), lines 12, 13, 23, and 24 under deductions.
And here's another some other questions, which I don't have answers too (because Cain's proposal lacks sufficient detail to give a definative answer). I don't expect you to answer these questions, but I'd really like to know the answer.
3. Does Cain's proposal eliminate the legal distinction between for-profit and not-for-profit corporations? In particular, are not-for-profit corporations (like churches and most colleges/universities) subject to his 9% corporate tax? I really have no idea, but I find the lack of a clear answer to be disturbing.
4. Are charitable contributions deductable from personal income? [I'm thinking not.] Does anyone have a model for how this will affect offerings? [I'm thinking, some, but not a lot. But I don't know.]
GM,
GE would pay 9% tax on revenue of 150 billion dollars minus
1) purchases from US located businesses
2) capital investment
3) net exports
Yes, this would be the GEs corporate tax under Cain's proposal.
this should be their net income (yes?) of 12 billion dollars (plus a bit more).
Wendy & Stu: correct or no?
Incorrect, for at least two reasons: One is that their net income includes profit from international operations. Two is that net income includes a deduction for payroll that is not deductable under Cain's proposal.
GM,
Good question. After the rugrat goes to bed tonight, I will submit the question to Cain's campaign via his website. Maybe we'll get a response or no.
I'll wait until then to continue the discussion and the absurd notion that Cain would tax expenses in addition to net income.
Wendy
Stu, I appreciate your willingness to look at the 9-9-9 plan but I don't think you do it with the correct spirit of disinterestedness. Without this fair and balnced perspective, it is hard to trust your data.
Wiki on Cain's positions:
"Deductions, except charitable giving, would be eliminated. The federal sales tax would not apply to used goods."
Sussing out all the details may be a waste of time, since Cain will probably fall by the wayside. Just my hunch. Bachman, Perry, Pawlenty, have. The MSM accepts Romney or Obama, so it's going to be Coke or Pepsi. These micro-bursts are meant to remind us that this is a Democracy.
It is hard to get all Cain's positions straight, plus I think they are still evolving. I trust his character. I read him as a no-nonsese fellow. But then I also prefer the Cambridge police to HL Gates and his presidential champion in terms of their unbiased character.
Stu, I appreciate your willingness to look at the 9-9-9 plan but I don't think you do it with the correct spirit of disinterestedness. Without this fair and balnced perspective, it is hard to trust your data.
Wiki on Cain's positions:
"Deductions, except charitable giving, would be eliminated. The federal sales tax would not apply to used goods."
Sussing out all the details may be a waste of time, since Cain will probably fall by the wayside. Just my hunch. Bachman, Perry, Pawlenty, have. The MSM accepts Romney or Obama, so it's going to be Coke or Pepsi. These micro-bursts are meant to remind us that this is a Democracy.
It is hard to get all Cain's positions straight, plus I think they are still evolving. I trust his character. I read him as a no-nonsese fellow. But then I also prefer the Cambridge police to HL Gates and his presidential champion in terms of their unbiased character.
Kirby,
"Deductions, except charitable giving, would be eliminated. The federal sales tax would not apply to used goods."
I've been through the used goods issue with GM. I agree that this is part of Cain's proposal, although I've stated my reservations regarding actual implementation in the special case of big-ticket items that require government registration (houses, cars, boats, and planes).
And yes, you're right about charitable contributions, answering my question number 4. And indeed, this is documented on Cain's 999 web site. Excellent. But isn't it significant that charitable contributions are not deductable for corporations?
And this suggests -- very tentatively -- that Cain will keep the not-for-profit vs. for-profit distinction, as it defines what constitutes a charity. Given his religious commitments, I'm doubtful that he'll make a proposal that would leave churches subject to corporate taxes. I'd just like this spelled out.
See, if you make an actual argument, we can make progress.
i'm getting so frustrated here
i mean we're talking about these perfectly good americans gathering with a shared purpose gathering to question the gambling tactics of modern american finance occupy wall street indeed and all you folks do is try to work out the tax math i mean there are people in the streets of our fine nation crying and moaning and acting like zombies in order to really say something and you're talkin budget details
i think there should be election taxes so that every candidate who pulls in one million $$ must pay an
income tax of 30%
and every bank loan for a house must include a bank agreement to pay it's share of the ownership tax on any building until the thing is paid for
people pay taxes based on the worth of the house but i think it should be based one who owns the house and how much of the house is owned by the buyer and how much by the bank
and govt only needs to meet every other year
and forgive some student loans go ahead it won't hurt that much
and pay women to stay at home
give huge tax breaks to families where women who stay at home and have the govt favor those people instead of the work work work work workers
all this work ethic crap is killing us
i won't say protestant
but i'd like to
the economy is a smoke and mirrors act and you want to talk tax breaks
that's like complaining about the color of the smoke
meanwhile back at the love castle
jh.....
I don't know how to pull JH out of the smoke and mirrors of the Vatican into the drudgery of the Protestant work ethic, or how the boils and toils of the worker can even be understood any longer from within the new socialist idea of lounging around while waiting for the government's check to arrive and bail you out so you can score drugs on your way to nail parlor. But the basic idea was that if the game was more or less fair then everybody would play. What then happened was the left got furious at the extreme wealth of some and demanded it be handed over, or else they wouldn't work. So the employers started hiring elsewhere. Then there was no money for the products. So the Democrats said let's just make everyone a government employee. The Republicans said that would be a drag on our phynances because who's paying for all those jobs. Then the Democrats said you are, and that's about where we're at right now.
Can Cain reset the whole Protestant work ethic into motion? His claim is that if you don't buy big ticket stuff you don't pay zee beeg taxes. If you do, you do, but it might set in motion a black market. Or the loopholes where something is declared "used" could be used more often. It seems that a lot of regulation and unthought about problems will occur with these giant changes. The ones that Stu brought up are just some of these, more of them would shake out as we got there. The 25% flat tax has been around a long time, and now Perry is trying to get back into the game by channeling Forbes. But Forbes got nowhere when he ran years ago. His huge forehead didn't help matters. If people aren't at least going to look lovely they should stay off the TV I say.
Cain looks good. Romney looks good. Bachman's losing it, especially her throat area is wrinkling up. Perry looks worse and worse. Huntsman's all sweaty. Someone gong that guy. I hate how he stares nervously, gulping for air, as they ask the questions.
The only really smart guy for the Republicans is probably Gingrich but his name sounds too much like Grinch.
Paul is smart but he terrifies everyone because he likes to take the huge swing. Let's wipe out the Fed! Let's get rid of five bureaus! Let's bring our entire army home. I wonder what kind of thing he proposed to his wife. Let's fly to China for lunch! Let's danceon the roof! Let's eat crocodile meat for lunch, it's cheaper!
I think people get addicted to wildness in the mental arena and it flits over into the domestic area. I am like this.
But only in writing.
In real life I am very cautious, and try to stay inside all the lines.
I called my mom tonight and she just laughed and laughed and laughed about the Republicans until she was half-bug-eyed. "Just shoot all the people in the prisons and kill all the union organizers, and attach everyone to a wheel, and make them work work work until they drop!"
I didn't know what to say. Honor and obey came to mind, and I tried to say, uh, mom, but she went on and on with her yeehaw, son, let's go to Texas! Yeehaw!
My dad was the Republican.
Stu--are you using slippery slope here?
Let's talk first about what Cain's plan does and doesn't do.
Then we can talk about how it may or may not be implemented.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA2eN6R0gP8&feature=player_detailpage
This guy from Hawaii made a record last December, the last month of the year. The 2011 Grammy Awards were given out in February for all the best pop music produced in 2010. One of the songs on the album, Just The Way You Are, shot to the top of the charts by the end of December, so the Hawaiian guy got nominated for Best Male Vocal Performance of the Year. Surprise, surprise. They gave him the statue even though eight weeks earlier all he was was a buzz, some studio musician who had dropped a couple hooks on some hip hoppers to make their monotonous raps sound a bit more melodic.
Cut to March, two weeks after the stunning upset at the Grammy Awards. The Hawaiian kid takes his band on tour in Europe to put some material together for a planned concert tour in the U.S. a few months later. He gets to Amsterdam. He starts to sing and discovers that some of the Dutch girls have heard of him. In fact, not only have they heard of him, they've downloaded his CD on the internet and burned copies for all their little Dutch friends. The only English they know is what they got in one year of high school English and from watching subtitled reruns of Friends on television. Yet they know by heart the lyrics to every song on his album, songs that have never been played on the radio anywhere in the world.
He starts to sing, thinking that if he does a few of his less famous songs some of the Europeans might decide that one or two of his tunes are catchy or even likable. The crowd hears the first chord or two and instantly knows every last one of his songs, so well in fact that the sound system setup for the concerts is totally inadequate. The crowd is singing his songs at twice the volume of his amplifier. The Hawaiian kid has a great voice but you can barely hear him. All the recordings were made on cell phones the audience had to sneak past the security guards, both on the way in and the way out. It wasn't just Amsterdam. It was everywhere he went in Europe. Slovakians were drowning him out.
When another Hawaiian decided to run for president four years ago he didn't start by trying to figure out how he could appeal to a handful of tractor drivers in Iowa. He went to Europe to get tuned up. He made a speech at the Brandenburg Gate and drew a crowd nearly as big as the one that turned out for his inauguration a year later. Decisions made by American presidents have huge consequences for Europe. They know what we're doing six months before we do.
craig great insert
the europeans also have a sense of value which is utterly lost on us
they judge by sound by touch by feel
we get lost at the price tag
download everything
jh
GM,
Stu--are you using slippery slope here?
I don't believe so. I'm not extrapolating wildly down a path of hypotheticals. It is reasonable to consider how tax systems similar to Cain's have evolved. I'm making a uniformitarian argument—if we try the same things, we should expect the same results.
This is in the same spirit as Bachmann's criticism of the same proposal, which was that subsequent congresses would find it easier to raise the sales tax rate than they'd find it to raise the income tax rate. My argument is actually more limited: I think Bachmann greatly underestimates the difficulty of raising the sales tax rate. But I also think that you've overestimated how hard it will be to extend the range of transactions to which the sales tax applies.
This is consonant with our respective concerns. Bachmann is much more interested in limiting goverment revenues, and she is concerned that Cain's proposal will facilitate subsequent tax increases. I'm most concerned about the regressive structure of Cain's proposal, which you've pointed out (correctly) is somewhat ameliorated by the sales tax exemption on used goods. But I feel that Cain's proposal is structured so that the most tempting adjustments to make are even more regressive than the proposal itself.
Let's talk first about what Cain's plan does and doesn't do.
I'm trying mightily to do that, with some successes and some failures. You and I have reached accord that Cain's proposal scraps a progressive federal income tax system by a regressive consumption-oriented one. We may differ as to the desirability of a progressive vs. regressive system, and somewhat as to the degree of regressiveness of Cain's proposal, but at least we've reached a basic accord on the fact that the current code is progress, and Cain's proposal is regressive.
I've had less success w.r.t. the corporate tax, but in the end, it really does boil down to arithmetic. Cain is planning to get much more revenue ($800B/year vs. $225B/year) on a much lower rate (9% vs. 35-ish%). This is only possible if his tax applies to many more dollars (in fact, 15x as many), and so things that seem as if they're obviously deductable, e.g., payroll, corporate charitable giving, research and development, etc., cannot be deductable. I'm hoping that Wendy does write and that she does her from Cain's people. I expect that they'll be honest, and this will further extend the factual basis for subsequent discussion.
In “The Rebel,” Albert Camus wrote, “Awareness, no matter how confused it may be, develops from every act of rebellion: the sudden, dazzling perception that there is something in man with which he can identify himself, if only for a moment … What was at first the man’s obstinate resistance now becomes the whole man, who is identified with and summed up in this resistance. The part of himself that he wanted to be respected he proceeds to place above everything else and proclaims it preferable to everything, even to life itself … [Rebellion] lures the individual from his solitude. It founds its first value on the whole human race. I rebel – therefore we exist.”
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/21/the_original_mad_men/?source=newsletter
JH, let's take the long view on rebellion. The first rebellion was that of Adam & Eve. That didn't turn out well. Adam & Eve were more or less cursed by God after the Fall. Adam is condemned to hard labor for about 900 years (he dies at 930 years of age).
"As a result of their breaking God's law, the couple were removed from the garden (Gen. 3.23) (the Fall of Man according to Christian doctrine) and both receive a curse. Adam's curse is contained in Gen. 3.17-19: "Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" (KJV).
[edit] Post-expulsion: After his expulsion from Eden, Adam was forced to work hard for his food for the first time."
Slovenian philosopher Slavoj zizek visited Zuccotti Park last week and gave a speech that included the incendiary phrase, "You can have sex with animals or whatever," which was quoted in yesterday's (Friday, October 21, 2011, p. D10) WSJ. Journalist Eric Felten was describing the phrase used as meaning (in context) that any desire you have can be had at a whim these days, so why can't we get rid of capitalism and institute socialism in its stead? What Zizek didn't seem to realize is that socialism is capitalism in which the state is owned by the Party, and all capital must flow through its dictates.
It is odd to me that at Zuccotti Park (a kind of replica of the Garden of Eden) the Adams and Steves there, and the Eves and the Mornings, and the pale Sunday afternoons in the increasingly cold weather, demand a return to paradise in which every form of happiness will prevail on demand.
"The change is possible. So, what do we consider today possible? Just follow the media. On the one hand in technology and sexuality everything seems to be possible. You can travel to the moon. You can become immortal by biogenetics. You can have sex with animals or whatever. But look at the fields of society and economy. There almost everything is considered impossible. You want to raise taxes a little bit for the rich, they tell you it’s impossible, we lose competitivitiy. You want more money for healthcare: they tell you impossible, this means a totalitarian state. There is something wrong in the world where you are promised to be immortal but cannot spend a little bit more for health care. Maybe that ??? set our priorities straight here. We don’t want higher standards of living. We want better standards of living. The only sense in which we are communists is that we care for the commons. The commons of nature. The commons of what is privatized by intellectual property. The commons of biogenetics. For this and only for this we should fight."
Zizek believes that the early Christians had this hankering for socialism too and it is widely thought that in Jerusalem they had a kind of Zuccotti Park situation which the rest of the Mediterranean sent money to keep afloat.
Technology is perhaps a means to recapture the Garden, too. Something like the Tower of Babel.
(You can google Zizek's speech and get the thing in the original, or find it in its entirety in several languages online.)
they're using this call and response technique i'm sure you've heard it where the one speaking blurts out a phrase and everyone nearby echoes the phrase so that people further away can hear the speech the language as it were
so did that happen
everyone chanting phrase for phrase
you can have
"you can have"
sex with animals
"sex with animals"
or whatever
"or whatever"
did they have to imitate the slavic intonation of zizeks' voice
maybe these are people who have thought themselves beyond the cyber age and are presented with formulating a new primitivism for the sake of saving the planet
i hear some of them are dumpster divers
can you imagine a more fitting role in the survival of the fittest set up
i mean those folks will survive if they don't die from botulism poisoning
maybe they'll develope resistance to that they'll be as ubiquitous as rats and as hard to kill
french social theory coming of age
how pleasant
french cuisine meets dumpster divers
jh
I know that I am weak in math compared to Stu and GM and Wendy but I've been wondering about the claim that the protesters make up 99% of America.
At any rate, I don't think their math adds up, but please check it for me, as I am not terribly good here.
If the Tea Party was 35% of the Republican party and the Republican party generally gets 50% of the vote, how can the OWS group represent 99% of the American population? Isn't it more likely that THEY are the 1%?
Kirby,
I'm not a OWSer, but their "we are the 99%" naming logic runs along these lines: Twenty percent of all wages go to the upper 1% of wage owners. This is essentially (and can be thought of) as the people who are have $1M/year in income. (Which would not include just earned wages, but also capital gains, dividends, etc.)
The 99% therefore refers to the people who's annual income is less than $1M, and ostensibly their concerns, which are perceived as being quite different from the 1%-ers.
Targeting a tiny minority is always suspicious to me. People like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are gooses that lay golden eggs. I have no problems with this, and do not want to nationalize their assets. I'm just grateful they live here and are Americans and not North Koreans or Red Chinese. They are the leaven in this lumpy economy.
OWS is now screaming "Let's occupy and take their stuff, and never give it back."
It's just so awful. It's like the preliminary chant to the total suspension of law and order. I have no idea why Obama supports this kind of thing, or why anybody supports Obama supporting this kind of thing.
I guess they don't think they'll be targeted. But once one thing gets seized, technically all things can be seized. They always start with a small minority and seek to "liberate" their things. Then after some years the kleptocracy goes after the Kulaks and takes their last cow.
We need to stand against this kind of thing at its inception.
Even the Koreans know about Bruno Mars. It's just Americans who can't seem to place him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwOvmGd6FSg&feature=player_detailpage
Many have claimed that the Tea Party and the OWS only seem to be symmetrical opposites but that they are actually key components bemoaning big business and government colluding at the expense of the 99%. I disagree with this.
I don't agree that there's an overlap, or that big business and big corporations are working together. Even if they are, OWS and TP are as different as America and the Soviet Union in the 1920s through 1960s.
OWS wants to destroy private business because they are envious that some have gotten rich. They want the government to own everything and redistribute it equitably. Their sin is envy.
TP wants to shrink the government because they argue that the government cannot innovate or make any decent products or profit, and thus the whole economy collapses if the government gets into control.
OWS wants Mother Russia with Obama as Stalin, while the Tea Party wants Coolidge: "The business of America is business."
OWS claims that the TP is in league with the rich, and that this proves they are guilty of the sins of gluttony and avarice but they aren't. Their only guilt is that they want the economy to function without state interference.
The people who are trying to conflate the two or even to justify the OWS are always already communist sympathizers.
I think the problem with the idea of the 99% is that the '1%' that it defines is too broad.
Ben and Jerry, for instance, are in the 1%, and I'm sure that the OWS guys would say they're good blokes.
Steve Jobs was like a top .00001%er, and if he were still alive, the OWSers would be pro-Jobs. (though somewhat unrightfully so, since Apple sends a lot of jobs overseas and their working conditions are apparently Nike-esque. Still, he was at least Creating things instead of dismantling things or being all usury-riffic).
It's not the people who make goods and (especially) create jobs in the U.S. and therefore have a lot of money that need to be protested - it's those people who make a crapton of money for doing nothing actually productive (the finance industry takes up way too much of our economy, and when CEOs get paid tons of money to dismantle corporations, that's bad...and when they get paid way more than they should and get way undertaxed because they buy loopholes, that's lame too).
The reason we're in a fiscally farked up place is (partly) because we're rewarding people too much for a) moving jobs overseas, b) moving money around but not actually producing anything, and c) f'in with companies just so the stocks will go up even if productivity (and # of employed) goes down.
Capitalism works best when the money people have represents their having provided a product or a service. Even better when the money is at least vaguely proportional to productivity.
Funny that the right and the left both have problems with people getting money when not productive - the reason I'm more of a lefty is that it seems more logical / effective / just to be a bit more up in arms about the people getting LOTS of money for not producing things of actual value for the U.S. economy than the people getting just enough to scrape by.
So, no, my grandfather shouldn't be denounced for having worked his ass off making dumpster and employing dozens and dozens of people over the years - but certain folks who have made their money in ways that aren't producing anything of actual value, especially for the U.S. economy... That system needs to be addressed and changed (as well as that system's hyper-influence on our economy).
And by 'economy' in that last sentence, I actually really meant 'government.'
Brett, the people who push money around are taking a risk. The risk was less when the gov't offered to cover the risk, but we need investment.
The Catholics in the Middle Ages made it illegal to practice usury even though Christ ok's it at the end of the parable of the talents.
The Jews developed banks because they didn't fall under the general ban on usury so they were able to lend. This led to huge money and no doubt many defaults. Shylock in Merchant of Venice represents some of the bitterness already felt by Catholics about this practice.
But we need start-up money. Just like in Hollywood someone has to "produce" the film, which means put the money up for a film. Not every film will make money.
The big stars make a ton, and the producers rake it in when the film is a hit. But there are also bombs where people lose money, right?
The same must be true of companies. Solyndra went belly up, for instance. Who lost their shirt in that?
One of the great problems in communist countries is that there is no capital investment by definition so it's very hard to get productivity going. Productivity requires investment money, and so requires people who are just moving money around, which can be a full time job if you don't want to lose your shirt.
Maybe we should one find one specific person with a face to put into the figurehead of the 1%? I hope it's not the Rothschilds or the Goldmans. Those people were also doing something positive for Europe.
Without capital, we can't have capitalism.
Right, Kirby, but when people use financial sorcery and manipulate a poorly-regulated system to sell a lot of pieces of crap as something other than crap, then there's a problem...
Investment got to the point where it was much about smoke and mirrors, not about investing in companies that produce stuff... This was due to a mixture of the repeal of certain regulations and other bad / out of date regulations...
Investment is great and fine and dandy when it's real ... venture capitalists are generally sources of good ... but that's not the way things actually worked in the financial sector.
Glass-Steagall Act didn't allow banking companies to double as investment. They wer separate. But thenin Clinton's era he repealed it, and it led to giant speculations on the part of banks such that if they speculated incorrectly the whole bank was threatened. Meanwhile the government backed up the banks. So the banks were betting without risk of a true loss. This mean that when their loans -- to formerly redlined areas (Acorn made it impossible for banks to not take risks in blighted areas where the plurality of people were paupers or shall we say not good risks) and this was in turn backed up by F & F. It led to an immediate high return in the economic sphere as there was so much activity and speculation. But there was no attempt on the part of most to remain conservative.
My brother is a banker and he told me that a complete knockdown was coming. A close friend from high school who is now an investment banker in Philly also said the whole house of cards would come down. My brother still thinks a giant correction is coming once the stimulus money is all spent.
He's generally right.
Not sure about my friend.
Fannie and Freddie have yet to be capped and are still billowing billions. Why is this allowed to happen? Except for Fox, no news channel will go after Obama because they don't want to appear racist.
Instead they'd rather find one sign in the Tea Party that might be construed as racist.
But the whole structure of the economy is still out of whack, and getting increasingly so. The new stealthcare bill doesn't allow insurance companies to keep people out for preexisting conditions. This means that -- they can't plan their risks. This is just what Fannie and Freddie made impossible to do.
It's utopian thinking.
We live in a finite world with infinite problems. If companies are exposed to infinite risks and aren't permitted to contain their exposure of course they will go belly up.
This will finish off what's left of our economy.
What should OWS want? Should they want sex with animals? Doesn't this just increase exposure to diseases? Why on earth would anyone want that? They should want a clear tight governmental structure that allows companies to clearly plan. We should have borders that allows us to plan for how many people will be in our states. Since the sixties people have all wanted to say yes.
Yes we can!
No, we can't!
That should be the new rallying cry.
NO WE CAN'T!
Kirby,
Glass-Steagall Act didn't allow banking companies to double as investment [banks].
Correct. There was support from both sides of the aisle for the repeal of Glass-Steagall, as well as considerable opposition (mostly from the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party).
One of the motivations was the concern that there were too few investment banks (back in those days, it was pretty much just Goldman-Sacks, Bear Sterns, and Lehman Brothers), and they were often conflicted, i.e., in offering investment advice, while at the same time underwriting IPOs. So there was a hope that allowing more players into the investment banking industry would enable competition, and eliminate some of the conflicts of interest.
At the same time, depository banks were "stuck" with a business model that made them cash rich, not only in terms of deposits, but also in terms of business value, but with fairly low returns on investment. So there was pressure (and specifically, lobbying) to allow the big banks more freedom in the investments they made.
I expect that the theory was that banks would only invest their own funds (as opposed to depository funds), i.e., shareholder value, but it didn't work out that way.
They wer separate. But thenin Clinton's era he repealed it, and it led to giant speculations on the part of banks such that if they speculated incorrectly the whole bank was threatened.
To say that Clinton repealed it is blame shifting. The repeal Act (Gramm-Leach-Billey) was proposed by three Republican's. The vote in the House was bipartisan, but the vote in the Senate was pretty much along party lines, Republicans for, Democrats against.
Meanwhile the government backed up the banks. So the banks were betting without risk of a true loss.
Yup. There was an moral hazard here. The nay-sayers were right.
This mean that when their loans -- to formerly redlined areas (Acorn made it impossible for banks to not take risks in blighted areas where the plurality of people were paupers or shall we say not good risks) and this was in turn backed up by F & F.
This isn't right. Yes, there was some reduction in lending rules in formerly redlined areas -- but you don't find multi-million dollar houses there. The big losses were in the suburbs and in new construction. The role of the F&F is complicated. On one hand, they were lied to by both the banks and the rating agencies regarding loan standards, on the other, they're still responsible for their own due diligence. As this process is getting sorted out, we're starting to see lawsuits filed by F&F against the big banks (BoA, IIRC, has already been filed). If they prevail, shareholder value in the lending banks will certainly be wiped out, which is part of the reason BoA's share price is in the tank. Unfortunately, some of the players that were most guilty of misrepresenting their loan "standards" to repurchasers (e.g., Countrywide) are already bankrupt, and so beyond the reach of civil litigation.
Getting the description right in any given debate is 99% of the struggle. I knew that I had part of Glass-Steagall right but didn't know that its repeal was launched by three Republican senators. It seemed to initially lead to a feeding frenzy. My friend in the investment business said that each investor had to try to partake or else yearly salaries were curtailed and one fell in the standings at the company. Honest or worried investment counselors were losing out.
My brother has always refused to partake in any feeding frenzy if he can't sense the realistic grounding, or the accurate business sense ten years down the road.
The booms often lead to busts.
Why did clinton allow the repeal to go through? Did he attempt a veto?
I still don't know what OWS wants. do they want Glass-Steagall back?
Do they want to tax the 1% at a 99% rate? I have heard no clear proposals (outside of Zizek, I confess I have not read entire speeches). Is anyone there emerging as a leader, and do they have a clear proposal?
There is apparently food there every day paid for by wealthy liberals. They have a fund of about 400,000 dollars from which to draw.
This means the crowd is supported although they don't have bathrooms. They use the local Burger King and some other venues, and are trashing local businesses as a result.
The situation seems untenable, and chaotic, much like the jumbled thinking of Zizek and other intellectual stalwarts of the far left.
Everyone desires things. But ideas must be grounded in reality, and in specific achievable goals.
I don't know what these would be for OWS. Democratic Pollster Schoen found that the group is 85% employed and that they are working with computers in their tents. Many of them are well-educated, and most of them have socialist beliefs.
(Exactly how he established this last part is somewhat outside of my ken.)
Who is their Moses? What is their Promised Land?
Kirby, just to tweak stu's description of the vote a bit, only the first Senate vote on the repeal of Glass-Steagall was along party lines (54-44). The first House vote was bipartisan "for"
(343-86) and the final version of the reconciled bill was passed by overwhelming majorities (Senate 90-8 and House 362-57).
Kirby, just to tweak stu's description of the vote a bit, only the first Senate vote on the repeal of Glass-Steagall was along party lines (54-44). The first House vote was bipartisan "for"
(343-86) and the final version of the reconciled bill was passed by overwhelming majorities (Senate 90-8 and House 362-57).
James, what is your take on the repeal? Good, bad?
Kirby,
I knew that I had part of Glass-Steagall right but didn't know that its repeal was launched by three Republican senators.
One Republican senator, and two Republican congressmen. Why is this a surprise?
It seemed to initially lead to a feeding frenzy. ... Honest or worried investment counselors were losing out.
Right. And here you begin to see why OWS's anger is not so misplaced. You've just (perhaps unintentionally) made a major concession. Bad loans were made, and there was management pressure to make them. The role of the Community Reinvestment Act was negligible. This was about greed, a.k.a., the profit motive. The OWS anger comes from the fact that these same institutions were deemed "too big to fail," and the managers who made these horrifically bad decisions are sheltered because of "their unique experience and ability." So the same people who caused the financial crisis have been largely sheltered from the consequences of their decisions, and they've been the first to say that everyone else should suffer.
And now, because they can't sustain their compensation packages because they can't make the same bad loans that they did before, so they're raising fees, and adding penalties to penalties without reason. There's been no willingness on the part of the banking community as a whole to go back to Glass-Steagall era compensation rates. There's no humility for the catastrophe caused by bad loans, only a sense of entitlement that they are due their 2007-era compensation.
My brother has always refused to partake in any feeding frenzy if he can't sense the realistic grounding, or the accurate business sense ten years down the road.
He's a banker. There are far too many people who work in the banking industry who do not have a banker's values or intuitions.
Why did clinton allow the repeal to go through? Did he attempt a veto?
Most Presidents have used their veto power sparingly. Clinton was no exception. And that said, I have no idea whether he supported the repeal or not. Clinton was generally receptive to the interests of big business, e.g., he put a lot of political muscle behind free trade agreements, including NAFTA.
I still don't know what OWS wants. do they want Glass-Steagall back?
I believe that first and foremost, they want justice, and they feel that justice has been denied. They want economic opportunity, which isn't to say handouts, but it is to say jobs. And just as the Tea Party feel that "we're losing our country," the OWS people feel the same way. Welcome to the counter-counter-revolution.
Do they want to tax the 1% at a 99% rate?
I don't think so. But neither do they want it taxed at a true rate of less than 9%, which is what Cain's proposal would do. [Since Cain would tax consumption but not capital gains.] They don't want to see the tax burdens shifted from the rich to the poor. I suspect that most would be happy with the Clinton-era tax code.
Who is their Moses? What is their Promised Land?
They're running try-outs. There are no clear contenders, let alone clear leaders.
Glass-Steagall was a Roosevelt Era bill meant to protect the banking industry from taking risks that could cause another run on banks in the way that happened during the crash. That makes sense.
That investment bankers would want it repealed is comprehensible, too, as they felt too constrained by it, and thought enormous profits could be made without it. Yes, but enormous losses, too.
But wasn't it Democrats who made Fannie & Freddie which by law had to bail out the banks that were making bad investments especially within real estate?
The crash in real estate is another barrel of fish, but let's keep the shotgun out of there just now.
The automatic bailouts that came through Fannie and Freddie were catastrophic in many cases because banks were not supposed to expose themselves to more than 3% of their capital, but instead went way out over their heads and then when the tsunami of debt came in they were all washed out to sea.
Which meant mandatory rescue missions.
But what I don't understand about OWS is not that they're mad about that process, but that they seemingly want to scuttle CAPITALISM ITSELF. (According to Schoen an enormous percentage of people are in favor of socialism.)
Do these people understand that communism just NEVER works, and is even worse??
I recognize a distinction between communism and socialism. Communism means the country has only one party.
Socialism doesn't necessarily mean this (except on American campuses, where only one party is represented on most campuses).
Socialist parties can be part of many other parties (Finland has far-right parties, too, which are still LEGAL -- France and Norway and Sverige also have them, and they all still have private property as well).
Just what these protesters mean isn't clear. They have a bee in their collective bonnet.
I guess it's like what Freud asked about women: what do they want?
I think they have a vague description, but no prescription whatsoever.
I hate this.
Kirby, I'm not dead set against separating commercial and investment banking again. I think it possible that the creation of relatively new financial instruments like mortgage derivatives might make this separation advisable.
But as long as the President can milk crony capitalists for huge campaign contributions (and dole out special government favours and subsidies in return) he'll continue to show his two faces about selected big business interests and Wall Street banks. More futile bailouts, more futile stimuli, and more "green jobs" bs to follow.
And in spite of what he promised about not hiring a single lobbyist in his last campaign, he's hired yet another as senior advisor to his reelection campaign. His broken promises, contradictory statements, and lies now could fill a huge tome. Of the MSM TV networks only Fox and Canada's SunTV seem consistently willing to point out his endless prevarications.
However, stu's claim that the Community Reinvestment Act and the grifter-led GSEs like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (crony-capitalist grifters like Jim Johnson and Franklin Raines gorged on fraudulently-obtained bonuses and the taxpayers took all the risks--and now of course, the heavy losses) had no role in the housing bubble that triggered the current recession is just partisan nonsense, as is most recently refuted in NYT writer Gretchen Morgensen's "Reckless Endangerment." Same goes for rubbish like "greed, a.k.a., the profit motive."
The OWS rabble is mostly composed of twenty-somethings with huge senses of personal entitlement and puerile resentment, urban hippies, and Marxobot ideologues with a malodorous sprinkling of anti-Semites and racists (e.g., like the hapless goon in NY holding up the big "Kill Whitey" sign). Some who once frothed at the mouth over the Tea Party now attempt to legitimise this rabble by describing it as the left's answer to the Tea Party, but the extremist rhetoric, the verbal and physical filth, and the criminality of the "occupiers" (several thousand arrests already) belie such false comparisons. So far, the protest activities haven't descended yet to the level of union thuggery and violence, but there is the growing potential for it.
Yeah, "welcome to the counter-counter revolution."
Post a Comment