Another pompous, hypocritical ass makes news.

[DiscoBiscuit]

Sorry for not being more specific on each point. We do not own "our" central bank, and that is the root of all evil in my opinion. Tax law and the associated legislation that is drafted by lobbyists, passed by Congress, and allows groups like Big Pharma to create a closed market for themselves are the types of monopolies that I was thinking of. Taxing them at a higher rate however does nothing for us since they simply tack the increase onto our bill, and the band plays on. So in retrospect, higher tax rates will do nothing to help, the tax code needs to be trashed and government mandates that force business into their web need to be eliminated.

No apologies necessary, cosmik debris. Any fan of Zappa is ok by me. I might reference collusion but I can see your point.

Higher tax rates in the 90s covered deficits. So much in fact, projected surpluses would pay off the national debt in 10 years.

Did you know that Reagan's marginal rate was 50%? In the 1960s it was 70%. Before that it was 90%. Those folks didn't actually pay 90% but tha was the top rate. Today, we're only talking 39.5%.

Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought you were suggesting a 4% increase to the top rate and matching it with the respective capital gains rate(s). If so, yes that's heavy. It's heavy if you cut it in half. The cumulative taxes that we pay are insane. What we pay to the Feds is just the largest insult of so called smart people redistributing our money as they see fit, and that always goes badly for us.

I would include cap gains at the rate the respective tax payer falls into. I pay cap gains and would have to pay a higher rate based on my bottom line. IMO, it's not fair for an investor to pay 15% on cap gains (which is his/her primary income) and their staff pays income rates.

It's only insult if you compare apples to oranges. I get the impression you never get past the ideal to measure practical application.

Comparisons to the 90's serve no practical purpose. The biggest impact on budgeting, and the resultant surpluses, were more the result of our debt being refinanced at a lower rate, thereby reducing the percentage of tax revenues required for debt service. They weren't the result of any serious spending reductions or equitable taxation policy, which is the core of current problem.

I'm not sure where you get your facts. Clinton reduced military spending and discretionary domestic spending.Dick Morris was his senior adviser for crying out loud.

What that chart shows is that every Democratic president since Lydon John has returned a surplus (excepting Carter's final year, a paltry sum but a deficit nonetheless.) Every president since Gerald Ford (actually you can go back to Herbert Hoover) has returned consistent deficits.

The comment was intended to point out that the common "progressive" complaints are exclusive in their focus on Republicans as being Wall Street's bed fellows, when in fact, Wall Street is populated principally by Democrats, they support Democrats with huge piles of money, and yet the libs still see only the Republican connection. That myopia doesn't sit well with me. I do not consider it to be an exclusive arrangement that is only the fault of one group or the other. The status quo is made up of significant numbers from both, but the welfare state is vociferously defended by them at every turn, and it is wrong.

Maybe you'll take it easy on the union rhetoric? I don't make blanket assertions or stereotype aspects. But I do recognize when every single Republican blocks progress on bank reform. we have to put back some of the regulations that were taken away. Otherwise they eat their lunch and part of ours.

Are you referencing my diatribe or are you agreeing with the comment?

I don't disagree with your right to an opinion and the right to express. I just hope that my opinions are tempered or supported by more than talking points. We wouldn't get very far attempting to influence each others' beliefs but we can look at the applications and verify what works and what doesn't.

Nixon's leaving the gold standard was a critical blunder, and backing currency with debt is bad mojo. The recent partial audit of the Fed is illustrative of just how bad the money-printing scenario is in reality. Check it out. This isn't paranoia or succumbing to cheap magic tricks. The money that the Fed has created and spread around in the last few years makes our National Debt look like a trifle.

A gold standard wouldn't allow us to compete in a global economy. If you're fine with the US no longer leading the free world and simply becoming a bit player, a gold standard would reduce our GDP to a fraction of our ability to generate commerce.

It's not only the fed that prints money. The nature of the fractional reserve system generates money as well. Lenders used to be able to lend at 10:1 of their reserve currency held. Now they get 30:1 because lobbyists did their jobs. Every time a bank loans $30, the signature to repay that loan just generated $270.

When lenders backed their principle with subprime, their 30:1 ratio was no longer valid. The fed is printing money and selling bonds to back the additional funds. The detractors don't mention this part, they want you to think we're just running the printers... period. Granted, the bond rate sucks and they'll take 2 to 3 decades to return but that's what low risk AAA investments are all about.

The fed can't stop relief because the banks won't adjust their bottom lines. That's part of the bailout responsibility, allowing these banks to write off their toxic debt and get back to the business of lending capital for commerce.

Banks can't lend and it's got nothing to do with the line, "we're waiting to see what lawmakers do". That's a load of crap. They won't loan money because their toxic debt is so intertwined they can't due-diligence potential borrowers, their bottom lines could be bullshit.

Review the how and where of the surpluses, and then please explain what they and the 90's have to do with now. Are you trying to suggest that our governance then was superior to now? Agreed. It was still horrible, but certainly better than now, but again, what's your point? That was our last opportunity to right this ship without the kind of pain that we are now confronting, but kick the can they did. Refinancing our debt was hardly a matter of the President or Congress making the hard choices. More like setting the bad example that most of America followed. Refi and spend!

You have a weird interpretation of how things work. The (Clinton) 90s are an example of practical application, not ideology alone. The simple fact we ran consistent fiscal surplussed compared to deficits is night and day difference.

The idea that DC refi'd their debt isn't reality. W gave money back instead of tending the till. Dick said deficits don't matter and everything they did was on the card. Don't get your hopes up over fixing this deficit anytime soon. It'll take 4, maybe 5 presidents to get us back to fiscal sanity and even longer to address the debt.

The breadth of issues that we have touched on covers an awful lot of ground. If you would prefer a more serious debate on select points I'll try to accommodate rather than continue exchanging verbose thread killing posts. The "narrative" of my opinions was meant as just that. Statistics used to support your opinions are fine and add to your narrative's ability to persuade, but they do not make your opinion fact.

Statistics themselves are fact. I make no suggestion that you should cross the aisle, I'm just using other than ideology alone to reinforce my personal opinion. I'll make yo a deal, I'll try my best not to spin facts. But facts are facts.

No fact makes opinion itself a fact. They have to coincide to give opinion more worth than simply ideology.

I agree with your response, and I have been paying attention for a lot more than just the last 30 years. I still don't see the confiscation of wealth as being anything other than theft.

You have lots of infrastructure, services and conveniences of modern life. The only alternative would be to pay the free market and that's too expensive for millionaires. That's why we subsidize energy or energy barons would be the only big shots. We learned that with the railroads in the 19th century.

And you of course possess just that? Comprehensive conception of economic reality? How comprehensive would you suggest yours is, and just which reality do you speak of? That which you experience or mine. Not tryin' to be a dick (this time) but your word choice is a little sketchy here... "conception"(?) as in creation? Or were you suggesting that I need to create an all encompassing perception of your impression of reality in economic terms? Please rephrase.

Never assume ideology alone serves the best interests. Compare your ideals and see how they work in the real world. You nay have to look historically but we've already had a guilded age. It wasn't prosperous for anyone except the top.

My civics foundation is fine thank you, but I would like to offer you my tutoring services in mathematics.

Math is the easy part. The hard part is compromising our differences.

The reallocation and distribution of wealth by the smart guys trying to construct and control a command economy is not a linear exercise. The money is, according to your friend Mr. Statistics, distributed depending upon political patronage above all else. There is an underlying vortex that focuses much attention on our decaying urban centers, but where I live, we see nothing , and yet we pay exorbitant taxes by comparison to those who receive the most benefit. That statement applies to all taxes collected and redistributed at all levels of government here in our State (a very, very blue one it is).

Our local school system has spent 110% of the funding that it received from the Federal government last year, and they were still short of the No Child Left Behind mandate. Uhh, the 10% part... that came out of the State's tax revenues. The State in turn reduced the amount that it typically redistributes back to the local jurisdictions by a slightly higher proportional amount...due to the expenses that government incurs every time they think about or touch something. Our State had matching funds from the Federal government that were dedicated for a waste water project. The EPA dictates that followed after construction had begun consumed all of the Federal monies and created a cost over-run of some several million dollars. Then they encountered asbestos that had been missed by the initial environmental impact survey. Back to the well for mo' money. The Federal money, our money that has now been handled by them no less than 6-8 times
has now shrunk considerably as a result of their bungling and mismanagement. Then we get what is left, and we end up spending more than we would otherwise because it is now labeled Federal money.

No Child Left Behind is a boondoggle. Head Start wasn't broke and it didn't break state budgets. NCLB teaches to test scores and educators already knew we'd have a class of students that don't perform as well in higher education.

Teaching to tests wasn't even intended to show off our educating prowess to the world. It was a way of identifying what was thought to be under performing teachers so they could be fired. Some lawmakers would rather break something as opposed to paying the cost of repair.

So, NCLB was ditched as early as 6 months after educators bought the circus. But Neil Bush got rich.

Davis Bacon prevailing Federal wages are higher than even our blue State, union loving forced wage, so the work is all more expensive, no matter what it is. Compliance, a huge condition of Federal money handling, is ridiculously laborious, redundant, and ultimately self defeating.eg: a school receiving ANY Federal money must provide a pile of paper not less than 120 pages long of bullshit that is completely redundant to the paperwork already required by our State, for a single student teacher meeting to discuss a later meeting to plan an IEP for a student with disabilities. This entire process will take months and generate no less than 500 pages of combined State and Federal compliance toilet paper. Our local school system employs at least two full time professionals with graduate degrees to do nothing but Federal compliance bullshit for roughly every 1000 students. Then the school board employes three levels of further supervision and oversight just to stay out of trouble and make certain that this "vital" revenue stream is maintained intact. Finally, after years of wasteful bullshit, they are now just beginning to look at the reality of what they are loosing rather than gaining. It seems admittedly counter-intuitive, but that is the truth where I live.

When applied to construction projects it gets even worse.
Safety officers, quality control officers, security officers, compliance officials and a stack of submittals as tall as a man are required, along with security clearances and another pile of shit that you wouldn't believe, before you even set foot on a job. Our money that the Federal government wipes its ass with, is better handled and spent locally, and that is an accepted fact by anyone who understands math. Why do you insist that it must be drug through their hands first?

I thought you were going to take less at a time and cite your assertions. I'd be happy to do the same. The haystack of (IMO) oversimplifications is too big to rebuke.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that having no way to honestly refute the statement you resort to sarcasm. Were we ever married?
Ditto that.
Constitution is always capitalized when referring to that piece of paper.
And since when did interpretations of our Constitution become such a dynamic morass that the target is just too quick to nail down? What can we argue about next... Supreme Court rulings?
Responding to your suggestion.

Oh... you mean like if I was bundling contributions for the Prez, and I had an idea for a solar company that would sell $5 cost to build widgets for $3, and I wanted a half a billion buck right away? You'd be amazed how fast they all move at the end of the fiscal period when they have money that they HAVE to spend, or it'll be deducted from their next period budget. Guess the statistic on how many times they forget to spend every fucking dime?

Resurfacing a road takes nothing to plan, and approvals for Federal projects depend almost exclusively on other Federal agencies' approvals. You're not suggesting that they can't get out of their own way are you? Or that they are total fuckups who can't do anything right perhaps. Yeah...we need to fund more of this... at any cost and damage to everyone and everything. You're also mixing the chicken and egg up again. Why would asshole call a project intending to fund work that couldn't start for years "shovel ready"? Or was he just referring to the shit that we needed to prepare to shovel through?

You being the yard stick by which all that is objective shall be measured I suppose?

Let's see... the problem is high unemployment... and he has nothing to do with the problem, right? The details that I missed were what?

And we're now back to just nuts. What the fuck do you want, another ginormous shift to the left? A ginormous right just might get us back to something near the middle.

Congressional Watch is a lot of fun I'll admit, and I am not going to defend any of the pork specialists that populate that shit hole. Agreed that things used to actually work, even in a rather crooked and croniest fashion, but work they did. We managed to build and reasonably maintain for a while, a huge interstate system. The current resistance that you refer to is grounded in their fear of reprisal from Tea Party voters who insist that spending be cut. They haven't the balls to actually cut anything so they just punt to the Dems, who won't hesitate to spend, but now the Replitards are terrified to continue enabling (when they aren't doing the spending themselves).

The specific problems with Obama's Job Act don't lend themselves to such a simplistic analysis, so lacking in attention to detail and objectivity. Read it if you dare. It is full of rather distasteful shit that taints everything else. Were it a simpler bill, it would stand a chance, but again, only if the Dems were willing to allow off-setting cuts to fund it...and that ain't happenin' so stalemate. But why can't you see that there are two fuck ups at this dance? It ain't just the Republitards.

Well they did, but it didn't go too well. Especially when they started gettin' carried away with the tariffs that they were layin' on each other. O.K., so we got this here Constitution, and it allows for the Federal government to facilitate interstate commerce. How does that morph into mandates to buy Zippy's Health Care?

Funny you mention that. Ever try to address an insurance problem through the State agencies? Most have these quasi bullshit organizations of insurance pricks that run them and decide what if any complaints are forwarded to the A.G. in the firt place. Once forwarded, if ever, then the A.G. looks at the governor's list of contributors to make sure that they aren't there, but they always are. You can count the number of ridiculously egregious cases that actually get handled on one hand here in any given decade.

Never said otherwise. I was addressing potential. We have the doctors, the beds and the equipment to do the job. Now we just need to look at getting the patient back into touch with their doctor. Look, if the U.S. could get free of all of the graft I'd get behind a Canadian style plan all of the way. But that is all but impossible, so they keep playing all of these dumb fuck moves that just piss away money. Medicare reimbursements to doctors are a joke. The Bush drug scam is insane. Preventative medicine needs to replace this bullshit legal driven crap of test, test, indemnify, test, write script and release. Sit in front of the toob one night and count the ads for "if you had this, we can sue for that". I wasn't attempting to hit every nail there, there are just too many.


This is likely a subjet that we can find plenty of agreement on, so let's save it for a rainy day.



See above.
So who gives a fuck who else is doing it? The point was not meant to exclude them, it was to INCLUDE the sanctimonious leftists that act as if its all the other side. Jeeze... talk about your defensive reflex...

Still think I'd rather be tangled in a literal interpretation of our Constitution than whacked by a drone.

You so funny! Sarcasm smart ass. Recognize it by any chance?

Man, I didn't even read all that. Sorry, it's just hard to approach such broad strokes of the... mop.


We know math and we know economics and we know revenue structures and we know how to do it all with surpluses or deficits. It just depends on who's calling the shots. The party of smaller government has proven repeatedly they'll spend as much or more yet placate the taxpayer and crash the revenue structure.

We know the math part and all we have to do is catch crooks that occasionally get elected and fuck up the mechanism. On the bright side, you don't have to take my word for it. But as high as 80% of Americans have poled in favor of taxing the rich more.

Thanks for the conversation. Sorry I don't have the energy to address all your points. And I hope your state receives better representation in future elections.

 

[mrwags]

Since the guillotine is out, do any of you also know about this so-called super congress bullshit, that appeared out of thin air to pass this debt ceiling? WTF! Our constitution is barely breathing, and these fuktards won't stop until they have absolute power.

The Patriot Act make the Constitution toilet paper and gives them Absolute Power. They Won most just haven't accepted it yet.


Mr.Wags

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

Since the guillotine is out, do any of you also know about this so-called super congress bullshit, that appeared out of thin air to pass this debt ceiling? WTF! Our constitution is barely breathing, and these fuktards won't stop until they have absolute power.

We now require a super congress because a single caucus refuses to compromise, even when a shit-for-brains agency downgrades our rating. Raising the ceiling doesn't increase spending. Raising the ceiling pays what we've already committed. New spending requires new legislation.

Don't like extreme solutions that work to undo the gridlock in Washington? Accept the art of compromise and encourage your representatives to do the same. Take your ten, twenty or how ever many issues important to you and prioritize them. In the end, remember the words of Jagger/Richards -

You can't always get what you want...

 

[pearlemae]

A couple points on some of the above. America is rapidly becoming a part of the "third world". Part of the definition of third world, is the lack of manufacturing ability, we have lost most of our ability to manufacture much of anything. All you have to do is look on anything where it says MADE IN ?. When I was a kid we made everything now not very much.

The other part of bcome a third world country is, European countries, Sweden,Germany have moved some manufacturing to the U.S because of lower wages here, sorta like us and China. IKEA has a facility in Virginia I think where they pay our workers around 8.00/hr, mostly no benefits health ins etc. The other is BMW putting a plant in No. Carolina because the BMW workers in Germany average 419.00/Hr and here they pay 12/Hr with no unions. Also because they made their beemer in the U.S they don't have to pay import duties, unlike American cars imported into Germany. So we lose revenue to the government also.
So in my view we are becoming rapidly third world.

As for the pot smoking hypocrite that started this thread, There's a lot of righties that smoke pot and wouldn't admit it. They will stand right there and bad mouth the dirty pot smoking hippies and then go home and smoke a bowl.

 

[LouDog420]

A better quote....

'C'mon Pookie, let's burn this mother fucker down!'

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

If the new trade bill passes, South Korea will make goods (in North Korea - 35c/hr labor) and sell to the US with no import tariffs.

What do we get in return? Cheap crap from North Korea that will make cheap WalMart shit from China look like German engineering.

Truth is, we get nothing in the form of economic expansion in the states. A few multinationals get contracts to manufacture in South Korea and sell back to us.

Believe it or not this is one bill that will pass with bipartisan support, without having to lobby individual caucuses. These multinationals are buying and moving our domestic opportunity abroad.

Know what's still hot manufacturing-wise in the US? Military technology. Ever heard of Roomba, the robot that vacuums your carpet all by itself? The same company makes remote controlled robotics for the military. And they do lots more than vacuum your rug.

Chevy has yet to release their first all-electric vehicle while the military has it's very first unmanned vehicle. It will operate on audio command - or - it'll remember where it's been and carry out tasks w/o the need to tell it where to go, when to stop, etc.

We still have world-class innovation. Some of this high-tech military gear ain't classified. We could build some of this stuff for the private sector but our middle class can only afford cheap crap from China.

1973 - the year that middle class wages peaked in the US. If you're not in the upper middle class you're making less now than your parents did in '73.

 

[pearlemae]

The Panama free trade bill is a joke, what does Panama make that we need so drastically. What it does do is make it easier to stash money in Panama if your a corporation so we get some kind of crap made in Panama and the corporate gangsters get a new place to hide their ill gotten gains and America loses tax revenue and import tariffs it definitely a win win for all Americans.
Bigger bonuses for the job creators means they will invest more in American jobs right?