Tea Parties Spread across Nation

I will agree with that. Most fiscal conservatives kept their traps shut while Bush was blowing a trillion in Iraq and another trillion on TARP. That said, it doesn't excuse the current administration's spending binge on some very questionable fiscal investments.

I don't excuse one party because the other party is a hypocrite. If you play that game, then you're in a race to the bottom. The Republicans led that race for 14 years. There's no reason for the Democrats to join them in that pursuit (though, now in power, I doubt they'll be able to resist the temptation).

~String

 

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I went to public school so the jokes on both of us.

Anyway,2500 years of history shows that military empires don't do too good when they try and barrow,tax and increase the supply of fiat currency to get out of a hole.

Care to dispute that?

As for Bush, he promised lower taxes, modest foreign policy and smaller government. That should be a lesson to anyone inclined to believe a politician.

 

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Well then lets talk about these "very questionable fiscal investments."

 

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Yes I would. I do not have the time nor inclination to give a economics course or history course. Currencies must have value, that is a given. But I think you are confusing fiscal policy with monetary policy...two competely different things.

It is the Federal Reserve that controls the money supply (not Congress or Federal Spending)....the printing of money. The Federal Reserve can expand the money supply and it can reduce it. So in difficult times, the Fed should have an expansionary monetary policy, and such is now the case. In times of plenty (inflation), the Fed should have a contractionary monetary policy, reducing the money supply. And this is exactly what the Fed is doing and plans to do.

It is the Congress and Treasury that control spending. Now because of the state of the economy, Congress should have a stimulative fiscal policy...spend money. And it is. However, this is a temporary measure. Ultimately, congress needs to keep spending more in line with its income in order to maintain confidence in the economy and government.

Taxes are now at historical lows, and that is part of the problem. Debt needs to be paid down on the mid to longer term in order to maintain integrity of the currency and financial system. Fiscal spending needs to be restrained in the mid to longer term. Running huge fiscal deficits cannot go on unrestrained indefinately and unbounded. However, there is a time an place for evertything. First we must restore order in the economy...restore trust, keep key insitutions alive....keep people from being thrown out of their homes....retain social order.

As mom always said, first things first.

 

When the Dead Can Dance

Certainly it doesn't, but these were questionable investments for years. What the current administration has before it is a crisis of proportions we could not imagine except that it's here. There will be mistakes along the way. Indeed, given that reality, and our general mistrust of politicians, I find it strange that some would criticize Obama for not rushing to the finish.

Still, though, the thing is that if everyone plays along in good faith, yes, we can work our way out of this. It's not just the idea of a questionable investment (e.g., auto bailout), but also the effect of what happens if the people responsible for the poor business decisions that brought us to this point "got what they deserved". We literally cannot give these executives what they deserve because, in the American context, that requires a certain amount of due process; in other words, we cannot simply have them "settled".

On the one hand, people are upset that these idiot executives are still in charge. We just saw a day of protest because the administration believes the solution isn't to reduce revenues through another tax cut for the rich and waiting for the altruistic trickle-down that will never come, anyway. So what would people think if the government stepped in, fired all the executives, reneged on their "performance" bonuses, installed new slates, and then issued the money with all manner of administrative oversight? To the one, the first TARP bailout failed because the money wasn't used to liquefy the credit markets, but was instead squandered much as private capital is squandered. To the other, if the credit market actually froze back in October, not only would that cost us a ridiculous amount of jobs, but it would also be entirely Obama's fault because that's just how politics works.

But that's the thing. I would be a lot less nervous about handing out money hand over fist in a desperate attempt to keep people working if I believed capitalists would actually use the money for that. But they're not actually to be trusted in that, and the record reflects this.

I certainly don't envy Obama the job. This is a complete fucking mess. He could heal the sick, walk on water, and bring world peace in the rest of his days, but he's always going to be remembered for the bailout. Sad, in a way, but that's also part of the reason for the hype. These tea parties are just like Rush Limbaugh: they want Obama to fail. They don't care how badly that failure would hurt their neighbors. They just want the Democrat to fail.

Are you fishing for another "I told you so"? I only ask because the only point of disagreement I would have would be to note that you need not doubt that they'll resist the temptation. Reid and Pelosi have already played their hand. They dove in a while ago, at least when they flinched for the Blue Dogs on FISA. And, hell, while I hoped for a long-term gamble by the Congressional Democrats, it looks like they rolled as early as spring, 2007, when they stood off the Bush administration on war funding and then backed down without making any useful demonstration.

But then, that's the only point of disagreement with that paragraph, and in the long run, fairly minor.

• • •​

On a side note, thinking back to the teabaggers themselves, why is it that people are outraged at the idea that the people who benefitted by the schemes that just broke the economy should not be coddled with more tax cuts in exchange for an altruism that never comes, when they seem to have no objection to increased product and service prices intended to achieve the same things—performance bonuses, expensive redecoration, family vacations on corporate jets—that piss them off with tax money? Guess what? The money you use to buy your pizza is yours until you hand it over. And if the company is in such straits that it needs to jack the price by ten percent, is it really a time to hand out performance bonuses, redecorate the office with useless antique furniture and eighty thousand dollar drapes, or pack the kids onto the company jet for a trip to the bahamas?

While the government may be incompetent in most things, it has a duty to try. Private enterprise? Their only duty is profit.

When I was living in Eugene, Oregon, a local measure boosted the property taxes. My father, at that time a Perotnoiac, made the observable point that, as a renter, I, too, would pay the property tax increase in my rent. If the tax goes up five dollars, he said, my rent would go up five dollars. Being young, I argued profit margins with him, and we actually tried to figure out whether it would be six dollars or seven dollars. At any rate, the difference on my place turned out to be fairly small, about ten dollars. The rent increase was fifty dollars. Property management didn't just recover their profit margin, they used the tax increase to boost their margins. And then conservatives turned around and whipped up anger over the tax increases. And, of course, people bought it, despite the fact that the lion's share of their increased burden went to pad the bank accounts of property management executives two states away.

The historical trend, at least since Reagan in the '80s (I wasn't paying attention, or even around at all, before that), is that people object strenuously to paying toward the general welfare of their community, but only mutter a little bit when private profiteers lie to them and take their money. And, besides, if the executives are behaving badly, you can always blame that on something the Democrats did, right? Just like blaming a ten dollar tax increase for a fifty dollar price hike.

(If your profit margin on a $500 rental is projected at 9%, and you incur a $10 (or 2%) increase in expenditures, the adjusted rent to maintain that profit margin would be $511 an annual increase to the renter of $132, or approximately 2.25%, increase annually. The fifty dollar increase far exceeds the necessary adjustment. The extra $39 a month goes toward an investor or executive's vacation house, RV, or asset portfolio. There's no actual reason for doing this, except that they want to. Yet for all the outrage people show because a fiscally-questionable tax cut for the rich isn't being renewed, this outcome—which I've actually encountered in the real world—doesn't seem to bother anyone.)

Anyway, it's something I wonder about. Perhaps it's a personal issue reaching back to Cold War-era lessons about why liberalism will ruin America, because that's the context of how I came to notice the phenomenon:

When I was a kid, my father was strongly anti-Communist. One of his reasons, he explained to me, was that he didn’t want the government controlling his education, health care, retirement, and so on. But now the bourgeoisie provides those things through the companies they own. With government, you can demand fulfillment of the social contract. Government institutions are supposed to be for the best interests of the people. Corporations, on the other hand, answer to the bottom line. Their only commitment to integrity is the belief that the appearance of integrity is good for profits. Decisions are being taken out of people’s hands. Sure, we have a choice: inadequate option A, counterintuitive option B, or counterproductive option C.

(BDLR)​

When we have a general proposition of Institution v. People, our instincts tend to put us with the people instead of the institutions. But are the institutions the same? Obviously not. But what's curious here is that the people antagonize the institution that theoretically exists for their benefit, while encouraging exploitative—and, as we see in the current financial crisis, dangerous—behavior among institutions that exist specifically for private profit.

America is dead because Obama isn't going to coddle the rich? Well, America was well and alive when we kept paying more and more for products and services so that the wealthy had even more discretionary funds. And, hey, as the economy shows right now, the wealthy did so well by that money.

• • •​

A Bad Allegorical Dialogue:

An angry parent sues the doctors at a local hospital regarding their alleged malpractice.

Plaintiff's Counsel: Six hours. Young Bobby was on that operating table for six hours, and you did what about his cancer?

Doctor: Well, nothing, but ....

PC: Nothing? Nothing! And yet you say you followed proper medical protocols? Without treating the disease?

Dr: The patient was on the table because he had four gunshot wounds obtained when someone tried to rob a pizza joint in the mall. He was bleeding to death on my table. Six hours to stabilize him? Yes, I could have cut out a third of his lung right then, but it would have killed him.

PC: Bobby is dead! And it's your fault!

Dr: You mean that's not Bobby sitting next to his angry parent? Who the hell did I operate on?

 

Who knew the right wingers were so kinky?

 

Ummm ....

Ummm ....

Ted Haggard (meth and gay hookers), Randall Tobias (prostitutes), Bob Allen (offering to sell himself to an undercover officer in a public park restroom), Richard Curtis (allegedly robbed by his former porn-star gay hooker), Donald Fleischman (drugging a young boy and sexually abusing him), and any handful of youth pastors from across the country come to mind.

And we might reach back, mostly for sentiment's sake, to 1992, when Phillip Ramsdell (yes, that's his name) and the OCA presented a voters' guide argument in favor of an anti-gay measure. It was a list of dirty things gays did, like rimming, watersports, fisting, &c. The joke at the time was that he might have just taught a bunch of stodgy old hets a few new tricks.

In history, there is an idea sometimes referred to as "puritan pornography". An example of this would be the old Anti-Catholic League, which in the early twentieth century distributed tracts denouncing Catholic perversion. The "educational" tracts included certain lascivious details, and the psychological effect on the reader was two-fold. First, the proper Protestant got to denounce the evil, kinky Catholics. And, second, the proper Protestant got to read some pretty hot material. Double gratification. We saw this pop up (heh!) again during Zippergate, when conservative outcry brought about a situation in which reluctant parents felt compelled to educate their children on the dynamics and nature of oral sex. One of my favorite Doonesbury strips comes from this period, when Mike decided he had to have that talk with Alex, and after stumbling through the first three frames, is let off the hook when his daughter explains that she already knows what oral sex is and what it involves. This, of course, scared the hell out of our hapless hero even more.

And then ....

Oh, wait. That was a rhetorical question, wasn't it?

My bad.

 

And now we have thousands of right wingers going around and teabagging in public! Who knew?

 

They're not doing it right

Well, you know the saying. Try anything twice; once to say you did it, and again to see fi you like it. Maybe that's what's going on. Because they're still not doing it right.

(And just because kinky conservatives are so accommodating, here's today's "Youth Pastor Watch" from Slog.)

 

Republicans are about as conservative as....well, they aren't conservative. At least, their current record has been not what I would call conservative at all. Republicans are a sham party and have none of my respect.

I am happy for the tea parties, but people please the party to support isn't republicans if you want freedom. It's the Libertarian Party. Republicans are actually corporatists

 

These protests aren't about supporting the Republicans, so much as opposing the Democrats.

Unfortunately, in a two-party system like ours, that works out to the same thing.

 

I agree, the dynamic was suppose to go like this

Democrats: spend more, tax more
Republicans: spend less, tax less

But they lost their brains somewhere (Reagan?) or got bought out by the companies or a combination of both (Bush II) :

Democrats: spend more, tax more
Republicans: spend more, tax less

The libertarians are the only ones dedicated to massive reductions in US spending, massive simplifications of the government (replace IRS with federal sales taxes or manufacturing tax to prevent shadow market explosion), to balance our government between, the dynamic should be like this:

Democrats: spend more, tax more
Libertarians: spend less, tax less
Republicans: dig hole in ground, push dirt over selfs, end

Somehow the libertarian party needs to really grow, these teabaggers need to be told of this party, also maybe some cream because I bet their balls hurt by now.

 

Priceless picture taken at a Tea Party protest.

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Republicans were not supposed to be for big government but it turns out that once in power they spend as much or more than the Democrats.

Libertarians have never gotten near power. Don't you have to sell your soul to the corporate devils before you can raise enough money to buy advertising with which to convince the sheeple to vote for you before you can win elections?

What would Libertarians who have sold their souls to the corporate welfare state be like? The Cato institute? I think the corporate welfare state devils may have control over Cato.

By the time Libertarians get control of government they will be fakes just like the fake "we care about the little guys" Democrats and the Fake small government and traditional morality Republicans.

The fake Libertarians will follow the same policies as the fake Democrats and the fake Republicans. Only the propaganda will change.

 

In from juice?

Kind of like that one Muslim protester everyone was laughing at for holding a sign demanding juice.

Ah ... what was it people were saying about him?

 

lol!

 

That's because you're a partisan.
Where were you for the past 8 years?

We had a pretty big turn out on my campus. Something like 500 people showed up; students and locals.

If you plan for taxes, I don't see why you'd ever have to pay very much of them. Being self-employed seems like the awesomest tax shelter, ever, since virtually everything becomes a deductible.

Unfortunately, there aren't more than a handful of conservatives in the House & Senate. It's been mostly Republicans and Democrats. And for that matter, some Republicans opposed the bill; until they got porked hard enough to capitulate. One of the (ironic) reasons the bailout packages were so huge was because of Republicans essentially holding out until their states got part of the bail out money, too.

Since when has robbery by the government been about altruism? Do you know how much of the federal budget is spent on making bombs? About 70% of it.

I think that's because fiscal conservatives, for the most part, enjoy good old fashioned imperialism, and most fiscal conservatives have shares in mercenary groups and bomb factories.

 

Fundamental conflict

Ah, Roman, it cheers me some to hear you sound so much like an Anarchist.

But your question might be misdirected; the point has more to do with the conflicting views on altruism and greed. This particular teabagger said, in essence, that if you're not greedy, that makes you greedy.

In monotheism, few things are impossible for God, but they involve betrayals of fundamental components. The classic example is the idea of a square circle. Can God make a square circle? The answer is no, because the fundamental nature of squares and circles require them to be that different.

A similar, but not identical, conflict is occurring here: If you're not greedy, that makes you greedy. There are very few elements in life that can sustain such a contradiction.

 

Oh, I gotcha. That is pretty funny.

 

I don't think being self employed is such an awesome tax shelter.

I think who gets audited works something like this: The IRS computer looks at ratios of expenses to income and compares your business to other business in the same field and flags those with high expenses for humans to take a look at. If the human IRS guy suspects you are claiming personal expenses as business expenses on your schedule C then you get audited. If you get audited and you can't back up your claims you are screwed.

Maybe you could pretend 10% of your personal expenses are businesses expenses but anything more than that would probably not be intelligent according to cost benefit analysis because of audit risk.

The self employed get audited much more often than the wage earners do.

Being wealthy enough to have your privately owned American corporations swing their income into your privately owned over seas corporations is my idea of an awesome tax shelter but I don't understand the audit risks at that level.