I think when you weren't looking they went in and chipped away at the ADA a little bit. They excluded a few self-inflicted disabilities, like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Don't get me wrong, it's the best thing since sliced bread, I'm just not sure if this is achievable. However, if you could get them committed...do they still offer 2-fer-1 Lobotomies down at Happy Acres? Just sayin.
Wouldn't doing as you suggest yield an even higher unemployment rate which would only make Obama look worse? Neither. Go to a flat tax with zero deductions. Our current ridiculously complicated tax system cost hundreds of billions of dollars to comply with and creates a gigantic incentive for corruption as the wealthy and corporations lobby for "special" tax breaks. A flat tax would free up all the capital and time spent complying with our current tax law so that it could be put to more productive use and simultaneously do more to clean up government than any campaign finance law ever did. If you're concerned about the "regressive" nature of such a tax, I would not tax any income below the poverty level. If nothing else, just freeze spending at current levels until the budget is balanced. Currently the government increases spending across the board by about 7% every year, which means spending will double every ten years or so. As to military spending, I would not object to closing many of our overseas bases. Certainly the regulation you mention, but many others as well. Most regulations, when looked at by themselves, seem reasonable and are meant to address some potential problem. However, the sum total of these regulations is a crushing burden upon anyone wishing to do business in the US. The federal register is now over 34,000 pages long. 34,000 pages of mind numbing minutiae. And for what benefit? Consider OSHA. Proponents of OSHA are fond of pointing out that workplace accidents have steadily decreased since its creation. However, as the following graph shows: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! The rate at which workplace safety was improving is exactly the same before and after the creation of OSHA. Does it serve any purpose whatsoever? What about the department of education? Has student performance increased since its creation? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!NO. Spending goes up and up while performance declines. Do you seriously believe there is not a lot to cut in terms of both federal spending and regulations? Are we really getting our money's worth out of all this spending?
No it would make President Obama look better. Because George Junior ended in a very low place. I will agree the current tax code is very complicated. Replacing it with a flat tax is very regressive, unless you only tax those earning over 250k per year or create a tiered flat tax but then it really isn’t a flat tax at that point. “Freeing up capital” isn’t our problem. There is plenty of capital out there. It’s sitting in the banks. The problem is it is not being spent. And it is not being spent because the demand isn’t there. How is that different from today? If you are below poverty level today, you are likely receiving an earned income tax credit – a negative tax if you will. So you are going to tell all those seniors relying on Social Security and Medicare (seniors, physicians, hospitals, nursing homes, etc.) that you Republicans are going to freeze their Social Security entitlements and payments even as their costs increase? If you can make an honest case that regulations are too burdensome, that the cost benefit calculation is not in favor of regulation, please do so using credible sources. Heavy reliance on partisan right wing sources as you have and continue to do is neither convincing nor credible. Our educational system is problematic. But the solution is not in blindly throwing more money at it or blindly butchering educational spending.
That overlooks the central matter - determination of income in the first place. But let's suppose you boot every Republican in Congress out of office, install competence, and set up an actual flat tax - having rolled in SS and Medicare and so forth - on all income above poverty, without deductions. On the contrary, you would have approximately tripled the tax rate on capital gains, and boosted the effective rate on middle and upper incomes by half or more. That is more progressive than the current system, significantly so. And brings up a mystery - if you support large tax increases on the rich, cutting government spending on expensive bloated stuff like the Pentagon bureaucracy, and similar ventures, why are you attacking those (Clinton, Obama) who both share and work for your agenda? And why are you so tolerant of being lied to by Republicans, blatantly manipulated and used and taken advantage of over and over again on a major scale, if credibility is a concern of yours? How is Obama's credibility, under no major challenge and probably on even sounder footing than Clinton's remarkably accurate speeches etc, under intense suspicion, while ridiculous baloney catapults like congressman West or Paul Ryan or increasingly Mitt Romney get a free pass for anything that comes out of their mouths?
I honestly don't know if the Fair Tax does this, or if there's another one out there, but it seems to me that the best tax is one that, as Obama calls it, is a fair share. It shouldn't be a minuscule amount that you don't even notice, but it shouldn't be so much that it impairs your actual income. Determining the best way to calculate that fair share is the big argument, as those below the poverty line can be hurt by very small amounts, but those who have a lot have many more options usually to avoid payment. I always thought a national sales tax made sense, with exceptions to what is taxed, so that the consumer can control his tax by controlling his expenses, and gets his true income.
It is not possible to address the incentive to lobby for tax breaks by tinkering with the tax code. As long as lobbying is legal and the tax code can be changed by Congress, interested parties are going to lobby Congress to change the tax code to give them breaks. Why you would imagine that anyone would stop doing that because of the introduction of a flat tax is beyond me. Also, your citation there is an article by none other than the godfather of supply-side economics himself, Arthu Laffer, and all of the numbers he cites there are produced by none other than his own personal think tank. Which is to say that it is an exercise in choir-preaching, highly unlikely to change anyone's mind about anything, as it is simply not credible on its face to anyone but true believers in supply side economics. To cite just one of the highly contentious, dishonest bits in there: flattening the marginal rates has no real effect on tax compliance costs. It is dishonest to conflate elimination of deductions with progressivity of rates in that sense, and likewise to elide the entire issue of the complexity of accounting what is "income" in the first place. We've been over all of this before here on SciForums, repeatedly, so it is fairly galling for you to regurgitate the same arguments without any aknowledgment of previous analyses of such here. Indeed, such looks more like a propaganda effort than honest engagement with other posters here, doesn't it? Again, this suggestion that a flat tax will eliminate the incentive for cheating or lobbying for tax breaks or corruption is just silly, and I note that your buddy Laffer made no such claims in your linked sales pitch for the flat tax plan. Unless you redefine "poverty level" to something like $250k per year, you are still pushing an unconscionably regressive bit of right-wing social engineering, designed to punish the lower and middle classes and enrich the already-fortunate. By all means, call up Mitt and Ryan and have them go on TV and announce that senior citizens will never get another cost-of-living increase in their Social Security ever again. In fact, let them know that they are going to get squeezed significantly as the Baby Boomers retire and spending is nevertheless held constant. I'd just love to see how that would go over. And yet, the USA has long ranked near the top of Global Competitiveness Reports, and is a fountainhead of business creation and expansion. Meanwhile, our last flirtation with ideological deregulation ended up producing the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Which is to say that this stuff is just tone-deaf, to begin with, and moreover directly undermines your earlier rhetoric about getting lobbyists and corruption out of Washington (since you're now carrying water for those exact same types with this whole "let's pollute the Earth and do away with workplace safety and accounting regulations" line). In the first place, that is weasel words. In the second place, you are ignoring the counterfactual: possibly that decrease would not have occurred without OSHA. It may simply be that as an economy and society develops, an official workplace safety institution is a natural, appropriate, necessary expression of the larger trends reducing the rate of workplace accidents. Likewise, in human development, switching from breastmilk to solid food doesn't result in any increased rate of growth - but you'd be a fool to argue that switching to solid food isn't a crucial, obvious step in human development. In the third place, OSHA is largely toothless - having been eviscerated by opposition from exactly the apologists for employer abuse that you are here stumping for - and so it is preposterously insulting for you to attempt to cite inadequacy on OSHA's part as discrediting the very purpose of regulation. This is just another one of those craven attempts the GOP makes to intentionally sabotage governance and then turn around and claim that governance is impossible in the first place. In the fourth place, if you can't manage to source material from places with more independent credibility than CATO or Arthur fucking Laffer, then you should not be surprized when your output is summarily and prejudicially dismissed as the dishonest propaganda exercise that it so clearly is. Yes, mostly. What spending there is to usefully cut, happens to be exactly the stuff that your candidates promise to not only retain, but increase. Mostly yes. Of course, you are obviously not interested in knowing the answer to that question, as you steadfastly refuse to posit or accept any framework for meaningfully answering such, and instead dedicate yourself to muddying the question and fixating on distractions. By all means, though, keep it up. It is intensely amusing and satisfying to observe your ever-increasing desparation and alarm as the date upon which you must admit political failure draws ever closer.
As we seem to be on a tax code detour I´ll mention my very simple tax code that fits on a 3by5 index card, not the current 73,000 pages of mainly special interest IRS code written by lobbies. It is very carefully defined in math terms and definitions that fit on one sheet of paper. Here is the first, math term defining part of that sheet: Taxes, T, are collected to help pay government expenses. Taxes are only part of means for doing so. Part of government expenses are obtained from trade Duties, D; Bonds, B; Gifts, G; and Charges, C such as revenue from sale of postal stamps and other fees charged for government services to specific individuals and corporations. I.e. Government Revenue, R of T+D+B+G+C is available for authorized expenditures. Here is another section giving an important reason why it is so simple and cost reducing. (All data required is already in corporation´s annual reports so their tax lawyers can be all fired.): US corporations pay no taxes, T, but must distribute all profits from US operations to US residents or citizens subject to tax laws; Except, part or all of corporate profits may be retained on the company books as assets for expansion, adverse conditions, operational capital, etc.; however, these sums can be retained for a maximum of 10 years. For example, any funds retained, in 2010, must be distributed to qualified individuals subject to US tax laws, typically as dividends, (not to other corporations) or expended for corporate purposes before first day of 2019. Any funds retained longer than this period become gift revenue, G, to the US Treasury. Another simplification is nothing (home mortgage interest included) is tax deductible, except major medical expense for humanitarian reasons and with certain limitations, half of gifts to the IRS or IRS "qualified organizations" (usually charities, even church affiliated ones that do not discriminate and meet public needs). Read it and some of the 43 comments, question asked and clarification posts at: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread...onsideration&p=1792841&viewfull=1#post1792841 I am open to more suggestions for improving it. For example in the corporation section perhaps something other than the 10 year period I suggested would be better, etc. for the text of other sections. But please, before giving yours, at least skim the thread of the link above as how to phase in, what about foreign corporations, gifts and inheritances, etc. have all been discussed. It has progressive tax tables, annually adjusted, that except in declared war time make it a "pay as you go" system, not the current "send the bill to my children" system. PS here is the section you probably are most interested in: Individuals, US residents and non-resident US citizens are subject to the US tax laws, and pay taxes in accordance with two progressive tax tables, one related to their income and the other to their accumulated net worth, which must be declared annually to the IRS. Increments of net worth, in excess of income, require explanation and documentation of the cause also to be filed with the tax return sent to IRS. Net worth increments not reported and confirmed real by judicial process are subject to confiscation by the Treasury. While requirement to declare net accumulated net worth annual may seem strange, it blocks most tax cheating and is done in many countries , including Brazil, already. The "cash" or "underground" economy in US is quite large and untaxed but would be with this code and permit honest tax payer at least a 25% reduction in their taxes.
Bob Woodward's "The Price of Politics," The Left is fond of blaiming Republicans for all of Obama's failures. "They were uncooperative." They say. "and Rush Limbaugh actually said he wanted President Obama to fail!" While it is certainly true that Republicans were not exactly doing all they could to help President Obama enact his agenda (they were the opposition, after all), Bob Woodward points out that it was president Obama himself who set the tone. And then there's the matter of the stimulus bill. "Fuck 'em". If that's not enough evidence for you: Nobody had the minority leader's number? Larry Summers, who served under both president Obama and Clinton, commented on a key difference between them: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bob-...lapse-led-pure/story?id=17104635#.UE5OUI1lQlA
Not that Obama's "attitude" would have mattered one bit when it came to the Republicans, who chose partisanship over the country.
And you are fond of weasel wording, apparently. The actual Left tends to focus more on what was said by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." So you agree with the GOP strategy of obstruction, but still want to blame Obama for it because he didn't make Republicans feel good enough or something? One decontextualized quote of Rahm Emannuel saying two words is not "evidence" of anything. Meanwhile, is anyone else noticing the pattern with madanth posts recently? He doesn't engage in any conversations running in the thread, but instead puts together propaganda splash posts that closely track whatever is on drudgereport and elsewhere in the rightyrant noise machine on any given day. He appears to be acting not so much as a regular participant here, or a disinterested moderator, but rather as a proud, on-message operative for right wing politics.
You've stumbled upon a problem with many so called fact checkers these days. They have turned into just one more venue for those with an ax to grind to put their slant on things while pretending to be merely "fact checking". Not that I would say it is out of line to mention Mr. Clinton's history especially in the context of interpreting any statements he makes regarding the trustworthiness of some other politician or even of politicians in general. And perhaps we should also make allowances for the paranoid delusions that can result from years of drug abuse which might cause a person to mistake a bit of context for a vast, right wing conspiracy?
The Obvious Points And sometimes a fact is a fact. As I've noted before, "all colors on the political spectrum scratch their heads from time to time about the fact checkers". But— —Zippergate is irrelevant to whether or not it is true Neil Newhouse said something. Why is it not out of line? Why is it relevant? How does it make a difference in whether it is true or false that a Romney pollster named Neil Newhouse said that the campaign will not be constrained by fact checkers? And how does it relate to the question of whether or not the Obama campaign should, as Romney suggests, be constrained by fact checkers? How does Zippergate relate to, justify, mitigate, or otherwise have any bearing on Mitt Romney's striking dishonesty that goes well above the norm for American politics? The only relevance is to distract attention from the facts that Mitt Romney is fundamentally dishonest and so is his campaign staff. So there's your liberal media conspiracy tanking one for the Republicans. Not nearly as big a deal as it was when they tanked a whole war for Republicans, but, hey, that was then, this is now, and—hey, it's Bill Clinton! Look at the birdie! I would think that mass neurosis is just about the opposite of a vast conspiracy, but, hey, I don't have a copy of the Conservative Neurotic's Dictionary.
He right federal regulations are crushing blows to business! Maximum allowed hours, minimum wage, can work children, dam it my company would be some much more productive with slave labor but fucking federal regulations prevent it!, and what for? Now with globalism capitalism companies can just go to countries which practically have slave labor, we can't compete with them as long as we have all chocking regulations on us! Ideologs like Mad and Joe fail to stop generalizing, everything is situational, in some cased regulation cause great good in other cases it has failed miserably, this is not evidence to have more regulations or remove them all, this is evidence that for each situations individualize solutions have to be tested and retested before one is found that works well, and even then its performance over the years may change and it may need revision or re-evaluation. Instead ideologs generalize a solutions as a cure all or bain that must not be used as a option for any problems. Most of all we should not become emotionally attached with a class of solutions (government regulation, socialism, communism, free market economics, feudalism, cthulthu worshiping, etc) because then we become bias and it becomes impossible to determine accurately all that is right or wrong with said solution. The most emotionally attach to an idea we become the more generalizing we get and the great chance we would accept catastrophic error in judgment as being righteous and correct. The American political spectrum runs along how much government there should be, that a fallacy, we should not ask how much government their should be but rather what are the problems, what are the potential solutions, lets test them, we got states to test on, find the solutions that work best, apply nationally, did it work, yes/no/sort of, fix it, reiterate, repeat.
And what is this? Is it not a generalization? I suggest you need to take a long and serious look at yourself before you go pointing fingers and name calling. Ignorance frequently renders one incapable of distinguishing between the specific and the general. Additionally, generalizations are sometimes appropriate and useful. Everything, every situation and every event is not unique. To test every possibility for every problem would be extremely costly and inefficient. That is why we use past experience and build upon those experiences – we make generalizations based on previous experiences. And those generalizations are used to filter out and identify solutions with higher probability of success. And finally, you ignore our political system. Rational solutions are determined more by political clout than rational thought. Who determines what the best solution is? If you are a coal mining CEO, the best solution would be very different from that of a single parent mom working at the local McDonald’s restaurant. When you have the gold in this country, you have a much better chance of defining the “best solution”. Your belief in a “best solution” is naïve at best. Before you can determine the "best solution" you have to define what is best and that is what this discussion is about.
Phases He goes through phases. It'll drive you nuts if you try to keep up. My solution is to simply remember that everything he presents in Politics is best read in the context that it is intended to contribute to the Great Cosmic Scoreboard. That is, counting the parenthetical letter after someone's name is more important than what those people actually do. And I think it's a malady that has infected a good number of conservatives, since even in places where they have both the executive and legislative it's still the Democrats' fault whenever Republicans screw up. There was a time when it seemed like he was in damage control mode; every time a minor scandal rippled through news cycle or blogosphere, it would show up a couple days later in one of his posts, except none of the discussion would be apparent—he simply reiterated Republican arguments and perspectives as if there was no other record. I decided not to track it, since I didn't feel like keeping a running file on my desktop detailing each of these incidents. In the end, I told myself I was imagining it, and eventually he moved onto another phase. Like a couple weeks ago, when all he really did was advertise. I think he's smart enough to know he's losing the argument in general. But he's also a conservative, and they're much better at losing battles and winning wars. So he just tacks and follows a new line based on his perception of the political winds. Fewer and fewer people are taking him seriously. It's not so much that he shills for the GOP, but that it's so apparent and so much of what he does. In truth, it is actually very hard to take him seriously anymore. And, yes, in truth, that is something of a relief. Civility demands a certain amount of accommodation, but trying to take him seriously demands extraordinary accommodation. The farther he goes out on his limb, the easier it is for the rest of us to just pass over his posts and continue with better discussions. As such, I'm happy to let him continue embarrassing himself. It's his choice, and he has shown himself so determined that it is simply not worth the investment of personal resources to dissuade him from such a self-dengirating course.
Well, obviously, since conservatives hold that Clinton deserved impeachment for his statements, madanthonywayne is implying that Romney is categorically unfit for office and should resign his candidacy immediately. Anything else would be brazenly inconsistent, and since madanthonywayne decided to bring this up we must credit him with having thought through the basic implications. That, or he just doesn't realize that he isn't addressing an audience where simply saying "Bill Clinton!" amounts to a serious indictment of democrats in general and a rallying cry for the faithful. It really is like that in dittohead land.
There can be only one .... Well, normally, yeah, we would give someone the credit of having thought it through. (I recall that years ago I used to find some pleasure in pointing out that I could insult people by presuming them intelligent.) But what is the blank slate of decency in presumption about a person compared to the record? We know that he didn't think it through. I'm uncertain on this point. That is, it's true that many conservatives don't seem to realize that not everyone is on their bandwagon; to the other, they complain enough about those other people that ... er ... well ... right. Anyway .... Oh, right. It's a classic example of the difference between conservatives and the oft-criticized liberal tendency to be oversensitive. After all, it is true that liberals can be paralyzed trying to figure out how to accommodate conflicting needs of other people. But it also long established that conservatives just don't give a damn; when needs conflict, there can be only one. (Speaking of which, there was a time when the freaky dude in Hands on a Hardbody—okay, there were many, but the, "There can be only one ...," dude—would have seemed like slapstick parody of the rudest sort; these days, well, I would hope he feels more at home in our society, since nearly half of voting Americans seem to have ventured into his realm.) But, yeah. The idea that some just don't see the world like they do? Well, we're just a bunch of terr'rist sympathizers an' anti-colonial Kenyans. We don't actually count. After all, we're not real Merkins.
A Note for Madanthonywayne A Note for Madanthonywayne This is how to properly hit Clinton: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Daily Star, September 11, 2012
BattleBounce BattleBounce While foreign policy concerns could certainly redefine the presidential contest in the next round of polling, a poll from NBC News, Wall Street Journal and Marist College suggests that President Obama gained ground over Republican challenger Mitt Romney in three key battleground states. Mark Murray, senior political analyst for NBC News, explains: After two political conventions and heading into the post-Labor Day sprint, President Barack Obama leads Republican nominee Mitt Romney in the key battlegrounds of Florida, Ohio and Virginia, according to new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls of each of these three states. In both Florida and Virginia, Obama is ahead of Romney by five points among likely voters (including those leaning toward a particular candidate), 49 percent to 44 percent. In Ohio, the president's lead is seven points, 50 percent to 43 percent. Among a larger pool of registered voters, Obama's advantage over Romney slightly increases to 7 points in Virginia, 8 in Florida and 9 in Ohio .... .... These states – all of which Obama carried in 2008 but which George W. Bush won in 2004 – represent three of the most crucial battlegrounds in the 2012 presidential election. And according to NBC's electoral map, Romney likely needs to capture at least two of these states, if not all three, to secure the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the presidency. By comparison, Obama can reach 270 by winning just one or two of these battlegrounds – on top of the other states already considered to be in his column. (Obama also has an additional path to victory without any of these three states if he wins the toss-up contests of Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin.) Lee Miringoff, of Marist College, suggests one standout statistic from the latest polling is the number of voters whose minds are already made up: "Those who are thinking of voting have pretty much picked sides," he explained. Murray notes that "most voters in these battleground states have already made up their minds, with just 5 to 6 percent saying they're undecided, and with more than 80 percent signaling that they strongly support their candidate". The numbers are less than the ninety-eight percent that have made up their minds according to cartoonist David Horsey, though his number might reflect national polling trends. This is an important difference, though. By Horsey's number, one might suggest that Mitt Romney's failure to pivot—part of the "pander and pivot" approach common in presidential campaign politics, although it is probably best known this season as "Etch-a-Sketch"—is a gamble that voter enthusiasm among the hardline right wing might offer better returns than playing for two percent in a battleground state. But a 5-6% suggestion challenges that outlook somewhat, and would stamp a boldfaced question mark on some of the former Massachusetts governor's recent decisions, and those of his campaign team. Meanwhile, President Obama seems to have won something of a bounce in these battleground states; Quinn Wonderling (yes, that's a real byline) of MSNBC notes that Chuck Todd called the polling bounce "the Clinton bump". Most observers weren't expecting significant bumps from the conventions, assuming they'd cancel each other out. However, it appears that female vote may be making the difference. O'Donnell asked Todd about Obama's lead among women voters in the three states. "Double digits in all of them," Todd replied. "Romney's lead among men is in low single digits and you see that he's got the widest gender gap in Ohio. But in all of these cases it's double digit leads for the president among women, but only single digit leads among men for Romney." Women aren't the only problem for Romney. He's still lagging way behind with Latino voters, and the Marist poll showed him down 12 points in Tampa, home of the 2012 Republican Convention. To add further to the Romney campaign's headaches, third party candidate Virgil Goode will be on the ballot in Virginia, where he could pull Republican votes away from Romney. Democratic sympathizers are reasonably tempted to feel comfortable because of such numbers, but the foreign service conflagration and campaign upheaval it set in motion could unsettle the NBC/WSJ/Marist numbers. Conventional wisdom should suggest that the progression of events in the campaign arena should favor the president, but nothing is certain, and Republicans are determined to make topaz from the excrement that Mitt Romney served them. It is clear that Obama received a bounce from the convention, but the murder of four foreign service workers—including a diplomat—literally renders these numbers obsolete before they were ever released. ____________________ Notes: Murray, Mark. "Polls: Obama holds the edge in Florida, Ohio and Virginia". First Read. September 13, 2012. FirstRead.NBCNews.com. September 14, 2012. http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/...a-holds-the-edge-in-florida-ohio-and-virginia Horsey, David. "Undecided voters are a tiny cohort that may not matter in the end". Top of the Ticket. September 13, 2012. LATimes.com. September 14, 2012. http://www.latimes.com/news/politic...-tt-undecided-voters-20120912,0,5745322.story Wonderling, Quinn. "Latest Marist poll shows solid Obama lead in three key battleground states". Lean Forward. September 14, 2012. LeanForward.MSNBC.com. September 14, 2012. http://leanforward.msnbc.com/_news/...d-obama-lead-in-three-key-battleground-states
