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McCain Decries "Hobbits," Accused of Ringbearing
Oxford_Comma_Lover writes "Senator McCain decried Tea Party 'Hobbits' on Wednesday for their failure to support the GOP's debt deal, at times reading from a WSJ editorial that began the analogy. The Tea Party fired back, with a prominent member noting on CNN that McCain had been corrupted by the ring of power. The full text of his floor remarks should be in the Congressional Record later today."
... if the US Government had the same budget as a Peter Jackson movie we wouldn't be in this fiscal mess, now would we? ;-)
One does not simply walk into Metaphor.
Ok, which one of you hacked his teleprompter?
Let's please not compare Tea Party members to sex icons like Elijah Wood and Sean Astin.
Now you're just being plain disrespectful McCain.
McCain was the last Democrat I voted for in a Presidential election
The Tea Party aren't Hobbits by any stretch of the imagination - hobbits are more like 1970's back-to-the-land hippie organic farmer types.
No, the Tea Party seems to be much more like the Easterlings, who's society has been thoroughly corrupted by promises of power regardless of the decency or lack thereof of the individual members. And Obama seems to be playing the role of Denethor, trying to hold back the tide but not really being able to do so and kinda ambiguous about where he's loyalties really lie.
I am officially gone from
I think we have to admit that McCain does bare some resemblance to Smeagol. I think the problem with the Tea Partiers is that they see it as being their way or nothing. I understand their perspective and conviction but I think the issue is that they want to do it ALL at once. No compromise, every vote they make must include everything they think has to be done for the next 20 years of government. I think the problem is if we do it their way the whole economy is going to come crashing down. People complain about government spending but then seem to forget that a large % of the US is employeed (directly or indirectly) by the government. You YANK that out all at once and I think we'll be reminiscing about the good old days of only 10% unemployment.
People live on narratives, and this makes them susceptible to magic, that is the use of patterned sounds and images to alter their brain-states. People say that it's too much to expect them not to do, that they are 'only human'...this is why I'm a trans-humanist.
He is not aware that Hobbits are the good guys (at least in LOTR)
Right, the Tea Party is the "Villain" here when the plan you support only cuts $1 Billion from this years budget and still adds $7 Trillion to our debt over 10 years. Anyone that thinks republicans are being extreme here in wanting cuts doesn't realize that no one is actually cutting anything. All of their cuts come years down the road after congress has completely changed and the successors have no obligation to keep the word of the predecessors. This whole Reid vs Boener plan is one of the biggest bunch of garbage smoke and mirrors dance we've ever seen in the US. It's just people yelling about ideals that no one actually backs up.
Congressmen?
that is all.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
So with Tolkien done and Superheros on the way out what's next?
Krispy Kreme the movie?
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Sorta forgot that part, didn't ya?
I thought Hobbits where the good guys. He meant to say trolls. Yeah, that's it. A big ugly mountain troll. Hobbits aren't real anyway.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Bullshit---that fact that idiots and assholes misquote and miss-characterize a work of literature has nothing to do with the literature. Your assumption that it does is right in there with their misuse. Now if this was meant in jest, your hints as to such use are really hard to see---use darker ink next time...
If you hate government so much, move to Somalia. Seriously.
The Tea Party is the best thing that could happen to Democrats. It's their secret weapon. By the 2012 elections, the Republican party will be down to only a handful of nutcases that can pass their litmus test.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
you, sir, have shown me an entirely new level of disrespect for the concept of communication.
If we had respect for the concept of communication, we'd all be speaking dialects of Quenya. But alas, men have made up thousands of mutually unintelligible languages in which to communicate. So when someone makes an error in what might not be one's native language, please don't use such tone when pointing it out.
So with Tolkien done and Superheros on the way out what's next?
Crossovers! "Saru-man, Saru-man, does whatever a Saru can"
We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious. They stole it from us. Sneaky little hobbitses. Wicked, tricksy, false!
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
This is one of those forwards that your crazy uncle sends you all the time. Unlike "Lets not buy gas on 9/11", this one actually makes a bit of sense.
-
1. No Tenure / No Pension.
A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office. [You are paid X for being in 'full session'. If you show up to 50% of sessions, you get 50% pay.]
2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.
All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.
3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12.
The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.
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I like the way that Indiana does it. "The Senate convenes its annual session the first Tuesday following the first Monday of January every year. In odd numbered years the senate must meet for 61 days (not necessarily consecutive days), and must adjourn no later than April 30. This is typically called a long session. In even numbered years, when elections are held, the Senate must meet for 30 days (not necessarily consecutive days) and adjourn no later than March 15."
There should be no such thing as a "career politician".
If citizens actually had free choice in which government programs to fund as well as how much to contribute, the size of the US government (measured both in revenue and power over the people) would be 1/10 the size of today's utter monstrosity.
Nah, you'd just see people get a realistic idea of how gov't programs work and realize that they've got to spread funding out across services that cover the country. While that would be a good, informative thing, it would ruin many a pundit's argument that the welfare state has taken over.
And if citizens literally had to cut a check at the beginning of every year, rather than pay through deliberately-obfuscated systems designed to hide the true cost of government, the size of government would be cut again by 90%.
Just looking at the ongoing debt that the average citizen carries from month-to-month, this would just lead to the gov't spending most of its time and money merely trying to collect. While I would love a "pay once a year" system personally, it wouldn't work worth a damn if most folks can't save a penny to begin with.
The price of civilization is a bitch, isn't it. I read that Pakistan is closer to the libertarian ideal than Somalia, btw.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
That place is entirely dysfunctional since the last election.
No really unexpected. Republicans can't afford to allow Obama to be successful, even if it means destroying the country in the process.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
I'm pretty sure McCain's campaign pre-dated the "Tea party" by a long shot. If I remember correctly, The Tea party movement began after Obama took office and started working on universal health care. They focus on cutting government spending as a way to keep dark-skinned people poor without appearing racist.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
There are some things that we need that you cannot trust the individuals to properly fund... Most of us doesn't really understand how expensive stuff is or why it is so expensive, and just assume that someone is ripping us off.
If you want the government to run a lot cheaper, be prepared for a very scary government where corruption is very common. A lot of the government funded money goes into making sure that it isn't abused. Managers on top of managers all making sure each other isn't abusing their own power, or getting secrete deals making sure no mistakes are made, and workers who are afraid of making mistakes will avoid being innovative. We can cut a lot of this overhead and things will still run... However there will be groups running illegal deals and giving money to corrupt officials for service. However it will be cheaper, but not better.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Except that Palin is not a true Teabagger. This whole tea party thing is as much smoke and mirrors as any of it. Palin jumped on the bandwagon when she saw it as a real way to align herself with a group of people that would pay attention to her and get her to appear on all those cable "News Channels" (and I use the term news loosely). I have lost complete faith in the system as a whole. They're all crooked, every last one of them Repub, Dem, Libritarian (who are they anyways), Teabaggers etc, ALL crooks.
Damn politics has reduced me to a fecking TROLL!
If you hate government so much, move to Somalia. Seriously.
If you love water so much, why not move to the middle of the Atlantic?
The problem is not government in general. The problem is TOO MUCH government, and too much CENTRALIZED government. You have much more power influencing your local and state government than you will ever have trying to influence the federal government. This should be obvious when you consider that 48/50 US Senators don't care about you or your state.
If we had more local control over our lives, your argument would carry much more weight. You could say, "If you hate government so much, move to Mississippi. Seriously." and you would know that the person you are talking to could truly move to Mississippi. Of course, if they are already in MS, you could tell them to keep their noses out of your state's business.
It's all clearly explained in the 10'th Amendment. Unfortunately, all three branches of our government seem to ignore it, even though they've all taken an oath to defend it. Clearly, the 10th Amendment means SOMETHING. I mean, the founders wouldn't have put in there for nothing. It's not like they had nine amendments and said, "Let's make up one more to make in an even 10."
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
This is an utterly stupid argument. Some level of government is necessary for collective action. The small government argument is not that there should be no central government, or that society should be so fractured that each faction has its own government and laws and otherwise lives in a state of nature with the other factions. Instead, the small government argument is that our government does too much, and has so extended its authority as to be destructive of its primary end of protecting our rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Your strawman is frequently-repeated, and utterly inane.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Everyone knows that Tea Partiers are Dunlendings, simple mountain folk experiencing economic hardship who are being manipulated by Saruman/Boehner.
If citizens actually had free choice in which government programs to fund as well as how much to contribute, the size of the US government (measured both in revenue and power over the people) would be 1/10 the size of today's utter monstrosity.
And if citizens literally had to cut a check at the beginning of every year, rather than pay through deliberately-obfuscated systems designed to hide the true cost of government, the size of government would be cut again by 90%.
No. It would not, unless, of course, you have some facts to back up this remarkable assertion. No? Didn't think so. Please stop parroting stuff you've heard parroted by various Fox News personalities. Simplistic "solutions" like this sound attractive until one spends more than ten seconds thinking about them. Then their absurdity becomes obvious. And no, I don't mean fiscal responsibility is absurd. I mean that it's absurd to suggest that the government we want can operate on a tiny fraction of it's current revenue. Not even close. So this suggestion, one that is near and dear to Tea Bagger hearts everywhere, is nothing but an absurd distraction from the critical process of meaningful reform, reform that actually has a chance of solving the very real problems we are facing. It is the folly of indulging this absurd distraction that Senator McCain refers to, and (I can't believe I'm saying this...), he's absolutely right.
Do Hobbits have sex?
When they get to address unemployment, I guess we'll be down to "Your mom" insults.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Actually, it's the other way around. If there's less money available to be handed out to political allies and cronies or to buy votes, the amount of graft and corruption generally goes down. The layers of overhead and oversight and management generally do not serve to reduce graft and corruption, despite the best of intententions, but they do increase cost by orders of magnitude. I've been working with the Federal government for years as a contractor, and I assure you that there is no way in which managers abusing their own power, or secret deals being made, or mistakes being made, or innovation being promoted could possibly be attributed to the government. Quite the opposite, in fact.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
It certainly sounds like congress has gone down the rabbit hole...
Tea Party, is just a revamp of the Religious Right. They kept the craziness and took God out of it. Figuring they can get others to join... It worked.
Palin was chosen because she was a Young, Woman who had a position high enough to carry the title and do the work as president... To counter balance Young Minority President Obama. Just to make sure if you voted for McCain you are not feeling bad about voting against a history changing moment.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Please let this turn into an Angry Hobbit cosplay rally put on by the Tea Party. Oh, I cannot wait for that.
Everyone thinks some of government should be cut.
No one agrees on what that some should be.
That's the entire problem.
The price of civilization is a bitch, isn't it. I read that Pakistan is closer to the libertarian ideal than Somalia, btw.
No, the cost of civilization is fine. It's everything else we're paying for on top of that that's a bitch.
"I know that every word that man just said is true, because it's EXACTLY what I wanted to hear." -- Space Ghost
The end of the 2008 election gave us two good things: Obama in the White House, and McCain saying things that make sense again from time to time.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Hey, you need oxygen to live, right? So why don't you pump your house full of 100% oxygen?
FINALLY somebody points it out! Its no different a strategy than creating multiple brands for your megacorporation -- they hire plenty of P.R. experts... one should expect them to use the same tricks. "Those GM losers.. I'll never buy one of their cars! I'll buy a Cadillac instead."
Palin was a purely marketing based decision. McCain likely didn't even choose her (other than to simply take the marketing advise... funny that she couldn't ever listen her handlers... the marketing people didn't think that far ahead.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Teabaggins
Isn't that ironic, that people like you leave comments like yours and get moderated up like in this case while talking about the government in USA, a country, where people came to for freedoms?
Freedoms, as in freedoms from government.
The reason USA became the wealthiest country in the world in 19 century was capitalist free market and industrialization, which only became possible because the US was so free to do business in because the government was so limited, so small and so insignificant.
Today, with government being what it is, USA became what it became, and people have to leave the country to search for those very ideals that their forebears left other countries to come to USA for? I suppose it does makes sense to do that for the folks who were unfortunate enough to be born in US in this time, the time of the great government involvement and destruction of freedoms.
I invite everybody to think about moving to freer nations, there are nations like that. On the other hand I am sure some people would rather try to save theirs, but it doesn't seem that there is a peaceful way of doing it.
You can't handle the truth.
This whole tea party thing is as much smoke and mirrors as any of it.
The Tea Party is the biggest astroturf of all time, heavily funded and orchestrated by the Koch brothers. The only people who don't know this are the useful idiots who are members. The TP message is tailored to appeal to the politically naive, and it is working brilliantly: an army of idiots who think that the next time a project is behind schedule they should stop working on it and instead spend all their time agitating for senior management to change the company's articles of incorporation to include a "No Missed Deadlines" amendment.
This is not to say the TP's aren't sincere in their rather belated concern about Federal spending, which somehow never once managed to come to their attention during the 80's, the 90's or the Bush II presidency. But don't for a moment think that they are suddenly getting all this media attention and organizational competency because Joe Plumber has finally realized he's a slave to the oligarchs who have borrowed America into servitude. It is because the oligarchs need something to further diminish American democracy.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Do you really think this is the case? What I see is a lot of people saying: "Don't touch my Medicare, don't touch my Social Security, don't raise my taxes, and balance the budget." Which is sort of a ridiculous position to take. Even if we're allowed to touch defense (which a lot of people don't want either) that's not enough room to maneuver. Hell a strikingly large percentage of Americans don't even seem to realize that Medicare and Social Security are tied to the federal government and the debt. Remember back during the health care debate when the nice old lady stood up to President Obama to say something along the lines of "I hate socialized medicine and don't touch my Medicare?"
I don't think people are stupid, but much like with technology they often lack the bandwidth in their daily lives to learn as much about politics as they probably should. People want more responsible government, and smaller government until they see how it's going to affect them personally. Everyone's happy with the idea that we should cut "stuff" out of the budget, but when the "stuff" gets personalized to "My Medicare", "My defense industry job", "My road project in my town" or whatever the happy starts to wane. Then you start hearing the "Well don't cut stuff like that, cut stuff like funding for research on the affects of cow methane on the local owl population (or pick your ridiculous government project of choice)" crowd starts up; blithely ignoring that fact that a) some of that research actually is valuable, just not in obvious ways, and b) it represents a really small portion of the federal budget.
We have among the lowest taxes in the developed world in this country, and we have the infrastructure to prove it. I'm not saying we should move to the European model of 40% taxes (yes, I pulled this number out of my butt, your European taxes may be higher or lower than this figure), but we can easily balance the budget with some prudent and moderate cuts to spending, along with very modest tax increases to say, where they were just 10 years ago. I know that real "small government" people like you probably understand the cuts that would be needed for true "small government", I'm not saying that you don't full understand your position. I'm saying that if most people truly understood what it meant to cut government this way, far fewer of them would support the idea.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Oxygen toxicity shouldn't be a problem until the partial pressure of oxygen exceeds 1.4 atm. Flash point of common materials becomes a problem much sooner.
... the result being that Congressmen will be people who either are independently wealthy, or are doing backdoor deals which will get them lots of pay, benefits, and retirement money.
Of course that happens anyway, but you really don't want to encourage it even more.
There is a fundamental flaw with this concept.
It's reasonable and makes sense. There will be none of that here.
Just another ignorant American.
And you remember incorrectly. It started to spark at the state level in New York and Seattle, and less than a moth later turned into a national firestorm when Rick Santelli bitchslapped the utter stupidity of the mortgage bill on CNBC. The stupidity of which, I might add, has merely postponed the full crash of the real estate market, not stopped it, and has therefore prevented any sort of recovery from taking place as everyone waits for the full realization of value to occur.
The reason USA became the wealthiest country in the world in 19 century...
Yeaaaaah, that turned out well, didn't it.
[End Of Line]
8. Congress and staff are subject to drug tests, just like all other federal employees.
Maybe we are addressing it wrong. If we don't all agree (for some large fraction of "all") that something should be part of the government, maybe it shouldn't be part of the government.
Great Depression is your answer to what? Because Great Depression was created by the Fed, who monetized UK debt (yeah, English debt). Fed was printing obscene amounts of greenbacks and buying UK debt to prevent UK from defaulting (sort of like Germany is doing with Greece).
The 1921 saw a depression that had higher unemployment than what is observed today, but by 1923 that depression was over. The difference? Government spending was cut by 70%.
1925 US Fed started monetizing UK debt, this inflated the agriculture bubble, which burst by 1929, similar to what Fed was doing starting with Greenspan and Clinton, when they set discount rate at 1%, and later Bernanke and Bush, who set the discount rate at 0% and since gov't was mandating that Freddie/Fannie and FHA subsidize 30% of substandard mortgages by 1992 and 50% of them by 1999 and 65% of them by 2006, it's not a surprise that the bubble that burst 3 years ago was in housing and not in agriculture.
The Great Depression started because the burst of the agriculture bubble inflated by the Fed was actively fought against by government bail outs and stimulus. I provided a time-line earlier on this topic, just like the bail outs and stimulus printed and given out by Congress and the Fed in 2008 and ever since. In 1929 this started the Great Depression. I am expecting the Greatest Depression this time around, because this time around USA doesn't have the savings and manufacturing (production capacity), that US of the twenties had and today USA is the biggest debtor nation with no savings and no understanding of economics on all levels and a enormous, all encompassing government, who completely abolished the idea of freedom by its mere existence.
So you are going to make smart ass comments, maybe you should try and understand the subject first.
You can't handle the truth.
Just curious ... How did you infer hatred in the above post?
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
And so it comes full circle.
People originally wanted to escape the corruption, massive taxes, distant and uncaring government, and miles of paperwork and red tape that existed in Europe. We have become that which we fought so hard against.
Except that there is no place to escape to any more. I'm not trying to be fatalistic, so much as if there was a solution that easy, half of the people in the World would be trying to take advantage of it as well. So we have to start cleaning it up. And grabbing back power from the Federal Governemt and giving it back to the states is the only rational course.
Either that, or we have states simply leave and create their own nations in a few decades. Texas keeps talking about how they made a mistake in joining the U.S. And, while it used to be mostly crackpots talking about it, it's suddenly maybe not such a bad idea at this point. You actually hear normal people talking about it now. It's kind of scary that it's gotten that bad.
Peter Jackson films are for-profit ventures. Despite of what we may have heard about Hollywood Accounting, profitability always takes priority in such ventures. US Government... not so much.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Start giving law enforcement bonuses for every politician they throw in prison.
That approach works so well in the private sector I'm sure that there could be no negative effects if we include it in law enforcement.
Well, there are no places that are as idealistic as what USA used to be in 19 century, but there are places that do have more economic freedoms. Singapore, Hong Kong, Switzerland from the more developed nations, that's my choice.
Of-course while everybody is completely bearish on Somalia and other African nations, I actually think in the long run it pays to go counter-trend, so I am looking to invest there but it's not easy for an outsider.
You can't handle the truth.
That's completely incorrect. The Democrats have been willing to compromise; Obama's facing a backlash among his own party for being too willing to compromise. If you've been following the news you know where the Democrats started and where they are now and can see what they've compromised on. The Republicans still refuse to compromise at all on taxes. The trick to a healthy government is for the population to pay attention to what they do, don't just wave your hands vaguely in the air and say both parties are equally culpable.
I'm not convinced that it is the quantity of government, but rather its specific content. The government is doing things that it should not, and not doing things that it should. Reducing the size of government might reduce the number of things it is doing that it should not, but I assure you the other side of this imbalance will only get worse, because the government will likely also stop doing several things that it should be doing.
www.wavefront-av.com
So you're calling him an elf?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.
They've been doing this since the 80's. Not sure if I see the point in having Congressmen who paid into the previous system get switched at this late date; it disrupts predictability (people planned for their retirement according to assumptions that you'd now retroactively upset), and many of them are probably retired from Congress already, so it's not as though this can be used to pressure them into doing anything to help everyone who pays into Social Security out of self interest.
5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
Already done in the big health care reform last year. Of course, I'd be happy to see more substantial reforms along the lines of real universal health care.
6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
Basically already true.
7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12.
So... what are you suggesting happens to a Congressman who took out a mortgage, or leased a car, or borrowed money for a student loan? Does he get a windfall, or does he lose everything? In what universe is this possibly a good idea?
Your chain email makes no sense, everyone who read it is now dumber for having done so, I award you no points, and Snopes rated it as 'mostly false.'
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Yes it worked out very well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
What are you basing this on? In the 19th century the USA wasn't a super power and wasn't doing all that well with pretty much slave labor camps otherwise known as textile mills just to get started. In the 20th century we became a super power due to massive infrastructure investments giving us our highway system and DARPA helped us build the Internet as we know it today. Sorry, government played a huge part in all of that. Everything from establishing minimal wage to setting fire codes help improve the way of life of every American and not just the robber barrens of the 19th century.
I don't see anyone leaving this country because they feel the government is too oppressive, if they did I'm not sure where they would go since Europe has a lot of the same policies, Asia is even tighter on freedom of expression and Africa is filled with strike. I guess that leaves Australia? While full of nice people and hot aussie chicks, they too have been spying on their citizens and doing the same things as our government including failed regulation leading to a massive oil spill off of their shores. So I guess that leaves Antarctica? Of course there are our dear friends to the north but Canada has its problems too, the grass is always greener on the other side. So I guess I have trouble picturing what a freer nation is. There aren't many nations out there where you will pay less in taxes, usually twice as much and don't forget the artificially low cost of gas here.
The grandparent was referring to Somalia being in what we in the US consider a state of anarchy, but in fact most of the country has fallen under traditional tribal leadership and obeys tribal law for their various tribes and the central government has dissolved. No tribal leader has the influence or power to take control of the central government, so there is no central government, which has led to some areas being in a state of lawlessness. In some ways that is not necessarily a bad thing, because depending on who is in power, it could be a very oppressive dictatorship (think Taliban).
As for the 10th amendment, it is and pretty much always has been filigree with little substance - States are considered subordinate to federal law in all cases, which is understandable in some ways - for example, the South could potentially still have slavery if it weren't for the government stepping in. Before you argue that slaves are human and should therefore have rights under the constitution, remember that up until the end of the civil war slaves were considered more like an animal than a human (by the South).
That's easier to figure out. When government is small, it is more transparent.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
48/50 US Senators don't care about you or your state
There are 100 US Senators, not 50. Each state gets 2.
The salary is $174,000.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Damn Democracy....
Let's really go for representation. Why not get rid of the election of representatives. *gasp* What you say. Anti-democratic. You betcha!
Democracy is 51% telling the other 49% what to do, a.k.a. two wolves and a sheep deciding who will be dinner. Liberty being a well-armed sheep. Anyways...
Instead of voting, we draft people to Congress. Similar to jury-duty. For 2 years you find yourself serving the people for a reasonable stipend. 2x avg salary should suffice.
Then the people elect 100 representatives to server a second term in the Senate. These do not make laws. Rather they rescind laws by a 1/3 vote (as proposed by Heinlein).
Lastly, we elect one Senator to serve a 3rd term as President.
While it may not be direct democracy. As I stated, I am not convinced of the merits of democracy. I am however, convinced of the merits of representation. And this system would do so. While at the same time ending most of the political machines. A single term, then you're fired or retained for Senate. No need to sell your soul for years before obtaining a national seat. And suddenly, Congress would go from being 90% lawyers to having a diversity of plumbers, teachers, engineers, computer programmers, CEOs, etc, etc.
It would be a significant improvement over our current system IMHO.
Because the percentage in the air is enough. Because your house would be a firebomb waiting to go off. Because it would cost a bunch of money for an unnecessary expense. Because it would kill you.
Is that good enough or do you need some more?
"But this one goes to 11!"
Thanks for helping maintain the high percentage of straw man arguments here on Slashdot.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Flash point is not the problem. LEL/UEL and autoignition temperature are the problems.
In an oxygen-rich environment, the LEL is lower, the UEL is higher, and the autoignition temperature is lower. The flash point does not change.
Flash point is the temperature at which a flammable liquid (at STP) releases a flammable vapor (Wikipedia says "the lowest temperature at which [a volatile liquid] can vaporize to form an ignitable mixture in air").
Now, for a short quiz to verify that you understand the concept of flash point: What is the flash point of propane?
How dare he be old! Stupid jerk...he should know that once you get old, you are instantly disgusting and should report to a Sleepshop on lastday.
I shall use that darker ink next time. It was supposed to be a comment about old people trying to be cool by using things from pop culture.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Unfortunately, the argument that the current federal government should be cut to 1% of its current size amounts to exactly that - no federal government. Heck, it wouldn't even be able to fund the various military branches at that level. Heck, $40 Billion won't even fund NASA and the Department of Justice. You'll fund a bit of administration, a couple of foreign embassies and a small army that is less than 1/10 of what it is now (just going by budget figures). Furthermore, lack of a central authority will result in exactly what you think won't happen: every faction with its own government and laws and living in a state of nature with the other factions. Or do you really think that Americans from Maine to California will pull together on all topics, just because their American? They won't even care about the same foreign issues.
The only utterly stupid argument is that you can have a unified country that is a super power in the world without a central government that can provide a single direction for business and foreign affairs.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Please don't mention Switzerland. Despite living there, you have no clue what "economic freedoms" means. The only economic freedom you care about is the one to reduce the taxes you pay.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
The "lowest taxes in the developed world" isn't quite true when you take into account state and local taxes.
However, I would say that the real problems are in the "My road project in my town" group. While the states have broad powers to tax, for some reason the argument has stuck that only the federal government can come up with the money for certain things. The federal government should not be funding the states, and any such funding should be cut. The states should administer their own taxes. When the states have more power, state elections will be even more contested, and better representation will result.
Social Security should probably be in the federal realm, since plenty of people move after retiring (and thus there's an imbalance of retirees). Medicare/Medicaid is already 50% funded by the states. If individual states really need help with Medicare costs then we can implement a "transfer" similar to the system used in Canada.
Defense spending certainly does need to be cut. Britain ruled half the world with 125,000 troops. We've got 1.4 million active troops. However, the time would be best spent finding a few large defense projects that can be cut for quick savings, and leaving the rest to an independent committee.
The Social Security wage base should be removed, so that it applies to all wages, not just the first $100K.
My bet is that if all that was done, overall taxes would still go up, but federal taxes might actually go down. Some laws would also change, without the threat of losing federal funding, states might be less willing to implement federal programs (e.g. drinking age at 21, abstinence-only education, etc.)
Federal road tax shouldn't exist either. There are very few federal roads, even the interstates are maintained by the states. They can fund that themselves.
Direct Payment and Grants to the states total $2 trillion. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_spending_by_state.php?year=2010&chart=Z0&units=b&rank=t
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
1 correction:
I shouldn't have included direct payments, as that probably includes Social Security.
The number should be $500 billion (grants) in 2008, I'm sure that's higher now.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
Well, that is what happens when you kill the government, isn't it? Reverting to tribalism or feudalism. The secret hope of right-leaning anarchists is simply that they would come out on top and fill the local warlord position. The secret hope of left-leaning anarchists, on the other hand, is so utopic, that you gotta view Marx as a stone-cold realist in comparison.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Wow. You are so off-base with reality.
Social Security has long ago been reduced to a line on paper. Our Government currently cooks the books and manipulates the fund to make it appear as if it's not broke. Also, Social Security was never envisioned by our Founding Fathers, and knowing their disdain for Rome and its history of corruption, I doubt if they would have ever have voted for it. (the fall of Rome can be attributed to the same pattern of social and military over-spending and lack of leadership)
The largest single deduction on my paycheck is for Social Security. What really happens is "You can buy into another retirement plan with that's left after The Government takes its pound of flesh" (and then wastes it, naturally)
The issue isn't any of that stuff that you posted. It's that Goverment Pensions, Social Security, Medicare, and Interest on the Debt account for almost 100% of our current budget. That leaves only 25 billion (less than 1.5%!) for our entire defense department, military, and, well, literally thousands and thousands of programs and agencies. Until we get rid of these four items, we're broke. We could cut the military to $0. Kill off every single social spending program. Get rid of student aid. Stop patrolling our borders. Stop foreign aid. Close down NASA. None of it would make any more difference than spitting on a bonfire. Those four items alone are literally killing our nation, and until we get rid of them entirely, we are doomed.
Now do the "slashdot geek" thing and head over to www.debtclock.org and add up the numbers yourself. Everyone should have that site bookmarked, since it's not only useful by itself, but it also helps with arguments and getting your statistics correct when you post here.
Not exactly true. The only "economic freedom" roman is caring about, judging by his posting history, is the freedom to shit on his fellow man from a high perch, unchecked and unchallenged.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
All power to the Counties! All power to the Cities! All power to the neighborhoods!
What is the deal with States, that they're so awesome? Maybe it's because I live in Oklahoma at the moment, but I'm just not seeing it. When we talk about mobility, you have to remember that the reason it's relatively (not absolutely, by a long shot) easy to pick up and move between states is that there's a certain amount of standardization provided by the federal government. Even something as simple as "states must recognize marriages from other states" makes a huge difference in where people could/would move for a job, for economic reasons. And it just goes up from there.
Also, do you really think the people of Missouri have sufficiently different needs and wants from the people of Oklahoma, that they need different laws? Maybe Utah does, and Texas just needs it for its ego, but really? We're all humans [for now], we're all potential works and employers. You might argue that when economic trouble hits, different regions need different economic policies applied because of local industry variations, but that's not prevented by the federal government; it already doles out money to various industries selectively, affecting regions differently. We decry the International Criminal Court as a violation of our sovereignty, we despise super-national unions like the EU, but really we're just drawing arbitrary lines in the sand. This far, and no further.
Are some states "red" and others "blue"? Maybe, but does that mean that we need states that are right next to each other, with either a 49/51 or 51/49 ratio, to be run entirely differently? Do you think that the resulting "sloshing", as people move out of their current states to escape overly-partisan policies, is good for us in the long term? Do you think polarizing our populations even more will solve our problems?
I realize this is about ideology, whether you believe that we are generally smarter or dumber as a group than as an individual. And I think that it's both, depending on the issue. Maybe we're smarter individually when running a small business, but we're dumber when it comes to planning health insurance, the military, etc. All of that is debatable, and actively debated, and that's healthy. I guess we could just split the union. Two countries. One centralized, one completely decentralized. Tear families apart. Break our economy. Increase tensions. Lose power in the world. And then split again, when each side disagrees on how much centralization is good.
States' rights sound awesome, but what would you *do* with that power and granularity, that can't or shouldn't be done at a higher or lower level?
The reason USA became the wealthiest country in the world in 19 century was capitalist free market and industrialization, which only became possible because the US was so free to do business in because the government was so limited, so small and so insignificant.
My, you are persistent. No, the reason that the US became the wealthiest country in the world is that it was able to harness enormous amounts of cheap resources without much interference by neighboring countries nor effective resistance by the native populations. The resources of the Western US (and various marine bodies) untapped (except by the locals who were rather quickly marginalized).
This behavior also had a number of deleterious effects - raping of resources, the environment (would you want to live in a 19th century urban environment?) and impressive social inequities.
So, government did step in and attempt to mitigate the hellbent robber baron / beggar they neighbor system. It was partially successful. Yes, we have problems that stem from going the other way - to much regulation, too much governmental control. But your slavish devotion to an anachronistic and time limited system (not much of the West available for plunder at bargain prices) suggests you really haven't looked at some of the finer points in American history.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
has fallen under traditional tribal leadership and obeys tribal law for their various tribes and the central government has dissolved.
The way I read Somalia's history, they have never moved out of tribal law. When the supposed Somali government's power was at it's peak, there were huge areas of Somalia that they didn't control. No governmental body has ever really ruled in that land. At best, they ruled Mogadishu and surrounding areas, and made a show of force in outlying areas. At worst, the capital experiences running gun battles round the clock.
England left Somalia because they were ungovernable nomads. Nothing has ever changed, that I am aware of.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Rightists and leftists are indistinguishable to me. Both sides of the aisle have bought into globalism, and both sides serve Corporate America, rather than the constituents who elect them. So - don't point fingers at the righties. The lefties are just as bad.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The Democrats have been willing to compromise;
Really? When? In fact, the Democrats haven't even proposed a single bill to correct this situation in either house. They just sit there and vote "No" to all options being presented without presenting one of their own. They are, in effect, refusing to cut spending, period. They want to raise the debt ceiling and taxes and not make any real cuts in spending. True to form - Tax-and-Spend-Democrats bankrupting this country, one election at a time.
Exactly. People will bitch and moan about the government all day but then they get to drive to work on paved roads with traffic moderation and other amenities. There are several superfund sites in my state left over by the mining industry when it was policing itsself for years and years. Now who has to clean the mercury out of the aquifer so these ignorant a-holes can drink clean water? It isn't the company that created the mess I can tell you that for sure and it isn't the state government. The Federal government does have a very needed purpose in the lives of the people and anyone that doesn't think so is completely ignorant. I'm not saying everything they do is great, but there are some things that the market simply wouldn't care to do even if they had the opportuninty to do so. Safe food? Government. Safe housing? Government. Safe infrastructure? Government. Clean air and Water? Government. State government can only do so much and a lot of what it can do is pretty ineffectual when you consider the broader implications of interstate commerce.
I got here through a series of tubes
Really? Do I really need to enumerate for you the virtually endless list of hyper-corrupt small governments? Oh. I get it. You're just trolling. Cool. (No one could be that full of BS.)
I shall use that darker ink next time. It was supposed to be a comment about old people trying to be cool by using things from pop culture.
Pop culture? That's just not on.
What are you basing this on? In the 19th century the USA wasn't a super power and wasn't doing all that well with pretty much slave labor camps otherwise known as textile mills just to get started.
It appears that roman_mir's idea of utopia is based on the few robber barons of the 19th (and early 20th) century who managed to amass great fortunes by running rampant over man and beast. It's a narrow reading of a small portion of history.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
technically 96/100 is the same as 48/50 as 24/25.
fractions are fun.
Um, actually it's 98/100, so the fraction you're looking for is 49/50.
technically 96/100 is the same as 48/50 as 24/25.
fractions are fun.
However, 96/100 != 98/100.
First I cannot fit the Tea Party into Lord of the Rings, there really isn't a faction they relate too. As for Obama, he is Saruman. When he speaks people fall under a spell which removes them from reality. The Democrats and Republicans are Mordor, they are willing to burn up the American public to hold onto power. This means they refuse to accept the reality that there is a limit to other people's money. They are quite willing to throw Main Street under the wheels in favor of political power - both while in office and without.
The Tea Party is a kick in the nuts to regular politicians. The only problem is that there is no authentic group on the left that also calls out their side for their reckless spending. While I will never be part of the Tea Party they are far better than the Democratic and Republican parties who not only lost their way a long time ago but really don't give a shit about us anymore
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Oh, that's plenty, thank you. I think you get my analogy just fine.
What are you basing this on?
USA should never have become a 'superpower', building empires is against its original ideals, that was distrustful of empire needs for standing armies, heavy taxes, large bureaucracies, and centralized decision making.
USA however did manage to pay out all of its debts in 19 century and to become the world's largest creditor nation. It took on all sorts of loans during the century but US used the loans to build up production capacity, to increase its infrastructure and to start manufacturing that allowed it to repay the debts and become the largest ever creditor nation. Today, on the other hand, USA is the largest debtor nation not only in the modern world, but in history of the human civilization.
with pretty much slave labor camps otherwise known as textile mills just to get started
- people were coming to USA for more freedoms, many even entered serfdom to come to USA and were serfs for a few years before becoming free people, but this practice ended in 19 century because it became unfeasible, serfs became more expensive than hiring help.
In the 20th century we became a super power due to massive infrastructure investments giving us our highway system
- if you think so, you'll be totally astonished at what I wrote on this topic. The highway system built as a public works project became a catastrophe for USA, in many senses, starting from the economics of it, and destruction of viable alternatives in rail and air transport and subsidies to the auto-industry and becoming completely dependent on oil and building impossible to maintain without subsidies infrastructure, to the major cause of States losing their freedoms and sovereignty to the federal government, which usurped power and is destroying every freedom of every US citizen with this Trojan Horse of subsidized highway infrastructure.
DARPA helped us build the Internet as we know it today
- DARPA took an off the shelf idea of packet switching from telcos and POTS and applied it to already existing computer networks (yes, computers and computer LANs existed prior to TCP/IP, imagine that?!) Sure, DARPA did some good, but if US government was limited to research in sciences there wouldn't have been any economic disasters that the government has caused and is causing now, we wouldn't be talking about loss of freedoms in US, so that's a red herring.
from establishing minimal wage
- which should not exist. With millions out of work, with all sorts of regulations that punish employers for employing people in USA and taxing and regulating and inflating and subsidizing monopolies, why is there a surprise US is in such shit in terms of economy? Minimum wage is a terrible idea, that caused loss of many jobs and cause rise in tuition fees, as people were no longer hired right after school, because they weren't worth paying over minimum wage, but paying them that didn't make economic sense, all while this minimum wage law destroyed apprenticeships.
setting fire codes
- none of federal government's business.
I don't see anyone leaving this country because they feel the government is too oppressive
- Jim Rogers? I left because of lack of economic freedoms and observing the fall of USA to become the next USSR, and as I was born in USSR I can't imagine living in a new one.
usually twice as much and don't forget the artificially low cost of gas here.
- my corporation in Canada only paid 18% taxes.
In Cyprus it's now paying less than 10%.
As to gas prices - well obviously, USA highway subsidies are closely tied to USA energy policy and the wars on 'terror', which ensure lower gas prices. Empires need their cheap gas, don't they?
You can't handle the truth.
That's assuming an equal cut. Stating that we need to reduce Federal government and including the caveats of making it do what it should be doing and stopping it from doing what it should not be doing, means that we'll be getting rid of entitlements, putting infrastructure and other projects at the State level, and leaving the defense of the country (and world) and how to pay for that at the Federal level. Certainly, we can't go back to the late 1700's and early 1800's where we figured out some things really do need to be centralized. But there are things that we can repeal that have been around since the late 1800s that should not have been at the Federal level to begin with.
the point should be that 98/100 senators don't care about your state which != 48/50...fractions are even more fun when used correctly...
When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed - Marilyn Manson
Why is it that all of a sudden reducing government (which has only grown over the years) is tantamount to becoming anarchy? Some nutjobs do believe in almost no government, most of us believe in a weaker federal government because what people in California want doesn't matter to people in Ohio, and what people in Ohio want doesn't matter to people in Florida. Example: Federal law has it that we can't use marijuana for medicinal purposes. California is in violation of that law, but most Californians don't care, and a lot of people outside of California would like to move there specifically for that. Wouldn't it make sense that people outside of California not have a say in what happens in California? This kind of bullshit happens all the time. It's about granularity. Small democracies work way, way better than big ones. It makes no sense to have the biggest, most diverse, least related group of voters doing the most powerful governing.
The federal government, as the least representative government of any specific person does a whole hell of a lot it was never intended to do. It's not a matter if government should do it, it's a matter of if a government so far removed should do it. If every single person in Montana wanted to opt out of Social Security in favor of their own locally run version, where do the assholes in the rest of the states get off telling them how to run their lives? If you want to be a dictator to the minority, instead of respect differences of opinion, maybe you should leave. Your ideas of how the government should be run are further out of touch with our laws than small government fans. You obviously don't have the support to change the laws or the constitution would have been ammended to make a lot of these illegal, overreaching programs legal, so you get out. There is nothing stopping any state from implementing any of the federal programs for themselves, they just want to impose it on everybody else whether they agree to it or not so they can get the benefit of other state's resources. That is the evil of strong central government, that is the purpose of the electoral college, and that is why changes to the constitution require more than a simple majority. But you can get around all of that by simply ignoring the constitution, and that's what we as a country have done. Somehow the people that don't support it want to send us back to a third world country? No, not at all. But I guess it's easier for you to cover your ears and scream than to challenge your own beliefs.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
If you don't' see a way to perform a peaceful revolution in the United States, then you are advocating anarchy, in my opinion. The peaceful transfer of power has been a staple of the government and rights of US citizens. We are fortunate that when we cast our vote, we should not have fear of retribution for our vote (freed black panthers situation is noted). The winners do not round up the losers and take them out back to never be seen again.
If things are not going your way, convince enough people to vote the way you want. (Not an easy thing, certainly.)
My, you are persistent
- well, I am not your president, so what do you care?
raping of resources
- I don't see raping, I see people developing their economy. Everything else is secondary to that until the point is reached, where there is enough wealth to start caring about the environment. Just ask the people in the poorest nations what is the most important thing - environment or food? Only wealthy economies with large amounts of wealth and production can start caring about anything beyond food and minimum comforts.
impressive social inequities
- that's what free market capitalism was fixing, as the people were poor before free market capitalism of USA, but they became wealthy in a wealthy economy as US freedoms allowed them to become wealthy, not due to anything that any government could do, as government does not create wealth.
You can't handle the truth.
I know in the past I've argued with you over politics, but damn if you don't make a lot of sense in this story. It's a damned shame that your extremely interesting and informative posts are sitting at +1, when inane comments with nothing but strawmen are sitting at +4.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
If Texas got serious about secession, I would move there. I'm already half considering it as it is.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
No, not just taxes. It's about regulations of business, labor laws, minimum wage laws, everything that government does that I am against and I will always vote against all of it with my vote and with my money and with my feet.
Your comments as always concentrate on the messenger and have nothing to do with the message.
You can't handle the truth.
that comparison holds up is if Hobbits were as virulently racist as the Tea Baggers. Seriously; there are more minorites in an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog than any attending a Tea Bagger rally. Be honest; if polled, around 90% of Baggers would state they believe Obama isn't a Christian or a US citizen or both. Their rallying cry wasn't "Budget!", it was "Ni**er!!".
Yeah, I think Congressmen make more than the average salary. Independently wealthy would have to take a pay cut to get in there, most average people would get a pay raise.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
I'm not convinced that it is the quantity of government, but rather its specific content. The government is doing things that it should not, and not doing things that it should. Reducing the size of government might reduce the number of things it is doing that it should not, but I assure you the other side of this imbalance will only get worse, because the government will likely also stop doing several things that it should be doing.
Well put! The programs that are Constitutional should not be slashed. The programs that are not Constitutional need to be eliminated.
Government has a purpose. Our government's purpose is spelled out plainly in the Constitution. Anything beyond that violates the Constitution per the 10th Amendment. However, I do believe that the government should not be limited to what's currently in the Constitution, but if it needs to do more, there is an amendment process that will allow for whatever expanded powers the federal government needs.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
+1? No no, you should visit this thread tomorrow. The total moderation of my comments shouldn't exceed -5 (that's with a minus.)
You can't handle the truth.
There are very few federal roads, even the interstates are maintained by the states. They can fund that themselves.
Part of the goal for the Interstate Highway System was to support land transportation for national defense. National defense shouldn't be something farmed out to the states.
He actually thinks being from Texas is a source of pride instead of a shameful laughingstock.
It's not so much that people believe only the Federal Government can come up with the money for certain things as it is a subtle redistribution of wealth to make sure that low population states don't turn into bankrupt republics. Sure, if federal grants went away and the states had to fend for themselves, places like New York or California would just up the state tax rate by a few percent (after much political wrangling, no doubt) and be fine. Most people in those states would probably see little or no difference in their overall (state and federal combined) tax burdens, some might even see it lower. Places like Montana and Alaska would have a serious problem. They simply don't have the tax base to recover the lost revenue. At least not without substantial increases in state tax rates. By percentage they may not eat up as much of the federal money as more populous states, but per capita they get a level of support from the rest of us.
The other issue I see with states taking on more of the burden (as a center-left resident of a very red state) is that in general Republican controlled states don't seem interested in taking up the ball of government service and running with it. They're constantly trying to trim and reduce state budgets too. For the Republicans that I deal with on a day to day basis, it's not a question of states rights, it's a question of cutting benefits and taxes all around, at every level. If the federal government stopped providing highway funds, Alabama would not say "Oh, we should raise state taxes by a mil so we can recover those funds and keep the roads up". They'd say, "well, the highways are going to suck more now".
All-in-all I'd say that your ideas have more merit than many small government activists and you've given thought to a range of solutions much more reasonable than the usual "Hack budget till it bleeds" attempts I see posted here. To carry those idea through would require a significant level of state and federal cooperation as services were transferred and budgets adjusted to the new reality. I question if that could happen.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
No, the Tea Party seems to be much more like the Easterlings
I am an Easterling you insensitive ...
Seriously, it has been a long time sense I read the hobbit, were there really a people in the book called the Easterlings?
"For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice" -- God
How is your comment not 'shitting on the fellow man', and mine are somehow?
While in this thread I left comments based on ideas, some others left comments based on persona. I like the doublespeak that you are engaged in, carry on.
You can't handle the truth.
Yeah, nothing says "Batshit insane" like wanting a smaller government.
It's really amazing how much hatred the Tea Party drums up by simply being "Not one of us".
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
The Tea Party wasn't even a concept until the Rick Santelli broadcast of 2009.
So, you're saying John McCain propped up, and played to a movement 2 years before it existed?
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
good catch.. me not thinking - no coffee today.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Exactly. People will bitch and moan about the government all day but then they get to drive to work on paved roads with traffic moderation and other amenities.
The Interstate Highway System was created to move military equipment around. It serves a military function and should be funded through the military. The fact that civilians may use it daily is an added perk. All other roads should be purely state funded. That would cut our federal highway budget by a substantial amount. Of course, states would have to raise taxes to pay for the building and maintenance of state highways, so it would end up being a wash to the taxpayer. The difference is that my tax dollars would not be going to build a bridge in Minnesota and Michiganders would not be paying for the road that takes me to work. I would actually have more control over which roads are placed where and if my state doesn't think roads are worth maintaining, than we can use the tax dollars saved to repair our cars. It's OUR CHOICE!
There are several superfund sites in my state left over by the mining industry when it was policing itsself for years and years. Now who has to clean the mercury out of the aquifer so these ignorant a-holes can drink clean water? It isn't the company that created the mess I can tell you that for sure and it isn't the state government.
Actually, it is the state government. The state should have taxed the mine enough money to clean up the site. After the site was cleaned up, any left over money should have gone back to the company that owns the mine. This tax refund would encourage the company to be good stewards to begin with. If the state didn't tax that mine to begin with... well that's the state's problem. I'll bet they'll tax it next time! Either way, if I never used coal from a mine in West Virginia, my tax dollars shouldn't be used to pay for the cleanup of a WV coal mine. If I did use that coal, the price would have been inflated to pay the taxes used for the cleanup. Remember, companies don't pay taxes; customers do.
The Federal government does have a very needed purpose in the lives of the people and anyone that doesn't think so is completely ignorant.
I don't live in Boston. Billions of federal tax dollars went for the "Big Dig" there. How is the "Big Dig" a "very needed purpose" in my life? I've never seen it. I'll never drive through it. Why did I help pay for it? Why can't Boston, or the state of Massachusetts pay for that? They are the ones benefiting from it. The state government can do a better job of filling those "very needed purposes" to the people of that state than the federal government can.
I'm not saying everything they do is great, but there are some things that the market simply wouldn't care to do even if they had the opportuninty to do so.
Not the market. State and local government. If the product crosses state lines, then the feds get involved.
Safe food? Government. Safe housing? Government. Safe infrastructure? Government. Clean air and Water? Government. State government can only do so much and a lot of what it can do is pretty ineffectual when you consider the broader implications of interstate commerce.
You said the magic words, "interstate commerce". If food crosses state lines, it falls under federal regulation. But if I want to sell my world famous tomato sauce at a local farmer's market, the feds should stay out of it. You could say the same for air and water to a lesser extent as both tend to cross state lines. Although, if a city gets its water from a lake, I don't see how the feds could get involved. If a state pollutes a river that flows into another state, that other state should sue the state or company that produces the pollution in federal courts. If pollution from a power plant pollutes another state, the polluted state should sue. However, they would need to prove t
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The grandparent was referring to Somalia being in what we in the US consider a state of anarchy, but in fact most of the country has fallen under traditional tribal leadership and obeys tribal law for their various tribes and the central government has dissolved. No tribal leader has the influence or power to take control of the central government, so there is no central government, which has led to some areas being in a state of lawlessness. In some ways that is not necessarily a bad thing, because depending on who is in power, it could be a very oppressive dictatorship (think Taliban).
As for the 10th amendment, it is and pretty much always has been filigree with little substance - States are considered subordinate to federal law in all cases, which is understandable in some ways - for example, the South could potentially still have slavery if it weren't for the government stepping in. Before you argue that slaves are human and should therefore have rights under the constitution, remember that up until the end of the civil war slaves were considered more like an animal than a human (by the South).
Slavery is banned by the Constitution so the feds could get involved.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
48/50 US Senators don't care about you or your state
There are 100 US Senators, not 50. Each state gets 2.
Correct, I meant 49/50. I guess I'll have to forgive that 57 states comment.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Yeah, why doesn't the Tea Party use that time machine and travel back to complain about the Federal spending?
Oh wait, it didn't even start to exist until 2009. And you know this. Looks like you're trying to manipulate people through lies of omission.
Unless you honestly believed that the Tea Party has been in existence since the 80s.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Your ideas are based on the one single ideology to leave the unfortunate to rot in the streets - and to gleefully watch over it. You made that abundantly clear in hundreds of posts. Me, I am just insulting you. I know what you are. You have no ideas worth discussing, because your frame of mind is lightyears outside of civilization. Equating me insulting you with you wishing to cancel the social contract is just one more example for how far you are disconnected from humanity.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Is a reminder that any man who would be part of a plan that risked placing Palin in the Oval Office in the event of his statistically imminent death is barely qualified to run a hotdog stand. He should have attracted less derision if he introduced a pony as his sexual partner and running mate.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Assuming you guys are talking about McCain's 2008 Presidential campaign, that was indeed before the Santelli rant, which happened on 2/19/2009.
You can't insult me with your comments, you only insult me with your presence, that I have to bear it in this world.
You can't handle the truth.
Yeah, that summarizes it, doesn't it? The mere presence of anyone dissenting from you, it hurts, no? Your callousness, your open disregard for anyone else, your barely concealed hatred for anyone that does not operate on your "give me mine, fuck yours!" attitude. As long as some of us are around that are not like you, you are constantly reminded that your attitude is sociopathic. And that burns in that small remainder of your consciousness. It burns, no? But be at peace, if you get yours, we will finally die in the gutters and you'll have your sociopath utopia - until someone stronger comes around and shits on you. Savor the taste, then, and think of us.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
I read that Pakistan is closer to the libertarian ideal than Somalia, btw.
Yeah, because what Libertarians advocate for is a power-hungry theocracy which executes rape victims.
You're either trolling, or you're seriously out of touch with reality.
It's not about dissent, it's about stupidity. What is intolerable is stupidity.
As to 'give me mine, fuck yours' - nonsense, I earn mine, earn yours. There is nothing burning anywhere in my conscious, it's clear. It's your conscious that should be burning, as you want the world to descend into poverty through government oppression.
You can't handle the truth.
I agree with ArcherB; when people complain government is too big, immediately people jump into Washington Monument Syndrome and claim that shrinking government will take away the really valuable things that most people want... but more than that, it conflates different kinds of tax revenues and where and how they are collected and what they are used for.
If you take a look at the huge debate going on in Washington right now, you don't hear people complaining about gasoline taxes - which is what is supposed to be used for transportation infrastructure. In fact, despite the very high cost of gasoline (from a U.S. perspective), I don't hear people complaining about the fact that the government is making more revenue off a gallon of gasoline than the oil companies.
One of the reasons we can't have honest political discourse in this country is the knee jerk reactions to some people's stances:
too much government != no government
lower taxes != no taxes
government spends too much != no fire departments, no schools, no police, no roads, no nothing!
What he's saying is most taxes should be local. If that means the state government keeps track of the mining industry, so be it. Most local roads and transportation infrastructure should be done at the local level (except perhaps interstates and agencies like the FAA). There were half a dozen stimulus projects making major upgrades to intersections in my town... the upgrades (what's finished, anyway) are awesome... but here's the rub: I would have paid an extra $0.02/gallon in local taxes and not burdened people in Alaska and Hawaii with millions of dollars in road upgrades done in my little town in GA. Why should someone in CA care about fixing up a park in Lilburn, GA? If the people in Lilburn, GA want to fix it up, they should fix it up... it's really just that simple.
That's the kind of spending people complain about - 95% of governance should be at the local (state and below) level in times of peace (which we, more or less, are, despite troop deployments). If they'd stuck by the constitution and by the 10th amendment, the federal government wouldn't be in the mess it's in now, and all the while they could still be protecting you and me from the big businesses that don't "play fair." Win-win.
It's not even that we'd necessarily be paying less taxes... just paying more to the cities and states and less to the federal government. I have 1/330 millionth voice in the federal government. I have a 1/10 millionth voice in GA... I have a 1/790 thousandth voice in Gwinnett County, and I have a 1/12 thousandth voice in Lilburn, GA. THAT'S why governance should come more from the local levels.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The 10th has been effectively trumped by the Interstate Commerce Clause. Which is probably the single largest reorienting of power in the country's history. If anyone realized what was happening at the time, it should have started a revolution.
I wonder if that was the intent of using the ICC, or if that's just how it has turned out; but the federal consolidation of power is absolutely been garnered by the expansion of that power beyond it's clear intent.
--
$tar -xvf
The hobbits are NOT just the members of the fellow ship of the ring but the entire people who believed that if they didn't mind the outside world the outside world wouldn't mind them. The majority of hobbits wanted nothing to do with the outside world problems. Only when the troubles came to them and a few hobbits helped them did they finally make a stand when they had no other option. Scouring of the Shire, the bit that did NOT make it into the movie.
Really kid, READ a book. Just once, it won't bite.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Even if the practical stumbling blocks DrgnDancer pointed out could be overcome, there is still a very large political barrier. The highway system is a perfect example. You ever wonder why the drinking age in every single state is 21? B/c the Federal government came in years ago and said "You want funds for your highways? Drinking age needs to be 21". Giving states money is how the Federal government affects policies that they technically have no say in. They have no desire to reduce that influence by passing some of the purse strings back to the stats.
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
No. It would not, unless, of course, you have some facts to back up this remarkable assertion.
Well, I know that the total of federal, state, and local governmental spending was 6.9% of GDP around 1900. I also know that projections for this year are for that to be 40%. So, if one assumes that what has happened in the past isn't impossible, then one should conclude that government could be much smaller. Possibly the GP's claim of 1/10 is an exaggeration, but if one compares the 1/10 claim to your "can [not] operate on a tiny fraction of it's current revenue. Not even close" then I think I would have to side with the 1/10. After all, 6.9% is one-sixth of 40%.
No? Didn't think so.
I just wanted to mention this in order to say that I find it extremely irritating. By saying this you've claimed that it is absolutely certain that no evidence could possibly be presented to support the assertion. I have an image in mind of a dog scurrying away with its tail between its legs. It's as though you want to assert your dominance so completely that you prohibit anyone from gainsaying you. Well, I find it irritating.
I mean that it's absurd to suggest that the government we want can operate on a tiny fraction of it's current revenue.
The government we want? I believe that the government I want can operate on a tiny fraction of its current revenue. Perhaps it's the government you want that is incapable of doing so.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
"Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people"
This section makes no sense whatsoever.
Which "American people"'s policy would they have to abide to, by law? In what world do you live that you think there is a common healthcare policy for all of the people across the land? If you want to be in the business of writing policy, learn how a basic contract works, first.
--
$tar -xvf
If you want the government to run a lot cheaper, be prepared for a very scary government where corruption is very common. A lot of the government funded money goes into making sure that it isn't abused.
Up to a point, auditors and inspectors pay for themselves.
We haven't reached that point yet and entrenched interests constantly fight to prevent us from reaching it.
Worse, leaders do not have the will to deal with the steady trickle of scandals uncovered by auditing anything the size of the US Government.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
And that works not at all for the three things our federal government spends >75% of its budget on: defense, health care, and social security. Is Mississippi going disown protection from the US Army? Does it make the slightest bit of sense to have a "young whuppersnapper" state with no social security and an "old fart" state that everyone moves to when they're 65? This would make it impossible to have such programs at all (including an Army), or at best would make people a prisoner of whatever state they were lucky enough to be born in. Forget about the problem of Mississippi's toxic waste and air pollution flowing into the next state over.
Do you guys think these things through at all?
All right, you caught me, I substituted flash point for autoignition temperature. I try to avoid both of them.
It's a pretty common mistake. Most people don't understand flash point. Its name doesn't really help either.
I mean that it's absurd to suggest that the government we want can operate on a tiny fraction of it's current revenue.
What's this "We" kimosabe?
You have an idea of the type of Government YOU want. This does not grant you the ability to extend this desire to all Americans.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
And yet, you voted with your feet to go to Switzerland, land of regulation and regulation-loving people. Again, please don't vote.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I earn mine, earn yours
Ah, the classic libertarian/randian fallacy: that everything you achieve in life is 100% due to your own actions, and no one else's. If that were truly the case, you could live like a king in the various places in the world that lack anything like a central government. I'm still waiting for you to move to any one of them and fulfill your dream (hint: Switzerland is not it. It's pretty much the opposite of it).
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
If you draw a paycheck, you'll notice that it has much more than just one number on it. Your failure to read those numbers does not mean tha they are obfuscated.
If you don't draw a paycheck, then you are making estimated tax payments at least every quarter, and cutting a check each time. That's four times a frequently as you recommend. While the instructions may be obscenely difficult to read and follow, the cutting of the check is not obfuscated at all.
As I said, you have nothing to say on the idea and your message is limited to ad-hominem attacks, which are completely pointless and irrelevant, but it doesn't matter, it doesn't change the message.
As to 'everything I achieved is 100% mine' - well, it's certainly 0% yours.
You can't handle the truth.
No federally dictated minimum wage, taxes are falling (though I prefer Cyprus taxes better), that's just to start, oh, and I am voting, I am always voting.
You can't handle the truth.
Not exactly true. The only "economic freedom" roman is caring about, judging by his posting history, is the freedom to shit on his fellow man from a high perch, unchecked and unchallenged.
I don't know what roman was referring to, but if you think "keeping what I earned through my own labor, innovation and investments" = "shitting on my fellow man from a high perch," then I'd love to shit on you all day, every day.
My, you are persistent
- well, I am not your president, so what do you care?
Really? I so thought you were!
.. the hobbits won.
The point you're missing is that $40 Billion doesn't even buy you the government of a small state like Norway or Belgium. It buys you the government of a state like Vietnam. And putting things at the state level doesn't mean squat. Who suddenly pays for the much larger state budget? The same taxpayer who was paying the federal government. Except now, you're doing it with less economies of scale and less standardization.
That's a great idea to turn the US into a Banana Republic.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
You mean keeping what you earned by benefiting from the whole society around you, all the infrastructure and background services it provided you? No, cannot be, it is all YOURS, you are the sole prodigy that came up out of nothing with no help at all, so you are DESERVING to KEEP IT ALL! Right? But thanks for making it clear. The mentality of a sociopath.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
We tried that voluntary stuff back when we had the Articles of Confederation. It didn't work out so well.
It started back in Team Fortress Classic
Of course you have nothing to say. We knew that. By the way, asshole, this is an insult, not an ad hominem. We are not saying "roman is an asshole, therefor his arguments have no merit", we are saying "roman's arguments are prima facie worthless, but, as he won't engage his two remaining braincells at any time, he is an asshole." Just plainly insulting you - that's not a fallacy, that's a rhetorical tactic. For the lulz.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
My state pays more to the government than it collects as do 90% of the blue states in the union. I also happen to work for the state so I know the limits of what the state is allowed to do. So in your model, a company from Va. comes to my state and mines gold then leaves a huge mess to clean up. The company then leaves a huge toxic mess and goes back to Va. My state goes after said company for the cost of the cleanup. There are 2 scenarios here under your schema: 1. Said company cannot be pursued because it is a Va. company and my state has no actual juridsiction over it or 2. Said company then dissolves the corporation and reforms under a different name leaving no actual entity available for recovery of funds. (This is what actually happens) Then my state is left with the associated costs of cleaning up a huge toxic strip mining mess. Oh wait, the state doesn't have enough money to pay for the clean up because the Va. company signed a contract stating they would be a good corporate citizen and not do what they just did. Does that then mean my state could go after Va. for the cost? If not, then who do we turn to? Like it or not, we are a union, not a series of countries, and no matter how much your cry "states rights" nothing is going to change the fact that we need a large centralized entity to watch over the country as a whole. Keep in mind, I'm not saying there is no place for states rights, but there has to be a federal government to oversee things like the military and international trade. You can't trust each state to properly take care of it's people as it is, do you think it would get better if we gave them all the power?
I got here through a series of tubes
Left leaning anarchists (e.g. Bakunin) predicted the tyranny that would follow if a Marxist revolution ever occurred. I'd say that makes them at least a bit more realistic than Marx was.
The secret hope of left leaning anarchists is little more than seeing todays successful democratic socialist governments taken to their logical conclusion. More direct democracy and more direct ownership of the means of production.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If you hate government so much, move to Somalia. Seriously.
Shame this is modded troll. There are quite a lot of posters here of a 'libertarian' nature who express the opinion that 'all tax is theft' or at least would like to reduce taxes to the point where governments would be unable to be effective in any sense - and the logical conclusion of going down that road is something quite like Somalia.
To summarize: All Governments suck to some extent; having no government generally sucks even more.
When have the Republicans? When Mitch McConnell woke up on the day of his "negotiation" with Obama and published an open letter about how he refuses to raise taxes? "I'm going to a negotiation but refuse to negotiate!" Lovely. We pay this man hundreds of thousands of dollars for this.
Tax bills must originate in the House -- which the Republicans control. The only reason they bothered writing a bill is because they knew they could shove it through and force the Democrats to vote against it. They knew it had no chance whatsoever of actually becoming law. This is somehow a plus to you?
Probably because the "options" have been "give us our way or fuck off." I personally enjoyed the Republicans' two step plan. Step one: Give us exactly what we want and in return we allow you to advance to step two. Step two: Unlike all evidence up until now, we really really promise to negotiate with you this time. Really. Scout's honor. Will you get any part of your way? Oh hells no, we couldn't do that!
The Republican party has been hijacked by the Tea Party, and they're betting that when the shit hits the fan they won't be the ones blamed. Frankly I'm not so sure. I think this is the first and only election cycle they will be relevant and there is no part of me whatsoever that will be sad about that.
You forgot:
MSNBC: Tea Partiers are FOOLS. Obama offered them shit and they turned him down. Idiots.
CNN: It is obvious the Tea Party doesn't understand how things work. That was some nice brown shit they turned down.
NightLine: Are Tea Party candidates closet shit eaters?
Rachel Maddow: The Tea Party won't eat SHIT! Are they crazy? Everybody likes SHIT!
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
You mean keeping what you earned by benefiting from the whole society around you, all the infrastructure and background services it provided you? No, cannot be, it is all YOURS, you are the sole prodigy that came up out of nothing with no help at all, so you are DESERVING to KEEP IT ALL! Right? But thanks for making it clear. The mentality of a sociopath.
In trade, both parties are enriched, as they both find a greater value in what they got than what they gave. Trade, in itself, automatically benefits society.
Background services? I would voluntarily trade, and pay for such services as I require or see fit. I do so on a daily basis. The fact that the government runs some of these, and so claiming that I would not pay for them because I object to taxation, is a strawman. The government doesn't need to run things. Roads can be privatized (and some are) and I would pay for my use of these roads. Same deal, value for value. And I keep the rest.
A sociopath, or anti-social person, is one who would demand that others contribute to one's benefit through the use of violence. And make no mistake, government force is not eloquence, it is not reason, it is force. It is violence. If I choose non-compliance, the government will use force, increasing it's violence up to and including deadly force, asserting their dominion over me. You advocate slavery.
I can't think of a single government function that is supported by "all" (for absolutely any reasonable fraction of "all") of the American people. Social Security? Gone. Medicare? Nixed. NASA, FDA, FCC, Department of Transportation? Won't stand a chance.
Warning: Contents May Be Flammable. Keep Out Of Reach Of Children.
As I said, I find your existence to be insulting, not what you write here, that's because existence of stupidity is insulting, as it should be.
You can't handle the truth.
If they were talking about taking your "gubmint" check and making you get off your ass and fend for yourself, you'd be pissed, too.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I don't have a teleprompter, so I am disqualified on that basis alone.
You can't handle the truth.
Well they were all about the decimal system really...
Note that the USA collects the least tax revenue of any OECD country [wikipedia.org] (as a % of GDP).
From your source..
In the most recent year, total government expenditures, including consumption and transfer payments, equaled 38.9 percent of GDP. Spending increases totaled well over $1 trillion in 2009 alone, an increase of more than 20 percent over 2008. Stimulus spending has hurt the fiscal balance and placed federal debt on an unsustainable trajectory. Gross government debt exceeded 90 percent of GDP in 2010.
I am all for entitlement reform, but note that many of these programs are self-funded through pay-roll. i.e.: people pay into them through-out there lives, and then collect the benefits in old age.
Well, no. The supreme court has ruled that is a particular tax that was enacted at the same time as a particular benefit program. Your acts of paying in convey to you no vesting whatsoever. Just to give you an example of what I mean, if I buy a private life insurance program I can borrow against it or will it to my heirs. I can't do that with OASDI or SSI. The legislature could repeal the benefits tomorrow (logically, not practically) and you would have to continue paying, but could not withdraw once you become old. Similarly, they could repeal the tax tomorrow, but continue the benefits. If a private company were to try the former, then you could sue and, if nothing else, gain ownership of their property if any. If a private company were to try the latter...well, they wouldn't.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
I agree with both of you. By the way, I generally consider myself left of center, but I'm in Upstate New York. Basically, rather than cutting services wholesale I'd like New York to have a choice of keeping the services it wants, and keeping more of the tax money. Currently the federal government receives far more in taxes from NY than is spent here. If the federal government cut services and forced states to pick up the slack, NY could probably do it. Eventually federal taxes would go down as the debt crisis passed and we ended one or two of the current wars. State taxes would likely go up, and so long as the increase is in income tax but not property tax, I can live with that. (I have a job, I pay income tax, but property taxes in Monroe County are already too high).
I think that the federal government would resist giving up their power, but it's power that doesn't rightfully belong to them. Plus, by concentrating all of this power in the federal government I think we've made it more difficult to get things done, and allowed fanatical laws to be applied nationwide.
For states with serious financial imbalances, there would certainly be cuts in services and high taxes. For those states, some level of transfer payment could probably be made, though it would be controversial. I think most voters would quickly see the logic of "if it's expensive to live where you live, move". For very conservative states that simply won't spend the money, they'll eventually see the local economic issues caused by businesses leaving. I imagine Texas (which I identify as very conservative financially) would do just fine, because they would be willing to tax to pay for necessary services.
Overall, cutting intergovernmental revenue would force states to decide which services they really need.
As for highways being used for national defense, I think they're used enough for commerce and leisure that the states can justifiably be required to pay for them, even if national defense is a side benefit.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
There is an obvious direct relationship between the desirability of a country, and the tax-revenue they collect. Norway collects twice the tax as the USA, and they are richer per capita, and have a very stable society. (Mass killings happen everywhere, and are a timeless phenomenon.)
I did a little more digging around in your source and found the following tidbit regarding Zimbabwe:
In the most recent year, total government expenditures, including consumption and transfer payments, equaled 97.8 percent of GDP. Underinvestment has led to inadequate infrastructure. The wage bill is high and climbing.
By your theory Zimbabwe ought to be a veritable utopia.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Well, the thing with taking democratic socialism to its conclusion is along the lines of Schumpeter then, I guess. That's one of the brighter projections of the future, indeed. I have to admit that I am not that versed in the classic theory of anarchism, I was working from my experience with current examples that I had met. I don't know much about Bakunin, in particular I have no idea how he would ensure that his egalitarian anarcho-socialist utopia would stay stable. How do you prevent concentration of power and downfall of such a system? All I ever got was a belief in an essentially good nature of the individual - but I kinda doubt that this is reality. If you got anything to enlighten me there - feel free to do so. I am interested.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
How is the "Big Dig" a "very needed purpose" in my life? I've never seen it. I'll never drive through it.
There's a very good chance that someday you or someone you care for will be treated by a doctor who had to commute that route to one of the huge number of medical schools in the Boston area. He'll have retained more of the material due to the extra half hour per day he spent catching up on sleep instead of sitting behind a wheel listening to WAAF. Also, anything you ever purchase that had to travel that route will potentially be cheaper due to lower transportation costs.
That, and thousands of other efficiencies gained by the Big Dig will add up to a huge economic plus eventually. Or in other words, the point many people seem to miss: when your neighbors do better, you do better. Which is kind of the definition of an economy.
Someone had to do it.
I see the current crop of Republican Tea Party Types as being very much like a cartoon super villain. For example right now they are holding our future and economy hostage and seem perfectly willing to screw us all if they don't get 110% of what they want and 0% of what they don't want. Their priorities are preventing reasonable taxes being re-instituted for the rich and corporations. Now it looks like they are trying to arrange a situation where we have a debt limit crisis every 6 months so they can hold us all hostage over and over. It's like Lex Luthor controls congress and the supreme court.
-- QED
I'm acknowledging the end-game of free-for-alls where no one gives a shit about their fellow man. Sociopaths rise to power.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Because different local populations all have their own brand of stupidity. Countless times the Feds have saved states from the consequences of bad policy, just as countless times state governments have stayed bad policies coming from Washington. Having the two systems offers another check and balance. One system harnesses the best the country has to offer to find the best overall policies. The other harnesses the region-specific knowledge to adapt those policies locally.
Obviously, the system is broken, but it isn't in the way the anti-federalists think. Downsizing the federal government is a simple and wrong solution to many complex problems.
Someone had to do it.
What he's saying is most taxes should be local.
But should it, really? And how local is local?
Number 1, just moving taxes to the state level (or even the county/city level) is not going to fix the budget problem. It just means someone else is responsible for it. Number 2, a significant number of states manage to have a balanced budget only because of help from the federal government for infrastructure, health care, education and security. Increasing their budgets while reducing their revenue is going to make the problem worse. Number 3, there is the implicit assumption here that a more local government is more accountable and more transparent, which is nonsense. That is a feature of the people who are in government, not of how many people vote for each representant. Number 4, local governments are actually at higher risk to be inefficient, because now it only takes a few hundred morons to band together to ruin everything. Granted, you also have a higher chance of having an effectively run government, just because you have a small enclave of smart, responsible people working together for the greater common good. But it certainly isn't a guarantee that smaller is better.
Finally, the mantra that government should be more local. How much more local should be? You mention that you have 60 times more influence at the city level than at the county level. Shouldn't the city then get the majority of your taxes? But how do you then build something like the Hoover dam? Pursue criminals across city lines? Well, you could have cities in various counties band together until they get enough money to build something like a dam, or set up a unified police force that that agrees to share information, tools and prosecutions... and now you're right back where you started off: moving things up government chain, because there are huge economies of scale that can't be accessed by city governments.
Not to mention: if you move the government power to small entities like city or even state governments, how do you deal with corporations whose profits exceed the state's revenue and completely dwarf that of county or city governments?
Yes, government isn't always better when it's bigger. But it also certainly isn't always better when it's smaller. The real problem is that the devil is in the detail, and a lot of people can't or refuse to understand that. Then we get shit like some party ideologues holding America's AAA credit rating hostage in order to advance their sophomoric ideas.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Then please move to Cyprus. Or are you saying that you like all the social stability and safety that the Swiss regulations buy you? Like, for example, the various minimum wage agreements hashed out between trade unions and employers in various sectors of the economy, and enforced by the government?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
The Republicans and Democrats compromised once when they agreed to the spending back when they passed this thing called the Budget. This bill is working out how to pay for the spending they already approved.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
If the Congress restricted itself to what the Constitution explicitly grants it, there would be no debt ceiling to raise. Congress has the authority to appropriate money, not to refuse to pay the bills for the things they already spent it on. In fact the 14th amendment specifically says that U.S. debt should never be called into question, which is why dubya should have been censured for his Social Security "IOU" stunt.
But then, when the Constitution doesn't agree with the Teabagger line it can be conveniently ignored, I guess. It's only important when someone can manage to twist it around in some way to give rich people more tax breaks.
Someone had to do it.
Yeah, that chart shows the point at which the Koch-funded spin machine stopped down-playing the deficit and started promoting the mess Obama inherited from Bush--and subsequently made worse--as something terrible. The instant there is a Republican back in the White House deficits will again cease to matter.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Also, Social Security was never envisioned by our Founding Fathers ... I doubt if they would have ever have voted for it.
So? I don't want to live in a country that is governed by long dead patricians. I'd rather that the living run things, and in the here and now, Social Security seems to be well liked and useful (if not implemented as well as we might hope). I don't have a problem with its existence.
The issue isn't any of that stuff that you posted. It's that Goverment Pensions, Social Security, Medicare, and Interest on the Debt account for almost 100% of our current budget. That leaves only 25 billion (less than 1.5%!) for our entire defense department, military, and, well, literally thousands and thousands of programs and agencies. Until we get rid of these four items, we're broke. We could cut the military to $0. Kill off every single social spending program. Get rid of student aid. Stop patrolling our borders. Stop foreign aid. Close down NASA. None of it would make any more difference than spitting on a bonfire. Those four items alone are literally killing our nation, and until we get rid of them entirely, we are doomed.
Well, you seem to be ignoring half of the picture. Why have you forgotten about raising additional revenue? (Which is not to say that we should not address some of our current spending priorities)
We could:
I'd also suggest that we pursue full employment policies; there are too many beneficial effects to ignore. True, it tends to cause moderate inflation, as we discovered in the 60's and 70's, but our experience since then demonstrates, I think, that inflation is the lesser evil. COLA adjustments would be needed for payrolls, benefits, etc., of course. This would also help substantially with the crushing debt load that most individual Americans carry.
As for our spending, I'd suggest cutting the military significantly. We might merely shift that money elsewhere -- infrastructure, jobs programs, NASA, etc. -- but doing so would have a nice side benefit of
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
A sociopath, or anti-social person, is one who would demand that others contribute to one's benefit through the use of violence.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
If I remember correctly, they never did agree on a full budget and have been piece-mealing it ever since.
You mean like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder#Millon.27s_subtypes ?
* covetous antisocial - variant of the pure pattern where individuals feel that life has not given them their due.
whatever happens between private entities is none of my concern, they are not the government. Cyprus is where I keep my hq, I like Swiss climate more.
You can't handle the truth.
We could double taxes at this point and still be in the red.
And, yes, I left out the military to make a point as these four are retirement and support services-related, and of course interest on the debt, which isn't going away. We have four single items out of thousands that are enough to cripple us. If we count the military, we'd have to raise taxes by almost 30% to just cover those five items. And none of that includes welfare or unemployment programs and the like. If we dropped the entire defense budget to $0, it still would not be enough If we paid $0 for any government aid or farm subsidies or welfare programs, it still wouldn't make a dent in the problem.
We're broke and nobody wants to address the three big items that are causing us to bleed out. It's like complaining about a paper cut when you have a 3 inch hole in your leg that's caused by a flesh-eating virus. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger and still everyone just comes up with idiocy that amounts to little band-aids and minor changes. Everything you listed sounds nice, but it's simply impossible to make any of it work at this point. We have to amputate at this point to save the patient's life.
Or when we go bankrupt and it all comes crashing down, it will be gotten rid of anyways. Just, the chances that our republic survives intact are mighty slim if it actually gets to that point. I personally would rather live without medicare, social security, or pensions rather than have to go through what Argentina did.
If you read what the guy said, he suggested collecting the cleanup costs up front, and then refunding the difference to the company.
Of course, that would require some intelligence on the part of the state governments, which is unlikely to happen.
>>Note that the USA collects the least tax revenue of any OECD country (as a % of GDP).
Because in most other OECD countries, health care is included in the tax burden and services of the government. Add our health care expenses to our taxes, and you'll see we're very heavily "taxed".
It's also important to point out that government expenses have risen 50% in the last 5 years, but revenues have dropped 20% in the same time period (though it is projected to be back at parity next year).
So when the Republicans say it's a spending problem, they're right. When Democrats say that we need to increase revenues/taxes, well, maybe a little. Certainly not by the 50% we'll need to balance the bipartisan drunken-sailor spending spree.
We could double taxes at this point and still be in the red.
Are you sure? The 2010 federal budget was about $3.4 billion, and 2010 federal tax receipts were about $2.1 billion. Doubling taxes -- your suggestion -- sounds like it might just work, without having to reduce spending. If we also reduced spending, and we could stick to this long enough to seriously pay down our debt, we'd probably be sitting pretty. Better still if we could stick to it even longer so that when we have good times we're building up a rainy day fund.
And, yes, I left out the military to make a point as these four are retirement and support services-related, and of course interest on the debt, which isn't going away.
And other than, perhaps that you oppose cutting the military budget, what point was that, exactly? (Also, federal pensions don't seem to be a big deal, so why'd you include them?)
If we dropped the entire defense budget to $0, it still would not be enough
No, but it would get us much closer. That would bring that 2010 budget down to about $2.8 trillion with $2.1 in receipts. But I don't think that anyone is seriously suggesting disbanding the entire military. It needs substantial cuts, but not outright dissolution.
Everything you listed sounds nice, but it's simply impossible to make any of it work at this point.
Why so glum? The new receipts would take a little while to come in but so long as there's a viable plan in place, it's not as though we couldn't obtain coverage in the interim one way or another. The problem is political is all.
Or when we go bankrupt
That would take a lot of effort, actually. The US isn't like a person or a business. It prints its own money and its debts are denominated in US currency. It would come at the cost of inflation, and it would likely not be repeatable, but the country can't go bankrupt anytime soon unless it done very deliberately.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Then people should be allowed to only fund the portions they believe in, and the parts that can't attract enough support can die.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
The doubling of taxes includes projected future interest and the massive amounts of tax-dodging by corporations through outright lying, money laundering, creative financing, or loopholes. Doubling taxes would generate about 3.5 trillion actually collected.(payroll tax won't go up much if we double corporate and income taxes, and may actually go down a bit due to lost jobs)
I included government pensions as that's also of the same type of spending problem, is listed on that site, and also is pretty much set in stone.
That's the real issue, though. That we have four untouchable programs in the U.S. that alone are enough to cripple us. Also, we do agree that the military should be closer to 50 billion a year. That's plenty for research and to defend ourselves. Nobody is going to actually invade us, after all.
That we are spending at least 600 billion a year on our two wars and other idiocy, and that also isn't helping. The combination of it all just its too much. Something has to change, but absolutely nobody in Congress wants to change it. So the only choices are either for the states to take back their own destiny or a total collapse.
>>We have among the lowest taxes in the developed world in this country, and we have the infrastructure to prove it.
Infrastructure spending is a very small percentage of our budget. All of our transportation funding hovers around 2% or so. (http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/)
The "lowest taxes" thing is just a Democrat talking point. We have one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world (second only to Japan in the OECD - http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/corptaxrates_usvsoecd_state&fed-2011-20110117.pdf). We also don't provide universal health care through our national government, as many other OECD countries do, which means you get to add health care expenses our our "tax burden" to equalize the assessments.
We're taxed quite highly, actually.
The real problem is that spending has gone up 50% in the last 5 years, while revenue has fallen 20% in the same time period (though it is estimated to break even for next year).
Your view of history is downright scary but if you were indeed born in the USSR then it would make sense that you have a very incomplete picture of how the USA developed in the 1800s and early 1900s.
As for corporate taxes I laugh as your assertion given that GE paid zero tax dollars and did billions of dollars in business and is by no means unprofitable. On a smaller scale, my company does a few hundred million and again, pays almost no taxes due to loopholes and reinvestment. When you can afford to pay for a tax lawyer you end up paying almost no taxes, this is why GE pays for an army of them.
Rail in America died not because of the interstate system but because of corruption on a massive scale, see the very definition of robber barren.
Fire codes were established because private businesses were building unsafe buildings which resulted in the deaths of thousands of people by the early 1900s. They are very much necessary. Minimum wage effectively ended slavery and serfdom as workers could no longer be taken such advantage of. This is the product of textile mills with their corporation owned towns that paid their workers just enough to pay rent ensuring that they would forever work in the textile mill. There is no reason to think lifting it now would be anything but bad for the people already hit the hardest by the recession. Apprenticeships still exist today so I'm not sure how you think they were destroyed. I myself have an apprentice and many people in my family have gone through the electrical apprenticeship process. It is quite alive and well, you just have to pay people enough to live.
As for Canada as it sounds like that is where you moved to. They have the exact same corruption of their process through monopolies gaining significant power and influence. I give the Canadian people a lot of credit for standing up to some of the more ridiculous proposals brought forth but Canada is headed in the same direction especially if the U.S. defaults on its debt.
Given the success of the American economy immediately after the great infrastructure project of the 30's and 40's I'm not sure how you can claim that it destroyed anything. Rail systems were already on their way out at that time and following it America saw more growth than any country ever before it.
Now for tech history which is always fun, the telcos got packet switching from DARPA, not the other way around. DARP created it, they then worked with universities around the world to establish Arpanet, the world's first packet switched network. TCP/IP followed almost a decade later. DARPA has been responsible for a lot of the technical innovation in use today as are held as THE example of why the government should be involved in the research process.
One last thing, the U.S. in the 1800s was not a creditor nation at all. Until the early 1900s we weren't on the radar of any other nation. Our contributions to WWI set the stage for operating in the world theater but again, we weren't really that special until WW2 when our manufacturing capacity and military allowed us to supply Britain with weapons, ammo, and vehicles. That set the stage for America as a manufacturing powerhouse through the 1990's where outsourcing began heavily shrinking exports and drastically increasing imports which set us down the path we're currently dealing with. Of course corporate greed and unregulated commerce played huge parts in it as well which are arguments why we need the government to do its job.
I agree with you in principle, but again must point out some practicalities. The reason it would expensive to live in some states is because they have low populations to begin with. Force people out with unreasonable tax burdens and those places will become truly abandoned. This is a) bad for our international image ("Yeah, we used to have 50 states, but after they abandoned Montana and Alaska we couldn't figure out a way to tax the bears") b) a potentially serious issue for agriculture. Remember that the more rural a state is, the lower the population density, and (with a few exceptions where desert or cold make it unfeasible) the more agriculture it supports. If we drive everyone out of Iowa with impossibly high taxes or total lack of government services, we're all gonna be a mite hungry this winter.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I'm acknowledging the end-game of free-for-alls where no one gives a shit about their fellow man.
Again, you're either trolling, or you're seriously out of touch with reality. If the former, please, go away. If the latter, do yourself a favor and try either reading some books on the subject, or having an honest discussion with a libertarian. Either way, your current strawman arguments are completely pointless.
the issue is that they want to do it ALL at once
To do it all at once would be to not raise the debt ceiling, ever again, thereby forcing our annual deficit to suddenly go from $1.5 trillion to zero.
You're right, that would be quite a shock to the system, causing much short-term pain; and I haven't heard anybody, no matter how far on the right, propose that.
I have, however, done a thought experiment about it.
If you're going to stop spending money on things that you shouldn't be spending money on, is it better to phase out the improper spending over a period of 10+ years, or to do it all at once?
Depends whether you want to minimize your short-term pain, or the total amount of pain that accumulates in future years. Because if you phase out the spending too gradually, our national debt keeps increasing -- from the current $14 trillion, to $30 trillion and beyond. We, and our kids and grandkids, will have to pay the interest on that enormous sum, every year -- probably forever, because after paying the interest you're exhausted and you can't pay down any principal.
If you really think about it, we are stealing from our kids and grandkids by not biting the bullet and doing it all at once.
And then there's the likelihood that future Congresses, any time they're not faced with an immediate crisis, will return to their old ways and not honor the restrained spending plans agreed to by previous Congresses. (It's not accurate to call them spending "cuts," because they aren't cuts, they are merely smaller increases in government spending. So I'll generously call them "restrained spending plans," not cuts.)
If that happens, we may be looking at a $45 trillion debt 10 years from now, not $30 trillion.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
That's only true of defense, which unsurprisingly the founding fathers thought of when granting the federal government the power to maintain a standing army. Both healthcare and social security could easily be implemented at lower levels of government. In fact, many other countries have already done this (one example is Canada, where each province has its own healthcare program). Massachusetts had (has?) its own healthcare program as well.
Yup, they're called "California" and "Florida", respectively. Believe it or not, it wouldn't exactly change much.
Not entirely true. For instance, if one state had a social program you paid into all your life and then you move to another state, I see no reason why you shouldn't be allowed (either by law or by ethics) to collect funds from that state even if you are living there no longer. Pensions certainly work this way (after you stop working for a company).
Yes, moreso than most.
We were also the only large, industrialized nation whose manufacturing and infrastructure weren't bombed to cinders during WW2.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
With enough money, it's all too easy. With enough cash, you can get people to support your agenda even if it's the polar opposite of their own best interests. We now have millions of poor and lower middle class Americans who vehemently believe that labor protections are bad, taxing the rich is "stealing", affordable health care is "socialism", that allowing companies to pillage pension funds how the Free Market is meant to work, and that gutting Medicare and Social Security is "good fiscal policy". Keep in mind that this is the same demographic that needs labor protections, as their jobs are generally easy to offshore, will never ever be rich enough to be taxed for $250,000 in income, could easily be bankrupted by an unforeseen medical expense, and will tend to really need the safety net that social security and medicare provide.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
None of the Founding Fathers envisioned a negro President, either. Just sayin'.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
The one that jacks premiums through the roof every year while cutting service, countermands doctor's wishes, and kicks them to the curb as soon as they get a long-term illness. You know, just like the rest of us.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
I mean that it's absurd to suggest that the government we want can operate on a tiny fraction of it's current revenue.
What kind of fat, disgusting, progressive mouse do you have living in your pocket?
LotR was very much pop culture for a few years. Not quite so much these days but honestly if these people know the month much less the year it currently is without it being written in front of them I'd be impressed.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Like Belgium compared to Germany?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why don't you investigate into why there are these two systems you speak of. I'm willing to be once you find that answer, you will not only stop confusing federalism (federalist) but maybe support their ideas in the process.
And BTW, in case you are wandering, it's the federalist who what a smaller federal government, not anti-federalist which I think you just invented out of ignorance.
Huh huh. You said KY Heh heh.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
And who would enforce that law, if the state said "go take a jump, we're keeping it"?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Only one?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Just like Delaware and North Dakota ruined any attempts by states to regulate lending. Some small state would take a dump at the dinner table. "No up front cleanup costs here! We are creating jobs for Americans!"
Then their mess would flow down the river to every other state.
Cheap storage VM.
While I may be able to get behind removing some of the powers and responsibilities that the federal government currently has, it sure as hell wouldn't be through the slash and burn methods that the Tea Party apparently favors. It requires planning and an orderly transfer of control from the federal government to state governments or whoever will be taking over the role. Otherwise we'll have chaos and a lot of people trying to cash in on that. We've had more than enough crap to deal with in the last several years, we don't need that to top it off.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Damn, I wish he WAS!!
Too bad, as he'd be a whole *hell* of a lot better than anyone the American political system is offering up currently for the position. He's certainly demonstrated a far greater understanding of what the US *was* all about than any US politician, or even most of its' citizens.
Sadly, I find any more that I have much more ideologically in common with those survivors from the former USSR and satellite countries that actually understand what freedom is and it's value, and also tyranny and it's horrors, than I do most of my fellow countrymen, many who seem hell-bent on repeating those horrors of tyranny.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
If you can't come up with any reason why that's a bad idea, you're either not thinking very hard or you're an anarchist.
If I were a betting man, I'd lay money on it being both.
"Sure, if federal grants went away and the states had to fend for themselves, places like New York or California would just up the state tax rate by a few percent (after much political wrangling, no doubt) and be fine. Most people in those states would probably see little or no difference in their overall (state and federal combined) tax burdens, some might even see it lower. Places like Montana and Alaska would have a serious problem. "
Well, the ones that get more from the feds than they pay are mostly places like Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and West Virginia. All the most populous states - California, New York, Illinois, Texas, even Florida pay more to the feds than they get. Some of the low-population western states such as Nevada and Wyoming don't break even, or only barely. Others such as the Dakotas, Idaho and Montana get more than they put in. Alaska has gotten more and more over the years - it wasn't breaking even on taxes in the early '80s, now they get $1.84/$. New Mexico would have a problem, as it gets about double what it puts in. The problem is that most expenditures are for salaries one way or another - Los Alamos workers in New Mexico, for instance. So even if the direct aid to the states were cut off, the apportionment of federal spending among the states would not change that much in most cases.
See: Federal Taxes Paid vs. Federal Spending Received by State, 1981-2005
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Passing amendments isn't fashionable, because doing it only gives legitimacy to the idea that government is limited by a constitution. Who wants that?
The constitution has no more ability to bestow or limit power than the people want it to. If the constitution says the federal government isn't allowed to do X, but the people vote for federal representatives who then do X, then the federal government is going to do X. Who's gonna stop 'em? Not the people; they decided they want federal Xing even if they never bothered to update the old document.
Ink on a page has no teeth. We were the teeth. But who bites us?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I've thought of similar. Unluckily it falls down as most normal people can't afford to take 2+ years off of their life. Being self-employed I'd come back to close to zero clients.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I'm sure being free of belligerent neighbours like the UK, France and Germany helped. (If you're really lucky, you get all three!).
And just being big had nothing to do with it at all.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The top rate is meaningless, particularly without mentioning what it actually applies to - what are the exemptions, what are the lower rates, what levels do they kick in, are they counting the "employer's side" of payroll taxes, etc. The meaningful number is what is the actual percent paid of profits. And even that can be gamed by adjusting executive salaries, perks, offshore entities, depreciation scams, etc. US corporations pay very little tax.
For 2009, for instance (latest available) the total federal corporate income tax receipts were only $225,482M vs. $858,164M in payroll taxes, the latter of which were paid disproportionately by people who has moderate to low incomes (and which directly more than paid for those social programs which right-wing idiots claim are going to bankrupt the country, but which in fact have a surplus which finances the deficit in rest of the budget, including all that corporate welfare, pork for weapons and mercenaries sold by the right wingers' firms, and those tax breaks for the rich, and which also take a good deal of the pension and healthcare burden off employers.)
On top of payroll taxes, individual federal tax receipts were over 5 times corporate receipts.
The state rates are even more meaningless, as it is easy to choose a state which not only has no income tax, but which for any large venture will abate property taxes and give other incentives.
The IRS reports that corporations after deducting:
Cost of goods sold
Compensation of officers
Salaries and wages
Repairs
Bad debts
Rent paid on business property
Taxes paid
Interest paid
Amortization
Depreciation
Depletion
Advertising
Pension, profit-sharing, stock, annuity
Employee benefit programs and
Net loss, noncapital assets
from the $6,126B in total receipts (nearly all by corporations with over $250M in yearly receipts)
AFTER deducting all that, the " Other deductions" category ALONE was over $612B in 2008 - almost as big as salaries and wages,($618B), more than twice as big as total claimed net corporate income (if we leave out rent income - $302B, if we also leave out portfolio income, $240B) .
Big corporations are all cheating on their taxes, and big corporations own the economy, the workers, the media and the politicians. Yet the individual middle and lower income taxpayer is somehow supposed to pay more because the corporations and their rich management won't pay their share, even though the taxpayer doesn't have a job anymore because the corporation sent it overseas.
Remind me again why the public has to grant these freeloading traitors corporate charters?
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
>>those tax breaks for the rich
Ah, yes, the mythical tax breaks for the rich.
Unless you're talking about capital gains tax being set lower than the normal income tax level, but there's a reason for that. You may disagree with the reason (it encourages investment-making which leads to growth), but it's not a tax-break per se. When Warren Buffet talks about paying less in taxes than his secretary, he's talking about 1) Percentages, not absolute amounts (which are quite high), and 2) The fact that he's primarily paying capital gains tax instead of income tax.
>>$858,164M in payroll taxes, the latter of which were paid disproportionately by people who has moderate to low incomes
No. Just... no. Educate the fuck out of yourself, dude.
For one thing, philosophically speaking, Social Security and Medicare aren't taxes unless you expect them to go bankrupt in the future. Even still, they do not pay a disproportionate amount. (http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/currentdistribution.cfm)
When it comes to income tax, the lowest quintile makes money off the income tax (-10% tax rate), the next quintile pays next to nothing (3.1%), but the top quintile pays 67.2% of all income tax.
Man, those "tax breaks for the rich" are pretty powerful, aren't they? All those blue-collar workers are sure suffering what with the 3 cents on the dollar they pay to Uncle Sam. And don't get me started on the poor who *collect* money from income tax. When I was making $19k a year as a grad student, I didn't have a lot of spare money, but I never complained about the nonexistent taxes I was paying.
>>On top of payroll taxes, individual federal tax receipts were over 5 times corporate receipts.
Meaningless because they're two different kinds of taxes. Corporations pay taxes on net profits, individuals pay taxes on gross. In a bad economy, corporations don't pay "income" tax (it's really a profits tax), but the fed still gets its piece of pie when the corporations pay for wages, rent, advertising, and all those other "writeoffs" you're talking about.
>>Big corporations are all cheating on their taxes
It's not cheating when you play by the rules. (Though I have reservations about things like Google's Double Irish and the like.) Every dollar that goes into a corporation will trigger a tax event. If the corporation retains it, it pays taxes itself. If they spend it, the people they spend it on pay the tax. The net result is to incentivize spending (mostly on hiring people), which is where the tax ultimately gets paid. It doesn't matter, honestly, to separate the two. While you might be busting a blood vessel over the fact that "people" are paying more than "big businesses", believe me when I say that it's better this way. You don't want corporations retaining all of their earnings and not hiring people.
lol, they can do that even if you're living in the state, and several are threatening to do just that: http://cincinnati.com/blogs/politics/2011/01/27/state-pensions-well-cut-benefits/
But what you ask is exactly one critical role of the federal government: regulating interstate commerce. I would imagine in a case where more and more services are being pushed down to the state level, legal clauses would be built in to protect earned benefits and that law would be upheld by the federal government. There's no reason the implementation of the program itself has to rest at the federal level. They just need to step in to make sure everyone plays nice. And frankly, it's not that all uncommon in decentralized governments. Take a look at Canada. Each province ("state") has its own healthcare law. However, their federal government has a set of guidelines and stipulations that each program must meet. They don't run things at the federal level, they merely moderate.
The Interstate Highway System was created to move military equipment around. It serves a military function and should be funded through the military. The fact that civilians may use it daily is an added perk.
Seriously? You think that the interstate system is a "perk" rather than an essential resource that the economy would suffer greatly without? You really want to let military thinking and values control them?
The rest was tl;dr after that statement.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You seem to ignore the fact that this wealth was gained at the expense of future generations. If you let the "Free Market" run free, it will only look for the short term outcome. Gigantic monocultures, killing diversity and easy fall prey to any vermin. Wastelands where resource were pulled out of the ground with whatever toxic material helped speeding up the process.
While that generated a lot of wealth for 2-3 generations, the future generations most likely have to spent even more money to remove and undo the remnants.
The problem is too many small government authorities and lack of control/oversight by a large central government.
If you have lots of small local government then they usually don't have enough power to really get things done. If central government is too small people are forced to get ripped off by private companies supplying services that otherwise the government would have. Most people get government services at below market cost thanks to subsidy via higher taxation for the rich.
The government is the servant of the people. If it isn't then it is broken and needs fixing, but the general idea is that we all get a better deal and get protection from pure market forces by banding together.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Let me guess, you get your history from the Glen Beck show...
The Federalists were dominated by businessmen and merchants in the major cities who supported a strong national government. The party was closely linked to the modernizing, urbanizing, financial policies of Alexander Hamilton. These policies included the funding of the national debt and also assumption of state debts incurred during the Revolutionary War, the incorporation of a national Bank of the United States, the support of manufactures and industrial development, and the use of a tariff to fund the Treasury.
While it is true that in historical parlance, "federalism" is often contrasted with "centralism" which is an even stronger form of national government, it is also contrasted with with those who want an even weaker federal government, e.g. libertarian "defense only" nutters.
Anti-Federalism refers to a movement that opposed the creation of a stronger U.S. federal government and which later opposed the ratification of the Constitution of 1787
Someone had to do it.
That has always been the big issue with allocating power to the states and was the big holdup to the whole "shopping for health insurance across state lines" bullshit. There will always be one state (usually a more rural one) that will sell it's own people down the toxic river just to entice some mega corp or another to come do business in their state thus forcing the lower common denominator for the rest of the country.
I got here through a series of tubes
I see your google fingers aren't broken, it's just your comprehension skills that are. I like the way you attempt to hide that by inserting what you think is a slam on my intelligence by associating my knowledge with that of the infamously evil Glenn Beck. Oh well, I guess this is why it's fun to watch the special Olympics.
Federalist wanted a stronger government then the articles of confederation allowed, but they were very much a practice of federalism which is focused more on the constitutional contract limiting government at the federal level focusing most of the rights over sovereignty with the states.
The anti federalist simply wanted to keep the Articles of confederation. They are not relevant to today's political realm at all because their opposition was to a constitutional government as apposed to the confederacy. To use it in the sense you did pretends that they are in practice today and we are still debating a constitution over the articles of confederacy. In fact, the federalism of today is actually more aligned with a strict adherence to the the US constitution which would require a smaller government and anything anti to that would be indicative of wanting a larger government.
If you would have made you comment 250 years ago, you would be somewhat right, yet still wrong if you consider the breadth of the US government today. It's the federalist who wanted a strong but limited government and we have went way beyond the constitutional role of government starting with the civil war and greatly exaggerated in the 1930s with FDR.
But go ahead, don't take my word for it, try reading up on federalism in the US, the federalist in the US, and the rest of the anti-federalist in the article you cited. You eventually will get a clue. And if you think that is something that someone who listens to Glenn Beck might know, it might do you some good to actually listen to him or something because that person would still have a better grasp on this then you seem to have.
What if Mindcontrolled is an asshole, AND his arguments are prima facie worthless?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I see you found a pal in roman - share your meds, guys, perhaps it helps.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
I am an anarchist. It used to say so in my slashdot profile, but I'm finding that slashdot has changed so much that I can't figure out how to view those profiles any more.
I make no secret of the fact I'm an anarchist, and I see no more shame in it than being a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent. It's my political point of view, just like anyone else has their political point of view.
I find it interesting that you seem to believe a person could only be an anarchist if they don't think very hard. I came to my beliefs after much thought.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Maybe you need to watch the news. There is no such thing as the "Obama plan" and he therefore cannot have presented it to anyone.
I find it interesting that you seem to believe a person could only be an anarchist if they don't think very hard.
That's not quite what I said.
I said you'd need to not think very hard to not see any drawbacks or potential pitfalls to what you suggested. It's the kind of statement that usually would be followed by a facetious, "What could possibly go wrong?"
I believe that the government I want can operate on a tiny fraction of its current revenue.
Fair enough. So stipulated. The government you want (apparently) being one that is incapable of doing any of the things that our government was intended to do, which is, primarily, the defense and maintenance of the commons. Most people, by far, want something quite different. Good luck with that in your fantasy world where federal revenue is 6.9% of GDP.
It is an undeniable fact that there is, somewhere out there, a consensus on what "we want". It is safe to say that it is nowhere near what the noisy extremists on the far left or right have in mind. It is also safe to say that, based on any poll you care to use as your yardstick, it can't be done on 1/10th of the current budget. Not even close. So we is "most of us" and certainly not mindless Tea Baggers who really have no idea what they're idealistic, wild-eyed noise-making would actually reap for them were anything close to their "vision" actually come to pass.
To use it in the sense you did pretends that they are in practice today and we are still debating a constitution over the articles of confederacy. In fact, the federalism of today is actually more aligned with a strict adherence to the the US constitution which would require a smaller government and anything anti to that would be indicative of wanting a larger government.
...or that's what they like to tell themselves, and how they want to be portrayed. In fact, however, the modern tea party effectively wants a return back beyond even the articles of confederation. I chose that term specifically because it IS accurate. They are indeed that regressive.
Someone had to do it.
Ah! That is a statement with which I agree completely. Although given his audience had he used anything normal to his generation, the target of his remarks would have been completely confused. They don't understand even their 'own' culture, let alone anyone else's. In fact I'm not sure they understand anything except the bizarre notions that pass for 'truth' among them.
Fair enough. So stipulated. The government you want (apparently) being one that is incapable of doing any of the things that our government was intended to do, which is, primarily, the defense and maintenance of the commons. Most people, by far, want something quite different. Good luck with that in your fantasy world where federal revenue is 6.9% of GDP.
Don't forget that my reference was to the U.S. government of 1900 A.D. Unless you have some evidence to the contrary I'm going to have to assume that the government at that time was doing many of the things it was intended to do. After all, this was some one hundred and twelve years after it was established.
~Loyal
p.s. How do you equate the actual world as recorded by the federal government of the past to a fantasy world?
I aim to misbehave.