American Politics

[Starchild2012]

You American this...You American that...

Truth is American politics and American people are the cause of 90 percent of the world problems.

Your selfish policies and capitalism has virtually destroyed this world....what with global warming, depleting natural resources, high fuel prices, war in every continent in the name of democrazy...You guys are the cause for every major event in the world now a days...

Ohhh god...from where to begin your sorry a s s state of affairs....You guys have left such a huge mess in the past 200 years of your history..that it will take another millenia to clear up your mess...

There are virtually millions of issues that you guys have put your hands on and burned the whole world in it...

This is now impossible for a man or even a university to guage the mess you guys have created.

I will try and start with the hot burning issue thats threateing to start another world war.

Yes, The Isreal thing...What's with you guys and Israel...are you guys in blind love with Israel or something....just like what ameircan women does and you guys rant about it in just the other thread out here.....Israel too does the same thing...takes everything from your country in the name of aid and development and does everything opposite in the name of self defense ..mass murder and genocide...

Tell me one thing....The Arabs in the middle-east have not even killed a "SINGLE" Jew during the world war....All the atrocities, holocaust, mass murder were carried out by The Europeans. Then why make Arabs suffer for the crime's done in europe. Why not make the germans answerable or take care of the JEWS now.

Where are you guys now, You will not get to see the real picture what's hapenning in the middle east, 'cos all your media CNN, FOX, ABC is just a propaganda tool, they do not show the pain and grief of innocents .....I hate too the arabs and the terrorist alike..BUT why make the innocent children and pregnant women suffer ...is it fair...

300 Killed in lebanon...25 killed in Isreal till date..Is it fair at all....They are bombarding the airport, bridges, power house....think if ever..the terrorist will hide there ....

If you guys have the courage...go through the land and pin point the terrorists and kill them...whole world is with you..BUT why just aimlessly bombard the whole city of innocents..does it have any meaning..

Where are you guys now..The richest nation on the planet...the most charitable nation on earth...Not even an ink here ...Just complete silence....

[Beavis]

While we are discussing morality, how many people think that Ken Lay is actually dead? I bet he could be reading this.

[Chocha Monger]

If you're poor you need certain things to dull the pain of your miserable existance: cheap beer to forget your reality; high fat foods to ease the hunger; nicotine to feel good; lottery tickets to create false hope; and cheap flesh to expend your frustrations. This last one usually results in poor people having more children than the rich. More children less resources, less opportunity to climb out the gutter. You get the general idea.

Being poor means that you're more likely to do dangerous work, and more likely to get injured, but you're less likely to have health insurance. As a result, while your broken and broke ass is sitting at home the rich get to pay for the up keep of you and the entire tribe.

Does all that suck? Maybe, but you can't be rich unless some other bastard gets to be poor and that is exactly why international mongering exists today. The alternative would be to replace capitalism with socialism. If we had used all of the money spent in Iraq to wipe out poverty in Latin America, for example, the region would cease to be a mongering destination. The women would become accustomed to a standard of living much like the US and demand much higher prices. Just take a look at some of the grumbling in the Colombia thread due to the recent sharp price increases caused by an influx of free spending gringos.

As for the illegal immigration issue, it can only be solved by fixing the economies in Mexico and Central America. However, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Financially secure chicas are not going to sell themselves to gringos for a few pesos.

So what do you do? Do you keep them poor and hungry with nice bodies so that they're always be ready to swallow your jizz for a few greenbacks, or do you raise them to the same economic level as American chicks?

I'll leave this moral dilemma for guys like Rush Limbaugh to figure out.

[Bart9000]

I understand the appeal of libertarianism, but can't support it. There are places in our society that we need paternalism.

I used to be a financial advisor and was the 401k plan admin of a car dealership. In that capacity, I got to witness John Q Public attempting to act as their own portfolio managers. Saving long boring explanations, suffice it to say that most people are not equipped to successfully manage their own investments.....yet that responsibility has gotten shifted off of the corporations (I've never seen a defined benefit pension plan), and onto "Joe Six pack"......trust me, the results are going to be disastrous, and a lot of people will be working as a greeter at wall mart well into their seventies to keep the bills paid. This includes incidently a lot of whitecollar professional people such as techies and engineers....they tend to think that they know what they are doing, but mostly don't.

Businesses (particularly corporations) have shown countless times that they won't behave themselves if left to their own devices. It is necessary to police them through the SEC, EPA, FDA, etc etc.

Now the fucking social issues however, the government needs to stay the fuck out of.

B9k

[Ocean Traveler]

There is a difference between marginal tax rate and mean collected tax rate. In other words: someone earning a small income may be in the 15% marginal rate but after all their deductions they don’t pay 15%. What they pay is the mean collected tax rate which is more like 3%. The rich may be at a 24% rate but after all their tax planning they end up at 21%. If you compare the mean collected rates you have succeeded in “soaking the rich”.

You may not believe it but ask any successful tax accountant.

The Income Tax numbers are subject to a lot of emotional debate but they are only a small part of the Federal Budget. There are a lot of very educated members out there who could supply the correct number but I will guess 35%. The rest of the budget is all the other forms of taxes such as cigarette, alcohol, fuel, excise, corporate income, franchise, import, communication, gaming, unemployment and other taxes. Haven’t you heard about Tax Freedom Day? It’s around May 1st.

The low earners pay a disproportionate share of taxes as a function of spendable income. Stand in line at a convenience store and watch the poor buying cigarettes, beer and lottery tickets; all very heavily taxed and all voluntary.

Don’t forget Social Security. It is 13% of your paycheck and uses a broken model. The entire system will be bankrupt in 15 years but that’s another emotional “trigger argument” like Granny’s Medicare.

You can bemoan the tax breaks for the rich corporations, as some one did in response to my earlier post, but where are we going to work? Successful, large corporations are the foundations of powerful economies. The same economies that can afford all the benefits you crave.

The rich start businesses that employ people not the poor. The Federal government cut income taxes yet collected more than ever. How can that be? It works every time it’s tried and as the rich get richer the poor get richer too because there is more jobs with better pay. The underlying economic principals are undeniable.

You wonder why jobs flee the USA? A UAW auto worker costs $72 per hour will all the retirement, lifetime medical benefits and other fringes added in. In China a worker cost $42 a month! For what you pay a UAW employee in 1 day you can hire a Chinaman for over a year and he won’t sue you for wrongful discharge, sexual harassment, repetitive motion injuries or want paid Family Medical Leave. I know, I’ve been there.

Last but not least, quality mongering is very expensive. I have been doing it myself for a few years but only recently found this website. Perhaps my future posts can be in a different section with a few pictures.

Unless of course you would like to know why Latin countries are poor and we are not. The answer is quite simple but doesn’t fit with any of the contemporary emotional arguments.

[Prefer Anal]

I actually sent that story suggestion to a major national newspaper......trying to demonstrate that once again, the guardians of our moral values don't hold themselves to the standards they prescribe for the rest of us.

Here is the funny thing. This prefer anal guy is probably a social liberal if he is posting on this board, but ID's with the right wing because of their bullshit about taxes, business, and economics. I actually used to be like this until I became highly educated in those subjects

B9k

I also consider myself highly educated in these subjects, but not elitist....and get my news/facts from a variety of sources. Yes, I could be considered a social liberal, but do not "ID" with the right wing anymore than I do the left. I consider myself more libertarian than anything. I don't consider the "right wing" stance on taxes, business, and economics to be any more/less bullshit than the left's.

[Bart9000]

[QUOTE=hardbarg]

http://www.house.gov/jec/publications/109/rr109-36.pdf

Some examples:

AGI $200,000 and over pay ~$313 Billion
AGI $100,000 to 200,000 pay ~$163 Billion
AGI $20,000 to 30,000 pay ~$9 Billion

The top 1% of tax filers paid 34.27% of federal personal income taxes in 2003.

Bullshit is in the eye of the beholder.

Ok,

Appearently, my quick and dirty analysis was in error. There are a lot of flat out lies and bullshit out there, and I mistakenly assumed that this was something cooked up by some asshole on talk radio (leftists are also guilty of lying like sacks os shit........in the eighties, it got widely reported that there were like 10 Million homeless......it turned out to be a massive exaggeration created out of thin air by an activist named Mitch Snyder) Although I believe myself to be more or less correct about the rates paid, I forgot about the social engineering that is administered through the tax code. Now some parts of that engineering I agree with (mortgage interest deduction-about the only fighting chance that a lot of families have towards decent retirement is complete home ownership), and others I have some issues with (child deductions-pay for your own fucking kids.) Another is the earned income tax credit, which I will have a word or two about:

The purpose of the earned income tax credit is to incentivise a "marginal player", right on the border of not needing social services to work, and hopefully some day earn enough to be fully self sufficient. I'll come back to this in a minute.

I can see where someone would be profoundly offended at the appeareant unfairness of the situation of "being Atlas", and carrying the weight of society on your shoulders.

However, I have to say a few things....first of all....who gives a fuck about the aggregate-the world isn't composed of two people, one rich and paying for 96% of public services, the other poor, and getting a free ride. Each person only files one personal tax return, and the amounts paid don't look too much like sodomy to me.....without looking again, the group between 100-200K pays on average about 18,000.....just pulling out a number of say 119,000, that is about 15%.........SCANDALOUS....the aggregate numbers quoted say more about the wealth and success of a good portion of our county than they do imply any unfairness in the amount of "load" being carried.

Let me lay something out here. It is a little more complex, and less easy to come to than a conclusion of "I'm the workhorse carrying a bunch of deadbeats"

First of all, were you to increase the tax burden on the low end, you would likely knock the people receiving the earned income credit out of the workforce and into being recipients of social services......then you might actually have something to cry about with the new number people on welfare/food stamps/section 8 housing.....currently the percentage spent on those programs is minimal (I don't have any exact figures handy)

Furthermore, there is more interdependence between high income earners and low than most people realize. People who earn high incomes do so because ultimately, they, or someone they work for sells something. Low income earners BUY THINGS......and do so at much higher percentages (and incidently generally buy things that are much more profitable to the seller) than do the more affluent (this is known in econ as the marginal propensity to save/marginal propensity to consume). . This spending of theirs (which gets repeated inciently as the same dollar gets spent time and again by low wage workers, being paid by the wealthy as demand for products and services continues-refered to as the multiplier effect) is what is ultimately putting the fat paycheck into the high earners pocket. Just pulling some numbers out of the air, someone could make 1 million a year at a 34% bracket, or (due to a reduction in economic activity) $500,000 at 17% basically a wash.........although the real life interaction is obviously more complex than this, I think I made my point.

B9k

PS Regarding Ken Lay's death, I would like to have the corpse DNA tested, with the process overseen by Michael Moore, Al Franken, Senator Joseph Biden, and about a half dozen pissed off investors.

[Beavis]

I totally agree. I have never served in the armed forces and nobody in my family ever has either so I am not at all biased by this. I was merely trying to demonstrate how our leaders could do a better job of establishing their priorities. The sad part is the future doesn't look any brighter. The amnesty is only a foundation for undermining the integrity of leadership. To put it in nautical terms the ship is sailing "not under command", which means by some unusual circumstances they are unable to comply with the rules.

Since there is a good level of intellect involved in this thread:

Who actually believes that Ken Lay is dead? His death was awful convienient at a prominent time? He was cremated so his ashes could be left over from the party they had before he left the country. I say B.S.but have only theory.

Anyway enough of that. Since we haven't got the alligators in place yet:

http://www.resist.com/other/border_patrol.swf

It won't be too much longer you will find me near some large mountains sipping a cold Aguila.

[MJG Dogs]

Does this mean that we need to help every homeless person who ever served in the armed forces ? No it doesn't but, these people served their country and should rank higher on the help list than illegal aliens.

Bravo Beavis...

And veterans who served this country should not be demonized by the leftist in this country either and should not be cheated out of benefits, education and healthcare by the far right....

It is disgraceful to see veterans treated so shamefully......

[Hardbarg]

[QUOTE=Prefer Anal]

"Almost everyone here seems to be missing the point.
Wake up people! The top 1/4 of 1% have received 75% of the tax cuts."

They deserve the tax cuts:

People with incomes $200,000 and over pay 42.7% of the taxes, $377 Billion.
People with incomes $100,000 to 200,000 pay 24.1% of the taxes, $213 Billion.

People with incomes $75,000 to 100,000 pay 12.8% of the taxes, $113 Billion.

People with incomes 50,000 to 75,000 pay 12.9% of the taxes $114 Billion.

People with incomes of $40,000 to 50,000 pay 4.4% of the taxes, or $39 Billion, and

people with incomes of$30,000 to 40,000 pay only 3.4% of the taxes, or $30 Billion!

Finally, people with incomes of only $20,000 to 30,000 pay only 1.1% of the taxes, or $10 Billion!

More info: the TOP 1% of income earners pay 33.6% of all the taxes!

Can you document the sources on any of your tax figures. I've seen the right wing media figures use some pretty creative math to make their cases.....or just outright lie with math.....most of their followers don't have advanced degrees in quantitative subjects...I'm calling bullshit.

http://www.house.gov/jec/publications/109/rr109-36.pdf

Some examples:

AGI $200,000 and over pay ~$313 Billion
AGI $100,000 to 200,000 pay ~$163 Billion
AGI $20,000 to 30,000 pay ~$9 Billion

The top 1% of tax filers paid 34.27% of federal personal income taxes in 2003.

Bullshit is in the eye of the beholder.

[Bart9000]

I know I should keep my mouth shut but here goes.

The average illegal alien costs $87,000 more than they will ever produce and that's before Social Security is added in. The average family of 4 in California costs the taxpayers $57,000 per year!

It does't save the US economy money. If it did, why do the states with the largest illegal populations have massive budget problems? It is cost shifting; so one person gets thier lawn cut cheaper but we all subsidize it through taxes.

Military spending as a percentage of the overall budget is historically and for a time of war it is unheard of.

Over 65% of the Federal Budget is entitlements: Medicaid, Medicare, Welfare, Food Stamps, etc. All programs started since WWII and dramatically expanded under Johnson during the War of Poverty. We have spent trillions on that war with very little sign of success. When do we "redeploy" on subsidizing failure?

Why pay billions for illegal aliens on one hand and pay billions in welfare subsidizing unemployment and failure on the other? Call me crazy but somethings wrong with this picture.

Ok, quote your sources, and substantiate it....this sounds like more Rush Limbaugh or clone therof type bullshit.....now there may be a grain of truth to this-what I have been maybe somewhat erroneously referring to as social spending is welfare, subsidized housing, and food stamps, which don't amount to much in the grand scheme of things....if you throw in subsidized student loans, medicaid and medicare, school lunches, and whatever, it may get to be a decent sized chunk..........I have to ask this however.....do you REALLY want to get rid of say Medicaid/Medicare? I have an 86 year old Grandmother who is in the hospital about every 3-4 months, plus takes all kinds of expensive pills etc. Do you have ny idea what health insurance for her would cost? If you could even get a private insurer to write her a policy, it would probably cost between $1000-2000 a month. The government at least has the ability to dictate terms and regulations to health care providers, and is consequently at an advantage for purchasing healthcare for senior citizens. Same thing with student loans and other education entitlements.....are you aware that a large segment of African Americans have come up from generally lesser means and become upper middle class/lower upper class ("blackistocracy")......alot of this was because education entitlements helped get them educated, into non-menial jobs, and eventually a great success. If they didn't have those, many would probably, well frankly still poor and would be getting maligned by you for getting social benefits for that....talk about damned if you do, damned if you don't........

By the way do you have any idea what we give to scummy corporations in the form of tax breaks?

B9k

[Beavis]

Regardless of the # of vets, it was simply an example that we have plenty of problems here we should address before we try to fix everybody elses. The immigration bill is a joke but then again, what has this adminstration did that wasn't a joke? Just my opinion but, my mnd is made up I am out of here ASAP prediction 06/01/09. By then we should have plenty of homeless Mexicans so we will see how they get treated. I could give a Rat's ass, lol.

[Bart9000]

The 300,000 was a figure that my mother (a private high school teacher) got from some source but here is what I found:

According to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”), nearly 33% of the nation’s adult homeless population served in the United States Armed Services. The VA further states that on any given day, as many as 200,000 male and female veterans are living on the streets or in shelters, and perhaps twice as many experience homelessness at some point during the course of a year. As if to underscore the seriousness of the problem of homeless military veterans throughout the nation, the VA characterizes the predicament another way: currently, the number of homeless male and female Vietnam era veterans is greater than the number of service persons who died during the Vietnam War.


VIVA LA MIGRA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A couple things real quick...

Are you sure that there is a disproportionate percentage of the general populace that are homeless vets. What percentage of the overall populace currently living did serve in the Vietnam war......I don't know for sure, but it is possible that there is simply a representative cross sample and you (with encouragement) are focusing on the vets.

Homelessness itself is a complex issue (correlates highly with mental illness and substance abuse), and it cannot necessarily be solved by simply writing a check. This is a wild ass guess, but I strongly suspect that even if we were to give every homeless vet 4 months rent free in a decent apartment, $1500, and a decent job that would more than pay his rent and living expenses, he would still be back on the street in a short time. It might astound you to know (this is something I've heard, but don't have a source)for example that when it gets to be -15 to -20 in Chicago, the police round up the homeless guys to make them go to a shelter.....and a good number of them have to be dragged, kicking and screaming all the way there.

Service to country is awfully abstract, and hard to quantify(for recompense).....you are basically saying that our Vietnam vets got a raw deal....you won't get an argument from me about that, although military service (assuming you don't get killed doing it) is like anything else you get out of it what you put into it. My father volunteered for Vietnam (though he was going to get drafted anyways), got out after 5 years, and then served another 17 in reserve, a good portion of that time as n E-8, getting nice fat paychecks for a part time career...now when he retires in 18 months, he is going to get big fat pension, on top of his big fat pension from work (he went to college free on the GI bill by the way-I owe 52K myself), Social Security, and healthy personal savings.


I hear you about the hassles in bringing your wife here legally....my take on this however isn't that everyone should have to suffer like you did.....but that NO ONE should.
B9k


Adding on: I realized what was bothering me about the situation....the problems aren't the least bit interrelated in my opinion. In my estimation, you could line a National Guardsman every 10 feet along the border with orders to shoot to kill, round up all the others, and ship them back, and you would still have your veteran problems....on the other hand, you could open the borders and let every Juan, Julio and Sergio in Mexico (yes I'm ignoring illegals from other parts of the world) come up here to work if they feel like it.....and still have your vet problems.

I was going to bring up some stat mumbo jumbo about skewed samples, and the tail wagging the dog, but I don't think it's necessary in light of the preceding.

[Beavis]

Does this mean that we need to help every homeless person who ever served in the armed forces ? No it doesn't but, these people served their country and should rank higher on the help list than illegal aliens.

[Beavis]

The 300,000 was a figure that my mother (a private high school teacher) got from some source but here is what I found:

According to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”), nearly 33% of the nation’s adult homeless population served in the United States Armed Services. The VA further states that on any given day, as many as 200,000 male and female veterans are living on the streets or in shelters, and perhaps twice as many experience homelessness at some point during the course of a year. As if to underscore the seriousness of the problem of homeless military veterans throughout the nation, the VA characterizes the predicament another way: currently, the number of homeless male and female Vietnam era veterans is greater than the number of service persons who died during the Vietnam War.


VIVA LA MIGRA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!