Here in the United States, Monday is Memorial Day, when we honor those who have fallen to protect our country. As a way to celebrate this day, the Daily Kos website is running a poll for more moderate veterans running against neocons for seats in Congress. The winner will get a web page put together at ActBlue, which can be a major boost to their campaign funding.
As it happens, one of the vets they have on the poll is my friend Lt. Colonel Hal Bidlack. A few months back I wrote a post in support of Hal, who’s running for Congress as a moderate Democrat in the reddest of red districts in Colorado. The incumbent is an ultra-far-right guy, Doug Lamborn, who is at best a rubber stamp for the President, and at worst… Well. Lamborn was one of the very few people who voted against the GI Bill that went through Congress last week, a bill designed to increase benefits for veterans including more money for veteran education after service — a bill which Bush has promised to veto, and for which both houses of Congress have enough votes to override. [Edited to add: A commenter below says that I am implying here that Bush et al. are voting against this bill because they don't want veterans to get benefits. To be clear: Bush has stated he will veto this bill because it spends too much. That is absurd, and if you think otherwise, I have a phrase for you to memorize: we are spending 20 million dollars per hour on the War on Terror. Remind me again: are we safer?]
Lamborn needs to go, and Hal would make a great Congressman, so I voted for him on the Daily Kos poll. Now let me be clear: I am not asking for a run on the poll for Hal. Seriously. I am asking that you go there, check out the candidates, and vote if you feel strongly about one over the others (I did some spot checking and they seem to be good folks running against bad ones). I think we could use more veterans in Congress, veterans who actually care about other veterans.
So head over there and vote.
Tip o’ the Air Force beret to ARealGirl.
May 24th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Let me head off the calls of “Not another liberal entry!” with: thanks for giving this some attention. There are a lot of great candidates out there who need support.
The commonly held belief that “I don’t matter, I can’t make a difference” is the political equivalent of Intelligent Design. Find the candidates in your area who need your support and help them, and if you can afford to, help the other ones across the country.
If the past 7 years have not proven to you how important it is that we wrest the country back from the neocons I don’t know what evidence would convince you.
May 24th, 2008 at 10:32 am
A little honest disclosure would be nice. The education benefits aren’t the reason for the no vote, nor the reason for the Presidential veto vote. The Dems took a Veterans Benefits bill and added a whole lot of liberal garbage to it, including a provision that would require companies receiving government contracts to reveal the names and salaries of their top management. So much for privacy rights.
And, no, sorry, I’m not going to waste my time on morons.org.
You know, for a scientist, you certainly use a lot of logical fallacies, such as Appeal to Ridicule, Argumentem ad populem, and of course, the liberal favorite ad homenem fallacy.
I’m just curious, I checked out Bidlack’s website, why does he hide the fact that he’s a Democrat? Why the deception?
You also fail to mention that Doug Lamborn is on the Veteran’s Affairs Committee and has sponsored the following legislation:
H.R. 295 – Sponsored a bill to direct the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to establish a national cemetery for veterans in Colorado
H.R. 3047 – Sponsored the Veterans Claims Processing Innovation Act of 2007
H.R. 797 – Amended the Dr. James Allen Veteran Vision Equity Act
H.R. 1863 – Sponsored a bill to direct the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to conduct at two-year pilot program to use a mobile processing unit to assist veterans in remote areas
H.R. 1864 – Sponsored a bill to direct the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to provide for the automated processing of veterans disability compensation claims
H.R. 2696 – Co-sponsored the Veterans’ Dignified Burial Assistance Act of 2007
H.R. 3047 – Sponsored the Veterans Claims Processing Innovation Act of 2007
H.R. 327 – Co-sponsored the Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Act
H.R. 1370 – Co-sponsored the Disabled Veterans Sports and Special Events Promotion Act of 2007
He’s also trying to establish a second Veterans’ Cemetery in Colorado so families of deceased Veterans’ in Southern Colorado don’t have to travel to Denver.
BTW, if you’re getting all of your news from the DailyKooks.com, you’re being less than intellectually honest.
Especially since you left out the Democrats’ amendments to the “GI Bill.”
“It provides $5.8 billion for efforts to strengthen New Orleans levees in FY 2009. It provides $178 million to the Bureau of Prisons for rising incarceration costs and a growing inmate population. It provides $210 million to address decennial census cost overruns. Finally, it requires companies that receive more than 80 percent of their revenue from the federal government to disclose the names and salaries of their top officers, and requires federal contractors to report violations of federal criminal law and over-payments on contracts over $5 million.”
It also: “would impose a tax of 0.47% on modified adjusted gross incomes above $500,000 ($1,000,000 for joint incomes), a slight increase in the highest tax bracket, to offset the cost of the expansion. It extends unemployment benefits for workers who have exhausted their benefits by up to 13 weeks in every state as well as an additional 13 weeks in states with high unemployment rates.”
Sure looks different that way than the left wing propoganda you’ve been reading, doesn’t it? Oh, wait, “soak the rich” is a liberal “value” isn’t it?
May 24th, 2008 at 11:12 am
@ Davd M: “Let me head off the calls of “Not another liberal entry!” with …”
Yeah, I’m waiting for the, “What has this got to do with astronomy?!”, responses, harbinger of the oncoming stampede of thumb-sucking, bed-wetters bellowing about how they’re leaving this blog because Phil mentioned teh politik.
… or at least one they disagree with.
Personally, I disagree with hippie-boy here quite a bit, but I fully expect him to have some kind of political bent like any other human being.
Logic and skepticism can be applied to politics. Even if you don’t agree with the premises you can still deliberate the validity of arguments and the internal consistency of the belief – just as you can with religion.
@Robert: “You know, for a scientist, you certainly use a lot of logical fallacies, such as Appeal to Ridicule, Argumentem ad populem, and of course, the liberal favorite ad homenem fallacy.”
Ridicule like “morons.org”?
Well whatever. But I wonder if you consistently take issue with it – like when it’s used against Ben Stein for example. Should I go back through the blog and see if you did?
You raise some good points though. And I hope nobody will try to use your delivery as an excuse to dodge them.
May 24th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Sigh.
I didn’t say the education were the reasons they voted against the bill, nor did I even imply it. Don’t infer what I didn’t imply.
But I will have you note that the people who voted against the bill were very conservative Republicans whose seats are secure. Those who are vulnerable in the fall for re-election voted for it. Now why would that be? Is it possibly because they know that the public is overwhelmingly in favor of these benefits, and don’t want to risk their seats?
Also, no bill that gets through Congress is ever completely clean. What the Democrats have been trying to do is get legislation passed that will actually do something, as opposed to empty promises like we’ve been hearing for so many years. Do you have a problem with actually trying to help those people in New Orleans, versus just saying empty words and then handing over the work to no-bid contracts?
The lines about Daily Kooks and morons.org gives you away as well. In fact, I have several sources of news I go through every day, because I’m trying to avoid bias. DailyKos and MoveOn are important organizations trying to counter the neocon propoganda we’ve been hearing relentlessly. You can dismiss them if you want, but that leaves you far more biased than for what you are accusing me.
President Bush has the lowest approval ratings in the history of this country for a reason. Lamborn is in lockstep with him. Where does that leave him?
Finally, a 0.47% increase in taxes for people making a half-million more or year is “soaking” them? Please. With record deficits, a two front war, gas prices skyrocketing and a country on the verge of recession, we have a President who wants to cut taxes on the rich?
Please.
May 24th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Soak the rich? LOL. That is rich! Rich people have benefited far far more over the past 8 years than a measly 0.47% tax rate increase takes away from them.
Can’t you just feel our hearts bleeding for those poor, downtrodden, persecuted millionaires. How on earth are they going to pay for that second yacht in the Mediterranean now? And the temerity of those poor people in New Orleans to think that they deserve to be kept safe from future hurricanes and floods? Shocking, I tell ya, just shocking!
May 24th, 2008 at 11:17 am
ALERT — ALERT : Using “Daily Kos” and “moderate” in the same sentence is a very strong sign that someone needs a serious political spectrum reference adjustment. The Daily Kos is about as whacked-out radical left as a blog can be, short of being published by the communist party.
For the sake of balance, may I suggest visiting HughHewitt.com.
May 24th, 2008 at 11:26 am
@jim
Are you trying to say that his political spectrum has been redshifted?
May 24th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Thanks Robert. You did a great job arguing one side while convincing me of the other.
May 24th, 2008 at 11:41 am
I wonder how many politicians have actually spent time in the military, and not the faux military GW did “time” in? I do not like McCain’s policies, but one cannot argue with the fact that he did serve his country, and paid for it.
May 24th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Well, it didn’t take long before the “communist” slur to appear. Okay, Jim, show us all the Daily Kos articles that advocate the abolition of religion, the wholesale confiscation of personal property, or, in fact, advocating anything that can be found in the Communist manifesto. No? Nothing? What a surprise.
Daily Kos is a solidly progressive web site in the mainstream liberal tradition that is dedicated to the election of Democrats to Congress. The quality and the success of their site is something the right-wingers can only dream of, which is why they are reduced to piling on with ridiculously out-moded slurs about communism.
The irony is that the political left in America would be considered to be moderates or even moderately right-wing in most of the rest of the democratic countries in the world. For example, only in America is the possibility of a universal health care system seen as an evil communist plot. Conservative parties in countries like Germany, the UK, France, Taiwan, and Switzerland (also a very conservative nation) are fully behind their systems and wouldn’t dream of trying to abolish them.
The American right is increasingly out of touch with the rest of the world, and with the American people. Karl Rove’s dream of a permanent Republican majority is being swept away now that the policies of the right have proven to be bad for everyone but the rich and well-connected.
May 24th, 2008 at 11:46 am
“Finally, a 0.47% increase in taxes for people making a half-million more or year is “soaking” them? Please.” Come on, Bad Astronomer, put this in context. People making approximately $300K/year fall into the top 1% of income earners, and guess what, they already pay over 34% of all income taxes! Are they soaked? YEAH! Looks dripping wet soaked to me!
And what about the rest of us? The top 50% (about $30K/year and up) pay 96% of all income taxes. That means we’re pretty much all getting soaked to some degree.
May 24th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
I make about 90-100k a year and I already give about 30 percent of my paycheck to taxes. How much more would you like to have?
May 24th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
“The Daily Kos is about as whacked-out radical left as a blog can be, short of being published by the communist party.”
Thank you for the laugh jim. I hate to break it to you, but by your measure most of the country is “whacked-out radical left” right now.
You can’t find anything to back up your claim of DKos being “whacked-out” so you come back trying to change the subject.
As for your whining about the high earners paying more of the income tax, what do you expect? You expect poor people to pay a lot of taxes? They don’t have the money.
I hate to break it to you but reality has a “liberal bias” right now. The neocons have been running this country into the ground.
May 24th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
@kebsis:
Whining about paying taxes is not a positive personality trait.
We all benefit from this great country of ours, and guess what, it doesn’t exist for free. We have to pay for it. You like many others may say “The government is too big it needs to be smaller!” but this is a naive point of view. If all the services the government provides were taken away, you would not be happy with the society that resulted. It wouldn’t be anything like the one we live in now.
The thing I object to is when large quantities of our taxes are being squandered. See also: Iraq. The almost unimaginable amount of money that has been thrown away on ruining another country that was no threat to us is something worth objecting to in terms of the government taking your money.
Schools, roads, rehabilitation, science and arts funding, et cetera are causes I couldn’t be happier to be contributing to.
May 24th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
“Conservative parties in countries like Germany, the UK, France, Taiwan, and Switzerland (also a very conservative nation) are fully behind their systems and wouldn’t dream of trying to abolish them.”
Actually, they do dream. But so far they haven’t had as much following as in the US.
May 24th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Phil does seem to have a distorted view of the political spectrum that’s common within academia generally. Maybe a more apt description would be, “pinkshift”.
I suspect it’s the result of otherwise intelligent people confusing how they would like the world to be, with the practicalities of making it that way, and it subsequently functioning that way.
And hey, don’t get me wrong, any one of the myriad of ideological utopias people dream about would probably be “nice” – so that’s not in dispute. But thinking you can change the world through totalitarian mandate, or some kind of Kumbaya-humming social change is not rationally addressing reality.
Intellectual people, (myself included), desire a world conducive to academic pursuits. That generally means peace, stability and abundant prosperity – physical and mental freedom from the distractions of mere survival. So socialism on the surface seems pretty attractive.
And don’t get me wrong here either. I think we can afford the luxury of a few limited socialist programmes. There are good arguments for “collective luxury items” like the Hubble Telescope, the Space Shuttle and purely academic pursuits generally.
But you have to stop and see where the money for those luxury items comes from in the first place. It’s time for you lefties to get over your love/hate relationship with money and see that business and the economy – far from being an evil to be sacrificed for some “greater good”, is the very source of the prosperity from which you benefit, and makes modern civilisation possible – socialist programmes and all.
And you’re killing it by trying to spend far too much of our hard-earned gains on a moralistic crusade to “fix problems” that either can’t be fixed, or aren’t actual problems in the first place.
You think the Neocons are morons for wanting to spend tax dollars on
enforcing their personal views of morality? Then take a good long look in the mirror scumbag.
Assuming that taxing the rich is the best way to fix economic problems, (and the assumption that government intervention not only CAN fix the problem, but is also the best way to fix it), or the underlying assumption that the money of “the rich”, (you know – the bad guys in Charles Dickens novels), is more beneficial to society in government hands, rather than them buying luxury items, (as if buying yachts is all rich people do with their money), is a simplistic view of economics.
Maybe if Phil built yachts for a living he’d gain some personal insight into exactly why that is.
May 24th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
DA, they may dream, but they know that the vast majority of their populations don’t. The Swiss conservatives fought tooth and nail to prevent universal healthcare from being introduced back in the 90s. Today, barely a decade later, those same opponents — prominent politicians — are saying that they were wrong and that universal healthcare has been a good thing for their nation.
May 24th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
What sort of a nonsense comment is that? He has a distorted view of the political spectrum just because he’s a liberal?
So the only people who have a balanced view of politics are conservatives? Like all those nice pundits on Fox News, for example?
Talk about a distorted view.
May 24th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
The Tories (Conservative party) here in the UK just won a by-election by complaining that the government raised taxes (abolishing the lowest band). They also refused to say that they would decrease them again, and I believe even proposed a similar restructuring in the past.
Also, a little correction reading-comprehension wise. Phil was referring to Bidlack, not the Kos, as moderate. Looking at his positions, that seems about right (I have a few points I would enjoy debating with him, thats for sure).
Similarly, the main reason that most people don’t. Lets take Lamborn as our example. A search for Doug Lamborn returns his House site first, with his biography from the same site second. Adding the word Republican pushes the first result from that site to page 4. Try this yourself. Most politicians like the idea of running on personality and policies before party, even though most will fall back on party when it comes to pulling the lever. For another reason, consider him running as a Democrat in a red district. He will be wanting name recognition, and being identified instantly as a Democrat will only chase many voters away from the site.
Onto the bill. Lets look at each of the amendments complained about in turn;
“It provides $5.8 billion for efforts to strengthen New Orleans levees in FY 2009.”
Sounds sensible to me. Actually giving the city some protection would be nice.
“It provides $178 million to the Bureau of Prisons for rising incarceration costs and a growing inmate population.”
I can think of other ways of dealing with this, but this is the most politically viable at the moment and doesn’t involve setting at least some people free. To be honest, that amount looks a little low…
“It provides $210 million to address decennial census cost overruns.”
You mean actually pay for the thing rather than let it become riddled with debt and having to pay it off after it has been damaged by those costs? Wow.
The census has to happen. Better to pay for it and have it be useful than ignore the costs till they cripple the ability to conduct business and have it be an expensive waste of time.
“Finally, it requires companies that receive more than 80 percent of their revenue from the federal government to disclose the names and salaries of their top officers, and requires federal contractors to report violations of federal criminal law and over-payments on contracts over $5 million.”
So a way of forcing companies that rely on the government contracts and ‘corporate welfare’ for their existence to be answerable? I would love to see who put this one into the bill, because they have some guts to flip off corporate sponsors like that.
As a final note, only the House version of the bill contained the 0.5% tax. That might or might not be included in the final version.
May 24th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
There was a letter to the editor in one of my two local papers today condemning NASA for spending $420 millon “for the excavation of the planet Mars.” Even if the letter-writer had his criticiisms straight – which he didn’t – I wonder if he would be surprised to know that the cost he quoted works out to less than a day’s pricetag for the War on Terror.
May 24th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
You know, some people here are talking as if all the rich people ever do is give, give, give, without ever benefiting from living in a country like America. Last time I looked, the rich have been doing better than they have done in decades, with the income gap between the rich and poor at record levels. Meanwhile the low waged people have been stuck in neutral at best, and have been in many case going backwards.
Nowhere else in the wealthiest nations can you go bankrupt just because you were unlucky enough to get sick. Nowhere else are poor people as likely to end up in prison or on skid row. Nowhere else is the social safety net so full of holes that millions of people drop through it.
The rich pay the lion’s share of the taxes because they gain the lions share of the benefits of living in America. The top 50% of wage earners make nearly 90% of the wealth in the USA. They don’t seem to be suffering much from those “high” tax rates.
As for paying 30% tax on your wages of $100,000, I would get a new accountant if I were you. In the last two years I earned over $100,000 and paid 17% and 23% in federal and social security taxes. The 17% was because I doubled up my property tax deductions into one year, but otherwise I just have a standard single person’s deduction (no mortgage deduction either).
The truth is that rich people don’t pay anywhere close to 30% taxes on their overall income. Much of their income is through profits on the stock market which are taxed at 15%, and they have much more access to tax-sheltered investments and tax-lowering strategies than regular folks like you and I have. In reality, studies by the IRS and others show that the very wealthy only pay about 20% of their income in taxes overall, which is pretty much what the rest of us pay.
Kind of casts claims of “soaking the rich” in a different light, doesn’t it.
May 24th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
“You think the Neocons are morons for wanting to spend tax dollars on
enforcing their personal views of morality? Then take a good long look in the mirror scumbag.”
Try as they might to pretend to be “neutral” or “moderate”, conservatives can never help revealing their true nature if you keep them talking long enough.
May 24th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Here’s a short TV spot that ran in California. Pretty much describes the problems caused by the Republicans destroying rational taxation by exempting yachts and private jets.)
http://www.couragecampaign.org/action/151/watch-yacht-party-2-and-double-the-action
May 24th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
First folks, I wouldn’t classify myself as liberal. Moderate would be closer, but then, to a neocon, I’m way far left. Calling me a hippie is pretty funny, too, though that was (partially) in jest.
Second, taxes are not a punishment. Do you like clean water? Roads to drive on? The space program? Power to your house? Medical research? You pay for those with taxes. Taxes are good. It’s when they are used to wage wars for no purpose, to line peoples’ pockets (look up what a no-bid contract is), or to build bridges to nowhere that taxes become bad. And even then it’s because the system is broken or abused, not because it’s wrong. Taxes are the price you pay for living in a civilization.
The government does not have to be a bad thing. It can help people. Grover Norquist may want to drown it in a bathtub, but a lot of people see government rationally as a necessity.
Tax rich people more? Yes. Of course. Maybe not necessarily at a higher rate, but certainly they should pay more money than poorer people. And maybe some corporations should stop getting tax breaks when reporting record profits of billions of dollars while the rest of us pay more and more for gas.
The system is screwed up for sure. But that doesn’t mean having any system at all is bad.
May 24th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
I agree with those points Phil, but I think it was something of a straw man. I haven’t seen anyone say they are anarchists nor have I seen anyone imply it. Nor has anyone said there should be no taxes.
It’s when the government takes on things it has no business taking on or could be handled better by the free market (which is pretty much everything) or when taxes get too high (20% is too high to me) and we see no benefits that people get upset.
May 24th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
DailyKos and Move-on.org: neither has balanced stories and both have used extreme smear tactics to try and influence politics. I avoid them like the plague (if I knew what a plague looked like, I’d avoid it like these web sites!)
This is not to say that some of there points are not right on, but I don’t like giving them business (hits) when I know the kinds of things they do. I can type a search in google and find a hundred more reputable news sources than these sites.
Hal Bidlack sounds like a great guy, and someone who wants to get the right stuff done, but aligning himself with these sites can harm his credibility. (of course, thats just my opinion)
May 24th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Wait I disagree with this part: “And maybe some corporations should stop getting tax breaks when reporting record profits of billions of dollars while the rest of us pay more and more for gas.”
I don’t think raising taxes on those corporations would actually help us in that regard. It might make some people feel a little better, but I hope we’re looking for actual results.
May 24th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
The free market is not the panacea some people make it out to be. It can be and often is as riddled with corruption, greed and incompetence as government programs can be. There always has to be some balance between the free market and government regulation — a swing too far in either direction is bad for the country.
As for 20% being too high? It’s by far the lowest rate in the western democratic world. It’s more like 35%-40% in countries like Canada, Sweden and the UK, and Denmark is closing on 50%.
And you know what? A recent study of various nations’ sense of wellbeing discovered that the Danes are, overall, are about the most contented group of people on the planet. That’s in spite of being taxed at over twice the rate of Americans. What’s more, they found that the Danes weren’t just being fat and happy and living off government handouts, their young people were just as ambitious and driven to succeed in life as those in the States and elsewhere. It’s all a matter of perspective and priorities.
Now, I don’t suggest for one moment that a 50% tax rate is an automatic guarantee of national wellbeing and success. It’ll never happen in the USA anyway (yes, even if all branches of the federal government are in Democratic hands for the next 20 years — that’s just right-wing scaremongering), but it does prove that higher taxes doesn’t necessarily make things worse for a country.
If right-wingers really believed that 20% was too high a tax burden, they would be railing about that and not the mythological 30% or 40% many of them gripe about all the time. 20% is low for an industrialized democratic nation, no matter how you measure it.
May 24th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
$171 million is spent every hour on social programs. How’s that War on Poverty doing?
May 24th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
“And maybe some corporations should stop getting tax breaks when reporting record profits of billions of dollars while the rest of us pay more and more for gas.”
Surely you must be aware that gas companies make about ten cents per gallon of gas sold – and the federal government makes over 80 cents on every gallon sold. And you must also be aware that there hasn’t been a new oil refinery built in the US in more than 30 years; all of the refineries are already operating at over 99% capacity. Congress just shot down any plans for using oil shale in Colorado, and ANWR and offshore deposits in Florida and California are still off-limits – not due to technological limitations, but by law. So, with no way to increase the supply, you continue to pay more and more for gas as long as the demand keeps rising. Want the price to go down? Either lower the demand (good luck with that) or increase the supply (starting with building new refineries). Anything else is posturing.
May 24th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Murff, then I assume you don’t visit sites like RushLimbaugh.com, NationalReviewOnline.com and TownHall.com either?
That’s fine. MoveOn and DailyKos are activist liberal websites. Their agenda is not a secret, and should never be mistaken for a balanced source of news — I doubt you would find they would argue otherwise.
And at least they’re being honest about it. Try getting the same admission from partisan outfits like Fox News.
Both sides have highly partisan organizations and none of them make particularly pleasant reading for those on the opposite side of the spectrum. It is, of course, absurd to say that Kos and MoveOn are worse than the equivalent (and just as powerful) organizations on the right, like the “Club for Growth” or “Focus on the Family”.
May 24th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
“..taking on or could be handled better by the free market (which is pretty much everything)..”
And this is the absurd viewpoint that underlies neocon mentality which Phil was referring to.
The “free market” is first of all a fantasy, no market is “free”, it is full of people jostling to tilt it in their own favor. Secondly, the market is not a panacea. You neocons (and if you favor privatization and think you aren’t a neocon, you’re wrong) have had the past 7 years to run amok and privatize quite a lot; and it has all gone very, very poorly.
Your pipe dream “The government is bad, the private sector will make things better” is just not true. Even with your guys in charge trying to prove just how inept the government can be. The government is an organization of people; as good or as bad as the people in it.
May 24th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
$171 million is spent every hour on social programs. How’s that War on Poverty doing?
Probably much better than the War of Drugs has done. How much has that cost the American taxpayer over the years?
The social safety net in America is one of the weakest and lowest funded in the westernized world. $171 million/hour is peanuts compared with what other countries spend (on a per capita or per GDP basis). Many countries spend twice as much (usually, though not always resulting in lower poverty rates).
So, it seems as though this is just another case of right-wing thinking with the gut and not with the head (hat tip, Steven Colbert).
May 24th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Tacitus: “And at least they’re being honest about it. Try getting the same admission from partisan outfits like Fox News.”
Or CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS!
May 24th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Dave M., I enjoyed your employment of both the straw man and ad hominem fallacies in 1 post.
The free market is better than the government at things because it is not the government, it doesn’t have direct power over the people. It is easier for the government to entrench itself in people’s lives and resists change better.
Can we get a post from Phil defining what a neocon is in his mind so everyone can stick to 1 definition?
May 24th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
“President Bush has the lowest approval ratings in the history of this country for a reason. Lamborn is in lockstep with him. Where does that leave him?”
That would leave him twice as popular as the Democratic Congress!
And, while, Phil, you may consider yourself moderate in Boulder, CO, (64 square miles surrounded by reality) aka “Berkeley East” in comparison to the actual center of the political spectrum, you’re not quite as far left as Ward Churchill, but you probably aren’t too far…
BTW, what is a “neocon”?
And, BTW, the “mainstream” Liberal of today is as far from Classical Liberalism as a Classical Liberal is from being a Socialist. Notice the equation there: Liberal of today = Socialist.
As an example, Morons.org took out an entire page in the New York Times denegrating and smearing the Commanding General in Iraq (General “Betray-us”) the day before he even testified. If that isn’t intellectual dishonesty, heck, let’s call it what it is; propogandizing, I don’t know what is.
BTW, did any of you on the Left note that the Democrats finally admitted that they “oversold” their intentions to end the war in Iraq? For those of you with less education than Phil, that means they lied…
Robert
May 24th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Tacitus: “Probably much better than the War of Drugs has done. How much has that cost the American taxpayer over the years?”
Damn right! Get rid of that too!
Tacitus, what you did there is assume the poster Ed Minchau falls in complete lockstep with what you think right-wingers believe in, and then attack that position. That’s not solid thinking.
May 24th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Yeah, those dastardly people, Glenn Beck, Joe Scarborough, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, just full of liberal bias…
May 24th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Well, if you mean I assumed he was a Republican and not a Libertarian then you have a point. But don’t get me started on how bad a Libertarian government would be for this country…
May 24th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Tacitus: “Well, if you mean I assumed he was a Republican and not a Libertarian then you have a point. But don’t get me started on how bad a Libertarian government would be for this country…
”
I just want one that sticks strictly to the constitution. Whichever ideology that is, sign me up.
May 24th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Very entertaining.
As far as ‘political spectrum’ is concerned, like many things it’s relative.
From where I stand it is very hard to see any American politician who could even charitably be called ‘progressive.’
There only seem to be conservatives, reactionaries, and crypto-fascists.
Where are your Dany le Rouges and President Lulas?
- Halcyon Dayz
Snarling Rabid Green-Communist Big-Government Hippie Tree-Hugger Euroweasel
(And proud off it.)
May 24th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
“The free market is better than the government at things because it is not the government, it doesn’t have direct power over the people.”
You’ve been swallowing too many neocon talking points, it’s gone to your head. I could write a multi-page screed outlining all the ways that the above is wrong, but I’ll instead address your most recent post.
“I just want one that sticks strictly to the constitution. Whichever ideology that is, sign me up.”
There isn’t one, because the constitution was not created under one single ideal. That’s one of the many flaws with the simplistic, child-like mentality with which most Americans approach government. The founding fathers/framers/dead white dudes did not see eye to eye on very much. They were a group from differing backgrounds, geography, families and mentalities.
Additionally the constitution was not meant to be an end-all be-all of government, and slavishly limiting yourself to it and only it is silly beyond description. It’s like saying “I only want to follow Newtonian physics and nothing else.”
May 24th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
I think what’s most galling here to everyone is how BA plays the political game. I don’t think anyone had a problem with him when he’s in debunking or skeptologist mode–he uses facts, and science, and rational thinking to get his points across.
But when it comes to making a political statement, that kind of rational thinking goes out of the window.
Trying to avoid bias? Certainly Rev. Wright and David Duke could be considered “important” alternative viewpoints to the “neocon” (whatever that is) propaganda, too, but I doubt you go there on a daily basis. Yeah, I do dismiss them entirely, and I do not feel less informed because of it. Looking for balance? And the best you can do is DailyKos? Phil, FYI, the Intertubes are a pretty big place . . .
Maybe the day I see you referencing NRO or FoxNews websites along with Kos or Crooks and Liars–then I will believe you in your “quest” for balance.
May 24th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Honestly if you don’t know what the term “neocon” means (and this goes to all of you above either asking honestly what it is or pretending you don’t know), then you have no business discussing politics at all.
May 24th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Dave M, I can’t believe you took that bait.
Dave M: “There isn’t one, because the constitution was not created under one single ideal. That’s one of the many flaws with the simplistic, child-like mentality with which most Americans approach government. The founding fathers/framers/dead white dudes did not see eye to eye on very much. They were a group from differing backgrounds, geography, families and mentalities.
Additionally the constitution was not meant to be an end-all be-all of government, and slavishly limiting yourself to it and only it is silly beyond description. It’s like saying “I only want to follow Newtonian physics and nothing else.””
That just doesn’t make sense. Why are you bringing up the mentalities and such of the founding fathers? How about sticking to the text of the Constitution to find out what it means? That’s typically how people interpret written words.
Slavishly limiting yourself to the Constitution? How about “recognizing the wisdom in the document and how correct it is.” Deviating from the Constitution and the founding principles (on both sides) got us in the mess we’re in now in the first place. Continuing to ignore it will just screw us up even more. Going back to it is the answer and always has been.
“It’s like saying “I only want to follow Newtonian physics and nothing else.””
No. It’s not like saying that at all. What is it like saying is “I’m going to understand the laws of gravity and not jump off of buildings without a parachute and expect to live or not be seriously injured.”
May 24th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Dave M: “Honestly if you don’t know what the term “neocon” means (and this goes to all of you above either asking honestly what it is or pretending you don’t know), then you have no business discussing politics at all.”
You’re getting dumber by the minute. The whole point that I and others have been trying to make about the word (and this has come up in other blog posts here before as well) is that different people use the word in different ways and to mean different things. So what I think a neocon is might not be the same as what Phil or you think it is.
May 24th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Okay Dave M, just what is YOUR definition of a “neocon?” YOURS, not Wikipedia, or DailyKos, or anyone elses.
May 24th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Oh for the love of …
This is some of the worst debating I’ve seen in a long time – if you can call it that.
Are you people just trying to “win” the argument, or honestly deliberate the reality of these matters to the best of your ability? If it’s the former, you suck, and if it’s the later … um … you suck. Either way some of you really suck at this.
1. You can’t go from someone arguing for lower taxes to saying they are advocating NO government services and anarchy. It’s a moronic strawman. Stop it.
2. Although I’ll grant you that some extremist Libertarians think the free market is a panacea, I doubt that anyone here is suggesting anything of the sort. So please put your tray table up, your seat back in the full upright position, and don’t mindlessly regurgitate that done-to-death thought-stopping comeback unless it actually applies. Thankyou.
Again this is just to equate Libertarian ideas with anarchy. That’s like saying they want to play monopoly without any rules. Not even close. Why do you think they specifically approve of paying taxes for the courts and police? Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not use this strawman. Do not collect $200.
3. Yes, the hippie thing was, (partially), in jest. I can only guess at Phil’s political position on a number of issues, but he’s obviously leaning far west of the centre line on several. Insouciantly taxing “the rich” is one of them.
Everyone considers themselves moderate politically. It’s not like you have to spend your weekends parading around Washington in a red starred ushanka handing out copies of Das Kapital to harbour some of the same flawed ideas within it.
It’s specific ideas that should be the meat of the discussion. I know you guys are dealing with an election campaign, so I’ll forgive the tendency to judge a person’s entire political perspective as good or bad, left or right, instead of dealing with individual issues. But save it for the candidates will ya?
And even if Phil came right out and said he’s a rabid Marxist hippie, it wouldn’t change the fact that I’d still have to debate the actual issues one at a time. Likewise you can’t validly discredit my entire argument merely by suggesting I’m some kind of crazy ultra-right-wing Republican.
May 24th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Does anyone here like the ideas behind the Fair Tax?
May 24th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Mikel: “Does anyone here like the ideas behind the Fair Tax?”
I do.
May 24th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Did anyone else actually go to the Wikis of the candidates? It was a hard decision between my fellow veterans (I even served in the same war as one of them), so I figured the one running against the biggest scumbag would get my vote. Unfortunately, that came out a tie, the Republicans seem to be breeding dishonest congressmen, especially in the old south.
In the end, I voted for Daniel Johnson of North Carolina. I have a son and property there. Not the greatest reason, but I’m not up for a 0.47% surcharge on my taxes either.
May 24th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Mmmmm…
Another political post in all its train-wreck splendor.
Nothing really to add, though my views are closest to IRONMAN’s.
May 24th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
@Mikel:
Here’s another question for you:
If everyone in the country earned $30,000 and paid, let’s say 20% in tax. Then I open a very successful lemonade stand and now make $60,000 a year.
Why should the government get more money than it did before? Does it suddenly cost more to run the country? Were they not already paying for the roads, water and the utilities that Phil mentioned before?
Is anyone seriously telling me that, not only should I pay more tax in dollars, but I should also pay a higher percentage? Why?
May 24th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
The BA says: “a 0.47% increase in taxes for people making a half-million more or year is “soaking” them? Please. With record deficits, a two front war, gas prices skyrocketing and a country on the verge of recession, we have a President who wants to cut taxes on the rich?”
I’m genuinely surprised at Phil’s lack of economic sense here. If we’re on the verge of a recession, that’s the worst possible time to raise taxes. No country has ever taxed itself into prosperity, but many have taxed themselves into oblivion.
No, a tax of 0.47% is not “soaking,” but that’s not the rate. That’s on top of the existing rate. Something no one here has done is define “rich.” You’ll be surprised that “soak the rich” advocates would consider just about everyone here to be “rich.”
Interesting tax facts (from the IRS):
The top 2% of wage earners pay 20% of the income tax.
The top 20% of wage earners pay 50% of the income tax.
The top 50% of wage earners pay 98% of the income tax.
The bottom 40% of wage earners pay no income tax.
What was that about the rich not paying their “fair share?” Tax cuts (which are actually tax rate cuts) go to the rich because it’s the rich that pays taxes.
Historical reference point: The “burdensome” taxes imposed by Great Britain against the American colonies that started the revolution were about 2% of the average income. Total taxes today (federal, state and local) are about 40%.
- Jack
May 24th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
The Fair Tax Act sounded like a good idea when I first heard about it, but after a little research, I’m really not a fan. It’s regressive with respect to income. The people who make less money have to spend a larger percentage of their income just to make daily purchases than the more wealthy do. In essence, the poor wind up paying a larger percentage of their income on taxes than the wealthy do. How is that fair?
May 24th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
I support your candidate 100%. I hope he wins against the crazy republican in Colorado.
I do not support Daily Kos. They are biting caustic and vitriolic. Most of the candidates they endorse lose.
May 24th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
“Remind me again: are we safer?”
I dunno? Why don’t you consult the “World Safe Meter?” Maybe there’s one on the Democrat’s website? You know, a scale of 1 to 10 on how safe we are?
Seriously, when you figure out a way to measure how “safe” we are, then come back and get with us on this, until then, let’s just expose your statement for what it is: Sophomoronic…
May 24th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Jack, I do know that a general tax increase when we’re in a recession is a bad idea. I’m not calling for one. I’m calling for a fix of the tax code so that everyone pays their fair share, including corporations. We’re well past the point when even a monumental influx of tax money to the government will help much — my daughter’s children will be paying for this useless war.
But seeing as how it just cost me $60 to fill my tank, I don’t like knowing that Exxon made $11.7 billion in one quarter last year, yet our government gives them subsidies.
May 24th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Robert, I have one rule on this board: be polite. name-calling will get you kicked off.
And guess what: there are many groups who look into how safe we are, including ones run by our own government, and many of them have said we are less safe now than we were before all the draconian rules were implemented. Nothing has been done to safeguard our borders. nothing has been done to safeguard our docks (oh, wait, we were gonna sell that job to Dubai, that’s right!), nothing the TSA has been doing actually does any good as has been shown by repeated testing, and on and on.
Instead of knee-jerking and throwing around insults, you might want to do some actual reading. You’d find out that what you’re saying is grossly inaccurate.
May 24th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
And Rorbert, you said:
“President Bush has the lowest approval ratings in the history of this country for a reason. Lamborn is in lockstep with him. Where does that leave him?”
That would leave him twice as popular as the Democratic Congress!
That is so misleading it’s incredible. First off, the polls show that people are unhappy with Congress because Democrats haven’t been able to reverse the damage done by the years of having the Congress Republican-controlled Congress. The ethics scandals — almost entirely Republican, with few exceptions — haven’t helped. And the Republicans have been very obstructionist, especially in the Senate where the Dems have a slim majority. Again, I’ll note that the GI Bill, which is a good bill, was supported by Republicans who were vulnerable when it comes to re-election in November. The others voted “no”.
May 24th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
When you consider the fact that, on the political scale, Republicans are far right and Democrats are just right of center, Phil’s political views are best described as moderate-centrist : hardly far left/liberal! And fwiw, Boulder is not a far left/liberal stronghold. Far from it. It’s left-centrist ultra-conservative! Just follow local politics or try owning property and you’ll see. Local politics and rules that must be cowtowed to are not based on the highly visible undergrad student body, who are transient and, in the end, uninvolved.
——-
Phil, continuing to refer to the so-called “War on Terror” as one-and-the-same as the Iraq War pt.2 makes you no better than the ignorant masses who continue to justify the war because “Saddam flew planes into the towers”. Bone picked.
——-
The Daily Kos is occasionally accurate, sometimes informing, but also commonly full of bullpucky. That doesn’t means in itself that they’re left/liberal, it just means their often wrong. Just plain wrong. The canard that liberal=derogatory term isn’t going to fly on a blog with an intelligent reader base any more than a xenophobic or jingoist rant. What ultracons call “liberal” is anything left of right-of-center. True liberalism has no political presence in the USA currently.
——-
“I make about 90-100k a year and I already give about 30 percent of my paycheck to taxes.”
So, once you add in sales taxes, gas taxes, property taxes, state, local etc, you’re in the 40-55% bracket, eh?
——-
“You think the Neocons are morons for wanting to spend tax dollars on
enforcing their personal views of morality? ”
Exactly. Particularly when a)personal morality is not the function of government; b)those personal morals are often unconstitutional and usually un-American; c)Those enforcements would limit the freedoms of men; d)Those enforcements would be based on whimsy such as the supernatural,sloganeering, talking points.
——-
People, please don’t start accusing people of “taking the bait” here. It assumes that the level discourse already reached baiting for baiting’s sake, or is used as indefensible cop-out by someone who can no longer discuss rationally but has an uncontrollable desire to submit a comment out of verbose, cowardly obstinacy.
May 24th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
JJ Berg: “The Fair Tax Act sounded like a good idea when I first heard about it, but after a little research, I’m really not a fan. It’s regressive with respect to income. The people who make less money have to spend a larger percentage of their income just to make daily purchases than the more wealthy do. In essence, the poor wind up paying a larger percentage of their income on taxes than the wealthy do. How is that fair?”
Why should someone who makes more money pay a higher percentage? How is that fair?
But one thing you didn’t consider is that people with more money would still pay more in taxes because they buy more. That’s the whole point of having more money. The tax on a Cadillac Escalade would be a lot higher than the tax on a Hyundai Accent.
May 24th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
@Folks above addressing me:
Nice play from the Fox News handbook. You get called out and you fall back to insults and unverifiable generalities,”Well, *people* use it in different ways.” Who are “people”? That’s not an answer. You made a very silly assertion and I called you out on it.
Neocon is a very well defined term and anyone who even glancingly pays attention to politics over the last 20 years knows what it means. Maybe in your Bizarro land it is standard practice to make up your own definition of terms, but I don’t. I use the common definitions.
Now, you will probably claim to not be a supporter of the Bush administration and say you’re independently minded. O’Reilly does this same play, and it just doesn’t work. Because when it comes down to the issues you attack the opponents of Bush policies, and you are on the same page as the Bush administration even when you don’t know it. Privatization is great, Government is bad? That’s a neocon core value. Paying lip service to small government while expanding its role and the powers of the executive branch to record levels? Yep neocon again.
I’m bored of going back and forth here, though. Clearly you guys aren’t interested in learning or opening your eyes. If you were, you wouldn’t be so silly and hostile.
May 24th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
I have a phrase for you to memorize: we are spending 20 million dollars per hour on the War on Terror. Remind me again: are we safer?
Yep, war is expensive, but war has always been expensive, I never known of a cheap conflict. I could understand the concern because of this fact about a G.I. Bill being too expensive, the government spends money as if cash comes from a grove of magic money trees.. $2.9 trillion for an annual budget? I think a few hundred billion can be shaved off of that.
I would like to see the G.I. Bill pass, I would though also like to see some budgetary cuts somewhere to make up for it, the deficit spending doesn’t have to be higher then it already is, there is no excuse baring a national emergency otherwise. We really need to spend less.
May 24th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
David M: “Because when it comes down to the issues you attack the opponents of Bush policies, and you are on the same page as the Bush administration even when you don’t know it. Privatization is great, Government is bad? That’s a neocon core value. Paying lip service to small government while expanding its role and the powers of the executive branch to record levels? Yep neocon again.
I’m bored of going back and forth here, though. Clearly you guys aren’t interested in learning or opening your eyes. If you were, you wouldn’t be so silly and hostile.”
Now you’re making more assumptions about the posters here without claim to back it up. Just saying “you believe that, you just don’t know it or won’t admit it” isn’t a logical argument.
The words conservative, liberal, neocon, spoon, apple all do have specific meanings, you are right, but that doesn’t mean people will necessarily stick to the same one all the time. And it’s been my experience that people have different meanings for words and it’s not easy to tell which one they have in mind.
Frankly, you are the one that seems silly and hostile to me.
May 24th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
BMcP: “$2.9 trillion for an annual budget? I think a few hundred billion can be shaved off of that.”
Let’s make it a billion! Please!
BA: “That is so misleading it’s incredible. First off, the polls show that people are unhappy with Congress because Democrats haven’t been able to reverse the damage done by the years of having the Congress Republican-controlled Congress.”
That doesn’t hold up Phil. If that were the case then the Republicans would be the ones with the low approval ratings, not the Democrats. That case would be very easy for the Democrats to the people and have them on their side. The Republicans would be too scared to block anything the Democrats did if the Democrats really had the mandate from the people they claim to have.
What seems more likely to me is that the Democrats got into power riding on the Republicans huge failures and the Republican voters distaste for their own elected officials, not some uprising by the people pushing them.
May 24th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
My previous post was incomplete.
BA: “Again, I’ll note that the GI Bill, which is a good bill, was supported by Republicans who were vulnerable when it comes to re-election in November. The others voted “no”.”
That discredits your argument right there, and is what I was just trying to say above.
The Republicans know they can’t paint this issue positively with the people in their favor so they voted for the bill (and I’m sure they think it’s a good bill as well).
Well, if the Democrats had a mandate about the war in Iraq the Republicans would be in the same situation as they are in on the GI Bill. They would have to vote for it, even against the President, if they had any interest at all in staying in power, which they care about more than anything.
Ronald Reagan got much of his agenda passed with a Democrat controlled House (a larger portion than they have today as well) and Senate (although that changed after he got in office) because he had a mandate from the people. A 45 state landslide followed by a 49 state landslide will do that for you.
The mandate from the people claimed by the Democrats would do the same thing for them were it true. The results are that it is clearly not.
I hope that clears up my opinion on this issue.
May 24th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Looked up ‘Fair Tax’- I assume its the move to a flat sales tax to replace income tax completely.
The only people who would call it fair are the rich, because they pay less. For every gain at the top, someone at the bottom has to pay.
The reason that those at the top pay more tax proporionately is that they have a higher disposable income, and suffer less (or not at all). Who hurts the most- someone on $20k who has to pay $2000, (10%), or someone on $200k who pays $40k (20%)? Will the person on $200k have to worry about childrens clothing bills, or the central heating breaking down? Howabout getting sick and needing $10k of treatment?
Placing all taxation on sales then means that basic items become more expensive proporionately for the poor. A fridge here in the UK costs as low as £250, up to £2500 (ish). Sales tax on the cheaper will be a bigger proportion of the poors’ disposable income than the tax on the big fridge will be for the rich, plus the rich person has a choice of fridge- the poor person is stuck with the £250 one. In addition some products are flat priced (eg fuel), so they already are a larger proportion of a poor persons income.
Progressive taxation has the strong looking after the weak. The sometimes repeated arguement the poor should improve is just plain foolish-
i) Not everyone can be above average, despite the pronouncements of at least republican.
ii) As the average income goes up, so do prices- some people actually get worse off. This is not just inflation due to rising costs, the market charges as much as it thinks it can get.
iii) There are limited places at the top- there is a finite number of CEOs. BUT those CEOs all rely on the ‘little people’- sneer at someone who earns a 10th of you if you must, but can you fix your own boiler?
In addition, there is history giving reasons the rich should help the poor. Ask the French and Russians!
A true ‘Free Market’ is a disaster, because it DOESN’T self regulate. Snake oil salesmen proliferate, and prosper even when the theory says they should lose custom. In fact just two words show how much Capitalism relies on government.
Sub Prime.
Governments all over the world are now bailing out economies because it turns out profit at any cost can not be trusted.
May 24th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
LastHussar: “The only people who would call it fair are the rich, because they pay less. For every gain at the top, someone at the bottom has to pay.”
Every Fair Tax plan I’ve heard about includes tax breaks for basic needs spending just like people making below a certain amount get with the current tax system.
LastHussar: “Progressive taxation has the strong looking after the weak.”
The problem here is that it removes economic freedom and is legislating morality the same way banning pornography is. I argue that it’s not the government’s job to do these sorts of things
No one’s claiming the rich shouldn’t help the poor; the rich help the poor all the time through real charity. Taking the money through taxes and redistributing it how you see fit is not charity.
May 24th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
BA: “But seeing as how it just cost me $60 to fill my tank, I don’t like knowing that Exxon made $11.7 billion in one quarter last year, yet our government gives them subsidies.”
I’m with you on the subsidies, but I think there’s something else to consider about this situation.
The government has a large hand in the oil companies high profits (although their profit margin is reasonable) in a different way. They have artificially limited supply by not allowing new drilling and refining, which plays right into the oil companies favor. If the prices rise the oil companies make a bigger and bigger profit so they lose interest in increasing supplies.
This artificially limited supply also reduces the amount of competition and prevents smaller oil companies from rising up and expanding and leveling the playing field.
I am reminded of the effect of price controls on housing and wage controls. Housing price controls artificially drive up demand which in turn limits supplies because so many people want cheap housing. The same happens in wage controlled situations.
This situation is different, but they seem to follow the same basic principles (supply and demand!). The supply is artificially limited so as demand increases the price has to because the supply can’t.
LastHussar: “A true ‘Free Market’ is a disaster, because it DOESN’T self regulate.”
Never heard of this supply & demand subject huh?
May 24th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Well, at least you managed to stay awake through the first week of HS Economics. It’s too bad, because later on there’s this wicked plot twist where it gets into the importance of this thing called “regulation”. Maybe you can pick up a textbook second-hand somewhere.
May 25th, 2008 at 3:20 am
It’s funny how the neocons always cry about taking “their” money as if they’re part of the GOP “good-ol-boy” clique and they’re going to get a piece of the pie.
Bad news, neocons… you aren’t one of them. I’m sure BushCo is going to give you a no bid contract worth billions because you support them. Dream on.
Neocons whine about the government wasting money and then provide examples like school lunches, “handouts” to the poor and destitute, social security, education and science.
But those are really low ticket items compared to where the real waste goes – the war industry.
How much does a year of all the above “liberal agenda” items cost compared to a year of Iraq, Afghanistan and other black and covert ops around the word?
It would be far easier to count the number of countries where we aren’t screwing around somehow.
You know what? I don’t like my money being taken from me either. I certainly don’t like my money being wasted. I’d like to waste it myself.
Providing health care for our citizens is LESS EXPENSIVE than not. A healthy, productive citizens costs less than one who is ill all the time because he can’t afford proper medical care and ends up in the emergency room with a far worse malady than he would have had if he could afford to see a doctor and get preventive medicine instead.
And we all pay for those emergency room visits which provide the most expensive, least effective care. You know the person who can’t afford the doctor in the first place can’t pay the bill so it gets passed on to the tax payer.
And that’s how it goes all around. In neocon world, diplomacy is more expensive than war. Basic healthcare is more expensive than emergency room visits. And so on…
Neocons are liars. They really don’t care about money being wasted. They just don’t like anyone “getting something for nothing.”
They want everyone to work as hard as they did to “earn it.” But they didn’t “earn it.” Put them in the society they want to create – one with no social services, etc. and take away the silver spoon they were borne with – the one that provide their medical care. The one that provided their college education. The one that ensure ALL their needs were taken care of when they were growing up and you’ll find most of them wouldn’t make it. They’re fooling themselves if they think they did it on their own.
Sometimes I wish there were a real Twilight Zone and Rod could give all the cons a dose of their own medicine. We can see them put their money where their mouths are and pull themselves out of poverty with no help from anyone – particularly the government.
May 25th, 2008 at 4:31 am
Stick to astronomy, Phil. You know far more about it than you do about politics.
May 25th, 2008 at 5:31 am
I’m thankful to see some actual honest answers here, and no…. I don’t mean the answer calling dailykos – dailykooks. The only provision that held up the bill in congress, had nothing to do with add-ons. It only had to do with how quickly the G.I. Bill is earned. Under the new proposed legislation, a soldier is eligible for full G.I. Bill benefits after his/her first term of enlistment.
John McCain, by his own comment, voted against the bill because he said it would encourage soldiers to pursue an education instead of re-enlisting. Look it up, it’s available anywhere….
The sad fact, is that you simply parroted what you hear on right wing radio…
There is nothing at all true about it. Showing the salary of those who receive government contracts? I agree! If someone makes an excessive salary for a project that is never completed…there should be accountability, not just a give away, like there is in Iraq. In Iraq, more than 50 percent of the projects haven’t been completed, yet they have been fully paid for. If you understand contracting, you are paid on progression not in lump sums. Which basically means they were paid even though no work was being completed. Guess what – it was your money that paid them billions of dollars to not complete work.
As for the tax increase, it only affects those at 500k and above. It doesn’t even replace the tax that was in place on the upper echelon of incomes that W. Bust repealed. Do you ever wonder why the rate of foreclosure, and jobless continues to increase yet, the market stays high? The wealth has become increasingly centralized.
And btw…there has never in history been a tax cut, and a war at the same time. It’s unpatriotic.
May 25th, 2008 at 5:35 am
And furthermore, most of us on this thread were doing better from 92-2000 before the tax cuts for the Rich…. More jobs have been lost, and sent over seas, and real salaries have remained stagnant.
Anyone who says anything about “welfare” – do you realize how much this war has cost us?
So spend all our money in Iraq, give billions to crony contractors even though they don’t complete work are still paid in full, and ehh who cares about improving student loans, or pell grants… those are for poor people.
May 25th, 2008 at 5:38 am
One more thing on salary accountability. If a company is publicly traded, it is required by law to disclose the salaries and compensation packages of management.
Now are you really saying we shouldn’t have the same standard for companies that are paid in our tax dollars??
May 25th, 2008 at 9:18 am
There is a massive transfer of wealth going on in this country that would have made Lenin proud if it were going the other way. And still Republican loyalists parrot what they are told to parrot about “soaking the rich.”
Sheep.
May 25th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Bill: “Anyone who says anything about “welfare” – do you realize how much this war has cost us?”
Bill, on an hourly basis, the War on Poverty costs 8.5 times as much as the war in Iraq. One day the war in Iraq will be over and the troops will come home – and when they do, those troops will still get paid for garrison duty.
The War on Poverty has been going on for decades with no end in sight, and negative progress (imagine – paying people to stay out of the workforce results in them… staying out of the workforce!).
Tacitus: “Well, if you mean I assumed he was a Republican and not a Libertarian then you have a point. ”
Tacitus, I am neither a Republican nor a Libertarian. It’s worse than that; I’m Canadian.
May 28th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Two examples of lazy thinking here:
From Phil:
First folks, I wouldn’t classify myself as liberal. Moderate would be closer, but then, to a neocon, I’m way far left. Calling me a hippie is pretty funny, too, though that was (partially) in jest.
Then from CafeenMan:
Neocons whine about the government wasting money and then provide examples like school lunches, “handouts” to the poor and destitute, social security, education and science.
Actually, not so much lazy thinking, rather just ill-thought out abuse. Whatever his other merits, our host and CafeenMan use “neocon” much like large chunks of the far left do – as a term of base abuse, without any meaning.
Neoconservatives in actualitie actually tend to be much more socially liberal and comfortable with the welfare state than libertarians or paleoconservatives (see for example, the writings of Max Boot). In fact, many neoconservatives are indistiguishable from Scoop-Jackson Democrats.
Not that this matters, as there is no one of the neoconservative tendancy in power in the US (and in fact, Tony Blair for example, was and is more “neoconservative” than Bush or Cheney, for example), and even at the supposed height of its powers, PNAC, for example, had a grand total of….four employees and an annual operating budget of less than $100,000..
Anyway, time to get back to my new draft of the supernova FAQ. Phil, by all means continue posting on politics, but apply the same standard of rigour to that as you to do science…