This morning I stopped at the Supervisor of Elections office to drop off my mom’s absentee ballot and was impressed to find a table set up in the lobby of the County Governmental Center. They had log books for people to sign in with the name of the absentee voter and the person dropping it off, they time-stamped the actual ballot envelope, and had me insert the ballot into a sealed container. So I’m confident they plan on actually counting the absentee ballots. Needless to say, South Florida officials are trying hard to lose the name Floriduh.

Then Peter doesn’t win.

I’m assuming you don’t think that, automatically, *all* tax cuts result in increased tax revenue. Take that to its logical conclusion and we find that cutting tax rates to 0% would result in infinite tax income. Homeopathic tax!

Seriously, my understanding is that Obama’s tax plan means that 95% of tax payers pay less tax. Given that apparently in the Bush years, middle class salaries have declined by 1% in real terms, while those of high income earners have tripled in real terms, suggests that something is a little out of whack in the US economy.

The point is often made that cutting taxes on high income earners allows them to spend more to keep the economy growing. But wouldn’t cutting the taxes of low/middle income earners instead also achieve that result? After all, there are a lot more low and middle income earners. Additionally, these people are more likely to spend their income on ordinary day-to-day items like food, fuel, and consumer goods like televisions, white goods and cars – things which keep an economy ticking over.

Doug, with respect, my point doesn’t rely on people becoming millionaires to be considered successes. Rather, my point is that hard work, sacrifice and staying on track aren’t a guarantee of success. Despite all that, some people still end up losing out.

I have no problem with people going out there and giving it a go, and the government should do what it can to help them succeed. But I also think a compassionate government should be there to help those in difficult circumstances. The question seems to be how the government should raise the money necessary to do that.

The way I see it, where people earn so little that it’s hard for them to make ends meet, it’s inequitable to make them pay tax. High income earners, by contrast, are at little financial risk if asked to pay a little extra in tax.

Perhaps someone could post the current income tax rates for the USA.

Too late. If this was true McCain/Palin wouldn’t be getting any votes.

I reckon, for what it’s worth, that if you got the the truly ignorant and uninformed to vote they be pretty much divided evenly down party lines anyway. You do, however, seem to have a large group of people that are informed that choose not to vote for either philosophical reasons or for just being apathetic.

Anyway saying that some people shouldn’t vote smacks of “elitism”.

Having said that click my name to see the “The Chasers” perspective on people who voted in the elections in Australia. Funny but definitely NSFW.

In any case, if you have at lest a hint of a clue (whatever you perceive that to be), get out and vote. If you don’t, please stay home and leave it to the adults If it takes a pack of cigarettes, a dollar or a half-pint to get you to the polls, we can do without your input. Same goes for you dead people.

You’re so wrong I don’t even know where to begin. I’ve never been a very good deprogrammer.

No, it’s not an obligation. I’m sorry but I don’t want every uninformed person in the U.S to vote. Sometimes it’s better if people who don’t know what they are voting for to stay home. Second, the type of government we have is a Democratic Republic or Constitutional Republic. Both of those labels are fitting. I get that you are saying it from a non legal sense, but it does no good in convincing others to vote with the unstated premise that they are inferior for not voting. That will just push more pressure on those that shouldn’t vote. Given that some are unwilling to become informed on the issues, it’s best to not glorify the process of voting or scorn those that choose not to.

“Citizenship is a two-way contract between the state and the civilian: the state shall not infringe one’s right to vote, and the civilian has the obligation to participate in how the state is constructed/operates.

If you want to call yourself a citizen and not a hypocrite, you vote. Otherwise, you’re a civilian (with almost no moral rights to complain about the government…you had your chance).”

In the U.S voting is a privilege that can be taken away. Anything that is granted by government, that can taken away by government, is a privilege. A person has every moral right to complain considering the people that were elected were not endorsed by said individual. This morality is greatly enhanced if all the choices presented deviated a great deal from the principles or value judgments held by the voter.

I’m proud to have voted for Obama and Biden.
Wish I could have voted for Hal Bidlack too.
However, the Roaring Fork Valley is way more comfortable for Freethinkers.

Voting IS an obligation, and such an obligation is a requisite to be a citizen. I don’t mean the legal definition, but the socio-political implications that living in a liberal-democracy (yes, America, you ARE a “liberal” democracy *GASP!*) entails.

Citizenship is a two-way contract between the state and the civilian: the state shall not infringe one’s right to vote, and the civilian has the obligation to participate in how the state is constructed/operates.

If you want to call yourself a citizen and not a hypocrite, you vote. Otherwise, you’re a civilian (with almost no moral rights to complain about the government…you had your chance).

1) As far as communalism being open to growth and new ideas: Who do you think came up with aspirin? You’re arguing about technology while I’m discussing social systems. Hunter gatherer tribes didn’t live in “crude huts and little villages”. Mostly they lived in tents and collapsible Yurts. They typically roved over an area about 20 mile in radius in their search and acquisition of food.
(The Kalahari typically had about 68 different sources of food).

2) Waiting to die as a tribal elder at age 35? Where do you get that? Comic books? Just because average life span was 35, doesn’t mean some didn’t live to 100 years. Average life span has much more to do with death from accidents, infection and infant mortality. Remember, our highly vaunted technological development has only had immunization ,beginning with Edward Jenner’s creation of the world’s first vaccine for smallpox in the 1790s and antibiotics since the 1940s. Prior to those innovations, average life span for this “civilization” was about the same as for the hunter gatherers but MAXIMUM lifespan has been pretty much the same for tens of millennia.

As far as the “community bumping us off”, is concerned I have no idea where you got that misinformation. Tribes are EXTENDED FAMILIES. If the families you’re familiar with bump off their seniors, you come from a really weird family environment.

The acceleration in technological development is directly proportional to the absolute number of humans on the planet. More people equals more innovation. How hard is that to understand? The earliest human settlements were, in fact, RUDE VILLAGES associated with agriculture. Agriculture was likely established for one purpose: to provide grain for the making of BEER. I expect humans knew quite well for many millennia that the seeds they were eating were the source of the plants from which they came. People just had no reason to stay in one place until the day some bright lad decided to hang around making beer, which requires staying in one place long enough for it to brew. Then of course, there were the containers for the brew, which were bulky, heavy and fragile. Don’t want to spill this precious nectar so staying in one place all year long made sense. Thus, the villages, kings, military, etc.

All of that is beside the point. I was talking about two different views of social organization, communalist vs hierarchical. The former was “fair” to all members of the tribe. The latter is intrinsically unfair to some of the tribe, thus we have “the poor we shall always have with us” as long as we adhere to a hierarchical social structure.

GAry 7

You seem to be coming at this from the now discredited Keynesian model of consumption and savings.

Discredited? I have to know a few competent economists and of at least one recent Nobel Prize winner who would disagree with that characterization.

You seem to be coming at this from the now discredited Keynesian model of consumption and savings. The fact is that savings drive the economy as much as consumption, if not more. The money BG has saved and invested is not stagnating the economy, but is driving it by allowing for the capital investment needed in order to create supply.

You’re both adding to the growth of the pie, as his money is coursing through the economy with just as much force as yours.

Meanwhile, wealth held as investments in the microeconomic sense is actually /savings/ in macroeconomic terms, and is as such the very source of economic stagnation. It’s /not/ being spent or invested, again in the macroeconomic sense of the word, and so it’s not helping the economy to grow.

So, yes, pie is a bad model. Clearly, the economy is not a pie. It can grow, and the rate at which it grows depends the evenness of the pie’s slices. Therefore, since I am poor (and thus save nearly nothing) and Bill Gates (nothing against Billy Boy, he’s just the Standard Issue Example) is rich (and thus saves nearly everything,) every dollar Bill Gates adds to his net-worth is not only another dollar I do not have, it’s an additional brake on the growth of the not-pie. (Conversely, every dollar that I have that Bill Gates does not adds to the growth speed of the not-pie.)

Calm down, sport. I’m voting Obama, but under protest. I’m on record on this blog saying a literally *hate* McCain for running at his age, and that I don’t want Palin to see the inside of the White House even as a tourist. I’m also voting NO on Prop 8 here in California.

But the level of adulation I see for the O-Man, a politician, is *very* off putting to an independent person like myself. I keep hoping civilization will evolve beyond such things, but I have come to accept it won’t happen in my lifetime.

Doesn’t mean I can’t poke fun.

What we really need now is a Middle Party that rejects ideology and tries to use the best tools of the Left and the Right and the Center to develop rational solutions for things. I’d start it if I could figure out how. This internet things has to be good for something.

Why is that the only other possibility besides being an evil robber baron? He was undoubtedly a tenacious competitor, but that’s a GOOD thing. Dropping the price of kerosene from $2.00 per gallon to $0.06 per gallon was good for the world, not bad.

I will agree that sending in thugs to use violence is a robber baron type thing. But in the Standard Oil case it’s mostly just rumour created by unhappy competitors in order to gain sympathy. But even if it did happen to some degree, even the biggest detractors don’t claim this was a major factor in the growth of Standard Oil.

Everything else you mention is only bad when said with scary music behind it. Predatory pricing is a myth (it never happened because it wouldn’t work) and working out exclusive deals with suppliers is a well worn competitive tactic, one that hurts competitors but lowers costs and helps consumers. There was no “hit” taken by society because of Standard Oil, in fact we’re all better off because of the great gains in efficiency that their competition created.

Here’s some articles on the topic that get past the mythical propaganda you find in a most textbooks.

http://www.campusreportonline.net/main/articles.php?id=154
http://www.fff.org/freedom/0592c.asp
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-169.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=CQFixQA6p9UC&pg=PA215&lpg=PA215&dq=standard+oil+monopoly+myth&source=web&ots=Nf9FFL5LAS&sig=dK-Qs4o0Txzu4_2BFwENE8_F9S4

No I’m not in favor of FISA, and yet I am in favor of FISA, and I sense that Obama is very much in the same boat. The problem with FISA and the Act passed in 2007 is that it is the culmination of three competing acts passed separately in the Senate. To be frank, I never cared much about telecom immunity. If we’re not going to impeach Bush, it doesn’t matter, that’s where the buck stopped anyway and that’s who I hold responsible. After all, in theory Bush could have simply overturned any convictions and it would have been perfectly legal.

Meanwhile, FISA is a mechanism for obtaining warrants under seal, and I would much rather have appealable warrants in secret with at least some accountability than extralegal measures taken without warrant. FISA has been around since before Bush, and Bush didn’t abuse FISA more than he circumvented it and ignored it all together. In other words while I dislike FISA immensely, it’s not anywhere on the level of the USA PATRIOT Act.

As for gay marriage, what are you on about? Obama supports the overturn of DOMA. Meanwhile, yes he supports “civil unions”, but that’s functionally the same damn thing as marriage. Marriage is not something the state should define anyway, the fact is that “marriage” in a legal sense is a private contract adjudicated upon by the state when and where necessary. Beyond that I don’t care what in blue blazes you call it. A rose by any other word would still smell as sweet.

That’s all true, but they haven’t even tried anything. There’s a reason they’ve got the lowest congressional approval ratings of all time. They’ve been impotent and inert, and that can’t be blamed solely on a potential veto.