How will I ever get rich enough to not pay tax?
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Tin foil helmets and rubber spears to fight the upper class
Results of various polls these last few weeks, some are overwhelming, some are a mere 51% here are the publics positions on various issues in the US. And for most of these items the public is willing to pay more for the product or in taxes to have it, yet the GOP blocks these things on behalf of their capitalist owners.
When polled, we want: higher milage lower polluting vehicles, more bus/train service, reduced noise in cities and on the job, increased energy efficient building standards, cleaner air, cleaner water, removal of dangerous yard and farm chemicals, energy from solar/wind/thermal and an end to coal power plants, stronger banking laws and prosecutions, stronger regulations on markets, outlaw payday loan companies, increase testing of food/restaurants, enforcement of consumer and product safety laws, get corporations out of the process at FDA, harsh laws on lobbyist access/support/legislative input to government and elected officials, protection for wildlife, increase in tax on the richest/corporations, increase in education at all levels, restore cuts that punished the poor, stop blocking judge appointments, the senate and congress should be exempted from any government pension plan and buy their own insurance.
There are very few outside the GOP hard core who are against these things, yet this is the norm of the day with the GOP and a few of the running scared Dems.
Here is my new law for lobbying: lobbying (or having a sibling-spouse-child-parent lobbyist) disqualifies you from ever holding any government job, or I would compromise at 10 years after ceasing and being estranged from the firms and key people represented. Also one would be forbidden to lobby for 10 years after leaving any government job or elected position or the military if at a rank above E7 (a high level sergeant). Senators and Congress should not have government pension but plan their own 401K or savings account, Senators and Congress should have to work in DC 4 full days a week. Lobbyist should have to enter/exit any government building by the citizen/tourist door and stand in line. No staff member can be on "loan or receive value, promise or retainer from outside government and must be on the Senator or Congress staff's payroll.
Class warfare? Yep, you see I am jealous beause I can't afford to buy a congressmen, or even the city council. But the capitalist upper class can. I can't afford to run lies on TV, secretly, to smear the minorities and unemployed, or cause doubts about science. I don't even make enough money to pay the millionaires lower tax rate. All I cling to is a little hope and my class warfare fantasy.
When polled, we want: higher milage lower polluting vehicles, more bus/train service, reduced noise in cities and on the job, increased energy efficient building standards, cleaner air, cleaner water, removal of dangerous yard and farm chemicals, energy from solar/wind/thermal and an end to coal power plants, stronger banking laws and prosecutions, stronger regulations on markets, outlaw payday loan companies, increase testing of food/restaurants, enforcement of consumer and product safety laws, get corporations out of the process at FDA, harsh laws on lobbyist access/support/legislative input to government and elected officials, protection for wildlife, increase in tax on the richest/corporations, increase in education at all levels, restore cuts that punished the poor, stop blocking judge appointments, the senate and congress should be exempted from any government pension plan and buy their own insurance.
There are very few outside the GOP hard core who are against these things, yet this is the norm of the day with the GOP and a few of the running scared Dems.
Here is my new law for lobbying: lobbying (or having a sibling-spouse-child-parent lobbyist) disqualifies you from ever holding any government job, or I would compromise at 10 years after ceasing and being estranged from the firms and key people represented. Also one would be forbidden to lobby for 10 years after leaving any government job or elected position or the military if at a rank above E7 (a high level sergeant). Senators and Congress should not have government pension but plan their own 401K or savings account, Senators and Congress should have to work in DC 4 full days a week. Lobbyist should have to enter/exit any government building by the citizen/tourist door and stand in line. No staff member can be on "loan or receive value, promise or retainer from outside government and must be on the Senator or Congress staff's payroll.
Class warfare? Yep, you see I am jealous beause I can't afford to buy a congressmen, or even the city council. But the capitalist upper class can. I can't afford to run lies on TV, secretly, to smear the minorities and unemployed, or cause doubts about science. I don't even make enough money to pay the millionaires lower tax rate. All I cling to is a little hope and my class warfare fantasy.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Do not go gently into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Pushing back on the icebreaker. ......... Ice cover in the Polar Bears home fell to a new low last summer, more ships are coming.Friday, December 2, 2011
A Reichwing wordsmith gives the GOP the latest spin lesson.
Progressives need to know these code words the GOP will use these next few months, and keep the original terms in use, don't fall into their language patterns. Below is the GOP's lesson plan:
1. Don't say 'capitalism.'
"I'm trying to get that word removed and we're replacing it with either 'economic freedom' or 'free market,' " Luntz said. "The public . . . still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we're seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we've got a problem."
2. Don't say that the government 'taxes the rich.' Instead, tell them that the government 'takes from the rich.'
"If you talk about raising taxes on the rich," the public responds favorably, Luntz cautioned. But "if you talk about government taking the money from hardworking Americans, the public says no.Taxing, the public will say yes."
3. Republicans should forget about winning the battle over the 'middle class.' Call them 'hardworking taxpayers.'
"They cannot win if the fight is on hardworking taxpayers. We can say we defend the 'middle class' and the public will say, I'm not sure about that. But defending 'hardworking taxpayers' and Republicans have the advantage."
4. Don't talk about 'jobs.' Talk about 'careers.'
"Everyone in this room talks about 'jobs,'" Luntz said. "Watch this."
He then asked everyone to raise their hand if they want a "job." Few hands went up. Then he asked who wants a "career." Almost every hand was raised.
"So why are we talking about jobs?"
5. Don't say 'government spending.' Call it 'waste.'
"It's not about 'government spending.' It's about 'waste.' That's what makes people angry."
6. Don't ever say you're willing to 'compromise.'
"If you talk about 'compromise,' they'll say you're selling out. Your side doesn't want you to 'compromise.' What you use in that to replace it with is 'cooperation.' It means the same thing. But cooperation means you stick to your principles but still get the job done. Compromise says that you're selling out those principles."
7. The three most important words you can say to an Occupier: 'I get it.'
"First off, here are three words for you all: 'I get it.' . . . 'I get that you're angry. I get that you've seen inequality. I get that you want to fix the system."
Then, he instructed, offer Republican solutions to the problem.
8. Out: 'Entrepreneur.' In: 'Job creator.'
Use the phrases "small business owners" and "job creators" instead of "entrepreneurs" and "innovators."
9. Don't ever ask anyone to 'sacrifice.'
"There isn't an American today in November of 2011 who doesn't think they've already sacrificed. If you tell them you want them to 'sacrifice,' they're going to be be pretty angry at you. You talk about how 'we're all in this together.' We either succeed together or we fail together."
10. Always blame Washington.
Tell them, "You shouldn't be occupying Wall Street, you should be occupying Washington. You should occupy the White House because it's the policies over the past few years that have created this problem."
BONUS:
Don't say 'bonus!'
Luntz advised that if they give their employees an income boost during the holiday season, they should never refer to it as a "bonus."
"If you give out a bonus at a time of financial hardship, you're going to make people angry. It's 'pay for performance.'"
How did the police go from our best buddies to looking like the Egyptian army?
Question: Under the law voted last night by the United States Senate, if one of these officers said the person being stood on made a threat against the nation, she could be turned over to the military for a life time of imprisonment with no lawyer or legal recourse, no rights, back to the middle ages, dungeons. Obama must veto this military budget, he must not sign it with this law as part of it. This creates a police. We have all heard of planted evidence, lies and corruption of some police over the years resulted in innocent in jail, even executions. Well........ If bat shit crazy Bachmann, Noot, and Fox news so easily claims some democrats should be jailed for perceived ties to terrorist, muslims and so on, then where the hell do you think this law will lead to if those people are running the nation?
Thursday, December 1, 2011
GOP "inequality good, government bad, unemployed bad, lay offs good, WTF?
We should all remember this. We hear often that all the spending and public works programs didn't get the US out of the great depression, it was WWII that finally did it. This, though partially correct it did not return industry to a rolling boil it provided work for millions planting forests, building parks and roads, but this popular myth bends us to an absurd logic if taken to conclusion, seeing the Axis powers as the best job creators this nation ever had. Which leads me to suspect the GOP would gladly land us in another war one day to have the excuse to do what they cannot do now, stimulate the economy through government spending.
If you only remember one thing about this episode, remember that bureaucrats in the government running up massive debt and borrowing launched full employment overnight. Industry did not wake up in Dec. 41 and decide to build bomb fins or recycle scrap steel. No, government cut the checks and mailed them out to make it happen. Like it or not the government is the only thing that can quickly restart a stuck economy the size of the US. Within days of Pearl Harbor money was flying out with the plans and orders, they ordered thousands of precision grinding machines, purchased land for new air bases, increased hundred fold every armament contract on the books. Industry built the machinery of war but it was overseen, planned and funded by government agencies, the "job creators" of the day were firmly attached to the pigs tit, sure they had some latitude, but it was a massive socialist system that they profited from and the nation won the war with.
As to government debt, it can be a scary thing indeed. However, we should not view it as a number out there that sets alone. The debt is not so scary if it is set next to a good growth rate, if the population of future workers is growing, if revenues are increasing. Republicans, especially the really stupid ones, talk about *Greece or other nations in dire straights as comparison, but there is none. Greece has a crazy big debt per cap than us, it has defaulted on it's debt a couple dozen times since WWII, tax cheating is national hobby, the economy is tiny and very narrow compared to the US, they don't have a currency of their own, so it's hardly worth the discussion. The lesson we should be learning, the experiment under way in the US, in the states, in the cities, is to cut governments income (revenues) and the services provided. Under the voodoo economics theory this will stimulate growth. This experiment is taking place also in parts of Europe at the same time. Already the results are becoming evident. Laying off hundreds of thousands of government workers, teachers and food inspectors does little to stimulate houses to be built or the next educated work force to emerge. Cutting hiway projects cause private sector jobs to dry up, this too apparently fails at stimulating a housing boom. The experiment is already a failure, it should be stopped before the patient dies. You cannot help the out of work become workers and tax payers by making it free for the rich to live among us while we reduce every form of service for the common good and meanly add to the unemployed rolls.
Now, the job creators of today. Where are they? If we are to believe the GOP, the upper 1%, or 10% ,use what you will, are the blessing of the world delivered to the USA by God to trickle down on us, and most important to give us jobs for our share of the American Dream. Bull shit. I think it was a politician of the faire sex from Maine if I have it right, a few days ago said something like ....... very few of the 1%ers are job creators. Think about it. Many of these people make their money off the markets and by speculating or collecting royalties. They are not tinkering in an R&D shop with some craftsmen they hired to invent washable toilet paper or a faster power window for the Lexus. No, the closest they come to job creation is contracting for maid service when they visit their homes in Aspen or Cayman Islands. She suggest we devise a way to tax the idle rich and leave the job creators alone. Excellent, but sure as shoot'n their lobbyest will claim they are all job creators if they hold a poor guys mortgage papers, or if they own Boeing stock. Look, stock trading is a secondary market, buy stock and you don't invest one fucking cent in the company, you invest in speculation, a bet that someone else will want it enough to pay more some day. The exception, the guys that started the company, and the IPO stock buyers, everyone else who buys stocks later on can pound trash up there ass and have the same impact on job creation at that corporation.
There are job creators, the guy that put the roof on my house, the guy that bought a machine and started making widgets. But collecting dads insurance policy, or trading foreign currency, or overlooking the bay in Miami while collecting oil well payments from the Texas desert isn't job creating. It's good that these people are able to eat and have shelter, but they should not own the government, nor should we buy the myth they are our blessing, our manna from heaven. Should manna smell like nursing home piss?
(*the reason Greece and some other Euro nations are getting so much attention from the world for it's debt, is in part due to those so called job creators, the bankers and traders who bought these debt/default/swap instruments that brought us to our knees in 2008, in other words, at the same time some try to save it, some take the bet it will fail, if it fails none of these people or banks know the ramifications, other than billions will be swept into the hands of a few somewhere on a sunny isle or penthouse in Dallas while other banks and the Greeks could be brought down.)
If you only remember one thing about this episode, remember that bureaucrats in the government running up massive debt and borrowing launched full employment overnight. Industry did not wake up in Dec. 41 and decide to build bomb fins or recycle scrap steel. No, government cut the checks and mailed them out to make it happen. Like it or not the government is the only thing that can quickly restart a stuck economy the size of the US. Within days of Pearl Harbor money was flying out with the plans and orders, they ordered thousands of precision grinding machines, purchased land for new air bases, increased hundred fold every armament contract on the books. Industry built the machinery of war but it was overseen, planned and funded by government agencies, the "job creators" of the day were firmly attached to the pigs tit, sure they had some latitude, but it was a massive socialist system that they profited from and the nation won the war with.
As to government debt, it can be a scary thing indeed. However, we should not view it as a number out there that sets alone. The debt is not so scary if it is set next to a good growth rate, if the population of future workers is growing, if revenues are increasing. Republicans, especially the really stupid ones, talk about *Greece or other nations in dire straights as comparison, but there is none. Greece has a crazy big debt per cap than us, it has defaulted on it's debt a couple dozen times since WWII, tax cheating is national hobby, the economy is tiny and very narrow compared to the US, they don't have a currency of their own, so it's hardly worth the discussion. The lesson we should be learning, the experiment under way in the US, in the states, in the cities, is to cut governments income (revenues) and the services provided. Under the voodoo economics theory this will stimulate growth. This experiment is taking place also in parts of Europe at the same time. Already the results are becoming evident. Laying off hundreds of thousands of government workers, teachers and food inspectors does little to stimulate houses to be built or the next educated work force to emerge. Cutting hiway projects cause private sector jobs to dry up, this too apparently fails at stimulating a housing boom. The experiment is already a failure, it should be stopped before the patient dies. You cannot help the out of work become workers and tax payers by making it free for the rich to live among us while we reduce every form of service for the common good and meanly add to the unemployed rolls.
Now, the job creators of today. Where are they? If we are to believe the GOP, the upper 1%, or 10% ,use what you will, are the blessing of the world delivered to the USA by God to trickle down on us, and most important to give us jobs for our share of the American Dream. Bull shit. I think it was a politician of the faire sex from Maine if I have it right, a few days ago said something like ....... very few of the 1%ers are job creators. Think about it. Many of these people make their money off the markets and by speculating or collecting royalties. They are not tinkering in an R&D shop with some craftsmen they hired to invent washable toilet paper or a faster power window for the Lexus. No, the closest they come to job creation is contracting for maid service when they visit their homes in Aspen or Cayman Islands. She suggest we devise a way to tax the idle rich and leave the job creators alone. Excellent, but sure as shoot'n their lobbyest will claim they are all job creators if they hold a poor guys mortgage papers, or if they own Boeing stock. Look, stock trading is a secondary market, buy stock and you don't invest one fucking cent in the company, you invest in speculation, a bet that someone else will want it enough to pay more some day. The exception, the guys that started the company, and the IPO stock buyers, everyone else who buys stocks later on can pound trash up there ass and have the same impact on job creation at that corporation.
There are job creators, the guy that put the roof on my house, the guy that bought a machine and started making widgets. But collecting dads insurance policy, or trading foreign currency, or overlooking the bay in Miami while collecting oil well payments from the Texas desert isn't job creating. It's good that these people are able to eat and have shelter, but they should not own the government, nor should we buy the myth they are our blessing, our manna from heaven. Should manna smell like nursing home piss?
(*the reason Greece and some other Euro nations are getting so much attention from the world for it's debt, is in part due to those so called job creators, the bankers and traders who bought these debt/default/swap instruments that brought us to our knees in 2008, in other words, at the same time some try to save it, some take the bet it will fail, if it fails none of these people or banks know the ramifications, other than billions will be swept into the hands of a few somewhere on a sunny isle or penthouse in Dallas while other banks and the Greeks could be brought down.)
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