Billy Beck has been saying it for sometime. I have been saying it. Now you are saying it. Bill Whittle has said it (obtusely)http://www.pjtv.com/v/3353 The ballot box is loaded in the lefts favor and the only cure for that is total collapse or outright violence. I feel we are on the verge of both.
Keep your powder dry, gonna need it no matter what side of the fence this falls on.
As Kevin likes to refer to the Unhinged Kingdom as the petri dish which reveals what is in line for America, take a look at what hopefully will NOT be your future ... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1265508/Peter-Davey-gets-42-000-benefits-year-drives-Mercedes.html
Oh I already posted that link over in M's sandbox. No response there, although since you said those two magic words, he may pop out of the woodwork here. It certainly would be amusing to see him screech about how that is code for racial stereotypes.
I am one of those who "pays no tax." The fed withholding for me was about $1300 on $60,000 in income. My "taxes owed" were $1100. And I'm getting back a return of just under $5000. Nice, huh? I have five kids and haven't paid the feds anything for years. I spent a year overseas with the family, paid out of our savings, with zero income - they still gave me over $3000 as my return.
Obama, however, didn't get my vote last time and he won't get it next time.
Like Billy Beck, I agree that we won't vote ourselves out of this. So I'm going to take everything I can get from the government, place the maximum demand I can on their services. The greater the strain, the quicker we reach the tipping point and we can get the collapse over with. I'd willingly pay my fair share, but would it go to strengthening or reviving the Republic? Would paying my fair share move us back to the Constitution?
You know the answer to that one. And that tax return? It's paying for a couple of new rifles, some more ammunition and a weekend at Appleseed with my older kids. I think we're going to need a few more riflemen...
Glad you are buying something useful with my money, I suspect most aren't. I paid for about a dozen of you leaches. All things considered, I would rather keep it myself.
Hmmm. My first thaought was defensive - i.e., "I'm not a leech!" But then I gave it a bit of thought. Maybe I am. Taking unearned money that was obtained from others under threat of force...
But then I considered about what I DO pay into - over $5000 year into property taxes including approx. $3000 for school construction in our new area. Won't get a dime of value out of that, since our kids are homeschooled (completely privately homeschooled - not pseudo-public charter schooled using "public" funds). So maybe I'm just getting some of my money back and not yours at all. Plus, I put about $3700 into Social Security last year and I'm not too confident I'll be getting that back in my Golden Years like I've been promised. I've been paying into that scam for about 25 years now.
So maybe I'm a leech, but I'm being leeched off of as well. Perhaps it's just a big circle of life thing?
That said, I'd like to see you keep more of yours as well. Flat tax anyone?
I have heard it termed "ballot box, jury box, cartridge box".
Where are the lines? People in Zimbabwe, for example, still have the vote.
As for the jury box, who are you trying? The government? The laws? In order to reach the jury box in the first place, might you not have to resort to the cartridge box?
The fact that you are even asking the question is a reflection on the times.
Sane men are slow to take up arms, knowing what it means and what it will cost them. The decision to move in that direction is not arrived at casually. Many of us know well of the founder's hatred of tyranny and have taken it to heart, but they endured many things before they reached the tipping point. Unlike Zimbabwe, we have a tradition of freedom and many of us still remember it and teach it to our children.
We have endured and will endure many petty tyrannies. But when will the preponderance of tyrannies add up to more than the sum of their whole?
In my mind, it is not a matter of lines that will be crossed, but more like a game of Jenga - as they pull out blocks from the foundation, the structure they are building becomes even more unstable. Eventually, gravity will do its job and both we, and they, will be carried along in the event to a conclusion one side will not like at all.
I've heard it as "Soap box, Ballot box, Jury box, Cartridge box". I think the strength of the soap box in our nation has in the past prevented too far a trip down the order of the boxes. Under most circumstances in our history, this past Summer's "Town Hall" meetings and the current Tea Party demonstrations would have been enough to pressure our law makers into taking the proper action. In our current situation, the Soap box has failed, so now we move on to the Ballot box. I don't think we'd see the Jury box unless, say for example, leading Democrats, Union leaders, and others of their ilk, were caught using physical force to prevent voters from voting-out Democrat incumbents (although I believe no charges were filed against the Black Panthers in Philadelphia for exactly that). The Cartridge box won't come into use unless Congress and the President were to refuse to relinquish their Offices. Should that happen, we would all be obligated, as Americans, to remove them from Office using the last box available to us.
Just watched the latest Afterburner. I may need to change my statement.
If elected Officials, having taken an Oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, publicly denounce the Constitution, they should be removed from Office. Immediately. If they are not then, by my estimation, we're suddenly past the Jury Box.
...and both we, and they, will be carried along in the event to a conclusion one side will not like at all.
I don't think either, or any, "side" will like it very much. To borrow a phrase from a completely different kind of conflict resolution, "The only winners in a lawsuit are the lawyers."
Interestingly enough, as Diogenes points out in the first comment, Bill Whittle's latest Afterburner hints not so obliquely at a coming break, and Walter Williams explicitly suggests secession in a recent piece.
I grew up in a part of NYC called Staten Island (yes, home of the Ferry and the world's largest landfill). Back in the 80's there was a major secession movement in Staten Island, they wanted to break off from NYC and go their own way, largely because the people who get paid to do so figured out that Staten Islanders got 60 cents worth of city services for every dollar in city taxes spent, the other 40 cents went to services in other boros. There was a referendum, Staten Islanders voted to seceed, and the courts ruled that they couldn't unless the rest of the city (the ones getting that other 40 cents) agreed to it.
The rest of the country can't afford to less us go our own way, we freedom-loving people are the ones who work, who are productive, who contribute to society. Like the dysfunctional husband, they'll kill us rather than let us go (which would of course put them in the same position). Unlike the unpleasantness of the early 1860's, where the issue was philosophical (preserve the Union/stamp out slavery), this time the issue will be simple self-interest on the part of the leeches.
You know, Kevin, I've been a regular here for, what...almost as long as you've been at this bit, and I've read that Tytler quote literally dozens of times, but it just now registered with me what it said.
I'll skip to the important part; "...every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."
It's a certainty that we are teetering on the precipice of the dependent event for the later, here. There is NO question of that. If this Tytler quote is indeed based on an historical precedent, and I have no reason to doubt that it is, who, then, steps into the breach after the collapse? The Won?
Having a hard time seeing that bit happening, as he can not possibly deal with that situation and how bad it'll be. He doesn't have the stones to handle it.
But likely someone will. And by the time that happens, our Constitutional Republic will no longer exist.
I quoted Philosopher Arthur Koestler some time back on this topic:
Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.
Atually it was the Bush Child Tax Credit that shoves a lot of folks into paying no or minimum federal income tax. (it existed under Clinton, but it was under Bush that it was expanded to $1000/chile). And yes I know, it's the Congress that sets tax policy.
A family of 4 making $50K a year will pay no Fed Income Tax.
This year will be distorted a bit because of the homebuyer tax credit. Pretty much anyone who qualifies won't pay taxes this year. I would have paid taxes this year, but because of the homebuyer tax credit (which is just stupid policy wise) the Feds will pay me around $5k instead.
Of course that family of 4 still pays plenty of taxes in the form of FICA,excise taxes, etc. So even though I'll pay no income tax this year I'm still "over-taxed".
I still think we should scrap the whole system and go to a 10% flat tax or 10% across-the-board tarrif though.
After the Argentine collapse did the Military run things for a while? ...Checking... Uh, no, several repeated failed governments and presidents later they emerged still shaky - however that was their standard response to most situations.
What one guy said though: Those that want to harm or steal from you don't come waving a pirate flag, they don't start shooting from 200-yards out or wear orange prision jump-suits - they come dressed nicely and probably better than you, and rob you anyhow. They look normal, like a Congressman...
I would be in that "family of 4 making 50K a year" (more or less) except for the fact that the little woman and I stopped getting along and now she and the kids are living elsewhere. In my case, I get to make huge child support payments (I pay in child support more than she makes in income) but, since she has custody, I get to pay taxes as if I was a single dude with nobody to support but myself. SO, I am one of the (seemingly few) who actually pay in more than I get back.
With that said, even back when my return was bigger than what I paid in I supported a 10% flat tax with NO exemptions, NO child credit, NO EIC, NO first time home buyers crap. Everyone pays their small part. It is the only way to be fair and the country would save a crap load of money because the IRS chould be shrunken down to a reasonable size and it could spend it's time going after people who don't pay instead of shuffling paper around.
We still have a very long way to go before it is time to start shooting.
Massive civil disobedience in the form of a tax revolt is what I predict is coming relitively soon. Where things go from there is entirely up to the Government.
I am a single person who doesn't get a refund, but I deliberately set my exemptions up that way, so I am not the norm.
So what happens if President Obama is able to manufacture an apparently permanent Democratic majority before the elections this year? What then?
There are two things that the Democrats could do that would make that likely:
1. Immigration 'reform'. Massive numbers of new citizens who would be eligble to vote in Novemember.
2. Election 'reform'. Motor Voter on steroids. No registration or ID requirement. Maybe like the Michigan requirement that you present a school ID or sign an affidavit that you did not bring a photo ID.
Both these reforms would enormously benefit community organizers in getting out the vote that they want to get.
Is it time to start shooting then? If so, at whom? Your neighbors who believe that President Obama is doing a wonderful job? The police? Your congressional delegation? How does that benefit anybody? Or what are you going to do? And how does any of that make a dictatorship more likely?
It's not a matter of a dictatorship being a requirement - there's a thing called disenfranchisement. It brings up an little issue we call "taxation without representation." I hear there was a war once on U.S. soil over exactly that issue.
Mark is right - we do have a long way to go before the shooting is a foregone conclusion (unless things degrade faster than I expect), but the questions of who we shoot, why and when are difficult ones. I don't believe it will be as clear cut as the last time, when the enemy marched off of ships wearing bright red uniforms. When the enemies of liberty are your own (perhaps unwitting and ignorant) countrymen... well, it's messy no matter how you slice it.
It is a terrible, terrible thought, but it is important that we play the "what if" game and know how we might proceed when the tipping point comes.
Regarding a tax revolt; how do you do that with income tax with holding? If I'm not mistaken, the government can just garnishee as much as they deem appropriate should you even be 'negotiating' with the IRS over a past tax return. It isn't very pleasant going to work when you know that all of your pay check is going to somebody else, but at least if you pay your taxes, you get to keep some of it.
Sooner or later, if you don't pay your taxes, they will come for you with guns. Then what? Take a few with you? I don't think that they're going to be sloppy enough to give you much chance of that. Your neighbors aren't going to lift a hand, it's the Pastor Martin Niemöller problem; if you don't belong to a group that is threatened, you have too much to lose to stand up.
Ther Germans pre WWII were forced to start forming political parties for their own physical safety against the communists and socialists. People in the US who are afraid of the government, rightfully in my opinion, are too distributed to organize in a similar fashion. They will be able to pick us off one at a time, as this example demonstrates: http://www.keepandbeararms.com/newsarchives/XcNewsPlus.asp?cmd=view&articleid=914
Until we solve the problem of having effective, organized political power, we are essentially powerless. If we can develop an organization that effectively gives us political power, we don't need to worry about it anymore, right? What we need is a way to organize better.
Too bad that the Republican Party has strayed so far from their ideals...
Kevin, I'm afraid I'm quite perplexed by all of this. You (and others) have told me several times on here that you abhor taxes. Now you are complaining about people not paying taxes? Or not paying their fair share? So, you bemoan wealth redistribution and yet champion it (your own version of it anyway) in the same breath? Wow...
Of course, the real irony here is that, by saying all of this, you come off as a defender of an aristocratic class...the very same thing that you (and others here) put forward as our country's central problem (Obama=King George, US=Britain). Yet, if your ideology were put into practical application, an aristocratic class (which we really have anyway according to the Citigroup doc) similar to the one that Britain had at the time of the American Revolution would be firmly cemented in place.
1) Responses. The dictionary definition that applies is:
n. A reaction, as that of an organism or a mechanism, to a specific stimulus
2) Standard. The dictionary definition that applies is:
adj. Normal, familiar, or usual: the standard excuse.
3) Yours.
In plain English, when other people write things here in Kevin's parlor, your responses are nearly always in one or more of these standard forms.
But, what is common to all eleven of your Standard Responses? A single word suffices to label it: evasion.
So, let's look up evasion, shall we?
evasion
n.
A means of evading; a subterfuge.
evading
v.tr.
1. To escape or avoid by cleverness or deceit
2. a. To avoid fulfilling, answering, or performing
3. To avoid giving a direct answer to
4. To baffle or elude
subterfuge
n.
a stratagem employed to conceal something, evade an argument, etc.
Yup, there it is, in plain English. Your Standard Responses to someone else's comment, particularly when it asks or requests something of you, are:
#1 Ignore it. This is evasion in its purest form.
#2 Complain that it's pointless to respond because you won't be believed. This is evasion, nothing more.
#3 Declare that you are not alone in your opinion and thus are correct. This is evasion, nothing more.
#4 Change the subject. This is evasion, nothing more.
#5 Lay on the blather, slathering on one turgid catch-phrase, slogan, and cliché after another, and then declare, later, "I answered your question," even though you didn't. This is evasion in a form that is also known as "lying".
#6 Deliberately miss the point, laying on a straw man. This is evasion, nothing more.
#7 Deny or ignore the demonstrable evidence that you are wrong. This is evasion, nothing more.
#8 Define words, after they are written, such that any statement, yours or others, means what YOU say it means such that you are not wrong. This is evasion, nothing more.
#9 Simply accuse the other guy or other side of being what you are accused of. This is evasion, nothing more, and in a particularly childish form.
#10 Run away, ignore it all, then reappear as if nothing ever happened. This is evasion, nothing more.
#11 Declare that the other guy is not smart enough for you to converse with. This is evasion, nothing more.
Do you see the pattern here, teacher boy?
Now, look at your comment to Kevin today. Yet again, you did what The Left does as its Standard Behavior; you mischaracterized what Kevin wrote and then took him to task as if that mischaracterization were correct.
Kevin is correct. You are a textbook-perfect example of a leftist moonbat. This post by you illustrates why.
Waitwaitwait... you're accusing marky of cleverness? I gotta admit, I never saw that line of argument coming from you, DJ. "
I quoted several definitions for "evading" from The Free Dictionary online, verbatim. The part that I have bolded above is quite applicable, in my unhumble opinion. Given the two instances of "or" that I have underlined, I believe this is quite correct.
No, I've never accused him of cleverness. For years, I have accused him of deceit. I think "to avoid by deceit" describes his behavior quite accurately.
You are completely without reasoning skills, and you have obviously read into this what you want, insisting they are saying things they are not, in an effort to villify those who you think are part of "the problem," or something.
Can you stay the fuck away, or is it a compulsive disorder of yours?
OneDay: Everyone with a W-4 can set their exemptions to 9. Not much you can do about FICA or Medicare.
However, you are overlooking the fact that your employer can decline to withhold the taxes in the first place, which is what I meant when it comes to a general tax civil disobediance movement.
I think the concept of withholding needs to go away anyway, for people don't feel the taxes they pay because of it. Can't miss something you never had in the first place.
Get rid of withholding, and watch Congress burn on April 15th when everyone has to write a check to the Treasury.
Mark: Correct me if I'm wrong, but if we had the political power to get rid of withholding, we wouldn't be in such deep trouble. The problem isn't specific actions, the problem is the balance of political power. That is what needs to be corrected. The rest is just mechanics.
Well, I honestly am perplexed. It would be one thing if you were simply against taxation. Or even most taxation. But to take this position and then condemn 47 percent of this country that has had their taxes cut based on some of the policies put forth by our current president makes no sense...when you are fighting against taxation.
I guess I'd like to hear Kevin's own words in describing how the most wealthy in this country, who all most certainly have a team of accountants to get them out of all sorts of taxes, are being victimized. Isn't this the same group of people that took government bailout money?
Here is a little true or false question that I am going to dedicate to the person that I am hopeful will be the first responder...DJ.
The financial institutions of this country benefited greatly from taxpayer bailout money, correct? Many of the people in these institutions are in the same category that are "having their wealth redistributed" by the socialist/fascist/totalitarian policies of President Obama. But they still took the money from all of us taxpayers. Doesn't that make them EXACTLY like the lazy good for nothings in the 47 percent that Kevin details here?
The Peter and Paul analogy flies out the window. Both of them are being paid by Kevin. And me, actually *DONT_KNOW*
You know Markadelphia, I would respond, but I've learned that there can be no useful debate between two people with different first principles, except on those principles themselves.
But you're a special case.
I can write until my fingers fall off, but what you will see when you attempt to read my words will be the equivalent of the adult "Wah-wah-wah-wah" the kids hear in those Charley Brown Christmas specials. You will take the square pegs of my thoughts and force them with a sledgehammer through the tiny round hole that is your mind, deforming them beyond recognition.
"The financial institutions of this country benefited greatly from taxpayer bailout money, correct? Many of the people in these institutions are in the same category that are "having their wealth redistributed" by the socialist/fascist/totalitarian policies of President Obama. But they still took the money from all of us taxpayers. Doesn't that make them EXACTLY like the lazy good for nothings in the 47 percent that Kevin details here?"
Ah, the conflation of dissimilarities error again. You'll never learn, will you, teacher boy?
Let's take it one at a time. I'll use a bit of bold emphasis so you can follow the discussion. Apparently you need all the help you can get.
"The financial institutions of this country benefited greatly from taxpayer bailout money, correct?"
SOME OF the financial institutions did benefit from the taxpayer bailout money.
"Many of the people in these institutions are in the same category that are "having their wealth redistributed" by the socialist/fascist/totalitarian policies of President Obama."
"The people in these institutions" are employees of these institutions.
"But they still took the money from all of us taxpayers."
No, they didn't. Here, you conflate "the financial institutions" with "the people in these institutions" and state that said people "took the [bailout] money".
"Doesn't that make them EXACTLY like the lazy good for nothings in the 47 percent that Kevin details here?"
No, it doesn't. Your premise is invalid, thus your reasoning from that premise is invalid.
Yet again, teacher boy, you're dealing with grownups, and you're not up to it.
I see, so since 40% of the populace doesn't pay taxes, they shouldn't get benefits (or at least less of them), right? After all, the argument is that the rich benefit more therefore they should pay more.
I remember reading that we should vote for Obama so the aristocratic class wouldn't exist anymore. Guess that got put in the stack right next to closing gitmo.
Okay, let me see if I can draw a parallel that will simplify it for you.
You see your neighbor being robbed at gunpoint by a well armed, well coordinated gang. While your neighbor's skin color/gender/religion/sexual orientation doesn't make a damn to you, nonetheless he is a christian white male, small business owner, investor in a modest way.
When you manage to communicate with the neighbor to see what you can do to help, you ask him if he's called the cops. After all, the police station is only 2 or 3 blocks away. Turns out he has, but the cops have informed him that poor blacks in the inner cities wait hours for the cops, if they show up at all, so it would be unfair for them to show up and help him in only a few minutes. For the neighbor to think otherwise is 'greedy' and 'racist'. When you call the cops, they tell you the same thing, and add that since it isn't you personally getting robbed why do you care? Stop wasting police time!
You notice that none of your other neighbors are trying to do anything either. When you try to rally them to defend the poor schlub being robbed, you get the same answer from them you got from the cops.
Question 1: Are you angry, or do you think "the system worked"?
Question 2: If you are angry, who are you angry with?
A. The neighbor who's being robbed.
B. The neighbors who aren't helping.
C. The people (who are presumably neighbors as well, after all) doing the robbing?
D. The cops.
E. Yourself.
Sorry Mark, but you come off like the guy who says "Well most of your neighbors are perfectly safe, and some of them are even benefitting from the experience, and anyway you're not the one being robbed, so why do you care?"
"This is good news, friends: The Left has given up on arguing with us and has fallen back on an overt strategy of defamation and deceit. We have the evidence. All that remains is to publicize it adequately.
In armed combat, deceit can only succeed when used sporadically as a tactic, never as an overall strategy. The enemy learns from your successes, especially your successes at deceiving him. Once he's learned not to trust your signals and forms or adopts independent sources of information, your deceits become impotent.
In political combat, deceit can only work to get a villain into office...once. After that, he must find a way to cement himself into place despite the public's discovery of his true nature. If you've been casting about for the inner thrust of the Obamunist agenda -- intimidating and defaming political opponents, alienating allied nations, nationalizations of major corporations and industries, swelling the welfare / dependency state, opening the borders and granting amnesty to the illegal aliens already here -- you have it now.
A deceiver in politics has two enemies: his ideological adversaries and the general public. He can't deceive his adversaries; his target is the public. It's we who must defend the public from the barrage of lies and distortions the deceivers will launch."
Yep. And we've gotten to see the deceitful tactics up front and personal.
By the way, have you yet figured out which number is greater, 22 or 15?
GOF, that certainly wasn't my intention. I'm simply wondering why Kevin is lamenting "wealth being redistributed" to 47 percent of this country from people who took government hand outs to maintain their wealth. These same people have seemingly convinced Kevin that they are being "soaked" throught taxes by the government...the same government that has helped them stay afloat. It's simply not logical.
n. Disproof of a proposition by showing that it leads to absurd or untenable conclusions.
Note the bold part. The method is quite simple; if a premise leads logically to an absurd conclusion, then that premise is false.
Now, here is yet another challenge from me to you: Complete the argument. Show us which premise of yours was false.
Here's a hint: I showed you your false premise only yesterday.
Or is this, yet again, your Standard Response #1, the "I can't hear you" response, and your Standard Response #7, the "Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin' camera?" response?
We can't have a reader wandering through and thinking there's no good response to his blitherings because there's no response at all, now can we? That's his Standard Response #1, not ours.
I meant that Marxaphasia set up a straw man (instead of understanding what Kevin or the rest of us actually wrote) and he's busy arguing with it. I wasn't saying anything about your game of Wack-A-Marxy. :)
"I meant that Marxaphasia set up a straw man (instead of understanding what Kevin or the rest of us actually wrote) and he's busy arguing with it. I wasn't saying anything about your game of Wack-A-Marxy."
Damn. Missed it completely, didn't I?
Edited to add:
It occurs to me that I ought to explain myself. ALL of our Whack-A-Marxy efforts amount to thrashing a straw man, or rather a straw boy. That's what he is. So, yup, I'm still thrashing him.
Though I understand the importance of answering his foolishness, I'm just really tired of thrashing him. Marxy's first post in this thread perfectly demonstrates why. When he restates what Kevin wrote (which is necessary in good communications to demonstrate that what the other person said was understood correctly), his restatement used some of the same words, but didn't have any conceptual relationship to what Kevin wrote.
Kevin's right. It seems like our words come across to Marxy almost exactly like the adult words from the Charlie Brown shows; as nothing more than random sounds produced by a muted trombone. Heck, my dogs understand what I'm saying better than Marxaphasia does, and language isn't even possible for them!
"A fool does not delight in understanding, but only wants to show off his opinions."
(Proverbs 18:2 HCSB)
After a while, punching a weeble-wobble just isn't fun anymore, even when you hit it hard enough to make it bounce off of more than one wall.
"Though I understand the importance of answering his foolishness, I'm just really tired of thrashing him."
Yup, that's it.
"It seems like our words come across to Marxy almost exactly like the adult words from the Charlie Brown shows; as nothing more than random sounds produced by a muted trombone."
No, I don't think so. His fuckheadedness is intentional and the cause is not lack of understanding. His problem is that he is a child trying to argue with grownups, he can't handle it, and he knows it, but his poor, fragile little ego won't let him stop trying. Denial is all that is left to him. So, when he is wrong, knows he is wrong, can't admit he is wrong, and can't stop arguing about it, he mischaracterizes the opponent's argument and argues against the mischaracterized argument. Erecting a man of straw and hacking it down is a typical response, even though he knows as he is doing it that it won't work. It doesn't matter to him that he is repeatedly shown to be a complete and utter fool, that he steps in his own poo and fouls his own nest; he exhibits no trace of embarrassment or shame. He is a prisoner of his ego and is immune to his own stupidity.
"After a while, punching a weeble-wobble just isn't fun anymore, even when you hit it hard enough to make it bounce off of more than one wall."
But, as I stated before, we can't have a reader wandering through and thinking there's no good response to his blitherings because there's no response at all, now can we? He will not win by default.
Luckily, you're the guy the local village idiot thinks is a bit dumb. So your "I don't think so" is reinforcing that Poretto is worth quoting.
Even more importantly, that I quoted from Poretto describes you decently well. I wouldn't say exactly. But pretty damn close.
As you projected onto LabRat once.. What, way too close to home?
I'm simply wondering... It's simply not logical.
Nope. You're not logical. And you're not wondering. You're blathering. You've seized upon what you think is a point, and you're going to take a stand on it.
But you're so blithering incapable in this, you can't realize you didn't make a point, you've not got a logical point, and we're not being hypocrites.
I'm not sure stupid is the correct term for these folks. The comment about their "reality" hits closer to the mark (snicker.) No matter what the input, the output is garbage because the filter or screen that is their entire life experience is fatally flawed. Square peg into a round, shapeless mass indeed.
Sorry Mark, but you come off like the guy who says "Well most of your neighbors are perfectly safe, and some of them are evenbenefittingfrom the experience,and anyway you're not the one being robbed, so why do you care?"
GOF, that certainly wasn't my intention.
No doubt, but that's the result. And in the above scenario, you'd hardly expect a "Support Your Local Police" bumper sticker on the back of your car to be helpful, would you?
Ed, so you take this video and all of the information provided in it to be gospel? Great critical thinking, dude. But that's just how the Cult works.
I think I'll let Bruce Bartlett walk you through it. Let's see if you can understand.
One of the reasons I became a conservative way back when is because conservatives lived in a world where one’s actions are defined by their consequences, not one’s motives. Conservatives also prided themselves on being reality-based and fact-based in their analyses, while liberals often seemed to live in a dream world disconnected from history, institutions and ideology, among other things.
Yep.
Today, however, conservatives have largely adopted the liberal operating assumption and now also define themselves by the righteousness of their motives. This fact became very obvious to me this week when I examined the knowledge that tea party demonstrators on Capitol Hill had on the subject of taxation.
Double Yep.
Federal taxes are very considerably lower by every measure since Obama became president. And given the economic circumstances, it's hard to imagine that a tax increase would have been enacted last year. In fact, 40% of Obama's stimulus package involved tax cuts. These include the Making Work Pay Credit, which reduces federal taxes for all taxpayers with incomes below $75,000 by between $400 and $800.
According to the JCT, last year's $787 billion stimulus bill, enacted with no Republican support, reduced federal taxes by almost $100 billion in 2009 and another $222 billion this year. The Tax Policy Center, a private research group, estimates that close to 90% of all taxpayers got a tax cut last year and almost 100% of those in the $50,000 income range. For those making between $40,000 and $50,000, the average tax cut was $472; for those making between $50,000 and $75,000, the tax cut averaged $522. No taxpayer anywhere in the country had his or her taxes increased as a consequence of Obama's policies.
It's hard to explain this divergence between perception and reality.
Indeed it is. Care to try to explain this, Ed? Remember, Bartlett was Ronald Reagan's chief economic advisor.
Then, of course we have this,
Meanwhile, taxes are at their lowest levels in 60 years, according to William Gale, co-director of the Tax Policy Center and director of the Retirement Security Project at the Brookings Institution. "The relation between what is said in the tax debate and what is true about tax policy is often quite tenuous," Gale told Hotsheet. "The rise of the Tea Party at at time when taxes are literally at their lowest in decades is really hard to understand."
Surely, even YOU have the logical capacity to work out an answer to THESE questions!
Kevin, we might have to reduce the respect we grant you for your powers of observation, there. :)
What MUST be the result?
Actually, there *is* one way that what you're trying to get him to understand won't work, and "reduced" taxes and increased spending can still drop the deficit.
But 1) Mark won't understand it (but he'll claim it will magically work that way), and 2) Obama and crew are doing everything in their power, intentionally or not, to make damn sure that doesn't happen.
Table 1.2 shows deficit spending at 14.8, 30.8, 23.3, and 22.0 percent of GDP for the years 1942, 1943, 1944, and 1945 respectively. During that time, we defeated the greatest army the world has ever seen and after that time we had the biggest boom in our country's history. Our deficit spending for last year was 10.9 and will be 11.2 percent for this year...both still considerably lower than any of the WWII figures.
Examine the federal debt in Table 7.1 for the same period and compare it to today. In 1946, we had a federal debt of 126 percent of GDP!! Guess what? We did quite well, didn't we? Glenn Beck has warned that our children will be slaves to our future creditors. Yet, with much higher debt and deficits, we did just fine post WWII. Now, does that mean that excessive spending is OK? No. But any time President Obama announces any spending freeze, it is laughed off by the pundits on the right as negligable.
I will stipulate that the government needs to change the way it spends money. It is bad. It is not, however, at the point where we are all going to be treading water in a boiling pit of sewage. And what was the alternative to solving the financial crisis? Let all those interconnected (thanks to Glass Steagall being chucked) institutions fail? Without FDIC pretty much everyone here would not have been able to draw money out of their banks because...there wouldn't have been any money.
You bemoan regulation yet it was the federal government that saved your money. And it was the lack of regulation that allowed the bozos in our financial services industry to rob Paul to pay Peter.
"Well, Kevin, I would refer you to the following tables. http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals/"
Yet another PERFECT example of why talking to Marxaphasia is LESS productive than talking to my dogs. Last time he trotted that link out, I downloaded the spreadsheets found there and just had Excel make charts out of them. And both the debt and spending charts showed the Obama administration driving us off a financial cliff. (I'll attach them again.) Yet here's Marxaphasia, proudly trotting out that link again as if it shows the OPPOSITE of what it does actually show.
"So, Ed, I challenge you…" … to waste your time doing something I will just ignore anyway.
Funny, because Ed's charts show what he dare not admit....we were at much worse points in our country's history and look what happened. The numbers show that FDR and Truman built a bridge and we did not, in fact, drive off a cliff. In fact, we saw greater prosperity than this country has ever seen.
So, Ed, how do you explain us making it after completely insane deficits and debt to GDP?
"I believe that I am an eyewitness to history. I cannot tell you that Hitler took Austria by tanks and guns; it would distort history. We elected him by a landslide - 98% of the vote . . . "
"we were at much worse points in our country's history"
Much worse TEMPORARY points. World War II is the only time we were at a worse point, and it ENDED. The spending being put into place by the left is supposed to be PERMANENT.
Ed, the article you linked is completely without reason. For one thing, gun laws are being relaxed around the country so the comparison is ludicrous. It's a complete appeal to fear load of paranoia. The fact that you think this is highly recommended makes me question your sanity.
And, no, the spending is not supposed to be permenant. Review the estimates through 2015 in table 1.2. The high deficit spending that went on during WWII lasted 4 years and was much larger whereas this slightly higher deficit spending lasts only 2 years.
The fact that Obama's/Pelosi's/Reid's histories have driven record gun sales and pro-gun legislation, coupled with the fact that they had higher priorities than to oppose it this legislative cycle, apparently makes them all gun rights supporters. I suppose the same can be said of Rosie O'Donnell.
-
The gang rape of the taxpayers by government, by making them guarantors of known bad debt through the agencies of the CRA and Fannie/Freddie, is/was only a minor issue, to be dismissed. It was only when the repeal of Glass-Steagal allowed the greedy private sector to get in on precisely the same gang rape the government had created for its own benefit, thus causing the whole thing to go viral, that it became unacceptable. In other words it's not the rape that's the unacceptable part, it's allowing it to be equal opportunity rape that turns it from "good capitalism" into "bad capitalism".
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Every single member of the 53% of Americans who actually pay taxes is, without exception, one of the people who had to be bailed out by TARP, Porkulus et al. Therefore it is just that they be tapped for the funds to bail out the 47% who do not pay taxes now, even though the 47% who pay no taxes are, by definition, not the people who funded TARP, Porkulus et al.
Note that the one person here who apparently considers this just is likewise the one person who supported TARP, Porkulus et al in the first place.
1. Violent crime is down so President Obama is not going to pursue gun control. There's no point to it because he is a sensible man who knows that there is no connection between guns and violence. He also signed a law which increased gun rights on trains and in national parks. Small, sure, but it does make his record 1-0 on gun rights legislation with his name on it. And how many more states will it take before you admit that he has respected their rights by not getting involved at a federal level?
2. The CRA only applies to banks and thrifts (for 9 zillonth time) and the Fannie/Freddie loans that really caused all the problems were the ALT-A loans not the ones that are falesly considered "entitlements."
3. Actually, the 47 percent do pay taxes. They pay Social Security, Medicare, property tax, state tax, sales tax, and local tax. The myth that there are just a bunch of freeloaders (probably the same welfare mother driving a Cadillac, right?) in that 47 percent is a Cult lie. And insults anyone's intelligence who understands taxation.
2. The CRA only applies to banks and thrifts (for 9 zillonth time) and the Fannie/Freddie loans that really caused all the problems were the ALT-A loans not the ones that are falesly considered "entitlements."
Which changes nothing at all about the fact that you consider politicians putting taxpayers on the hook for known bad debt to be acceptable, praiseworthy, even vital. It's only when private sector investors get in on the fun that it's suddenly "a crime".
3. Actually, the 47 percent do pay taxes. They pay Social Security, Medicare, property tax, state tax, sales tax, and local tax. The myth that there are just a bunch of freeloaders (probably the same welfare mother driving a Cadillac, right?) in that 47 percent is a Cult lie. And insults anyone's intelligence who understands taxation.
If it's a "Cult lie", then it's a "Cult lie" to exactly the same degree for exactly the same reasons to say that Obama has not raised taxes on the lower and middle classes. Cigarette taxes are acknowledged as the most regressive form of taxation the US has ever used, but that's exactly what he raised.
"And insults anyone's intelligence who understands taxation."
To borrow from Wanda (look it up, Hollywood boy), calling you fuckheaded is an insult to fuckheaded people, but it fits. It describes your behavior nicely.
For the past several days (while I've been away), you have done almost nothing except regurgitate (yes, that is the appropriate word) your previous blather, exhibiting not the slightest evidence that you have read or understood anything anyone else wrote about it. You cannot learn. You cannot admit error. You lecturing other people about "understanding taxation" is yet another instance of your fundamental hypocrisy.
Why do YOU keep insulting OUR intelligence with your fuckheadedness?
3. Actually, the 47 percent do pay taxes. They pay Social Security, Medicare, property tax, state tax, sales tax, and local tax. The myth that there are just a bunch of freeloaders (probably the same welfare mother driving a Cadillac, right?) in that 47 percent is a Cult lie. And insults anyone's intelligence who understands taxation.
My gosh, are you this dumb after years of hard work and effort or does it come naturally?
The report Kevin linked to clearly states it is looking at individual income tax liability. The data breakdown shows that nearly half of all tax units will pay no income tax in 2009.
"About 47 percent of single filers will owe no tax, compared with 38 percent of joint filers and 72 percent of heads of household."
And because you have evinced a consistent lack of reading comprehension, I'll explain what that means. Out of the tax units that paid into the government, 47 percent of single filers will owe no tax. They'll get all the income tax money back, and in some cases, more. For heads of households, that number jumps up to 72 percent.
Your reference to "freeloaders" isn't in Kevin's post nor in the subsequent comments. Thus, for this post and related comments, you trying to state that the Cult thinks that within the 47% of the tax units that owe no taxes there is a subset of freeloaders can only be construed as a fabrication on your part. Kevin et al. have asserted that 47% of the tax units do not owe income taxes. The existence, or non-existence, of freeloaders within the US tax system isn't part the post or discussion. Again, your reading comprehension is around nil, but your strawman building prowess remains a wonder to behold.
Yes, Russell, he is that dumb. He is doing his usual: he mischaracterizes the other guy's argument and then blithers against the mischaracterized argument. It doesn't work. It makes him appear to be stupid as hell, but he doesn't care.
It was published only today. Yeah, its on the Fox News web site, but you can buck up and wash the cooties off later, right?
Here's the (ahem) money quote:
"A series of tax reforms, generous exemptions and tax credits, including last year’s economic stimulus bill, have dropped millions of Americans from the federal tax rolls. Huge numbers of Americans are simply no longer affected by the federal income tax. The Tax Policy Center projects that 47 percent of all U.S. households will pay no federal income tax for 2009. And, the bottom 40 percent of income earners actually receive a cash payment from the government at tax time. This cash payment is styled as a “refund” but it is actually a net cash transfer from the government--not a refund of taxes actually withheld on income. And for many Americans, this cash transfer from Uncle Sam actually exceeds all federal, state and local taxes that they pay in any form during the year including sales taxes and social security taxes."
We've been telling you that, too.
But wait! There's more!
"The people who don’t pay federal income taxes are, as the phrase goes, “rational economic actors” just as much as anyone. Like all people, non-taxpayers respond to economic incentives. Their demand for entitlements and government programs is naturally insatiable because they don’t care at all about the cost. Non-taxpayers don’t have any “skin in the game” and are completely indifferent to the government raising income taxes. So they will always support increasing government programs as a long as they get even a small benefit from them because it does not cost them a cent. It’s also perfectly rational for non-taxpayers to support politicians who favor more spending. Non-taxpayers get something for nothing, at least until the country becomes insolvent."
We've been telling you that, too.
But wait! There's more!
"The so-called progressive Democratic politicians are rational actors too. By taking more and more Americans off the federal tax rolls, they are creating a permanent base of supporters for themselves. These politicians may claim to support increased government spending because of their concern for the less-fortunate but--hey, it also happens to be in their own political self-interest. And these politicians will continue to spend on these programs until our nation goes bust because they want to keep their jobs and grow expensive programs for their political base."
We've been telling you that, too.
But wait! There's more!
"And what about the people paying all the federal taxes? Well, taxpayers respond to incentives too. When faced with increasing tax rates, taxpayers will reduce their income, which is why it is impossible to raise a lot of revenue by increasing taxes above a certain point. As taxes on income rise, taxpayers spend less time on work and more on leisure. They avoid sales of investments and assets which could trigger income until they can pair them with offsetting losses from other transactions. They spend billions of dollars on tax advice and structuring to reduce their tax burden, which makes economic sense for them but which is a waste of resources for our society. In the aggregate, a tax system that is hostile to investment and growth has a distortive effect which harms U.S. productivity and reduces the standard of living of our whole nation."
We've been telling you that, too.
Now, go ahead, Standard Response boy. Do your usual. Mischaracterize this explanation and then blither against what you've mischaracterized. Demonstrate that you do not understand it and then try to convince us you're right about it. It's what you do.
Yes. The increased spending is "only temporary" even though Marxy was crowing about the just passed "permanent" health care "reform" costing "only" $930 BILLION, and is "fully funded" by 10 years of new "nonexistent tax increase" taxes paying for 6 years of "reforms".
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Billy Beck has been saying it for sometime. I have been saying it. Now you are saying it. Bill Whittle has said it (obtusely)http://www.pjtv.com/v/3353 The ballot box is loaded in the lefts favor and the only cure for that is total collapse or outright violence. I feel we are on the verge of both.
Keep your powder dry, gonna need it no matter what side of the fence this falls on.
As Kevin likes to refer to the Unhinged Kingdom as the petri dish which reveals what is in line for America, take a look at what hopefully will NOT be your future ... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1265508/Peter-Davey-gets-42-000-benefits-year-drives-Mercedes.html
Good lord.
Took the words right out of my mouth.
No such thing as "welfare queens," right?
Oh I already posted that link over in M's sandbox. No response there, although since you said those two magic words, he may pop out of the woodwork here. It certainly would be amusing to see him screech about how that is code for racial stereotypes.
I am one of those who "pays no tax." The fed withholding for me was about $1300 on $60,000 in income. My "taxes owed" were $1100. And I'm getting back a return of just under $5000. Nice, huh? I have five kids and haven't paid the feds anything for years. I spent a year overseas with the family, paid out of our savings, with zero income - they still gave me over $3000 as my return.
Obama, however, didn't get my vote last time and he won't get it next time.
Like Billy Beck, I agree that we won't vote ourselves out of this. So I'm going to take everything I can get from the government, place the maximum demand I can on their services. The greater the strain, the quicker we reach the tipping point and we can get the collapse over with. I'd willingly pay my fair share, but would it go to strengthening or reviving the Republic? Would paying my fair share move us back to the Constitution?
You know the answer to that one. And that tax return? It's paying for a couple of new rifles, some more ammunition and a weekend at Appleseed with my older kids. I think we're going to need a few more riflemen...
Glad you are buying something useful with my money, I suspect most aren't. I paid for about a dozen of you leaches. All things considered, I would rather keep it myself.
Hmmm. My first thaought was defensive - i.e., "I'm not a leech!" But then I gave it a bit of thought. Maybe I am. Taking unearned money that was obtained from others under threat of force...
But then I considered about what I DO pay into - over $5000 year into property taxes including approx. $3000 for school construction in our new area. Won't get a dime of value out of that, since our kids are homeschooled (completely privately homeschooled - not pseudo-public charter schooled using "public" funds). So maybe I'm just getting some of my money back and not yours at all. Plus, I put about $3700 into Social Security last year and I'm not too confident I'll be getting that back in my Golden Years like I've been promised. I've been paying into that scam for about 25 years now.
So maybe I'm a leech, but I'm being leeched off of as well. Perhaps it's just a big circle of life thing?
That said, I'd like to see you keep more of yours as well. Flat tax anyone?
So, I have a question.
I have heard it termed "ballot box, jury box, cartridge box".
Where are the lines? People in Zimbabwe, for example, still have the vote.
As for the jury box, who are you trying? The government? The laws? In order to reach the jury box in the first place, might you not have to resort to the cartridge box?
Or am I getting the wrong end of the stick?
The fact that you are even asking the question is a reflection on the times.
Sane men are slow to take up arms, knowing what it means and what it will cost them. The decision to move in that direction is not arrived at casually. Many of us know well of the founder's hatred of tyranny and have taken it to heart, but they endured many things before they reached the tipping point. Unlike Zimbabwe, we have a tradition of freedom and many of us still remember it and teach it to our children.
We have endured and will endure many petty tyrannies. But when will the preponderance of tyrannies add up to more than the sum of their whole?
In my mind, it is not a matter of lines that will be crossed, but more like a game of Jenga - as they pull out blocks from the foundation, the structure they are building becomes even more unstable. Eventually, gravity will do its job and both we, and they, will be carried along in the event to a conclusion one side will not like at all.
I've heard it as "Soap box, Ballot box, Jury box, Cartridge box". I think the strength of the soap box in our nation has in the past prevented too far a trip down the order of the boxes. Under most circumstances in our history, this past Summer's "Town Hall" meetings and the current Tea Party demonstrations would have been enough to pressure our law makers into taking the proper action. In our current situation, the Soap box has failed, so now we move on to the Ballot box. I don't think we'd see the Jury box unless, say for example, leading Democrats, Union leaders, and others of their ilk, were caught using physical force to prevent voters from voting-out Democrat incumbents (although I believe no charges were filed against the Black Panthers in Philadelphia for exactly that). The Cartridge box won't come into use unless Congress and the President were to refuse to relinquish their Offices. Should that happen, we would all be obligated, as Americans, to remove them from Office using the last box available to us.
Just watched the latest Afterburner. I may need to change my statement.
If elected Officials, having taken an Oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, publicly denounce the Constitution, they should be removed from Office. Immediately. If they are not then, by my estimation, we're suddenly past the Jury Box.
...and both we, and they, will be carried along in the event to a conclusion one side will not like at all.
I don't think either, or any, "side" will like it very much. To borrow a phrase from a completely different kind of conflict resolution, "The only winners in a lawsuit are the lawyers."
Interestingly enough, as Diogenes points out in the first comment, Bill Whittle's latest Afterburner hints not so obliquely at a coming break, and Walter Williams explicitly suggests secession in a recent piece.
"Interesting times" indeed.
Secession will never happen peacably.
I grew up in a part of NYC called Staten Island (yes, home of the Ferry and the world's largest landfill). Back in the 80's there was a major secession movement in Staten Island, they wanted to break off from NYC and go their own way, largely because the people who get paid to do so figured out that Staten Islanders got 60 cents worth of city services for every dollar in city taxes spent, the other 40 cents went to services in other boros. There was a referendum, Staten Islanders voted to seceed, and the courts ruled that they couldn't unless the rest of the city (the ones getting that other 40 cents) agreed to it.
The rest of the country can't afford to less us go our own way, we freedom-loving people are the ones who work, who are productive, who contribute to society. Like the dysfunctional husband, they'll kill us rather than let us go (which would of course put them in the same position). Unlike the unpleasantness of the early 1860's, where the issue was philosophical (preserve the Union/stamp out slavery), this time the issue will be simple self-interest on the part of the leeches.
You know, Kevin, I've been a regular here for, what...almost as long as you've been at this bit, and I've read that Tytler quote literally dozens of times, but it just now registered with me what it said.
I'll skip to the important part; "...every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."
It's a certainty that we are teetering on the precipice of the dependent event for the later, here. There is NO question of that. If this Tytler quote is indeed based on an historical precedent, and I have no reason to doubt that it is, who, then, steps into the breach after the collapse? The Won?
Having a hard time seeing that bit happening, as he can not possibly deal with that situation and how bad it'll be. He doesn't have the stones to handle it.
But likely someone will. And by the time that happens, our Constitutional Republic will no longer exist.
I quoted Philosopher Arthur Koestler some time back on this topic:
Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.
Atually it was the Bush Child Tax Credit that shoves a lot of folks into paying no or minimum federal income tax. (it existed under Clinton, but it was under Bush that it was expanded to $1000/chile). And yes I know, it's the Congress that sets tax policy.
A family of 4 making $50K a year will pay no Fed Income Tax.
This year will be distorted a bit because of the homebuyer tax credit. Pretty much anyone who qualifies won't pay taxes this year. I would have paid taxes this year, but because of the homebuyer tax credit (which is just stupid policy wise) the Feds will pay me around $5k instead.
Of course that family of 4 still pays plenty of taxes in the form of FICA,excise taxes, etc. So even though I'll pay no income tax this year I'm still "over-taxed".
I still think we should scrap the whole system and go to a 10% flat tax or 10% across-the-board tarrif though.
After the Argentine collapse did the Military run things for a while? ...Checking... Uh, no, several repeated failed governments and presidents later they emerged still shaky - however that was their standard response to most situations.
What one guy said though: Those that want to harm or steal from you don't come waving a pirate flag, they don't start shooting from 200-yards out or wear orange prision jump-suits - they come dressed nicely and probably better than you, and rob you anyhow. They look normal, like a Congressman...
I would be in that "family of 4 making 50K a year" (more or less) except for the fact that the little woman and I stopped getting along and now she and the kids are living elsewhere. In my case, I get to make huge child support payments (I pay in child support more than she makes in income) but, since she has custody, I get to pay taxes as if I was a single dude with nobody to support but myself. SO, I am one of the (seemingly few) who actually pay in more than I get back.
With that said, even back when my return was bigger than what I paid in I supported a 10% flat tax with NO exemptions, NO child credit, NO EIC, NO first time home buyers crap. Everyone pays their small part. It is the only way to be fair and the country would save a crap load of money because the IRS chould be shrunken down to a reasonable size and it could spend it's time going after people who don't pay instead of shuffling paper around.
s
We still have a very long way to go before it is time to start shooting.
Massive civil disobedience in the form of a tax revolt is what I predict is coming relitively soon. Where things go from there is entirely up to the Government.
I am a single person who doesn't get a refund, but I deliberately set my exemptions up that way, so I am not the norm.
So what happens if President Obama is able to manufacture an apparently permanent Democratic majority before the elections this year? What then?
There are two things that the Democrats could do that would make that likely:
1. Immigration 'reform'. Massive numbers of new citizens who would be eligble to vote in Novemember.
2. Election 'reform'. Motor Voter on steroids. No registration or ID requirement. Maybe like the Michigan requirement that you present a school ID or sign an affidavit that you did not bring a photo ID.
Both these reforms would enormously benefit community organizers in getting out the vote that they want to get.
Is it time to start shooting then? If so, at whom? Your neighbors who believe that President Obama is doing a wonderful job? The police? Your congressional delegation? How does that benefit anybody? Or what are you going to do? And how does any of that make a dictatorship more likely?
It's not a matter of a dictatorship being a requirement - there's a thing called disenfranchisement. It brings up an little issue we call "taxation without representation." I hear there was a war once on U.S. soil over exactly that issue.
Mark is right - we do have a long way to go before the shooting is a foregone conclusion (unless things degrade faster than I expect), but the questions of who we shoot, why and when are difficult ones. I don't believe it will be as clear cut as the last time, when the enemy marched off of ships wearing bright red uniforms. When the enemies of liberty are your own (perhaps unwitting and ignorant) countrymen... well, it's messy no matter how you slice it.
It is a terrible, terrible thought, but it is important that we play the "what if" game and know how we might proceed when the tipping point comes.
But you didn't answer the question, JR (and I can't etiher). "Who do you shoot?"
Regarding a tax revolt; how do you do that with income tax with holding? If I'm not mistaken, the government can just garnishee as much as they deem appropriate should you even be 'negotiating' with the IRS over a past tax return. It isn't very pleasant going to work when you know that all of your pay check is going to somebody else, but at least if you pay your taxes, you get to keep some of it.
Sooner or later, if you don't pay your taxes, they will come for you with guns. Then what? Take a few with you? I don't think that they're going to be sloppy enough to give you much chance of that. Your neighbors aren't going to lift a hand, it's the Pastor Martin Niemöller problem; if you don't belong to a group that is threatened, you have too much to lose to stand up.
Ther Germans pre WWII were forced to start forming political parties for their own physical safety against the communists and socialists. People in the US who are afraid of the government, rightfully in my opinion, are too distributed to organize in a similar fashion. They will be able to pick us off one at a time, as this example demonstrates: http://www.keepandbeararms.com/newsarchives/XcNewsPlus.asp?cmd=view&articleid=914
Until we solve the problem of having effective, organized political power, we are essentially powerless. If we can develop an organization that effectively gives us political power, we don't need to worry about it anymore, right? What we need is a way to organize better.
Too bad that the Republican Party has strayed so far from their ideals...
Kevin, I'm afraid I'm quite perplexed by all of this. You (and others) have told me several times on here that you abhor taxes. Now you are complaining about people not paying taxes? Or not paying their fair share? So, you bemoan wealth redistribution and yet champion it (your own version of it anyway) in the same breath? Wow...
Of course, the real irony here is that, by saying all of this, you come off as a defender of an aristocratic class...the very same thing that you (and others here) put forward as our country's central problem (Obama=King George, US=Britain). Yet, if your ideology were put into practical application, an aristocratic class (which we really have anyway according to the Citigroup doc) similar to the one that Britain had at the time of the American Revolution would be firmly cemented in place.
Sad, dude :(
Teacher boy, you remember your Standard Responses, don't you? Go refresh your memory; you can find all eleven of them at
http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2009/08/standard-responses-of-markadelphia.html
I first compiled this list on September 23, 2008, in the comments to this post:
http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2008/09/rapture-of-marxists.html
Now, just what are these behaviors? They are:
1) Responses. The dictionary definition that applies is:
n. A reaction, as that of an organism or a mechanism, to a specific stimulus
2) Standard. The dictionary definition that applies is:
adj. Normal, familiar, or usual: the standard excuse.
3) Yours.
In plain English, when other people write things here in Kevin's parlor, your responses are nearly always in one or more of these standard forms.
But, what is common to all eleven of your Standard Responses? A single word suffices to label it: evasion.
So, let's look up evasion, shall we?
evasion
n.
A means of evading; a subterfuge.
evading
v.tr.
1. To escape or avoid by cleverness or deceit
2. a. To avoid fulfilling, answering, or performing
3. To avoid giving a direct answer to
4. To baffle or elude
subterfuge
n.
a stratagem employed to conceal something, evade an argument, etc.
Yup, there it is, in plain English. Your Standard Responses to someone else's comment, particularly when it asks or requests something of you, are:
#1 Ignore it. This is evasion in its purest form.
#2 Complain that it's pointless to respond because you won't be believed. This is evasion, nothing more.
#3 Declare that you are not alone in your opinion and thus are correct. This is evasion, nothing more.
#4 Change the subject. This is evasion, nothing more.
#5 Lay on the blather, slathering on one turgid catch-phrase, slogan, and cliché after another, and then declare, later, "I answered your question," even though you didn't. This is evasion in a form that is also known as "lying".
#6 Deliberately miss the point, laying on a straw man. This is evasion, nothing more.
#7 Deny or ignore the demonstrable evidence that you are wrong. This is evasion, nothing more.
#8 Define words, after they are written, such that any statement, yours or others, means what YOU say it means such that you are not wrong. This is evasion, nothing more.
#9 Simply accuse the other guy or other side of being what you are accused of. This is evasion, nothing more, and in a particularly childish form.
#10 Run away, ignore it all, then reappear as if nothing ever happened. This is evasion, nothing more.
#11 Declare that the other guy is not smart enough for you to converse with. This is evasion, nothing more.
Do you see the pattern here, teacher boy?
Now, look at your comment to Kevin today. Yet again, you did what The Left does as its Standard Behavior; you mischaracterized what Kevin wrote and then took him to task as if that mischaracterization were correct.
Kevin is correct. You are a textbook-perfect example of a leftist moonbat. This post by you illustrates why.
1. To escape or avoid by cleverness or deceit
Waitwaitwait... you're accusing marky of cleverness? I gotta admit, I never saw that line of argument coming from you, DJ.
:-D
"1. To escape or avoid by cleverness or deceit
Waitwaitwait... you're accusing marky of cleverness? I gotta admit, I never saw that line of argument coming from you, DJ. "
I quoted several definitions for "evading" from The Free Dictionary online, verbatim. The part that I have bolded above is quite applicable, in my unhumble opinion. Given the two instances of "or" that I have underlined, I believe this is quite correct.
No, I've never accused him of cleverness. For years, I have accused him of deceit. I think "to avoid by deceit" describes his behavior quite accurately.
Marxy,
You are completely without reasoning skills, and you have obviously read into this what you want, insisting they are saying things they are not, in an effort to villify those who you think are part of "the problem," or something.
Can you stay the fuck away, or is it a compulsive disorder of yours?
OneDay: Everyone with a W-4 can set their exemptions to 9. Not much you can do about FICA or Medicare.
However, you are overlooking the fact that your employer can decline to withhold the taxes in the first place, which is what I meant when it comes to a general tax civil disobediance movement.
I think the concept of withholding needs to go away anyway, for people don't feel the taxes they pay because of it. Can't miss something you never had in the first place.
Get rid of withholding, and watch Congress burn on April 15th when everyone has to write a check to the Treasury.
Do I hear the cackling of Brave Sir Robin's chicken?
Mark: Correct me if I'm wrong, but if we had the political power to get rid of withholding, we wouldn't be in such deep trouble. The problem isn't specific actions, the problem is the balance of political power. That is what needs to be corrected. The rest is just mechanics.
I'm afraid I'm quite perplexed by all of this.
Very good, Mark. Admitting you have a problem is the first step.
Yep. He wouldn't be so perplexed if he actually understood what he read.
Well, I honestly am perplexed. It would be one thing if you were simply against taxation. Or even most taxation. But to take this position and then condemn 47 percent of this country that has had their taxes cut based on some of the policies put forth by our current president makes no sense...when you are fighting against taxation.
I guess I'd like to hear Kevin's own words in describing how the most wealthy in this country, who all most certainly have a team of accountants to get them out of all sorts of taxes, are being victimized. Isn't this the same group of people that took government bailout money?
Here is a little true or false question that I am going to dedicate to the person that I am hopeful will be the first responder...DJ.
The financial institutions of this country benefited greatly from taxpayer bailout money, correct? Many of the people in these institutions are in the same category that are "having their wealth redistributed" by the socialist/fascist/totalitarian policies of President Obama. But they still took the money from all of us taxpayers. Doesn't that make them EXACTLY like the lazy good for nothings in the 47 percent that Kevin details here?
The Peter and Paul analogy flies out the window. Both of them are being paid by Kevin. And me, actually *DONT_KNOW*
You know Markadelphia, I would respond, but I've learned that there can be no useful debate between two people with different first principles, except on those principles themselves.
But you're a special case.
I can write until my fingers fall off, but what you will see when you attempt to read my words will be the equivalent of the adult "Wah-wah-wah-wah" the kids hear in those Charley Brown Christmas specials. You will take the square pegs of my thoughts and force them with a sledgehammer through the tiny round hole that is your mind, deforming them beyond recognition.
I'm used to that now, so I no longer bother.
Thanks for dropping by! ;)
"The financial institutions of this country benefited greatly from taxpayer bailout money, correct? Many of the people in these institutions are in the same category that are "having their wealth redistributed" by the socialist/fascist/totalitarian policies of President Obama. But they still took the money from all of us taxpayers. Doesn't that make them EXACTLY like the lazy good for nothings in the 47 percent that Kevin details here?"
Ah, the conflation of dissimilarities error again. You'll never learn, will you, teacher boy?
Let's take it one at a time. I'll use a bit of bold emphasis so you can follow the discussion. Apparently you need all the help you can get.
"The financial institutions of this country benefited greatly from taxpayer bailout money, correct?"
SOME OF the financial institutions did benefit from the taxpayer bailout money.
"Many of the people in these institutions are in the same category that are "having their wealth redistributed" by the socialist/fascist/totalitarian policies of President Obama."
"The people in these institutions" are employees of these institutions.
"But they still took the money from all of us taxpayers."
No, they didn't. Here, you conflate "the financial institutions" with "the people in these institutions" and state that said people "took the [bailout] money".
"Doesn't that make them EXACTLY like the lazy good for nothings in the 47 percent that Kevin details here?"
No, it doesn't. Your premise is invalid, thus your reasoning from that premise is invalid.
Yet again, teacher boy, you're dealing with grownups, and you're not up to it.
Hasn't stopped him yet.
I see, so since 40% of the populace doesn't pay taxes, they shouldn't get benefits (or at least less of them), right? After all, the argument is that the rich benefit more therefore they should pay more.
Really! I could swear I hear a chicken cackling somewhere around here.
I remember reading that we should vote for Obama so the aristocratic class wouldn't exist anymore. Guess that got put in the stack right next to closing gitmo.
Well, I honestly am perplexed.
Okay, let me see if I can draw a parallel that will simplify it for you.
You see your neighbor being robbed at gunpoint by a well armed, well coordinated gang. While your neighbor's skin color/gender/religion/sexual orientation doesn't make a damn to you, nonetheless he is a christian white male, small business owner, investor in a modest way.
When you manage to communicate with the neighbor to see what you can do to help, you ask him if he's called the cops. After all, the police station is only 2 or 3 blocks away. Turns out he has, but the cops have informed him that poor blacks in the inner cities wait hours for the cops, if they show up at all, so it would be unfair for them to show up and help him in only a few minutes. For the neighbor to think otherwise is 'greedy' and 'racist'. When you call the cops, they tell you the same thing, and add that since it isn't you personally getting robbed why do you care? Stop wasting police time!
You notice that none of your other neighbors are trying to do anything either. When you try to rally them to defend the poor schlub being robbed, you get the same answer from them you got from the cops.
Question 1: Are you angry, or do you think "the system worked"?
Question 2: If you are angry, who are you angry with?
A. The neighbor who's being robbed.
B. The neighbors who aren't helping.
C. The people (who are presumably neighbors as well, after all) doing the robbing?
D. The cops.
E. Yourself.
Sorry Mark, but you come off like the guy who says "Well most of your neighbors are perfectly safe, and some of them are even benefitting from the experience, and anyway you're not the one being robbed, so why do you care?"
Well, I honestly am perplexed.
You're not "honestly" anything.
http://www.eternityroad.info/index.php/weblog/single/who_are_we/
"This is good news, friends: The Left has given up on arguing with us and has fallen back on an overt strategy of defamation and deceit. We have the evidence. All that remains is to publicize it adequately.
In armed combat, deceit can only succeed when used sporadically as a tactic, never as an overall strategy. The enemy learns from your successes, especially your successes at deceiving him. Once he's learned not to trust your signals and forms or adopts independent sources of information, your deceits become impotent.
In political combat, deceit can only work to get a villain into office...once. After that, he must find a way to cement himself into place despite the public's discovery of his true nature. If you've been casting about for the inner thrust of the Obamunist agenda -- intimidating and defaming political opponents, alienating allied nations, nationalizations of major corporations and industries, swelling the welfare / dependency state, opening the borders and granting amnesty to the illegal aliens already here -- you have it now.
A deceiver in politics has two enemies: his ideological adversaries and the general public. He can't deceive his adversaries; his target is the public. It's we who must defend the public from the barrage of lies and distortions the deceivers will launch."
Yep. And we've gotten to see the deceitful tactics up front and personal.
By the way, have you yet figured out which number is greater, 22 or 15?
Francis Poretto, Unix? Yeah, I don't think so.
GOF, that certainly wasn't my intention. I'm simply wondering why Kevin is lamenting "wealth being redistributed" to 47 percent of this country from people who took government hand outs to maintain their wealth. These same people have seemingly convinced Kevin that they are being "soaked" throught taxes by the government...the same government that has helped them stay afloat. It's simply not logical.
"It's simply not logical."
Teacher boy, you have just executed a correct Reductio ad Absurdum. Well done.
Go read about what it is at
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dict.asp?Word=reductio+ad+absurdum
I'll quote it for you:
reductio ad absurdum
n. Disproof of a proposition by showing that it leads to absurd or untenable conclusions.
Note the bold part. The method is quite simple; if a premise leads logically to an absurd conclusion, then that premise is false.
Now, here is yet another challenge from me to you: Complete the argument. Show us which premise of yours was false.
Here's a hint: I showed you your false premise only yesterday.
Or is this, yet again, your Standard Response #1, the "I can't hear you" response, and your Standard Response #7, the "Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin' camera?" response?
"Francis Poretto, Unix? Yeah, I don't think so."
Sigh… Genetic Fallacy.
Using a fallacy translates this argument to, "Cluck, cluck, cluck."
>>It's simply not logical.
I can't decide whether the assertion of logic wrapped in yet another chain of fallacies from this paragon of critical thinking is comedic or tragic.
It would seem that the dividing line between the two is the degree to which he and his ilk have any ability to make policy decisions that affect us.
Still arguing with the straw man.
Cluck, cluck, cluck.
"Still arguing with the straw man."
No, just apply a dope slap now and then.
We can't have a reader wandering through and thinking there's no good response to his blitherings because there's no response at all, now can we? That's his Standard Response #1, not ours.
I meant that Marxaphasia set up a straw man (instead of understanding what Kevin or the rest of us actually wrote) and he's busy arguing with it. I wasn't saying anything about your game of Wack-A-Marxy. :)
"I meant that Marxaphasia set up a straw man (instead of understanding what Kevin or the rest of us actually wrote) and he's busy arguing with it. I wasn't saying anything about your game of Wack-A-Marxy."
Damn. Missed it completely, didn't I?
Edited to add:
It occurs to me that I ought to explain myself. ALL of our Whack-A-Marxy efforts amount to thrashing a straw man, or rather a straw boy. That's what he is. So, yup, I'm still thrashing him.
Sigh ...
Though I understand the importance of answering his foolishness, I'm just really tired of thrashing him. Marxy's first post in this thread perfectly demonstrates why. When he restates what Kevin wrote (which is necessary in good communications to demonstrate that what the other person said was understood correctly), his restatement used some of the same words, but didn't have any conceptual relationship to what Kevin wrote.
Kevin's right. It seems like our words come across to Marxy almost exactly like the adult words from the Charlie Brown shows; as nothing more than random sounds produced by a muted trombone. Heck, my dogs understand what I'm saying better than Marxaphasia does, and language isn't even possible for them!
"A fool does not delight in understanding, but only wants to show off his opinions."
(Proverbs 18:2 HCSB)
After a while, punching a weeble-wobble just isn't fun anymore, even when you hit it hard enough to make it bounce off of more than one wall.
"Though I understand the importance of answering his foolishness, I'm just really tired of thrashing him."
Yup, that's it.
"It seems like our words come across to Marxy almost exactly like the adult words from the Charlie Brown shows; as nothing more than random sounds produced by a muted trombone."
No, I don't think so. His fuckheadedness is intentional and the cause is not lack of understanding. His problem is that he is a child trying to argue with grownups, he can't handle it, and he knows it, but his poor, fragile little ego won't let him stop trying. Denial is all that is left to him. So, when he is wrong, knows he is wrong, can't admit he is wrong, and can't stop arguing about it, he mischaracterizes the opponent's argument and argues against the mischaracterized argument. Erecting a man of straw and hacking it down is a typical response, even though he knows as he is doing it that it won't work. It doesn't matter to him that he is repeatedly shown to be a complete and utter fool, that he steps in his own poo and fouls his own nest; he exhibits no trace of embarrassment or shame. He is a prisoner of his ego and is immune to his own stupidity.
"After a while, punching a weeble-wobble just isn't fun anymore, even when you hit it hard enough to make it bounce off of more than one wall."
But, as I stated before, we can't have a reader wandering through and thinking there's no good response to his blitherings because there's no response at all, now can we? He will not win by default.
Francis Poretto, Unix? Yeah, I don't think so.
Luckily, you're the guy the local village idiot thinks is a bit dumb. So your "I don't think so" is reinforcing that Poretto is worth quoting.
Even more importantly, that I quoted from Poretto describes you decently well. I wouldn't say exactly. But pretty damn close.
As you projected onto LabRat once.. What, way too close to home?
I'm simply wondering... It's simply not logical.
Nope. You're not logical. And you're not wondering. You're blathering. You've seized upon what you think is a point, and you're going to take a stand on it.
But you're so blithering incapable in this, you can't realize you didn't make a point, you've not got a logical point, and we're not being hypocrites.
Marxy is far too stupid to know that he's not making a point, and hasn't the tools to be in this fight, Unix.
I'm not sure stupid is the correct term for these folks. The comment about their "reality" hits closer to the mark (snicker.) No matter what the input, the output is garbage because the filter or screen that is their entire life experience is fatally flawed. Square peg into a round, shapeless mass indeed.
Looks like somebody caught Marxy (or one of his clones) on video.
Here's "good capitalism" at work. I don't know whether to laugh or cry:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjVmMjJmZDYyOWRlMzY5NDdmNDJkMDY2ZjBiMTM0Mjg=
Sorry Mark, but you come off like the guy who says "Well most of your neighbors are perfectly safe, and some of them are even benefitting from the experience, and anyway you're not the one being robbed, so why do you care?"
GOF, that certainly wasn't my intention.
No doubt, but that's the result. And in the above scenario, you'd hardly expect a "Support Your Local Police" bumper sticker on the back of your car to be helpful, would you?
Ed, so you take this video and all of the information provided in it to be gospel? Great critical thinking, dude. But that's just how the Cult works.
I think I'll let Bruce Bartlett walk you through it. Let's see if you can understand.
One of the reasons I became a conservative way back when is because conservatives lived in a world where one’s actions are defined by their consequences, not one’s motives. Conservatives also prided themselves on being reality-based and fact-based in their analyses, while liberals often seemed to live in a dream world disconnected from history, institutions and ideology, among other things.
Yep.
Today, however, conservatives have largely adopted the liberal operating assumption and now also define themselves by the righteousness of their motives. This fact became very obvious to me this week when I examined the knowledge that tea party demonstrators on Capitol Hill had on the subject of taxation.
Double Yep.
Federal taxes are very considerably lower by every measure since Obama became president. And given the economic circumstances, it's hard to imagine that a tax increase would have been enacted last year. In fact, 40% of Obama's stimulus package involved tax cuts. These include the Making Work Pay Credit, which reduces federal taxes for all taxpayers with incomes below $75,000 by between $400 and $800.
According to the JCT, last year's $787 billion stimulus bill, enacted with no Republican support, reduced federal taxes by almost $100 billion in 2009 and another $222 billion this year. The Tax Policy Center, a private research group, estimates that close to 90% of all taxpayers got a tax cut last year and almost 100% of those in the $50,000 income range. For those making between $40,000 and $50,000, the average tax cut was $472; for those making between $50,000 and $75,000, the tax cut averaged $522. No taxpayer anywhere in the country had his or her taxes increased as a consequence of Obama's policies.
It's hard to explain this divergence between perception and reality.
http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/1592/ignorance-bliss-tea-party-crowd
Indeed it is. Care to try to explain this, Ed? Remember, Bartlett was Ronald Reagan's chief economic advisor.
Then, of course we have this,
Meanwhile, taxes are at their lowest levels in 60 years, according to William Gale, co-director of the Tax Policy Center and director of the Retirement Security Project at the Brookings Institution.
"The relation between what is said in the tax debate and what is true about tax policy is often quite tenuous," Gale told Hotsheet. "The rise of the Tea Party at at time when taxes are literally at their lowest in decades is really hard to understand."
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20002548-503544.html
Not really hard at all when you consider the Cult, sir.
So, Ed, I challenge you to read the above links and compare it to your little video. Which ones contain verifiable facts and which ones do not?
Markadelphia, Obama and the Democrat Congress have increased Federal spending by how many TRILLION dollars since The One was inaugurated?
And, as you note, they have cut taxes.
How long can this last? What MUST be the result? Surely, even YOU have the logical capacity to work out an answer to THESE questions!
Surely, even YOU have the logical capacity to work out an answer to THESE questions!
Kevin, we might have to reduce the respect we grant you for your powers of observation, there. :)
What MUST be the result?
Actually, there *is* one way that what you're trying to get him to understand won't work, and "reduced" taxes and increased spending can still drop the deficit.
But 1) Mark won't understand it (but he'll claim it will magically work that way), and 2) Obama and crew are doing everything in their power, intentionally or not, to make damn sure that doesn't happen.
Well, Kevin, I would refer you to the following tables.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals/
Table 1.2 shows deficit spending at 14.8, 30.8, 23.3, and 22.0 percent of GDP for the years 1942, 1943, 1944, and 1945 respectively. During that time, we defeated the greatest army the world has ever seen and after that time we had the biggest boom in our country's history. Our deficit spending for last year was 10.9 and will be 11.2 percent for this year...both still considerably lower than any of the WWII figures.
Examine the federal debt in Table 7.1 for the same period and compare it to today. In 1946, we had a federal debt of 126 percent of GDP!! Guess what? We did quite well, didn't we? Glenn Beck has warned that our children will be slaves to our future creditors. Yet, with much higher debt and deficits, we did just fine post WWII. Now, does that mean that excessive spending is OK? No. But any time President Obama announces any spending freeze, it is laughed off by the pundits on the right as negligable.
I will stipulate that the government needs to change the way it spends money. It is bad. It is not, however, at the point where we are all going to be treading water in a boiling pit of sewage. And what was the alternative to solving the financial crisis? Let all those interconnected (thanks to Glass Steagall being chucked) institutions fail? Without FDIC pretty much everyone here would not have been able to draw money out of their banks because...there wouldn't have been any money.
You bemoan regulation yet it was the federal government that saved your money. And it was the lack of regulation that allowed the bozos in our financial services industry to rob Paul to pay Peter.
Let all those interconnected (thanks to Glass Steagall being chucked) institutions fail?
And what was GS chucked ALONG WITH?
You bemoan regulation yet it was the federal government that saved your money.
DESPITE all the "regulation" (which you have described as "unregulated", the diasters occurred. Because there was no risk, the government assumed it.
They didn't save my money, they saved a bunch of people who otherwise would have lost their jobs for making insanely bad deals.
Instead of having a resume "was in charge of lending, lent to a bunch of deadbeats" listing, now they work for Uncle Sam and aren't fireable.
Yeah, Mark, you've got a real handle on the issues here.
And it was the lack of regulation that allowed the bozos in our financial services industry to rob Paul to pay Peter.
No, it was the entire "regulation" that allowed it.
They'd never have done it without that "regulation".
"Well, Kevin, I would refer you to the following tables.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals/"
Yet another PERFECT example of why talking to Marxaphasia is LESS productive than talking to my dogs. Last time he trotted that link out, I downloaded the spreadsheets found there and just had Excel make charts out of them. And both the debt and spending charts showed the Obama administration driving us off a financial cliff. (I'll attach them again.) Yet here's Marxaphasia, proudly trotting out that link again as if it shows the OPPOSITE of what it does actually show.
"So, Ed, I challenge you…" … to waste your time doing something I will just ignore anyway.
_N_O_
Oops. Forgot the charts.
Damn, Ed.
A spanking that bad surely qualifies as child abuse, doesn't it?
I haven't seen a beating that bad since Rodney King!
Funny, because Ed's charts show what he dare not admit....we were at much worse points in our country's history and look what happened. The numbers show that FDR and Truman built a bridge and we did not, in fact, drive off a cliff. In fact, we saw greater prosperity than this country has ever seen.
So, Ed, how do you explain us making it after completely insane deficits and debt to GDP?
I just came across an excellent article from an eyewitness of history.
This is How They Buy You
"I believe that I am an eyewitness to history. I cannot tell you that Hitler took Austria by tanks and guns; it would distort history. We elected him by a landslide - 98% of the vote . . . "
Highly recommended.
"we were at much worse points in our country's history"
Much worse TEMPORARY points. World War II is the only time we were at a worse point, and it ENDED. The spending being put into place by the left is supposed to be PERMANENT.
Ed, the article you linked is completely without reason. For one thing, gun laws are being relaxed around the country so the comparison is ludicrous. It's a complete appeal to fear load of paranoia. The fact that you think this is highly recommended makes me question your sanity.
And, no, the spending is not supposed to be permenant. Review the estimates through 2015 in table 1.2. The high deficit spending that went on during WWII lasted 4 years and was much larger whereas this slightly higher deficit spending lasts only 2 years.
For one thing, gun laws are being relaxed around the country so the comparison is ludicrous.
The only people I've seen who can run into more points without notice is Indian fakirs.
And, no, the spending is not supposed to be permenant.
What was Social Security "Supposed to be"? What was Medicare Part D?
What are they now?
How many of those "savings" are exactly the sort of cuts to medicare/aid that are REPEALED EVERY YEAR?
Okay, let's see where we are:
-
The fact that Obama's/Pelosi's/Reid's histories have driven record gun sales and pro-gun legislation, coupled with the fact that they had higher priorities than to oppose it this legislative cycle, apparently makes them all gun rights supporters. I suppose the same can be said of Rosie O'Donnell.
-
The gang rape of the taxpayers by government, by making them guarantors of known bad debt through the agencies of the CRA and Fannie/Freddie, is/was only a minor issue, to be dismissed. It was only when the repeal of Glass-Steagal allowed the greedy private sector to get in on precisely the same gang rape the government had created for its own benefit, thus causing the whole thing to go viral, that it became unacceptable. In other words it's not the rape that's the unacceptable part, it's allowing it to be equal opportunity rape that turns it from "good capitalism" into "bad capitalism".
-
Every single member of the 53% of Americans who actually pay taxes is, without exception, one of the people who had to be bailed out by TARP, Porkulus et al. Therefore it is just that they be tapped for the funds to bail out the 47% who do not pay taxes now, even though the 47% who pay no taxes are, by definition, not the people who funded TARP, Porkulus et al.
Note that the one person here who apparently considers this just is likewise the one person who supported TARP, Porkulus et al in the first place.
-
Got it. Did I miss anything?
1. Violent crime is down so President Obama is not going to pursue gun control. There's no point to it because he is a sensible man who knows that there is no connection between guns and violence. He also signed a law which increased gun rights on trains and in national parks. Small, sure, but it does make his record 1-0 on gun rights legislation with his name on it. And how many more states will it take before you admit that he has respected their rights by not getting involved at a federal level?
2. The CRA only applies to banks and thrifts (for 9 zillonth time) and the Fannie/Freddie loans that really caused all the problems were the ALT-A loans not the ones that are falesly considered "entitlements."
3. Actually, the 47 percent do pay taxes. They pay Social Security, Medicare, property tax, state tax, sales tax, and local tax. The myth that there are just a bunch of freeloaders (probably the same welfare mother driving a Cadillac, right?) in that 47 percent is a Cult lie. And insults anyone's intelligence who understands taxation.
We need a "LEEEEAAAAAAVE BRIIIITNEY ALLOOOOOOOOOONE!!!!" Standard Response.
2. The CRA only applies to banks and thrifts (for 9 zillonth time) and the Fannie/Freddie loans that really caused all the problems were the ALT-A loans not the ones that are falesly considered "entitlements."
Which changes nothing at all about the fact that you consider politicians putting taxpayers on the hook for known bad debt to be acceptable, praiseworthy, even vital. It's only when private sector investors get in on the fun that it's suddenly "a crime".
3. Actually, the 47 percent do pay taxes. They pay Social Security, Medicare, property tax, state tax, sales tax, and local tax. The myth that there are just a bunch of freeloaders (probably the same welfare mother driving a Cadillac, right?) in that 47 percent is a Cult lie. And insults anyone's intelligence who understands taxation.
If it's a "Cult lie", then it's a "Cult lie" to exactly the same degree for exactly the same reasons to say that Obama has not raised taxes on the lower and middle classes. Cigarette taxes are acknowledged as the most regressive form of taxation the US has ever used, but that's exactly what he raised.
"And insults anyone's intelligence who understands taxation."
To borrow from Wanda (look it up, Hollywood boy), calling you fuckheaded is an insult to fuckheaded people, but it fits. It describes your behavior nicely.
For the past several days (while I've been away), you have done almost nothing except regurgitate (yes, that is the appropriate word) your previous blather, exhibiting not the slightest evidence that you have read or understood anything anyone else wrote about it. You cannot learn. You cannot admit error. You lecturing other people about "understanding taxation" is yet another instance of your fundamental hypocrisy.
Why do YOU keep insulting OUR intelligence with your fuckheadedness?
3. Actually, the 47 percent do pay taxes. They pay Social Security, Medicare, property tax, state tax, sales tax, and local tax. The myth that there are just a bunch of freeloaders (probably the same welfare mother driving a Cadillac, right?) in that 47 percent is a Cult lie. And insults anyone's intelligence who understands taxation.
My gosh, are you this dumb after years of hard work and effort or does it come naturally?
The report Kevin linked to clearly states it is looking at individual income tax liability. The data breakdown shows that nearly half of all tax units will pay no income tax in 2009.
"About 47 percent of single filers will owe no tax, compared with 38 percent of joint filers and 72 percent of heads of household."
And because you have evinced a consistent lack of reading comprehension, I'll explain what that means. Out of the tax units that paid into the government, 47 percent of single filers will owe no tax. They'll get all the income tax money back, and in some cases, more. For heads of households, that number jumps up to 72 percent.
Your reference to "freeloaders" isn't in Kevin's post nor in the subsequent comments. Thus, for this post and related comments, you trying to state that the Cult thinks that within the 47% of the tax units that owe no taxes there is a subset of freeloaders can only be construed as a fabrication on your part. Kevin et al. have asserted that 47% of the tax units do not owe income taxes. The existence, or non-existence, of freeloaders within the US tax system isn't part the post or discussion. Again, your reading comprehension is around nil, but your strawman building prowess remains a wonder to behold.
Yes, Russell, he is that dumb. He is doing his usual: he mischaracterizes the other guy's argument and then blithers against the mischaracterized argument. It doesn't work. It makes him appear to be stupid as hell, but he doesn't care.
So, cult boy, try reading this:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/04/16/elizabeth-factor-mallory-factor-federal-income-tax-tax-day-americans-democrats/
It was published only today. Yeah, its on the Fox News web site, but you can buck up and wash the cooties off later, right?
Here's the (ahem) money quote:
"A series of tax reforms, generous exemptions and tax credits, including last year’s economic stimulus bill, have dropped millions of Americans from the federal tax rolls. Huge numbers of Americans are simply no longer affected by the federal income tax. The Tax Policy Center projects that 47 percent of all U.S. households will pay no federal income tax for 2009. And, the bottom 40 percent of income earners actually receive a cash payment from the government at tax time. This cash payment is styled as a “refund” but it is actually a net cash transfer from the government--not a refund of taxes actually withheld on income. And for many Americans, this cash transfer from Uncle Sam actually exceeds all federal, state and local taxes that they pay in any form during the year including sales taxes and social security taxes."
We've been telling you that, too.
But wait! There's more!
"The people who don’t pay federal income taxes are, as the phrase goes, “rational economic actors” just as much as anyone. Like all people, non-taxpayers respond to economic incentives. Their demand for entitlements and government programs is naturally insatiable because they don’t care at all about the cost. Non-taxpayers don’t have any “skin in the game” and are completely indifferent to the government raising income taxes. So they will always support increasing government programs as a long as they get even a small benefit from them because it does not cost them a cent. It’s also perfectly rational for non-taxpayers to support politicians who favor more spending. Non-taxpayers get something for nothing, at least until the country becomes insolvent."
We've been telling you that, too.
But wait! There's more!
"The so-called progressive Democratic politicians are rational actors too. By taking more and more Americans off the federal tax rolls, they are creating a permanent base of supporters for themselves. These politicians may claim to support increased government spending because of their concern for the less-fortunate but--hey, it also happens to be in their own political self-interest. And these politicians will continue to spend on these programs until our nation goes bust because they want to keep their jobs and grow expensive programs for their political base."
We've been telling you that, too.
But wait! There's more!
"And what about the people paying all the federal taxes? Well, taxpayers respond to incentives too. When faced with increasing tax rates, taxpayers will reduce their income, which is why it is impossible to raise a lot of revenue by increasing taxes above a certain point. As taxes on income rise, taxpayers spend less time on work and more on leisure. They avoid sales of investments and assets which could trigger income until they can pair them with offsetting losses from other transactions. They spend billions of dollars on tax advice and structuring to reduce their tax burden, which makes economic sense for them but which is a waste of resources for our society. In the aggregate, a tax system that is hostile to investment and growth has a distortive effect which harms U.S. productivity and reduces the standard of living of our whole nation."
We've been telling you that, too.
Now, go ahead, Standard Response boy. Do your usual. Mischaracterize this explanation and then blither against what you've mischaracterized. Demonstrate that you do not understand it and then try to convince us you're right about it. It's what you do.
Come on, teacher boy, we're waiting. How could you miss such an opportunity? Why, just look at all those words and sentences you could misunderstand!
"Did I miss anything?"
Yes. The increased spending is "only temporary" even though Marxy was crowing about the just passed "permanent" health care "reform" costing "only" $930 BILLION, and is "fully funded" by 10 years of new "nonexistent tax increase" taxes paying for 6 years of "reforms".
PHD comics put together an interesting chart showing the breakdown of the Federal Budget. His purpose was to be funny, but by using real numbers, it's also rather interesting to see what the largest budget items actually are.
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