Week In The News: Occupy Protests, Cain Surges, Iran Accused

Roy Mac

What does “direct contact with Iran” mean? Their governing structure is incomprehensible to the outside world, and probably to those who live there.

Hidan

Means this,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iKuMVqht4U

Wm. James from Missouri

Mr. Ashbrook,

I would like to thank you and your crew at NPR for doing such a wonderful job with the “On Point” broadcast. You’re the best ! All of you !

I would like to you ask your technical staff about a problem I had with my laptop and its’ calculator.One day I was trying to add up handful of numbers, I had valued from 1 to X such as, Jack Beatty’s and your IQ, wit, ability to rephrase a question, humor, Presidential potential, etc., when I received the oddest error message, it read, “Unable to Compute. “ Infinity is not a number. “ Does anyone on your staff, or any listener have a clue, as to what might be going on in ‘Circuitville’ ?

Hidan

The whole Iran things seems pretty darn fishy not only are experts from nearly all fields/sides stating this even Iran finds it absurd. Even the target seems absurd to be going after and looks like the goverment is trying to pull one over the people by leaking some and hiding the rest of the information on this.

Loring Palmer

“Fishy” is an understatement. Are our government officials fox or fools in this case? It’s worse than the yellow cake ruse or Tonkin Bay “incident.” Who are the winners if this drags us into another war?
Check out Juan Cole for some surprising facts in this charade:juancole.com
- Loring Palmer
  
  The link to Juan cole’s Informed Comment blog, posted 10/13/2011
  “Wagging the Dog with Iran’s Maxwell Smart”
  
  http://www.juancole.com
  - Hidan
    
    Did you also know his girl is on the board of Brookfield Properties,?
    
    http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/10/more-who-controls-zuccotti-park/43414/

Hidan

Anyone catch what our U.S. supported TNC is doing?

Not only are they still lynching Africans civilians for being “African” there now (atleast it’s finally being reported)arresting and torturing civilians as well. This is being done with no charges. The U.S. backed TNC is now in discriminating firing on both fighters and loyalist in Sirte. There’s talk after there done it wouldn’t even be inhabitable to live. Not only the many of the civilians the TNC allowed to escape actually wasn’t allow to but if anyone had any evidences of supporting Gadafi they are being refused to leave and often beaten, torture, arrested or outright shoot dead. This includes both Men and Women. To add the NPR cheerleaders of the TNC are finally unable to hide what the Rebels are doing and while asking the Rebels if they would allow Gadafi supporters to non-violently protest against the TNC. One replied he shoot them all dead while the other reply that he shoot them all dead if they had weapons.

Hidan

Gotta love the Token Kain,

Boortz jokes with Cain after Kain says his Great Great grandparents were slaves, Boortz goes on to ask where. after finding it was a different plantation boortz than goes on to say thank god his ancestors didn’t use to own him.

Herman Cain & Neal Boortz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U63UBXcQzYo&NR=1

Worth pointing out that Cain is mostly supported by the Koch Brothers who it recently has come to light one of the Koch brothers used Social Security to try and get the God Father of Libertarians to come to american he even sent Hayek a government pamphlet to help him take advantage of
America’s federal retirement insurance and healthcare programs. But hey they love their county so much they both fund and give Americans cancer

http://markcrispinmiller.com/2011/10/koch-industries-cleans-up-by-giving-cancer-to-its-neighbors/

“While the brothers wage war against safety precautions, every day
their factory is dumping millions of gallons of wastewater into streams
that flow near a small rural town in Arkansas.
“The Koch brothers are killing me and my family,” Norma Thompson, a
Crossett, Arkansas resident told us during our investigation. She’s
lived near the Koch brothers’ mill for 39 years.”

http://www.thenation.com/article/163672/charles-koch-friedrich-hayek-use-social-security

But the funny thing is,

“A few weeks later, the institute reported the good news: Professor Hayek
had indeed opted into Social Security while he was teaching at Chicago
and had paid into the program for ten years.”

Where’s Dave on this one?

Fredlinskip

I think GOP has finally convinced me about this “starve the government” stuff. How much better if the founding fathers sitting down to write constitution had following conversation: “Hey guys, whaty’all say we create a government?” “Hell, no, we don‘t need no stinkin’ guvment- just hand out some baseball bats and a few sharp sticks and who ever‘s left standing let them do whatever they want.” “Hey Madison, how’s about ‘for and by the people’”. “That sounds like a bunch of focialist Comi crap, what‘ya think Ben?” “I agree. Matter of fact, write this down Jefferson, if anyone ever fuggests a policy with intent of benefiting majority of Americans they will be labeled SOCIALIST comis and burnt at stake.” Adams- “HEY and write this too- if there ever happens to be a furplus for some odd reason lets instead of ufing it to for the benefit of the people, lets distribute it to richest amongft us”. “VERY GOOD, I’ll second that”. “AND HOW bout this- if we ever become powerful enough, let’s make up excufes to occupy other countries”. “But won’t that create terrorifts?” “Yes but we need terrorifts to sustain perpetual War and support military induftrial complex”. “Good! And let’s tappeth phones indifcriminately and torture some folks- let’s not wait 200+ years to put that down”. “Good good- Boy generations to come sure will be proud”. “I’ll drinketh some madeira to that!“

William

I have to agree. Allowing 47 percent of working Americans to not pay their fair share of Federal Income Tax was a huge mistake.
- Anonymous
  
  I’m sick an tired of this lie being told by the right.
  I pay FICA taxes federal income taxes and state and local taxes. You people are nothing but shameless examples of of how uninformed and senseless information can be used to make it seem that wealthy are paying to much. Don’t bother posting links, I know what I pay. I know what everyone around me is paying, some get refunds and others do not. This argument solves nothing and is more about how nasty and demeaning some segments on the right are.
  - Brett
    
    Even if one is getting most of the withheld state and federal taxes back that were deducted from his/her paycheck (and paying sales and property taxes notwithstanding), those so-called 47 percent are still giving the government an interest-free loan, as it were, by having the government keep their money until it is refunded. Those who are acquiring their money through investments are not…the whiners about the ’47%’ never temper their thinking with that! I suppose it takes some of the sting out of their so-called argument.
  - William
    
    It’s not a lie you just don’t know the difference between the various taxes and where the money goes. FICA is more of an retirement plan and you get that money back when you retire. State and local taxes don’t go to the federal government and don’t fund federal programs. There are actually people in this country receiving a check every April and never pay any federal income tax. We should all share the burden of paying the federal income tax to keep essential federal programs funded.
    - TFRX
      
      Wait until they’re no longer poor, and they’ll pay income tax then. What is so hard to figure out?
      
      And have you never heard of the business cycle?
    - William
      
      Define poor?…I think a family of 4 making 40k pays no federal income tax…not sure about single people….what let’s say 30k per year for a single person..should they pay something in federal income tax?
    - TFRX
      
      “I think a family of 4…”
      
      You think a lot of things. Do your own homework.
      
      And you said EVERYBODY! What does that mean? Down to one person making $6k a year? You said it.
    - William
      
      Yup…everyone pays…Obama said everyone needs to have skin in the game…..
    - TFRX
      
      And for the rest of the taxes, their burden is much greater, as it’s not scaled to income.
      
      You’re really sh!tting the bed on this one. If I wanted to make up a right-winger to demonize what Republicans think…not a screenwriter in the world would put into Mr. Potter’s mouth the crap you really believe.
    - William
      
      You need to quit treating the poor as second class citizens. They won’t mind paying their fair share and even the VP and President said it is our duty to pay our fair share. We need the money for investments in our future, pay teachers, police, fire etc…build schools, roads, bridges, the poor that are now receiving more than they pay won’t mind paying a little bit more…a dollar a day..they will take pride in the fact that they are finally doing their duty as good Americans and paying their fair share. Just because a person is poor does not mean he does not have any pride and wants to be called a freeloader. Step back from the computer and give the poor a chance to contribute their fair share.
    - Terry Tree Tree
      
      Go and support a family of four on $40,000 ONLY, for 10 years, and come back and tell us how that worked! You can donate ALL but the $40,000 to help pay off the deficit, or to pay the expenses of working people that cannot afford health care and dental for their children!
      If they have it so easy, PROVE IT! Otherwise, you know NOT of which you speak!!
    - Brett
      
      William, you also suffer from similar reading comprehension deficits as your neocon counterparts (with some reading hallucinations to boot). I didn’t say anything about FICA. I also didn’t say state and local taxes go to the feds. That “check every April” you speak of is money that wasn’t the government’s but was held, interest free. If one makes his money from investments, he doesn’t have to give the government money to hold until they figure out how much he owes. But you keep going with the talking point about how unfairly burdened wealthy people are.
    - Brett
      
      Oops, sorry, William, you were responding to jeffe68. But, you still haven’t addressed why lower income people have to give the government an interest-free loan every year when wealthier people who receive money from investments don’t?
    - William
      
      Huh?….what are you talking about?
    - William
      
      There are people that pay zero federal income taxes and receive a check every april called EIC. It is a joke on the hard working Americans that pay taxes to see people receive a “refund” but never paid into the federal income tax system.
      
      Where did I say “unfairly burdened wealthy people are?”….I said, and I will continue to say that everyone needs to pay some federal income tax. At least 5 percent regardless of your income and go up from there.
- Denis
  
  Where did you get this number… factually, no Fox News? Remember taxes includes sales tax, property tax, gasoline tax, etc. etc. Would someone that has really studied this comment: When you include all of the taxes what percent of income do the bottom 47% pay compared to the top 10%?
  - William
    
    Federal income taxes pay for many services that everyone enjoys. There is nothing wrong to require everyone to pay something.
    - TFRX
      
      Wow. Business cycle. “Lucky Duckies”. And do you have any idea what percentage of those non-Fed Inc Tax sorts hold down jobs?
      
      Please stop with the “they need to feel they’re not parasites” crap.
      
      What people who are poor enough to not pay income tax need are jobs, or better jobs. After that, to be left alone by meddling right-wingers who worry they’re “getting away with something”.
    - notafeminista
      
      As opposed to meddling left wingers who think people who DO pay income tax are getting away with something.
    - William
      
      Define poor? A family of 4, earned 40k, is that poor? Should they pay some federal income tax or nothing?. It is a bad idea to keep increasing the number of people that don’t pay any federal income tax. Eventually, they will figure it out and demand even more services from the federal government, i.e. taxpayers, because they don’t have to pay for them. We are all in this together and it makes sense that everyone pay something in federal income tax.
    - TFRX
      
      Pfft.
      
      You brought it up, you answer it. Do your own homework.
      
      You’re really doing your side a favor by showing us all what the right really thinks of working class Americans, especially at this point in the business cycle.
    - William
      
      You do your side a favor by showing your contempt for people that pay taxes.
    - TFRX
      
      I’ll tell everyone at my next family reunion how much I loathe them. And you go down to the soup kitchen and demand pennies from each of them.
    - William
      
      We need to bring the poor out of the shadows, get them education to get a better job, housing etc…when they pay their fair share of federal income taxes they will feel good about themselves. When they see their tax dollars to build the schools they send their children too, pay for the roads, bridges, they will say “I helped pay for that”…we as a society need to treat the poor better…calling them freeloaders because they take more than they have paid for does them no good….it is time to break this cycle….just a dollar a day..everyone can afford that….we need the money to invest in green technology, roads, schools, police, teachers, etc…
    - Terry Tree Tree
      
      DO IT!! Don’t say what we need to do! DO IT!! Evidently you are wealthy enough to do it all by yourself.
    - Cory
      
      Maybe the bottom 1% could give blood plasma, hair, or redundant organs in lieu of money they don’t have.
- Cory
  
  What would you say is fair for someone in the bottom 1% to pay in federal income tax? How much do you think this person makes? I just yesterday saw that the TOP 1% make 20% of the income in this country. What percentage does that person at the bottom make?
  - Ellen Dibble
    
    According to Krugman in the last few days, it’s not the top one percent; the really gross concentration of wealth is in the top tenth of one percent. I don’t recall if he had a proposed “solution” for outsize “success.” Sometimes I think anyone who puts themselves into that kind of position is just plain stupid. They have excluded themselves from most of what makes life worth living. There is no point to putting them in jail for it; they are already in a kind of jail. �
    I know that is far out to say that. How can I say that about people who can pull the strings of all the campaigns, who can pull the strings of all the lobbyists, who can pull the strings of all our elected officials… How are they trapped? �
    Pretend you are one. Try to imagine your way through the world’s ills, either trying to keep the boat of humanity afloat to help you and your fortune, or trying to keep yourself afloat and to heck with the rest of us. Well, I’m thinking they’re almost all wanting humanity to keep them afloat, but that’s a tall order.
  - William
    
    Sure…they receive services but are not paying for them…it is very fair to ask everyone to pay something….When I was in the service back in the mid 1970′s I paid federal and state income tax. I did not make very much, but I paid and did not get much if anything back. It did not bother me because I knew for our country to work we all should pay taxes.
  - William
    
    Everyone that works should pay at least 5 percent in federal income tax. This is only fair. We are not a poor America, rich America, we are one America. We need to invest in roads, bridges, schools, keep teachers, police, fire personnel on the job. We are only asking for a little bit from those 47 percent that are not paying any federal income tax. It is the least they can do for the greater good of the country.

Joe

Atty. General Eric Holder has been subpoenaed for his role in operation ‘Fast and Furious’. The operation in which the A.T.F. sold thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels which resulted in three U.S. Border Patrol agents being murdered with those same guns.

But since On Point has decided to completely ignore talking about President Obama’s and Atty. General Eric Holder’s roles in operation ‘Fast and Furious’, why start now?

Cory

And of course the Mexican cartels would not have otherwise had guns. Whitewater, Tony Rezco, Reverend Wright, Monica Lewinsky,… Would you give this crap a rest and focus on substantial issues related to governing our collapsing nation?

at

We are a nation of over three hundred million persons, and Kain and the
other jokers (including Obama) are the best we can come up with?�
Believe that, and you may be interested in sending me ten percent of
your income in order to get into heaven after you die.

Once again the politicians have to lie to us for a few months then they can continue ignoring the vast majority of us and go back to catering to their owners on Wall Street..

Like I stated here a last election: Don’t vote for Republicans or Democrats, unless you want more of the same.

Don’t vote for super wealthy politicians who have nothing in common with you and who will do everything to strengthen their own position of power at your expense. You see the power thing is really a zero sum game. If they get more, you get less. It’s as simple as that.

Don’t let O’bama fool you again (he got me the first time too, even though I knew the only truly good man was Nader. We are no longer a nation that deserves a Nader but we still don’t deserve what we have been getting since the CIA scuttled Carter and put their man in.

at

Sorry, please delete this copy.
Vic44

You know A.T. it seems like you are always summing up the situation in like a sentence or two. Usually I read your various diatribes for a laugh, because if the world were as simple as your mind seems to think it is, then someone like you could come along and fix everything in a few weeks, or when you got around to it. But this time I thought you had really gone over the edge. The CIA scuttled Carter? And I was sort of thinking that you were pro-CIA. Didn’t you once write this long text-wall about how the CIA had done an excellent job of first deposing the Soviets with the Muhajadiene – some of who later became Taliban – with minimal support and investment. And you praised their job with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban. Then went into this thing about how the army did everything wrong and how much it costs (a mil per man — It’s a milperman war.) You wanted to just launch air attacks and drones use special ops to target specific trouble makers and leave Afganistan the hell alone unless it turns into a moneymaking proposition (for everyone not just the military contractors.) Anyhow it was some kind of plan like that (like none of our professional military ever thought of that — duh.) So I sort of thought that the CIA were your patriotic heroes or something and now you are saying that they subverted the Executive Branch? Gee I sure hope for your sake that you are wrong, or that none of them read your post, you could come down with a heart attack. But I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you. What are the chances? (About the same as the CIA having scuttles Jimmy Carter — I’d say.)
Hugs
- at
  
  Wow, you remember a post I wrote about a year ago. I find that hard to believe. Maybe you were listening to an archived show and happened to peruse the comments eh? In either case, I am almost flattered, on the other hand I am also almost insulted.
  On my suspicions of the CIA thing: I will be absolutely honest. I have done no research except for a minute ago. It is simply a gestalt that arises in my consciousness whenever I consider that scenario. It is a pattern that I have recognized on a purely preconscious level. And it just makes sense, when you add up the incredible pugnacious attitude that allowed these same guys to later sell weapons to Iran and use the proceeds to buy drugs they distributed in American ghettos and support some very unsavory characters in Central America. I forget what it was exactly — drugs for money for weapons for Iran, or some other scheme — done entirely outside of the law. Then that shame of a hearing and Oliver North becomes a star, instead of a convict, even though he is the fall guy. An the thing is: these are now venerated figures. Reagan, a man whose subversion of our financial system through soft headed notions and the influence of his master (Regen and the Goldman Sachs boys) brought us to this financial impasse as much as anybody. He is there hero. What can you expect from them but more of the same. The thing is that we don’t need some knee jerk liberal in there, who is every bit as soft headed as Reagan but with a different orientation. The joy over the election of Obama (at the time) was a sign that a huge majority of the people is ready to come together and create change. It was the figure head that let us down. but that because it was their figure head — the one percent. Another rule for voting: Don’t vote for anybody that gets contributions from Goldman Sachs.
  Oh, and Vic44 check this out, I just found it.
  
  http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-CIA-Likud-Sinking-of-J-by-Robert-Parry-100624-779.html
  
  And anyone else who happens to read this here is an new and excellent report on Secret America, it’s vast and powerful network of resources.
  
  Here is Frontline: Top Secret America from PBS it is excellent.
  
  http://video.pbs.org/video/2117159594
- at
  
  By the way, my name is at, not A.T., or AT.
  It doesn’t stand for anything it is the word at.
  - Vic44
    
    That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.
    - at
      
      Yep
Denis

All of this anti-Obama talk is just plain crazy!! Most of you that complain, complain, complain do not realize you are causing a big part of the problem. You follow [in most cases it seems unwittingly] Fox News misinformation and express it as fact. You give no credit for gains made and you are as rigid as the Tea Party folks are. With this type thinking all that can be said is, “Good Luck America!”
- JaBoomKaaaa
  
  He is owned by the Wall Street criminals. And if he isn’t he acts like he is, so it’s the same thing.
- DaDum88
  
  Don’t you believe in at’s wisdom?
  
  It is an axiom
  
  Don’t vote for anyone who gets contributions from Goldman Sachs
  
  More than any other single entity they have steered us off the cliff for their own profit, so being a concerned American, if they, the enemy of the American people, support a candidate, a real American cannot support that same person.
  
  If you hate the corporate influence and its corruption, don’t vote for their men. Is that hard too understand, or are you just a minion of what used to be the Democratic party?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso

Outlaw lobbyists, campaign funding, and corporate status. Get rid of the compromised clowns in congress and the white house. and America could be truly a great nation.

If any legitimate candidate can provide 50,000 valid signatures, the taxpayers should provide him or her, with a website to clearly promote their platform and an advertising budget equal to all other candidates.
Enforce fair exposure of all candidates by the biased MEDIA. Primaries should not be about two party charades but simply to arrive at the candidate with the majority of the people’s vote. Simple.
- BlixOne11
  
  Which is pretty much what AmericaVotes.org is trying to do, but they are on the ballot in every state. Are you? If not, you might want to hook-up with their assets, because you are asking for what they are doing.

LidaLampreeDuvilleAddomanice

So the OnePercent decided to try to bomb Iran so nobody cares about the movement to Occupy Wall St.

Look at how tolerant the police were when and were ever the Tea Party demonstrated.

Look at how this contrasts with how the Occupy Wall Street movement is portrayed and hassled by the police.

It would lead one to think that the police either contain people being payed by the one percent to cause trouble or they actually are on a side, and it ain’t that of the 99%.

Cory

Longest… name… ever.
- Terry Tree Tree
  
  Glad I don’t have to type that one in!!

JustSayin

Well Congress is at it again…
Protect Life Act Passes House: House Passes Controversial Anti-Abortion Bill – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/13/protect-life-act-passes-house-of-representatives_n_1009876.html

” House of Representatives on Thursday passed the so-called Protect Life Act,
which prohibits women from buying health insurance plans that cover
abortion under the Affordable Care Act and makes it legal for hospitals
to deny abortions to pregnant women with life-threatening conditions.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), a proponent of the bill,
told voters last week that its purpose is “to ensure that no taxpayer
dollars flow to health care plans that cover abortion and no health care
worker has to participate in abortions against their will.”

The nations massive functional problems are ignored but the Theocracy is busy debating religious laws for a secular nation. The Republican candidates have moved on from debating the nations future to who is more Christian than the next and who will enforce Christian law onto the nation if elected.

I wish the rapture were real and would happen today….However every member of Congress would be left behind anyway. The hardships of the 95%… is that 99% of this countries problems are caused by acts of a totally corrupt, irrational and ideologically driven Congress.
�
The candidates are just another batch of crazed millionaires.

Anonymous

I thought their lazer-sharp focus was supposed to be on creating jobs? Oh now I get it: the goal is to reduce the rights of women, get them back to being bare-foot & pregnant all the time and that will open up a whole bunch of jobs. Right?!?!?!
- JustSayin
  
  Yeah that’s part of it. That whole drive to get back to the good ole 1950′s….
  
  But behind the curtain they are doing everything in their power to protect China’s economy and thereby protect Wall St.
- TFRX
  
  Apparently you didn’t hear their slogan: “Jobs are job N+1″.
Will H

It’s all about producing the next generation of slaves for the 1%…Get it?

at

If you need a graphic depiction of the superiority of the American moral character over that of the British, check out the third episode of the British channel 4 series Fighting on the Frontline: Suabbies. I’m not even going to comment further except to suggest you try to imagine American soldiers expressing such a fascination with death and killing even in their guarded moments. (always remember, do not surrender your arms to a Scotsman {they will kill you.})

The Brits don’t always share their public broadcasting with us like we do with them so you may have to find it at one of the sites listed here.

https://torrentz.eu/b72539d4984f88093d22e1f19526fbd2018807bf

david from Gardner

occupy Wallstreet:

I propose an “emancipation proclomation” for congress. Let’s free our nations leaders from their coporate masters. Let’s pass a constitutional amendment to ban corporations and interest groups from making political contributions. If citizens are “the only proper objects of government” as Hamilton wrote in The Federalsit Papers #15 why do we tolerate government that is only concerned about large donors?

Cory

Amendment would require ratification by 38 states. Won’t happen.
- Ellen Dibble
  
  But such an effort might bring the Occupy Wall Street movement together with a common goal. Never underestimate the power of a good idea.

david from Gardner

I can’t believe I misspelled proclamation

Yar

David, if you create an account you can edit your posts. I seldom get it right the first time around. The ability to edit is the single best feature of Disqus software.
- Anonymous
  
  You might want to edit that post from “single best feature” to “single good feature.”

Hidan

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks#p/u/3/Gjdv2GNHa8c

Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller held a
press conference about a foiled terror plot involving the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard, the Israeli Embassy, a Mexican drug cartel and
more. The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur explains why many journalists
aren’t buying the story

Hidan

CNN’s Burnett: Root For The Banks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-ylvFAYEjs

CNN anchor Erin Burnett had a segment where she explained that Americans
should be rooting for the banks. She also asked softball questions to
the CEO of City National Bank.

Hidan

Obama: Iran must pay for ‘reckless behaviour’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P0grHuJD60

The facts the government is presenting is that the suspect “Said” he was working for his cousin. The U.S. government is not providing proof the money came from Iran or that the other suspect is a memeber of the Quds force but are going around the world trying to convince others it’s true.

Hidan

Occupy Wall Street Park Cleanup Postponed

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/10/14/141345779/occupy-wall-street-park-cleanup-postponed

Occupy Wall Street, the movie: I am not moving

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgBFrcNY398

http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso

Now that the credibility and logic of this ruse is being questioned, by even
Americans, the US media has turned to spinning the story to make it look like
rebels within Iran’s Al Quds devised this plot to make the Iranian leadership look
bad. LOL

If only most Americans had a brain and could understand this stuff…
it’s actually quite entertaining, but so pathetic.

Innocent hikers in Iran. Osama found with a room full of porno without a weapon, using his wife as a human shield. Dumped in the ocean, no proof, no photos. Navy seals killed while riding in a national guard helecopter on a recon mission. WMDs. Yellow cake. Pathetic pathetic pathetic.

When you hear a huge popping sounds around the USA it will be Americans finally pulling their heads out of their butts.

JustSayin

LOL Sounds like a theme for the next episode of South Park.

But I agree. People know more about how their I-pods work than they know about their government. As to the Iran thing. It is hard to place any level of credibility on either the US or Iranian government. Which government has more religious ideology, power lust, and greed behind its ruling elites… Observably, they are very similar, except one is accused of planning and carrying out a war of aggression upon the world, and the other actually has.

Ellen Dibble

As to the foiled Iranian plot, I listened to Robin Wright, in an interview by Charlie Rose on 10/3 but broadcast night, discuss the unfolding of what she sees as 21st century movements in that part of the world. Her new book is Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East. She points out that with a 5,000-year history, things unfold in longer than, say, a quarterly cycle, but after the overthrow of the shah, who she says represented an centuries-old monarchical model, the Ayatollah Khomeini sent all the clerics I think to religious institutions. But where the country had been united against the shah, they were divided about creating a constitution, and in creating that, dozens of elected officials were assassinated, and the ayatollah called back the clerics and created the theological shadow wing of government that they now have. Oh, listen to her on bin Laden’s history too. Anyway, slo-mo change. And I’m thinking halos on Hillary Clinton’s head, not overreacting. This aggression, state-sponsored or otherwise, is a sign of a government coming apart at the seams. You treat it as one does teenagers who could become scared of their own shadow if you overreact, worse than jumpy. You don’t do a World War I when a Serbian revolutionary knocks off the Austro-Hungarian archduke and voila all possible conflicts are activated. Not with the kind of weaponry that is now loosed on the world. We have to grow up. My take.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso

Ellen, not sure about he halos over Hillary’s head ( White Water, Vince Foster, etc), but I do know that WWI had a lot more causes and intrigue than just the murder of a Serbian archduke.
- Ellen Dibble
  
  And there are a lot more causes for unrest in the Middle East than easy to summarize. There’s generations of repression, and lack of institutions and experience in leadership, organization, collaboration — government. There’s centuries old — millennia-old — tribal conflicts, conflicts between Shiia and Sunni, between Arab and Persian, all steeped in oil wealth and traditions of corruption that may not be thoroughly made transparent and controlled for yet. The internet provides the life blood of the ferment, and there is room for explosive difficulties. Oh. Did I mention Israel? One other reason for unrest. Why would “they” think of displacing all the unease to Washington, DC? Couldn’t imagine. Maybe because “they” think we might just fall for it. Look what happened after 9/11.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
    
    WWI? How about THE BALFOUR DECLARATION? The gift that keeps on giving.

Anonymous

Wow, does anyone else think the picture above look reminiscent of “Big Brother”

notafeminista

Wow, does anyone else think they did that deliberately?
- Anonymous
  
  As they revere him like a god-like figure, so it is really only fitting. He never was a very good actor, but playing “President” was a good role for him. Didn’t hear any of the candidates complaining at the time – you think they didn’t notice the big head behind them?
  - Brett
    
    [In a cockney accent] …Is jus’ lit’l Ronnie lookeen down from eaven…or is it up frum ‘ell?!?!?!
  - notafeminista
    
    I would hope given the size that EVERYONE noticed the big head. Wouldn’t you agree?
- Cory
  
  That was actually to scale. Reagan’s head was that large.
TFRX

I just assumed the Foxtruppen hacked WBUR and put Reagan pictures up on everything.

Gregg

I’m sure it was an oversight that the subpoena issued to Attorney General Holder was omitted from the headline. People are dead, the second amendment has been targeted and the AG has been caught in lies. I look forward to the show on it.

Cory

I wouldn’t. More republican scandal wannabe meant to distract us all from important issues.
- Gregg
  
  I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume your left wing news sources have you uninformed. But look into it, it stinks to high heaven.
  - Cory
    
    Like Whitewater? How much did we spend investigating that sham? How about Bill and Monica and his impeachment for lying about being “pleasured”? I say distraction until PROVEN otherwise.
    - Gregg
      
      Look into Whitewater too, it’s amazingly corrupt if you get into the details.
      
      But you have a point. Holder should go ahead and resign now and save all the hassle.

Anonymous

Karen Tumulty did the best job I have ever seen at a presidential debate, and I’ve been watching them since 1960.

She was prepared, not just with her initial question, but for the candidates’ answers, and ready with a meaningful follow up. Her questions to Rick Perry on government investment in industry and his record in Texas were outstanding.

We would all be better off if we had more questioners doing their jobs at such debates, instead of asking whether the candidates preferred American Idol or Dancing with the Stars.

http://gawker.com/5811604/here-are-all-the-stupid-this-or-that-questions-from-tonights-gop-debate

Gregg

I like Ms. Tumulty but I thought her question to Perry about investing in energy was not a valid comparison to Obama “investing” in the “green jobs” fiasco. She also looked clueless when Bachman gave her the real reasons for the banking crisis.
- Anonymous
  
  The fact that you think Michelle Bachmann is a reliable source on anything, much less economics, speaks volumes.
  
  I know, why don’t we listen to an actual economist. Better yet, how about a Nobel Prize winning economist, explaining why the right wing attempt to blame Barney Frank is full of what makes the grass grow green:
  
  1. The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 was irrelevant to the subprime boom, which was overwhelmingly driven by loan originators not subject to the Act.
  
  2. The housing bubble reached its point of maximum inflation in the middle years of the naughties.
  
  3. During those same years, Fannie and Freddie were sidelined by Congressional pressure, and saw a sharp drop in their share of securitization, while securitization by private players surged.
  
  http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/things-everyone-in-chicago-knows/
  - Gregg
    
    Michelle Bachman didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Newt piled on as well. It just seemed to me Ms. Tumulty was hearing it all for the first time. I could be wrong.
    
    Krugman is far too partisan to be taken seriously. His views are totally dependent on who is in office. It’s well documented.
    - Anonymous
      
      He has been a harsh critic of Obama.
    - Gregg
      
      Yes he has (for not spending enough) but his criticism of spending has changed considerably since Bush.
    - Anonymous
      
      Krugman and Dean Baker were voices in the wilderness pointing out the idiocy of the financial sector and housing bubble problems long before they became the subject of widespread debate. you need to check your “documentation”.
Ellen Dibble

I found the debate informative and my cortisol level probably stayed put. At one point, going alphabetically, Charlie Rose skipped Romney and went to I think Santorum, who pointed out the error. If the tension could have been cut with a knife, that was the point. Charlie Rose responded that actually he had been thinking about (distracted by thinking, I guess) how much fun he was having. (There is a demonstration of skill in mass mood management, etc.) Wow. I think he was reminding himself at that point that if you aren’t having fun, an interview isn’t working, and this is the time to remind myself of that. Save the mud-slinging for Congress. I suppose.
I think Charlie skipped Romney because Romney had just been speaking when Charlie went on to the “next” person, because everybody was being granted a right to respond whenever he or she was mentioned, so I guess Romney had been mentioned, I suppose by Perry, if my alphabet is right.

Ellen Dibble

As to Occupy Wall Street, locally in my city people who had been camping in the park to participate have simply agreed/decided to come to the park every afternoon and protest/demonstrate. No tents. They’ll have police protection rather than police confrontation. They’ll have time and space to develop, evolve, network, etc. �
I listened to Bloomberg saying the park that is to be cleared in NYC is private, and the owners have rights and interests too. I don’t know what he’d say about public parks being “occupied.” I think the law is: no lying on benches, no storing private belongings in public places. �
But is actually camping out essential to the “occupy” movement? Wouldn’t it have better chances if people let themselves go home and reconstitute overnight?

Ed

A Coptic Christian Church was burned in Egypt by radical Mulsims, and the Copts staged a peaceful march in protest. The government ran over 30 or so of them, plus their Muslim supporters. Religious freedom is in danger in the Middle East. Our government asked the two sides to get along, as if it wasn’t one side that attacked the other.

Cory

This has been the weekly On Point Evangelical update with Ed.
- Anonymous
  
  No, this one is relevant. And Ed is Catholic not evangelical.

Gregg

I like Herman Cain a lot and am not surprised at his rise. After every debate I usually think Newt was great but he’s got baggage. Then I saw this:
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/greghengler/2011/10/12/3am_call_cain_vs_newt_on_iranian_terrorist_attack

I’m going with Newt.

notafeminista

Oh shucks, I forgot Ronnie isn’t the only one revered….tsk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37B_nOdRTAA

NoTalibangelicals

Ms. Tumulty,

Perhaps you can reserve time at the next GOP debate to ask the candidates how and why they voted on HR 358 and how allowing hospitals to deny life-saving procedures or even referrals to pregnant women squares with their stated pro-life position. Perhaps you can ask them why a woman’s right to life is so inconsequential to the GOP.

John in Amherst

For many in the GOP, the “right to life” lasts only until birth. For those of us who believe that life begins with the first breath, not the union of sperm and egg, who believe that the “free market” is not the sole arbiter of worth, the GOP is morally bankrupt.
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  As Randi Rhodes says… they love the fetus, hate the child.

Gregg

First Obama changes the metrics to make his dismal unemployment rate look better. Then he invents a new term, “jobs saved”. Now it’s “jobs supported”. We need jobs not semantics. He’s a joke.

Cory

Does this mean you aren’t going to vote for him next time around?
- Gregg
  
  Yes.

Tom G

Republicans think that what this country needs is a Businessman to run it. This is akin to going to a Proctologist to treat a brain aneurysm.

Anonymous

Tom G, we have seen how poorly a president with no business experience can run our country. It seems like a good idea to dump the hope and change and start the business engine of our country!
- Cory
  
  Are you talking about Reagan?!
- Tom G
  
  Let’s not concern ourselves with Global Warming, Foreign Involvement, Human Rights, Nuclear Proliferation, Rising Social Inequity- any of those “Elite Concerns”. Let’s make sure we stick to Bean Counting, make sure the Fat get Fatter and the Wealthy are protected as they’re doing such swell work being Job Creators.
- jeffe68
  
  Yeah, that worked so well for us. So all this economic turmoil that was caused by the “brightest and best of the busniess and investment world” means nothing to you.
  
  Amazing how some people live like horses with blinders on.
- TFRX
  
  Yeah, the worst and least popular president in memory was Shrub, and he had an MBA.
  
  So good luck with that.
- BHA in Vermont
  
  Lets see, the prior ‘experienced businessman’ president racked up the debt, started two unfunded wars and cut taxes. Yep, GREAT record we want to repeat.
  
  His prior ‘business’ experience includes:
  - Running an oil company Arbusto – which lost money (GREAT NAME- arBUSTo!!!) and was bought in 1984 by Spectrum 7 Energy Corp as it failed under GWB’s ‘leadership’. When it was near failure under GWB’s ‘leadership’ in a down oil market, it was purchased in 1986 by Harken Energy (buying access to the White House and VP GHW Bush) and GWB got Harken shares, a directorship and a consulting job. Not bad for a guy that was running a failed company.
  
  Just what we need, another pro business / anti consumer crony capitalist who thinks the rich are entitled to anything they can get and everyone else should be happy if they can get a job.
  - Anonymous
    
    So you are saying Obama has spent less than Bush? Raised taxes? Stopped the wars on a timeline quicker than bush had set forth while in office?
    
    Obama hasn’t done any of those things, except for possibly raising taxes, but most of that has been indirect taxes in the form of increased regulatory complexity that you wouldn’t know about.
    - Anonymous
      
      What taxes have been raised during the Obama administration?
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  Ya, we really need a president like Bush who failed in the oil business but lucked into being a partner in a baseball team. But they weren’t worth much… until the city built the team a new stadium funded by a new public tax. THEN, when the team was worth more, Bush etc sold. Bush made his millions off a PUBLIC investment. Is THAT the kind of business experience you’re looking for? Someone who knows how to milk the public sector? We had Bush… and it worked out really well… don’t ya think? Or don’t ya?
Cory

My cheeks clenched for the briefest moment while reading your post.
Anonymous

Considering where the Republicans’ heads are . . .

Cabmanjohnny

More work on resurrecting Iran as the next evil empire, not that their ruling powers are not, just that our sinking economic structure depends on foreign military deployments and conflict. Get ready.�
GOP debates were far more informative and entertaining when G.W. was there. Mr. Cain’s idea is grand on keeping taxes shifted to the earned income folks but I’m still expect someone unexpected to emerge.
Support the OWS folks but really, if you want to hurt the crook banksters, then organize your own financial system to shun corporate Wall St. Form or join local non profit credit unions, pull your money and assets from banks, form investor groups, support local community oriented business. Make your own employment, shun the corporate system-period.

Anonymous

Isn’t it amazing that the Solyndra bad loan scandal has cost the US more money than most states get for roads and bridges in a year! And the Federal government extended more Solar loans to a company that has a Democrat Legislators sun as an executive, and plans to build its products in MEXICO.

If Obama wanted to repair roads and bridges, why didn’t he spend the money he loaned to solar companies for infrastructure?

Gregg

Brilliant point.
TFRX

A federal loan spread out over whatever timeframe, compared to what one state gets for roads and bridges in one year?

You want to make a better comparison, or are you at your limit?

http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso

A couple years ago, I saw a car on the freeway with a huge Herb Cain billboard propped on the roof. The car was adorned with Israeli flags.
Nuff said.

TFRX

“The Senate says ‘no’ to the president’s job’s plan”?

Tom: All 43 Republicans voted to stop it. That was enough because, in favor, there weren’t 60 votes. And when a Democrat is in the White House, “60 is the new 51″.

Spare us the Beltway claptrap about “how a couple of Democrats” voted with the obstructionist GOP. I can watch Fox news for that.

Ellen Dibble

Beatty is talking about Cain’s 9-9-9, and I wonder because there is no place in that plan that I heard for Social Security. No FICA taxes. No safety net. He said he uses the “Chile plan” for retirement, but what’s that. My memory.

BHA in Vermont

9-9-9
Simple and easy to understand: Move the wealth up to the rich.

Yep, I can understand that and I’m a simple guy.

http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX

Actually low tax rates just let the rich escape paying for the public infrastructure they use to get rich in the first place.
�
Consider this: what is a killer idea worth in an impoverished 3ed or 4th world nation without the necessary infrastructure to exploit that idea?
�
What infrastructure? How about a literate and educated workforce? A legal system that allows for the existence of limited liability corporations, intellectual patent rights, and contract law? A judicial system to oversee such laws? What about stable monetary and banking systems from which to get credit? What about systems for national defense and law enforcement? What about a system to insure public health… from clean water to vaccination programs? What of publicly financed basic research?
�
Without such infrastructures, that killer idea would be worth nothing.
�
The simple truth the far Right doesn’t want us to consider is that the private sector doesn’t perform any miracles on its own nor do those billionaires make their billions on their own. Most new product ideas are built upon a foundation of older ideas. A well developed and well run PUBLIC sector is crucial in making that wealth possible.
�
THIS is the moral basis for a strongly progressive tax code. Perhaps the income tax should be renamed the Opportunity Tax.

Emjones

Tom,

Don’t get horn-swaggled by this BS tale of Iranian intrigue. This is just a ploy to distract from real issues. There must still be a CIA psychological warfare officer in the White House.

Don’t buy it for a N.Y. second.

John in Amherst

The 999 plan is simple, all right, as in “simple minded”. The GOP could take a giant step toward redistributing wealth toward the wealthy with “999″, which is perhaps why Cain is rising to the top.

Ben

The Iran debacle is a complete farce. To think that a country would be this sloppy in such a serious operation is laughable. Whatever you think about the interal workings of Iran and their foreign policy moves, they are not this stupid. This reeks of a false flag operation.

joe

One large pizza, two toppings: only $9.99 (This week only)

brian parizek

…and 9% on capital gains.

Janna

I dread Cain’s proposal…I live in NY and we already have 8.075% sales tax. If he instated his 9/9/9 plan…I would have to pay 17.0875% sales tax on everything I buy! How would this POSSIBLY help me in any possible way??

brian parizek

i think part of the trade off for the increase in sales tax is the end of pay check deductions (eg fed, medicare, social security).
- Anonymous
  
  Followed closely by the end of those programs, which is part of Cain’s real agenda.
BHA in Vermont

By relieving you from having to make decisions about what to do with any “extra” you MIGHT have by giving your money to rich people like Cain.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso

Beatty is quoting Reagan era economists against sales tax ? Regressive?

Sales tax is a great idea ! Over consuming has been the problem which has created this debt situation. Americans need to change their economic mindset.

There is a reason why the storage space industry has flourished in the USA. Americans have too much useless junk to fit in their own attics.

The middle class needs to slow down consumption, let the rich keep shopping.

http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

You do realize that sales taxes hurt those with limited means. If you raise the cost of food, for example, the well to do have no problem affording it, but the poor then end up paying yet more of their income to survive.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
  
  Obviously there are exceptions: NO TAX ON SCHOOL SUPPLIES. MEDICINE. NO TAX ON FOOD. Except caviar and monkey brains.
  - http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
    
    Caviar and monkey brains? Where can I buy those?
  - Anonymous
    
    No tax on school supplies? So business that use the same supplies pay no
    tax? how would you know who is buying what for what purpose? Does that
    mean that we have to create another Gov, office to over see this?
    Medicine I’ll give you but it ain’t gonna happen.
    No
    tax on food? except on exotic items or perhaps imports? There should be
    no tax on food but some states have a tax on consumable items, mostly
    it depends on what it is, fast food or precooked etc. if you tax imports
    you would have to have a tariff so no free trade agreement. Which should go away IMO.
    
    Sorry to many flaws
http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX

Of course it hasn’t occured to you that storage units are so popular BECAUSE PEOPLE HAVE LOST THEIR HOMES AND HAD TO MOVE IN WITH FRIENDS OR FAMILY.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
  
  Storage facilities were flourishing LONG before the sub-prime collapse. I can see how they are useful now. And BTW flea markets are filled more than ever with peoples over-consumption.
  - http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
    
    I take it you’ve never tried to live in a small apartment.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
      
      Greg, are you trying to apologize for American’s over-consumption. I know of people with huge homes that have a storage unit, just for cloths and junk. Minimalists, Americans are not.
    - http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
      
      I can’t speak for the wealthy, having not been in their class, but I do know that I’ve had to store some of my belongings when I lived in a small apartment.
  - brian parizek
    
    …also good for the reality tv industry.
  - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
    
    Your grotesque analysis that storage units can ONLY represent American overconsumption is insulting. One of my friends had to rent one when she lost her job and then her apt. I own several properties and some garages are rented because an elderly family member died and the family hasn’t decided how to dispose of the heirlooms. But perhaps you’re correct. If these people owned nothing or nothing but junk, there’d not be this storage problem. Heaven forbid some people hope for better times after the GOP and Wall Street crashed the economy for the rest of us.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
      
      One man’s heirlooms is another man’s junk.
      
      If you have more stuff than you can fit in your house, or pass to your kids after you die, YOU HAVE OVER-CONSUMED!!!!
    - Ellen Dibble
      
      I actually worry as much if not more about the stuff that is perishable that we consume, the gas, the costly cable subscriptions, to some extent time spent loosely, unwisely. Time is nothing you can put in the bank or the storage container either. If we were in the Soviet Union, the dictators would find “jobs” to fill every usable waking hour. They would have a Five-Year Plan for infrastructure, and everybody would be out there. Heil Hitler.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      If I can translate for our resident consumption morality cop:
      
      TRANSLATION: if you lose your job then your home or apt, and you have more than fit in your car… you’ve over-consumed. If you lose your car too and have more than you can carry in a shoping cart… you’ve over-consumed.
      
      Why didn’t you just say so!
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
      
      Hey UlTRAX, you are just being silly now…arent you.
    - Steve__T
      
      No but you are, you’ve obviously over consumed some BS and keep spewing it out here.
- Anonymous
  
  or their storage unit.
BHA in Vermont

While I don’t disagree that a lot of people buy stuff they don’t “need”, I don’t think the rich are going to buy anywhere NEAR enough “stuff” (which they don’t “need” either) at 9% sales tax to make up for revenue loss from paying 9% income tax.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
  
  Wealthy people will continue to consume at any price…because they are …wealthy. Even more so when hyperinflation kicks in .
  - notafeminista
    
    No they don’t – people wealthy or not will only pay what they feel is reasonable – you are familiar with the phrase “priced out of the market”?
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
      
      Oh you must be a gazillionaire to possess such definitive wisdom.
      
      I beg your pardon madam, but you are patently wrong. You need a little more training in economics, finance and reality.
      
      Millionaires are not going to buy the cheaper brands of soap and are not going to Kmart and Wallmart for their cloths. You have no idea about being wealthy means… do you???
      
      One thing wealthy people understand is that their life ends and they cant take their money with them. They will not sacrifice their standard of living, including their vacations, because of the economy or high prices.�
      The uber-wealthy fully understand the forces of inflation and they see the dollars, deflated as they maybe, funnelling up to them under the worst of conditions.
    - notafeminista
      
      Are you deliberately missing the point? One thing apparently “not wealthy” people don’t understand is that wealthy peoples’ money DOES NOT BELONG TO THEM simply by virtue of being “not wealthy”.
      
      Anyone (rich or poor)will not pay that which they feel is not reasonable for any given product. Don’t you comparison shop? That’s all it is. EVERYONE rich and poor alike want the most bang for their buck. It’s not some rich person’s fault YOU can’t afford a BMW (or luxury item of your choosing).

http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX

I can understand that these GOP candidates, being the servile lapdogs for the rich, would want to push the tax burden (or paying down debt) downward away from those with means. But for so many in the GOP to buy into Herbert Cain’s heavily regressive 999 plan seems to indicate either profound self-sabotaging of intellect or profound self-loathing. And, no, we can NOT reject the latter possibility. There is a strain in right wing philosophy that believes that the rich are only so because they the market found them more worthy than the rabble or blessed by God. So why shouldn’t the government enshrine those principles in tax policy!

Joe

So the Iranain goverment hired a dope smoking, prostitute-frequenting, used car salesman to blow up the Israeli and Saudi embassies in D.C.?

If you believe that nonsense, then you probably believe the goverments ‘official’ version of 9-11 as well. Lies, lies, lies.

Du618

9-9-9 plan? It is not fair. The rich will pay less and the poor pay a LOT more. With the gap between the rich and poor is at historical high, this is GOP wants to do??? The people supporting GOP (most are not millionaires) are brain damaged.

brian parizek

9-9-9 could be the base; have those make more, pay higher percentage on income. eg 9% < $100k, 18% < $500k, 27% $1mil. keep the “9″ theme going.

Scott B, Jamestown, NY

“999″ doesn’t work. In NY we pay over 7% sales tax already in many parts of the state (state tax being 7%, add in local/country tax), so that would be over 16%. 16% might be no big deal for someone looking to buy a new car with their trust fund, but for the 99% of us that have to literally count pennies for the basics of food, clothing, shelter (and utilities that go along with it) that’s a burden that will break the middle class and down. That, in turn, will drive more people out of their homes, erode the tax base of municipalities, cost jobs as products become unobtainable so makers to checkout clerks get laid off, and drive more people onto an already burdened social services system.

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

Yes your 7% tax will go up to 20% by the year 2020.

9% tax will be permanent.
- Scott B, Jamestown NY
  
  On ABC they showed where the avg family making under $50K@year:disqus
  will be paying roughly an extra $6,000 per year under his “9-9-9″ plan, between the sales tax and the elimination of things like the Earned Income tax credit.
  - TFRX
    
    it’s been shown that economists were treated like wallflowers at the prom during the debt ceiling “debate”: Hardly ever seen on TV or asked what they thought.
    
    I wonder what shocked ABC into actually talking to one about this.
notafeminista

In England the VAT is 17.4% plus y’know…federal taxes.
- http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
  
  The British people also get more for their taxes than we do.
  - notafeminista
    
    Like what?
    - http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
      
      Healthcare, for one.
    - notafeminista
      
      Oh right…the NHS. I’ll take my chances here thanks.
      
      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218689/Grandmother-dies-ovarian-cancer-sent-home-FIVE-times-trapped-wind.html
      
      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/7896737/Cash-crisis-in-NHS-leaves-patients-lying-on-operating-tables.html
      
      http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/millions-spent-on-doctor-gagging-orders-by-nhs-investigation-finds-2041209.html
      
      Not to mention, any NHS doctor is permitted to deny a woman an abortion based on his/her personal beliefs. Not exactly abortion on demand. What MORE are they getting?

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

What I love about One Point (NPR) is encouraging me to be a radical again. Don’t get me wrong it is a great thing.

I told like Ronald Reagan’s picture for he supported Marcos until to the very end of his historical dictatorial government.

Darlyne O

In regards to the downside on Mr. Cain’s 999 tax proposal…you just mentioned Texas ending up with a 15 % total sales tax. Well…Niagara County NY (Niagara Falls) would have a 17% tax and Erie County (Buffalo) would have a 17.075 total tax. How can low income families absorb that additional cost?

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

How can it be 15% sales if it’s only 9% sales tax.
- snathan
  
  9% Federal sales tax + 6% state sales tax.

Jmc

god help us if we have a president that supports health care reform, that is just unamerican and not the conservative doctorine.

JustSayin

Romney doesn’t have the qualifications to be president of the USA….He has never sold pizzas!

Bill

“Let them eat pizza”

snathan

Between Mr Cain’s 9-9-9 plan and Ms Bachman’s statements on raising taxes on the poor, we have more proof for the argument that there is a class warfare in this country – the underclass and middle class against the republican party.

notafeminista

Hey didja know…in Austria (that has “free” healthcare) the progressive tax rates starts at 20%? That means even the poorest people in Austria pay. Not so in the US.
- TFRX
  
  In Austria “the progressive tax rates start at 20%…even the poorest people pay.”
  
  Even if you’re not lying–and that’s a big IF–nothing you’ve said supports your conclusion.

Anonymous

The caller Jerry is not really on the ball. How will Herman Cain by being a conservative create jobs by just being one. That makes no sense whatsoever. Also history has not been kind to Republicans and Conservatives in this regard to growth and jobs. The Democrats seem hold a better record in this regard.

Dpweber83

I have a request: please bring in longtime, conservative listeners like the recent callers, and have them square off against Jack Beatty on economic policy. I’d pay money to hear that.

-dan
Boston, MA

Jmc

good question by the caller, i hate to stereotype middle class conservatives but when they choose to not see such obvious cronyism to Wall Street i cannot help but think that they are disconnected from reality and more concerned with talking points and ideology

Ellen Dibble

I find Herman Cain most personable too. And was for him before I was for Huntsman.
Now I’m reminding myself of an insight from one of my gurus: “The house is being repainted, repaired; and I’ve noticed that the friendlier these contractors are, the less competent they are.”
They are hoping to be hired on the basis of being transparent and friendly. As I recall, W was the one to share a beer with.
It’s an easy choice. Don’t get into the weeds. Leave that to the policy wonks. And vote against those types. We the oh-so-smiley are actually against competency. (It is too competitive, and I’m in a position to want to get BEYOND competition.)

Carrie

Herman Cain is nothing more than the flavor of the week, just like Perry before him, and Bachmann before that. I will be surprised if Mitt Romney doesn’t receive the Republican presidential nomination.

chaosnat

Mr Garrett is just wrong wrong wrong about assigning any significant blame to CRA. http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2008/10/subprime_suspects.html

Joe

At least Herman Cain’s school and medical records aren’t sealed like all of President Obama’s medical and school records are all sealed, completely unavailable for public viewing.

Jmc

Is that your idea of a Jobs plan Joe, spending time to try and discredit the president instead of finding solutions to running an effective economy?
- Joe
  
  “An effective economy”?
  
  LOL!!
  
  Thanks for the joke, that’s funniest thing I’ve heard this month.
  - brian parizek
    
    …other than some of your previous posts.
  - Jmc
    
    poor Joe
brian parizek

what conspiracy our you working on now?
- Joe
  
  The U.S. Constitution you mind-less Obama-noid.
  - brian parizek
    
    name calling and association…awesome discussion techniques. i just as a question about what the records had to do “anything”.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso

Occupy Wall
Street explained: The top 1% being attacked by protestors being funded by the rest of the
top 5%. �

Look into
the protests and you will see upper middle class students from expensive
colleges protecting their parents wealth.

And what’s with these posters JEWISH LABOR. Wahhh?? Iron workers, masons, landscapers, grocery clerks??? The only Jewish carpenters
I know are Norm Abrams and Jesus.

There won’t
be a real protest until more working people are in the streets.

http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

Jewish Labor? What’s that supposed to mean?
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
  
  Ditto!!!!! But people are carrying these signs. I was wondering if I should carry one that says ITALIAN LABOR !!! EQUADORIAN LABOR !! NORWEGIAN LABOR !!! �
  I just saw several placards with JEWISH LABOR at the protests. Go figure. �
  Hey Greg, Let me know when you find out.
  - http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
    
    We haven’t had any protests in Arkansas.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
      
      And thats why you cant buy caviar and monkey brains. You probably dont even have a Trader Joe’s down there in Whitewater country.
notafeminista

Shouldn’t working people be…..at work?
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
  
  Not when they’re protesting.
  - notafeminista
    
    Well if working people are protesting…who’s working?
    - GretchenMo
      
      Flea-baggers don’t want to work, they want a free lunch.
    - TFRX
      
      …and it’s nice to see someone who can’t help but pick up their monolithic talking points from Fox and Rush.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
      
      Hey NotaFeminista: You should see that Fritz Lang movie. METROPOLIS. Also check out Orwell’s “1984″.
      Cause you sound like one “happy worker” and obedient too.
      
      BTW I hope you are not writing these comments on your bosses dime. Are you??? Hmmmmmmmmmmm????????
    - notafeminista
      
      Nope..my dime dear, but thanks for the concern.
      
      I don’t know about happy worker, but I prefer to keep the lights and heat on…groceries are nice….y’know. If I go out to protest I’m not at work, and if I’m not at work I don’t get paid. Landlord gotta eat too.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
      
      Trapped like a rat. I know notafem. how you feel. Been there. Barely enough to keep it together…no time to fightback…could get fired… and thats how they control you.
    - notafeminista
      
      Um…what? Are you suggesting the people whose services I use should not be compensated for said services?
    - TFRX
      
      Waitaminit: A year ago your side was screaming at Obama, “Where are the jobs?”
      
      Now you’re saying to OWS, “Get a job, you hippies!”
      
      Pick one. Pick only one.

Susan

It would be nice if Major Garrett mentioned the fact that Ron Paul talked about Glass-Stegal at the Debate. As I recall Ron Paul was one of three who addressed that particular issue. Garrett mentions Bachmann and Gingrich in the negative, but not Ron Paul in the positive.

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

People are moron how a sales of 9% can be 15%, 17% or 17.05% sales tax.

I don’t get that equation. 9% tax is only cents it is not even close to a dollar when you puchased something.

http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

You’re not recognizing state and local sales taxes that we also pay. Nor are you seeing that once the tax is in place, it can always be raised.
- http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
  
  With 9% tax plan will eradicate State and Local Tax
  
  That is the plan.
  - http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
    
    Good luck getting that to happen.
  - brian parizek
    
    cain’s plan says nothing about the local and state taxes…how else would you support those governmental agencies
  - chaosnat
    
    Federal Govt, even with Mr Cain as president, doesn’t have the power to eradicate state/local taxes.
  - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
    
    PROVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
HR

Because it is a national sales tax. It is added to a states sales tax. Most states that have a sales tax are from 3% to 8%.
- http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
  
  Cain that is National Tax plan it means he will eradicate other taxes the 9% tax plan is the sole tax for the entire nation no more State Tax or local tax that’s what i heard.
  - Anonymous
    
    Isn’t that the federal government interfering with states’ rights? I’d love to see Clarence Thomas come up with a way to justify that.
    - TFRX
      
      I’d love to see Clarence Thomas come up with anything while Scalia drinks a glass of water.
    - Anonymous
      
      He isn’t Scalia’s puppet. He’s even more to the right.
    - Steve__T
      
      Good one LOL I almost choked on my coffee.
  - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
    
    Perhaps you might want to READ more about 999 before rushing to praise it. But I know from your other posts, clear thinking or doing research isn’t your forte.
Nutricj

it is a proposed federal sales tax of 9%. that would be added to state sales taxes that already exist in each respective state. so it could be close to 18% in some metropolitan areas.
Anonymous

Here in Massachusetts we also pay a 6.25% sales tax, so the total would be 15.25%; or $15.25 per $100 spent.

Neil

Anonymous

Nein nein nein to 999.

http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX

Obama’s job’s bill went down to defeat with all 43 Republicans and 2 Dems voting against it. I think it would be fascinating to know what percentage of the US population these obstructionist Senators represent.

No, PLEASE don’t lecture me on the purpose of the Senate. I REJECT that rationale. Such vote weighting/dilution schemes are anti-democratic and ILLEGAL on all other levels of government.

Here’s an idea to make the Senate democratic WITHOUT the need for a constitutional amendment:

http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/2010/02/reforming-anti-democratic-us-senate.html

http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

You’d like to let the House of Representatives run wild?
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  Another of your red herring arguments? How is REFORMING the Senate the same as ABOLISHING the Senate?
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  �
  Here in Mass we have two houses… BOTH are proportional in that districts have roughly the same number of people. Federal law REQUIRES THIS. Small towns don’t have their own representation in the state Senate.
  
  By your logic, such as it is, the lower house is running amok with no checks?
  
  It’s time to dispense with the illusion that states are not those who chose to live within. The concept of state suffrage is behind EVERY anti-democratic defect in the Constitution… defects that not only impose candidates REJECTED by the People as president, give 52% of the Senate seats to 18% of the population, and that the 12 smallest states that can block any amendment contain a mere 4.5% of the population. I know when it comes to the Constitution your powers of logic and morality fail you, but we CAN have checks and balances AND democratic rule.
  - http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
    
    We disagree. That doesn’t mean that I question your skill at reasoning.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      Perhaps if you valued the concept of democracy, you’d finally see the light… and do the math of how anti-democratic our system is. But as long as you place the Constitution beyond criticism, you’ll forever be blind to its defects… and never really understand why our nation is so screwed up.
GretchenMo

Looks like bipartisanship at its finest. Perhaps Washington is finally paying attention.
- TFRX
  
  Leave it to you to call 43 obstructing GOPers against (when 60 is the new 51) “bipartisan”. I won’t leave it to you to ask about what economists think.

Simon

Rejection of jobs bill proves once again that the only thing GOP wants is to defeat Obama, and they are willing to achieve that at the cost of millions of people losing jobs, children suffer from hunger etc.

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

9% tax plan will ERADICATE OTHER TAXES

I Know we will pay only 9% on payroll
and 9% on sales tax.

I am not sure about the other 9% tax?

brian parizek

9% on personal income, 9% on corporate/business income, 9% national sales tax. still would have to pay your local and state taxes.
- http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
  
  Well that is not his plan Local and State are gone.
  - http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
    
    You mean that the states are just going to roll over and accept a Federal mandate?
  - brian parizek
    
    who’s going to pay for those local and state services? what about local control for school funding or any other city/state level service? i guess we’re going to have to rely on washingtion dc for everything…no thanks.
  - Steve__T
    
    That Ain’t gonna happen! Mainly because it’s unconstitutional. You can’t federally mandate what an individual state taxes. We are the United States not United State.
Nutricj

states have the right to impose consumption taxes. in addition, cities, towns, etc. also have a right. most states impose limits. federal govenment also imposes consumption taxes. federal can impose limits of commerce between states but cannot stop states from their own revenue streams.

Bob

Tom, How about the observation made in the recent New Yorker article about John Maynard Kenes that observes that both parties are endorsing different aspects of Keynesian prescriptions, the GOP the tax cut side, the DEMs the Government stimulation side. Both of these different aspects of government intervention, that the GOP never acknowledges as much. Is the multiplier effect real? If so investing in infrastructure IS the best solution.

Ellen Dibble

I don’t see anyone addressing Cain’s exemption of used items from the 9% sales tax. This suggests to me a number of ways to get around the law. Oh, prohibition, where are the imps that taught us jazz and the way to deal with mean and small-minded legislation? What you do is you put all the freezers through a “laundry,” that makes them “used,” and then sell them. Likewise with cars. Etc. Aside from that, to my view, used stuff is pretty cheap as is, even without the tax break. I need help from the government if I’m trying to save for retirement, pay for health care. I do NOT need government when I’m at the used book store, or the used furniture store. That is an automatic deduction in cost. I need no further tax-motivation to go there. Does this make me automatically green? No, but it may mean that I carry home some bedbugs.

Jamxtc

The Iran plot sounds like a US Government sting where they find some crazy guy and help him to develop his plot, then move in to save the day.

mary elizabeth

With all the real threats and plots out there, does the govt really need to go out and make some up? As for it being a ploy to distract from economic woes- was the oil spill, the underwear bomber, the Times square, all so contrived? Does not the FBI have anything else to do these days than make up fake threats?

Jmc

still waiting on the facts of the Iranina connection, why is it that the public is the last to know?

http://www.facebook.com/johhsi John Jones

For some time people who want the Occupy Movement to go away have been expressing a desire for those involved to boil down their frustrations to a single issue that can be comprehended, addressed and hopefully resolved. This desire is understandable but reflects an unrealistic, simple-minded mentality. Some of these seem to think that if the economy improves then the anxiety will vanish. They don’t seem to understand the gravity and magnitude of our crises, which is like a many-headed hydra.
First of all the economic challenge is not simply solved. If it was then it would have been fixed long ago. But that is just one of the many heads. There is an environmental crisis, a justice system crisis, a war-making crisis, a political crisis, a financial crisis, an immigration crisis, a crisis of investing in industries which will insure our competitive edge on the world scene now and into the future, an educational crisis, a me-against-you crisis and all of these crises (and more) are tangled together into a Gordian Knot so complicated that it is nearly impossible to even understand much less solve.
If it is frustrating to the people who want this movement to go away by just boiling the anxiety down to a clear and simple problem/solution statement it is understandable but this isn’t going to happen. Every one of these hydra heads are related and none more important to than others. The young and old alike, regardless of differences in race, political persuasion or any other division know that the system is broken but are hard pressed to articulate the nature of the problem nor what a solution might be. What is needed to resolve this crisis is a vast rethinking of the entire system, but we are simple-minded people and that probably isn’t going to happen. Instead we will resort, as we always have by turning to violence and protecting the owners of the system

http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso

Did I just hear Karen Tumulty, say that “Iran is going to have to pay for this”. THIS being a bogus contrived US diversionary plot, based on the word of a loser exile of the Shah.

Do I appropriately see the word TUMULT in this vacuous woman’s surname ???

http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

It’s a conspiracy–you should believe every bit of it.

Susan

Sanctions are an act of war. Warmongering is one way to keep minds off the fact that this nation is bankrupt.

notafeminista

Worked for FDR.
- http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
  
  That war was paid for by taxes. Ours now are paid for on credit.
  - notafeminista
    
    Whose taxes…25% of the country was unemployed! Isn’t that what the left touts how FDR and WWII brought us out of the Great Depression?
    
    And it still goes to the original point…that politicians use war as a distraction no matter how they pay for it.
    - http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
      
      Yup, FDR called up the Japanese and asked them to bomb us. He then gave Hitler a call and asked him to declare war too.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      FDR was no innocent bystander in getting the US into WWII. But we’re straying from the topic of the show. Read Day If Infamy, Day of Deceit. It has transcripts of decoded Japanese communication showing the attack on Pearl wasn’t a surprise.
    - http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
      
      That’s been tossed around for years without gaining much credibility.
    - Anonymous
      
      I agree, but lets not feed the conspiracy folks.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      Facts and acceptance of facts are two different things. Don’t you think? Or don’t you?
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
      
      Hey notafem. gave you a like on that comment. Nice one.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      The Orwellian Right has a double standard when it comes to Keynesian deficit spending. If it’s spent on PEOPLE it’s ineffective and a waste of money. But if Keynesian deficit spending is for the MILITARY, then it performs miracles.
    - Anonymous
      
      So let me get the context of your statement right here.
      You are saying that FDR got into WW2 to distract the nation from the Great Depression. Is this your thesis? FDR and the New Deal did help to get this nation out of the Great Depression that’s a historical fact no matter how you want to warp it into a right wing diatribe against FDR. Which I’m sure he would welcome.
      �
      WW2 definitely got us into full employment and a lot of debt.
      More than we have now by the way. Anyway it’s clear to me that you do not know history or only want to have it skewed for your political dogma.
      
      The US had no choice about getting into WW2, it’s pretty clear to anyone with any sense of what the consequence of not doing so would have been.
    - William
      
      FDR made the depression the Great Depression. His “economic ideas” failed and prolonged the agony for millions of Americans.
    - notafeminista
      
      Hey you said it. WW2 definitely got us into full employment – and thats what (at least in part) OWS claims they want…jobs. So. Did FDR provoke Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor as a distraction? As a means of getting Americans employed? Both? You tell me.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
    
    Hey Greg, I gave you a “like” vote, However technically, ALL wars going back to the Revolutionary War were fought on credit.
- Anonymous
  
  So you’re saying those Nazis were just a figment of his imagination? I think the Poles, Czechs, dead British ship crews in the late 30′s might disagree. Talk about delusional.

Jmc

can we see the advisement from the administration that has been sent out to other nations on the facts of the case? we should hold them as accountable as we expected to hold Bush when he tried to persuade us of Iraq

Steve__T

Tried?

Simon

No matter how you spin it, changing the tax system system means redistributing the wealth – assuming the total tax collected remains same. And we all know GOP wants to redistribute more to the rich from the poor.

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

Listen People Cain tax plan is 9% sales tax no other tax will be added local or state are GONE.

9% is National Sales tax like Value Added Tax.

brian parizek

how is your local police or fire depts function? schools? where’s the money coming from? so you’re saying that a national/fed sales tax is going to pay for the local services?
http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX

So you don’t just advocate authoritarian economies, you’re now in favor of regressive taxes that punish the poor and heap more wealth on the top?
If I had your opinions, I’d be embarrassed to admit them publically.
Anonymous

The federal government cannot dictate to the states to cancel their sales tax.

Neil
Anonymous

You state that local and state sales taxes will be done away with.
You kind of left out that the federal government cannot set the laws on how states tax.

Of course they can try to influence them, and poll taxes are a good example of how the Justice department was used to bring them down. However this is not the same thing. Local taxes and state taxes will still be in place.

Saseitz

Herman Cain can’t win for two reasons: the 999 plan is a complete loser, and there are still huge blocs of white people who will never bring themselves to vote for a black candidate. Many states rely on sales taxes for their revenue, and this proposal would drastically raise them. Here in Vermont, Cain would have us paying 15 percent on our purchases. We won’t take it. Next door in New Hampshire, they take great pride in having no sales tax. I can’t see it catching on. Besides, flat tax schemes do not work. When Steve Forbes was touting it, the CBO estiamted it would have to be 17 percent just to keep up with then-current revenue. It’s got to be higher now.

Romney can’t win because the evangenlicals do not believe Mormons are Christians. It looks to me that a third party candidate will rise on the right, splitting the vote.

Either way, Obama wins in 2012.

Anonymous

Well history is not in Obama’s favor. No President has ever won reelection with his popularity below 50%. Obama might win, but it will be a real hard slog.

Jmc

what evidence? can we the people please see it before it is released on Wikileaks?

Taline Voskeritchian

Thank God, for Jack Beatty re the “Iran threat” which reads more like a third rate plan! Is there no one left in this world who exercises the first virtue of thinking people?–skepticism.

Jmc

the U.S. suffers from allowing itself get into conflicts when the people begin to become aware of realities at home, it has happened throughout history from the begenning of the revolutionary war

Tom, Vermont

This alleged “terror plot” from Iran sounds a lot like the plot of the Cohen Brother’s movie “Burn After Reading.” One zany mix-up after another in a half-baked plot involving bumbling, incompetent people that no real affiliation with any government or agency.

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

Please watch the Documentary Film ” The War on Democracy”

I wish One Point will invite the directors of this film. Such great documentary about People Power in Latin America and how the US Government tried to eradicate Hugo Chavez and destroyed nations of Latin America. And how the American Media destroyed the reputation of an elected President of Velenzuela.

http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

You see Hugo Chavez as a democrat? Um, I need a map to your fantasy world.
- http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
  
  Watch the film before you write your own Imaginary views about the Latin America. Democrat? Let say Democratic Socialist.
  
  For the Poor By the People.
  - http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
    
    Do you regard Fidel Castro in the same light?
    - http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
      
      Did you believe everything the American government and the American Media tells.
      
      Tell me HOW MANY PEOPLE DID FIDEL CASTRO KILLED IN HIS LIFE TIME AND COMPARED THAT TO THE US GOVERNMENT?
    - http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
      
      How many political dissidents did Castro imprision? How many suffer in his country because of his economic policies?
    - http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
      
      What Dissidents? Who invaded CUBA and almost destroyed the entire country.
    - http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
      
      You don’t know about Cubans who disagree with Castro and get imprisioned for their trouble?
      
      I’m done.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
      
      Dont kid yourself Greg, the US has ways to punish dissenters, and incidentally, the US has the greatest per capita prison population on the planet.
    - http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
      
      And a good portion of those prisoners are in for drug crimes. I don’t like it, but using or selling drugs is not the moral equivalent of dissent.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
      
      The US and its corporate media and military industrial complex do not have to send people dissenters to prison to punish them, as convenient as that may be.
    - Anonymous
      
      Don’t waste your time with FilipinoBoston, no one else does. he is either 12yo or not that bright.
    - http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
      
      i am not so Bright but i can Understand the plight of the Hispanic people in Latin America Because the Filipino people are also the victim of American Imperialism in the Philippines.
    - brian parizek
      
      how much of this open discussion goes on in the castro and chavez governments?
  - brian parizek
    
    when did the constitution change?
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
  
  There is no doubt that Hugo Chavez represents the majority of his people. I call that democracy…. as opposed to plutocracy or oligarchy.
  - http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
    
    So when he rigs elections, that’s just what it takes?
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
      
      Are you talking about two rigged presidential elections won by George W. Bush, whose brother brought his crooked Diebold machines to Mexico to install Felipe Calderon, subsequently turning Mexico into a complete narco state under quasi marshall law ???
      
      How many elections around the world has the US rigged through various means, to include outright military coups, assassinations, vote rigging??? Come on Greg… you are too easy.
    - http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
      
      Subverting the democratic process is fine for you so long as it’s on the side that you support?
      
      Get some principles, why don’t you?
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
      
      You can provide proof of a Chavez rigged election??
      You deny that the majority of people in Venezuela love this guy??
      You can deny the CIA coup on Chavez where the people protested to return him to office?
      You need to read more Greg. All points of view and propaganda. And then use your logical deduction and reasoning.
      You sound like a Bill O’Reilly groopie. very sad.
    - http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
      
      yes Bush RIG FLORIDA REMEMBER!!!!!!
  - brian parizek
    
    chavez running a democracy…what a laugher. i guess we should start nationalizing our industries.
    - http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
      
      You don’t even live in Caracas or know Hugo Chavez. YOU PROBABLY GOT YOUR STORY FROM THE AMERICAN MEDIA.
      
      The American Media only support WAR and War that’s what you see almost every day on the news.
http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX

The film was made back in 07, probably filmed back in 06. Chavez has reportedly become more autocratic since then. Either way, what does that have to do with the news of the week?
- http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
  
  The film is not about him it is the entire people of Latin America and how your beloved US government turn democracy into a murderous
  binge in those countries.
  - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
    
    I’m well aware of the film… I OWN IT.
    
    AGAIN you’re sending contradictory messages. You support murderous right wing thugs like Marcos and the Red Chinese capitalism… yet here support the Left. I’ve given up trying to make sense of your ramblings.

Susan

China is manipulating its currency. Like the US hasn’t?

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

Marcos did that too.

KOABD

While there are questions to be rightly asked about the quality of the Iranian plot, most of the terrorist plots that we’ve seen recently would be far-fetched if you laid them out before. A group of 19 Arab men would fly planes into buildings? A disaffected British criminal would stuff plastique in his shoe and try to light it on a US-bound plane? A misguided Nigerian teenager would try to set off a bomb hidden in his underwear? Get real, right? I’d say let’s ask questions, but let’s not be cynical.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso

Listening
to US officials this past decade (box cutters, imploding WTC building 7, Atta’s
undamaged passport, yellow cake, Osama dumped in ocean, Osama’s porno
addiction, Seal Team 6, etc etc.etc.) is like a grammar school teacher having to daily
listen to the same student’s excuses for not having his homework. “my dog ate it” “it blew out the bus window” “a bully stole it along with my lunch money” “it fell into a drain gutter” “ it decomposed in my schoolbag” “ my house was robbed over night” “it burnt
on the stove while my Mom was making hot cocoa”…etc…etc.

What are
the odds of any truth?? How much nonsense,
how many lies can the American people accept??
- Usuk
  
  You thing America is the great satan, we get it.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
    
    If it quacks like a duck….

ITF

As Obama fights for support for his jobs bill and as a follow-up to psychologist Drew Westen’s critique of Obama on “On Point,” I’d like to hear a panel of several other psychologists with contrasting viewpoints on Obama’s character and/or Westen’s theories and his mix of psychology and politics.
�
A cover blurb on Westen’s interesting but flawed book “The Political Brain” admiringly describes Westen as a new Machiavelli. Machiavelli’s best-known work takes the form of advice to princes, not democratic politicians, however. Westen’s book calls for a new kind of Democrat and describes how the emotions of voters can be manipulated by liberals. Managing one’s own emotions is a different matter. The runaway emotions of Westen’s moral-outrage binges in his book and his demonizing of Obama, a fellow Democrat, should give liberals pause.
�
Listeners would be well served by a deeper look at the psychological implications of Westen’s critique of Obama. In his book Westen argues that ambivalence about race permeates American culture, and the way to inhibit unconscious racism is to focus people’s attention on their conscious values regarding race. But in his Obama essay, he doesn’t focus readers’ attention on their conscious values regarding race. He doesn’t discuss race at all, a major omission when his topic was the power dynamics of the Obama presidency. According to his own theories, the failure to address race allows unconscious racial prejudices to migrate into his demonizing of Obama. “On Point” also did not mention race when it featured Westen and his Obama critique.
�
For reflections on “On Point’s” Aug. 11 interview with Westen, please see “Did NPR Mishandle the Drew Westen Interview?” at http://freemanspeaks.blogspot.com.

TFRX

Remember when George W. Bush was getting 30% approval ratings and every real-world expert in economics and such was tearing him the new one he deserved?

NPR didn’t get cracking on fret-pieces over Shrub’s psychological makeup and how it turned him into the failed AWOL daddy’s boy president he became.

So forgive me if I don’t see any point in NPR doing more about this on Obama.
- TFRX
  
  …by which I mean, NPR’s mien is incapable of doing this right. They’ll manage to “teach the controversy”, the way they always do for lefties.
  
  Your comments, however, get a like.

Ellen Dibble

China selects its next administration about the time we do next November, as I hear. And that economy has to be stable too, if the world is going to be on an even keel. When you listen to the Chinese talk about the ways they could be disrupted, and the ways they are hoping to move into the future, you see that what Huntsman says about having close communication at all levels, China to America, from mayors to governors and so on — you don’t want to upset their apple cart and say, see, we won. It doesn’t work that way. Check out this interview with Chinese business leaders: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11940

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

Pass the Second Bill of Rights of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Scott B, Jamestown, NY

Why doesn’t the US get its tariffs in line with the rest of the world’s tariffs rates of between 20% and 40%? Our rate is just over 2%. The problem also rests in business. Back in the 80′s car makers demanded that a $500 tariff be slapped on foreign-made cars, but then raised the price on their own cars by an equal amount because they saw that since people were paying the higher price for the foreign cars they’d get in on that money too. The problem was that quality American cars was virtually non-existent, and foreign car makers started building cars here.

Cecelia

I think the plot by the Mexican drug gang member might be credible because I think Middle Eastern terrorists will be hooking up with these people, to smuggle their people into the USA or to work a plot. Mexicans through their Spanish ancestry have a great deal of Arab blood in them; many Mexicans could pass for Arabs and vice versa. That is one thought. Another is that sometimes the most far-fetched scenario is the real one–truth is often stranger than fiction!

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

Mexican Cartell and US Government works together indirectly and directly the WAR ON DRUGS DOES NOT EXIST.
- http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
  
  Does “working together” mean fighting to you?
  - http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
    
    The Cartell and the US government Dont’ Kill Each Other my friend.
    
    They kill innocent Mexicans and Americans that knows about the truth.
    - SoCom942
      
      I suggest you do some google before you embarrass yourself by making more asinine statements like this. But then you probably don’t realize that there is egg all over your face pal.
Ellen Dibble

If the plot actually went through, how ready would we be to jump into denial mode? Would we be second-guessing the CIA to the extent this thread suggests? Maybe we learned from the fall of the World Trade Center towers never to believe our eyes. Maybe not. But now we don’t believe — just as the CIA didn’t want to believe that terrorists were learning to fly planes and bin Laden was threatening an in-USA attack, the news telling us it would be probably via planes. No, our president went on vacation. This time, apparently not.
Steve T

OMG Arabic Mexicans…. the truth is your post is just strange. Stop thinking you may hurt yourself.

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

The film The War on Democracy is not about Hugo Chavez

It is about the people of Nicaragua, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, El Salvador etc etc.

It is about the oppression of the American government towards those people. To push Democracy not only in Latin America but the entire world.

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

Remember this the American people are manipulated by the US government through the Televison and the Media.

Every imaginable lies are fed to the minds of the American people thru television.

Anonymous

You got that right. Have you seen MSNBC, ABC, NBC, and CNN news lately!
- TFRX
  
  Your brief stop on this side of the Reality Event Horizon is over, I see.
  - http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
    
    News are reality if they make it real news not lies.

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

In order for the Universal Health Care Act to work is to Pass the Second Bill of Right of FDR.

Anonymous

How can one person have the right to healthcare without taking away the right of a physician to treat the number of patients they want to, and charge the market rate for their services?
- http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
  
  So people have to die so doctors can have more time off?
  - Anonymous
    
    So doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals have to be slaves to do what ever the government wants them to do???
    
    Greg Camp you are so smart. Look a little deaper
    - http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp
      
      I feel so sorry for them. It’s just a shame to make someone work for a six figure salary. . .
      
      There are some forty million Americans without health insurance. That means that we get substandard care. Don’t tell me that it’s because we’re lazy. We work for a living–often more than one job–without getting benefits from our employers because that makes us cheap employees.
      
      When you have an answer to that, I’ll listen.
    - Anonymous
      
      We pay twice what any other developed country pays for health care, with worse outcomes, and with way fewer people covered by insurance. When and how will the almighty market address these shortcomings?
- http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
  
  The physician does not charge the market rate for their services
  The Hospital or the Institution that they work for does every single one of them. Doctors are more vulnerable when a pharmaceutical
  companies knock on their doors and give Gifts or buy them to introduce new drugs to the patients, even if there are risk taking those new drugs.
- NothingsFree
  
  Why dose a 5-minute visit to a doctor’s office and a simple blood test end up being ‘priced’ in the system for hundreds of dollars?
  
  It ain’t the ‘free market’, that’s for sure.
- JacFlasche
  
  Why should an MD be able to charge the market rate when they are awarded a monopoly by the government? Having a monopoly is a sure way to get rich (I don’t know any poor docs who don’t want to be that way.) Even if the monopoly is on something seemingly minor like matches. Within my lifetime the average income for an MD has gone from 25K to about 200K.
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  Gee… when doctors agree to do business with ANY insurance company… you’re saying there are no restrictions on that doctor’s practice? There’s virtually NO private pay market in health care… the real market is between insurance programs, private or public… and health care providers.
- Anonymous
  
  Have you read the Hippocratic oath?

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

The Second Bill of Rights was a list of rights proposed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the then President of the United States, during his State of the Union Address on January 11, 1944. In his address Roosevelt suggested that the nation had come to recognize, and should now implement, a second “bill of rights”. Roosevelt’s argument was that the “political rights” guaranteed by the constitution and the Bill of Rights had “proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.” Roosevelt’s remedy was to declare an “economic bill of rights” which would guarantee:
Employment, with a living wage, Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies, Housing, Medical care, Education, and, Social security

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

If Obama will push this the American people will never be the same.

I will write to Obama to push this Plan for 2012 and he will pull American economy from the drain that the Bush administration flushed for 8 years.
Anonymous

America only promises equal opportunity, not equal outcome.

No man can have a “right” to something that must be taken from another man! Think about it!
- http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
  
  Who said the Second Bill of Rights is about stealing from another man. when the US Government has taken freedom from other people in other countries is Not Equal Outcome for those oppress people.
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  Problem with your theory of property… in this case income, is the CONSTITUTION grants the federal government the right to tax… and by your definition it’s confiscation. In reality the federal government is a wealth redistribution system… and the most heavily subsidized states are typically the small “red” states. Sarah Palin’s welfare state of Alaska was getting about $1.84 from Washington for every dollar it sent to Washington… 2004 numbers.
  - GodAlmighty
    
    And let us not forget that the one good thing that Sarah did was get the oil corps to share the wealth in her own little socialist coup. Sure wish I had a superpak that I could dupe people into supporting and then just take the money and run — or bus. It seems there is more money in fake politics than the real thing — Sarah and FOX would agree I am sure.
- Anonymous
  
  Then how did we get this country? And continue to depress the original owners, with no true opportunity’s? Think about that!

http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX

Hoping to be taken seriously GretchenMo wrote: Flea-baggers don’t want to work, they want a free lunch.

The BIGGEST Free Lunchers on the Planet are the GOP.

We spent some $13.5 TRILLION on ourselves the past 30 years and REFUSED TO TAX OURSELVES FOR IT… knowing the bill for our party will get passed on to our kids and grandkids. And as we see from all the GOP plans… like Paul Ryan’s, the GOP wants to set that intergenerational theft in cement.

How goddamn noble.

GretchenMo

Perhaps you might want to READ more about how the debt was created before rushing to condemn a single party. But I know from your other posts, clear thinking or doing research isn’t your forte.
- Anonymous
  
  I have done my homework, but it is pretty clear you haven’t. Please look into it before you post uneducated posts.
  - Anonymous
    
    I love it when right-wingers on the same side are too wrapped up in their own BS to even know it. Kind of like a cornered rabid animal.
  - BHA in Vermont
    
    Um, Brandstad, she was referencing ulTRAX’s post, not your’s. So darned quick to take offense, you just bit your own right (wing) hand.
    - Anonymous
      
      No he sees that GMs statement won’t hold water, make em look bad.
  - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
    
    Reading Orwellian Right websites is NOT doing your homework… unless you’re studying propaganda.
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  Are you claiming that about 50% of the national debt run up in the past 30 years was NOT by GOP presidents? Yes or no?
  
  Being a smart ass doesn’t get you off the hook. Put up or shut up Mo.
  
  Rounding off to trillions here are the OFFICIAL debt numbers from
  
  http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np
  
  Pre-1993 numbers are from http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt.htm and are calculated by FY.
  
  4,065 Debt by end of FY92907 - pre Reagan debt————————–3,158 = total Reagan and Bush1 debt 10,625 Debt by end of Bush2′s term5,727 – Debt at start of Bush2′s term————————–4,898 = total Bush debt (not counting any deficits running into Obama’s term 3,158 +————————–8,056 = total GOP debt from 1981 to now, about 54% of total run up in last 30 years.
  
  And let’s not forget that Neither Reagan, Bush1, nor Bush2 had to deal with a collapse of the banking sector.
  
  　
  - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
    
    Let’s try those numbers again:
    
    4,065 Debt by end of FY92
    
    907 - pre Reagan debt
    
    ————————–
    
    3,158 = total Reagan and Bush1 debt
    
    10,625 Debt by end of Bush2′s term
    
    5,727 – Debt at start of Bush2′s term
    
    ————————–
    
    4,898 = total Bush debt (not counting any deficits running into Obama’s term 3,158 +
    
    ————————–
    
    8,056 = total GOP debt from 1981 to now, about 54% of total.
  - GretchenMo
    
    Your analysis, as usual, is way too simplistic. Using the Treasury data, I’m sure you can easily calculate fiscal year additions to debt under same party rule with no supporting votes from the party in opposition for each respective party. That is the only way to support your thesis of single party blame.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      Gee Einstein, I’M NOT THE ONE SAYING ONE PARTY IS TO BLAME… even if it’s pretty clear it’s the fiscal irresponsibility of the GOP since 1981 that’s to blame. THAT’S when the debt started to explode.
      
      My position… and you’re EVADING this point, is that THE DEBT IS HERE… and the GOP is determined NOT to have our generation pay for what we spent. And since I’m not a party hack like you, I don’t see the current crop of Dems being much better… they’re only less irresponsible.
    - TrollLess
      
      ulTRAX:
      
      No use arguing with a troll, when you make a valid point they just hide under their bridge and throw rocks.
      
      Save your energy and skills for more valuable pursuits.
    - Gregg
      
      I hear he’s thinking about pottery.
    - Anonymous
      
      If only we could put you in a pot and close the lid.
    - GretchenMo
      
      So let me explain it to you as simply as possible so even you can get it. Debt will be paid down by cutting government spending and maintaining revenues (or potentially increasing once economic activity is invigorated by clearer government spending policy); thereby creating surpluses to reduce the debt.
    - SimpleMinds
      
      Sure, and governments work just like households.
      
      Heard that one before. Go troll where you are wanted.
    - Fredlinskip
      
      Gretchmo,
      Cutting gov spending at best may create a balanced budget, which is a worthy goal (although it seems like GOP admins always spend like gang busters and then decide that when Dems are in office is the time to cut spending).
      Balanced budget= we spend as much as we take in.
      
           Unfortunately, IMO it is unrealistic to think that cutting spending is going to pay down trillions in debt- that is going to require $ (i.e revenue). The best time to pay down debt is in thriving economies but our political leaders were not enlightened enough to do so at such times- so it is what is.
        �
         IMO, an overall examination of our nation’s tax policy will reveal that when tax rates were higher, the rich were still sufficiently rich and the nation seemed to thrive. It’s hard to argue with that if you actually take the time to study our country’s short history.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      Nice delusion GM… WE WERE THERE IN 2001… and where’s the evidence the GOP was willing to pay down debt even though Bush PROMISED TO????
  - Dave in CT
    
    50% = 100% 2-party blame. Where are we going from here?
    
    This place sounds like an OWS rally….Meanwhile the Banksters and their political bodyguards keep going to work unmolested and laughing their way to the… their, bank.
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  And let’s not forget that when we HAD THE CHANCE TO PAY DOWN DEBT… it was BUSH and the GOP who instead passed SIX ROUNDS OF TAX CUTS even though we were some six to eight TRILLION in debt.
- GodAlmighty
  
  You prove once again that anybody can say anything, but what ulTrax has contributed here over the months has been the opposite of what you claim.
  - GretchenMo
    
    Ok Ultrax’s mom, you love your boy no matter how dumb he is, we get it.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      PKB… you’re all empty claims and evasion GM. Now are you EVER going to deal with the topic of this thread… that the GOP is determined NOT to have our generation pay for what WE spent these past 30 years and refused to tax ourselves for?
      Didn’t think so.
      
      But feel free to make your evasions look respectable. That’s what Bradstad is doing.
    - Dave in CT
      
      Perhaps they don’t want to reward bad behavior? Its the Tea Party congressionals who are making things so tough for the establishment Ds and Rs, because they are on a STOP THE SPENDING mission.
      
      You want them to raise the taxes to pay for bipartisan bad behavior of decades, and then maybe, MAYBE not pick up where it left off.
      
      Their constituents don’t like that idea.
      
      There is not alot of evil here, Just principled obstructionism carried out by people with an R on their sleeve, which like it or not, is a protest of the status quo…
      
      Hey, give them a chance to evolve……
      
      Our politicians have been all about bad behavior and rewarding themselves and their cronies in the banks for a looooong time, using the unassailable shield of “essential government spending” to hide behind, when in fact they don’t give 2 sh!ts, and just put it on the debt, which ultimately screws us all.
      
      Hence, one group, yes a conservative one, said, enough.
      
      We gotta start somewhere. I hope OWS steers clear of the massive entitlement demands, and instead focuses on DEMANDING ACCOUNTABILITY AND FAIR, POLICED, FREE MARKETS.
- Fredlinskip
  
  Gretchmo,
     As soon as he was handed a surplus from previous Dem administration, W decided it was good idea to hand it over to the fabulously wealthy. W admin also thought it a good idea not to fund unnecessary War in Iraq all the while promoting War profiteering no-bid contracts.
  Cheney claimed, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.”
     Ronnie raised debt ceiling 17 and quadrupled national debt under his tenure, with “the greatest peacetime spending in American history”.
      This began a trend lasting 30+ years in which GOP was the party of “Borrow & Spend”, all the while getting Americans to repeat the mantra “all taxes bad- starve the beast”.
  
  Am I coming close to any of the sources of national debt creation?
  
  Please enlighten us with your wisdom.
Anonymous

Lets not even look at how much of the $13.5 TRILLION of spending was passed under democratic controlled House. Lets also not look at how many of those dollars was spent while Obama was in office as a senator (and voted for the legislation) and as president.
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  About 50% of the federal debt was run up by GOP presidents… largely because of their irresponsible tax cuts. And pray tell… do YOU cut your income when YOU have bills like a mortgage, car payment, or rent? What I’ve yet to hear from any of you rabid rightists is how it’s fiscally responsible to cut taxes WHEN WE’RE IN DEBT!!! No, tax cuts do NOT bring in more revenue than previous tax law. That is a bold face lie the Orwellian Right has been spreading since the Reagan era and no matter how many times Gregg repeats it here is still a LIE. Either way THE MONEY’S BEEN SPENT. We can argue till hell freezes over whether it was spent wisely or pissed away… IT’S GONE… DEAL WITH IT!!!
  - Dave in CT
    
    We know they are equally to blame. Why do you seem to always defend the Dems?
    
    Who would your preferred candidate/philosophy be, and how would it fundamentally change things in a way that could come to pass without a revolution or mass coercion?
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      History set up a nice little experiment in 1981. At that point the national debt from ALL the previous administrations not paid off was about $970 billion. Now that’s still 970 billion too much debt. It’s not until Reagan came in when the debt exploded. Bush1 and Clinton tried to correct some of the damage done by Reagan’s irresponsible tax cuts. Clinton got us to a surplus… and Bush2 immediately did everything he could to sabotage it and create more debt. While I’m not a fan of the Dems, I think there’s a clear pattern here even if you are determined to blame both major parties equally. The far Right in the 80′s implemented a new strategy to use fiscal irresponsibility to undermine Democratic Safety Net programs. They could not do so without a respectable fig leaf that redefined their fiscal irresponsibility as the opposite. Unfortunately that’s metastasized into a tax cut cult that can no longer think clearly about budget issues.
- BlaimingTheWrongCriminals
  
  Let us not even remember how the Banksters basically brought the world’s economy to its knees in the beginning of the 21st Century and in the earlier part of the 20th Century.
  
  All of that spending in both periods wouldn’t have even been needed if the Banksters’ house-of-cards hadn’t collapsed.
  - Dave in CT
    
    Wouldn’t even have been possible, nor the wars, with sound money. Thanks Fed!
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      You mean with “sound money” the US would not have been able to go into debt by borrowing money from its own people? LOL
    - Dave in CT
      
      You would have freely lent to the budget at our debt levels and to Wall St Investment banks to continue the shenanigans we all agree they were up to??
      
      I know you’re better than that. Why can’t you trust yourself and your friends and neighbors more than the banking cabal?
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  You’re EVADING the question here B… and in doing so proving my point that the Right really wants a $13.5 TRILLION free lunch.
  
  The money’s gone and our generation refused to tax itself for what we spent on ourselves.
  
  WHO SHOULD PAY? Us or our kids and grandkids?
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  Lame argument. Leaving aside the matter than budgets typically originate with the executive branch, and no president in the last 30 years except Clinton submitted a balanced budget, in the end if a president signs a spending bill he’s equally responsible for whatever the House and Senate approve.
  
  Now are you EVER going to deal with the topic of this thread… that the GOP is determined NOT to have our generation pay for what WE spent these past 30 years and refused to tax ourselves for?
  Didn’t think so.
  
  But feel free to make your evasions look respectable. That’s what GM is doing.

Anonymous

What’s with the Reagan deification (cf. video during Republican debate)? If ever there was a president to impeach, it would be Reagan: contribution of weaponry to Guatemalan genocide, trading arms to a terrorist country (which just kidnapped Americans and held them for over a year), contravening Congress re Contras. Add to that the record that is in opposition to the current Republicans in Congress with re to economics, and his support for dictators in Central America and, well, I’m just stumped.

Frontman

If there were ever a vice-president to impeach it would have been Reagan’s: George Herbert Walker Bush

BeingLiedTo

Iran story, probably fiction, called ‘far-fetched’:
A more sober Stratfor Global Intelligence called the
plot “far-fetched.” Cautioning against claims against Iran, founder
and CEO George Friedman said doing so “involve(s) substantial political
risk.”"Iran has been known to carry out preoperational
surveillance in the United States, but it has not yet used this intelligence
to carry out a high-profile attack.”He added that Iran has nothing to gain from committing
a terror attack on US soil and everything to lose…

Former Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs
PJ Crowley commented in the London Guardian, calling the alleged plot “far-fetched….(O)n
the face of it (it’s) so fantastic that it begs a disclaimer….It’s unclear
how much Iran would stand to gain by sanctioning or supporting this plot.”
�
Former CIA case officer Robert Baer said “the Quds
are better than this. It they wanted to come after you, you’d be dead already.”

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

Iranian Green Party will previal.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
  
  Dont fall for that color revolution stuff. Look what happened to the Orange revolution.
  - FancyColors
    
    All color revolutions are brought to you by the world’s ‘intelligence community’.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
      
      Yeh, went the way of Tom Ridges color coded terror alerts.
      
      You know Fancy Colors, I am not sure if people are stupider now than they were a century ago. They are more informed now, but it seems the intelligent quotient has dropped.
    - FancyColors
      
      Definitely dumber.
      
      (If I didn’t have spell check my posts would be horrendous.)
      
      Not only that, critical thinking skills are no longer valued.
      
      People are more dis-informed.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
      
      There is more information readily available, from all sides of the spectrum. But it takes some intellect and initiative to access it.
      This is what’s missing.
    - AllTooReal
      
      I’ve learned this:
      
      Most people would rather not know the truth. It’s too real and scary.
  - http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
    
    The color of People Power Revolution in the Philippines was Yellow.

Anonymous

Everyone here should know that the Occupy Wall Street movement is about “revolution”. Can we have a discussion about what an American revolution would result in?

Resolution must not occur because it will not be peaceful and it will not result in anything good in the next 10 years.

LetItGo

OWS is not about ‘revolution’. It’s about ‘evolution’. And nobody knows what that will result in.

History shows us ideals usually result in calamity when the State steps in.

All of the economic hardships to come over the next 10 to 20 years aren’t looking good either.
- Dave in CT
  
  Hence best to follow the ideals of the non-statists, and be ready for the statist kick and scream…..
http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

How can you say that you haven’t been in a Rally in your life.
Anonymous

Was that a typo? We do need a resolution to the problems to keep the peace.

Anonymous

Both Romney and Cain became “successful” in their respective businesses by bolstering the profit margin, thereby increasing share value, by getting rid of employees. Cain has the additional feather in his cap of helping assure that millions of Americans did not have any reasonable chance at affordable medical coverage. Their proven experience in enriching capital at the expense of labor makes them the ideal candidate to implement the right-wing agenda on a national level.

GretchenMo

Spoken like a follower-parasite, certainly not a leader-creator.
- Anonymous
  
  Spoken like someone who equates destroying jobs as creating something.
- Fredlinskip
  
  GretchMo,
  Jimino’s comments conclusion was:
  “Their (Cain and Romney) proven experience in enriching capital at the expense of labor makes them the ideal candidate to implement the right-wing agenda on a national level.”
  
  Why are you defensive about a comment that espouses the exact same sentiment of many of your other comments??
Dave in CT

I’m not a neocon or establishment GOP supporter by any stretch, but come on, the idea of a living, dynaminc economy having a “composting” aspect, with old jobs/ideas removed and new ones sprouting, is not that radical, and certainly makes sense. The question is whether that dynamic market is open to all and fair, or rigged by government-banker/business colluders so all the benefits go to a few.

We don’t need to throw out the former because we rightly abhor the latter.

Unfortunately the Dems give you the chance for either, and Repubs consistently the latter, but neither gives you the fair/free market choice.

Come to the dark, Austrian-influenced liberty side……
- BrokenRecord
  
  Every time you show up I yawn and grown.
  
  I’d like to know where your theoretical, Austrian-influenced-libertarian side has been implemented or even attempted.
  
  And you never commented about the poster boys, financiers of the Tea Party, those gods of Libertarianism – the Koch brothers – and their doing business with Iran scandal:
  
  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/billionaire-koch-brothers-in-the-dock-over-trades-with-iran-2365181.html
  
  How does your theoretical system eliminate a multi-billionaire’s political influence peddling, manipulative legal wrangling and total disregard for their own country’s trade policy?
  - Dave in CT
    
    Better than your current system or yet to be explained one.
    
    But it’s tough to be rational.
  - Dave in CT
    
    Give me a couple minutes to look up some “evil” supporter of whatever position it is you have, so I can dismiss without rational rebuttal.
    - ByAnyOtherName
      
      Like the trolls on this site, evil doesn’t deserve rational rebuttal.

Joe

Robert Baer: Iranian plot is a bad Hollywood script.
http://www.infowars.com/robert-baer-iranian-plot-is-a-bad-hollywood-script/

SoObvious

Our intelligence community and state department probably have a bunch of these ‘terror/fear mongering’ scripts in development at any given time.

I wish the mainstream media would pick this apart instead of shill for the agenda.
- Joe
  
  Good point, but I wouldn’t expect the likes of CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, The Wash. Post, NY Times and LA Times to start being critical of Obama now after three years of slavish-devotion to the current squatter in the White House.
  - TFRX
    
    You forgot to call it the “Communist News Network”, and are hereby dunned $1000 Foxbucks.
Anonymous

If Iran was capable of killing an individual they deemed worthy of such treatment as an enemy of their state by deploying an unmanned drone into the USA, would that be acceptable?

twenty-niner

Cost of Obama’s 2012 campaign: $1 billion. The irony: priceless.

As the Wall Street sit-in gathers steam, Obama plans to raise more money from Wall Street than he did in 2008:

A just-released study by the Center for Responsive Politics shows that President Obama is relying more on Wall Street to fund his re-election this year than he did in 2008, according to CNBC, which obtained an advance copy of the report.

Obama has even added new Wall Streeters who did not work for him in 2008, including former Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine, Evercore Partners executive Charles Myers, Greenstreet Real Estate Partners CEO Steven Green, and Azita Raji, a former investment banker for JPMorgan.

Obama and the DNC combined are on pace to far exceed the amounts Obama raised from Wall Street donors in 2008, both in raw dollar amounts and as a percentage of what he raises overall.

http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/obama-wallstreet-electioncampaign/2011/07/22/id/404563

In the photo, in case you can’t read lips, Blankfein is saying, “We own him now.”

NoSurprise

They’ve always owned him

Sully

As a resident alien who is trying to learn about the political history of the US, can I ask a genuine question?

Is this the weakest line up of presidential candidates (including DNC and excluding the incumbent) is years OR is it often the case that the challenging party fails to present good candidates in mid-terms, usually (ie. Kerry, Clark, Edwards etc in 2004).

Of course, I am aware of Clinton and Reagan but circumstances were as they were and Pres. Obama may suffer a similar fate as Bush and Carter…… but….

My question is more about the generality of the mid-term line-ups for the challenging party.

Thanks for your help with my question and have a nice weekend.

twenty-niner

I like Huntsman but he won’t go anywhere because the primary system is rigged against moderates. I do wish the Dems would put someone up against the disaster-in-chief.
- Joe
  
  “Disaster in Chief”.
  
  Very good description of the current squatter in the White House.
- Dave in CT
  
  They should put Huntsman up.
  - Ellen Dibble
    
    First we vote out the entire Congress and see what Obama can do with some un-lobbied-for branches of government. Then let Huntsman switch parties, maybe. By the end of four years, maybe the Occupy Wall Street movement will have shifted the parameters.
    - GretchenMo
      
      I think people were willing to give flea-baggers some room given that they’re mostly young and ignorant, a combustible combination; but today when they started throwing bottles at police, an unclean movement just got really ugly.
    - Fredlinskip
      
        They don’t have a monopoly on ignorance. There’s plenty of that in America- look at our school systems. Read T Party signage at their rallies. Watch Fox “news”.
      
          One good thing- their hopes and dreams, nor their vitality, nor open-mindedness have been crushed-     Yet.
      
         And thay have the courage to fight against what has become a very obviously corrupted economic system-
      
      And they’ve done it peacefully- as much as you hope it gets ugly.
    - twenty-niner
      
      “and see what Obama can do with some un-lobbied-for branches of government”
      
      The problem is, he’s the chairman of being bought and paid for. I refer you to my post below.
AndSoItGoes

Good question.

The system is set-up to not provide a viable choice – a ‘lesser of two evils’, if you will. Political parties are just diversions

Week candidates are an American tradition. They are already in somebody’s pocket even before their first day in office.

And if they don’t follow their rulers, they will be snuffed out or disgraced.

Banks own the Corporations and Corporations own the Government.

The People only watch and pay, pay, pay.
Fredlinskip

A resident alien? What exactly does that mean?

Yeah it’s a sad bunch of characters- that’s because there’s really not much substance behind all the Fox “news” GOP bluster- these candidates are showing that.

Romney is the obvious candidate because:
1) he’s got the look (Better looking candidate and the one who you’d feel more comfortable inviting to your barbecue wins 9 times out of 10 times) and;

2) He’s the one who most obviously represents the top couple % ‘ers that have $ to finance all the negative commercials that are soon going to be thrust on Americans.

If your TRULY interested in learning about American politics you’d do well to read up on the Reagan administration and the trends that happened in last 30+ years.
Hint: you may have to actually read a book or 2- not just trust various internet blogs and sound bites.�
Study the facts and your eyes should open considerably.

Anonymous

Here’s an economic question that all candidates should be required to answer: Do you believe that income from work should be taxed at a higher rate than income from capital gains, dividends and carried interest, as it currently is? If so, why?

GretchenMo

Where do capital gains come from jimi? Think about it. First I work, I pay taxes, then I get my after tax income. Realizing that I’ve got to retire and pay for kids’ education, I decide not to spend every dime that is left after taxes; so I invest in a CD, a savings bond, a municipal bond, a loan to my brother, a big business, in a small business, in a film project, a lemonade stand; whatever. Maybe that investment works, maybe it doesn’t, maybe it pays some income, maybe it doesn’t. The value of that investment was already taxed when I earned it, should I have to pay an even higher tax on the income or gain when I sell in order to pay college tuition? Should I have spent it right after I earned it? What behavior should tax policy encourage?
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  There is double taxation everywhere. I already paid taxes on what I earn yet still have to pay property, sales, auto excise, gasoline, taxes etc. Why should capital gains be treated specially? Oh I know! Because as a rabid right winger you believe we have to bestow even more benefits on the rich because making money with money is morally superior to labor in all its forms.
  - GretchenMo
    
    Wow, take your meds. Jimi and I were talking about relative tax rates; all the taxes you mentioned are applied at significantly lower rates than income, interest, dividend or capital gain. So I have no problem with interest income being taxed at a sales tax rate and apparently you don’t either if that is the point of your disjointed diatribe. Left wing nutjobs should favor tax policy that encourages savings and investment over gluttoness consumption, no?
    
    I’m sorry your life has been a failure, but don’t blame me, and personally I don’t want to be stuck with the bill for your shortcomings and inadequacies. Take your envy and anger and turn it into something positive. Have you thought about pottery?
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      Feel free to delude yourself being a smart ass gets you off the hook for EVADING my points. It doesn’t.Your point about double taxation is moot. Do you withdraw it or not? BTW, I don’t mind rewarding SOME investments with lower taxes, say those who take real risk in investing in areas that will benefit us all. But should it be at a lesser rate than what someone who WORKS for a living pays? No. The idea that we should REWARD those who sit around the pool waiting for the dividend check to come in… or some hedge fund for manipulating oil markets and bringing us $147 a barrel oil… and being the final nail in bringing down the economy… is obscene. But then most of what you believe in falls into that category.
    - GretchenMo
      
      The issue was applicable tax rates Sherlock.
      You never have points so it’s hard trying to evade them.
      Investments that will benefit us all, so only the ones with the ultratax stamp of approval are worthy?�
      Sitting by the pool, some false narrative! 76% of dividend paying stocks are owned by individuals in pension and 401k plans by soon to be or already-retired working folks. What about CDs? Those are almost exclusively owned by individuals trying to supplement social security.�
      Hedge funds don’t collect dividends, they play for big returns.
      Who’s bringing us $80 oil? Hedge funds? That’s another one of your tired narratives free of facts.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      Responses above.
    - Anonymous
      
      Are you dyslexic?
    - Ellen Dibble
      
      Ultrax, I took a stab at addressing the gluttonous consumption idea that GretchenMo brought up. If you want to find this spot, you can find that post, to her, not to you.
    - Ellen Dibble
      
      I’d be interested to see your Dr. Gretchen’s Fiscal Diet book, defining at which point a purchase is necessary and healthful, and at which point it becomes gluttonous and therefore subject to a “consumption tax.” Let’s say you tax a small refrigerator at 5 percent and a large refrigerator at 10 percent. Except, if you have more than one dependent, that large refrigerator goes back to the 5 percent tax, because it is deemed necessary for more than x number of people. So you go to buy that bicycle and motorcycle, and you have to prove that it is your primary mode of transportation, failing which it is deemed to be conspicuous consumption, undertaken for sport, not necessity, and you get taxed double, or triple. Put me on that Congressional committee that gets to draw all those lines. Outhouses, 3 percent. Indoor plumbing, 10 percent. Jacuzzi’s 15 percent. Visits to the spa, 20 percent. Oh, wait, maybe the level of income should play a role. If you earn your money from capital gains, and make over $100,000, then your spa visit is not a luxury; it’s considered the norm. Right?
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      GM spewed: “The issue was applicable tax rates Sherlock.”
      
      I addressed that but YOU brought in additional issues such as double taxation. Try reading your own posts… this time for comprehension.
      
      GM: “You never have points so it’s hard trying to evade them.”
      
      As I said, smart ass responses can provide you the delusion that your evasion is some devastating rebuttal. But we see it’s just evasion.
      
      GM: Investments that will benefit us all, so only the ones with the ultratax stamp of approval are worthy?”
      
      Hey Brainiac, YOU were the one who first raised the issue of whether tax policies should favor some activities over others. Again, try reading your own posts… this time for comprehension. So look in the mirror before pretending only I’m doing it. I ADMIT IT. For instance I don’t believe the tax system should encourage non-productive speculation. Why should tax breaks be given to those that are parasitic on the economy or can actually do it damage? Why should that income be taxed LOWER than someone who actually works for a living? And I don’t believe returns from playing the equities casino should be granted lower tax rates. It’s rare companies ever benefit from second party transactions.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      part 2
      
      GM: “Sitting by the pool, some false narrative!”
      
      It’s true often enough. Why aren’t you harping on the elderly widows who have a few stocks like the GOP does when they want to get attention from the fact that capital gain cuts mainly benefit THE WEALTHY.
      
      “76% of dividend paying stocks are owned by individuals in pension and 401k plans by soon to be or already-retired working folks.”
      
      Source? Or don’t you know how to C&P or what a URL is? Even if true, and it sounds suspicious, 401k plans are tax DEFERMENTS. WTF does that have to do with anything? Quit making random points stalling for time.
      
      GM: “What about CDs? Those are almost exclusively owned by individuals trying to supplement social security.”
      
      What about them? GM: “Hedge funds don’t collect dividends, they play for big returns.”
      
      Red herring. Who cares if they don’t get much from dividends? That’s NOT the issue. Try making some relevant points if you can.
      
      GM: “Who’s bringing us $80 oil? Hedge funds? That’s another one of your tired narratives free of facts.”
      
      You mean when oil starts to fall closer to where a normal market price SHOULD be, and it’s still too high… we should THANK the speculators for not being more parasitic and manipulating the market back up to $147 a barrel?
      
      My God, are there any intelligent right wingers out there?
      
      Didn’t think so.
- Dave in CT
  
  Consumerism and Demand for Demands sake! But we’ll get you straightened out with a sales tax…..
- Anonymous
  
  Obviously, it should reward the making of money with money, regardless on its effect on the vast majority of people who work for a living. As it currently does.
Anonymous

Another question would be: do you think it is right or proper to accept money for your vote from lobbyist or corporations, instead of what your constituents have voted you to do? if so, why?

Cime

Man has become too obsessed with his own creation! Money! So much so that he forgot what it is to be human!

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

I like it.

Joe

Petraeus’s C.I.A. fuels fake Iran murder plot.
http://www.infowars.com/petraeus%e2%80%99s-cia-fuels-iran-murder-plot/

brian parizek

I believe that you an the “FilipinoBoston” are the same person. keep up the good work.
- Joe
  
  Yeah, and if you believe that, you probably also believe that Obama’s forged birth certificate is legitimate.
  - brian parizek
    
    i was waiting for you to post the birther “non issue”. what took you so long?
    
    in about an hour, please re-run your commentary.
    - Joe
      
      You really enjoy swallowing Obama’s propaganda.
    - brian parizek
      
      obama propaganda…did fox news help you w/ that one?
    - Joe
      
      It’s the truth, America has a ‘Liar in Chief’, squatting in the White House.
    - brian parizek
      
      good “call” joe; obama, the current president, is all to blame for the current state of the economy, the wars and whatever else you have issue with…come’on, really. the recent past presidents and congresses have at least an share of responsibility for the current state of the country.
      
      in reality, until a viable third party makes a run in the political system of this country, we will be left to deal w/ the cycle of republicans and democrats who continually bend to will of washington lobbyists for personal and party gains.
    - Four Elements
      
      I think BO is trying, but he is the most overrated orater I have ever heard. I haven’t decided about him yet, but I know one thing: in the immortal words of Lloyd Bentsen (almost), “He’s no Jack Kennedy!”
    - MIA
      
      He’s no BO
- http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
  
  Name Joe is not Filipino and my real is Achilles (part greek)

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

Let Israel attack Iran. Let the Economy of America skip another war of attrition.

brian parizek

maybe russia will take the hit on this one…keep spreading it around the globe.
http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX

Yup, as if any attack on Iraq won’t cause them to hold all gulf oil hostage and be the final nail in the coffin of the US economy.

GOOD THINKING EINSTEIN!!!

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

Revive the Second Bill of Rights.

brian parizek

hmmm…seen this before, around 11:23. who are you really working for?
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  Maybe FB wrote a PHP script that acts as his bot here. Unfortunately it’s still in alpha.
http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX

Damn it FB, you’re getting to be as bad as Moda with your off topic repetive posts.
- http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
  
  it is called Freedom of expression. I can repeat and repeat I want to write no one can stop me.
  
  Have you been to a demonstration? They repeat what they say all the time.
  - Gregg
    
    He gets testy about his blog.
  - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
    
    There is an expectation in an On Point forum about the Week In Review that it be connected to THE WEEK IN REVIEW. But then if you’re competing with Moda to be the forum’s second Village Idiot, then carry on.

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

American Capitalism is the root of all evil in the world.

brian parizek

and organized religion.
RU4Real

Settle down amigo. Capitalism would be great if the commie/socialist/totalitarian elite weren’t running it.

It may take a while, but things can turn around.

By the way, what’s up with the FilipinoBoston moniker?

What would you think if I called myself IrishBoston or ItalianPhilly or PolishChicago or WASPNewEngland or JewNYC or MexicanPhoenix?

I’m not sure how I feel about your Nationality/City name-thing.

Are you for real?
- http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
  
  it is my nationality and the place I live. I thought we live in a democratic and free country. I can use any user name I want as long it doesn’t offend anyone. Does “Filipino” bothers you?
  
  Because I grew up in Manila or should I say the 7,000 islands of the Philippines. There are a lot Irish Pub in Boston that start with the word “Irish” should I also tell them that it “bothers” me seeing “Irish”.
  
  PLEASE!!!!!
  - brian parizek
    
    those pubs are a private business…this a commnetary website. two different things; congrats on your heritage.
    - http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
      
      Does NPR has 10 commandments of how to create User name.
      it is not about the Pub or Business it is about names.
      
      This why the world is in Chaos LITTLE THINGS like user name is a big deal for someone.
      
      What would I think if your user name is IrishBoston or ItalianPhilly or PolishChicago or WASPNewEngland or JewNYC or MexicanPhoenix?
      
      I would I think if you use those user name? OF COURSE NOTHING because my brain is not like your brain -Narrow
    - brian parizek
      
      i didn’t say there was anything wrong w/ your username or that npr has commandents which direct us all on how to “call ourselves”, and i don’t think RU4real did either. i didn’t agree w/ your argument linking the name on a pub and npr’s commentary page.
      
      “narrow” = priceless
    - http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
      
      it is useless to argue when it’s about username.
      
      I felt like in grade school.
    - brian parizek
      
      i agree
  - JustAThought
    
    Sorry, I meant no offense. Just wondering.
    
    I’m all for being proud of one’s heritage.
    
    America use to be considered a ‘melting pot’ now it’s a ‘salad bowl’.
    
    I’m not to sure about the ‘multiculturalism/politically correct’ trend.
    
    Where else do people describe themselves by their heritage-country of origin/and where they reside now:
    
    As if the person is always still from their prior country or ethnic background/american
    
    Personally, I don’t care for the ‘Irish’ pub thing either.
    - Drew You Too
      
      “Salad Bowl”, thanks for that it made me smile.
- Anonymous
  
  The only place capitalism IS actually working, according to the accepted metrics, is in a communist country. Really.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
    
    Actually the natives of Papua New Guinea are known to practice the purest form of capitalism, based on a currency of yams.
    
    What one sees in the US is pure corruption, based on a plutocracy that runs the media and the banks.
  - twenty-niner
    
    Not sure about that…
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso
  
  Yeh, RU4Real, It bugs me when people flaunt their ethic background … like they’re proud of it or something. Makes me want to move to a place where everyone is just good ol “Merikan”…like the Ozarks or Appalachia, where no one has any memory of ethnic origins, other than a little scotch, irish, english and a dash of cherokee. You know where English(or a derivative thereof) is the only language spoken at the mall, the dairy queen, and even on all of the 400 cable channels hooked into the trailer. Ciao Amici !!!!!
  - WhitemuttredneckTerreHaute
    
    Caught your drift.
Jeffe68

ah yes the great voice of reason from the guy who supports Herman Cain. You are a walking contradiction.
- http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston
  
  HA!!! I don’t support Cain. Don’t assume and speculate.
  - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
    
    That’s only because Ferdinand Marcos isn’t running.
    - twenty-niner
      
      Maybe he’s a shoe salesman.
Drew You Too

Money is the root of all evil and it’s been around a heck of a lot longer than Capitalism.
- notafeminista
  
  LOVE of money is the root of all evil.

JacFlasche

This used to be a place were it was worth reading the comment. Thanks to Filipino, Paolo and a number of equally rabid right wing dupes, this is no longer the case.

http://twitter.com/FilipinoBoston FilipinoBoston

They are great comments but are they actually the real opinion from those people not copy and paste opinion from another message boards. my ideas came from my own mind not from someone else. It is not a Text Book or Thesis like comments but it is about the truth, about the world and a government who wants to control every living soul, to act and to be like America. I experience racism, dictatorship,people power revolution,poverty,unemployment,violence, coups and more.

Tell me what did you experienced in your life that are written in history books that you’re part of it.
- Textbooks
  
  We’ve experience some of the same things in America, except it’s not written in our history books.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Paolo-Caruso/1778940602 Paolo Caruso

Whats that Jack Nickolson line about not being able to handle the truth? BTW -dont include me we the rightwing dupes.

Joe

When Obama launches his bogus war against Iran,

based on a ridiculous lie that a pot-smoking, used car salesman tried to blow up the Israeli and Saudi embassies,

it will be of no avail to the current squatter occupying the White House, as Obama is a one-term President.

brian parizek

didn’t bush start a bogus war? yeah, about eight years ago w/ iraq.

based on your commentary and bush’s action, i’m thinking that president obama gets a second term (he didn’t get my vote the first time and he probably won’t this time either)
- Joe
  
  Are you a pot-smoking, used car salesman?
  
  If you are, then President Obama has got a special mission for you.
  - brian parizek
    
    Job Posting. work from your home or office, posting semi-original anti-obama, anti-liberal commentary on npr’s news site; bonus paid upon president obama’s re-election. bonus based vote differential. contact the national democratic party for details; serious candidates only.
    - Joe
      
      Obama must really be getting desperate if he thinks Americans would believe that a pot-smoking, used car salesman could blow up the Israeli and Saudi embassies in D.C..
      
      But as long as Obama has people like yourself, Brian, who are going to buy all of Obama’s fantastic lies, expect to see a “false flag” terrorist action sometime in the near future.
    - Brian
      
      the comforting part of your rhetoric is that you don’t believe yourself
  - brian parizek
    
    i think you misread my comment. the vote declaration was regarding president obama.
  - MissionAccomplished
    
    No, but I want to be.
    - Joe
      
      I’m sure your parents must really be proud.
    - MissionAccomplished
      
      I just sold them a car and a lifestyle.

GeoPolitics

Iran is one of the most westernized countries in the region.

Sure, they have their political extremists, but who doesn’t.

Iran is more valuable internationally as a threat – real, imagined or manufactured – than anything else.

You need to have your boogie-men/axis-of-evil/cold war to keep all of these fake wars going so the military complex thrives.

Gregg

Wow.
notafeminista

They stone adulterers. Fail.

BrokenRecord

Dave in CT:

This is a re-post, just in case you missed it:

You have failed to comment about the poster boys, financiers of the Tea Party,
those gods of Libertarianism – the Koch brothers – and their doing
business with Iran scandal:

http://www.independent.co.uk/n…

How
does your theoretical system eliminate a multi-billionaire’s political
influence peddling, manipulative legal wrangling and total disregard
for their own country’s trade policy?

For someone who replies to himself frequently, you are strangely mute about this story and the Koch brother’s actions concerning the black-eye it gives all Libertarians.

Could they be ‘wagging the dog’ with this Saudi caper?

Dave in CT

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=32412

I’m not here to defend the Koch’s or any Tea Party co-opters or any other red-herring characters you want to trot out.

I have explained my ideas, posted endless links that paint a picture, explain a political-economic philosophy, and provide enough logic to discredit your “theoretical” attack. If you can’t do the reading or the thinking, that’s your problem.

Not many others around here try to outline the mechanics/ideas that would pragmatically a) explain what has happened, or b) explain how a different, specific vision would work. Especially not you, whoever you are behind you little monikers.

The standard, Repubs are the more evil and caused all this, and the easy cry of “lack of regulation”, which was heavily perpetrated during the Clinton years (Rubin, Summers, Fannie Mae, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd), just doesn’t hold water anymore, even to the weakest critical examination.

Please defend your status quo, or whatever random position you have, as it relates to our current, corrupted situation.

The model of central planning by elite technocrats that the rest of us should trust, because they are associated with the “angelic” Democratic party, (given not many of us have faith in the establishment crony, authoritarian, religion-pandering GOP), has proven too dangerous to follow anymore.

Taking the DISCRETIONARY power away from all of them the best we can, while fiercely demanding a clear, strong, enforced RULE OF LAW that does not dictate specific ends, but punishes for breaking the rules, is a very rational idea.

We have NOT had that in practice. We have NOT had any clear accountability to corrupters and colluders in the system. How do you blame that on Rule of Law libertarians? We haven’t had it, so its theoretical, so its a failure??

You do it because of your ignorance, IMO.
- BrokenRecord
  
  My point is…
  
  One man’s libertarian is another man’s corrupt, fascist, extreme-right-wing republican.
  
  The ideals you espouse are theoretical concepts which can not and could not exist in reality. Ideals do not allocate or account for the evil in the hearts and minds of men.
  
  Ideals are instruments designed to be manipulated for the benefit of the few to accumulate and control the power over the many.
  
  The new ‘libertarian’ is the old ‘conservative’.
  
  Without intent, you are constantly supporting their agenda.
  
  And, ignorantly falling into their trap.
  - Dave in CT
    
    The liberty philosophy has a long historical record. There is no agenda, besides a positive hopeful vision of maximized freedom and opportunity for the most people.
    
    The traps seem to be in your own mind.
    
    New libertarian, old conservative is crap.
    
    Conservative is Conservative, GOP is GOP
    
    Libertarian is neither. Is there a broad spectrum in there? Of, course, its human.
    
    You seem content with supporting the status quo.
    - BrokenRecord
      
      I give up. Your mind is closed and fixated. Enjoy that paradigm of yours. I look forward to avoiding your future comments by not reading them.
    - Dave in CT
      
      That’s fine. You’ve never said anything of factual or rational substance to dispute the ideas, only making broad smears of “theory” and vague assertions that your (non) positions are righteous and self evident.
      
      Using red herrings of the Koch brothers or GOP co-opters of the Tea Party or whatever, to avoid the actual discussion of the merit of the rationale of the viewpoint.
      
      Democrats were once the lynching party. I hope you never vote for one again. How stupid is that?
      
      Mostly what I do here, is play devils advocate to hold the knee jerk anti-liberty folks accountable for their dismissive, yet unsubstantiated comments.
      
      Its obviously an uphill battle, even though the Democratic and GOP Republican narratives are full of holes and hypocrisy.
      
      The time for well thought out alternatives is here.
      
      Thanks for not contributing.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      Dave, Dave, Dave…. you can try, but you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say your philosophy WILL work yet also admit it’s never been actually tried. From yesterday’s forum:
      
      ulTRAX: “In your free market, politicians are just another commodity as capitalists look for the best ROI. We already have that world.”
      
      Dave: How so? We don’t have a Ron Paul world, are you kidding? We don’t have a sound-money world that would structurally constrain the $ that bankers and politicians could collude with. We don’t have a government that doesn’t collude with industries. We don’t have a blind-justice rule of law that makes what Washington/Wall St. did illegal.
      
      I don’t understand why sometimes you argue against ghosts that aren’t there….
      
      THAT’S RIGHT!!!!! You’re making claims for an political-economic system NEVER tried in totality, but then there are enough warning signs from those pieces that have been tried… that it doesn’t work. You won’t be happy until there’s a total disaster. Maybe THEN you’d reconsider? Or probably not. Obsessed ideologues typically blame the world for the failure of their perfect schemes…. not that the scheme itself was defective. We see that now in the Tea Crackpots who refuse to believe conservative economics could have destroyed the economy. It HAD to be government.
    - Dave in CT
      
      Try driving a few pieces of your car down the road.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      Dave… you’re a True Believer… convinced you have the answer to all of humanity’s ills. Aside from the hubris… where’s the beef? You believe in a system you admit has NEVER been tried in totality, yet you’re CONVINCED through the internal logic of Libertarianism it MUST work. That’s nothing but a secular RELIGION! How many times throughout history have we been through this?
      
      If there’s a greater truth in humanity it’s ALL such systems create their own intolerant ideologues who will sweep under the carpet all the contradictions, excuse all the defects, and persecute all those who no longer believe. Logic is only as valid as the assumptions it rests upon. The greater danger isn’t humanity can’t think “logically”, it’s that humanity is not adept at questioning its own defective assumptions. Humans seem to have some innate dual imperative to believe they are acting in best interests of humanity AND that they are infallible. What makes this possible are belief systems… individual or social, that seem to have explanations (or excuses) for everything. That you fail to understand what seems to be a truth in human nature makes me believe you fall somewhere between deluded and naive.
      
      Please advise where you fall on that spectrum.
    - Dave in CT
      
      Somewhere a bit removed from the fatalist position you occupy.
    - Dave in CT
      
      What is ever your point here anyway?
      
      What is your model of maximizing liberty (if you don’t vomit at that word)?
      
      What is your model of minimizing the “power corrupts” truism, whether government, individual or corporate?
      
      What is your plan to minimize coercion of individuals to “go along” with a master plan they just don’t believe in?
      
      What do you disagree with about the idea that freedom of ideas and choices leads to more opportunity and innovation and chances for the rewards of spontaneity, and that it also increases the chances that if there are bad apples, or shoddy producers etc etc, one can choose another instead of being stuck with the mediocre or worse. That’s in products or governance.
      
      Then again, you wish the government was in charge of designing DVD players.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      Dave wrote: “Then again, you wish the government was in charge of designing DVD players.”
      
      If you can’t make a point without gross distortions, you haven’t made a point… have you Fluffy?
      
      Sometimes relying on the market to make decisions is so grotesquely inefficient it’s a public service for government to get involved. If the market had its way we’d have competing brands of electricity and they’d be fighting the same foolish standards war that VHS and Beta fought where each would try and lock in movie titles to their format… only in this case they’d fight over new appliances that could only run on brand X power.
      
      I’m on record saying government SHOULD get involved in the obscene waste in a market economy by encouraging corporations to cooperate on developing new standards to LOWER the cost of goods and increase reliability. I’ve presented two models for this… the voluntary one where corporations formed alliances to develop the DVD and DV standards. And the compulsory one where the federal government brought together industry and government to devise broadcast standards like NTSC.
      
      I also presented the history of how the Reagan admin wanted to let the market decide on a new AM-stereo standard. Predictably it was a disaster. Fearing a costly format war where losers have to pay TWICE, for the losing standard then the winning one… few broadcasters invested in equipment fearing few listeners could decode their signal and consumers were afraid to invest in radios that would not decode any station they wanted. The effort died relegating AM to low-fi talk/news/sports. No doubt in your mind whatever mess the market arrives at is inherently moral and superior because everyone’s “freedoms” were preserved. Lost in your fantasy are those who want to be FREE of such market madness. I don’t want two brands of electricity just to preserve some theoretical, but meaningless, right to choose. I want ONE standard that can power ALL my lights and appliances.
    - Dave in CT
      
      The problem is you think the “government” has some magical judgement about what the “best” way to build a DVD player is.
      
      There is no way some panel of experts is going to come up with that, without killing the overall competitive market.
      
      Today’s standard is tomorrows cobweb, and the panel of experts can never stay ahead of the empirical research on the ground.
      
      Our science system here, while single payer (NIH), funds a competitive pool of scientists all doing their best to advance knowledge and understanding.
      
      The NIH does NOT have a panel of mythical experts that already know what the science will say, or what the ultimate answers to questions are. It doesn’t work that way. It’s harder than that, and we wait for the competing ideas of the research community to flush out empirical reality.
      
      There is no reason the same is not true for other idea-based ventures.
      
      It would be NICE, if we could know all the answers, and impose them on ourselves for efficiencies sake, but we can’t, and competitively trying to figure things out is the best we can do.
      
      40 minds are better than 1. I think that such a marketplace of ideas concept is very much established, and is where I part from you/don’t quite understand, with regards to your positions on the market economy vs. utopian central planning.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      The problem with Dave’s fantasy is it seems to have an explanation for everything. Now that COULD be the sign of a well thought out philosophy, or it could also be a warning sign that it’s a seriously deranged belief system. I won’t go that far. I have my own libertarian streak. But I’m reminded of medieval Christianity where the entire universe could be seen as a war between good and evil. If you doubted that, it was just more proof evil was at work. Of course all the previous millennia of orthodox Christianity did was cover up the core contradictions of the Pauline split from Judaism… to sweep under the carpet Jesus was a Jewish rabbi who preached strict adherence to the Torah and make him into a savior to the Gentiles. But I stray… unless the Second Coming was in the news this week and I missed it.
    - nj
      
      It’s the Libertarian Cult Syndrome. Who could possible be against “liberty”?
    - GoingGoingGone
      
      Didn’t you know, “liberals” are against “liberty” – if you listen to the “libertarians”, even though the roots of the words are the same.
    - Dave in CT
      
      When was the last time you heard a modern “liberal” make a case for the mechanisms and benefits of liberty? It’s well known, that the classical liberal has become termed libertarian, and liberals have morphed into a great supporter of a large, centrally-manging state.
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  Evasion by another name would reek as sweet!
  - Hidan
    
    Notice his silences about Hayek coming to the states to take advantage of SS.
    
    http://www.thenation.com/article/163672/charles-koch-friedrich-hayek-use-social-security
    
    “Hayek initially declined Koch’s offer. In a letter to IHS secretary
    Kenneth Templeton Jr., dated June 16, 1973, Hayek explains that he
    underwent gall bladder surgery in Austria earlier that year, which only
    heightened his fear of “the problems (and costs) of falling ill away
    from home.” (Thanks to waves of progressive reforms, postwar Austria had
    near universal healthcare and robust social insurance plans that Hayek
    would have been eligible for.)”
    
    “A few weeks later, the institute reported the good news: Professor Hayek
    had indeed opted into Social Security while he was teaching at Chicago
    and had paid into the program for ten years. He was eligible for
    benefits. ”
    
    “Koch writes: “You may be interested in the information that we uncovered
    on the insurance and other benefits that would be available to you in
    this country. Since you have paid into the United States Social Security
    Program for a full forty quarters, you are entitled to Social Security
    payments while living anywhere in the Free World.”
    
    The documents offer a rare glimpse into how these two major free-market
    apostles privately felt about government assistance programs—revealing a
    shocking degree of cynicism and an unimaginable betrayal of the ideas
    they sold to the American public and the rest of the world.
    - ArnoldWalker
      
      He came to the US for SS; yeah right, we’re all working for the SS benefits we get to claim in 45 years. Getting your money back doesn’t seem like a right or left wing concept, seems like fairness; but go ahead and draw some warped conclusion that fits your bias Skippy, nobody’s stopping you
    - Hidan
      
      No problem since your wrong again.
      
      Hayek only paid into SS for 10 years not 45 before collecting. Doesn’t seem to fair.Your welcome to say uninformed all you like.
      
      Typical of conservatives.
    - Hidan
      
      “stay”
    - ArnoldWalker
      
      You missed the point gifted-one. No one works for the SS benefits, that’s just confiscated income that comes back fractionally. Go find a conspiracy that makes sense.
    - Dave in CT
      
      “With regard to a safety net, Hayek’s statements are mixed. On the one hand, he was prepared to tolerate ‘some provision for those threatened by the extremes of indigence or starvation, be it only in the interest of those who require protection against acts of desperation on the part of the needy.’[69] On the other hand, as referenced above in the section on “The economic calculation problem”, Hayek wrote that “there is no reason why…the state should not help to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance.”"
      
      What’s your red-herring point now?
      
      Maybe you can’t walk and chew gum at the same time, but having a liberty philosophy as a core, and recognizing the need for some limited government functions is not that hard. In fact, thats what most but the most “anarchic” of libertarians agree with.
      
      If you don’t have the capacity to read, or understand, The Road to Serfdom, and see its very rational cautionary value, informed by a logical philosophy, observations and realizations about human nature and history, and contemporary analysis of the rise of Nazi Gemany, thats your problem, and our loss.
      
      Enjoy attacking the straw men characterizations of your boogeymen that I have never described or defended. And say hi to Ultrax.
    - Hidan
      
      Your guy(Hayek) abused the system that he wrote/worked to destroy for others. Why would I believe someone like that or believe he’s not full of bs with his writings on the Road to Serfdom. Hayek saw no problem taking advantage of our social programs.Seems more like you can’t admit Hayek has turned out to be a fraud and while openly preaching one thing he was privately praising the thing he was against. The Straw-man(Hayek) as you call it is the basis for much of the philosophy you spout on here.
      
      BTW was Hayek threaten with extremes of indigence or starvation before he started using SS?
      
      Ultrax already pointed out the flaws in such belief so I don’t need to repeat them. As for Central Planning isn’t that how China works with a mixture of capitalism? How’s China working there dave as opposed to the U.S. and Europe?
    - Dave in CT
      
      “Your guy(Hayek) abused the system that he wrote/worked to destroy for others.”
      
      Pure, simple-minded B.S. conjecture.
      
      “As for Central Planning isn’t that how China works with a mixture of capitalism? How’s China working there dave as opposed to the U.S. and Europe?”
      
      You are truly frightening. Please move to China. See you under the tank, or more likely, simply bent over.

http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX

It’s official… Herbert Cain is just another right wing religious megalomaniac who believes God told him to run and credits him with his sudden popularity. He considers himself another Moses.
Video here…
�
http://culturecampaign.blogspot.com/

There really needs to be a mental health test before anyone runs for the most powerful office in the world. We’ve already seen what damage Bush, a megalomanic AND sociopath, did to this nation all the time believing God wanted him to be president.

FourMoreYears

Anyone else not surprised? Just part of the GOP circus.
Dave in CT

http://reason.com/blog/2011/09/23/why-9-9-9-is-even-worse-than-h
Gregg

“… this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and the planet began to heal…”

Megalomaniac?
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  At least Obama wasn’t presumptuous enough to say that was the moment the followers of the Orwellian Right would seek psychotherapy. Now THAT would be a miracle!
G_d

Yeah, I talk to him; I’d talk to you too but I don’t speak moron.
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  Sure you do… which is why it’s so difficult to make sense of your bizarre posts.

Ellen Dibble

Mark Shields to Jim Lehrer on the PBS NewsHour about the shibboleth or mantra (or Republicans) that government regulations are reducing the labor force. He said the Bureau of Labor Statistics (US BLS) keeps statistics of reasons for RIF’s, reductions in force, lay-offs, and the percent specifically with the reason of regulations was two-tenths of one percent. So: .02% of firings are due to government regulations. Someone will say that relates not at all to hirings that might have taken place or might be in the works. Yes, but on the other hand, regulations also create jobs. You need all those airplane checkers, and checkers to check the passengers getting onto those planes…

ArnoldWalker

The BLS, so one government agency is going to tell us what the impact is of regulations enforced by other gov agencies … have you seen the conspiracy loonies above on Iran, I’m sure they’d have a field day with this softball.
Anonymous

@ellendibble:disqus A much better and deeper analysis of why the Republican claim that regulations are a big factor in the current high unemployment is a false thesis is given by Lawrence Mishel in an Economic Policy Report:

http://www.epi.org/publication/regulatory-uncertainty-phony-explanation/

where the report can be read or downloaded as a PDF.

That thesis is further elucidated at his blog:

http://www.epi.org/blog/regulatory-uncertainty-jobs-problem/

It really is disappointing that so many for such crass motives keep repeating what is an easily DISPROVABLE as Mishel shows.

Gregg

The headline on Drudge is: “Obamacare unraveling”.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_LONG_TERM_CARE_PROGRAM?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-10-14-15-24-47
How many States are challenging the Constitutionality? Plenty. Obamacare is a ball and chain on the economy. It’s a job killer. Everything, including the economy and jobs, was put on hold while Obama rammed it through on a party line vote against the will of the people. It’s clear what a huge mistake it was.

http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX

More of your Orwellian rewrites of the past? Or are you in the early stages of dementia. I honestly can’t tell since your posts usually have little connection to reality beyond spelling people’s names correctly. The FIRST order of business when Obama took office was stabilizing the collapsed Bush economy. What should have been the second order of business was insuring it NEVER happened again. Was health care against the will of the People? Obama RAN on health care reform and I believe if you check, unlike Bush2, Obama WON the election. Are you going to rewrite his platform like you erased the fact that Clinton ran on welfare reform as you gave all the credit to Newt.�
- Gregg
  
  You’re so funny!
  - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
    
    No, but you’re running away from defending your own claims.
Anonymous

@327b60c55221432e499267aebfb70c09:disqus The drag on the economy is the RATE of INCREASE in healthcare costs. The PPACA (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) is a first step in reigning those costs in. Right now, NO ONE knows all the best things to do to achieve this, but this does achieve two really good things: it ensures that (almost) EVERYONE has insurance and it establishes a data collection system that will enable analysis of what works and what doesn’t so that a better payment system can be implemented. The right incentives need to be established.
It is usually true that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but right now it is difficult to know what kind of prevention should be provided and most of it is not covered by insurance because of that.As to the story in your link, you have totally distorted/misinterpreted the real meaning of the article. That is that to be affordable by everyone, the health insurance system needs to have all citizens enrolled to spread the risk, which is the reason that the PPACA has the mandatory purchase of a healthcare policy by ALL citizens. Since 80% of the health costs are incurred by 20% of the people, but no one knows ahead of time which group they will be in, there is a need to prevent citizens who think they are “healthy enough” to not need insurance avoiding paying for a policy until they are really sick and then joining a plan.That was the justification for insurance companies not covering “pre-existing conditions” in the past. Thus anyone who had played by the rules and had insurance but lost it for some reason (employment change, etc.) usually could not get coverage for some medical condition and had to rely on less than adequate government provided help (Medicaid, etc.) which left them with huge medical bills often leading to bankruptcy and destroyed lives. This rarely happens in the rest of the “developed nations” where universal health care is standard and it should not happen here.

This had the effect of people looking for work, or staying, at (large) companies with generous health insurance rather than looking for better or more enjoyable work in, say, a small startup, where they might be happier and/or make a big contribution to the well-being of the whole country.
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  No one knows how to reign in out of control heath care costs? Maybe not. But Single Payer nations know how to reign in all those needless costs associated with dysfunctional private sector run health care… and THAT’S our biggest problem. Unfortunately ObamaCare does virtually nothing in this regard.
  - GoingGoingGone
    
    Obamacare = Socializing the costs while privatizing the profits.
    
    Not much different than the system we already have.
    
    More like HMOs on steroids. Glad it’s failing.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      Yes, ObamaCare like RomenyCare in Mass are forms of corporate welfare. I was against this plan and only hoped it would pass to set the precedent… then it could be fixed later and we’d at least get a public option. But that was also AARP’s position on the defective Medicare part D bill… pass it now, fix it later.
      
      Sometimes things never get fixed.
    - GoingGoingGone
      
      Sort of like when government agencies get established they never get abolished.
      
      Government is good at creating more layers of broken, e.g., DHS
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      Sure, agencies and regulations (and laws) should have clear missions statements or statements of intent. My personal belief is all laws that exceed legitimate intent are an abuse of power.
      �
      But it’s also clear some criticisms of govt agencies are unfair. Reagan ran against the Dept of Energy claiming it didn’t produce a gallon of oil… implying it did nothing. Yet it was responsible for the design, testing, and production of all nuclear weapon… something dear to Reagan’s heart. Closing DOE down would NOT have saved what was then, I believe, a $10 billion budget. But it was a good applause line.

http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX

The plot and the accusations against Iran are just too bizarre not to be suspect. Arbabsiar, the accused perp is a clown playing a very real 007 game. Yet money was wired from overseas. I’m sure I’m not alone is suspecting a false flag operation but not by the US… but that the US was the real intended victim. Gee, who would have the desire and means to pull this off and raise tensions even more between the US and Iran? Israel?

Wm. James from Missouri

Conspiracy stories can be fun, like telling stories around a campfire. I try not to go down that route though. However, I have been wondering if this botched hit, might not have been a trade made by a drug ring and a payoff to our own people ? In other words, they dropped a dime on some braggart, for something in return. We are talking about Mexico and an area of the world where Heroin flows, due to our presence in the devils zone.
ArnoldWalker

Stupid and anti-semitic, a nasty combination.
- StupidandNasty
  
  Just because one suggests a county’s intelligence community might be behind a ‘false flag’ operation doesn’t infer one is ‘anti-Semitic’.
  
  I disagree with America’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that doesn’t make me anti-American or anti-English.
  
  The definition of Semite is:
  
  A member of a group of Semitic-speaking peoples of the Middle East and northern Africa – the most widely spoken Semitic languages today are Arabic, Amharic, Hebres, Tigrinya, and Aramaic.
  
  What you ignorantly implied is the above comment was being anti-Israel.
  - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
    
    I should have read your post. You already made the same point.
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  By your warped “logic” such as it is, if I distrust the our own CIA and believe Bush was capable of deceiving the American people and its allies into an illegal war of aggression, that would make me anti-American.
  Similarly, not trusting Netanyahu doesn’t make NOT me an anti-Semite.
  
  The only stupidity exhibited in this thread so far isn’t mineGrow up.

Anonymous

Are you dyslexic?

Steve__T

This was a reply to GretchenMO Disqus stalled then reposted it here

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_TPVGHR7OPH47B7OHA5OOQJQ5PM HB

It’s a hint that you need to do more thinking when you find Michelle Bachman on your side of an issue.

Michelle Bachman thinks a sales tax is a bad idea.

Ergo, it need a good look. In fact a sales tax does something very good: it taxes foreign goods just as much as American goods.

That means it encourages more American jobs at the expense of imports.

Any competent legislator will make a sales tax that EXCLUDES FOOD, CHILDRENS CLOTHING, etc., basics.

That’s basic! It’s distressing to hear the guest on the program so ignorant of these basics. Further, a common idea is to REFUND A BASIC ALLOWANCE TO FAMILIES FROM THE SALES TAX. It’s like, Tom had the least economically knowledgeable guest just when they discussed a very important idea: encouraging more AMERICAN JOBS.

http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX

Incomprehensibly, HB ventures: ” In fact a sales tax does something very good: it taxes foreign goods just as much as American goods.”

Not sure where you’re going here Sport… but can it be you want to DISCOURAGE foreign goods?
�
If so you don’t want a sales tax… you want a TARIFF!! In which case there won’t be any additional cost on American goods.
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_TPVGHR7OPH47B7OHA5OOQJQ5PM HB
  
  Don’t realize you can do both? More reading, more thought can help clarify. 2 separate issues here. A tariff on Chinese goods, after warning them and giving them a year or two, should be equal to exactly the estimated degree of subisdy for Chinese goods from their currency peg, no more, no less. But this has no bearing on the question of a sales tax.
  
  The idea of a sales tax requires some reading in economics to appreciate. It taxes consumption instead of jobs. There’s a hint.
  
  Most successful nations use one, and most to a significant level, like 15%, 18%, etc. Those nations have thrived with those levels of sales tax.
  - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
    
    �
    Why shouldn’t tariffs equal ALL the overhead US companies have to pay and foreign companies don’t? Those costs being good wages, overtime, benefits, holidays, vacations, Social Security and unemployment taxes, pollution controls, and for safe working conditions?
    �
    Once that’s done I’m all for “free trade”.
- ArnoldWalker
  
  What’s an American good? We mostly do finishing assembly of imported parts. How clueless can you be?
  - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
    
    Gee Brainiac… if an item is only assembled in the US from foreign parts then PLACE A TARIFF ON THE IMPORTED PARTS. That you find this so difficult to understand is shocking… or maybe not.
    - ArnoldWalker
      
      So what’s left sparky, what’s American, what are hopeless sheep like yourself going to be able to afford with all these tariffs. It’s hard having to explain you to you.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      I’m sorry the simple concept of placing tariffs on foreign parts/products crossing our border for assembly/sale here is still too difficult for you to understand. But then from reading your childishly nonsensical posts it was a long shot you’d understand anything. At least it’s not lost on the adults here.
    - ArnoldWalker
      
      hopeless sheep, trade protectionism will only hurt unproductive libbie parasites, you know who i mean

Far-Fetched

Re-Post: Iran plot called ‘far-fetched’ by analysts:

Former CIA case officer Robert Baer said “the Quds are better than
this. It they wanted to come after you, you’d be dead already.”

A more sober Stratfor Global Intelligence called the plot “far-fetched.

“Cautioning against claims against Iran, founder and CEO George Friedman said doing so “involve(s) substantial political risk.”

“Iran has been known to carry out preoperational surveillance in the United States, but it has not yet used this intelligence to carry out a high-profile attack.”He added that Iran has nothing to gain from committing a terror attack on US soil and everything to lose…

Former Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs PJ Crowley commented in the London Guardian, calling the alleged plot “far-fetched….(O)n the face of it (it’s) so fantastic that it begs a disclaimer….It’s unclear how much Iran would stand to gain by sanctioning or supporting this plot.”

Gregg

Now that Obama’s “jobs” bill (with $1.5 trillion in tax hikes) has gone down in flames and Bill Clinton has warned not to raise taxes in this economy, can we finally dispense with all this talk about soaking the rich?

http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX

Back to playing your games Gregg? You’re position isn’t that we should not let the Bush tax cuts expire because the economy’s bad. Your position is they should NEVER expire even when the economy’s good. For SIX MONTHS you’ve played your games EVADING the central issues I’ve raised. If We The People spent $13.5 TRILLION in the last 30 years and REFUSED TO TAX OURSELVES FOR IT… how is it “soaking the rich” to let tax cuts expire that were clearly IRRESPONSIBLE when they were passed? No, please don’t use the 911 excuse. Bush RAN on tax cuts and they were passed BEFORE 911. Bush had a chance to start paying down debt as he promised to do… and instead did everything possible to create MORE debt. In your warped world we should NEVER correct this mistake. And it’s not as if reverting to previous law negates those tax cuts. A tax cut doesn’t have to exist FOREVER for it to have reduced revenue. So Gregg WHO SHOULD PAY FOR OUR FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY? No, cutting spending will NOT pay down debt unless we again get back to where we were in 2001 where revenues exceed spending. But we’ve been there, done that. Please explain WHY SHOULD WE TRUST THE TAX CUT PSYCHOS ON THE RIGHT TO NOT AGAIN SABOTAGE DEBT PAYDOWN? At SOME point you need to confront your own delusions as well as the deception and irresponsibility of the Right. But I won’t hold my breath. A year from now you’ll still be here 24/7 spewing the same lies and distortions.
- Gregg
  
  Please don’t tell me what my position is. I am the world’s foremost authority on what my position is. The debate is over, the guru has spoken, no tax hikes in this economy.
  - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
    
    More evasions? You position is well known… yet you’re running from it? And you wonder why I say you’re playing games? Your position is you NEVER want to let the Bush tax cuts expire no matter how irresponsible they were to begin with… and no matter how good the economy might be in the future.
    
    Which leaves open all the other question’s you’re evading… like who should pay for OUR fiscal irresponsibility?
    - Dave in CT
      
      Who?
      
      Fed central planners and their political and Wall St. Banker cronies who engaged in self-destruction for profit, using government backstop, tax-payer bailouts.Capital should be forcibly taken from the corrupt banking industry to pay down our debts, as accountability/punishment. They should go out of business as a result. We will have to suffer whatever that causes, as punishment for our lack of vigilance/accountability over the years.Straight-up punishment claw-back.Start an organic supply and demand economy from scratch, isolationist for a while if we must, until we get back on track.If that’s what OWS was about, I would support it.
      
      Of course the chance of the bank owned military complex helping us get the money from the bank owned bank complex is unlikely, and so I should be as cynical and fatalistic as others around here I guess.
      
      Or just blame republicans.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      The obvious problem with your analysis is that much of the debt was NOT caused by bailing out the banks. It went to tax cuts and spending we didn’t have the courage to tax ourselves for. As for the big criminal banks, I find your sudden desire to expropriate all their funds to pay down debt they were NOT responsible for… rash, unprincipled, and irresponsible.Since they were bankrupt, I think they should have been nationalized back in 08, broken up, and put under new management with new guidelines… that they were prohibited from speculation and their only job was now to fund productive activities in the US economy.
    - Dave in CT
      
      Last I checked, the bailout and Fed activities have resulted in billions if not trillions of $ being hoarded, until the colluding crooks can identify the next sure thing. Even if all the hoarders are just playing by the current rules and with $ handed to them, the system/planners who arranged all this, have not acted in an open, transparent, democratic way, and I would be fine seeing an aggressive clawback, that was clearly defined as such. As long as the $ goes back to individuals to start a new more organic market moving again, and helps pay the federal debt.
      
      Frankly I wouldn’t mind seeing the $ all going back to the citizenry to start over, and if investment defaults occur, it will be tough love against irrationally-exuberant debt investors, as well as ourselves, for our failure in vigilant self-governance.
      
      I really don’t buy or respect the “big, global, so complex” arguments about the economy, putting it on an untouchable, unaccountable pedestal, that prevent a dramatic, one-time reform/restructure/clawback, that would be consistent with both liberty and justice.
http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX

BTW you haven’t said where you’re getting that $1.5 trillion number. If true it would just negate much of the Bush tax cuts that NEVER should have been enacted.

So in your mind, with $14.5 trillion in debt, just breaking even is unacceptable to you? OF COURSE IT IS. You want our generation’s theft of that money from our kids and grandkids to be set in cement.

How goddamn noble.
- ArnoldWalker
  
  There wasn’t anything wrong with the tax cuts, they should have cut spending as well. You can’t make a balance sheet with just one side of the ledger. Why don’t you start thinking about the other side, that’d be a big change for you.
  - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
    
    Let’s look at your “logic”. After some 40 YEARS of deficits we’re finally in a position to pay down what by 2001 was a $SIX TRILLION debt. Bush PROMISED he would do so. Instead Bush passes SIX ROUNDS of tax cuts even as the debt grows. In your mind, there was nothing wrong or irresponsible about those tax cuts except there were no spending cuts to match the loss of revenue. By 2001 the on-budget surplus had already disappeared which mean unless you cut spending in EXCESS of those tax cuts, there’d be no surplus to pay down debt. But by Orwellian Right logic, the debt doesn’t exist. ANY annual budget surplus is “proof” we’re overtaxed. Why is THAT time any better to fight with the crazies on the Right to pay down debt then BEFORE the Bush tax cuts were passed? At SOME point the Right has to abandon its political strategy of fiscal irresponsibility hoping to undermine Democratic Safety Net programs. The Orwellian psychosis needed to justify these irresponsible policies has taken a terrible toll in lowering the collective IQ of the nation and we see that in your posts.
    - Gregg
      
      2001:
      
      The Clinton recession as a result of the tech bubble bursting and the annihilation of the center of the financial universe on 9/11 might be worth a mention in any honest application of “logic”.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      Yawn. You’re on record in an older forum claiming revenues and employment were in free fall in 2000. I PROVED you wrong on both counts. 2000 was the BEST revenue year for Clinton, and the last 4 months of 2000 had unemployment down at 3.9%… better than ANY of Bush’s 8 years.
      
      YOU KNOW THIS IS TRUE: I PROVIDED YOU THE OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT SOURCES. Have you EVER officially retracted both claims? I recall you tried to weasel your way out with some nonsense about the stock market in March 2000.
      
      You ALSO KNOW that the recession didn’t officially start until March 2001. Yet you’re here AGAIN pretending it was the “Clinton recession”.
      
      As for 911, what bearing does that have on the Bush tax cuts which were passed BEFORE 911?
      
      Thanks AGAIN for proving if anyone wants honest postings, they need not bother reading any of your Orwellian Right rewrites of history.
    - Gregg
      
      Dude, the economy was a wreck when Clinton left office.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      You just LOVE to move the goal post don’t you Gregg? You original post was that revenues and employment were in free fall at the end of 2000. I PROVED both those claims wrong. 2000 was Clinton’s best revenue year and unemployment was a low, low, low 3.9% for the last 4 months of 2000. So you don’t retract, you just look for some sleazy way out.
      
      But I also admitted there WAS an economic slowdown starting. That was hardly a secret. It just was NOT an economy in freefall as you described it. So your original claims were 100% wrong…
    - Gregg
      
      The economy was in free fall, I’m sorry you didn’t see it. Clinton and I say no tax hikes in this economy. We also both say the recession started under his watch. Whose side are you on?
    - Gregg
      
      Dude, the economy was a wreck when Clinton left office.
    - Gregg
      
      http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/860170/posts
      
      http://old.nationalreview.com/nrof_luskin/luskin200405050850.asp
    - Gregg
      
      http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/860170/posts
      
      http://old.nationalreview.com/nrof_luskin/luskin200405050850.asp
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      Don’t think your GDP numbers add up either… showing in constant dollars growth through all of 2000.
      
      GDP-Real (Adjusted) United States
      
      2000 Q1 $11,033.6�
      2000 Q2 $11,248.8�
      2000 Q3 $11,258.3�
      2000 Q4 $11,325.0 �
      2001 Q1 $11,287.8 <==== drop
      
      source: http://www.data360.org/dataset.aspx?Data_Set_Id=354
      
      Gee… so NBER was right? ROTF
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      Ya, you’re Freeper GDP chart is deceptive since it implies a drop in GDP, when it’s really a chart of the drop in GROWTH of GDP… indicating a definite economic slowdown, NOT a recession. GDP was still growing when Clinton left office. Time to deal with fact Spanky… up to it? Didn’t think so.
      
      The article is playing the typical right wing game of playing with stats to imply NEBR is wrong, that the recession technically started during the Clinton era. But as far as the traditional definition of a recession goes, NBER nailed it for March 01. None of this is to say Bush wasn’t handed a slowing economy. Just because I take issue with your constant Orwellian rewrites of history doesn’t mean I don’t try to be fair. It was a much, MUCH, smaller problem than an economy in TRUE freefall that Bush handed Obama.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      G wrote: “annihilation of the center of the financial universe on 9/11″ Geeeeee Gregggg, since you use it so often, that’s got to be your favorite phrase. Yet I didn’t realize the NYSE or NASDAQ trading centers were in the WTC. And try as you crazy Orwellian Rightists may, Clinton wasn’t the one asleep at the wheel for 911. It was Bush’s head of anti-terrorism… Dark Vader Cheney who was more interested in dividing up Iraq’s oil fields even before 911 provided the lame pretense for an invasion. And even after 911 Bush had plenty of choices… one was to go on a peace offensive in the Muslim world while America had the moral high ground and isolate Al Qaida. Instead Bush chose to play the Ugly American… and start a de facto war on the Muslim world. There’s nothing like a good war or two to spread some moolah on the GOP’s military industrial complex. But it better fits you Orwellian Right rewrite of history to blame Clinton for everything. Oh well, no sense crying over spilt blood… ours and theirs. Bush and Cheney will never be indicted as war criminals even if they deserve to be hung from the gallows like other war criminals. The ability to write History is one of the trophy’s of the victors.
- Gregg
  
  I don’t know how you don’t know about the $1.5 trillion in tax hikes. Obama split it up and made two installments (the plan, how to pay for it) with his speeches. But I have to admit you’ve raised an excellent point. The number is a farce. Dollar for dollar returns do not happen. It’s not static.
  
  Please don’t tell me what in my mind. You have no idea.
  - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
    
    You’re not that complex Gregg. The only question that remains is whether you’re a True Believer who takes seriously the nonsense you spew here 24/7… or whether you get paid to spew nonsense here 24/7.
    
    Enquiring minds want to know.
    - Gregg
      
      I get paid $250 K.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      Thanks again for admiting you’re a paid shill… and that there’s a lot of money on the Right to spead its propaganda… not that you’re that good at it…. you’re at best on a 10cents per post level.
    - Gregg
      
      I get paid $250 K.
Steve__T

Here’s more:
“I personally don’t believe we ought to be raising taxes or cutting
spending until we get this economy off the ground. If we cut government
spending, which I normally would be very inclined to do when the
deficit’s this big, with interest rates already near zero you can’t get
the benefits out of it”.

Clinton responds. “I would organize a meeting. There are two big chunks
of money in this country, untouched corporate treasuries and banks.
Companies have $2 trillion but they’re not investing it. Banks have $2
trillion but they’re not investing it. I’d like to see him (Obama) have joint
meeting with these people and say, tell us what it takes to get the
money flowing again. We don’t have to borrow that from China. We don’t
have to run the deficit up. The money’s there.”
Newsmax:

Dave in CT

“Hayek’s influence on the development of economics is widely acknowledged. Hayek is the second-most frequently cited economist (after Kenneth Arrow) in the Nobel lectures of the prize winners in economics – particularly since his lecture was critical of the field of orthodox economics and neo-classical modelization. A number of Nobel Laureates in economics – such as Vernon Smith and Herbert Simon – recognize Hayek as the greatest economist of the modern period.[citation needed] Another Nobel winner, Paul Samuelson believes that Hayek was worthy of his award but nevertheless claims that “there were good historical reasons for fading memories of Hayek within the mainstream last half of the twentieth century economist fraternity. In 1931, Hayek’s Prices and Production had enjoyed an ultra-short Byronic success.” Samuelson spent the last 50 years of his life obsessed with the problems of capital theory identified by Hayek and Böhm-Bawerk, and Samuelson flatly judged Hayek to have been right and his own teacher Joseph Schumpeter to have been wrong on the central economic question of the 20th century—the feasibility of socialist economic planning in a production goods dominated economy.[74]”

wiki

Dave in CT

But of course since “libertarians” or heaven forbid, Tea Party types, raise his name, we’ll throw out his whole body of work and perspective.

That “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” attitude and knee jerk tendency, shown so frequently here, is IMO one of the largest problems facing us as a country.

Incredible political arrogance and demonization, that prevents an objective examination or our current situation, what got us here, and core values/philosophy of the nation.

Cutting off nose to spite the face…..

We are never going to make it with half a brain, and will deserve the mediocrity, decline, and worsening plutocratic tyranny by colluding politicians and organized capital that we bring on with our Me-generation grasping to political dogma above all else.

When a Democrat or Republican prefaces their view with a principled and honest EXPLANATION of the core “liberty” value, and THEN goes on to explain why his/her proposal is both consistent with that, and necessary to effect some desired change, then I’ll listen.

But they don’t value it, even if some may understand it, because it doesn’t offer them enough discretionary power to curry favor with drooling, corporate welfarists, or great entitlement expecting voters, both of whom they encourage out of self-preservation.

Our only hope is a clear and appreciative view of the value of liberty in the minds of our citizenry, so that at each point in the voting/choosing cycle, we are making choices that consciously are trying to realize the fruits of it.

Hidan

Some of the people citing Hayek,

Glenn Beck
said “The book clearly and logically explained how any form of central
government planning eventually leads to serfdom (or servitude) and
extinguishes freedom.

Worth looking at Karl Polanyi who made a case diametrically opposed to Hayek, arguing that unfettered
markets had undermined the social order and that economic breakdown had
paved the way for the emergence of dictatorship.

Also worth pointing out

:Gordon Tullock
has argued Hayek’s analysis predicted totalitarian governments in much
of Europe in the late 20th century. He uses Sweden, in which the
government at that time controlled 63 percent of GNP, as an example to support his argument that the basic problem with The Road to Serfdom
is “that it offered predictions which turned out to be false. The
steady advance of government in places such as Sweden has not led to any
loss of non-economic freedoms.”:

That’s right folks Sweden.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom

Reagan and the U.S. followed much of what Hayek wanted, Sweden did not.

Also how would Hayek describe China rise economically with it’s centeral planing and mixture of capitalism and the U.S. decline ?

Dave in CT

Do you really defend the lame logic, that X supported the ideas of Y, and I think X is an ass, so I throw out all the ideas of Y?

This is the shallow thinking that threatens our country.

So now we are so intellectually and politically lazy, if we have to choose liberty vs. China, we are choosing China.

Is this a joke?
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  What threatens our nation most is irrationality in ALL its forms including yours as a blind True Believer ideologue. Logically you’re no different than the Tax Cut Cultists on the Right like Gregg who are so obsessed they come here every day insisting that tax cuts perform wonders and create revenue booms when there is NO evidence to support that claim, and plenty that destroys any causality argument they make. In your case you’re adamant that something for which there’s NO empirical evidence for, and plenty that it can’t work, MUST work based on argument alone. �
  - ArnoldWalker
    
    Tax cuts with spending cuts will create an economic miracle. We get the fact that you believe in bigger government and penalizing the hardworking to support the lazy, self-interest no doubt, but parasites didn’t make America great.
    - Anonymous
      
      I think you mean it would take a miracle for more tax cuts and more spending cuts to help the economy. But whatever.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      What’s bizarre here is the troubles we have all go back to the Right wing ideas of the past 30 years… from free trade, deregulation of the commodity and banking sectors, irresponsible tax cuts, stupid if not illegal neocon wars, etc. Yet the Orwellian Right is so effective with its propaganda, combined with the cowardice of the Dems to stand for anything, that few realize this simple truth.
    - Dave in CT
      
      By all means reject the right wing conservatives.
      
      Just don’t throw out the liberty and financial sanity (that they TALK but don’t WALK) out with the bathwater.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      And the proof for your right wing dementia is….? There was no economic miracle either after the Reagan or Bush2 tax cuts. But there sure was a lot of new debt. And of course your fantasy neglects that little matter of paying that $14.5 trillion debt. As I’ve long said… the Right’s Tax Cut Cult has metastasized and now the GOP has become the Free Lunch Party. Let our kids and grandkids pick up the bill for our irresponsibility. How goddamn noble.
  - Dave in CT
    
    Or a true believer Dem? Or a true believer Repub?
    
    What a lame criticism.
    
    Or should we all follow so many here, who don’t really have any view or vision, but are content to bitch, moan and shoot down. What then? Anarchy?
    
    Do you guys with so much vitriol and no answers except, “more regulation” blanket statements with no explanation for situations like Fannie Mae, showing the “regulators” as part of the problem….
    
    or more spending our way back to the status quo, with a 14,000,000,000,000 debt?
    
    Or end the free market, when we have nothing of the sort with a manipulative Federal Reserve and Unsound money that so OBVIOUSLY have NOT served us?!
    
    Is the liberty-based American experiment perfect? Hell no!
    
    But you see the only model really left, is China, the most modern incarnation of Fascism (State-dictated capital “freedom”, No personal Freedom).
    
    You guys never, EVER lay out a reasonable alternative model, with details that demonstrate it wouldn’t be susceptible to what has happened here with the government and banks.
    
    A country, a Constitution MUST be built around a vision, a set of ideals to be realized by it’s execution.
    
    The alternatives are Anarchy, or Central Planning.
    
    If you all are so truly enamored with China, or Europe why not go.. and let America try to give the experiment in liberty a fair try. What we have had in recent history is NOT the liberty experiment, so keep your lame “we tried that and it didn’t work” arguments in your pants.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      I’m not a true believer in any party. I place principles first. When it comes to the major parties in the US I only believe the Dems are the lesser of the evils. I think they are a cowardly party, devoid of principles and full of contradictions they refuse to face to the point of being virtually braindead. I certainly won’t defend them when they sell out or blow it. That doesn’t mean I believe all the right wing lies told by the GOP… the party that is clearly more irresponsible and deceitful than the Dems. If these parties are the best America has to offer, no wonder we’re in trouble. As for China, I have no idea what the hell you’re babbling about. I’ve never said I favor the Chinese political/economic system. But I am in favor of government interventions in the economy… getting speculators out of the commodity markets, finding ways to direct banking money from speculation to productive investments. I favor government coordination of pharmaceutical research to lower prices, and Single Payer to reduce health care costs. I don’t believe public services should be privatized and I’m against free trade except with nations that share our overhead… good wages, benefits, holidays, restricted work weeks, unemployment and social security, pollution controls, safe working conditions. I believe the government should intervene in promoting more cooperation between companies in developing new standards instead of endless costly format wars. I also believe the government should invest when the private economy is too dysfunctional to move in needed directions like alternative energy. I could go on. What’s the point… it’s all be said before.
    - Ayzee
      
      No, it hasn’t. You’re obviously picking the Democratic side, and realistically, by picking a side (even as a “default”) means you are jumping on the bandwagon they want you to. Cite the issue, ignore the side. You can still come back from this haze of confusion as it’s one that’s purported to most Americans (well…. those of us who care enough about our country to take part). But when Dave says you’re supporting China, he doesn’t mean you necessarily support the economic/social structure they embue, but rather the personal economic gain that is CHINA. You want all this goodness thrown to you, and are willing to ignore that this is a real, very real, SCARY real threat to our wellbeing? Or country? Everything that we know and love? It’s really that real. It is. Read about it, for God’s sake look around. In China people are running over each other just for the OPPORTUNITY for things… and you’re supporting the argument that we should bicker and support the ENTITLEMENT mob.
      
      You can choose what you support. You can do it now, and not look back. We can all do this, it’s pride alone that stands in the way of just letting go of a pre-emblazened belief like this.

Dave in CT

I cannot believe people are explicitly encouraging the China model here.

Anonymous

No tax on school supplies? So business that use the same supplies pay no tax? how would you know who is buying what for what purpose? Does that mean that we have to create another Gov, office to over see this?
Medicine I’ll give you but it ain’t gonna happen.
No tax on food? except on exotic items or perhaps imports? There should be no tax on food but some states have a tax on consumable items, mostly it depends on what it is, fast food or precooked etc. if you tax imports you would have to have a tariff so no free trade agreement.

Sorry to many flaws

FromtheTitanic

Maybe never.

If you are not familiar with Quigley’s, “Tragedy and Hope”, he outlines the conditions necessary for an empire’s decline. (Other author’s have since added to his primary research.)

Most of the factors pinpointing to the ending of an American empire are already in place.

So, if the probability of America’s future is almost inevitable, then what do we have to lose trying to change our destiny?

Otherwise, maybe just try and enjoy the decline.

Trpf

I listened to this show and was amazed at the silly way that your guests treated some very critical issues. When you were discussing any conservtive politician, the “tittering and tee heeing” that went on reminded me of a group of middle school kids making fun of a new student. Grow up.

http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX

Cain’s 999 plan is perverted on numerous levels… the most egregious is it’s a tax on the poor while giving massive tax breaks to the rich. But then it’s just on steroids what ALL Republicans generally want to do… shift the taxes (or debt paydown) away from the rich.
�
One of the more amusing aspects of Cain’s 999 plan is the sales tax section will only will tax “new” items. It sounds good… a tax will only be paid once on an item. Buy a new car… 9% added on… a $1800 on a $20k car. Buy a used car… nothing. How long will it take before we kiss the auto and housing industries goodbye? Of course the rich can use the money they’ll get from whopping income tax cut from 35% to 9% to pay that extra sales tax. Since they typically can’t spend all they earn anyway, they’ll benefit handily.

GoingGoingGone

Though he claims to have received the idea from a bank employee named Richard Lowrie Jr. in Ohio, observers are now questioning if the true inspiration is the tax code used on the SimCity video game.

The game, originally invented in 1989 allows players to plan and run virtual cities. The fourth version of the game, which came out in 2003, taxes players nine per cent for industrial taxes, nine per cent for residential taxes and nine per cent for commercial taxes.

Sound similar?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2048969/Did-Herman-Cain-999-tax-plan-SimCity-video-game.html#ixzz1asPvwOjD
ArnoldWalker

Hey Edna isn’t your contention that the rich don’t pay taxes so now they’ll be paying something to support the economically (at a minimum) disadvantaged such as yourself. 9% is not going to stop anybody from buying a new house or car; seriously, think before you type. You crazy stupid!
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  So in your mind, such as it is… reducing taxes on the rich from 35%… probably an effective rate closer to 30%, down to 9% will get the rich to pay more?
  
  As I asked in the last thread… are there any intelligent right wingers here? Clearly not in this thread either.
  
  BTW Pickles, I NEVER said the rich pay no taxes now. You’re arguing against your own strawman… and STILL not bright enough to prevail.
  �
  As for a “mere” $1800 tax on a $20k isn’t going to stop a person with means from buying a cheap $20k car. But it will sure put a dent in the wallets of those who are going to be paying a LOT more under Cain’s soak the poor tax plan.
Anonymous

You’re forgetting that if you turn it upside down you get 666. The number of the beast. And a popular heavy metal favorite.
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  And Ronald Wilson Reagan had 6 letters in each name! Whoa!
  
  But then most suspected that!
  
  Seriously, in contrast to the Right wing lunatics that make up most of the GOP these days, Reagan seems like a moderate.

Dee

Jobs Bill….

Once again , the Republican Party shows its members are serving Wall
Street instead of Main Street…No doubt they will be rejected and be-
come the endangered species in the coming elections at ballot box.

Since the down turn in the fiscal situation they shamefully haven’t done
a thing to improve the economic situation for struggling and out of work Americans–by blocking the Obama agenda to bring help to ordinary
people. They deserve to become history as a political Party…..Dee

ArnoldWalker

Democrats voted against it as well, and what’s the point in proposing a bill that makes no effort to appeal to others. I know BHO hasn’t been in DC long, but by now he should understand how to govern. Got it, you want single party rule as long as it’s your party.
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  Gee… TWO Dems voted against the current proposal and that to you is proof it was bipartisan?
  
  Are there any intelligent right wingers out there?
  
  Not in this thread.
  - Gregg
    
    This bill was never intended to pass. It’s bogus. It’s all about bashing Republicans. It’s all Obama has left for 2012. You’re being played and it’s working. Sad.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      I’m not being played. Just because you are blind to the politics of the GOP doesn’t mean I’m blind to the politics of the Dems. Frankly it’s too little too late. Obama should have been forcing the GOP hand and exposing them as the lapdogs of the rich on day one. Who else will? Certainly not the mainstream media. What’s really amusing is it’s the GOP that’s unabashedly been involved in class warfare especially since the 80′s. The Dems cower, fearing the accusation will be made against them. That the Right can pretend merely restoring tax levels to Clinton levels is class warfare is proof of how disingenuous they are. Reagan’s top tax rate after the 1981 ERTA tax cuts were higher than Clinton’s top level by over 11%. Of course you’re blind to that simple reality. The bottom line remains… and the issue you continue to evade: that the Bush tax cuts were fiscally irresponsible. They were passed when We The People were SIX TRILLION in debt and those tax cuts prevented debt paydown. The other issue you continue to evade is who should pay for our generation’s fiscal irresponsibility. It’s clear you have NO intention of paying down debt but want to set the theft of now $14.5 trillion in cement. How goddamn noble.
  - ArnoldWalker
    
    We’re supposed to let leftwing nutjobs define it, ha. Does that qualify as highbrow thinking down on the commune sparky?
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      No, nor should we let RIGHT whack jobs do so, yet you rushed to do so. If something is truly bipartisan the voting PERCENTAGES by party should define it… not a few outliers as you’re doing. 2 of 51 Dems in the Senate comprising 3.9% of the Dems defecting… at least on this version of the bill, hardly makes the opposition “bipartisan”.
      �
      I ask AGAIN… I know it’s a contradiction in terms, but are there any intelligent right wingers out there?
      �
      Didn’t think so.
    - ArnoldWalker
      
      If an idiot can’t be trusted to identify another, I’m not sure we should rely on them to identify intelligence. So try again. Outliers, ha, the right and courageous. You just don’t get it. Are there any clear thinking leftwing nutjobs out there? So far none on this board.
Ayzee

You’re drastically over-victimizing the general public that’s marching on Wall Street. Public programs are and have been in place to support those who want to change their status. The key to this is a social mentality that this means youth have to focus their efforts early. Time is the one thing that we are all born with a capital of and claiming that funding for public schools matters is ridiculous. Those who want to learn, those who want to improve, those who have the heart find the way. I worked and studied in public high school and took out federally subsidized and private loans for which I am paying off still. Still, but it’s not uncontrollable. If I can change my situation based off the publicly available system, then there isn’t a problem.

Turn your eyes away from that and toward legislation that controls businesses in the support of American factories and American work forces. What does marching on Wall Street do? Thank you for harassing the market that’s also holding our retirement plans (that some of us are responsibly trying to save for instead of relying on social programs).

Anonymous

Great show, Tom. And it’s great to hear from Major Garrett. I enjoy his analysis. And Marvin Gaye. I enjoy his songs.

UnansweredQuestions

How can one believe their own government about anything when the highest levels within it are possibly complicit in fomenting derision against another nation?

“U.S. officials say they are certain the bizarre plot against Ambassador Adel Jubeir was real.

But some analysts say they are not. They find it unlikely that the
Iranian government, or legitimate factions within, would be involved in
such a tangled plot.”

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/12/us/analysis-iran-saudi-plot/

Michaelshanley@hargray.com

Know one likes dirrea but some times your body just needs to clean out the bad so congrass needs to cleaned out. Get it?

Ayzee

Yeah, appreciate the help in supporting the notion that we have a “sick” legislative branch, but breeze your stuff through spell check or read it first. One or two isn’t a big deal, but four or more in one sentence…? Not helping us.

Dave in CT

IMO

Our current situation is difficult to analyze and escape from because of 2 opposing situations:

1) We Americans have victimization/entitlement complex, supported by an oversimplified, if not leftist, mainstream pop culture, in which ones misfortune must be due to another’s malevolent gain. Ie, its a zero-sum world and you are either a good sharer or an evil taker. “Old-fashioned” values of working hard and a sense of self-sufficiency are looked upon as outdated, or worse, a fallacy.

2) We actually HAVE been victimized. Not by the vagaries of life or truly free markets and choices/consequences, but by a coordinated effort by Washington and Banking colluders who have created a rigged plutocracy, that makes the “Old-fashioned” values almost useless.

As I see it, unless we understand #2, we are left with the false conclusion that we need a new, non-market, socialist-type solution as the only solution. That such experiments have continuously failed historically seems not to matter in the face of exasperation.

Ayzee

My God, about the most succinct expression of what I would call the modern American Condition I’ve yet read. I can only hope that this message resonates with anybody else on this forum.
http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX

Nonsense. Accusing the Dems/Liberals/Progressives of believing in a zero-sum economy is old hat. The real problem isn’t that the economic pie doesn’t grow… it’s that the rich ARE getting all the gains.
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  Never mind… your second point covers my point. My apologies for responding without reading your entire post.
twenty-niner

Yes, the de-industrialization of the country has occurred in concert with the “financialization” there of. We’ve traded in building for betting. Of course building takes effort and is nowhere as much fun as high-frequency dice rolling.

In the end, banks may be too big too fail, but shareholders aren’t to big to get wiped out.

Dave in CT

“Romney Beating Obama in a Fight for Wall St. Cash”

NY Times

Yippee! Ready for the continuation of our Wall St Presidency?

Go Dems! Go Repubs!

Apologists of both parties have ruined our country.

Ayzee

Dave, you’re inspiring my hope in the idea that we can see past these two sides. Thank you for the open-mindedness, and for anyone else reading this, there is no shame in recognizing that we’ve been misled. None of us are born with the realization, we have to have it rammed down our throats. See this reality and know that with non-partisan (and uncorrupt) legislation we can bring our country back to what it should be. This is an understanding we all as Americans need to embrace, instead of continuing to point fingers. Lots of arguments here about “doing something for the other 99%”, but lots of people like myself started out lower and it’s completely possible for us to grow up. Not just as individuals, but as a nation. This partisan talk is avoiding the issue and indulging in slander and bigotry.
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  Dave, don’t be fooled by A’s initial calm and generous tone. S/he/it has an hidden agenda and will so go rabid as in a post above.

http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX

Cain is a true idiot… or a grotesquely deceitful con man. He’s now on Meet the Press claiming under his Soak-The-Poor 999 tax the poor WON’T pay more because his plan will drive down prices. He claims this though some laughable sleight of hand. Cain claims 999 will lower prices by getting rid of hidden (embedded) taxes. So a $2 loaf of bread now includes income/business taxes paid by the farmer, the baker, etc will be gone… so the price of bread will fall DESPITE the new 9% sales taxe. BUT THOSE TAXES WILL STILL BE THERE. Under 999 there will be a 9% income or business tax on the farmer and 9% business tax the baker. Taxes have NOT disappeared. They may be different rates than before….but those embedded taxes do NOT disappear. Cain then claims prices will be driven down by competition if this his plan will magically add this new force to the market.

Cain IS correct in one regard. He says stupid people ARE destroying America… and he must have been looking in the mirror when that bit of insight struck him.

Dave in CT

Cain vs. Paul on predicting the Economic Collapse

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=36914
http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX

When seeing that Cain is now the GOP frontrunner the rest of the world must at first be laughing at us dumb Americans, yet they also must be scared sh*tless to think America might even go more insane than it did during the Bush years. Right wing ideas of irresponsible tax cuts bankrupted our government. Deregulation of banks and commodity sectors crashed the economy. Free trade is a religion even as we have a jobless recovery. Yet the American Right has learned NOTHING from these failures. They are classic True Believers that have perfected denial and protect their insanity by finding scapegoats. Worst, they are dying to prove their ideas were handed down on a slab by promising next time not just to continue the insanity, but to go insane on steroids.

The rest of the world can’t be fearing for just America. They must be fearing for themselves.
- ArnoldWalker
  
  Oh font-master still beating the tired drum of tax cuts when it was all spending’s fault. This is the definition of insanity in action. You should sleep in, you’re obviously tired, not just tiring.
  - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
    
    Gee Arnold… at one point you almost sounded like an above room-temp IQ right winger when you admitted the obvious: there were TWO variables in a budget… spending and REVENUES.
    
    But it’s clear… and I suspected as much, that you’re just another Orwellian Right winger that refuses to admit revenues play ANY role in the federal budget even if in inflation corrected dollars federal revenues have only exceeded Clinton’s last year in TWO of the last TEN years. Your only use for revenues is to REDUCE them further.
    
    Yup… keep repeating that GOP mantra: there’s NO revenue problem… and there’s no such thing as an irresponsible tax cut even if we’re now $14.5 TRILLION in debt.
    
    BTW Einstein… interest alone on the debt totaled $2.9 TRILLION in Bush’s 8 years. I know your right wing Orwellian budget logic requires you abandon all common sense and sabotage your own intellect, but how long do you intend to keep ignoring that $14.5 TRILLION elephant in the room? Or are you as I suspect a Free Lunch GOPer who wants to set in stone our theft of that money from our kids and grandkids?
    - Ayzee
      
      Right, so who’s paying for this debt, ulTRAX? I am. You’re welcome. I didn’t even get a thank you from you. It’s too bad really. I’m working from 5:30 in the morning until 10:30 at night and living in a micro apartment in order to continue pinching off my college loans and start a savings account for my retirement while paying taxes to support YOUR (or at least the people your argument is supporting) retirement. Why? Are you enjoying your current luxuries while I penny-pinch? Do you comprehend the personal sacrifices those of us who are trying have made in order to get here? I know there are people who are “gifted” into their status in life, but some of us earned this, and earned it tooth and nail, and we don’t appreciate you taking “THE AMERICAN DREAM” out from under us because you want to sound high and mighty as some “supporter of the proletariate” which is the Lennonist card you’re trying to play. The opportunities are there.
      
      In the mean time, you’re welcome for your retirement. As is everyone else who votes for more federally subsidized programs that I’m paying for. I enjoy transiatively soaking up your laziness and pain.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      So much for thinking you were some reasonable person who wanted to have a discussion free of personal bickering. Please take your martyrdom elsewhere. I’m not interested in your whining especially when it’s been the Right that has been making it more and more difficult for people to put themselves through college… policies I OPPOSE. And you’re blaming me? FO
    - Ayzee
      
      I’m citing my own experience because it adds validity and weight to my argument. It’s a valid argument because I see this happen with my wallet and I know what I’ve done to get here. These things are real to me through experience.
      
      How did you get your degree, as I’m assuming you have one by your writings? How did you pay for that degree? How are you planning your retirement? What kind of lifestyle did you come from? These things bear weight in a discussion because they add dynamicism.
      
      It’s not a defense of “the right”, it’s this particular issue of spending being the issue and the notion of further taxation being the answer rather than control of the spending.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      Our discussion is over. You came here pretending to want a issue-only discussion and I was willing to engage in that with you. But it’s clear you were being disingenuous, are now taking threads off topic, making false allegations and personal attacks that I’m a Leninist because I want our generation to pay for what we spent on ourselves. But in case it’s STILL not obvious who’s waging the war against people such as yourself, all you have is look at which side has worked to destroy the finances of government to undermine programs that could help students… it’s the GOP. As states come under more financial pressure their own tuitions go up. Affordable higher ed is becoming a thing of the past. Back in the early 70′s when I received my degrees at a state university, a semester including room, board, tuition, fees and books cost about $1200. PT and summer jobs would easily take care of that. Yes, the cost would have been greater if not subsidized by the state. Now students are graduating with $50-100k or more in debt… and the GOP made sure in 2005 even bankruptcy won’t let one escape this debt.
      
      You seem to be bright so it comes as a surprise you’re so oblivious to the bigger picture and in the process cutting off your nose to spite your face. It’s the GOP that’s working to sabotage Social Security for myself and you. It’s the GOP that would rather piss away 350-450 BILLION a year on interest than ever see any of that money help US citizens. They’d rather bankrupt the US with military spending equal to the rest of the world rather than rethink their militaristic dementia and use some of that money help US citizens. In the mind of the Right spending, or deficit spending, that helps ordinary US citizens is unproductive and wasteful but if it’s for interest, tax cuts for the rich, needless military spending, or to subsidize private corporations… then it’s just peachy. If on some level you buy into the Right’s fig leafs that conceal their true goal of a nation that works for the wealthy and privileged and leaves everyone else behind, then don’t come crying or blaming me about your plight. I believe the public and private sectors bootstrap each other and an essential part of that is supporting affordable higher education as critical element in that effort.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      One last thought.
      
      Just what does that $14.5 trillion in debt represent? It’s that We The People have pissed away that money… $13.5 trillion in just the last 30 years, on ourselves, WITHOUT WANTING TO TAX OURSELVES for it. This debt cost us $2.9 TRILLION in interest alone just during Bush’s 8 years. Your notion that this debt can be dealt with through spending cuts alone is so naïve it borders on laughable because as soon as it ever approaches a annual budget surplus, the Tax Cut Cult will do as they did in 2000 claim ANY surplus is “proof” we’re overtaxed even if then we were $6 trillion in debt… and they’ll do the same even if next time we’re $20 trillion in debt. Yes spending should be cut. If much of this debt was the result of irresponsible GOP tax cuts starting in 1981, then a big part of the solution is REVERSING those tax cuts to recoup that lost revenue because those tax cuts… 6 rounds alone in the Bush years, were ALL passed when we were in debt. Despite what the Right claims there IS a revenue problem. In inflation controlled, constant dollars, revenues only exceeded Clinton’s last year for 2 of the past 10 years. The GOP NEEDS this debt. It doesn’t hurt the only constituency they care about… the wealthy, and it’s a key part of their strategy to weaken or destroy the New Deal and Great Society safety net for the rest of us… and it’s YOUR generation that’s most in their crosshairs.
      
      It’s time to grow up and smell the stench on the Right.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      Since NO debt has been paid down since 2000… it’s pretty presumptuous of you to claim YOU are paying it. While some debt recycles, it’s always growing… and you, like the rest of us, are merely paying INTEREST on that debt.
      �
      If you don’t understand this simple concept, perhaps you need to find a new college.
    - Ayzee
      
      Right, so if both of us own a joint credit account and we’re over our limit so badly that I can only afford the interest, but you’re not even contributing, and instead adding to the debt with the new “buy a new magazine subscription” program then I’m “paying the debt”. Is the debt going anywhere? No, because there are only so many people contributing when other people are spending the money.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      A, you’re a whiney, arrogant ass. You came here pretending to decry partisanship looking for some truth in the middle, and claiming wanting some discussion on the issues free of vitriol… only to betray your right wing agenda and foaming at the mouth against people you don’t know claiming you’re paying for everyone else’s bills. Gee, I could claim I’ve been paying for whatever college you go to… and all the infrastructure in the US… and I don’t even get a thank you. Would that make anymore sense? In the US we ALL have some intergenerational benefit from, and debt to, other generations. So take your whiny life story elsewhere. I’d don’t buy it and I can’t care about someone who lets those who ARE responsible for your problems off the hook while blasting those that do want to help your generation.
  - Ayzee
    
    In this, Arnold, you’re right. The problem lies largely with these programs we have, but don’t be too quick to pick a side (left or right). This is a game both are playing. Each has its own motives. They are businesses when you consider the “profit” of each being a less tangible item known as Power. The reality is that they are coercing both you, Arnold, and you, ulTRAX to pick a side rather than selecting an issue which can be viewed without the input of either parties. Consider the issue as though neither side existed. We have no need for the animosity. There are clear answers to our problems that any basic economist can recognize.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      I have to take issue with you on this one Ayzee. I’m not a Dem… and in a post below to Dave I explain my contempt for the Dems which I consider at best the lesser of the evils.
      �
      We needed to pay down debt when we had the chance in 2000 but both the Dems and the GOP floated tax cut plans. Bush’s was about 3X larger than the Dem’s but like them he promised debt paydown.
      No one forced Bush to go for all tax cuts and to sabotage debt paydown even as that Clinton surplus disappeared. Recognizing this fact doesn’t make me a Democratic partisan… only a citizen who remembers why paying down debt was important… and if it takes a reversal of those irresponsible policies that prevented debt paydown… so be it. They were the six rounds of GOP tax cuts passed when We The People were already $6 TRILLION in debt. �
    - Ayzee
      
      And I think we’re locked up on the fundamental understanding that taxes only come from people who are paying them. The clear analogy of a new credit card holder having overcharged his limit is pretty clear. You can’t just suggest that he make more money, he’s got to change his spending habits.
ArnoldWalker

But they’re lower. When an idiot call someone an idiot, it really makes you wonder. Love that mirror line, some of your best work. You’re credibility couldn’t get much lower.
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  Seems you still have problems reading for comprehension. Cain FIRST said those embedded taxes would be GONE. He NEVER said in that interview they’d still be there under a different form… which may OR MAY NOT be lower. You’re assuming overall taxes will be lower without proof.
  
  Cain, as are you, clearly is incapable of grasping the full implications of the other aspects of this 999 plan on prices (taxes on the farmers or bakers) or he’s being dishonest. And let’s not forget that there will be a new 9% SALES TAX on whatever the farmer or baker buys. So there’s now a NEW 9% sales tax on the farmer buying seeds… and NEW 9% sales tax on the baker buying the farmer’s grain… not to mention all their equipment/buildings… which you’re on record claiming no one will be dissuaded from purchasing anything because of a new 9% sales tax.
  
  Cain is proposing a magical plan where prices will fall because he CLAIMS they will fall. It comes as no surprise this plan appeals to you because from your posts it’s clear your acceptance of whatever the Right claims is in direct proportion to how deceitful or dumb their claims.
  
  AGAIN I ask… are they any, ANY, intelligent Right wingers out there????? Please… have all those on the Right truly sabotaged their own intellects? �
  - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
    
    Of course there IS a way for the farmer, the baker, and the consumer to avoid ALL of these new 9% sales taxes on seeds, grain, and bread. This sales tax only applied to NEW items. So the farmer can buy USED seeds, the baker USED grain, and the consumer USED bread.
    YES, Arnold… perhaps you’re correct!
    - Sam Walworth
      
      Yes I support you with my whole heart. However, please help me understand one aspect.
      
      When there is a 9% tax across the board, wont the farmer add 9% to his cost and try to pass it down to the baker? Similarly the baker would pay 9% taxes to the Farmer and add his 9% taxes as his cost and pass it down to the Store and store would add 9% and pass it down to consumer?
      
      So at the end, the cost of the bread (well, only the flour part here) would be 9% higher than what it was, and the consumer will share the burden with other consumers all by giving their 9% extra all the way up?
      
      Again, I am not here to prove or disapprove anyone, just want to understand for my own good, and you appear to have better understanding on the aspect than I have for the moment.
      
      Will be looking forward for your reply, sir/madam
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      Greetings SW… It’s hard to say what the final price of this theoretical loaf of bread would be because the new 9% sales tax would seem to accumulate at each stage of production and there would certainly be other embedded taxes… the farmer’s, baker’s store owner’s own 9% individual or 9% business tax. Cain claims all those embedded taxes will disappear dropping the overall price, and only the final 9% tax will be paid. I don’t see it. The only caveat I’ve heard on what would not be subject to this sales tax are USED goods… Cain said nothing to indicate the sales tax would only be on retail sales nor is there any mention of this at Cain’s site:
      http://www.hermancain.com/999plan
      
      9% National Sales Tax.
      Unlike a state sales tax, which is an add-on tax that increases the price of goods and services, this is a replacement tax. It replaces taxes that are already embedded in selling prices. By replacing higher marginal rates in the production process with lower marginal rates, marginal production costs actually decline, which will lead to prices being the same or lower, not higher.
    - Ayzee
      
      Yes, that’s the logical conclusion, but you really don’t have to specify that it would only be the grain. The salt, sugar, yeast, etc. would also be taxed. Well, truth be told- don’t know how salt would be viewed as a mined resource. That’s foresight we don’t have as it’s just a proposition. The reality is, everything would cost more except things made outside the US and imported. Is it possible now that we see an import of FOOD to us???? Could it be that this sells out one of the last things our country has left that legislation hasn’t completly thrown under the bus to China? Where does it all end?
      
      This whole business of the 999 tax is a diversionary thing though. Everybody look back at Congress, it’s over there, more or less doing nothing to control the currency manipulation of China or the complete lack of trade protection for American workers. Look back at the idea of realistic and comprehensive labor laws which keep us buying from American owned AND American operated businesses (rather than providing easy loopholes for a corporation to find a cheap way out of). I’m not defending the ludicrous “Walk around Manhattan” or “Occupy Wall-Street” or whatever you want to call it, it’s got to be more thought out than the insane mob-mentality hooplah that’s created. We need realistic legislation that PROTECTS American corporations by FORCING them to maintain American assets (like workers and resources).
  - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
    
    I neglected the 9% sales tax when the store buys the bread from the baker. So while Cain is claiming to get rid of all embedded taxes in a loaf of bread… there seem to be no end to them…. and this is just the sales tax aspect of 999.
    
    The farmer pays 9% sales tax on seeds…
    
    The baker pay a 9% tax on the grain from the farmer…
    
    The store pays a 9% tax on the bread it buys from the baker…
    
    The consumer pays a 9% tax when s/he buys the bread…
    
    To get around these sales taxes there will be immense pressure for complete vertical integration… when the store owns the bakery and the farms. Or stores will rent shelf space to bakers. Or stores will become coops so consumers aren’t buying from 3ed parties. The 999 scheme will disrupt the entire economy as it struggles to avoid these punitive taxes. A Value Added Tax would prevent this but that’s not what Cain is proposing.
    
    All of the above in the bread example, except the consumer, will be also be paying either a 9% income or business tax that gets factored into the price. Anyone can see the problem in seconds if they think about it. Cain HAS to know these taxes will pile up… and is lying when he said his plan eliminates embedded taxes. OR… and this is very possible, he’s really not that bright.
  - Ayzee
    
    Please, let’s be careful. This shouldn’t be about which “side” we’re picking. These are ISSUES not ORGANIZATIONS we’re talking about. You can agree on some and disagree on others. Let’s fuel THAT logic in our discussions! This is what we’re supposed to be supporting here. This is the purest form of our freedoms, to decide. And the decisions happen on an ISSUE, not on which group to follow blindly over the cliff.
    
    Talk on the ISSUE.
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      You’re correct of course. But sometimes when someone is denying that X is X, then their intransigence is so interjected into the issue it becomes almost inseparable from it. I admit I have little tolerance for stupidity… either mine or that of others. If I screw up, I’ll eat crow… it doesn’t taste than bad. The alternative is a head full of wrong ideas and bad data. I’d like to think others feel the same. But I know that’s not true. Sarcasm might not go over well with others and it’s pointless to say just about every post AW’s made in the past few months prove him to be a snot. After debating on-line the same Orwellian crackpots for close to 20 years, I have little patience left. And that’s a sign that I need to leave.
    - Ayzee
      
      Right then, goodbye.
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  If you only put as much thought into the quality of your thinking as you do your sarcasm, you might actually get that GED!
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  If you only put as much thought into the quality of your thinking as you do your sarcasm, you might actually get that GED!

Hidan

Race and Herman Cain
http://m.sltrib.com/sltrib/mobilemobileopinion/52720849-82/black-cain-herman-racism.html.csp

“Modern social conservatives, in my experience,
do not hate black people en masse. To the contrary, there are two kinds
of blacks they love.

The first is those, like Rice, who are mainly
mute on the subject of race, seldom so impolite as to say or do anything
that might remind people they are black. The second is those who will
engage on race, but only to lecture other blacks for their failures as
conservatives conceive them. And that, friends and neighbors, is Herman
Cain all over.”

“It is a claim spectacularly at odds with
reality, given that African-American unemployment runs twice that of
whites, given that the Agriculture Department admits to systematically
discriminating against black farmers, given documentation of a “justice”
system engaged in the mass incarceration of young black men.

But what made the claim truly bizarre is that
two days later, Cain branded himself a victim of racism. Specifically,
he said some black people are “racist” because they disagree with his
politics. So blacks aren’t held back by racism, but Cain is?”

B88

It’s sweet that you view this all as a one way street; where people are either racist (in YOUR view) or not (in YOUR view). It’s quaint, really. A completely polar world is one shared only by those who choose a side. Let us see past guarding a single partisan candidate in an argument and focus on an issue rather than a personal vendetta or “our team”. Choosing one of the sides here is as blind as your accusation. Assert an issue rather than simply bashing an opponent. If you truly believe that all “selectivity” and “objectivity” (which are the true bases of political racism) is sided with one group and that you, by arguing for the popularly accepted approach, are somehow vindicated, then you do none of us justice. Throwing around the racism card is an old one, and hopefully the other readers here can review what your argument is and not simply be weary of your accusations (however false). Maintain your focus, realize that those numbers are CAUSED by things and not just REPRESENTATIVE of things, and then return an argument.
- Hidan
  
  Focus away, Prove what I quoted as wrong. Feel free to believe what you want but there is ample evidences to prove my point. All you done so far was to say i’m wrong because you disagree with what I said. You provided nothing to back yourself or your claims about me other than….nothing.
  
  As I stated before Not all conservatives are racist but most racist are conservatives. Check out the states with Republican control of the House/Senate and Governorship and you will often find bills or attempts to pass laws that discriminates against minorities,gays, etc. in one way or another.
  
  Unlike yourself if you want or need proof I’ll provide it.
  - B88
    
    Go ahead, grab some proof of trends. That’s trends, not individual bills. You didn’t provide any proof in your original argument either, so hold back on jumping down my throat until you hold up your side of that.
    
    And what’s with the “foaming at the mouth” business? I can understand some heated disagreement or emotion, but there’s no need to just be blatantly rude. Geez, really shut somebody down on bothering with joining this stuff.
    - Hidan
      
      A few things before I respond,
      
      1. I responded to B88 not Ayzee, judging from your comment you are one and the same2. If you are one and the same it begs the question why you would use B88 instead of Ayzee. 3. Read above and you’ll see it I didn’t make the foaming at the mouth comment.Now for Cain,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U63UBXcQzYoCain goes on Neil Boortz who stated the primary people to blame was the victims of Hurricane K were worthless parasites.
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U63UBXcQzYoHerman Cain Promotes Discriminating Against Muslim. Stating communities have a right to ban Mosque.
      
      http://www.hassanshibly.com/2011/07/herman-cain-promotes-discriminating.html
      
      Herman Cain, A Perfect Racist
      Herman Cain continued on his trail of silly statements this week by saying that racism is not a factor in economic inequality in America.
      The candidate argues that educational and geographic differences
      account for disparities in wealth levels and unemployment. The statement
      is curious, because these words serve as further evidence that Cain
      never studied structural inequality in school. Also, to continue Cain’s
      argument, inequality exists because black people are either naturally,
      culturally or strategically inferior to whites, which is the convenient explanation taught to us in White Supremacy 101.
      
      http://thyblackman.com/2011/10/11/herman-cain-a-perfect-racist/
      
      But Cain was also able to evade Jim Crow by willfully standing to the
      side in the fight for Civil Rights (yes, he has admitted that he avoided the Civil Rights struggle)
      http://newsone.com/nation/casey-gane-mccalla/msnbc-host-criticizes-herman-cain-for-sitting-out-civil-rights/
    - http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
      
      Yes, one does wonder why s/he/it created a new user name when it was pretty clear it was the same person.
    - Hidan
      
      As for trends,see onpoints War on voting where mainly republican control states are attempting or passing bills that would largly discriminate against it’s minorities,Or the Arizona or Alabama laws mainly done under Republican control states that encourages and discriminates against there Latino minorities.
      
      Notice when Republicans take over discrimination goes up
      
      War on voting
      http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/10/17/voting
      http://mobile.latimes.com/p.p?m=b&a=rp&id=1010028&postId=1010028&postUserId=7&sessionToken=&catId=6221&curAbsIndex=1&resultsUrl=DID%3D6%26DFCL%3D1000%26DSB%3Drank%2523desc%26DBFQ%3DuserId%253A7%26DL.w%3D%26DL.d%3D10%26DQ%3DsectionId%253A6221%26DPS%3D0%26DPL%3D3
      
      DWS: GOP wants to bring back ‘Jim Crow’
      http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0611/DWS_GOP_wants_to_bring_back_Jim_Crow.html
      http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/10/10/alabama-immigration
      
      Republicans discriminate against gay N.C. residents
      
      http://www.news-record.com/content/2010/12/03/article/republicans_discriminate_against_gay_nc_residents
      
      The Republicans may also attempt to repeal the School Violence Prevention Act, which protects against anti-gay bullying
      Promoting Discrimination In Virginia
      
      http://www.ohiomm.com/blogs/blog_mass_destruction/2010/02/23/promoting-discrimination-in-virginia/ID=10261/
      Republicans Triple Budget For Defending Gay Marriage Ban
      http://jezebel.com/5846760/republicans-triple-budget-for-defending-gay-marriage-ban
- http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/ ulTRAX
  
  Gee… you’re new here but your writing style and tone are identical to Ayzee. We’ll know if you’re one in the same if you, too, start foaming at the mouth. Otherwise welcome!
Gregg

What’s it like to see the world only through the lens of race?

…Never mind, I don’t want to know.
- Hidan
  
  Comedy fail.
  
  Greggs living in a fantasy
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v86UG6WYlJk

david

The National Debt is at $14.8T and still trucking on. Obama has been in the drivers seat for nearly three years and he has added to it almost $5T. I am sure glad he took the keys to the truck from the Repubs. and put them in the back seat. He can no longer blame Bush because Biden has stated on record that we (Obama/Biden) are incharge!�
Obama is on record stating that Americans are worse off than they were four years ago. Now, that I can believe!

Ayzee

Of course, $14.8 trillion is entirely based upon China blatantly lying about what it’s money is worth, so really what do we owe them? Hey, my dollar is really worth four dollars, so if I loan you 5, you owe me 20. We need legislation that defends American interests. This doesn’t come from presidents. All of them make propositions, but it’s Congress that levies federal taxes and trade regulations, so let’s ignore the president when it comes to these issues and LOOK AT CONGRESS!

Ayzee

There are other aspects to the 9% sales tax. The lack of a sales tax in states like New Hampshire are some of the fundamentals to their basic state revenue plans. They have frequent toll road taxes on primary incoming roads because ski-based tourism helps their economy. FORCING upon them this tax reduced the effectiveness of this scheme (I know everyone gets the tax, so on a planar scale they all appear the same) but the idea of a sales tax free state is a selling point. When you can’t say that anymore, then it has an effect. It’s other states’ agendas forcing their will upon another’s. Is this not what we had a scuffle over (truly, look back at history and not hype over this one) in the 1860′s? The states don’t get anything out of a federal tax, so how do they cover the difference?

MoneyForNothing

Money is a fiction. Money is created out of nothing.

Fractional reserve banking is a system of control.

Taxes are the symptom of that diseased system.

Cancel all debt. Eliminate all interest on money.

Government serves the people – not the other way around.

Sociopaths make economic slaves out of us from the myth of money.

Dave in CT

Once we went to un-sound money, putting all its value in the hands of a DISCRETIONARY, non-accountable central banking cabal, that all became true.

We need a “money” to represent value to trade beyond direct barter.

Having its value constrained by tying it to something of value such as gold/silver etc, keeping the grubby hands of politicians or scheming bankers OFF of it, is our only hope. That’s why such a concept arose in the first place historically.

Tricky Dick took us off gold for good. If you don’t trust the guy, don’t trust that part either.

You have all seen what the discretionary control of the money supply, Greenspan and all the Fed/Treasury cronies, and their arrogant/ignorant technocratic dream of playing God with our economy has done.

ECONOMICS IS NOT NOR EVER WAS/WILL BE A HARD SCIENCE, UNTIL WE ARE ALL ROBOTS (almost there….).

As such, the notions of PREDICTABILITY AND PRESCRIPTIVE CONTROL are ILLUSIONS, maintained by politicians and bankers that rig the system with their DISCRETIONARY CONTROL.

Rule of Law, is the concept of NON-DISCRETIONARY LAW, equally and dispassionately applied, to prevent the corrupting influence of man’s human nature.

This is why the liberty perspective of free markets is so radically (compared to status quo) different than todays faux-free-markets that is nothing but a centally managed whore-house.

Please look into it yourselves and broaden the discussion.
Dave in CT

Once we went to un-sound money, putting all its value in the hands of a DISCRETIONARY, non-accountable central banking cabal, that all became true.

We need a “money” to represent value to trade beyond direct barter.

Having its value constrained by tying it to something of value such as gold/silver etc, keeping the grubby hands of politicians or scheming bankers OFF of it, is our only hope. That’s why such a concept arose in the first place historically.

Tricky Dick took us off gold for good. If you don’t trust the guy, don’t trust that part either.

You have all seen what the discretionary control of the money supply, Greenspan and all the Fed/Treasury cronies, and their arrogant/ignorant technocratic dream of playing God with our economy has done.

ECONOMICS IS NOT NOR EVER WAS/WILL BE A HARD SCIENCE, UNTIL WE ARE ALL ROBOTS (almost there….).

As such, the notions of PREDICTABILITY AND PRESCRIPTIVE CONTROL are ILLUSIONS, maintained by politicians and bankers that rig the system with their DISCRETIONARY CONTROL.

Rule of Law, is the concept of NON-DISCRETIONARY LAW, equally and dispassionately applied, to prevent the corrupting influence of man’s human nature.

This is why the liberty perspective of free markets is so radically (compared to status quo) different than todays faux-free-markets that is nothing but a centally managed whore-house.

Please look into it yourselves and broaden the discussion.

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From Tom’s Reading List