Republicans & Conservatives Archives

You know something, Your president and vice president aren’t exactly drawing a welfare check back home. Neither are many of their advisors.

This is a nonsensical use of class politics. I suggest you take a realistic tack against your opponents, not this pot calling the kettle black stuff.

When the Texas Rangers baseball team was sold in June, 1998 George W. Bush’s percentage of the take was $14.9 million dollars. His initial invstment was $600,000.

A “man of the people”, my ass.

There is nothing wrong with making money, if you are good at it and don’t resort to illegal tactics. What I disagree with is the way Bush and his PR people portray him to the media. He’s a spoiled rich boy who used family influences to accumulate his wealth and power. Selling yourself to the American public as a man of the people is dishonest and immoral.

No one is asking anyone to give up thier wealth, it’s just a little tax hike. I’m sure Hillary and the rest of the ‘evil rich liberals’ are going to be more than happy to pay the higher taxes once they are reinstated. I’m also sure that a tax hike won’t break any of these people.

How many poor inner city blacks could be afforded a real chance at the American dream if Heinz gave up just half of her wealth? She could easily give thousands of poor inner city children a $100,000 trust fund for college and a real chance at the American Dream for just a fraction of her wealth.

C’mon, Eric, you sound like a commie! I know you don’t believe that. I really don’t see any hypocricy here.

Eric!!! You surprise me. I didn’t know you were a marxist!!

Power to the proliteriate!!! You and I finally agree. I agree the inhertances and trust funds should be reasonably taxed. I also think Income should be reasonably and prgressively taxed.

I disagree that the wealthy should be punished or despised for enjoying the finer things of life. Their wealth should not be taxed into oblivion as the middle class and poor should not.

The Wealthy should remain wealthy, but be taxed to assist the poverty stricken and uneducated to achieve a better economic status. It is Noblesse N’oblige. Let’s remove the loopholes.

Welcome to the Democratic side, Eric.

Now, if we can only get the Republican Congress to agree. I’m glad you’ve stopped being a dupe of the Elitist Right.

I don’t have a problem with the rich being well, rich, but I do have a real problem with the statement by the Senator from New York.

I’m curious Stephen, Cameron, et al, does that statement bother you? Is it something you just write off as out of context or maybe a bad choice of words, or does the fundamental meaning of that statement parallel your own political ideology?

“We’re saying that for America to get back on track, we’re probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”

I think, what Hillary Clinton is talking about here is not the “taking away” of money through higher taxation, but rather a reminder that in times of need (as we are in now) that the American people must be willing to sacrifice to get the country back on track. During WWII, we sacrificed by paying higher taxes and suffering the rationing of things like iron and gasoline. To think that the $150+ billion spent on this “war” in Iraq is going to come from nowhere is faulty reasoning. Anyone with common sense will realize that taxes will need to be raised to recoup the costs of this “war.”

While I am in favor of the lowest taxes possible without bankrupting the government, I’m also in favor making sure that the tax rate is fair to all Americans, not just the rich and not just the poor.

In this sense, I believe it is un-American to demand and expect unnecessary tax cuts, especially in these times of “war”. With war comes sacrifice - and those who can afford to sacrifice more should be proud to do so.

You wrote:

If anyone needs to take one for the team it is millionaire liberals.

It’s good to see that you and Hillary are in complete agreement. Of course, I’m sure that all the selfless rich conservatives will be equally overcome with patriotism and pony up a comparable amount for the team, too, no? Wouldn’t want to be shown up by a bunch of generous Democrats, would they?

No one is asking anyone to give up thier wealth, it’s just a little tax hike. I’m sure Hillary and the rest of the ‘evil rich liberals’ are going to be more than happy to pay the higher taxes once they are reinstated. I’m also sure that a tax hike won’t break any of these people.

That’s exactly my point dave. No one is talking about giving up their wealth. Their talking about having someone else give up their income who are trying to get wealthy. There is a fundamental hypocrisy here with taxing income which is actually exacerbated by the continued policy of making it progressive besides. Income is for those who are trying to get wealthy. Trying to build capital. What do we do for those who are trying to accumulate capital? Tax them more! “How dare they try to attain our strata. Why we were here first!” It’s the oligarchy trying to keep the rest of us down. (See Nader has his good points.)

After all the tax cuts were just a little less for the government. Surely they could trim SOME of the fat in the federal budget first?

The issue I see here is that the evil rich liberals support ‘progressive’ tax rates which limit competition by taxing incomes rather than actual wealth. The argument I always hear from liberals is that, ‘No one needs to make that much money.’ That’s why I’d propose a tax on wealth. See how quickly Kerry et al would change their mind if we taxed assets at a yearly percentage the same as we tax income. After all if you didn’t earn it in the first place you shouldn’t be that attached to it. I’m talking about inheritance and M.B.M.. That is, “Money By Marriage.”

30% income tax rate? Why not a 30% levy on all Kerry/Heinze assets yearly as well?

Aren’t you guys with me? Throw off your capitalist limosuine liberal oppressor’s chains!!

I disagree that the wealthy should be punished or despised for enjoying the finer things of life. Their wealth should not be taxed into oblivion as the middle class and poor should not.

The Wealthy should remain wealthy, but be taxed to assist the poverty stricken and uneducated to achieve a better economic status. It is Noblesse N’oblige. Let’s remove the loopholes.

I agree greg, let’s start with repealing the income tax and just taxing the wealthy.

I think, what Hillary Clinton is talking about here is not the “taking away” of money through higher taxation, but rather a reminder that in times of need (as we are in now) that the American people must be willing to sacrifice to get the country back on track.

…While I am in favor of the lowest taxes possible without bankrupting the government, I’m also in favor making sure that the tax rate is fair to all Americans, not just the rich and not just the poor.

Cameron, You’re talking about fairness. What is fairness? When there are people starving in America during this ‘worst economy since the great depression’ is it really FAIR that one person has two billion dollars? Think about it for a moment. Then expand your mind outside our borders for another moment… Heinz has more money than some countries do. People are starving. Heinz… money. People… starving. It’s not really a choice is it?

30% income tax rate? Why not a 30% levy on all Kerry/Heinz assets yearly as well?

Teresa Heinz is the head of a multimillion-dollar Foundation dedicated to philanthropy and giving away money for the benefit of mankind and the greater good. This is what people do when they have too much money. Rather than just give up 30% of it the Federal government with no say in how it is to be spent (like on unnecessary wars), they instead focus on giving money to causes they care about.

As far as I know, there is no Bush Family Foundation (though they have a good track record of church donations) or Cheney Foundation dedicated to philanthropy. And even when there are signs of philanthropy form the wealthy base of the Republican party, all the signs point to them being up to no good.

Eric,

You’ve finally made it, you are now officially a liberal, where’s my kleenex(sob-sniff) I’m soo proud.

But seriously Eric, power to the people??? You don’t believe in power to anyone unless it serves Bushie election time objectives am I right? Of course I am, Alex Keaton.

In the words of your new republican bunkmate Dennis Miller “…people see through that stuff like used Neutragena.”

Okay we have two ultra-wealthy people running for president. The incumbent from big oil and the running candidate hailing from I guess, big Ketchup. Okay Kerry’s plane uses alot of feul but have you heard those damn stewardesses caterwall? Along with “Peter, Paul and Mary” on his tour bus? (actually living there I think). Abu Ghraib’s got nuthin’ on what this man has been through. Yes, his means of travel may not be all that fuel efficient but the only option he has is to drive faster before they break out in another DAMN chorus of “99 bottles”. Kerry uses more fuel-but I’ll bet cash money he makes record time!

Bush has so many tax write-offs, um I mean wonderfully compassionate charities right, name one!!! And Teresa Heinz has undoubtedly the same deal, name one of hers!!!

Oh you don’t want to do that much homework? so what’s your point then if you didn’t do the homework neccessary to support your piece??

It’s clear you don’t know either side’s charities, no offense. But welcome aboard liberal! because Watchblog is currently having a shortage of leftists.

This is why I feel a flat tax would be a great thing for our country. Those with more money (whether it be from dividends or salaries) would pay more in taxes. Those with less would pay less. But each American would pay a fair share. It’s just not right to ask some to pay a much higher rate than others, simply because they have been more successful.

Think about if you asked Shaquille O’Neal to shoot less from the inside, simply because he has a higher shooting percentage than others do. Or if you asked Tiger Woods to hit tee shots from his knees simply to even out the playing field.

Eric is right that many liberals want a redistribution of money, at least as long as its not theirs. I spoke to someone this past week—-they complained about CEO’s making $5 million a year and more. “Who needs that kind of money to live—they should never be allowed to have so much”, they said.

The conversation took an entirely different tack when I asked about this person’s 40 foot yacht, half milion dollar home, Colorado ski trips etc. I asked, ” Who really needs a yacht, or ski vacations…..how would you feel if we sold the boat and gave the money to charity?”

The conversation ended. No surprise.

ERIC, on your 1:56 post-

Duuude, you are doing this all without mentioning your boy Bush now aren’t you? The Bush family are good wealth and Kerry is bad wealth, I like it’s different.

I personally actually do feel the same way about the situation of wealth in respects to the power it buys in America-Huffington/Frist et al. But if you want to see any of that stuff that you are espousing you may find yourself pulling the democratic lever come November because that which you espouse is exactly what Kerry has on the table. To raise taxes on the wealthy exclusively.

But Bush money is goooood people money right??? Kerry money Baaaaaad people money, am I getting warm?
Ketchup & multinational investment money=Bad money-
Texaco/Zapata/Harken/Carlyle: oil, multinational investment & military industrial complex money=Goooood money

I see your problem Eric, you’ve never tried to put napalm on a hamburger before.

Or are you saying you want money out of politics, sorry bro, look in your history books they were all rich men occupying the white House your boy Bush included.

I do actually totally agree with The Heinz fortune going to the needy or atleast to rebuild schools and buy text books. But Teresa Heinz also has multiple charities that she is involved in as well. And a billion dollars towards a cause or myriad causes won’t harm her a bit, so I do concur with you.

Money on that grand scale (Bush money included)fascillitates only one thing in America-Political power and more privelege.

Joe, it’s silly to claim that your alleged conversation with one person can apply to every Liberal in the country.

But since the discussion has gone completely off-topic, let’s have fun musing at how much wealthier the two presidential candidates are than ALL OF US:

George W. Bush assembled the wealthiest Cabinet in U.S. history, with $10.9 million being the average wealth of the members of Bush’s original 16-person Cabinet. Dick Cheney alone will save $116,000 under President Bush’s tax cuts. Trying to make it through college, I never even saw $116,000 in one place. Lucky Cheney.

75% of Americans go completely unaffected by the Bush tax cuts. Yet the average savings members of Bush’s Cabinet are expected to receive this year as a result of cuts in capital-gains and dividends taxes is around $42,000 each.

The median U.S. household income in America right now? $42,228.

Note:

I’d like to know if any WatchBlog commentors complaining about Hillary’s desire to roll back the Bush tax cuts ARE ACTUALLY AFFECTED BY the Bush tax cuts. The overwhelming majority of people I know are not.

I don’t really get it. Why do taxes discourage competition? I would think they’d encourage it. The more tax breaks and tax cuts you pile on people the less, theoretically, they have to work to earn the same kind of money. If people work a little harder to earn the same amount of money, what’s the harm in that? Your people say competition is good for business.

Now, there is a point at which the raising of taxes from their current level would become a restraint on that, but with top rates in the thirties, I don’t see what the problem is, especially with all the tax dodging going on. We can talk about the awful burdens rich people are under when they stop availing themselves of B.S. tax shelters.

As for flat taxes, I think that’s an inflexible solution. Thought the proportions are equal across the board with regards to percent of income taken, they are not equal in terms of cost of living expenses and discretionary income.

Besides, the poor aren’t the greatest offenders with the tax cuts, it’s the rich, who can afford to hire lawyers and accountants to screw the system.

Joebagodonuts,

If Shaquille O’Neill was 25 feet tall I’d throw him off the court.

If Tiger Woods had a club in his bag that could literally push the ball into the whole from long distances I’d throw him off the green.

See the mistake in your assessment is a presumption that money is akin to being good at something like a sport as opposed to the truth, that it takes big money to make big money. The more you can put in the bigger the “potential” return.

Now this may be tact and knowledge but it’s also money that you are investing in a given project in recieving wealth albeit no guarantees which makes it more risky which means it almost has to be yours or money you are directly responsible for. And if a loan that means collateral of equal worth that you are borrowing or more.

Now let’s say that on this court it was essential to allow other players to get the hoop as opposed to a 25 foot tall person, why? Because in this game it’s reliant on growth, and if no other players get to take a shot the team(nation) is worth less and could lead to dismissal of many players(unemployment) if this 25 foot Shaquille creates a monopoly on the court, then that means that everyone becomes Shaquille’s handmaiden and earns less which isn’t good for the team(nation). If Shaquille becomes the team and there becomes less variety for fans(less choice in the marketplace)what happens is the the entire basketball community suffers(wherever you live, Anytown USA) and there is no new ticket sales because everyone knows who will win, Shaquille(monopoly beats all). Most Republicans usually are anti-trust so I thought I’d border it a bit in the scenario.

Do I think that the rich should pay a fair share of taxes for all the services that they do indeed use? Yes. Here’s my rationale, the wealthy have available to them numerous tax loop-holes and tax write-offs and exemptions of which many of us are not afforded, they have the best of accountants that are on their payrolls, consulting firms on how to garner the best returns, money managers on speeddial setting up their portfolios. That’s part ONE.

PART Two: They(the rich)have the benefits of our roads and judicial systems albeit that they have a different system from the poor that they can afford to have. THey have the money to influence congress but we the middle income should pick up the tab on that? They lobby, we pay? They get what they want we foot the bill not to mention bail-outs, LOANS, and SUBSIDIES! THey actually do get alot for their money.

If we have a war they can afford to buy stock in the military industrials(weapons systems, communications and jets, bombers etc.) that we have to pay off! They can buy stock in government contractors that we have to pay off! They can afford to buy bonds that we the people have to pay off! They can get the government contracts for their OWN companies that we have to pay off! Now, we are having a war of upwards of 200 billion $$$ but it keeps them safe too, right? but now we have to pay that off too! Medicare spending under Bush 400 billion $$$ we have to pay that off although they can buy that blue chip stock and bonds on new fascilities. This country gave them a place where they could build what they have amounted with our largely free markets and they don’t want to pay into this country that gave them the opportunities?! THis is their country too, right?

They use our airports! They use our streets. THey use our waste fascilities every time they take a dump!!!!

Are you getting any of this yet, Joe? Why should trust fund kids not pay in and why shouldn’t millionaires help out? BUsh has it so that we are supporting them at this point while they make money off of us and create monopolies with Bush’s help, feel used yet?

Now at the same time massive deregulations, even more help for the rich and we have to pay for that with our and your middle class.

Sir, taxing the rich is a neccesity to keep us afloat it’s not something that anyone greedily wants like the republicans assert. OUR COUNTRY IS RUNNING ON FIAT MONEY and we have to pay that off! Our dollar is worth nothing without tax monies coming in THAT’S OUR CURRENCY JOE and the Fed takes that tax money out of circulation to support the dollar. Why do republicans want us to go broke? is my question. WE NEED A CURRENCY JOE of which to be rich with. No value to money then I don’t care how many little paper rectangles you have.

If we errode the middle class and the wealthy don’t have to pay taxes then what Joe? What happens to currency at that point? All I can say is welcome to EL Salvador cuz we’re done. The republicans fail to see the end game of usurpation of the goverment under republican populism. NAFTA and other such agreements have taken a bite out of the middle class we need to protect.

Anyway, you invest money to make money is my point as opposed to a free throw line.

From 1st Timothy, Chapter Six, Verses 6-10 (NSRV):

Of course there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into this world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

This is a Deuteropauline letter, one authored by a student or successor of Paul, who owing to the tradition of the time, would write under his master’s name.

What it addresses in this particular passages is very relevant to todays world, where we have decided that the love of money is the root of all kinds of good. Now it is not wrong to seek financial contentment, to make oneself a good living, but when our entire object in life is to hold onto and gain more money, our perspective becomes distorted.

We cannot form our entire tax policy around people’s wish to be rich. We must form it around a just sharing of the burden for the good we seek to gain from our government. We should have neither smaller government nor larger, but the right amount of government. And if that costs something, we should not let our greed get in the way of our public welfare.

Many people argue that they should be able to keep every dollar they earn, but if one reads the passage, there is an important point made about that: Having brought nothing into this world, we take nothing out of it. Whatever you believe about the human soul, it is clear that when everything is said and done, the riches we don’t get to keep the riches we have on Earth.

What do we keep? Who we are. And if we have done a hell of a lot of evil to maintain our wealth, if we have made mistake after mistake out of our greed, we aren’t going to be happy with what we’re left. All in all, money comes second to necessity and morality, because we don’t live our lives on balance sheets.

I need to start out by saying I would fall into the lower income of this country. I take responsibility for this choice. I like the simpler way of life. By choice, I have no credit cards, no car payment and low rent.
What has happened to personal pride and individual responsibility in our country? It seems our country has turned into a place where everyone is responsible for everyone else. But not themselves. We have so many enableing programs. They afford anyone with a ‘victim of life’ attitude to feed off the system. And to have the audacity to demand more as if it’s a right.
I read all over the spectrum. The more I do, the more I find people angry at the corporate community. And anyone else who has gotten off thier duff and made money for themselves. What is up with this attitude? Why would someone feel that because they didn’t take the necessary steps to make thier own feel that someone who did should fund thier lifestyle? It seems like a negative and defeatist attitude.
College education and the funds to go? Anyone with access to the internet can research the numerous FREE money available. There are free funds for minorities, women etc. Having worked within the university system, I am aware there are private individuals who leave small to large scholarships to anyone who applies for them. They just have to be searched out.
It seems our great nation is moving towards people with victim attitudes who feel they have rights of entitlement. What a shame.

Ho hum, more Kerrypoly.

For heaven’s sake, it is hard to be more of a blue blood than George W. Bush. His father was rich. His grandfather was rich. (Actually he made a bundle trading with the Third Reich - talk about dirty money.) His greatgrandfather was a business partner of John D. Rockefeller’s.

But then he poses with a feed cap and a chainsaw and he’s a “regular guy”. Is our voters learning? I hope so.

Pardon the corrupted link. @#$%in parasite-ware.

George wrote:
> I’m curious Stephen, Cameron, et al, does that
> statement bother you? Is it something you just
> write off as out of context or maybe a bad
> choice of words, or does the fundamental meaning
> of that statement parallel your own political
> ideology?

In my case, I do write it off as “out of context”, and as yet another example of Eric trying to portray the Democratic Party as a coven of die-hard Soviet spies. If you follow the link, you’ll see that she was speaking in front of a crowd of extremely wealthy Democratic donors. I’m sure she was smiling when she said it, and I’m sure the crowd laughed at the line, aware of the irony of wealthy people donating to a party that was going to probably cause their wealth to decrease.

I do, however, think that her quote does honestly reflect the plain truth behind what a tax hike for the rich really is. Indeed, Senator Clinton’s quote is a pretty accurate description of what taxes themselves actually are, and is hardly a revolutionary or controversial or anti-American philosophy at all.

Imagine if the Republicans were equally honest, even when joking, about what a tax cut for the rich really is:

Republican Senator to Rich Republican Donors: “We’re saying that for America to get back to being a true oligarchy, we’re probably going to extend the tax cuts and give you even more money. We’re going to give more money to you to the detriment of the common good.”

That kind of reminds me of the Bush fundraiser speech featured in Fahrenheit 9/11, where he addresses a crowd he describes as “The ‘haves’… and the ‘have mores’” and about how he considers them, the ultra-rich, his “base”. I guess he is honest occasionally, after all.

-Cf

I don’t believe cutting programs, Mary, will lessen the victim culture in this country, if anything it will worsen it, because now people will have the fat cats in Washington to blame. No, education is the key.

You get people educated, you work to make education the route of power in a community, and the victimization syndrome will fade from primacy. You simply make money and success the draws, then you will have what you have now: people taking shortcuts and going either for impossible dreams, or criminal enterprises to attain that wealth and prosperity.

There is a light year’s worth of difference between a junior high education and a diploma, and an even greater difference between a diploma and a college education. The person who is willing to seek a college education is not the person we need to be worried about. It’s that person with the brains for college, but who lives in a culture and an income level that pulls them away from that path.

Those programs that get yanked are often the ones that pull people onto these paths, away from a sense of being a humiliated and oppressed people.

In the end, such programs are about optimize our nations resources. If we have one person who isn’t being steared toward realizing their potential as a business person, artist, scientist, lawyer, social worker or technician, that’s one person too many, and we can no longer count, as we once did, on the manufacturing sector to provide a source of upwards mobility.

In short, we do ourselves no good by imagining that improvements in our inner cities and rural areas will come by themselves, without intervention of some kind from outside.

Eric, you’re crazy.

The issue I see here is that the evil rich liberals support ‘progressive’ tax rates which limit competition by taxing incomes rather than actual wealth.

What you suggest is highly impractical. Do you really see a practical way to get a measurement of someone’s total wealth and tax based on that? Income happens to be a fairly good measure of how much money a person has. We’d probably end up spending a ton of money on auditors to verify these numbers.

Teresa Heinz is the head of a multimillion-dollar Foundation dedicated to philanthropy and giving away money for the benefit of mankind and the greater good. This is what people do when they have too much money. Rather than just give up 30% of it the Federal government with no say in how it is to be spent (like on unnecessary wars), they instead focus on giving money to causes they care about.

Cameron, I’m aghast. As if the Federal Government is going to waste it? You actually advocate letting individuals be in charge of their own charity? I always thought that given a choice the rich would just spend it on themselves, selfishly.

Clinton strongly disagrees with President Bush’s tax cuts, calling them “selfish and wrong.” He said, “I don’t know anybody in my income range who wouldn’t be happy to have a smaller tax cut, or none at all, to keep kids in after-school programs and cops on the street.” -Bill Clinton

SKBD, two points:

But seriously Eric, power to the people??? You don’t believe in power to anyone unless it serves Bushie election time objectives am I right?

Actually, I am for power to the people. That’s why I oppose most of the Democratic platform, as it would in fact take more power away from the people.

But if you want to see any of that stuff that you are espousing you may find yourself pulling the democratic lever come November because that which you espouse is exactly what Kerry has on the table. To raise taxes on the wealthy exclusively.

But Bush money is goooood people money right??? Kerry money Baaaaaad people money, am I getting warm?

Except that you’re forgetting that it is not Republicans who are not living up to their rhetoric here. Democrats are supposed to be the party of the proletariat. All I’m saying is that it is Democrats who’s political existence is dedicated to ‘social justice’, yet the solutions they advocate all involve taking away more money and power from the people themselves and giving it to a government monopoly.

Why do taxes discourage competition? I would think they’d encourage it. The more tax breaks and tax cuts you pile on people the less, theoretically, they have to work to earn the same kind of money.

Stephen, they discourage competition because the more you make, the more you are taxed. It’s a penalty, a fine for the crime of increasing your income. Do speeding tickets encourage or discourage faster driving? Everyone wants to get to their destination faster so why would having to pay a fine for the privilege stop anyone from speeding?

As for flat taxes, I think that’s an inflexible solution. Thought the proportions are equal across the board with regards to percent of income taken, they are not equal in terms of cost of living expenses and discretionary income.

Besides, the poor aren’t the greatest offenders with the tax cuts, it’s the rich, who can afford to hire lawyers and accountants to screw the system.

Is the income tax a revenue generation scheme or an egalitarian-income-redistribution scheme? Because there’s a difference. I’m saying that as an egalitarian-income-redistribution scheme it’s an abysmal failure precisely because of your point that all the loopholes in the presently 54,846 or so pages of the federal tax code are available mostly to the rich.

For all the money the Federal income tax brings in how much does it really cost taxpayers? By that I mean the entirely of lawyers, accountants, tax preparers, etc that we have to hire just to comply with it has to cost billions of dollars every year, not to mention the salaries of the marvelously efficient and ever helpful IRS employees themselves. There has to be a better way.

The hypocrisy and dead ideology here is with the Democratic party line. Taking more from the rich does not empower the poor, it creates poverty. This is why throughout the third world people see such a dividing line between rich and poor. Not because of capitalism but in spite of it. The rich throughout the third world are actually those in government. They construct the laws to limit the incomes and growth of the people. Progressive taxes, massive and overburdening regulations on entry into the marketplace. Read Hernando De Soto.

This perception originates in the fact that in Peru there indeed exists a private sector, but it exists largely on the basis of competing for government favors, contracts, and privileges, and its economic approach is to try to exclude or marginalize competitors—not by outproducing them in quantity, quality, or prices, but through political means, from legislation to outright use of the many resources of legal coercion at the disposal of a modern state. This is why I have characterized the official Peruvian economy not as a free-market economy but as a mercantilist economy. The informal economy is much closer than the formal to what we call a market economy. Not only does it not function on the basis of political favors, but it often functions in spite of a government opposition incited by participants in the formal economy.

This is truly the correct definition of ‘corporatism’. It’s what was widely touted at the beginning of Clinton’s first term. How many articles did I read about Clinton being the CEO of America? Too many.

In short, we do ourselves no good by imagining that improvements in our inner cities and rural areas will come by themselves, without intervention of some kind from outside.

Do we imagine that improvements can’t come from ourselves? How can you imagine that any solution that doesn’t come from ourselves will work? Here’s the whole argument in a nutshell. If having it done for us were the solution we’d be in utopia by now. Empowering the government to ‘intervene’ is generally what gets us to third world status. To the extent it is carried out to it’s logical conclusion it impoverishes not enriches.

The whole point of Hillary’s quote is that government is THE solution and that money in the hands of the rich won’t help anyone.

We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.

Christopher’s imagination that this was really just a joke notwithstanding, it sums up the redistribution argument quite well.

tax cuts are next to meaningless for the unemployed.

Eric, I think your imagination puts mine to shame. In my world, Hillary Clinton makes a joke at a fundraiser by using the language of the Republican Worst Nightmare, while you are apparently envisioning Hillary Clinton darkly and earnestly making her redistribution-of-wealth remarks in front of several hundred stern-faced Communist millionaires. Do you not see how absurd your scenario is?

-Cf

Burger, tax-cuts mean everything to the unemployed—in fact the unemployed have a more vitaly important stake in tax cuts than anybody else. The current job-creation boom is a direct result of the tax cuts. Even Paul Krugman admits it.

In my world, Hillary Clinton makes a joke at a fundraiser…

Well if you don’t want to argue about the quote on it’s merits I guess in your world it would have to be a joke. I hope that doesn’t sound too harsh, but is that the context of this statement? For that matter isn’t my ‘interpretation’ the true context of all democratic opposition to the tax cuts?

John Kerry has the courage to take on Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy so we can invest in education. He will stand up and say that four years of college should be as universal and as affordable as a high school education is today. -JohnKerry.com

Is Kerry joking as well? It sure fits the same formula. Let’s see, we need to repeal these tax cuts (take something away from you) so that our kids can have a free public higher education (for the common good).

I don’t know, what color is the sun in your world?

The real hypocracy is that the republicans don’t represent the people outside of the overclasses. All of their populist sentiment(as in the populist movement of the early 20th century) is a means to fomenting an imbalance that is purely a destructive entity to our United States by making the underclasses pay off the incoming debts of the overclasses.

I have to admit Skbd, that I am not following you. What imbalance? What debts?

Your theory seems to be a little light on facts as well as concrete examples.

I guess most of your argument boils down to this quote, “…how the wealthy do in fact get a free ride at taxpayer expense.” I’ve also heard it put a different way, that the wealthy make money off the backs of the poor. But you have to explain what you mean because there are so many marxist variations of this that without specifics it’s hard to refute.

We can examine this claim closer up. What exactly are the wealthy receiving from government that all the rest of us aren’t also receiving? What exactly are they receiving but not paying for? (Putting aside tax loopholes and the like, which make how much any individual pays an unpredictable variable.) How are the wealthy not paying their ‘fair share’? They actually pay more in dollar amounts and in most situations pay more percentage wise as well.

Not only that but I think much of this argument stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of business. What is it’s function? How does a business make money? The tried and true liberal answer is that they overprice their merchandise and/or service and underpay their employees all in the pursuit of tainted profits.

See the mistake in your assessment is a presumption that money is akin to being good at something like a sport as opposed to the truth, that it takes big money to make big money. The more you can put in the bigger the “potential” return.

Or maybe we should start with what is money itself since I titled this post, “the root of all evil”. Stephen pointed out my favorite reply when someone argues that money is the root of all evil. In fact the quote (the Bible) says that the love of money is the root of all evil. Quite a difference.

I like Walter E. Williams explanation, that in order to make money you have to serve your fellow man. That you must perform some service or exchange some good that pleases your fellow man in order to make a profit. How is that robbery?

To: Mari Ann Andrieux

The problem isn’t a victimization complex in our system or culture it has to do with our country doing things that benefit only the top percentiles and not the small entrepreneurial outfit or the middle or underclasses. The resentment is an earned thing for the wealthy getting a free ride on our backs. We pay for all of their loopholes, taxcuts, goverment influence, deregulation,subsidies,grants,loans,tax incentives and more. what do we get in return? outsourcing and the de-leveraging of our system to them as republicans help them create corporate monopolies via incentives. Yes Nasdaq might shoot up as a result but A: the majority of those companies are multinational and may not even employ in the U.S. & B: they serve the upper middle class and wealthy and not the average American, by the majority of investors are the upper classes. The more incentive we give them the higher the stock price which means we are outside the monetary range to purchase those options (as a sidenote). Not that giving big incentives to companies means huge dividends always, but it actually does and no, major corporations are not the problem but instead the allowances towards corporate monopoly is. And in circumspect stalwarting growth by doing little for the upstart entrepreneurial competition giving small business very few of these incentives,loopholes and write-offs that the larger corporations get.

I in some ways agree, but your assessment is not completely 20/20. AS I am assuming you are saying pro-charity as opposed to “tax and spend” and you might be against social programs(?) that benefit segments of the population(?).

When you pay your taxes this is what happens essentially. The federal reserve takes that money out of circulation to support the dollar. Then with that value enabled in the dollar it goes into spending on programs, not all of it mind you but this is just the part I’m concentrating on here. The way Bush has it, is that the VALUE of the dollar does not increase as it goes into expenditure mode governmentally which is debt incurring. If the wealthy don’t pay these taxes the next level of expenditure becomes majoritively debt spending(on us), and I say that because there is no big tax monies going out if circulation to reiforce or support the value of that dollar(in overly simplistic terms). The worse off the dollar is the less you can purchase with it obviously but also the less purchasing power it has in the world marketplace. Now to with some of our trade agreements that infeesibly do nothing but send jobs out and the lower dollar is supposedly to bear more ability to trade. Republicanized free trade isn’t good for us. The GNP is nothing if it’s all fiat.

But what does it mean to us in the U.S.? Oil prices go up due to the purchasing power of that dollar and every industry powered by oil suffers and food goes up in price, travel, tourism loses, airlines have to undersell. And all of this creates lay-offs.

Now why should the rich pay a greater burden than the rest. Well what they pay doesn’t hurt them as it does hurt us and also by doing so it fosters a possibility for smaller companies to get in on the action as it were. Competition drives prices down and taxing the large corporation reinforces the dollar, obviously creating more purchasing power within the dollar.

Republicans like Eric although well intended can banter all day that the government creates “Monopoly” or is a “Monopoly” those are just the ‘Populist’ underpinnings I’ve tried to discuss. Reinforcing for them (or you politically) an “us versus them” when the real closed books to the masses are in corporate hands and not in bureaucratic ones. It stirs republicans right into the hands of userpative policies through notions of governmental mistrust. And yes the IRS does need to be overhauled and laws changed.

Free-markets as they espouse is actually a looting of the system and a looting of the middle classes to foot the bill of the rich and corporate. The government becomes the bad guy and the looting and the serving us the bill on their governmental priveleges becomes the Good-guy position. WE are just the cry-babies and they are the responsible ones? Yet looting the middle incomes is somehow good? If we have to pay it off it’s not a tax cut and if we have to foot the bill on what they get handed to them that’s not free market as it enables the rich only.

Perhaps you were just espousing a position of why should the poor be in any disagreement with wealth? my point is that there are quantifiable and legislational reasons for such a distrust of corporate finagling in our republic with power, influence and allotment purchasing.

ERIC, I’ll try to keep this short.

We give out millions in welfare subsidies annually to large corporations and big agribusiness and various industries. That money comes out of our taxes. A good many of those companies are overseas and employ very few here in the U.S. which means little if any taxable monies which means we get nothing in such cases from the subsidies given. So that’s money lost (hence) we have to pick up the bill, how you may ask? Because it’s a government program that gave them the money, our money and we are taxable for it. They may pay tarriffs coming in with the goods but a good many of the goods get sold abroad. If we don’t break even we pick up the cost eventually. as there is no money going back into the system from them.

That money that you and I pay for the corporate welfare doesn’t neccessarily mean it’s beneficial to us or our communities, employment or otherwise.

The power they lobby and can buy with their money creates legislation, as is often the purpose. And sometimes it’s detrimental. Case in point:

In 1999-2000, the credit card companies through lobbyist Lloyd Benson amongst others on both the left and right side of the aisle, successfully removed many of the bankruptcy clauses so that only under minimal circumstances can people file for bankruptcy. My point in stating this is to illustrate the one sidedness of big money politics.

Well what this does is keeps businesses from restarting for one, when you are weighed down with debt and many small companies have rocky starts and may have to try several times before being successful. How does this work on behalf on creating monopoly? By ousting small competition, although not the intention, there becomes less choice as bids for government contracts so if a business goes out and can’t rebuild that’s one business out. Now how many businesses go out of business annually? thousands perhaps even tens of thousands? And each year that’s tens of thousands of businesses that are strapped to overcome that debt before the rebuilding and by that time they’re broke. This obviously thwarts competition, but this is just such a case of campaign contributions to the DNC/RNC being more important than the citizens and especially the entrepreneurs of this country. (And it’s not just in gov. contracts alone it’s also employment which if an empoyer’s market where they can pay less due to less enterprise and jobs available in a given economy this hurts the taxpayer by us having to incur higher taxes due to a populace technically making less hence in lower tax brackets).

Do we pay for this? Absolutely but down the road further, we have government contract bids, and if there is little competition for the larger companies to have to compete with the bids are higher, more bidders means more competition hence lower. We pay for those contracts with our taxes and if it’s higher due to fewer choices we pay that. The thousands of dollars extra add up when we are engaged in purchasing governmentally at the rate we do.

THe main point is that wealthy people do get a good deal for their money as it can buy them power over situations for one. We do in effect need a sheep to sheer as a government. And the rich can be that sheep, but this sheep has loopholes galore it can rest on under the Bush administration. So who picks up for that loss to support needed programs? We do.

To disempower the U.S. government and it’s people from opportunity and give the corporations the sole means to create a monopoly by disempowering the upstarts and sheering competion, it may prove to be a gainway into corporate feudalism.

Corporate feudalism being that they have the power to legislate on their own behalf as we now see with corporate heads getting elected to office to serve themselves. The answer to this problem I’m not sure but I just want to give testimony to the amount of whores we have on the hill with no far-sightedness on how these corprately minded decisions will impact us later on down the road.

I’ll let it rest there.

SKBD:
You sure seem to hate “rich” people, and you certainly seem to buy into all the stereotypes that are out there. For instance, you say that,
“If we have a war they can afford to buy stock in the military industrials”, without recognizing that a majority of Americans now invest in the stock market.

You postulate that you have to have money to make money, without recognizing that the richest man in America, Bill Gates, was not rich when he started his company. What he had was modest financial support, a great idea, and tons of energy with which to pursue it. Same can be said for Michael Dell, who started Dell Computers from his college dorm room. Now, you might consider anyone who can go to college as rich, but to do so would cause your argument to really look silly.

In my version of a flat tax, there would be 3 tiers, so it wouldnt totally be flat. Rather it would be like a bell curve. The top end of the tax (for the wealthiest) would be slightly higher, while the lower end (for the poorest) would be lower.

But….everyone would pay something. Its psychologically strengthening to have a stake in things, even if only a modest stake. To be totally on the dole isnt good, but we do need to recognize that 15% (or whatever %) of $25,000 has greater significance than 15% of $1 million.

I don’t know Eric. You assume that right now the rich are in such a desperate position, that if we only so much as keep taxes at a level they were during the Clinton Administration, during the greatest expansion of our economy of all time, that they will not be able to make any more jobs. I have no idea how you think that the people who save the most of any group would be caught short of funds in this circumstance. If mean, if you’re that rich, and you are in desperate straits, you likely have no one to blame but yourself.

Personally, I’m neither opposed to Capitalist, nor socialist methods of dealing with the economy. I’d much rather have private enterprise get the first chance, and only have government intervene if it’s necessary or more practical for them to do so. But what I am opposed to is fiscal irresponsibility.

Debt is dead weight, and your administration has managed to add more of it faster than any administration in recent memory. When one has to raise the ceiling on how much debt the government can hold in order to allow it to borrow that much, you know there’s trouble.

Smaller government, at this point, is not in the picture. Your party will not work towards it. only a return to pre-Bush tax levels will allow revenues to recover, and the deficit spending to stop. We cannot wait for our debt to mount up further to hope the economy reclaims it’s 1990’s heights.

You postulate that you have to have money to make money, without recognizing that the richest man in America, Bill Gates, was not rich when he started his company

Joe, he was the son of a millionaire.

dave,

you said: “Eric, you’re crazy.”

Another breach of our policy regarding critiquing the message and not the messenger will result in your loss of comment privileges at WatchBlog. We apprecite your points of view and participation in the debate, but, civility is what makes WB a pleasant place for debate and we must insist you abide this simple rule.

> Well if you don’t want to argue about the
> quote on it’s merits I guess in your world
> it would have to be a joke.

Eric, I never said that Senator Clinton wasn’t serious about raising taxes for the rich. I’m saying that her language was formed in such a way to get a laugh out of her listeners. It was a joke, a laugh line. The format was humorous, but the sentiment was certainly not.

As to your charge that I don’t want to argue the merits of the quote, apparently you are, as usual, disregarding the part of my original post on this topic:

I do, however, think that her quote does honestly reflect the plain truth behind what a tax hike for the rich really is. Indeed, Senator Clinton’s quote is a pretty accurate description of what taxes themselves actually are, and is hardly a revolutionary or controversial or anti-American philosophy at all.

Nobody has ever tried to hide this. We Democrats think that the rich should be taxed more than the poor. Is that news? No!

Everyone knows (well, almost everyone: apparently people like Mari Ann and other poor folks who still vote Republican don’t realize this) that countless mechanisms exist for the rich to pay lower taxes than the poor even with the higher tax rates. Flat taxes are a load of horse manure designed to further innoculate the rich from paying their fair share of taxes and putting even more of the burden on the middle class. All this stuff about how the progressive tax system discourages people from getting rich is absolutely ludicrous and flies in the face of even the most basic common sense: Who the hell doesn’t want to be rich?

-Cf

We pay for all of their loopholes, taxcuts, goverment influence, deregulation,subsidies,grants,loans,tax incentives and more. what do we get in return? outsourcing and the de-leveraging of our system to them as republicans help them create corporate monopolies via incentives.

The principle of government interference makes us pay for all of those things, skbd.

Name one corporate monopoly created by Republicans under the theory you are espousing here. Monopoly by incentive? Perhaps you are referring to the aforesaid loopholes in the income tax? Something Republicans like Forbes and Armey would like to do away with?

When you pay your taxes this is what happens essentially. The federal reserve takes that money out of circulation to support the dollar. Then with that value enabled in the dollar it goes into spending on programs, not all of it mind you but this is just the part I’m concentrating on here.

I’m finding this difficult to follow. You’re saying that the Federal Reserve contracts the money supply according to the net amount of taxes the rich pay to the federal government?

The way Bush has it, is that the VALUE of the dollar does not increase as it goes into expenditure mode governmentally which is debt incurring.

Exactly how does Bush devalue the dollar without the Federal Reserve’s help? Or are you saying that the Federal Reserve contracts the money supply only according to the amount of dollars paid in taxes by the rich, and they are unable to take into account tax cuts in that equation?

If the wealthy don’t pay these taxes the next level of expenditure becomes majoritively debt spending(on us), and I say that because there is no big tax monies going out if circulation to reiforce or support the value of that dollar(in overly simplistic terms).

Again, how does the Fedral Reserve account for which dollar amounts are taxes from ‘the rich’ and which are not? And how does that connect, exactly, to making spending become debt instead of ‘paid for’ dollars (if the tax money came from the poor?).

The worse off the dollar is the less you can purchase with it obviously but also the less purchasing power it has in the world marketplace. Now to with some of our trade agreements that infeesibly do nothing but send jobs out and the lower dollar is supposedly to bear more ability to trade. Republicanized free trade isn’t good for us. The GNP is nothing if it’s all fiat.

Again, you have completely failed to present any argument as to how a lesser amount of taxes paid by a certain segment of society magically creates a devalued dollar.

Free-markets as they espouse is actually a looting of the system and a looting of the middle classes to foot the bill of the rich and corporate. The government becomes the bad guy and the looting and the serving us the bill on their governmental priveleges becomes the Good-guy position. WE are just the cry-babies and they are the responsible ones? Yet looting the middle incomes is somehow good? If we have to pay it off it’s not a tax cut and if we have to foot the bill on what they get handed to them that’s not free market as it enables the rich only.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of free trade. I still don’t understand how in your mind voluntary exchange is somehow looting the system. Free trade means that everyone, rich and poor, are able to exchange goods and services. The subsidy system you are talking about is largely a democratic construct. (I’m thinking of Roosevelt and the New Deal.)

By any logical definition the rich would have to pay less in taxes (dollar amount and/or percentage wise) than they ‘get back’ in order for them to be looting the poor and middle class. A tax cut is lowering that percentage but I would submit they still pay higher marginal rates. No matter how you cut it, they pay more in dollar amounts regardless. Therefore there cannot be a net transfer of money to the rich. Unless you are going on a completely different measurement of how much they can ‘afford’ to pay in relative terms than the rest of us. Which is certainly a subjective standard yet to be completely defined even by you.

We give out millions in welfare subsidies annually to large corporations and big agribusiness and various industries. That money comes out of our taxes. A good many of those companies are overseas and employ very few here in the U.S. which means little if any taxable monies which means we get nothing in such cases from the subsidies given. So that’s money lost (hence) we have to pick up the bill, how you may ask? Because it’s a government program that gave them the money, our money and we are taxable for it. They may pay tarriffs coming in with the goods but a good many of the goods get sold abroad. If we don’t break even we pick up the cost eventually. as there is no money going back into the system from them.

As for welfare for the rich, I agree, let’s cut these useless programs. Like flood insurance on beachfront property:

Why does Uncle Sam offer me cheap insurance? “It saves federal dollars,” replied James Lee Witt, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), when I did a 20/20 report on this boondoggle. “If this insurance wasn’t here,” he said, “then people would be building in those areas anyway. Then it would cost the American taxpayers more [in relief funds] if a disaster hit.”

That’s government logic: Since we always mindlessly use taxpayer money to bail out every idiot who takes an expensive risk, let’s get some money up front by selling them insurance first.

But this is the system democrats want to perpetuate and grow! If there’s a problem government can’t solve democrats haven’t heard of it.

And farm subsidies?

Farmers argue, “We need subsidies — because the food supply is too important to be left to the uncertainties of free market competition.” But farmers who grow beans, pears, and apples receive no government subsidies, and they thrive. Free markets are best at producing ample supplies of everything. Notice any shortages of unsubsidized green beans, pears, and apples? Me neither.

From which political quarter do we hear that ‘sometimes the free market just doesn’t work,’ So we need subsidies and price controls etc.? Is this a Republican argument or a Democrat argument?

ADM collects welfare because of two cleverly designed special deals. The first is the government’s mandated minimum price for sugar. Because of the price supports, if a soft drink maker wants to buy sugar for its soda, it has to pay 22 cents a pound — more than twice the world price.

ADM’s second federal feeding trough is the tax break on ethanol. Ethanol is a fuel additive made from corn, kind of like Hamburger Helper for gasoline, except that it’s more expensive, so no one would buy it if government didn’t give companies that use ethanol a special 52-cent-a-gallon tax break. That costs the treasury half a billion dollars a year. ADM produces half the ethanol made in America.

So here’s the problem… corporate welfare, a direct byproduct of government interference in the market place, is unfair. Your solution is more of the same kind of government interference in the marketplace. Why not just reverse the damage by backing up the gravy train so that we have less interference in the marketplace?

Rather than leaving the subsidized flood insurance in place let rich homeowners pay for their own folly. Rather than subsidizing farmers let them determine their own level of risk in producing crops. Rather than having price controls why not let the true cost be paid by those who buy the products? Rather than incentives designed to encourage targeted ‘government favored’ industries like ethanol production, lets let the free market decide.

Instead liberals view everything as arbitrary and thus have no problem implementing arbitrary solutions.

If you start with the premise that government must be involved in every economic decision and in ‘partnerships’ with business, that it must be involved in deciding electric cars should be produced so people can afford them for instance, or ethanol production must be encouraged, or the price of wheat must be low, what you get is corporatism, or if you prefer corporate feudalism. It doesn’t happen without government. Democrats cannot see this apparently, so their solution is to further punish corporations, the rich, and business in general. When the real solution is less government interference and more free market.

You assume that right now the rich are in such a desperate position…

…Personally, I’m neither opposed to Capitalist, nor socialist methods of dealing with the economy. I’d much rather have private enterprise get the first chance, and only have government intervene if it’s necessary or more practical for them to do so. But what I am opposed to is fiscal irresponsibility.

Actually Stephen, I don’t assume the rich are in a desperate position at all. I assume that the socialist method of dealing with the economy will actually hurt the poor and middle class more than it will the rich. Because usually government interference short circuits the ramifications of financial responsibility.

Not only that but the whole issue of tax incentives and loopholes, as well as the lobbying that goes on for those incentives and loopholes starts with a socialist defintion of the utility of government. The closer we are to a free market economy the less campaign finance reform is needed, because government takes a more limited role in providing tax breaks and loopholes. Hence there is less need to lobby for them.

Debt is dead weight, and your administration has managed to add more of it faster than any administration in recent memory. When one has to raise the ceiling on how much debt the government can hold in order to allow it to borrow that much, you know there’s trouble.

Smaller government, at this point, is not in the picture. Your party will not work towards it. only a return to pre-Bush tax levels will allow revenues to recover, and the deficit spending to stop. We cannot wait for our debt to mount up further to hope the economy reclaims it’s 1990’s heights.

I agree that Republicans have been failing to deliver on smaller government. They don’t seem to be trying very hard. We should encourage them to do more.

Democrats certainly are not in the business of making government smaller. Are tax increases going to make the government smaller, do you think? Or is the better solution to cut spending?

CF-

If it was a joke then I don’t know if I get it. Her use of the word “we” to describe the Federal Government is very troubling. This is the evil that is found when Marxist ideologies are put into practice. This is an inherent problem with socialism; that it takes freedom from the people and gives it to a select few all in the name of the common good. And those select few become corrupt by the power given them by the system. Hillary is no longer an elected representative from the State of New York, in her mind she is the Federal Government.

And that is before you even get to the wealth distribution philosophy of taking for the common good.

Okay, George (& Eric), if you really need help getting the joke, let’s look at this style of humor in reverse, with a Republican painting himself with the language of his opponent’s worst accusations for humorous effect. Let’s examine President Bush’s joke delivered to a crowd of his own wealthy supporters (and famously included in the movie Fahrenheit 9/11.

“Some consider you the elite. I consider you my base”.

One could read that to mean that Bush is admitting that he considers the ultra-rich his most important constituency. Michael Moore is a pundit and he intended that quote to be perceived by his audience as evidence of the crassness of President Bush and the Republican party. But I don’t think that Bush intended to honestly tell the world that he was a champion of plutocracy or that he didn’t consider the middle class his base. He was joking.

(Moore’s inclusion of this particular clip in Fahrenheit 9/11 didn’t affect my image of the President one bit, by the way. It seemed a little crass, I guess, but it also seemed like some good-natured humor to me, not a sinister expression of secret GOP evil. Can’t you give Senator Clinton the same benefit of the doubt?)

Secondly, Senator Clinton was using the word “we” to describe the Democratic Party and their agenda if they should end up with control of the White House, the Congress, or both. This should have been obvious to you if you had bothered to read the context of her quote. It should have been obvious to you even if you didn’t read the context of the quote. Everything else you just wrote about her use of the word “we” being “troubling” to you, or about how she thinks of herself as the Federal Government, is just political smoke and mirrors. You’re not fooling me, and I don’t think you’re even convincing your fellow intelligent conservatives any more than Michael Moore’s inclusion of the Bush clip affected me.

The quote says one thing and one thing alone: Hillary Clinton supports higher taxes for the rich. Big deal, that’s not news at all. The phrasing of the quote, however, which was almost certainly intended as a joke, has turned into something that crass manipulative Republican operatives and their loyal followers are exploiting by quoting it out of context to try to make it look like Clinton is a Soviet communist devil.

The quote is, according to a quick Google search, the hottest thing in the right-wing blogosphere today. Every Google search result links to that single SFGate article, which tells me that this quote is spreading like an out-of-control virus through the right-wing chattering class, every single one of the sites linking to this single SFGate reprinting of an AP wire story. I doubt that Eric read it while perusing the San Francisco Chronicle the other day. Which right-wing site spoon-fed you that quote, Eric?

-Cf

I doubt that Eric read it while perusing the San Francisco Chronicle the other day. Which right-wing site spoon-fed you that quote, Eric?

Well, let’s see. Actually someone emailed the link to me. Then I heard it on Rush’s show and then Sean Hannity’s show. Yeah, all pretty much right wing sources.

Did I break that rule that says unless I get the info from at least one left-wing source I can’t use it? Damn. I keep running into that one. So many ‘facts’ I can’t use becuase the left rejects them.

You’d think the San Francisco Chronicle would not be considered a right wing source though.

Secondly, Senator Clinton was using the word “we” to describe the Democratic Party and their agenda if they should end up with control of the White House, the Congress, or both.

My first thought was that she was using the royal ‘we’.

Look, a smaller government is no panacea for problems. Neither is larger government for that matter. We need appropriate government. Wise Government. It does not seem all that wise to me that Bush, encountering an economic recession, not one but two wars, the creation of an entirely new cabinet level department, and a major increase in medicare entitlements still advocates tax cuts. He wants to have his cake and eat it too. What makes this worse is were are going to run trillions of dollars of debt because of this foolishness.

So if Hillary Clinton bluntly jokes with her supporters that she’s going to be honest and ask the American people for the cash up front, I hardly see how that doesn’t make sense. Bush has taken us from a pay as you go system back to a debt-ridden leveraged revenue system. Tell me something Eric, what happens when we have to pay this crap back? Did you ever think that maybe our next boom could be curtailed or even turned into a recession because of the dead weight of the debt Bush has saddled us with?

Or has Bush found Saddam’s secret money tree in that multibillion dollar invasion of his?

I assume that the socialist method of dealing with the economy will actually hurt the poor and middle class more than it will the rich. Because usually government interference short circuits the ramifications of financial responsibility.

I’m not in favor of nationalizing any industry, enforcing a godless society, encouraging people to go on a permanent dole or having a command economy. I am on the record here as being against subsidies for the most part. I believe the market is a powerful tool for sorting economic matters out, and for encouraging people to do their best.

I also, though, recognize that markets can be manipulated, their value sapped from them by the anti-competitive practices of certain participants. Where you would stand by and let a cancer grow on the market, limiting the crucial elements of choice, I would have there be limits except under the most extraordary circumstances for monopoly behavior. I also don’t expect the market to work miracles in regulating certain harmful activities. The market is a human enterprise, and as such is susceptible to manipulations of its power like anything else. So, I don’t trust it.

The Government is the same, but instead of developing an allergy to it, I develop a strategy for it: I attempt to fire those who misuse it’s power and ask others to do so with me. Better yet, I hold the implicit threat of this over their heads. Sometimes what an electorate can do is more important than what it actually does.

Maybe you Republicans need to make that point to the GOP leaders, show them who’s really in charge.

The closer we are to a free market economy the less campaign finance reform is needed, because government takes a more limited role in providing tax breaks and loopholes. Hence there is less need to lobby for them.

Your error here is in assuming that the special interests don’t get to decide what gets cut. The problem with a free market is that the regulatory decisions get handed to those companies, and the result is not smaller government. The subsidies will stay. Only the regulatory agencies will be compromised, and that will happen along the lines of what will profit them most, whether or not it’s honest or ethical. The crash of recent times is an extraordinary example of how that can happen. It happens that just the laws that would have prevent much of the chicanery were just the ones scrapped for the “good of business”.

All in all I don’t believe we should set theory as the target, the standard of how things are done. Practice should be the measure of things. If history has shown that the market does not curtail a certain dishonest practice, then it is the government’s duty to step in and intervene. Otherwise the system will maintain the inequity.

Screw the rich, many of whom are only rich becasue of the money that DOESN’T go to the working class manufacturing workers in the USA anymore. That tax base is disappearing since those good paying jobs have been sent overseas to reap the benefits of just abover slave labor costs, so in order to make up the deficite those who have benefitted from this scam are going to have to cough it up. Breaks my ****ing heart.

I … recognize that markets can be manipulated, their value sapped from them by the anti-competitive practices of certain participants. Where you would stand by and let a cancer grow on the market, limiting the crucial elements of choice, I would have there be limits … I also don’t expect the market to work miracles in regulating certain harmful activities. The market is a human enterprise … So, I don’t trust it.

Stephen, while it is true that markets can be manipulated, it is expensive and difficult to do it ‘the honest way’ within a free market. The cheapest and easiest way to manipulate markets remains employing the hand of government. Seldom do ‘cancers’ and monopolies occur without government involvement. Those that do are short lived and have no guarantee of dominance. This is the essence of what a ‘free’ market is.

Government is also a human enterprise but with quite a different purpose and scope of powers by nature than a corporation.

For example I wonder if you can name me one private enterprise monopoly that did not ‘grease the wheels’ of government to attain that monopoly. The reason is that in order to enforce a monopoly you end up having to use force; and why use naked force when you can get the government to do it so much cheaper?

Rather than employing the government in myriad schemes to prop up corporations or industries or favor select technologies over others, government should be focused on precluding monopolistic practices by ensuring that companies do not use strong arm tactics or try to employ government to do it for them.

The Government is the same, but instead of developing an allergy to it, I develop a strategy for it: I attempt to fire those who misuse it’s power and ask others to do so with me. Better yet, I hold the implicit threat of this over their heads. Sometimes what an electorate can do is more important than what it actually does.

I don’t disagree with your premise here in developing a strategy. I just question your lack of information about what the root problem here is. Free market failure is the issue, but the cause of free market failure is more often than not a government short circuit. To say capitalism and socialism are equally fine solutions to the problem is like saying that water and gasoline are equally good at putting out fires.

Your error here is in assuming that the special interests don’t get to decide what gets cut. The problem with a free market is that the regulatory decisions get handed to those companies, and the result is not smaller government. The subsidies will stay. … The crash of recent times is an extraordinary example of how that can happen. It happens that just the laws that would have prevent much of the chicanery were just the ones scrapped for the “good of business”.

What I say is that government should be limited in what it does. When the power of government is unlimited everyone soon develops a ‘special interest’ in what it does and for good reason… survival. When we look at the problem in practical terms it makes no sense to promote the government’s ability to control any aspect of economics arbitrarily and then demonize corporations as having the potential to do so if they get too powerful, or they attempt to manipulate the same government which has arbitrary power over it.

All in all I don’t believe we should set theory as the target, the standard of how things are done. Practice should be the measure of things. If history has shown that the market does not curtail a certain dishonest practice, then it is the government’s duty to step in and intervene. Otherwise the system will maintain the inequity.

Does history show that the market (by itself) does not curtail dishonest practices? I would dispute that. Do you have any examples?

Eric said, “Seldom do ‘cancers’ and monopolies occur without government involvement. Those that do are short lived and have no guarantee of dominance. This is the essence of what a ‘free’ market is.”

I fail to see any evidence in history to support your claim above, Eric. The very concept of monopoly defines the power to outprice a competitor into bankruptcy thus ending competition. Dominance is assured in a free market absent regulatory intervention. Government regulation is the only reason the Morgans, Rockefellars, and dare I say it, Gates, do not have text book monopolies today.

That is not to say monopolies don’t exist, they do, but, today they come in the form oligopolies and cartels capable of supporting each other in a vast interdependent global marketplace. And yes, I agree with you, these oligopolies and cartels exist with cooperation or at least the blind eye of government assent. Reagan and others have opposed monopoly by bailing out Chrysler type large corporations, but, have supported oligopolies who work in concert to maintain their monopolistic protection against any further competition.

In other words, our government opposes single entity monopolization at the large corporate level, but, also affords protections for the oligopoly of the Big Three auto industry, for example, and their oligopolic relationship with fossil fuel oligopolies who are interdependent and work in concert to prevent new companies from developing alternative competitive products.

Thankfully, foreign markets and corporations are relatively immune from American oligopolies and their governmental supports, so, competition in the form of innovation and new product development continues to make inroads into the American consumer marketplace like the hybrid vehicle introduced by foreign competitors which has forced the Big Three to begin producing them as well, despite concerns of their compatriot oil industry partners (shared shareholders and boards of directors).

Unfortunately, this means the U.S. has been losing its competitive edge in product development and necessitated American corporations going global to buy up patents, share patents, and develop businesses which support cheaper and more comptetitive foreign production for import back into this country. And this in turn has been killing American manufacturing and new product development in America except in medicine, banking services, and organizational efficiency services.

In a real sense, the marketplace is becoming more free with globalization as national intervention has less and less power over international and multinational organizations. Thus the economic future belongs to nations like China and SE Asia whose low cost labor populations and technical rapidly advancing technical expertise will give them competitive economic advantages the U.S. will be hard pressed to overcome.

Since G.W. Bush is incapable of understanding the magnitude of what I have said here, and I am sure his advisors have expressed to him on these topics, this alone is criterion enough for me to seek any other qualified opponent candidate in November.

Eric-
I’m afraid you vastly overestimate what’s required to manipulate people. All you need is information and it’s imperfect flow. If you know something the average stockholder or customer doesn’t, and you can make your profit before they find out, or with them never finding out, you can manipulate the market.

I made the point in my previous post that government is a human institution, but our government can be made to serve our interests more readily, when they fear what the voters will do to them when they fail to do so.

I do not equate socialism and capitalism as strategies. The closest I come to that is saying that capitalism is to be preferred as the first choice for solutions to economic problems.

I believe in a dynamic balance of power between government, the people, and the corporations, one where the interests of all are served by compromises between them, and laws to rule over all concerned. I believe that currently corporations have far too much power over public policy, and are using it to serve their interests alone, leaving the rest of us in a dysfunctional society that ultimately undermines our culture as whole.

I distrust free market philosophy, because the market itself is a reification of more complex human activities, all of which are vulnerable to the forces of human ignorance, dishonesty, and wrongheadedness. The Markets didn’t curtail monopolies. They didn’t curtail the practices that lead to the stock crash of 1929. They haven’t curtailed companiesfrom releasing unsafe and/or defective products, from polluting or clear cutting. If you want proof that the market doesn’t discourage these practices, you don’t have to look long for it.

The Market, I believe, is like any other environment, in that sustainability is more important than morality. A creature can be the worst parasite, the most vicious competitor, the smelliest, ugliest, foulest thing imaginable and survive nonetheless. All it needs to do is survive long enough to reproduce and have it’s offspring do the same.

Just the same, the market will allow any business to survive that presents itself as profitable and growing at a sufficient rate. It will do the same for individual businessmen, if they seem to be moneymakers. The means of success only become an issue if the law make it an issue. The function of regulation is to apply a selection pressure to behavior of the corporation, to make it more difficult for a company to function when its doing things that are harmful, even when the harm doesn’t directly translate to economic bad fortunes for the rest of us.

I fail to see any evidence in history to support your claim above, Eric. The very concept of monopoly defines the power to outprice a competitor into bankruptcy thus ending competition.

You are not defining monopoly David, that is competition. A free market allows you to price however you see fit. Company A wants to put Company B out of business as you suggest. They price their products below cost. Let’s say they can sustain that loss longer than Company B. Company B goes out of business. Company A raises it’s prices because there’s no competition. The price is high now, inviting Company C to start making the same product. Is Company A still a monopoly? As long as others are free to enter the market, it’s a ‘free market’.

Government regulation is the only reason the Morgans, Rockefellars, and dare I say it, Gates, do not have text book monopolies today.

David if you look deeper into how the Morgan’s and Rockefeller’s acheived ‘monopoly’, in any sense they may have, you will see them greasing the wheels of government in order to do so. They had laws and regulations passed that gave them the edge. The kind of monopoly you are talking about has never existed without graft, bribery, and collusion of public officials. Just take a good look at the third world. Monopolies exist, but they are always public sanctioned ones. Just good ol’ public-private partnerships.

I really think liberals are not looking very hard for the facts on this issue. The old monopoly boogeyman is very much like any other conspiracy theory. The oligarchic oil companies raise the price of gasoline… They’re gouging the customer! The oligarchic oil companies lower the price of gasoline… They’re engaging in predatory pricing!

It’s really an example of what George W. is being accused of with the Iraq war, exploiting fear to manipulate the public. “There’s these evil corporations that want to give you cheaper goods, but only until they can drive their competitors out of business then they’ll own you!”

In a real sense, the marketplace is becoming more free with globalization as national intervention has less and less power over international and multinational organizations. Thus the economic future belongs to nations like China and SE Asia whose low cost labor populations and technical rapidly advancing technical expertise will give them competitive economic advantages the U.S. will be hard pressed to overcome.

Are you actually saying here that less government intervention increases economic prosperity?

I believe that currently corporations have far too much power over public policy, and are using it to serve their interests alone, leaving the rest of us in a dysfunctional society that ultimately undermines our culture as whole.

Yes, but how do they exert that power? What is the system dynamic that allows and even impels them do so? If corporations are exerting undue power over government, in what way will we limit that access to government power?

I distrust free market philosophy, because the market itself is a reification of more complex human activities, all of which are vulnerable to the forces of human ignorance, dishonesty, and wrongheadedness.

It occurs to me that this is very similiar to the arguments advocating state censoring of speech before the advent of the 2nd amendment. Ideas, which are disseminated via speech, can be parasitical, vicious, smelly, ugly, and foul too, but we no longer advocate state regulation of it because we realize the validity of the principle of a free market of ideas.

Nothing is immune to, ‘the forces of human ignorance, dishonesty, and wrongheadedness,’ certainly not government. I am not advocating the rule of corporations over that of government. I am advocating a proper role for both. It seems logical to me to close the loophole of government interference so that corporations do not have the opportunity to exert that kind of influence.

The function of regulation is to apply a selection pressure to behavior of the corporation, to make it more difficult for a company to function when its doing things that are harmful, even when the harm doesn’t directly translate to economic bad fortunes for the rest of us.

For instance? “Unsafe and/or defective products, from polluting or clear cutting.” Ok. We have that regulation. Now the regulators are looking at new horizons. These are clearly things which have long been illegal already. Theft is theft, whether you lie about the value of what you are selling or are devaluing something that doesn’t belong to you.

How do we deliniate what aspect of economic life is off limits to government? What standard do we use to say government has no right to intervene in my economic affairs?

First we have to define our concept of free market, because you guys seem to be operating on a different definition. Free market does not equal anarchy, or imperialism, or oppression. Free Market Capitalism flourishes and was brought to life under the rule of law. Trade has existed since the beginning of human society. I’d say Capitalism evolved from trade, but was properly given birth within the confines of western civilization.

In a free market how many unsafe and or defective products will you buy a second time? In a free market property rights are paramount and infringment on those rights require recompense.

martin,

there is no current “job-creation boom.” what is going on is job-recovery, and it is FAR from a boom.

remember that just because people are no longer collecting unemployment benefits, that doesn’t mean that they are employed.