Ok, I didn’t realize that Evil Captor had participated in that thread. That fact moves this rant of his from uninformed to an outright lie.
Respect for EC------> down the shithole.
This typical of the Bush mentality; accept our proposal, or we will tar you as being against reform. There are dozens of ways to cure Social Security’s ills, but Republican don’t like them, so they prefer to believe there is only one solution.
Ok, I will. Raise the salary cap on Social Security contributions from $90,000 to $200,000; better yet, get rid of the cap altogether and fund universal health insurance.
I said you wouldn’t like it.
You’re so cute when you talk like Joe McCarthy.
Sure, the Left never calls the American voter stupid. Sure, the Left doesn’t hold the American voter in contempt. I see that now.
As opposed to the outright love of humanity shown by the right.
I find that people who feel the need to constantly insist that they’re smarter than their opponents probably aren’t.
Would that be the American voter that thinks personal accounts are a bad idea? To the contrary, the American voter has been moving up in my estimation ever since the election.
The OP asserts “class warfare” by the wealthy against “the middle class and the poor.” The non-combatant status of the poor in one of the theatres of operation (to strain a metaphor) does not, in itself, invalidate the fundamental assertion.
I’m not debating, here, I’m just sayin’.
The idea that there isn’t class warfare going on is laughable. Just about every single thing Bush has done has been disadvantageous to the poor and middle class. The vitriolic “counter-arguments” posed by some here is surprising to me. I mean, defending the rights of the wealthy to be wealthier is your raison d’etre, isn’t it? I recommend that you simply embrace it.
For a look at the issue from a roughly non-partisan (politically) and tax oriented point of view, I recommend David Cay Johnson’s book Perfectly Legal (see http://www.thinkingpeace.com/Lib/lib056.html or http://www.jimnewsom.com/PFW-perfectlylegal.html). The number of audits of poorer people has been going up, while those on the wealthy has been going down (see, e.g., http://www.taxprophet.com/hot_topic/0204.shtml or http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0510-02.htm).
From the latter website:
If you don’t believe that there is a class war going on, you are either blindly stupid or profiting. If you want to keep supporting it, at least know what you are doing.
Not only that, but just because the new bankruptcy laws do not impinge directly on the poor does not mean that they lack any of the hallmarks of class warfare.
As even some of our conservative commentators have conceded in the thread on bankruptcy, the new bankruptcy provisions do little or nothing to remove some of the massive loopholes in bankruptcy laws for people of large means. Property exemptions, asset trusts and the like will continue to shield many wealthy people from the consequences of their malfeasance, while the poor are left to fend for themselves.
True, but the OP’s deliberate misrepresentation of the facts (on bankruptcy) calls into question every single one of his unsupported allegations.
There is certainly room to question whether or not it’s bad law, or whether or not it is overly helpful to big corporations and doesn’t stop loopholes for the rich. He didn’t say that, he said it would make it “harder and more expensive for poor people to declare bankruptcy” which is a dirty lie, and he knows it’s a lie, and he lied because it served his purpose.
You can’t support your side without making up inflammatory lies about the opposition, your argument is intellectually empty. It takes some mother fucking balls to go on a website dedicated to fighting ignorance and deliberately spread lies about something this important.
Cheesesteak, I think that I conditionally agree with you here.
As the debate over the new bankruptcy law has raged, I have been asking myself why it has so many folks on my side of the aisle so pissed off. On the surface of things (given that (I am pretty sure) the FBI has reported something like 10% of bankruptcies as fraudulent, and that the folks below the median income are excluded) reform seems like a good idea. Yet you have folks claiming that this will hurt the poor. This seems contradictory.
That said, I do think that the OP is correct in that this bankruptcy reform is a form of class warfare, though not for the reasons that the left seems to be sound byteing (yeah, that’s a word, when you get a degree in English you are granted the power to make up words. Don’t like it, too bad ). What we see, beyond the moral issue of it being inherently correct to pay what you owe, is a multi-billion dollar industry that has enough political clout to influence things even more their way. This just rubs some of us the wrong way.
The other thing that is a huge problem is that nothing is being done to regulate the predatory marketing of this industry. They are giving credit to people that in no sane universe should have it, collecting what money they can and then writing the rest off when these folks are ruined. It would seem that at very least this industry should suffer some logical consequence of this (like eating it on bankruptcies), but they don’t.
That, I think, gets to the heart of the class warfare issue. The loyal opposition seems to be really big on the personal responsibility angle when it comes to individual, corporeal citizens but remains strongly mute when the issue of corporate (or fictional persons) responsibility comes up.
So, to sum up, I am pretty sure that the claim that this particular legislation will make things any worse for the poor is probably not true. However, the very existence of it is part of a big picture that, when viewed, shows how the wealthy and powerful continue to stack the deck in their favor.
There is also room to argue that it constitutes class warfare, which is the only point that I wished to make.
Well, upon closer inspection of the OP, I see that he did indeed use the words you are attributing to him. I won’t defend such a misrepresentation.
Nor will I endorse your characterizations of his motives and purposes (or challenge them).
Nor will I consider the instance to poison the well on the validity of the initial assertion.
You’re right. Only a liberal would want to take care of our elders. Conservatives would be quite happy to hear of them eating cat food.
The Rand institue says that 4.4% of all punitive damage awards are from product liability and 2% from medical malpractice. The Wall Street Journal said that nearly half of all federal court cases filed between 1985 and 1991 were businesses suing each other. Tell me more, Clothahump, about “incredibly rampant” lawsuit abuse.
Depending on which statistics one chooses to use something between one-quarter and one-half of all bankruptcies are predicated by high medical bills.
BUT IT’S MY MONEY! YOU CAN’T TAKE MY MONEY AWAY FROM ME! IT’S MINE, ALL MINE! DAMN COMMUNIST!
Look who is leading the opposition! Loveable old Sen. Ted Kennedy (the guy who is always wailing about the poor), and Harry Byrd (ex Grand Kleagle of the KKK). Why are they in opposition? The Trail Lawyesr and ABA have both of these guys in their pockets…the lawyers do not want an end to the gravy train of umlimited malpractice lawsuits. Everybody seems to have the curious idea that the money paid out from these lawsuits grows on trees…the fact is, YOU and I PAY for each any every one of these. John Edward’s million-dollar lifestyle was paid for by medical malpractice lawsuits, and none of these guys will give up without a fight.
President Bush’s courageous attempt to reform the bankruptcy laws is another example of the old democratic party defending the staus quo=which is allowing well-heeled people to walk away from multi-=million dolar debts, with their houses and cars.
To the extent that the end result of the legislation pushes more people from the ranks of the middle class to the ranks of the poor, it creates a larger pool of people relying on the social safety net. Absent some mechanism for enabling the social safety net to handle the increased burden without collapsing into failure with catastrophic results for everyone who relies on it, this legislation can be argued to be detrimental to the poor.
Long way around to make it so, and nothing so direct as implied by the OP, but there you go.
Very well-written post, BTW, Binarydrone.
Unless the poor are being exempted from the mandatory (and not free) credit counseling, it is indeed “harder and more expensive for poor people to declare bankruptcy.”
They’re pouring money into liberals now? Cool.
I fail to see how changing nothing and throwing more money at it constitutes any sort of reform.
So you are against Bush’s proposal to increase the federal debt by 2 trillion dollars to bridge the Social Security shortfall as we transition to privatization? How will it work if you don’t throw that money at the problem?