Unfortunately, even then, you never know.
BTW, I am an ex-navy SEAL and hold an endowed chairs at Stanford and MIT. I find that working at the universities is more intellectually stimulating than my nominal “job” playing in the NBA :-).
What’s pertinent is that conservatives got their wrists slapped for holding a jobs bill hostage to their getting still more taxcuts in the midst of the greatest recession since the great depression. Then y’all proceeded to gas about how unfair it all is when you still haven’t paid for any of the programs that you implemented while your guys were in power.
The fact that I’m actually the king of Mars does nothing to change these facts. It merely serves as a convenient diversion and coverup for Republican’s plainly visible greed and fiscal irresponsibility.
Tell you what, just assume that I’m a native of whatever city Sam Stone comes from. I’ll let you play the ‘foreign rabblerouser’ card for free and without factual basis, kinda like the way you painted Iraq a ‘grave and gathering danger’ back in aught two. 
Army seal myself, took out Cambodian destroyers on the Mekong delta.
Good times, good times!
Funny you should mention that. Sam is also a self-made expert on Vietnam War swift boat tactics.
I’m Batman, and so’s my wife.
Hmmmm, I see you still won’t answer. Neither Magell nor myself brought up the ‘your war’ or ‘your debt’ bullshit, you did. So the question is completely reasonable.
Yes, I know that the board is anon so there’s no indy corroboration, but your answer obviously frames people’s responses… so if you want to be taken seriously and not just piss and moan (although the Pit is the right place for the latter I guess), you should probably just say where you’re from.
Else, you can continue to ignore the question, and I suppose, lose any credibility to discuss the subject, which is another way to move the conversation forward I guess.
Why should he, or any Republican, claim to worry about that?Here’s how much they really care:
Well sure, we’re supposed to forget all that stuff when you think it comes time for you to cut yourself another tax break?
Only in your dreams.
Government programs must be paid for, just like anything else.
It’s unfair of you to want to be left off the hook for some very expensive programs initiated under the conservative’s watch.
Let’s get that debt taken care of, then we can discuss how much taxation is ‘fair.’
That’s the responsible way to approach things, now isn’t it?
You do want to be a responsible citizen, don’t you? 
Okay, let’s get the debt taken care of, as you suggest. Now, how do you propose we do that? Of course, we can’t do it by reigning in spending alone, so that means that the money has to come from taxes, right? So, the question to you is how much tax should we collect and from whom? What would you like to be see done?
Well, I’d like to see a jobs bill passed, one that isn’t full of special tax bribes for Republicans.
What about you?
Would you like to see a jobs bill passed that isn’t full of special tax bribes for Republicans?
I’d like to get the economy back on its feet, and the American worker back to work, full time if they want it, with a decent job, and decent benefits.
How about you, how does that stack up against a little taxcut money in your pocket?
are you an American?
So are you happy with Harry Reid’s bill? He cut out all the Republican stuff, leaving nothing but 12 billion in tax cuts for small business.
The annoying thing about you guys demanding a ‘jobs’ bill is that you had almost a trillion dollars to use to create jobs, and you blew a big chunk of it propping up salaries of public union employees and paying off Democratic constituencies.
And then you support higher taxes on business, which the CBO says will have a disincentive effect for business investment (and therefore cost jobs). But when confronted with the job-losing effect of taxes, suddenly you turn into deficit hawks, and accuse the Republicans of wanting to jack up the deficit. In the meantime, you’re busy cranking up discretionary spending like boosting the Department of Education by billions, bumping the EPA’s budget by 34%, giving the Department of State 40% more, and in general throwing money at government agencies willy-nilly. When you’re called on that spending, suddenly it’s about ‘jobs’.
Then you accuse the right of having ‘no ideas’, while simultaneously ignoring every idea they propose.
For example, here’s an obvious way to stimulate the economy in an era where the deficit is out of control - cut regulations. Cutting a regulation is the same as a tax cut in terms of lowering the cost of doing business, but it doesn’t cost the government a damned thing. It’s one obvious way to create a stimulus without spending any money. There should be an effort to take a comprehensive look at existing regulations and eliminate the ones that have shown a negative cost/benefit ration. Sarbanes-Oxley would be at the top of the list. A second option would be to announce a regulatory freeze, to give businesses some breathing room and reduce investment uncertainty. But Obama plans to do the opposite - he wants to ‘re-regulate’ vast swaths of the economy.
And free-market economists believe that one of the reasons the economy isn’t recovering the way it should is because of uncertainty. The Democrats have proposed sweeping changes in many areas that will affect business, and still claim to want to enact those changes. Tax hikes, card-check laws, cap and trade, health care legislation, new EPA mandates on CO2… No one knows where any of this stuff stands as of today, so businesses cannot plan for the future. If all of it passed, it would represent a radical change in the business environment. Not all of it will pass, but no one knows what will and what won’t.
The government’s role in job creation should be to create a stable businesses environment, then allow the market to work. The Democrats are doing the exact opposite - every day they’ve got a new ‘plan’, a new jobs bill, a new stimulus, a new regulation. This stuff gets thrown at businesses willy-nilly, then you wonder why they’re not investing.
Tell me - if tax hikes are so critical to getting the deficit under control, would you agree that spending cuts are equally critical? The 2010 budget increased discretionary spending by a total of 13.1% in one year. None of this is ‘stimulus’. It’s simply growing the size of government agencies and increasing foreign aid. That’s an increase of something like 150 billion dollars - about seven times the amount of annual revenue that would be collected from the estate tax.
And this is why Republicans oppose tax hikes. You claim that it’s necessary to fight the deficit, and yet you increase spending by more than any of the proposed tax increases. And of course, none of this can possibly be stimulative, because if you pay for government spending with tax increases, the very best that can happen is that the two effects cancel out. More likely, you’ll just be moving money from efficient use to inefficient use, and damage the economy even further.
It’s hard to take your deficit-fighting claim seriously when Obama is cranking up spending by a huge amount (and not ‘stimulus’ spending - just baseline increases to federal agencies). And it’s hard to take your ‘job creation’ program seriously when you’re also proposing immense job-killing programs like Cap and Trade and card-check and all kinds of new taxes on businesses.
The economy is in such a mess in part because of all these conflicting programs. You blow the budget up with ‘stimulus’ packages, then kill the economy with anti-stimulative regulations. Then you want to control the deficit by raising taxes - another anti-stimulative move. It’s chaotic and destructive.
I’m sorry, Sam, since you are not an American, I am initiating the Smashy Codicile of Debate Rules and declaring your entire post invalid.
Tough break.
Well, I’m all for tax cuts, as it is MY money to begin with. But, like you I’d guess, I am more than willing to pay more in order to get our financial house more in order. I’d be willing to pay MORE in taxes. And I don’t mean that in general terms, I mean I’d be willing to wind up with less money each month—assuming you and everyone else are willing to do the same.
Now, back to what is an important question. What do you think is my fair share? How about yours? Are they the same? The same as everyone’s?
Well, that’s not what Smashy was doing. Smashy, and I, were just trying to understand Squink’s repeated use of “your” war, etc.
Yeah, I saw how much **Squink **mentioned ‘your war’ in his last post that **Smashy **quoted.
Incorrect, Jack… but of course you know that already and were just using snark. I don’t care if he’s an American or not wrt his standing to discuss; I want to know because it will color my response to his concerns. The fact that he won’t say (because he’s afraid that we’re stalkers and knowing his country of origin gives away his location? :dubious: ) means that he’s not interested in a conversation, he just wants to rant ‘n’ rave. Which is fine.
But he shouldn’t plan on being taken seriously.
Sam, I agree (as does almost every economist out there, including uberlefty ones like Krugman) that tax cuts (and regulation cuts) will generate jobs, but disagree that repealing SarBox is poster child #1 on where to start. Confidence of a firm’s books is critical to the efficient free flow of capital.
Oh, you’re right. I forgot about the rule that when responding to a poster that one must cite/discuss/post/take into account only the words in that poster’s most recent post.
Thanks for pointing that out…
Oh, almost forgot. Here: :rolleyes:
Evan Bayh is a big fat pussy.
Oohh. Roll-eyes. Got me good on that one. You’re such a fucking little girl.
If you’re going to quote someone, don’t you think what you write underneath the quote should have something to do with … oh, I don’t know … the fucking quote.
Here’s some rollies for you to whack off over.
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
I’m sure your agreement with Sam would be entirely different if he were from Papau New Guinea instead of Canada.