No, I understand. And I agree. I thought along similar lines when he was apologizing for torturers based on the act being okayed by the torturers.
Not that Im aware of.
Hmmm. That’s kinda backwards, logically, if you know what I mean. First off, you might as well blame yourself. You became a chicken farmer. Why didn’t you do something you hated so that you could earn more money and pay more taxes and help the veterans?
Or, I would say, if this is an issue that bothers you, why you don’t volunteer for veterans?
I think the government has plenty of money. Why not blame them? I mean, it seems silly to blame Exxon, for the lack of veterans’ benefits when Congress votes itself incredible benefits, salaries and perks. Even you seem to say that the government is not prioritizing properly. So, the inability the government do the right thing is not Exxon’s fault.
Scylla’s Book of Rules Rule #1 People will say whatever they think you want to hear to get you to do what they want you to. It’s a human thing, not a liberal or conservative thing.
I don’t know what your generation is. I might think of you as “young” people, or you might be my senior, but I’m glad we agree.
I however, don’t think that the answer is to blame the corporations for the fact we as a people are soft and stupid.
I don’t think that’s true. Were talking about growth, a progression. It was certainly better for women than it was 50 years before that, and I don’t think things changed very much for gays until recently.
Correlation does not equal causation.
What happens when you slash the social services net???
It’s a genuine question, because I don’t know.
What does that mean? Between who and who? Does this catchphrase actually represent anything good?
What starts? What are you trying to do or fix?
I dunno. To me that’s not far off from General Mao’s state of “constant revolution,” where they just tore down shit they didn’t understand, and it sent the country back 50 years.
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I’ve skimmed this thread and I’ve seen a lot of derision because the NYC occupiers supposedly lack an easily quotable agenda. How many people have actually gone to an occupation in their city to find out what’s really happening?
I attended the first general assembly of Occupy Austin.
Let me tell you what I saw:
A well organized meeting to establish local criteria that we could address as concerned citizens.
Proposals put forth that directly impact Austin.
One committee had a list of local credit unions with comparison of services for those who wanted to get their money out of the major banks like BOA.
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What’s wrong with BOA?
They were stupid enough to buy countrywide, but during that long weekend when the world almost failed, they, at the government’s behest bought Merrill Lynch to stop them from failing. They absorbed Merrill’s CDO losses and took on the chin to save the country because A. The government told them they needed to do it, and B. They thought that long term, it would be worth it.
If you’re referring to the fee increase, read this:
I know BOA is a great big bank, so that makes them an easy target, but I happy to think they are a pretty good company.
[quote[Another issue addressed was the piss poor management of the Capitol Metro-our local bus/light rail service.
Cap Met used to offer greatly reduced fares for the disabled or the elderly but bad business practices and the reduction of sales tax revenues have forced it to make budget cuts and of course, the target is those who could least afford it.
A group was formed to block funding police surveillance cameras in Austin at a time when crime is low and the city is cutting vital social services.
A group was formed to help institute campaign finance reform.
A spokesman for the Save Our Springs alliance give a quick speech on how to force the city council to stop the building of a water treatment plant that is extremely costly and unneccesary.
That was just in the first afternoon.
I also saw tremendous respect and diversity.
I saw people getting registered to vote for the first time.
I saw an occupier in a wheelchair with the sign “Please don’t cut my Medicaid.
I saw another with a placard that said 'Give my parent’s retirement back.”
(I also saw one that said “Eat your vegetables”. That might have been Bricker’s PETA person).
I saw a marine in full dress uniform.
I saw nurses, and teachers, and social workers and firemen and EMS workers.
I saw the obligatory bad poet take the mike.
I saw, or rather heard, the equally obligatory drum circle.
I saw an absurd amount of police officers at Occupy Austin-including at least two SWAT teams postioned on the roofs of the surrounding buildings.
I had a moment of extreme irony when a young protestor asked me what he should put on his signage.
Most improtantly, I I saw kids unpug their Ipods and get involved in a participatory democracy for the first time in their lives.
It was great! I’m going back tomorrow afternoon.[/quote]
Ok. I’m glad you had fun. Personally I would just rather go to a block party. I don’t need a veneer of social consciousness to disguise my good time. And, again, many of thee things you discuss as positives, I see as negatives. I don’t care about Austin public transport. I live in PA. Here we think we have a movement, but really you have everybody just doing their own thing. Politics as mosh pit. If i’m going to dance, I’ll dance a real dance.
I view Krugman probably the way you would view Limbaugh. I simply respect Limbaugh more, because Limbaugh doesn’t pretend to be a serious economist. Krugman is a despicable human being, a liar, and a hack. I would doubt the sun would rise tomorrow if you told me he said it would.
But you do raise an interesting point:
It seems to me that Occupy Wall Street is to the Tea Party as Air America is to Rush Limbaugh. I frankly think the left is jealous, or worried and trying to copy somebody else’s idea.
Scyllla never fires a rifle when a shotgun is available. Why be wrong about one thing when you can be wrong about fifty?
I do *so *enjoy reading about “The Left” in the singular. Such a rich fantasy life some people have…
Well, at least we’re discussing Corporate Personhood now, rather than something else.
Who said anything about being able to dissolve corporations based upon whim or political convenience? That’s fantasy: the Executive Branch doesn’t have that power. Now I could imagine a situation where you might want to set up a private-public partnership with exactly that sort of structure: if Joe Taxpayer is a shareholder, he should get a say in the operations. But if that was the case it would be written into the original law. I can’t see how that would be unconstitutional.
And on the first amendment, you just endorsed Citizens United as well as all manner of fraudulent advertising claims. Hey that’s fine. But pretending that it’s part of the constitution is highly dubious as per the arguments made by Chief Justice Marshall (1819).
Again, there are all sorts of statutory protections for corporations that might make sense. They should be analyzed with an eye towards the specifics of the situation. But saying corps have human rights? Constitutionally protected, with no need to study the particulars? That’s loony.
It’s about time that people are marching on the street, keeping the crazies in check. The Broadway bongo drummers are heroes, as are the blue shirted cops keeping law and order. Lieutenant Bologna disagreed and resorted to violence to make his point. I support the cops on the beat: if Bologna had problems with the blue shirts, he should have brought it up during their performance evaluation instead of macing them and every patriotic citizen in reach who was holding a camera.
I worked with the VVAW during the early 70’s. I worked with Goldstar Families for peace more recently.
I did everything that I could think of to stop the wars.
I don’t think it would be ethical of me to take a salary doing something I hated because I doubt I would be very good at an occupation I despised. If I’m going to take someone’s money, I believe in doing the very best job I’m capable of or I’m not giving full value. That’s stealing in my book.
You are correct that the government fails to prioritize.
That does not change the fact that a significant number of large corporations fail to pay taxes or receive IRS rebates.
No disagreement here.
Less money for schools because of an inequitable tax base leads to an uneducated populace easily appeased by circuses and mislead by soundbytes.
A media bent on promoting the weapons of mass distraction while ignoring the relevant issues leads to ignorance.
Constant branding of what were the commons leads to increased consumerism.
Admittedly, these aren’t the only reasons (by any means) for our cultural decay but they’re a part of it.
Just one example:
The regulations on advertising that targets small children has been slashed.
I have little respect for parents that plunk their kids down in front of the TV for hours but I’m sure not happy about bombarding said children with messages to buy Happy Meals either.
A progression because people of color, gays and women demanded their rights.
The majority didn’t grant them.
The minority took them.
Many nice white liberals urged MLK and other civil rights leaders to stop marching, to wait nicely and quietly for segregation to end.
You create a large disenfranchised population with no reason to maintain the status quo.
You breed bloody revolution.
You create the conditions where a tyrant can gain control because the people are desperate.
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.
You read history.
Surely you’re familar with the causes of the French Revolution.
Or the conditions in Germany prior to WWII.
The polls I’ve read indicate that the majority of Americans do not support the continued occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan.
They do not want education or Medicare or Social Security cut.
We’ve seen the Republicans kowtow to Grover Norquist and pander to the Tea Party. Hopefully the Democrats will come to realize that there is another group of equally pissed off citizenry and start working to protect programs that help those that truly need it while slashing wasteful military spending.
It’s nice you have positive relationship with BOA. It was our business bank for years until they started nickel and diming to us to death. We fired them and closed our account.
For over a year, BOA sent us statements showing a negative balance-with a five dollar transaction fee added on for sending us the statement on the account we had closed.
I don’t ‘need a veneer of social consciousness’ either but hey, if you can participate in something you do believe in and have fun in the process, what’s wrong with that?
I don’t expect you to care about Austin. The people at Occupy Austin do and they are working to change their community. What’s wrong with that? One of the most common complaints about the Occupiers is that they lack an agenda. I give you examples of what was agreed on at the very first meeting and all you can come upo with is that you don’t care about a city 1000’s of mile away.
And Rush is honest, has integrity, and has received a Pulitzer prize for his stellar reporting.
Insert laughing hysterically emoticon here.
Good for you. Seriously.
Heh. Nice try. You just tried to tell me that you’re not capable of doing something well unless you like it. I don’t believe that. I’m sure you do lots of things well that you don’t like, and I can’t believe that someone such as yourself has so little self- discipline that would not be good a job they didn’t like.
Not all jobs are rewarding in and of themselves. I have one of those jobs that I don’t particularly care for, and I do it well… because it’s my fucking job. Same with lots of people. I doubt I’m any better than you, or that you couldn’t do the same..
Grrrrr. This is a pretty generalized statement. Let me assume that this statement is founded on that MediaMatters and Forbes thing that was going around a year or two ago. Is that accurate?
Well, that information does not come from the tax returns, it comes from the 10-k, and that does not tell you what the company’s marginal tax rate is. In 2010 for example, Exxon paid 9.8 billion in total taxes and duties to the US government and had only total US income of 7.7 billion.
Exxon is not in a 125% tax bracket. For a lot of reasons , 2009 is a great year to pull data if you want to say “Corporation don’t pay much taxes.” You could cherry pick years like 2010 to say that they pay more than their fair share. Neither argument is actually accurate if you’re interested in the facts.
Corporations pay a lot of taxes. Frankly, I think they could pay more, but I don’t think it’s because the tax brackets are too low. They are not. If anything, they are too high. What you really need to reform the corporate tax structure is a lower tax bracket, but the removal of all the subsidies and the credits that the government provides. The problem is that the government tries to have it’s cake and eat it too. It incentivizes certain behavior by offering tax credits. What this means is that the government is saying if you “X” than that will count as if you’ve paid “Y” in taxes. Nobody counts these things in a corporation’s tax bill. Some of these are just, some aren’t.
Anyhow, like most other issues, this is a bit more complex than it seems at first glance.
Im on the board of my daughters’ private Catholic School, and am privy to the budget. The public schools publish their budget. I published the figures on the SDMB in the past, but the public schools spend a whole order of magnitude more per student than my daughters’ school while providing an absolutely terrible education. They have plenty of money. It doesn’t get to the students.
Ummm, the Civil War?
Your original quote was about what happens when you “slash the social services net.”
I don’t either of your examples had much of a social services net to slash.
So, based on this you want to organize a boycott of the company through an organized protest?
If it tastes good, it’s probably not good for you. If it’s fun, it probably isn’t helping anything.
Rush doesn’t pretend to be something he’s not. Krugman does. The Pulitzer and the Nobel are a bit of joke.
Oh, you poor man.
Oh no. I eat yummy food, and have lots of fun. I just Don’t pretend it’s somethin it’s not.
No doubt that’s why everyone calls you Mr. Sunshine.
Does your daughter’s school accept every student that applies? Even the ones that have learning disabilities, are marginal achievers, discipline problems, or physical or mental disabilities? Does your daughter’s school provide services for all these problems? No?
False equivalency.
http://firedoglake.com/ This cut on Maher is perfect for this discussion. PJ ORourke is like most righties who don’t understand what happened to the economy. They poke fun at the marchers because they can’t understand the turmoil in people’s lives. Grayson explains it well.
Sending a child to a Catholic girls school will guarantee of a young woman of calm self-discipline, chastity and sensible shoes. By sheer coincidence, I met the dozen or so that weren’t. What are the odds?
If you ask and answer your own questions, I don’t think you are debating.
Anyhow, the school district spends over 20k per student, not including special Ed. Since that receives grants and funding both federally and from the state which monies must be spent in that department, they are naturally separated, so it’s easy to back out.
By comparison, my daughter’s school is under 5k.
But, we don’t spend millions on superintendents and administrators. We are not in the top tenth in teacher’s salaries, but the bottom fifth in academics.
So, no, the equivalency is not false… Once you stop answering your own questions.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a… a… butterfly?
You dodged my question again, so I will ask it again. Does your daughter’s school admit all students who apply, including those with learning disabilities, discipline problems, underachievers and the physically disabled?
False equivalency.
No.
Still not a false equivalency. The school district doesn’t conform to your list.
I’m not sure you are using “false equivalency” well
Clarify.
Do they admit those with learning disabilities? Yes or No.
Do they admit those that create disciplinary problems? Yes or No.
Do they admit those who are academic underachievers? Yes or No.
Do they admit those who have physical or mental disabilies? Yes or No.
I will give you credit, you have tried to avoid outright lying thus far, but obfuscation is really not that much better.
I really have to fade from this conversation and get back to work.
I did want to say that I realize I sounded like a unsufferable pompous prig with my jobs remark.
Of course, I’ve had jobs that made me grit my teeth every time I drove to work and I still managed to do a good job.
Also, you mentioned you had a daughter Scylla.
I don’t have children but I do have a godkid that I love very much.
I don’t want her to inherit what I think is coming down the pike unless drastic changes are made.
I don’t thing she’s entitled to a life of luxury but I do think she deserves affordable renewable energy, a clean environment, reasonably priced college tution, safe food, affordable housing and a decent job if she seeks one.
I’m not giving you any credit, because you are being a douchebag, the point you are seeking to make is moot as it cannot account for the discrepancy in cost per student, you are using “false equivalency” in a way that makes little sense, and i don’t play yes or no games.
More obfuscation. I will take that as a “no” to all questions. Plus, I got you to resort to name calling first. A win all around.