jshore, you did no such thing. You merely presented an alternative viewpoint. You in no way refuted that the senate would again reject Kyoto. You in no way refuted my statement that Clinton never presented the treaty for ratification. Yes, other nations have ratified the treaty since then. However I suspect that their govts were presented with the treaty for ratification much earlier so that they could debate the issues and propose compromises. Since Clinton didn’t present it, that couldn’t be done. What Bush did was say that this was a bad treaty for the U.S. (and it is, it will cost us far more than anyone else, why should we act in other nation’s best interest) so he had no interest in it’s approval. What Clinton did was sign something that looks good in the headlines, just as long as you don’t look very closely to see just how bad all the warts are. If he had submitted it, the warts would be a lot harder to gloss over.
I guess you are one of those that also thinks that Bush “increased” the arsenic drinking water standards too, eh? Never mind that all he tried to do was roll back the rediculous standards Clinton put in on his way out the door.
Well, I can’t refute such a statement since it is merely conjecture. My personal opinion is that it would have been very difficult for a Democratic President to round up the required number of votes (although I tend to be a pessimist…I wouldn’t have expected Kyoto to live at all after the U.S. backed out). However, a Republican President like Bush would have a much better chance because he could get at least some of his fellow Reps on board and most of the Democrats would come on board. Just as it was probably easier to Clinton to get NAFTA passed than it would be for a Republican Pres., it is easier to get international arms control and environment treaties passed by a Republican Pres.
Well, you may suspect this but you would have to give evidence that this was the case. I think most of the industrialized nations simply did not take up ratification until the negotiations on the details were completed which was after Clinton left office.
No, what he did is put on hold standards to lower arsenic levels that had been adopted during the Clinton Administration but had not yet gone into effect, criticizing them and threatening to overturn or weaken them.
Well, if the standards were so ridiculous then why did the Bush EPA end up backing down on this and accepting the Clinton standards after review? From this Public Citizen link:
By the way, you never did answer my question of where you get your information from. Your posts seem to align very closely to the view of the world someone would have if they were locked in a box with only the WSJ editorial page to read.
Wouldn’t this be more meaningful if it was stated in the form of percentages? You certainly have to agree that if tax cuts were limited to equal dollar amounts between the various income groups they would be essentialy worthless.
I agree with your statement that taxation is not nearly so progressive when you factor in everything, however, my complaint is that it’s not politically possible to increase taxes without increasing them more on the higher income groups and it’s not possible to reduce taxes without reducing them more (percentage-wise) on the lower income groups. That will inevitably lead to wealth flight and economic problems for the country. When does it stop? When the top 10% pays 100% of the taxes? How do those few avoid being taken advantage of?
Essentially an engineering problem. It will work if we want it to. Considering N.Korea’s current capabilities, I wish we had it now.
You fail to understand what this is all about. Bush’s policy will reduce pollution by allowing an upgrade to a plant without altering its grandfather status. This allows incremental improvement. Under Clinton’s policy, any change instantly removed the grandfathered status forcing the plant to meet all current regulations. That makes things worse since the inefficient, highly polluting plants were never upgraded.
This is a misrepresentation of the Republican’s position. They have never said they will pay for themselves, but the hit is not as bad as the static model would suggest. Also, this policy will encourage dividend payout by public corporations and discourage fraud. Dividends are cash money paid to shareholders and cannot be faked.
How about market-based approach vis-a-vis eliminating double taxation of dividends?
This is a free country. If you want a totalitarian society, there are plenty of places in the world that will make you happy. The only issue that needs to be addressed is “tragedy of the commons” which should be addressed in regards to pollution, but not fuel conservation. Fuel usage is automatically addressed by market pricing. Pollution probably should be addressed with an extra tax on pollution sources. I can go along with that if the calculations are done right and the money used appropriately.
So was the Maginot Line. Gotta disagree that the nature of the problem can be defined as tightly as shooting down other rockets. If the problem is preventing attacks, the likelihood is too far down the list to deal with - and it wouldn’t help now, or ever.
Will it reduce pollution as much as his policy of making environmental compliance in Texas voluntary? Call me a skeptic.
“Dynamic scoring” is supply-side voodoo in different clothing. It’s still assuming that business growth will exceed debt growth. I don’t think it’s a misrepresentation to say we’ve been there and done that and it failed.
Heard stuff like that before too. Don’t underestimate the power of the weasels to find loopholes.
Why not? Fossil fuels are nonrenewable. Market pricing is not the answer to all problems.
For a few months’ supply, ten years from now.
Opinions on its intrinsic value to humanity vary widely from those suggested by the National Review, whose photos you cite. ANWR is part of the commons that would become a tragedy.
As would more genuine consultation and less patronization by the Republicans.
“Certainly?” It’s a major subject of debate, as you might know.
Yes, let’s. And we can start by ending tokenism by a party only pretending to be for colorblindness.
Why am I a Republican? Well, I started out as a Democrat, back in my early college years. Didn’t know much, and got most of my news from either TV or the college newspaper - in other words, from slanted liberal sources. Took a few classes, developed a thirst for knowledge, and started hunting for info on my own, which gradually opened my eyes as to the real Republican position, as opposed to the typical twisting of it into such lovely statements as this:
Thank you, ElvisL1ves, for presenting me with such a vividly bigoted statement. I used to buy into the notion that Republicans were some buffet-line combination of:
racist
stupid
heartless
stuffy
Usually all of the above, actually. Tripe, all of it. Republicans, as a class, or no more accurately summarized by such demonizations as Democrats are by such terms as “anti-American” and “Marxist”. Those who insist otherwise are just incapable of dealing with actual arguments - when you claim the opposing argument is being made by the anti-Christ, it saves you the trouble of having to eradicate your ignorance. “He’s wrong because he’s a bad, bad man.” It has a certain elegant naivete to it, dontcha think?
So, what, exactly, do I like about the Republican party?
I like the idea of personal responsibility, which is certainly more central to conservative ideology than it is to its liberal counterpart. This is the biggie, right here. Most of the conservative positions I take have this principle at their hearts. Lower taxes? Eliminate the nanny state? Dump AA? Check, check, and check.
I like the idea of a nation well capable of defending itself - a strong military is our friend.
I’m a pragmatist. As has been mentioned before, many liberal/Democratic ideas are really nice ideas that just won’t work. “Hey, we don’t need to build up our nuclear arsenal. I’m sure those nice Soviets wouldn’t dream of attacking anyone. It’s not like they have a record of trying to dominate other nations, or anything. And weapons are baaaaad!” “Affirmative Action will make sure nobody gets discriminated against!” “Let’s cut all of our emissions by 80%, effective next Tuesday, so that we all have clean air and water!” “If 60ppm limits on arsenic are good, then 10ppm would be better! Ooh, or how about 1ppm? That’d be keen!” “War is always based in greed. The best solution to our problems is to not have enemies!” Yes, I’m exaggerating for dramatic effect, but you get the idea.
Really, I’m what Jonathan Chance would call a “Practical Libertarian” at heart. The Republicans represent a much better alternative than the Dems, to me. Are Republican politicians perfect? Of course not. They love their pork as much as anyone. Some of them are willing to sell out their ideals for woefully low prices. GWB, as much as I like him in most regards, is a Big Government Conservative, which saddens me. But as a party, I’m generally pleased.
And for those of you who are genuinely interested in finding out what the conservative movement is all about (as opposed to those who are just interested in slandering us - you know who you are), you really must check out National Review Online. A better bunch of columnists on the web I have not found. Conservatives actually have a wide range of views on most subjects - in my experience, there’s much more variety amongst conservatives than amongst liberals. (Compare NRO to The Nation, and you’ll see what I mean.)
Anyway, you slander-monkeys may now resume your painting of the Pubbies with your wide ol’ Paintbrush of Nastiness. Cheers!
Jeff
Again, IANAR, but I too read NRO. I find much more diversity of thought there than elsewhere. Interesting that liberals portray it the opposite way, but I find most liberal thought to be vacuous or shallow. Conservative thought seems to me to be more intellectually stimulating with actual honest debate of the issues. This is not to say the same thing about individual liberals or conservatives - I am referring to published articles and debates. While I’m not a card-carrying member of the conservative movement (I’m libertarian), I came about my current mode of thinking the hard way. When I was younger I was a full-fledged member of the radical left. As I began to examine my political views more deeply I came to discover that liberal viewpoints are either hypocritical and disingenuous or foolish and naive for the most part. This realization was quite distressing, but it has held up under more intense scrutiny and careful analysis. I know I’m angering the majority left on these boards but my opinion is based on independent thought and comes with the full knowledge I had of liberal viewpoints. I’ve seen both sides and I’m ashamed of my previous liberal ideology.
Well, percentages of what? The cites I linked to expressed things in a variety of different ways and the spinsanity one talked about how different ways of looking at things lead to different conclusions. In addition to linking to those cites so that everyone can see the variety of ways to look at things, I chose to highlight something in my post that shows the dramatic disparity in who gets what when you look at things in real dollars. But, I am not telling people here that this is the only way to look at things and I am providing them the resources to look at them in a variety of ways. (Contrast this to what the Bush Administration does!!!)
If you look at who gets what in terms of the percentage share of the total money going to the tax cut, you still see striking disparity. If you look at things in terms of percentage decrease in total federal tax burden (or, total overall tax burden), the disparity is somewhat less pronounced but still skewed quite strongly toward the rich. Only if you look at things in terms of percentage decrease in the federal income tax only do you see a larger cut for the percentage cut for the poor than the rich (e.g., those making <$30000 get 17% reduction and those over $200,000 get an 11% reduction). Of course, this last way of looking at things is what the Administration has chosen to point out because it conveniently hides the fact that they are making the tax burden as a whole more regressive even while the income tax itself is becoming slightly more progressive (as the spinsanity piece explains) and because it hides the dramatic difference in dollars back. Since the poorest folks pay little or no income tax, instead facing the burden in other taxes, it is trivial to cut their taxes by a large percentage. [If you make some people who used to pay $10 of income tax owe no tax, you have decreased their income tax by 100% !]
Well, they don’t necessarily have to be equal dollar amounts but the point is the huge orders-of-magnitude disparity in dollar amounts. At any rate, a cut in only the lowest marginal rate would give equal dollar amounts to each group (which is what the “$300/$600 rebate” part of the 2001 tax cut did), except if you are in that lowest income bracket in which case you get some fraction of that.
And, I’d ask worthless from the point-of-view of who? Sure, from the point of view of the top 1% who have seen their real incomes grow by like 150% over the last 20 years, it would be a pretty worthless addition. To those around the median income or below who have seen only anemic if any rises in real income during that time, it would be far from worthless. And, in my conception of “fairness”, these are the people who should be getting the benefits of a tax cut, although obviously this is a value judgement.
Yes, I know you believe this to be the case that such a situation is unstable toward “soaking the rich”. But, it flies in the face of reality. It simply is not empirically true. Why it is not true is an interesting question. One is the extent to which the rich have control of the media and access to the government. I also think that Robert Nozick (who wrote “Anarchy, State, and Eutopia,” sort of a libertarian social theory bible) has an argument in his book sort of on this subject…more specifically, why the majority of the lower classes don’t overwhelm the wealthy in a democracy. His point is that it is always cheaper for the rich to “buy off” a certain segment…say the top 51% of the population than to allow the poor to “win”.
At any rate, if you look at the way after-tax income has changed over the past 20 years, the instability that one sees is not the rich losing ground but rather the rich far outpacing everyone else! That is the empirical instability that I think we actually have to come to grips with in our society, not some hypothetical instability that simply doesn’t seem to manifest itself in the real world!
Of course, these switches go both ways. For example, Kevin Phillips, author of “Wealth and Democracy” was quite a dearling of the right for a while until he broke with them over precisely these sorts of issues of inequality.
Maybe I should start reading “NR Online” and seeing what I think of it. I have made it a project over the past year or so to read the Wall Street Journal editorial page religiously and, I’ll tell you, if that is at all representative of right wing thought it leaves a hell of a lot to be desired…I’ve considered starting a whole web site dedicated to setting their “facts” straight!!!
I read the WSJ Opinion Journal online only rarely, probably because I subconsciously see the factual problem you see overtly. I do, however, read NRO regularly. It’s all opinion, much of which I don’t agree with, but it’s intellectually honest and has genuine debate. It’s really pretty rare.
Upon re-reading my post, I think I may have been somewhat overly offensive to some - I regret that. I’m glad you didn’t take it that way, jshore, as I have a great deal of respect for your viewpoints (even with disagreement). I have many friends who are avowed liberals who I respect as well - I just think they are, for the most part, misguided (their opinion of me is often somewhat more harsh).
And while the switches do go both ways, I’ll venture to say that my way is far, far more common.
The disparity in the tax break between the wealthy and the not so wealthy is indeed huge when expressed in dollars.
Also equally as huge is the disparity between the wealthy and the not so wealthy is the amount of taxes paid when expressed in dollars.
As an intelligent individual as you are, I would hope that you would try to make your points without guilding the Lilly. Expressing it as you have without a relevant comparator is merely salacious and not informative, and is misleading.
I’ll give you another example of the technique:
I studied two groups to see if my new medicine would help reduce menstrual pain. For group A, the reported a 40% reduction in menstrual pain by taking my medicine once a day. Group B who did not take my medicine, but took another leading brand instead reported no change in the amount of menstrual pain that they suffered.
This data will lead you to conclude that my medicine works, and my competitors did not. What I have unfairly neglected to tell you is that group A consists entirely of women, and group B entirely of men.
Misleading and salacious, right?
It’s the same with taxes. I guy that pays $50 in taxes, and gets a $10 break has recieved a 20% reduction. A guy that pays $50,000 and gets a $10,000 break has recieved a proportional cut.
If you wish to argue that the tax break is improper, feel free to do so, but please present your evidence in a fashion which is less salacious and misleading.
Haven’t we been over this so many times that we can take it as a given that you’re going to get called on it every time you try to pull this trick?
Do you even read my full posts and links for heaven’s sake?!? You’ve got freakin’ nerve complaining that I have expressed them in a misleading fashion! I have given links that discuss in detail how to look at this from several perspectives and I have given in my most recent post above a complete discussion of all of the different ways in which you could look at the cuts including quoting the figure that the Bush Administration loves to quote regarding the percentage decrease in federal income tax for the rich and poor.
And, unlike you (or the Bush Administration), I point out rather than obfuscate issues such as whether one computes the percentages based on total tax burden, total federal tax burden, or only federal income tax burden! I discuss the extent to which the current taxation system is progressive or not when you consider income tax alone or all taxes together.
Geez! I may not be perfect but if this isn’t a case of the pot calling the slightly cream-colored wall black, I don’t know what is!
Thanks. I didn’t take offense. Well, maybe I was slightly irked by the implication that if we only read more that we would come to know the same truth as you have discovered, but hey, I tend to believe that a bit but only the other way around!
True enough. I would hypothesize that this is because:
(1) To the extent to which “conservative” means believing in the status quo (which is an oversimplification to be sure, but not without some truth), one is more likely to be liberal when one is young and conservative when one is older.
(2) To the extent to which this is correlated with an increase in wealth as one gets older, I can understand the appeal of conservative policies on taxes and such once one becomes reasonably well-to-do (although I am trying to prove to be a strong counterexample).
While this may be so in some cases, I see it more that as one gets older, one has more life experience and maturity to see why utopia isn’t possible. I don’t fault libs for their ideals, just for the foolishness to believe we can get there without unintended consequences. Actually, in recent years it appears to be the left that wants the status quo. The right wants taxation reform, SS reform, a colorblind society, etc.
And you may indeed. A good friend, now in his 60s was steadfastly liberal throughout. He is a brilliant man, holds the patent that makes AlCu interconnects work for integrated circuits, and is very well off. I am astonished that he can’t see what I see, but it is clear that there is no universal truth in this regard. I have no doubt that I am more self-centered whereas he is more self-sacrificing for the good of others. Certainly one of my lesser qualities (and one of his best). This is probably where the crux of the issue is when the transition to conservatism does not take place with age and maturity.
ElJeffe, the subject of race vs. party has been gone into in great detail here. The lack of facts you have supplied here, in relation to the intensity of your invective (which, from you, is a compliment), shows that you either have not read any of it or did refused to pay attention to anything which carried the risk of upsetting your carefully-tended worldview. But most of us prefer facts.
flex727, if you’d like to clarify or revise any particular point, please do so.
Flex727, thanks for your honest assessments in your last post. I would like to respond to some things in an earlier post of yours that I find hard to resist reply to (even though ElvisL1ves has already briefly addressed them.
No…not nearly so simple. Here is a thread where this was discussed in gory detail. The problem is that the advantages strongly favor the offense…i.e., countermeasures seem to require much less technical sophistication and money than means to defeat them. At any rate, this is all basically irrelevant to the issue at hand since there is enough of a bipartisan consensus that research will continue on missile defense regardless of who is in the White House or what the exact make up of Congress is. The issue on the table is really about rushing ahead to deploy a system that won’t work, with timetables that are driven by Presidential re-election campaigns rather than physical reality.
Yes, this is the claim by the Administration. But, apparently there is little that is gained pollution-wise from the incremental upgrades, especially if the regs are written not to require any improvements. The point of grandfathering old plants under New Source Review was to allow some small upgrades to occur without the power companies incurring large expenses with the expectation that these old plants would eventually be phased out anyway. Instead, these companies have been trying to make more extensive upgrades to keep the old pollution-spewing plants in operation. (A new plant is way cleaner and more efficient than an older one that hasn’t had modern pollution controls put on it.) The government has had to sue in some cases. The Bush solution is just to make all of this legal so that the old plants can continue to operate indefinitely, even undergo extensive renovation, and still continue to avoid modern pollution control equipment.
Well, different ones have said different things. As for the “dynamic modeling” on a macroeconomic scale, there is so much voodoo in that that even the last two heads of the Congressional Budget Office appointed by the Republicans have refused to go along with the idea of issuing dynamic projections, the most recent one explaining his position in quite a bit of detail. Unfortunately, he is about to be replaced by a new head who is a real supply side believer so the Republicans may finally get their way of having overly-optimistic projections made official policy. We shall see.
Some experts familiar with this area have pointed out that the Bush plan might not be so bad if it was part of a larger reform of the whole corporate taxation system. However, this is not reform…It is simply giving away the store. While some corporate dividends are essentially taxed twice, more are essentially taxed only once or not at all.
Well, maybe with the same logic that supplying free cocaine to cocaine-addicted people would help. It just feeds an addiction, keeping fuel prices artificially low so that we continue to use the resource wastefully. And, it doesn’t deal with the fact while conservation would help solve both the imported oil issue and the issues of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, drilling for oil in ANWR makes only a very small contribution to the first problem and excerbates the other ones.
Well, I could show you pictures from the Sierra Club to prove the opposite point. And, scientific studies that have discussed the unique biological habitat there. And, so on.
As jshore noted, there are indeed many ways of calculating percentages.
One could also observe that the fiscal burden of a $10,000 break is much larger than the fiscal burden of a $10 break. (About 1000 times as much! )
One could also argue for giving everyone the same level of tax cut (say, $50) rather than the same percentage.
One could also cut the bottom rate alone: that would still tend to lower the middle and upper classes taxes more than the working class, as the working classes are in the bottom tax bracket.
Indeed, if one is a classical utilitarian, one believes that marginal utility declines with income: you get more happiness from an extra $100 when you earn $20,000 than when you earn $200,000. This would argue for skipping tax cuts on upper incomes all together. In fact, I’ve pointed this out to Scylla before, IIRC. Not that it especially matters.
)
