Comments by "" (@A86) on "C-SPAN" channel.

  1. I've read that before. "Wasting Away in Hooverville" by Jonathan Chait, The New Republic blows most of these revisionist myths away.
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  2. "They're investors. They're small business owners who don't make the millions" Most small business owners make less than $250,000/year. Obama's "tax hike" on those over that limit is still pretty low. Ronald Reagan raised the tax rate on the rich to as must as 50%. Obama's rate for them is 11% lower. "Takes a lot of income to pay multiple people $15k per year and up" Small businesses make money from the value added from the labor of employees.
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  3. Besides, I haven't "redirected" arguments. Unless you consider refuting claims you hold to be sacred and self-evident to be "misdirection" because you couldn't possibly conceive that they might be incorrect.
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  4. "increasing tax burdens" On whom? Most of us are getting tax cuts. It's the top 2% who will be getting the tax increase. I feel no sympathy for them because they've shoveled debt and the tax burden onto the rest of us for decades. You can't continue to dole out corporate welfare and pay for multi-trillion dollar military adventures every year without spending. No president after Eisenhower has decreased spending.
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  5. "use the percentage of blacks verses whites" Government surveys even show that black suspects are 3 times more likely to be incarcerated for the same crime as a white counterpart.
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  6. I'm sorry but this is completely revisionist: (dot) boston (dot) com/ bostonglobe/ editorial _ opinion/ oped/ articles/ 2009/02/ 18/ the_new_ deal_ and _right _ wing_ revisionism/ Before the New Deal there was no suburbia, no large, booming middle class, no interstate highway system, few social services, lower business/industrial output, lower wages, etc. To say the New Deal didn't work is like saying investment doesn't pay off.
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  7. *brainwashed* *monotone robotic voice* Must.......crush.....capitalism..... Lol. Neocons and Glenn Beck fans would be funny if they weren't dead serious and 30-35% of Americans didn't actually believe them.
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  8. I agree. It's not just minorities either, at least on a global scale. Poor rural whites have more or less the same crime rates as poor inner city minorities. Russia, one of the poorest European countries per capita, has a crime rate around that of an American inner city. The experts should do a research into what are the motives of offenders, including violent offenders. Though the data already shows that poverty breeds crime we need to hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
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  9. @jimistreets - I don't think it's that simple. I think we should lower taxes on some things and raise it on others. Most large businesses are not paying their taxes as it is, which is why need to restore Glass-Steagall. I think for small businesses taxes should be lowered.
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  10. @billabong24041 - Of course I have a problem with it. But Republican policies do nothing but add to the debt as well. "Bush had it right with his tax cuts" Tax cuts did jack shit except shift more of the tax burden to the middle class and increase debt. He cut taxes while increasing spending. That's horrendously stupid. That's like cutting your salary in half then buying a new car. You can't fight multi-trillion dollar wars if you cut taxes.
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  11. Here you go: (dot) sadlyno (dot) com / archives / 11958 (dot) html While CRA loans were part of the problem the bigger problem was the deregulated loans.
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  12. That's true. Without social services to take care of people when they're down and out and without sufficient jobs that pay well to fill the void of social services people will commit crime to get by. It's human nature. The countries and regions with the lowest crime are generally those with the highest per capita income and the most social services. Crime rates in the US are highest in inner cities and poor rural areas like the Rustbelt and the Bible Belt.
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  13. I don't know about your business but in general tax cuts for the wealthy don't trickle down to small businesses: (dot) cbpp (dot) org / cms/ ? fa = view & id = 692 Most small business owners are not wealthy. Even if you don't increase spending it still decreases tax collections and puts a burden on small businesses to pick up the slack. Most savings are just pocketed and/or put in overseas bank accounts.
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  14. The corporations wouldn't exist without the people that work for them. Don't forget. "The Reagan tax cuts increased tax revenue" Not really: en (dot) wikipedia (dot) org / wiki / Reaganomics # Tax _ receipts Tax cuts don't increase tax collection revenue and aren't intended to do so. The whole point of them is to encourage more spending or investment.
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  15. A monopoly forms by cornering the market and limiting competition. That makes them anti-competitive by nature. Cornering the market and limiting competition coerces the consumer. If a company has not cornered the market and squeezed out all competitors they're not a monopoly. "Every new product or service creates a monopoly" So McDonald's "Southern Style Chicken Sandwich" created a monopoly for chicken sandwiches?
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  16. CRA is only part of the problem. The other problem was deregulation put into place by Bush, Reagan and "ironically" Carter. You have more than one culprit in this. You have deregulation and bad regulation.
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  17. @CalifSunshine2008 - It was the same way with Bush. Paulson, Gramm, etc. All those characters. Both parties are pretty much the same.
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  18. No, some planets are cooling while some are warming: (dot) skepticalscience (dot) com / global - warming - other - planets - solar - system (dot) htm Solar activity has been at a minimum for decades. There has never been a period in earth's post-Cambrian history where atmospheric CO2 composition has jumped 107ppm in just 250 years. If so I'd like you to point me to that period or chron. There is no such thing as "Planet X".
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  19. What's been "socialized" about healthcare? The public option isn't even being put in. A step backwards? Lol. All the best healthcare systems in the world are single-payer systems (which is nationalization, not socialization). The US is in 37th place in healthcare quality. Not a single private healthcare system in the world is above 45th place.
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  20. From the CBO, the Department of Treasury, the Department of Labor, the Census Bureau and the NBER. I can PM them if you want.
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  21. Tripled the national debt? Please explain how so. Our foreign debt at the end of the Bush Admin was $10.4 Trillion. Bush brought it up to that from the $5 Trillion foreign debt under Clinton. Reagan increased Carter's foreign debt of $0.9 Trillion in 1980 to $3 Trillion by 1988. Under Obama our current foreign debt is $12 Trillion. Every president since Nixon has increased our foreign debt. But $12 Trillion is not triple of $10.4 Trillion.
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  22. 1) Prove the information is incorrect. If you cannot this argument is worthless. 2) BS. There are all sorts of private studies. CATO and the Heritage Foundation being two of them. 3) Government spending on social programs has shrunken over the past 30 years but the income gap is increasing.
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  23. America is not above question or condemnation. It's a nation like any other. Not a god or something holy. If you read the Bible you would know that nation-worship is idolatry.
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  24. The public ended the Vietnam War through protests and lobbying Congress to end it. "Without government, I doubt Blackwater would be stirring up trouble in Iraq" According to that logic no business would exist without the government. Blackwater exists because there is money to be made off of war. A business will form around anything that money can be made off of.
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  25. You haven't proven that I've misrepresented anything. Your only argument consists of "well some guy under FDR later criticized him" and citing a certain book/article as if by itself it is the gospel truth. People claim all sorts of things. All that matters is pure, unbiased, unpredjudiced numbers. And the revisionists' numbers don't add up.
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  26. Actually employment and economic growth was higher under Eisenhower and Clinton than Kennedy and Reagan.
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  27. Most people in the EU work less hours per month and per year than Americans yet have higher living standards. America is 15th overall in the world in living standards and dropping.
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  28. 1) Again that's a logical fallacy. There is no reason to disbelieve the information simply because of the source. I could just as easily dismiss private/independent studies by saying they have their own motivations. You have to PROVE the information is false. BTW, some of the information was independent and private studies. Not government. 2) Did you know most economists don't take depreciation and foreign debt weighed against growth into consideration? Also no growth isn't necessarily bad.
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  29. About socialism I don't see anti-socialists getting rid of their pensions, unionized $38/hour jobs, retirement funds, the GI Bill, collective bargaining power, public parks, firefighter services, etc. Ironically (or maybe not) it was the socialistic policies that industrialized capitalist nations adopted that bailed them out of collapse and bails their people out of poverty. All the countries in the world with the best living standards are regulated capitalist or market socialist countries.
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  30. Bush left over a trillion in deficit and Obama has so far left nearly 2 trillion in deficit. That's not quadruple, that's nearly double. "stolen from future generations" The only problem I have is that when people complained about Bush stealing from future generations Republicans just went "Oh be quiet you silly libs. He knows what he's doing. This is for the best." now those same people are wringing their hands about Obama. "Born-again fiscal conservatives" I call them.
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  31. "It doesn't take a genius to deduct Rev. Wright doesn't like America" Not that I'm a fan of Rev. Wright but you're taking what he said out of context. He said "God damn America" about slavery, extermination of the Natives, etc. He was cussing he saying "damn" as in "condemn". He said "That's in the Bible" because prophets in the Old Testament such as, ironically Jeremiah, called down God's condemnation upon their nation (being Judea) for their nation committing various sins.
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  32. Newsflash: a lot of economists believe Obama's stimulus is insufficient. I know, I work with them.
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  33. Exactly. The heating which started at the end of the Little Ice Age ended back at the end of the 50s, which is why the temperature temporarily dropped in the 1960s before it started going back up again in the late 60s/early 70s. If human pollution didn't exist the earth's temperature would be going down right now or leveling off. Instead it keeps going up at an ever-accelerating rate. I guarantee there is no time in earth's history where CO2 jumped 107ppm in less than 10,000 years.
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  34. @mynameiswhoo - That is correct. The vast majority of foreigners who come to the US for treatment are wealthy. Why the hell would working/middle class people come to the US to get treatment and end up with a $10,000+ bill? In the US you get billed $800 just for the fucking doctor to LOOK at you. I got billed $1400 for a 15 minute checkup last year. The majority of working/middle class people travel to Canada, Japan, France and India for medical tourism.
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  35. What does democracy have to do with healthcare being "government-run"? There is no such thing as "government-run healthcare" in the first place. Single-payer is where the government funds insurance for everyone for private healthcare. "is a disaster" Lol, and the private sector has done such a bang-up job? They got us into this economic mess thanks to deregulation. Cash For Clunkers was very successful. As is NASA, the FDA, Medicare, etc.
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  36. "denying the facts" Such as what? And single-payer is government insurance. The government does not actually run the pharmaceutical system of the country or regulate the doctors. Speaking of facts over the past 40 years the income of the top 5% of this country has increased more than fivefold while the income of the bottom 90% of income earners in this country has stagnated or even decreased since 1983.
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  37. "But to tax them extra lacks any meaningful sense" They already don't pay most of their taxes as it is (and leave working/middle class Americans and small businesses to pick up the slack). Taxing them even less would just mean they pay even less of taxes they already mostly avoid paying. That's what happened with the Bush tax cuts and to a large degree the Reagan tax cuts. Tax cuts are better for small businesses instead of corporate vampires.
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  38. 4) I linked a graph of government spending. Less than 40% of it was dedicated to those. The vast majority was dedicated to defense contractor spending, corporate handouts and agribusiness.
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  39. You do know that people who worked under Reagan now criticize him, right? It's not the source, it's the information. Argument from Authority is a logical fallacy.
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  40. If you think our private sector is a "free market" then there is little hope for you. It's so far from what Adam Smith or David Ricardo envisioned they wouldn't even recognize it. "tax payers are forced to participate" The Constitution grants the government the right to collect taxes and all citizens are expected to pay them. Since everyone uses public services that's why you are "forced" to pay them. Living on American territory is a public service in and of itself.
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  41. "Tax cuts increase tax revenues" myth is one of the biggest tripe theories they teach kids in economic classes today. It's based on the Laffer Curve theory which is almost completely without basis. It doesn't even make common sense. It's like saying eating less makes you gain weight: (dot) cbpp (dot) org/ cms/ ? fa = view & id = 692 Real tax revenue collection has dropped over the past 30 years. But government spending has not. Hence why deficits and foreign borrowing and inflation increases.
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  42. Monopolies are by nature coercive. A non-coercive monopoly is sort of like a "non-harmful criminal" or a "altruistic bully". If competition was a threat they wouldn't be monopolies.
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  43. The Housing Market Crash was because of both deregulation and bad regulation (in the form of the CRA). Bush and Reagan are just as responsible as Carter in Clinton. If you want to blame it all on the CRA (which is ridiculous) the Republicans still had 6 years of a Republican Congress and Executive Branch and did nothing about it.
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  44. The debate among scientists is over how fast this is occurring, if humans can significantly lessen our impact and how.
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  45. As for private services you aren't forced to partake of any particular service but you have to by necessity since it's impossible for most citizens completely self-sufficient. I don't even know about not being forced anymore to partake of private services. The current healthcare bill says you HAVE to buy private insurance or else pay a fine (a tax). Also when certain private businesses fail everyone HAS to pay for it through corporate welfare and bailouts.
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  46. (dot) salon (dot) com/ tech/ htww/ 2009/ 02/02/ the _ new _ deal _ worked/ Trying to argue the New Deal didn't work is an uphill battle. It doesn't even make logical sense. Logically if you invest in more production, more infrastructure (which allows businesses and workers to increase output) and increase tax revenue while keeping prices down you have economic growth.
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  47. Market growth has slowed over the past 30 years. Indeed the market can find a way to grow but that doesn't mean much if the growth isn't raising GDP per capita for most of the population, isn't decreasing inflation, isn't offsetting debt and borrowing and isn't lowering prices. Growth alone a good economy does not make.
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  48. @jimistreets - Actually the mandates are to buy PRIVATE INSURANCE. You need to go back and re-read that bill. This was bought and paid for by the insurance industry. Good ole corporate America sold you and I out. Yet again. Are you waking up yet?
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  49. Usually "small businesses" are defined as ones with less than 100 or less than 200 employees. "It's simply unjust to say that someone at the top should pay substantially more than those in the middle or bottem" They should because those at the top use more government services and functions than those at the middle and the bottom. Most working/middle class people don't use tons of energy every year, or use shipping lanes, land grants, business loans, etc. Public services aren't free.
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  50. Reagan indoctrinating kids to vote Republican by indoctrinating what they should believe about taxes = okay with the Right Bush Jr. asking kids how can they help his Administration = okay with the Right Barack Obama Jr. telling kids to work hard, be healthy and stay in school = Right-wing shitfit Notice the double standards? Shit like what the Republicans are doing lately is exactly the kind of stuff that makes the US a laughing stock in the world, especially among industrialized nations.
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