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44 days in...
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Thraxle wrote
at 11:18 AM, Wednesday March 4, 2009 EST
...and there is no sign that Mr. Obama is any different from the past democrats that sat in the oval office. The only exception is that he has 100% compliance within his party and a majority in congress that will pass anything Mr. Obama supports.
How hypocritical is it that Mr. Obama continues to remind the general public of the deficit he inherited, but then spends so recklessly that the possibility of having a balanced budget anytime within his term is utterly impossible. How hypocritical is it that the libs called the recent spending bill that was passed a "stimulus package". How does $20 billion dollars towards food stamps stimulate the economy? What jobs will be created by increasing food stamp allowances? This is only one example of many within that spending bill, but I'll try to avoid making this post unneccisarily long. One of you left wingers need to help me understand what our President is attempting to do. The view from the cheap seats here in right field makes the picture look exactly like I thought it would look before the election took place; the liberal democrats want a socialist republic in place of our cherished capitalistic society. Let's continue to drain the rich to pay for the poor. Let's continue to increase taxes on large corporations that have been laying off employees at an enormous pace. Let's increase benefits to the unemployed instead of finding ways to provide jobs for them. I'm ranting a bit, but one thing is clear. Barack Obama scares the living shit out of me. JP, UGB, anybody, please help me feel better about the job he's doing. And someone explain to me how the fuck he has a 67% approval rating. They must have done the polling at a foreclosure seminar or a foodbank. |
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skrumgaer wrote
at 8:43 AM, Sunday August 16, 2009 EDT UGB: I don't know what you mean by "covering".
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vagisil3 wrote
at 12:24 PM, Sunday August 16, 2009 EDT So, Thraxle, you need to get it out of your head that we live in a capitalist society, and that we didn't have any socialism already.
If you actually go back and read the Communist Manifesto, you'll notice that a lot of the things (not all of them) that Karl Marx was agitating for exist in our society. They came about in the US through gradual social change rather than violent upheaval, but they are here nonetheless. But let me explain what I mean about not living in a capitalist society. In a true free market, we would have let our banks fail. We would have let Fannie and Freddie fail. We would have let the auto companies fail. Why? Because that's how a true free market works. Companies that make bad bets and bad business decisions fail, and in Darwinian fashion, the better, smarter, stronger companies survive. However, that's not where we live. We live in a corporatist society, where the profits of big businesses are privatized, and the losses of big businesses are publicized. It's actually quite the opposite of socialism economically, and it's horrific to contemplate. I don't know why you think this country drains the rich to pay for the poor, in fact what it really does is use the middle class as a vehicle for catapulting the wealthy elite to heights unequaled in any society in the scope of human history (except maybe the current oil sheiks in the middle east). |
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vagisil3 wrote
at 12:25 PM, Sunday August 16, 2009 EDT And this conversation has proven Godwin's law once again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law Oh, and btw, this is JeremyS posting under his wife's michael jackson alt. |
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vagisil3 wrote
at 12:28 PM, Sunday August 16, 2009 EDT Oh, and my biggest complaint about Obama is that he's NOT trying to nationalize healthcare.
How the fuck anyone in this country who doesn't own huge amounts of stock in a health insurer could not want nationalized health care is beyond me. Someone explain. |
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vagisil3 wrote
at 1:21 PM, Sunday August 16, 2009 EDT From Wikipedia:
10 Conditions For Transition To Communism 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all right of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equal distribution of the population over the country. 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.[7] 2, 5, and 10 are clearly a part of the US. |
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vagisil3 wrote
at 1:24 PM, Sunday August 16, 2009 EDT In addition, a number of the things that were making the workers so crazy (such as 6/12 work weeks, the right to organize, wages) have just vanished in the modern age. The people arguing for communism argued against other socialist reformers that more drastic measures needed to be taken.
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skrumgaer wrote
at 2:32 PM, Sunday August 16, 2009 EDT UGB:
"Covering" is not a word usually associated with taxes. Do you mean what the tax revenues will be spent for? Like "coverage" for insurance. In the U.S., Medicare is paid for from a tax on labor income; the funds are spent to "cover" particular types of medical expenses. |
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skrumgaer wrote
at 4:44 PM, Sunday August 16, 2009 EDT UGB:
I don't assume things. I infer them. I will cast my pearls elsewhere. |
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JeremyS wrote
at 5:21 PM, Sunday August 16, 2009 EDT Have you never heard of the Federal Reserve golf? That's pretty much #5 in a nutshell.
In addition, the current progressive tax code is a replacement from the flat tax that Marx and others found so odious. Finally, we're paying for the uninsured with our dollars regardless - part of the reason that costs are so high is that hospitals have to recoup the money they lose when they take care of an uninsured patient, raising prices for everyone. |
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JeremyS wrote
at 10:21 PM, Sunday August 16, 2009 EDT Yes, but it's all controlled by the Fed. They have a few different numbers they can tweak that completely open up or shut down the credit markets at any given moment, from the interest rate to the amount of reserves a given bank has to keep against its deposits (which in turn directly effects how much it can loan)
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