The Jokers Rant

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Message 860083 - Posted: 31 Jan 2009, 6:18:53 UTC

[rant]
Smaller Government as in a lack of regulations and stripping Government Agencies of their manpower got US into this stupid situation with our economy, It's time to put teeth back into Government and not make It weaker anymore as It's there to Serve and Protect the People of the US and to Protect Itself for our Posterity(Descendants). Lincoln didn't back down and start tearing stuff apart, He had limited Government and what happened to Him? He got assassinated for His Trouble(Not enough protection), Plus He got a Monument and His face on the Penny, Smaller Government, Sounds like an idea from the 1850's and It's an obsolete idea, Just like It was when FDR was the President.

Then there's the uninformed yahoos(Nuts?) Who like to claim the FED is a Private Organization and that It prints the Money(WRONG, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing does that as a part of the Treasury Department which was given power by Congress as Congress was given the authority by the US Constitution and the Amendments thereof to do what It takes to run the Government, The Chairman of the FED is an Appointee of the President and serves at the Presidents Discretion. The IRS is also a target of some, Almost the Same situation applies as the Congress created the IRS after an Amendment to the Constitution(the 16th which was ratified by 3/4 of the states and then signed into the Law of the Land by the President back then as explained Here. As all US(Federal) Government Agencies are derived by Acts of Congress and/or the US Constitution and It's Amendments, As the Power of Congress is bestowed by the Constitution and the Amendments thereof and Until the Patriot Act is overturned, It is a Lawful Act enacted by Congress under the Constitution, Like It or Not. I swear some people need a mandatory Civics/US History Class badly, But they'd probably fail It miserably, But then they wouldn't graduate High School or even Get a GED without It.



To say I got a bit ticked off is ok, I had to get this off of My chest.[/rant]
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Message 860092 - Posted: 31 Jan 2009, 6:45:49 UTC - in response to Message 860083.  
Last modified: 31 Jan 2009, 6:46:17 UTC

[rant]
Smaller Government as in a lack of regulations and stripping Government Agencies of their manpower got US into this stupid situation with our economy, It's time to put teeth back into Government and not make It weaker anymore as It's there to Serve and Protect the People of the US and to Protect Itself for our Posterity(Descendants). Lincoln didn't back down and start tearing stuff apart, He had limited Government and what happened to Him? He got assassinated for His Trouble(Not enough protection), Plus He got a Monument and His face on the Penny, Smaller Government, Sounds like an idea from the 1850's and It's an obsolete idea, Just like It was when FDR was the President.

Then there's the uninformed yahoos(Nuts?) Who like to claim the FED is a Private Organization and that It prints the Money(WRONG, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing does that as a part of the Treasury Department which was given power by Congress as Congress was given the authority by the US Constitution and the Amendments thereof to do what It takes to run the Government, The Chairman of the FED is an Appointee of the President and serves at the Presidents Discretion. The IRS is also a target of some, Almost the Same situation applies as the Congress created the IRS after an Amendment to the Constitution(the 16th which was ratified by 3/4 of the states and then signed into the Law of the Land by the President back then as explained Here. As all US(Federal) Government Agencies are derived by Acts of Congress and/or the US Constitution and It's Amendments, As the Power of Congress is bestowed by the Constitution and the Amendments thereof and Until the Patriot Act is overturned, It is a Lawful Act enacted by Congress under the Constitution, Like It or Not. I swear some people need a mandatory Civics/US History Class badly, But they'd probably fail It miserably, But then they wouldn't graduate High School or even Get a GED without It.



To say I got a bit ticked off is ok, I had to get this off of My chest.[/rant]

I would not like to be in your shoes, Joker my friend.


I am not far off......my eyesight is fading as fast I can hardly see the keys.......
Sometimes when somebody shows a document to me at work.....I just smile and nod........because I can't really read it......if they figure that out anytime soon.....I guess I am gone.......
"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

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Message 860097 - Posted: 31 Jan 2009, 6:55:21 UTC - in response to Message 860092.  

[rant]
Smaller Government as in a lack of regulations and stripping Government Agencies of their manpower got US into this stupid situation with our economy, It's time to put teeth back into Government and not make It weaker anymore as It's there to Serve and Protect the People of the US and to Protect Itself for our Posterity(Descendants). Lincoln didn't back down and start tearing stuff apart, He had limited Government and what happened to Him? He got assassinated for His Trouble(Not enough protection), Plus He got a Monument and His face on the Penny, Smaller Government, Sounds like an idea from the 1850's and It's an obsolete idea, Just like It was when FDR was the President.

Then there's the uninformed yahoos(Nuts?) Who like to claim the FED is a Private Organization and that It prints the Money(WRONG, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing does that as a part of the Treasury Department which was given power by Congress as Congress was given the authority by the US Constitution and the Amendments thereof to do what It takes to run the Government, The Chairman of the FED is an Appointee of the President and serves at the Presidents Discretion. The IRS is also a target of some, Almost the Same situation applies as the Congress created the IRS after an Amendment to the Constitution(the 16th which was ratified by 3/4 of the states and then signed into the Law of the Land by the President back then as explained Here. As all US(Federal) Government Agencies are derived by Acts of Congress and/or the US Constitution and It's Amendments, As the Power of Congress is bestowed by the Constitution and the Amendments thereof and Until the Patriot Act is overturned, It is a Lawful Act enacted by Congress under the Constitution, Like It or Not. I swear some people need a mandatory Civics/US History Class badly, But they'd probably fail It miserably, But then they wouldn't graduate High School or even Get a GED without It.



To say I got a bit ticked off is ok, I had to get this off of My chest.[/rant]

I would not like to be in your shoes, Joker my friend.


I am not far off......my eyesight is fading as fast I can hardly see the keys.......
Sometimes when somebody shows a document to me at work.....I just smile and nod........because I can't really read it......if they figure that out anytime soon.....I guess I am gone.......

Well It's My Rant and so It's on Topic, Neat way to handle It though, It might get moved to Politics of course, But anything here that I post is based on as much fact as I can find and if Google can find It online, It exists and so I quoted or linked to It If I could. I guess I like the US Government, As I'd rather have this form of Government than something else. As Evil grows when It's left unchecked and allowed to rot what has been left to US by Previous Generations.
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Message 860502 - Posted: 1 Feb 2009, 2:51:48 UTC


The old saying power corrupts Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely!


LETS BEGIN IN 2010
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Message 860526 - Posted: 1 Feb 2009, 3:17:04 UTC - in response to Message 860502.  
Last modified: 1 Feb 2009, 4:04:13 UTC

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Message 860583 - Posted: 1 Feb 2009, 7:26:19 UTC - in response to Message 860526.  

Smaller government has not worked. Less regulatio has not worked. You are right Joker.
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Message 861097 - Posted: 2 Feb 2009, 14:23:39 UTC - in response to Message 860583.  
Last modified: 2 Feb 2009, 14:26:43 UTC

Smaller government has not worked. Less regulatio has not worked. You are right Joker.


I think you miss the point of the cartoon, the cartoon is pointing out the fact that the republican party has not been the party of small government and fiscal responsibility. Instad they increased the size of government faster than even Clinton ever could. They also increased the national debt astronomically. The founding fathers of this great nation believed that the larger a government gets, the more it infringes on personal liberty and freedom. There has to be a balance between government regulation and personal liberty.

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Message 861155 - Posted: 2 Feb 2009, 17:28:24 UTC - in response to Message 860583.  

Smaller government has not worked. Less regulatio has not worked. You are right Joker.

Ohferchrissakes.

There has never been "smaller government." There has never been "less regulation." You are both wrong.

Since the creation of the United States, almost universally, the gov't has simply grown larger. Regularly, continually, and steadily. That's true no matter what yardstick you use to measure it. The budget, including so-called off budget spending, has always trended up. The number of laws and regulations has always trended up. The number of employees has always trended up. No matter how you measure it, as a rule there has never been smaller gov't or less regulation, and the few times it has been tried, e.g., deregulating the airline industry, said industry has exploded, bringing significantly cheaper airfare to the public and thus helping the most, those that could afford it the least.

Yet, even though government keeps getting larger, keeps punishing those who can afford it the least, keeps meddling in every aspect of your life, keeps creating ever more laws and regulations, keeps creating more problems, keeps skewing market activity badly out of shape, keeps going to war, keeps handing out corporate welfare, and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on, you people still manage blame everything under the sun except your precious gov't, which arguably is the source of most of your problems, and certainly is the source for taking 1/2 or more of your income and wasting it.

Rocket scientists, the country cannot regulate and tax itself into prosperity and economic health. Every law, rule, regulation, stupid idea, and all the rest of it that is forced on you by the gov't costs you (you, yes you, not some generalized "rich people" or "corporation") real money in the actual cost, the regulatory cost, and the cost of bungling and error. It takes an ever increasing amount of real money out of your pocket and is used to pay for wars and the CIA and corporate welfare and the DoD and bailing out exceedingly rich and sophisticated investors in ways that WILL NOT SAVE THEM or prevent what happened again, et cetera ad infinitum. Sheesh, look around you. The gov't NEVER gets smaller. The total tax burden NEVER gets smaller.

More regulation and more gov't agencies and more negative drags on the economic activity of the country do not make anything better.
Cordially,
Rush

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Message 861182 - Posted: 2 Feb 2009, 18:11:35 UTC - in response to Message 861155.  
Last modified: 2 Feb 2009, 18:14:35 UTC

OK dont faint but I agree with RUSH a bit on this one. Check out this page. Note that the cabinet only had 4 members. Seems to have grown a bit since then hasn't it. That's not to say that the Country and the world hasn't greatly changed since then. Still it seems like the regulations could be more easily enforced than what we are doing now. SO instead of having all the Cabinet departments enforcing their own regs. perhaps we should eliminate all the enforcement for each dept. and have a cabinet level Regualtions enforcement division. I can see how this would reasonably remove a great deal of bureaucrats whos jobs are repeated in all the depts.

Although if we had the regulations on the books and actually enforced the ones that are there we certainly wouldn't have gotten into the current mess we are already in.

BTW RUSH Reagan Bush I and bush II did it. THey all deregulated, cut taxes to the rich and each one cost the country dearly in national debt. Nope this theory is now closed. Supply side econmics Doesnt work hasnt worked and needs to be put on the scrap heap and burned for the rubbish it is.


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Message 861197 - Posted: 2 Feb 2009, 18:45:32 UTC - in response to Message 861155.  

Ohferchrissakes.

There has never been "smaller government." There has never been "less regulation." You are both wrong.

More regulation and more gov't agencies and more negative drags on the economic activity of the country do not make anything better.


Well said!

"[P]eople do not ask for socialism because they know that socialism will improve their conditions, and they do not reject capitalism because they know that it is a system prejudicial to their interests. They are socialists because they believe that socialism will improve their conditions, and they hate capitalism because they believe that it harms them. They are socialists because they are blinded by envy and ignorance." --economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)
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Message 861234 - Posted: 2 Feb 2009, 19:49:47 UTC - in response to Message 861182.  

Although if we had the regulations on the books and actually enforced the ones that are there we certainly wouldn't have gotten into the current mess we are already in.

That's simply untrue. The regulations that exist on the books helped create the current crisis because they skewed economic activity in ways that, absent the regulations, people would never have chosen to invest in.

BTW RUSH Reagan Bush I and bush II did it. THey all deregulated, cut taxes to the rich and each one cost the country dearly in national debt.

Meh. This isn't true simply because you said it. Kennedy cut the highest marginal tax rate from 90% (yes, that's right NINETY PERCENT. How hard do you think anyone works to earn the next dollar when they know they will only be getting $0.10 for every $1.00 they earn?) to 50%. Reagan cut it from there to 28% (or so, close enough). Guess what? In neither case did total tax revenue go down. A) Other taxes were used, and B) people worked very hard to make more money because they knew they could keep $0.75 out of every extra dollar instead of $0.10. In either case, those tax cuts were also linked to what were supposed to be actual cuts in spending, not cuts in the baseline budgeting scheme the federal gov't uses. Needless to say, the corresponding spending cuts never materialized, and in fact, spending increased, as it always does. Ya gotta love da gubmint.

While both presidents kinda cut taxes, and kinda cut some regulations, my point still remains, the gov't trends up. The debt trends up, regulation trends up, total tax burden trends up, costs trend up. By every measure, the gov't gets larger, more meddlesome, more expensive, more taxy, and as usual, it causes problems, skews economic activity, and costs those that can afford it the least, the most.

Nope this theory is now closed. Supply side econmics Doesnt work hasnt worked and needs to be put on the scrap heap and burned for the rubbish it is.

More empty idiocy. There is a LOT more to economics than overly-simplistic, populist terms like "supply side" or "trickle down" economics.

But it's very very simple here: if you take 90 cents of every dollar, or if you take 25 cents of every dollar, or if you only take 10 cents of every dollar, which dollars do you think people will work hard to earn? And isn't is just possible that by taxing people 10 cents you'll have lots and lots of dollars to tax? Conversely, isn't it just possible that by taxing people 90 cents you'll have very very few dollars to tax?
Cordially,
Rush

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Message 861253 - Posted: 2 Feb 2009, 21:01:59 UTC

SO this crushing national debt isn't the fault of Supply side economics? Oh enlighten us on how Reaganomics (supply side) economics worked. Was it the increased spending or the tax breaks or star wars programs that made it work? was it the complicit Congress that allowed it to happen? was it Dropping the capital gains tax to 15%? Thats a rate lower than the poor pay in taxes. The reason for high taxes on capital gains is and was that the money is unearned. As in Johnny went to work for 5 hours @ $6.00/ hour and brough home 20 of that. Johnny earned his money.

Now lets look at my GF. She doesnt work but receives $4000 a month for doing nothing more than breathing. This money is interest only!!! She gets this money because her parents and grand parents were thoughful enough to be well to do. She pays a tax rate on her money lower than I do because her money is earned through investments.

Heres my plan: Invest, enjoy your investment, If you choose to shift move or change that investment to other investments then you get hit and incentive tax rate. Incentive rate because you are going to be taxed heavily so the incentive it to keep your money where it is. If you keep your money stable then you get a rate only 10% higher than the top income tax rate. what ever that may be at the time. Capital gains taxes would be exempt from itemization. You didn't earn it you dont get to write it off.

how would this help
it would stablize the stock markets. create cash for the Gov't and allow people to move their money but pay to do so. Its become quite common for the ultra rich to do inside trading, bail on a bad investment, transfer their investment to another investment without any damage being incured.

Taxes collected from capital gains and investments would be in part directly returned to the working class. Why you ask? because they are the ones that run the businesses that you invested in. they get the crap pay and they deserve the tax breaks.


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Message 861315 - Posted: 2 Feb 2009, 23:15:19 UTC - in response to Message 861253.  

SO this crushing national debt isn't the fault of Supply side economics?

No. It's not. It frankly has nothing to do with economics per se, it's the simple result of nearly every single successive administration borrowing and spending far more money than it takes from the citizens of this country. That really has nothing to do with any particular economic theory, it's just simple math. If you take in 2 dollars, and you spend 1000 dollars you have a debt of 998 dollars.

Oh enlighten us on how Reaganomics (supply side) economics worked.

I don't know what you mean here, and I already made this clear. Both Kennedy and Reagan knew that if you take 90 cents of every dollar, or if you take 25 cents of every dollar, or if you only take 10 cents of every dollar, people will work hardest to make to make many many more dollars where they keep 90% of them, and they will hardly work at all to make dollars where they keep 10% of them. By extension, by taxing people 10% you'll have lots and lots of dollars to tax, and by taxing people 90% you'll have very very few dollars to tax.

Was it the increased spending or the tax breaks or star wars programs that made it work? was it the complicit Congress that allowed it to happen? was it Dropping the capital gains tax to 15%? Thats a rate lower than the poor pay in taxes. The reason for high taxes on capital gains is and was that the money is unearned. As in Johnny went to work for 5 hours @ $6.00/ hour and brough home 20 of that. Johnny earned his money.

Made what work? Reagan in essence cut the marginal tax rates in 1/2 and total tax revenue never dropped. Then, the gov't continued running around spending money like drunken sailors on shore leave. They kept and keep spending more money than they take in, as a rule, year in, year out. They create so-called budgets that contain spending cuts in future and out years, knowing full well that the whole thing will be re-written the following year.

Now lets look at my GF. She doesnt work but receives $4000 a month for doing nothing more than breathing. This money is interest only!!! She gets this money because her parents and grand parents were thoughful enough to be well to do. She pays a tax rate on her money lower than I do because her money is earned through investments.

She pays a lower rate because her income is sufficient to use the tax system. Without getting too deep into tax regulation here, you could buy, say, 10 million dollars in tax-free municipal bonds, paying a guaranteed 3% return. You would then be earning 300K a year, tax free. The reason that the gov't deliberately created those bonds as tax free instruments was to encourage people to invest in them because their return is small. So, that works very for her and many others.

Heres my plan: Invest, enjoy your investment, If you choose to shift move or change that investment to other investments then you get hit and incentive tax rate. Incentive rate because you are going to be taxed heavily so the incentive it to keep your money where it is. If you keep your money stable then you get a rate only 10% higher than the top income tax rate. what ever that may be at the time. Capital gains taxes would be exempt from itemization. You didn't earn it you dont get to write it off.

Wow. This is pure idiocy and will serve to discourage investment. Discouraging investment means there is less capital available to invest in providing the vast array of goods and services you see around you. That has the effect of driving prices up, which, of course, affects most those that can afford it the least, and does not solve whatever problem you think it will solve.

People like liquidity because they can invest where they think best, and when they dislike how their investment is performing, they can move it somewhere else. No one wants to be locked into an investment, say for example those that invested in Wang Computers. Why? Because they are given a crappy choice: pull out, and get hit with punitive tax rates, or stay in and get hit with losses. Those are crappy choices and hence will discourage investment.

how would this help
it would stablize the stock markets.

Why? 'Cuz you sez so? They will certainly be smaller as people hesitate to invest.

create cash for the Gov't and allow people to move their money but pay to do so.

Why? 'Cuz you sez so?

Its become quite common for the ultra rich to do inside trading, bail on a bad investment, transfer their investment to another investment without any damage being incured.

Ummmm, it's become quite common for EVERY SINGLE SMART investor to bail on bad investments and trade to others without damage because THAT'S the WHOLE POINT. To invest where you think your interests are best served, and to remove your money from those where it is not. That is why AIG and Citi and GM and Chrylser and every single other one of them should have been allowed the fail, so that investment seeks well-run companies, not bloated gov't propups.

Taxes collected from capital gains and investments would be in part directly returned to the working class. Why you ask? because they are the ones that run the businesses that you invested in. they get the crap pay and they deserve the tax breaks.

As I said before, the more you tax, the less time, effort, and money get invested. Those "working class" people won't get much at all--because no one in their right mind will invest any money in your crazy scheme. They can't get it back when they want to.

Look, this is really simple. You can sell one banana for $0.05, or you can sell one for $10,000,000.00. If you sell that one banana for $10mil, you're rich, except, well, NO ONE will EVER buy your banana. On the other hand, it will take some time, but you can sell millions and millions of bananas for 5 cents. Everything else follows from that simple reality. Thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of regulations, or stupid ideas like the one above just drives costs up and discourages investment. Discouraging investment means less jobs, less income, lower standard of living, et cetera, and that of course affects most those that can afford it the least.
Cordially,
Rush

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Message boards : Politics : The Jokers Rant


 
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