a bit more of the story...https://www.yahoo.com/news/south-carolina-republican-rep-gives-205158561.html

more examples;
LA: https://tinyurl.com/53c9y7m4
TX: https://tinyurl.com/5y6dsypd

etc. etc. etc.

add these concerns to the mix...

not enough qualified doctors...
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/challenge-antiabortion-states-doctors-reluctant-162629136.html

...and the worse is yet to come...
https://www.npr.org/2022/08/18/1111344810/abortion-ban-states-social-safety-net-health-outcomes

can't see the 'grin' in any of this. just the grim.

You can’t be that dumb.

1) these rich people pay our “leaders” to write unfair tax code so they can not pay taxes. Legalized by Republican pushes to allow unlimited corporate donations and bribes. In many cases, they DO in fact write the code, then hand it to those “leaders”.
2) these “leaders” writing tax loopholes for the super rich, all Republicans, are also rich people, legislating for personal gain.

If the top 1% made 80% of all income, they underpayed by more than half if flat tax were the law or in any way fair. In the 50’s, the time period conservatives want to return to, the top 1% paid 91% tax rates, and America was booming. Today it’s actually <24% and you whine.
How much did they pay AFTER their last massive tax cut, much less than 40%….not that I’m taking your word for those statistics, you are hardly a trustworthy source, the actual number in 2018 is 37% of personal income taxes, which ignores a lions share of non income taxes we all pay.

If you count ALL federal taxes, they payed <24% of taxes collected.
Their highest income tax rate for the rich was +-25% (before deductions, exemptions, loopholes, tax heavens, etc), 66% less than in the 50’s. Under Clinton they paid almost 40% income tax (not 24%), and the economy was again much stronger and growing much faster.

Edit: it was possibly the highest share of that portion of federal taxes paid by the top 1% since 1982, although your track record indicates that’s also a huge exaggeration, but if it’s even remotely true that would be because they took (not really earned) that much more income, not because they paid a higher percentage of earnings. In the 90’s they paid 40%, not today’s 25%…yet today they pay more….can you understand what that means? It means they take almost twice as much “income” as they did in the 90’s when the economy was strong.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/fact-check-richest-1-dont-pay-40-of-the-taxes.html

Republicans are ALL stupid people who do not think, proven every time they are forced to think and realize they have everything backwards. You idiots think Covid is a fraud, the election was stolen, and CRT in grade school is a thing.

Such a nonsensical blatant red herring. They often do “just write a check to the irs” btw. I’m not rich, but I don’t take deductions I legally could because I want to pay my share, not weasel out of it. That’s called being patriotic, not attacking congress and shirking any and all civic duties.
Pushing for a fair tax code, unlike Republicans who plan to raise taxes on anyone making under $250k AND end social security, Medicaid, Medicare, and any other social safety nets they can think of, is not just the ethical and moral thing, it’s the only sane economic move based on ALL economic history ever.

Right, stop wasting, like billions wasted on useless monuments to failure (Trump’s failing fence), trillions more on stupid failed trade wars, billions on political stunts like blockading the border (Texas), trillions to try to fix the disastrous Covid (lack of) response thanks to insane mismanagement and the removal of safeguards, billions to fight the non existent CRT in grade school nonsense…etc. you are ecstatic to waste billions-trillions on idiotic Republican nonsense with absolutely zero return for the money, not complaining once while Trump tried to double the debt in 4 years (nearly succeeding), but not on programs that keep the poor from turning to crime because they have literally nothing to lose, or start to fix our crumbling infrastructure, you call that pork. 🤦‍♂️

So fucking stupid, bob. Delusional, dumb, prejudiced, and always wrong. You must be playing the character of ignorant moronic trumptard, no real human being is this deluded or dumb. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, you are like a clock specifically designed to NEVER show the correct time….you actively avoid being truthful.

Still no answer to posting an insanely edited misrepresentation video….no surprise. You’re an infant. A dishonest racist and sexist infant propagandist.

Yes Bob.
Because she’s a black woman, you can’t accept that she’s accomplished, that she earned her position. That is racist and sexist. I know your little brain has trouble figuring that out.

You are a blatant racist piece of shit. Evidence: your comment above and all previous racist comments
You are a blatant sexist piece of shit. Evidence: your comment above and previous sexist comments
You are an ignorant, moronic piece of shit. Evidence: all your previous comments
You are a pro Putin, anti American, anti democratic piece of shit. Evidence: many of your previous comments.
Plenty of hammer and sickles, Russian, and nazi flags at your far right rallies…for years now. Not found at Democratic rallies, you dumb shit.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-cpac-russian-flags-speech-republicans-support-president-latest-a7598276.html

Better red than blue is a Republican slogan, you lying piece of shit.
We should be friends with Putin and let him expand is a Trump position, not Biden dumbshit.


All those are insults to shit and complimentary to you….better than you deserve. You lying worthless waste of skin. Fuck you you liar.

All delusional nonsense bullshit Bob. How many Republicans went on international tv to tell those immigrants the border is wide open, starting new waves of immigrants? Not one Democrat did that.
Energy independence is a lie, we never stopped importing oil, you liar. We produce more oil today than under Trump.
Inflation is a Trump legacy, idiot. It will get worse. That’s the problem with just printing 1/3 of every dollar over 4 years, it makes every dollar worth 1/3 less. Trump did that, not Biden. When inflation hits over 33%, we can talk….until then keep your ignorant whining to yourself.

Trump spent far more money than any two terms of any administration and for that we had a recession, 750000 dead, Russia expanding, a useless wall that hasn’t stopped a single immigrant, inflation through the roof, negative GDP, skyrocketed unemployment, an insurrection, etc. Nothing good to show for it, no investments in America, just failed trade agreements, wasteful spending like drunken sailors, huge debt, loss of international standing, loss of allies, recession, and unprecedented death.

Anti immigration = anti American. Anti democracy = anti American. Pro Russia = anti American. Pro China = anti American. Vote fraud = anti American. Insanely high deficits = anti American. Doubling the debt = anti American. Tax breaks for the rich = anti American. Removal of social safety nets = anti American. Racism = anti American. Sexism = anti American. Fraud = anti American. Insurrection = anti American. White Nationalism = anti American. Suggesting the death penalty for people not even charged with a crime = anti American. These are all Trump policies, bob.

I paid less for gas last week than I paid in 2019, dumbass. $5 a gal for super.

I know you don’t remember, because it wasn’t yesterday, but Trump policies caused all your issues…including your panicked insanity. Trump was the worst president in history by far by almost every measure. Biden is an unqualified success by comparison, and you can’t stand it so you go off on insane sexist racist rants, like accusing the accomplished professional VP of sleeping her way to the top despite not having a clue with who or how that could work in public office.

Edit: Here’s your chance, exactly who do you claim she slept with to be elected VP? 1/2 of America? The entire DNC? Who? How does that work, exactly? (Don’t worry, no one expects you to be able to answer, we know you don’t have a clue, and that you can never back up your hysterical delusional racist claims).

Biden removed the national cancer. He’s a winner no matter what else happens.
Trump will always be the biggest loser, the worst president in history by far. He made W look reasonable and competent! Deal with it.

Edit: oops…I missed the part where shipping logistics are now Biden’s fault, even though the issue began in 2020 and is purely in the private sector. I guess you are upset Biden hasn’t nationalized the ports so he can take control? Same complaint about the oil industry. If it’s Biden’s issue, you must be suggesting he take charge, and the only way possible would be by the nationalization of private industry. Who’s the socialist? ROTFLMFAHS!!!

I've seen / read some stuff around the "great replacement" concept lately. It's apparently a significant, if not THE significant commonality amongst people who both 1) believe the election was fraudulent and 2) would consider violence in response. The root causes of the worldview seems to stem from personal hardships, and from the perception of others getting advantages they didn't receive themselves. Makes some degree of sense to me, as over the course of one's life it could feel like you were treated unfairly while others were given a leg up.

It doesn't strike me as the sort of thing that can be productively fought against on an individual level. That such a worldview requires far more than just a motivating incident, but more like a life of personal experience, I don't personally see how to successfully shift someone away from it. Too damned ingrained. Our best bet, in my view, is actually having a proper social safety net that lifts everyone up to a viable baseline from which to pursue their life / liberty / happiness.

You cant both keep increasing school segregation and keep pretending there is no racism.

You cant both have decreasing social mobility with no social safety net and claim to be the land of the free.

Free to live without dental care and indebted for your entire life. Sounds like the middle ages to me.

Every social program is taken out of people's checks (unless those checks come from investments or inheritance), that's how they work, otherwise they would be called charities.
Yes, people have paid into those programs, some for a long time, but they want to contribute at 1970's rates and collect at 2016 rates, while defunding the programs. You see the problem, right? They were social insurance programs that now everyone wants to have pay out for them....this type of insurance is for those in need when they need it, not for the rich to use to pay every day expenses, it simply doesn't work when used that way.
Speaking of solar, how did the government programs we tried to keep all solar production from going to China work....not so bad. You can find a few failures, but there were far more successes for a net gain.
Again, if everyone takes from the social safety net as if it had been a savings account, it doesn't work. It's for the poor, there really needs to be a means test to collect, or it's doomed to fail.
In my experience, they like to say that, but then they raise goats for tax breaks, not for any product, and grow corn (or don't) for government handouts, and expect free or near free water at government expense, or use government land without paying (stealing from us all), etc. They are not nearly as reliant as they claim...and I come from Texas where we raised cattle and goats for exactly those reasons, not as livestock but as tax dodges, and that was the norm not the exception. Of course, my family would never in a million years have admitted that that was a handout, but it was.

And the argument is hilarious when paired with the accusations that 'others' that get government assistance are "takers" and welfare queens, but not them, they're just taking back what they think they put in (with interest and inflation added) when in reality they put in far less than they think and take far more than they admit.

The real Ronald Reagan was in favour of a social safety net for the truly needy, despite being known for the 1981 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act which cut benefits for some of the better-off welfare recipients. Also, if you look at his position on immigration (granted amnesty in 1986) and gun control (banned open carry in California, banned sale of machine guns in 1986, lobbied for the ban on assault rifles in 1994) you'll find that he is politically far to the left of any of the current Republican presidential candidates.

The real Barack Obama proposed income tax rates lower than under Reagan, and if he's ever proposed socialist style wealth redistribution then I didn't hear about it. From over here he looks centre right poitically, so it's a little bit jarring to hear people talk about him as if he's a leftist!

1. Weed in the Park (Illegal act in public place) Fine, they deserve to be called out on it, but it's also something that the public at large doesn't care enough about to affect them long term.

2. Winter Solstice Ritual. Fine, they could be fired from one company, but it's pretty rare to have strict religious fundamentalists as employers. They'll find a job elsewhere and be able to sue the other company.

3. Prostitute. It's illegal, if they're caught, I'm assuming they met in public. It's something that society tends to forgive.

As far as your version of VoodooV being a crazy stalker, that's probably something that could be dealt with using anti-harassment laws.

Even the racist moron in this video will end up with another job eventually, we have some social safety nets that will help him survive until then. The people who choose to crusade about these things also tend to have a short attention span, there's always something new to be outraged about. So, the likelihood of an ongoing campaign to keep this guy unemployed is pretty low.

Also, there is nothing forcing these companies to fire them. They can keep them employed and accept the bad PR and any accompanying loss of business. It's their choice.

First of all, Flassbeck is the only(!) prominent economist in Germany arguing strictly against the madness of austerity. But he's living in the border region between France and Switzerland, so he's a European more than a German.

Among all the economic think tanks in Germany, only the union-sponsored IMK makes a credible case against this madness. Everyone else is more or less in line with the neoclassic perspective. Not a Keynesian in sight, much less a post-Keynesian group.

But now to the meat of the issue. There will be no major political shift in Germany in the near future. As Flassbeck stated, only a single party opposes the financial inquisition commonly known as the Troika. Unfortunatly, it's the socialists, and despite overwhelmingly popular policies, they are still an absolute no-go for large swaths of the demos thanks to the authoritarian regime in East Germany. Sucks, but it is what it is.

So it's up to the French people once again to save the continent from itself. Noone else has the balls or the influence to put an end to this misguided union. How likely is it for the French government to openly challenge German hegemony soon? I wouldn't bet on it. Which means the Greeks are fuuuucked².

In any case, what would it take for Greece to stabilise? And by stabilise I'm talking about a return to a manageable level of unemployment, a working healthcare system and social safety net. A conservative guesstimate would be a public deficit of ~10% of GDP for at least 5 straight years. Alternatively, the EIB would have to prop up Greece with €50b a year for the same number of years. To get a working bureaucracy, to undo four decades of nepotism, Greece would basically need a generation to reestablish itself as a state – and it would require appropriate financing.

Now remember which of Syriza's demands is painted as most controversial right now: debt restructuring. Debt restructuring, while neccessary at some point, is entirely pointless as long as the fiscal policy remains contractionary. Greece needs austerity to stop, right the fuck now. Greece needs to provide income-generating jobs for its people. All the talk about debt is utterly pointless, because at 25% unemployment, we're looking at permanent damage in every way imaginable. The social toll alone should be completely unacceptable within Europe if we truly gave two shits about human dignity.

So, even if Syriza get their way tomorrow, Greece would still be flushed down the shitter. Syriza's proposal is contractionary. Any primary surplus in this situation is contractionary.

Greece is done within the Euro. The use of a foreign currency makes it impossible to use appropriate fiscal policy on their own. Unfortunatly, but also intentionally, the currency issuer, the ECB, is placed outside the democratic control of the European Parliament, or any national parliament for that matter. Fiscal policy within the EZ was taken out of the control of our elected representatives to ensure that the neoclassic/neoliberal approach was irrevocably built into the system. We can thank Germany for that, by the way.

There is a shortage of spending in Greece. There is a shortage of spending in Spain. There is a shortage of spending in Portugal, Ireland, Italy, France. There is a shortage of spending in Germany, for fuck's sake. Put the ECB under control of the EP, add full employment (2-3% unemployment) to its mandate, and have them finance the appropriate programs at the national level. The output gap in Europe is so massive, the un(der)employment so vast, they could spend a trillion Euros and inflation would still not reach the agreed upon target value of 2%.

All it would take to change the rules is consent from every national parliament in the union. Might as well go skinny-dipping instead.

Greece accumulated debt in a foreign currency (Euro). Had they been using a free-floating currency with Greece as the sovereign issuer, it would have been much less of a problem. But that's a different discussion.

You brought up retirement benefits. These benefits have been a major talking point over here in mercantilistic Germany. Unfortunatly, a lot of inaccuracies crept into the debate over time. A closer look reveals that it's not as black and white as it is made out to be. One point at a time...

The effective retirement age, if we look at OECD stats, is basically the same for men in Greece and Germany. The age of 56 is often thrown around as the expected average retirement age for workers in Greece, but that's only for the totally messed up public sector. The average for the private sector is significantly higher, as the OECD numbers indicate.

Yet the size of retirement benefits is even more controversial. There are, in fact, some very dubious practices going on in Greece, which result in rediculous retirement benefits for a select group of people, even at very young ages. Decades of nepotism, that's what it produces. But even so, pension expenditure as a % of GDP was not significantly higher in Greece before the GFC than in Germany. When Greek GDP collapsed, expenditures as a % increased, naturally. Some have gotten absurd benefits, but the majority got a pittance. And as if that wasn't bad enough, Greece doesn't have a social safety net, unlike Germany. There is no welfare. Many people have to take early retirement at reduced benefits to have any income at all.
So I'll say it's bad in Germany. Last decade's changes to our retirement system have a metric fuckton of people (~40% of workers) heading straight into poverty when they retire. It's social security for them, and nothing else. Still, it's bliss compared to what the plebs in Greece now ended up with.

However, even all those beautiful OECD stats have to be taken with a grain of salt. Germany has a working bureaucracy. Everything is documented. Greece is a mess. Therefore, all comparisons are guesstimates at best.

Finally, as long as the Greek economy produces enough goods and services, it is for them to decide how to distribute their wealth. If they want a lavish retirement system, so be it. Our governments opted to create a true underclass of the working poor, and gutted a retirement system that made it through two world wars unscathed. If German retirees want to bitch about their benefits, it should be aimed squarely at our governments and their intentional deconstruction of our social welfare state.

"Over time, we're going to see what works and what doesn't and things will generally settle down"
Illusion and fantasy...total confabulation.

A government is a simple creation really, it uses force to achieve the end goal which is control, not unlike a rapist or a thief-The antithesis of liberty in the example of say, the American government works because force is used by an immoral core of liars and thieves to achieve goals that benefit the few rather than the whole of society. Examples of just how fucked things are at face value VooDooV, why bother to cite the examples that are glaringly obvious to anyone who at their core, is a moral and free individual...pointless and insulting to anyone who can think.

Mind you, infrastructure and social safety nets enhance freedom, but what should the end-goal be? To enhance the moral framework of a society, which has surely not been done so far with the American form of government, on the contrary, we see the fabric of what makes a society prosper and maintain a fairness for all being eroded to serve the interests of a few, through force and control...through civil liberties being chipped-away at through surveillance and more prisons, more laws, more fines and punishments for more people, etc. Deficit spending pays debt forward to further enslave the recipients of services like roads and social welfare programs, higher education, etc. The freedom to make poor choices at a micro and macro level is what the current government is all about, getting worse every year.

Urban sprawl will continue as folks with pipe-dreams tout more green, less energy usage, cleaner burning cars and factories, etc. One 'problem' is addressed by creating one for another somewhere else.

Ever listen to Buckminster Fuller's idea of a 'green' or 'energy efficient society'? It doesn't use ANY of the current models of societal structure, it pretty much SCRAPS them all for a trans-formative way of moving forward. The old models are shit if they accomplish them through force and control of human activity. YOU don't live in a democratic system, in case you have been asleep for your entire life, democracy is only a fucking word, a concept not unlike any 'ism' created by humans in the past 3000-7000 years.

The financial structure of the United States is inherently evil. It can not be made fair and moral for everyone, it wasn't designed to. It is designed to serve the few at the top, with enforcers and regulators at the bottom-tier of their system. The government is NOT inherently evil but it has been hijacked by cunts.

Just because you think you know how politicians should perform, does not make it happen that way. Sane health care system? Nope. Maybe for the privileged classes-What they hand the masses is complete shit. National debt? Foreign policy? How would YOU do it? Then that's probably saner than the way it's being run, innit? Government is not needed for ANY of these aspects of a civil and moral society to function. All it takes is moral and sane judgement and agreement at solutions and for folks to voluntarily subscribe to these actions, without force, without police, without armies, etc.

Many more examples too many to pontificate upon, many variables of systems, all of which could function to afford everyone freedom and liberty, WITHOUT a government. The government is a construct just like everything else man creates-It takes willing humans to make them either function efficiently, or to scrap them for something new and improved.

I'm no libertarian, no anarchist, just a practical human being.
There are more reasons for scrapping the world system of government than there are for maintaining them, you simply refuse to see any other way THAN systems of government.

Mankind can self-govern if it does so with a formidable and sound moral compass...Is mankind doing that? It can also make the entire planet it's playground if it chooses to do so...Is mankind doing this??
FUCK NO!

I would not advocate for that, RFlagg. I am not a republican either, although I am conservative on many issues, but not all of them. I am liberal when it comes to helping the poor, for instance. I find most Christians who have a heart for the Lord have a heart for people and are willing to donate their time and money to serve. Not all are like that, but not all know the Lord either. It was actually the church who provided the social safety net before the New Deal. Even today, you will scarecly find a place in the world where a church hasn't built hospitals, food banks, homeless shelters and various helps and organizations to serve people. That isn't what is reported on, however..

The reasons you listed have nothing to do with how the administration sees things. Rather, how the republicans see things.

And you cannot honestly tell me the republicans have any other reason, other than putting this as an issue for 2014 mid-terms, to want to delay the mandate.

The Forbes article you posted is an opinion article from a right-wing thinktank hack. AEI wants nothing other than destruction of any social safety net this country has. You may as well link to a breitbart or Glenn Beck diatribe.

It's fine if you feel so bad about the veterans not getting to have their gathering. But what about all the head start kids who're locked out of school because of the bagger hostage-taking?

The Democrats have already given two enourmous gifts to republicans.

1- CR at sequestration levels
2- The Paul Ryan Budget

There is absolutely no way in hell that our economy needs to suffer more.

The baggers need to be destroyed. Period.

0:06 - Is government the antithesis of liberty?

0:47 - One of the things that enhances freedoms are roads. Infrastructure enhances freedom. A social safety net enhances freedom.

2:02 - What should we do with the losers that are picked by the free market?

3:38 - Do we live in a society or don't we? Are we a collective? Everybody's success is predicated on the hard work of all of us; nobody gets there on their own. Why should it be that the people who lose are hung out to dry? For a group that doesn't believe in evolution, it's awfully Darwinian.

5:41 - In a representative democracy, we are the government. We have work to do, and we have a business to run, and we have children to raise.. We elect you as our representatives to look after our interests within a democratic system.

7:41 - Is government inherently evil?

9:03 - Sometimes to protect the greater liberty you have to do things like form an army, or gather a group together to build a wall or levy.

9:47 - As soon as you've built an army, you've now said government isn't always inherently evil because we need it to help us sometimes, so now.. it's that old joke: Would you sleep with me for a million dollars? How about a dollar? Who do you think I am? We already decided who you are, now we're just negotiating.

10:54 - You say: government which governs least governments best. But that were the Articles of Confederation. We tried that for 8 years, it didn't work, and went to the Constitution.

11:16 - You give money to the IRS because you think they're gonna hire a bunch of people, that if your house catches on fire, will come there with water.

11:56 - Why is it that libertarians trust a corporation, in certain matters, more than they trust representatives that are accountable to voters? The idea that I would give up my liberty to an insurance company, as opposed to my representative, seems insane.

13:38 - Why is it that with competition, we have such difficulty with our health care system? ...and there are choices within the educational system.

15:00 - Would you go back to 1890?

16:20 - If we didn't have government, we'd all be in hovercrafts, and nobody would have cancer, and broccoli would be ice-cream?

16:30 - Unregulated markets have been tried. The 80's and the 90's were the robber baron age. These regulations didn't come out of an interest in restricting liberty. What they did is came out of an interest in helping those that had been victimized by a system that they couldn't fight back against.

19:04 - Why do you think workers that worked in the mines unionized?

20:13 - Without the government there are no labor unions, because they would be smashed by Pinkerton agencies or people hired, or even sometimes the government.

20:24 - Would the free market have desegregated restaurants in the South, or would the free market have done away with miscegenation, if it had been allowed to? Would Marten Luther King have been less effective than the free market? Those laws sprung up out of a majority sense of, in that time, that blacks should not... The free market there would not have supported integrated lunch counters.

23:23 - Government is necessary but must be held accountable for its decisions.

Perhaps if your beloved so called "job creators" paid people a living wage rather than horde more and more of their profits for themselves there wouldn't be a war on poverty.


>>> You are your own boss, whether you work for someone else or not. You create the value and sell your time and labor to others, and can increase the value of both in many ways: providing solutions for others, inventing new products or boosting your own knowledge base. Yep, there are socialist countries that will pay you a living wage to push a broom, and those economies can't hope to compete with non-socialist economies.


I will go out on a limb and assume that you would shop exclusively at a Wal-mart-type store that paid their employees a living wage as opposed to the real Wal-mart? There aren't enough such "conscious consumers" to sustain such a business.


The problem with your narrative is you believe that the wealthy all won some type of lottery, that they did not provide any service or create an invention that yielded deserved financial rewards. This is a common sickness surrounding socialism: the game is rigged and those at the top are there by pure chance. This is what Obama was raised to believe.


The rich pay the lion's share of taxes in America, while the bottom half pay NOTHING in income tax yet get plenty of benefits. This model is nothing new, the ancient Athenians taxed the wealthy at a much higher rate than the poor. The difference is they didn't endlessly spend and create money out of thin air. I'm not against the social safety net, but what we have now is unsustainable and beyond ridiculous.


I agree that many of these CEOs are overcompensated turds, but they are a small part of the problem. In order for them to be paid, stockholders have to be happy, and for stockholders to be happy, a business has to be successful. Only in the fantasy world of government is anything too big to fail.


You're somewhat awakened in that you see that the ole government's robbing peter to pay paul routine doesn't work. Wonder where the trillions went? First and foremost, to con artists and bureaucrats, who gobble up so much of every dollar seized by government very little reaches the intended recipients, and that will NEVER change. "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else."


If you want to attack "greed", start with these Obama worshipers who nonetheless sheltered their own wealth when it came time to pay up.


http://michellemalkin.com/2013/01/01/obamas-tax-evaders-of-the-year/