Conservatives give lip service to freedom and such, but they have been taken over by corporatists who do nothing but take money and spread lies.

I think you're confusing "Conservative" with "Republian Party" here. The Republican party stopped being 'conservative' a long time ago. If you're talking about Republicans, then I agree with you. However, if you are talking about 'conservatives' then I think you're totally off base. Conservatives stand for principles of small government, personal responsibility, and individual freedom. Republicans do not.

liberals...at least their policies have some honest compassion as a foundation

Liberalism as a POLITICAL philosophy focuses only on one thing - the increase in the size and scope of centralized government at the expense of personal freedom. The end results are as compassionate as a sack of hammers. No one who uses Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or the myriad other so-called liberal social programs and comes away feeling like they dealt with a 'compassionate' entity. Liberalism is not compassionate. It is an excuse for people to NOT be compassionate.

I long ago pegged liberalism. People are attracted to liberalsm because they feel like 'someone should do SOMETHING' about the world's problems. But the problems don't ever go away, and they don't feel like people are 'doing enough'. Hence, they want to create massive federal programs to address these issues. Then the liberal guy can ignore the problems because "government is taking care if it for them. When you get right down to it, liberalism is the attempt to offload compassion to 'government' via legislation, taxation, & social engineering - thereby absolving individuals from personal action. It doesn't matter how horrible a job government does, or how many freedoms it annihilates, as long as a liberal guy can walk down the street and ignore the sick & needy - resting assured that 'government' will take care of the problem instead of him having to help.

Human misery and injustice exist. Nothing can be done to eliminate them. The best solution is to have a people that believe in a philosophy of compassion that will minimize the negatives. That is best accomplished by teaching, service, and kindness at the individual level. In short - it is best accomplished by teaching people to be 'good' (inherently a religious function). But liberals reject 'religion' out of hand. Therefore they use 'Government' as a substitute and attempt to force everyone to be good by law. All efforts by government along these lines have been spectacular failures, because legislating morality without acknowledging a moral imperitive is idiotic.

Liberalism 'compassionate'? Ha! It is the antithesis of compassion. But liberalism doesn't mind killing compassion, skinning it, and wrapping the tattered ghost of compassion around itself to advance its political aims.

Social engineering at work. I hope the shills "driving the debate" and the fools duped by the propaganda know where they are taking us...

I really do question what we've learned in school. I think it's national indoctrination, that's why I dislike the public school system so much. That, and my education was sub par, and I was not the sharpest tool in the shed at 18 because of it. I've done better as an autodidactic which has also lead me to understand what I learned in school was not so much a lie but a cherry-picking of information devised for social engineering and thinly veiled as unbiased education. Regardless, I don't think any of my classes properly explained Capitalism to me, nor the free market, nor fiat currency, Corporatism, the Federal Reserve, etc. etc. etc. They didn't teach me a lot of things except how to be dumb and be a cog.

I get it. I don't tow the lines. But, you seem to want to lump me in with anti-abortionists (I refuse to call them by any euphemism), creationists, anti-immigrationists, homophobes and racists. Seriously? All of that is antithetical to my positions and those of Libertarians. In fact, if California was a Libertarian state, I bet gays would no longer be secondhand citizens like they are in the blue state. Democrat civil liberties fail.

What's so wrong with personal liberty, DFT? What's wrong with giving the individual a right to be captain of his own destiny? Why shouldn't we honor self-reliance over dependency? Why do you feel people are too stupid and incompetent to live with freedom? I believe you veil elitism under the banner of democracy. Most people do who believe they know what's best for everyone instead of allowing the individual to choose. When your direct democracy leads to bad legislation and tyranny you will pretend it wasn't democracy, but a lack of it; and therefore it's a selective democracy where the pro-Democratic voices should be heard, but dissenters should not. To me your party sounds a lot like the other party.

Also, I understand your fears of Corporations. I, too, am anti-Corporatist and I certainly don't trust them. They wouldn't exist if government didn't allow them to. In fact, it used to take an act of Congress to create a Corporation; now it all has to do with how much money you have. And it's government regulation that allows them to monopolize the markets by squeezing out the small business owners. Corporations, like government, hate competition, and most regulation is set up to protect Corporate interests, not ours. I've given a great example of this here in the 5th and 6th paragraph and show how a protective government bureaucracy like the EPA is only used to further the Corporate agenda, not protect us. That's your government regulatory system failing... again.

I could ask you the same question about being a Democrat that you asked me about being Libertarian. Seriously, if you were part of the Green Party or a Marxist I'd probably have more respect for your position. But a Democrat? Sure I can see how you agree with some of their positions, but all of them? Hell, most of them? The continuation of the unconstitutional war? More troops sent to Afghanistan? No mention from your party on closing the 700+ military bases in 130 countries overseas. And, what about the Patriot Act? Your party isn't moving to repeal it, only modify it. Your party is a sham. And the fact that you can't see how similar your party is to the Republican Party is very amusing but mostly frustrating. Pot, meet kettle.

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday

Are you referring to the fact that as you make more you have more discretionary income therefore the tax is less in real intrinsic value?

Yep! You got it in one.

If you have enough income that all your basic needs covered, plus enough to buy a new car, plus enough to have a First Class 4 month vacation to Europe, plus plus plus.... $1000 to that person just isn't the same $1000 to someone who struggles to pay the rent.

A flat tax doesn't take the relative VALUE of that $1000 into account. A progressive tax does.

Wouldn't making taxes flat and based on all income and define income as income from any arena solve the money from dividend problem?

Whether you have a flat tax or not, you still have to define what income is. I started to write a long thing on the different types of income that are taxed and not taxed and the benefits and drawbacks to each one, but I deleted it all. It gets back to my general point of taxes being used to socially engineer -- I don't think that is a bad thing. Carrots to reward behavior you want -- works better than laws forcing you to do things, sticks, you see.

I guarantee you, very wealthy people want a flat tax, and they will gladly pay tax on the dividend income, if they have any kind of investment portfolio at all. Their tax would plummet, unless you set the flat tax at 25%. And if you set it at 25%, that would be increasing the tax burden on 95% of Americans. So that the wealthy would pay less.

That makes no sense.

Thanks for taking the time to read my long post. I am so pissed about the dividend income tax boondoggle, I am grateful to anyone that takes the time to read this.







In reply to this comment by GeeSussFreeK:
Thanks for your comment dude, always nice to have insider opinions on stuff like that! I would like to see a flat tax because it seems the most consistent and the least subject to arbitrary standards. I don't understand how you call flat tax regressive, being that it is a total percent and not a sliding percent? Are you referring to the fact that as you make more you have more discretionary income therefore the tax is less in real intrinsic value? Or is there something else that I am missing or misunderstanding. Also, wouldn't making taxes flat and based on all income and define income as income from any arena solve the money from dividend problem?

In reply to this comment by bareboards2:
I do taxes for a living, have done 35 years (I started young.) It is, indeed, horrible how complex the system has become during my lifetime.

Being on the "inside" so to speak, I also see WHY it has gotten so complex. A tax law is written, the smart folks figure out how to use it to avoid tax. So that "loophole" is plugged, the smart folks figure out how to work around that, and new laws are generated.

Star Wars Defense Initiative
Invading Grenada and Nicaragua, etc
Iran Contra

National defense. That's the only thing that federal government actually SHOULD be doing, so I don't have a problem with them so much. I'd prefer less political meddling in international matters though. Small government, strict constitution, fiscal responsibility. Nowadays the obstacle to these issues is domestic entitlement spending, social engineering, and so forth. Reagan could have done better, but with a democrat congress it is hard. He talked the right stuff though. Even the Repubican party didn't like how hard he was pushing for cuts in domestic spending.

>> ^blankfist:
Laws don't prevent behavior. If laws against drunk driving worked there would be no drunk drivers on the road just as there would be no murders in a state with a death penalty.

BS, and you know it. Laws DISCOURAGE behavior. The law is a success if there are LESS murders. The law is a success if there are FEWER drunk drivers.


DUI laws serve to punish innocent people and are an attempt at social engineering. A person who has never hurt anyone or has never had more than the amount to drink he thinks is safe for him to operate a vehicle is irrelevant to statists.

No, they aren't irrelevant. Rather, they are bad at estimating a satisfactory tolerances for the safety of others. That is, they infringe on others' rights by making that judgement on their own, particularly in an impaired state. Much of this comes from a characteristic underestimation of small probabilities with catastrophic costs when relying on personal experience alone.[citation]

On the other hand, deaths that could have been prevented by government intervention are irrelevant to you. You'd rather be free to get wasted and swerve all the way home than prevent any loss of life potentially forced upon someone by your errant actions.


If you have a beer or a glass of wine and get behind the wheel of a vehicle you will go to jail. That's collectivist justice.

No, as you pointed out, if that were the case there would be no drunk drivers. If you have a glass of beer or wine, and get behind the vehicle of a car, AND GET CAUGHT, you go to jail. That slight increase in the probability of a bad event when drunk driving is what discourages the behavior.

>> ^blankfist:
DUI laws serve to punish innocent people and are an attempt at social engineering. A person who has never hurt anyone or has never had more than the amount to drink he thinks is safe for him to operate a vehicle is irrelevant to statists.


I think the main question that others were attempting to convey was "when is behavior too dangerous to be legal?" This person who never hurt anyone may think it is safe for him to operate his vehicle with however much he drank, but he could very well be completely wrong too.

People who crash due to alcohol always think they're sober enough to drive. I've never heard anyone seriously say "I'm going to drive home, I doubt I'll make it there". Yet we still have people driving into trees (or people) because they overestimated their ability to drive. How much alcohol is too much to be legally allowed to drive on public roads? Should there not be any regulation at all?

I've known people who drove home when they could barely walk, still completely confident in their abilities. I also know people who refuse to do so, not because they lack confidence, but because they fear arrest. I prefer the latter, because I have yet to meet a rational drunk. Somewhere between being sober and struggling to walk people become very dangerous operating a motor vehicle, but confidence lasts well beyond that point.

Similarly, my grandmother swears to God that she is a safe driver, despite the fact that she can barely see the other end of her car's hood. I do not believe that her confidence is enough reason to allow her to drive, because she would kill someone. Luckily the DMV agrees and refused to renew her license, and I don't see that as a bad thing.


How would you handle these situations?

Laws don't prevent behavior. If laws against drunk driving worked there would be no drunk drivers on the road just as there would be no murders in a state with a death penalty.

DUI laws serve to punish innocent people and are an attempt at social engineering. A person who has never hurt anyone or has never had more than the amount to drink he thinks is safe for him to operate a vehicle is irrelevant to statists.

If you have a beer or a glass of wine and get behind the wheel of a vehicle you will go to jail. That's collectivist justice.

It's hard to take a group of people seriously when they make up ridiculously wild claims to scare people into believing them. It's a crusade of the small-minded.

Obviously public schools are indoctrination, but the "Limbaughs" (like my father, too!) don't seem to mind when the social engineering favors their down home pro-American nationalism, pro-church and anti-drug propaganda.

And when did Marxism become associated with homosexuality? "To each according to his abilities; to each according to his fabulous style, girlfriend."

>> ^bareboards2:
As far as a flat tax, that is just insane. Example -- a family of four has wage income of $25,000. 10% flat tax is $2,500.
Or you have a family of four with wage income of $250,000 and interest and dividend income of $25,000. Their 10% comes to $27,500. That $2,500 is a much much bigger number to the first family of four than the $27,500 is to the second. How much in savings and stocks do you think $25,000 in interest and dividends represent???
What they don't say in the video is that most tax payers get the lower rates, too. The first chunk you make is taxed at 10%, the next at 15%. So most taxpayers enjoy the lower rates.
What pisses me off right now -- sorry to change the direction of the argument -- is the bowing down to capital at the expense of labor that is embodied in the current code. The last stage of Bush's tax cuts became activated this year.
I ran two scenarios through the tax software at work.
First scenario -- married couple, no children, $80,000 in wages, no itemized deductions (social engineering embodied). Their tax - including payroll taxes -- was $14,000 if memory serves. I know it was 18% of gross -- a tax rate that would be the envy of most other countries.
Second scenario -- married couple, no children, $80,000 in dividends from corporations. Same cash inflow, but from millions in stocks rather than going to work every day for 50 weeks out of the year. Their tax for the year? $200. TWO HUNDRED MEASLY BUCKS. I can't hardly stand it.
Bowing down to capital. Poor poor rich people who are taxed twice on dividends -- once at the corporate level and then again on a personal level. Let's spare them that horrifying situation, poor poor rich people.
Flat tax is horribly regressive. Sales tax is horribly regressive. The current code -- horribly complicated.


The scenarios would be a lot better if both just payed 10 % ($8,000), wouldn't it? I don't see the big problem with flat tax. It's about as fair as it can be.

I do taxes for a living, have done 35 years (I started young.) It is, indeed, horrible how complex the system has become during my lifetime.

Being on the "inside" so to speak, I also see WHY it has gotten so complex. A tax law is written, the smart folks figure out how to use it to avoid tax. So that "loophole" is plugged, the smart folks figure out how to work around that, and new laws are generated.

Some of those tax laws that are written were indeed intended to "socially engineer," a complexity that then begats more complexity. I don't think that is a bad thing, necessarily. My uber-conservative brother installed solar panels on his roof because the cost was offset by state and federal tax credits. He is now a net-producer of energy, rather than a consumer of energy (California buys back his unused energy produced.)

Some of the complexity is indeed region specific or industry specific and is a boondoggle of the worst ilk-- you can tell. I can't remember the details, but there was something that was passed a few years back -- some credit for airplanes (or something) built (or sold) for the very specific period of time. It was clearly crap, clearly designed for one company in a Congress member's district.

Can you say line item veto? That would cut down on a huge number of abuses on all levels, and make it clear some of the more egregious backroom deals that are going on.

As far as a flat tax, that is just insane. Example -- a family of four has wage income of $25,000. 10% flat tax is $2,500.

Or you have a family of four with wage income of $250,000 and interest and dividend income of $25,000. Their 10% comes to $27,500. That $2,500 is a much much bigger number to the first family of four than the $27,500 is to the second. How much in savings and stocks do you think $25,000 in interest and dividends represent???

What they don't say in the video is that most tax payers get the lower rates, too. The first chunk you make is taxed at 10%, the next at 15%. So most taxpayers enjoy the lower rates.

What pisses me off right now -- sorry to change the direction of the argument -- is the bowing down to capital at the expense of labor that is embodied in the current code. The last stage of Bush's tax cuts became activated this year.

I ran two scenarios through the tax software at work.

First scenario -- married couple, no children, $80,000 in wages, no itemized deductions (social engineering embodied). Their tax - including payroll taxes -- was $14,000 if memory serves. I know it was 18% of gross -- a tax rate that would be the envy of most other countries.

Second scenario -- married couple, no children, $80,000 in dividends from corporations. Same cash inflow, but from millions in stocks rather than going to work every day for 50 weeks out of the year. Their tax for the year? $200. TWO HUNDRED MEASLY BUCKS. I can't hardly stand it.

Bowing down to capital. Poor poor rich people who are taxed twice on dividends -- once at the corporate level and then again on a personal level. Let's spare them that horrifying situation, poor poor rich people.

Flat tax is horribly regressive. Sales tax is horribly regressive. The current code -- horribly complicated.

But remember, you folks who hate taxes so much -- remember where the internet started. It wouldn't be here without having been developed at the government level first. Roads. Schools. The university you went to.

*social engineering
nice toss from the first kid

In reply to this comment by Jaace:
Agreed, the video is quite goofy...but have you tried it Razor? Before you go assuming this is a parody, using cell phones wrapped in ethernet cable and other things are actually quite workable.

I haven't tried this method...but it probably does work.

Since the RJ-45 ethernet port on a computer does not act as an antenna for the Wi-Fi circuitry it would never work. For this to be remotely plausible some wiring would have to be connected to the Wi-Fi antenna.

Additionally, cell phones do not use protocols used by Ethernet or Wi-Fi. The cell phone would never show up with it's name in the networking control panel applets. A user, however, may be tricked into believing this if their phone's Bluetooth is enabled, as that usually displays their cell phone model's name.

A watched a few more of this guy's videos, and they are all just geek jokes. It's along the lines of the BOFH style of comedy, taking advantage of social engineering =P

>> ^longde:
The zionists/israelis have had nearly 100 years to get it right. They started in strife, maintain in strife, and this will likely end in strife. Only, we can now see the end of the road.
How do they end? Will they take the two-state option? Fade into the true demographics of the region (that they tried to social engineer)? Or use their nukes and take the german option?

When the UN passed the Partition Plan in 1947, the Jewish settlement in the soon-to-be-former British mandate had several reservations, but accepted the plan as a whole. The Palestinian leadership at the time opposed it. I fail to see how that made the Jews "start in strife".

Right after the British pulled out, Israel declared it's independence and was promptly invaded by all the surrounding nations in what we refer to today as the War of Independence.

As I already replied to geo321, all we want is to live in peace. Give us a plan that lets us stop fearing terrorists blowing up restaurants and buses, rockets fired from our neighbor and random militants kidnapping soldiers, and we'll take it without hesitation.

Anything that leaves any chance of one of those things happening is simply unacceptable.

The zionists/israelis have had nearly 100 years to get it right. They started in strife, maintain in strife, and this will likely end in strife. Only, we can now see the end of the road.

How do they end? Will they take the two-state option? Fade into the true demographics of the region (that they tried to social engineer)? Or use their nukes and take the german option?