Democratic Super PAC Buys Newtgingrich.com 630
netbuzz writes "The purchase of newtgingrich.com by a Democratic Super PAC — and the use of it to highlight Newt Gingrich's political weaknesses — is either amusing or a dirty trick, depending on your politics and your view of the Republican presidential hopeful. In either case, however, it is a cautionary tale about the importance of controlling your brand online, a task that is about to get more difficult for everyone thanks to the impending expansion of generic top-level domains."
Dirty trick (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's a bit of a dirty trick regardless of your politics.
Re:Dirty trick (Score:5, Insightful)
Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:4, Insightful)
When a politician says he intends to pass Bill X, you expect him to pass Bill X. And yet these scumbags never do what they say.
Why should anyone be in the least bit shocked that politicians are being dishonest?
Have we really still not learned that as long as we maintain representative democracy, we will maintain corruption?
Is nobody yet ready for trying something new?
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Insightful)
For the most part politicization have a list of things they really want, a list of nice to get, and a list they can take it or leave it.
When they are compromising for a bill they will try to put it all out in the table (both sides) then they will slowly take out the lower priority items as the other side does the same, until you get a bill that both sides doesn't really want but it is better then nothing.
The US Government isn't designed to run fast, it is designed to be slow and offer small solutions.
the US Government (Score:5, Insightful)
No, its not. The U.S. Government isn't the product of a design effort with a coherent objective. Its the product of centuries of individual compromises on specific issues between not merely diverse but -- from the outset -- radically opposed priorities.
It was designed at the outset (of the Constitutional system) both to run fast and have strong central power (one of the main motives for revising the Articles of Confederation to produce the Constitution) and to be hamstrung and dependent on the States. There are features -- in the text of the Constitution (original and in amendments), in the statute law, in the case law, in the bodies of federal regulations and other binding executive acts -- that represent far extremes and every conceivable point in between, implemented on narrow issues over the whole history of the Republic, with little in the way of rationalization over time.
To say that the US government is designed to do any one particular thing (other than be the US government) or to implement any one particular philosophy of the role, scale, or model of government is, well, fundamentally wrong and more misleading than useful.
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Insightful)
My assumption was that he was talking about tax raises on the wealthy. You can balance a budget by taking in more money or cutting spending, and one party is okay with doing both, while the aforementioned tea party is not.
Re: (Score:3)
except raising taxes does not always raise revenue for the government. Especially during an already sluggish economy.
Why recession tax cuts fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Insightful)
It depends on who you tax. Taxing the poor could possibly be the worst, since the poor live paycheck to paycheck (yes, most of the poor work. Those food stamps subsidize Wal Mart's and McDonald's profits by allowing them to underpay their workers) and spend every penny they earn. Money they don't have is money they don't spend, meaning money someone else doesn't earn.
Raise middle class taxes and they will both spend less and save less, also harming the economy. That skipped haircut is a lost wage for the barber and lost revenue for the government.
The rich? Taxing them more (to a certain point, of course) does nothing whatever to or for the economy. They won't spend less, so there is no loss of tax revenue. It won't affect their hiring -- nobody hires production workers unless they're selling more than they can produce, and nobody lays off production workers unless they can't sell all that they produce.
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Insightful)
The same could be argued against cutting Public Radio or the national endowment of the arts funding. Every cut you make will be a drop in the bucket. Every tax raised may also be a drop in the bucket. But, but collecting those drops into a bucket, it gets filled up.
There isn't a good argument to not raise taxes on the higher income brackets. Just hand waving and mumbling about "job creators".
Is it too much to really ask for compromise? Some Tax raises and some cuts?
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Insightful)
your scale here is way off. public radio and nea funding are ridiculously small drops. it's absurd to even talk about cutting their funding to help balance the budget.
people really need to start talking about the biggest money suckholes of them all: defense, medicare, and social security.
wasting your time talking about penny ante stuff like npr and the nea is pointless. you're missing the big picture, and will literally accomplish nothing trying to take care of this problem by going after the smallest budget items.
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Informative)
Medicare WAS mostly self-funding until the drug cartels got their way with an enormous unfunded giveaway to their bank accounts. They spent a few hundred million buying both political parties, and the ROI has been astounding. I don't think they ever expected to do that well in their wildest dreams.
The military could get slashed in half and we'd still be spending more than the next five countries combined. We could cut the Pentagram budget by 80 percent and still be the largest spender on war toys in the world. Most years if you graph the military budget and the US deficit the two amounts are amazingly close.
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, I'm pretty sure it's not Bill's scale that's off but the Republican party's scale. The cuts he's talking about are the ones the Republicans like to proposed as an alternative to raising taxes. When you look at the number is becomes immediately obvious that they are not seriously trying to cut the budget but to use the deficit as an excuse to punish their "enemies". There are a disturbingly large percentage of the Republican base that think the U.S. spends billions on NPR and arts funding every year.
Every year it gets harder to tell if the Republican candidates are trying to capitalize on that ignorance, are generating it, or both.
Re: (Score:3)
I am loathe to get into this kind of discussion, because politics is like an unmarked minefield.
However, with regards to the US budget, we're quickly heading down the same road that Greece is on. Raising some taxes, and making a few spending cuts isn't going to work here; that's the standard political chicanery when you're dealing with a populace that wants both; in this case, it's not the populace that's demanding these changes, it's our globalized markets; and they are a lot less patient, a lot more deman
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Interesting)
The same could be argued against cutting Public Radio or the national endowment of the arts funding. Every cut you make will be a drop in the bucket. Every tax raised may also be a drop in the bucket. But, but collecting those drops into a bucket, it gets filled up.
The problem is this: The budget is comprised of social insurance programs, the military, interest on the debt, and "Everything Else." If you cut the entirety of "Everything Else," you will not close the deficit. The deficit is not caused by NPR or the Department of Education. It is caused by foreign wars and Medicare. At the other end of the spectrum, raising taxes by the amount it would take to close the deficit would be (and this is the technical term that economists use) "very bad."
The reason why the Tea Party candidates are dishonest is that they have no plan. They don't want to raise taxes, but if you ask them what they want to cut, they either give you some completely useless answer because the thing they list is 0.1% of the budget, or they provide something even more meaningless like "[unspecified] pork barrel projects."
The Democrats are dishonest for exactly the same reasons. You can't balance the budget with just taxes. And it probably isn't worth cutting anything in the category of "Everything Else" -- most of that stuff is pretty important, and none of it is very expensive. But the Democrats don't want to be heard suggesting cuts to military spending or social insurance either.
The elephant in the room is that those are the only options. The only way to eliminate the deficit without raising taxes at all is to cut all military and social insurance spending in half. The only way to eliminate the deficit without raising taxes so much that the economy goes back into the recession is by cutting those things by at least 25%.
The final alternative is to just say fuck it and keep running huge deficits without cuts. Those are the options. There is no option that allows you to close the deficit without raising taxes or cutting anything important. There is no option that allows you to close the deficit without goring anybody's ox. So you have to pick an ox, you have to gore it, and that is very inconvenient for politicians, so they get on the TV and lie to you about whose fault it is and what is going to happen.
The truth is they're probably just going to keep running huge deficits, regardless of who is in office, because nobody is willing to take on the AARP or the defense industry.
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Both parties are not the same. People keep saying "Democrats don't want to cut programs and they want to raise taxes", but consistently time and time again the party that both cut (or raised) taxes responsibly and cut programs have been the Democrats. Sure Obama passed a massive temporary stimulus, but unlike Bush he's also been cutting at fundamental programs in the budget as well, and he's been working to fix Medicare. You may not like the Obamacare bill, but remember rather than fix the problem the last Republican president passed a massive NEW entitlement without the ability to negotiate for lower drug prices. Democrats are not perfect and Republicans aren't all bad, but Democrats have definitely proven over the past couple decades that they are the party of fiscal responsibility.
It's especially hard to deal with Republican rhetoric since they are exactly the ones who are responsible for me knowing that a budget deficit in a recession is often cleared up once you get back into a boom time, and slashing jobs during a recession prolongs the recession. Republican campaign rhetoric taught me that. It's pretty obvious that the Tea Party has one goal and they're willing to give up things like payroll tax cuts to do it - "keep the economy bad so that Obama can't get re-elected". They're willing to keep millions unemployed to achieve that goal. And obviously there's a large part of the mainstream Republican party who doesn't think that way, but there's a strong enough faction of economic terrorists that do. And comparing them to Democrats or even mainstream Republicans is extremely disingenuous.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Cutting spending reduces the amount of money circulating through the economy. The interest costs associated with that deficit spending are far less than say taking a Trillion dollars out of the economy. At some point people will stop lending us money but that point is decades away.
We had a relatively balanced budget and a booming economy back in 2000. Then someone cut taxes and added 4 trillion to the debt.
The system was relatively balanced and we would have been literally debt free by now had we left well enough alone. Would it have worked out that way in reality, obviously probably not. But the direction we were headed is a far sight better than what we got.
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it too much to really ask for compromise? Some Tax raises and some cuts?
I can understand the people who want to draw a line in the sand. Some people think that the government is too big, and that holding the line on taxes will starve the beast. I happen to think that tax reform is important, even if the total collected doesn't increase. I think the marginal rates could be held or even reduced if deductions were limited. Get rid of capital gains tax and corporate tax and just count capital gains and dividends as regular income. Programs like Social Security and Medicare should be made self-sufficient - no loaning money to the general fund and no borrowing from the general fund. You could handle recessions and such by basing everything off of 3 to 5-year moving averages... then any shortfall or surplus would be short-lived and manageable. Combine this with a complete freeze on federal spending until the economy catches up with the government and I think you might make the government's balance sheet healthy again.
Re: (Score:3)
The question isn't how big the drop is compared to the bucket. It's what we get in return for our money.
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:4)
GOP defines Bechtel (billions in revenue) and PriceWaterHouseCoopers abig accounting firm are 'small' businesses by the GOP definition. Is a billion dollar a year company a 'small' business?
linky [huffingtonpost.com]
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way raising taxes would work is to actually start having everyone pay income tax.
Great! So let's start paying people a living wage and let the wealth trickle-up. Our economy was at it's strongest when our middle-class was at it's strongest, after all.
Oh, wait, never mind, you meant let's squeeze more out of the people that are already struggling, didn't you? Yeah, good call. Then we can use the Michele Bachmann unemployment solution: dump the current minimum wage so that the "Job Creators" can move the sweatshops over here. It'll be great! No more unemployment, everyone can get a job for $2 an hour! And think of all the money the "Job Creators" will save not having to ship their crap over here from China! And once we get rid of those awful child labor laws, we finally can get back to the real American Dream of being put to work in grade school! Well, the poor kids, anyway, but who cares about them, right?
The whole "everyone should pay something" idea sounds fair on paper but will accomplish jack fucking shit in terms of improving the state of our economy. The phrase "A rising tide lifts all boats" is absolutely true. But taking more money from the people that have the least to give, just so we can continue keeping tax breaks on the books for those that can most afford them, is more of that trickle-down Reaganomics horseshit that has done nothing but harm our country since that corporate shill took the oath of office in 1980.
We're 30 years into this stupid fucking shit and the only times this country has done well financially was during the Dot Com boom, and as soon as that retard George W. Bush got elected they pissed all of the progress we made then right down the fucking drain so they could give rich people another fucking tax cut and continue the trickle down bullshit for another generation. Then, to make matters even worse, we get involved in a massive, nebulous war effort all over the middle east that costs us tens of billions of dollars a month to fund without raising taxes to pay for it at all.
It's not taxes and regulations that are responsible for the unemployment rate, despite what you hear over and over and over again on conservative talk radio and Fox News. It's the lack of demand for the goods and services these companies put to market. These companies aren't hiring because they don't need to hire anyone, they're making just as many widgets as they need to meet demand. The rich assholes aren't buying them; no matter how large their bank account is, they still only need one widget, just like everyone else. People are trying to make it seem like making it cheaper for these "Job Creators" to operate is going to increase demand for their product...how? Seriously, how is that even fucking logical? When everyone is poor, who the hell is buying a new car? Or a new home? Or going on vacation? Or going out to eat? Or going to the movies?
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Informative)
Great post. One nitpick:
The phrase "A rising tide lifts all boats" is absolutely true.
No, no it's not. Not even in the literal sense.
A far more accurate phrase would be: "A rising tide lifts only those boats that aren't sinking."
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Informative)
The tax and regulatory environment, domestically, is the environment in which business must either turn a profit or close its doors. Contrary to your delusional rant, the tax and regulatory environment is *everything* to a business that must turn a profit to survive.
Funny, we seemed to be doing just fine until Reagan and his deregulation bullshit came around. Our main economic problems then stemmed from OPEC arbitrarily doubling the price of a barrel of oil, and that was simple greed on their part.
Yes. The lack of demand, due to higher cost, due to higher taxes and more regulation, compared with places like China, with lower costs and fewer regulations.
Lack of demand as in "how many people can afford to even buy a fucking iPad in the first place?". People that are struggling to pay their mortgage aren't buying consumer goods or services. What's the first thing people start cutting when they're hurting financially? The lawn service, the cable bill, eating out, buying electronic toys, upgrading the television, the newest BluRay releases. Wealth doesn't trickle down, but we can see with our own eyes what happens when it ceases trickling up because they don't have any at the bottom. If it wasn't for the explosion of credit in the 90's and 00's, we would have felt the effects of this shit much sooner. People still couldn't afford the shit they were buying, but it was a fuck of a lot easier for them to charge it then.
Due to high taxes and regulation, they move jobs to China ( and other lower cost environments ) via outsourcing and someone else makes the widgets.
No, they moved the jobs to China to increase their profits because the drive towards globalization in the 80's made it cheaper to produce over there than here. In countries with more protectionist measures in place, like Canada, and Germany, you see that the global recession hasn't fucked them nearly as bad as we have been. Allowing business to import goods without paying an import tax is what crippled our economy, not fucking regulations. Before that, they had no choice but to follow the regulations, and guess what? Everybody did just fine. They continued to get rich (just not as rich) and their employees were able to actually afford the shit they were producing.
Besides, there are good regulations. Unless you want another Love Canal [wikipedia.org], for instance, there needs to be regulations and stiff penalties for polluting. Do you want to live in polluted shit like they do in many parts of China? As always, out of sight, out of mind; pay no attention to the river that's fucking burning due to all the pollutants in it. [wikipedia.org]
Every rich asshole knows you don't get rich by consuming things. You get rich by producing things for a profit.
Only if there is someone to buy the shit they're making. The less disposable income the middle class has, the less of the shit they're producing gets sold. Henry Ford deliberately paid his employees very well (for the time) to be able to afford the cars they were making. When people make shit wages they don't have the money to buy the crap. It doesn't matter how cheaply they can produce the crap, if people are struggling, they're not gonna buy it.
No matter how rich you become, you're only going to need one fucking toaster, and that's never going to change. Throwing more money or opportunity at "Job Creators" doesn't effect demand for their product at all. Only throwing money at the consumers so that they can continue consuming is going to do that. Once they have the disposable income to go to movies, and go out to eat, and buy new flat-panels, the wealth trickles right the fuck up. For better or for worse, we're a consumer culture. You want to make things better, give people
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you declared a law that everything over 200k a person makes would go to the government it would be about 2 trillion dollars or enough to run the country for less then 2 months
OK, there is a lot wrong with this statement. First of all, Federal outlays in the 2011 budget were $3.6 trillion [wikipedia.org], so the $2 trillion you cite would last 6.6 months.
But the $2 trillion is wrong (the other way). Those earning over $200k made 17.5% of the total US income of $7.723 trillion [wikipedia.org], or $1.35 trillion. That amount of money would last us 4.5 months.
But the most egregious part of your statement is the implicit assumption that taxing all of the income over $200K would replace every single other source of revenue for the federal government. No one is suggesting reducing the income tax rate for under $200k to 0%. Not only are those suggesting higher marginal rates for the very rich not suggesting lower marginal rates for the rest, they are also not proposing cutting non-income taxes and revenue.
Federal income tax makes up about 45% of total Federal revenue. [taxpolicycenter.org] Payroll taxes make up the second biggest chunk of revenue at about 36% (perhaps lower with the current holiday), while corporate income tax (which some say should be higher) makes up 12%. These other sources would continue if we raised taxes on the rich.
So, not only do you use inaccurate numbers to make your argument, you are arguing against a strawman.
A sensible debate on this issue would reveal that we need to have a comprehensive approach to solve the deficit and debt problems we face. Cutting spending alone, or raising taxes alone, will not solve the issue. The combination of decreased tax revenue (due to the Bush tax cuts and the deregulation of the financial industry which directly led to the bank bailouts [increased spending] and recession [decreased revenue], and the increased spending due to the War on Terror (not only Iraq and Afghanistan, but also DHS) has out us in a fine mess, and we need to reverse course on both those fronts to climb out of the hole we are in.
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that per capita or total amount? Since the tax rate is the lowest its has ever been since the IRS was formed, I have my doubts about your statement.
Bush got us into two global conflicts consisting of large troop deployments, large expenditures on tactical support, AND large amounts of money going to infrastructure in the name of "nation building". During which the Bush administration lower the tax rate on a (*cough* *cough*) temporary basis which is unprecedented in US history. Normally we would sell bonds earmarked for the cause or raise taxes to pay for the war effort.
That my friend is no bullshit.
Re: (Score:3)
The US Gov't brings in $2.5 T/year in taxes.
The US Gov't spends $3.5T/year - approx $1T in military, $1T in social programs, $1.5T in gov't infrastructure
The US Gov't has $14T in debt because of Democrat AND Republican policies since 1980.
You can't 'spend less' your way out of $14T in debt.
At a minimum, if we cut $1T/yr in spending AND raised taxes $1T/yr, it would take us 14 years (7 house representative terms!) to get out of debt. And neither of those options are politically doable.
So how would you actua
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who pays attention knows that we have to STOP the spending.
The Iraq war ended last week, that's a lot of huge stopped spending right there. Not enough, but we should have not spent a penny on Iraq. Oh yeah, they're still spending money on the Bridge to Nowhere and other boondoggles. But you tea partiers insist that we pay for two wars, the bridge to nowhere, tax breaks for the rich, and grants to the oil companies rather than pay the medicare and Social Security that was contracted decades ago.
The government takes in more as a percent of GNP that it has since WWII
And the rich are paying lower taxes than any time since, which tells you who's being a freeloader. Isn't it about time those damned rich freeloaders started paying their fair share?
And don't give any me bullshit about Bush
Who started those two expensive wars? Who started those expensive acronym agencies like TSA, DHS, and FEMA? Who bailed out the "too big to fail" banks first?
Who was the only President to ever leave office with fewer employed Americans than when he started? Who was Predident when the economy collapsed? You do realise that the defecit has grown so much faster under Obama because so much less tax revenue is being generated, because 10% of us are out of work and not paying taxes?
Obama took over after the worst President in American history; Bush left the country a shambles. Considering the mess he was left to clean up, I don't think he's done that bad a job. All I'd fault Obama for is health care, not raising taxes on the rich, not insisting that oil subsidies stop, and caving in to the radical, hypocritical Republicans in the House.
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Bush DOUBLED our debt. DOUBLED it. While being handed a 'balanced budget'. Obama was handed a tanking economy and has only added 50% or so to the debt. Granted Bush's 'double' and Obama's 50% are actually fairly close in real numbers (4 trillion I think).
Context matters. One person had a balanced budget and destroyed our financial outlook. Other was given an imploding economy and has halted that downslide and started back up if slowly. You guess who is who.
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Insightful)
So if there were not any taxes at all on anyone, that would be a good thing? No police, No Garbage pick up, No military, No regulations on pollution. If thats the society you want to live in, then you are right, if not, then you'll have to admit that there is a level of taxation necessary to maintain the essential services. With that perspective, maybe we can have a thoughtful debate over the level of services we want and how to pay for them. As it is currently, we are not paying for them without massive borrowing on almost every governmental level ( depending on your local). As such, lowering taxes without cuts to the services we currently have would be a bad idea.
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:4, Funny)
(fingers crossed that mods recognize tongue-in-cheek)
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Fine. How about we stop raising taxes until we determine exactly what that level should be?
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Informative)
1.) Don't confuse federal taxes for state and local taxes.
2.) Have you checked your tax rate lately? I bet you'll be pleasantly surprised to find that it is lower than it has been in quite a few decades.
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:4, Informative)
The total tax rate including federal, FICA, state, local, sales, real estate and nuisance taxes are considerably higher than ever.
Also keep in mind that you're comparing tax rates without considering the effects of inflation on wages.
If you look at the tax rates on someone making $175K in 2011 you have to compare with the tax rates of someone making $30K in wages in 1950.
Plus, people making less than $50K largely pay little or no federal income tax today.
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Interesting)
So right there you just killed the discussion.
We go from there are too many /too high taxes to "well, there should just be no taxes at all and there would be no police, fire...blah blah blah". In a word, Strawman.
Find a post where someone says all taxes should be abolished.
Can't?
OK, then maybe we can start the discussion again.
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Because the United States has to go into deeper debt to pay for your tax cut. It's not like the Democrats or the Republicans are interested in actually lowering our spending amounts. They only argue about where to spend the money...
My ex is Canadian. Taxes are very high there (Score:5, Insightful)
Her very first impression of the United States upon her very first visit here was the appalling condition of our roads. I was surprised at this, as I had always figured our roads were just fine, but upon my next visit to her home in Nova Scotia, I just had to agree. I later lived in Canada for several years and just had to agree that the roads everywhere I went were in immaculate condition.
Contrast this to the United States: in the October 1989 Loma Prieta quake, the top deck of the two-deck portion of Interstate 880 through Oakland collapsed onto the bottom deck, killing I think sixty-nine people. Some poor woman had her legs pinned under many tons of concrete. The only hope of saving her life was to use a power saw to cut both her legs off without the use of any anesthesia of any sort.
More recently the bridge on an Interstate highway between Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota collapsed, killing I think eleven people in an incredibly cruel way by dropping their cars from a great height into a deep river.
The authorized widely broadcast requests that anyone that had ever taken photos of that bridge turn them into the civil engineering authorities for their post-mortem. Careful examination found that some of the bolts in that bridge had been stretched noticably out of place as long as five years before!
I mentioned this to a friend who is a Professional Engineer - that's the proper term for a Civil Engineer. The fact that people get killed when people like him screw up is the reason that it would be a criminal expense for him to even claim to be a Professional Engineer without the proper license.
"That's impossible," he said. "Every bridge is inspected every two years."
I don't doubt that bridge was inspected every two years, but nevertheless it did fall down and kill a bunch of people.
If America were willing to tax itself enough to properly maintain its infrastructure, all those deaths and permanently crippling injuries just never would have happened.
I vastly preferred living in Canada for the specific reason that the Canadians are only too happy to tax themselves to provide for the common good. I always told people that Canada was the way America should be, and could be, but isn't.
I lost my immigration when Bonita divorced me. For quite a long time I wanted to return, and there are other ways I could still become a Canadian Landed Immigrant, and eventually a Canadian citizen.
One reason I don't, and chose eventually to remain in the United States, is so that I could work towards someday putting a stop to damnfool ignorant people such as yourself who are driving my Mother Country into the ground.
Re:My ex is Canadian. Taxes are very high there (Score:5, Informative)
I mentioned this to a friend who is a Professional Engineer - that's the proper term for a Civil Engineer. The fact that people get killed when people like him screw up is the reason that it would be a criminal expense for him to even claim to be a Professional Engineer without the proper license.
No, a Professional Engineer in one licensed in his/her state. Most engineers are not, whether they are Civil Engineers, or any other type. Most of the Professional Engineers that I have met were Mechanical Engineers, as it happens, but could be Chemical, Electrical, Nuclear, Welding, Aeronautical, or whatever other type you can remember. However, it would be a criminal offense for your friend to claim to be a Professional Engineer in any of the subtypes other than Civil, just as my friends could not legally claim to be Professional Civil Engineers.
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If your own selfish interests are more important than those of your country and your countrymen, there's not much point in arguing with you.
Indeed. If you selfishly demand that the government should steal money from other people and give it to you, then you're part of the problem, not the solution.
But I thought Gingrich was a Republican?
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Informative)
At what point is anyone demanding you give your money to them? Your taxes go to paying for goods and services that are, for the most part, publicly available. The military doesn't stop Soviet tanks from rolling over your house but allow them to roll over mine because you're in a higher tax bracket. The CDC doesn't spend more researching cures for diseases that I have because I take fewer deductions.
All of this money goes to services for ALL of us, not just some of us. If you lost your job and became destitute, YOU TOO could apply for social assistance. If you go to the airport YOU TOO get to board an aircraft that travels down a runway and gets directed by air traffic controllers through safe airspace all paid for by me, you, and everyone else in this country.
Taxes aren't theft, they are part of our social contract. Hell, even posting on /. over the internet has been made possible by the tax dollars of our parents going to fund DARPA projects.
If you think this social contract amounts to stealing, then by all means, move somewhere else that is more suited to your personal desires.
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that almost almost half of the people in the country think the other half doesn't work or pay taxes. The majority of the "half the people in the country" who don't pay net income tax don't pay net income tax because the people they work for don't pay them enough to both pay taxes and pay for food and shelter. The government could tax them, but then it would have to give the money back anyway so that they can continue living. Many of the working poor work long hours for little pay, often holding down several part time jobs and working more than 40 hours each week to try and make ends meet.
Part of the problem is that the income for the bottom 75% of Americans has stagnated for more than 30 years. Often the working poor have seen their wages decrease relative to inflation so that each year food and shelter costs a greater percentage of their income. How can this be? Well, virtually all of the proceeds of progress have been accumulating in the hands of the richest Americans, they have increased their share of the country's wealth from about 20% in the mid-70s to almost 40% now. Meanwhile, the bottom 80% of Americans control around 8% of the total wealth of America.
But you are free to choose to blame those who can't pay over those who won't pay, if you like.
Re: (Score:3)
If your own selfish interests are more important than those of your country and your countrymen, there's not much point in arguing with you.
Darn tootin, its a core american value. Thats why the founders instituted a 50% capital gains tax, a 40% income tax, and a 8% VAT on all transactions. They were strong believers that if you didnt pay a high tax rate, you were Just Plain Unpatriotic.
In fact, unless my memory is going, I think that the level of taxation may have had something to do with our country's founding.
Re: (Score:3)
How better to help people? If people have more money they will buy more, stimulating the economy naturally. And really, who better deserves the money? Who are your countrymen!? The one's that don't pay taxes?!
I'm not advocating no taxes so don't even start with t
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But how much money is the government entitled to? 25%? 50%? All? The amount that I specifically owe for government services I received?
If they take all, I'll stop working.
And before you take the highest percentage that will keep me working, consider this... dollar for dollar, is the government going to do more with the money? The government is well known for its bureaucracy, debt, and inefficiency. ( Oblig xkcd [xkcd.com]. Look closely, right hand image... the amount of annual improper federal payments almost eq
Re: (Score:3)
The tax holiday issue (Score:4, Informative)
So do the House Democrats. So do the Senate Democrats. So do the Senate Republicans. So does the President.
Democrats, disagree with Republicans, on other policies aside from the payroll tax holiday extension, some of which are directly related (e.g., offsetting tax increases or spending cuts to account for the lost revenue expected from extending the payroll tax holiday) and some of which are tangential but which parties are trying to use the popular payroll tax holiday as a lever to force the other side into agreeing to (e.g., accelerating approval timeline for the Keystone XL pipeline.)
The Senate, by an 89-10 vote, approved a 2 month extension of the payroll tax holiday along with a comprise mechanism for covering the cost of the short extension and with some agreements on some of the peripheral issues, to address the fact that the expiration of the tax holiday was rapidly approaching and to provide some time for more negotiations to reach a compromise on the remaining details to accompany a longer-term extension.
The Senate has already debated a full year tax break and failed to reach a consensus on the funding and other peripheral issues. They already know where the positions are of everyone in the Senate are right now on those issues, and know that neither the version of those issues in the House bill nor any other version has sufficient support to pass the Senate right now. Which is why, after extensive discussion and negotiation around the full-year extension requested by the President, the Senate passed the interim 2 month extension to provide time to reach a deal on a longer term extension, a goal which has nearly-universal support in the Senate, but where key differences on implementation details remain that would be fatal to any particular bill until they are resolved.
Re: (Score:3)
Or it could be that a two month extension is impractical simply because of the expense of implementing it.
Payroll systems are not to be trifled with. You don't just go in, start jacking things around and then deploy the changes.
Fucking with payroll is a Big Deal. [thehill.com]
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, absolutely. But somehow, I don't expect that logical considerations are behind any opposition to whatever Obama wants to do these days. I mean, republican leaders managed to change their stance on lowering taxes from "it's good for the economy" when they argued for cuts to investment taxes and taxes on the rich to " it's an ineffective stimulus measure" when the democrats and Obama wanted to extend the current tax holiday.
Re: (Score:3)
Bankruptcy and hyperinflation only happen when spending outruns income. Why do you only look at the cutting income (taxes) portion of the tea party's platform? They want to cut spending as well, in which case it would even out and not result in either bankruptcy or hyperinflation. That other political groups are unable to cut spending is not their fault.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Interesting)
To be honest I can't. I don't trust mob rule. You may think you can but I'm actually old enough to remember what happens when the mob has its way. Sorry but your competing with real life experience, so you're just wasting your time trying to convince me otherwise.
Right. Because it wasn't like people didn't actually go to a town hall and organized prior to the internet. How did we survive as a nation without the internet?
Maybe. At least Rick Perry actually put the effort into running for office to promote his party's and his own interests. The average person don't even show up to vote. The US has the lowest percentage of people who actually put forth the effort to vote. If the average person isn't smart enough to know the importance of voting than how do we expect our choice in leaders to be any better?
I know it sounds like a novel idea but you actually leave your basement and go to a polling place to cast your vote on who you'd think would be a better leader. Don't like the two party system then form another party that represents your views. You people seem to have plenty of time to occupy various town squares and do jazz hands but don't seem to have the focus to actually do anything.
Don't like the current state of our electoral process? The existence of Super PACs? Then use it against them. Nothing prevents you from forming your own super PAC and collecting money to generate commercials to the public that promotes your political ideology.
Sorry for the rant... I just hate it when people blame the system for their own apathy.
Re: (Score:3)
If the average person isn't smart enough to know the importance of voting than how do we expect our choice in leaders to be any better?
Oh, they know the importance of voting, they're just too fucking beat and demoralized after working their 2 jobs and taking care of their kids and staring at their delinquent notices that come in the mailbox every day to wait in line for who knows how long to do it. Plus, only having a realistic choice between the guy that will fuck you to death and the guy that will fuck you almost to death, may have a lot to do with it, too.
They'll never let something like internet voting occur. Never in a million years
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Representative democracy can be done right. The way the US is currently operating... isn't it. The problem is corruption, not the system. The system simply needs more checks to prevent the corruption in the first place.
Start with making campaign finance taxpayer-funded and make campaign donations illegal. That alone would cause a shift in the sort of people who want to be politicians because it would remove a lot of the profit motive.
The real problem is that in order to put these checks into place, we'd need our current, mostly corrupt politicians to agree to them.
Re: (Score:3)
First, I am quite certain that some of the money goes to the politician themselves.
Second, removing campaign donations means that one lobby can't position themselves as more "vital" to a person in power than another simply because they gave that person more money when they were running. Campaign donations effectively scale the influence that an organization or person has to the amount of money they can give, and I believe that proportionality shouldn't exist.
"Buying laws" isn't just a metaphor.
Re:Dirty trick (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd have to agree. If you go to Walmart.com, you expect it to be Walmart's site. Same with Microsoft.com, Sears.com or Chrysler.com. If a site is against it, you'd expect something more like walmartsucks.com or antiwalmart.com.
Dick's Sporting Goods is not at dicks.com ;-)
It'd be sort of like finding some kind of trademark loophole where you could build a store, put Walmart's logo out front but then have the inside be expressly anti-walmart. If nothing else, it's deceptive.
Putting up a store under the walmart.com domain would probably be construed as trademark infringement. Putting up a reasons-not-to-shop-at-walmart site at walmart.com would just get Walmart's legal team to try to crush you like a bug. Putting up a factual page about Newt Gingrich at newtginggrich.com won't make Mr Gingrich happy, but legally they should be OK. As far as the deceptive nature of it, nothing in politics is transparent or honest anymore. It's not a surprise that either side would try something like this.
Re:Dirty trick (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dirty trick (Score:4, Funny)
dicks.com actually takes me to dickssportinggoods.com. I agree with your other points though.
Bummer. It should take you to dicks.cum
Re:Dirty trick (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dirty trick (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dirty trick (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Dirty trick (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why didn't the guy who got paid millions from many companies because of his status as a public figure, not purchase it himself? Dirty, maybe... but again, Newt is the dumb one for not already purchasing this domain.
We need our congressmen to be put to the test on all these issues, so they can make a good call when it comes time to vote about them.
It links to FREDDIE MAC (Score:3, Funny)
Just tried the link http://newtgingrich.com/ [newtgingrich.com] and up comes freddiemac.com, which you may recall is the organization that paid newt 50,000 per hour for consulting. Now Newt considers this a feather in his cap and a good example of how his intellectual abilities are well appreciated. So it hardly seems like this is sandbagging him. He'd approve of this recommendation.
It's on a randomizer (Score:3, Informative)
Try it a few times: http://newtgingrich.com/ [newtgingrich.com]
Re:It links to FREDDIE MAC (Score:5, Informative)
Just tried the link http://newtgingrich.com/ [newtgingrich.com] and up comes freddiemac.com
Looks like it is on a rotating forwarder. The briefest of examinations suggests that it sends people to a URL from this list:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/12/gingrichs-campaign-still-looks-awful-lot-book-tour/45977/ [theatlanticwire.com]
http://www.greektravel.com/ [greektravel.com]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/gingrich-senior-aides-resign/2011/06/09/AGN77VNH_blog.html [washingtonpost.com]
http://www.tiffany.com/?siteid=1 [tiffany.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaZFfQKWX54 [youtube.com]
http://www.freddiemac.com/ [freddiemac.com]
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2009/09/11/60353/gingrich-porn/ [thinkprogress.org]
http://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/contract/?contractId=654836 [intrade.com]
I think it is great. I'd think it was funny if it happened to any politician, or any public figure really.
At a minimum it is funny because of all the people who will get their panties in a wad over it.
Re:Dirty trick (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Seriously. I've been squatting on NewtGingrichIsYourGodNow.com for half a year, and no one has even approached me about purchasing it.
*Not really. Feel free to register it yourself.
It's both (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sad what we have come to expect from politicians. On one hand, this is a dirty low down trick. On the other hand, Newt is a lying, cheating ass, so it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. But so are all the other Washington politicians, lobbyists and PAC executives, on both sides of the aisle. So on some primal level I get entertained when it happens to someone I don't like a lot, like when I'm watching professional wrestling or a soap opera. And this is where our government has degenerated to.
Re: (Score:3)
Newt is a lying, cheating ass, so it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. But so are all the other Washington politicians, lobbyists and PAC executives, on both sides of the aisle.
There is an issue of degree here, and that should not be ignored. It is true that none of them is a saint, but they fail at being a saint for different reasons and at different levels. Burying your head in the sand won't help. You have to judge wisely, make choices and vote accordingly, otherwise things will only change for the worse.
Re:Dirty trick (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't it be both?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it makes the Democrats look scared. They have gone beyond pleading their own case (effective if you have a case worth pleading) and smearing the opposition (reviled, but effective), to actively trying to stop the opposition from getting their message out. Seems like this will make some excellent 'what are they so afraid of' campaign material.
Furthermore, it seems utterly pointless. Who do they think is going to be positively (for them) swayed by this? Someone going to that site is either going t
Re: (Score:3)
I think it makes the Democrats look scared. They have gone beyond pleading their own case (effective if you have a case worth pleading) and smearing the opposition (reviled, but effective), to actively trying to stop the opposition from getting their message out. Seems like this will make some excellent 'what are they so afraid of' campaign material.
How are they "actively trying to stop the opposition from getting their message out"? The Newt campaign obviously do not need the domain, or they would have bought it already. The Democrats have not taken down his real website. If someone wants to find the real website, they should have no problem finding it on google. They are just taking advantage of a previously unused site to get their message out.
As for your accusations of smearing, all I have seen is them bringing up his past actions in a less tha
Re: (Score:3)
Ewwwwww.
Re:Dirty trick (Score:5, Insightful)
Most politics are not based of evil, it is based on people thinking what is best.
The Hard Noes republicans, who are against all sorts of government services such as welfare and unemployment, are not for it because they want to watch people suffer in poverty, but feel the government need to give them some tough love to get them off their butts and work for themselves.
The Hard Noes democrats, who are all for massive government services and expenditures, are not for it because such costs could bankrupt the United States, but feel there is a set of services that all people in a wealthy country such as the United States should all get.
Re:Dirty trick (Score:5, Insightful)
Summarizing republicans as "against big government" is a bit misleading. It's more of a "Against big government, except where it pleases us, our sponsors or enforces our belief system". Or would you honestly say that republicans oppose farming subsidies or military spending? Or support limiting the federal government's ability to spy on its people? Or demand more secularization of the federal government?I think that republicans ideologically being against big government is a myth and instead they are for it or against it depending on what benefits them in each individual case. (And I want to be very clear here: I don't consider that approach to be a bad one. I just think it shouldn't be combined to "small government" rhetoric.)
That said, I actually think that Newt is the best one republicans have to offer at the moment. He's not one of the craziest ones* and he has a lot more consistency than many other candidates. I do disagree with him in most issues but I think he's relatively respectable when it comes to acting as a politician.
Re:Dirty trick (Score:5, Insightful)
feel the government need to give them some tough love to get them off their butts and work for themselves
This is being far too kind for them. They feel that the only reason that someone could be unemployed in the current economic climate is because they deserve to be - despite 10% unemployment or even higher in some areas, despite even minimum-wage jobs at McDonalds having dozens of applicants for each position, despite all the copious evidence that the work just isn't there.
What's more, the reason they're so keen on this idea is not because they have a reasonable belief that it's true but because it justifies cutting taxes and spending in ways that benefit their wealthy friends and screw the poor. After all, so their reasoning goes, the only reason the poor aren't as wealthy as their rich friends is because they're lazy and don't deserve to be - never mind the fact that America has some of the worst class mobility in the world and that pretty much the only reason the rich are so much better off is because their parents were too, or just how much harder the poor have to work.
How Are The Republicans For Small Govt? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you know what Corporate Welfare is?
The Republicans are all for Big Government provided it benefit the rich.
The Right failed to regulate the banks (Score:4, Insightful)
The Republicans damn well knew that subprime loans were being repackaged into derivatives, but did nothing to stop that nonsense because the big investment firms were making money hand over fist as a result.
Do you have any concept of how many suicides have resulted directly from the subprime meltdown, or how many have died from exposure or from inadequately treated illnesses after having lost their jobs and homes?
If I were to knock over a liquor store for a couple hundred dollars, I'd be spending time behind bars and because of the popularity of background checks today, I would forever find it difficult to get any sort of decent paying work or housing.
But the people who caused the subprime crisis are still running the big investment firms. How many of them have been prosecuted? The closest one I can think of is Bernie Madoff, but that was for running a Ponzi Scheme, not for defrauding investors.
Protect Your Name (Score:5, Insightful)
If that's what you need to win (Score:4, Insightful)
adversarial government (Score:3)
Then why the fuck should I vote for you?
Our form of government is intentionally set up to display adversarial behaviour. Unlike a monarchy where there is a single voice and perhaps no free press. In the US we set up a system where opposing parties could say whatg was wrong with the other team. Newspapers could shine sunlight and free speech assured no one could supress these opposition messages. It helps keep politicians honest and the people informed when they are not up holding the ideals they promote.
Your implied condemnation is not quite
Re:adversarial government (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say the same thing if a Republican tried this. It's low down and dirty and is on the same level as having your opponents removed from the ballot on a technicality. If you can't stand without perpetrating fraud against voters then how honest can I expect you to be when you're elected and actually have a bit of power?
Re:If that's what you need to win (Score:5, Insightful)
amusing or a dirty trick, depending on your??? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not a fan for Newt Gingrich but this is a dirty trick.
People who want to learn about the candidate will want to go to their web site to see their official stance on things. This is an attempt to keep the public misinformed by the opposition.
Mr. Gingrich has a sorted political past, and if you go to the others web sites they will tell all about it. You really need to hear his side too for people to get a full picture of who you should be voting for.
Lets all complain how stupid the voters are and they don't do their research, then in the same breath we reward and pat on the back members of your political beliefs their attempt to misdirect the public to only see their views.
Re:amusing or a dirty trick, depending on your??? (Score:5, Insightful)
People who want to learn about the candidate will want to go to their web site to see their official stance on things. This is an attempt to keep the public misinformed by the opposition.
You can still do that. It's at newt.org. And how does this use of the URL "misinform" anybody"? It redirects to media reports about him, organizations he has worked for, a public-service video he appeared in with Nancy Pelosi, etc. How is any of this "misinformation"? It's information he doesn't want to emphasize in his current campaign, sure, but that doesn't make it false or even deceptive.
Re:amusing or a dirty trick, depending on your??? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh what to go with... how about this:
Did he use a quick sort or a bubble sort? Maybe a merge sort?
Re:amusing or a dirty trick, depending on your??? (Score:5, Funny)
Judging from his marital history, an insertion sort.
This is plain old cybersquatting. (Score:3)
There is already a law in place to deal with this.
Newt can own this domain by the end of the week, once he brings in a good lawyer.
LK
That Law Doesn't Protect Politicians (Score:3)
Just the owners of registered trademarks.
How about both (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a good way to get a job as a webmaster (Score:5, Interesting)
Shortly before a San Francisco Mayoral election a friend by the name of Andy Hasse registered the .coms of all of the expected candidates. One such candidate, upon finding that his domain was cyberly squatted upon, asked what he could do about it. Andy pitched his web consulting services then was hired by that candidate to do his site.
Andy was at the time a recent graduate of UC Santa Cruz and was living the Bohemian lifestyle in The Mission District. He was just starting out. Imagine his great surprise - and mine as well - when Andy made the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle when the Willie Brown campaign discovered that willybrown.com was owned by one of the staff for a competing campaign.
That was a long time ago; I'm not sure that the article would still be online. Let me check... Ah! Here We Go! [sfgate.com]
Willie Brown is to San Frasncisco politics as the Kennedys were once to American politics. While Willie has many supporters in San Francisco, it's quite definitely old-skool big-city machine politices.
I suggested that Andy take advantage of his fifteen minutes by offering him some free hosting. The Willie Brown website [williebrown.com] is no longer online, with the registrant being hidden by a private registration service. But based on the creation date, that domain just has to still owned by Andy.
Let's ask The Wayback Machine... Service With A Smile. [archive.org]
Sometime later an incredibly right-wing guy by the name of Dan Lungren was running for California State Attorney General. "Did you register Dan Lundgren's domain?" I asked Andy.
"Yup," he replied. "Com, Net and Org."
I for one... (Score:3)
welcome Newt Gingrich's popularity in the GOP primaries.
It will make it a whole lot easier to reelect President Obama. The only down side is that it will make his campaign staff fat and lazy, as they will not have to work to find baggage to pull up on Gingrich.
It has to be on or the other? (Score:3)
Speaking as a non-yank.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Very fitting (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever conservativism means in modern America, Gingrich is it. He would describe himself as conservative, his allied would describe themselves as conservatives, and his opposition describes him as conservative. He lead the 1994 Republican revolution that put conservatives back in power in the US. If Gingrich isn't conservative, you're going to have to rewrite almost 20 years of political history. If your particular political persuasion isn't compatible with Gingrich's, you need to find a less overloaded term for it.
Re:Waste of money (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Waste of money (Score:5, Insightful)
I think (in the general election) that what Romney loses in extremists he will more than make up for moderates (including moderate Democrats who voted for Obama last time).
Of course, Huntsman would be an even better general election candidate, but he really is unelectable in the primary.
Finally, keep in mind that Gingrich more-or-less invented the ultra-adversarial tactics that are causing the gridlock in D.C. that lots of citizens (including Republicans) are so pissed off about right now. Hopefully, folks keep that in mind on election day.
Re: (Score:3)
who controls newtgingrich.xxx?
"This domain has been reserved from registration."
Perhaps the registrar has an aversion to lawsuits. It might be educational to try various $NameOfPublicFigure.xxx domains.
Re: (Score:3)
Kind of died when the platform of both parties became "spend more, engage in more corruption, screw the little guy, blame the other side, and win the next election."