What Charles G. Koch Can Teach Us About Campaign Finance Data 238
Lasrick writes "Lee Drutman is a political scientist with the Sunlight Foundation who does terrific work. In this article, he attempts to trace campaign donations made by one of the Koch Brothers and discovers just how difficult it is to do: 'The case of Charles G. Koch is a nice lesson in just how hard it is to determine who is breaking and who is abiding by campaign finance limits. It's hard to make accurate tallies of individual aggregate campaign contributions when the Federal Elections Commission doesn't require donors to have a unique ID, and when campaigns don't always reliably report donor names. Given this, it is unclear how the FEC would even enforce its own aggregate limit rules. The FEC's spokesperson told me that while the FEC welcomes complaints, it does not typically take enforcement initiative."'
Who cares who donates and how much? (Score:2)
You don't have to track political donations just look at how the politicians vote. If you vote for bank bailouts I am going to assume you or someone you know is getting rich off it. If you vote for a hunded billion dollar Air Force fighter contract I wil assume the same.
Re:Who cares who donates and how much? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you know who donates to which parties, politicians, and organizations, it can highlight what things you might want to give extra scrutiny to.
You don't have to use the information, but I would like it to be available for analysis.
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Where in the Constitution is there a right to privacy for individuals?
Re: Who cares who donates and how much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where in the Constitution is there a right to privacy for individuals?
The Supremes have repeatedly ruled that the enumerated rights in the constitution add up to an implied right to privacy, since you can't realistically have several of them (including the right to freedom of speech) without it. It is ignorant at best to utilize this argument. It is also highly disingenuous to ask this question in any case because the constitution was never intended to exhaustively enumerate the Human Rights of The People. Your one-liner amounts to nothing more than tired prevarication.
Re: Who cares who donates and how much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where in the Constitution is there a right to privacy for individuals?
4th Amendment prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure, and the 9th Amendment which clearly says that just because a set of rights are enumerated doesn't mean those are the only ones you have, and the 10th Amendment which says that the only powers the Federal government has are those delegated to it, and that all others are reserved to the States (where not prohibited) or the People.
So, the real question which you should have asked is where in the Constitution was the government given the power to snoop through all your crap in the first place.
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How is trying to find out how our elected officials are beholden to wealthy contributors the same thing as our government snooping through all our crap?
For the most part it isn't, but then again I didn't say it was. The person I was replying to asked where in the Constitution is there a right to privacy which showed they were falling into the classic trap of presuming that if there isn't an enumerated right to something then that right doesn't exist which isn't true.
Or to rephrase the problem another way, they were looking at the world as if Government must give them permission to do things as oppose to the way it is supposed to be which is that we gave Go
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Where in the Constitution is there a right to privacy for individuals?
The right to privacy is the cornerstone of Roe v. Wade [wikipedia.org] and Doe v. Bolton [wikipedia.org]
It's interesting that the Affordable Health Care Act requires the government to know more and more about your health and health care decisions. Either these are contrary to Roe v. Wade or they are undermining the principles that RvW is founded upon.
Asinine Article of the Year Award Goes to... (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama is spying on every American with blanket data grabs and still fails to stop terrorist attacks
Obama has the IRS pry into the personal lives of anyone (and high school kids) who is trying to start a conservative non-profit
And you want to bitch about money from people supporting a candidate that DIDN'T WIN the election.
Step 1: Get the tyrant in power
Step 2: Keep the tyrant in power
Posting an article about people who are harassing conservatives for who they dare to support with their money... That's just special. I guess the IRS isn't doing a good enough job, we need to find other avenues to ensure Conservative/Republicans politicians don't get financial contributions to their campaign.
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The IRS situation is particularly appropriate here as what the IRS was doing was trying to prevent the money laundering going on in this article. Such money laundering does not only provide US political power to legitimate US corportations and firms, but also to terrorists and f
Re:Asinine Article of the Year Award Goes to... (Score:5, Informative)
Despite the fact that the record shows them preventing crimes and arresting criminals.
Tell that to Boston. You know, where the FBI was flat-out told by Russia "this man is a radical Muslim and is going to commit terrorist attacks" and the FBI responded by asking him if it were true and then ignoring him. (But apparently my phone calls are needed to "stop the terrorists!")
Actually, maybe don't tell Boston that, because apparently the city was trying to get the attack classified as "not a terrorist attack" in order to not offend Muslims or something.
But the point stands: if the FBI can't catch a terrorist when they're flat-out told "he's a terrorist" by Russia, why the hell should we believe that they'd do any better when it's the NSA telling them? We already know the FBI can't stop even the most inept and incompetent terrorist attacks like the one in Boston, why would they do any better with the aid of nation-wide spying? That was, you know, was ALREADY HAPPENING WHEN THEY MISSED THAT ATTACK IN ANY CASE. So it's not like this is theoretical or anything: PRISM didn't help stop the Boston attack. Which isn't surprising since being handed a report saying "this man is a terrorist" didn't help prevent them.
Another irrational statement. Obama is not micromanaging the IRS. There is indication Obama did any such thing.
Wrong: the IRS manager had nearly 200 meetings at the White House. There's very good evidence Obama knew exactly what was happening and didn't care.
Unfortunately your chance at the moral high-ground was killed when conservatives profiled black-people as being more likely to have invalid voter-registration, and thus did mass suppression of voting in black areas.
Uh, also wrong: the simple answer is that we have no idea how bad voter fraud is in the United States because WE DON'T BOTHER CHECKING FOR IT. Voter ID laws are NOT targeting "blacks" they're targeting voter fraud PERIOD, plain and simple. No racial bias since it covers everyone, no economic bias since the IDs are free for people who can't afford them.
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Wrong: the IRS manager had nearly 200 meetings at the White House.
Apparently, the manager in question had that many instances of allotted time for meetings, but didn't actually use most of those opportunities. The actual number of meetings seems to be around a dozen, unless there were some meetings off the books.
At a glance, this seems more a "will someone rid me of this meddlesome priest" moment. Obama probably just strongly implied that interference with conservation non-profit formation would be looked upon favorably. But he probably hasn't an inkling what was actua
Why Koch and not Soros? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it because the Koch is considered evil by the left while Soros is a saint?
Yet the irony is that the Koch brothers actually make something in the United States and their workforce is 80% unionized while Soros is a banker who makes money on devaluing countries currency.
Re:Why Koch and not Soros? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's much more likely because the Koch brothers quite literally astroturfed the Tea Party into existence. It doesn't take a genius to realize that the agenda being pushed by the Tea Party is obviously pro-corporation and anti-liberty.
If people could detach emotional bias from politics, the Tea Party would disappear overnight when everyone realized how hoodwinked they had been by corporate interests.
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If you think that free markets and deregulation are pro-corporate policies, you're not paying enough attention. The whole point of corporatism is to use "consumer protection" as an excuse to prevent new entrants into the marketplace.
Re:Why Koch and not Soros? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why Koch and not Soros? (Score:5, Informative)
Deregulation has caused us nothing but trouble. Remember that Enron crisis a decade or so ago in CA?
I take it you don't realize that the state of California deliberately broke the electricity market in question? Electricity utilities were required to buy a portion of their electricity at any price on the spot market. It didn't take the so-called "smartest people in the room" (Enron) to see that was going to cause lucrative trouble.
And once this flaw was revealed in the summer of 2000, the then governor, Gray Davis let this flaw run on for about six to seven months, bankrupting one utility and almost nailing a second (there were three such businesses in addition to utilities on the public or non profit side).
Yes, Enron and other players manipulated the market. But we need to remember that the market was designed to reward such market manipulation.
Another group of markets with similar behavior are the carbon credit exchanges in Europe. Because of the hard cap on the credits allotted for emissions, there either are more credits than emissions or less. In the former case, emission credits are low value. In the latter case, the high inelasticity of supply drives up prices and encourages market manipulation.
After all, if you can buy a lot of credits early in the year for cheap and then sell them to desperate coal power generators and other industries near the end of the year, then you can make a bit of coin, even if you can't get rid of all the credits you bought.
Anyway, when that market melts down, you'll know why.
It's tiresome to see all these accusations against deregulation by the painfully ignorant. Deregulation can be done poorly, such as the California energy crisis or the firesale of Russian gas properties to Yeltsin cronies. Or it can be done well. One doesn't see such drama in telecommunications or passenger air travel, for example.
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Or it can be done well. One doesn't see such drama in telecommunications or passenger air travel, for example.
Or electricity. In Texas.
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A 'market' for a natural monopoly.
Delivery of power to a particular wall socket may be a natural monopoly, but power generation is not.
A lot of markets have a limited supply
All markets do. And that's the point of markets pretty much - to match that limited supply with the buyers that want the goods or services the most.
When Enron was allowed to add future sales to the balance sheet without adding future expenses, a demand bubble was created.
Nonsense. A "demand bubble" was created because the end customers in a large portion of California were completely insulated from the cost of the electricity they were purchasing.
In normal markets where the consumer pays most of the price of the good in questi
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The problem is that using the courts or California national guard to stabilize the energy supply would have been viewed as a left-wing assault on corporate freedom.
The problem is that a couple of simple legal things would have done the job. Either allow the two power companies, Consolidated Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric to charge their customers what the utilities actually have to pay for electricity. Or remove the obligation to buy on the spot market. These were not done.
One doesn't need to resort to illegal actions in order to fix this particular problem.
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Remember that Enron crisis a decade or so ago in CA?
I live in California. When they deregulated the energy market, they only did a partial deregulation. In this case, partial dereg made things much worse.
The 2008 economic meltdown was caused by deregulation
No, the meltdown was caused by the government interferring in the market and forcing lenders to loan money to people who had no chance of paying it back.
Socialism only works in some imaginary liberal fantasy world where greedy douchebags can't game the system to their own benefit. Under every economic system you will always have people who are able to
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I live in California. When they deregulated the energy market, they only did a partial deregulation. In this case, partial dereg made things much worse.
Indeed, but the problem began much sooner, when they chased most of the power producers out of the state to begin with.
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The difference is that MoveOn has no pretenses in what it's about. What exactly is the tea party these days? All I hear from its mouthpieces right now is how gay marriage is a sign of the end times and moral decay causes deficits but we should totally spend trillions more dollars on war. And tax us less or something maybe.
I guess meanwhile you can sit around apologizing to Bush. [teaparty.org] Thats what you do these days, right? Tell everyone how shit Bush did was awesome then but stopped being awesome when Obama do
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The difference is that MoveOn has no pretenses in what it's about. What exactly is the tea party these days? All I hear from its mouthpieces right now is how gay marriage is a sign of the end times and moral decay causes deficits but we should totally spend trillions more dollars on war. And tax us less or something maybe.
I admit that I only have listened to actual Tea Party people three or four times -- but they were for smaller government and less taxes. They explicitly stated that they did not take any stand on social issues.
And please don't bring in the asinine fallacy that because I think Bush (and now Obama) are over spending that I somehow want to eliminate the Federal government completely or take us back to the dark ages.
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What exactly is the tea party these days?
Getting the US federal government finances into order (which includes cutting spending substantially), curtailing US government power, and of course, cutting taxes.
why don't we identify all these characters? (Score:2)
the real question, if you are going to have wild-ass money to surf down the halls of Congress on in the first place, is why we don't have something as reliable as DNA tagging to allow following the cash?
oh, wait... ahh, now I get it. how silly of me. so, where's my check for shutting up?
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Is it because the Koch is considered evil by the left while Soros is a saint?
No, it's a directive. This is part of the larger campaign to instruct left-wing career bureaucrats to abuse their power, of which the IRS abuses are only the beginning. Rather than using "dog whistles" or "code words," they're using goddamned bullhorns to coordinate this, out in the open.
The top leaders of the left, including Obama, deliberately claimed that conservative and libertarian organizations were cheating on their taxes, and groups like Sunlight and Media Matters made similar claims. It was basical
Re:Why Koch and not Soros? (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, did you even read the article? (I know, I know, this is /., what on earth am I thinking.) That's a rhetorical question, of course - you wouldn't ask the question you asked if you'd read the article. Then again, that seems to also be true of quite a few people who replied to you, so you're hardly alone.
Koch is the subject because an earlier article, by the same author, had listed Koch as one of nearly 600 people who appeared to have exceeded campaign contribution limits. Turns out this was incorrect - an error due in large part to the disasterously poor state of data on contributions by major donors. The whole damned article is both exonerating Koch and explaining where the original analyis went wrong. It's about Koch because Koch's company took the time to contact the author, work with him to identify where and how some of the erroneous data came about, and help set the record straight. If one of the other nearly 600 donors listed had done the same, this follow-up article might easily have been about someone other than Koch.
It's got nothing to do with "evil", "good", "bad", etc, except inasmuch as the FEC data is manifestly "bad", and woefully inadequate for even the FEC themselves to determine who may be breaking campaign finance laws. If you want to get upset about the article, get upset about the real point - that nobody has sufficient information to tell whether major contributors on either side of the political aisle are breaking the law. (And there were plenty of Dem donors in the original article if you take the time to read it. I apologize in advance to you that Soros wasn't on the list. Well, that's not true - there's two Soroses (Sori?) on the lists - just that <Jedi>these are not the Soroses you're looking for</Jedi>)
So untwist your knickers, grab a beer, chill out, then try actually reading the article.
Re:Why Koch and not Soros? (Score:4, Insightful)
ok, so we're at a special moment in US history. both the right and the left agree that the government is dysfunctional, highly corrupt, and borderline totalitarian.
appropriate next move... anyone?
Whine and bitch about the other guy and the lesser of two evils. In other words, exactly the same move that got us into this mess.
Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were asking what was actually going to happen.
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Which is more racist, choosing a kid's school based on geographic proximity or choosing a kid's school based on race? Hint: the latter is the literal definition of racial discrimination.
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Of course it is difficult. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would politicians that got elected enact laws to make it harder for them to be bribed? They specifically make the campaign finances difficult to track in order to hide the bribery.
Not only that, but we let the people being elected set their own paychecks as well.
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In Canada campaign finance reform was pushed through by a retiring PM. Much like how super rich old people start to think about how they'll be remembered and start giving away their money to good causes in the hope of being remembered for the good they did instead of the horrible things they did to get rich, a politician at the end of their carrier might change the bribery laws.
This worked better in Canada as the PM is defacto dictator with a majority government whereas the American system allows party memb
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Everyone cares about the pay. Maybe the pay is sex, or land development rights, or granting licences, or even just the ability to have people shot on a whim, but there's always something to attract the sociopaths.
Enforcement (Score:2, Interesting)
"... The FEC's spokesperson told me that while the FEC welcomes complaints, it does not typically take enforcement initiative."
The FBI has the means to track laundered money in the banking system. I myself don't know all the ins and outs of laundering, but I'm sure it can get complicated as it takes the Bureau manpower and time to do so. But it can be done.
It seems that the example of Koch and his pay-offs is akin to laundering. Especially if it's breaking laws. If the FEC hasn't been outfitted with means t
Charles Koch can teach us? (Score:3)
Money buys influence. Period.
Biased by design (Score:4, Insightful)
This would have more validity if the the title was "What Charles Koch & George Soros can teach use about campaign finance data"
solution.... (Score:2)
change the law so that political donations without a proper, verifiable audit trail back to a specific individual donor is deemed to be the proceeds of crime and subject to immediate civil forfeiture.
the first whistleblower or citizen-detective who reports the improper donation gets to keep 50%
the other half gets split equally between any competing candidates - but only to independents and minor parties.
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But don't worry! The US left has already proposed a way to resolve these abuses targeting right-wing political activity! Nancy Pelosi would have us take action to ban these vehicles for right-wing political activity altogether. We can also pretend Citizens United never happened. :P (Whatever else, that lady's got some chutzpah.)
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501(c)(4) organizations are for promoting social causes; donations are nondeductible but operations tax-exempt, aka "if we performed these activities as individuals we wouldn't get taxed again so why should we be taxed as a group?" -- they can engage in cause-oriented political spending. 501(c)(3) are charitable organizations and the donations are tax-deductible
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You can't contribute tax-exempt to any TRUE Scotsman!
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This is more like donating to an Englishman and saying hey, close enough to a Scotsman.
Re:If you donate to leftists (Score:4, Insightful)
What does any of that have to do with being far-left? Harassing Fox News is just political partisanship, not leftism. Abolishing capitalism and private property and promoting communism: now that would be a far-left organization. Media Matters are just Democratic partisans who don't appear to have any interest in actual leftism, just in attacking Republicans.
That's more about how fervent you are in approaching politics as team sports, than about position on the left/right spectrum. You can be a hardcore partisan and be anywhere on the spectrum; even some very centrist politicos in terms of their actual political ideology are hardcore partisans, in both parties.
Re:More support for a national ID (Score:5, Informative)
Really strange - the lefts HATRED of brothers promoting freedom with their own money.
For the record - did you know that the Koch Brothers support:
Decriminalizing drugs,
Legalizing gay marriage,
Repealing the Patriot Act,
Ending the police state,
Cutting defense spending.
They call this being way right wing?
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Really strange - the lefts HATRED of brothers promoting freedom with their own money.
For the record - did you know that the Koch Brothers support:
Decriminalizing drugs,
Legalizing gay marriage,
Repealing the Patriot Act,
Ending the police state,
Cutting defense spending.
They call this being way right wing?
The problem is that even though they support Freedom and Liberty they don't support Liberalism. They're against big government, heavy taxes and heavy regulation. They tend to be individualists and not collectivists, ergo they are right wing extremists (or something).
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The problem is that even though they support Freedom and Liberty they don't support Liberalism.
That's not a problem in my opinion, it's a plus.
They're against big government, heavy taxes and heavy regulation.
Why shouldn't they be? With all of the government scandals these days, the IRS being prominent among them, why should we want more government? We have too much already if you ask me.
They tend to be individualists and not collectivists
The United States was founded on individualism, not collectivism. Have you ever wondered how a country that's only 237 years old came to be the most powerful and prosperous nation in recorded history? It wasn't Marxism or collectivism that made us wealthy and powerful, but individu
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They call this being way right wing?
Yes, but the Kochs don't support income redistribution through tax and spend government, so that makes them anathema to the progressive left. The progressives only tolerate liberal billionaires, like George Soros, who give them money and even then just to avoid biting the hand that feeds them and not because they actually believe that those billionaires and millionaires, even those whose donations they accept, should actually be allowed to retain their wealth.
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Really strange - the lefts HATRED of brothers promoting freedom with their own money.
For the record - did you know that the Koch Brothers support:
Decriminalizing drugs,
Legalizing gay marriage,
Repealing the Patriot Act,
Ending the police state,
Cutting defense spending.
They call this being way right wing?
And the Chinese are in favor of human rights.
Got any references to back up your claims?
WTF is income equality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Should we all be paid the same per hour regardless of what we produce in that hour?
The Koch brothers employ 10's of thousands of people.
Obviously they're doing something for ordinary people.
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Everybody should be able to earn a living wage no matter what kind of job they have. I'm sick and tired of this race-to-the-bottom bullshit where executives make millions of dollars a year (or more) while rank-and-file workers are paid so little that they need food stamps to survive (and now the right-wingers want to cut that out of pure spite). And no, I don't envy the rich. Why does anybody need that much money? The rich have not done anything for me or for you without expecting much more in return. Let
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Let them be taxed at 90% like in the Eisenhower days
Are you write only? As others have pointed out, the income tax is for "the little people" -- professionals and the middle class. Not the rich.
Let's look at Steve Jobs for a moment. The vast majority of his compensation was stock -- not income. What does that stock represent? Money? No. It represents control of his company. Tax Steve at 90% and he no longer controls Apple, John Sculley does -- or worse -- some government bureaucrat.
Unlike you, I'm not hide bound by anger, envy, and greed. If my
Re:WTF is income equality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Capital gains (how the rich make most of their income) should be treated no differently than regular income. This is one way the current tax code favors the rich. Also, eliminating the cap on social security would keep it solvent indefinitely. Would it be such a bad thing if more industries were nationalized? I've seen how the private sector runs the economy and honestly, I'm not very impressed. (banking and healthcare, I'm looking at you!)
I disagree that our standard of living has improved since the 50s. When the rich paid higher taxes, the country experienced a period of high prosperity. We experienced a similar thing when Clinton raised taxes in the 90s. We ended up with a budget surplus that was soon squandered by Bush. Sure, we have more cheap electronic gadgets nowadays but job security, healthcare affordability, and infrastructure have gone to shit since Reagan came up with trickle-down economics. I'd call trickle-down the most ghastly economic failure in history except it did exactly what it was supposed to do (redistribute middle class wealth upward to the rich).
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I hear this a lot, but I think it is a knee-jerk reaction to hearing about rich people paying such low capital gains taxes. The reason that capital gains taxes are lower is because most activities that generate such gains are inherently riskier than working for a paycheck. So I think it does make sense to start capital gains taxes at a low rate, to encourage small-time investing. The problem, as
America never had a 90% tax rate (Score:4, Informative)
Basically at one point in time we said there ought to be limits on how much of societies limited resources we dedicate to 1 person.
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Basically at one point in time we said there ought to be limits on how much of societies limited resources we dedicate to 1 person.
The problem with this idea is that its not the government's job to determine how much money I earn, or how much someone else pays me. It COULD be the governments job, if we wanted to take another crack at that sort of system, but it hasnt worked terribly well in the past.
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Basically at one point in time we said there ought to be limits on how much of societies limited resources we dedicate to 1 person.
The problem with this idea is that its not the government's job to determine how much money I earn, or how much someone else pays me.
You're still allowed to earn as much money as you want, and anybody can pay you as much as they want. It's just that society wants a larger share of that money, since you can afford to contribute more. A tax rate of 90% would be a bit high, but I don't see anything wrong with 70% or perhaps even 80%.
It COULD be the governments job, if we wanted to take another crack at that sort of system, but it hasnt worked terribly well in the past.
But in fact it has worked terribly well in the past. In the booming years after WW2 top tax rates were considerably higher in both the USA and western Europe.
Note, however, that this requires an at least re
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The taxes didn't limit how much you could earn. If you managed to earn more, you got more.
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Because taxes are levied on capital gains (i.e. only when selling his shares) and not on capital itself, then taxing Steve would have done about nothing. He carried many of them to his grave. Though I agree with you about what they represented to him: control. Stock ownership is only about profit when you sell your stake. Holding your stake is holding control.
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Because taxes are levied on capital gains (i.e. only when selling his shares) and not on capital itself, then taxing Steve would have done about nothing. He carried many of them to his grave. Though I agree with you about what they represented to him: control. Stock ownership is only about profit when you sell your stake. Holding your stake is holding control.
Thank you for enforcing the point that the income tax does nothing about the rich.
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Stock does not only represent control of the company. It also represents ownership. So why shouldn't it be taxed? When a person is given stock, he/she should be taxed according to their market value (and I guess on a % of the companies book value in cases where the company is not publicly traded).
So when Steve got his shares, he should have paid income taxes on their value.
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Everybody should be able to earn a living wage no matter what kind of job they have.
Communism has been tried. It doesnt work precisely because that statement is not true and cannot be true.
Successful societies operate in a free-market capitalist system where what you earn is tied to the demand for what you do. Someone who does a menial job that requires neither skill nor training should not make the same as someone whose job requires years of training.
More immediately, if your demand was put in place, there would be _0_ jobs for college kids. Who the heck wants to pay for an untrained k
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I'd say it's simpler than that. Communism and farming are incompatible for a lot of reasons, which is why the USSR almost starved in the 1920s.
However you don't live in a "free market" or you'd have cheap sugar in your Coca Cola instead of that corn syrup that costs more than cane sugar from Jamaica.
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Oh come on, you can do better than that! You conservatives love to bring that up but you never have any specific examples of fraud (just like this rampant voter fraud perpetrated at the hands of minorities I keep hearing about). I've heard all this before- it's always the phantom poor person covered in bling who buys lobster and caviar with food stamps and then drives off in a late-model Cadillac Escalade with chrome spinners, never to be seen again until they show up at another market somewhere in Conserva
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Be vigilant, my friend. The canadian storm [theworld.org] is coming.
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http://www.ohioauditor.gov/newscenter/press/release/1171/ [ohioauditor.gov]
Columbus – The State of Ohio reissued nearly 340,000 food stamp EBT cards in 2011 – and 17,000 recipients received 10 or more reissued cards, according to an evaluation of the program by Auditor of State Dave Yost.
Hm. Does that count?
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Maybe I'm reading that article wrong, but it sounds like 5% of the EBT users lost their cards ten times in the year. Wow, that sounds pretty bad, but it could simply be the set of people who would lose their heads if they weren't firmly attached to necks. The article seems to say nothing about (1) any cards being used after being reported as lost/stolen, or (2) multiple
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The implication is that they sell the things for money and then get a replacement by claiming it is lost, hence the "fraud" title on that article.
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Yes, I understand the implication there, but it's not exactly damning evidence of large-scale fraud; just a surprising statistic worth further investigation. That press release was over a year ago; has the state followed through and discovered evidence of fraud? Has anyone had their EBT access/re-issue revoked, payed a fine, or been locked up? If cards were sold, then surely the buyer got some value
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A strange way to conclude your remarks since both of your links documented/described fraud by EBT cardholders.
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How about Massachusetts [bostonglobe.com]? Or Louis Cuff [about.com]? Or the octomom [tmz.com]? Or these two [seattlepi.com]?
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BTW, Plasma TV is old technology. I haven't seen a new one sold in years. You can buy a cheap-ass LCD TV for less than $250 now so I have no idea what your point is. For all you know, it was a gift. In a way, you just defeated your own argument because lots of poor people have older stuff because they can't afford to upgrade. Would you blame a poor person for owning a CRT in this day and age?
You must think that all poor people should be dressed in rags and have no dignity or luxuries whatsoever. I've bee
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You must think that all poor people should be dressed in rags and have no dignity or luxuries whatsoever. I've been poor before and I know how it is, you insensitive prick
I love it when someone tries to take what I say out of context and imply I said something I didn't. Thank you for spreading your ignorance.
By Obama's definition, I've been poor too. People do not need cable TV. Hell, I haven't had cable or satellite TV for over 10 years. If someone insists that they need it then they sure as hell don't need me to spring for the grocery bill. Take that $800+ a year and put it towards groceries.
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Plasma TVs are not "old tech", and theyre definately not less expensive than LCDs.
http://reviews.cnet.com/best-plasma-tvs/ [cnet.com]
Hey look theyre still being sold / reviewed!
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Business people allow you to stand there making arm motions and get a house, car, and TV out of it, when, left to your own in a field, those motions would quickly get you starved to death.
The true comparison for the "common man" is that, not some warmed-over 1920s Workers of the World Unite pamplet.
Capitalism, having brouught cheap food, leading to the poor in the US being literally the fattest segment of society, the left has to shift goalposts.
Note they push health care or Obama phones or Intertubes-for-a
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Capitalism brought cheap food? Massive farm subsidies doesn't seem to me to be capitalism unless you are talking about the type of capitalism that purchases politicians to change the playing field in their favor. Note that these kinds of subsidies lead to some types of food being cheap, the same types of food that cause obesity.
Most of the research that made food plentiful, higher yielding etc was done by government or government subsidized universities and only recently have pesticide companies been doing
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While it is true that mechanization has resulted in huge labor savings, another reason for cheap food is that the remaining labor force consists of illegal laborers and such working for less then a real living wage.
If labor costs were raised to the point where regular people would work in the fields, the price of food would have to go up.
I hear people going on how any job is better then none but personally I don't see the point of working if all you do is fall behind due to expenses being higher then wages.
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yep. staged transition worked extremely well for a few decades while the illegality of theft was phased in. gave burglars and so on years to get used to the 'semi-legal' status of their profession and adjust slowly to their job gradually becoming illegal.
the huge compensation payouts for their loss of income helped too.
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Should we all be paid the same per hour regardless of what we produce in that hour?
The Koch brothers employ 10's of thousands of people.
Obviously they're doing something for ordinary people.
That's true. I wipe my butt with their products every day. http://www.gp.com/forYourHome/bathtissue.html [gp.com]
The point of the study was that (1) they're some of the largest, highest profile donors in America and (2) despite that high profile, we still can't figure out where their money is going.
Re:WTF is income equality? - Exaclty. (Score:5, Informative)
Whatever gives you that idea? Opposition to rent seeking is probably the primary defining characteristic of libertarianism, and the Koch brothers support numerous causes and organizations that strongly oppose rent seeking.
The 19th century robber barons weren't unfettered free marketeers, they were people who translated a high level of political influence and corruption into personal fortunes. This is exactly what libertarianism opposes.
Do have even the slightest idea what you're saying? Do you really think anybody who is rich is affected by income taxes at all? Rich people don't have income, they mostly just own untaxable assets. Income tax is primarily a burden on the middle class and professionals, not "the rich".
Furthermore, the 19th century was a period of great improvement in the standard of living for everybody, not a period of economic and social decline the way you falsely portray it.
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I think you've got it backwards. How exactly does a "libertarian" society built on the idea of "fuck you, I've got mine" have a way to oppose such people setting themselves up as aristocracy?
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Well, the problem here is that you equate libertarianism with "fuck you, I've got mine". That's merely a testament to your ignorance.
An "aristocracy" means a form of government where all power is concentrated in a small, privileged ruling class. Libertarianism is about limiting the power of government (to the minimum necessary to enforce contracts and punish criminal offenses against persons and property). They are polar opposites.
Progressivism and socialism are trying to create an "aristocracy of intellect
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If you want something to really rub it in, consider the bui
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I see that too. And that is unfortunately what progressives are trying to create.
Bangladesh has been governed for y
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Pretending I'm "ignorant" because I'm aware of a problem is a bit much isn't it?
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You really need to look up what the terms mean that you use. It is anarchists that favor a lack of governance. Libertarians and progressives/socialists both want a functioning, strong government, they just want government do different things: libertarians want it to protect free markets and individual liberties, while progressiv
Koch an anarchist? Seriously? (Score:2)
You get that when the people you are asking about their ideology are not actually in charge.
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Why are you pretending that the two things are not one and the same when there's a powerful group, government or otherwise, to do the enforcing? Why pretend to be stupid? The regulations are just the fine print that defines details of the duty of care.
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Re:WTF is income equality? - Exaclty. (Score:4, Insightful)
FFS!
WTF is wrong with you stupid fucking americans?
How do you get to believe that kind of bullshit? are you just born stupid or is it brainwashed into you?
"the government" is *NOT* the source of all evil. There are plenty of other sources that have nothing at all to do with government, and there are plenty of things that governments can and do do that aren't in the least bit evil.
why the fuck, when you hear a rich and poweful man telling you that "government and regulation is evil and bad for you" that you never, ever, not even for one moment stop to think and ask yourself "what's in it for him to say that? why does he want me to believe that?"
have you no natural suspicion? or cynicism? or has it all been channeled and misdirected via propaganda into anti-government theology?
rent-seeking, for instance, is completely unrelated to government or 'government powers'. it is what happens when a private individual or organisation uses their monopoly or near-monopoly of supply to charge whatever they think they can get away without an angry mob with pitchforks burning them down.
and that means a lot...far more than you might expect because most people will take a hell of a lot of shit from businessmen parasites and exploiters before getting angry enough to even think about doing something about it. rebellion only occurs when conditions become completely and relentlessly unbearable.
it's got nothing at all to do with governments or governmental powers.
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how quaint - you actually believe that?
the primary definining characteristic of US-style Libertarianism is suckering the aspirationally stupid to endorse policies that allow the rich and powerful to fuck everybody else (including their stupid supporters) over in whatever way they like with no restrictions.
it's a con-job to make you think that your interests align with theirs, that what is good for them is good for yo
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Unfortunately, you've been suckered by a con-job, believing that if you just pay ever more in taxes and make ever more rules and regulations, your life will get better and better. In fact, what you are doing is supporting rent seeking on a massive scale, both legally and financially. Just look at how Obama has handed out favors to corporations left and right.
I mean, what does it take for you to
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Check back with me when the Kochs promote income equality,
The percentage of people who promote income equality is extremely low. Even the Soviet Union didn't promote it; even Marx didn't promote it.
"Income equality" (Score:2)
"Income equality" will happen after we achieve education equality, intelligence equality, motivation equality, health equality, physical attractiveness equality, and luck equality. So don't hold your breath.
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You're confused. The sun's not setting, the horizon is rising.
Didn't you mean Verizon?
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corporations have no interest whatsoever in maintaining society and ensuring quality of life (the very purpose of government).
I don't know if I agree that is the purpose of government. Wouldn't it mean that the government is completely justified in prohibiting alcohol and marijuana use? Since those cause real health issues?
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The social-security number is fairly close to a unique ID. It's already used as such in a number of contexts; e.g. banks, police departments, the IRS, and hospitals all use it as a unique identifying number.
However, it's not asked for in all contexts, sometimes for social reasons (people are rightfully wary about giving it out everywhere), and sometimes because of laws restricting its use.