Dems: As arrogant as ever?

[Craig234]

Who's this "WE THE PEOPLE" you speak of? I want tax cuts for everyone. I don't care how much they make. Unlike you, I am not jealous or envious of other's success.

I've said one of my rules here is that anyone who says people who object to an excessive concentration of wealth are 'jealous' is an idiot. One more added to the list.

 

[MooseNSquirrel]

And they just had their omnibus spending nightmare stopped by Mitch McConnell. Awesome!

Dems had to pass the republican economy saving tax plan, defeat
Can't pass pork filled omnibus, defeat
November? History making rejection of democrats/obama/agenda
Republicans take house in January and get to take credit for economy turning around thanks to republican tax plan, FATALITY!

Thats an odd take on it.

A tax compromise which causes the economy to turn around would have 2 effects:

1. Long term taxes will have to go up, there is no alternative. We cannot spending cut our way out of this mess. Republicans will have to deal with this eventually and enact it or admit they arent really interested in fiscal health. Not that have ever displayed this behaviour in the last 30 years.

2. Obama will ensure his reelection.


Remember the problem with being in charge is that like, you know, you have to actually make decisions not just be the opposition.

 

[Matthiasa]

And they just had their omnibus spending nightmare stopped by Mitch McConnell. Awesome!

Dems had to pass the republican economy saving tax plan, defeat
Can't pass pork filled omnibus, defeat
November? History making rejection of democrats/obama/agenda
Republicans take house in January and get to take credit for economy turning around thanks to republican tax plan, FATALITY!

Republicans get to take credit when other countries stop buying our bonds and or our country finally declares bankruptcy. FATALITY!
See others can do that to...

Please note either party in office at the current rate will eventually cause one of those but still...

 

[MooseNSquirrel]

Guess you didn't pay attention in November's historic landslide? Yeah, irrelevant. You're displaying the arrogance of the democrats. But by all means, please keep it up.

Easy tiger, the number of seats changing was big, the difference in the percentage of votes was not.

 

[matt0611]

I've said one of my rules here is that anyone who says people who object to an excessive concentration of wealth are 'jealous' is an idiot. One more added to the list.

What this even mean exactly?

Say I started a business, honestly run, I had a great idea and helped many people by providing them a service that they benefited from, I earned a lot of profit because of this. You need to take money from me to prevent the "excessive concentration of wealth"? Why? Whats wrong with this?

 

[daniel49]

I agree, facts are inconvenient; reality really does have a liberal bias, as Stephen Colbert once famously said.

why do young men like yourselves always act like anything Cobert says is worth repeating>
For Gods sakes he's a comedian. Not a Journalist, not a scholar, philosopher, statesman, or anything remotely similar. He's someone who has figured out how to earn a living telling political knock knock jokes. And beyond entertainment his words/show have little value.
I swear most of Gen x acts like he and Stewart are a reliable News source.


Or as Curly Joe once famously said Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

 

[Fenixgoon]

you know, in theory i have nothing against DREAM. in practice, it's ridiculous because there are thousands upon thousands of MS and PhD level students who would *love* to stay here in the states, and it would be completely unfair to them, IMO.

 

[sMiLeYz]

Some of you need to just relax

 

[Craig234]

What this even mean exactly?

Say I started a business, honestly run, I had a great idea and helped many people by providing them a service that they benefited from, I earned a lot of profit because of this. You need to take money from me to prevent the "excessive concentration of wealth"? Why? Whats wrong with this?

I understand that education on the dangers of excess concentration of wealth are badly needed for most in our society - you hardly get a word on that from the media.

The first thing to note is the importance of the word 'excessive' - you can have too little of it too, in theory, though we're in no danger of that.

The second thing to note is that the 'you start your business' kind of guy is almost certainly not big enough to be what we're talking about.

If you even do so well you're one in a thousand, making the better part of a million dollars a year, that's not the problem with 'concentration of wealth'.

The problems are many, and involve things from the reduction of opportunity for everyone else, to a lower standard of living for everyone else, to an incompatibility with democracy - you may have a period of 'corrupted democracy' where the rich really get their way and the pretense of democracy is maintained, but eventually you either have real democracy or you have an excessive concentration of wealth, because they are incompatible, the interests conflict and one side and only one side wins.

“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

For just one example, in the last 30 years since Reagan as we've had right-wing policies that have shifted wealth from being more spread out for decades, steadily concentrating it more in a historic shift to the top, it's estimated that had the normal distribution of wealth in the US like it was in the 70's remained, working Americans would have about three times the salary they do now. That's because 75-80% of all new wealth has gone to the top 1%.

You ask 'what's the harm' - the harm is you making one-third the salary you would be.

The harm is you are far less able to start that business when the means of production are dominated by a small ultra-rich class.

It's a serious problem that people don't understand the harm - like even our founding fathers who had not seen anywhere near this concentration of wealth.

Even they, in a very primitive, simple agrarian economy saw the issue.

For example, an excess concentration of wealth leads to not people using the money for 'starting a business', for real good and services, but for extracting wealth from society by manipulating the value of the goods the poor saps own - you know, food, a home, energy. We see that today in Wall Street - who recently made 40% of all US profits - with their derivatives and other massive computing and Ph.D. math and scientist manipulations to take wealth, ever hear of a stock jobber?

“Stock Jobbers

Persons who gamble in Exchange Alley, by pretending to buy and sell the public funds, but in reality only betting that they will be at a certain price, at a particular time; possessing neither the stock pretended to be sold, nor money sufficient to make good the payments for which they contract: these gentlemen are known under the different appellations of bulls, bears, and lame ducks.”

Oh, that was written by James Madison.

Or Thomas Jefferson:

“Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.” Jefferson added, “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance.”

If that wasn’t clear enough, Jefferson reiterated his conviction: “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [them] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”

These pressures for people who want to be that aristocracy are always pushing.

Moving forward to our seventh President, Andrew Jackson also hit the nail on the head when he warned, “Unless you become more watchful in your states and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will in the end find that the most important powers of government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations.”

When President Jackson was asked what his greatest accomplishment was during his presidency, he gave a simple and direct four-word answer: “I killed the Bank.”

And those same pressures largely have their wish today - the Treasury Department itself is largely run by agents of Wall Street.

I recall a story when the financial crisis happened of someone hearing George Bush yell in the phone to his Goldman-Sachs Treasury Secretary, 'I'm the President, you have to tell me what you're doing!' The nation saw what he was doing when he came out with a one-page plan to give him nearly a trillion dollars to hand out as he wanted with no oversight and a clause banning even the Supreme Court from having any review power of his use of the money.

But I digress. Let's add Lincoln's comments:

“The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the Bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.”

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my Country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed.”

And this is in the primitive economy at the start of the industrial revolution - the same decade that gave us corporations spending years to finally get the US Supreme Court, in an era it was radically -ro-business, to finally say corporations have rights of citizens, the basis for allowing them to drown out the people with money in campaigns recently.

But I digress again. It's not easy to just list a lot of the harms, but they are huge.

You starting a business - unless you have a name like 'Walton' or 'Sachs' - are not the problem.

But most Americans having no idea about the threat of the concentration of wealth make them vote on the issue as if it were just about that nice business owner.

It's the leading danger in our country today. It's a battle our country has fought since it was founded to some degree - but never like today.

Today, there is a massive propaganda war on our society to sell it on right-wing ideology, which is all the more clear when you contrast the US with Europe, which has maintained a far better safety net so the poor in the US are far worse off than the poor there, where the CEO's there have remained where both sides' CEO's used to be at about 40 or 50 times worker compensation, while the US alone shot up to 400 or even 1000 times the worker - and yet the European CEO is similarly productive.

As in the 1890's, we are returning, thanks to this propaganda effort, to a culture where the people think a radical pro-rich agenda is good.

All those old sayings that the US is a 'great experiment in Democracy' that seemed musty as our great democracy was doing well, are more relevant again.

We're going to see a conflict between democracy and the public interest against the aristocracy more and more, the more concentration of wealth we have.

Whether we keep going and become more like China will be mostly determined by whether we do something about the wealth concentration.

Save234

 

[HAL9000]

Perspective from my part of the world.

Democrats = Level headed people we want running your country.
Republicans = Gun toting christian nut bags. The idea of them running the country is scary (bush)

 

[DucatiMonster696]

The "Dream Act" (Nightmare for America) needs to die a horrible death. DADT is a non-issue for me so if it passes no problem but the "Dream Act" is a complete pile of pandering shit that cheapens US citizenship and legal immigration.

 

[Craig234]

Perspective from my part of the world.

Democrats = Level headed people we want running your country.
Republicans = Gun toting christian nut bags. The idea of them running the country is scary (bush)

You're mostly wrong about Republicans.

The Republican politicians are far more dangerous than that as the party of the rich, of aristocracy/oligarchy/plutocracy/corporatocracy.

The people you describe are part of the Republican *voters*, who are the victims of massive propaganda and manipulated to vote for the politicians.

 

[Jimmah]

Perspective from my part of the world.

Democrats = Level headed people we want running your country.
Republicans = Gun toting christian nut bags. The idea of them running the country is scary (bush)

It's even scarier when they're your neighbors.

 

[HAL9000]

It's even scarier when they're your neighbors.

I can only imagine, I'm sorry sir, please feel free to come to the UK we have space for the sane ones.

 

[DucatiMonster696]

Perspective from my part of the world.

Democrats = Level headed people we want running your country.
Republicans = Gun toting christian nut bags. The idea of them running the country is scary (bush)

Then you've never been to Democrat paradises like Oakland, California or Richmond, California, Detroit, Michigan, etc or any other city dominated by dems at all levels of government because if you had then you wouldn't be as stupidly bias in your assessment of both parties.

 

[boomerang]

I can only imagine, I'm sorry sir, please feel free to come to the UK we have space for the sane ones.

Says the man from the country with rioting in the streets due to the specter of entitlements being cut back.

 

[HAL9000]

Then you've never been to Democrat paradises like Oakland, California or Richmond, California, Detroit, Michigan, etc or any other city dominated by dems at all levels of government because if you had then you wouldn't be as stupidly bias in your assessment of both parties.

Not my assessment, just the way people over here tend to view it.

Says the man from the country with rioting in the streets due to the specter of entitlements being cut back.

Yeah it sucks...

 

[nobodyknows]

Not my assessment, just the way people over here tend to view it.

So you speak for all of England?

 

[nobodyknows]

waaa, waaaa, waaa.......gimme, gimme, gimme

Irony at it's finest.

 

[HAL9000]

So you speak for all of England?

I speak for everyone in england who I've ever heard discuss american politics, so probably a few thousand people, and TV programs...

 

[brencat]

I speak for everyone in england who I've ever heard discuss american politics, so probably a few thousand people, and TV programs...

Actually, who gives a rat's ass what your country thinks of the U.S. ? I love England but your extreme political correctness and loony left politicians are going to get you killed. There's a muslim enemy quietly growing in your midst while your politicians dither. At this rate, in 50 years there will probably be Sharia law in the U.K. And we'll likely be coming to your rescue once again, just like 68 years ago.

 

[KlokWyze]

This thread is the perfect example of what is wrong with US politics and society relating too.

 

[Jhhnn]

Then you've never been to Democrat paradises like Oakland, California or Richmond, California, Detroit, Michigan, etc or any other city dominated by dems at all levels of government because if you had then you wouldn't be as stupidly bias in your assessment of both parties.

Try Denver, Colorado. It's nice here. Then compare it to the dunghole Colorado Springs is becoming. (very conservative, the new home of the Fundie fringe) It's economy consists of govt pensions, contributions to televangelists, tourist traps, and catering to several military installations.

It's amazing that anybody could consider Dems as being more arrogant than their Republican adversaries. Repubs try not to talk about their greatest achievements, but that's not out of modesty, at all. If they told the truth, this would be part of it-

We preached small govt, yet grew federal employment at the greatest rate since the Great Society.

We preach fiscal responsibility, yet engaged in 2 wars of adventure while cutting taxes at the same time. We had and still have no exit strategy for that military adventurism.

We've created the greatest concentration of wealth and power since the 1920's, but we'll tell you we're looking out for the little guy.

We conspired with the FRB and the banking giants, who we fostered for decades, to create and exploit the housing bubble. Our financial backers profited tremendously before we had to bail 'em out, put it on Uncle Sam's tab. Now we're pushing for a deflationary spiral, so we can put our hoarded liquidity to use buying up distressed assets of all kinds- cheap, really cheap. If you're so far under water that you can't tell which way is up, we'll keep you there as long as we can.

We actively promote offshoring with low personal income taxes for the elite, making profit taking here and investment over there a very attractive proposition.

We luvs illegal immigrant labor. They're perfect, because they have no rights and will never organize- a model for what we really want for America. They also serve as a convenient scapegoat.

We will, for sure, do our best to make sure you never hear that for what it is, because we'll wrap it in old glory and put the cross at the head of the column...

Look! Over there! Terrarists! Illegals! Gays! Welfare Queens! Gun Grabbers! And worst of all, Libruhls!

Values, people! It's all about Values!

 

[HAL9000]

Actually, who gives a rat's ass what your country thinks of the U.S. ? I love England but your extreme political correctness and loony left politicians are going to get you killed. There's a muslim enemy quietly growing in your midst while your politicians dither. At this rate, in 50 years there will probably be Sharia law in the U.K. And we'll likely be coming to your rescue once again, just like 68 years ago.

:hmm: someone who knows nothing about the UK me thinks...

 

[wirelessenabled]

+2

Try Denver, Colorado. It's nice here. Then compare it to the dunghole Colorado Springs is becoming. (very conservative, the new home of the Fundie fringe) It's economy consists of govt pensions, contributions to televangelists, tourist traps, and catering to several military installations.

It's amazing that anybody could consider Dems as being more arrogant than their Republican adversaries. Repubs try not to talk about their greatest achievements, but that's not out of modesty, at all. If they told the truth, this would be part of it-

We preached small govt, yet grew federal employment at the greatest rate since the Great Society.

We preach fiscal responsibility, yet engaged in 2 wars of adventure while cutting taxes at the same time. We had and still have no exit strategy for that military adventurism.

We've created the greatest concentration of wealth and power since the 1920's, but we'll tell you we're looking out for the little guy.

We conspired with the FRB and the banking giants, who we fostered for decades, to create and exploit the housing bubble. Our financial backers profited tremendously before we had to bail 'em out, put it on Uncle Sam's tab. Now we're pushing for a deflationary spiral, so we can put our hoarded liquidity to use buying up distressed assets of all kinds- cheap, really cheap. If you're so far under water that you can't tell which way is up, we'll keep you there as long as we can.

We actively promote offshoring with low personal income taxes for the elite, making profit taking here and investment over there a very attractive proposition.

We luvs illegal immigrant labor. They're perfect, because they have no rights and will never organize- a model for what we really want for America. They also serve as a convenient scapegoat.

We will, for sure, do our best to make sure you never hear that for what it is, because we'll wrap it in old glory and put the cross at the head of the column...

Look! Over there! Terrarists! Illegals! Gays! Welfare Queens! Gun Grabbers! And worst of all, Libruhls!

Values, people! It's all about Values!