The wars are just right-wing progressivism. And many democrats supported the wars, along with Obama assassinating US citizens, drone strikes etc. That doesn't come cheap. The income tax should be absolutely abolished.
all of the Iraq war cost less than the stimulus package according to the CBO. Although it is very close. From the numbers one could say the problem seemed to escalate around 2009................
Some Occupy participants are organizing to employ other strategies to achieve their goals. That are calling themselves Occupy the SEC.
Replacing a progressive income tax and not having a regressive tax would be difficult. A sales tax, for instance, like we have in Texas, hits the lower and middle classes proportionately worse than it does the upper class. Sure, spending can be cut, but what do you cut? Cut enough to balance the budget without raising revenue and the defense industry will scream. The elderly who depend on Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid would scream, and they vote. The disadvantaged would suffer. The districts of the members of the House would scream, when they see the federal funding for the host of things it goes for in their districts shrink or disappear. Raise tariffs? Someone show me how we could do that and raise enough revenue to make a real difference in the budget without setting off a trade war. The major force behind our current deficits are the Bush Tax Cuts. No Republican wants to admit it, though.
My main point about the tariffs was that America (and the rest of the world) need income tax is because budgets used to be funded by tariff income, and then as free trade picked up, income taxes were introduced. So obviously, if somebody proposes to get rid of income tax completely (never mind progressive, regressive) then they may imagine going back to tariffs. Which would indeed be a rather silly thing to do.
"But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow" or the opposite
The US government system is specifically designed so even the most drastic changes or reversals of policies, are incremental, negotiated, compromised, and in the courts, decided by precedent. They are deflections. Nothing really changes much even under the Socialist Muslim Hitler. So your tax reform discussions are fine, but we can't even pass campaign finance reform.... a level playing field for everyone. It would take a super majority to even talk much about taxes.
I pretty much agree with everything except for the comment about the courts. The radical Supreme Court under Roberts has made a mockery of precedent.
The problem is that it's a distortion of reality. The number in Iran is extremely under reported and it comes along with dissapearances, thousands of major injuries, thousands of minor injuries, tanks, hoards of riot police and mercenaries, etc. It's not even close, and as Realjad says, anyone who knows anything about the Iranian crackdown will take it as a joke when they read what you posted.
Who knows anything about the Iranian crackdown? Because I don't think there are any official reports. Trudat, unprecedented. Probably the reason campaign finance reform will have to go all the way to a Constitutional amendment defining "a citizen" and "non-citizen" for the purposes of free speech. I don't think its too much of a stretch since we already have laws defining citizenship and I don't think those mention corporations. They come under the laws pertaining to incorporation that don't mention birth or naturalization. I'm a little surprised there are aren't some leftover laws from the red scare era that preclude foreign sources form spending money to influence American political races. One might use those to argue that international corporations should be barred from US elections for not holding US interests at highest regard the same as outside political powers. Until then, OWS needs to make every candidate for national office's donor lists public, backtrack the PAC money and jump up and down and scream about the anonymous Super Pac money, and out every duplicitously named profit and propaganda machine. Shine a light on the roaches till the people stomp them out.
via Truthout On Friday, police officers at the University of California, Davis doused students with pepper spray for sitting together with locked arms. This act was perceived as a “threat,” according to the officers. Last night, students lined the way between UC Davis Chancellor Katehi’s office and her car, and sat in silence as she walked out of the building to go home. The silence is deafening in the video. Something has shifted in this country. Apathy is not an option for the people who are inheriting the future rife with unprecedented challenges. The tactics and the dedication of this group are new, effective and powerful. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/8775ZmNGFY8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Regarding UC Davis, I read one twitter comment that says something like "Now the police can finally have fund beating up on white kids." It's meant as a joke but has some truth to it. Specifically, what happened there (and probably back in NYC at the start of the OWS movement) isn't a random cop going rogue, but standard police procedure. We just haven't noticed it because it is usually done on camera to nice middle-class kids. We imagine the police only use pepper sprays and tasers on the kind of drunk/high/out-of-control dangerous people we see on the show "Cops" when they really use it more liberally than that (It's not strictly a "race" issue, though race is a part of it).
Has anyone ever deprogrammed a Ron Paulie? So many of them remind me of the Lyndon LaRouchites, thought they usually bug the Democratic Party.
More information about lobbyists efforts to undermine OWS -- Washington Lobbyists Crafted $850,000 Secret Plan For Bank Lobbyists To Undermine Occupy Wall Street This weekend, the MSNBC show Up! With Chris Hayes broke a stunning story about how Washington lobbyists are scrambling to undermine the protesters on Wall Street and across the country. Hayes’ report, which can be viewed here, details how the Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford (CLGC) compiled a secret plan to undermine Occupy Wall Street for the American Bankers Association (ABA). The plan, which CLGC was demanding $850,000 to implement, was presented in a secret memo that was leaked to Hayes’ staff. The memo warns that Occupy Wall Street, particularly if it is embraced by the Democratic Party, threatens to “have very long-lasting political, policy, and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.” Interestingly, the memo also cautioned that Tea Party protesters may join forces with Occupy Wall Street because “well-known Wall Street companies stand at the nexus of where [Occupy Wall Street] protesters and the Tea Party overlap on angered populism. [...] This combination has the potential to be explosive later in the year when media reports cover the next round of bonuses and contrast it with stories of millions of Americans making do with less this holiday season.” In order to combat Occupy Wall Street’s growing movement, the firm offered to engage in research and advocacy to “undermine their credibility in a profound way.” This included researching activists’ financial histories and civil and criminal information, and monitoring social media. The goal of this research was to “create negative narratives of the [Occupy Wall Street] for high impact media placement to expose the backers of this movement”: Not gonna work this time!
