Comments Posted By Liberty60
Displaying 21 To 29 Of 29 Comments
PALIN AND HER SUPPORTERS IN A TIME WARP
Lorianne:
Here is a link to the Tax Foundations charts of federal income tax rates througout history:
http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html
Notice that tax rates are lower now than they were in 1986 under Reagan; and much, much lower than they were under Eisenhower in the 1950's. Weren't we prosperous in those decades?"Lower taxes" is a card that has been played, and played, and played again.
Would yet another round of tax cuts help? Well, they would certainly reduce revenue and increase the deficit- is this a good thing?See my comments above regarding the budget, and think about which GOP 2012 contender has even made a serious stab at a balanced budget; They all know it requires more than vague platitudes, but can't bring themselves to break the taboo of taxes and defense spending.
Which is why I say that even if they returned to power, they could not govern.
Please note that I am not attacking from the left; I am attacking them for not believing in their own message-
Comment Posted By Liberty60 On 18.11.2009 @ 15:06
If you are going to posture as the "commonsense" Presidential candidate, then G**damnit, at least have some common sense.
To answer ignorantapathy: "You also need to point out alternatives if you don’t like Palin’s talking points. I had wanted to see Romney out there more but he’s scarce. Not sure why."
Lets look at the budget to see why Palin's talking points are incoherent.
According to wallstats http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/:
We take in about 2.1Trillion in revenue;
We spend 3.5T
this leaves a deficit of 1.4TThe 3.5T in spending breaks down like this:
1.421 Trillion is discretionary, able to be cut.
The remaining $2.17 Trillion goes for Social Security, Medicare/ Medicaid, interest on the debt, and so forth.
The biggest portion of this is Social Security/ Medicare/ Medicaid accounting for about $1.3 Trillion of the $2.17 Trillion.The federal discretionary budget for FY 2010 is $1.421 Trillion; It is broken down into military spending $901 Billion (62%) and non-military $520 Billion (38%).
So this means a few things- it is mathmatically impossible to balance the budget without one of the following:
1. Raise taxes;
2. Cut Defense/ Homeland Security;
3. Cut SS/ Medicare
4. A combination of all the above.Realistically, the public will never allow a serious cut in Medicare/ SS. A slight trim, perhaps raising the eligibility age, but never a deep cut.
So this leaves raising taxes and/or cutting defense. Raising taxes, such as instituting a VAT as Bruce Bartlett has suggested, is possible, but only if the Tea Party stops being religiously committed to cutting them.
Cutting defense is possible, but only if we stop engaging in multiple wars that last a decade.The bigger point here is that the current conservative movement is wedded to shallow platitudes and contradictory bumpersticker slogans. It is incapable of governing, even if it were given the chance.
Comment Posted By Liberty60 On 18.11.2009 @ 13:10
FT:
You compare these "New Leftists" to the New Dealers- unfavorably. Apparently the New Dealers were reasonable, non radical folk.
As George Will would say...Well!
The New Deal was about as close to actual, real socialism as America ever got. Not only did the government provide direct employment to millions of people through the WPA, CCC, CCC, and so forth, during WWII Roosevelt actually took over about 1/2 of the economy.
He dictated to Detroit what they could produce; tires, nylons, sugar, wood, and paper were rationed; over a third of the nations workers were unionized; The national debt rose to over 100 percent of the gross domestic product, a level never seen before or since; Marginal tax rates were in the range of 80% for top earners.
The New Deal assumed a degree of government intervention in the economy never before seen outside of Bolshevik Russia.And these dangerous radical "New Leftists"?
Basically, Obama has proposed programs that are more conservative than Truman;
Obama is proposing a health plan more limited than one proposed by Richard Nixon;
Obama is proposing tax rates lower than Dwight Eisenhower.So please, tell us what radical leftist programs or policies are being proposed by Obama.
Comment Posted By Liberty60 On 17.11.2009 @ 21:11
Aaron-
You hit the nail on the head. Objectivism was and is a Utopian scheme; what is disheartening is to see the resurgence of her ideas among the Tea Party groups.They don't seem to want to improve public functions like schools and infrastructure, so much as eliminate them; it seems as if they have this cult-like faith in Free Market, free of the skepticism and caution that marked traditional conservatism.
Its almost a looking glass world, where the "liberal" party advocates a cautious, mixed economy of public and private ventures, and the "conservative" party puts its faith in a Utopian scheme of radical change, where the public sphere ceases to exist.
Comment Posted By Liberty60 On 17.11.2009 @ 17:30
Given that the main force that animated the Left throughout the 20th Century was Socialism, and the belief that government was the universal answer to governance. And given that true Socialism is dead (depsite the Tea Party protestations).
What divides left and right today?Or to put it another way- what is the Agenda of the Right? The Right was mostly a reaction against Socialism, a defense of free markets. But everyone belives in free markets now- the biggest complaint against Obama's economic team is that they are too deferential to the bankers, that Chris Dodd/ Barney Frank/ Dianne Feinstein/ Nancy Pelosi are too close to corporate ties.
Conservatism defined itself in opposition to something; now that that something has vanished, conservatism is left without a clear driving idea.
Comment Posted By Liberty60 On 17.11.2009 @ 12:31
IS THERE ANY WAY SARAH PALIN CAN RECOVER?
Palin represents an updated version of George Wallace circa 1968; she represents the rural, white outsiders who resent the urban technocrats, the "pointy headed intellectuals", the ethnic minorities. They hold themselves out as the Real Americans, the rightful owners of America against the usurpers who have unfairly taken their America way.
Where she differs is unlike Wallace, she is a "useful idiot" for the Wall Street interests who appreciate her distate for government.
Comment Posted By Liberty60 On 16.11.2009 @ 21:15
I agree with Rick's assessment about her anti-intellectual attitudes- worse, she is pure identity politics.
Her entire appeal is based on the fact she is a Mom (not mother, but Mom, the casual derivative) and a hunter, and white, and rural, and Christian and most of all, a Mom.There is an undercurrent of anger in her supporters- a bitterness and rage against the "intellectual elite" which translates into anyone who isn't a mom, white, rural, hunter, and Christian.
Others have correctly tagged her as not having any positions or ideas, but my objection is more that unlilke Reagan, her vision of America is a crabbed, angry, exclusive one.
In theory, she should appeal to black and Latino women who are Christian. yet her appeal was and is near zero among them. Even if she isn't pitted against Obama, ethnic minorities have sensed that her supporters are the same ones who angrily complain about having to "press 1 for English" and in sotto voce, bitterly talk about America becoming a Third World cesspool. They know who the target of this resentment is, even if Sarah doesn't use the word "macaca".
It is her supporters, the angry townhallers, the Tea Party mobs, who are her biggest drawback; They are the conservative equivalent of Code Pink or the Weathermen, the outrageous partisans that turn off most sensible voters. She speaks to and for them, and by her own definition, excludes anyone else from her "real America".
Comment Posted By Liberty60 On 16.11.2009 @ 11:48
So now The Bow has become the Zapruder film of the Obama presidency. We will see it replayed, analyzed, frame by frame. Someone will create a 3D digitized version, so we can revolve around and see it from every angle. We will have a 1,000 page tome examining the links between Kenyan Mulism culture and Japanese cermonial practices, with links made to Ho Chi Min and Karl Marx.
Comment Posted By Liberty60 On 15.11.2009 @ 13:18
Wait, wasn't that Bill Ayers standing just out of frame? Wasn't there a tweet from Malia Obama mentioning a Secret Plan for an Imperial Order confiscating guns?
I heard that if you look carefully, you can see Obama extending 3 fingers of his right hand, while two are curled; It is clearly the secret handshake of the Illuminati; Whose members include members of the Knights of Malta, including one Okio Matshumi, who operated a steel mill in Japan during WWII, and whose son sits on the board of Toyota Motors, whose members gave campaign contributions to....Prime Minister YUKIO HATOYAMA! Who has a reported stash of films starring...Kevin Bacon!
SOME SHORT NOTES ON KSM AND AMERICAN JUSTICE
"Not surprisingly, many were convicted, often based solely on confessions beaten out of them by the Royal Ulster Constabulary. For many more years, the Brits relied on the supposedly temporary Prevention of Terrorism Act which basically suspended due process rights and allowed authorities to detain anyone. More than 5,000 people were so detained, only a tiny proportion of whom were ever charged with any crime."
Seriously, without a trace of snark- given the context of the post and comments, I can't tell in your writing if you are admiring or condemning this.
Which is kinda the point here; for a political movement that throws around the words freedom and liberty like Halloween candy, there seems to be a lot of resistance to actually practicing said freedoms.
Comment Posted By Liberty60 On 14.11.2009 @ 20:28
