USA Politics

Great. There should be positive aspects but I don't like these two:

Tax decrease for the richest.
And no more pressure on Israel to ask them to stop building those fucking houses.
 
I really do not see it as a tax decrease, it is keeping tax levels at what they have been for the past 10- years.
 
If not mistaken, the original idea was to lower tax for everybody apart from the richest. But I might have misunderstood/misinterpreted that.
 
There were a series of tax cuts passed on 2001 (for everyone based on rate and some other credits (increasing the child tax credit and eliminating the marriage penalty), in order to pass them at the time, they need to be renewed, they have been a few times, but were scheduled to expire (all of them)  next year.  There were ideas floated to renew some of them not all, the "deal" seems to be that all will be renewed for 2 years, then we can do this all over again.
 
Forostar said:
Great. There should be positive aspects
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Not really, many republicans have gone on record saying they will do anything in their power to make sure Obama doesn't get elected, regardless if what he proposes is actually GOOD for the people. This type of politics is what is screwing the American people.
 
Onhell said:
Not really, many republicans have gone on record saying they will do anything in their power to make sure Obama doesn't get elected, regardless if what he proposes is actually GOOD for the people. This type of politics is what is screwing the American people.
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That is pretty common, the democrats were pretty determine to oppose anything Bush proposed out of hand when they controlled the House.  It's a problem with both parties.
 
bearfan said:
That is pretty common, the democrats were pretty determine to oppose anything Bush proposed out of hand when they controlled the House.  It's a problem with both parties.
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True, except, when the Dems did it Bush was ALREADY re-elected and had done his fair share of damage (mainly dragging the U.S into Iraq), but the Reps don't want Obama re-elected.
 
Given a chance, the Dems would have done the same thing pre-2004 and in 2006-08 they were laying the groundwork to elect a democrat.  As someone opposed to most of what Obama wants to do, I'll be happy to see the GOP block as much of his agenda as possible.  But I assume the reverse would be true if Congress were flipped and McCain were President for Democrat supporters.
 
Forostar said:
One of the things I said is that America's fascination with blame feeds their passion for punishment.
These outraging prisoners-statistics help me believing this.

I also said that a problem of American society is that the church, but also many parents and teachers expect their children to do what they tell them to do, or else it's wrong, and then comes punishment.

It's difficult to make other choices, because many people will tell you, you're doing wrong.

I might have mentioned America (or USA) in more posts.

This is how that class situation went:


... My fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Gorsky, a strict former U.S. Army sergeant, didn't appreciate anyone talking out of turn and was intolerant of smart-ass comments. One day he gave us a homework assignment to memorize the planets of the solar system, and the next day he called on to me to recite the names of the planets in sequence.

"Pluto, Neptune..." I began.
"From the sun outward, please," he said.
This confused me. I had learned the names of the planets from a poster that drew the solar system in three dimensions, so Pluto was closest and Mercury was farthest away. I decided to ignore him and do it my way.
"Neptune, Uranus..." I said.
"No, it's YOUR-i-nus," he said/
At that point, I was being embarrassed by a teacher who didn't appreciate my reverse-order learning of the planets and kept interrupting me. Recognizing a setup too good to ignore, I said, "But, Mr. Gorsky, there are no Klingons around YOUR-i-nus; they're only found around Ur-A-nus!

The entire fifth-grade classroom burst into laughter, but Mr. Gorsky's face immediately clouded with anger. He marched to my desk, grabbed my arm, and dragged me into the hallway. I figured that I was headed to the principal's office, but instead he decided to give me a speech right there. He told me that I was an embarrassment to myself. He wagged his finger at my nose and said, "Don't you realize, young man, that those kids were laughing at you, not with you?"

I immediately knew that he was wrong. The class loved it when I cracked jokes. Some of my best friends were good at comebacks, too, and we laughed about our fifth-grade witticisms at recess. Mr. Gorsky was trying to convince me of something that had no basis in fact. I knew he had no way of veryfying his opinion that I was a laughingstock. It seemed obvious to me that he was saying what he wanted to be true, not what actually was true. Maybe this kind of discipline worked in the military, but even as a fifth grader I recognized that, without any proof, one opinion was no more valid than another. In fact, Mr Gorsky's misinterpretations worked against him. I had plenty of teachers who simply laid down the law and didn't try to justify themselves: "Okay, the rule in here is simple, if you speak out of turn, you will be sent to the principal's office."These teachers may not have been very inspiring, but they were taken more seriously than Mr. Gorsky was. They didn't confuse their formal authority with the expectation that we students would see the logic in following their rules. They believed that the most effective authority was one that invited no scrutiny.

But Mr. Gorsky had all the power and control, and I didn't. I wouldn't do any good to fight the power structure in that school. And I didn't want my mom and dad to learn about my continuing disrespect to my teachers. Even though I yearned to do otherwise, I capitulated to him that day in the hallway: "Yes, sir, I guess you're right. They're laughing at me. And it's better to learn the planets from the sun outward." But silently I was thinking, "You're wrong, Mr. Gorsky, and someday I'll prove it."

I tell this story not to demonstrate my insolence as a child--you already knew that--but to recall some of the difficult situations that kids have to deal with when they are confronted by small-minded restrictions on their thinking. ... (etc.)

I never said that something like this can not happen in other countries, in case you were waiting to here that.

But I do believe that small-minded restrictions happen less in less religious democratic countries.

(BTW: Even if you'd discard this typed story as unimportant, I still hope you enjoyed reading it)
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I've heard stories like this before.  People of military background teaching youth.  The usual explanation is that those who've learned to obey without question will expect the same when the shoe is on the other foot.  Not a good recipe for education and critical thinking.
cornfedhick said:
Not a stupid question.  The private prisons are generally paid for out of government funds and stocked with prisoners sentenced by government-employed judges.  The fact that many prisons are privately run is a result of privatization efforts based on the premise that privately-run organizations tend to be more efficient than government organizations.  That's a questionable premise given that the private organization is dependent upon public money rather than the free market for its services.  Whether private prisons are more efficient is irrelevant to SMX's point, though. 

While SMX adds an interesting twist to the discussion, I seriously question SMX's theory that privatization of prisons accounts for the high prison population.  His theory assumes that the private prison lobby is powerful enough to influence lawmaking, including sentencing guidelines.  Otherwise, even if one assumes private prisons want lots more prisoners -- which I'm not sure is true, it depends how they are paid, and whether the incremental revenue they may get from an additional prisoner outweighs the incremental cost of caring for that prisoner -- private prisons can't GET more prisoners unless laws and judges supply them.  I don't know how powerful the private prison industry is, though I doubt it is that powerful.  In contrast, endorsement by law enforcement organizations, including labor unions, is often considered an important endorsement in local elections.  I therefore think the police lobby has a far greater voice in determining which criminals will go to jail, and for how long, than the prison lobby. 
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Great points all around, here.  Especially the bolded parts. :ok:
 
bearfan said:
I really do not see it as a tax decrease, it is keeping tax levels at what they have been for the past 10- years.
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The past 7 years. And taxes are at their lowest in 60 years in the US, but the budget deficit is the highest. Coincidence?
 
bearfan said:
Given a chance, the Dems would have done the same thing pre-2004 and in 2006-08 they were laying the groundwork to elect a democrat.   As someone opposed to most of what Obama wants to do, I'll be happy to see the GOP block as much of his agenda as possible.  But I assume the reverse would be true if Congress were flipped and McCain were President for Democrat supporters.
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I agree except for one not so tiny detail... ok two tiny details. 9/11 and Iraq. a war time president has ALWAYS been reelected and even the dems (pre 2004) were on board with what bush and the rest of the Reps were doing.

But you are right, were it not for those two things the Dems would totally (and have) do the same.
 
cornfedhick said:
I'll be a grown-up and let it drop.  There's enough in the last few posts to lead a curious browser to the video anyway.

Back to SMX's theory, about 5 minutes of Google research (pretty rigorous, huh?) uncovered a term called the "prison-industrial complex" which suggests that large corporations like IBM and Revlon use cheap prison labor provided by private prisons.  This suggests that SMX may be on to something.  That the two most noteworthy proponents of this theory are Angela Davis and Jello Biafra, however, is cause for skepticism.  Maybe this can be Wikileaks' next pet project!!  

By the way, the Wikipedia article Bearfan posted seems well-written, well-researched and balanced.  It, in turn, links to an NPR article on the new Arizona immigration law, in which the author suggests the law was designed with one aim in mind: to increase the supply of prison labor in the state.  Which, if true, is chilling, and again suggests that SMX is on to something.  It also suggests that the prison lobby is more powerful than I thought.  
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Validates my view that public-private enterprises are bad all around.  On the same scale, but a much less serious degree, is funding of stadium via public-private means.  The taxpayer gets ignored, expect when forced to foot the bill.  In the prison example, people are going to jail often for a non-violent "crime".  And that's a real crime.
 
I'd rather see it all public, or all private. I have no problem with the government helping to find investors, but then the government gets stuck with the pricetag...ugh.
 
Sorry to all for responding to posts late and messing up the neat flow that's been made here.  :innocent:
LooseCannon said:
I'd rather see it all public, or all private. I have no problem with the government helping to find investors, but then the government gets stuck with the pricetag...ugh.
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Rather the taxpayer, whether current or future, gets stuck with the price tag.  ;)
 
LooseCannon said:
The past 7 years. And taxes are at their lowest in 60 years in the US, but the budget deficit is the highest. Coincidence?
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Spending also at it's highest point ever.
 
True, it is.

However, spending was at its highest point ever when the Republicans enacted tax cuts they had no intention of paying for. That's important to remember. I'm not saying that spending couldn't be cut in many places, but taxes (especially tax cuts on the upper echelon, sorry cfh) should go up too. Tax cuts don't fix things, they never really have.

I'm interested to know how people would fix the spending issue, which certain aspects of US gov't policy they would chop away.
 
Lower taxes=more money in the economy.  The list of things the federal government should not be doing and the amount of waste and poor budgeting in the things it should do is nearly endless IMO.
 
If you think that's always true. I don't. I look at countries that have high taxes and very high quality of life, and I see that a high-tax high-service economy can be successful. Not all the time, but it's not like the US economy has always run spic-and-span either. There has to be a balance.
 
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