Quote of the Day

Here's some solutions for you folks, if you want to begin to correct the problems;

1. Don't nominate or confirm political appointees that don't care to pay taxes, and put them in charge of the tax code; people like Rangel and Geitner or Daschel or that other nominee who had the good grace to decline her nomination once it came out that she too didn't believe in paying taxes.

2. Restructure the entire tax code. A flat tax rate perhaps, this way all those sneaky people running "cash" businesses actually pay their taxes, and so do the corporate criminals. Right now, the top 50% of earners pay 98% of taxes. Nothing wrong with not making alot of money, but there are an awful lot of people living on the dole by sheer laziness (see, Americans who won't work at fast food restaurants or on farms or in gardening). Somewhere in the 1990's it became unacceptable for american teenagers to work at these jobs. And yes, I've worked at everything from washing dishes to mopping floors. And no, I'm no longer poor.

3.Cut capital gains taxes even more, small businesses create 80% of jobs in this nation. yes 80%. You want jobs growth, stimulate small businesses to go into business. Small businesses thrive on the idea that they take risks with money to gain on the other end with their good ideas. I'm talking about the Dunkin' Donuts shops, the doctor's offices, the corner diners and the architect's office. The current "stimulus plan" does little to address this.

4. Give up on the idea of socialism, it simply does not work because it ignores a simple but ugly truth about human nature, which is this; much of our basic nature is made up of fear and/or sloth. Given the opportunity, feeding into our fears will allow the tendency towards sloth to predominate. And this is not just a physical sloth but a mental sloth. How else to explain nations of millions being enslaved by totalitarian dogma ; Stalin, Tito, Pol Pot, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Ill, the list goes on and on accross continents. Socialism is a nice idea but it unplugs humans from their basic drive to achive and replaces it with an idealistic pursuit towards a common "brotherly" good. Inherently at odds with our selfish genes. We're just not evolved enough.

5.Rent control is a form of socialism, it wasn't originally intended that way but has become that. Rent control is meant to protect the original tenant, not a carload of distant "cousins" and "sons in law". By all means protect the original tenant from 1958, but the slacker cousin from Des Moines, doesn't deserve a classic six on the park for the price of a bus ticket.

6.Realize there is a limit to how many persons a nation can sustain and still maintain a decent standard of living. We have 300 million people and the best standard of living for the largest population of people at any time in history.Don't mess with it by attempting to import the poverty of the rest of the world. We cannot win that game, and our decendents will surely suffer. We can only help show other nations the way to prosperity for themselves, That is, Democracy and free markets (well regulated of course). And of course, not exploiting others.

7. No Wall Street bonuses paid for by my tax dollars. I don't get a bonus for running my business into the ground. I get to go bankrupt and start from zero. I don't get another ticket to ride from uncle sam and our grand children. I don't get a "golden parachute" and a house in Sag Harbor.

8. Corporate corruption should be treated as a treasonous crime. Their threat to the economic stability of this nation is equivalent to domestic terrorism. Transfer the al quaeda slime at guantanamo to work camps in Northern Alaska (to appease the whiny liberals) and line up the corporate criminals for a permanent holiday on the American part of sunny Cuba.

fasten your seatbelts, we're in for a bumpy ride...

Posted by: Legion at February 3, 2009 8:31 PM

cmu,
you, my friend, are part of the problem.

For people like you throw away something that took millions of years to evolve;
Common Sense.

Common sense is that inherent human trait that allows us to discern in a split second what is dangerous to us or harmful at a gut level, before the need to process it throught the thalamus.

Sort of like walking into a roadside gas station men's room and getting that first olfactory tingle of the ugliness that lies behind that stall door. No need to use the other 4 senses on that one. Unless of course you are a raving liberal. In which case you will have to see it, hear it, feel it and taste it before you determine that getting anywhere near it is not good for your health. So too is the situation at guantanamo, where enemy combatants who have been captured in war, in the process of attempting to kill your fellow Americans, have vowed to do so again if given the chance and have actually been documented to do just that once released, are, in your skewed mind, victims of some bad family trip planning to Tora Bora.

People like you , also think that, somehow, despite repeated wholesale historical attempts at forced indoctrination into the pleasures of socialism/communism (read Solzhenitsyn), including the largest genocidal campaigns in human history between Stalin (over 30 million served)and Mao (over 40 million served), somehow it will work if we only try just one more time.

Get real. or as Solzhenitsyn put it;

"...to taste the sea, you need only take one gulp."

as for lechakakahn,
start up businesses and investors thrive on capital gains, that's the way it works. why would I start an internet widgit company from my garage if I couldn't look forward to selling shares and using the profits to start another business. check out that guy who started PayPal in college then sold it to start a company developing privatized space exploration and missile technology. Why would I bother buying more real estate, improving it, maintaining it and finally selling it if the profits were going to fund that fat guy down the street watching reruns of Kojak all day long.

If you think that's simplistic, perhaps you're spending too much time at the alter of ivy league worship, Wall Street and Washington are full of over-analyzing morons with degrees from Harvard and Yale who have done such a great job these past few years. Look up the name Jaime Gorelick, Harvard educated assistant attorney general under Clinton, who was instrumental in writing the infamous memo placing a large wall between CIA and FBI communications ,responsible in large part for 9/11. Later going on to distinguish herself as a member of the board of directors of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the period of overexuberant government backed home loans, now known as the root of our current economic malaise. She made millions, sure enough, was even on the 9/11 commission. great. lol.

God Bless America.

Posted by: Legion at February 3, 2009 10:42 PM

ok, let's take these liberal whiners one at a time.
first off lechakakhan;
you attempt to employ that most predictable of liberal whiner ploys; the good old "if you haven't served in the military you cannot speak about the war" routine.
This is nothing more than a feeble attempt at censorship by a person who cannot argue to the facts of the situation. It is akin to saying, you cannot comment on the conduct of the president if you haven't served as president of the united states or perhaps you cannot comment on the state of your health unless you are licensed doctor. Silly isn't it. and yet you fascists on the left (and don't try and tell me you aren't) will always go for the censorship route instead of facing the facts head on. So keep on playing the role of Joker from Full Metal Jacket. I'll keep on being an original personality and not a poseur. Not afraid to speak my mind on subjects far and wide and without much regard for those who believe that speech is to be qualified if it cannot be countered with reasoned thought. As far as the suggestions of anal play, that is not my bag of tea, but hey, if you're an assclown into teabagging , that's your thing dude. Go for it.

next we have boxgirl who states with great abandon that she is "poor". This in itself is not a problem for me, I was once poor myself, could be again one day, who knows? No, the problem with boxgirl is that she tends to wallow in it and then beat other posters over the head with her supposed learned virtues. Let me clue you in sister, poorness is over rated. Given a choice, most poor folks would rather not be poor. It tends to get in the way of enjoyment of life. Now if you live in a society which is capitalist in nature, do you fly off the handle and attempt to bring down that successful society that has given more to the great unwashed masses than any other nation in history, or do you do a little introspection and attempt to play the game as it is and move forward? If you are a liberal you attempt to change the game midway and blame the society at large for your predicament. That my friends is boxgirl in a nutshell. Oh, but I do remember her telling me that she was educated, so why she never managed to get out of her "poorness" is beyond me. Then again, being "poor" in the United States simply means that you are entitled to approximately $30,000 in yearly programs including free housing (section -8) , free food, free job training, free medical insurance, free child care, free transportation and of course free education. Hey, not knocking it, just telling it like it is. Just don't dare imply that being "poor" in the United States is anything like it is in the third world where it means you have no food, no shelter and your life expectancy is about 30 years. As far as the prisoners at guantanamo, I didn't hear your response to the fact that more than a few who were released went on to continue their jihaad and slaughter of innocent people. Heard of Mumbai? Heard of Belsan? Heard of London? Madrid? Jakarta? There are a few more nations involved in this radical islamist war. And many don't even have much to do with the USA.

And now for CMU:
Iraq was invaded for many reasons, following 9/11, and Saddam's defiance of 17 UN resolutions, following the anthrax attacks (now known to be homegrown)but nonetheless a contributing factor to our national psyche at the time, following the repeated shooting up of US warplanes in the UN mandated no fly zone, Saddam was basically doing a Hugo Chavez, taunting us at our most vulnerable time; add to this the fact that British, Israeli, Russian, French and US intelligence all stated that Saddam had WMD's (we know he had them because he used them against Iran); what exactly did you expect? what followed was a series of three wars which were all won by the strength of will of the US military; the first war against Iraq was completed in months, the second war against al quaeda was won when Fallujah was taken back and the third war against Iranian backed insurgents was won with the Surge. And in cased you missed it, the Iraqi's have voted in democratic elections once again. Despite what the left in America stated was a "LOST" war. so you now have a new democracy in the middle east serving as an example, along with afghanistan as two islamic nations that don't have to go the route of radical islam. And guess what? they now surround Iran, that nation which has been at the heart of much of this unrest since the Carter/Reagan years. but perhaps geo-political flexible strategies is beyond you. Anyhow, keep on believing, we are the problem, you will be ignored by history anyway.

Common sense. It's what's sorely missing in America today. and particularly amongst posters here in Brownstoner.

Posted by: Legion at February 4, 2009 8:53 PM