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Bushies seek to revolutionize the country the wrong way [BerkleyEast tale of Bush and the neocons]
Capital Times ^ | 2-14-06 | Ed Garvey

Posted on 02/14/2006 3:27:08 PM PST by SJackson

Perhaps there is an easy way to solve our nation's economic problems. Eliminate taxes for everyone earning over $100,000 per year and for all corporations? After all, we are told that those at the top of our economy create most of our jobs. If we eliminate their taxes, they will create more jobs.

Why not bar individuals from suing corporations? I recognize that the Chamber of Commerce and the Republican Party nationally, and the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce lobby group in our state, have already proposed something similar with a combination of tort reform, "tax limits" and the latest federal budget, but maybe we should not stop at halfway measures. Why not make it clear that corporations should have the same First Amendment rights as other citizens to contribute to campaigns?

Hell, if ExxonMobil makes a profit of $34 billion, why not let the company spend it any way it wants? It could pay for all our elections. ExxonMobil would make sure only those entitled to vote will get a ballot. It will pay for Accenture and Diebold to handle the balloting.

Only a radical would restrict corporate involvement in the political process. Think of how many jobs ExxonMobil is responsible for. Why shouldn't it be invited to participate robustly in our political process? It won't cost us as much.

With these reforms in place, we can get about the business of eliminating unnecessary government programs and truly privatizing everything. Toll roads, not freeways. Sell off national and state parks too expensive to maintain. No more agencies of government dealing with health, drugs, welfare and agriculture. The private sector knows best.

We must stop the trade imbalance and we can do it by getting wages down so our products are cheap enough for poor people in Bolivia to purchase them. Begin by eliminating minimum wage laws. And what is wrong with kids learning a trade at 12 or 14? Kids in Korea are making the products we purchase. Why not compete? Teach job skills that have practical application. Kids love to work and work keeps them out of trouble.

We don't need public schools. It is time to get government out of education. Too inefficient. Corporations should run schools because they will be hiring these youngsters and they understand how to train kids to work the jobs that will be around in the future. We should not be teaching marginal subjects such as philosophy, political science, history and the arts. Let's get serious. We need jobs, not philosophers. We need soldiers, not politicians.

Repeal the New Deal, Fair Deal and the New Frontier. Instead of coddling people, it is time to get rid of food stamps, subsidized housing, free health care for the poor. What incentive is there to work if people get food, shelter and health care from government? Get out and work! Earn your food! Buy a house! Get your own insurance! C'mon!

OK, OK, I am not serious. But the Bush administration and the neocons are serious. They are trying to repeal Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security through the back door by running up deficits so large we will have no choice but to eliminate programs, but not tax cuts for the rich. The Bushies are the only ones who think tax cuts for wealthy supporters, not low interest rates and refinancing, kept the economy afloat.

Republican Abraham Lincoln suggested that "government should do for the people what they cannot do for themselves." This is not the ethic of the neocons. They say coddle the rich, eliminate corporate taxes, and permit them to dominate our politics, control the media and write our laws.

At the moving service for Coretta Scott King, speaker after speaker told the truth to the president, who was sitting on stage, and to the nation. He wasn't listening. Forty-six million people without health insurance; poverty on the rise; racism; low-cost housing in short supply; family-supporting jobs being eliminated. All this while spending on the military coupled with tax cuts for the wealthy are bankrupting America.

And with significant exceptions such as Tammy Baldwin, Ted Kennedy, Gwen Moore, John Conyers, Russ Feingold, Howard Dean, John Edwards and Dave Obey, the Democratic Party seems to have lost its voice. It is time for a bold platform. Time for national single-payer health care and time for free tuition for our technical schools and our universities. Time to break up the oil cartel. Time to get out of Iraq and to raise, not lower, taxes for the well-off.

We need help for small family-owned farms not more subsidies for Monsanto and ADM. We need more teachers, not more soldiers. We need to renew the war on poverty, not pre-emptive wars.

When you read the Bush budget, you must conclude that they don't want to trim the fat, they plan to eliminate government as we have known it since Franklin Roosevelt.


TOPICS: Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections
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1 posted on 02/14/2006 3:27:09 PM PST by SJackson
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To: SJackson
Perhaps there is an easy way to solve our nation's economic problems.

Dow hits 11,000. Unemployment @ 5.2%. And we still are in the Depression! Damn! This Meth problem is worse than I thought!

2 posted on 02/14/2006 3:29:47 PM PST by Bommer (Ted Kennedy - Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life!)
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To: SJackson
This Capital Times is one of the most insane cage-liners I've seen in a very long time.

Remind me to stay the hell out of Madison until it's time for the siege.

3 posted on 02/14/2006 3:31:59 PM PST by WhistlingPastTheGraveyard (No, I'm not 4 86. R U?)
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To: SJackson
Why not make it clear that corporations should have the same First Amendment rights as other citizens to contribute to campaigns?

Why not to make corporations to be the full fledged persons with all the rights and abolish the status of a person for the citizens/individual human beings? That way this process will be brought to its logical conclusion.

After all the corporations represent the most productive members of the society. The mere human beings are superfluous and parasitic relic of the past.

4 posted on 02/14/2006 3:35:09 PM PST by A. Pole (In 2001 top 5% owned 60% of national wealth, while bottom 60% owned 4%)
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To: A. Pole
Why not to make corporations to be the full fledged persons with all the rights and abolish the status of a person for the citizens/individual human beings? That way this process will be brought to its logical conclusion. After all the corporations represent the most productive members of the society. The mere human beings are superfluous and parasitic relic of the past.

Substitute academia and government for corporations, the author would agree.

5 posted on 02/14/2006 3:36:47 PM PST by SJackson (There is but one language which can be held to these people, and this is terror, William Eaton)
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To: Bommer
Dow hits 11,000. Unemployment @ 5.2%. And we still are in the Depression!

It all depends how you measure the unemployment. By some measures the unemployment during the Great Depression was close to zero.

6 posted on 02/14/2006 3:37:01 PM PST by A. Pole (In 2001 top 5% owned 60% of national wealth, while bottom 60% owned 4%)
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To: WhistlingPastTheGraveyard

The writer of this article must live in some fantasy world......or he's an idiot.....probably both.


7 posted on 02/14/2006 3:41:04 PM PST by L98Fiero
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To: SJackson
...they plan to eliminate government as we have known it since Franklin Roosevelt

Hey Ed, you stupid git, that's a great idea!

8 posted on 02/14/2006 3:42:11 PM PST by clintonh8r (If you don't support the mission you don't support the troops. Period.)
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To: Bommer

Dow hits 11,000. Unemployment @ 5.2%. And we still are in the Depression! Damn! This Meth problem is worse than I thought!


Unemployment is now @4.9! (4% is considered full employment)


9 posted on 02/14/2006 3:44:47 PM PST by kaktuskid
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To: SJackson

>>When you read the Bush budget, you must conclude that they don't want to trim the fat, they plan to eliminate government as we have known it since Franklin Roosevelt.<<

Yes! See http://www.house.gov/paul/nytg.htm


10 posted on 02/14/2006 3:48:58 PM PST by kojak
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To: SJackson
The author of the article seems to be blissful oblivious to the distribution of income vs percentage of total taxes paid...

What more needs to be said?

11 posted on 02/14/2006 3:49:09 PM PST by Publius6961
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To: SJackson; Behind Liberal Lines

I thought Ithaca was Berkeley East.


12 posted on 02/14/2006 3:49:30 PM PST by presidio9 ("Bird Flu" is the new Y2K Virus -Only without the inconvenient deadline.)
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To: SJackson

Darn, till he said he wasn't serious, I was getting excited!


13 posted on 02/14/2006 3:49:33 PM PST by wizardoz
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To: SJackson
OK, OK, I am not serious.

Well, that's a relief. With these genius types it's kind of hard to tell. Glad he let us know.

But the Bush administration and the neocons are serious.

Not about that. See point one.

I do get the sense that some "progressives" are finally, at long last, sensing that progressivism has turned into pure reaction and that the most truly progressive individual in government is named Bush. "But it isn't progressivism as we define it!" Yeah, so what?

14 posted on 02/14/2006 3:53:39 PM PST by Billthedrill
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To: SJackson

 

 

15 posted on 02/14/2006 3:54:09 PM PST by Fintan (Shut up. You're rude and silly. And ugly.)
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To: A. Pole
By some measures the unemployment during the Great Depression was close to zero.

and just how drunk did you have to get back then to see a bread line and say, "Yep, no unemployment here!" Unemployment was close to 25%.

16 posted on 02/14/2006 4:20:01 PM PST by Bommer (Ted Kennedy - Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life!)
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To: A. Pole

Last I heard, unemployment was 4.7%. Of course, if you just have to look for the bad side, employment is only 95.3%.


17 posted on 02/14/2006 4:27:56 PM PST by ozzymandus
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To: ozzymandus

Eliminate the income tax- great idea
Eliminate coperate tax- great idea
Protect coperations from lawsuits- bad idea, if they are at fault they are at fault. How about protect them from insane lawsuits
Repeal new deal- Great idea
privitize schools- Amazing

Sounds like this guy is the smartest person I've heard in a long time. Haha, I love how offended liberals are of conservitive ideas. BTW how is Bush's spending threatening to destroy goverment! He's making it bigger.


18 posted on 02/14/2006 4:35:35 PM PST by RHINO369
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To: Bommer

Unemployment is actually at 4.7%, not 5.2%


19 posted on 02/14/2006 5:30:31 PM PST by MNJohnnie (Conservatives...lack sufficient cynicism to properly assess the nature of their liberal opponents)
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To: kaktuskid
Current Unemployment is 4.7% Full employment is considered at 5%. The only reason they say 4% is because of the last 2 years of the 1990s we got down there, however as anyone who went into a convince store in 1998-1999 could tell you, MOST of the people employed at the low end after you get under 5% are marginally employable at best.

Plus there is some question if the changes made by the Clinton Admin to calculate the Unemployment rate were as accurate as the previous method. The numbers reported after 1995 are probably underreporting the Unemployment rate due to those Clinton era changes.

20 posted on 02/14/2006 5:35:49 PM PST by MNJohnnie (Conservatives...lack sufficient cynicism to properly assess the nature of their liberal opponents)
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