“Occupy Wall Street”

[SR540Beaver]

In general, liberals want to feed people from a magical storehouse and conservatives want to teach people how to be self reliant and feed themselves. Liberals believe that there is one pie that has to be sliced to give each person a slice. Conservatives believe that you bake more pies. The Tea Party simply wants the government to honor the ultimate law of the land, the Constitution, and exercise responsible and sensible spending. The Occupy Wall Street crowd wants to blame the rich for having and them not having and demand a $20 minimum wage. Can you imagine what your groceries are going to cost if the grocery store has to pay all of those teenage kids $20 per hour? Wealth envy, an entitlement mentality and killing the goose that lays the golden egg certainly isn't the answer.

[Beavah]

Yah, do you guys even listen to yourselves? Da whacky characatures of each side are really hysterical.

 

The left wing favors what economists call "price discrimination" in taxes. That's where you charge people different prices for the same service. Charging an adult and child different prices for an airline seat would be an example.

 

Or providing government-funded health care only to senior citizens?

 

How much police and fire protection do yeh think a fellow renting an apartment needs compared to a corporation running a large physical plant? Da fellow who is making $10 M in bonuses from the market is benefitting from da stability created by several whole divisions of the federal government - SEC, Treasury, Comptroller of da Currency, FDIC, plus the quasi-governmentals like da Fed or Freddie and Fanny. Whole divisions of the federal government to serve just a small number of people. Then yeh have a typical family that doesn't fly anywhere or go yachting anywhere compared with those bonus folks. So add in disproportionate service by the FAA and Coast Guard. On and on. It's a complete myth that folks are receiving the same service from government.

 

As a conservative, I'd be all in favor of teachin' people to be self reliant and feed themselves as SR540 suggests. I'm just not seein' that in "modern" conservatives. Where are the proposals for education? For research funding? Cut. Cut. Where is the investment by the bankers in facilities to make more pies? Nowhere. Funds are tied up gambling in da derivatives market, creating wealth on paper. They claim to defend da law and Constitution, but where were they on torture and suspending habeas corpus and signing memos? Nowhere. They favored dismantling da constitution whenever it was inconvenient.

 

By and large, da folks who claim to be conservatives right now really aren't people who understand business or built anything in their lifetimes, eh? They are people who are old enough and lucky enough to have benefitted from a series of bull markets, and as happens so often they confuse a bull market for their own personal genius.

 

I guess that's da downside to preventing Great Depression II. If we had just let it happen and all those geniuses had lost their entire savings and their jobs at age 50, they might have been reminded to look at their fellow man with sympathy and compassion.

 

There, but for the grace of God, go all of us.

 

Now, none of that means I agree with da liberal approach, mind yeh!

 

Beavah

[SeattlePioneer]

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Heh, heh! Beavah, you are the most reliably liberal person posting on the board. Do you ever listen to yourself?

 

 

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If a fire district charges a flat tax rate on the property value of a house and a $100 million factory, I imagine each is receiving reasonable value. I imagine the homeowner is actually being subsidized by the factory owner, but that's life.

 

 

Similarly, if Bill Gates and a welfare case were each to pay a flat tax on their income, I'd say that would be entirely fair.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(This message has been edited by seattlepioneer)

[Beavah]

Nah, SP, what you're hearin' isn't a liberal voice, eh? Even old Rooster agreed I was a solid conservative. What you're hearin' is a fellow who is willing to speak truth to his friends. . Although I do have to admit that da modern conservatives and a big chunk of the Republican Party have moved so far away from traditional conservative positions that I find myself politically homeless. Problem is that you modern conservatives are so much into the "us vs. them" thing that yeh can't even recognize you're old friends and fellow Americans anymore.

 

I'm OK with a flat tax, even an advocate for a well-conceived one. Also in favor of consumption taxes on things like gasoline instead of income taxes (though that's a position that modern conservatives seem to have abandoned). I believe we should pay our own way, but that paying our own way actually involves some paying.

 

Da thing is, a flat tax only works if there is some sense of honor and responsibility in business. Honor, in accepting compensation only in an amount that truly reflects one's own labor and contribution, not what you can "get". Responsibility in payin' da full cost of your operation without a public subsidy - to pay your share of the roads and bridges, to pay your share of da regulators and services, to pay to restore the areas affected by your pollution. In full. And to value and be responsible for the way yeh treat your employees and their families.

 

The farther we move from a position of honor and ethics, the more important it is for our misbehavior to be limited and reigned in by laws designed to recoup what we weren't honorable enough to pay in da first place, or regulations to require us to do what a person of honor would have done without being told.

 

That is the true conservative position, eh? It begins at home, with personal honor and responsibility.

 

Beavah

[BadenP]

Man it is so obvious to me that most of you guys haven't got a clue as to why we are in the economic crisis we are in. Most of your solutions will do little to nothing in solving this crisis. It is one thing to be proud of being a liberal or conservative but neither group is doing a dam* thing to improve the countries situation. So all you are really doing is comparing rhetoric from one do nothing group to the other donothing rhetoric. Then you wonder why people who have it really tough right now are taking to the streets to protest??

 

Time to wake up, smell the coffee, and get back in touch with reality. Several economists have publicly stated that in 2012 house foreclosures will go up by 20% or more, unemployment will rise and be somewhere between 10-12%, and several large corporations will go bankrupt and fold, and much more. All I can say is I sure hope they are wrong, but if they are right we will all be in breadlines together Conservatives and Liberals.(This message has been edited by BadenP)

[packsaddle]

Nope, when the conservatives start eating the liberals, suddenly it will only be conservatives in line.

[vol_scouter]

Packsaddle,

 

An odd comment when there has not been charges of violence with the Tea Party which can hardly be said of the OWS crowd.

[packsaddle]

Just not hungry enough...yet.

[JoeBob]

JoeBob

[Beavah]

Mmmmm... Liberals. Tender and juicy.

 

I agree with BadenP and packsaddle though. We're about to get clobbered as Europe comes apart. Nobody knows what da overall exposure is to Greek sovereign debt and to banks holding Greek sovereign debt. Maybe it'll go down hard, maybe Europe will get it together and engineer a mammoth bailout. Any way yeh cut it, in da short term the uncertainty is almost sure to tank the markets and trash the economy.

 

And there is no plan. Or rather, the plan is to pile onto the economic downturn with unspecified spending cuts, so as to maximize da market uncertainty and damage.

 

B

[SeattlePioneer]

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I'm pretty sure Beavah would be too tough and gristly for my taste.

 

 

Now Michael Moore would probably be great roasting on a spit over a fire.

[CalicoPenn]

"An odd comment when there has not been charges of violence with the Tea Party which can hardly be said of the OWS crowd."

 

You keep claiming this when it just isn't true.

 

In October, 2010, at a Rand Paul Senate Debate, a Tea Party yahoo dragged a woman holding a sign opposing Rand Paul to the ground and kicked her in the head.

 

In March, 2010, a Democratic Congressman was spit on by a Tea Party protestor - at the same protest, the Tea Party protestors screamed the N word and the F word at the Democratic Congresspeople making their way into the Capitol.

 

In November 2009, a Tea Party rally descended into violence as a couple of Tea Party yahoos started fighting with some counter-protestors.

 

At one Tea Party rally, Tea Party morons screamed at and hurled dollar bills at a man suffering from Parkinson's who was quietly holding a sign stating an opposing view - and the worst part was other Tea Party twits stood around and did nothing.

 

Between people showing up at Tea Party protests wearing guns, people holding up signs at Tea Party protests promoting violence against other people, and actual violent acts taking place at Tea Party rallies, to say that there have been no charges of violence is either incredibly ignorant and naive, or an outright lie.

[Eagledad]

>>I think this discussion has become hysterically funny with SP and Barry defending the Republican party and giving them credit for being the only ones trying to fix this economice mess we are in, as well as blaming the liberals for this crisis.

[JoeBob]

Calico,

 

Before you call someone a liar, you might want get your own facts in order:

 

Calico: "In March, 2010, a Democratic Congressman was spit on by a Tea Party protestor - at the same protest, the Tea Party protestors screamed the N word and the F word at the Democratic Congresspeople making their way into the Capitol."

 

Here the link to video disproving the spitting claim and offering a $15,000 reward for any proof that intentional spitting occured:

http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2010/03/tea-party-groups-offer-15k-reward-for-spitting-incident-proof.html

 

Here's a conservative commentator offering $10,000 for any video or tape proving that the 'N' word was used:

http://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2010/03/25/2010-a-race-odyssey-disproving-a-negative-for-cash-prizes-or-how-the-civil-rights-movement-jumped-the-shark/

 

I invite you to look through all the videos and tell me how anyone could have snuck a racial epithet through the myriad of cameras and cell phones recording that action.

 

No one ever came close to collecting either reward.

 

And your concern about guns at Tea Party events? There is one man in shirt and tie that I'm aware of who legally carried an AK slung across his back and a revolver holstered on his hip to a Tea Party rally to demonstrate his support for the 2nd Amendment. (You can see it on the above link.) Can you tell me why MSNBC cut the man's head off when they used a still image on their broadcast? Could it be because the man carrying the guns was black? And blacks don't belong to the Tea Party?

 

I'm unaware of your other charge of violence by the Tea Party, but if it is as factless as the first two; well.

 

As hard as it is to prove a negative, perhaps you can provide positive substantiation of your charge?

[BadenP]

Barry

 

The truth is that both sides are dragging our country down into the great abyss of economic collapse and neither of them have any realistic solutions to prevent a potential second major recession from occuring next year. Liberals and Conservatives have miserably failed the American people with their inability to function as an elected group of legislators working for the common good and getting our country back on its feet before its too late. What is happening today within our government is nothing short of criminal, the fat cat corporations and megarich individuals are the ones truly calling the shots, not Congress or the POTUS.

 

We are currently on the road to nowhere with anemic and unworkable proposals to jumpstart our economy. Companies are continuing to dramatically reduce their workforce, financial institutions continue to horde those stimulus funds that were supposed to have been loaned out, and you have Boehner and Obama fighting it out without regard of the American people. Maybe we ought to demand that Congress be laid off for a year with no pay or benefits and let them feel firsthand what many people in this country are feeling and what their inaction has caused.