And of course Papageno included a multitude of links and all that with his posts about how evil conservatives are and all that… wait no he did not.
Fighting fire with fire. I like your style!
http://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/showthread.php?t=550189
The California Part Time Legislature
Specifics:
No more than 90 days in Sacramento from January to June, resulting in fewer bills and laws
Two-year budget – first year of session devoted to passing a balanced budget, second year devoted to legislation
Reduced salary, per diem, travel – $1,500 per month, down from almost $8,000 per month. Legislators can continue in their full-time jobs and live under the rules they create
No political/government appointment or lobbying for 5 years after leaving office –eliminates incentive to give in on critical votes for a promised position later
Result:
At the least, we will mitigate the damage caused by a full-time legislature– in 2011, they passed 3,000 bills and the Governor signed 800 new laws
At best, citizen legislators will set California on a course to bring down the size and scope of government, provide first class service to the citizens of this state, and respect every tax dollar spent.
That’s true, the enforcement mechanisms which come attached are nothing like the 1890’s.
Just ban 'em for life. Public service in government or work as a lobbyist. You get to choose one.
Don’t confuse P&R with data it will mess up the echo chamber.
It wasn’t just Wisconsin voters that supported reigning in public service worker unions and their benefits. In San Jose, almost 70% voted for measure B which cut pension benefits far more dramatically than anything Walker proposed. Measure B actually allowed the city to eliminate the 3% cost of living for existing retirees.
Of course, if your state happens to be Illinois, then your position and salary as a legislator only facilitate your real income.
San Diego passed a similar measure.
It also looks like the state measure to increase tobacco taxes is about to fail. That is a shock.
Gov. Brown’s initiative in November to raise the state sales tax and increase taxes on the rich is not looking so good now.
Papageno is absolutely right. These people, including some of the supreme court justices, are Gilded Age warriors, plutocrats through and through. They will not be happy until they effectively repeal the 20th century in America.
Yes, they did but San Diego is filled with the military, tea party, and other forms of sub human Republicans. San Jose is populated by engineers, game designers, and highly educated and evolved Democrats.
No kidding, but I can’t resist one other piece of data that argues against the “it was the money” theory: In last month’s primary, before most of this money had been spent, Walker, in a virtually uncontested race, polled more votes than the entire Democratic field combined in a contested race. The handwriting was on the wall before all the cash was spent.
Geez…Nice balanced reporting there. :)
Given the option I would live in San Diego.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/05/us/politics/wisconsin-recall-exit-polls.html
Breakdown of the exit polls.
Again total bullshit.
Wow that is stunning information. Considering that I have been following this race very closely, you would have thought that one of the political analyst at CNN, Fox, MSNBC, NY Times, Washington Post, might have mentioned this pretty important measure of enthusiasm.
No surprises there that I see. The election was decided almost entirely on demographics and turnout.
If it’s all the same with you, Whitey McWaspson, I’d prefer oligarchy.
Listen to the Tea Party rhetoric and see if it can’t be used to justify the removal of all those hard-won social protections. Worker’s comp? Burdensome to business, rewards lazy fraudsters (so throw the baby out with the bathwater and get rid of it)! Unemployment insurance benefits? Interfere with the market, pay people to sit around and watch TV (never mind that the meagerness of the benefits is sufficient incentive to look for work). Wage and hour laws? Interfere with freedom of contract! Child labor laws? What, you’re telling parents what they can and can’t have their kids do to help the family make ends meet?
It’s well known that U.S. income inequality is at a historic high: Household income in the United States - Wikipedia
Households in the top 1% experienced the by far greatest increases in household income. According to economist Janet Yellen “the growth [in real income] was heavily concentrated at the very tip of the top, that is, the top 1 percent.”[33] A 2006 analysis of IRS income data by economists Emmanuel Saez at the University of California, Berkeley and Thomas Piketty at the Paris School of Economics showed that the share of income held by the top 1% was as large in 2005 as in 1928. The data revealed that reported income increased by 9% in 2005, with the mean for the top 1% increasing by 14% and that for the bottom 90% dropping slightly by 0.6%.[34]
The reasons for it are many and varied (Introducing the Great Divergence), but the important thing is that it’s happening and that it shouldn’t be ignored or it’s going to break our society. Unfortunately our leaders are whistling past the graveyard on this one.
I agree with you, but unfortunately nominal democracies can become fascist regimes if the oligarchy gets bad enough. The ruling wealthy are always trying to divert attention from the real issues and scapegoat some unpopular minority.
Unions? Liberal money machines for the Dems. Public workers that provide services critical to a functioning modern country? Just part of the big bloated govt we’ve messaged against for decades now (psst, ignore that we love to explode the size of govt when in power ourselves). Progressive taxation? Unfair to the ‘job creators’.
And it’s incredibly rare for the right-wingers on the Supreme Court to rule against corporate interests. As Lofgren wrote in his Truthout piece, one of the primary tenets of the modern Republican party is to serve the interests of their wealthiest contributors:
- The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors. The party has built a whole catechism on the protection and further enrichment of America’s plutocracy. Their caterwauling about deficit and debt is so much eyewash to con the public. Whatever else President Obama has accomplished (and many of his purported accomplishments are highly suspect), his $4-trillion deficit reduction package did perform the useful service of smoking out Republican hypocrisy. The GOP refused, because it could not abide so much as a one-tenth of one percent increase on the tax rates of the Walton family or the Koch brothers, much less a repeal of the carried interest rule that permits billionaire hedge fund managers to pay income tax at a lower effective rate than cops or nurses. Republicans finally settled on a deal that had far less deficit reduction - and even less spending reduction! - than Obama’s offer, because of their iron resolution to protect at all costs our society’s overclass.
Republicans have attempted to camouflage their amorous solicitude for billionaires with a fog of misleading rhetoric. John Boehner is fond of saying, “we won’t raise anyone’s taxes,” as if the take-home pay of an Olive Garden waitress were inextricably bound up with whether Warren Buffett pays his capital gains as ordinary income or at a lower rate. Another chestnut is that millionaires and billionaires are “job creators.” US corporations have just had their most profitable quarters in history; Apple, for one, is sitting on $76 billion in cash, more than the GDP of most countries. So, where are the jobs?
Another smokescreen is the “small business” meme, since standing up for Mom’s and Pop’s corner store is politically more attractive than to be seen shilling for a megacorporation. Raising taxes on the wealthy will kill small business’ ability to hire; that is the GOP dirge every time Bernie Sanders or some Democrat offers an amendment to increase taxes on incomes above $1 million. But the number of small businesses that have a net annual income over a million dollars is de minimis, if not by definition impossible (as they would no longer be small businesses). And as data from the Center for Economic and Policy Research have shown, small businesses account for only 7.2 percent of total US employment, a significantly smaller share of total employment than in most Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.
Likewise, Republicans have assiduously spread the myth that Americans are conspicuously overtaxed. But compared to other OECD countries, the effective rates of US taxation are among the lowest. In particular, they point to the top corporate income rate of 35 percent as being confiscatory Bolshevism. But again, the effective rate is much lower. Did GE pay 35 percent on 2010 profits of $14 billion? No, it paid zero.
When pressed, Republicans make up misleading statistics to “prove” that the America’s fiscal burden is being borne by the rich and the rest of us are just freeloaders who don’t appreciate that fact. “Half of Americans don’t pay taxes” is a perennial meme. But what they leave out is that that statement refers to federal income taxes. There are millions of people who don’t pay income taxes, but do contribute payroll taxes - among the most regressive forms of taxation. But according to GOP fiscal theology, payroll taxes don’t count. Somehow, they have convinced themselves that since payroll taxes go into trust funds, they’re not real taxes. Likewise, state and local sales taxes apparently don’t count, although their effect on a poor person buying necessities like foodstuffs is far more regressive than on a millionaire.
All of these half truths and outright lies have seeped into popular culture via the corporate-owned business press. Just listen to CNBC for a few hours and you will hear most of them in one form or another. More important politically, Republicans’ myths about taxation have been internalized by millions of economically downscale “values voters,” who may have been attracted to the GOP for other reasons (which I will explain later), but who now accept this misinformation as dogma.
And when misinformation isn’t enough to sustain popular support for the GOP’s agenda, concealment is needed. One fairly innocuous provision in the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill requires public companies to make a more transparent disclosure of CEO compensation, including bonuses. Note that it would not limit the compensation, only require full disclosure. Republicans are hell-bent on repealing this provision. Of course; it would not serve Wall Street interests if the public took an unhealthy interest in the disparity of their own incomes as against that of a bank CEO. As Spencer Bachus, the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, says, “In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks.”
So, Brett, I raise your knee-jerk reactions with a lifelong Republican who’s an educated Washington professional insider possessing far more knowledge and understanding of internal party policy and motivation than anyone on this board.