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The Way I See It — Why Now?
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The Way I See It

Election 2012

Neither party represents anything to the left of center and the Republicans have fallen off the right edge of reality.

Zero will do nothing for you, and Rmoney intends to do a lot of things to you to help out the 1%.

You have an empty chair battling an empty suit, Chicago vs the Cayman Islands.

The Newsbiscuit [British satire] says that Good and Evil are neck and neck in the polls as both shift to centre ground, but in the US both parties have shifted to the right, and are ignoring everything from the center to the left.

I expect many on the left to vote for Dr Jill Stein of the Green Party, and Gary Johnson will pick up a lot of Republican votes on the Libertarian line.

Both candidates are right-wing authoritarian war-mongers who support failed economic policies, and refuse to take the obvious actions to fix the economy. Mitt the twit, like the rest of the 1% is intent on making ‘your money R money’, while Zero favors the slow suicide of austerity.

Not with a bang, but with a whimper…

12 comments

1 Kryten42 { 09.23.12 at 4:37 am }

And you are definitely not alone in that m8! 😆

In fact, here is a post by a blog that was supporting Mitt earlier, but bow says:


So if you want to vote for the best Republican in the race, consider a vote for Barack Obama. Never mind the Republican health care plan he pushed that resembles what the GOP wanted back in the mid-1990s; or the continued operation of Guantanamo Bay; and the relentless campaign against terrorists that are a holdover from the Bush years. When it comes to taxes, we are no where near the Republican confiscatory tax rates of Herbert Hoover or Dwight Eisenhower – and Ike, by the way, also pushed for a national health care plan. Taxes are low, and yes, slow growth has contributed to the deficits. But Romney’s plan to cut taxes even more will just blow up the deficit even more – and we are beyond the point where further taxes can stimulate the economy.

A Romney would have made a great president–but George and Lenore are no longer with us. Speaking of which, look who was on welfare for a while:

On Taxes, More Than 47% Will Question Why Vote For Mitt Romney

So, it’s a race for the best worst candidate for Prez by all accounts. Much like here. the next election will be for the best worst PM. We have so much in common!

2 Kryten42 { 09.23.12 at 4:44 am }

For me, this is the money quote in that post:


It is easy to blame politicians for our current fiscal woes, but much of the blame lies on voters. We want our benefits but do not want to pay for them; we demand countless write-offs, credits and refunds but then chafe at the legal and accounting industry we prop up as a result. Even though both Republicans and Democrats are to blame for the failure to implement any of the Simpson Bowles deficit reduction plan, the fact is voters would have resisted some of the castor oil that everyone would have had to swallow. Benefits of all kinds will require more premiums yet lower payments; retirement needs to be pushed back as many of us will live into our 80s and 90s; and the national defense has to be leaner and meaner.

Whilst some Americans are demanding politicians take responsibility, the fact is they should be looking in a mirror when they talk about taking responsibility! the fact is, politicians only get away with what the public allow them to! And the same goes here also.

PS: error above: ‘but bow says’ -> ‘but now says’ 😉

3 paintedjaguar { 09.23.12 at 8:41 am }

Americans pour what must amount to billions per year into the effort to limit government benefits to the “deserving”… whatever that means. I’m certain it would be cheaper in lives, resources and general misery to have a guaranteed annual income… a ridiculous, extreme-left notion that was supported by both of those well-known communists, Richard Nixon and Milton Friedman

4 Bryan { 09.23.12 at 2:19 pm }

First off as a matter of clarity: there is no Simpson-Bowles plan. The Simpson-Bowles committee couldn’t agree on a plan and gave up. People are talking about ideas that were proposed by Simpson and Bowles, but they were never agreed to by the committee. It is a myth.

Congress is the one who screwed up the tax system by including all kinds of exemptions and exclusions rather than making it simple and straight-forward. People didn’t do this, Congress did it with the guidance of lobbyists. People didn’t ask for a mortgage interest deduction, the banks did. There is a industry behind every deduction, and every loophole in the tax code.

There should be one standard deduction for a household, and a second deduction based on the number of people in the household, both indexed to inflation. Deduct those from the gross and everything that is left is taxable income. All income, no matter what the source, is treated exactly the same. People would be free to do whatever they wanted with their money without worrying about ‘the tax implications’, because there wouldn’t be any.

Congress won’t do it because the special interests would oppose it tooth and nail. Tax attorneys, accounts, and tax preparers would be up in arms as they became irrelevant. The only way anyone could cheat would be by hiding income and that is much harder to do than ‘misapplying dubious deductions’.

Putting the minimum wage at the level of a living wage, is the first step to a guaranteed annual income. The current minimum wage needs to be a third again as high to match the minimum wage in the 1970s.

People are paying the Treasury to sell them bonds. Currently US bonds have a negative interest rate, and with the Euro imploding, that isn’t going to change in the near future. Now is the time to repair and build infrastructure, and expand the economy and jobs. We need to expand the GNP, not make it contract with austerity. You pay off the debt in boom times, not in depressions. You cut government jobs in boom times, not in depressions.

5 Steve Bates { 09.23.12 at 2:41 pm }

What? you mean someone is even considering the, um, stuff that came out of the Catfood Bowls Commission?

Keynes was proved right in the 1930s. He would be proved right again today if anyone in power were paying attention, which would happen only if their own gravy train were in danger. Great Depression II, here we come, with the same distribution of wealth as in Great Depression I, which suited the elite just fine…

6 Bryan { 09.23.12 at 4:39 pm }

On the framing side, Steve, we need to keep reminding people that nothing, nada, zip, came out of that commission. It reached no conclusions and issued no report. There was no agreement on what to do about the non-existent budget crisis, only a lot of suggestions, many of which that we know will make the deficit worse, like austerity.

We know what worked the last time this happened, and that’s what we should be doing now, if we didn’t have a lot of people in charge whose paychecks depend on remaining ignorant.

7 Badtux { 09.24.12 at 1:22 am }

This election is a choice between things getting worse slowly (the big O), or things getting worse very very fast (the crazies who own Rmoney). What a choice. Well, I’m going to choose things getting worse slowly, because there’s a chance of turning that around in the future, rather than things going to **** fast because given how many guns are circulating in America, when things hit bottom it’s going to go bad *fast*, but …

8 Bryan { 09.24.12 at 2:55 pm }

This is government by the 1% and it is going to end badly. People are too busy trying to stay afloat to get involved with what is going on politically. They are hoping that someone will fix it, but have no idea what needs to be done.

Both parties are guilty of hiding the causes of the problems, and degrading the real solutions.

9 Badtux { 09.24.12 at 11:11 pm }

I guess the difference is in how long it takes to end badly. There’s too many guns floating around in America for it to *not* end badly, but with Zero it might end badly far enough in the future that I have time to prepare for it, while with Rmoney, it will happen so quickly that by the time you realize it, you’re in the middle of it. And who knows, if we drag things out far enough, maybe the horse will learn to sing.

10 Bryan { 09.25.12 at 12:02 am }

We are buying time and hope that the people with power figure it out before we reach the point of no return. A hell of a way to run a country … into an early grave.

11 Badtux { 09.25.12 at 10:31 am }

Yep. Buying time, and hoping the horse will learn to sing. Thing is, I don’t know of any horses that ever learned to sing. But what can you do?

12 Bryan { 09.25.12 at 9:59 pm }

You prepare for it like any other disaster, only you plan on it being of a longer duration.