I have a friend who works 12-16 hour shifts, frequently,  for a company that will fire her for being sick or even late. Tech help line work—the pay is good, but not 6-7 figures good. I fucking dare those who would “Go Galt” to tell her that she’s not working hard enough… and then ask her how to solve their lack-of-trying computer problems.

I’ve worked in a business environment where the ladder climbers were working 12 hours a day. It wasn’t because there was 12 hours of actual work, it was to make it seem like they were doing 12 hours of actual work.

The actual amount of effective work (as opposed to being a bully or doing make-work) was usually between 2 to 4 hours. Not even 8. Most of the rest of the time, as I mentioned, was either them being bullies because they are bored, or socializing. And this is a successful business. And from what I can see, this is normal in the business world.

Different people have a different idea of hard work. Myself, I consider the lack of autonomy, the idea of being on somebody else’s schedule to be “hard work”. That to me makes 8 hours tough. Give me a job with that autonomy, and doing 10 or 12 becomes easy.

I’m taking my ball and going home.

The fact that Obama is married to one of the minority that probably did work her way to the top, pulling on few privileges, and still has zero issue with this shows….that a 2% tax raise is not fucking someone over as if they’re inhuman.  Sending people to war for no good reason without armor is objectification.  Cutting someone’s source of food or health care is fucking someone over.  Demonizing people losing their houses is what makes you inhuman, not making $250,000 a year. 

It’s telling that these idiots like Tigerhawk are more worried about losing 2% a year more to taxes that will go to someone else than the massive losses they’re seeing in the stock market.  40% overnight losses instead of 2% a year is acceptable, I guess, because you can be assured the people running off with your money are the Worthies—-rich, white assholes, the only decent people in society. 

I thought people like Tigerhawk & Co. were the true populists, about to overthrow an overclass of urban artists, academics, and other sorts of squishy liberals.  I wasn’t aware that most of us make 1/5th of what our class inferiors do.  I guess living where people don’t suck is worth a cool mil a year.

I would absolutely love it if these people went John Galt. I would set up cameras so we could all enjoy the lolz.

I’ve been thinking about this “Going Galt” thing a bit now. In a sense, you could argue that this was already done, for real, by corporations, when they left the US. All the corporations that became incorporated in the Cayman islands, or just left the US to find more desperate laborers with less rights. They were the actual followers of Rand’s advice. Looked at that way, it’s less of a joke and more of a real problem.

These upper-middle-class and upper-class people talking about it due to Obama’s election are just johnny-come-latelys.

Why should they pay their hard-earned money to subsidize the lower classes? What’s in it for them? Apparently, the benefits of not living in a society with a large percentage of homeless, sick, starving, and desperate people are lost on them. 

If they think gated communities are expensive now…..

From Tigerhawk’s profile:

“I am a middle-aged executive in a medical device company in the Princeton area. [...] I work long hours at a fascinating job in a very exciting company,”

Yeah, get back to me when you work long hours at a boring job at low wages, because you’re putting yourself through school while raising kids by yourself.  Like my mother.

So half the lawyers, executives, bankers and forex dealers go on strike.  And all teh wingnut bloggers.

However will we survive?

And setting aside the people who work as hard or usually harder than the people Tigerhawk acknowledges—-people whose 60-80 weeks are just enough to survive on, not enough to move ahead—-even many of the people in his equation who work exactly as he suggests don’t become rich.  That’s because at some point they chose their soul over keeping up with the Joneses, and used those graduate degrees in non-profit work, at at least in non-evil work.  They may not be making the world a better place, but they aren’t making it worse.  The big bucks are in making the world a worse place than you found it, as the stock market crash demonstrated.  Why should we consider hard work in itself a virtue that should exempt you from gratitude and community spirit? 

And his example of how rich people give back—-by sitting on boards of art museums—-chilled me to the bone.  We’re supposed to be so happy that philistines who dominate Republican politics also control our cultural centers that we exempt them from taxes?  Sheesh, they should pay 10% more just to make up for being philistines.

If it makes them feel better, why don’t they just pretend the entire 2% is going directly to fund the war?  I know I like pretending that my taxes go to fund HHS or FEMA and not to killing people who did not and could not cause us any harm.

Besides,  are there no workhouses?  This country could use a few good workhouses.

Mr Taylor wrote:

“Going Galt” is demeaning to the very idea of America - that we make a valuable contribution to society by being good citizens, working hard and raising families and anything else you’d put in a Norman Rockwell painting, like drinking Coca-Cola.  Capitalism needs cogs as much as it needs cog-placers, and the fundamental promise of the American dream is that the former matters just as much as the latter.  Apparently not anymore.  The new message: forsake your babies and your God and go make partner, because that’s what makes you a good person.

I am so glad that I had already finished drinking my Mountain Dew when I read that, or I’d have spit it out all over the keyboard and monitor.  Are you meaning to tell us that Jesse Taylor, a major writer on Pandagon, is saying that it is a good thing to be raising families, and that “forsaking your babies and your God” is selfish, Ayn Rand-ish and just plain not part of the “very idea of America?”  One wonders if Amanda Marcotte, another major writer on Pandagon, has seen this yet? 

Dana, if you read the paragraph above the one you quote, Jesse outlines the conservative ideals set forth over the course of the past several decades and then argues that the Going Galt movement is at odds with that very same conservative ideal.  They’re being hypocritical, you see?

It’s awfully un-American to assume that you only work hard when you’re rich, that getting there isn’t hard work in itself, if not harder work.  The idea that the hard work of being rich starts out as the hard work of being poor - or at least not rich - is hereby abolished in favor of the Fuck You, I Got Mine principle.

That right there is a particular bit of truth.  People have learned to equate hard work with the value that is being paid than the actual task that is being done.  There are people working 2-3 part time jobs in retail and fast food and that is definitely hard work.  The problem is that we have learned not to value the everyday tasks that keeps countries running in a desire to push prestige. The poor that identify with this nonsense are suffering from false class consciousness.  In most cases to achieve a form of financial success you need to be born with a certain amount of privilege to begin with.  We do not live in a meritocracy and no amount of pull yourself up by your bootstraps nonsense is going to create opportunities where none in face exist.

If the spirit of John Galt is best embodied by the upper echelon of Wall Street, the clueless leaders of Detroit, the proud men and women who are attempting to outsource every job in America except the very bottom, maids, janitors, and gardeners, or the very top; if those people represent the best of America, then it seems like we really do need to hear the squeak of the tumbrels as they carry the “worthy” to the center of town to be executed.

I know it offends the delicate sensibilities of the overclass to hear such things, especially from the proles, but this shit just can’t go on forever without repercussions.

You treat people like animals and sooner or later those animals are going to show you what being an animal is all about…first hand…

If they want to live in a dog-eat-dog third-world hell hole, where there are only two kinds of people — the ultra-rich and the ultra poor — there are plenty of them around.  There’s no reason to make America into another one.

You don’t like it here, get the fuck out. 

OTOH, if you are a person who appreciates that the labor of all people is worthy of respect, regardless of what labor entails, then maybe we can work something out.

Maybe the person at the top should only make 20-times the wages of the person on the bottom, instead of 500-times.  Maybe you could support Universal Health Care instead of fighting it tooth and nail.  Maybe you could begin to understand that taxes are not some arbitrary punishment for being rich, but a cost we all pay for the privilege of living here and enjoying the fruits of American society and infrastructure.

If you can’t handle that “socialism”, then Get. The. Fuck. Out…

I doubt a single person making $300,000 a year is going to willfully give up $50,000 in income just to avoid paying a higher tax rate on that 50k. Even if the marginal tax rate went to 50%, they’d still have $25,000 in extra take-home pay. That covers the cleaning lady and the year’s dry cleaning bills right there—a big help with managing the household budget.

Are you meaning to tell us that Jesse Taylor, a major writer on Pandagon, is saying that it is a good thing to be raising families, and that “forsaking your babies and your God” is selfish, Ayn Rand-ish and just plain not part of the “very idea of America?” One wonders if Amanda Marcotte, another major writer on Pandagon, has seen this yet?

They said A.  Now they’re saying B, which is totally at odds with A.

I can make this simpler through the use of simple images and sounds, if need be.

I know it was hard work for me picking those six lottery numbers. I have no idea why society isn’t more grateful for my contributions.

KMac has it.

I’d go even further, though. By reducing their hours so that their income drops to a mere $250K, the Galters are actually behaving as cryptosocialists. Because they have to know that people earning less than $250K are going to pick up the extra work by increasing their hours. They’re voluntarily flattening the income distribution by refusing the extra money, and they’re helping with unemployment by sharing their jobs.

Personally, I just wish all these glibertarian asshats would just “go Galt’ and get it over with.  They contribute little or nothing to the world and would never be missed.  How can we miss you if you won’t go away?

people earning less than $250K are going to pick up the extra work by increasing their hours.

Doctors and Dentists need to hustle for patients. Scientists face an incredibly competitive field when applying for grant money. Engineering firms compete with each other for contracts. I-Bankers would sell their mother for a shot at an M&A;deal. So there are those of us who would love to see some right-wingers “Go Galt.” This is a nation full of motivated, intelligent people just waiting for opportunities to present themselves. Don’t they realize that? Don’t they realize that they created a society that just had a little room for those at the top, so that if those at the top decided to “drop out,” there would be hundreds begging to take their place? No one is indispensible.

What certain people fail to realize is that, really, your taxes are almost always a secondary concern to your earnings potential. People don’t like taxes, but they’re willing to deal with taxes if they know that each year will present them with more opportunities and higher salaries. It’s the people who are finding their peak earning years over who are probably the most frustrated by tax increases, because things are never going to get better for them again. What they didn’t realize is that they had the low-tax years to take advantage of (a metaphorical 7 fat years). Why they never expected or prepared for a metaphorical 7 lean years is anyone’s guess. The rest of us, however, are just hoping for a future where our earnings will rise, rather than fall. If the cost of that is slightly higher marginal tax rates, it’s a trade I’m willing to make…. it’s better than keeping taxes the same but guaranteeing I have no change in income or opportunities.

I guess these people are working too hard to think about all the poor people that make their lives possible.  These people never have to worry about growing, transporting, or cooking their own food, doing any cleaning, or having sanitary living conditions.  They have never have to worry about any of their cool entertainment junk not working.  It’s the poor people who are making their TVs, cars, computers, clothing, and cell phones.  It’s the poor people who work hard so the rich can have safe roads and bridges to drive on, an effective sewer system, and a clean tap water supply.  And it’s the poor people who make all the stuff that the rich people buy.  If there were none of these hard-working poor people, it would be completely pointless to become rich, because there would be nothing to buy with all that money anyway.  And how much work would they get done if they had to change their own office light bulbs, clean their own carpets, and take out their own trash?  Stupid people don’t understand how society works.  It’s more than just a collection of individuals, and when one person gains, everyone gains.

These bastards need to have their bluff called, and hard. You think you’re going to withdraw from society and we’re going to miss you? I’ll be the first one to wish you good-bye and shut the door behind you. Oh, what’s that, you want to come back? Nah, I don’t think it’s worth it to let you back in; look what you did the last time you were here.

I agree that no one is irreplaceable, but I’m not sure of the wisdom of punishing successful individuals who’ve contributed greatly to the wealth and stability of the nation.

Does anyone remember that expression, “brain drain?”  Let’s not be so partisan that we’re willing to lobotomize our society in order to spite those we politically disagree with.

-A

These bastards need to have their bluff called, and hard.

It’s just the 2009 Republican version of “I’m moving to Canada!” that we heard from some Dems in 2004 (or thought to ourselves), but it’s dressed up with a lot more self-justification of their own importance.

I’ve been gobsmacked by this whole stupid “Galt” thing because it’s so _blatantly_ elitist—that, literally, someone with more money has more worth in all respects—after about two decades worth of depicting the left as out-of-touch elitists.  It goes right along with their premise that they’re hoppin’ mad about the government helping people _too much_.  Way to read the moment, people.

catgirl:  Stupid people don’t understand how society works.  It’s more than just a collection of individuals, and when one person gains, everyone gains.

Wasn’t it their hero Margaret Thatcher who said “There’s no such thing as society”?

Oh boy, it’s Atanarjuat, the resident troll from Balloon Juice!

Being asked to pay a slightly higher marginal rate on an income of over $250,000 is not “punishment.” The very notion that this is somehow a punishment is patently absurd. If you are that wealthy, you are the beneficiary of a complex public infrastructure that has made your wealth possible; you can certainly afford to contribute a measly additional 3% or whatever it is over your already large income.

The idea that America will suffer from a brain-drain because of this is ludicrous. It is one of the falsest ideas ever propagated by Republicans. The simple fact remains that when you’re rich, this is a great country to live in. As a rich person, your opportunities here are legion; the entire system is set up to cater to you, and you don’t even have to worry about armed uprisings and being put up against the wall. And you want to tell me that these rich fucks are going to “boycott” us and move somewhere else, where they think they’ll be more free? I double-fucking-dog-dare you.

Being wealthy, contrary to what Republicans think, is not a sign of divine election or inherent worth. Lots of smart, even brilliant people work just as hard or harder and are never going to be in the 6-figure range, and lots of people overall work long hours in shit jobs for little pay because they’re mired in a system that punishes them and rewards paper-pushers and CEOs with golden parachutes. This whining coming from the upper class is just the realization that the cracks in the system are now becoming too large to ignore.

Apparently, the benefits of not living in a society with a large percentage of homeless, sick, starving, and desperate people are lost on them.

Let’s remind them. You bring the rope, I bring the molotovs.

Well, if I can go out on a completely educationalist (is that a word?) limb, most of the dingleberries who want to “go Galt” are MBAs.  I’m sorry to any of our honored readers who have an MBA, but most of them aren’t freaking graduate degrees, they’re something you get for turning in enough cereal box tops.  As far as a “brain drain” is concerned, I’m willing to flush that type down with a little Drano to help ‘em get down the pipe faster.  Just let us remember that “W” was our first MBA-manager prez, and look what a stellar job he did. 

The vitriol comes from working 10 years on my PhD, translating documents, going through review after review by committee after committee, only to be told that I’m some sort of gold-bricker ivory tower lazy liberal (yes, me and my $70K of student loans certainly hit on the formula for the good life!) by a suit-and-tie MBA who has a “gradjut degree” in marketing or some other pseduo-discipline and who can’t freaking construct a simple and understandable English sentence.

Ship ‘em all off the island, I say.

I’d love it for these worthless pricks to “go Galt”. I think we as society should subsidize this. We’ll give each investment banker and trust-fund baby forty acres, one mule, a wagon, some tools and seeds and a manual on basic agriculture. Drop them off in Nebraska before planting time and let them have at it. They’ll be eating their own children by May: problem solved.

Jerry Vinokurov wrote:

Being asked to pay a slightly higher marginal rate on an income of over $250,000 is not “punishment.”

Do you actually believe that this “slight” tax increase on the incomes of successful and productive people is a one-time thing?  Remember, we’re talking about a President who has promised to spread the wealth around.  Kneecapping entrepreneurs and business owners is only the beginning.

President Obama hasn’t even been in office for two months, and already he’s guaranteed that the deficit will be swelled by a few trillion dollars.  All these Porkulus Plans have to be paid for in part somehow—printing more money just won’t suffice.  Now that liberals are large and in charge, soaking the rich and bleeding them dry in order to comfort those who feel entitled to other people’s money is the seeming financial plan for the foreseeable future.

I’m just not confident that hammering folks like TigerHawk will have a positive outcome in the end.

-A

Atanarjuat, your credibility when it comes to complaining ended sometime around when Bush begged for an extra $87 billion to keep funding the Iraq war back in the fall of 2003. If TigerHawk faces economic destruction because of a return to 1990-era levels of taxation to pay off the policies he supported and make up for the revenue lost because of stagnation of middle class incomes, which he also supported, then some of us who are more competent in managing our economic and professional futures can take his place. Plus we will support more economically valuable policies in the political sphere.

In any case, Tigerhawk isn’t going to give up his job. He’s just whining and a little too confident in his own importance. I say, let him whine… his ideology was tried and proven to be immoral, dishonest, and destructive, so we have abandoned it.

“They’ll be eating their own children by May…”

...and each other after that, just like human Mormon Crickets…except less benign to the environment…

And if that isn’t good enough, we can always start the party ourselves...

Do you actually believe that this “slight” tax increase on the incomes of successful and productive people is a one-time thing?  Remember, we’re talking about a President who has promised to spread the wealth around.  Kneecapping entrepreneurs and business owners is only the beginning.

Yes? Why wouldn’t I believe this, given that this returns taxes on that income bracket to what they were in Clinton’s time, and that there’s essentially no push to raise those taxes to anything like what they were in the 50s and 60s (under Republican presidents too).

Also, I don’t have any problem with “spreading the wealth,” and I speak as someone who will very likely not be on the receiving end of that equation. Furthermore, your notion that this somehow “kneecaps” entrepreneurs is false; where is the evidence that this is what this modest tax increase will do? You don’t have any of course, which is why instead of making factual arguments you blow up relatively innocuous language into some post-apocalyptic fantasy.

President Obama hasn’t even been in office for two months, and already he’s guaranteed that the deficit will be swelled by a few trillion dollars.  All these Porkulus Plans have to be paid for in part somehow—printing more money just won’t suffice.  Now that liberals are large and in charge, soaking the rich and bleeding them dry in order to comfort those who feel entitled to other people’s money is the seeming financial plan for the foreseeable future.

Hurf de durf. This isn’t even worth responding to because your points have no connection with reality. This is a common tactic on the right: any time the rich aren’t being pandered to means they’re being soaked. We’d better all bow down and worship our benign overlords or they won’t deign to throw us a crust of bread as they pass us on the street. Of course, you don’t have the remotest idea of what “bleeding the rich” would look like. It’s just a thing you say because you have no real argument so you have to cast everything in the direst terms. God forbid people should actually realize this isn’t the end of the world and maybe we can use this public spending for something worthwhile instead of bombing Middle Eastern countries.

I’m just not confident that hammering folks like TigerHawk will have a positive outcome in the end.

As far as I’m concerned, people like TigerHawk haven’t been hammered enough.

Does anyone remember that expression, “brain drain?” Let’s not be so partisan that we’re willing to lobotomize our society in order to spite those we politically disagree with.

Except we already agree that people so stupid as to reduce their income significantly to avoid a slight increase in taxes on a portion of that income are brains that probably should be drained.  They’re occupying important spots in society that could be filled by people with two synapses to rub together.

I’m just not confident that hammering folks like TigerHawk will have a positive outcome in the end.

Boo fucking hoo.  We’re breaking out the sledges.

“I’m just not confident that hammering folks like TigerHawk will have a positive outcome in the end.”

You’re right -A.  We should instead be having public trials of those who took other people’s money and gambled it away on bullshit like CDOs and CDSs.  And then we can follow up with all the cheerleading assholes like TigerHawk. 

The French showed us the way 200-years ago, all we have to do is follow their example.  And if a French doctor can invent a very efficient machine for executing people 200+ years ago, surely modern American ingenuity and materials can do better…

MikeEss -

Soylent Green is people!

That’d do it.

Do you actually believe that this “slight” tax increase on the incomes of successful and productive people is a one-time thing?

Yes. It will pay the bills that the government hasn’t been paying, and eventually middle class incomes will start rising again, and we’ll all be better off, particularly when private investment increases again and gets directed towards the “real economy” rather than being lent out for dubious hedge fund and real estate scams.

I’m less interested in the fate of TigerHawk than I am in the ability and opportunity for one of his employees to get a business loan and start a small business of his own. Plus, I’m interested in seeing regular, middle class employees see their incomes rise regularly.

If people like TigerHawk want to “go Galt,” I’m fine with that. The public really is no longer interested in the Chamber of Commerce hucksters. We gave them some accolades based on their supposed success, only to find out that this rung hollow and that they were using their good fortune to support right-wing policies that have caused a lot of damage in this country. If the TigerHawks and the Schriffens are going to use their clout to sell the Americans down the river by supporting jokers like George W. Bush and his corrupt jerks like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, I can’t say they’re really as valuable as they think they are.

“Soylent Green is people!
That’d do it.”

...hey, at least that way they be contributing something beneficial to society.

It would be a simple choice:  Taxes or Soylent Green — take your pick…

Jerry Vinokurov said:

As far as I’m concerned, people like TigerHawk haven’t been hammered enough.

The envy and hatred of those who earned their wealth the old-fashioned way—working for it—couldn’t be more obvious than that very telling statement you just made.

TigerHawk’s “rant” seems more rational with every spite-filled diatribe launched in his direction from those eager to strip him, and successful people, of their hard-fought riches.

Kinda reminds me of that scene from Dr. Zhivago, where the bolsheviks who took over part of the good doctor’s house wound up chopping the family’s finely-crafted furniture into firewood.  I think that’s an illuminating metaphor to what the moneyed class in this nation will be facing soon.

-A

Felagund, MikeEss:

Although it might be better for us to subsidize them to leave, I think we really shouldn’t let them go until they’ve paid their share of national debt (since they’ve already benefited from the things bought with it) and, if they work in the financial industry, their share of TARP and the Fed bailouts. Maybe we can simply take half their profits (ahem) from 40 acres and a mule until everything is even.

This whining coming from the upper class is just the realization that the cracks in the system are now becoming too large to ignore.

Yup. A little bit of reality is finally beginning to leak into their bubble, and they’re starting to get a bit scared. GOOD. They fucking well should be.

Gotta love referring to the assholes whose greed and stupidity brought the economy to its knees as “successful and productive”.  (By that standard I guess pirates are also involved in a productive activity.) They’ll be getting off damned easy if they merely have to pay a bit more in taxes, since a hell of a lot of them should be in jail.

To me, the funniest ones are running around saying they’re going to “go Galt” by accepting their government benefits earlier than planned.  That’s right, they’re going to prove that they’re rugged individualists who don’t need anyone by getting onto Medicare and Social Security.

There’s almost no way to respond to someone that mind-bendingly stupid.  The concept, you are missing it.

<blockqutoe>The envy and hatred of those who earned their wealth the old-fashioned way—working for it</blockquote>Yeah, stop picking on those successful and productive crack dealers, people! They worked their asses off to kill all their rivals, stay alive themselves and keep control of their productive businesses. You think you could do their jobs, liberal wussies?

“I think that’s an illuminating metaphor to what the moneyed class in this nation will be facing soon.”

...oh yeah, the wealthy in this nation are so oppressed!  Why they’re oppressed almost as much as Christians, who are always bleating about how badly they have it.

-A, no matter how well you suck their dicks, the rich in America are never going to reward you with anything more than a mouthful of sticky fluid…

I think that’s an illuminating metaphor to what the moneyed class in this nation will be facing soon.

Whereas now, they’re facing tight times due to a shrinking economy and imploding capital markets. It sucks for them now, but it sucks even more for the 8.1% unemployed and even more who are underemployed. And what did these brilliant “captains of industry” do? They opposed a stimulus plan that was meant to put people back to work. Nice move, guys. If they’re so smart, why were they such unhinged rabid Bush supporters and why did they squander the gains from their artificially low tax rates of the 90s and why did they lash out at the middle classes during these times? It strikes me that they’re not as smart and brilliant as they think they are… they’re just upset about having their ideology repudiated and being part of the “losing team.”  There are plenty of people—even the majority—who are economic leaders and professionally successful who supported Obama. TigerHawk’s not whining because he’s successful—he’s not. He’s whining because he realized he hitched his wagon to a losing ideology
and he realizes that after 8 years, he’s on the losing side, and this pisses him off, being on the wrong side of history.

<blockquote>I don’t like framing the tax hike debacle as a moral issue, but raising marginal taxes decreases the incentive to do marginal work or to take marginal risk and that’s not good for the economy. </blockquote)

Which is why the economy was in such terrible shape during the Eisenhower Administration when the top rate was 91 FUCKING PERCENT.

Moron.

OK, I should stop trying to use HTML when I’m angry…

If a bunch of rich assholes in a forest of self-delusion go Galt, do they make a sound?

Kneecapping entrepreneurs and business owners is only the beginning.

But if entrepreneurs put money back into the business instead of taking it as income, that’s helping the economy.

My husband works for a small company. At the end of every fiscal year, the boss asks them what equipment they want, and spends tens of thousand of dollars on that (It’s a chemistry lab so that’s reasonable). Then he decides how much income he needs. Then he takes the rest of the business’ profit and splits it six ways between his employees (not, I think, equally, but it’s not info they share with each other). He doesn’t get taxed on income he doesn’t need. The business gets what the actual scientists say it needs. And six families go out and buy new appliances, remodel kitchens, and pay off debt, thus pumping money into an economy that I keep hearing is dependent on our spending money.

Is it a socialist notion? Really? Or just a sensible business decision by a man who has already made his fortune? The increased tax rate won’t kneecap him. If it encourages even one other businessman to act the same way, I think it will have been a rousing success.

raising marginal taxes decreases the incentive to do marginal work

Evidence indicates otherwise.

a small business owner, who will bear 100% of the cost of a failed expansion

I’m not really sure you understand how business loans and other methods of raising capital work.

If Republican policies were so good for business, we wouldn’t be in the position we’re in now. I appreciate your ability to mouth the platitudes/religious beliefs of the conservative movement, but this method has been tried and found wanting. My advice? Pursue policies to put people back to work and raise the median income. Taxes were artificially low from 2001-2009, and apparently SOME people were unprepared to deal with that reality, and for that I feel dreadfully sorry for them, but if they had expended their time and energy to doing something other than selling out the rest of the country with their full-throated support of George W Bush, degregulation, and the Iraq war, we would have been better off.

The sad part is that Obama’s economic policies will raise the incomes of these rich people, and they’ll make more money, and the small increase in marginal tax rates won’t hurt them, and then they’ll vote for Republicans who will blow it all to hell again.

“Office Space” anyone? “TPS Reports”? The “Bobs”?  Anyone get that reference? One of the themes of the movie:Working hard at a white collar job didn’t actually mean working hard. It just meant looking like you were working hard.
These upper class a$$holes are so sure they work harder than everyone else because they shout into the phone on a call to Japan at 11pm, make 6 to 7 figures and pay an immigrant to take care of their children.

We want people taking business risks again (albeit at reduced levels of leverage compared to past boom times), and we need those risk-takers to get the economy moving.

Actually, no, we don’t need people taking business risks again, at least not the kind that people have been taking for the past decade.  A huge part of the reason we’re in the situation we’re in now is that we removed so much regulation that bankers and investors were able to take huge risks with other people’s money without facing any risk to themselves.  Now we’re stuck with a bunch of worthless CDOs and other tricksy financial instruments that no one vetted properly because, hey, they were going to get their bonuses whether the investment did well or tanked, so why should they bother figuring out if it was a good investment or not?

What we need is for banks and investors to realize that 3% to 6% returns on an investment are perfectly reasonable, and the only way you can get 12% to 15% returns is to be a crook like Madoff or Stanford and run a Ponzi scheme defrauding your investors.  What we need is for banks to realize that even though it’s boring to lend money to companies that are solid and can pay you back, that’s what you need to do to have a stable business.  Clearly, though, it’s going to take a couple dozen more slaps in the face before they realize that our entire financial system is built on smoke and mirrors and they have to get back to investing in companies that actually make things or do things, not companies whose sole reason for existing is to make money.

The envy and hatred of those who earned their wealth the old-fashioned way—working for it—couldn’t be more obvious than that very telling statement you just made.

I think it’s quite telling that your move is not to actually argue against anything I said (of course you can’t) but to try and psychologize me. My feelings about TigerHawk (though you’re right, I do hate people like him) are irrelevant to the correctness of my points. Again, a standard tool in the right wing arsenal: since you can’t plainly justify to the majority of Americans that they should be robbed for the enrichment of the already wealthy, you have to translate your argument into terms like “envy” and “hatred” because it allows you to obfuscate the real issues at hand.

And it’s doubly funny that you think I somehow resent people who got wealthy by working. You know, I work pretty hard (I’m on the tail end of a physics Ph.D., fingers crossed to finish next year); I never got a $50 million golden parachute like noted Republican hack Carly Fiorina (hey HP, I will run your company into the ground for a measly $5 million!). The majority of the people responsible for our current crisis do not work any harder than anyone else, and they built their wealth on phony, obfuscated financial instruments whose consequences they hoped would never need to be reckoned with. I’m supposed to feel sad for them?

TigerHawk’s “rant” seems more rational with every spite-filled diatribe launched in his direction from those eager to strip him, and successful people, of their hard-fought riches.

The riches are made possible by a particular system; the existence of that system is a contingent fact about America, not a “natural” state of things. Either you contribute to the system or get out.

Atanarjuat demonstrates in one neat package the total and undeniable failure of the Republican project. For 30 years, the conservative elements in this country have been engaged in dismantling rights, protections, and support systems for the very people whom they then turn around and rob by various mechanisms of their hard earned (really hard-earned) money. These are just the last gyrations of a decapitated serpent; it’s got a tiny little brain in its tail, so it can still thrash around a little bit and doesn’t really realize it’s dead. The liberals have won; the liberals always win in the end, and the conservatives are going to be left picking up the pieces and crying about how unfair it is that we treat women like human beings, or provide support for people who fall on tough times, or refuse to pay homage to the moneyed classes. I’m playing the world’s smallest violin for you, dude.

America is one of the few places where you can apply for jobs in I-Banking, Management Consulting, medicine, and corporate law and make a lot of money doing it relatively soon. You face fewer barriers there than in other countries, and you’ll have greater access to such jobs assuming you did well in college. And you’ll face lower costs of real estate and lower taxes.

The problem is, now, we’re bogged down in 2 wars (that they supported) and an economic contraction caused by imploding markets and lots of people are out of work (due to economic policies that they supported). It sort of makes sense that we should be supporting measures that can pay our bills after 8 years of artificially low tax rates and that we should support policies (which they oppose) to put people back to work, right here and right now to get the economy moving again.

Are people not interested in paying money to keep the “land of opportunity” afloat, or are they just hoping to pocket as much money as they can before they retire, not caring if economic opportunity evaporates for everyone else after their professional lives are done with?

Also, the complaints about how this will hurt small business owners are nonsense.  A company that’s making over $250,000 in net profits a year is not a small business.

I don’t like framing the tax hike debacle as a moral issue, but raising marginal taxes decreases the incentive to do marginal work or to take marginal risk and that’s not good for the economy.  If you take economics 101, you learn that a tax is not just a revenue-generating mechanism.

And I’m sure if you ever get past econ 101, you’ll learn that people’s reactions to tax brackets are not nearly so simple. In fact, as long as the tax brackets are not particularly punishing, people don’t really change their work strategy to avoid falling into them. And in fact, as it has been pointed out numerous times, this is simply a return to a tax rate that we had before anyway; we know already that it’s not really going to incentivize people to not work.

A lot of the “rich” people in the top two or three percent of earners are not rich because they have inherited wealth, or rich because they own the means of production.  Their source of wealth is specialized skills for which demand is (historically) quite high.

What’s that got to do with anything? They are the beneficiaries of a system which among other things builds the roads that they drive on, educates the people who work in their companies, provides them with legal protections, and creates economic incentives for them to expand their business. They are receiving a disproportionate share of the wealth generated in this country and can easily afford to give a higher percentage of it back once they hit a particular income bracket.

The high compensation incentivizes these guys to work a lot and that work creates value.  If you reduce the value of an additional hour of work by increasing the tax on it, then you reduce the incentive to work the extra hour.  That’s problematic, especially when it reduces the availability of something like health care.

Except that’s not what actually happens because people aren’t automatons.

Similarly, a higher tax on the gains of invested wealth deters risk.  We want people taking business risks again (albeit at reduced levels of leverage compared to past boom times), and we need those risk-takers to get the economy moving.  Slicing off a bigger chunk of capital gains is counterproductive to the important national goal of enticing idle capital off the sidelines and get it back to work funding jobs and growth.

We can easily incentivize these behaviors by providing tax breaks for business expansion. This has nothing to do with taxes on personal income.

It is possible that the super rich, the private jet class, may be taxable at a higher rate without fundamentally changing their behavior. But squeezing the top 2-5% of earners for another seven percent of their income is not a good plan in a weak economy.

It’s not good in a weak economy or a strong economy or according to conservatives in any economy! How terribly convenient.

Jerry Vinokurov said:

I never got a $50 million golden parachute like noted Republican hack Carly Fiorina

Precisely.  Since you haven’t gotten rewarded, no one else should, either.  Another very illuminating class envy comment from you, Jerry.

And yes, it’s rather obvious that you hate people like TigerHawk, as per your admission.  Moreover, it is indeed very relevant that the “correctness” of your points are suffused with this anti-upper class bias you’ve repeatedly expressed.

I get it, I really do.

The liberals have won; the liberals always win in the end

The economy has cratered, jobs are being shed at an alarming rate, and your primary tendency is to remind the loyal opposition is that you’ve “won!”  A phyrric victory indeed, my sad and angry friend.

But please, keep doing your fist-bumping victory dance while people like TigerHawk are marginalized for having the audacity to work hard for their success instead of relying on government assistance.  I’m sure that kind of class warfare will help us all come together to find solutions and help get America back on its feet.

-A

Nothing brings out the hacks like the hypothetical minor suffering of the richest of the rich.

Anyway, _nothing_ would do more to encourage entrepreneurship than a national health-care system that made it much easier to leave an adequate-or-worse job that happens to have benefits.

There’s something impressive about Atanarjuat’s ability to troll, saying absolutely nothing, while appearing to actually say something. He even quotes from others providing the appearance of a reply while not actually doing so.

However, in the same way that I watch a movie for its story rather than the “great cinematography,” I have to rate Atanarjuat a “minus” when it comes to intellectual contribution of his comments. A thumbs down.

Precisely.  Since you haven’t gotten rewarded, no one else should, either.  Another very illuminating class envy comment from you, Jerry.

You sure do have reading comprehension problems don’t you? She ran the company into the ground and got rewarded for it. But whatever, it’s not like you care about facts anyway.

And yes, it’s rather obvious that you hate people like TigerHawk, as per your admission.  Moreover, it is indeed very relevant that the “correctness” of your points are suffused with this anti-upper class bias you’ve repeatedly expressed.

Waaah, the peons won’t play nice!

The economy has cratered, jobs are being shed at an alarming rate, and your primary tendency is to remind the loyal opposition is that you’ve “won!” A phyrric victory indeed, my sad and angry friend.

Ah, of course, those last 8 years when Obama was in charge and had a Democratic congress helping him out. Reality, what’s that?

But please, keep doing your fist-bumping victory dance while people like TigerHawk are marginalized for having the audacity to work hard for their success instead of relying on government assistance.  I’m sure that kind of class warfare will help us all come together to find solutions and help get America back on its feet.

Ok, will do. Of course, since any solution that doesn’t involve licking TigerHawk’s bootheels is unacceptable for you, so I’m sure you’ll continue to complain no matter what gets done short of the restoration of the plutocracy.

See, the thing you’re missing here is that I’m not interested in convincing you because you can’t be convinced. You’ve got your tune and you’re going to sing it no matter what, so it’s not like anything I say could change your mind. But fortunately, I also don’t need to convince you, I only need to convince a majority of voters, and it looks like that’s been done. So you can continue to do your little “pity-the-rich” act, but it doesn’t matter because you don’t matter. I once remember, not too long ago, some folks saying something about how elections have consequences. Looks like you weren’t the only ones paying attention to that.

And if a French doctor can invent a very efficient machine for executing people 200+ years ago, surely modern American ingenuity and materials can do better…

I’ll bring my knitting.  Vive les tricoteuses!

Ok, I apologize for feeding the troll. I’ll stop.

The liberals have won; the liberals always win in the end.

“The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.” - Mark Twain

As for the Galt-goers, I echo the call for them to go for it.  Any money that they leave on the table will be picked up by the next person who’s not quite so stupid.  Meanwhile, they can piss and moan about living under the same punishing tax rates that they had to bear under the tyrannical reign of that dirty socialist Ronald Wilson Reagan.

I also love how “going galt” is so utterly and totally misused.  The very best INVENTORS, MANUFACTURERS, EMPLOYERS, etc.—Ayn’s “PRODUCERS” went on strike.  NOT the financiers and lawyers who were all part of the moocher mentality.

Seriously, I adore Rand, even though she only 1/2 got it.  But just like everything else, half her “supporters” abuse her philosophy to feed their own twisted ends.

When making $500k requires working 80 hours a week, and you can make 350k working 65, and the marginal benefit of the $150k in additional earnings is only $85k after taxes, maybe some doctor will decide to go eat dinner with his kids instead of performing surgery on you.

That’s what’s funny—you actually think it would be a bad thing for people to stop working punishing hours and spend more time with their families rather than working themselves to death in order to get that extra $85K.

You know what would happen if that surgeon decided to not do that surgery?  Another surgeon would do it.  Because, believe it or not, we don’t have a lack of good doctors in this country. 

If Carly Fiorina hadn’t been promised $45 million regardless of her performance at HP, a lot of people would be a whole lot better off right now, because she wouldn’t have had an incentive to meddle around with things that were working just fine so she could get her bonus.  The fact that she tanked two companies did not affect her at all, because her golden parachute was guaranteed.

And yet you think it’s a good thing to incentivize executives to screw around with their companies with no consequences to themselves—hey, if the company tanks, they just take their $30 or $50 or $100 million and walk away, leaving smoking wreckage behind them.  Why should they care?  There was no financial risk to themselves.

Oh, I forgot—pointing out that paying someone $45 million to run a company into the ground might be counterproductive to keeping that company healthy is “class warfare” and just proves that I’m jealous of those masters/mistresses of the universe who can tank a company and walk away with millions of dollars for their trouble.

Like Jerry said, if HP had wanted someone to ruin their company, I would have been happy to do it for half the price.

Jerry Vinokurov said:

So you can continue to do your little “pity-the-rich” act, but it doesn’t matter because you don’t matter.

Yes, I know, anyone who disagrees with compulsory wealth redistribution and taxes that punish success and hard work should be marginalized and ignored.  It’s a constant theme I see on liberal blogs.

That’s fine, Jerry.  You keep celebrating your pseudo-proletariat victory against those who actually labor to make this country great.  Just don’t be surprised if that dismissive smugness that you and your fellow liberals keep expressing may end up resulting in an outraged, conservative backlash in the next two elections.  Then we’ll see who’s “on the wrong side of history.”

-A

People will not tailor their work to avoid falling within the tax bracket, because the brackets only tax marginal earnings above the bracket.  Trying to hit the bracket is pointless.  But it reduces the incentive to produce the marginal unit of value, and that is going to have an impact on the availability of that value.  When making $500k requires working 80 hours a week, and you can make 350k working 65, and the marginal benefit of the $150k in additional earnings is only $85k after taxes, maybe some doctor will decide to go eat dinner with his kids instead of performing surgery on you.

Again, people aren’t automatons; I find it hard to believe that for someone making that kind of money the tipping point is that extra 3% you’re being taxed in that bracket. That’s what, a difference of at most $10k, and you’re telling me that’s going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back? I don’t believe it for a second. You’re also ignoring institutional incentives to work a certain amount, such as “up-and-out” systems. And there’s no shortage of qualified people who would be happy to take up that slack.

Just like people don’t stop polluting because you tax pollution, and many people don’t stop smoking when you tax cigarettes.  The effect of the incentive is subtler, but taxes affect behavior.

“Taxes affect behavior” is a pointless truism that is worthless without some quantitative indication of how they do so. Unless you’re going to point me to some data that corroborates your points above, you’re just making things up.

It does have to do with the risk relative to return on investing, in a society where stock market investment has been part of the ordinary middle-class retirement savings plan.  Raising the capital gains tax when we want people to put their money back into the market makes no sense.

If you’re making over $250k per year, you are not in the “ordinary middle class.” That’s not a value judgment, that’s a mathematical fact that follows from any reasonable definition of “middle class.”

This is correct.  Lower income taxes are always better than higher income taxes.  But raising taxes is a particularly destructive government act in a weak economy.

No, they aren’t. You don’t have any proof of that, so your doctrinaire position is meaningless. In fact, there may be some situations in which higher taxes are better and some in which lower taxes are better; it all comes down to what works, not what you would like to see happen in fantasy-land.

Yes, I know, anyone who disagrees with compulsory wealth redistribution and taxes that punish success and hard work should be marginalized and ignored.  It’s a constant theme I see on liberal blogs.

Watch out for those black helicopters, chief! Sorry we don’t live in your magic world.

That’s fine, Jerry.  You keep celebrating your pseudo-proletariat victory against those who actually labor to make this country great.  Just don’t be surprised if that dismissive smugness that you and your fellow liberals keep expressing may end up resulting in an outraged, conservative backlash in the next two elections.  Then we’ll see who’s “on the wrong side of history.”

Oh noes a conservative backlash!

Keep smoldering, dude. Too bad no amount of anger can make up for the fact that everything conservatives have touched has turned to shit, but don’t let that stop you from dreaming.

I wonder if they consider the last two elections to be a “liberal backlash”.

You know what kneecaps entrepreneurs?

Having to pay for health insurance for employees.

You know what else kneecaps entrepreneurs?

Not being able to be entrepreneurs because they have to work at a job for a big corporation that provides them health benefits.

The people at the top of big corporations are not entrepreneurs. They create nothing. They invent nothing. They are parasites on the brilliant ideas of others, who are generally small fry who are either unable to get together the capital to make a small business, whose small business cannot grow enough to compete with the big guys, or who already work for a salary at the big corporation, coming up with ideas in exchange for a high five figure salary, hardly significant wealth.

Paying extra taxes would free entrepreneurs if the money was turned around and put into universal health care. As a small business owner who is taking a bath on an employee because I have to pay for his health insurance, I say, bring on the extra taxes. It would be almost impossible for Obama to raise taxes enough that I would not still make a profit if I didn’t have to pay health insurance in exchange for my higher taxes.

Lower income taxes are always better than higher income taxes.

Sorry, this is a religious belief of yours that doesn’t have any basis in fact.  There are a lot of ways that you can use higher income taxes to incentivize people to behave in ways that are better for the economy as a whole.  If higher income taxes on a business owner mean s/he has an incentive to instead put that money towards capital improvements to the business rather than buying a vacation home or yacht for personal use, those capital improvements benefit the overall economy far more than that home or yacht. 

You can argue from a philosophical base that it’s not the business of the government to direct the economy, but it’s false to claim that lower income taxes are always better than higher income taxes.

“Just don’t be surprised if that dismissive smugness that you and your fellow liberals keep expressing may end up resulting in an outraged, conservative backlash in the next two elections.”

...the only “conservative backlash” I fear is when the next Timothy McVeigh drinks a little too much of that wingnut Koolaid and decides that guns and explosives are the solution to his problems…

Raising the capital gains tax when we want people to put their money back into the market makes no sense.

Again, we don’t want people to put their money back into mortgage-backed securities and other idiotic financial instruments.  We want people to put their money into capital improvements for businesses.  I see no problem with giving people incentives to not make foolish investments that they then expect the taxpayers to bail them out from.

Lower income taxes are always better than higher income taxes.

This is flatly false.  There is an optimum level of taxation at which the government has sufficient revenue to deal with collective action problems and handle the externalities of private enterprise. 

Freidmanite economics had been decisively refuted by the collapse of the stock market.  Without an external check on abusive behavior the free market will produce bubbles and collapses with regularity.  This is well known to people familiar with reality, or even just with economics above the introductory level.

Just-so stories based on Econ 101 are nice and all, but there is a reason that Economics departments offer classes above 101, extending all the way to 800 level in some cases.  You can’t build computers using Electrical Engineering 101, and you can’t run an economy on Econ 101.

I can make this simpler through the use of simple images and sounds, if need be.

Jesse Taylor

Can you help me understand with an interperative dance?

Go to Manhattan’s Upper East Side or other premium location and take a look at how the high-flying executives, lawyers, traders free up the time to work more. They either marry a servant (aka “stay at home wife”) to get all the practical necessaries done for them, and/or they subcontract the chores of daily living to poorly paid workers. Eat out, send laundry out, hire maids to clean on a weekly or more basis, hire nanny. And very often, these surrogates, especially nannies and maids, are either undocumented non-US citizen workers or are part=time co-opted into being paid “under the table” - employer offers a larger cash wage to the worker in exchange for not paying Social Security tax for them, thus enabling the worker to either avoid declaring taxable income or avoid being picked up by Immigration.

Almost all of us will subcontract out some chore of daily living, usually by eating out or buying pre-cooked meals at the deli/supermarket. The very wealthy achieve more “billable hours” by doing so on a large scale.

The envy and hatred of those who earned their wealth the old-fashioned way

... by having other people work for you, so you can shave off a huge chunk of the value of what they produce and keep it for yourself. Yep, capitalism is the old fashioned way: barely an evolution from feudal lords mooching off peasants working the land they conquered by force.

Alara, with all respect, I’m not sure if I follow your reasoning.

Universal healthcare, which will have to be organized and run by the government, will have massive overhead in terms of administrative costs and possibly unionized labor (a liberal administration can’t resist the latter).  The taxes required to pay for this kind of government program will be staggering and will consume a great portion of the annual federal budget.

If you don’t believe me, look at what’s happening now in those utopian European countries that have universal healthcare.  Their economic issues are even worse than ours—especially because of those stratospherically high taxes that help pay for all that “free” healthcare.

Please think this through.  Tilting hard left is not the solution to our own economic pitfalls, and bleeding the rich that keep the country running even less so.

-A

And his example of how rich people give back—-by sitting on boards of art museums—-chilled me to the bone.

My father was on the boards of some charitable organizations.  Not once did he do it to “give back” to his community.  It was 100 percent networking.  Many of those richy rich organizations are entirely about rich people shmoozing amongst themselves and throwing lavish parties (aka fundraisers).  Those types of organizations also typically have the highest overhead, pay the largest salaries to their executives (think mid- to high-six figures), and quite frankly do the least good for the community at large.

I’m not saying that all of those organizations are worthless (I like art museums as much as any other member of the intellectual urban elite.), but many of those organizations would do much better work without those Productive Americans donating their precious time.

Also, I endorse everything Alara Rogers says above.  This point: They are parasites on the brilliant ideas of others… is particularly ironic, since it’s a point made by Ayn Rand in, among other works, Atlas Shrugged.  John Galt’s motivation for “going Galt” is in part the parasitic nature of the corporate overlords who would exploit his invention for their own benefit without contributing anything of value.

Universal healthcare, which will have to be organized and run by the government, will have massive overhead in terms of administrative costs and possibly unionized labor (a liberal administration can’t resist the latter).

Translation: Single payer healthcare, since it will be run by the government, might have to pay more because possibly employees won’t be glorified slaves and will have a bit of power over their own destiny because they will use their right to free association to obtain some bargain power over their employer.

Also, bullshit on the overhead. Like medical practices don’t have huge administrative overheads from having to pay people whose only purpose is to get a hundred different insurance companies to pay up for their patients.

I forgot to add to the previous 12:41 post: Nannies, maids, and other personal services providers who work outside the Social Security system, either because they are undocumented aliens or because they don’t want to take a lower wage AND be made to pay taxes on it, are very vulnerable to employer coercion to work very long hours without being paid minimum wage for all time worked, or to tolerate dangerous/abusive working conditions (being locked in while working). So, a nanny or other personal servant may work as many or more hours than the 70 hour a week hotshot broker employing them.

Why is it conservatives forget all about simple stuff like ‘economy of scale’ as soon as health care gets into the picture?

Having a hundred insurers and every medical practice having to hire at least one person to take care of contacting them, versus a single insurer and all of the bureaucracy being state-side instead of on the side of the individual medical practices. You don’t think *maybe* that if a single entity is responsible for paying for the costs of running the bureaucracy, it might get some economy of scale discount?

BlackBloc said:

... by having other people work for you, so you can shave off a huge chunk of the value of what they produce and keep it for yourself. Yep, capitalism is the old fashioned way: barely an evolution from feudal lords mooching off peasants working the land they conquered by force.

Come now, BlackBloc.  I can appreciate the occasional use of hyperbole to drive home a point, but this assertion is just way over the top.

Rich people provide jobs and security to those who are less successful.  There’s nothing oppressive about such a traditional, time-honored business relationship in this country.  The American working class can hardly be compared to feudal peasants of yore, as every citizen in the 21st century has the right to vote and their grievances can be redressed in a court of law.

Let’s keep it real, please.

-A

“Universal healthcare, which will have to be organized and run by the government, will have massive overhead in terms of administrative costs…”

...as opposed to now where not only do you have massive overhead in terms of administrative costs, but you also have massive profit taking, huge salaries and bonuses for the Mahogany Row set, as well as huge inefficiencies directly related to both maintaining a huge and unorganized system of competing insurance companies and competing health providers (whose competition consists primarily of trying to get some other company to pay), but also social and financial costs related to figuring out how not to pay for care people need.

Even if incompetent Bushites (I know, that’s redundant) run a new American Health Service, it’s hard to see how it could be much worse, short of the insurance barons robbing patients directly at gunpoint…

... and possibly unionized labor…”

Oh Noes!  Actually giving employees some tiny fraction of the power Big Business wields over them every day?  Heavens!...

I can appreciate the occasional use of hyperbole to drive home a point, but this assertion is just way over the top.

I should agree, good sir! Why, upon reading Mr. BlackBloc’s comment, I almost spit out my brandy and had to adjust my monocle!

Obviously, here, people like Alara are the ones more in tune with what actual people who create real, live value and business are concerned about. TigerHawk, investment bankers, corporate lawyers, and the Lisa Shriffen-esque wingnut welfare beneficiaries who’ve never had to face competition in search of a job much less create one, are just blowing smoke and falsely associating themselves with the people who do actual, real work and have real concerns.

okay, knowdoubt has GOT to be rugged in montana reincarnated.

Atanarjuat, I’m not sure if you’re a parody or not. If the latter, I hope you understand that real wealthy people (as opposed to JoeDuhPlumber-style “owners” of millions in imaginary corporate equity) laugh at dupes like you. The conservative ones laugh because you’re a prime sucker and boot licker, and the liberal ones laugh because you’re so bloody ignorant of basic economics and finance.

Just don’t be surprised if that dismissive smugness that you and your fellow liberals keep expressing may end up resulting in an outraged, conservative backlash in the next two elections.  Then we’ll see who’s “on the wrong side of history.”

Hate to tell you, but if the current economic crisis is as bad as it seems, any such “backlash” will first express itself as a populist revolt within/against the GOP establishment by Know-Nothings, and that won’t bode well at all for the laissez-faire capitalist wing of either party. Of course, being neither wealthy, educated nor liberal, you’ll have the luxury of shifting your rhetoric and joining that proud expression of ignorance.

I rather like capitalism myself, which is one of the reasons I lean moderate Keynesian (translated for you: “onea them thar homo-lovin’ pinko soshalists”) in my economics and support policies like universal healthcare. And I can guarantee you that, though I have the privilege of choosing to live a relatively (for the G7 West) un-materialistic and balanced lifestyle, I’m not one to promote class envy and warfare—to think that way would be counter-productive, to say the least.

I don’t like framing the tax hike debacle as a moral issue,

Please. Of course you do, Mitch. Except when it comes to framing the application of those funds to corporate welfare—then you extreme free marketeers get oddly quiet about the issue of moral hazard (mainly because you’re really Rotarian socialists). I didn’t hear guys like Rick Santelli ranting when Bush was bailing out the i-banks and insurance companies with no accountability last fall, but some actual libertarian and conservative businessmen I knew were outraged.

Learn the difference between income taxes and corporate taxes, and maybe run a business or professional practise yourself. Then get back to us about the behaviour of entrepreneurs and highly specialised professionals (and even some HNWIs who live off their investments). I think you’ll find that most of us are grown-ups who understand that “going Galt” when it comes to the source of one’s income (and additionally eschewing the benefits of the commons in the process) is about as unrealistic and immature a concept as a 50-page “radio address” that captures the rapt attention of a nation.

When making $500k requires working 80 hours a week, and you can make 350k working 65, and the marginal benefit of the $150k in additional earnings is only $85k after taxes, maybe some doctor will decide to go eat dinner with his kids instead of performing surgery on you.

Trust me, the kind of physician who’s in it mainly for the money is not the kind of doctor you want performing surgery on you. Fortunately, most MDsare in the game for other reasons—wish I could say the same about the various MBAs and JDs who pollute corporate America.

However, thanks for providing an illustration of why extreme free marketeers (i.e. those who obsess soley on the economic aspects of libertarianism) are so blinkered in their thinking: in your minds, every interaction and decision, from choice of profession to risk-friendliness to relations with women, is defined as an economic transaction involving currency.

What we need is for banks and investors to realize that 3% to 6% returns on an investment are perfectly reasonable, and the only way you can get 12% to 15% returns is to be a crook like Madoff or Stanford and run a Ponzi scheme defrauding your investors.

Only the greedpigs and people who’ve never had big-budget P&L;responsibility don’t understand that, and they’re natural-born marks for confidence artists (see Atanarjuat, above). Most reasonable people understand that, anomalous but legit bumps aside, the highest ROI you’re going to get realistically on any investment is 10%.

Rich people provide jobs and security to those who are less successful.

Fuck you.  Fuck you and your pose of objective rationality.  Lower taxes have done nothing to provide security to me and mine.  The past eight years have made me only incrementally poorer as my wages stayed flat while my expenses, especially health-care-related, have blossomed like mushrooms in cow shit.  Please get hit by a <strike>bus</strike> chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car and die at your earliest convenience.

maybe some doctor will decide to go eat dinner with his kids instead of performing surgery on you.

What’s the problem, here? Most surgeons are up front about their complaints that there are too many surgeons competing with them for patients. I don’t begrudge the hard-working surgeon who loves his work and wants to make more money for serving more patients, but it’s not like there aren’t plenty of others willing to pick up the slack.

Okay, I know I’m late on this thread, but can someone please explain how success is being “punished” by going back to a tax rate we had during relative economic prosperity?

Gracchus said:

I’m not one to promote class envy and warfare—to think that way would be counter-productive, to say the least.

I’m very much heartened to read that, Gracchus.  If only your fellow liberals were as forward-thinking and rational, as projecting all this vicious hatred against TigerHawk and others like him is indeed counterproductive.

-A

kaninchen said:

Fuck you.  Fuck you and your pose of objective rationality.
[...]
Please get hit by a bus chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car and die at your earliest convenience.

Liberal tolerance for dissenting views at its finest.  Thank you.

-A

Hey, I’m just another jerk posting to a blog.  I’m not the one making Republican dissenters publicly lick Rush Limbaugh’s ass.

There was something about motes and beams that I can’t recall right now.

Please think this through.  Tilting hard left is not the solution to our own economic pitfalls, and bleeding the rich that keep the country running even less so.

The rich aren’t keeping this country running, you ass.  The rich, by waging class warfare on the middle class, haven’t paid their fair share in decades.  The economy is totally fucked b/c the rich have run us into the ground.

History shows that FDR was right.  The most prosperous times for the US are when we have a large middle class.

If the rich are really so b/c they are so smart, then they should have been socking all that money away for a rainy day (b/c we know for a fact they sure as hell weren’t letting it trickle down). 

You cannot be the party that started 2 wars and CUT taxes and still somehow try to claim you are the party of fiscal responsibility.  Since the time of St. Ronnie, it’s been Republicans that create massive deficits, and claim that said deficits are fine and dandy until they lose power.

As for complaining about the massive deficits Obama has “created” in just his first month and a half…fuck that shit.  Obama put the cost of the war in the budget where it belonged, and as promised, he’s started a massive spending program designed to get us out of the mess the Republicans created with the historically-proven way of jump-starting the nation.

Face it.  W is no longer the president.  Grown-ups are in charge.  The days of the rich soaking the rest of the nation are over.  It’s not ‘class warfare’ to revert to a time when the rich were paying their fair share as opposed to placing undue burdens upon the other 90% of the country.

Go read a little history.  Tilting far left is EXACTLY what is called for at this time.  Continuing to cut taxes for the uberwealthy will lead to utter collapse.  It may already be too late, but I have hope in That One.

I’m very much heartened to read that, Gracchus.  If only your fellow liberals were as forward-thinking and rational, as projecting all this vicious hatred against TigerHawk and others like him is indeed counterproductive.

I’m fond of saying that the only class warfare that’s been promulgated over the last 25 years is the GOP’s war on a healthy and sustainable American middle class. I’m sure you’d disagree, but you seem to be one of those folks who longs for the company town, blissfully unaware that you’ll be sweeping its sidewalks.

As to TigerHawk, I can certainly see where his class privilege would contribute to the generally blinkered and idiotic economic views you seem to share with him. Some people are smart (and self-interested) enough to see beyond that privilege, some aren’t. Engaging in the class warfare rhetoric of the Marxist-Leninists and Jacobins would, for various reasons, be personally counter-productive for me, but I’m not stupid enough to pretend it doesn’t matter or doesn’t express genuine disconent.

Okay, I know I’m late on this thread, but can someone please explain how success is being “punished” by going back to a tax rate we had during relative economic prosperity?

No.  Nobody can give an explanation.  That’s assuming you want one that makes sense and is grounded in reality.  If regurgitated right wing talking points divorced from any empirical basis are good enough for you, we may be able to accommodate your request.

Universal healthcare, which will have to be organized and run by the government, will have massive overhead in terms of administrative costs…

As opposed to the minuscule administrative costs now required by health insurance companies? Try selling that one to any physician’s office staff.

Atanarjuat, if you got a stiffie knowing that you made a poor woman angry by telling her her life didn’t happen the way her memory (and financial records) suggest, tipping is encouraged.

Go read a little history. Tilting far left is EXACTLY what is called for at this time.

The sad thing about the state of American political discourse is that the Overton Window has shifted so far to the right to the point that FDR’s New Deal could be considered anything close to “far left.” Roosevelt was an American aristocrat, Keynes was a member of Britain’s intellectual elite, and both men were primarily focused on saving capitalism from itself so they could continue to enjoy the privileges it bestowed on them.

There are plenty of people—even the majority—who are economic leaders and professionally successful who supported Obama.

The richest man on the planet comes to mind.  The old investor dude from Omaha was a pretty staunch supporter of Obama.

And Buffett is a guy that most of the Galters worship as a God.

Naah, that’s okay.  I was just reading through the thread and wondering if I missed something.  I’m getting a kick out of the apologists, though.

Roosevelt was an American aristocrat, Keynes was a member of Britain’s intellectual elite, and both men were primarily focused on saving capitalism from itself so they could continue to enjoy the privileges it bestowed on them.

That’s because FDR (and his cousin, Teddy) knew that without regulating capitalism and putting a social safety net in place, eventually people like them would be sent to the guillotine. See: 1780s France, 1917 Russia, 1949 China.

Either that (violent far-left overthrow by the lower class) or they’d end up like Nazi Germany where the capitalists are forced to share power with a far-right demagogue in exchange for crushing the left.

The capitalists don’t make out as well in either situation as they do in a New Deal-type arrangement.

Caren, a poor person never provided a job for me or anyone else I know.  I’m sorry if that sounds rather stark, but it’s so axiomatic as to be irrefutable.

BlackBloc alluded to the truth earlier, even if his response was full of undue snark.  Many people who are wealthy have indeed reached that state by having others work for them.  Put another way, the rich provide the jobs that we need in order to survive and prosper, albeit on a smaller scale.  If that smaller scale bothers many of you, nothing is stopping you from working your way up—just as the wealthy have—and attaining your own level of success.  That’s capitalism, and that’s the American way.

Movers and shakers like TigerHawk are simply reminding the rest of us, in a very sober and insightful way, that this country works best when entrepreneurs and business owners are permitted to invest their capital as they see fit, which in turn promotes the creation of jobs and domestic stability.  These radical attempts to strip them of their wealth simply because the government can goes against the grain of what has built this country and made it such a great economic example to the rest of the world.

Simply put, if you think the job losses during this recession are bad, just imagine how much more frightening the losses will be if entrepreneurs and business owners like TigerHawk are compelled to scale back their contributions to society and the common good.

-A

Caren, a poor person never provided a job for me or anyone else I know.

Horseshit. The poor and the middle class are the people who are the engine of mass consumption which drives the economy.

See how many cars you can sell when the poor and middle class are out of work. Oh, wait. You don’t have to, you can look at how well car dealerships are doing right now.

The thing is that if my blog commenting amounted to simply ignoring everyone elses comments and cutting and pasting hackneyed right-wing talking points (the obedience to which has resulted in our current mess), I would become extremely bored. I assume that Atanarjuat is simply so slow that he lacks need to be in any way intellectually stimulated.

That’s because FDR (and his cousin, Teddy) knew that without regulating capitalism and putting a social safety net in place, eventually people like them would be sent to the guillotine. See: 1780s France, 1917 Russia, 1949 China.

Exactly. And the people DTG mentioned @1:40 think the same way: systematically.

The GOP economic project of the last 25 years has been an attempt to return us to the “glorious” days of America ca. 1895, mainly by un-doing as much of TR’s and FDR’s regulation as possible. Gramm-Leach-Bliley is going to rank up there with Smoot-Hawley as one of those historic acts of American legislation that made a cyclic economic downturn much worse than it had to be.

Anybody who would “go Galt” over three percent of the upper margin of their +250K income is manifestly such a lack-witted waste of space that we’re all better off without them. Shit we should make it an entire five percent and convince even more of our societal dead weight to take a hike.

Tyro, I"m sorry that you somehow feel ignored, but it’s not intentional.  I respond to what I wish, just as everyone else is doing.

Nothing sinister or “slow” about that.

-A

Come now, BlackBloc.  I can appreciate the occasional use of hyperbole to drive home a point, but this assertion is just way over the top.

It’s not hyperbole. Unlike most Pandagon posters I’m an anarchist (hence ‘BlackBloc’ as my moniker), which makes me an *actual* far leftist.

Rich people provide jobs and security to those who are less successful.

This is as ridiculous an assertion as ‘feudal lords provide land for the peasants who would otherwise be landless’.

The purpose of the capitalist class is to *fence off* and *stop people* from working by putting barriers stopping regular people from competing through private ownership of capital. They then *oh so generously* open up positions in their companies so that we may work for them (in exchange for most of our production being leeched off us).

The American working class can hardly be compared to feudal peasants of yore, as every citizen in the 21st century has the right to vote

Purely ceremonial due to the real power being held by the economic class and politicians merely ending up doing their bidding no matter which party gets in power (and I know some liberals will give me flack for this assertion).

and their grievances can be redressed in a court of law.

Again… a court of law whose laws are drafted by the very captains of industry who run our lives, voted in my a Congress and executive which is also owned by the capitalist class and lobbyists.

Ceremonial rights.

Kaninchen, I know someone in the apartment complex I live in who used to be a lawyer for a big health insurance company.  She’d be the one to look through the fine print of the rule books to find a way to prevent reimbursement for any major medical procedure.

Then she got a brain tumor.  And the insurance company did the same thing to her.

She sued, and won ... but only because she knew the system.  Now, she’s an advocate for patients’ rights, but only because she got screwed by the system she thought would provide “security” for her in a time of need.

It will probably take something bit to give a little perspective to Atanarjuat.

and their grievances can be redressed in a court of law.

This is my favorite right wing talking point, because it comes from people who hate trial lawyers and are constantly pushing tort “reform” that would make lawsuits meaningless.

I’d also like to remind people that the feudal peasants in Europe had this institution called ‘the village commune’ which ran its affairs in more or less a democratic manner, and thus the idea that somehow modern men and women have this ‘right to vote’ thingee that those poor dark age peasants didn’t have is a gigantic joke. The first action during the rise of the nation states was that certain lords, which ended up becoming kings and emperors, eradicated the village communes, took the land for themselves, and amalgamated these lands into nations. The seed of capitalism (the theft of the village commune, and then of American native land and other colonial adventures) is based on theft and pillage. Not a free market.

Atanarjuat, you’re not coherently replying to anyone else, either. You’re just offering more of the same tired cliches because you can’t understand anyone else’s arguments. It’s why people mock you as a troll. Most people would find your shtick boring, but apparently you’re satisfied to simply cut and paste phony non-sequiturs that parrot the beliefs of a right wing fringe that has long since been discredited. Welcome to the dustbin of history. Go hang out with the Marxists.

“Gramm-Leach-Bliley is going to rank up there with Smoot-Hawley as one of those historic acts of American legislation that made a cyclic economic downturn much worse than it had to be.”

...but Mr. Gramm stood up and said we were all just a bunch of whiners.  He certainly would never do anything to jeopardize Capitalism in the US of A…

...And then he told his driver to run over a few homeless people on the way home so he could feel better…

And Buffett is a guy that most of the Galters worship as a God.

Yet when Buffett starts talking about how he’s severely under-taxed and it’s ridiculous that his secretary pays more in taxes than he does, suddenly his fans become selectively deaf.

“Hey, if you don’t like it, you can just leave!”

Hmmm… somehow, I don’t think the folks who keep the economy running, such as TigerHawk, for example, will pull up stakes just because they’re surrounded by envious ankle-biters.  What’s more likely is that people like him will work that much harder to push back against the various radical agendas proposed thus far by the Obama administration.  Otherwise, our great nation may end up tumbling into the abyss.  I’m unsure why anyone would like for the latter to occur just to “stick it to the man.”

-A

How can anyone with an IQ above room temperature believe one class “keeps the economy running”?

“What’s more likely is that people like him will work that much harder to push back against the various radical agendas proposed thus far by the Obama administration.”

You really have not the slightest inkling of what a true “radical agenda” would be, do you?

So far, Obama is joining Clinton as one of the two best Republican presidents since Eisenhower.

Radical?  Not hardly…

The problem, it seems, is that TigerHawk, who’s neither an entrepreneur nor wealthy, is having a mental breakdown because he feels he’s not being “appreciated.” I think the thing is that the reason TigerHawk is getting such flak is not for his job or the money he makes, but because he was a supporter fot he Bush administration and Republican policies. He should be thankful that we elected as conciliatory a Democratic president as Barack Obama is.

With money and professional success comes a lot of acclaim and societal respect. What a lot of the right wingers are upset about is that everyone remembers the politicians and the policies they’ve supported over the past 8 years, and no one has any particular respect for that or the sort of people who were willing to sell the country down the river simply because things were going well for them.

I would LOVE to see a bunch of investment bankers leave their companies in a huff to go seek better-paying jobs elsewhere rather than be forced to accept a measly $500K salary.  There’s a reason it’s called the GLOBAL financial crisis, dickweeds—you’re not going to be able to go to London or Hong Kong and find a job that’s just as good.  Those guys are getting laid off, too.

I really think it’s going to take a couple of rounds working at Starbucks and Abercrombie before these guys figure out that the people they screwed the most by being so greedy was themselves.  They brought down the entire global financial system, and yet they’re convinced they’re going to be able to slap a couple of Band-Aids on the sucking chest wound and keep the cycle going for another quarter.

Tyro, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but nothing I’ve written is copied and pasted from anywhere.  These are my thoughts and observations that I share here.  That you’d prefer to diminish my views and ridicule them as “phony non-sequiturs” in order to avoid any attempt at debate is your problem, not my mine.

As far as not understanding “anyone else’s arguments,” you can say that to yourself all you like, but disagreement does not mean lack of comprehension.  It’s really that simple.

And look!  Once again, I responded to you, and you’re not ignored.

I hope you feel better.

-A

I really love the perennial wail of OHNOES PUNISHING THE RICH1!!1!

Yes. Yes, the Gubmint is going to punish you by providing you with a society to exist and do business in that isn’t overflowing with sick, crazy, desperate, dangerous people. It’s going to punish you by preventing the kind of proletariat uprisings that behead and slaughter people like you in other countries.

What the fuck reality do these people live in?

a poor person never provided a job for me or anyone else I know.

There’s an old salesman’s adage that goes something like this: “if you cater to the masses, you dine with the classes; if you cater to the classes, you dine with the masses.” If the relevance of that to your statement above isn’t readily apparent to you, you can’t expect us to take you seriously.

I mean, really: “movers and shakers”? “the folks who keep the economy running”? This TigerHawk fellow is, like all of us, a tiny cog in a hugely complex economic machine. You look ridiculous glorifying him simply because he’s fortunate enough to have a little less sticky grease on him than the other parts.

By the way, I think Tyro’s complaint is not that you ignore him, but that you ignore arguments that contain inconvenient items like facts and logic. When a person does this, it indicates that he’s not really serious about addressing the issues.

More incoherent non-sequiturs that fail to grapple with the argument addressed. Your problem, Atan, is that you’re too stupid to grapple with anything other than the stream of right-wing cliches that has been fed to you and your gullible ilk. The ideas have been tried and found wanting. The only people left advocating for them are the people so embarrassed by their association with the Republican party that they’re grasping for something, anything to redeem their moral failure of the past 8 years. Repeating the same dishonest arguments they’ve always repeated isn’t going to help. You inability to comprehend or coherently respond to everyone else’s arguments outs you as a mindless automaton and follower of the right-wing beasts who have caused so much damage.

I’m unsure why anyone would like for [our great nation to end up tumbling into the abyss] just to “stick it to the man.”

I disagree with Rush Limbaugh too.

This TigerHawk fellow is, like all of us, a tiny cog in a hugely complex economic machine.

Yes, this is the truth.

There is no one class that keeps the economy running. Everyone—the poor, middle class, upper class, the government—plays a role and one class can’t get far for very long if they screw one of the other classes.

Tyro, what “argument” did you address?  This is how you ended one of your diatribes against me:

Welcome to the dustbin of history. Go hang out with the Marxists.

Please, edify me.  I wish to be able to “comprehend” and “coherently respond” to this insightful comment of yours.

I know, I know… it’s far easier to imitate a broken record and repeat things like “incoherent non-sequiturs”  and that I’m “too stupid.”  Obviously, I’m a “mindless automaton” since I can’t formulate a rational response to such sober pronouncements from a serious fellow like yourself.

Pssst!  I’m still paying attention to you.  I hope my not-ignoring-Tyro effort will help ensure your recovery, since something’s obviously ailing you.

-A

Gracchus, it’s becoming obvious to me that the reason so many here are eager to ignore the contributions of those like TigerHawk is because he’s not a liberal—at least as far as his own commentary suggests.

Sorry to say, but that’s not a crime yet, and not being a liberal doesn’t mean that TigerHawk’s concerns are no less valid than the next person.

Anyway, this attempt at bogging me down with the diversion about how I’m somehow “ignoring” comments that contain facts and logic has become rather transparent.  Just say you disagree with my view and leave it at that.  No need to get hyper-personal and condescending.

-A

Caren, a poor person never provided a job for me or anyone else I know.  I’m sorry if that sounds rather stark, but it’s so axiomatic as to be irrefutable.

You’re wrong. It’s easily refutable.  Poor people are consumers.  Every day they are keeping farmers, grocery stores, engineers, and textile manufacturers in business.  It’s clear that you just don’t understand how society works.

I grew up rich, and I still am, so it’s not like I’m jealous of people who make more than I do.  I know first hand how lazy rich people are.  Haven’t you ever heard the expression “banker’s hours”?  It’s ironic to bring up the idea of kneecapping, because it works the other way around.  My own father made his millions in the semi-legal collection business.  All the rich people who lived on my block either made their money by exploiting harder-working people (sometimes only semi-legally), or by inheriting it.  In college, all the business students were the biggest slackers, but they’re the ones who will be making 6 figures.  My best friend had a double major for engineering and business, and he would constantly make fun of how ridiculously easy the business classes were.  All of these business people aren’t our country’s best and brightest, they’re the luckiest or sleaziest.  So what if a bunch of ambulance chasing lawyers and middle managers stop working as much?  We’d be better off with out them.  Let’s keep the physicians and surgeons though.  They’re competent enough to understand basic math and they know they will still earn more by earning more.

not being a liberal doesn’t mean that TigerHawk’s concerns are no less valid than the next person.

TigerHawk’s concerns are irrational and based in his belief that he’s not being loved and appreciated enough. Which means that, in fact, his concerns are not valid and not worthy of concern, except insofar as he could do some political damage to our society which, thankfully, was put to an end in 2008.

Hey, as an ambulance chaser, I object to that remark.  We work darn hard, and get the insurance companies to pay up the settlements they owe.  You paid the premiums, and that means they’re supposed to cough the hell up when you hit Joe Schmoe with your car and he can’t work for a month and can’t pay his medical bills.

The whole “plaintiff personal injury lawyers are eeevil” meme is a load of Republican horse-pucky.  Our clients are poor as dirt, and have some seriously tough times because some idiot rear-ended them one morning on the way to work.

catgirl, it’s almost as if the U.S. economy were set up like a multi-level marketing scheme, the way success is awarded according to how well one exploits the labor of others.  Hmm.  Hmm.

Yeah, I for one appreciate living in a world with seatbelts, airbags, and pool drains that won’t suck out my intestines. If you do as well, don’t give trial lawyers so much shit.

Show of hands for those who have turned down a raise because said raise would move you into a higher tax bracket.
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And then there’s med mal.  Pity the poooor doctor who left the client waiting in the emergency room for eight hours then told him his abdominal pains were “probably gas.”  He died the next day.

Gavel Down, you’ll never hear me complaining about tort attorneys.  Y’all provide a badly needed service, performed under increasingly difficult circumstances.  If consumer protection laws were stronger and enforced better there’d be less need for you, but until that happy day, I’m glad you’re around.

No need to get hyper-personal and condescending.

And yet, despite that, you keep talking.  You come here as a troll and a five-star useful idiot and expect to be respected for your “dissent”?  Get a job.

Gracchus, it’s becoming obvious to me that the reason so many here are eager to ignore the contributions of those like TigerHawk is because he’s not a liberal—at least as far as his own commentary suggests.

There’s nothing “obvious” about it. They’re calling him out on being narrow-minded and self-important and self-destructively selfish, which characteristics taken together pretty much define the modern GOP’s ideal for economic thinking.

Sorry to say, but that’s not a crime yet, and not being a liberal doesn’t mean that TigerHawk’s concerns are no less valid than the next person.

True, but no-one’s claiming he’s wrong because he’s not a liberal. His bloviating “concerns” are less valid because, like you, he really doesn’t know what the heck he’s talking about—see my graf above.

Anyway, this attempt at bogging me down with the diversion about how I’m somehow “ignoring” comments that contain facts and logic has become rather transparent.  Just say you disagree with my view and leave it at that.  No need to get hyper-personal and condescending.

Awww, did I hurt your wittle feelings? Nothing personal about it—I’m addressing your arguments (such as they are) and rhetoric, and any condescension emerges from their pitiful nature.

Look, if you show up at a site like this with arguments just as empty and fantasy-based as TigerHawk’s, what do you expect will happen? Of course you’re going to be pummelled with facts and logic and general mockery. The presence of ridiculous trolls like yourself provide reality-based folks with entertainment on a quiet Friday afternoon—you’re serving in the role you yourself chose, and it’s unbecoming for a clown to get upset when the audience (and ringmasters) call him such.

Get a job.

Atan’s contribution to capitalism is the same as the right-winger’s contribution to the war effort in Iraq: fighting on the “frontlines” of the blogosophere!

Heh.  I am prone to rant a bit on the subject, as even my ostensibly liberal friends ask me conspiratorily “so, how many of your clients are bullshitting?” with an evil smile.  They are always shocked when I reply “Zero.  Without a doctor’s report confirming their injury we have no case.”  It’s really tremendously hard to “win the lawsuit lottery.”  But conservative frames persist even when we don’t know we’re using them.  It’s an uphill battle.

Many people who are wealthy have indeed reached that state by having others work for them.  Put another way, the rich provide the jobs that we need in order to survive and prosper, albeit on a smaller scale.

Yeah, they ‘provide us with jobs’ the way that a feudal landlord provides peasants with land.

Step 1: Conquer large tracts of land
Step 2: Fence it. Hire people to stop peasants from working the land.
Step 3: Give access rights to the peasants who are the most desperate and better ass kissers.
Step 4: Request huge chunks of the product of their labor be given to you in exchange for these access rights.
Step 5: Profit.
Step 6: Use profit to finance another try at step 1, and increase your holdings.

Capitalists didn’t end up with all the factories and corporations because of dumb luck. They took control of government, used force, and had it give all this stuff to them through statist incentives. The state’s purpose (n’en deplaise the liberals) is to funnel money from the poor to the rich: corporate welfare, military-industrial and prison-industrial complex, ad nauseam. It’s always been that way until the New Deal patched it up a bit (on top of poor -> rich transfers, it added some bribes to buy off the middle class).

Yes, Gracchus, I can see that a request to keep things civil is seen as a sign of weakness among sneering, condescending liberals like yourself.  Thanks for the sober reminder.

In that case, I’ll take you as seriously as you’ve been treating my own comments, which is to say that knee-jerk derision and dismissal will be the preferred response.  It’s what you’ve eagerly been pushing for, so you’ve got no room for complaint.

-A

BlackBloc, it’s called survival of the fittest.  It’s also part of human nature, for as far back as history has been recorded.

Granted, it would be nice if we could all be equally well-off, but given the competitive and domineering nature of human beings, that’s not likely to ever happen.

-A

damnedyankee, do you have the same “get a job” advice for your fellow liberals here who have been responding to me with the same frequency?

No?  I don’t really wonder why.

-A

“Yes, Gracchus, I can see that a request to keep things civil is seen as a sign of weakness among sneering, condescending liberals like yourself.  Thanks for the sober reminder.”

...actually, it’s usually seen as just another tactic to derail the discussion.  Which it usually is…

And after all the wingnut Koolaid you’ve had to spew these talking points, it takes a lot of balls to use the word “sober”...

Show of hands for those who have turned down a raise because said raise would move you into a higher tax bracket.

(Puts his hands down as close to the ground as possible.)

Oh, and if -A-hole wants to play along, he can consider himself represented by Rick.

I can see that a request to keep things civil is seen as a sign of weakness among sneering, condescending liberals like yourself.

Ah, yes, that’s the sort of thing I’m looking for from my “voice of reason” right-wing trolls: the mask slipping, the inferiority complex showing. I wonder, would you pull out your Browning if I mentioned the word “culture”?

In that case, I’ll take you as seriously as you’ve been treating my own comments, which is to say that knee-jerk derision and dismissal will be the preferred response.  It’s what you’ve eagerly been pushing for, so you’ve got no room for complaint.

Please do, but try also to address the statements I make (as I did with your statements), rather than just whinging about me and others being “liberals.” Any good clown knows you need some variety in your act.

I’m just glad, since cutting taxes is so wonderful, that the Obama Administration is going to cut the taxes of the vast majority of Americans.  Including me.  I’m glad to see the full-throated support for these tax cuts from conservatives.

the folks who keep the economy running, such as TigerHawk,

...have really done a heckuva job lately.  I know I want more of their leadership, which has kept the economy running so well.  People like Tigerhawk have created over -600k jobs a month for at least the past three months.  I’m sure they could do better and eliminate jobs at an even faster pace, if they really tried.

damnedyankee, do you have the same “get a job” advice for your fellow liberals here who have been responding to me with the same frequency?

Because they’re not wasting good oxygen that otherwise might go to some more-deserving creature.  You came here seeking rejection, -A-hole.  Don’t start whingeing now that you’re getting it.

Soylent Galt
  Eat the Rich!

BlackBloc, it’s called survival of the fittest.  It’s also part of human nature, for as far back as history has been recorded.

Social Darwinism in support of feudalism. Excellent. A shame your likes would be consigned to mucking out the stalls of whatever thug set himself up as baron, but don’t let that dissuade you from your authority worship.

More please.

Gracchus, you’re being intentionally obtuse.  You’d just said the following:

“The presence of ridiculous trolls like yourself…”

“Awww, did I hurt your wittle feelings?”

And that my “arguments just as empty and fantasy-based as TigerHawk’s”

And yet you expect me to reciprocate with a respectful tone? Pfft.  You are indeed a sneering, condescending individual, and pretending otherwise just makes you a real schmendrick.  Yeah, yeah, I know, that’s more of that “mask slipping,” you baiting faker.

-A

You folks are operating on the misguided principle that Atan has anything to offer other than talking points. He doesn’t even have a coherent ideology that can be refuted in any comprehensive sense. He only has rhetorical tricks, and every time anyone of us plays into those tricks, we waste our time.

Conservatives are scared, and they should be. The era of looting is drawing to a close and they know it, and since conservative ideology is nothing more than a shambles constructed to justify the existence of the looter to the looted, they have to fall back on language like “punishing success” or “survival of the fittest,” (what’s this, the 19th century?). Engaging them is like engaging evolution deniers. It’s a worthless pursuit because they can’t be convinced of anything. Their very criteria for policy evaluation are warped beyond those that any reasonable person can possess.

But don’t worry, Atan. It’ll never be a crime to not be a liberal, because unlike conservatives, liberals don’t believe in <a >killing our enemies</a> or <a >holding them in detention indefinitely</a>. We’re just going to let you rant yourself while reasonable people ignore you.

It appears hyperlinks don’t work anymore?

By “ambulance chaser”, I mean the kind of lawyer that will sue McDonald’s for making coffee that’s hot or will sue McDonald’s for making their client fat.  It also means the person that trips over a the space in a sidewalk between squares of cement and will then sue the homeowner for not making it perfectly smooth.  I’ve had experience with that type on both sides, and I truly think we’d be better off without them. 

Lawyers that help people who who were scammed or actually were a victim of medical malpractice are different, and they’re probably not the ones who are complaining about being so much more hard-working than all the poor people.

No whingeing from my side, damnedyankee, I just wanted you to admit your hypocrisy, which you just did with great pride.  Keep those partisan goggles strapped on, kid, you’re doing great!

-A

BlackBloc, it’s called survival of the fittest.

Well then I expect there won’t be hard feelings when we of the underclass develop a new survival strategy which consists of coming to your glass towers, taking you out of your corner office, hanging you to a lamp post, taking back the factories and capital for ourselves to divide amongst us, and granting control of the workplace to a federation of democratic workers councils…

Survival of the fittest.

Use quotes, Jerry.

a href=”(link)”

Keep those partisan goggles strapped on, kid, you’re doing great!

Said with utterly no self-awareness whatsoever.

Jerry:  I find it works better if you put quotes around the url.

Ah, the quotes! I wish the blog had an “edit” feature so I could go back and fix that.

liberalrob, do you really think that folks like TigerHawk helped to inflate that housing bubble that recently collapsed and took down the economy with it?

I think that if you scrutinized those Community Reinvestment Act loans you’d get closer to the truth.  Also, the shady dealings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac more than accelerated the nature of the bubble.

You may dislike TigerHawk and others like him for expressing their alarm at the direction the country is taking during the recession, but I think your ire might be more justly directed leftward where the true villains did their slimy deeds with full Democratic approval.

-A

BlackBloc, it’s called survival of the fittest.  It’s also part of human nature, for as far back as history has been recorded.

Ah, social Darwinism - it’s the only kind of Darwinism that conservatives believe in.  Nevermind that science does not actually support this idea, and the whole concept of evolutionary psychology is pretty sketchy.  But leave it to conservatives to use pseudo-science to support views that they already hold, rather than use science to form their views in the first place.

Even it were true, “fittest” doesn’t always mean strongest or fastest or most willing to screw over everyone else.  In fact, the biggest reason that humans are so “fit” is our ability to cooperate and work together to form societies.  We’re certainly not very fast, strong, or fit in any other way.

In fact, the biggest reason that humans are so “fit” is our ability to cooperate and work together to form societies.

Or form worker unions. Or anarchist affinity groups. Or worker councils.

Like I said… I’m sure the conservatives won’t mind if we try out a new strategy for survival that involves ganging up together and kicking them off their pedestals, right? Since it’s all just natural selection, well, it’s the natural order of thing that they would be depossessed…

BlackBlock said:

Well then I expect there won’t be hard feelings when we of the underclass develop a new survival strategy which consists of coming to your glass towers, taking you out of your corner office, hanging you to a lamp post, taking back the factories and capital for ourselves to divide amongst us, and granting control of the workplace to a federation of democratic workers councils…

Considering that the powerful and the wealthy in this nation have access to police and military protection of their properties, you are more than welcome to stage a “workers unite!” insurrection.  However, the outcome may not be to your liking.

You’ve described a stirring bolshevik fantasy, though.  Thanks for the hearty laugh.

-A

And yet you expect me to reciprocate with a respectful tone?

Well, no, Atan, I don’t—never did. I made my expectations clear at 3:02PM, and you’re delivering on them.

You are indeed a sneering, condescending individual, and pretending otherwise just makes you a real schmendrick.

If it makes you feel better, I only sneer at empty arguments and condescend when it becomes clear that the person is more interested in spouting ditto-head talking points as “credible opinion” than addressing criticisms thereof. I make obvious exceptions for the young (under age 22) or mentally disabled, so if you’re either I genuinely apologise—I mean, I’m not a monster.

The thing is, as noted above, from my end it isn’t personal, it’s entertainment. If it hadn’t been you, I would have been messing with Dana or Mitchforth.

Yeah, yeah, I know, that’s more of that “mask slipping,” you baiting faker.

I’m betting I’m not the only one here who laughed out loud when they read the bit I bolded.

Now, if you’d be so kind, please tell us more about the joys of feudalism. And please tell us what your preferred royal title would be.

Wow. Atan’s comments are something out of a game of “wingnut bingo.”

The fact is that our current predicament is the final culmination of decades of right-wing economic policies. You can agree with those policies or disagree with them, but that’s what brought us here, and that’s why our president is busy at work dismantling those policies. And I feel sorry for TigerHawk and Atan and others who have hitched their wagon to a morally deficient ideology which has driven the country into a ditch, but just because we’re busy fixing things doesn’t mean we have to worry about whether doing so hurts their feelings. TigerHawk got artificially low taxes for 8 years. Instead of enjoying it and using those low taxes to prepare for the future, he squandered those opportunities and used those opportunities to waste his time supporting the Bush administration and their corrupt crony capitalism. His job now is to get out of the way while the rest of us competent, moral, honest people fix it. If TigerHawk wants to feel better about himself, I suggest he get a hobby and stop
annoying us. He’s free to have right-wing beliefs, but the fact is that his beliefs have failed us. He took advantage of the tax cuts he was offered but was unprepared for changes in the tax code. I have no idea why I should feel any sympathy for him whatsoever. His was a wasted life that should serve as an example to others. If you’re working 80-100 hours a week and making money but still can’t be successful or happy, then it’s a sign that you have failed at life. His on-camera decompensation should serve only as a warning to others of the danger of getting caught up in the Republican death-cult.

Dan, you’ve got that exactly backwards.  I didn’t “descend into spittle-flecked insults” until I had been shat on repeatedly for my temerity to espouse a dissenting view.  Also, it’s not an insult to call someone condescending who is indeed condescending.  Keeping things civil is not just a one way street, sorry to remind you.

Anyway, the rest of what you wrote is just more of that diversionary tangential stuff that I observed earlier, so please forgive me if I don’t respond to the rest of your commentary.  It doesn’t mean I’m conveniently ignoring anything, so don’t take it personal.

Now, if you wish, you can scroll back up to the top and see my first comment in this thread.  I’d be more than glad to debate you from that point on.

-A

“Or form worker unions. Or anarchist affinity groups. Or worker councils.”

...oh no!  Not those!

-A was referring to a bunch of rich guys talking while playing golf together and then deciding to form a partnership to exploit workers somewhere for fun and profit.

When proles cooperate it’s communism.  When the overclass cooperates against the proles, it’s God’s American Capitalism…

Tyro said:

[Referencing TigerHawk]

<blockquote>
He’s free to have right-wing beliefs, but the fact is that his beliefs have failed us.
</quote>

That doesn’t compute, Tyro.

How can TigerHawk’s beliefs fail anyone at all?

Or is this an indirect admission that he is indeed an influential and a necessary component to the well-being of our nation?

-A

damnedyankee, 3:00 -

LOL

Atanarjuat-the-Troll, I told you that I wished you ill because you—ever so smug, ever so condescending, ever the doting father-figure baffled by his children’s unwarranted misbehavior—completely discounted my life and my experience.  You quoted and responded to my anger, not my argument.  In fact, you elided that part entirely.  Tell me again how my life is better that I pay more, as a fraction of my total income, in taxes, than someone who makes in a day as much as I make in a year, that I am entirely disposable should my continued employment and health ever threaten to reduce shareholder value.  Tell me that my anger at this state of affairs is unjustified.

I suspect that you may be dumber than a stick for any given value of stick.

I didn’t “descend into spittle-flecked insults” until I had been shat on repeatedly for my temerity to espouse a dissenting view.

Oooorrrr… we could refer to the “Shorter John Boehner” thread where you threw out little bon mots like “you liberal illiterates” and you can just admit that you came here to pick an argument and generally be a dickweed.

is this an indirect admission that he is indeed an influential and a necessary component to the well-being of our nation?

That was a weak troll, Atan. Weak. Have we tired you out that much?

catgirl:

By “ambulance chaser”, I mean the kind of lawyer that will sue McDonald’s for making coffee that’s hot or will sue McDonald’s for making their client fat.

Not so.

kaninchen, if I were to return the level of discourtesy you’ve shown me, your pals will vigorusly land on me with both feet and accuse me of descending into “spittle-flecked insults.”

So I’m between a rock and a hard place here with you.  I feel entitled to respond to you as you have addressed me, but I dare not because that would somehow just be trollish behavior on my part.

At best, all I can do is attempt to take the high road and tell you with all sincerity that I never discounted a single thing in your life or experience.  I commented on the profanity you launched at me out of the blue, but can you actually blame if that obscured what you felt was the more important portion of your message?

In all seriousness, if I suspected that you “may be dumber than a stick,” would you think that should only respond courteously to such a statement?

I say this with all due respect, but I think your approach is counterproductive if you really are looking for any meaningful dialogue.

Thanks.

-A

Melissa just posted this in her Quote of the Day:

“When is a tax cut for 98 percent of taxpayers portrayed as a tax increase? When some of the small handful of people whose taxes will go up happen to control the nation’s news media.”—Jamison Foser, in his latest column for Media Matters, which is a must-read.

emphasis in original

damnedyankee, that was “leftist illiterates,” and I said that after (once again) being pounded on by the profanity patrol.

But keep up the double standard, dude.  Those partisan goggles are the sure path to understanding and harmony in any debate.

-A

Or is this an indirect admission that he is indeed an influential and a necessary component to the well-being of our nation?

Part of the power-worshiping social Darwinist viewpoint is that “influential” (along with “wealthy” and “powerful”) is one of the main defining attributes of “necessary.” Otherwise, one just doesn’t matter.

It’s amusing enough when that viewpoint is expressed by someone who actually is influential, wealthy, and/or powerful (or believes himself to be). When a toady is expressing it on behalf of someone else, who isn’t truly influential, wealthy, and/or powerful, it’s even funnier (in a pathetic kind of way).

I think trollboy should read this and get back to us…

Considering that the powerful and the wealthy in this nation have access to police and military protection of their properties

Ah, so we are agreed then that the rich’s property is theirs by virtue of their usage of statist coercion and not the benefit of the free market?

“The bear tells us he will crush us. What if we crush the bear?”
- Jack London, “The Iron Heel”

Tyro, it looks to me that you’re admitting as much, yes.

Unless, of course, you feel like addressing my question vis-a-vis beliefs and being “let down,” rather than trying to slide yet another jackalope past me.

-A

By “ambulance chaser”, I mean the kind of lawyer that will sue McDonald’s for making coffee that’s hot or will sue McDonald’s for making their client fat.  It also means the person that trips over a the space in a sidewalk between squares of cement and will then sue the homeowner for not making it perfectly smooth.  I’ve had experience with that type on both sides, and I truly think we’d be better off without them.

If you’re mentioning the McDonald’s coffee case as a frivolous suit, I don’t think you’ve had any experience whatsoever with personal injury law.  And, a sidewalk is public property.  You can’t sue the homeowner for that.  And the million other reasons why suits like that don’t get off the ground. You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.

Atan, maybe you can help me with some understanding here ... how is the restoration of the 90s era tax rate for those making above $250,000 / year (from 35% to 39.6%) “punishing successful individuals”?

Atan, you made a disingenuous comment intended to provoke a resposne which, in context, was really not up to par when it comes to trolling. You got tired out and your response was weak. I award you no points. Try again.

And your disingenuous attacks on others for being not as hardworking as others is also lame, which is why you are considered a loathesome, immoral person. It also explains why you support Republicans. So leave us be and stop defending such a useless, destructive ideology and their emotionally damaged advocates like TigerHawk, who is himself one of life’s losers who finds himself, after all his hard work, crying because Obama got elected and finds out that no one really thinks his stupid beliefs are worthy of anything other than disdain. The fact that you have to lash out at hardworking people in order to praise Tigerhawk just makes you out to be a weak little toady…. which is humiliating for you, regardless of how much you enjoy trolling.

And from Foser’s column:

Slate.com’s Daniel Gross estimates that for someone with $350,000 in income, this will amount to about $1,500 a year in increased taxes.

All this gnashing of teeth, all this sturm und drang, all of this hand-wringing, whingey wah-wahing over 0.428571% of total income??

Really?????

Over an extra $125 a frickin’ month???????

Shit, just drop the daily Starbucks habit and brew your own. Or drop one night per month of dinner out with the family.

I’d like “Arguing in bad faith” for $100 please, Alex.

BlackBloc, I merely pointed out that you can organize and stage a revolt against the bourgeoisie any time you’d like, but, just like that sad rabble in Iraq whom we dignify with the name of “insurgents,” you and your proletariat posse might find yourselves the recipient of an Apache-delivered Hellfire missile, fired right into that magnificent People’s Bunker of yours.

That will really strike a mighty blow against The Man.

There’s a better way, but since you’re an anarchist and all, it would be futile to share any such sage advice.  Keep on keepin’ on, I say.

Survival of the fittest.  It’s not just a slogan; it’s how we all live, being that’s it’s our instinctive nature.

-A

Being nice is not the same as being right, and I’ve found that the people who insist on conflating the two are actually the least likely to engage in either one.

Well, no.  It’s patronizing—interesting that it fixates on being condescended to when its entire mode of discourse is distilled condescension—and wildly disingenuous.  All this wide-eyed “O you have hurt my feelings!” swoonery is designed to be infuriating, and it works rather well.  At least with me, though I’m short-tempered of late.

Survival of the fittest.

The poor are more numerous and more likely to pass on their genes, as a group. Even your trolling reflects your stupidity and inability to think.

May I suggest that, instead of wasting hours of your life on Atanarjuat the troll, you spend those hours productively watching the stunning film whose name he is besmriching.

And speaking of things from Canada that are awesome - if anyone making over $250,000 complained about beint taxed too highly, they would be in hit in the face with a hockey stick. And then treated at one of our evil socialist hospitals which, although more cost-effective than the private system, forces the elite to (gasp!) sit next to poor people.

In closing I suggest that if Atarnarjuat must adopt a moniker from a Canuck film, he choose the more appropriate Porky.

I understand, Dan, you’re just like Tyro.  You’d rather expend a great deal of energy lecturing me on style rather than debating actual substance.

And no, I don’t really wonder why.  When the other side has no desire to address your argument, this is what always occurs.  Lamentable, true, but I wish you and your fellow liberals had chosen otherwise.

-A

Survival of the fittest.  It’s not just a slogan; it’s how we all live, being that’s it’s our instinctive nature.

Actually, it’s a terribly watered down oversimplification of the idea of natural selection.  Its application in social contexts usually contradicts Darwin’s ideas.

There is no substance.

Someone making $350,000 in income would pay an estimated additional $1500 / year in taxes (see my post above at 4:11 pm.

My wife and I together make less than 6 figures.

Even we could find that amount of money in our budget.

Joshua, if the restoration of 1990’s tax rates was as far as the Obama administration would ever go, I’d have very little to quibble about.

But as I’ve said previously, the president has proposed budgets that WILL swell the deficit by several trillion dollars, and Obama hasn’t even been in office for two months yet.  One would have to be staggeringly naive and rather trusting to believe that this is as bad as the tax rates will ever get.

More Porkulus Plans will be enabled, more earmarks will saturate the already suffocating federal budgets, and all of this has to be payed for somehow.

So take a guess, who’s going to wind up picking up the tab?  It’s not that hard to figure out, which is where the alarmed concerns come in from those who have the most to get “redistributed.”

-A

do you really think that folks like TigerHawk helped to inflate that housing bubble that recently collapsed and took down the economy with it?

Yes.  Not only do I think it, I know it for a fact.

I think that if you scrutinized those Community Reinvestment Act loans you’d

...find they had nothing whatsoever to do with the bubble.  Long ago proven.
“Community Reinvestment Act had nothing to do with subprime crisis” (BusinessWeek, 9/29/08)

Also, the shady dealings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

...were nonexistent.  Also long proven.

“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were victims, not culprits” (BusinessWeek, 09/26/08)

You may dislike TigerHawk and others like him

...when they whine about being asked to pay more to support the society that has enabled them to be so successful.  Yes.

but I think your ire might be more justly directed leftward where the true villains did their slimy deeds with full Democratic approval.

Full Republican approval; some Democrats opposed it very strongly but were outvoted.  Phil Gramm was a Republican when he helped eliminate Glass-Steagal, Republicans have controlled Congress for most of the past 20 years, 5 of the past 7 Presidential terms (20 of the past 28 years) have been Republican.  Republicans have always been in favor of deregulation no matter the consequences to society at large.  Republicans talk about things like survival of the fittest when it comes to social services.  To the extent that Democrats enable Republicans in their harmful policies, I do direct my ire their way.  But it’s very clear what the source of the current problems in this country is, and it’s Republicans and their “conservative” theories run amok.

Does anyone remember that expression, “brain drain?” Let’s not be so partisan that we’re willing to lobotomize our society in order to spite those we politically disagree with
Like when Bush demonized scientists and set US stem cell, climate, environmental research behind for a decade ?

PS: Talking about “Going Galt”, Halliburton relocated to Dubai, no ? How is that working out for them ?
ROFL!!!!

Atan, we’re trying to teach you how to behave and speak like a normal human being. If you cannot accomplish that, you should go off and hang out with your socially deviant right-wing friends. There is a reason why Republicans deride as a liberal *intellectuals*—it’s because we’re capable of actual thought and can out someone when they’re acting like deviant fools and talking-points machines. And it’s why the American people sought to throw such right-wing fools out of office, because their ideology was exposed for the deviant destrucrtive force that it was. And that fact is the reason why losers like TigerHawk have psychologically decompensated, recently—because everything he’s believed in is being repudiated by healthy, normal people. He doesn’t need you to defend him. If you want to debate the merits of your worthless beliefs, do so, but you’re not even bothering. You’ve not made one coherent argument against Obama’s budget plan, and that’s why he’s succeedinng… because you haven’t got any coherent
arguments on your side. You’ve been reduced merely spitting on working people and subsituting empty resentments for actual thought, as is the conservative way.

Funny, it seems that whenever somebody goes to substance you gloss over it and go to style, -A-hole.

Tyro, here’s what I’d like you to specifically respond to:

You:

He’s free to have right-wing beliefs, but the fact is that his beliefs have failed us.

Me:

How can TigerHawk’s beliefs fail anyone at all?

Thank you.

-A

This is related to a comment further upthread, but there was more to the McDonald’s coffee lawsuit than the public seems to realize.  The 79 year old woman received third degree burns on six percent of her skin, requiring an eight day hospital stay and two years of treatment.  She originally merely wanted to have her medical bills paid.  McDonald’s offered her $800.  Also, McDonald’s continued to keep their coffee at an unreasonable hot temperature even though hundreds of other people had also been burned.  At any rate, the case turned into a rallying cry for the “tort reform” crowd, and it makes me sad that all these years later most people only remember the talking points regarding this case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald’s_Restaurants

Atan, I expect you to make the appropriate inferences and respond to my arguments coherently, rather than resort to the socially deviant disingenuous sophistry of your typical right-winger. TigerHawk and you are advocates of a failed ideology. If you have any intelligent, reasonable critiques of Obama’s policies, offer them, but for now resorting to standard right-wing complaints and whining about returning to 1990s-era taxation levels for a few people while cutting taxes for everyone else is just the bleatings of the defeated who are realizing that what they believed is something that the national is dismantling.

To date, you have offered no coherent critiques of Obama’s recovery plans and instead have only defended those who damaged the economy to begin with.

liberalrob, I suspected that you’d lay the blame largely at the feet of Republicans.  No surprises there.

Remind me again of those principled Democrats who stood firm against President Bush during the period of 2006 to 2008, absolutely refusing to vote “aye” on any of Bush’s spending bills that added to the deficit or even the supplements for the War in Iraq.

My memory is quite hazy there, so help me out.

-A

So take a guess, who’s going to wind up picking up the tab?  It’s not that hard to figure out, which is where the alarmed concerns come in from those who have the most to get “redistributed.”

Sooner or later, those with the money are going to have to pay.  Whine all you want about “redistribution.”  This country is practically broke, thanks to shortsighted policies.  You can either pay higher taxes, or hope the torches and pitchforks somehow pass you by after the social compact is destroyed and society collapses.  Your choice.

I suspected that you’d lay the blame largely at the feet of Republicans.

Gee. That’s because they were in charge. And you were one of the Republican defenders, as was TigerHawk. Their bleating now is just a bunch of whining over the fact that the public accords their political beliefs no respect, nor should they. TigerHawk will have to pay a little more in taxes. He benefited from artificially low taxes in the past. He can handle it. His emotional decompensation over the issue isn’t my problem. He’s only upset because his religion has been discredited in the eyes of the public and Obama’s policies will ensure that no one takes Republican beliefs seriously for the next generation or two. You’ve merely mouthed Republican talking points in favor of a mentality that got us here in the first place. It’s why we look down upon people like you and TigerHawk, because you’re no different than the aging communists still pining for Soviet days.

But as I’ve said previously, the president has proposed budgets that WILL swell the deficit by several trillion dollars, and Obama hasn’t even been in office for two months yet.  One would have to be staggeringly naive and rather trusting to believe that this is as bad as the tax rates will ever get.

The Bush tax cuts were originally set to expire in 2011.  Obama was going to kill them early, but left them alone in the wake of this recent crisis.  So tax rates are not as bad as they’ll ever get.  However, you may be right - he may increase taxes in the future on top of what already exists.  And, if there are tax hikes, the rich will probably see more of it than the middle class. 

Of course, since the middle (and lower) class provides the consumer base for many big businesses, their purchasing power should be kept strong, so it makes sense.  The poor would still like to be able to afford both food AND shelter, so they’re out.  This isn’t about punishing success or “sticking it to the man” ... but what you yourself pointed out:  who’s left to pick up the tab?

Remind me again of those principled Democrats who stood firm against President Bush during the period of 2006 to 2008

If you’ll recall, Congressional approval ratings dropped off quite precipitously after Jan 2007.  There was continuous fuming about the “Bush Dogs” and DINOs in the lefty blogosphere.  I was right there.  No points for you.

So, let’s see, I asked Tyro to address a question I posed to him that he willfully ignored the first time around.

And what does he do?

Glibly ignores it again, and launches into a recycled diatribe of the “proper” way I should engage in a debate with him, to his exacting standards.

But yet I’m the one who has refused to address any arguments.

This shit’s getting fucking predictable.

Okay, Tyro, you win.  I will now take you just as seriously as the ever-condescending Gracchus and Partisan Goggles-wearing damnedyankee, which is to say not at all.  Talk about bad faith.

-A

Thank you, Joshua, that’s what I’ve been saying all along.

I appreciate the healthy exchange.

-A

What I recall, liberalrob, is that those Democrats who now had the ability to set the legislative agenda from 2006 and on gave President Bush everything he wanted, just like the Republicans.

And still, Republicans are Da Debbil and deserve most of the blame for the economic collapse that’s killing us all.

Partisanship.  Gotta love it.

-A

As one of those that will actually be impacted by the higher marginal rate - as will most of my friends - I feel comfortable saying none of us will work less hard, give less to charity or change just about anything in our behavior. In my case, I don’t even write charity off in my taxes, anyway. We are largely salarymen or piecemeal workers (i.e. doctor for a large medical system) and there really isn’t much reason to change what we do to be successful because an almost unseen amount extra is deducted from each paycheck. Given all the different deductions taken from each paycheck (SERP/401K, 401K catchup dollars, employee stock participation up to some amount set by law, FICA for some part of the year but not the rest, insurances, and so forth) I’ve never taken the time to figure out from one pay period to the next what my net amount should be. Paycheck amounts change pretty dramatically over the course of a year.

More to the point about ChickenHawk’s (CH) weird rant - there are lots of jobs that are just as hard or harder than any of ours, and which pay a modest living wage at best. The chances that CH normally works productive 100 hour weeks are close to zero. He is either lying, inefficient and making his company worse off, or delusional. Anecdotally, I had a friend that made similar complaints. We asked her to keep an honest, personal log to track her real hours worked.  She was shocked when she realized she worked about 1/2 - 3/4 the hours of what she somehow believed. There are few people who can work such long hours week over week. And CH claims to help around the house, etc. as well.  Right. Color me skeptical.

There is so much luck involved in building a hyper-successful career I don’t understand the cry baby attitude to paying back the good you’ve received.

DN

What I recall, liberalrob, is that those Democrats who now had the ability to set the legislative agenda from 2006 and on gave President Bush everything he wanted, just like the Republicans.

Actually, given the filibuster and the veto, they really didn’t.

Hilarious. Yes, trolls, rich people are the only people that matter and as demonstrated, they have the magical power of being able to buy poor people. Hurray. You do realize that “wealth creation” doesn’t mean that a)wealth is all there is nor b)that they actually create real good X (known as wealth), but rather make undue profits off other people making real actual goods and selling them to other people. A process easily maintained and replicated without someone there to “make wealth”. In short, shit or get off the pot. A “meritocracy” requires movement between the classes. If a rich man is making so much that there is no longer room for incentives and taxes actually matter to their real wealth acquisition, then they are making too much money and have stagnated and its probably time they retired to their very comfortable lifestyles and allowing someone new to receive the rewards of such a position. There are no shortage of takers.

Also funny is the doctor dodge. You people think that’s actually a good argument? The only reason doctors work obscene hours is because they’re trying to pay back massive medical school loans. Tax the rich in order to provide universal health care and free education and not only do you have more doctors, but they won’t be bankrupted by med school bills and be able to take off more time to enjoy their lives and relax. This time spent will then benefit their patients because they won’t be zoned out tired and stressed and thus able to provide better health care. Plus, hospitals will be able to save on all the expenses in trying to force insurance companies to pay up that they’ll be able to hire more nurses and doctors, thus providing jobs and creating consumers of Ugg boats and other real objects. The selling of such objects will give those companies profits and then the wizard rich people will wave their magic wand and “create wealth” through whatever voodoo practice it is they do that makes them 500 times more valuable than any of their employees (maybe they lay golden eggs).

I also don’t get the bs tax disincentive dodge. Let’s say that for all my money over 250,000, I’m taxed 99% on everything I take home as profit. Would I “work harder” (aka accept from the profits of my business) an extra 100,000 dollars. Of course, cause that’s an extra 1K of money I now get. From a personal standpoint, I just got a thousand dollar raise. Now, that may be less impressive if I was earning 250,000, but so what, I also have 250,000 dollars. I can pay cash for houses on one year’s worth of salary.

More importantly, I also have incentive to reinvest that money in the company rather than take it home. I have an incentive to create new jobs and if I can’t just crash a company and take home 500 million on a good stock market bounce, I actually have to care about the long-term health of my company rather than chasing the fickle nature of the stock market. In other words, I still have to create jobs and I become more interested in maintaining healthy profit rather than maximizing stock returns.

In other words, I’d have to get rich the old fashioned way and I’d be more hesitant about engaging in short-term strategies with long-term consequences because I’d probably still be around in a couple of years when it went pear-shaped. Furthermore, my tax money would allow poor and middle class people to have the social net available to make the truly risky decisions to start new companies even ones that could fail horribly or try out careers that might not make immense money because they always know no matter what that they’ll have shelter, food, access to education and medicine and a means to reintegrate into the work world and society if they go bankrupt or fail. This will create actual competition.

It’s not rocket-science.

Though, it is highly amusing living in Denmark and hearing Americans whine about their Calvinist aristocracy envy “what about the rich” crap. My last landlord was telling me how there are no rich people here and how glad he was to pay taxes as he ran his own organic farm and negotiated the rent of his summer place in Germany. He was naturally a socialist.

Oh, did I mention he felt free to take the risk to form that organic farm that made him “not rich” because of the immense social net that took care of him and that the work hours here are from 10-3 and yet their economy is doing better than anyone else’s?

Yeah.

Atan, we’re not your monkeys. When your trolling gets weak, I call that out. Seriously, if you want to provoke a response, you can do better. Come on, right-wing weakling, explain to us why we should ever, for a single second, take Republican policies seriously, or why Obama is wrong to dismantle them and put taxes for just a few people back to where they were in ‘99. TigerHawk seems like a bit of a crybaby here. I find it hard to believe that he’s as successful as he claims, if he’s really as psychologically weak as he comes across.

This is crazy stuff.  Robber barons have not been around for a long time.

United Fruit (but I guess that’s the ancient era known as *the 80s*)? Halliburton? Black *fucking* water? Enron?

What the fuck are you smoking? If I wasn’t straight-edge I’d ask you for a hit. Seems like primo shit.

and the means of production is owned by broad sections of the public as stock.

I have a bridge to sell you.

The vast majority of stocks is owned by the top 5%. The general public owns a piddly amount of stock. I suppose if the robber barons had given each of their employees a single share in the company, you’d be trumpeting that as the triumph of socialism because *now the workers own the company in common*!

Oh Glorious Revolution! We are all part of the Owner Class now!

Atan, your problem is you’re trying to defend an indefensible philosophy.  That’s why Republicans constantly wind up having to resort to character assassination; their “principles” are abhorrent to any thinking, caring human being, once they take the time to examine where those principles lead.  Might makes right?  Social darwinism?  Religious dogma codified in law?  No one of goodwill can honestly put that forward as a blueprint for The Good Society. 

Yet that’s what modern conservatives keep coming back with, time after time after time.  It only succeeds in getting them elected when those outcomes are hidden away from public view, when the citizenry is distracted by an unpopular war or religious fanaticism or, yes, schoolyard character assassination.  When it comes to actual governing and policy outcomes, the American people have rejected Conservatism time and time again.  Sooner or later the unbridled greed and lack of supervision gets a lot of people hurt, and suddenly awkward questions are asked about how that could possibly have happened, and every time it winds up with egg on the faces of conservatives. 

Conservatism is a loser philosophy that can only flourish when memory of the last disaster it created has faded.

Nothing brightens my day like watching some vainglorious, self-aggrandizing choad with no concept of reality wallow in such a massive load of pure, unadulterated projection.

It’s certainly made for an entertaining Friday afternoon. I miss the days when TigerHawk was a regular guest in the comment sections of other blogs. I know people who really do work 80-100 hours per week. They don’t have a lot of time for chiming in on comment threads. But TigerHawk, he’s special, I guess.

Also what is with the weird conservative obsession that how you say something should be more important than what you say. All of them saying, be nicer to us, don’t use mean words or profanity, make your case civilly, etc… while often espousing policies that are all about removing rights from people, helping kill large amounts of the population or literally calling for their “lessers” to be shot or starved.

Is it merely the fact that being a conservative, they stand for the status quo thus for any debate they don’t have to win, only stop the debate from occurring and this provides a valiant means of providing that distraction of the debate or is it something deeper that gets to the idea that they literally value presentation over substance? That is, that they believe presentation has some inherent value above and beyond reality as some sort of means of rationalizing their deep hatred not only of reality and its liberal bias but how people who believe in reality look at them like they’re fucking retards when they open their mouths.

Or is it even simpler and these are just the legacy beneficiary middle management friendless losers who think that just because their employees smile politely and laugh that they whole-heartedly agree that they don’t provide real value to the company and that a black person in the white house is the worstest thing ever. The Sales Account Managers of the World.

By “ambulance chaser”, I mean the kind of lawyer that will sue McDonald’s for making coffee that’s hot or will sue McDonald’s for making their client fat.

Everyone else has covered this, so just one reminder:  third-degree burns and reconstructive surgery on your vulva.  Because of hot coffee.

There’s a reason it didn’t take very long for the jury to decide that, yes, McDonald’s should have to pay her medical bills.

Jesse, I recall the threat of filibusters, but I don’t remember any actual Republican filibustering of Democratic bills, with some red state Senator staying up all night and sweating in his unchanged clothes through the next day reading the Federalist Papers into the Congressional Record.

Maybe it happened and I just didn’t happen to catch in on C-SPAN.

Or, the simpler (and truer) explanation is that the majority of the Democrats were perfectly happy to go along with the Bush agenda, and they did, deficits and all.

As for the veto you mentioned, well, I don’t exactly remember Bush vetoing any spending bills he wanted and which the Democratic-led Congress gave him rather eagerly on each occasion.

Without getting too sidetracked on this, I’m just pointing out that trying to mostly blame Republicans for this economic crisis that’s swallowing up the country only works if you ignore the role of the majority Democrats in both houses of Congress.  They played their role in this troubling matter, and rather eagerly, too.

-A

Considering that the powerful and the wealthy in this nation have access to police and military protection of their properties, you are more than welcome to stage a “workers unite!” insurrection.  However, the outcome may not be to your liking.

Well if we actually followed through with your utopian fantasies of getting rid of taxes altogether, then we wouldn’t have those things.

And you would probably be drawn and quartered.

Oh let me also riff on A’s lovely whole “you can’t revolt as the poor, we’ll buy the army to stop you.” Isn’t the army and police a part of the government. The one that needs your taxes, the ones you pay in if you were a member of the ultra-class. So why wouldn’t you want to pay more to ensure that the poor don’t have the right to storm your Bastille? That’s why the taxes are going up the sliver. Because the poor are revolting and their patience must be paid off. Idiot.

Furthermore, please do not take this as encouragement. You have no interest in discourse in good faith and you expect as an intruder to someone else’s blog to have your topics given special and preferential treatment to everyone else’s including Jesse’s. You are not by calvinistic decree one of the Elect. We don’t care about you and we your “Lessers” do not need to cater to your interests and whims. Call it Class Envy if you will, but like the religious right in this country, you have no idea what it would look like if the powerless and oppressed actually decided to wage actual war on their oppressors. It doesn’t end well for the powerful and their supporters.

And still, Republicans are Da Debbil and deserve most of the blame for the economic collapse that’s killing us all.

Democrats who voted to go along with the Bush Administration policies have continually been pilloried, by myself and others far more influential than little ol’ me.  But it was Republicans who PROPOSED those policies.  The Democrats just went along.  (Often because they felt they had no choice, given all the threats about “nuclear options” and scaremongering about The Terrorists killing us all.)  So yes, Republicans are deserving of most of the blame for the economic collapse.  In fact I’d be more than willing to give them all of the blame, since conservatism is supposed to be about going slowly and preserving our country for those generations to follow, not enabling the greedy and shortsighted to have free reign to drive the economy over the cliff.

And still, Republicans are Da Debbil and deserve most of the blame for the economic collapse that’s killing us all.

Thank you for your race-baiting.  Please sir, may I have another?

You mean the majority when they actually passed something, say SCHIP, had it vetoed entirely because it was a Democratic idea? That majority? Do you even recall the SCHIP debate you disingenuous lying shit for brains?

Sorry, no more responding to the troll for me. It’s the academic twitch though. It’s hard resisting the urge to educate that much raw stupid even though it never ends well. Those looking for an excuse for their beliefs will believe anything convenient and disbelieve anything true in order to justify their pre-decided actions.

Also what liberalrob said.

Progressives hate congressional dems because they stood by and still stand by from their principles and the Blue Dogs are constantly threatening secession every time they try and do right by the people. The reason I want the Repubs to fade is so we can elect a real Progressive Party instead of one that’s good at cleaning up the worst of the messes every 8-12 years for the next Republican to destroy.

It’s hard resisting the urge to educate that much raw stupid even though it never ends well.

It gets us nowhere but trouble, but it’s hard to resist the temptation, isn’t it? Still though,there’s a subtle beauty there that trolls like “El Viajero”, “Al”, and others on similar liberal blogs just don’t have.

When making $500k requires working 80 hours a week, and you can make 350k working 65, and the marginal benefit of the $150k in additional earnings is only $85k after taxes, maybe some doctor will decide to go eat dinner with his kids instead of performing surgery on you.

Just out of curiosity, what profession makes $6250 per hour?
Not most Doctors I know of.

You’ve just debunked yourself.

Considering that the powerful and the wealthy in this nation have access to police and military protection of their properties

That’s a good one, I missed that one.  This would be the same police that have a very well-organized union, the same military that is comprised of volunteers who are woefully underpaid, come home to find jobs missing and benefits denied?  Somehow I don’t think the police and military are going to be very sympathetic to your cause- in fact they are more than likely to be the ones leading the mobs, once society is gone.  The best-trained, best-armed people in the world, with an axe to grind against you and you having resources they need to survive…that’d scare me.  Might want to pay those taxes and get those people some benefits.

Just out of curiosity, what profession makes $6250 per hour?

My accountant, I think.

“Just out of curiosity, what profession makes $6250 per hour?”

In the area of medicine, I understand there are plastic surgeons who can pull that in.  Not by themselves, but by owning a big practice and having several other MDs working for you…doing the actual work.  (I’ll leave unexplored the fact that actual medical doctors don’t make up all that large a part of modern medicine — no doctor is an island and there are a hell of a lot of other people that give them the ability to be successful all by themselves) 

If those guys (and I assume they’re men, sorry, the vast majority of rich doctor assholes are men) are spending 80-hours at the office, they’re either riding somebody else’s ass about their productivity, or getting a lot of office nookie, or both…

I don’t remember any actual Republican filibustering of Democratic bills, with some red state Senator staying up all night and sweating in his unchanged clothes through the next day reading the Federalist Papers into the Congressional Record.

That’s not how filibusters are done these days.

The Myth Of The Filibuster: Dems Can’t Make Republicans Talk All Night

Those damn facts again!  Curse you, real world!

Umm, $127/hour < $6250/hour, Mitch.  The argument was that Dr. Galt would only work 65 hours instead of 80, only make $350k instead of $500k, thus forgoing $150k of taxable earnings of which he would only get to keep $85k.  85k/15=6250.  Leaving aside whether that’s the correct math at any point, that’s the argument.  Dr. Galt is forgoing $6250/hr for his additional 15 hours of work because he doesn’t want to pay taxes on it.  Which is nonsensical.

liberalrob, in Mitchforth’s hypothetical example, he was taking a doctor who works 80/week for the entire year and hypothetically saying he might choose to work 65 hours/week for the entire year.

That’s not how filibusters are done these days.

Too bad, really.  A little drama might make people pay more attention to politics, and stripping Rethuglicans of dignity is always a good thing.

It could still work to our advantage, though.  The public has already noticed that Obama is the one trying to be reasonable, while the Rethugs mindlessly obstruct everything he does.  Just keep a camera focused on the schmucks stationed there to “suggest lack of quorum”, keep a timer running, and have Obama give a few speeches about how the Republicans are playing these silly games while you - yes you, out there in Peoria! - are in desperate need of help.

The Rethugs would either back down right quick, or we’ll break 60 in 2010.  Either works.

Let’s try to figure out the real math, roughly.  With 3 weeks of vacation+holidays, that leaves 49 weeks.  49*80=3920 hours.  500k/3920=128/hour (rounded up).  Now for Dr. Galt, he’s going to only work 49*65=3185 hours, 350k/3185=110/hour.  Let’s fix that so he makes the same hourly rate, 128*3185=407680, let’s round it down to 400k.  So he makes 100k less if he only works 65 hours because he doesn’t want to pay taxes.  Let’s also assume that all of that 100k would be taxed at the highest marginal rate, 40%.  Dr. Galt gets to keep 60k, which is about my salary BTW, for working an additional 15 hours a week.  That works out to 60000/3920=$15/hour for that additional 15 hours.  If the marginal tax rates didn’t change and remained at the current 35%, he’d get to keep 65k.  That works out to 65000/3920=$17/hour.  So now I’m asking myself, why the hell is Dr. Galt working 80 hours TODAY?  And why is he complaining about a $2/hour pay cut when he makes $127/hour?

Shorter version of all of the stupid troll comments in this thread: “WAH!  WAH! WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE POOR, BEATEN-DOWN RICH PEOPLE?! WAH! WAH! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!”

liberalrob said:

Somehow I don’t think the police and military are going to be very sympathetic to your cause- in fact they are more than likely to be the ones leading the mobs, once society is gone.

You got that one backwards, liberalrob.

Once society is “gone,” that means that wealthy and powerful have already departed for a more stable region.  The moneyed class of Haiti live in France, for example.  There’s no point in having any military or a police force if there’s nothing of value left to protect.

I’m not sure if that’s the kind of America you’d like to see in the future, where law and order have broken down completely and it’s every man for himself such as in Somalia, but the truth of the matter is that wealth promotes stability, and stability in turn allows everyone else to live in relative comfort and peace.  The bolshevik dream of stringing every “robber baron” from lamp posts and establishing the People’s Republic of Amerika is a nice fantasy among fringe leftists, but only such nutjobs would even THINK of rising up against those who are integral to the survival and prosperity of the nation.

And for those few who think they can attempt an insurrection anyway, just remember the lesson of those insurgents in Iraq.  The American armed forces and police in general know just who runs the show and signs those payroll checks, and valuable assets are always protected first.

-A

Stick rule ban time for a few people here:
Atanarjuat for being a hateful, privileged, tantrum-throwing, self-centered whiner.
Dana for being a misogynistic cock (why the slimebag hasn’t been banned for that already is beyond me).

I’m not sure if that’s the kind of America you’d like to see in the future, where law and order have broken down completely and it’s every man for himself

It certainly seems to be the kind of America that Republican policies are working hard to create.

And for those few who think they can attempt an insurrection anyway, just remember the lesson of those insurgents in Iraq.

Why bother directly confronting them, just wait long enough and eventually the occupiers will leave?

Or,

Once you’ve gotten your ethnic cleansing done and the violence dies down, the occupiers will leave and you can take over?

Iraq is not a great example for you guys.  I’d stay away from it.

wealth promotes stability, and stability in turn allows everyone else to live in relative comfort and peace…only such nutjobs would even THINK of rising up against those who are integral to the survival and prosperity of the nation.

Bulletin: the country is not stable.  We are not living in peace, and our comfort decreases by the day.  The nation is not prosperous, and survival is by no means guaranteed.

The wealthy aren’t doing their jobs, it seems.

Actually, the murderous assholes, aka “Iraqi insurgents,” are a great example, liberalrob.

Every time they try to take on the might of our military, they lose, and lose big.  If our own malcontents at home ever get any ideas of trying to tear down the establishment by force of arms, they’ll quickly find themselves rather crispy and not so tasty.

Face it, dude, there’s no point in trying to game out any scenario in which the poor try to take on the rich—especially an armed revolt.  The results will always be the same, and it will likely only strengthen the hold the rich have on society, as they would not be seen as the aggressors but the champions of an orderly society.

I can only imagine that a guy like TigerHawk would get a kick out of being proven right in such an event, too.

Game over, man.

-A

Assholejuat, if you ever make an actual point rather than “shut up and stay in the mud, you non-rich scum”, gimme a call.  Until then, shut your filthy trolling piehole.

Can we please send the troll back to the factory now? I’m pretty sure he’s defective.

We hear from other precincts
By TigerHawk at 3/06/2009 07:15:00 AM

A number of big lefty blogs linked my last TigerHawk TV yesterday. The comments over on YouTube are really quite something. And to think I was catching grief from the right because I said I was willing to pay higher taxes; I just do not want to be villified by politicians for being in a position to do so. It is not even clear why these guys are angry, but boy are they.

Permalink/Main
(24) Comments Trackback

“Actually, the murderous assholes, aka “Iraqi insurgents,” are a great example, liberalrob.
Every time they try to take on the might of our military, they lose, and lose big.”

...says the guy who apparently doesn’t realize that the US Military “won” almost every battle throughout the Vietnam War.  But we still didn’t win.  We could have fought the Vietnamese for the next 40-years and we wouldn’t have won.

We can stay in Iraq for the next 40-years too.  But we still won’t win.

I bet you’re the kind of guy who thinks Red Dawn was great movie making with a conservative message, right?  You know what the single most important message of that film is (supported by history too)?  The people who live there will win.  The invaders will lose.

We call them “insurgents”, but to the Iraqis they’re Wolverines.

It took 57,000 American deaths to convince us to leave Vietnam.  How many deaths will it take in Iraq before you rah-rah war-supporting idiots smell the fucking coffee?...

Atanarjuat, the way you conservatives are fucking up, soon enough you might see more people thinking that rich people hanging from lamp poles is a pretty good idea…

In the meantime, at least the liberals have the presence of mind to throw a few crumbs down the chute so the desperate and hungry don’t end up *too* desperate and hungry.

Stick rule ban time for a few people here:
Atanarjuat for being a hateful, privileged, tantrum-throwing, self-centered whiner.
Dana for being a misogynistic cock (why the slimebag hasn’t been banned for that already is beyond me).

Look, teh simple fact is that the arguments they provoke allow us to marshall the facts that show their cases are false.  This is why we need an open society.

If what they say is false, allowing them to say it lets us sort out for ourselves where they are wrong.  If what they say is true, we should listen.  And if they are mostly wrong with some elements of truth, then we need to listen and argue in order to refine our own views.

Dana, for all his idiocy, at least allows opposing voices. And regularly gets shown as factually wrong because of this.

PiaToR: My problem isn’t that I disagree with them, it’s that they’re outright trolls.  Assholewut whines because nobody will think of the poor rich people and because people won’t tell him what he wants to hear, and Dana left only one comment: a horribly sexist load of bullshit.

And no, Dana’s policies at his site don’t mean anything here.  If he decided to come to my site and annoy me (which he and his lapdogs have done in the past), I would have no more mercy on them there than I do here.

What matters is that trolls make things unpleasant, and these people are doing their best.

Let them go all the way and refuse to pay their taxes at all (assuming they are self-employed business owners), then they can go to jail and claim it’s “civil disobedience.”

The very successful, anyway, would not stop working just to spite Obama’s tax policies because soon it would get around that they had stopped doing anything, had stopped having ideas—no new R&D;or investments, no new research papers, books, legal cases, new surgical procedures, whatever. They would die rather than see their reputation dran away that way (“what happened to him/her? burnout?”).

Somehow I doubt that the Galtistas are these people.

Do I understand that Atanarjuat is a parody troll? If so, please ban.

Not every parody troll is a nuisance. Rugged In Montana, obvious troll is obvious, and sometimes funny.

In this case I see no redeeming qualities.

sara: They won’t claim it’s civil disobedience - one of the losertarian Randroid talking points is that taxes are “extortion and theft by men with guns”.

Considering that the powerful and the wealthy in this nation have access to police and military protection of their properties, you are more than welcome to stage a “workers unite!” insurrection.  However, the outcome may not be to your liking.

You’ve described a stirring bolshevik fantasy, though.  Thanks for the hearty laugh.

-A

Someone seems to think petty insults can change the facts about who won the Bolshevik revolution.

BlackBloc, I merely pointed out that you can organize and stage a revolt against the bourgeoisie any time you’d like, but, just like that sad rabble in Iraq whom we dignify with the name of “insurgents,” you and your proletariat posse might find yourselves the recipient of an Apache-delivered Hellfire missile, fired right into that magnificent People’s Bunker of yours.

Spoken as a truly ignorant Useful Idiot who has probably never even met a soldier or a vet and thinks they are mindless robots like yourself who obey their Uber-Lords.  Talk to some real soldiers or Marines and they’ll tell you they’re more likely to shoot their officers in the back than fire on their country-men.  We used to call it “fragging.”

As far as “That sad rabble,” remind me how the Soviet Union, our greatest enemy and the country we spent trillions of dollars to “defend” ourselves against did against “that sad rabble” in Afghanistan?

Of course it is hard work to have your education fully paid for by daddy, parents who buy your furniture and your first home down payment, and a trust fund to subsidize your youthful consumption and even childcare and maid service while you work excessive hours.

Well I tell you what this new troll is impressive.  Aggressively wrong about everything and smug about it too.  I applaud the debunkery by our stalwart regulars!

Someone seems to think petty insults can change the facts about who won the Bolshevik revolution.

Wait, wait, let me guess—it was the czar and the aristocracy, because they had the army and all of the money, right?

Universal healthcare, which will have to be organized and run by the government, will have massive overhead in terms of administrative costs and possibly unionized labor (a liberal administration can’t resist the latter).  The taxes required to pay for this kind of government program will be staggering and will consume a great portion of the annual federal budget.

You know, all evidence to the actual contrary that exists in the world where administrative overhead in nations with single payer health care is at least less than half of what it is in the US.

You know those commercials where they advertise Exciting Trade School Opportunities! and one of them is “Medical Billing Expert”?  Yeah, those of us not Americans laugh our asses off at the idea that the American system is so complicated you need that sort of expertise.

By the by, “Atanarjuat”, why are you using the name of an Inuit mythical character?

Atanarjuat… wealth in the hands of a few may equal stability, but what kind are we talking about here? That’s hardly a maxim to live by. Look at Colombia, nominally a democracy, where the drug barons are in de facto control of half the country because they’re so wealthy they can afford more people to fight for them than the government can.
Obviously, the situation in the US is not equivalent, but just mouthing off maxims like “wealth=stability”- when there are so many cases when it’s not true, and other cases where one could *wish* that it weren’t true - is not going to win people over to your way of thinking.

Some cutters do it only for themselves, and don’t show anyone else. Before we started hearing about it on the evening news, the phenomenon existed since time immemorial. It is possible to say without irony, “I was a cutter before it was cool.”

Don’t know why I felt compelled to issue this clarification. I’m not a cutter.

he’s the intellectual equivalent of a cutter.

In that sense, he reminds me of the cutter who etched the interesting pattern into his chest. You can’t help but be disgusted and intrigued at the same time. There are some trolls engaging in the equivalent of a few half-hearted superficial cuts on the forearms to get some attention out of it, but Atan actually manages to write in a way that provokes a well-thought-out, determined response from others while at the same time never following through with any useful replies and just continues the cycle all over again.

Sort of like Tony Soprano leading Melfi around in circles for 4 seasons. She takes time to be genuinely interested in his case until she finally realizes he’s just consciously wasting her time.

I mean the kind of lawyer that will sue McDonald’s for making coffee that’s hot

Maybe I’m uniquely qualified to respond to this, since I’m both a lawyer and a former owner of a fast food restaurant.  McDonalds was selling coffee about 40 degrees hotter than our restaurant did.  The plaintiff in that case spilled hot coffee on herself (quite forseeable when the person buying the coffee is riding in a car) and needed extensive skin grafts as a result.  Thank god she didn’t drink the coffee—I’m not sure you can get skin grafts in your throat.

The point of the lawsuit, of course, was not that serving hot coffee is negligent, but that serving coffee so hot that people need skin grafts if they spill it on themselves is negligent.

Now, if somebody spilled our restaurant’s coffee on themselves, it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience, but they wouldn’t wind up in the hospital getting skin grafts as a result.  That’s probably why nobody ever sued us.

McDonalds wanted its coffee that hot, because it keeps longer at higher temepratures.  Our restaurant, during slow periods, would pour coffee down the drain, and make another pot, instead.  Not a huge cost, for keeping our customers safe.

Maybe I’m uniquely qualified to respond to this, since I’m both a lawyer and a former owner of a fast food restaurant.  McDonalds was selling coffee about 40 degrees hotter than our restaurant did.  The plaintiff in that case spilled hot coffee on herself (quite forseeable when the person buying the coffee is riding in a car) and needed extensive skin grafts as a result.  Thank god she didn’t drink the coffee—I’m not sure you can get skin grafts in your throat.

Moreover, they knew that this was dangerous: there had already been cases of serious burns due to their coffee and they’d kept it that hot anyway.  It was, when you look at it beyond the simplistic way the case was normally reported, a classic example of negligence.

Okay, I know I’m late on this thread, but can someone please explain how success is being “punished” by going back to a tax rate we had during relative economic prosperity?

in the same sense that once a child has been rewarded by being given a cookie, if you do not continue to give them cookies every 5 minutes, you are punishing them.

If the value the market puts on his time represents an efficient or utility-maximizing amount of work for him to be undertaking, then taxation may result in a less desirable amount of time worked.

In what way is this a bad thing? People still get sick, they still need doctors, regardless of how much this particular doctor (who is not unique, no matter how much they’d like to think so) works. Go ahead, “go Galt.” A smarter doctor will just step up and do your job. If Reardon Metal collapses, the trains don’t stop running. Johnston Metal just takes up the excess line.