Ye Olde Political Thread

[vipertcu]

lol. I was hoping the smiley would indicate I was joking.

Ah again with the ol' "moral obligation" to help less fortunate people. The government forcing you to "help" people is wrong. As for my reason for not voting Obama and voting McCain, the way I have chosen who to vote for is this: Who do I want to be my commander in chief? Obama who wants to do all of this stuff for the poor innocent helpless people? Where does that money come from? Either A. Increased Taxes, or B. Cut Spending in other areas, which if we look at history means the defense budget. McCain has been a POW, been in the military and I believe will keep our military strong which is what we need in this day and age.

[Shan/KenDoRin]

I knew you were joking, but wanted to use your post to show my parallel reason .

Let's clear this up: Tax cuts are not for granted. Americans do not have a right to have their taxes cut. It is a privilege provided by the government. At the moment, rich CEOs are paying lower percentages in taxes than middle-class families, be it because of hiding wealth, tax cuts or whatever. Reducing (not ending) tax cuts for those who don't need them to help those who do is not taking from the rich. It's giving less money to the rich to give some more money to the poor.

[DennyCrane]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shan/KenDoRin

I never saw the statement from Obama's website that promised such tax raises. Link me the quote where Obama's website says directly to the voters, "We will raise taxes." You can't assume he'll do something because of the programs he's proposing. If I missed this quote in the thread, I am sorry, you must have posted it while my internet was down. I promise you, I don't ignore facts.

This is the last time.
Here's my aforementioned post showing just SOME of Obamas promised entitlement programs. Again, you must ask how they will be paid.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DennyCrane
Let's look at his "universal healthcare" for starters. He claims "there are 45 million Americans who don't have health insurance". I've seen him pinned down on that number. He's including people in America illegally and people so wealthy, they have no need for insurance. He will force employers to pay more for employee insurance, but his plan lacks specifics. All he's saying is he'll tax the hell out of employers who don't meet his hidden standard. But what about the cost? Most experts put it at 1.5 trillion dollars anually. I could cite examples around the world on how socialized medicine leads to lowered care quality and long waits, but I'd suggest you look in the sR political thread... it's been documented well there.

Everyone who pays taxes will pay more taxes. He says things like "Obama will cut income taxes by $1,000 for working families to offset the payroll tax they pay." This is a flat-out lie. Again, when pinned down, he's talking about an additional earned income credit for people who make so little they're getting all their payroll taxes back. So, he's giving money they did not earn to people already not paying taxes. Where is the money coming from? The government does not generate money, they can only take it from one place and send it to another. The money comes from othe tax payers. So, if you're not in the bottom rung of the national payscale, your payroll taxes will go up.

Obama's plan talks up all kinds of nice things for workers, but he fails to understand that there has to be a 2-way relationship between the employee and the business itself. Obama doesn't understand that people go into business to earn money. They do not create a business to create jobs. If a business is losing money due to high costs, they must make cuts. The first thing cut is jobs. The business must get by with fewer people who are required to increase their productivity to make up for the loss of people. Obama says he'll increase minimum wage often. Minimum wage is not something people will live on forever. It's something entry-level people start out at. Most are young people in high school and college and as soon as they're out of school, they move on to higher paying positions. People who do stay get merit and cost of living increases, and eventually get promoted up. Raising minimum wages like Obama promises will result in large costs of doing business increases which again will result in positions being cut and... here's another huge consequence... higher prices. Think about the places that hire at minimum wage. Fast food restaurants, supermarkets, stores at the mall, etc. When they all have to raise their prices to stay out of the red, who is hurt the most? Correct... the people earning the least. So they get a little more an hour, but everything they buy is more expensive. Who is behind this minimum wage push?

Unions.

When you're in a union, they take a percentage of every dollar you earn. It's in their financial interest to raise minimum wage. They don't care about products like food costing more, they care about higher and higher union dues. Obama gets massive contributions from unions and this is all for them.

Obama also talks about taking away tax cuts for those evil rich people. He is very deceptive here. He says Bush gave huge tax cuts to the wealthy and very small cuts to the poor. The facts are, Bush increased that deduction for low income familes just like Obama has promised to do... yeah, Bush gave free money to people who don't pay taxes, too. He also lowered the marginal tax rates across the board. This is the best way to explain how they effected people. Let's say Costco has announced a rebate for anyone who made a purchase last month of 10%. The poor person spent $10 last month on a pair of pants. That rich bastard spend $2000 on a home theater setup. The poor guy gets $1 back and the rich S.O.B. gets $200. That's all Obama-math mentions. "Bush gave that wealthy person a $200 tax cut and gave that needy poor person only 1 dollar!" Obama would take away the 10% discount from the home theater guy and give the $200 to the guy who bought a pair of pants. This is wealth redistribution.

The rest of his plan is full of handout promises... from free wireless broadband to $500 a year to people with mortgages, to subsidized time off from work, yada yada yada... he even goes so far as to say the problem with education is not that teachers aren't held accountable for the quality of education they provide, but that they simply need more money. And the tax payers will foot the bill. Oh yeah, and the children... $4,000 per kid for their first year of college. (tax increase). 150 billion dollars invested in global warming plans (tax increase). Double funding for failed windmills and solar panels. (subsidy, tax increase).

That leads us right into Obamas energy plan. He's going to spend hundreds of billions of tax-payer dollars a year on things he guesses will decrease our use of foreign oil by a third in 25 years. Wait, what??? Yes. 25 years. And in this bloated plan of his, there's NO mention of building standardized clean modern nuclear power plants. None. Europe has them all over the place and they are problem-free. One miserable Jane Fonda movie and one accident at an ancient technology plant in the 1970s and the democrats have blocked nuclear power plant building. We have vast supplies of oil in the ANWR, Montana, N. Dakota, gulf of Mexico, and off the Pacific coast. We can't drill. The democrats won't allow it. All refineries are running at near 100% capacity and it's still not enough. The democrats will not allow new refineries. Obama will not even discuss this. All he'll do is promise to spend huge ammounts of tax payer dollars to cut foreign oil consumption by a third in a quarter of a century. Why not eliminate it completely in less than 10 years at no cost to tax payers? And apparently Obama doesn't know about supply and demand, but if we have volumes of domestically generated electricity and petroleum products, costs go down and the American tax payer has more money left over in his wallet each week.

OK, so that was a lot of info, but trust me, it's barely scratched the surface of Obamas "plan". EVERYTHING in his plan involves spending the money tax payers earn. You cannot tax a country into prosperity and I think this November, he'll learn you cannot get into the White House on that platform.

__________________

[Shan/KenDoRin]

He'll reduce tax relief on million dollar income households, which is not tax raise. He'll give less. He won't be taking more. Tax cuts are not for granted. Read the above post.

[Shan/KenDoRin]

You say you can't tax a country into prosperity. But you can't tax-cut a country into prosperity either. High taxes are the mark of a booming economy; remember that. Even if he did raise some taxes on working families, the benefits that come from that would balance out the cost. But mostly, I assume his funding would come from reducing tax cuts on super-high income households, which, as much as you want to say otherwise, is NOT raising taxes.

[DennyCrane]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shan/KenDoRin

Yeah, I'm for the withdrawal plan, so you can see why McCain is a no-no for me.

Which plan? He's stated a) he'll pull all troops in his first day in office, b) a phased pullout over 16 months, and c) not leaving until the mission is completed.

[DennyCrane]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shan/KenDoRin

You say you can't tax a country into prosperity. But you can't tax-cut a country into prosperity either. High taxes are the mark of a booming economy; remember that. Even if he did raise some taxes on working families, the benefits that come from that would balance out the cost. But mostly, I assume his funding would come from reducing tax cuts on super-high income households, which, as much as you want to say otherwise, is NOT raising taxes.

This is a fallacy. There are many layers of government required for every entitlement program. So, taxing "working families" (And what family doesn't work?) sends money to Washington where it has to be accounted, placed into the General Fund, drawn out and redistributed to people that still other government workers must manage. All those people are paid witht he very money they're taking from tax payers. It is proven that allowing people to keep more of the money they earn results in prosperity. You're advocating wealth redistribution in the form of punishing the producers on a sliding scale. The more they produce the more you'd take. And you'd give it to the non-producers. This is not Constitutional. It is socialism.

[Shan/KenDoRin]

Okay, I have a question. What exactly is our mission? Saddam's dead, we've changed the regime. The only reason insurgents are attacking us is that we're still there. What I thought was the mission is complete.

He said he'll a) give the order to pull out soldiers his first day in office, beginning b) the phased 16-month pullout, as c) the mission is complete. That's how I've interpreted it.

[Shan/KenDoRin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DennyCrane

It is socialism.

No it's not. It's a business transaction. If he wins, this is what it'll be:

The people have elected Obama to change the tax system. The government is improving conditions for working class Americans, and the workers are giving the government the money it needs to do it. Government workers are involved in the process. They are part of the cost.

[Shan/KenDoRin]

This is "Ye Olde Political Thread". Why should we reduce it down to just plain American politics? Why don't we use it to laugh at the broken systems of other countries? Take India for example. Everyone says China and India are the two next superpowers. Let me tell you why that is not possible for India.

Indian government's future on a knife edge - CNN.com

Quote:

vote of confidence in Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is expected to be so close Tuesday that several ailing members will be carried into parliament on stretchers or pushed in on wheelchairs.


Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for vote after communist parties withdrew support.

The vote is so crucial to the survival of Singh's government that five members of parliament who are serving prison sentences have been freed to cast votes -- under the watchful eyes of their jailers.

A vote of no confidence would mean Singh must resign. The government would hold early elections unless a new coalition is formed.

A no-confidence vote also could doom a controversial plan for the United States to share civilian nuclear technology with India -- an arrangement between President Bush and Singh that triggered anger from India's leftist opposition.

The deal, which has many critics for differing reasons, would give India access to U.S. nuclear fuel and technology for its civilian nuclear power plants. That would happen even though New Delhi, which tested nuclear weapons in 1974 and 1998, has declined to join international non-proliferation agreements.

India has promised that it will not transfer the fuel and equipment to its weapons program. It would also allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect at least 14 of its 22 nuclear plants.

Don't Miss
Singh faces crucial nuclear deal vote
The leaders of India's two communist parties -- which hold about 60 seats in India's 543-member parliament -- have accused Singh of surrendering India's sovereignty to the U.S. with the deal.

Although it does not have to be ratified by the parliament -- India's cabinet approved it last year -- Singh's recent efforts to implement the plan helped bring on the confidence vote that could effectively kill it.

Singh faces opposition from the right and left sides of the political spectrum in India. He will lose the vote of confidence if 272 members -- just over a half of all members -- vote against him.

The nuclear deal, announced in 2006 and signed by Bush and Singh a year ago, would also expand U.S.-Indian cooperation in energy and satellite technology.

Yet the U.S. Congress would have to change U.S. law before it could transfer fuel or technology to India.

The confidence vote is also highly-charged because the next schedules election is set for May 2009. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which Singh's Congress party upset in early elections four years ago, may see India's rising fuel and food prices as an advantage if early elections are held.

Good news is that the no-confidence vote failed by the speck of protein on it's tiniest hair. Manmohan Singh will remain Prime Minister and the nuclear treaty will pass

I've been watching the coverage live on Indian TV. This is why India is going nowhere. Its government doesn't care about the people, because the people don't care about it. It is full of uneducated thugs who are concerned with one thing: rupees. You know, that thing you collect 43 of to get a dollar. The entire Indian government is crap. PM Manmohan Singh had a 2006 deal with President Bush to have nuclear plants installed in return for his cooperation on the IAEA's non-proliferation program (the one we're trying to get Iran to cooperate on). Because there is little morality in the Indian Parliament, several MPs were paid by oil and fossil fuel companies to force a no-confidence vote to try and destabilize the federal government to stop one piece of legislation that is in every way good for India. The kind of trouble India would be in staying without an executive leader for days, even weeks, while the parliament elects a new PM is apparently a reasonable price to make a couple easy bucks.

But that's not all. During the vote, there was a claim from certain MPs participating in the vote that they were offered bribes by the party for the nuclear deal and against the unjustified ousting of the country's leader. They said they were offered money to abstain from the vote, as the party for the deal was winning the vote at the time. These bribery charges were later accused of being fabricated.

So here it is in a nutshell. A political party in India is accusing another party of fabricating charges of another party committing bribery to save a vote started by another party to remove the prime minister in order to stop their prime minister (a good man) from passing a single piece of legislation that would benefit India. Corruption much?



God bless America.