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Will the Republicans please now drop their theocratic crusade?
invite response
2012 Nov 6, 5:50pm 22,722 views 95 comments
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Bellingham Bill
2012 Nov 8, 3:18pm
Oh yeah, both socialist Norway and North Dakota have state banks. I think that's a good idea, too, maybe.
A dollar would be a dollar in my Kingdom, not this 2% pa. inflationary jazz we've got going now.
curious2
2012 Nov 8, 3:24pm
A dollar would be a dollar in my Kingdom, not this 2% pa. inflationary jazz we've got going now.
JFK campaigned against 2% inflation in 1960, and won.
As for your kingdom, I hope it will be on PatNet's floating island after cannibal anarchy leads to Zombie apocalypse. AF will be defense minister. Since it will be a floating man-made structure, there will be no land tax, but we can all pitch in on the hydroponic yam harvest.
but how can you realistically achieve any significant monetary benefit from targeting the 1%
personally, I'd break their rent-seeking business models. Foremost is real estate, and the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax is good for that.
Included in this is more aggressive severance taxes on natural resource exploitation.
Then I'd socialize health care via single payer, to slowly wring the rents out of that sector.
Then I'd somehow close the $600B/yr trade deficit.
If I were King there wouldn't be inheritance taxes, since it would be impossible to accrete wealth via rent-seeking in the first place. People who had money had come by it honestly, through their own labor and deferred consumption.
Sounds overall good to me although I'd favor a mix of state/federal run and private health care (both as add-ons and complete replacement) working side by side like in Germany - when can you start? ;)
How can one child who is born on the planet claim a piece of nature as inheritance and the other child cannot.
Property / Contract Laws.
Not that the late Steve Jobs & Co. aren't past masters at rent-seeking, but at least creating new wealth -- the Personal Computer, Desktop Publishing, the www, touchphones & tablets -- is how they make their money.
Billy... Im suprised at you.. surely you mean those who paid 90/share for Apple stock during first day of trading didnt exactly become wealthy over the next months-years..
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Election results show President Obama got a majority of the popular vote again, in addition to winning the electoral college 300 vs 200. That happened even with an approval rating below 50%, and ObamaCare polling at -10%. Granted, President Obama is an extraordinary campaigner, but the larger issue is that many Americans felt they had no real choice: Republicans devolved into an apocalyptic cult offering only catastrophic Romnesia.
To borrow Bill Clinton's phrase, America built a bridge to the 21st century, and we are not going back. Republicans' bronze-age pact with Pat Robertson is no longer a "winning" formula, if it ever was. Contrary to freak80's delusional and deeply disturbed fears, supporters of same-sex marriage appear to have won a majority in all four states where the issue was on the ballot. That is consistent with polls showing majority support nationally since 2010. In other words, divide-and-misrule holy warrior crusades seem no longer to be a viable electoral strategy.
The issue is, now, will the Republicans even try to convert from a faith-based apocalyptic cult to an evidence-based political party with coherent governing principles? Or, will they blame Satan and persist on their current course?
To remind any Republican readers of American history, the first Republican President (Lincoln) signed the Emancipation Proclamation, championed the 13th Amendment, and rejected proposals to put "In God we Trust" on the currency. (Possibly the pre-eminent lawyer of his generation, Lincoln believed it would raise an impermissible establishment of religion. He also worried about fiat money, but that's another story.) Alas Lincoln's true legacy seems long forgotten now, at least among the party he helped create.
I ask this question because I believe that America needs at least two viable political parties, preferably more. Instead, we have two rival patronage networks, one of which is an apocalyptic cult. Can we please move on to a time when we can have a real choice in elections?
#politics