Thursday, December 17, 2009

SAR #9352

Taxing the rich is never the answer, according to the rich.

Dear Santa GOP:    If I promise to vote against all the things I used to support, which will let you completely frustrate the will of the American people, will you bring me seniority in your caucus and a couple of nice committee assignments? Yours Faithfully (with my fingers crossed behind my back) Little Joey Lieberman.

Buy The Numbers:   The Congressional Research Service say each of Obama's 30,000 soldiers will take two mercenaries civilian contractors along with them to Afghanistan, brining the number of 'contractors' in Afghanistan to about 150,000. Contractors made up 69% of the Pentagon's personnel in Afghanistan.

Asked & Answered:     “Producer Prices Rise 1.8 Percent. Should the Fed be Worried About Inflation?” No, but the citizenry should.

Home For Christmas the New Year:   All over the globe this year, governments have been bad, spending lots more than they had. And investors, inexplicably, kept buying up their questionable debt. If banks repay their debt, it will have to be with freshly printed paper, for no economy is producing the kind of taxable income required. And then they'll have to pay more interest to re-float their loans. Which will make the debt that investors bulked up on this year worth much less....

Peter/Paul:   Citigroup is repaying the TARP funds, and in return the IRS is giving them $38 billion in tax breaks.

Timed Exercise:   A British newspaper has a list of 100 purported reasons why climate change is a natural event no one need be concerned about. In 10 minutes see how many of their silly statements you can debunk.

Shipping Out the White Collars:   Shell is shipping “hundreds” of Houston-based office jobs to India and the Philippines to reduce labor costs. Good news for shareholders, unless they used to work for Shell in Houston.

The Dark Side:   There may be enough natural gas in the shale deposits in the Northeast to make oil barons drool. There are certainly enough problems with the extraction techniques to make the local citizens sue.

Soapbox:   The question is 'should taxes be progressive'? Yes. All personal income no mater what the source – wages, dividends, interest, capital gains, inheritance, lottery winnings, everything – should be progressively taxed and at some level, say a million dollars a year, the taxes should be at least as large as they were back in the fifties. There should be no tax benefit of one form of income over another, and there should be no tax deductions which reward any form of debt, specifically no deduction for any form of interest paid on a debt and no writing off bad debts against income.

Political Operations:   The Democrats have been gelded and healthcare reform has been gutted. Merry Christmas, Insurance Companies.

Being Brief:   Growth in the US economy depends on growth in consumer spending, which depends on growth in consumer credit (because the American consumer doesn't have any discretionary cash on hand). Ditto for small businesses. No credit; no economy.

Wish I'd Said:   “We are well on our way to becoming a failed state.” Oh, right. I have.

Excuse Our Dust:   The CEO of the company that ships 12% of Canada's tar-sands oil to the US says that mining tar sands, ruining the environment, and adding greatly to the CO2 problem is necessary because “we can’t deny access to the rest of the world to that huge resource.”

Porn O'Graph:   Tinker to Evers to Chance – Don't look down.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Could you convince my husband to let me get another credit card, I'm only doing it to help out the economy. It's not good for individuals to save, it's better to run up more debt. I think I remember you saying that in one of your issues.

rjs said...

in case you didnt notice, those strikethroughs are breaking your links up into a series of identical links...

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

Anony 859. Your dedication to the economy is admirable and you are right - if the entire group saves there will be no demand-driven growth. On the other hand, I'm sure you don't want to be just another face in the crowd, so I'll side with your spouse and urge you to save... and send your money to me.

rjs - I hadn't noticed the strikeover stuttering effect - think of it as an undocumented feature.
ckm

Eric Hacker said...

re: Timed Exercise

I totally blew it. I lost too much time reacting to the asinine lunacy of each of their so called reasons to get very far with the debunking. The process went something like: Read reason #1. Shout obscenities about their idiocy. Stand up and look for to kick. Give up and sit back down. Take deep breath. Sigh and put head in hands. Reread to be sure it was really that stupid. Guttural scream. Grab desk and count to 10 ... OK 20. Debunk.

to: rjs

What did you tell him for? Now he'll start sneaking other relevant links into the strikethroughs to see if we'd notice. ;)

Thanks for all the entertainment ckm!

Anonymous said...

Excuse Our Dust:...

Canada has a disproportionate number of its Yahoos and Rednecks located in Alberta, home of the Tar Sands and the Texass of the North. Canada's Yahoo In Chief, Stephen Harper aka Canadian Prime Minister has his power center in Alberta with his own district in Calgary. Hooaaa, as they say in Houston!

A Canadian diplomat recently blew the whistle on Harper's use of Torture (sound familiar?, move over Barry, George, Tony!) in Afghanistan:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/20/canada-allegations-complicit-torture-afghanistan

Canada, not just maple syrup and Winter "sports". Visit today but be prepared to tell Border Cops what you intend to say:
http://i1.democracynow.org/2009/11/30/amy_goodman_detained_at_canadian_border

That little Yankee Dame sure looks threatening.

kwark said...

Re: Political Operations
Given the performances we've seen since Obama's inauguration, I've decided that the Dem's hand-wringing and woe-be-gone looks are just part of the act. Depending upon the subject the Dems and Republicans simply dutifully trade-off -good cop/bad cop fashion- to better confound the public. All for their corporate paymasters of course.

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