The Democrat Thread

[Jenksismyhero]

But all you're doing is making it a little easier for small- and medium-sized businesses to become big businesses. Where does the calculus ultimately change there? Why wouldn't these new-big-businesses also have CEO's making 380 times the average employee's salaries, why wouldn't a substantial portion of the wealth created still be siphoned off by the finance industry? We've seen the growth of gigantic, multi-national firms over the past several decades and we've seen real wages stagnate and opportunities disappear. Why should we expect drastically different results from these tax policy changes?

 

Potentially, but you can make requirements on the tax incentives they get. Every employee gets a pro-rata share of the credit/refund. If Congress is giving you money back, they can mandate what that money can be used for. Either way, if you're an employee of a small company that continues to grow, chances are very high that you're going to stay with that company, gain more responsibility and get paid more.

 

Ultimately though, I think you're right. There's nothing the government can do to stop a fortune 500 company from giving CEO's multi-million dollar bonuses while the peons make small salaries without good benefits. That's going to take a market shift where people no longer want to work for that company until they change their practices. Difficult to do in a down economy.

 

What's your solution? How do we get the 1% to share the wealth? Income/capital gains taxes will only get you so much. And it won't really address entire classes of people. At best you'll help fund some welfare programs, but that's not really changing anything, that's just maintaining the current system.

 

One will take its capital and its jobs to another country. This is the real problem that the race-to-the-bottom, cut-taxes-and-regulations policy that gets euphamized as a "business-friendly environment" is addressing.

 

I don't buy this. Some might, most won't. You're talking about gigantic gambles and potentially even more lost revenue. You think consumer won't change their perception of GE if they stick it to the US, refuse to pay their fair share of taxes and go work out of X country? Heck, make it part of the bill that if a company leaves because they don't want to pay taxes they're estopped from conducting business in the US. No company is going to risk that. (And yes, that's an extreme measure that would never ever happen, but i'm sure there are ways to keep businesses from leaving).

 

 

But your stated goal is to help small- and mid-sized businesses become large businesses, who would then become subject to these taxes, right?

 

I don't see how such a substantial tax reform is't broad, but really that's just semantics so w/e.

 

I don't know that that's the goal. In fact, I don't want it to be the goal. I wish our entire economy had no major multi-national businesses. I wish it were all local mom and pop shops. The big corporations suck from just about every angle but pricing and availability.

[StrangeSox]

Dropping a couple quick thoughts because there's a lot in that post but I can't write hundreds of words right now

 

1) You could impose maximum wages/compensation, though that's off in lefty-land

 

2) I ultimately don't know that we can achieve this with the current system, that we can patch-up where capitalism fails enough. Taxation could go a long way theoretically, but capital is simply too mobile and wealth too easily sheltered these days. I dunno, strong social democracies work in some places, much stronger than what we have.

 

3) Capital is already highly mobile, but I'm genuinely shocked to see you rejecting the most prominent conservative economic policy, which is that we need to cut, cut, cut taxes to keep businesses here. Hell, we know it works, that's why companies extort huge tax breaks out of state and local governments all the time.

 

4) I don't know how well such a protectionist law that would bar capital flight from doing business in the US would work ultimately--seems enormously complex. Politically it's an impossibility, though.

 

5) But that's the end-result of capitalism--concentration of wealth and power (and this includes co-option of the government, historically and currently). There's also quite a bit in our modern world that can't be done by "local mom and pop shops"--you going to fly on the Jim & Bill 747 built in their backyard? Build a semiconductor lab in your basement?

 

With a few phrasing tweaks, this could be something I'd expect to read from an avowed socialist.

[Balta1701]

I don't buy this. Some might, most won't. You're talking about gigantic gambles and potentially even more lost revenue. You think consumer won't change their perception of GE if they stick it to the US, refuse to pay their fair share of taxes and go work out of X country? Heck, make it part of the bill that if a company leaves because they don't want to pay taxes they're estopped from conducting business in the US. No company is going to risk that. (And yes, that's an extreme measure that would never ever happen, but i'm sure there are ways to keep businesses from leaving).

GE hasn't paid any federal income tax in >4 years.

[StrangeSox]

Soviet Soldier Found 33 Years After Going Missing in Afghanistan

 

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/06/soviet.../#ixzz2Mmma8QYE

[DukeNukeEm]

But that's the end-result of capitalism--concentration of wealth and power (and this includes co-option of the government, historically and currently). There's also quite a bit in our modern world that can't be done by "local mom and pop shops"--you going to fly on the Jim & Bill 747 built in their backyard? Build a semiconductor lab in your basement?

Ehhhhhhhh

 

I mean in a real open market, where the government doesn't have such a huge presence, big companies would fail a lot more. Is it really a wonder how wealth gets concentrated once the words "too big to fail" start entering the picture? All those investors are protected, all those executives are safe, the workers hide behind their unions and the unions are politically untouchable. GM should've been split into a thousand pieces and left a massive void in the market which would have to filled by someone, there's an opportunity for some turnover at the top right?

 

I mean it's almost sad when you think about it with GM. Here you have Tesla, which is doing some absolutely incredible stuff with electric cars, and GM which got forced by the government to build a $40,000 piece of s*** that NOBODY WANTS. All those players I mentioned earlier still win, GM's still there and those pensions are untouchable. But they are just clogging the market, they are the definition of rotten institution fighting institutional rot. Of course capitalism is going to fail when you take the possibility of failure out of capitalism, and no s*** small businesses are going to suffer when you've decided who is actually risking anything and who isn't by virtue of size.

Edited March 6, 2013 by DukeNukeEm

[StrangeSox]

GM didn't get forced by the government to build the Volt.

 

We can look to see what a minimalist government results in. Just go look at the Gilded Age. Power was enormously concentrated among a handful of firms if not outright monopolies in most industries.

[DukeNukeEm]

GM didn't get forced by the government to build the Volt.

 

We can look to see what a minimalist government results in. Just go look at the Gilded Age. Power was enormously concentrated among a handful of firms if not outright monopolies in most industries.

Oh you mean the fastest period of growth any country in the history of the world has ever experienced? Must have been awful.

Edited March 6, 2013 by DukeNukeEm

[StrangeSox]

For most people? Yeah, it was. Especially anyone who wasn't a white male and was legally a second-class citizen. For a very few at the top? It was awesome.

 

Steinbeck's quote about temporarily embarrassed millionaires comes to mind.

[DukeNukeEm]

For most people? Yeah, it was. Especially anyone who wasn't a white male and was legally a second-class citizen. For a very few at the top? It was awesome.

 

Steinbeck's quote about temporarily embarrassed millionaires comes to mind.

CUE THE WHITE GUILT LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

 

Plenty of those companies failed on their own too, Samuel Insull, Pullman, etc. There was also a lot of competition in many industries, you really think Bethlehem Steel and Inland Steel would be allowed to exist by the government today?

[StrangeSox]

CUE THE WHITE GUILT LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

 

Anyone advocating for a return to the Gilded Age and how awesome it was should feel guilty when they realize they forgot to consider reality for >50% of the population.

 

Plenty of those companies failed on their own too, Samuel Insull, Pullman, etc. There was also a lot of competition in many industries, you really think Bethlehem Steel and Inland Steel would be allowed to exist by the government today?

 

I really think that the Gilded Age was an incredibly s***ty era for most people. We were talking about the hypothetical return to a minimalist government.

[DukeNukeEm]

I really think that the Gilded Age was an incredibly s***ty era for most people. We were talking about the hypothetical return to a minimalist government.

By modern standards? Yea, of course it was s***ty for most people if you're comparing it to 2013 America.

 

But if you compare the standard of living in the United States to its global peers at that time we were blowing them out of the water. There's a reason immigrants flowed into this country.

[StrangeSox]

By modern standards? Yea, of course it was s***ty for most people if you're comparing it to 2013 America.

 

But if you compare the standard of living in the United States to its global peers at that time we were blowing them out of the water. There's a reason immigrants flowed into this country.

 

No, compared to some of their peers at the time who made enormous amounts of money exploiting cheap labor working in horrible conditions and co-opting the government.

[DukeNukeEm]

No, compared to some of their peers at the time who made enormous amounts of money exploiting cheap labor working in horrible conditions and co-opting the government.

Well the nice thing about that era is there wasn't much of a government to co-opt. Besides, even the cheap labor here was doing great compared to the rest of the world.

[StrangeSox]

Well the nice thing about that era is there wasn't much of a government to co-opt.

 

You misunderstand. The smaller the government, the easier it is to co-opt and the less restrictions on their actions and exploitation in the first place. Corrupting and controlling the government was central to many of these companies' success, especially the railroads.

 

Besides, even the cheap labor here was doing great compared to the rest of the world.

 

Citation? There was an awful lot of labor unrest, poverty and exploitation.

 

Either way, few other places in the world had started moving away from the horrible structures that defined the Gilded Age, so that's not really saying much. It's certainly not a moral argument for those structures.

Edited March 6, 2013 by StrangeSox

[bmags]

I don't know where we are at this point, internet is too hard nowadays.

[StrangeSox]

Another good article from Ta-Nehisi Coates, this time in the NYT.

 

The Good, Racist People

In modern America we believe racism to be the property of the uniquely villainous and morally deformed, the ideology of trolls, gorgons and orcs. We believe this even when we are actually being racist. In 1957, neighbors in Levittown, Pa., uniting under the flag of segregation, wrote: “As moral, religious and law-abiding citizens, we feel that we are unprejudiced and undiscriminating in our wish to keep our community a closed community.”

I am trying to imagine a white president forced to show his papers at a national news conference, and coming up blank. I am trying to a imagine a prominent white Harvard professor arrested for breaking into his own home, and coming up with nothing. I am trying to see Sean Penn or Nicolas Cage being frisked at an upscale deli, and I find myself laughing in the dark. It is worth considering the messaging here. It says to black kids: “Don’t leave home. They don’t want you around.” It is messaging propagated by moral people.

 

more here:

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archiv...-people/273843/

Edited March 8, 2013 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Breitbart forced to settle for $100k over O'Keefe video

 

The most absurd passage ever published at Breitbart.com appears in a November 2011 article by Ron Capshaw, under the headline, "The Birth of the Democratic Campaign Tactics: 1964." The piece begins by discussing the race between Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson. Then one reaches the third paragraph: "Journalists on the campaign trail saw Johnson drunkenly board a plane armed with nuclear weapons and then accidentally drop them on the United States," the article states. "Luckily, by the grace of God, they did not go off. None of this was reported, while newspapers editors worked in overdrive to portray Goldwater as eager to push the button."

 

How I love that passage. It isn't just that it appears without attribution, as if the reader should accept such an anecdote without citation. What's so priceless is that, even in a scenario where it improbably proved to be true, a writer and editor would still have just slipped it into the article as a casual aside, quietly achieving the biggest buried lede in history. Adds the next sentence, "Today, pundits argue that dirty tricks by Carville and Begalia [sic] were something new on the horizon for Democrats and were borrowed from decades of Republican campaigns. But Johnson was a pioneer of the Clinton War Room." A near nuclear disaster is mentioned not as something to dwell on or condemn, but as incidental example of the actual subjects to be dwelled upon: liberal med

 

After making Vera look like an eager would-be sex trafficker, what did Breitbart and O'Keefe do when it was reported that he had in fact called the police? What did they do when the California Attorney General investigated the case and affirmed as much? Did they append a correction to the story and apologize? Did they do what they could to give this man back his reputation?

 

They did not.

 

When last I wrote about this story in 2010, long after all the facts had come to light, there was no correction appended to the story. And look at the page today: The original story is still up with no correction, no clarification, no editor's note -- nothing. Long ago I confronted O'Keefe on Twitter about Vera. Back when he was alive I confronted Andrew Breitbart about the man too.

 

You'd think that someone in the conservative press, or some media critic, would have jumped on this long ago, but no one ever got interested. And by all appearances, Breitbart.com is being run today by people with no interest in doing justice in this case.

 

Anyway, no thanks to them, there's been a bit of justice after all: Juan Carlos Vera sued O'Keefe and Giles "for $75,000 in damages, arguing that he was taped without consent in violation of state law, and portrayed untruthfully. And as of yesterday, O'Keefe agreed to pay him $100,000 in damages and tender an apology." Actually, the "apology" is pretty weak, but whatever. The paperwork is below.

 

As you can see, it didn't require O'Keefe to admit wrongdoing or to fully apologize for the wrong he did Vera, so while the $100,000 debt has presumably been discharged, he still owes Vera that much.

 

Breitbart ought to publish an apology too, but how often do they ever do the right thing? And as much as I hate to say it, they may also want to fact check that scoop about LBJ and the loose nukes. If they can confirm it, they might even find that it's worth bumping the part about the near nuclear detonation (due to the drunken recklessness of the president) up to the second paragraph.

 

They run a hell of an organization over there, and it's only gotten (substantially) dumber since Breitbart died.

[Jenksismyhero]

"Forced to Settle" is an oxymoron.

Edited March 8, 2013 by Jenksismybitch

[StrangeSox]

yeah not sure what I was thinking with that phrasing!

[mr_genius]

Ta-Nehisi

 

haha. great name. i love it.

Edited March 8, 2013 by mr_genius

[StrangeSox]

His parents were Black Panther activists. Apparently it's an ancient Egyptian word for Nubia.

[mr_genius]

His parents were Black Panther activists. Apparently it's an ancient Egyptian word for Nubia.

 

i hate that name now.

[StrangeSox]

the "Dow 36,000!" guys have a heck of an article in Bloomberg:

 

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/...-was-right.html

 

“[...]in our 1999 book[...]get to 36,000[...]between three and five years[...]Today, the far edge of that time frame is clearly in reach.”

 

“Sure, if you count the tech bubble, 9/11, and the world-wide financial collapse of 2008, our predictions look incredibly stupid, but we’d be right if those hadn’t happened!”

[mr_genius]

Dow 36,000 Author: I Was Right!

 

what a douche

[bmags]

I'm having trouble linking on ipad, but I suggest reading nytimes article on al-alwaki assassination.