>> Unfortunately, in the day of Fox News, being an informed populace is even becoming difficult.
Equality doesn't just mean that everybody has the same wealth, regardless of how hard they work. This is superficial. It means everyone has to think the same way. That's the only way we'll ever get true equality, and we won't get that until everyone's getting the same information. Conformity, equality, obedience: these must be our core values. Fox News must be stopped.
Current US (federal) debt is $16.1 trillion, the burden of which is largely hidden by the fact that interest rates are currently extremely low.
Add to the above numbers an inflation tax of about 1.5 - 2.5%.
Your analysis starts by excluding any taxes you find inconvenient (such as, apparently, social security, inflation, tariffs, ad-valorem taxes, and especially state and local taxes -- which you somehow don't regard as governments) to get the numbers you want. If a business did accounting the way you just did, they'd rightfully land in jail.
But if you're just going to point to the national budget, echo popular political talk-show points about "$16 TRILLION IN DEBT OUR GRANDKIDS WILL HAVE TO PAY"...
You fail to mention who's going to pay it then? It must wonderful to be an Entitled One and write checks that someone else has to cash.
...and "WE'RE ON THE ROAD TO GREECE" then I'd argue you're completely missing the forest for the trees.
Unfortunately, you didn't argue it, you merely asserted it without any evidence and worse, started by providing "evidence" that was misleading at best.
As for Greece, I actually lived there 15 years ago. Even then the government was obviously bloated beyond all recognition, with government "jobs" that required little or no work being handed out as political favors. I left in part because I knew that the country would deteriorate eventually, with a rapidly aging population and three -- count 'em -- viable communist parties and one socialist party (PASOK) that was at that time the largest party in the country. Current newspaper reports and email accounts from a friend there sound pretty ominous.
Years ago a prominent foreign politician -- I'm sorry I can't remember who -- was asked how his country went bankrupt. He replied "Two ways. Slowly at first, then quickly."
Your analysis starts by excluding any taxes you find inconvenient (such as, apparently, social security, inflation, tariffs, ad-valorem taxes, and especially state and local taxes -- which you somehow don't regard as governments) to get the numbers you want. If a business did accounting the way you just did, they'd rightfully land in jail.
I had assumed the OP was talking in terms of the federal government, as that is the government debt that is most criticized. Also, did state and local taxes not exist in 2000? I would assume the tax and spending ratios would be close to the same.
Also, if the government got to do accounting the way businesses do, then they would be able to capitalize things like infrastructure costs. But because our governments can't, transportation funds dry up and we end up with decaying infrastructure.
You seem to suggest I'm being deceiving here, but all I'm pointing out is this: We had a recession caused by the private sector. As a result of this recession, tax revenue went down, because taxes go down in a recession. Spending also went up, because spending on safety net programs intended to mitigate recessions goes up. And certain people, like yourself apparently, think this is an unprecendented catastrophe. And our long-run debt projections are almost purely a function of healthcare costs and have nothing to do with aging or population trends.
You fail to mention who's going to pay it then? It must wonderful to be an Entitled One and write checks that someone else has to cash.
Where is it written that a country is required to eventually reduce it's national debt to $0? The US will not "die" and leave a bunch of credit card bills to its heirs, like human being. China is not going to knock on our door, throw a bunch of IOUs in our faces, and demand we pay up or they'll break our legs. The figurative way this could happen is if our debt causes expensive borrowing costs or massive inflation. Why don't we wait for either of those to start to happen -- none of which has happened in countries with much greater debt than US that control their own currency (as we do), like Japan -- before you throw the "future burden of our kids" argument out?
Even then the government was obviously bloated beyond all recognition, with government "jobs" that required little or no work being handed out as political favors.
I posted this link down below, but public sector employment has completely collapsed since the recession[0]. So, I can't imagine too many jobs are being handed out this way.
Greece had multiple problems, and yes, government corruption was one of them. It also has no control of a central bank to increase/decrease the money supply. Its government does not also does not possess roughly $100 trillion in asssets[1]. I don't like the idea of selling Yellowstone to Disney (for example) in the face of fiscal deficits, but if you're going to make the "future generations" argument, it's more accurate to compare the government debt to government assets than the government's tax receipts in a single year.
> We had a recession caused by the private sector.
I was going to stay out of this thread but, no, not with something like this.
The recession was not caused by the private sector. It was caused by government policy that enabled people to buy homes they should not have been able to buy. That was the primary enabler. With at that one gating element what happened would have been impossible. The private sector worked with and within the framework provided by our inept politicians, who never seem to have a handle on the concept of unintended consequences.
Let's not forget the millions of Americans who got on the gravy train knowing, full well, that they couldn't really pay for that million dollar home with their $75K combined salaries. Those among our compatriots who took part in this were another significant gating element. Without their participation this wouldn't have happened.
There are three groups destroying our country from the inside: Politicians, government and unions
Ummm, what irony? 1) The article doesn't say that Thomas used the word. 2) The word is hardly a "ten-dollar" word, since many foreign imports are standard usage ("gung-ho" is Cantonese). 3) Finally, I would expect that he would indeed use the word in his writings, since there really isn't a good substitute ("transistion" is rather too vague).
>> It feels as if western state-assisted assassinations of civilians are becoming a more frequently documented reality
And when were they documented the first time? It's much more plausible to believe that you are paid by the Chinese government to spread that rumor than to believe what you've written.
>> Sounds like a classic case of corporate murder.
No, it sounds like a case of Chinese government murder, something they have plenty of experience with. They must have known that there was a good chance that he would talk to the US government. The more interesting aspect is that the IME, a agency of the Singaporean government, would appear to be in on at least the suppression of the story.
Just wondering who had more at stake here: the Chinese Gov't or the US Gov't? If he was the one guy with the skills and knowledge (at IME) capable of operating this device, and his work was a potential national security threat to the US, then wouldn't they have more motive to kill him than China?
I don't think it would have come as much of a surprise to the US that China is interested in cutting-edge semiconductor tech, nor would be the details of what IME was up to. I don't see much of an upside for China killing him, shedding tons of light on his work, and Huwei's dealings with IME, plus losing their top specialist. They tend to just blanket deny things when caught red-handed anyway.
Considering his "suicide" happened on the last day of work at IME and he was coming home to the US, it would seem the cat was out of the bag on that one.
So, Facebook invites Obama to their HQ to give a "townhall", then many of their execs contribute heavily to his campaign, and then Solyndra, er, Facebook gets a massive tax break. This is one of the many reasons why I, too, have made Obama a secular substitute for Jesus and anti-racism an easy-to-satisfy substitute for a more rigorous personal morality.
In other news, Facebook co-founder Chris Zell has purchased The New Republic magazine and turned it into magazine so pro-Obama that even its former owner, Martin Peretz (himself an Obama supporter) has attacked it.
Facebook is taking advantage of a long-standing loophole in the tax code, not the President Obama Decrees Special Breaks For Buddies Act of 2013. There is a story here about the insidious influence of major corporations, but it's considerably more nuanced than the one you're pitching.
Businesses don't take sides in politics. They contribute to whomever will make their lives easier in the government and currently has the power to do so.
And they DO have to... if not, then the press coverage will increase until reporters demand an answer on their own.
No, the media coverage will the same as it has always been since Obama announced his candidacy: fawning adoration, mixed with just enough mild skepticism to create the impression amongst themselves and others that they really do perform some sort of journalistic function and that what we see in the media really is "news" and not just propaganda.
Poke a Mainstream Media "reporter" deep enough and you'll always touch MSNBC.
What a skewed view of the world - I hardly think you will find MSNBC by poking FOX reporters, NYT reporters or Christian Science Monitor reporters (not to mention al-Jazeera, BBC, RT, etc.) And Obama has gotten plenty of bad press.
I hardly think you will find MSNBC by poking... NYT reporters or Christian Science Monitor reporters (not to mention al-Jazeera, BBC, RT, etc.)
I assume this is a joke, particularly the NYT. And I'm not seeing ABC, CBS, NBC (owned by GE, which has gotten massive "green energy" subsidies from Obama), PBS, the former Current TV, not to mention almost every newspaper in the US, anywhere in your list. Kinda lopsided, huh?
As for the foreign media organs, the BBC, al-Jazeera, and RT are all famously anti-American. Obama still manages to get much better press that any Republican. They hate America and they like Obama. Odd.
Picking Rand at her youthful (23 y.o.) worst seems hardly fair. The young Rand was very much under the influence of (what she took to be) Nietzsche's thought. (Much of Rand at the beginning and end of her life was Rand not at her best, the interview being a good example.)
Defining a lifetime by a single extreme is a game two can play, so let's play it. Ayn Rand was also capable of great caring and benevolence, as when she loaned money to two struggling friends (who never paid her back). See! See! That's who she really was, all else must be ignored! And since Clarence Thomas and Paul Ryan were fans of hers they too are great humanitarians! It's your ad hominem and guilt by association in reverse. Dang, this is fun!
More seriously, do you really think that someone going thru the intimate details of your life couldn't find one thing to damn you with?
>> Ayn Rand was an eloquent proponent of sociopathy.
No, she wasn't. She was an advocate (hardly a perfect one) of human freedom and prosperity. And speaking of sociopathy , that makes her an eternal enemy of every advocate of one form of socialism or another: Adolf Hitler's National Socialist German Workers Party, Slobodan Milosovic's Serbian Socialist Party, Stalin's Bolshevik Socialism, Saddam Hussein's Arabic Ba'ath Socialist Party, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge flavored socialism, Mao Tse Tung's socialism, or New York Times-endorsed Robert Mugabe's socialism ("I am still the Hitler of the time. This Hitler has only one objective, justice for his own people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people, and their right to their resources. If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold.") Etc., etc., bloody etc.
Mao said "Serve The People". Socialists, like the leaders mentioned above, are the people who truly care. Those who oppose them need to get a good dosing of Zyclon B, or at least a Struggle Session or three.
Equality doesn't just mean that everybody has the same wealth, regardless of how hard they work. This is superficial. It means everyone has to think the same way. That's the only way we'll ever get true equality, and we won't get that until everyone's getting the same information. Conformity, equality, obedience: these must be our core values. Fox News must be stopped.