Yeah, I mean you have people who can pay but are taking advantage of loopholes to avoid it, a large amount of the populace who can't pay, and a government that's kind of shady as to what's being done with the little that is collected, and you've got a mess on your hands. Greece needs to clean house in their government, close the tax loopholes, and make both their people and their government accountable, in order to win back the faith of the people.
Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats
- Thread starter GasBandit
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It was pretty much in line with the rest of Europe but on the high part. It actually climbed a lot with the crisis and the bailouts, but previously it was lower to that of, say, France (compared to GDP!)
*not sure if 'Not the forum's Poe' Poe's law is in effect here*
I'm curious now as to what the forum's poe's law would be...
Pope: "The Poor are sacrificed on the altar of Money."
It's not surprising that the Pope (who has lived a pretty austere life) would be going after the supply-side Christians that have been pulling people away from the authority of the church, but I find it HILARIOUS that this is an actual image from the article.
Yes, that IS the Pope happily accepting a hammer and sickle, the symbols of Communism, from the president of Bolivia. This is going to be ALL OVER the news and Fox News is going to have a field day with it... if they have balls anyway. I mean, are they willing to risk alienating millions of Catholics just to go after one of the most anti-capitalist people on the planet? Though a better question may be if this is a sign that South American-style communism is abandoning it's militant atheism, something that has always been at odds with the fierce religious views of the people who live there.
It's not surprising that the Pope (who has lived a pretty austere life) would be going after the supply-side Christians that have been pulling people away from the authority of the church, but I find it HILARIOUS that this is an actual image from the article.
Yes, that IS the Pope happily accepting a hammer and sickle, the symbols of Communism, from the president of Bolivia. This is going to be ALL OVER the news and Fox News is going to have a field day with it... if they have balls anyway. I mean, are they willing to risk alienating millions of Catholics just to go after one of the most anti-capitalist people on the planet? Though a better question may be if this is a sign that South American-style communism is abandoning it's militant atheism, something that has always been at odds with the fierce religious views of the people who live there.
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ALTAR! Their article title got it right. It's kind of important!
I can be a language geek at times.
Edit: F'n phone making Irony.
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#irony
That show was so underrated. Maybe not a "must see" series like Gurren Lagaan, but a damn good shonen series in a time when all we had was Bleach.
GasBandit
Staff member
S-cry-ed.
Boy Scouts of America Executive Committee votes unanimously to end ban on gay adults. This also prevents regional governing councils and boy scout camps from discriminating based on sexual orientation, instead making it the decision of each individual troop to determine eligibility. That last bit reeks of them trying to keep the bigot leaders in the organization now that it's shrinking, but it's also a way to prevent walking into a religious based lawsuit. Instead the Executive Council can hold up their hands and say "That's up the leaders of that troop," and point out they can find another troop in the area or start one themselves if no one will allow them in.
I wonder if this means the Mormon church has finally pulled their funding or if this is a sign they are going to have another "revelation from God" like they did with black folks?
I wonder if this means the Mormon church has finally pulled their funding or if this is a sign they are going to have another "revelation from God" like they did with black folks?
Necronic
Staff member
Looks like Oil is back down again with the Iranian deal looming. Apparently when that deal goes through some 5 million barrels, about 10% of the Cushing inventory, will hit the market. May be a decent time to buy some of the old garde oil stocks that are a bit more diversified, like Exxon or Chevron. (By diversified I mean upstream/midstream/downstream).
John Kasich's joined the race... for some reason.
GasBandit
Staff member
Well, pretty much everybody else has, so he might as well, it's not like he has ever had an original thought in his head his entire life.
He's not the worst governor I've ever had. He's generally pro-union outside of the teacher's union, he doesn't dance around topics a lot, and he's stood up to his own party on stuff essentially because it wasn't how we do things here. He's firmly purple, like all good Ohio politicians. Still, he's staunchly pro-life and helped to undermine abortion access (we have -9- places you can do it in state), he's dragging State Troopers around outside of the state to protect him as he campaigns (and we're footing the bill, not his campaign), and the main reason he's anti-eduction is because he's trying to prop up the failing charter schools for his campaign donors. The last one doesn't sound so bad until you find out that his chief-of-staff's husband was taking F grades for online and dropout recovery schools off evaluations of charter school sponsors because they would "mask successes".
That's just how we roll here in Ohio: my governor is getting kickbacks for undermining our teachers and schools... and my mayor was involved in taking bribes from the private company running our red light cameras. You don't even want to see what happens when you cross the tradesmen unions. It's like being in Chicago, if it was a quarter the size!
Necronic
Staff member
Reading up on Kascich he's a strange one. Apparently he is all down for the medicaid expansion in Obamacare but wants to repeal all of the other parts of the law. Isn't the medicaid expansion one of the most expensive aspects of the law, and therefore one of the most contentious?
It DOES cost more in the short term, but Medicaid is also one of the most cost-effective public services in the country. Nothing else comes close to saving as much money through it's services than Medicaid and, as someone intimately familiar with how insurance is handled collectively thanks to his union supporters, he knows that it's a good deal. I've said it a million times but politics as usual stops at the Ohio River. We're simply too diverse as a state for it to work, so we have our own rules.
I mean... look at the marijuana legalization amendments we have being proposed for the next election.
- The first legalizes marijuana in the state for anyone who wants it, but also enshrines a monopoly into the state constitution by only allowing ten grow sites (all owned by people pushing for the law) though we can get more after a bit of time if those ten sites can't produce enough to meet demand (and they won't). This is coming from people who would normally be considered liberals in other states.
- The second one also legalizes marijuana, but makes it clear that no monopolies are allowed in Ohio, including any that would happen as a result of other amendments passed the same day this is passed. Yes, we literally have a second amendment on the same ballot to counter act another one if it passes that day. This is coming from people who would be considered Right Wing in other states.
This doesn't happen in other states.
GasBandit
Staff member
Basically the entire police force from Chealsea, Oklahoma, has resigned due to interference by elected officials. The police chief, assistant chief, captain, a full-time patrol officer, and two part-time officers, all resigned over the past couple of weeks. Only seven reserve officers remain on the force.
The resignations were due to town officials interfering in legal matters related to a DUI arrest. Brian Haggard (above), a local contractor, was stopped on March 3 and charged with DUI, with a blood-alcohol level of 0.106. During the traffic stop, town administrator Kenny Weast actually came to the scene, and Haggard asked the officers to allow Weast to drive him home, rather than go to jail, asking for a “free pass.” Following the stop, the police say Weast and other officials – including the police commissioner – asked officers to go easy on Haggard, and made it clear they weren’t happy about the arrest.
The resigning officers stated that they have faced continued increasing pressure under a system of nepotism to allow select people – as chosen by political leaders – to break the law at will. The last straw for them was a vote by the Chelsea town board to retain Weast as town administrator. Working under leaders who believe themselves to be above the law, the police officers did not feel they could effectively enforce the law, and resigned.
[via RawStory]
Pro-Russian Ukraine rebels claim to find stash of US supplied Stinger missile launchers, but are exposed as frauds. The current theory is that ether Russians or Ukrainians copied the design from Battlefield 3, meaning not only are the launchers fake but they are BAD fakes.
Chris Christie is, for some reason, announcing his national finance leadership team, who are a group of crooked billionaires who are puffing that disgusting thug up with massive amounts of money.
Notables include:
Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett Packard and former gubnatorial candidate in California, where she lost to Jerry Brown despite spending close to $200 million of her own money. In 2013, she was named "Most Underperforming CEO" by Bloomberg LP; under her tenure HP's stock value is underperforming by 30% relative to the rest of the market. She supported Mitt Romney in his 2008 campaign, then became part of McCain-Palin's team after Romney conceded. Meg and her husband have a charitable foundation, that in it's first year of operation had $46 million in assets and had disbursed $125,000 to charitable causes, while investing $4 million in offshort hedge funs in the Cayman Islands. In 2011 that foundation gave $2.5 million to a company that operates charter schools in the San Jose area. . Interestingly enough, her charitable fund is managed by Goldman Sachs, which she is a board member of, for which she draws an annual salary of $475,000. In fact, she has a multi-million stake in 21 different investment funds managed by Goldman Sachs and made millions as CEO of eBay through a process known as "spinning", in which the bank would offer CEOs early deals on potentially hot IPOs before the public got a look at them.
Ken Langone, billionaire co-founder of Home Depot and ChoicePoint, which you may recall was involved problems with a certain election in Florida in 2000. ChoicePoint had purchased the contract to maintain voter records, and around the time of the election, tens of thousands of people were mysteriously struck from the central voter file and not allowed to vote. Oddly, this happened mainly to African-American and Latin voters, who were incorrectly filed as felons. Some of the felony listing on the erroneous files had dates into the 23rd century. ChoicePoint had been selected by Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, and Florida Elections Unit Chief Clay Roberts and reportedly were told by the Florida government to "add to the list voters who matched 80% of an ineligible voter's name, middle initials, and suffixes were to be dropped, while nicknames and aliases were added. In addition, names were considered reversible, for example Clarence Thomas could be added in place of Thomas Clarence." Over 57,000 voters were erroneously barred from voting because of this; the margin of Dubya's victory is officially tallied at 537 votes. In 2009 in the Wall Street Journal, Langone talked about Bernie Madoff's investment plan that was "raising $500 million to 1 billion for his new fund for exclusive clients" (this would be revealed as a Ponzi scheme).
Steven A. Cohen, a hedge fund manager with a net worth of $11 billion, according to Forbes. SAC Capital Advisors, his hedge fund, was implicated in an insider trading scandal in 2012, the company plead guilty and paid a $1.2 billion fine. 8 present or former SAC Capital fund managers have been found guilty on charges of insider-trading, and Cohen was also under investigation for racketeering and fraud.
Notables include:
Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett Packard and former gubnatorial candidate in California, where she lost to Jerry Brown despite spending close to $200 million of her own money. In 2013, she was named "Most Underperforming CEO" by Bloomberg LP; under her tenure HP's stock value is underperforming by 30% relative to the rest of the market. She supported Mitt Romney in his 2008 campaign, then became part of McCain-Palin's team after Romney conceded. Meg and her husband have a charitable foundation, that in it's first year of operation had $46 million in assets and had disbursed $125,000 to charitable causes, while investing $4 million in offshort hedge funs in the Cayman Islands. In 2011 that foundation gave $2.5 million to a company that operates charter schools in the San Jose area. . Interestingly enough, her charitable fund is managed by Goldman Sachs, which she is a board member of, for which she draws an annual salary of $475,000. In fact, she has a multi-million stake in 21 different investment funds managed by Goldman Sachs and made millions as CEO of eBay through a process known as "spinning", in which the bank would offer CEOs early deals on potentially hot IPOs before the public got a look at them.
Ken Langone, billionaire co-founder of Home Depot and ChoicePoint, which you may recall was involved problems with a certain election in Florida in 2000. ChoicePoint had purchased the contract to maintain voter records, and around the time of the election, tens of thousands of people were mysteriously struck from the central voter file and not allowed to vote. Oddly, this happened mainly to African-American and Latin voters, who were incorrectly filed as felons. Some of the felony listing on the erroneous files had dates into the 23rd century. ChoicePoint had been selected by Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, and Florida Elections Unit Chief Clay Roberts and reportedly were told by the Florida government to "add to the list voters who matched 80% of an ineligible voter's name, middle initials, and suffixes were to be dropped, while nicknames and aliases were added. In addition, names were considered reversible, for example Clarence Thomas could be added in place of Thomas Clarence." Over 57,000 voters were erroneously barred from voting because of this; the margin of Dubya's victory is officially tallied at 537 votes. In 2009 in the Wall Street Journal, Langone talked about Bernie Madoff's investment plan that was "raising $500 million to 1 billion for his new fund for exclusive clients" (this would be revealed as a Ponzi scheme).
Steven A. Cohen, a hedge fund manager with a net worth of $11 billion, according to Forbes. SAC Capital Advisors, his hedge fund, was implicated in an insider trading scandal in 2012, the company plead guilty and paid a $1.2 billion fine. 8 present or former SAC Capital fund managers have been found guilty on charges of insider-trading, and Cohen was also under investigation for racketeering and fraud.
Necronic
Staff member
I just don't know what to say about Trump leading in the polls. I mean, even the other republican candidates seem shocked by this. When Rick Perry says that he's a menace, and remembers his full name while saying it, I mean that says something. I guess at the end of the day this is the reality of the republican electorate.
GasBandit
Staff member
Or, it's still not an election year, so the polls have even a more laughable sample group than normal.
So what your saying is that Chris Christie is almost assuredly going to win the nomination.
Also this. People can beat their chests all they want, but we'll see how the votes go in November.