Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats
- Thread starter GasBandit
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I'd watch the hell out of a remake where an aging Plissken is taken mid-Mall Santa shift to go rescue a Democrat president from a Libertopia containment area.
We have a moron out here who keeps sending letters to the editor of the paper (which they then publish) calling for a wall around one of the small towns to keep "those dirty immigrants and criminals out." I've been sorely, sorely tempted for the last few days to send a rebuttal telling them they can build their wall and keep their old, white, incest committing, pedophile pizza store owner and the 20-somethings who vandalized the one decent Mexican restaurant in the area so often that the guy just taped the windows over and put a sign up saying "stop shooting my windows and I'll replace them."
I see phase two of your country's war on "ENTITLEMENTS" has begun.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7dd187f6fe5e
Massive deficit is because of Social Security and TOTALLY NOT massive, massive tax cuts to rich folk.
You fucking leeches, you entitled babies expecting to receive any of that social security you've paid into your whole lives.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7dd187f6fe5e
Massive deficit is because of Social Security and TOTALLY NOT massive, massive tax cuts to rich folk.
You fucking leeches, you entitled babies expecting to receive any of that social security you've paid into your whole lives.
DOOOO IIIIITTTTTT.
I can't find it through searching right now, but I thought there was something from '09 or '10 (or something) that stated that if the USA's tax rate on everything over $100,000 was 100% (and everything else the same), they still would have a deficit.
If true, they have a SPENDING problem more than an INCOME problem.
We might still have a debt. But we could balance without a deficit (growing the debt further). Bill Clinton's budget was balanced.
https://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-budget-and-deficit-under-clinton/
GasBandit
Staff member
Thing is, in 2000 (clinton's last budgeted year) we had federal outlays of about 1.7 trillion. Now we have approximately 3.2 trillion. If people want to tout Clinton-level taxation as a model, maybe we should also push for clinton-level spending.
Of course, another problem with that is that a lot of it came from gutting the military.
Dave
Staff member
Speaking as someone who has always advocated for the military...we could afford to gut the military a little, as long as we did it intelligently. There's a lot of obsolete equipment we could get rid of and a lot of fat that could certainly be trimmed without harming readiness or effectiveness.
To be clear, I'm not "touting" his level of taxation. I'm just using that administration to show that balancing the budget is possible, esp int he time frame that Eriol was mentioning as his possible source of "you can't balance the budget, even with 100% taxation" comment.
But in general, I agree: We don't tax the right people enough, and we spend too much on stuff. Reining both of those in would go a long way to fixing the deficit.
I remember debating some fed-working friends during the spending cap years, and they were *outraged* when I suggested that their government jobs shouldn't be guaranteed for life. It was such a weird mindset to me (having been in the private sector most of my life). They legitimately felt that the government owed them an income.
Why did you start the sentence like you were about to bring up a problem and then didn't bring up a problem?
Don't forget inflation though. 1.7 trillion 2000-dollars is 2.48 trillion 2018-dollars, roughly. Still a serious increase, but not as drastic as you make it seem. Still more than enough, mind.
GasBandit
Staff member
Clinton's gutting of the military is a lot of why gulf war 2 was such a clusterfuck when gulf war 1 was such a milk run.
GasBandit
Staff member
Inflation affects both the budget and the taxation though, so I kind of considered it a wash.
I don't think the lesson to take away from the Iraq war was "we should've killed them better."
GasBandit
Staff member
I get what you're saying, but "killing them better" always is kinda what you want to happen in a war, once the shooting starts.
Or at least "Kill them faster than they can kill you (without killing yourself in the process)."
--Patrick
We literally let millions of dollars worth of next gen fighters get destroyed in a Hurricane because it was "too difficult to move them in time". Mind you, they were absolutely worthless next gen fighters but...
No amount of technology could have changed this outcome, short of ability to read god damn minds. That's the problem of fighting insurgent forces... and frankly, if the government had the ability to read minds, it would have been using it on us first.
GasBandit
Staff member
Technology, no. Manpower and materiel, maybe.
OP:
Like I said, this is an old memory, but at least somebody was claiming even 100% taxation above $100k would still result in deficit, and I thought it was the early Obama years.
Response:
Comment on comment:
Where did I say that I was talking about 1992-2000? I thought that it had been mentioned regarding 2009-2010, which is 10 years later (at least).
Like I said, this is an old memory, but at least somebody was claiming even 100% taxation above $100k would still result in deficit, and I thought it was the early Obama years.
Only if you intended for them to never leave. The populations of Iraq and Afghanistan are still completely unwilling to police themselves except along brutal, theological lines. That's not something we can change without a decades long occupation. It's not worth it and we got what we "wanted" (Saddam and Osama, dead, and their organizations in ruins). Leave them to their self-inflicted, ideologically driven misery. We have other battles to fight.
Really, if we've learned anything since Gulf War 2, it's that the real threat to America is our inability (or potential complicity) to prevent foreign powers from attacking us in the digital domain.
Shouldn't be too hard to get a quick read. Just compare GDP against the deficit.
--Patrick
I tend to see this more as people taking advantage of an opportunity.
"You know what would be the antidote to Terrorism? Oligarchy."
--Patrick
What are you on about? Taking out Iraq's military was as easy both times.
The actual difference was the whole "staying and occupying the place". Which 1994's Dick Cheney said would end up as a quagmire:
figmentPez
Staff member
So, the party that defends white supremacists as "good people" are the ones who are now claiming they're afraid of angry mobs. The party that actively supports the picketing and harassment of Planned Parenthood are now the ones claiming that angry protestors are an imminent threat to democracy.
The levels of hypocrisy are off the charts.
The levels of hypocrisy are off the charts.
As I've told several family members, what they really want is the ability to act like shit, feel like they are right to do so, and be free of the repercussions of their actions. As long as we hold them accountable for their shitty behavior, they have won nothing and only managed to fuck themselves, something more and more of them are coming to terms with.
GasBandit
Staff member
Aaaaand it's backfired massively.
I could have told her it was stupid move. She's not a member of a tribe, has never presented herself as an indigenous person in any serious capacity, nor has she ever faced hardship for being one. Any blood relation is irrelevant; modern DNA tests can't even tell if her ancestors came from North or South America, let alone which society.
Her claim is too nuanced to survive the public forum. It was always going to dog her if she made a run for higher office.
As others say, it was pretty much bound to.
Yet those Native organisations are attacking her are being stupid. They're essentially condoning Trump's use of "Pocahontas" as a slur. And he's the real racist asshole here, not Warren.
And to not attack her would be to condone her co-opting of their culture and heritage for political game. Again, Warren is not a member of a tribe, has never presented herself as an indigenous person in an serious capacity, and has not lived the life of one. This is the equivalent of claiming such status on a college admission paper; she's only doing it to score points but has done nothing to earn those points.
Seriously, it's kind of fucked up to attack the organizers here. They shouldn't have to roll over and take this just because it's politically expedient; their support should not be taken for granted just because we have lunatic in the White House. Warren should have fucking known better, period.