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rhubroma said:A lil political obstructionism is a far cry, however, from lying to the nation and to the world about weapons of mass destruction to then start an ideological war for oil and give your corporate friends all the sweet rebuilding deals after you've blown the place to smithereens.
Modern conservatism at its finest.
Once again you have no sense of proportion and measure, while such things happen all the time in party politics, such leverage comes with being in power. It doesn't make it honorable, but let's not sensationalize out of baseness now shall we.
ChrisE said:How can you keep reading this BS in this thread? I can only take it in very small doses.
I am sure scott will be along shortly with some link to a wingnut website stating the opposite or what rhubarb wrote.
Scott SoCal said:Yep. That's generally how debates go these days. There is one wingnut debating a bunch of completely normal people.
Time for a break.
Scott SoCal said:Yep. That's generally how debates go these days. There is one wingnut debating a bunch of completely normal people.
Time for a break.
ChrisE said:Who said rhubarb was "normal"? I give crap to him and red and whoever else as much as I give to you (that is, when I feel compelled to) when they write something stupid and/or unworkable. If you don't believe me, look up my posts on this thread.
Have fun on your break. Hopefully you are doing it for your sanity, and not for a pitty-party like last time.
redtreviso said:3/4 of US Business have no employees
""In 2009,there were 27.5 million businesses in the United States, according to Office of Advocacy estimates.The lastest available Census data show that there were 6.0 million firms with employees in 2007 and 21.4 million without employees in 2008. Small firms with fewer than 500 employees represent 99.9 percent of the total ( employers and nonemployers), as the most recent data show there were about 18,311 large businesses in 2007.""
http://web.sba.gov/faqs/faqindex.cfm?areaID=24
L'arriviste said:Does that figure mean that they're "ghost companies" set up as financial or legal vehicles? Or is it because people set themselves up in business but as directors they don't count as employees for the purposes of stats?
Scott SoCal said:Of course. Liberals are holy and everyone else is evil. Libya? Righteous.
And we now have members of the congressional black caucus declaring the Tea Party can "go straight to hell" (Rep. Waters) and wants to see African Americans "hanging on a tree" (Rep. Carson). But you are correct, liberals can be as baseless and vile as they wish to be and those that are accused better not say a word. Did I get that right?
BTW, anybody ever accuse you of being a racist?
I understand completely why someone who considers himself enlightened would see nothing wrong with this.
redtreviso said:I dunno....kind of shoots holes in the theory that small business in general is owed tax relief for their contribution of providing jobs. The numbers probably are inflated due to shell company post office box/tax sheltering schemes.
L'arriviste said:I acknowledge the generality of your post, but anyway it's a pretty sore point for me. Having run a couple of small businesses and having done the mountains of paperwork and paid out all the high taxes demanded by the spendthrift, big-business-only UK Labour government of the time, I would have been happy to get any sort of break. I still think that everyone should run a company at least once though. It's an improving experience. And give me a million small businesses over an unwieldy, competition-hating corporation any day.
redtreviso said:Well here in the US the small business owner who is really just self employed screams bloody murder over the taxes the Exxon corporation is supposed to pay, like they are brothers in arms...In many cases the self employed are unemployable otherwise..They tried working one time but after 6 months they weren't offered a seat on the board of directors....
Scott SoCal said:Of course. Liberals are holy and everyone else is evil. Libya? Righteous...
L'arriviste said:Wow, that's a very different perception. In the UK, starting a company was about taking back the power (and of course accepting all the concomitant risks). We had nothing in common with the corporations. We started up because we didn't like the way our (bigger) employers ran things. We figured we knew better and we could do it better. And we did, but the Labour government and its agencies sure knew how to make things tough for us.
L'arriviste said:Wow, that's a very different perception. In the UK, starting a company was about taking back the power (and of course accepting all the concomitant risks). We had nothing in common with the corporations. We started up because we didn't like the way our (bigger) employers ran things. We figured we knew better and we could do it better. And we did, but the Labour government and its agencies sure knew how to make things tough for us.
Alpe d'Huez said:Meanwhile, the austerity measures and debt restrictions are working. There was zero job creation in August, the stock market fell another 2.2%, Treasury yields are off, and gold is up.
One other "liberal" problem has also been eliminated when Gumby, I mean Obama caved into Tea Party demands that EPA regulations be loosened. He went as far as overruling the EPA and it's recommendations from an independent panel of scientists in order to allow more smog.
When he's finally gone it's going to be an interesting debate as to who is the worst president in modern history. Bush, or Obama, as they are basically the same. I'm old enough to remember Carter and Nixon, and I'd instantly take either of those two over, as I believe red called him, the "Black Bush".
Alpe d'Huez said:Meanwhile, the austerity measures and debt restrictions are working. There was zero job creation in August, the stock market fell another 2.2%, Treasury yields are off, and gold is up.
One other "liberal" problem has also been eliminated when Gumby, I mean Obama caved into Tea Party demands that EPA regulations be loosened. He went as far as overruling the EPA and it's recommendations from an independent panel of scientists in order to allow more smog. When he's finally gone it's going to be an interesting debate as to who is the worst president in modern history. Bush, or Obama, as they are basically the same. I'm old enough to remember Carter and Nixon, and I'd instantly take either of those two over, as I believe red called him, the "Black Bush".
usedtobefast said:rockin' the mom jeans...
redtreviso said:but can he do a face plant??? or eat a pretzel? or crash a segway?
patricknd said:naw, he might have to go faster than .7 mph to do that.
L'arriviste said:...
For me, Obama proved that 'change' is a word. I work in government communications and I've seen at first-hand how, in difficult times, our office has jettisoned the policymaking and gotten very busy with message-making. This is bailing out the ship, not sailing it. Management around here is a byword for scared, hopeless, hanging-in-there boomers. I don't believe these people have what it will take to change anything. I don't believe they even know what it will take to change anything.
So what else can we do but start with ourselves and the choices we make?
rhubroma said:...
Finally I have already stressed the need for 'happy downsizing'. We all need to learn to live with less and embrace our own mortality, to stop cynically treating the world and our fellow man as merely instrumental resources, both natural and human, to be used up and exploited at will to satisfy men's every material appetite, or at least the strong among them over the weak. Thus the folly of eternal economic growth at the markets will have to be fundamentally rethought and reassessed. All of this means that we must willingly give up the empire to ensure more stability at home, while having any hope of promoting a more ethical world abroad. This is what is meant by leadership and leading by example, and not the spurious kind of administrating regime currently practiced in which the madness of global competition among states that's fanatically promoted means that everything is bargained for and everyone gets defrauded.
While I realize these measures may not be workable in the real world, because they aren't compatible with homo rapiens, they seem to me nonetheless to be the only rational and principled ones to prevent a more rapid extinction and are thus worth noting.