vakratunda: "Neighborliness"

Four Arms (

vakratunda) wrote,
@ 2008-09-14 04:36:00

"Neighborliness"
"If I am sitting pretty and you've got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips, and I can afford it and she can't, what's the big deal for me to say, I'm going to pay a little bit more? That's neighborliness." If that is Obama's rationale for making the tax code even more steeply progressive than it already is, it's no wonder voters are having second thoughts about his economic aptitude.

"Neighborliness." Perhaps that word has a nonstandard meaning to someone whose home adjoins the property of convicted swindler Tony Rezko, but extracting money by force from someone who earned it in order to give it to someone who didn't is not usually spoken of as neighborly. If Citizen Obama, "sitting pretty," reaches into his own pocket and helps out the waitress with a large tip, he has shown a neighborly spirit. But there is nothing neighborly about using the tax code to compel someone else to pay the waitress that tip.

Taxation is not generosity, it is confiscation at gunpoint. Does Obama not understand the difference?

.

(38 comments) - (Post a new comment)

	heh ... btripp 2008-09-14 09:10 pm UTC (link)
	Helps to triangulate what a "neighborhood organizer" does, eh? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	I Think The Emphasis Is On The 'Hood'. vakratunda 2008-09-15 05:22 am UTC (link)
	I just get keep getting these images of Barack as Mr Rogers, or rather as Eddie Murphy's Mr Robinson, and I cannot get them out of my brain. Must clean brain. . (Reply to this) (Parent)

	treecat 2008-09-15 04:44 am UTC (link)
	Mc Cain wants to tax health insurance benefits for everyone. Obama only wants to raise taxes on those making more than $250,000 / year. Yeah I know you will still insist that Obama's worse, whatever. (Reply to this) (Thread)

Harry Truman

vakratunda
2008-09-15 05:18 am UTC (link)

Was the only really honest modern Democrat. He said, "The Democratic Party is like Robin Hood. We steal from the rich and we give to the poor."

I happen to believe that theft, let alone armed robbery, is inherently antisocial and may only be indulged in by government in pursuit of its legitimate ends, among which redistribution of wealth does not number.

That is why I am a Republican, and that is why I almost never support a Democrat, and when I do support a Democrat he is one who has *demonstrated* that he is a Grover Cleveland style Democrat, like Bill Richardson of New Mexico.

I supported Bill Richardson for President - despite his incredibly boneheaded stance on the Iraq war (in my own defense I have to say that I began to support him before he took this stance, and I am not one to turn my coat) - right up until he withdrew from the race.

I think that McCain is going to shake things up, in a very good way. Certainly he is far from perfect.

Anyway, I'll say this: the current depression is not going to be over in four years. The Democrats will have a real advantage going into the 2012 race, if (as I do expect) McCain and Palin win this year. The 2012 race is going to be even more amusing than this one.

Hillary Clinton vs Sarah Palin. Only one will walk out of the ring.

Barack is going to regret not having tanked the last few primaries. We may all regret Barack's not having tanked the last few primaries.

.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Harry Truman treecat 2008-09-15 05:50 am UTC (link)
	The problem is that the modern Republican party is all about robbing the poor to pay the rich even more. If the choice is between those two, and how I wish it weren't, I have to side with the Democratic version. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

vakratunda
2008-09-15 06:55 am UTC (link)

How do you figure?

Please give me an instance of the Republican party taking money from the poor to give to the rich. I don't believe that this has ever happened. The money that the government is giving to the poor does not rightfully belong to the poor or even to the government: it rightfully belongs to the rich that it was stolen from. Allowing them to keep it, and thus depriving the poor of government handouts is not robbing the poor, however the poor may squeal.

.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

your example is right here...
(Anonymous)
2008-09-15 10:59 pm UTC (link)

The nationalization of Fannie Mae is the single largest act of Socialism in the entire history of the concept. It is robbing 6 trillion in tax dollars from the working and middle class and handing it to the bankers who sank the whole Ship of Finance in the first place to line their pockets.

Corporate Welfare is far in excess of social welfare by orders of magnitude, and always has been.

Trickle down economics, another rob everyone to pay the rich scheme.

The current Republican/Neocon system is nothing but a Robber Baron scheme, they looted the entire economy of the USA for at least two generations.

They run a centrally managed economy via the Federal Reserve, more tightly managed than the centrally run economy of the Soviet Union, and perhaps less efficiently! They are not fiscally conservative Goldwater republicans, they are the essence of Socialism!

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

vakratunda
2008-09-16 12:03 am UTC (link)

I agree that the buyout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the previous rescue of Bear Stearns which caused them are and were totally wrong. It is doing pure evil to the monetary system.

The working and middle class people who have lost their houses lost them because they got mortgages that they couldn't afford. These mortgages were bundled up together into attractive packages that could be bought and sold and traded around, and Fannie and Freddie own a bunch of these packages. But these packages, since many of the mortgages in them are under foreclosure, aren't worth near as much as people think they should be: therefore the value of Fannie and Freddie has dropped precipitously.

I think that F & F should be allowed to go broke. The problem is that one Ben Bernanke, last Easter, did a piece of jiggery and a piece of pokery and made it so that shares in F & F were basically equivalent to Treasury bonds, and a bunch of large investors (like the governments of China, Japan and Germany) bought a bunch of these shares assuming that the fine print on the shares, where it says that they may not gain and may lose in value, didn't really apply. We're not talking about rich people keeping their money: we are talking about keeping entities that run to multiple million soldier armies and nuclear weapons with up-to-the-minute guidance systems getting mad enough at us that they want a piece of us. It's a total mess.

The little folks lost their asses at the get go: they aren't losing any more of their asses because F & F are going broke. We may *all* lose our asses if the dollar goes away. That is the big problem, and it is a big, big problem.

And I can't disagree with you about the Federal Reserve either. It is not a good way to manage the money supply. I happen to think that we should throw it out and go to a currency based on opium, personally. I wouldn't bet on this happening any time soon: it is far too sensible.

On the other hand, if by 'trickle down economics' you mean reducing taxes on the rich so that they may use their money as they see fit, you are wrong: the things the rich see fit to normally involve employing more people than whatever the Feds were going to get up to with the money instead. And I am very much against corporate welfare: I could be convinced to support certain types of social welfare (like a negative income tax) as long as it replaces the current system of social welfare, which (as far as I can tell) is about creating union civil service jobs which can be filled with people who can mostly be relied upon to vote Democratic.

The Federal Reserve did this, and there is no doubt that the Bush administration's appointee facilitated their doing this. I agree that the bankers should be allowed to go broke along with everyone else. But to call this acting in a Republican way is ridiculous: it is a total betrayal of Republican principles, at least the kind that I subscribe to.

.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

treecat
2008-09-16 02:31 am UTC (link)

There are a lot of people who got loans they had absolutely no business getting, it is hard to feel sympathy for those,

However there are surely quite a few people who more realistically thought that they could afford their loan, and then various forms of misfortune - job loss, illness, etc struck them. I don't like tarring them with the same brush.

We ALL, yes including you, sometimes flunk out at being omniscient.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	treecat 2008-09-16 02:28 am UTC (link)
	agribusiness farm subsidies ! Plus the general rigging the game so that even if the money doesn't directly sully the hands of the gov't by passing through, the gov't gets bought out to support the interests of certain corporations over the interests of the citizenry and the future. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	vakratunda 2008-09-16 04:20 am UTC (link)
	How do you figure that 'agribusiness farm subsidies' are an uniquely Republican thing? It seems to me that they have wide bipartisan support. Also, do you think you could be a bit more vague in your second paragraph? As it stands it is almost comprehensible, and I feel certain you wouldn't want that. . (Reply to this) (Parent)

	What John McCain will do? (Anonymous) 2008-09-15 11:07 pm UTC (link)
	He will 'bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran', and this will lead to hot war with Russia and/or China or even a nuclear exchange. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	vakratunda 2008-09-16 12:05 am UTC (link)
	I don't think that this is true. I don't think that a US/Iran war is in the cards, actually. . (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

if it quacks like a ....
(Anonymous)
2008-09-16 01:56 am UTC (link)

when McCain sings "bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran" in "jest", well I take him seriously.

If you agree these new Republican socialists aren't real Republicans, then why continue to support or vote for them? They would make AUH2O vomit blood if he were alive...

McCain voted with Bush 90% of the time, when he could be bothered to vote.

These are not remotely the Republicans of the past.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	vakratunda 2008-09-16 01:58 am UTC (link)
	You are allowed to do as you please: I encourage you to do so. . (Reply to this) (Parent)

	sturgeonslawyer 2008-09-15 05:09 pm UTC (link)
	The idea that taxation is theft is based on an assumption that property is a right. Please provide some logical support for this position. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	vakratunda 2008-09-15 08:40 pm UTC (link)
	Do you believe that there is no right to own property? . (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	sturgeonslawyer 2008-09-15 08:45 pm UTC (link)
	I do not believe that there is an inherent right to property, no. Property is a social construct, enforced by the same contrait social that allows for taxation. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

vakratunda
2008-09-15 09:13 pm UTC (link)

So that is a no? You do not believe that there is a right to own property?

All rights are inherent.

Rights are not social constructs. Rights are rights. Rights come from God, not from man.

Rousseau was the one who invented the idea of the social construct. It's amazing (and unfortunate) that anyone takes it seriously.

Government can affirm and support your rights, or government can deny and attempt to prevent you from exercising your rights, but government does not grant you your rights.

That is my position.

The right to own property, like the right to self-defense, is inherent in the kind of animal that we are. Logic has little or nothing to do with this, thank the good Lord.

.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	vakratunda 2008-09-15 09:15 pm UTC (link)
	Pardon me, I meant to say social contract, though what I did say is also true. . (Reply to this) (Parent)

sturgeonslawyer
2008-09-15 09:25 pm UTC (link)

All rights are inherent

Are they inherent before they even exist? Does the right to free speech have independent existence, or did it come into existence with the passage of the Bill of Rights?

I don't believe anyone has any rights at all except what they can enforce, and that the whole point of social constructs, or contracts, is to band together for the enforcement of the kind of rights we, on the whole, want. Without such a construct, "property" is not a right; it's simply a polite word for "I have it and you can't take it away from me" -- and if I can, then it becomes my "property."

The idea that "taxation is theft by threat of violence" is exactly as true as "property is possession by threat of violence." In a civil society we centralize the "threat of violence" so as to avoid a war of all-against-all. By doing so, we implicitly grant that centralized power the "right" to tax us to fulfill its obligation to maintain and apply the force required to maintain whatever "rights" we agree upon.

Rights come from God, not man

Whose God? I'm a Catholic, and I say, God forbid that Catholicism, or any other religion, should come to control the law of the land.

Really: do you believe that God grants freedom of religion? If so, it's like offering a child a poisoned candy... I believe in freedom of religion but only because I believe that enforcing religion is worse.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	No desire to give offense by intruding ... gimelresh 2008-09-15 10:31 pm UTC (link)
	but I do believe vakratunda is refering to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inalienable_rights (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	vakratunda 2008-09-15 10:34 pm UTC (link)
	That is exactly correct. Mil gracias, senor. . (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	gimelresh 2008-09-15 10:40 pm UTC (link)
	De nada, Señor. (Reply to this) (Parent)

vakratunda
2008-09-15 10:33 pm UTC (link)

The right to freedom of speech has always existed, or at least as long as human beings have existed: Article 1 of the Bill of Rights contains the recognition and affirmation of that right and so on down the line.

God, also, is independant of religion. Of course freedom of religion is the will of God: if it wasn't, no one would ever change their religion. Anything that actually occurs is the will of God.

Or do you think that God comes from religion in the same manner that you seem to believe that rights come from government (I am having a hard time making out what you are saying there, though I can make out that it is totally wrong)?

.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

sturgeonslawyer
2008-09-16 04:26 pm UTC (link)

No, I do not think that "God comes from religion." I believe, however, that peoples' understandings of God come from their religions, and that nobody has a perfect understanding of God. (Well, except maybe God.)

Let me clarify also that I don't believe that "rights" come from government, but from social structures. Governments are not the only way to structure a society.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	vakratunda 2008-09-16 04:51 pm UTC (link)
	Well, it is interesting to see what your beliefs are. You say that people's understanding of God comes from their religion. Does that apply then, to Moses and Abraham also? Because it says in the Bible, Dan'l, that they had personal relationships with God. Perhaps you don't take that part literally? . (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	sturgeonslawyer 2008-09-16 05:16 pm UTC (link)
	Abraham and Moses, as founders of religions, are exceptions to the general rule. I would be fascinated to see the Scriptural citation that tells evantelicals that each of us is expected to have a "personal relationship with God." None has ever been able to show me this verse. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	vakratunda 2008-09-16 02:04 am UTC (link)
	So Dan'l, do you believe that people have inalienable rights? . (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Actually...

vakratunda
2008-09-16 02:09 am UTC (link)

The correct term is 'unalienable' my mistake, and not only mine as that article points out:

The correct word in the context of the United States Declaration of Independence is "unalienable". You have unalienable rights if you are a sovereign American. You have inalienable rights if you are a serf or slave. The legal differences of these two words are vast and profound. Accepting the term "inalienable" literally means accepting the theory that rights are granted through the sufferance of some superior human power, rather than through their immanence in Nature (arising from the ordering of things, or through human nature), thus being self-evident, appertaining perfectly and equally to all people.

In modern usage, however, the terms "unalienable" and "inalienable" are often thought to be synonyms; and it is likely that reference to "inalienable" rights is actually a reference to the concept of "unalienable" rights. Though this is incorrect usage, it is increasingly common.

.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

sturgeonslawyer
2008-09-16 04:30 pm UTC (link)

Given that every "right," including "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" has been alienated at some point, it is clear to me that no "rights" are in fact inalienable. "The violent bear it away." The purpose of government is to concentrate a society's potential for violence and focus it on what the people of that society want to get done.

That said, I do believe in a kind of absolute morality, which, if it were followed, would include the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights -- and more, those in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, to which the US is signatory. But I believe that pragmatically only social structures can ensure those rights -- they are not "inherent" in the sense of being inalienable.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	vakratunda 2008-09-16 04:54 pm UTC (link)
	Well, this is a fascinating point of view, which I think is completely wrong. . (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	sturgeonslawyer 2008-09-16 05:18 pm UTC (link)
	I note that in all this you have dodged my original question: Please provide some support for the claim that property is an inherent right. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	vakratunda 2008-09-16 05:24 pm UTC (link)
	As a Jeffersonian, I subscribe to the theory of unalienable rights. I don't believe that logic applies here: this is a matter of faith. . (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	sturgeonslawyer 2008-09-16 06:08 pm UTC (link)
	Okay, that's a good, honest answer. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	vakratunda 2008-09-16 06:34 pm UTC (link)
	Logically prove that you have a nose. . (Reply to this) (Parent)

	vakratunda 2008-09-15 10:38 pm UTC (link)
	Anyway, it is interesting to see the variety of political belief, no one would deny that. . (Reply to this)

off topic...
(Anonymous)
2008-09-15 10:51 pm UTC (link)

Say something to Veleda/Sophia about her obvious bipolar 'false epiphany' eh?

Poor thing can not distinguish mental illness from genuine mystical experience. And her delusion that Burningman has anything to do with Magick is the least of her delusions.

She also would not recognize real 'love' if it snuck up and bit off a chunk of her enormous ass. A chunk she could certainly spare! Lose some weight before you run off to save the world, ok, 'Supper Chunks'?

Notice how every little surge of her manic emotional state is a message from God himself? She can't notice, she has lost all objectivity. She has also lost grammar and punctuation, she is damn close to genuine hebrephrenic word salad at this point : all ... crazy... bonkers... nuts, etc, et al.

If no one manages to cut through her delusion (which is nurtured by a whole herd of equally lost online 'friends'), she will be found on a street corner soon shaking a broken baby doll head as passersby and mumbling curses, like the insane bag lady she appears destined to become.

In all likelyhood, she is utterly beyond help though.

(Reply to this)

(38 comments) - (Post a new comment)

Username:		Create an Account Forgot your login or password? Login w/ OpenID
Password:
	Remember Me
	English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…

About

Help

Get Involved

Legal

Store

LJ Labs