" In reality, his tax cuts did what they have always done over the past 100 years – they initiated a bubble economy that would let the very rich skim the cream off the top just before the ceiling crashed in on working people."...........This sentence from the following article should hold your interest to spur you on to reading and understanding the complete article. You have been conned for thirty years, it is time you start to understand this.The Republican party has controlled this country for the last 30 years BECAUSE of it's spending...not because of balanced budgets and small government.
The Two Santa Claus Theory
The Two Santa Claus Theory is a political theory and strategy developed by Jude Wanniski in 1976, which he promoted within the U.S. Republican Party.
The theory states that, in democratic elections, if one party appeals to voters by proposing more spending, then a competing party cannot gain broader appeal by proposing less spending. The "Santa Claus" of the theory title refers to the political party that promises spending. Instead, "Two Santa Claus Theory" recommends that the competing party must assume the role of a second Santa Claus by offering other appealing options.
This theory is a response to the belief of monetarists, and especially Milton Friedman, that the government must be starved of revenue in order to control the growth of spending (since, in the view of the monetarists, spending cannot be reduced by elected bodies as the political pressure to spend is too great).
The "Two Santa Claus Theory" does not argue against this belief, but holds that such arguments cannot be espoused in an effort to win democratic elections. In Wanniski's view, the Laffer curve and supply-side economics provide an attractive alternative rationale for revenue reduction: that the economy will grow, not merely that the government will be starved of revenue. Wanniski argued that Republicans must become the tax-cutting Santa Claus to the Democrats' spending Santa Claus.
Two Santa Clauses or How The Republican Party Has Conned America for Thirty Years
This weekend, House Republican leader John Boehner played out the role of Jude Wanniski on NBC's "Meet The Press."
Odds are you've never heard of Jude, but without him Reagan never would have become a "successful" president, Republicans never would have taken control of the House or Senate, Bill Clinton never would have been impeached, and neither George Bush would have been president.
When Barry Goldwater went down to ignominious defeat in 1964, most Republicans felt doomed (among them the then-28-year-old Wanniski). Goldwater himself, although uncomfortable with the rising religious right within his own party and the calls for more intrusion in people's bedrooms, was a diehard fan of Herbert Hoover's economic worldview.
In Hoover's world (and virtually all the Republicans since reconstruction with the exception of Teddy Roosevelt), market fundamentalism was a virtual religion. Economists from Ludwig von Mises to Friedrich Hayek to Milton Friedman had preached that government could only make a mess of things economic, and the world of finance should be left to the Big Boys – the Masters of the Universe, as they sometimes called themselves – who ruled Wall Street and international finance.
Hoover enthusiastically followed the advice of his Treasury Secretary, multimillionaire Andrew Mellon, who said in 1931: "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. Purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down... enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people."
Thus, the Republican mantra was: "Lower taxes, reduce the size of government, and balance the budget."
The only problem with this ideology from the Hooverite perspective was that the Democrats always seemed like the bestowers of gifts, while the Republicans were seen by the American people as the stingy Scrooges, bent on making the lives of working people harder all the while making richer the very richest. This, Republican strategists since 1930 knew, was no way to win elections.
Which was why the most successful Republican of the 20th century up to that time, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had been quite happy with a top income tax rate on millionaires of 91 percent. As he wrote to his brother Edgar Eisenhower in a personal letter on November 8, 1954:
"[T]o attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything--even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon 'moderation' in government.
"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt [you possibly know his background], a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
Goldwater, however, rejected the "liberalism" of Eisenhower, Rockefeller, and other "moderates" within his own party. Extremism in defense of liberty was no vice, he famously told the 1964 nominating convention, and moderation was no virtue. And it doomed him and his party.
And so after Goldwater's defeat, the Republicans were again lost in the wilderness just as after Hoover's disastrous presidency. Even four years later when Richard Nixon beat LBJ in 1968, Nixon wasn't willing to embrace the economic conservatism of Goldwater and the economic true believers in the Republican Party. And Jerry Ford wasn't, in their opinions, much better. If Nixon and Ford believed in economic conservatism, they were afraid to practice it for fear of dooming their party to another forty years in the electoral wilderness.
By 1974, Jude Wanniski had had enough. The Democrats got to play Santa Claus when they passed out Social Security and Unemployment checks – both programs of the New Deal – as well as when their "big government" projects like roads, bridges, and highways were built giving a healthy union paycheck to construction workers. They kept raising taxes on businesses and rich people to pay for things, which didn't seem to have much effect at all on working people (wages were steadily going up, in fact), and that made them seem like a party of Robin Hoods, taking from the rich to fund programs for the poor and the working class. Americans loved it. And every time Republicans railed against these programs, they lost elections.
Everybody understood at the time that economies are driven by demand. People with good jobs have money in their pockets, and want to use it to buy things. The job of the business community is to either determine or drive that demand to their particular goods, and when they're successful at meeting the demand then factories get built, more people become employed to make more products, and those newly-employed people have a paycheck that further increases demand.
Wanniski decided to turn the classical world of economics – which had operated on this simple demand-driven equation for seven thousand years – on its head. In 1974 he invented a new phrase – "supply side economics" – and suggested that the reason economies grew wasn't because people had money and wanted to buy things with it but, instead, because things were available for sale, thus tantalizing people to part with their money. The more things there were, the faster the economy would grow.
At the same time, Arthur Laffer was taking that equation a step further. Not only was supply-side a rational concept, Laffer suggested, but as taxes went down, revenue to the government would go up!
Neither concept made any sense – and time has proven both to be colossal idiocies – but together they offered the Republican Party a way out of the wilderness.
Ronald Reagan was the first national Republican politician to suggest that he could cut taxes on rich people and businesses, that those tax cuts would cause them to take their surplus money and build factories or import large quantities of cheap stuff from low-labor countries, and that the more stuff there was supplying the economy the faster it would grow. George Herbert Walker Bush – like most Republicans of the time – was horrified. Ronald Reagan was suggesting "Voodoo Economics," said Bush in the primary campaign, and Wanniski's supply-side and Laffer's tax-cut theories would throw the nation into such deep debt that we'd ultimately crash into another Republican Great Depression.
But Wanniski had been doing his homework on how to sell supply-side economics. In 1976, he rolled out to the hard-right insiders in the Republican Party his "Two Santa Clauses" theory, which would enable the Republicans to take power in America for the next thirty years.
Democrats, he said, had been able to be "Santa Clauses" by giving people things from the largesse of the federal government. Republicans could do that, too – spending could actually increase. Plus, Republicans could be double Santa Clauses by cutting people's taxes! For working people it would only be a small token – a few hundred dollars a year on average – but would be heavily marketed. And for the rich it would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. The rich, in turn, would use that money to import or build more stuff to market, thus increasing supply and stimulating the economy. And that growth in the economy would mean that the people still paying taxes would pay more because they were earning more.
There was no way, Wanniski said, that the Democrats could ever win again. They'd have to be anti-Santas by raising taxes, or anti-Santas by cutting spending. Either one would lose them elections.
When Reagan rolled out Supply Side Economics in the early 80s, dramatically cutting taxes while exploding (mostly military) spending, there was a moment when it seemed to Wanniski and Laffer that all was lost. The budget deficit exploded and the country fell into a deep recession – the worst since the Great Depression – and Republicans nationwide held their collective breath. But David Stockman came up with a great new theory about what was going on – they were "starving the beast" of government by running up such huge deficits that Democrats would never, ever in the future be able to talk again about national health care or improving Social Security – and this so pleased Alan Greenspan, the Fed Chairman, that he opened the spigots of the Fed, dropping interest rates and buying government bonds, producing a nice, healthy goose to the economy. Greenspan further counseled Reagan to dramatically increase taxes on people earning under $37,800 a year by increasing the Social Security (FICA/payroll) tax, and then let the government borrow those newfound hundreds of billions of dollars off-the-books to make the deficit look better than it was.
Reagan, Greenspan, Winniski, and Laffer took the federal budget deficit from under a trillion dollars in 1980 to almost three trillion by 1988, and back then a dollar could buy far more than it buys today. They and George HW Bush ran up more debt in eight years than every president in history, from George Washington to Jimmy Carter, combined. Surely this would both starve the beast and force the Democrats to make the politically suicidal move of becoming deficit hawks.
And that's just how it turned out. Bill Clinton, who had run on an FDR-like platform of a "new covenant" with the American people that would strengthen the institutions of the New Deal, strengthen labor, and institute a national health care system, found himself in a box. A few weeks before his inauguration, Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin sat him down and told him the facts of life: he was going to have to raise taxes and cut the size of government. Clinton took their advice to heart, raised taxes, balanced the budget, and cut numerous programs, declaring an "end to welfare as we know it" and, in his second inaugural address, an "end to the era of big government." He was the anti-Santa Claus, and the result was an explosion of Republican wins across the country as Republican politicians campaigned on a platform of supply-side tax cuts and pork-rich spending increases.
Looking at the wreckage of the Democratic Party all around Clinton by 1999, Winniski wrote a gloating memo that said, in part: "We of course should be indebted to Art Laffer for all time for his Curve... But as the primary political theoretician of the supply-side camp, I began arguing for the 'Two Santa Claus Theory' in 1974. If the Democrats are going to play Santa Claus by promoting more spending, the Republicans can never beat them by promoting less spending. They have to promise tax cuts..."
Ed Crane, president of the Libertarian CATO Institute, noted in a memo that year: "When Jack Kemp, Newt Gingich, Vin Weber, Connie Mack and the rest discovered Jude Wanniski and Art Laffer, they thought they'd died and gone to heaven. In supply-side economics they found a philosophy that gave them a free pass out of the debate over the proper role of government. Just cut taxes and grow the economy: government will shrink as a percentage of GDP, even if you don't cut spending. That's why you rarely, if ever, heard Kemp or Gingrich call for spending cuts, much less the elimination of programs and departments."
George W. Bush embraced the Two Santa Claus Theory with gusto, ramming through huge tax cuts – particularly a cut to a maximum 15 percent income tax rate on people like himself who made their principle income from sitting around the pool waiting for their dividend or capital gains checks to arrive in the mail – and blowing out federal spending. Bush even out-spent Reagan, which nobody had ever thought would again be possible.
And it all seemed to be going so well, just as it did in the early 1920s when a series of three consecutive Republican presidents cut income taxes on the uber-rich from over 70 percent to under 30 percent. In 1929, pretty much everybody realized that instead of building factories with all that extra money, the rich had been pouring it into the stock market, inflating a bubble that – like an inexorable law of nature – would have to burst. But the people who remembered that lesson were mostly all dead by 2005, when Jude Wanniski died and George Gilder celebrated the Reagan/Bush supply-side-created bubble economies in a Wall Street Journal eulogy:
"...Jude's charismatic focus on the tax on capital gains redeemed the fiscal policies of four administrations. ... [T]he capital-gains tax has come erratically but inexorably down -- while the market capitalization of U.S. equities has risen from roughly a third of global market cap to close to half. These many trillions in new entrepreneurial wealth are a true warrant of the worth of his impact. Unbound by zero-sum economics, Jude forged the golden gift of a profound and passionate argument that the establishments of the mold must finally give way to the powers of the mind. He audaciously defied all the Buffetteers of the trade gap, the moldy figs of the Phillips Curve, the chic traders in money and principle, even the stultifying pillows of the Nobel Prize."
In reality, his tax cuts did what they have always done over the past 100 years – they initiated a bubble economy that would let the very rich skim the cream off the top just before the ceiling crashed in on working people.
The Republicans got what they wanted from Wanniski's work. They held power for thirty years, made themselves trillions of dollars, cut organized labor's representation in the workplace from around 25 percent when Reagan came into office to around 8 of the non-governmental workforce today, and left such a massive deficit that some misguided "conservative" Democrats are again clamoring to shoot Santa with working-class tax hikes and entitlement program cuts.
And now Boehner, McCain, Brooks, and the whole crowd are again clamoring to be recognized as the ones who will out-Santa Claus the Democrats. You'd think after all the damage they've done that David Gregory would have simply laughed Boehner off the program – much as the American people did to the Republicans in the last election – although Gregory is far too much a gentleman for that. Instead, he merely looked incredulous; it was enough.
The Two Santa Claus theory isn't dead, as we can see from today's Republican rhetoric. Hopefully, though, reality will continue to sink in with the American people and the massive fraud perpetrated by Wanniski, Reagan, Laffer, Graham, Bush(s), and all their "conservative" enablers will be seen for what it was and is. And the Obama administration can get about the business of repairing the damage and recovering the stolen assets of these cheap hustlers.
Read your article about Jude Wanniski and Arthur Laffer at the commondreams site. It's political spin in the guise of scholarship.
It takes the concurrence of related concepts held by a school of economists by the 1970s and the principles of Ronald Reagan- held for decades-from BEFORE his 1964 speech in support of Goldwater (Read Reagan's speeches for GE in the 1950s) when they were unpopular to after their successful implementation in 1989. Wanniski had nothing to do with the FORMATION of Reagan's belief in less government, lower taxes and the market. Neither Wanniski nor Laffer had anything to do with Reagan's election. They simply provided the theoretical underpinnings for Reagan's position among the intellectual elite.
Likewise, Reagan, Wanniski, Laffer had nothing to do DIRECTLY with the policy behind the increase in the Social Security taxes in 1986. That proposal was put forth by a BIPARTISAN commission because neither Reagan Republicans nor Tip O'neil Democrats wanted to take the actions necessary to make the program (supposedly) solvent when the boomers hit retirement in the 21st century. As Fed chair, Greenspan (AND HIS PREDECESSOR PAUL VOLKER- on whom Obama relies) supported the tax changes because they knew solvency was a good idea.
Reagan got elected in part because we had unemployment as high as now in 1980 and double digit inflation. He implemented his long held proposal- cut MARGINAL tax rates (yes, returning REAL tax levels and PROGRESSIVITY of the code to what it was in 1978- taxes had gone up on everyone with increasing progressivity because tax brackets were not then indexed for (double digit) inflation).
The federal income tax, in real inflation dollar terms, return to near 1978 progressivity levels by 1984 (Reagan’s 3 year, 25% tax cut). Until the code was changed in 1986, Reagan's policy only reduced real taxation on the wealthy to 78 levels (corporate income tax reductions aside).
And, along with Volker-Greenspan monetary policy, it worked: until last year, we did not face the economic crisis lack that we endured in the 1970s. If the Laffer curve is bad theory, WHY WHEN MARGINAL TAX RATES WERE CUT BY KENNEDY, REAGAN, AND BUSH, WERE GOVERNMENT REVENUES HIGHER than what had been projected?
The deficits came from ever greater spending, not the tax cuts.
This article takes facts, asserts cause-effect relationship as part of POLITICAL SPIN.
Friday, February 5, 2010 at 10:00 AM UTC
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Wow, like I didn't see the inaccurate attacks coming from the supply-siders coming.
Reagan had always believed in lower taxes and lower government, the laughable Laffer curve and Wanniski just enabled the Republicans to have a silly theory to sell the idea to the public that cutting taxes would be good for everyone. In a little over a year it was such a disaster Reagan pushed through the largest tax increase in history to stop the ballooning deficit.
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Hey Thom - please do correct the election of '68. I'm not sure how you could have even gotten that out off your keyboard!
Cheers.
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The Reagan scam is so transparent that only a moron could fail to see through it. Unfortunately, there are a lot of them, and they vote.
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Wrong. And anyone who accepts the fundamental thesis of Thom's aricle, as you apparently have is NOT a moron, they are just ignorant of relevant history.
Read my other commentary if you care. Or check the progressivity of the tax code NOW - even before the Bush cuts expire; do some research into the 1986 changes, not only in the federal individual income tax code, but in how the Social Security tax increases were developed (and overwhelmingly passed by a highly Democratic Congress). This article is garbage.
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Thom,
My friend Jim Simpson is an economist with an interesting background. I’ve copied him here.
[Jim Simpson is a former White House staff economist and budget analyst. His writings have been published in American Thinker, Washington Times, FrontPage Magazine, DefenseWatch, Soldier of Fortune and others. His blog: http://truthandcons.blogspot.com/]
I read your article: “Two Santa Clauses or How The Republican Party Has Conned America for Thirty Years,” published recently on Common Dreams- http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/26-0
It seemed to me it contained errors. So I asked Jim for his expert analysis. (Jim: Thom’s contact information below.) Here is Jim’s reaction to your article. :
“Thom misrepresents several matters. Look up Wanniski on Wikipedia. The "two Santa Claus" theory is not at all as described. It is instead exactly what we have been doing: offering an alternative (a different kind of Santa) than the Democrat vote buying method. (To garner votes, Dems offer us increases in spending, all the “goodies” and “promises”, and the GOP offers up tax cuts.)
Supply side economics is not what he described, showing how ignorant he is of economics. Supply side economics is classical economics with a 1980's buzz word attached. It is the only economics firmly grounded both in theory and practice.
Hoover wasn't a supply-sider or conservative. It was HE who started all the programs that FDR grew. And it was his idiotic policies that got us the Depression. FDR grew those policies, using Keynes’ discredited theory to justify it. (Obama is a Keynesian/demand sider eh?) It is Keynes demand side economics that has been discredited and was a novel economic theory in the 1930s. Its attractiveness to Democrats lies in its advocacy of government spending.
Reagan tried to cut spending. He found two enemies: 1. Democrats and 2. His own party in Congress!
Greenspan wasn't even appointed until 1987. It was Paul Volcker during most of Reagan's tenure. Also, budget director David Stockman did NOT advocate spending and tax cuts. He tried desperately to cut spending but was thwarted, as I mentioned by both Congressional Democrats and Republicans. He wrote a book about it: The Triumph of Politics. He quit in 1985, and was long gone when Greenspan arrived.
I would like to see where Republicans made trillions?!? The only politicians in recent memory to make any money from it were the Clintons.
Clinton didn't cut anything. Republicans did all that!!! He reluctantly signed as he couldn't override.
There are so many other falsehoods in this article it really makes me angry. I would like to meet some of these people publicly to confront these misrepresentations.”
Here are a couple more logs for the fire:
ENTIRELY DIFFERENT SIDE TO THE STORY
http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2008&month=05 Today’s Economy in perspective: Greatest Story Never Told
http://allanerickson.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/reaganomics-versus-obamanomics/
My Note: It boils down to this it seems to me: get government out of the way (very Jeffersonian) and let people freely create, and prosperity is created for everyone; but if you allow government to play a dominate role, it taxes and spends and stifles prosperity. History appears to prove this out. Thom, this paragraph in your article, and your headline, indicate to me you are more interested in pandering to your audience than you are engaging rational debate.
“Odds are you've never heard of Jude, but without him Reagan never would have become a "successful" president, Republicans never would have taken control of the House or Senate, Bill Clinton never would have been impeached, and neither George Bush would have been president.” Ludicrous statement.
One little fact just to upset your apple cart: 85% of income tax revenue is paid by the upper 25% of income earners in the country. So much for tax cuts for the rich.
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Wow! I'm impressed! Jim Simpson said it, so it must be true! What a fugging crock. "Classical" economics, just like "classical" liberalism, is a rewriting of history to reinvent conservatives as something other than the Tories who opposed the revolution and sided with King George.
The U.S. was founded on the principles of (small r) republican democracy. NOT on crapitalism. In fact, Jefferson distrusted not only banks, but ALL corporate pigs.
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Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_side_economics. Supply side economics is not classical and it is not mainstream thought. In fact, NO RESPECTABLE ECONOMIST currently believes in supply side economics. It is, as Bush 41 once said, voodoo.
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I'm sure you are aware, but in case others are not, FrontPage, American Thinker, and Washington Times are all heavily conservative and will naturally only espouse conservative views and beliefs, such as supply-side economics. And as for this ridiculous line:
"One little fact just to upset your apple cart: 85% of income tax revenue is paid by the upper 25% of income earners in the country. So much for tax cuts for the rich."
Income tax is FAR from the only tax paid in this country. EVERYONE pays payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare), sales taxes whether local, state, or federal (is gasoline tax federal?), plus fees and charges for public services. You conservative morons try to make it seem like income taxes are the only taxes in the country (besides of course business taxes!) and that your poor, unfortunate upper-class people are carrying the burden of the whole country.
"My Note: It boils down to this it seems to me: get government out of the way (very Jeffersonian) and let people freely create, and prosperity is created for everyone;"
Really? So, the government not regulating those retarded derivatives created by the upper-income fools in the finance industry let to prosperity for everyone? Or did it blow up in their faces and threaten economic destruction for everyone?
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There are a lot people with a lot of good comments.
I think now we need to come up with some good solutions.
I think we all need to start doing the math.
Foreclosures are a simple math problem. We have less than 1,000,000 foreclosures per year. The average monthly payment needs to be lowered by less than $1,000.00 so that the mortgage holder can be around the 30 percent mark on gross family income and continue to stay in the home.
The goverment could loan the homeowner the $1000.00(or less) per month and have the homeowner pay at the end of the original loan at the same interest rate back to the federal government until the loan is paid off.
Cost is 1mill * 1k or about 1 billion per month or 12 billion per year.
YES, 12 billion will stop every single foreclosure.
Jobs again are simple math.
We have about 3 million people per year losing there job at an average of $40,000.00 per year. 3mill * 40k or about 120 billion per year.
So 120 billion could be given to the existing unemployment system to put these people to work.
Again wipe out all unemployment and foreclosures with less than 200 billion.
We have given trillions yes trillions to the banking system and they are not loaning it out because NOBODY is borrowing, because everyone is losing there job!
Economic Expansion comes from building more with less people and less material and less environmental impact.
We have had Economic Expansion not because of left vs right or republic vs democrate but because of legislation that forces corporations to build more with less people, less material and less environmental impact by using constant gains in America with American technology.
Now corporations and wall street made short term gains by offshoring everything.
We Americans must demand legislation to stop all corporations from doing business in America unless they follow all American laws, like child labor, slave labor, minimum wage and environmental no matter were they produce the goods. That includes food.
Then the economy will right
itself within ONE MONTH.
Do your own math, math is a funny thing the solutions are singular and real!
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If we want to have economic recovery, we need to cut tax rates (despite Thom's article- cutting rates will produce a boom that will result in lower unemployment again.
If we want to fix the economy over the long term, we have to address the fundamental causes:
Government action that excessively promotes mortgage extensions to individuals who cannot afford them- the Freddie Mac Fannie May policies of Clinton and G.W. Bush-which behind the excessive real estate boom- need to be curtailed. Your idea will simply exacerbate the policy.
Adapt and increase current regulatory policies for security exchanges, which date to the 1980s, for the global economy we have now.
Get the Federal Reserve to do its regulatory job in this area (not to mention the SEC, which was too incompetent to even control the Enron's (misrepresentations began by Enron in 1998) and Bernie MaDolph's of the world.
Get the Federal Resserve to do its monetary job, i.e., gradually end the "free money" policy it maintained even when the economy was growing, 2001-2007. Which means, to do that without astronomical interest rates one needs to....
Get Congress and this president to stop spending $, Just as the last Congress and W. should not have gone off on a drunken sailor spree.
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One citizen's solution:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100326109
Economy
Marks Is His Name, Avoiding Foreclosure His Aim
by Chris Arnold
Morning Edition, February 6, 2009 · One of the more colorful characters in the ongoing financial crisis is Bruce Marks. He runs a housing nonprofit that helps people avoid foreclosure. And he has some unorthodox tactics. Over the years, Marks has camped out on the front lawns of CEOs, made big scenes at their country clubs and dug into their personal lives to embarrass them. Marks has even been called a "bank terrorist."
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell
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Mr. Hartmann, Nixon never beat LBJ. LBJ chose not the run. Nixon beat Humphrey in 1968.
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Dear Readers:
If you think a revolution isn't coming, think again. Everywhere I turn hard working people have taken the hit (many of my fellow workers seeing retirement funds crash with losses of 80K to 120K. If you think america isn't about class warfare, think again. What goes around, comes around. If your a rich person living on our backs, I have got news for you. We will take you out. So hide in your gated communities all you want. Just wait for the clamoring at the gate. I often wonder what the French Monarchy thought as they saw there world turned upside down?
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If you believe that a violent revolution will come to America and resolve our problems, or that ,if it did, that would be a good thing I suggest that you rethink your position.
There are other, less bloody forms of revolution, and ones that are far more desirable.
There may very well be riots should this economy continue its slide, and, while that would be unfortunate and result in much spilled blood, I see no alteration in our government or for whom that government serves resulting from said riots.
We obviously need change, and badly. The world needs us to change in fact. But I very much think that lasting and permanent change must come peacefully.
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so. Bertrand Russell
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Never could understand why the democrats didn't deflate the "lower taxes" slogan with the retort that they are not really lowering taxes but just putting it on the credit card for future (non-wealthy) generations to pay. Naturally this is tied up with the "starving the beast" technique that was mentioned.
In the world of simple advertising slogans one must fight back with simple more truth telling ones. Thus "tax and spend liberals" would be countered with: "paying as you go (cash and carry) is much better then 'spend and charge republicans' who always put us further in debt.
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Let's see. first read my comments above concerning Thom's article.
Then consider the results of supply-side economics:
1962- Kennedy supply side tax cut----federal government revenues exceed projections, we have an economic boom. Social spending (Great Society) and Vietname war spending cause government expenditures to radically exceed projections. (Some of that spending may be worthy- but that's off point): What caused the chronic deficits by the 1970s- tax cuts? or SPENDING.
1981- Reagan's 25% "cut" in marginal tax rates over three years.--------federal government revenues exceed projections, we have an economic boom. Dramatic increases in Defense spending in the 80s, while maybe hastening the demise of the Soviet Union and helped save money in the future, as well as the "spending" deal the adminstration engaged with Congress (Defense spending in inflation adjusted dollars in the eighties and as a percentage of the federal budget was greater than we have now- including what we spend on Iraq and Afghanistan) (Some of that spending may be worthy- but that's off point): What caused the chronic deficits by the 1970s- tax cuts? or SPENDING.
2001- Bush's tax cut-----federal government revenues exceed projections withing 3 years, we have an economic boom. Social spending ($400 billion for prescription drug coverage not paid for, September 11, two wars- not paid for- cause government expenditures to radically exceed projections. (Some of that spending may be worthy- but that's off point): What caused the chronic deficits by the 1970s- tax cuts? or SPENDING.
Spending increases are sometimes necessary. But this argument is partisan bull. We need to return to, let's see.....the approriations of the REPUBLICAN Congress (1994-2000, Congract w/ America) and the DEMOCRATIC President Bill Clinton who worked with them- read about Dick Morris' triangulation strategy for Bill Clinton).
DIVIDED GOVERNMENT WORKS. AND WE ARE GOING TO HAVE IT AGAIN. REAL SOON.
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Have you looked at the proposed "stimulus" package? Would you describe it as "paying as you go" or "spend and charge?"
Do you really think only one party is to blame for putting the government in debt?
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Teddy,
You seem to have it all figured out. Your use of capital letters makes your arguments so much more powerful. As one who cherishes freedom, I would be quite content to let the people in the fifty states choose the type of government they want within their state. Keep the federal government limited to the Constitution (but repealing the 16th and 17th amendments).
Why do you feel the need to impose your idea of good government on many within a population of 300 million people who have no desire to live in a collectivist/statist/socialist society? Do you think that you are that much smarter than everyone else? Are those who disagree with you just too ignorant to know what is good for them?
Why wouldn't you agree with having fifty experiments in government? Do you think that those who disagree with you should not have the choice of the kind of government that they want?
When do you think slavery started in the North American continent? States rights did not give us slavery. There was slavery when the states were colonies of England. During the creation of the Constitution, the slave states wanted to count slaves as people. It was the non-slave states that did not want them counted. They compromised on 3/5ths. The non-slave states did not want the slave states to gain representation in Congress by counting the slaves. Most educated people can agree that slavery was a travesty, and it is an unfortunate stain on the history of America. However, some argue that we are all becoming slaves (http://townhall.com/Columnists/WalterEWilliams/2008/06/11/are_americans_pro-slavery).
Regarding "universal" health care. I lived in England for two years. I really enjoyed reading the stories of the extremely ill and elderly who were being denied hospital beds because of the shortage of space. The government had decided they were expendable. Their lives were no longer worth the cost to the public. The beds had to be used for those whose lives were more valuable.
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You know, reading your comment I kept thinking, "Okay. I disagree somewhat with this person, but I think we could have a rational, sane, agreeable - even friendly - discourse." I even got over the speed bump of your sort-of-arrogant, demeaning question to Teddy; the one that starts "Do you think that you are that much smarter..."
And then: WHAM! slavery was just a travesty!? Do you KNOW what travesty means? If so, please tell us what slavery is a travesty OF? And what is it about slavery that you find comical?
And THAT was followed by the "unfortunate stain". Man, you had better do some research on what is is to be a slave, both today and 200 years ago. Especially if you equate the slavery of then with the political slavery you equate with federalism. What hubris!
And by the way, an anecdotal story about some extremely ill or elderly person having to wait for a bed is just that: anecdotal. In retort, I can give you worse horror stories of people in this country with full insurance coverage (the very notion that one needs to purchase insurance from a third party that sits between me and my doctor and is there just to make money is DISGUSTING!) who were denied treatment and died because it would have been too expensive for said insurance company.
In Denmark, if you have to wait more than 30 days for treatment due to demand or scarcity of resources, the government will allow you to receive treatment in the country of your choice. There IS a better way, and it's called single-payer!
"no gods, no masters" --m. sanger
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I would welcome a sane and friendly discourse.
A travesty of human justice and the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence. I do not find slavery comical, and I was not trying to minimize slavery in any way. I was simply trying to refute Teddy's suggestions that it was "states' rights" that gave us slavery. I was also not equating slavery then with the current situation, but I was pointing out that others have. Did you read Walter Williams' column?
My question to Teddy was not arrogant. I am quite aware that I do not have all the answers. I am also quite aware that the 537 elected federal officials do not have all of the answers. That is one of the reasons that I prefer limitations on the federal government. Fifty experiments in democracy give more opportunity to find out what works and what does not.
Denmark's health care has often been used as an example the United States should imitate. Denmark is a mostly homogeneous society of 5.5 million people located in a country of approximately 17,000 sq. miles. The United States is a heterogeneous country of 300 million people and an area of approximately 3.8 million square miles. What works for Denmark may not work for the United States. The population and area of Denmark is more on the scale of one of our states. Since the money for single payer health care comes from the people, let each of the states, if they decide to, implement "single payer" health care. Again, it would give fifty experiments in government, and the states could learn from one another what works and what does not.
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Teddy,
What is your vision for American? Do you think it make sense to put control of the lives of 300 million people and $3 billion to $4 billion dollars in the hands of 537 elected officials? Corporations love the fact that there are so few people with so much power concentrated in one place. Why do you think there are so many lobbyists in DC? Imagine if the lobbyists had to lobby 6,300 representatives instead of 435 (http://thirty-thousand.org/). Imagine if the power was not concentrated in DC, and the corporations had to lobby representatives and senators in fifty states.
Do you think you are more likely to get good government from a one size (does not) fit all federal government or fifty "experiments in democracy?" Do you think it makes sense for citizens in New York and California to send billions of dollars to DC for elected officials from all of the states to determine how to spend it, or would it make more sense to keep the money in the state?
Regarding the "nationalism" of the early Americans, many "Americans" really thought of themselves as citizens of their state rather than citizens of the "United States of America." The consciously limited the role of the federal government. Do you think it is easier to make changes at the city, state, or federal level?
Do you think the federal government's involvement in education has led to "an informed well educated, participatory people."
Do you support Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Do you think that the current Social Security legislation could have been passed in its current form, or do you think that the American people were promised one thing and it was gradually changed over time? What about the income tax? Medicare?
Do you cherish freedom?
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furthermore -- the PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM in teh USA has DETERIORATED NOT because the government has "spent too much" -- even if there IS waste -- but because the government under the "free marketeers" has TRANSFERED PUBLIC WEALTH in taxes TO PRIVATE schools through grants and "rich neighborhood" transfers of WELFARE system FOR THE RICH! while having their powerful media -- LIKE NATIONAL REVIEW -- proclaim it is the fault of the public system ...when in reality
THEIR lobbying AGAINST the public system HAS caused the Destruction and deterioration of education for americans BY MAKING PROFITMAKING the HOLY GOSPEL of "education" -- RENDERING the majority of ALREADY LOW PAID AMERICANS -- also under the free market system -- UNABLE to afford proper education!
so -- there you go!
it's ALL traceable to this "conservatism" -- this "small government" mantra -- and hiding behind it this self-styled "libertarianism"........
ALL OF THEM with NO respect whatsoever for the COMMONS and COMMON WELFARE but ONLY for PERSONAL PROFIT which they define , ERRONEOUSLY and MISLEADINGLY and DECEPTIVELY as "freedom and choice".
such a funny, twisted kind of thinking. it's aberrational and irrational and selfish!
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Unmitigated bull. You have a right to your own ideas, but not to misrepresent the facts.
Over 27 years I have taught- half at a parochial high school in Connecticut and the other half at an inner city school.
First, the government provides NO meaningful funding for private schools- not even tuition tax deductions. Some Districts provide busing, some textbooks, some public library resources. That's it. Your statement is ignorant.
Second, at a time maybe a decade ago, the parochial high schools in Connecticut were spending just over $8,000 per student; the public school system was spending over $12,000 at that same time. (I do not have current comparisons handy- look it up- you will discover the same).
YOU WANT TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF EDUCATION FOR POOR AND MIDDLE CLASS KIDS (which are the kids are current system is failing); GIVE THEM AND WHAT PARENTS THEY HAVE THE SAME CHOICE IN EDUCATION THAT THE WEALTHY KIDS HAVE- PUBLIC # FOR VOUCHERS.
Question: What country has the best post secondary education system in the world? Answer: United States.
Question: Why, then, is K-12 in the U.S. hurting so badly. Answer: Teacher Unions like mine care more about protecting their workers than they do about kids- so they fight the necessity of schools having to compete- the way colleges do.
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Unmitigated bull. You have a right to your own ideas, but not to misrepresent the facts.
Over 27 years I have taught- half at a parochial high school in Connecticut and the other half at an inner city school.
First, the government provides NO meaningful funding for private schools- not even tuition tax deductions. Some Districts provide busing, some textbooks, some public library resources. That's it. Your statement is ignorant.
Second, at a time maybe a decade ago, the parochial high schools in Connecticut were spending just over $8,000 per student; the public school system was spending over $12,000 at that same time. (I do not have current comparisons handy- look it up- you will discover the same).
YOU WANT TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF EDUCATION FOR POOR AND MIDDLE CLASS KIDS (which are the kids are current system is failing); GIVE THEM AND WHAT PARENTS THEY HAVE THE SAME CHOICE IN EDUCATION THAT THE WEALTHY KIDS HAVE- PUBLIC # FOR VOUCHERS.
Question: What country has the best post secondary education system in the world? Answer: United States.
Question: Why, then, is K-12 in the U.S. hurting so badly. Answer: Teacher Unions like mine care more about protecting their workers than they do about kids- so they fight the necessity of schools having to compete- the way colleges do.
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Where are the facts that support your arguments?
Please explain how this transfer of wealth applies to the public schools in Washington DC. Washington DC spent about $24,000 per student in 2008. This is money spent in the public schools. This was not money transferred private schools through grants. Do you think that the DC schools are successful?
Why do you think that the cost for a college education is outpacing inflation?
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i will answer your questions with QUESTIONS:
do you think that if there were no "representatives" in congress or there is NO congress -- where it applies in america -- LOBBYISTS among PROFITEERS borne out of the DOGMA of "free enterprise" would NOT SEEK AND FIND A WAY TO TAKE CONTROL OF COMMONS WEALTH just the same?
do you think that the government has NO business serving the needs of the COMMONS -- which is PEOPLE _- where PEOPLE , left intheir "individuality" UNDER the excesses -- which are INEVITABLE under the free market system -- can NOT defend THEMSELVES from this barbaric practices of exploitation?
do you think that PEOPLE as represented in their own government SHOULD NOT SEE TO IT THAT THEIR PARTICIPATION and contribution to society as a whole is embedded in the ability of their PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS to generate and maintain policies that look after THEIR COMMON WELFARE or LEAVE IT to the exigencies of your wonderful "free market?"
i have NO problem with people paying taxes and the RICH ought to pay MORE ....as part of maintaining a decent society.
it is only those who think that they OWE SOCIETY in which they function and make their wealth - NOTHING -- who love this idiotic idea of "free market" and "deregulation" and "no or small government spending"
because in REALITY _- what they REALLY hate is PUBLIC SPENDING throguh government institutions -- IF they are truly benign and under the watchful eye of CIVIC MINDED people (unlike what is under capitalism) - for COMMON WELFARE....
and in reality what they DESIRE and LUST after is the "freedom" to FEED on the TROUGH of PUBLIC COMMONS and without ANY responsibility TOWARDS the society from which they TAKE their WEALTH!! and their ENTIRE existence!
that is what this idea of libertarianism really tries to foster but COVERS up with high-falutin notions about 'freedom'....
when in reality they couldn't care LESS about freedom FOR OTHERS -- but ONLY FOR THESMELVES to EXPLOIT public commons for THEIR S0-called "personal choice" and "freedom"!
public spending on health care is PROVEN by every other industrialized country in the world to be FAR FAR MORE Efficient and Cost-effective THAN privatized -- FOR PROFIT -- "free market" health care nonsense!
it should be DISMANTLED in its entirety and rendered ILLEGAL and CRIMINAL for such a thing -- profiteering on ILLNESS - has NO PLACE in a decent society!
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Your questions did not answer my questions. Were you educated in public schools?
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please don't question me or others about "freedom" AS IF you are the guys who can define it for anyone. you libertarians love to use that word without any real philosophical argument as to EXACTLY what it means and even then -- you promote economic systems that REMOVE freedom from people under the guise of "choice"
.
MY definition is simple. GOVERNMENT is PART of a society - a society can not order itself without GOVERNANCE in some form.
the question of governance is about GOOD , BENIGN governance whether it is by democratic , direct participation or chosen representatives. that is up to PEOPLE and the culture and THEIR notions of "freedom".
i will give you a DIRECT example of the CONSEQUENCES of liberatarians' , "free market choice" , "small limited government" mantra that has led to an explosion of REGULATION BY CORPORATIONS , the business community, the MONEY capitalists of the lives of people:
-------
a man has killed his own wife, his five children and himself - out of despondence at losing his job -- and his wife was also "terminated".
LET ME ASK YOU -- which PRECIOUS WONDERFUL ECONOMIC SYSTEM has DONE THIS, and is effecting it all across the USA and the globe AT THIS VERY MINUTE?
it this precious "magical" free market, let us "privatize everything and leave it to individual choice" nonsense that has left out the COMMONS and COMMON WELFARE -- by giving up POWER to a FEW individuals who hide behind CORPORATISM -- which is the CHILD of this very wonderful "libertarianism" . !
that Newt Gingrich "NATIONAL REVIEW" website? that's already DISCREDITED as ANOTHER of those proclaimers of so-called "free market fundamentalism" --- who try to EQUATE "socialism" with
Fascism BECAUSE the Nazis called themselves "NATIONAL SOCIALISTS".....
EVEN IF socialism as OWNERSHIP of the commons BY the people and NOT by corporations and private businesses -- is VASTLY different from FASCISM
which as Mussolini described ,and APPLIES to Italy and Nazi Germany CORRECTLY was:
"FASCISM SHOULD MORE PROPERLY BE CALLED -- CORPORATISM -- FOR IT IS THE WEDDING OF STATE POWER WITH THE CORPORATION TO CONTROL NATIONAL RESOURCES -- IN FAVOR OF THE FAR RIGHT".
THE libertarians -- you can GO to JUSTIN RAIMONDO -- of Antiwar.com -- for the proper defintion of his and similar minded "Rightists" - are nothing more than MASQUERADERS for RIGHTWING FASCISM and CORPORATISM
disguising themselves as "freedom" lovers..when in reality -- that principle puts PERSONLA PROFIT above COMMONS.
and that is UNCIVILIZED - for IT leads into tyranny as much as anything -- and removing it from ordinary people under the instrumetns of state and corporation ....
EXACTLY as is seen today with BANKS , FINANCE, MONEY CAPITALISM "left free" to do "their magic of the market place" .
A SOCIALIST ECONOMY -- mind you =- ECONOMY - is better. it places PROFIT MAKING in its PROPER PLACE --
SECONDARY to the COMMON WEALTH of people! PERIOD!
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What everyone is forgetting: Who caused this financial crisis???
The TRUTH is Pres. Carter and Clinton!! Remember the law that was passed to MAKE banks give loans to people who could not afford the homes they were buying?? Freddie Mac etc. ?? THAT is what caused this problem and the liberals will not ever admite that THEY made this happen!! What made this country great WAS the individual who worked hard WITHOUT government interference to succeed or fail by HIS own drive. CAPITALISM is what made this counrty the GREATEST in the world. It was the people not the government. IF we proceed on this course of "socialism" we WILL FAIL.
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The TRUTH needs no capitalization. Nor am I aware of any law that MAKES banks give loans to people who cannot afford the homes they seek to buy.In fact brokers were pushing homes and falsifying the value of those homes in order to increase their commissions, in addition they were lying as to the terms of those mortgages. Thus what you claim to be the cause of our current mess is, in reality, nothing more than the ravings of a sadly uninformed person.
CAPITALISM ( do you honestly think that capitalizing gives you an unearned credibility?) which was freed by the deregulation policies of Reagan and Bush to invent bundled derivatives, made legal and free of government scrutiny by REPUBLICANS ( does that work for you), is what led to the collapse of that market. As to your inference that we are embarked upon a course of "socialism" ( shouldnt that be capitalised?) perhaps you might elucidate ( that means explain) as to what course and what socialism?
But thanks ever so much for playing.
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so. Bertrand Russell
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Rather than talk about who is right or wrong I would like to add a little math to the argument.
Banks take deposits and pay less than 2% PER year.
Banks borrow money from the federal reserve for less than 2% per year.
Banks loan the money at between 5-11% per year.
Banks make 4-8% per year or approx. $50,000.00 for every $1,000,000.00 loan every year.
Less than 10% of the homes per year go into foreclosure. Over 90% pay the loan back or the bank is guaranteed more than $45,000.00 for every $1,000,000.00 loaned and will be able to write off 100% of the loss on foreclosed homes. But they really do not lose money because the home still sells for something. All the bank has to do is pay the interest to customers or federal reserve.
So they are not losing money on foreclosed homes so why are they going bankrupt?
The banks need the money to pay for all of the corporate loans to build factories overseas and to buy each other out and in general just keep letting rich people get richer. It is a never ending tale of borrowing money to be able to live richer and richer.
The math is simple. Less than 1 million homes foreclosed last year at an average per month payment of less than $2,000.00, means less than 2 billion per month of total loses. Or $24 billion loses for the total industry not taking into account the fact that over $2,000,000,000,000.00 was taken in for the people who did pay there mortgage payment with a profit on that of over $100,000,000,000.00.
So again the media, the banks, our legislators are all lying.
The banks do not need to be bailed out.
The corporations and billionaires need to go bankrupt for building all of those factories in third world countries.
The banks need to go bankrupt for letting them steal Americans money.
The legislators need to go to jail for bailing the banking system out!
New banks will take there place and be happy to make 4% on every dollar they loan to Americans. For doing nothing but hitting a computer keyboard.
Again the math does not lie. But bankers and politicians do.
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You betray a lack of understanding of the cause of this current mess. It is not the simple mortgage loan that is the culprit, but instead the bundling of many,many such loans into packages called derivatives and then sold and resold, splintered, reassembled and resold again. Today noone knows for certain who holds the mortgage on a particular home,or for that matter what those bundled derivatives are really worth given the plunging value of the homes contaned within them, thus making rather difficult the methodology by which one reduces the payments to save the homeowner from foreclosure.
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so. Bertrand Russell
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Do you really think that the banks were not regulated? What are your thoughts on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Do they deserve any of the blame for the current financial situation? Do you recognize that government had a hand in creating our current financial situation?
Do you think that the founders of this country would support the type of government that you promote? Can you provide evidence?
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You have no issues with bankers taking home hundreds of millions in remuneration, while running their banks into the ground? You have no issues with bankers saddling their their banks with who the hells knows how much bad debt, and then requiring the public to bail them out?
One last question: if you subscribe to the free market idea, should the banks not be allowed to go bankrupt? The free market has demonstrated that the banks, and the people who ran them, are incompetent at best, cheats at worst.
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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are one of the reason that the banks saddled themselves with bad debt. The banks operated under the expectation that if things with south the federal government would bail them out because of Fannie and Freddie.
Banks should definitely be allowed to go bankrupt.
The market is not free. There is still plenty of regulation, and some of the regulation is to blame for the current financial problems.
Your last sentence could be applied to the federal government as well. The federal government has demonstrated that it, and the who runs it, are incompetent at best, cheats at worst.
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Nice article and I agree with all of it until the end. I do NOT see Obama doing anything different. His staff choices and policies offer just more of the same. In fact, it seems that he has taken the two Santa theme as his own. Trillions more in deficit spending, trillions more in debt and cheap credit to solve a problem created by debt and cheap credit.
The sad fact is that America's economy needs to collapse completely before any real change can come. The good news is that is not so far away.
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Reagan had nowhere near the gray matter to understand such a scheme. Greenspan's cryptic explanations were understood by nobody, least of all himself. If Wanniski was the brains who was the power broker?
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Reagan was the Chief SELLER of "small government...it's individual choice freedom, let the free market do its magic".....where the REAL motive was to RENDER ANY GOVERNMENT IMPOTENT in serving its job , which is to serve the interests of the common welfare or people and prevent them from being exploited by those that THRIVE and RELY on "no regulation" to EXPLOIT others and THEN USE that POWER of "limited REGULATION" of their actions --
TO IN TURN REGULATE the lives of people and society for the sake of PROFIT!
THAT"s the real game of these "small government" SELLERS like reagan. and margaret thatcher.
they are DISCREDITED.
the fact that government has become a handmaiden to CORPORATE POWER is the PROOF , in addition to its having become a WAR MACHINE and POLICE STATE -- a BIG GOVERNMENT -- in SERVICE of CORPORATISM - that the "small government, let the free market do its magic" nonsense is a TROJAN HORSE that people swallowed...........
making people IMPOTENT because the protection and aid of GOOD government has been REDUCED towards the END of removing ANY protection for people FROM exploitation by those who use "small government" as the BAIT and SWITCH it with
BIG POLICE CORPORATE WARFARE STATE and WELFARE STATE for the RICH and POWERFUL --and the MONEYED INTERESTS and those that WISH TO BE LIKE THEM as well as IMAGINE they TOO can be Little Kings and Queens in this world.
period!
this boils down to a matter of philosophy -- towards an economic regime that considers SO:ME to be born to be RULERS and NOBILITY -- hiding behind "small government" BAITING of people .
that's what you all see in FULL DISPLAY in ALL ITS GORY BARBARITY as the economy implodes and in its implosion -- this capitalist "free market -deregulate, and privatize everything" -- leading to unbridled exploitation of the commons - spreads its POISON as the "BOILS" festering in its body explodes and the PUS just poisons everything it touches,,,not LEAST of all HUMAN decency!!!
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Interesting read:
http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/
Rahmbo: http://vodpod.com/watch/1177723-never-let-a-serious-crisis-go-to-waste-wsj
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I believe that most people at their core desire freedom, but much of the political discussion and commentary is so issue focused that many people do not even consider freedom. I have tried to illustrate freedom and limited government in the terms that are often used in political commentary regarding a variety of issues.
Choice - An expansive federal government limits choice and personal freedom. Limiting the scope and budget of the federal government and leaving more decisions to the people and local and state governments increases personal freedom and choice.
Diversity - Giving people more freedom and leaving more decisions to the state and local levels increases the diversity of ideas and solutions that can be implemented, tested, and improved.
Unity - Having an expansive federal government causes division between those in and out of power and those who agree and disagree with what the federal government is doing. Limiting the power and scope of the federal government limits division and increases unity.
As long as we have an ever expanding federal government (regardless of party in power), our freedom and choices will be limited. A one size does not fit any federal government limits the diversity of ideas and solutions. If the government gets it wrong, as it often does, it gets it wrong for everyone. Once something is implemented at the federal level, it is difficult to get rid of it. As long as the federal government is doing as much as it currently does, the country will be extremely divided. Limiting the scope of the federal government will not eliminate division, but it offers a better chance at reducing division. (As an additional benefit, limiting the power and budget of the federal government provides natural lobby reform.)
The solution is to stop the growth of the federal government, and then gradually begin to "peel the onion" to return the decisions to the state and local governments. Limit the federal government to its Constitutional powers. Leave the rest to the states and local governments. If there is something that the federal government should be doing that is not authorized by the Constitution, then the Constitution should be amended. The citizens of each state decide how much government they desire. Those who disagree with the type of government implemented in one state would have the freedom to move to another state that has a government more aligned with their desires.
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thank you for giving us a REHASH of the Classic Republican, s0-called "libertarian" , so-called "choice" mantra .
the purpose of government depends on what people believe it to be...and that includes the american dogma about "choice" .
the dogma of "limited government and leave things to the states" using fear of "big government that becomes tyrannous" has been USED to install Slavery, corporatism, the "free-market choice"
which ALL ended up in DISUNITY, DIVISIVENESS, economic class divisions, and IRONICALLY -- BIG GOVERNMENT that is a POLICE STATE that is used to protect the interets of the VERY SAME classes that fomented "small government" -- or more correctly :
small government that is NOT supposed to spend on COMMON WELFARE NOR PROTECT the individual or body politic from the exploitation by those that RISE in power THROUGH the so-called "limited government".
the real question is whether government -- BIG OR SMALL, big spending or not -- is a GOOD government - and THAT depends NOT on "limited government" dogma, or "small expenses" dogma, or so-called "fiscal conservatism" - removing any PUBLIC role and PUBLIC FUNDING for COMMON welfare -- such as health care, education, etc. -- but on a population that is well-informed and educated which can NOT be achieved by "privatization" or ""choice with limited government" nonsense
as has ALREADY been demonstrated again and again and again.
"limited government fosters UNITY?"
there is no such thing.
while no government has ever been entirely benign ..small or big....greater unity - forced or otherwise - is more achievable under a large government that has the institutional capabilities to foster it.
that is why there such a thing as Nationalism..whether it was the early americans or today...or the Nazis, or the chinese today .
let's not try to place garlands and flowers around this "unity" high-sounding rhetoric about "small government fosters unity" in that case.
the French have "big governemtn" it spends a LOT on their social welfare network and the population considers it CIVILIZED....they are no LESS united THAN the "small government" americans - be it the ones under the "small government of earlier decades compared to today or not.
what was it that DID divide the south and north through slavery?
STATES' RIGHTS! there you go.
what was it that allowed corporatism to become a maw that swallows everything and REPLACES government and becomes GOVERNMENT in the dark?
"Choice" and "individual rights" used as justification to exploit through power. ....when GOOD government is removed by the mantra of "limited government".
what DID they replace GOOD government or its vestiges and the consitutional rights with:
CORPORATE/STATE SPYING -- BIG GOVERNMENT coming out as a result of the mantra of "small government" fostered by the "small government" so-called libertarians and cosnervatives THEMSELVES!
YET - these people NEVER talk about good governance whose purpose is to PROTECT people and the commons from the EXPLOITATION of those that would USE "small government" to WEAKEN ANY PUBLIC power or COMMON power to protect ITSELF FROM exploitation by power hungry INDIVIDUALS who THEN abrogate upon themselves the power of BIG POLICE STATE government while
reducing and seeking to destroy government that sees after the interests and welfare of the commons BY SPOUTING "Small government".
this kind of creed is a TROJAN HORSE.
PRETENDING to be for "small government": as if by saying that something MAGICAL happens...like by saying "let's leave everything to the free market and individual choice" and something happens by MAGIC!
it's nonsense.
it is a TROJAN HORSE.
the real issue is informed well educated, participatory people - and a benign government of educated, decent individuals which it is people's obligation to KNOW who their leaders are and what issues ARE without being sold a "bait and switch" (same as the mantra of "small limited government") -- which is GOOD governANCE, as opposed to the discussion between "small or big" government.
a "small government" which withholds assistance to people whose needs can not be MET BY THE MARKET or "free market" and INDEED are even DESTROYED by such ideas and the "individual choice of OTHERS" whose consequences are destructive (examples.....wall street, bankers, greenspan, --- individual choicers all of them!!!) ...
is a BAD government as easily as a BIG government that spends on WAR , IN SPYING in the interests of the big powerful entities that were given life and sustenance THROUGH the mantra of "limited government" so THEY can exploit people!
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In 1908, federal spending was 2.5% of GDP and total government spending was 7.8%. In 2008 federal spending is estimated to be 20.5% of GDP with government spending at federal, state and local levels totaling 35.7%. Many people do not know that the federal government has not always been as expansive as it currently is. Even some conservatives have embraced "big-government conservatism," arguing that big government is here to stay. In some ways this is an understandable position for politicians because only so much can change over the course of 2, 4, or 6 year election cycles. However understandable the position may be, what this country needs is a conservative, limited government vision.
The vision that I have for the federal government of the United States is a budget, in typical circumstances, of no more than 10% of GDP. Many people may argue that a 50% reduction in federal spending is impossible. Though there are obstacles to achieving this reduction, over time it is possible. If federal spending was frozen at 2008 levels and the GDP grew at an annual rate of 3%, after 25 years, the federal budget would be 10% of GDP. If GDP grows at a reduced rate or if the amount spent increases, the length of time that it takes to achieve the reduction would be extended, but the reduction would still be achieved. The cumulative reduction over the course of time is substantial, but it is achieved incrementally.
How would this reduction be achieved? Since the reductions happen incrementally, drastic annual cuts are not necessary, but the process will require a fundamentally different approach to government spending. Departments could no longer assume annual increases in their budgets. Wasteful spending would have to be eliminated. Redundant agencies would be combined. Departments, programs, and agencies would have to be prioritized, and eventually some would be eliminated. Evaluating the Constitutional legitimacy of the various entities could aid the process. Entitlement programs may have to be restructured to meet promised benefits over the short term while being phase out over a longer term.
How would the country function with reduced federal spending and the elimination of some government agencies? Again, the reductions happen incrementally, so there is time to plan and adjust to the changes. Some of the changes, such as reducing wasteful spending would require no adjustment (except possibly for the recipients of the wasteful spending). Other changes may require the states, local governments, religious and civic organizations, and individuals to assume the responsibilities. Not only is this a constitutional principal, but pragmatically, it moves the responsibility closer to the need.
With patience, concerted effort, and a conviction that a limited federal government is best for the country, this limited government vision can become a reality.
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The Glue That Holds Chaos Together
Hello, Thom!
I have heard you present the Republican's "Two Santa" tactic, and I have learned more about our government than I have in a dozen tomes laying about my house, though I believe that there is a fundamental problem with the morality of the conservatives that appeals to desperate people. I disagree that the neo-cons will fail if they are to get rid of Social Security, not because their system is feasible (which it is not) but because they are fooling too many people into believing that they are entitled to more than the common man. As unemployment increases, and more people join the armed forces, the value that many people put on human life will decrease. As this happens, civil liberties will become less important to the conserative mindset, and the progressive community is already playing into their hands. Capitulation is not an option. Mediocrity will not bring change for good. The Obama administration, and the Democratic Party are trying everything to accomodate the conservatives who have fought so hard to ruin this nation, and that is wrong.
If they present two Santas to the public, then we have to give them their Black Peter. We have to rule over the conservatives, not with them, as even a simple act of contrition will delay the process needed for true progress. We don't have time to play nice with the Republicans and the neocons, and we should never compromise our beliefs for theirs. The end will not justify the means. We must point out that while our enemies are screaming "SOCIALISM", they are supporting fascism, and they are not American...and make no mistake, the conservatives are our enemies.
The right-wing fascists in this country do not value anything that doesn't directly benefiit their own desires, and these are desires that can never be sated. No amount of money will do it, no amount of humiliation will do it, and certainly no amount of blood.
Thanks, Thom!
I like your references concerning the antiquity of demand economics, and how a small group of greedy men tried to change the laws of economics. I think that it would be cool if you had some kind of timeline graph that would detail this for people who are little less cerebral.
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Before we start self-flagellating about being fooled by the Repubs, we should remember that the bastards had to cheat to get into power.
It took gigatons of media propaganda, smear campaigns, dirty tricks, voter intimidation and suppression, vote caging, gerrymandering, and vote-flipping to get these bozos in power. Mark Crispin Miller estimates that Obama's victory was cut in half by Republican cheating.
So it was all a fraud. If they had to cheat to win, they did not snooker the public. So please, my friends--put down your whips. Watch this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuWnw4Hkf1A&f
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http://www.heritage.org/research/features/budgetchartbook/fed-rev-spend-2008-boc-T1-Income-Tax-Receipt...
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DUH!!!!! It's good cop, bad cop! WE THE SHEEPLE HAVE BEEN LED TO THE SLAUGHTER.. We are now the capital of the third world, mexico with nukes, deal with that!!!!
Follow the money!
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regardless of the small differences between the parties....
article below show how COMICAL the Republican "tax cut, tax cut, tax cut" party is ...i mean -- this seems to be ALL they really are about.........Tax cut for the rich (tax cut for ordinary folks is just the BAIT -- to be paid for by non-existent or failing public infrastructure for same "ordinary folks" who'll have to shell out EXTRA money from their pockets to find comparable PRIVATE infrastructure -- at highway robbery prices -- amounting to NEW TAXES demanded by PRIVATIZED infrastructure).....
read on:
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TUESDAY 27 JANUARY 2009
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Truthout Original
The Anti-Stimulus Crowd Blows a Gasket
Monday 26 January 2009
by: Dean Baker, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
President Barack Obama with Congressional leadership.
Republicans have responded negatively to President Obama's proposed stimulus package. (Photo: Mark Wilson / Getty Images)
The anti-stimulus crowd is getting desperate. The possibility that a young charismatic new president will push through an ambitious package that begins to set the economy right is truly terrifying to this crew. After all, if the economy begins to turn around and has largely recovered in three or four years, the Republican leadership can look forward to spending most of their careers in the political wilderness.
President Obama will cakewalk to re-election, and even his designated successor will be able to benefit from the glow of his success. If the New Deal serves as precedent, Congress will stay in Democratic hands long past the time that the current leaders of the Republican Party start collecting their pensions.
This explains the need that many Republicans feel to block the stimulus package. This desperation led them to fabricate a report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which purportedly showed that most of the stimulus would not be spent in 2009, or even in 2010. Based on this report, they argued that President Obama's stimulus would do little to boost the economy out of recession. The Republicans managed to get a story to this effect in The Washington Post, in addition to extensive coverage in other major news outlets.
The only problem is that there was no CBO report. The CBO had done some very preliminary analysis of a package that was loosely modeled on a portion of President Obama's program. This preliminary analysis was done at the request of members of Congress to give them what was available at the time. It was not a full analysis that had gone through the CBO's normal review process, and was not posted on its web site where it could be assessed by budget analysts and the general public.
In short, this analysis was clearly not ready for prime time. But, when you're as desperate as the Republican leadership, you take what you can get. Unfortunately, many in the media got taken by this ploy and now have egg on their face as well.
The CBO will produce an analysis this week that examines the most recent version of the full stimulus bill. This analysis will provide a much more serious basis for assessing the proposals than the CBO "report" invented by the Republican leadership. It will provide a full analysis of the proposal, including an explanation of the methodology that the CBO used in its calculations.
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In this respect, it is important to caution against one possible limitation of the CBO methodology. The CBO typically relies on rules of thumb in calculating spendout rates for types of projects.
For example, as a rule of thumb, the spending for highways in the first year after an appropriation may be just a small percentage of the total cost of the highway, with spending in the second year being a little bit higher. It takes time to plan a highway and to bid out contracts. Based on analysis of the time between the passage of appropriations and the actual spending, the CBO can project the time period over which a wide range of appropriations will actually be spent.
However, these rules of thumbs are likely to understate the spendout rate for the projects chosen as part of the stimulus package. These projects are being selected specifically because they are ready to go, with plans already in hand and contracts ready to be submitted for bids.
Furthermore, because of the severity of the economic downturn, contractors are likely to be able to move much more quickly than would usually be the case. Typically, contractors will have to find time to fit a government project in their queue of other work. With the sharp downturn in the construction sector, there are likely to be plenty of contractors who are ready to move almost immediately after a contract is signed.
Finally, the bill threatens state and local governments with the loss of funding if they do not move quickly to spend any money appropriated. For these reasons, the CBO's rules of thumb on spendout rates may substantially understate the amount of spending that will be carried through in the next two years.
The Republicans have raised a serious issue in questioning the rate at which the stimulus will be spent. The plan should be scrutinized to determine if there are not ways to get money into the economy more quickly. But this effort requires looking at evidence and data, not invented CBO reports.
»
Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of "Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of The Bubble Economy." He also has a blog, "Beat the Press," where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues. You can find it at the American Prospect's web site.
Comments
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Political reality is not a polarity between Democrats and Republicans. They are not and never have been opposites. Nixon was a good Democrat; Clinton a decent Republican.
DaveBronstein January 26th, 2009 11:30 am, makes this point.
Thomm Hartmann's rhetoric is only effective if we believe there are two distinct parties with opposite views. Things are just simpler that way.
Hartmann isn't talking about distinct ideologies; he's describing vote-getting strategies on the part of political operatives. The "two Santa Claus" idea is not ideology, it's the basis for an advertising campaign. Barry Goldwater was an ideologue and a principled man, as Ron Paul is today, which explains their irrelevance. Reagan was not an ideologue, he was a talented opportunist, ie, an actor. GW Bush was and is nothing more than a cunning sociopath. FDR defined all future Democrats.
The Demorepublican Party serves one constituency: the wealthy elite. The question that bedevils this party is: how can we support the wealthiest among us without inciting the great mass of people to unrest, revolution, and chaos? One wing of the party is more compassionate than the other, but they both serve the same constituency, the one that controls the money machine.
This is as true of Obama as of any other Democrat, including FDR, when he struggles with the dilemma of saving "the capital markets" at the same time he wants to save the middle class from default.
It has been possible to be a successful Demorepublican, until now.
Obama will have to invent a new party to save this country, one that serves the public interest. If he is to be a great president and lead this country out of this terminal crisis, he will have to take the money machine away from the wealthy elite and install it in the government where it will administer monetary affairs as a public utility and not the prerogative of an elite class.
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I compared the Democrats and Republicans to owners of a Slave Plantation.
The Republicans whip the slaves or withold food and water if they do not comply in order to keep their Plantation running and the monies coming in.
The Democrats think they get more out of their slaves by ensuring they have food in their belly and a halfways decent roof over their heads.
Neither really CARES about the slaves. What they care about is the best and most efficient means of extracting the labor from them so that the "Owners" can grow rich.
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While I like Hartman's writing, there are a few factual errors in the article:
1. "Even four years later when Richard Nixon beat LBJ in 1968, Nixon wasn't willing to embrace the economic conservatism of Goldwater and the economic true believers in the Republican Party."
(Nixon beat Humphrey, not LBJ.)
2. Reagan was not the first to try tax cuts in the manner described. Ford was, against advice. Reagan was merely the first to embrace it and take it to a new level, make it a kind of centerpiece.
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Why is anyone still listening to anything the Republicans say? It is a complete mystery to me and has been for decades.
The biggest ally Al Queda ever had in harming America is the Republican party. Its members damned near destroyed our economy, our military, our health, our environment, our relations with the rest of the world, our future and for what? Apparently solely to line the pockets of a small percentage of the already rich.
That was completely obvious from the beginning, let alone in November. Yet, nearly one out of ever two people voted to keep them in power last fall, weeks after it became clear that they not only caused the recession, but planned to make it worse with foolish unrestricted giveaways to the very people whose decisions precipitated the crisis.
Even today, after it has been revealed how badly Republicans have conned and crippled us, still more than one in four people think G. Bush did a great job. Incredible.
Even more amazing, Republicans like Rush Limbaugh openly state on the air they want and hope the new President "fails" even though that would obviously do grievous harm the US in the process. What idiocy. Why is he is still on the air? Why does he still have listeners who claim to be "patriots"? Even Democrats who hated Bush's guts with good reason did not want him to fail since it would harm us in the process. Why is anyone still listening to anyone that is as thoroughly discredited as the Republican party, its platform and "principles"? I continue to be puzzled.
Signed: Lawlessone [for more irreverence, see resistence-is-possible.blogspot.com]
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Why does Limbaugh stay on the air...a little annoyance called free speech.
When one condemns the GOP solely one misses the point completely.
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so. Bertrand Russell
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WHY? because there are gullible people just as there are people who actually share the mentality of republicans or conservatives, whatever "party".
this is the same as people listening to Rush Limbaugh and then despite the facts staring them in the face, including dire ones that affect their own lives , they CLING to the precious SENTIMENTS espoused by conservatives and republicans in particular:
racist, exclusionary, paranoid, fearful, "nativist", class-oriented, scroogelike, dominating, authoritarian, thieving, ELITIST in reality, UNcooperative, COMMANDING, narrow-minded, comfortable with being ignorant, head-in-the-sand attitude no matter what, niggardly, UNgenerous, LOVES to withhold what isn't THEIRs really, BUT LOVES to TAKE what ISN't theirs, submissive to authoritarian figures while authoritarian to those they can dominate, -- and you can put in a thousand other descriptions.......
conservatives, especially in their republican garb , are a veritable case of collective INSANITY and UNETHICAL "group-think" people. sorry to say.
these are the ones COMFORTABLE with the WORST instincts in people.
if the USA was Argentina under the era of "desaperados" - they would be running the country and the world...and THEY would be the equivalent of horrific things if given free reign...such as mass graves and mass suffering and CALL IT "order" ..and STILL claim it is "in the name of god, flag, and country".
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I find that as a rule of thumb that those who have to continually claim their patriotism in defending a policy or position that looked at OBJECTIVELY can not be defended are sadly misinformed , naive , poorly educated and or are trying to take advantage of the same.
Citing the red white and blue as some sort of rationale is an admission of ignorance.
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How many times during the last eight years was the phrase "Make the tax cuts permanent" utterted on the public's airwaves? I estimate about 10 zillion times.
How many times was the idea to raise the marginal tax on the highest income bracket back to 90%, where it was when America built the greatest middle class the world has ever known? I estimate ZERO times.
The public has been beaten into submission with the idea that tax cuts stimulate the economy.
To think or say anything else is considered heresy.
The Republicans/Corporatists won this battle because control their airwaves.
If only Thom Hartmann were given 1/100th the television time of Ann Coulter the citizens of this country might wake up from their slumber.
The war on terror isn't real.
The war on class is.
************
"Whoever controls the media controls the country. Period."
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Thom only scratches the surface in one regard…the increase in taxes on those not so rich. When I started grad school in 1979 on a fellowship with a stipend bearing the gigantic sum of $3500 per year it was not taxed. Neither fellowships were taxed nor were those kind of puny amounts. In just a couple of years I was taxed on both counts…fellowships were examples of the elite not paying their fair share that Reagan ranted about and taxing puny amounts was sticking it to the “welfare queens in Cadillacs” (really working class poor) that he also ranted about. When I got out of graduate school the time honored ability to income average (averaging 5 years of income) so that those starting out could save more and put aside a nest egg had been eliminated. Those of us starting out in life were fairly bludgeoned by Reagan’s soak the poor tax policies…yet whose generation venerates Reagan the most? The mantra that these hardships were not the work of Republicans who instituted these policies, but of the “tax and spend liberals” is what we endlessly heard. Too many people of my generation still believe it. To my peers…PAY ATTENTION!
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Yes, "the Republican Party has conned America for thirty years." But do you really believe that globalization, which is supported by both major parties, is not the biggest con job of all? Globalization is driving the typical American worker out of work. And so is automation, computerization, robotization and artificial intelligence. And almost nobody in Washington DC seems to notice.
Check out "It's Worth Two Bills" here: http://www.sillyconvalley.net/twobills.html
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I totally empathize with those in the 35% tax bracket who might soon be paying 39.5%. Especially those at the low end who earn only $357,700 per year - how could they possibly expect to survive if they have to pay an additional $16K?
Greed=good.
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I read an article a year ago or so -- about a businessman in connecticut maybe -- who owns a business making ceramics of related industry -- and say that he remains prosperous -- but has had very very hard times to the point of even closing shop...BUT it was said he and his family are so proud that they had NEVER laid off a single worker in all their two or 3 generations of the business and clung to paying their workers high salaries and benefits -- and that the workers -- in very difficult times understood the common loyalty they all had and voluntarily would sacrifice wages or benefits to help the business through hard times..until the bad tide is over ...and it went on like that for 3 generations now...and his mantra , he said: was that
withouth his workers his business would be nothing and it was HIS obligation to see to it that workers had decent lives.
for that -- his workers respect and love him and his family and do everything they can to give good work and good products.
i just forget the name of the company -- an AMERICAN company americans could be proud of.
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THomm Hartmann is also a small-business owner actually. i don't what ..but i think ceramics or somethig like that. he sometimes talks about it in his radio program ...so he does seem to put his money where his mouth is and seems to be a genuinely conscientous person who wants to see other americans and people to also prosper because they TOO have labored in their lives and should be recompensed properly for it as part of an economy.
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He actually is an entrepreneur of note. He has multiple businesses and works with psychologically damaged children as well. A good man but one far too wedded to the status quo.
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so. Bertrand Russell
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Somewhere out there are growing underground economies, that simply ignore and bypass the current established economic systems advocated by the current group of politicians and economists; like the dinosaurs and the later Romans, they don't seem to realize that all their learned debate is only important to small publishing companies and waste paper recyclers.
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This is brilliant. It is incredible that the so-called liberal media never ever ever informed the American people of any of this....
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thom writes: "Even four years later when Richard Nixon beat LBJ in 1968" huh
sorry to alarm your fact checker but last time i looked nixon beat humphrey in '68
here is what johnson said about that election cycle: "Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President."
by 68 johnson was tired and defeated as a person and disillusioned as president
he had envisioned himself as being "the best one ever" but he died a death by a thousand cuts, vietnam being a big gash
he was implicated in the assassination of jfk
after he left the whitehouse he let his hair grow long as was the fashion in those more innocent days
cheers, b
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I want to mention another aspect of recent GOP practice: the record amount of earmark spending in the George W. Bush years, which allowed the GOP to both play Santa and decry government spending.
I hope we will see real reform under Obama, not just repair. The real economy needs, once again, to be protected from the investment economy. And maybe the amount of speculation involving borrowed money should be more strictly limited.
Pension reform should be a very high priority. Is there any greater injustice than losing a hard-earned, guaranteed pension, even while CEO's of the same corporations see huge increases in bonuses and incomes?
But I am also skeptical that Democrats are up to the task. Our real hope for change may lie -- probably does lie -- with electing a more liberal Congress in two years.
Andrew W. Mellon's name should be more widely known. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, many of us saw this economic and financial disaster coming as soon as the irresponsible and unecessaary Bush tax cuts were enacted.
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One can not really "blame" the Republicans for this. The responsibility lies with the voter .
See California as an example of an electorate that wants everything but does not want to pay the taxes to afford it.
A recent poll was done in Canada asking Canadians if they were in favor of tax cuts along with reduced Government spending. The majority of Canadians said NO in that poll indicating they would not be in favor of tax cuts if it meant going into debt or cutting Government programs.
Now we will certainly be running a debt for the first time in 10 years with our upcoming budget. My own personal viewpoint is that it should be a direct stimulus program rather then a swathe of tax cuts. I really do not think we should try and stimulate more "Consumption". We whould invest in Social housing , Infrastructure and our Educational institutions.
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the "tax cut" mentality is foisted by so-called fiscal conservatives simply to BAIT people into supporting the idea that "you keep your money and do with it as you please...rather than let SOMEONE ELSE take it from you"....and THEN SWITCH it with the fact that RIDING on this BAIT to the general public is the REAL prize conservatives love:
the HUGE TAX CUTS that the rich and their cronies would enjoy..which WOULD include being placed on welfare BY the remaining taxes OUTSIDE of the circle of "capital gainers" as a "reward" for being "hardworking"(the word that gets the general public to pat itself on the back to getting the pitiful little amounts in tax cuts for themselves, like so much bread crumbs) ...and which further baits the ordinary people in working even HARDER to think that if only they DO SO -- they TOO could become "capital gainers" --
EXCEPT that the price to pay is -- the capital gainers , having gained the increased power through their "capital" which keeps increasing by not paying taxes but is used to leverage their "saved" money to gain more and more control of industries - LOW wages, and therefore less power for people.
it's really a very simple strategy but americans keep swallowing it up like so many idiots. they THINK that "i can be LIKE that millionaire neighbor of mine" even if they publicly won't say so..and so their actions and decisions for which policies to support bring them closer and tighter to what conservatives want..and they become enslaved to this idea of "lower taxes"...no realizing that a bigger price they pay on top of lower wages for more work and less decision in the workplace is -- HIGHER TAXES in hidden forms:
BAD public institutions that don't serve their needs but become servants of the capitalists...and indeed, BETRAY their role and purpose to protect ordinary people FROM exploitation; crumbling public schools, hospitals, infrastructures, buildings, highways , parks, polluted environments, etc....
where conservatives AGAIN come in and say:
"SEE? government DOESN"T work....we have to PRIVATIZE SOME MORE">
and on and on and on it goes....
americans - blessed with such wealth and institutions that could hav eprotected them from corporate, capitalist , private profiteering exploitation have thesmselves to blame for being such IDIOTS and STUPID citizens - with all the means and laws and processes at their disposal to ward off such things...rather than just leave it to "leaders" who sacrifice themselves,,,,such as genuine labor leaders, or politicians with truly honest or decent intents to do the "heavy work" and even DIE for it , such as Dr Martin Luther King -- before americans go back , zombie-like , hungering for more of their
PITIFUL LITTLE PRECIOUS TAX CUTS as sold to them by conservatives, telling them this is "independence and being self-responsible"
when in REALITY -- it is a strategy and tactic to MAKE americans and the general public DEPENDENT on the POWER and CAPRICE of the Rich WHILE supporting the RICHto do whatever they please in hoarding the wealth the public creates as an economy.
the conservative ideology, i always like to say, masquerading as "free market" -- is a DEAD ideology thrashing around , even in intellectual circles , as if it is alive...when its DEAD ideas are really nothing more than ENSLAVEMENT of people for the sake of a few in every community or nation ...which to THEM is the "natural order" of things.
what was it someone said ?:
"THE PRICE OF CIVILIZATION IS TAXES".
but where taxes are concerned ... the HAVE MORES - who would NOT exist as Have Mores -- without a SOCIETY in which to exist and gather their wealth -- ought to pay the PRICE of their privileges -- HIGH TAXES....
if they do not wish that -- they should DIVEST themselves and their children of such wealth and privilege and WORK like any laborer or workers...
but they should be preaching "low taxes" that would "trickle down" -- for they HAVE BEEN LIVING ON WELFARE for generations under the blessings of the general public's accumulated ECONOMIC activity -- which includes LABORING.
unless of course they want to push things more and more and end up - like Marie-Antoinette and King Louis XV?....lol.
AFTER ALL -- what conservatives SECRETLY want as a group or class or mentality or culture is
A GUILDED AGE for themselves.
that is ALL there is to them.
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i have read SO MUCH of their writings....from AntiWar.com -- wich i RESPECT very much for its antiwar commitment but NOT for its "conservative ideology" which they claim as "inherently antiwar" which it is NOT....any more than liberals are "antiwar" -- to the TRULY venerable "american conservative" magazine -- and have come to the conclusion
BOTTOM LINE -- the RIGHT WING --whether they call themselves
"true conservatives or paleoconservatives" are clinging to a "purity" of idea of conservatism (small government..no taxes, individual freedom to the max) that harbors within it NOTHING MORE
than SELFISH , GREEDY, SELF-CENTERED ideology that eventually ARRIVES at a tyrannous state BECAUSE it does not wish to acknowledge that there IS something GREATER than the individual and hyperindividualism they espouse -- and that is:
SOCIETY and COMMON WELFARE....that shares a common purpose:
to meet the needs of the many and the individuals within the society by controlling the GREED of the few...towards a common destiny: HUMAN welfare as a species and a civilization.
conservatives are inherently "rulers" by nature. they love the idea of having their little kingdoms and castles and territory -- which of COURSE demands PEOPLE to be RULED over by "individuals" such as conservatives.
WHY else are their fmailies often very "disciplinarian?" or theor communities are so authoritarian - far more than any "liberal" community is?...
why ELSE do they gravitate towards dictatorial powers -- SPECIFICALLY by a few select people? why ELSE do they LOVE Corporatism and its "top down" UNdemocratic structure as any worker knows once he or she "punches in" the time clock?
why ELSE do they HATE "cooperatives"? for example and seek to destroy those as "rivals" in business?.
it's easy to pick them out. because they are the "would be kings and queens".
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They are the PREDATOR Class and have convinced many that their best interest is everybody's best interest. Just listen to the millionaires and multi-millionaires on the Sunday morning gabfests and their professed love for "free markets" and globalization. It's inevitable, don't ya know.
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See California as an example of a state that was royally screwed by deregulation and Enron. But I agree the voters need to be held responsible.
Many of today's conservatives don't like to remember the record tax increases Reagan signed into law in California. He knew then what responsibility required.
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I see California as a customer of Enron who Gov. Davis was about to launch criminal investigations into Enron's price gouging...
All of a sudden Davis gets accused of something or another in the corporatist media, and they DEMAND a special election...
Where voters can choose between a porn star, Gary Coleman, or the Gubernator...
With voting machines to make sure it happens as planned...
Stealing elections is not limited to presidential election cycles...
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As an employee of PGE, a company bankrupted by Enron, and a resident of California, a state which was almost bankrupted by Enron I see business as usual....
Until and unless we the people come to the understanding that Capitalism must be kept from controlling Government we will see an endless stream of Enron-like happenings.
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so. Bertrand Russell
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Gotta love the Republicans...national suicide for a few decades of power and wealth..what a bargain!
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This is an excellent historical demonstration of the fact that economics is not a science of wealth, production and markets, but a system of calculated and self-justifying exploitation.
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The only way economy could be made scientific is to take Adam Smith's basic notion seriously (as Karl Marx did) that the source of value is labor. Smith (and then Marx) attempted to show how the efficiency of machine production could increase profits. Unfortunately they were both wrong because if value is labor, then the laws of thermodynamics govern economy and the second law states that it is impossible to produce more labor than was input. If there are profits, then others must be providing labor with inadequate compensation. Others are, in short, victimized by transactions.
The victims include:
• Nature (overlooked by Smith, deliberately omitted by Marx)
• Workers (deliberately short-changed by Smith's system)
• Customers (who receive a less than adequate product)
• Competitors (who must produce a less than adequate product to remain in the market)
• The public (who finally gets the real thermodynamic tab on any and all failures.)
Until academia, the media, and the public get on the same page with regard to an economy of real thermodynamic throughput, all the issues will be discussed only as vague metaphors and obfuscating jargon serving no purpose but the validation of those who benefit from victimization.
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Marx's contribution to the theory was his recognition that the capitalist class made its profits by appropriating surplus value. This surplus value is that value created by the labouring masses in the form of unpaid labour. In a typical 8 hour day, each produce 8 hours of labour value. However, in 4 hours of production the worker produces enough value to cover his wages. The other 4 hours of production of labour value is appropriated by the capitalist as surplus value - profit and is in essence unpaid labour. Production technology allows the worker to be more productive, so that in 3 hours of work for example, he/she produces enough labour value to cover the wages. This increases the amount that the capitalist can appropriate as surplus value.
Go and read Marx, as it's obvious that you never have. Marx and Engels spoke plenty of Nature and how that all fits into the capitalist scheme of things. It is labour applied to the nature that produces commodities of value.
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Remember the butchery in Gaza by the IDF.
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I have read virtually every word written by Marx. His doctoral thesis concerned one of his favorite sayings: "Where man is not, nature is barren." He could not understand (and no one else at the time could either) that where man is not, nature is footing the bill for human existence.
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Read this article. I subscribe to this journal and it is really good. The latest one is focused on just this subject. Here's a book from the editor of MR.
http://www.monthlyreview.org/books/marxecology.php
And here's the article in Nov's MR:
http://www.monthlyreview.org/081110foster.php
[quote]
“Man,” he wrote, “lives from nature, i.e. nature is his body, and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die. To say that man’s physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.”3
[endquote]
It makes references to what Marx had to say about nature and its role in human society. As to having "read virtually every word written by Marx" - that is some accomplishment, let me tell you! Didn't know there was enough hours in the day to accomplish such a task. I've read plenty of Marx, Engels and Lenin over the last 35 years or so, but I'd not be so silly as to suggest I've read every word. Sorry, but I just don't believe you. If you managed to do so, then that is where speed reading gets one. You missed all the important writings by Marx where he puts nature up there in the importance it has in the whole scheme of things.
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Remember the butchery in Gaza by the IDF.
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The term 'economics' should never be used in the same sentence as 'science' in my opinion.
Economics, as I understand it, is guessing how the future of the commercial/capitalist market will behave, based on past behavior.
It is not predictable to any degree, nor repeatable, two of the hallmarks of scientific theory. Therefore it is not 'science'.
'Economics' is a carny sideshow dressed in a three piece suit, talking a good line of patter while picking your pocket. Economics textbooks and the popular money market books you see in the Chapters stores should be in their proper place - beside Tolkien and Clark in the Fantasy and Science Fiction section.
Have any of you ever read the final lines in a stock prospectus?
EVERY SINGLE ONE reads 'past performance is not a guarantee of future returns.'
Think about it... that is a tacit admission that they have NO IDEA what the market, or the wider economy for that matter is going to do.
Walk in peace.
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Agreed. If economics is a science, it is the softest of the soft sciences. But you are probably right that it is better to completely withhold the label of "science" from it. Economists are like modern witchdoctors, spewing gibberish to confuse the common people and convince them that everything will work out if they follow the witchdoctors' prescriptions, which usually amount to accepting slave wages and misery today in the hopes of a better tomorrow that never comes. To use more modern terminology, they are the highly paid sophists of the capitalist bullies who recognize that the more they weaken the resistance of the common people to their plunder, the more plunder they can get away with.
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Please.
Do not call 'economists' witch-doctors.
Afterall, modern labratory research has shown that many 'witch-doctor' remedies are actually more effective than the concoctions of the drug companies, and often have a higher rate of success.
Walk in peace.
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Yea, I may have been unfair to witchdoctors. Maybe a better comparison would be with witch hunters, like Sarah Palin's old buddy Thomas Muthee.
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This article is long, & not uninteresting. But look at its last sentence to get a sense of its bottom line: "...And the Obama administration can get about the business of repairing the damage and recovering the stolen assets of these cheap hustlers."
Is that what the Obama admin is going to do? I strongly doubt it.
Hartmann isn't stupid, but he's way too much of a Dem Party loyalist to be taken without considerable skepticism. The article basically says, "Republicans are fools who should never be taken seriously." OK, that's true. But one of the main reasons they've been taken seriously is because Democrats never had the guts or integrity to expose them for what they are.
Hartmann's next-to-last sentence is "Hopefully...reality will continue to sink in with the American people and the massive fraud perpetrated by Wanniski, Reagan, Laffer, Graham, Bush(s), and all their 'conservative' enablers will be seen for what it was and is."
- When did the Democrats EVER try to expose this "massive fraud"? The answer is "Never." Instead, they quietly collaborated with it, both actively & passively. To this day, they're still collaborating. Obama's appointments, his Inaugural Address, & his long history of genuflecting to the mythology of Ronald Reagan, are all evidence of a Democratic Party that lives in permanent dread of the Republican Right, even when the voters decisively rejected that discredited Right.
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Hartmann is a student of history, an insightful and studious man, a capitalist as well, and certainly a democratic loyalist of the first order.
He was also the best and brightest voice on Air America Radio. If the democratic party could be saved ( I personally think not) it would be by such as he.
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell
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No. Hartman has his history wrong. He writes political spin in the guise of scholarship. Read my commentary above. Challenge it. he needs to stay a student.
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well said. the repubs never could have succeeded w/o lots and lots of help.
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In the early 1980's at the same time all of this Reaganomics voodoo began, they also created a conservative trojan horse (deregulated media) to echo the conservative's mantras over and over again so that the dems constituents were effectually two-santa-system brainwashed beyond reason before election time began.
It worked like a charm.
This must be the elite talk they make at the trilateral commission meetings and CFR secret meetings (not the PR meetings they have with Angelina Jolie). I still see the Vietnam War and Nixon's frustration and the report "The Crisis of Democracy" as the turning point for all of this crap we are just now revealing/disclosing/figuring out.
How can we get a halfway honest media back? That one should be a priority. If Obama doesn't address this, then he is not going to change much I am afraid.
The media must promote open-minded discussions.
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Hey, we all love supply-side economics. Keep the taxes low and spend, spend, spend. Of course the huge government deficit is like a bleading ulcer, but the vastly greater private debt makes America's consumption a disease that has the potential to kill us. Should we continue to inject liquidity and hope the bleeding will someday slow or let nature take its course and hope that in time this great consumptive body will escape the grave. I guess mostly I wonder, will this great rough beast, when its hour comes round, throw off its lethargy and be reborn or give up the ghost?
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PIPEDREAMS Says: "If it seems to good to be true, odds are it's not true!"
I'm not sure this theory is dead yet. Obama seems a bit confused here or is getting more bad advice from Clinton's economic team of Summers and the rest. I'm hearing tax cuts tax cuts as if that's what will revive the dying economy. This sounds like phase two of last falls robbery. The banks got trillions and have done zero with the $$ but have a party and now the crony Corps. are lining up waiting for the next Pork party of Obama's stimulus. Who else do u think will get all this $$? They already own most of the Congress critters folks! Party affiliation means nothing to the BIG $$ guys they'll buy whomever they need to to get what they want. Oh, they prefer Repubs. but that's only because it's easier for them to buy guys they play golf with and go to the same church with. But business is business and if they need to buy Barney Frank et al. so be it and don't believe Barney et al. aren't for sale, because they damn well are!
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Hey Rick, for you. I changed the name of this post because I have an apparently mentaly ill harasser, who always let's me know he is there, for some reason he thinks this post holds some kind of weird humor to him....Well Rick, if you notice....I am here too, have you taken note?? { : D) ? I cannot wait until the landlord takes note and realizes that her creep boyfriend is responsible for the publication of this story, it is just a matter of time. It is over three years from when the trouble started and over two years since I left that crazy house, daily, every day this mouse of a man lets me know he is there, fake profiles, sending weird material to other people and trying to do what, make me paranoid, get me to go after him, WHAT. This harassment will not stop, when the landlord realizes what is going on and boots him, he will just find another electrical outlet to plug his computer in and keep a goin. The stupid will not learn. The weird are best left sitting in solitude, ignored, laughed at as their messed up minds twitch out it's babble. He has told me three times that he is weird and indeed he is. I post the little story below to give you some kind of an idea. Humor comes from many sources and this sick ticket has supplied me much. For him, the shit is about to hit the fan, feel defeated Rick and take a little ride with me to the Pennsylvania State Police, will ya? You know I have been saving all this messed up crap and also know the volume is sizable.......No sense being stupid unless you show it, right folks. ..........I will keep adding to this comment section with parts of the story to add some humor into your day.....It is a long story, written up 2 winters ago and added to and edited since. I have an obsessive compulsive man of 50 acting like 13, who is the boyfriend of my old landlord who became my girlfriend for a short while...after she kicked her husband out...the Chief of Police....Well we have a grown little boy now who apparently has a bug up his ass for me, all I can say Rick is don't let the bug bite : D)
______________________________________
Here is a strange account of one night.
One night a good friend stopped over to see me, as we sat there talking I hear a creak in the floor outside my door. Well I knew we had no ghosts, but I had a new neighbor, our honorable knight; how do you like that, I thought ,a snoop. Frank says he has ice cream in the car and cannot stay so I sneak quietly to the door and open it. I stand there, inside but where I can see the new neighbors door and continue my conversation with Frank. Now realize, I have our honorable knight trapped, pressed against the wall to the left of my door. I am all smiles, I cannot wait to see how this will play out. I say nothing to Frank. It is time for Frank to leave so I walk out the door first to open the exit door for him which is to the right. I intentionally do not look left, my back is to our boy pressed against the wall. Well Frank looks left and of course sees our idiot pressed against the wall. You should have heard the noise, it sounded as if our idiot thought he could kick in some kind of jet propulsion by slapping the wall with both hands, evacuation at the speed of light I am sure was the attempt. I now look, our honorable knight ducks down like nobody sees me and ZINGS across the six foot hall as if he were playing the bull for some Matador in his imagination. Oh what a moment to have no picador, talk about funny. Well the next morning I changed my routine, I usually left for work before the honorable knight, today we will reverse this. I went outside and laid on my motorcycle drinking coffees at the end of the sidewalk waiting for our knight. If he is going to work today he is going to have to walk by me, If I have to I will sit here all day. Well our knight apparently could not miss work, out he comes as if nothing has happened. Is this fucked up? ……………, I am dealing with 13 year old little boy crap, and the thing is this guy knows it but does it anyway. What does this tell us? When adults are little kids it is not so much funny as it is sad, I would love to know the pride factor this guy's mom holds for her little boy.....………………..I have spent the winter writing up all the crazy activities in that nut house, I think there is a book there, Karma will speak! Life is funny. My brother in-law is a senior person at a major publishing house, when you are in a bookstore and see a book with the crosses figure on the cover, smile and buy it, it is I and the laughs are many, to the normal brain it will be quite the comedy.
.......watch for more installments.......comming soon.
KAK
Posted by: KAK | May 22, 2011 at 06:31 PM
My Landlord instalment 1.
"true life story" ........Five years ago when my landlord booted her husband, this idiot of course(damned white knight syndrome) helped her greatly, to the tune of $7000 greatly(fuckin dope). If it were not for this dope she would not have made her first winter. Well she appreciated me, and at Christmas when I bought her over a big box of food she said she truly knew what kind of person I was at that point. As thanks she helped me clean the apartment up. Well I didn't just let her clean, I was tidy boy too, point being we spent a lot of time together and ended up in a relationship. She invited me to a New Years party and we were officially off and running. Well, she wanted to go slow.....ok fine(I didn't get laid....I'll save the night Kevin almost got laid by the Chief of Police's wife story for another laugh).........Well 5 yrs. ago, a big funeral was held for a Scranton Firefighter, that was my cousin. There was a benefit held at a Scranton bar for his wife and we went. Well she did not realize (I did, I knew it) that it was going to be a 1/2 to 3/4 crowd from our town there. So here was Kevin, after all the sneakin around we did, with the Chief of Polices wife wrapped around his waist and I imagine a shit eatin grin on my face to go with it (picture to prove it) 0{:D). .........Well when 37 year old Harley Davidson boy(ten years younger than her) came along in spring, boy did she blow me off, that only lasted about 1 1/2 mos. Life in the landlords residence became very interesting.
Posted by: KAK | May 22, 2011 at 11:06 PM
Well, I hit the "A---- the Bitch" part of my life, some good laughs, tensions, a good mix. Thank God that I was gifted with one of those personalities able to shrug off that which I cannot control. I take life with a lot of grains of salt, I turn the negative into the positive or just a good laugh, If I can, it is not always possible. In the saga that follows I am fortunate, tensions flow into smiles and smiles escalate into full out rolling on the floor in laughter. What you are about to read will make you ask “how the hell did this guy get through this without psychological damage or complete mental breakdown. I am KAK, ask my friends…ask the people who knew me when I lived in bars; just a person of durable constitution, educated, wanting to pass through this life unobstructed, feeling the joy of just being with friends and going with the flow of the winds that move through the either. The times, the seventies and eighties were the forces that shaped my psyche. I have regrets, I do not dwell on them, onward to adventure just seems to be the path I roll down. A woman has not settled my soul, yet; the tale that follows is a result of age and an attempt to alter that circumstance and I learned that nature must take it’s course; what will happen will happen and not until it is right. So off we go into a tale, of error on my part but God damn, the lord must love me because I fall, bounce, and don’t bruise. My luck will run out one of these days, but I can laugh it has been a good life, riches have eluded me but ah the experiences……..life has been good. Now, a story…..a true life story….humor…lotsa bitchin…some aggravation…..lots o satisfaction and thank God I am left with no bugs up my ass! On ward!
A Well Planted Bug:
It is the day of New Years Eve, the first New Year after she takes me to the party which has us off and running. Her and the kids and the new guy, the one that ends up living across the hall in the pool room will be going to that same party tonight. Mutual friends go to this party and of course I know this. I am at another friends when this mutual friend pulls in the driveway. In the course of the conversation he says to me, “It doesn’t look like you are going to be moving into the big side of the house, does it Kevin?” I paused before answering, the shit eating grin was probably materializing before his eyes, the God damned light bulb always seems to go off ….. The landlord’s husband was the jealous type and extremely so, he had told me that he suspected she was having an affair, well I had met the guy, the suspect, at parties at the house and from something the landlord said I thought the husband was right…….So now I have someone standing before me who will be seeing her that night. Of course the light bulb goes off. I answer, “ no , it doesn’t look like it, she is not even divorced and she is on her fourth guy”. Well, I know my friend here will say nothing to the landlord, but wiffey is another story, and I bet right.
New Years Eve comes and goes, now I wait, I figure there is some steam gusherin out of the landlord’s ears and the wonderful sound of her pounding on the door that I was so familiar with would be happening any minuet . Well it did come. To my surprise, when I opened the door, there stood her lovely, 16 year old condescending little ----- daughter. Well I know Momma is behind the door to the pool room across the hall, just waiting for me to say the wrong word so she could rip my throat out.
OK, the daughter starts.” Kevin why are you feeding the cat? “ Yes I was feeding the cat, they booted it outside and you couldn’t walk out there without this cat meowing(loudly) and staring a hole right thru you. Now here is the daughter bitching about me feeding the cat, as we debate the cat is eating a lb. of hamburg on the steps to my porch, they probably could not afford meat at this point and I have the cat eating a pound of hamburg. Well I get fed up, I am tired of debating this kid, I finally say “ I am not going to stand here and argue with a snot nosed kid” and Slammed the door in her face.
Bang Bang Bang! Anybody want to bet I got Momma Bear standing at the door? Things are about to get explosive but it is I who will be left rolling on the floor in laughter.
Ok, jees god, yep it’s momma bear! Well I am tired of this woman’s habit of sticking her foot in the door when she is on the bitch, so I step into the hallway and close my door behind me. Rant, bitch, argue, scream; all about me feeding the cat. To shut her up I go out and pick up the bones off the sidewalk and take the burger off the cat, as I head back in the house I see them all in the pool room watching me. I realize she is heading me off at the pass for the real debate over “How dare I”. Yep, I’m right, as I step into the hallway the pool room door flies open, here she comes, yep HELL HATH NO FURRY. Well I’ve had enough, I quick jump into the apartment and shut the door. In my haste, The lock knob was at A 45 degree angle, I start to go to lock it all the way when my good senses said “ back up, don’t get your fingers broke…she is going to take this door down!” SHUR ENOUGH, KAPOW or whatever expression you want to use from the cartoons! Now I am about five feet back from the door. If I were thinking quicker I would have done the Matador’s side step and had her face in the floor and ass up somewhere around the kitchen table. Well it was a collision and when she hits me her arms are just flailing as we are belly to belly and chest to chest, she knocked me back another 2 to 3 feet. Now I have this woman flailing in my arms who is the Chief of Police’s wife and I am about to grab her by the neck and throw her on the floor and not feeling comfortable with this, even though it was she who broke and entered. I tried something first, I screamed her name, it worked. She is now standing beside me her back to the door, a very beautiful detail, she had no idea that the door had bounced off the entertainment center and was left in the shut position., beautiful, wonderful little detail.
Ok, a little background here. I have said that she would come over and bitch and stick her foot in the door so I can’t slam it. Well one night, I told her I knew how to get her out of there. I reached over to the book case where I had previously placed a 16 oz. coffee mug full of water and said, “If I lambaste you from your belly button to kisser with this, you’ll back out of here”. I get a dirty look and she left, that night. Well, I realize I am dealing with people who are law enforcement oriented so a new strategy hit’s me, I wondered if hitting someone with water could be construed as assault. Ok the new strategy relied on her dislike of her having her picture taken, I was relying on the fact that she is slightly crossed eyed, she had her reason. I stood many times in front of the family pictures trying to figure why she looked odd, cross-eyed, I realized this one night as we sat on our nightly meeting spot, my couch..
Ok, she is beside me, I said “ I know how to get you out of here, you are camera shy”. I had replaced the mug of water with a throw away camera. ZING, she hits high gear, turns around and runs smack into the door, on a full run. My wits are about me I have the camera in my hand, I GET THE PICTURE……..It was wonderful, She did have the time to turn her head so she would not break her nose as she flattens against the door. There was this most wonderful disgusted look on the half of her face that I could see. Her hands were up plastered against the door along side her head just like you see in the cartoons when characters run through walls. WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL……I WIN ROUND 3, well, I win round 4 also…………….There was about 3 to 4 hrs. of peace and quiet which I came to realize was the quiet before the storm. They apparently had put their heads together and came up with a plan to get that camera off of me……..Have faith, I did win round 4.…..wonderfully, decisively, and bear in mind, all this is supposedly because I was feeding the cat.
stay tuned for round 4.
Posted by: KKAK | May 23, 2011 at 02:50 AM
Round 4 The peace is shattered:
Round three passes into about three hours of peace and quiet, I am watching TV and my mind is bouncing back and forth between TV and the afternoon’s events, glorious events. I was probably just ear to ear shit eatin grin, shakin my head not believing the ruckus that actually, I had started. Well there’s a knock knock, not the Bang Bang Bang that I had become accustomed to, a sensible persons knock as if “let’s sit down and talk” were the frame of mind. Well at this point, I’ve had it with them, I do not want to answer that door but I realize they will not go away. I get up and swing open the door. Well there is Momma Bear and sweet little daughter in the lead, that was why there was no Bang Bang Bang.
The daughter takes one big step into the apartment and Momma Bear stands out of arms reach as if she is afraid of me. Round four officially begins, it carried on for a half hour to forty-five minutes. I started aggravated, moved into this is getting interesting and finished with “I’m really enjoying myself” to complete with CHECKMATE! The daughter did all the talking, I thought at first that it seemed as if it were an attempt at regaining some kind of honor while tossing insults at me. It was not long before I figured what they were up to. The daughter was trying to enrage me with insults, smiling all the way. It occurred to me that they were trying to make me slam the door on her again but this time it would be hitting her first and I can only presume they were going to barter an assault call to the State Police for the camera, with the Chief of Police’s wife committing breaking, entering and assault and let’s not forget interrupted exit. Well when I realized this I went for another picture, it looked like I was photographing Momma bear, the point was to make sure the picture showed the daughter on my side of the door frame. Momma bear snarls and hits me with Kevin do you want me to report you for stalking, “pictures in my own apartment, A----”.
OK, I‘ve got to engage this debate. I had made my mind up a few weeks earlier that the way to handle little Miss Condescending daughter was to tell her something her mom did not want her to know every time her little attitude had it’s way, thinking that mom will tell her to back off of me. This is where I begin. “C--------, I have made my mind up to tell you something your mom does not want you to know every time you hit me with your little condescending attitude” she laughs, “Kevin, we are a family that sits down and discusses everything, there is nothing you can tell me that I do not know”. ……OK…, this is where I know I am going to blow her away, I pause a second, look at Momma Bear who I think is squirming because she has an idea where I’m going with this. …….”C-------- has your mom told you that I bought her her lawyer. C-------- , has your mom told you that it is me putting the fuel oil in this house”, Silence, I’m hitting the nerve.
A thought hits me, I made Momma Bear a CD and it occurs to me that it is in the turn table now and I am standing right next to it. Joy, joy, halleluiah we will have fun tonight. I reach over and hit the open tray button with full grin, lift the CD and hand it to the daughter. She just looks at me, “read it C--------”, she does. “Now C-------- ask your mother what the significance of that is.” The hall is lit by somebody’s eye balls, it read “A CD that I made for you on my broken recorder that I fixed with our broken rubber”. Well, of course C-------- stands there looking like a dummy, little Miss Condescending Bitch had no idea what to say. My spirits have lifted, I am having a blast, all right, you guys want to fight, let’s fight.
Well my tongue is sticking to the roof of my mouth, I’m starting to have fun and need something to pry my tongue loose if I am to continue. I look on the coffee table, there my coffee mug, good I just pray something is in it. I go over pick it up, good half full cold but half full. While I am at the coffee table I notice something that tells where my next line of questioning is headed. I am smiling, probably ear to ear, I can’t wait to get back to the debate. As I walk back towards the door C-------- says “you aren’t”, I presume her mom told her of my comment about lambasting from belly button to kisser and she was going to take one for the cause. “No, C-------- I’m not, don’t worry”.
Well here goes: “C--------, see that alarm clock on the end table?”, no response. “C-------- that alarm clock sat on that dresser for 9 years until your mother and I started sleeping together on that couch every night.” Momma Bear’s eyes are firein, crossed becomes spinning, I’m smillin. “C-------- your mother used to leave here, every night between 3:30 and 5:30 in the morning”….Momma Bear starts with the “oh no”s. “C-------- , go over there and see what time that alarm is set for, A---- we had it set for 3:00, come on C--------!” Of course she won’t go look. I continue: “Sex, yes” Momma Bear is dying and she knows I’m enjoying this. I continue, I look right at Momma Bear “sex yes, intercourse no, get your self a Dr. Ruth book and find out when sex has taken place.”
The next thought that hits is a comment on Momma Bears personality. I looked right at her and said “A---- the town’s people are right, you are nothing but a stuck up bitch”, and that is what they say; the husband called her Queen Bee and she thought of herself as Queen Bee. Well she can take no more, she sees I’m having a blast and she’s taking a beating. She finally says “Come on kids let’s go”. There was defiantly a tail drag as she waited for C-------- to cross into the pool room. I Tran scripted the conversation as soon as they left to cover ass on possibly having my ass in court. ……………The above was written with out looking at that transcript …..when I look it up I will add the omissions.
The next day, the light bulb goes off. I want to keep Momma Bear from even wanting to come to my door to bitch. I go out to the van looking for a 2x4. I find one of proper length. I make “THE A---- BAR”, a bar with that heading in big black letters for the purpose of embarrassing her away from my door. It was notched to fit the door knob on one end and the heat pipe on the other. It was wired to the heat pipe so that It could not be misconstrued as a club. If my door were ever crashed in again, she would take out her own heat pipe, and of course I knew that anyone entering my apartment from then on would ask, “what the hell” and I had a story to tell and hoped Momma Bear was listening.
--------------------------------
I moved out of this crazy house after eleven years, that was my town’s Chief of police's house where my girlfriend and I first moved in. The episodes above took place there, after Momma Bear(Chief’s wife) blew me off things became tense, and moved thru the spectrum to full blown out weirdness. Before I made the mistake of becoming her white knight, I was always told that I was the best tennent they ever had. Yes, it was wild, it was real, I beat them and that is probabally how I kept it together for myself. I needed comedy to kill the tension and the anger, and I was dealing with the chief of police's wife, disgusting actually; the use of kids for neferious purpouses and the disguising of motives to conceal illicit deception, let's face it that is what it was.
I escaped the den of weirdness March ’09 after a legal battle in which I won and walked out with no one able to look me in the eye and leaving two giant bugs up two asses, I can still hear my name being screamed. If I get fucked with, I will always call your bluff, I called her bluff and thank god my personality is such that I turn the challenge into fun. .......Up coming episodes are the two year span after the New Years battle with sweet A---- and my happy departure in '09.
Stay tuned, it was an eventful two years.....Next: The night Kevin almost gets laid by the police chiefs wife.
Posted by: KKAK | May 24, 2011 at 02:10 AM
The night Kevin almost got laid by the Chief of Police's wife:
Well A---- and I were slipping around behind everybody's backs, the bond was tightening and she admitted to me that our all niters driving around was an effort on her part to avoid my magnificent body(do I have to tell you that I added one word for effect there {;D)). Valentines night, "Kevin, got any protection?". Well she is already topless and her skirt was already above her waist and boy she had me rubbed into full attention, yes malady tonight I am yours. ZING off I go, I had worn my leather jacket a few times with her and had found a condom in a pocket. .....OK condom in hand here I come malady. She at all times has to say "Kevin, how old is it".......Mother f#@!^%, god damned son of a bitch, I says to myself, well let's hope there's no date. Alright, "1994" says I in a hopeful questioning manner. NG....well she allowed me to wither, high hopes and a wither. A beautiful dampening of what actually was a good night. C'est dommage n'est pas! She never even got to find out that I was bionic. Of course as you can tell from where we are at in our story I am better off for it, I did not miss anything.
Posted by: KKAK | June 1, 2011 at 10:24 PM
Well shall we get this story moving again. ……………..As I said, A---- was at the point of not being able to look me in the eye. I did not revel in this, I took it as relief from the incessant bitching sessions at my door. She was trying to get me under her thumb, a controller whom I totally frustrated. There is only one person in this world who has the power to put me under their thumb and it was not her. Letters became our standard of communication, and the few times she did come over to give me a piece of her mind I would leave her with the same reaction. She would scream “Kevin” jump up in the air once, utter a protracted “aher..ah” or something to that effect and scamper off across the hall. I would be left standing there with a grin on my face and an unspoken “have a good day A----” in my mind.
The hot water heater went, after between a month and two months I had to deal with her again, this staunch dominant stuck up woman. She came right over when I called, all boss like. I told her it had to be shut off and the breakers were in the garage, I knew that house better than her. Well, she knows what she’s doing, doesn’t need my help. I try to tell her she has to shut each breaker off and wait a minute so I could listen and hear if the hot bubbles quit radiating off the element, she won’t listen. So I go back to the computer and let her frustrate herself. She comes back in “Is it off”, “I don’t know A---- you won’t listen to me, shall we give this a try with a spirit of cooperation”. She is forced to succumb to cooperation and the mission gets accomplished. Well this is the first time she sees the motorcycle in the living room and goes into a tirade to which I respond “shove it up your ass”, mostly a gentleman here but not always, some women just have that gift to make a man leave his manners in the basement. Well of course this is the first time she sees “The A---- Bar” in the corner by the door and I was working on modifying a gun. She says nothing and leaves.
Now, I know her curiosity is up so I set her up. I knew that the first time I leave this apartment she is entering to check things out. The next morning, Saturday, I gather up my laundry and go to my mom’s to do it. I kill time, I stayed away for six hours. Before I left I put a propane cylinder behind the door and marked the spot. When I come back, there’s a note on the door, water heater fixed tomorrow. Good enough. Now as I open the door, I stick my head in the door first, well I’ve been supplied a big ass grin. The propane cylinder is in a different spot, “YES“. I’m a thinking man, don’t worry, the camera with that lovely picture of that wonderful disgusted look on A----’s face as she is caressing the door is in my pocket.
Sunday morning arrives. The first thing I do is call the State Police, I had a sense about the new boyfriend, he would end up telling me that he was weird but sometimes oddity just stands out like a third eye on the forehead and it prods one in the direction of covering one’s ass. Remember there was the strange night eavesdropping at my door. I also wanted to make it as uncomfortable as I could for the changing of the water heater. The State Police won’t come, they tell me landlord entries are a matter to take to the magistrate. Ok, but I got the process started of creating a record of incidents realizing I may wish I had this at a future date based on experiences from the past and remember there was the strange night of eavesdropping at my door. That night should have been taken more seriously by me, what was to come was even stranger.
Around noon, this gentle knock comes upon the door. It’s “property manager “ Rick. He’s here to change the water heater. He does his thing as I work on my gun, I keep it cordial. He finishes up and tells me the motorcycle has to go, “shove it up your ass Rick”. He starts to argue, “Rick, shove it up your ass, get me?” We return to cordiality as he starts to give me his phone number; cordiality, a smile and a frown equals cordial, right. “No Rick, I don’t need it, if everyone wants to get so formal around here, all communications between you and I will be in writing”. I hand him a pad and pen, “I want your full name and full address”, he just looks at me, A---- was not there to do the thinking for him, she knew the moved propane cylinder told me that they were in there and lost the nerve to look me in the eye; the boss lady would not get to boss anyone around on this job today, she had her dupe to do the dirty work for her. With a look of total resignation he jots down the requested information. Now he tries to leave. I block his exit, I stand between him and the door. “One more thing Rick”, and I pointed at the propane cylinder by the door. “Yesterday when I came back the cylinder was moved and you know and I know the cat did not move that cylinder”. I’m sensing a little squirming and I add, “I called the state police”, “ya did?” as a visible hard swallow ensues. “Yes I did, have a good day Rick” as I opened the door for him, this poor man was dying to get out of there. Ok, another aggravation was turned into a big smile.
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I spent two winters ago catching up with two ex-girlfriends here on FaceBook, this is how this tale came into being. Both received it with accolades and always the request “send another installment”. I leave you today with a short transcript of one of those conversations,.......Rick is watching and I do want to leave him talking to himself. 0{; D)
N.S. : you remind me of andy griffith and how he used to outsmart everybody --cause he was the smartest guy in that town of mayberry.
Kevin : I am laughing out loud, slightly curious though.....Did you mean That
for a HickerBilly I'm on the ball or did you just tell me that I am the smartest
man in town???
N.S. : kevin let's face it--you MAY be the smartest man in town. ;o}
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Next: The Ridiculousness of Audacity
Posted by: KKAK | June 1, 2011 at 11:53 PM
Preface: This one stired a chain of reaction,I smiled through most of it.
I had given A----'s boy friend my blog address. He rented the pool room across the hall from me, evidently she had moved him in to help make ends meet; bear in mind there is no divorce here yet and three kids and she thinks she is fooling everybody. Well as things were unfolding and tensions grew, he starts leaving anonymous comments on my blog. I would address him as Rick and comment politely back, condescendingly of course. Well now I know I have their attention, and there is something I always wanted to let her know that I knew. The light bulb goes off and I post the following on my blog..
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A Case Study: My Landlord, The Ridiculousness of Audacity
The country right now is burdened down with personal, corporate and national bankruptcy and the question right now is “Who’s fault is it?”. Is it the predatory lenders in collusion with lobbyist corrupted government? Is it that simple minded all American trait of “ keeping up with the Jones’s “ ?
Let us look at a case I am familiar with, Hagatha my landlord (name changed for obvious reasons). Well Hagatha divorced her husband, a very hard working man who had just lost a prestigious job, no more Queen Bee Hagatha. Poor Hagatha. The income here was in the $35,000 to $40,000 range. Hagatha ranted for years “ I want a new kitchen”. Well her husband, a very amicable soul, remortgages the house (ARM) and gives her a $30,000 kitchen thru the home equity loan mechanism. Give her a kitchen and get tossed on your ear, c’est de mage. Now this was not a very smart move for two reasons . The first and obvious to most minds of average intelligence is the stupidity of trusting a greed driven banking industry with keeping interest readjustments within reasonable ranges for modest income people especially when the track record for the credit card companies is a history of out of control interest rates with hidden fees and fines.
The second and just as obvious reason in this case is the fact that the house had more urgent needs than a new kitchen. Ya I know, try telling this to a staunch smug dominant woman. Hagatha is slightly cross eyed which I think adds to that dare not cross those firey eyes aura about her. Firey eyes light my face up with a smile and I do swear her head will hit the ceiling some day as she screams my name. Hopefully the husband realizes that he is much better off by now.
Back to the house. We are talking a double plank (no insulation) house with few thermal pane windows . What this house needed, especially in light of rising fuel costs, is new windows, Styrofoam insulation and new siding. Where were their heads at? Well for some people it’s in the sand and for others it’s in the clouds. In this case all that mattered was Hagatha had the big white house at the top of the hill with the $30,000 kitchen to show the Jones’s. She’s entitled, isn’t she, why she’s Queen Bee. Who are we to judge a WalMart shopper with an I want list the length of her arm and the big white house at the top of the hill?
Life is funny, I am the last person that this staunch smug dominant woman would want to know anything about her. One day a fuel truck driver comes to my door, a local man that I knew from work, he heard my stereo recognized my van and stopped in to exchange howdy dos. Well he hands me her faxed in fuel order and says “ what the hell is this ? “ . It was signed “ Hagatha ****** CEO. “. Oh I laughed my ass off. I said “she’s a nine dollar an hour receptionist and the only thing she is CEO. of is a sinking ship “. My next rent check had CEO. after her name and as I handed it to her I said“ here you go CEO“, a title deserves respect. Loss of a Queen Bee prefix calls for a CEO. suffix, right. I have always felt that people were compelled to tell me things with the expectation of trust and she would die if she knew what I have been told. Small towns are interesting. Little does she know that I have an in where she takes her cars to get worked on, her last car was finally free of payments this summer and she buys a nice newer one. The word I have is that the last time her KIA left Kennedy’s garage in Scranton there was nothing wrong with it. We have a woman who thinks of herself as a classy woman and needs a classy car to complete the image, she is all about image.
To tie in the above with our case study, let me add that two winters ago the fuel deliveries to this house were all made by different fuel companies. What does this tell us? That it was all bum checks being handed to the drivers is my best guess. This house is court mandated For Sale for her inability to pay the bills, and she had the nerve to call me deadbeat recently. This dope assured her survival the first winter of her happy divorced life with the agreement that I will get paid back with free rent on a section of the garage as my shop at a more than generous rate of $150 per month. Now of course as life gets more expensive, she reneges. The point of the shop was for me to get paid back without her feeling the burden of actual cash reimbursement but to hell with that cash flow is what counts now. It is sad that this economy is turning some good people into thieves, but the point of this case study is “ who’s fault is it? “.
I could go on and on with this because of my personal involvement and enmity but for the purpose of this case study I think in this case the question of “ Who’s fault “ has been answered. After eleven years I am now fighting eviction with my embittered staunch smug dominant landlord, Hagatha. Like many others she cannot accept the fact that she has slid down the rungs into low socioeconomic status and she has allowed herself to go beyond the point where a parachute will stop the free fall, it has become a real behavioral issue for her. Anger and emotion have canceled logic as she quite possibly slashes her own throat as she destroys her source of proven rental income. Why? Hubris and arrogance, personality defects that will be responsible for the foreclosure on many a house. When problems manifest into precarious reality and the eyes are squeezed ever tighter shut, when the crash comes, maybe just maybe it won’t be felt. Well it’s her house for a short while and she’s entitled to any crippling emotion she damn well pleases, right. The kicker is I found her a $15 per hour job two and a half years ago half the distance her present job and one block out of her way on her way home from work that night, “ I can’t take a job KAK found for me”. This is a mother of three. [taking this job would have saved her house, had the spending been kept under control] National tragedies like this will continue to unfold for quite a while to come and sad reality is that the safety nets are falling also.
There is a lot more to this story. It may be worth starting another blog or doing a cartoon strip, we’ll see. The quasi sit on his ass boyfriend is a source of much material……..I’m thinking!
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Now, our staunch, smug, dominant woman blames me for the loss of her house as we shall see as this story unfolds, but it is right here that she has put the noose around her own neck, common sense be damned “I want my new kitchen” and "I need a car fit for a lady". I have already said she would jump up in the air once when she screams my name, can you imagine the jumping up and down the husband had to deal with over her kitchen, the man is gone, the man is lucky; he should have walked out before he remortgaged the house, he was an extremely hard worker, a drone, a worker bee for the queen. He did have all my respect.
Posted by: KKAK | June 3, 2011 at 09:33 PM
0{ :D)
Posted by: KKAK | June 5, 2011 at 11:29 PM
Preview of up comming instalments:
This guy’s mind was that of a child, it put a smile on my face knowing this was the best A---- could do for a boyfriend. He would tell you he was weird, “he was weird”. I have no problem testing his metal, let us see how high we can run this score up.
ZERO - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > [ : ( ] < - - - - - - - - - - - - DOPE! - - - - - - - - - - 0{ : D)
Life for me in this house turned into a battle with my landlord and her boyfriend. A battle where the psychotics were in control and the only thing that made sense was to sit back and laugh. It is a tale of shameless use of kids to help fight her battle. To survive the third winter my landlord decides twist Kevin’s nuts for $7000. I warned her, "I am not letting you get away with it" , the look on her face changed, she knew me and she knew I meant it. I turned and hopped on my motorcycle and left for a State Trooper.
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My landlords knight in white armor had moved into the house and taken up residence right across the hall from me. In late October I got him a sizable electric job, which he took on. We both got paid on the same day. What does he do? He get’s pilastered and she boots him as he knew she would as he had had his warnings. This Knight in white armor bailed on her, that is what he did, he wanted nothing to do with a woman in a house that drank fuel oil as winter approaches, how brave this man who supplied her with cheap charm but when she needed him he bails. I smiled oh honorable knight. Well in the summer after the heat bills are a thing past he opens up with the charm again, some women are fools, she apparently had attracted no other knight of quality, there is another winter on the horizon maby she can tantalize this worthless knight to see the upcomming winter through with her, so welcome back oh honorable knight.
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The bastard had greased the gas bottle, now I’m going to be a greased monkey wishing I were a bird. God grants wishes, now keep in mind I am getting shot at, 20 to thirty shots. Here goes I jump I fly I sailed through that window over my head I don’t think I even touched the counter top. I land on the kitchen floor laughing out loud, I do not believe this. I stand up and say “hey pop gun Pete”, the blinds in front of me are shattering and I realize I better turn my head and do my laughing. I’m on a mission, carry on.
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I had quit knocking on her door to give her the rent check right after the NewYears A---- kisses the door fight. I figured let her come and get it. I did not want to see her so It was thumb tacked to the door. The first time I did this it was there a few days, one morning gone. I imagine the steam built up and she was coming to give me a piece of her mind and there it was, now she is trained. After some time I put her through another hoop, she asks for it, I give it to her. I would put the check in the crack of the door with part of it on my side so I could see it disappear and at least get a smile, they were sneaks in the dark and felt that collecting the rent check had to be carried out this way, people are strange. I never saw it get taken so I put a paper clip on the check with a string to a Mouse Trap set up that dropped three D cell batteries from six feet up onto the floor, you know get a bang bang bang. I got my laugh and I’m sure a “Mother Fucking Goddamned son of a bitchin bastard”. God rewards those that are patient and wait. Sneaks in the dark were they, snoop and sneak could have been their names, she the CEO want to be and he the double o7 spy boy; creative self imagery was at work here and what could you do but laugh. The extent that they went to will leave you shaking your head; is this what "normal people" do with bugs up their asses or was there always a deficit of normality?
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The landlord with weird boyfriend under thumb loses her house in a court mandated sale. No lessons learned here, she builds a new one on a lot she separated off of the original property. Well this boy is sitting back and watching, Her neighbor, my old neighbor has told me that after the sale of the house you should have seen all the new clothes, I can imagine, this woman thinks of herself as quite the lady, CEO material et all. The boyfriend gets a nice new vehicle, something pretty to look at and new tires to Armorall every morning, yes every morning, images must be maintained. The economy is falling apart with foreclosures the big headline and loss of property values being the new reality, the mortgage companies are still up to their tricks but this duo of deluded imagery has set up the new illusion that will stand for a short while but will fall with the acceptance of double dip recession(depression) by this country. I will get to smile at the loss of two houses in three years. I tried to get the landlord to plant a garden while I lived there, soil under the fingernails of a lady is a yikes we can’t have that. The quasi boyfriend is too lazy to lift a gardening tool, what the hell it is time consuming keeping those tires spiffy let alone creating fake profiles and proxy accounts and following me around on the internet. When they lose the new house maby they can plant the boyfriends new truck with some vegies to move around from campground to campground. The smiles will keep coming at me, a dope and her dupe are learning their life’s lessons slowly all be it at a cost they are too slow to comprehend. I’m a watchin, I’m a watin keep those smiles coming, see ya at the supermarket, I know where she shops when she is on food stamps walking the isles with a calculator. Life’s trials and tribulations do not cease do they Ricky boy?
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They would enter my apartment when ever I left, they were snooping and they were doing damage, they were playing their own psychological game and they were about as effective as a cat trying to kill a deer. I had reached the point where I could not leave this apartment for fear they would throw water in the back of my $1400 computer, I could not have this especially since I was half winning this war through faxes to my lawyer, this was my lifeline to an active defense against two goddamned snooping mice, a dim witted one and a fat one. The police chief's wife, the landlord, thinking she can opperate an over 4,000 sq. ft. home on a $9 an hour job with threats and sneak in the dark cunning and plans aimed at I who had gotten her through her first winter, so why not another winter;disgusting, quite morraly and ethically reprehensible. The eldest daughter sweet A---- would say is "mean, just mean", no she was a very smart young girl who had to deal with the demanding personality of a kiniving mom and was like I, just tired of it, she refused to sink so low. This teen age girl to my knowledge is the only one of the family that did not participate in anything underhanded towards me, I do wish her all the best.................................Much of what I say here is backed up with Faxs' to my lawyer at the time of the transgressions, conviently waiting for the day I might need them. 0{: D).....0{: D).....0{: D).......................Aah, good old documentation!................and pictures, plenty of pictures.................Like the State Trooper said, keep documenting everything"!..................2;40.....I laugh Rick, your times say that you do not sleep in the same bed as her, are you the basement mouse? Poor boy, lawn boy and share the expenses boy, after all the work you did on that house -- the basement mouse; there is a reason she calls herself CEO, isn't there. I call it sly but what the hell she can be anything she wants to in her own mind, can't she. Dishing out dispersions, delegating duties, and feeling righteous and self important, that's our CEO, right Rick. Are you uptight on those nights she goes to see Harley boy (K---), 10 yrs younger than her, that is the only man that really means anything with her.....bet her new job is working with him, isn't it. ......If she comes home late after work on Friday's, I know where they go. ...............................................Cool night for a basement mattress there mousey boy, got any blood warmer to toss in those veins? ...............4:42.......basement mouse!.........................................................................................Got another pack of Depends in the mail today folks, this is the mind of this guy, 50 years old, as this story unfolds you will see how infantile this Rick guy is, there is a reason he was an alcoholic most of his life, now he lives with a woman who hates drinking......do you really think he will last long there.......he is just the best she can do to have a man around the house to be dominant over..........they deserve each other. When she expects him to be a man, he drinks, otherwise he is a timid infantile little mouse, there are examples of this in the remainder of the story................. Now folks, keep in mind this is three years after this story I am telling took place. There is a mini me stuck inside his head kicking his brain around and what can you do but sit back and laugh your ass off. ...................Thanks Rick, Depends worked good to mop up the bottom of my tranny case....tranny done, if you are supplying my toiletry needs make it Gillette trac 3 razor blades next time...Gillette, Rick......thanks. 0{: D)..........................................Rick, when I left that house, I walked out with an onward attitude, that part of my life was over with, you people were my past good riddance sianara...over. It was your choice to keep the bullshit rolling, low intelligence being I am presuming............It is not just you watching this, why don't you address the folks, I'll let you; we the mystified, we the amused want to understand; you clearly need someone to talk to...........Well Rick, here is your chance to speak....aren't you going to before we roll with the rest of this story? ? ? You don't even have to read it Rick, you were there for all of it, you know how it goes. Are ya holdin yer breath Rick, those chubby cheeks ought to hold a good gallon of air, get ready for a good read........By the way, was the Depends from a case sitting next to your desk.....are you that afraid of that woman or are you back on the sauce, the elixer of gumption, the tasty treat or whatever it is you guys think of it as? Rick has bragged that he was drunk everyday of his life without ever going in a bar, anti-social psychotic?.....the lion roars with the consumption of the suds, right Rick.
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Folks, Rick here is using the titles of my blog posts to send me a message; subtlety, like the night I caught you eavesdropping at my door. Get your balls up...be direct. In my experiences at my former apartment the landlord was always threatening legal action with no grounds or basis for any such realistic action. This is a woman who thinks of herself as superior even signing her name as CEO when she felt she could get away with it, there is always Murphy and the hand of God to expose these arrogant frauds. I was supposed to be a scared little hickerbilly and run for the hills; ask Rick here how I ran. I called their bluff and am calling it again. Rick here is threatening me once again with legal action, “shove it Rick”, can’t you see that the point of this is just that you dope. I did not bluff then and I will not bluff now, and somehow you have that nervous little funny feeling I mean it once again, don’t you Rick? Find your brass balls and do it, the landlady can help you with that, she's got brass balls! I know Rick, you are a sneak and a snoop, this personality is ballless(guzzle...guzzle...guzzle if you want those balls, I know)..……..A smile for you, we now have a lawyer in the family, this time it is free for me, a second lawyer next year….Aah the nieces and nephews are making this family proud. So if you are a “a good defense is a strong offense” person, go ahead, initiate the proceedings; so go, sit with your lawyer and fill him in on all the thirteen year old little boy crap you have been doing for 3 years now, make your mom, A----, and everyone proud. You know my smile, I am wearing it now and you will be seeing it again.
Well so far the reviews are all ass laughing positive, we all are really enjoying it and we are only half way through. You’ve met some of the witnesses Jon, Frank, Mike and the rest we will keep under wraps for now. I have been advised on what lines to not cross from the whites to the blacks. You know me, do you think I will stray into the greys? You know that if I do it is for a reason, maby to see if I can bring the man out of the coward. When the shit hit’s the fan there you are going to be locked in that basement for a month, aren’t you…….I can hear her screaming now, I used to smile at it and I am laughing at it now. Don’t worry, on a hot summer’s night with windows open Bob will fill me in. I bet she will beat you; I bet Bob ends up putting a lawn chair next to the stone wall but you have a video camera on the wall already don‘t you, we both know how you are; full blown paranoia has crept in, hasn‘t it. Folks, it is always the paranoid creeps who go nuts with the video survelience, this jerk did on me, I used to walk up with a smile on my face and put duct tape on the lens, didn't I Rick....foiled by tape and frittzin and frettering and wondering what I did after that, right Rick....did it get you hyperventilating there Ricky boy? You do know you do not have to relive your stresses, you don't have to read this.
Comments are being kept as a last chapter, we still have a ways to go but you know that. Two and a half years ago, I just could not wait to stand before that judge, I was going to have a blast; ya chickened out…..Why? Well there is next time, right Rick..…..Oh Rick, have a good day will ya now..........Is someone going spastic today....an obsessive compulsive spasm???....Can you rev em up to 50 to 100 again???....Bet ya can't.........Folks, this guy, this aparent twit, has sat there and run consecutive hits to my blog from 50 to 100 times multiple times.....this is a fifty year old man, anyone think there is something wrong with him?.......In my last days at the apartment our twit here and the landlady were out in front of the garage, right outside the window where my computer sits, he was, for my benefit I am sure trying to be lovey dovey with her, I laughed as she kept taking his hand away from around her waist; this is why I call him the quasi boyfriend, she is just a user and an image maintainer and it is Rick's turn to provide use to her. The time he spends hounding me on the internet is another sign of just how often she leaves him to himself and his obsessive compulsive wyles......How often is she out after work on Fridays Rick?
I CAN AFFORD WAR....MY LAWYER IS FREE 0{: o)......Rick is playing games folks, once again sending me messages through my blog titles.......go for it asshole, do something in your life that is not on the sneak or sly even if it is just to put on an honest jagg which you chose to do on the sneak anyway as we are both aware of. You live in the dark corners of existence Rick, you are a lurker, one of societies clinger oners of obscure hidden existence; it is for a reason Rick, you admit to being weird, you seem proud to subscribe to subtle imbibification....there is something here, something hidden from view, something deep and dark and personality bending in your past. The discovery stage of a lawsuit ought to bring that out, eh?
Just to get you mumbling grumbling and talking to your self Rick...you have noticed that OpEdNews published two of my articles, haven't you. Why not have a little fun here, join in will ya......I'm rather enjoying this pause in our story Rick, how about you?....Sure ya are, cause you know how the story goes, there will be many uncomfortable moments for you to relive again, you may even catch yourself calling yourself a scumbag like the rest of the folks here will be doing. Do you ever have moments of conscience Rick, lucid moments of any kind of guilt or is your mind as the eyes of the inebriated, glazed over shielding the depth of dimentia within? .......Hey, why don't you change the name of that little KAK in your head, mask a little more reality Rick, it is sure to help, eh?
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By your own soul(Rick), learn to live
And if men thwart you take no heed.
If men hate you have no care.
Sing your song, dream your dream,
Hope your hope and pray your prayer.
......
But you will pry, you will snoop, you will gosip and that is all you will ever be. What is the pride level your mom holds for you.....I did not see your kids come to visit you once when I lived at that house....you are all you will ever be, at your apex Rick. Are you proud to be who you are?
__9:48.....I would have thought you were enjoying the holiday with your arms around the Misses at this time..........or is it the master and she has tossed you aside already........prolly talking to Harley Boy on the phone eh?.....don't worry you get your hands on her phone every now and then and check things out....you keep up on things.....three pats on the head.....good little snoop.
keep wastin your time on me ya dope, it tells us a lot, life certainly can't be going good for you when I am your priority.........I'd love to see your eyes when that lil KAK is kicking your brain around 0{:D)
Another Spasm Rick??
Another day and Rick's spasms get worse folks , twitch in your brain or finger.....24 hits on my blog today...(totaled out at 36 in this 24 hr period)...some as high as 7 per min...he has hit 100 in the past............What do you think this twit is trying to prove folks?......God bless the nuts in this world......Ya know Rick, insomnia can be a sign of mental illness.....bet that basement bedroom is nice on these hot days yet you do not sleep and a sign you have that bed to yourself......basement mouse........you have your little hole drilled in the floor so you can hear her on the phone....don't you.....................Making me a part of your daily agenda puts the power on my side of the equation, doesn't it Rick, it shows me how you are jumping up and down like a little boy good ole tantrum style disconnected with reality....Can't get me out of your mind?...GOOD glad to have left an impression......keep kicking that brain around lil KAK. 0{: D)..............ya can go back to spyin on the master now....good little spy............Do you fuck with the master as she entertains herself with Harley Boy like you do with me??.........I bet she spends more time with him on FaceBook than with you.....that's why you spend all the time shadowing me......It is not just lil KAK kicking your brain around it's lil KAK and Harley Boy.....I laugh...you cry....Harley Boy just doesn't give a damn he's got his older woman, too bad.....some saps just deserve what they get 0{:D) Too bad you and I don't talk eh, I could tell you where they go......maby by the end of this I will give you the town....be a good little boy 0{:D)
............Here's one for you Rick..How to hear through walls....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEXTzI4-pXg&feature=related
....more spasms....7 per three min. rate.......what's the matter Rick?
....Hey Ricky boy, do you and the landlord ever think about what you will do when the interest rates rise(soon), living a life of illusion will be impossible........the seccond laugh is coming.......better keep that hair short because you will be wanting to pull it out ....." As bad as the housing crisis has been over the past three years, it has only been a warm up to what we have headed our way." - Global Research ...The crash is coming--this means you, 10 million more houses are expected to fall to foreclosure....this means you .....strategic default is not for image keepers...........think she is going to take you to her mothers, I don't? 0{:D)
............Santa's Theory is heating up Ricky....it's not just you, you'd die if you knew who is reading it.
..........Ya got your demon eyes on Rick, all bugged out...that finger locked into that firm staunch tool to rata tat tat that key with my smile on it and lil KAK kicking that brain.........come on let's set a record today and prove...here's where I'm stymied..prove what....that you are as fucked up as they come....am I close Rick?........Well happy rat a tat tating dope..................Fri night by your times, I'd say the boss is out with Harley Boy(Olyphant Rick...Olyphant)........Mommy is out, so little boy is home alone snooping, isn't he.
.......Keep kicking lil Kak......our boy Rick has been spasaming the last 2 days, multiple blog clicks per min., is this more than obsessive compulsive, how many other 50 yr. old men do you think are doing this.......my guess none, class of your own Rick, keep kicking that brain lil Kak....0{:D)
...................Spasms?? 0{;D)..........keep agoin lil KAK.....Having a particurlarly hard day there Rick......God I'd love to see your face at the keyboard.....gotta love that lil KAK, eh?............ya gonna blow a gasket for me today??....go go go.... red eyes? heart rate a goin? kill kill kill.....kill that KAK....git that KAK.....go go go 0{:D)
Jes Rick, it's nice we can have these moments.....that lil KAK sure is something, eh?
...Did you snap out of it Rick, you were doin good, approaching 60 hits........lil KAK's there though, you'll spasm soon........Ya miss me, that's it isn't it?.....well you'll have to settle for lil KAK in your head 0{;D)
.....Once again you prove you and the landlord don't sleep in the same bed.....no sleep, you better get to a shrink Rick.
....He's reving up again, the clicks are clicking...eyes bloodshot Rick?.....muttering to yourself Rick?.....happy clicking.
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Heard the Rick gets the boot story last week, laughed my ass off; took her a while to figure out what you are but she did.....I laugh.....all that work you did, you were used, welcome to the club...........still have a contact in her circle, gotta check in with them more often...........knew you were not in her bed.......poor lil boy but now you have her to spy on too.........have fun dope, enjoy the suds.....Where do ya do your guzzlin?....................................
Another thought.........Remember when you told me that the landlord and family had a weird relationship to food.
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Remember the day you called me "Buster"......I still laugh at that one every now and then.
Comming soon, the rest of the story!
Posted by: KKAK | June 6, 2011 at 04:43 PM
i am a Test Comment!
Posted by: Robin | December 22, 2011 at 04:13 AM
Contact......connection made.
Posted by: KAK | December 24, 2011 at 07:52 PM