Voter Criteria

[amdx]

In fact, what you had in 1776 and for a quite few years after that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_States


What you had was Tammany Hall - amongst many similar organisations - and yoir country is a long way from being saved from them and their heirs and successors. Your constitution was a fairly early attempt at moderately representative democracy. More modern constitutions - like the one Germany got in 1948 - work a whole lot better. What France has got was written later - 1958 - but it was heavily influenced de Gaulle and reflect his particular interests and prejudices.


The Heritage Foundation is right wing think tank. If you trust their propaganda, you probably think that James Arthur can think straight.

Here's the page with the government numbers.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historicals

Be sure and get back, to apologize for not believing accounting
numbers straight from the government and reprinted by Heritage.

But the point was you said, "Federal income taxes are - in large part
- forced payments into a defense fund to pay for a standing army"
The government says it's only 27.4% of tax revenues.
I said, " Entitlements take 90% of all the tax money that is collected"
The government says it's 84%.

 

[P E Schoen]

"Jon Kirwan" wrote in message

Now that's a subject I don't need to be informed about. My
opinions about the US in that light are quite strong and
would probably largely agree with yours. Perhaps exceeding
them. There is a great article... see below:

The author has a lot of experience he's working from and it's
probably fairly accurate.

That's an excellent article, and although I don't fully understand
economics, especially on the macro level, the points made make a lot of
sense. In fact, I think my problem with understanding macroeconomics even as
I was studying it at Hopkins in the late 60s, was that I tried to use too
much logic and scientific reasoning, whereas the system is actually founded
on abstract concepts such as emotions (feeling good or bad), perceived
worth, value added, and assumptions of ever increasing growth in an
environment of unlimited resources. Those ideas may have made sense at that
time, before peak oil and the rapid emergence of global players, and indeed
many people made lots of money by essentially gambling in the stock market
and financial institutions in the later 70s and 80s.

It really does come down to personal (and corporate) greed, and materialism
that has always been part of the economic ruling elite, but more recently
has become expected as an entitlement by the average (and below average)
citizen, and their numbers now include many more from developing countries.
We all want to be "above average", as Garrison Keeler might say, and that
makes about as much sense as the still struggling and fundamentally
dysfunctional concepts of economics and wealth and business practices,
especially in the financial sector.

Paul

 

[hamilton]

hamilton wrote:
* That's Congress------------^-----------^

When making breakfast, the chicken is involved, the pig is committed.

So Congress are chickens, only.

 

[Jon Kirwan]

"Jon Kirwan" wrote in message



That's an excellent article,

I thought so and I read it first when it was initially
published. But I'm also always conscious of my own observer
bias, too. So while I think the article is reasonably
accurate and expresses some "higher truths" about the reality
here... it may be that I think so because it confirms my own
earlier conclusions. I hate saying all that, but I am ever
wary of my own ability to be selective. It's a necessary (but
of course not sufficient) awareness to keep in mind if you
want to build solid foundations of knowledge.

and although I don't fully understand
economics, especially on the macro level, the points made make a lot of
sense. In fact, I think my problem with understanding macroeconomics even as
I was studying it at Hopkins in the late 60s, was that I tried to use too
much logic and scientific reasoning, whereas the system is actually founded
on abstract concepts such as emotions (feeling good or bad), perceived
worth, value added, and assumptions of ever increasing growth in an
environment of unlimited resources. Those ideas may have made sense at that
time, before peak oil and the rapid emergence of global players, and indeed
many people made lots of money by essentially gambling in the stock market
and financial institutions in the later 70s and 80s.

I could add a great deal to this, as I spent many many
hundreds of personal hours studying and listening to
testimony during the 1980's regarding the 1982 banking bill
and the way it was abused by the Reagan (actually Bush)
administration in order to strip hundreds of billions of
illicit dollars when Congress was unwilling to fund their
world view politics abroad. (They hated the impact of the
Boland Amendments, for example, and used it skirt them at the
terrible expense of nearly 1 trillion US dollars to the
public.) But I'll stop short of writing a treatise here.

It really does come down to personal (and corporate) greed, and materialism
that has always been part of the economic ruling elite, but more recently
has become expected as an entitlement by the average (and below average)
citizen, and their numbers now include many more from developing countries.
We all want to be "above average", as Garrison Keeler might say, and that
makes about as much sense as the still struggling and fundamentally
dysfunctional concepts of economics and wealth and business practices,
especially in the financial sector.

Paul

If you want to get a real-world glimpse of what kind of
attitudes are bred at the very top, watch some episodes of
"You're Cut Off" someday. I've been personally involved in
venture funding, so I've met a few of these people myself.
They actually exist.

Jon

 

[Bill Sloman]

Here's the page with the government numbers.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historicals

Be sure and get back, to apologize for not believing accounting
numbers straight from the government and reprinted by Heritage.

The art is in selecting the numbers. Only idiots find it necessary to falsify them.

But the point was you said, "Federal income taxes are - in large part
- forced payments into a defense fund to pay for a standing army"

The government says it's only 27.4% of tax revenues.

A quarter is a large part.

I said, " Entitlements take 90% of all the tax money that is collected"
The government says it's 84%.

"Entitlements" is a concept invented and defined by right-wing nit-wits. Anybody who uses it is endorsing a particular point of view - not a point of view that any rational observer would find useful in explaining what is actually going on, but useful if the only idea you have in your head is that taxes are too high.

 

[Robert Baer]

Define "skin in the game"

Or are you talking about chickens and pigs ?

* That's Congress------------^-----------^

 

[Bill Sloman]

All this stuff was argued vociferously during the early and
mid parts of 1787, before finishing the writing of the US
Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Since then, things have
changed (we vote for Senators now, but didn't back then.)

Making voting based upon wealth is an old question. During
the US Constitutional Convention in Philidelphia, Gouverneur
Morris said (you can find Bancroft's books on this topic

[it's a 2-volume set] on Google Books, by the way):

"The ignorant and the dependent can be as little trusted with
the public interest as children."

On the same day, James Madison said:

"In future times, a great majority of the people will not
only be without property in land, but property of any sort.

These will either combine under the influence of their common
situation, in which case the rights of property and the
public liberty will not be secure in their hands, or, what is
more probable, they will become the tools of opulence and
ambition; in which case, there will be equal danger on
another side."

You would, I suppose, find little difficulty with the above
world view.

Ben Franklin said, just 3 days later, on August 10th of 1787:

"I dislike everything that tends to debase the spirit of the
common people. If honesty is often the companion of wealth,
and if poverty is exposed to peculiar temptation, the
possession of property increases the desire for more. Some
of the greatest rogues I was ever acquainted with were the
richest rogues. Remember, the scripture requires in rulers
that they should be men hating covetousness. If this
constitution should betray a great partiality to the rich, it
will not only hurt us in the esteem of the most liberal and
enlightened men in Europe, but discourage the common people
from removing to this country."

In the end, Ben Franklin's opinion and that of others who
agreed with him, together with the opinions of Madison and
Morris and others, were cobbled together into what we have
today. There is NO wealth test, but the States were left to
devise methods of selecting their Senators, for example,
leaving significant power in the hands of those wealthy
enough to have regular access to education and power

That week in early to mid August was quite a week, by the
way. A lot of world views about wealth and poor and their
various peculiarities were exposed in plain view. And there
wasn't much agreement. Enough to get things done, but not a
lot. There was a divide and significant prejudices all around
about those who they understand poorly and that division of
perspectives continues to this day and is just as incorrect
and false today as it was then. (And I'm speaking about the
views that each have of the other; both are false and born
from a lack of understanding.)

You need to read Jonathan I. Israel's "Democratic
Enlightenment" ISBN 978-0-19-954820-0. The American
Revolution exploited some Radical Enlightenment ideas to get
the masses on-side - Tom Paine was a useful propagandist,
but had no direct influence on the creation of the US
constitution, which was all Moderate Enlightenment, which
has the defect of leaving the fat cats in control of the
cream jug.

I'll see about getting and reading it.

It's heavy going - it's well written but it covers a lot of ground, and is more interested in the intellectual under-pinnings of the democratic activists than it is in their actions when they got power. The early days of the French Revolution get a lot of attention, but it's subsequent decline into the terror that allowed Napoleon to step in as a saviour is pretty much outside his sphere of interest.

I've spent a fair
amount of time reading the various personal letters from the
period between about 1750 and 1810, or so, already. Along
with published letters in the New York Journal (from that
period.) And session records of the Confederation Congress
from around 1783 to 1785. I've learned a lot that I never got
even close to in any history books in public schools here.
And stuff that differs dramatically from popular opinion in
the US about that time. I'm well aware of propaganda going
on. Doesn't mean I can't learn more.

Jonathan Israel is a great educator. You may decide that you don't need to know quite that much about the specific issues that interest him - which ishow we got to our current world view, and - incidentally - how Spinoza managed to shape that world-view, mainly by thinking more clearly than anybodyelse.

By the way, propaganda is much better understood today after
the expenditure of trillions of dollars in this last century
(since certainly before the 1920's and going forward.) And
that science knowledge is used quite effectively here in the
US. It's sickening. But it works. In the US, manufacturing
consent is worth a lot of money.

And the people who collect that money have a vested interest in keeping theAmerican political scene as one where other people (with lots of money) can keep on paying them to manufacture consent on an industrial scale.

The electrical power industry is polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, and the political power industry is polluting the intellectual atmosphere with pernicious nonsense, climate change denialism being a depressing example.

Now that's a subject I don't need to be informed about. My
opinions about the US in that light are quite strong and
would probably largely agree with yours. Perhaps exceeding
them. There is a great article... see below:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/307364/

The author has a lot of experience he's working from and it's
probably fairly accurate.

For May 2009 it's remarkably prescient.

 

[cameo]

Since my healthcare topic seems to have run its course.

I think we need a new rule for voting.
If you don't pay any federal income taxes, you can't vote.
If you have no skin in the game, you can't vote.
If you don't pay any federal income taxes and you vote,
all you can do is transfer my labor into dollars in your pocket.

Mikek

PS. SS taxes are not federal income taxes, it's a forced payment into
your retirement fund. Even if you call it payroll taxes.

In other words: No representation without taxation!

 

[amdx]

The art is in selecting the numbers. Only idiots find it necessary to falsify them.


A quarter is a large part.


"Entitlements" is a concept invented and defined by right-wing nit-wits.

Hmm... That's what the Obama administration calls them.

But you're probably right, all the people receiving them, really aren't
entitled.
Mikek

 

[amdx]

Mikek



In other words: No representation without taxation!

I stirred the pot and look what came out! Very nice! LOL
Mikek

 

[amdx]

The only "nit-wit" in this thread is Slowman. Do us all a favor and
ignore/shun him.

...Jim Thompson

This is just a test, I've been having problems replying from my laptop.
I might add, I'm pretty good at ignoring name calling, and I don't think
I do any name calling myself.
Mikek

 

[rickman]

I would never go so far as to say *everyone's* opinion is "important".
They may be entitled to it, but many opinion are not very valuable...
just read Jim's post above

And you think we have balance now?
Oh maybe, about 50% don't pay taxes and about 50% do.

You want to include those who worked for many years, paid into various
retirement plans and now are reaping the rewards of their capital?
Income doesn't include capital gains.

Or do you only want to include those who are without the means of
producing an income, no capital, no job and no prospects?

 

[rickman]

No problem, "I'll create and exception".
I'll probably exempt most people on SS but not SSI.

Can you explain why those on disability incomes should loose the right
to vote? It seems to me they have LOTS of "skin in the game".

 

[amdx]

I would never go so far as to say *everyone's* opinion is "important".
They may be entitled to it, but many opinion are not very valuable...
just read Jim's post above



You want to include those who worked for many years, paid into various
retirement plans and now are reaping the rewards of their capital?
Income doesn't include capital gains.

Or do you only want to include those who are without the means of
producing an income, no capital, no job and no prospects?

This may get complicated, but we can probably do it in 5 pages,
instead of 2,700.
As long as I'm ruler I can make the rules as the political winds push me.

 

[amdx]

Can you explain why those on disability incomes should loose the right
to vote? It seems to me they have LOTS of "skin in the game".

My latest info is, a 53 yr old male that spent 3 years living free on
someones junk boat, collecting foods stamps. After 3 years of fighting
the SS system he finally got on disability, but could not collect
through SS because he had not worked enough in his life to earn the
credits needed. So they did it with SSI. The same week he won his claim
he got a job on a shrimp boat, somehow that fell though and he ended up
on a fishing boat one of the most dangerous professions. These boats go
to sea for 2 to 3 weeks, must be hard on his disabled back.

I may be mistaken, I thought SSI was for those who didn't pay much
into the system.
Mikek

 

[amdx]

It must really suck to be you.

No not really, I work more than I want, and my back hurts,
but I have a great wife, two good kids, one just graduated, the other in
his second year at the university. The grad got a job within a week and
a half after graduating, didn't even move back home. I never expected
she would, she's a highly motivated young women, must get it
from her mother.
My wife and I have lived a frugal life and when I retire in about 3
years I'll be more than comfortable.
I'm looking forward to figuring out what I want during retirement.
Oh and I have a granddog too! His name is Stanley.
Mikek

 

[Bill Sloman]

Eventually we're going to hold teachers accountable for their poor
productivity >:-}

(I'm sure that's what's gnawing at Rickman's craw

Rickman probably has enough sense to realise that teachers are processing avariable raw material. Parents have to have some responsibility for bringing up kids who are hard to educate, and simple-minded measures of "teacher productivity" just provide extra motivation for teachers to avoid working in low income neighbourhoods.

The US is already notorious as the advanced industrial country where choosing your parent carefully gives you the biggest life-time advantage, and discouraging teachers from working on the children of the poor isn't going to help.

 

[josephkk]

It must really suck to be you.

Heheheh. It couldn't possibly suck nearly as bad is it must suck to be
you.

To have a chance at arguing (let alone debating; alas a nearly lost art)
you must know your opponents arguments at least as well as your opponent
does. Something almost never seen here; what is most seen is total
disregard for the opponents presentation.

?-)

 

[rickman]

Rickman probably has enough sense to realise that teachers are processing a variable raw material. Parents have to have some responsibility for bringing up kids who are hard to educate, and simple-minded measures of "teacher productivity" just provide extra motivation for teachers to avoid working in low income neighbourhoods.

The US is already notorious as the advanced industrial country where choosing your parent carefully gives you the biggest life-time advantage, and discouraging teachers from working on the children of the poor isn't going to help.

This is an example of when you are both wrong. I do believe in holding
teachers accountable for their performance. I remember all the times I
was held accountable for my work and how I hated it. Of course I
justified all the reasons why I didn't meet schedule or... well, that
was the only real problem, not meeting a schedule someone else put
together.

My point is that over the years I have learned that everyone has to be
held accountable for their performance. That doesn't mean using
standardized tests to rate the performance of the kids being taught as
if they were the only and most important measure of the teacher's
performance. But some method needs to be applied that is realistic both
from the teacher's perspective and respects the needs of the children.

So how did we get off topic of an off topic thread? Oh yeah, Jim wanted
to say something he thought would bug me. Did it work? Do you think
you bugged me? I hope so. I want you to be happy Jim.

 

[rickman]

My latest info is, a 53 yr old male that spent 3 years living free on
someones junk boat, collecting foods stamps. After 3 years of fighting
the SS system he finally got on disability, but could not collect
through SS because he had not worked enough in his life to earn the
credits needed. So they did it with SSI. The same week he won his claim
he got a job on a shrimp boat, somehow that fell though and he ended up
on a fishing boat one of the most dangerous professions. These boats go
to sea for 2 to 3 weeks, must be hard on his disabled back.

I may be mistaken, I thought SSI was for those who didn't pay much into
the system.

You didn't explain your reasoning very well. You describe a situation
where someone apparently gamed the system into getting something he
didn't deserve. But is that supposed to mean that *everyone* on SSI
disability is gaming the system? What?

I will say I envy the guy. I bet he is living high on the hog with that
SSI check and the food stamps. Damn, where did I go wrong?