Voter Criteria

Like I said, I almost like it.

I'll see about getting and reading it. 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.

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.

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.

Jon

It must really suck to be you.

Here's the page with the government numbers.

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%.

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

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

So Congress are chickens, only.

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.

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.

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

on

sed > >>> to apply in more or less every English-speaking country. Now tha t you

te.

d yoUr country is a long way from being saved from them and their heirs and successors. Your constitution was a fairly early attempt at moderately rep resentative 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.

to

nto > >>> a defense fund to pay for a standing army, which is another way o f

tax

me

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

A quarter is a large part.

"Entitlements" is a concept invented and defined by right-wing nit-wits. An ybody 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 act ually going on, but useful if the only idea you have in your head is that t axes are too high.

n.

Sadly, you didn't borrow enough at the start, so you stayed in recession l onger than you should have done, and had to keep on borrowing for longer be fore the economy got going again.

• That's Congress------------^-----------^

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 activi sts 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 out side his sphere of interest.

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 is how we got to our current world view, and - incidentally - how Spinoza man aged to shape that world-view, mainly by thinking more clearly than anybody else.

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

The electrical power industry is polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxi de, and the political power industry is polluting the intellectual atmosphe re with pernicious nonsense, climate change denialism being a depressing ex ample.

For May 2009 it's remarkably prescient.

In other words: No representation without taxation!

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

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

Mikek

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

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

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?

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".

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.

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

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 :-)