We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
There is a day coming. It is not on the horizon yet, but it is not far over it. Prospective employers are going to look at your children's resume, and if it refers to any sort of "public school" on it, they're going to roundfile it without hesitation, and they're going to call HR and ask them to find another homeschooled kid. Maybe they'll settle for an expensive privately schooled kid if there's no "non-socialized" kids available.
From a news point of view this is dog bites man: the usual people are doing the usual things. They are doing it in an unusual place — and over time they may be doing it in unusual numbers. But leftie protests that go nowhere are part of the background noise of modern American life. Drums and granola in the park is not news. Until OWS breaks that mold, expect public interest to remain tepid.
Rush is right, as always. Mitt is a successful businessman and talented executive turned pol, and not deeply ideological. I think lots of people are comfortable with that. Romneycare? Big error, but the people who have not fled MA yet seem to sort-of like it thus far. I would hate it, on principle, just like Medicare. Socialism never adds up because job-creators won't take risks for nothing.
Yesterday, Buffett declined the request of a Republican congressman to swap tax returns and reiterated his pledge to publish the form if other billionaires would do the same.
The Congressional Research Service report found that, on average, millionaires paid federal tax at a 30 percent rate, while moderate-income taxpayers, defined as those earning less than $100,000, were taxed at 19 percent.
The overall average, though, “obscures a great deal of variation,” including the finding that 25 percent of millionaires pay lower rates than 10 percent of moderate earners, the report found.
The findings “would be considered a violation of the Buffett Rule, but not to the extent alluded to by Mr. Buffett,”the report says.
The numbers are, of course, the effective rates (ie after deductions), not the marginal rates.
Here is the story. In 1929, we had a top marginal tax rate of 24% on all income over $100,000. And, according to Historical Statistics of the United States, the federal government took in almost $1.1 billion that year from income taxes. In 1935, after FDR successfully enacted a 79% tax on multimillionaires, the federal revenue from income taxes had been more than cut in half, down to $527 million. Granted, we were in a Great Depression in 1935, but that is in part because we were steadily adding new taxes and raising taxes on income from 1929 to 1935, and those rate hikes helped cause and perpetuate the Great Depression. Why should entrepreneurs invest and take risks when they have to turn more than half of what they might make over to the government?
During World War II, FDR further expanded the federal government. He did not let that crisis go to waste. On taxes, he eventually raised marginal tax rates on the rich to 94% on all income over $200,000. In making the case for huge tax hikes on the rich, Roosevelt’s supporters argued in Congress that government had the first claim on the wealth people earned. On March 30, 1943, Rep. Emanuel Celler (D.-N.Y.) argued, “The government can at any time make income taxes as thumping big as the necessities of war require. Thus, if any plan does not raise enough money, taxes can at any time be increased. The government always has a moral if not actual lien on all our income.”
Sheesh. Ask your parents before asking me to pay it. I have my own to pay for, shmuck. Next, they will want us to buy their cars and to pay for their car insurance.
Amusingly, such people are blind to their own greed which they project onto others. Gimme, gimme. If you gave him a free tuition, he'd want something free after that. An entitlement/freebie mindset never stops, and creates permanent infants instead of self-reliant adults. Or sociopaths, which this guy sounds like with his lack of shame and humility for asking for charity.
During last night’s Republican debate, all agreed on repealing ObamaCare. But only Romney mentioned that we need something to replace it and mentioned he has that plan.
To be quick out of the blocks, Romney promises to exempt all states from ObamaCare on his first day in the Oval Office, then ask Congress to repeal it.
To control federal costs, he would provide block grants to states to devise their own, closer to their publics, programs. Individuals would be able to deduct premiums from taxes, as businesses can. Preexisting conditions would not affect insurability if the individual had prior continuous coverage, a spur to taking more self-responsibility. HRAs, pretax savings accounts for healthcare, would be expanded to pay for premiums, making the cost of premiums less for taxpaying consumers, and cross-state purchases would be allowed to avoid costly state mandates. Non-medical malpractice tort awards would be capped.
These are all well and good………if one just wants band aids for a hemorrhage.
It is probably politic to avoid rousing the ire of independents via Democrat MediScare charges. But as I argued yesterday the core problem is not addressed: extensive government direction of medical care driving up costs to today’s unaffordable levels for the budget and for consumers, distorting markets, reducing individual choice and overriding individual circumstances. Thus far, only the Ryan plan addresses it.
Regardless of whom is elected president in 2012, it will be up to Congress to choose whether we continue on a government-lighter or ObamaCare model, or face up to the real drivers of healthcare costs in excessive government direction of healthcare.
Even if one forgives Romney for RomneyCare being a mistake of the past, he does not adequately learn from nor atone for it. For that matter, the other Republican presidential potentials have not even been as specific as he in what they’d do after being elected. Inadequate from all.
Romney may have strengthened his case for “inevitability”in last night’s debate by his smoothness and command of details. And something is better than nothing. However, that something is still nothing compared to the unresolved challenges we must face to retain healthcare quality and access at affordable costs, enhanced freedoms, and the resources needed to face the US other needs.
"Wall Street's Gullible Occupiers. The protesters have been sold a bill of goods. Reckless government policies, not private greed, brought about the housing bubble and resulting financial crisis." One quote:
Beginning in 1992, the government required Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to direct a substantial portion of their mortgage financing to borrowers who were at or below the median income in their communities. The original legislative quota was 30%. But the Department of Housing and Urban Development was given authority to adjust it, and through the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations HUD raised the quota to 50% by 2000 and 55% by 2007.
Read the whole thing. The government essentially forced lenders into the subprime markets and to violate their own lending standards. Naturally, they didn't want these crappy loans on their books, so they packaged them as derivatives and sold them to eager buyers worldwide (unaccountably rated triple A when any fool could see that they were below investment-grade). With that, combined with low interest rates and people using their suddenly-valuable homes as ATMs, the housing and construction debt-bubble was created and inevitably burst.
Why the world's financial geniuses didn't see it coming is beyond me. Everybody on the internet saw it coming. All bubbles burst, but this was a biggie-sized one just like the internet bubble. Based on my reading, I had shorted housing-related equities, did not buy my living quarters which I could not have afforded anyway, and made out like a bandit. It was just too easy, even for an amateur. Call me greedy.
Of course, the rest of my quite modest portfolio did horribly. Equity baskets have been a bad bet for many years now. Munis stink too. Sorry I didn't buy gold, but I always thought gold was for end-of-the-world nutjobs.
I am no economist nor do I play one on the internet, but my take on things today is that fear of government is part of what is holding back investment in the US. That, plus people freaking out about their debt - and their lower-to-zero incomes.
It is not particularly mature to blame banks who were willing to lend you money, though, even when they perhaps doubted your ability to repay it. An adult who takes on debt is supposed to be an honorable citizen who will repay that debt, or have their credit and reputation ruined for ten years or more. Employers check your credit rating.
My only debts are my student loans which were such a good deal that I am in no hurry to pay them all off, as long as my career proceeds on course. However, periodically I borrow money from my local bank or my credit cards. Small amounts - $5000-10,000 - then pay it back after a couple of months. I use that trick to keep my credit rating up to date and in good shape (I rent). One of these days, I will really use my credit card to take a good girlfriend or future spouse on a bike tour around Sicily.
Today, Slovakia has the lowest average salaries in the euro zone. How am I supposed to explain to people that they are going to have to pay a higher value-added tax (VAT) so that Greeks can get pensions three times as high as the ones in Slovakia?
Hmmmmm. In the US, shrinking unions have retreated to the bastions of monopoly - schools and givernment (sp), where they wield great power to plunder the people:
Bob Samuels, the president of the union, says this effectively gives the union veto power over any online initiative that might endangers the jobs or work lives of its members. “We feel that we could stop almost any online program through this contract,” Samuels told Inside Higher Ed.
"... Meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the government. All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations ... The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for ... officials ... to bind the employer ... The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives ...
"Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of government employees. Upon employees in the federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people ... This obligation is paramount ... A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent ... to prevent or obstruct ... Government ... Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government ... is unthinkable and intolerable."
I can't tell what these stoners think because it is difficult to decipher their logic. However, their demeanor is what probably turns people off. These are not good poster children for the Democratic party (below from Gateway):
There is no perfect solution to what varying interest groups or segments of public opinion desire as reforms to US healthcare. Now that we’ve gone down the path of ObamaCare and RomneyCare, that is more evident. The question, then, is what course is more promising? The answer is less government intervention in healthcare than preceded ObamaCare or RomneyCare.
There are three core problems with either ObamaCare or RomneyCare. Each by itself raise conflicts with facts, law, and public desires. Together, they are a witches brew. Both ObamaCare and RomneyCare are based on wrong premises of government intervention and result in worsening the future of healthcare in the US.
ObamaCare and RomneyCare are premised on extending more medical care to the uninsured even beyond need or personal responsibility or affordability. They are premised on reducing or moderating our national costs of healthcare even though they fail to do so and in many ways increase costs. They are premised on the imposition of added government regulation and intervention into individual choice and circumstances even though neither science, management, competence, politics nor majority public support is up to the task nor expected to be.
But one has to go deeper than that to find the roots of the false premises of ObamaCare and RomneyCare. The roots are in government healthcare programs themselves like Medicare and Medicaid. Regardless of any good intentions or needs, they set the course of government being the solution.
Regardless of promises or embedment they have expanded beyond initial promises or need. Regardless of the good they do they have done more harm to healthcare by distorting its economics and its public perception. Regardless of cost they have increased costs to those outside these programs. Regardless of their public acceptance they have become unaffordable.
It is painful to abandon ObamaCare or RomneyCare. It is less painful to change course entirely.
From decades and certifications in health insurance I am highly critical of health insurers, and moreso as they have become more self-servingly enmeshed in government healthcare programs. That said, private insurers are more responsive to change, improvements, competition, and tailoring coverages to individual needs than any government program is capable. Further, individuals – including the poor or uneducated – are more able to discern their own needs than any government bureaucrat. Further, groups advocating types of health insurance coverage beyond the core would have to compete with more transparent facts and costs instead of canoodling with and paying off politicians.
Congressman Paul Ryan has proposed the reform of Medicare that would reverberate throughout US healthcare. It is estimated by the CBO to “totally reverse the course of recent fiscal history by lowering federal health care spending from 8% of GDP today to just 5% by 2050. If we remain on the current course, the spending would jump to 14% in that time frame.”
In effect, Ryan is asking Americans to make a historic leap of faith…. Ryan's vision of bringing the market to Medicare is the best choice in a world of poor alternatives….
Americans will no longer get more than 70% of their Medicare costs paid by the government. [Instead there would be premium subsidies, declining with means, and co-pay subsidees for the poor. –ed.] Retirees are bound to pay a much bigger share of their own medical costs. More and more seniors will choose high deductible plans, and HMO or PPO-style programs that limit choices of doctors.
Still, the rise in costs for the elderly could prove far less than the giant annual increases we're experiencing today. We've simply never seen a competitive environment like the one in the Ryan blueprint. "The Obama plan is all about price controls," says Joseph Antos, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute. "Ryan's is all about unleashing the market."
The Ryan plan has another major strength: It will stop heaping a bigger and bigger Medicare burden onto younger taxpayers. Ryan is making a bold, wrenching choice that wins because it's less painful than all the others.
The Obama re-election administration has lambasted Ryan with Democrat MediScare (even though Ryan's program would reduce government subsidies for the wealthy!) Mitt Romney tries to explain that ObamaCare exceeds RomneyCare’s ailments instead of admitting original sin. The other major Republican candidates, in this as in other areas, have not put forth anything but slogans. Perhaps that’s about all we can expect from an election season.
To avoid facing the battle during the elections, I suppose that Ryan will not be the V-P nominee. (Even though "70% Favor Individual Choice Over Government Standards for Health Insurance," there doesn't appear sufficient courage or faith in the voters for leading candidates to take the risk.) However, after 2012, we must either turn to Paul Ryan or continue our present muddle that resolves little and increases faults. I don’t know whether Ryan would be most effective in Congressional leadership or as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Whichever will depend on the size of the Republican majority and the intelligence and guts of the next president and Congress.
What a loss to humanity it would have been if Jobs had dedicated the last 25 years of his life to figuring out how to give his billions away, instead of doing what he does best.
Lots of very smart people suck at those social things, however. That's why they should start their own operations. I am glad that Prasher got a few bucks from his work, and, finally, a job.
When scientists say we know something, we mean only that we have certain ideas and theories whose predictions have been well tested over a certain range of distances or energies. These ideas and theories are not necessarily the eternal laws for the ages or the most fundamental of physical laws. They are rules that apply as well as any experiment could possibly test, over the range of parameters available to current technology. This doesn’t mean that these laws will never be overtaken by new ones. Newton’s laws are instrumental and correct, but they cease to apply at or near the speed of light where Einstein’s theory applies. Newton’s laws are at the same time both correct and incomplete. They apply over a limited domain.
..if I had to pick just one French term of art popularized by a 19th-century German philologist to describe the Occupy Wall Street set and its attendants, it would be Nietzsche’s Ressentiment. Why does good old English “resentment” not suffice? Why is the extra ‘s’ and fancy French pronunciation required? Well, resentment is about begrudging the success of your betters as a way to avoid self-reflection on your own failures. The Nietzsche scholar Robert Solomon described resentment as an “impotence self-righteousness” directed at your superiors, and contrasted it with anger (directed at your equals) and contempt (directed at your inferiors). But ressentiment is what happens when you take that impotent self-righteousness and define a whole morality of good and evil in terms of it, build a whole belief system out of it, build an ideology, a political movement — an occupation.
Waves of nostalgia swept over me. This was exactly how I spent my college years, which were theoretically dedicated to creating a more humane society and stopping the war in Vietnam, but, in reality, mainly involved meetings. Endless meetings in which it was alleged that the winner was the person who managed to remain sitting while everyone else toppled over with boredom. I can’t say definitely, because I never made it to the end.
When I joined Maggie's recently, I was told it was a voluntary collective. "To each according to their needs, from each according to their abilities. Just be eclectic with your topics." I decided this would be interesting and fun.
After watching the Occupy Wall Street movement, however, I've come to realize that Maggie's is just another corporate entity keeping me down, and I am being shortchanged by The System. I've decided to visit some of the Wall Street protesters and get them to join me here. We can complain about how Maggie is keeping us from enjoying the well-deserved fruits of our labor. After all, Maggie's Farm takes advantage of a public good (the internet), so just as people like Elizabeth Warren point out Maggie should, in all fairness, be giving back.
The Wall Street protesters agree and feel that if Maggie won't share, then perhaps the government should step in and make things fair. After all, I went to college. I have debts. I'm putting into The System. Where are my goodies? I want my Dunkin' Donuts! It's time to redistribute!
I call on other writers to join me in creating a list of demands that can be endless. Not having one demand makes us stronger. If we have more, and make the demands go on and on forever, we show strength.
Now I'm going to go take a nap, play some hacky sack, blog on my Mac about how I'm looking out for the best interests of other Maggie's Farmers, have compassion for others, feel good about myself, and engage in many other unproductive activities until I get something for nothing.
(I really hope Maggie has a sense of humor.)
Editor, to Bulldog: We would gladly surrender to the armed occupiers below the fold, but I am afraid most of today's Occupier chicks do not meet Maggie's Farm standards - to say the least. Furthermore, the $5 million Dunkin Donuts pays me each year is all mine! Be a big dog and suck it up! You get a free megaphone out of it!
If anything, preschool may do lasting damage to many children. A 2005 analysis by researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, found that kindergartners with 15 or more hours of preschool every week were less motivated and more aggressive in class. Likewise, Canada's C.D. Howe Institute found a higher incidence of anxiety, hyperactivity and poor social skills among kids in Quebec after universal preschool.
"Even the people who did the experiment will tell you that the chances are very, very small that it's right," Carroll said. "They just want people to understand that it's on the table, it's possible. They don't know what's wrong with their experiment. They would like someone else to check it, to duplicate it, to see what might be wrong."
...the Obama administration — let me be candid here — seems clueless, overpopulated as it is by policy nerds, academic overachievers, and tenured functionaries (cf. Larry Summers’ “there is no adult in charge”). They tend to flash Ivy League certificates, but otherwise have little record of achievement in the private sector. Officials seem to think that long ago test scores, a now Neolithic nod from an Ivy League professor, or a past prize translates into knowing what makes America run in places like Idaho and southern Michigan.
“Healthy men should no longer receive a P.S.A. blood test to screen for prostate cancer because the test does not save lives over all and often leads to more tests and treatments that needlessly cause pain, impotence and incontinence in many, a key government health panel has decided,” reports the New York Times. But JunkScience.com was all over this more than 13 years ago.
Our readers have all been educated on the Cloward-Piven strategy. We have an admin in DC which is steeped in Alinsky, Gramsci, and Cloward-Piven. Just add Lenin and you have their Founding Fathers.
...only three economists predicted job gains anywhere near what Obama claimed. And the median forecast was a piddling 288,000 new jobs. Given the $447 billion price tag, that comes to $1.6 million per job.
How often does the MSM call the O out on his habitual lying?
Independents and some Democrats must be joining nearly all Republicans in the recognition of deep dysfunction in the Obama-Reid-Pelosi leadership axis. The lefty pollsters must be telling them that the numbers --weighted correctly and unspun for the MSM-- are collapsing at every level, which is making an already desperate group collectively unhinged.
Let us recall that it was Obama – not McCain – who picked up the most money from the banking, hedge fund, and securities sectors. It was a majority of House Democrats – not Republicans – who voted for TARP. And it was the Democratic financial reform bill – not the GOP’s – that ignored Fannie & Freddie and watered down the Volcker Rule to irrelevance. Tim Geithner's financial bailout plan prompted even John Heilemann (no GOP partisan!) to declare that it was “strikingly favorable to Wall Street.” So, if there was ever a cycle that the charge--“The GOP is a tool of fat cats!”--won’t stick, it is 2012.
Over the long term, however, it’s a different story, and Republicans should pay close attention to what’s happening. The protests on Wall Street this month are only a taste of what will come should the GOP win the White House in 2013.
Not everybody who is complaining was wronged. The We Are the 99 Percent Tumblr includes complaints like this: “My father (multiple PhD’s) lives in his car so that he can do what he loves for a living rather than be a slave to the system.” A Columbia graduate student complained to the Associated Press that she has to eat rice and beans. These are not people who got screwed. These are people who have gainful employment available to them and made follow-your-dreams life choices that reduce their incomes. That’s their prerogative; it’s not anybody else’s problem.
If there is one political theme here at Maggie's, it is distrust of the power and of the wisdom of the state. Especially, the remote governmental powers. We have faith in the ability of the individual citizen to make his own choices and decisions according to his own lights. We do believe in collectivism, of the voluntary sort.
Regarding close-up government, in my town, you can walk into our First Selectman's office (if you bring a Starbucks for her with you) or Second Selectman's office, and chat about anything for a bit. They only work 9-3, so you have to bear that in mind. If somebody else is there too, you all chat together. That works for me. We're a small town.
What if your kid is too skinny? What if she's an early anorectically-minded girl who nibbles on lettuce and is driving you to exasperation? Should that 14 year-old be taken from you while you are charged with felony child-neglect?
I hear all of these stories. Life is full of all sorts of stories. I tend to fall on the freedom side of things. It's messy and things go wrong, but that's the way life is. Freedom to screw up is the closest to utopia we're gonna get.
And, if we are to see government control of medical care, what if I am too fat for their cost statistics? Can they take me away from me?
I am not going to sit it out - Brown has been nudging his constituency as far to the center as they can tolerate in MA. Maybe further. I give him credit for that.
“Barack Obama is a bigger disaster to this country than 9-11. If you took the phrase ‘fair share’ ‘millionaires and billionaires’ and ‘pass this bill’ out of his vocabulary he would be unable to deliver a speech… The American people developed a fighting spirit after 9-11 and we responded back after them. And if allowed to defeat would be total. But, Barack Obama, what he has done to our economy, what he has done to the American spirit of individual responsibility and self-reliance… Killing three thousand people is a tragedy, Sean. It is a real tragedy. But, killing the individualism, the self-reliance, and the self respect of the American people like Barack Obama has done is much more of a tragedy.”
It’s all very odd. Obama is acting as if his approval ratings are in the mid-60s instead of the low 40s. He’s acting as if Republicans fear him instead of Democrats like Senator Claire McCaskill, who no longer want to be seen with him. The president is acting like his agenda is popular rather than radioactive. He’s acting as if the public still cares what he thinks rather than having tuned him out long ago. And he’s acting as if Republicans will feel compelled to justify their opposition to this singularly inept chief executive and his failing presidency.
Obama is once again trying to weave a narrative that is utterly detached from the real world. From time to time my son does the same thing.
If you look at methods alone, there isn't a huge difference between the Wall Street protests and the Tea Party protests. They have very different values, different demands, and different bases of support. But both utilize the First Amendment as a means of making their point.
The Wall Streeters are more rowdy, and as a result have seen quite a bit of police involvement. There have been far fewer arrests at individual Tea Party events. Some of the Wall Street arrests and the overly physical nature of the police are unnecessary. But there is little doubt the Wall Streeters are far more provocative and looking to antagonize the police, given the nature of the agitators involved. We've seen them before. They know the best way to get on TV is to create a scene, and they are good at doing it. Is it a surprise so much of the 'police violence' is being caught on video? They are planning to get this on video by initiating events which will lead to the use of violence, even at moments when the police probably should show more restraint.
So why does Obama view one set of protestors an "expression of frustration", while the other is "misidentifying sort of who the culprits are"? Both are viable protests, seeking to make points and be heard. From that standpoint, both are worthy of having Obama's full attention. But no, one has been formally rejected by the "vast majority" of Americans.
To be clear, there is no reason to prevent either group from gathering, protesting, or speaking. It's unfair to say one is more legitimate than the other. But for our country's leader to recognize one as more valid than the other is absurd. Particularly when the group which he considers more valid has not made its agenda clear, is only advocating a never ending list of grievances without valid solutions, and is provoking violent activity (some of it, but not all, unwarranted) on the part of the police. Tea Partiers, whether you support or oppose them, have tended to gather peacefully and have made their agenda clear. They support smaller government, lower taxes and they oppose crony capitalism. What's interesting is the two groups share that final point. Where they differ is on solutions.
The Tea Party solves crony capitalism by shrinking government and getting it out of the way. The Wall Street protestors don't have a clear solution, but it's clear increasing the role of government is part of their solution. Increasing that role with politicians 'who care'. In other words, people like them.
The Wall Streeters' world is like Orwell's "Animal Farm", where some people are more equal than others. Their solution, unfortunately, is to keep it that way, but change the people who are more equal.
I think that most sane people have spent the past three years of the Obama administration exerting their tolerance because, after all, he is the President. That tolerance has been extended as it would to a toddler trying to figure out how to use a screwdriver, or a teenager who thinks Liquid Wrench is a joke. But President Obama is an adult. He just can't be such a screw-up as he appears. He just can't be such a leftist extremist. By now, believing their eyes, most (as polls attest) are through with shredded tolerance. He's an ossified 60s radical who never grew up or learned anything.
For a time I thought all such talk was cynical politics, offered up to bond with the “rubes” in America who might be convinced that only the liberal pols have their interests at heart. Now I think that in moments of high stress (imagine how one feels as the presidency and historic legacy melt away), the president’s unvarnished beliefs come through. It’s a crude sort of populism fueled by conspiracy theories, the kind you expect on college campuses — or on the streets of lower Manhattan of late.
This is a pol who tells us we should increase the public sector, dictate to the private sector and then excoriate business for trying to maximize profits. (It’s almost like they think that’s their primary obligation, or something.) At one level it is embarrassing that the president of the United States has economic views that approximate those of a dim college freshman. But actually it’s petrifying. For nearly three years this has been the mentality behind an economic vision that has failed miserably. It’s remarkable the economy isn’t in worse shape.
And he wants four more years. One can hardly imagine what he’d do if he got them.
When government pays the health care bills, they can then use that as an excuse to micro-regulate our every behavior. Because it's no longer an individual choice, it effects public costs.
Apparently, most of the protesters are white, middle class kids who somehow got the idea that the world owes them something because they had the remarkable privilege of attending college.
Quite the opposite: they owe us something in return for all they have been indulged. Surber says Occupy Wall Street? Grow up. He lived in a trailer when a young adult. What's wrong with that? Everybody should have to.
I lived in one room over a grocery shop, on beans, macaroni and cheese, cheap beer, and no-brand cigarettes when I got out of college, and I felt independent and happy despite having a go-fer job at a slowly-dying country newspaper, for minimum wage. Boo hoo. It took me 6 years of farting around while broke to make a good plan for my life.
And here's a good idea, children: Go march on Washington - It’s the real author of our woes. Protest Obama! Oh, almost forgot - MoveOn is providing financial support to these losers so they can't protest the government. So why not Evil Big Corporations instead? Yeah, they're the bad guys this time.
As best I can tell, these kids want fun jobs with no heavy lifting - and they also want money - my money. I guess they didn't get the memo that their Obama's economy is not generating jobs and investment. If they had any sense, they'd be out there trying to figure out how to start a business or to make themselves useful to somebody.
I am half-disgusted with myself for giving these spoiled brats any of our precious bandwidth since it's really a media-ginned-up story, but I had to get it off my chest. As a New Yorker, I can report that these people are having essentially zero impact on our vibrant life in Manhattan except when they walk on a bridge and mess up the traffic from Brooklyn. It might get a little more amusing and colorful when the union thugs join the stoners and losers. Perfect together!
Almost forgot one item: the cops are getting good OT for the babysitting. It's good for their incomes, so there is some benefit for the good guys.
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Image stolen from SISU's
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After watching the Occupy Wall Street movement, however, I've come to realize that Maggie's is just another corporate entity keeping me down, and I am being shortchanged by 
Emitters kindly requested to stop breathing. Image via 
Maurice Sendak 
the nature of the agitators involved. We've seen them before. They know the best way to get on TV is to create a scene, and they are good at doing it. Is it a surprise so much of the 'police violence' is being caught on video? They are planning to get this on video by initiating events which will lead to the use of violence, even at moments when the police probably should show more restraint.
Apparently, most of the protesters are white, middle class kids who somehow got the idea that the world owes them something because they had the remarkable privilege of attending college.