Political discussion thread

timothy leary wrote: Ambient Hurricanes wrote: Slartibartfast wrote: If you are subject to your taxes going up,when you file in 2014 it won't mean a damn thing until then.  If you are dependent on EUC, you get shoved off the cliff and won't be able to even scrape by. Erm...income tax?  It gets taken right out of your paycheck.  Sales tax? Some think that going  off the fiscal cliff will actually be good, in the long run, for the economy.  Unfortunately, in my opinion, any long term benefit of the fiscal cliff will be negated because the government will just try to reverse the damage and kick the can down the road again instead of really making the structural changes the the fiscal cliff is supposed to demand. Anyway...it's going to screw up the economy.  But we'll survive.  It's not like we've never had a recession before.  I'm still thankful to live in the most affluent nation in the world, where poor people live like rich ones even during recessions, compared to the millions of suffering people in other nations around the world.  When you think about it from that perspective, the fiscal cliff doesn't seem so frightening. So I am ridiculous and he never said it. Oh that isn't what he meant. Quote, do you know what that means?

I clarified what I meant more than once.  It's painfully obvious to anyone who reads this post that I'm being thankful to live in America, not trying to trivialize the hardships of anyone who struggles in America.  Unless you want to have an actual conversation about this instead of falsely accusing me of the same thing over and over again, I'm through discussing this with you.

where poor people live like rich ones even during recessions, 

 A 24-year-old Los Angeles area man accused of setting a homeless woman on fire as she slept on a bus stop bench was charged on Monday with attempted murder and aggravated mayhem.

Prosecutors say Dennis Petillo doused the 67-year-old woman with a flammable liquid as she slept on a bench in the Los Angeles section of Van Nuys in the early morning hours of December 27 and then set her on fire.

This is a growing problem in America. The homeless are in no way rich. Yes, she is getting free medical. She is in the hospital in critical condition. 

It is kinda great this battle keeps happening because the Bush tax cuts had that 10 year sunset provision. All because they wanted to cut those sweet taxes without cutting spending, as would've been required under PAYGO. Silly GOP and your fiscal irresponsibility!

dtguitarfan wrote: Ambient Hurricanes wrote: dtguitarfan wrote:  put a link in originally, and it never showed up.  I've been having problems trying to post in the forum with Firefox lately.  Like, I'll click into the message box, and it won't let me type.  Anyone else have this issue? What version of Firefox are you using? It's version 17.0.1 I saw this article, and my thought, after reading the reactions to the President's speech, was: Oh, poow wittew obstwuctionists - did the bad man huwt your wittew feewings?

From the article:

"In the House, GOP sources said earlier Monday that there's little practical difference in settling the issue Monday night versus Tuesday. But if tax-averse House Republicans approve the bill on Tuesday -- when taxes have technically gone up -- they can argue they've voted for a tax cut to bring rates back down, even after just a few hours, GOP sources said. That could bring some more Republicans on board, one source said."



This whole fiscal cliff debate epitomizes everything that is wrong with Washington.  Republicans more concerned about their silly little reputations than the good of the country; Democrats unwilling to do anything at all to entitlements even though the Republicans agreed to compromise on tax increases. 

"Put not your trust in princes,
    in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.
⁴ When his breath departs, he returns to the earth;
    on that very day his plans perish."

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: This whole fiscal cliff debate epitomizes everything that is wrong with Washington.  Republicans more concerned about their silly little reputations than the good of the country; Democrats unwilling to do anything at all to entitlements even though the Republicans agreed to compromise on tax increases.

That's just the thing, though - I've been following this story all month, and from what I've gathered the Democrats HAVE negotiated.  They HAVE given in on a number of issues.  To the point that a lot of Dems/Liberals have expressed anger that they have given too much.  And yet the Republicans in congress can't come to an agreement!  They have become so extreme, so idealistic, that even though they are getting blame for this (according to Gallup polls and such), they simply will not budge.  In their fantasy world you can fix this problem with nothing but cuts to programs that actually help society (but no cuts to our ridiculously enormous military that's bigger than the next 10 biggest countries', mind you) and we MUST MUST MUST protect those rich people!  We must offer them up sacrifices to show our devotion so that they will trickle down their blessings upon our economy!
Indeed:

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: dtguitarfan wrote: Ambient Hurricanes wrote: This whole fiscal cliff debate epitomizes everything that is wrong with Washington.  Republicans more concerned about their silly little reputations than the good of the country; Democrats unwilling to do anything at all to entitlements even though the Republicans agreed to compromise on tax increases.  That's just the thing, though - I've been following this story all month, and from what I've gathered the Democrats HAVE negotiated.  They HAVE given in on a number of issues.  To the point that a lot of Dems/Liberals have expressed anger that they have given too much.  And yet the Republicans in congress can't come to an agreement!  They have become so extreme, so idealistic, that even though they are getting blame for this (according to Gallup polls and such), they simply will not budge.  In their fantasy world you can fix this problem with nothing but cuts to programs that actually help society (but no cuts to our ridiculously enormous military that's bigger than the next 10 biggest countries', mind you) and we MUST MUST MUST protect those rich people!  We must offer them up sacrifices to show our devotion so that they will trickle down their blessings upon our economy! Indeed: Both sides negotiated on many issues, but each side had their big one: for the Republicans, it was "don't raise taxes on the rich!" and for the Democrats, it was "don't touch entitlements!"  Regardless of which side you agree with, it's a fact that Republicans compromised on tax increases, and Democrats did not compromise on entitlements.  I'm not trying to shove all of the blame on the Democrats for this; there were many other factors in negotiations, and both sides acted immaturely and selfishly.  But it's unfair to pin the blame on Republicans too, because, in the biggest issues in the debate, they compromised and Democrats didn't. Vote 'em all out, I say!

I think the only reason there was no "compromise" on entitlements is that there was no time - they have merely delayed the decision on entitlements.  They've "kicked the can down the road", as people are often fond of saying.  Obama DID include cuts to entitlements in his various proposals that he put in front of Boehner, but he was too idealistic to accept anything Obama put in front of him, and then tried to put a silly bill he new Obama would veto in front of him, which wasn't even accepted by his own party!  It was foolish of him to think that bill would've passed, considering that not only did he NOT get a majority of the Republicans to vote for it, but it never even went to the Democrats in the house, so it surely would not have passed!  All he succeeded in doing was making himself look stupid and wasting Americans' time.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that they are merely delaying a bunch of the automatic spending cuts. So if no new deal is reached before the new deadline, cuts will happen.

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: dtguitarfan wrote: Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that they are merely delaying a bunch of the automatic spending cuts. So if no new deal is reached before the new deadline, cuts will happen. Here's the summary of the deal from Forbes.  It doesn't sound to me like they're just delaying cuts.  But even if they were, that's what they've been doing for a long time.  Have any cuts been put into effect?  Nope.

FTA:
"Which brings us to the sequester—the harsh cuts to the federal budget scheduled to go into effect today. Per the agreement, the cuts have been delayed for two months, with the obvious intent of taking up these cuts as a part of our next fiscal fiasco —the debt ceiling debates coming in February to a Congress near you."

That sounds to me like the cuts are still on, just with a new date.