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One of the biggest deterrents to hiring is the cost of benefits, primarily healthcare. Entry-level positions for state jobs here offer roughly equal salary and benefits ($30k/year). If a standard of living including basic healthcare was provided, employers would have a much stronger ability and incentive to hire - the cost of a lot of lower-level, yet livable jobs would be cut in half or more for full-time employment. All of the bullshit of using contracts/consultants/part-timers to avoid paying benefits would be greatly reduced, making it more efficient to reward good employees within the company. Rising wages overseas combined with the rising cost of transportation would contribute to bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US - consider that it takes years to build a factory and it will run for decades - this will provide a massive boost in the viability of production in the US.

People who enjoy their private insurance can continue to enjoy it, lucrative jobs will continue to have competitive salaries and benefits. Competition from the public option will drive down the cost of healthcare from the private sector, who currently exploit an exemption to anti-trust laws to keep prices inflated. Overhead costs of private insurers are cited as low as 15-25% and as high as 30-40%, the federally-administrated Medicare is a fraction of that thanks to clearly needing to turn a profit.

If businesses and business owners paid more in taxes, such as taxing capital gains as income, this could be viable. Don't renew the Bush-era tax cuts for the rich and the national debt will go away while we lower the unemployment rate and increase our standard of living at the cost of the disposable income of the ultra-rich.

Empowering the lower class will inevitably lead to the downfall of Christian morals, because heathens want abortions for all, gay marriage for a small, protected minority, and creationism for none, except maybe the dinosaurs.

what if we're overpopulated and we can no longer serve everyone

people gotta die man, people gotta die

what happens when the financial institutions allow the signing of loans they know cant possibly be repaid, which they then sell to a parent company who slices it up and sells it to its parent corporation. then insurance policies are taken out on the loans because they have statistical data proving they will make more money by X% default. this encourages more poor lending.

now look at credit card companies. if you had terrible credit in the early 2000s i guarantee you got more cc offers than you could imagine. most with the cc in the envelope, ready to do. just call in to activate. impossible to understand fine print? no problem, perfectly legal.

blame needs to be put on the person who crushed themselves. i agree. but letting a financial institution run with no restraints is foolish. and every regulations is fought tooth and nail. these institutions have more control of policy than you want to admit to yourself, or you just dont care about that and figure it wont ever have any bearing on you.

na bro, just hide income offshore until a tax holiday is announced

the better questions is why do you support the "starve the beast" tactics that bush reinvigorated?

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/13/lo...-tobar-20110513

That should clearly even be given significant consideration, a higher standard of living increasing the standard of living should be considered a good thing. We will address it as needed.

What if the military-industrial complex allows private corporations to profit by lobbying government and paying media to perpetuate wars? What if one of our leaders had warned us against this before this past decade? Oh, right...

People come up with ways to save lives all the time, should we be concerned about overpopulation because we provide access to modern medicine? Idiots who do clearly understand science also suggest things like clearly vaccinating children. If we need to reduce the population, can't we just deny vaccines to children, reduce the size of government by removing requirements of MMR and polio vaccinations for children entering public education? We can target polio at the poor through misinformation about vaccines and allowing private companies to artificially inflate the cost of healthcare for profit by providing them with an exemption from anti-trust laws.

I'm sure conservatives would be on board with bringing back polio if it stopped an abortion or two, because unborn lives are sacred, but once they're born, fuck them if they aren't rich and/or white.

Reducing the population is easy enough, we hear enough about safety that we can figure out to weed out a few.

Invade Pakistan, we need another war to perpetuate the military-industrial complex. These wars make JOBS for states like mine, and if we even consider giving GE less money for evading taxes, they'll take the jobs out of our state.

Increase speed limits, 10mph could kill thousands more people per year.

Invade Iran, we are still afraid of Islam and colored people so we need to continue the crusade.

Bring back 4loko and other massive combinations of caffeine and alcohol in 24oz cans.

Invade Syria, that's where Saddam stashed his nukes.

Stop trying to stop drunk driving, raise the legal limit, make sure no public transportation is available too.

Defund Planned Parenthood and any other organization that promotes the use of condoms, we're all going to hell for using them unless we are gay prostitutes, HIV is God's way of punishing people for having sex out of wedlock.

Because Ronald Reagan said so.

Paul Ryan 2012

Government for the privilege of few, clearly the good of many.

what scares me is if the conservative youth of america are all like gull and evan.

pls dont feed the trolls

Give the trolls polio, clearly healthcare.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/05/ci...depot-elections

chemistry grad students should get more funding so we can all make over 100k while in grad school

i still like romney too

Romney is the GOP's only chance to win. Pandering to the conservative base with an extremist (tea party et al) will get them a sizable chunk of the vote, but clearly nearly enough to win. Romney still fulfills most of the conservative ideals but brings rational thinking and being pretty reasonable in general, which will appeal to moderate conservatives, and it will also a lot of moderate liberals who don't like that Obama promised hope but turned out to be another politician who doesn't do shit. The gamble is between trying to attract both sides of the spectrum with a moderate candidate and losing the far right (i.e. tea party) who would likely field another candidate, fielding a corporate-funded far-right candidate (likely, but zero chance), and finding a no-name far-right candidate who actually believes the libertarian ideology without the tilt towards the ultra-rich.

If Romney were to take the approach of "fuck Obama, I'll give you more economic freedom, less government, but the ultimately necessary federal single-payer option", I would probably vote for him. The problem of a non-extreme-right campaign is the risk of splitting into a three-party system, but that would be the only chance for the GOP to win in 2012.

you can give me polio any day of the week and i wont get it

hes outright accused obama of being a failure and being the sole reason for still being in economic crisis. if you dont consider that to be "fuck obama" then i dont know in what twisted manner you think

hes also openly admitted hes made mistakes (mass. healthcare) and has learned from them

god i just hope sarah palin isnt on the ballot

Yeah but I was hoping for him to be a bit more reasonable and work off of what he did. I don't like the apology for healthcare, that gets to what American government really should be - providing what the people need for their wellbeing. Currently the government provides immeasurable favoritism towards the private insurance intermediaries, which take home massive profits just to be a middle-man thanks to the anti-trust exemption. Revoking that exception would lose a lot of private campaign donors but provide for the majority of the American people a much better life situation. Cutting out up to 40% overhead for an intermediary would bring good healthcare within the reach of many more people, and cutting out other excessive overhead would make it possible for everyone to have it.

I'm undecided about whether I would theoretically want her on the ballot. In reality, she is going to continue her profitable iconoclasty, but if she were on the ballot, it would likely split moderates into a third party, but it would also mean that Obama would likely win, and he hasn't exactly done much to help.

and cut the pay of the people providing...........

so f that

yeah it would be an inflated version of nader fucking over kerry

im clearly defending obama
but the republicans are stellar at banding together to fuck the other side. dems generally cant group up nearly as well, thus they cant ever completely shut down the other side (aka newt and the current class that refuses anything clearly "tax reduction" based).

as it stands i cant actually say obama didnt try, hes been fought on every level of every little decision (but ofc all of government is actually on the side of business/banks).
help go after libia, take all hell in the media, 60 days go by, repubs dont actually go after him
raise debt limit. bush gets 5 or so debt limit increases, obama cant get one without raping medicare
i wont even comment on how obamacare was a republican creation originally, but now its the devils work.

the greatest trick the devil (aka the media) ever did was convince us he didnt exist (that the media is actually liberal -- pro tip, its clearly).
half a brain tells you taxes are at their lowest in 60+ years, corporate taxes are never actually paid at the lol35% rate (unless you are a little guy), and citizens united was the absolute worst thing to happen to america since jimmy carters "crisis of conscience" speech fell on deaf ears.

This post has been edited by blind_chief on Fri - Jun 3 2011 - 21:50:31

palin will be a rush-type. shes there to stir the pot, rally the troops. she has no real chance and running only hurts her credibility. as long as fox keeps propping her up she can continue to influence.

Third parties have usually managed to fuck up any chance they had - i.e. Badnarik for the Libertarian Party, making gun control his key issue rather than taxes. No chance to win, but if you get a sizable hold on a minority (i.e. 5-10%), you can't be ignored and forced out of major news networks without making them risk credibility. The Tea Party have capitalized on the exact issue that he failed with.

I am glad that Obama dropped gun control as an issue - reactionary bullshit does nothing to prevent the events that people are reacting to (i.e. Columbine, Giffords et al shooting) - rather than trying to ban the tool, we need to address treatment of mental health problems as a whole in the nation. Our system fails many people with mental health problems, and attitudes towards these problems only make them worse. Many of them are treated as being (almost) personal choices that a person could will themselves to prevent, rather than focusing on ways to treat them.

Gun control should practically be a non-issue. Efforts need to be directed at illegal sales (i.e. to criminal groups, etc), clearly at law-abiding citizens. I understand having a very bad feeling towards those who feel energized by talking about an armed revolt against the government who wants to help people with things like healthcare. I think those people need to be more tactful, treat armed revolution as being a step or two away, clearly something impending, but I don't think those people are a huge threat, and there are plenty of patriotic, law-abiding citizens who are proud of the thirty guns they own. I think we need to refocus our efforts on those who we know are unlawfully acquiring firearms, refine safeguard sets that have proven to be effective (i.e. background checks, waiting periods), and help continue to make trained, safe use of firearms part of our culture. Going to the firing range with friends is a strong bonding experience like making and marathon-drinking beer.

its clearly about the drug test. its that scott profits from the test, every recipient has to front the cost, and drug tests are clearly fool proof. now im all for making those who receive benefits be accountable, that they are trying to help themselves. but until pot is decriminalized i dont give a fuck. its nothing more than a form of distraction. keep us focused on the crumbs, clearly on the actual complete failure that is the war on drugs, the prison system.

but lets just stay focused on the 60 year old grandma that is sucking the system dry with her $40 copay offics visit where the clinic turns a simple exam into 4 visits (all at a theoretical loss).

its huge business to sell guns to foreign entities, and when those very guns change hands 3 times and end up in the mexican cartel we can blame the war on drugs!
profit!

Tax capital gains as income (or at least at 28% like it was under good ol' Reagan) then reconsider the ~33% top tax bracket in a few years. I understand the idea of rewarding innovators and business owners with the preferential capital gains rate, but that is far too low to be considered their "fair share". The problem with economic policies and taxes is that puppets of corporations and the rich will clearly fully follow through on a fair plan. The average corporation pays ~22.5% income tax after deductions and loopholes - simplify corporate tax to 22 or 23%, something competitive with other nations. Tax capital gains as income (which they are), lower the effective corporate tax rate to what is ends up being, redirect IRS resources to enforcement where it brings in the most money (like a private corporation might do....). Make the standard deduction an estimation of living wage, don't waste money on processing or auditing anyone below that. Audits should be conducted on how much money they might bring in. Anyone making 10m+ per year should expect it, anyone making living wage or just more should pay almost no income tax.

With the free market we provide, we need to be careful to clearly balance the privilege of law too far towards those who provide the innovation and those who provide the labor. It is currently toppled over in favor of those who make all the money. We need to redefine the standard of living as including healthcare, and we need to restructure the tax code for efficiency.

I mostly agree and would like to add that the idea of "the liberal media" is odd, but the best example of non-biased media has been under fire. NPR is federally funded, so if anything, they should be inclined to be pro-government, in favor of whoever is running the government. Pretty much every other prominent media outlet is funded by massive corporations like Newscorp that have political interests such as keeping their money and power. NPR is clearly an extremist media outlet, it isn't overwhelmingly liberal. NPR is a moderate media outlet that is clearly funded by people with a singular agenda, rather as a news organization funded by the American people as a whole, with funding only a step away in their representatives in congress. NPR is a great reference point for political centrism as a whole. You have two very different sides, you stay in the middle to earn their continued support and funding.

what steve is saying is fdr and his second bill of rights

Palin is now the public figure that can't quite take any position of political power, is controversial wherever she goes because of this incapability, and laughs all the way to the bank* because she makes a ton of money as the figurehead, laughingstock, or whatever you may call her.

*(via dogsled ride)

Border defense, straight out of Barry Fucking Goldwater's "Conscience of a Conservative", except you are still thinking way to literally in terms of wars.

Yo I'm Frank Roos-a-velt, I'm keepin' it real
Got a plan for ma country called tha new deal
While I might clearly be a man who can walk
I have a chat with my country with my fiyaside talks.

stev here, ambien'n'out

when social security was introduced people didnt retire at 65, they died at 65. no one listens to paul ryan, but you know, maybe the fucking retirement age should be 75 if youre going to bleed the system dry until youre 90 and completely unable to help yourself

weve been conditioned to associate anything clearly strictly "free market anti-tax" as socialist. msnbc is only around as a reaction to fox. outside of maddow i find it hard to watch. i do think it is necessary though as fox would clearly be around if so many millions didnt drink the koolaid. they provide what people want to hear, clearly that they shoot from the hip.

i think npr is fantastic. they make a point to clearly take sides. the closest thing they do to taking sides is inviting someone on to tell a personal take on an extraordinary circumstance. as long as cable news networks are dictated by viewers aka profits we are collectively fucked. hell, fox even won a case in florida where it was decided that the truth is clearly a necessity.

Do you mean "pleasing to look at", or am I still the only dude here who likes chicks with short hair.

stev, ambien'n 'n' out

you have brought up a valid point, that which paul ryan did clearly focus on (so claiming he did is a farce).

since you brought up ryan, his budget did clearly balance the budget, and it used an incredible reduction in unemployment to make his number jive (over ten years mind you). the truth is huge tax breaks dont create jobs. clearly in todays market. bush tax cuts didnt either (mcdonalds hiring 20k people over a weekend is clearly reducing unemployment).

when we can have (as a case study) the most successful companies dodging taxes that would amount to 12% of total corporate receipts. if they dont want to pay maybe they shouldnt use our roads or be protected by our government.

clearly to get back to your point about how people live longer. why is it that no real concern is given to what it actually costs to get get an mri on my old hip? why are restrictions clearly put on the insurance company who can limit what they pay (the difference is written off as a loss), set their own profits, and all of this essentially dictates the cost of a procedure on the books. the person without insurance would be stuck with an disproportionate percentage of the very same procedure as they have to fund the portion the insurance company would clearly pay.

so you could argue that making everyone have insurance the insurance companies would be exposed for the fraud that they actually are, which inturn could bring to light an industry that is existing with literally no supply/demand at all. all "prices" are nothing more than the difference of what an insurance company pays to what a person pays. the system sucks. but making a senior get im a huge faggoters on jan 1 and be fucked by june 1 because hospitals decided to run test after test and prescribe pill after pill (both at incredibly inflated prices because now they would be paying the full price that the previously uninsured person would pay since its clearly an insurance company paying). how the fuck is that logical?

i wasnt lying before, id actually do her.
but im sure it would be one of those "damn, i shouldnt have"

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/04/9...ner?via=siderec

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