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(pictured: America's first socialist president)
As we get closer to election day, wingnuts are increasingly obsessed with the idea that an Obama administration will turn the US into Denmark.
Some loon screamed "socialist!" at Obama over the weekend, Sarah Palin called Obama's tax proposals "socialist" and the Anchor Baby just compared progressive taxation with brutal African juntas.
In a normal year, this would merely be annoying -- an expected barb to be tossed at any Democratic candidate from the right. But the Bush administration just nationalized our financial system. Is there a bigger socialist on the planet right now than George W. Bush?
Also, the mind-numbing historical ignorance of these people never ceases to astonish.
McSame, their nominee, says he's a Teddy Roosevelt Republican. Does he mean the Teddy Roosevelt who was a big believer in spreading the wealth around?
As a matter of personal conviction, and without pretending to discuss the details or formulate the system, I feel that we shall ultimately have to consider the adoption of some such scheme as that of a progressive tax on all fortunes...
And:
The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the State, because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.
And:
The inheritance tax . . . is both a far better method of taxation, and far more important for the purpose of having the fortunes of the country bear in proportion to their increase in size a corresponding increase and burden of taxation.
Why does John McCain idolize a socialist?
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What the heck is wrong with socialism? It has been good enough to bail out capitalism (a la 700 billion). Give me a break, it’s only socialism or ‘welfare’ if it doesn’t benfit the republicans. They are more transparant than cheap toilet peper
Did you send the reminder to McNoBrain? I am pretty sure he has forgotten.
benefit…harumpf my education dollars have been well spent
These people wouldn’t know a socialist if one put a foot up their ass. Ask any of them what socialism is and what you get is some screed from the early 20th century when Lenin and Trotsky scared the hell out of the industrialized world.
(bows) Konnichiwa, Wobbs
transparent…oy
If you’re not rich, you’re not worthy, doncha know?
(((SD)))
bom dia
1,801DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen Blue Texan and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:
I am a lot less worried about whether er not the fascists know what “socialism” is than the calculated and orchestrated efforts to incite mob action and foment violence at public rallies. The fact that fascist thugs are now planted in Obama rallies not jest to hurl nasties but to encourage physical confrontations that will appear as nasty mob reaction on national TV is our last warning …the Democrats and the Obama campaign are gunna hafta come up with some very creative methods to expose these things and get the bastards their 15 minutes of fame in the local courthouse.
Make no mistake, the fascists have jest begun and even if they lose the election they will have legitimized the tactics and poisoned the well of political democracy further…this is why there must be truth and reconcilliation PROSECUTIONS after the election for all things criminal from torture to treason and including election fraud and voter suppression.
KEEP THE FAITH, FASCISM WON’T GO AWAY BY ITSELF IT MUST BE IRRADICATED ROOT AND BRANCH!!
Of COURSE they know what “socialism” is. It’s an epithet, like “liberal,” that you shout at someone you don’t like! I hear those words used to have other meanings in the past, but those are archaic, like ‘democracy,’ and ‘representative government.’
True dat.
I still think that there are a lot of rethugs buying “federal” flood insurance, How capitalistic is federal flood insurance?
They rationalize that because they think the gubmint should protect their McMansions.
true
And rebuilt their front porches after Katrina.
TR’s National Parks = socialist.
Recently we have only had socialism for the wealthy. Kuchinch is on it. Love that guy.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/....._1019.html
Union?
Common defense?
General welfare?
And not one word about pulling one’s self up by one’s bootstraps.
Founding Socialists, that what they were.
a fine Texas Good Afternoon to ya Blue Texan
o/t
needing help with my first diary. figured out the paragraph thing already but now I need help with the “more break” function. There is a break where I don’t want a break and no matter how many times I delete it in the body text box, it keeps popping up like some tired gooper meme.
anyone ? thanks. :D
Good afternoon, pups. I was away from the net for the weekend and missed the action.
Great post, BT. If socialism was good enough for TR….
Michelle Obama is coming here to Gainesville Wednesday. I can’t wait!
It did the same thing to me. It will not appear when you publish. I think it’s for the break where you get “read the rest of this entry.”
LUCKY!!!!!
Alex Jones movie about.
http://video.google.com/videop.....3600562261
This is apropriate
http://www.scholarsandrogues.c.....#more-4796
Obama was in Tampa this morning. All I’ve seen is a 2 paragraph story on the Rethug St Pete Times website.
Thank you - that makes sense. and now I’ll trip for another 90 minutes about that -lol !
Tampa gets all the luck. World Series and Barack.
OT: Blue, did you check the content of the Dallas Morning News endorsement of McCain? I was so sorry they went that way. I had thought that had come out of the worst of its old days, so I had hoped for better. Anyway, I wrote a LTE back just b/c I am so irked. Then, I wondered if you had checked the content: even comments on the Mc temperament, etc., but went that way regardless. At least Houston went with Obama. (Sorry to digress ;))
How good do Americans feel about police and firefighters in this country? Guess what, they’re socialist institutions. The state (local government) provides them as an unbiased service for the good of all. We used to have private firefighting in this country, and if you did not display the right fire medallion in your window when your house was on fire it would be left to burn to the ground. Disastrously large fires in Chicago and Boston put an end to that nonsensical approach, and state-run firefighting became the norm.
Although, with the fires in LA last year, the pay-for-protection scheme was back in full force, with paid firefighters passing burning houses in order to get to one they were paid to protect.
But now we have Blackwater
I was about to go crazy tryin’ to delete that tag. You’re right. It was like Ronnie the Loonie RayGuns poppin’ back up every time I whacked ‘im.
I wonder if my boss is gonna offer me a ticket.
Bush, McCain, Cheney et al are not socialists. They are fascists.
Speaking of bosses, it’s back to the salt mine.
Be good to yourselves, and all other living things.
Namaste
Rather than “Let them eat cake”, Let them burn down.
Latest polls have Obama up by 19% in Virginia.
Apparently calling Northern Virginia a pack of un-American communists isn’t a winning strategy for the McLiar/Palin camp.
By the way, Obama verbally smacked Sarah Palin right in the mooselips. That’s gonna get the GOP-ers screaming and will push Palin over the edge. Thus inducing more shrilltastic goodness from Our Lady of the Snow Machines.
-G
Only to be expected. They have even less idea what a terrorist is. Obama “might be a terrorist”. Really?
Ooops! 10%, NOT 19%.
-G
In a nutshell. That’s disturbing.
There is less to Alex Jones than meets the eye. His recent racist rants against Obama proves he is just as much a neo-con as his friend Jerome Corsi.
Ok guys, if socialism and/or ‘Progressive tax’ is the best way to get America prosperous again, why not really get progressive and tax the super-rich at 80-90%? For example, say Bill Gates is worth 100 billion…tax him at 90% still leaves him with 10 Billion. What do you think the fall out from this will be?
Doing this, do you think your lives are going to be any different or better? You may get some health care, and probably a low pension working for some government entity, but that will be about it. Ingenuity and personal accomplishment will be a thing of the past and we will all simply be drones living a meager existence.
Things will not get better until people get off their butts and do something to make things better for themselves. The people that cannot take care of themselves, we can take care of……everyone else must take control of their lives. The government will not make it better, it will only make it worse.
BTW: to those of you that think your making a connection b/t Bush and socialism, I tend to agree with you. The bailout package was a horrible idea and probably will not work. It makes us conservatives sick that anything like this was even proposed by a ‘so-called’ republican.
I think it is funny that Alaska is the most socialistic state. Taxing the oil companies and distributing the money to the populace.
Do Conservatives Know What Socialism Is?
No.
(Can’t believe we got through forty comments without a “simple answers to simple questions! ;-)
Give us a peek: What did he say about Ms Moose?
what happened? smacked inthe mooselips? I didn’t want to laugh but that was funny *g*
thank you. for Palin of all people to even part her lips to say anything on the subject is laughable
It was a few years ago, but I can’t remember who said that we’d know the War on Terror was a failure when our government started using the word “terroris” to describe anyone they’re fighting against. The McCain campaign, apparently, is just extending this principle.
Hello KrisAinCA!!
OT
OK, did some posts on ES entry on Powell endorsement…maybe I was wrong:
I figured well worded endorsement, if it sways people great. But serious problems with Powell - but then endorse or not he could still be investigated. I also did not figure it would sway Obama:
Obama: Powell Will Have A Role In My Administration
(HuffPo)
mebbe ’cause all the socialmalist education and healthcare benefits provided him as a Navy pilot and congresscritter ???
we all know why. it’s a sideways invocation of Reagan. it’s all about the “carry a big stick” part. they simply aren’t used to being questioned on this.
Eli upstairs
Kurt, you could make your case better if you got your facts straight (as conservativse unfortunately rarely do). Gates’s fortune is $80 to $90 billion, not his income, which is what the income tax is all about. As to 90 percent income tax rates on the very rich, they were in force down to the mid 1960s, and we had pretty good growth without a ‘rich man’s strike.’ When the rates were drastically lowered under Reagan, growth slowed; when they were really lowered under Bush-II, it virtually ceased.
Countries with highly progressive tax systems tend to do better than the United States. Sad but true. I don’t suppose facts matter, though, if you are a true believer. As my econometrics teacher Marc Nerlove used to say of Bayseian estimators, if your prior is 100 percent, no amount of ex post evidence is going to affect your evaluation of the outcome.
From TPM:
Obama, speaking a short time ago on McCain’s sleazy robocalls:
“You really have to work hard to violate Governor Palin’s standards on negative campaigning.”
-G
heh
These people would not know a socalist from a communist from a marxist if a red robed cossack danced a barynya on thier heads.
From William Jennings Bryan:
Socialism is the gays and the blacks and the illegals takin’ our hard earned money to spend on tire rims and menthols and gay weddin’s and supportin’ the Muslims and the terrists in order to ruin our way of life of God and apple pie and wimmin being at home takin’ care of the children and Hollywood promoting their porn and rap and ghetto ways into our lives and taki’ our jobs and givin’ ‘em away to Mexicans so they can help Castro and Chavez and that Iran guy who are helpin’ the Russians return to communism and destroy our military through spending cuts.
-Joe the Moran
Thanks BT.
That is why I stated “For Example”, I was not stating a fact.
Looking at a couple ‘Progressive taxers’ canada & france, Canada has virtually no growth to speak of, and france is near collapse from all the ‘progressive taxing’ it has been doing of its citizens.
Taxes has never in history helped a country produce more and never will. By its very nature it limits growth.
BTW: Obama wants to put the death tax back in place which technically would hit the Gates fortune.
Huh?
I believe that Mr & Mrs Gates have already taken care of that themselves. My understanding is they’ve established a trust for their children @ $10M each with the remainder of the billions going to the Gates Foundation.
They, like Warren Buffett, understand that there is a reason the fortune needs to be given back to others and that if their children can’t make it on $10M, they deserve to be treated like idiots.
And for the record, Obama needs do nothing as the estate tax provisions passed in the early part of the Bush Admin always had a sunset provision that they would expire and go back to the previous levels along about 2010 or 2011.
Another thing that came to mind…Do you all think the “rich” are going to sit there and allow their taxes to be increased? Not that I am rich or anything, but I can certainly tell you that the rich did not get that way by letting some over-zealous politician tell them they can’t keep what they earned. They are going to hide their assets in trusts and other loop-holes. As Obama will not want to cut his social spending, he will need to go to the one place that cannot afford to hide their wealth..the middle class. This is where the Joe-The-Plummer’s of the world are going to get hammered
hmmm…. sughest you look at the following data:
Historical Tax Rates
Yay!
The poll tested “death tax” line!
-G
The relationship between the principal banks currently on the public dole goes way back as well. They’ve been making their living as primary dearers of in governments — the Treasury business — for donkey years. That’s exactly how long they been on the government dole.
…dealers…
And Buffett made very clear value statesments about wanting to leave his kids enough to live on, have opportunities and not so much that they wouldn’t need to work…something very near that, not exact.
That’s fine, but you miss my point. The government should not be allowed to do this, nor should it be given the power. Also if Buffet believes so stongly in this (keep in mind he just dumped 5 billion in GE), why hasn’t he just done this, that being spread more of his wealth around? He could have given his entire fortune to the government, and the government would have taken it with open arms. Heck he could have written me a check
They did this during WWII. We’re in two wars. So I’d say why not?
Warren Buffett’s annual gift to Gates foundation was $1.88B this year
Why does McCain idealize someone who apparently disagrees with his current views? Because his staff forgot to clue him in to the need to actually know what he is talking about.
I’m thinking that this quote ought to be talking-point repeated relentlessly to our “base” until it begins to have an impact. Not for the purposes of class war, but rather just to remind us all that there is a damn good reason for progressive taxation. Can you say, “social cohesion”?
I don’t like the idea of socialism. It’s too much power in the hands of a few who aren’t particularly great at running businesses.
I see the progressive tax as a necessity AT TIMES since the rich have taken so much of the country’s wealth and held down the working middle class and poor to the point where they simply can’t afford to pay more taxes. They’re on the edge of collapse as it is. That’s why Obama-Biden propose some tax cuts.
Whether 90% or 29.32% is better is merely an observation and calculation of the outcomes and not an ideological issue. All taxation redistributes wealth in one way or another. Blue states subsidize red states and I don’t hear Republicans complaining about that!
The fallout from a highly progressive tax system with a big high-end rate would depend upon whether it worked to get the country moving. It would be a lot less defensible if the economy worked better for everyone.
It’s been argued that for national defense we should spend about every penny in the country on bombs, airplanes, tanks and such. Would you not do the same if the country were about to implode financially? Wouldn’t our national security be in jeopardy the same way (presuming we had wolves at the door who might take advantage)?
I suppose you oppose to having a public fire department too.
If Republicans really believed in their own abilities to succeed without any public help they’d stay off the sidewalks & roads and never call the police or go to a library or attend public schools. Instead they’d move to the wilds of Alaska or somesuch and stay free of government and the oppression of help from other Americans. Nuts.
Historians would guffaw loudly at the idea that McCain is anything like his supposed hero, Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was probably the most “progressive” President (and perhaps ever elected to public office ANYWHERE) to his time. He was called a “Communist” in his day by the laissez-faire ideologues, but he declaimed socialism. He called his model “The Square Deal”…which allowed both wealth, but the capability of all people to obtain it.
He assumed the Presidency after William McKinley is shot by an assasin, at a time when anarchist attacks and communist and socialist protests and recruitment were increasing. The fear was that the economic system was rapidly becoming fractionalized and stagnant, especially for the poor laboring working classes. This could lead to revolution without reform. Thus the “progressives” who actually emerged out of several different parties began to take on the corrupt leadership. Roosevelt was one that represented the Republican party.
Almost immediately after taking office Roosevelt invoked the Sherman Anti-Trust Act against the
Northern Securities Company. He encouraged Congress to pass the Expedition Act to facilitate antitrust prosecution. Beef and Oil Trusts were dismantled. Standard Oil indicted on antitrust charges. Hepburn Rate Act
A Department of Commerce was created to regulate foreign trade. He created the term “muckraker” to refer to those writers who brought forth social ills and then acted to alleviate the issues exposed by them. After Upton Sinclair published The Jungle Roosevelt advocated passage of the Food and Drugs Act and Meat Inspection Act.
He fostered the first workers protection laws-Employer’s Liability Act. He wrote “Conservation of Womanhood and Childhood”, the precursor for national legislation protecting women’s labor rights and proscribing child labor. An advocate throughout his presidency of the progressive income tax resulted in the 16th Amendment, previously declared Unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
Roosevelt saw that labor unrest could only be resolved by negotiations between representative unions and management. He compelled the settlement of a crippling coal strike, not be federalizing troops…but by forcing the parties into a collective bargaining session. The Roosevelt Foundation for Industrial Peace was created.
TR sent Victor Metcalf, the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, to California to diffuse the racial tension prompted by the San Francisco School Board’s decision to segregate Japanese students…negotiating with leaders on both sides. And after decades of racist immigration laws, he instituted the Basic Naturalization Act enacted into law framing the rules for naturalization in effect today. This resulted in a massive in-pouring of new immigrants, and their eventual naturalization as citizens…648,743 in 1902 and more than 800,000 in 1903.
TR was an environmentalist and conservationist. He signed the U.S. Antiquities Act which protects not only Native American sites from destruction, but also protects artifacts. Rather than seeing lands as acreage to be exploited for commercial gain he created the National Parks, and National Forestry Departments. He created dozens of national parks and monuments such as Crater Lake NP, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Wind Cave, Sully Hill Grand Canyon, Platt, Mesa, Devil’s Tower, El Morro NM, Chaco Canyon NM, Petrified Forest NM, Montezuma Castle NM, Cinder Cone NM, Lassen Peak NM, Gila Cliff NM, Tonto NM, the Pinnacles NM, Jewel Cave NM, Natural Bridges NM, Lewis & Clark Cavern NM, Tumacacori NM, Wheeler NM, and Mount Olympus NM.
TR won a Nobel Prize for his efforts in negotiating peaceful resolutions to several world conflicts, and engaged in diplomacy with several “enemies” of the United States (including Muslim “terrorists”), while at the same time enunciating strongly the positions of the United States. While not an isolationist by any means (he was more than willing to intervene in other nations in a number of occasions), he did have tangible programs to attempt to extricate the US from Cuba and the Philippines after the US occupied them.
He believed that the use of public expenditures for what he believed the common good. His support for the Panama Canal was the “Space Program” of its time: a massive use of tax-money and bonds to build a colossal technological leviathan. Nothing like it had ever been attempted before.
So TR was quite a “regulator”, “taxer”, environmentalist, and believed in the use Federal power (rather than the private sector) to undertake massive social projects. He was pro-union. Pro-woman. Pro-education.
John McCain…you are no TR!
I am not even sure where to start with this.
1) If you tax people, as seen in my example, do you honestly think they are going to sit there and allow the government to do that? What will the fall out be? By some of the comments I’m seeing, you honestly seem to think taxes will get the country moving in a positive direction again. Man this is scary, that rate of taxation will cause most of those people to head for the hills and horde their money. What do you think will happen to the jobs those people create?
An absolute fact: The government does not make wealth be it for the guy making $30k, or the guy making $300k. The government only takes wealth, that’s all it can do
Dakine01: That is a tax write-off for him. What I meant was him writing that extra little check the uncle sam. I can bet that he has never, or will never do that.
MarkH, concerning your statement about Fire Departments, I would say most of us can agree we all need to have the government do some basic things…IE infrastructure - including fire department, Defense, and taking care of those that cannot take care of themselves (IE Handicapped). Your example was a bit ridiculous and exaggerated.