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Originally Posted by sprocket
Host, I still don't really get the connections here... Any of the other candidates are going to improve the situation how exactly? If you subscribe to the philosophy of using income tax to equalize incomes, than I could see your point. I dont. From what I know of most of the other candidates, they will do nothing but increase income disparity, with continued spending and borrowing, driving up the inflation tax. (national health care? are you kidding me... nice idea.. no money).
Ron Paul doesn't want to abolish all regulation for the benefit of the super-rich. Its to give the states back their power to regulate. This will obviously create some competition between the states, but states will be free to experiment with new policy (drug policy would be a good example). As other states see what works and what doesn't, they refine and improve on what others have done. We all benefit.
In this scenario, each individual, including the poor, have a much bigger impact over the policies, regulations, and taxes in their locality.
Its not unleashing the reigns on big business so they have free for all on the unsuspecting public. Its giving the small fish a much smaller pond.
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...and Ustwo....the dark comedy....the farce...of a huge number of "have nots"....the vast bulk of us....engaging in violent revolution against the idea of a populist government....risking our lives to "achieve"...via revolution.... an indifferent, "every man for himself", libertarian ideal....is too ridiculous to contemplate....where do you obtain such delusional ideas?
...and sprocket, there is no peaceful, practical way to reverse wealth concentration.... <h3>(wealth buys political influence, negating the potenital of the populist voting superiority, if the people let themselves be fooled),</h3> ....other than by a progressive income tax. We achieved a strong middle class through two changes.....high progressive taxation....the momentum...choked off in 1946....
...of strong, government protected unionism....union organzing. 1946 brought the "states rights" "Right to Work" "reform"....of Taft-Hartly.
If I'm wrong, why has Bush, winger "think tanks", and maggots like the John Olin foundation, spent so much money and political effort to bring down the labor supporting, NLRB?
Your politics, and Ron Pauls.....sprocket, have "it"...exactly backwards. You want to divide federal power of oversight and regulation....and distribute it "among the states".....that is a "divide and conquer" strategy that has not gone away since the populist progress in reaction to the Great Depression of the 1930's.....there is only one way to attempt to restore the US middle class, and John Edwards....however feebly...is the only candidate to even address it.....
We've lived through "States Rights" politics....it's a much harder political atmosphere to reform, than the current one. "Reform", as in populist...people prioritized change...the opposite of what Ron Paul's presidency would bring.
"States Rights"....aside from permitting segregation to be the local law until 1969, in Georgia schools, brought us the Union busting, "Right to Work"....which pitted the northern, closed shop states, against sunbelt states. North Carolina's state mandated "Right to Work", provided anincentive for manufacturers to leave northern states, and set up shop in a southern state with much lower wages and a workforce that was not union represented, and would do what it was told. Those manufacturers moved on to still lower wage Mexico, and from there....to Asia:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law
Right-to-work laws are statutes enforced in twenty-two U.S. States, allowed under provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act, which prohibit trade unions from making membership or payment of dues or "fees" a condition of employment, either before or after hire.
The Taft-Hartley Act
Prior to the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act by Congress over President Harry S. Truman's veto in 1947, unions and employers covered by the National Labor Relations Act could lawfully agree to a "closed shop," in which employees at unionized workplaces are required to be members of the union as a condition of employment. Under the law in effect before the Taft-Hartley amendments, an employee who ceased being a member of the union for whatever reason, from failure to pay dues to expulsion from the union as an internal disciplinary punishment, could also be fired even if the employee did not violate any of the employer's rules.
The Taft-Hartley Act outlaws the "closed shop." The Act, however, permits employers and unions to operate under a "union shop" rule, which requires all new employees to join the union after a minimum period after their hire. Under "union shop" rules, employers are obliged to fire any employees who have avoided paying membership dues necessary to maintain membership in the union; however, the union cannot demand that the employer discharge an employee who has been expelled from membership for any other reason.
A similar arrangement to the “union shop” is the “agency shop,” under which employees must pay the equivalent of union dues, but need not formally join such union.
Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act goes further and authorizes individual states (but not local governments, such as cities or counties) to outlaw the union shop and agency shop for employees working in their jurisdictions. Under the "open shop" rule, an employee cannot be compelled to join or pay the equivalent of dues to a union, nor can the employee be fired if he or she joins the union. In other words, the employee has the right to work, regardless of whether he or she is member or financial contributor to such union.
The Federal Government operates under "open shop" rules nationwide, although many of its employees are represented by unions. Conversely, professional sports leagues (regardless of where a team is located) operate under "union shop" rules.
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<h3>North Carolina, a "Right to Work" state, described today:</h3>
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http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...64&postcount=8
More WNC families depend on food stamps
by Leslie Boyd, STAFF WRITER
published December 24, 2005 6:00 am
....The number of working families receiving food stamps in Buncombe County has risen by nearly 40 percent since 2002. [Buncombe County contains the relatively prosperous and higher growth, Asheville, NC metro area...]
Even with the numbers so high — 362,579 of the 1.1 million families in North Carolina used assistance as of September, state Department of Health and Human Services records show — officials estimate only about 65 percent of people who are eligible actually are receiving food stamps.......
........Rhodes cited a 2005 study by the N.C. Budget & Tax Center of the N.C. Justice Center, “Failing Jobs, Falling Wages: The 2005 North Carolina Living Income Standard.”
The center calculated what families pay in seven categories: food, housing, health care, child care, transportation, taxes and miscellaneous items. It does not include money for extras such as entertainment, cell phone or cable television service, debt payments or meals out of the home. On average, its calculations show, North Carolinians need to earn 231 percent of the federal poverty level to meet expenses.
For a family of four, the federal poverty level is $19,350. To be eligible for food stamps, a family can earn no more than 130 percent of that. The Budget & Tax Center report calculates that on average, a family of two parents and two children in North Carolina needs to earn just under $45,000, what it calls a Living Income Standard. Nearly half of the 1.1 million families in the state live below that standard.........
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http://traditionallaborlaw.blogspot....es-recess.html
President Bush Makes Recess Appointments to the NLRB
The recess appointments follow quickly on the heels of an <a href="http://www.nrtw.org/b/nr_466.php">article</a> in the Wall Street Journal authored by the president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Mark Mix. In the December 31 article, Mix urged the White House "to get off the dime and install an NLRB majority" to address the Dana/Metaldyne cases, among others, free from the constraint of institutional adherence to precedent.
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The "National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation" is not an organzation that defends workers...it is funded for employers' enrichment, at the expense of workers, by the maggots listed here:
http://www.mediatransparency.org/rec...rants.php?1128
We need this "reform", today:
Republican Eisenhower was president when the top rate was <a href="http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php">91 percent</a> (on annual income above $400,000), when new college graduates often worked for less than $4000 per year....and the <a href="http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/f04.html">Gini coefficient was 35.1</a>....it's 44 now.
The U.S. has experienced political shifts, beginning with the the "great depression" in the 1932 elections, that transferred the presidency to a democrat.......and democrats dominated in the executive and legislative branches, with the exception of the 8 year Eisenhower presidency, for the next 36 years. Compared to later republican presidents, Eisenhower could be described as a "centrist".
Today on a webpage at the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation site, (Milton was the late younger brother of republican president Dwight Eisenhower,) the following is displayed:
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http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/..._economic.html
.......With an eye to Thomas Jefferson's warning against the antidemocratic "aristocracy of our moneyed corporations," the United States needs to return corporate taxes to the levels in force during the Eisenhower administration. We also need to increase the top marginal tax rate for the super-rich to about 50 percent. This would still be far below the top marginal income tax rate of 91 percent during the Eisenhower administration.
Repealing the tax cuts given to the super-rich would return more than $85 bilomglion per year from the richest 5 percent of the population. Returning to corporate tax rates in force during the Eisenhower administration could increase tax revenues by roughly $110 billion more per year. Returning to a 50 percent top marginal inomgcome tax rate far below the top rate in the Eisenhower administration could capture as much as $90 billion more per year from the richest 2 percent of the population.
At the same time, we should provide tax cuts to the 150 million hard-working workers who are struggling because they can't afford to buy all they need. Millionomgaires don't need additional spending money. Workers, middle-class Americans, and the poor do. Their spending will stimulate the economy more effectively, help busiomgnesses, and be more fair to the Americans who need fairness the most. There is amomgple economic evidence that putting money in the pockets of average Americans stimulates the economy much more than further lining the pockets of the rich........
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