you think i ranted before?
there are times when i think that the number of people in this country who actually give a shit about what is going on is miniscule to say the least. politicians don't seem to care and why should they? they are the ones, who, for the most part, got us into this mess and they won't be the ones who suffer when the whole house of cards comes tumbling down, they have life long pensions and life long health care. (even the ones who left in disgrace and the ones convicted of crimes...they still get their pensions and health care...is that a deal or what?) most of the american public doesn't care because they are too busy trying to stay afloat and/or keeping up with the proverbial jones family to actually know what is going on. by the time the american public becomes aware the disaster is no longer pending, it is descending on their unknowing little heads. then they cry, "why didn't someone tell us?"
the ones who do give a shit become discouraged because a. no-one else does and b. what can a private citizen do about it? we can be voices in the wilderness writing our little blogs that are only read by the few, saying our little speeches that are only heard by our own ears, writing our little letters to the politicians who then immediately discard them or turn them over to the fbi saying this person is dangerous, he cares. then the fbi comes by and quotes george saying that you are either with us or against us and if you are against us, you must be a terrorist so off to gitmo you go. how dare you question the powers that be? (alright, that may be extreme but you know what i mean, don't you?)
people come to my blog wanting comedy and i give them grief and facts and news stories. hell, if they wanted to know things they would have read the paper. what about the jokes, ron? well, the jokes are in washington and they are on us. but nobody cares.
bush told us that he would eliminate the deficit by the end of his term. yeah right. the deficit will increase next year by up to 366 BILLION dollars according to the united states senate. since they are always wrong it probably will increase by over 400 BILLION dollars and that does NOT COUNT THE COST OF THE IRAQI OCCUPATION AND THE OCCUPATION OF AFGHANASTAN. (bookkeeping brought to you by george and the neo-cons..open government my fucking ass)
but here is the real stinger for today: the national debt which now stands at 9 TRILLION DOLLARS and going up by the second and will grow, at present rate, to over 11 TRILLION dollars in the next five years and almost half of that debt is owed to CHINA, JAPAN AND THE OPEC COUNTRIES. they own us, bubba. you are working for the chinese and the arabs. you, bubba. you, bubba sue.
not only that we borrowed all that money and did we spend it here? oh, fuck no. we spent it on foriegn wars. foriegn aid. on an already bloated military (we spend more on war than the next ten nations do COMBINED) . we don't spend it on building schools in america but schools in iraq, which we blew up the first time and they are going to blow them up next. but that's alright, we borrow some more money from the saudis and the chinese and build another one plus, of course, buy the weapon to blow up the people who blew up the school that we built after we blew it up the first time. which, of course, is going to piss the relatives of that guy off so they will blow up....
but nobody cares. so why should i? why should i write about the housing crunch a year and half before it happened? why should i write about no wmd's in iraq and no connection to al qaida when fox news tells us that there were weapons of mass destruction right there in plain site, why here is a picture of a building that has weapons in it. take our word. those are weapons in there. well, no they weren't; they were tractors......
if we don't get our financial house in order, we have 5 to ten years before we face FISCAL RUIN. you know who said that? david m. walker , ex comptroller general of the united states. but, hey, what does he know? he's not even running for office.
here is what we need to do and not a politician in the country has the balls to say it much less do it.
a. immediately withdraw from iraq and afghanastan.
b. cut our military spending in half. bring our troops home from the 112 countries that we have them in. how much would that save?
c. raise taxes on corporations
d. raise taxes on the rich
e. raise taxes on the rest of us.
f. cut off most foriegn aid.
g. drop the war on drugs and legalize almost all drugs and tax them as well. use treatment and not imprisonment for drug addicts.
h. drop the sham about ethonol and stop those huge subsidies to corn farmers (which are mostly huge corporations anyway)
i. spend the money in america creating jobs by building a national electric rail system and subsidize the fares so that anyone can afford to ride it.
j. build electrical generating systems using wave power.
k. start immediately on desalination plants on the pacific and gulf coasts thereby insuring water for our cities and our farms and eliminating the possibilities of disasterous droughts such as the one now going on in the southeast of the united states and the west and the one that hit us in the 30's.
l. have job programs instead of welfare programs.
m. make education a bigger priority than warmongering. pay teachers on a scale with the private sector.
n. make tax breaks for companies that build factories in the usa. drop tax breaks for companies that have factories in third world countries.
o. secure our borders. use american troops to do that, not fight in some shithole country on the other side of the world. if we quit meddling in others affairs they have no incentive to meddle in ours.
p. once those borders are secure, offer a way for the illegals to become citizens thereby increasing our tax base. punish business that then hire illegals. we are a nation of immigrants, let us always remember that. we have room for legal millions so make our immigration policy more intelligent and give preference to those from this hemisphere. why? well, they are our neighbors and hell, half of us speak spanish anyway.
q. if we have to subsidize american manufacturers to help them compete...DO SO!
r. make a national effort, similar to the space effort of jfk, to build autos that can run on renewalable energy be it hydrogen or electric or whatfuckingever.
s. allow the oil companies to drill off shore on all coasts to sustain us until r. has been done.
desperate times call for desperate measures.
IF WE ARE GOING TO GO INTO DEBT LET US SPEND THAT MONEY ON AMERICANS IN AMERICA. WHY GO INTO DEBT TO SEND MONEY TO OTHER COUNTRIES? DOES THAT MAKE SENSE TO YOU?
oh well, none of this is going to be done. it will be business as usual. the rich will get richer and the rest of us will get fucked and the war will drag on and on and on and on and thousands more will die and our enemies will multiply and we are going to go down the fucking tubes. if you don't think this can happen to us, ask the romans. ask the british. ask the greeks. ask the persians. ask the monguls. ask the french. ask the babylonians. all those empires failed because they overextended themselves fighting foriegn wars. read a fucking history book. you better read one, your kids aren't. or can't.
today is saint patrick's day.
someone told me the difference between an irishman and an american is that when the american looks up at the mansion on the hill with the wall around it and the limos and helicopters coming and going and private security guards, he thinks, "wow, if i work hard maybe some day i can have a place like that." when the irishman looks at the same view he says, "one day we are going to get you, motherfucker." i knew i always liked the irish.
the ones who do give a shit become discouraged because a. no-one else does and b. what can a private citizen do about it? we can be voices in the wilderness writing our little blogs that are only read by the few, saying our little speeches that are only heard by our own ears, writing our little letters to the politicians who then immediately discard them or turn them over to the fbi saying this person is dangerous, he cares. then the fbi comes by and quotes george saying that you are either with us or against us and if you are against us, you must be a terrorist so off to gitmo you go. how dare you question the powers that be? (alright, that may be extreme but you know what i mean, don't you?)
people come to my blog wanting comedy and i give them grief and facts and news stories. hell, if they wanted to know things they would have read the paper. what about the jokes, ron? well, the jokes are in washington and they are on us. but nobody cares.
bush told us that he would eliminate the deficit by the end of his term. yeah right. the deficit will increase next year by up to 366 BILLION dollars according to the united states senate. since they are always wrong it probably will increase by over 400 BILLION dollars and that does NOT COUNT THE COST OF THE IRAQI OCCUPATION AND THE OCCUPATION OF AFGHANASTAN. (bookkeeping brought to you by george and the neo-cons..open government my fucking ass)
but here is the real stinger for today: the national debt which now stands at 9 TRILLION DOLLARS and going up by the second and will grow, at present rate, to over 11 TRILLION dollars in the next five years and almost half of that debt is owed to CHINA, JAPAN AND THE OPEC COUNTRIES. they own us, bubba. you are working for the chinese and the arabs. you, bubba. you, bubba sue.
not only that we borrowed all that money and did we spend it here? oh, fuck no. we spent it on foriegn wars. foriegn aid. on an already bloated military (we spend more on war than the next ten nations do COMBINED) . we don't spend it on building schools in america but schools in iraq, which we blew up the first time and they are going to blow them up next. but that's alright, we borrow some more money from the saudis and the chinese and build another one plus, of course, buy the weapon to blow up the people who blew up the school that we built after we blew it up the first time. which, of course, is going to piss the relatives of that guy off so they will blow up....
but nobody cares. so why should i? why should i write about the housing crunch a year and half before it happened? why should i write about no wmd's in iraq and no connection to al qaida when fox news tells us that there were weapons of mass destruction right there in plain site, why here is a picture of a building that has weapons in it. take our word. those are weapons in there. well, no they weren't; they were tractors......
if we don't get our financial house in order, we have 5 to ten years before we face FISCAL RUIN. you know who said that? david m. walker , ex comptroller general of the united states. but, hey, what does he know? he's not even running for office.
here is what we need to do and not a politician in the country has the balls to say it much less do it.
a. immediately withdraw from iraq and afghanastan.
b. cut our military spending in half. bring our troops home from the 112 countries that we have them in. how much would that save?
c. raise taxes on corporations
d. raise taxes on the rich
e. raise taxes on the rest of us.
f. cut off most foriegn aid.
g. drop the war on drugs and legalize almost all drugs and tax them as well. use treatment and not imprisonment for drug addicts.
h. drop the sham about ethonol and stop those huge subsidies to corn farmers (which are mostly huge corporations anyway)
i. spend the money in america creating jobs by building a national electric rail system and subsidize the fares so that anyone can afford to ride it.
j. build electrical generating systems using wave power.
k. start immediately on desalination plants on the pacific and gulf coasts thereby insuring water for our cities and our farms and eliminating the possibilities of disasterous droughts such as the one now going on in the southeast of the united states and the west and the one that hit us in the 30's.
l. have job programs instead of welfare programs.
m. make education a bigger priority than warmongering. pay teachers on a scale with the private sector.
n. make tax breaks for companies that build factories in the usa. drop tax breaks for companies that have factories in third world countries.
o. secure our borders. use american troops to do that, not fight in some shithole country on the other side of the world. if we quit meddling in others affairs they have no incentive to meddle in ours.
p. once those borders are secure, offer a way for the illegals to become citizens thereby increasing our tax base. punish business that then hire illegals. we are a nation of immigrants, let us always remember that. we have room for legal millions so make our immigration policy more intelligent and give preference to those from this hemisphere. why? well, they are our neighbors and hell, half of us speak spanish anyway.
q. if we have to subsidize american manufacturers to help them compete...DO SO!
r. make a national effort, similar to the space effort of jfk, to build autos that can run on renewalable energy be it hydrogen or electric or whatfuckingever.
s. allow the oil companies to drill off shore on all coasts to sustain us until r. has been done.
desperate times call for desperate measures.
IF WE ARE GOING TO GO INTO DEBT LET US SPEND THAT MONEY ON AMERICANS IN AMERICA. WHY GO INTO DEBT TO SEND MONEY TO OTHER COUNTRIES? DOES THAT MAKE SENSE TO YOU?
oh well, none of this is going to be done. it will be business as usual. the rich will get richer and the rest of us will get fucked and the war will drag on and on and on and on and thousands more will die and our enemies will multiply and we are going to go down the fucking tubes. if you don't think this can happen to us, ask the romans. ask the british. ask the greeks. ask the persians. ask the monguls. ask the french. ask the babylonians. all those empires failed because they overextended themselves fighting foriegn wars. read a fucking history book. you better read one, your kids aren't. or can't.
today is saint patrick's day.
someone told me the difference between an irishman and an american is that when the american looks up at the mansion on the hill with the wall around it and the limos and helicopters coming and going and private security guards, he thinks, "wow, if i work hard maybe some day i can have a place like that." when the irishman looks at the same view he says, "one day we are going to get you, motherfucker." i knew i always liked the irish.
posted by Ron Shock | 8:57 AM
5 Comments:
You are starting to see things differently now aren't you?
I was wondering when that would kick in.
Your list of "a" through "s" pretty much states the platform that Ron Paul ran on. Except the raising taxes part.
If you did "a" and "b", then "c","d" and "e" aren't necessary.
As a matter of fact, "c" doesn't even exist. "C" is actually a part of "e".
This is getting confusing. I know.
In short, there is no such thing as corporate taxes. It is a figment of the imagination and most people just don't get it.
Let me explain...
All corporations either provide a product or a service. Right?
If you raise their taxes, the end user (meaning you) just has to pay more for the product or service. It's really that simple.
Therefore "c" turns into "e" and "c" isn't effected at all.
Corporate taxes DO NOT exist. They are, and always have been, factored into the price of the product or service that the end-user pays. Period.
We really have to sit down and talk sometime.
A. Not immediately. We've fucked them over so bad we've got some responsibility to clean up the mess. An accelerated withdrawal schedule.
b. Depends--Military spending has non-military benefits. We need to do some drastic overhauls of how military money is spent, and how contracts are awarded. The military serves some work-fare purposes--People with undeveloped potential get skills, training and discipline that will help them in later life.
c. If you raise taxes on corporations, one of two things will happen: Those extra taxes will be passed on to consumers, or the corporations will go where the taxes are lower. Instead of property tax, income tax, sin tax, use tax, road tax, etc; almost all revenue should be raised with a retail sales tax. This would mean imported goods would support our tax base as much as domestic. Goods produced in America for sale overseas wouldn't be taxed, (until the workers who made them spent their paychecks paid for with foreign money) so they would have a competitive advantage.
d. e. Equally. Being rich isn't a crime, and the rich should pay the same proportion as the rest of us. Wealth isn't zero-sum--It can be created with work and risk. If you can't keep your wealth, there's little reason to take the risks and do the work. Entrepreneurs and investors make themselves richer, but they also raise the standard of living for everyone.
f. Foreign aid should be cynical--Only where it demonstrably benefits us. Too much foreign aid winds up feeding corruption.
g. Antibiotics should be regulated, because if you use them wrong it hurts me. I've got some misgivings about meth--Apparently meth users spread drug-resistant staph infections. Otherwise I'm fine with pure heroin being available, as long as it is labeled honestly.
I'm not sure about treatment--I'd want some proof that treatment has a significantly higher success rate than no treatment.
h. Phase out subsidies to all farmers.
i. Subsidies don't work, and we don't have the population density to support a nationwide rail system.
j. If it works, it will get done commercially without subsidy. If it doesn't, it's no different than ethanol subsidies.
k. Let the people pay open-market rates for water, and conserve if necessary. If a resource is subsidized, there is little incentive to conserve it.
l. A step in the right direction, but not basket weaving, and with realistic attendance and productivity requirements.
m. Set realistic standards for teachers, and pay what it takes--It might be that good teachers will be willing to work for less, if they have less bullshit to deal with. Let technical professionals teach part time with less bullshit--It would be invaluable for a science or math class to be taught part time by a working engineer, but "no child left behind" adds huge, flaming hoops for them to jump through.
N--See my answer to C.
O--Overhaul our immigration system so productive people can come legally. Eliminate entitlements for non-citizens and illegals. Anchor babies may be citizens, but that doesn't mean their parents can stay.
P--Employment of illegals should be where most of the focus is. Anyone who turns in an employer who hires illegals gets a bounty. If the person collecting the bounty is an illegal, they get to stay longer legally, if nothing else disqualifies them.
q. Where does this money come from? You want to increase corporate taxes so you can increase corporate subsidies?
r. This will result in more Ethanol-type subsidies. The government is incompetent at deciding what the best strategy is here, the market can figure that out. AT best ,the government can make sure renewable energy gets favorable tax treatment.
s. Not sure about this--There are finite supplies of oil, and draining the last of our reserves should be a last resort.
Jesus H. Christ...
I've been totally upstaged. I don't have much to add to that other than some nit-pick stuff, BUT! BUT!
Sevesteen...Google two things:
(you too, Ron)
Green River Formation and Bakken Oil Formation.
We have more than the middle east does if the environmentalists will just let us tap into it and build a few refineries. We haven't built a refinery since 1974. 1974!
Peak oil is a LONG way off.
Also.
When you have time watch this video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3340274697167011147&hl=en
I can't vouch for any of it, but IF it is true, we've been lied to real hard.
A. Yes, but we still need to track down the people responsible for 911.
B. I think if we brought all of our solders home we could cut more than half, not to mention the boom in the places they would be stationed here.
C. We don't need to raise taxes on anyone or anything, we just need to quit supporting the assholes. No more tax breaks for rich people.
D. Same as C.
E. sorry I don't make enough to pay more of anything.
F. Agree
G. Agree
H. Covered in C also.
I. Make a law that to do business in the US your highest paid employee cannot make more than 10 times your lowest paid employee no matter where in the world they are employed, jobs would pour back into the US because regardless of the propaganda, Americans do better work than anyone else in the world.
J. Not sure what wave power is but will look it up.
K.I don’t think desalination plants are a bad idea but I think trying to beat nature may be more of a challenge then you think.
L. Agree, if we are going to pay people they might as well work for it.
M. Fixing the schools will require a lot more than paying teachers. They suffer from the same cost efficiency is the god of all endeavors sickness like the rest of our culture. Go back to one teacher with the same class all day, teaching all subjects and developing a personal relationship with the student and parents.
N. Covered in I.
O. Enforce the laws we already have.
P. Enforce the laws we already have.
Q. Also covered in I.
R. You will have to take all the patents for the cool energy stuff away from the oil companies.
S. Fuck oil companies, cap their profits at 20%.
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