Ryan Blethen trying to explain The Seattle Times’ new feature, Just Fix It, doesn’t do a good job making me want to read it. I’m going to ignore the fact that the title implies simple solutions. And I’m going to ignore that the Seattle Times’ vehement opposition to tax increases means that they don’t really want to have the conversation they say they want to have. No, my problem is even more basic.
The intractable, sophomoric politics that has come to define this era is nothing new. Americans have been dealing with such bursts of dysfunction since the beginning of the republic.
While I don’t like the intractability of today’s politics, it seems that The Seattle Times would oppose the sorts of things that would make our politics more, um, tractable. On the state level, they should eliminate the 2/3 requirement to pass any taxes. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen editorials in favor of that very requirement. Nationally, I’d suggest eliminating the filibuster will tract the hell out of things. In both cases, fundamentally, make our representative democracy more democratic.
But I suspect people like me and the rest of the rest of blogtopia (y!sctp) are part of what he means by “sophomoric” (although he only names cable news). You know, people willing to admit an ideology. People who care more about outcomes than the game. People who say fuck and shit. People who aren’t the right people. People who didn’t have their idealism and ideology sucked out of them at journalism school and then learned the right way to do things with some father figure (sometimes more literally than others) in the business.
No, those of us with our sophomoric notions about how to express ourselves in the absence of our daddy’s newspaper will continue right along.
The Wingnut Times just lost all pretense of being an objective newspaper. Of course, they never had any to begin with.
The Blethen definition of “right people” excludes more than just bloggers, people so say bad words or mean things, or people who don’t try to pass off their ideology as an unbiased norm. Indeed, it pretty much excludes everyone who, unlike Ryan, doesn’t have a hereditary membership in the Rainier Club.
This is what intractable sophomoric politics really looks like.
ttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Southern_Chivalry.jpg
And this is what it sounds like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NigTXwIz804
This is what intractable sophomoric politics really looks like.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi.....ivalry.jpg
And this is what it sounds like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NigTXwIz804
Just Fix It Dep’t
Okay, let’s review. The wingnuts who ran our government for 30 years damn near caused another Great Depression by eviscerating government regulation. Now they tell us to get out of this hole we have to eviscerate government regulation.
Giving Obama more tax hikes is like giving a drug addict more drugs. Thank god the Republicans will just laugh at his latest plans!
Hmmm it seems the AP finally fact checked Barack ObamAA+
PuddyCommentary: How do you figger out a DUMMOCRAPT is lying… his/her lips move and sound eminates from their throats!
PuddyCommentary: Well if I tell the truth about the real truth about who pays taxes Barack ObamAA+ will be really really upset. So Geithner has to defend sophomoric politics.
What Geithner will never say is the truth. People who invest invest with after-tax $$$. So they pay the 35% or whatever, then they risk it in various potential return instruments. If they lose it’s gone. If they win it’s taxed again. My stepfather never made more than $15,000 working in a factory. Yet when he died he left $100K in investments, all with a high school education!
# 8 “…People who invest invest with after-tax $$$. So they pay the 35% or whatever, then they risk it in various potential return instruments.”
Really? You never heard of tax-deferred investments – there are plenty of them in the IRS code, with a lot of them favoring special interests. Warren Buffet doesn’t invest with after-tax dollars, which was one of the points he was making. I don’t know all of them, or how they work, but I know they exist. The more common pre-tax investments the public sees are IRA’s (not Roth) and 401(K) plans, but they aren’t the only ones.
In other words, you listened to some Republican talking point over the weekend, and came away impressed with their explanation. But as usual, it is misleading and inaccurate. When dealing with tax policy, the devil is in the details.
Of course, Puddy is particularly impressed with the moral courage required of the wealthy to take investment risks. He thinks they should be rewarded for that moral courage by not having to pay taxes on the profits from those investments – or paying tax rates much lower than wage earners.
Of course, this “morality” argument is deeply flawed. The wealthy residents of the Hamptons and Miami didn’t do a thing to create their wealth, and even take minimal efforts to manage their investments. They have stock in businesses founded by the grandparents (or great-grandparents), and received dividends or trust payments on a regular basis. It took no moral courage for them to invest, and they take no measurable risk – even in an economic downturn, the businesses they are invested in are so large the government would be compelled to bail them out.
And you can’t argue that this is the exception. With the great majority of our nation’s wealth being owned by only 400 families in the U.S., and with the wealth disparity growing each year, there are more and more who fit this description. Only a handful of recent technology moguls fit into this category of wealth, the remainder are “old money” families who couldn’t possibly spend their wealth in their lifetimes.
Of course, the CEO’s want to join these ranks, which may account for the outragious salaries and stock bonuses they insist that they have earned, despite the performance of their company. But they can never reach this level in their lifetime – they are “new money”, and the “old money” looks down upon “earned income”.
So these families lead a life which few of us could ever understand, and will never attain. They send their kids to bording schools in Switzerland, have large horse farms just to have something to do, own private jet aircraft or helicopters just to commute between their homes in the Hamptons and downtown New York City for shopping trips, parties, and operas.
And these are the folks who can easily make a multi-million dollar donation to politicians to make sure their income is treated in the most favorable fashion by the tax laws.
And this is whom the Republican Party treats as it’s lord and master.
re 8: Well Said!!!!!!!!!!!
@6 Typical wingnut stupidity. Republicans inherited a balanced budget, then slashed revenues and went on a spending binge. Voila, deficits! Debt! Republicans claim cutting taxes increases revenues. Republicans think you can run a government without deficits by cutting taxes to zero. A Republican is someone who isn’t smart enough to be a Democrat.
@11 Just what this blog needs, another wingnut with a two-word vocabulary.
@8 “People who invest invest with after-tax $$$.”
Bullshit. Plenty of people, and some rabbits, invest with before-tax $$$. Ever heard of an IRA, 401(k), or Roth? Idiot.
Oops, #9 beat me to it, you get the drift — puddydope is such a simpleton he doesn’t even know that tax-deferred savings exist.
And it isn’t just individual retirement accounts. There are tax deferred college and health savings accounts, tax deferred annuities, etc.
And that’s not even counting the trillions of dollars stashed away by government and corporate entities in pension funds.
“re 8: Well Said!!!!!!!!!!!”
Well said? WTF? Well said?? Hell, without a decoder ring nobody here has a clue WTF the psychotic, self-loathing loon is even talking about most of the time.
@16 Also see #13.
You can’t reason with morons.
SHE DID IT!!!
Rachel Beckwith has not only raised over $1.25 million for safe drinking water in developing countries, she blew right past her $300 goal by over $1.25 million! The kitty now stands at $1,251,970 with 10 days to go. With luck, she might make it to $1,275,300.
http://mycharitywater.org/p/ca.....n_id=16396
Not particularly. I read what Roger DOPEY Rabbit sez about his investments and I removed everything except a few grand from the stock market back in January 2011. So the latest market volatility hasn’t really affect me. But this is another of rhp6033 conjecture bullshit lines
Where have I said anything of the sort? Go ahead moron ask your favorite serial arschloch plagiarizer! This is why you are Cass Sunstein’s malleable favorite Homer Simpson idiot. You march to the same drumbeat without regards to what people are saying.
Buffet wrote
He doesn’t discuss his deductions or the fact he owns approximately 23% of Berkshire Hathaway. Looking up their 2010 report, Berkshire Hathaway’s income tax was $5,600,000,000. So 23% of that is $1,000,000,000 so what did he really pay in taxes rhp6033.
So if Buffett claims the tax code is unfair.. write another $5,000,000,000 check to Barack ObamAA+’s treasury and move along!
Yes I do ya moron. Mrs Puddy has them. I usually cash them out when I move between companies and reinvest them as I see fit.
So you think Warren Buffet invests his paltry $6000 in an IRA Roger DOPEY Rabbit? Insert giggles here.
So you think Warren Buffet invests his paltry $3000 maybe in an Roth IRA Roger DOPEY Rabbit? Insert chuckles here. Maybe he has a SEP IRA
So you think Warren Buffet invests his paltry $49000 maybe in an SEP IRA Roger DOPEY Rabbit? Insert laughter here. So what does Warren Buffet actually invest in? Seems Roger DOPEY Rabbit and Cass Sunsteins prize pupil rhp6033 don’t really know.
re 21: Well Said!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It’s a sad state of affairs when Ryan Blethen is your editorial page editor. Few have a greater gift for spewing reams of verbiage while saying nothing. The new “Just Fix it” is as gaseous as ‘Reset 2000’ or whatever the old thing was.
Who was the last Seattle Times writer I would pay to read? I can’t really think of any. I like Bruce Ramsey but that’s mainly because I tend to agree with him poltically. Almost every Times reporter who left has gone on to a PR or lobbying job. Almost never do they go on to another writing job.
I’m doing an internship Preteam Nn Bdsm Toplist =-O
@22 “Well Said!!!”
The only 2 words in the vocabularies of 90% of the world’s wingnuts.
@22 Btw, if you think #21 is “well said” you’re as big an idiot as Puddydope.
@24 Either that’s spam or you’re a pervert.