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Open Thread 9/15

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– Guest Editorial: To Fix Washington State’s Problems, We Need Real Talk on Taxes

– Good on the groups flying Goodell Must Go banners over NFL games this week.

– I’m not sure Marco Rubio knows what defeat means.

– We should probably just raise the voting age to whatever Fox News’ median is.

– Do you know who I am?

– Apparently the kids today are all entrepreneurs. Not because capitalism has failed them so they’re doing something, but because that’s how kids do, freedom, etc.

Comments

  1. 1

    Goodell must go, not just because he elevates team profits above the criminal behavior of players, but also because he’s a bald-faced liar.

    But there’s something deeper going on here, that we also saw when a CEO lost his job over a dog-kicking incident. And that is, ordinary citizens are fed up with double standards that excuse bad behavior by the high and mighty. They want a return to basic values like honesty and moral behavior at the top levels of our society.

    I think it’s a perfectly reasonable expectation.

  2. 2

    My thoughts on the link about workers becoming entrepreneurs because employers now want to make all work piece-rate:

    If the changing nature of work requires workers to become entrepreneurs, then workers should be paid like entrepreneurs, it’s as simple as that.

    In other words, if you don’t want to give a waitress steady work, but instead expect her to work on call, then you also should expect to pay her $50 an hour instead of $10 an hour.

  3. 3

    Yeah, let’s talk letting 18-year-olds vote.

    http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/39993

    Why is that? Because, two generations ago, people decided if you’re old enough to fight and die in Vietnam you’re old enough to vote.

    Well, guess what, 18-year-olds still serve in our military. They fight in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Ask the conservatives how they justify taking away their right to vote, and they have no good answer for that. Because there isn’t one.

  5. 5

    Something like 45 states have adopted a tax system that combines income, sales, and property taxes to pay for traditional state and local services (e.g., prisons and law enforcement, streets and bridges, child welfare, K12 education and public colleges, etc.). While spending levels and tax rates vary somewhat, the basic tax structure is similar, because it has proven to work across a range of geographies, economies, etc.

    When you don’t follow this model you get aberrations like the Washington-Oregon border, where people live on the Washington side to avoid Oregon income taxes and shop on the Oregon side to avoid Washington sales taxes. But this is getting harder to do, because the taxpayers of the two states can’t agree on how to pay for a bridge across the river separating them. (More accurately, they can’t agree on WHO will pay for the bridge, because the residents of both states want the taxpayers of the other state to pay for it.)

    But the stunning and repetitive defeats of any kind of tax reform in Washington’s polling places inevitably leaves me pessimistic about the future of public services in our state. I think law enforcement, education, and transportation will have to collapse before voters will support tax reform, because of our electorate’s beggar-thy-neighbor mentality. Thinking people recognize the short-sightedness of this, but most voters don’t think much (if at all), and like people who build houses in earthquake zones they’ll wait for the roof to fall on them before they’ll do anything.

  7. 7

    @7 Better yet, he should disappear altogether. You know, living the quiet life of an ex-Senator out of the public eye, spending all his time with his family. I think that would be good for the country, for him, and for his family — a triple win from which everyone benefits.

  8. 8

    CNBC reports that corporate profits are up 9% in 2014 so far, and the year isn’t even close to over. When was the last time you got a 9% raise? Let me guess, maybe 1977? Or, more likely, never?

    Point is, the capitalists are doing great, so don’t believe for one second that stagnant or falling wages are inevitable, because companies can easily afford to pay decent wages to workers.

    They simply don’t want to.

  9. 9

    Worker loyalty to employers made sense, back in the days of lifetime employment at good wages with retirement and health benefits. But it doesn’t make sense anymore. Why should workers be loyal to lousy employers who treat their employees as expendable commodities, and think of labor as a commodity to be purchased as cheaply as possible? Loyalty has to be a two-way street, or it doesn’t work, and employers threw loyalty to workers out the window a long time ago. So screw ’em, because they’re certainly out to screw you.

  10. 10

    When I read investing blogs, I see people of conservative political leanings constantly diss on workers. They complain about the falling workforce participation rate, an alleged skills gap, a declining work ethic, growth in disability claims, lazy people living on welfare and food stamps, etc.

    But what they never mention is this: What incentive do people have to work? C’mon, seriously, do they expect people in a free society to show up for work if employers keep demanding more productivity while cutting pay, eliminating benefits, and treating workers like dirt under their fingernails? Why should anyone work?

    If they can’t hire good employees for their businesses, it’s their own damn fault, and my advice to them is trying paying them more and they’ll come.

  11. 11

    Only one or two states out there worse than TexASS..

    Let’s look at the home of the Koch Bros, KansASS:

    In his 40 years living in Kansas, Konrad Hastings cannot remember voting for a Democrat. He is the type who agonizes over big purchases, trying to save as much money as possible. He is against stricter gun laws, opposes abortion in most cases and prefers less government involvement in his life.

    But when he casts his ballot for governor in November, he plans to shun the leader of this state’s conservative movement, the Republican incumbent, Sam Brownback, and vote for the Democratic challenger.

    “He’s leading Kansas down,” said Mr. Hastings, 68, who said he voted for Mr. Brownback four years ago, when he easily won his first term. “We’re going to be bankrupt in two or three years if we keep going his way.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09.....ansas.html

    I mean look at Walker and what a joke his promise of 250k jobs has been.

    This klownservative ASS Brownback has driven the state into the red and downgraded its credit rating.. There’s no one to blame but the klownservatives who dominate the legislature and the governor’s office.

    Klownservatism is a failure!

  13. 13

    The California housing market hits a wall:

    This must be part of the explanation why home sales in the expensive parts of California, which is where most people live, are collapsing: according to a Harris Poll on behalf of electronic broker Redfin, 92% of millennials who don’t already own a home do not plan on buying one in the future. Ever.

    These people, now between 25 and 34, are in their peak home-buying age. They’re the much sought-after first-time buyers. They’re the foundation of the market. But not this generation. Homeownership rate among them, according to the Commerce Department, already plunged from 41% in 2008 to 36% currently; as opposed to 65% for all Americans…

    These folks are not “pent-up demand” accumulating on the sidelines, as the wishful thinkers have proclaimed…

    Orange County, the most expensive market in Southland, is leading the way: about a third of the asking prices have been cut. The dream is over: the price bubble that lasted for two years and that peaked in June with a year-over-year gain of 28% – even as volume was already plunging – has popped.

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com.....lamed.html

    Wow. Brave new world folks. Of course our klownservative trolls will say tax cuts for the rich can fix this.

    Or a new war.. Whatever.

  15. 15

    At least one guy out there is putting forth what he believes is a way out:

    Keynesian policy or stimulant spending ultimately will not be effective because of the “four horseman” of Part II of the book (resource costs, international political/economic shifts, labor saving technology, financial fraud) and because modern finance is no longer a motor of growth (Chapter 14). Instead we can follow Costas Lapavitsas’s (2013) argument, that banks have become institutions of “financial expropriation” and the deep institutional source of superexploitation (see also Despain 2014).

    Galbraith contends we are entering a period of slow growth. The only way forward is economic planning (Epilogue). Currently the “planning” is being performed by corporations for their own enrichment. Planning can be aimed to provide greater benefits to more citizens and communities by being carried out by the public sector (Galbraith 2014 is deeply rooted in Galbraith 1973 and 1967). Galbraith argues public deficits are no constraint on spending in a planned-economy (Chapters 12, 5). Interest rates can be managed to put an upper limit on the growth of deficits (Chapter 12).

    Galbraith’s policy prescriptions include support for public banks geared towards public purposes. He insists on the importance of the protection and extension of social insurance programs, including early retirement to make room for young workers. He supports a guaranteed (living) personal income (also once supported by ultra-conservative economist Milton Friedman). He stresses the urgency of “a large increase in minimum wage,” which establishes a real living wage, and tax policies that increase the share of national income going to labor and decreases the share of national income going to capital. Galbraith further insists on a large tax upon predatory rent-seeking activities…

    Galbraith’s The End of Normal will be highly esteemed and celebrated for many decades for its penetrating critiques, original theoretical insights, policy-minded orientation, and especially for the urgency of his tone and purpose.

    http://marxandphilosophy.org.u...../2014/1102

    Yes trolls it’s a Marxist rag but the reviewer doesn’t throw many Marxist brickbats at Galbraith.

    Less government isn’t the answer. An engaged public using government for everyone’s benefit is the answer.

  16. 16

    Goldy’s boss, plutocrat Nick Hanauer, gives an interesting talk here:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2gO4DKVpa8

    The best part is when he makes this statement (paraphrasing a bit):

    Show me a highly unequal society and I’ll show you either a police state or a revolution..

    Wow.. Most of the time Hanauer talks ONLY about pitchforks, i.e. revolution.. But he lets slip the PS words..

    I (YLB) believe a police state is more likely if things continue as they are. Shit, we might be already there!

    NSA?? Militarized police anyone?

  17. 17

    @12 Yep, unions created America’s middle class, and the end of unions will mean the end of the middle class — and with it will go our nation’s vaunted prosperity.

    But America’s corporate chieftains don’t give a Ratatouille about America’s middle class anymore, because they figure they can cash in their stock options by selling stuff to rising third world middle classes.

  18. 18

    @15 To keep our dumb trolls from getting confused, Galbraith 67/73 and Galbraith 2014 are different Galbraiths. The old man whose pop economics books took ’60s campuses by storm kicked the bucket in ’06 at age 98.

  19. 19

    @15 If you want a petri dish for conservative whack-o-nomics, there’s none better than the Euro Zone before Draghi reversed course and implemented Keynesian measures. The austerians actually succeeded in achieving 1930s unemployment levels in Spain and a couple other countries before getting run off the Continent.

  21. 21

    The California housing market hits a wall:

    DUMMOCRETINS control the state.

    Nuff said sucka monomaniacal crazed moron cretin

  22. 22

    Amazing revelation… http://dailysignal.com/2014/09.....nt-review/

    “She told me, ‘Ray, we are to go through these stacks and pull out anything that might put anybody in the [Near Eastern Affairs] front office or the seventh floor in a bad light,’” says Maxwell. He says “seventh floor” was State Department shorthand for then-Secretary of State Clinton and her principal advisers.

    “I asked her, ‘But isn’t that unethical?’ She responded, ‘Ray, those are our orders.’ ”

    So just unfettered was that Accountability Review Board’s promised “unfettered access” eh HA DUMMOCRETINS…

    Wait for it Benghazi!!!11!!!11!!! Benghazi!!!11!!!11!!! Benghazi!!!11!!!11!!! from schmuckosmegman

    The black guy was made a scapegoat then summarily cleared. Hmmm…? No calls of racism from certain HA DUMMOCRETINS? No? So people discounted the ARB report while Puddy remembers HA DUMMOCRETINS screaming the ARB ARB ARB!

    Trey Gowdy gonna have a field day here! Hopefully Maxwell is being deposed over this “special” clear the bad light stuff!

    WOWOWOWOWOW! This will fire up the peeps over a COVER-UP! Just as Trey Gowdy said in the hearings! http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfro.....id/569258/

    “I have evidence that, not only are they hiding it, there’s an intent to hide it,” the South Carolina Republican told “On the Record With Greta Van Susteren” on Fox News. “I can’t disclose that evidence yet, but I have evidence that there was a systematic, intentional decision to withhold certain documents from Congress — and we’re just sick of it.”

    Puddy remembers the low life freakazoids screaming Benghazi!!!11!!!11!!! Benghazi!!!11!!!11!!! Benghazi!!!11!!!11!!!.

    Can’t wait! Just before the Elections too!

  23. 23

    @20 Libertarian food safety regulation. The bright side is some Republicans may chow down maggot-infested chicken, too.

  26. 26

    @25 Democrat housing prices are doing great here in Seattle. My burrow is up 11.2% over the last 12 months.

  27. 27

    22 – LMAO!!! Trey Gowdy is the new Issa.

    An idiot..

    The real report is here:

    The House Intelligence Committee, led by Republicans, has concluded that there was no deliberate wrongdoing by the Obama administration in the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, said Rep. Mike Thompson of St. Helena, the second-ranking Democrat on the committee.

    http://www.sfgate.com/politics.....663509.php

    The other stupid is a political stunt to stop Hillary’s momentum.. The House intel commitee already finished and this Trey Gowdy idiocy is supposed to go on till 2016..

    Unless someone better steps up she’s going to be the next President..

    I’m going to be here to see this troll moron troll SWALLOW IT!

  28. 28

    @27 Barring major political upheaval, I don’t see how GOPers put together a plausible electoral vote map that gets them to 270 EVs in 2016. They gained only 1 state in 2012, Indiana, and that deep-red state was a gimme. I’m sure they realize their only chance is massive vote suppression and massive election fraud, so you can bet they’re working feverishly on both of those schemes.

  29. 29

    @ 27 & 28

    “A lot of people would like to stay on the sideline and say, ‘Just bomb the place and tell us about it later.’ It’s an election year. A lot of Democrats don’t know how it would play in their party, and Republicans don’t want to change anything. We like the path we’re on now. We can denounce it if it goes bad, and praise it if it goes well and ask what took him so long.”

    Jack Kingston (R-GA)

  32. 32

    Politics wasn’t the point of the article – And that’s why HA’s monomaniacal crazed moron cretin misses the between the lines action. Of course it’s not the point… Written by libtards.

    Sheeesh there isn’t anything operational in the granite encased cranial orifice!

  33. 33

    Remember when Puddy callled the ever lazy non-working monomaniacal crazed Hamas loving clueless cretin@27 a chronological idiot? From the article linked in #27…

    House panel: No administration wrongdoing in Benghazi attack
    Carolyn Lochhead
    Published 3:53 pm, Friday, August 1, 2014 — Notice the date! What date was yesterday, when Puddy’s article was offered?

    Nuff said sucka. Its lack of a mind that understands time is a terrible thing! NO wonder a job is not in its future!

  35. 35

    @34
    AHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!!!

    the puddibigot’s tax dollars paying for slutty sluts to have elective abortions!!

    On DEMAND, no doubt!!

  36. 36

    @22

    Oh, you’re killing me. Gowdy has “evidence” that he can’t share now.

    And the “source” on your story form, heehee, Daily Signal, “I was not invited to that after-hours endeavor, but I heard about it and decided to check it out on a Sunday afternoon.” Yep, that’s good testimony. I wasn’t there, I can’t prove it, but I heard something second hand…”

    “I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.”

    TRUTHINESS!

  37. 37

    The funniest thing about Trey Gowdy’s little “investigation” is that it has already been established that it specifically intended to NOT find anything different from the three previous investigations. The entire purpose is to generate talking points for the paranoiacs in Congress and FOX Entertainment Network to use during the next election cycle. Gowdy has already said this in so many words, that this phony “investigation” will shut down as soon as the election is over.

    It’s a stunt to present to the stunted. It’s a campaign strategy to give the Propagandists fuel for their bullshit fires that will echo around in their twisted little circle. They’ll all use each other to confirm their statements that they got from themselves.

    And Trey gets his little day in the sun. I’m sure he thinks he’ll be considered for higher office in a few years unless he somehow pisses Roger off. This is just another stump for the campaigns. Facts are unnecessary when speaking at the marks.

  38. 38

    @36 “I heard something second hand…”

    It’s called “hearsay” and is inadmissible in courts because the law deems it too unreliable to allow it to be used as evidence of anything.

  39. 39

    What date was yesterday, when Puddy’s article was offered?

    What you offered was crap, just like your stupid, imaginary slant drilling off Cuba, just like your stupid, delusional chinese land grab in Nevada – among so much other garbage.

    What I “offered” was Republicans putting the Benghazi tragedy behind this country.

    What you “offered” is batshit insanity. It sure would be sweet justice to see 8 years of President Hillary Clinton come to pass.. It’ll be a knee-slapper when you bring back that stupid, bullshit eugenics crap.

    A cherry on top of TWO TERMS of PRESIDENT Barack H. Obama!

    Damn you’re an idiot!

  40. 40

    Oh my the crazies are out in force. Good! Puddy loves it when libtards go apeshit crazy for everyone to see!!!!!

  42. 42

    “The younger cohort appears to have wised up to the fact that 30 year mortgages and short job tenures with potentially long periods of unemployment in between are not a happy mix. ”

    “Many millennials, burdened like no other generation before them with student loans and making less money than their predecessors, are coming to grips with something important: they’re locked out of the American dream of home ownership for years to come. ”

    Millennials have high education debt, low paying jobs and no job security. Homes now need a huge down payment and are record expensive and need job security to be cost effective. They are looking at the numbers and the situation and just not finding that home ownership makes sense for them.

    Latex puddy skims the article, if he comprehends at all, and blames democrats. He should be blaming the banksters and offshoring and companies not willing to pay a living wage. That’s not democrats fault, that’s the 1% fucking with the rules of the economy to favor the rich, and not caring one damn bit about the 99%.

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