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    #46
    Originally posted by z31maniac View Post
    ^Who knows. It sounds good.

    I think the CBO came out and said ACO's proposed tax increased would raise a few trillion dollars while her policies would cost around $30 Trillion over the same amount of time.
    This is coming from a person than thinks DoD accounting errors = the pentagon having 21T in cash sitting in a suitcase in the fucking basement lost and forgotten about.
    Originally posted by Fusion
    If a car is the epitome of freedom, than an electric car is house arrest with your wife titty fucking your next door neighbor.
    The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money. -Alexis de Tocqueville


    The Desire to Save Humanity is Always a False Front for the Urge to Rule it- H. L. Mencken

    Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants.
    William Pitt-

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      #47
      Originally posted by phillipj View Post
      A green energy focus, affordable healthcare and affordable college/secondary education tuition are all winning ideas that everyone can stand behind. That would be indicate a US government with real values a moral compass.

      We don't need to raise everyone's taxes and fearmonger people with cartoon stereotypes of boogeyman 'socialism' (like the President did the other night). What we need is to reassess our priorities.

      Our country's top priorities? Defense and Weapon Contractors, no bid contracts to privatized military. Endless boondoggles. Wall Street with unchecked trading where regular everyday investors get continually fleeced. Tax loopholes that the very wealthiest individual or corporation can take advantage of, but the everyday worker or tiny business can not. We subsidize uber wealthy Big Oil and Big Farm operations with countless tax dollars from everyday people. You could go on and on.

      Anyway, a moral rebalancing of how we budget could more than pay for these high-value core tenets that would make all the difference for our population. Too bad it is never going to happen.
      So you realize to do as you wish it would come at the end of a gun pointed at you from the benevolent folks of government?

      Still willing?
      “There is nothing government can give you that it hasn’t taken from you in the first place”
      Sir Winston Churchill

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        #48
        Originally posted by gwb72tii View Post
        So you realize to do as you wish it would come at the end of a gun pointed at you from the benevolent folks of government?

        Still willing?
        What the hell does this even mean?
        1990 BMW 325iC Triple Black Hard Top, Self-Wrenched, Original Owner Family

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          #49
          Originally posted by phillipj View Post
          What the hell does this even mean?
          Taxation is theft. It's a really tired old trope.
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            #50
            Originally posted by phillipj View Post
            What the hell does this even mean?
            You’re ceding control of your life to government, and government will force you to obey, by implicit threat of force (penalties, prosecution, etc).
            “There is nothing government can give you that it hasn’t taken from you in the first place”
            Sir Winston Churchill

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              #51
              What AOC and the current progressive movement are advocating is full out socialism, which through history has been literally at the point of a gun
              “There is nothing government can give you that it hasn’t taken from you in the first place”
              Sir Winston Churchill

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                #52
                Originally posted by gwb72tii View Post
                What AOC and the current progressive movement are advocating is full out socialism, which through history has been literally at the point of a gun
                no. it's democratic socialism. you still get to vote on it.
                past:
                1989 325is (learner shitbox)
                1986 325e (turbo dorito)
                1991 318ic (5-lug ITB)
                1985 323i baur
                current:
                1995 M3 (suspension, 17x9/255-40, borla)

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                  #53
                  Originally posted by gwb72tii View Post
                  You’re ceding control of your life to government, and government will force you to obey, by implicit threat of force (penalties, prosecution, etc).
                  I think your view is warped, to say the least.

                  Alls I suggested before is: boy, it'd suuuuree be nice to have a more moral budget -- we actually don't need more taxes, we just need different priorities. Priorities like home-grown renewable energy and jobs that come with it, affordable healthcare and affordable education -- those are winning, moral priorities.

                  Part and parcel with these priorities could be: rejecting trickle-down theories that are plainly bogus, closing tax loopholes, cracking down on offshoring, adequately enforcing and regulating our taxes, adequately regulating Wall Street and Big Banks, ending massive subsidies to Big Oil and Big Farm among countless other giveaways. Ending our Empire policies where we spend billions of dollars on regime change around world, which solely benefit super-large Energy Companies, Weapons Contractors and the Financiers that actually run our government.

                  >> Maybe consider that the US has a certain 'Socialism' right now. It's Socialism for the ultra wealthy & powerful.
                  1990 BMW 325iC Triple Black Hard Top, Self-Wrenched, Original Owner Family

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                    #54
                    Originally posted by gwb72tii View Post
                    What AOC and the current progressive movement are advocating is full out socialism, which through history has been literally at the point of a gun
                    Right wingers, Trump, Fox News, Limbaugh, etc. identify 'Socialism' as the worst criminal excesses and Authoritarianism of the USSR from the last century.

                    Alexandria Ocosio-Cortez, Bernie, Progressives on the US Left advocate for an idea of 'Democratic Socialism' which is definitely not that. Instead, it explicitly rejects Authoritarianism -- the main organizing principle is to return control of the Economy to We the People as a whole instead of a very small number of super-rich people or corporations.
                    Last edited by phillipj; 02-08-2019, 04:18 PM.
                    1990 BMW 325iC Triple Black Hard Top, Self-Wrenched, Original Owner Family

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                      #55
                      gwb doesn't like to admit that he used public education for his kids, that he's posting his rants on a government funded and developed platform, and any other number of "socialist" type policies.

                      Yes, the government hasn't taken the means of production, blah blah blah, but let's see what happens when I refuse to pay my property taxes that pay for the education of all the little ankle biters in my neighborhood.

                      I'm with you phillipj, we need different priorities. Our defense budget is completely out of fucking control.

                      I have no idea why people think that China is going to either:

                      1. "Call the bank note" on the US.
                      2. Go to war with us.

                      China is more dependent on us than we are on them. They aren't going to shoot themselves in the face to shoot us in the hand.
                      Need parts now? Need them cheap? steve@blunttech.com
                      Chief Sales Officer, Midwest Division—Blunt Tech Industries

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                        #56
                        Originally posted by z31maniac View Post
                        ... I'm with you phillipj, we need different priorities. Our defense budget is completely out of fucking control.
                        One of the most "controversial" proposals put forth by ol' 'crazy socialist' Bernie in 2016 was a plan to make tuition-free at public colleges and universities. What a crazy, terrible idea!

                        Not only the GOP & the typical Right Wing, but the Hillarys, the Pelosis, the Schumers, as well as all the establishment papers/news - The WSJ, The New York Times, all the Tribune papers, CNN, etc - blasted him. Where the hell would the all this money come from???? It would cost $47 Billion dollars! It would surely "Bankrupt the Country". You saw that quote repeated everywhereeeeee...

                        ---

                        Ha! well, shortly after Trump's Election, He requests a $639 Billion Dollar defense Budget -- a $54B increase. Guess what? Congress ultimately votes to help the President increase that amount to $696 Billion Dollars! We are talking well over a $100B increase. Nearly every Republican and over 60% of Democrats voted for this.

                        ... Some "#resistance"!!! This is what I am talking about when I suggest a more "moral" budget and "different priorities." It surely doesn't mean new taxes!
                        1990 BMW 325iC Triple Black Hard Top, Self-Wrenched, Original Owner Family

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                          #57
                          As noted above, we already are operating in a sort of socialist kleptocracy. At the largest of scales, we are set up to allow mega corporations (and by extension, billionaires) to privatize all gains from their nation-scale shenanigans, and then when the various ponzi schemes that they deployed onto the public implode, the losses are socialized onto said public. See: 2008, and probably sometime in the next 2-3 years.

                          "Socialism" gets tossed around a lot. Self-described right-wingers generally automatically take it to mean Soviet-style socialism ("It's the only possible outcome!"). Self-described left-wingers generally automatically take it to mean utopia ("It just hasn't been done right!"). Obviously, anyone thinking for 5 minutes about it knows that there is no such thing as "pure" socialism, capitalism, communism or anything else. The ideals found in economic treatises and textbooks are idealized (to varying degrees) versions of things, and the complexities of human nature will always divert the course of these systems to something resembling, but distinctly different than, the ideal. Capitalism usually gets thought of in the same black & white terms, but with the "wings" reversed. Ultimately all of these systems are experiments, and while I think that our capitalist experiment is generally less-bad than a bunch of the others, it is far from great and we absolutely need work on developing the next one to address the shortcomings of all of the previous ones. "Democratic socialism" is sort of the label I would use to describe the next iteration of political systems within western civilization, but it is not a good label because "socialism" is basically a loaded term for many people.

                          Much of western Europe seems to have found a reasonable balance, with systems that seem to be described adequately (not perfectly, but adequately) as tending toward democratic socialism. Having spent time there off and on for the last few years, I have sort of gotten the feeling that they have been able to get there as the result of spending thousands of years waging wars of expansion, domination and general aggression across the European continent. The amount of history available to see in any major city tells a story you just don't get from a textbook, and I think that people there grow up with more of an idea of the importance of finding some sort of balance since remnants of the violent alternatives are on display all over the place. Granted, current socioeconomic trends are fueling yet another growth of extreme populism in many countries, so maybe the last ~70 years are an anomaly within the ~2500 years of western civilization as we generally know it. History is long and human lives are short, so it might be that we can never truly retain the lessons of the past.



                          Anyway, as for 2020, the only candidate that I am at all interested in seeing run is Gabbard. She is basically the only one out there who has the guts to even talk about reigning in the military industrial complex. Nevermind that the actual amount of control that the president has over this is limited. One of the biggest sources of threats to our national security is our own foreign policy, and dialing back on our nation-building escapades needs to be done. Using that money domestically would be of tremendous benefit to everyone.

                          Sanders used to be more principled on this, but he got into bed with the devil in 2016 (and I applaud him for doing it; someone has to shock the DNC out of their corrupt stupor, although it has not happened yet) and it would seem that the DNC is slowly eroding his views to conform to the status quo when it comes to our foreign policy. That, and he is too damn old. I have never voted for Democrat or Republican for president because, in my adult life, I have not seen a candidate worth voting for. If Gabbard got the Dem nomination, I'd vote for her (***assuming she does not end up reversing her stance on everything in order to get, or as a result of being, nominated***).

                          Trump, and populism more generally, is the symptom of the real problem: a corrupt political system which is not serving the interests of most people. You can see the system defending itself every day as it tries harder and harder to convince everyone that Trump and populism are the real problem. Trump and populism are to systematic corruption as a migraine headache is to the brain cancer that is causing it. The headache sucks, but taking some ibuprofen for the headache isn't fixing anything.

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                            #58
                            Back on topic!

                            Elizabeth Warren official in the race.

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                              #59
                              Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota announced today that she is running in 2020.

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                                #60
                                Originally posted by mbonder View Post
                                Back on topic!

                                Elizabeth Warren official in the race.
                                She was done as soon as the left leaning papers blasted her last week over the "native American" issue.
                                Need parts now? Need them cheap? steve@blunttech.com
                                Chief Sales Officer, Midwest Division—Blunt Tech Industries

                                www.gutenparts.com
                                One stop shopping for NEW, USED and EURO PARTS!

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