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Comments Posted By Smirnonn

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Pessimism in the Age of Mass Manipulation and Plutocracy…

“All I know is that it makes me pleased to leave things a little better for me having been there. To clean up my tiny corner of the beach… In the end, maybe that’s all any of us can do.”

Well said, PW. That’s the bottom line. Leave every situation better than you found it. A hard bill to fill, indeed, but a truly noble goal.

» Posted By Smirnonn On March 7, 2011 @ 12:32 pm

Wisconsin, what does it really mean?

“May you live in interesting times.”

Check ✔

This situation here in WI is all about union busting. Walker claims budgetary concerns are at the core of the issue but even after the unions said they’d be willing to negotiate monetary concessions Walker still isn’t backing backing down from taking away collective bargaining. And, believe you me, if this bill passes here it won’t be the end but the beginning of a nationwide attempt to eradicate unions.

I’ve been in a union before. I’m not a huge fan of unions overall but they do provide a necessary counterbalance to the monied corporate interests. And, even non-union workers benefit from unions as the unions often set the bar.

I saw on TRMS last Friday that unions are the only organizations on the left that are able to donate to elections on the level of some of the big PACS like the chamber of commerce. Of the groups that donate the most money to campaigns, 2 of the top 5 are unions. If republicans succeed in eradicating unions, and in light of the deplorable citizens united ruling, they will practically be able to buy whatever (most probably regressive) legislation they want.

» Posted By Smirnonn On February 20, 2011 @ 1:03 pm

Sarah Palin Watch: The Death of Death Panels

From a fellow farmer, well put. I loved the quote from the emt. It IS all about respect for life.

» Posted By Smirnonn On February 19, 2011 @ 4:56 pm

Tenderfoot No More

Wolf, really funny post!! I did the cub scout thing and my mother was one of the “den mothers.” I hated it and quit pretty early on but my mom stuck with it and stayed on. In retrospect it must’ve been really embarrassing for her. Sorry, mom!!! 🙂

» Posted By Smirnonn On February 18, 2011 @ 7:14 am

The Deficit of Truth About Obama’s Budget

Love that vid, Kelly. He really says it like it is. The real war has nothing to do with anything but money and “class.”

» Posted By Smirnonn On February 14, 2011 @ 8:18 pm

Budget, Deficits, the Debt and the lies from the right

Excellent!!!!!

» Posted By Smirnonn On February 15, 2011 @ 7:48 pm

I know. It is really disturbing when the whole austerity program concept is brought out into the daylight. We have so far to go…….

» Posted By Smirnonn On February 15, 2011 @ 7:42 pm

This is an excellent explanation. Concise, yet disturbing. Here’s a transcript:

“Let’s talk about the austerity programs being imposed by governments on people around the world, and especially here in the United States. Austerity is a fancy term. It really simply means that a government is either raising the taxes on average people, or cutting the services it provides to them, or both. And the purpose is always the same – to put money aside on the part of the government to pay off the lenders from whom it has borrowed. Those lenders are demanding a more secure flow of money, they’re demanding to see that the government has set aside money to pay interest on these debts, and so they want the government to show that they have the muscle – to get the taxes, to cut the services – so that the money will be there for the lenders. Let’s see why that happened over many years, and why it’s a crisis now.

For many years politicians solved their problem of being popular by not raising taxes on people while providing them with services. If you keep improving the services and you don’t raise the taxes, how are you going to pay for that? Solution? Borrowing. That’s what corporations want the government to do because they don’t want to have to pay the higher taxes. Rich people don’t want to have to pay the higher taxes, and the mass of people can’t pay the higher taxes. So the solution is you go to the rich people and say, “I won’t tax you, instead I’ll borrow from you,” and then the government can satisfy everybody.

This was already a problem before the latest crisis hit. But the latest crisis turned the problem into itself another crisis. Here’s how that happened:

Perfect example, in a way of the ongoing problem: The crisis meant the government had to spend a lot of money to get us out of the crisis. It had to lend money, it had to buy defunct corporations, it had to bail out broken companies, it had to fix a broken capitalism. That cost trillions. And the government, not to be unpopular, feared to tax people, feared to tax rich people, feared to tax corporations. So it went to the rich and the corporations and said, “Ok, I’m not going to tax you. Instead you lend it to me so I can bail you out.”

All over the world governments borrowed like never before. That’s why the “lending problem” is so big now. That’s when they discovered that the lenders, having lent them trillions to fix this crisis, are now nervous about governments being able to pay back. And so they demand – these lenders do (and again these lenders are corporations and wealthy people) – they demand the government set aside money to insure their loans. And so the government has to raise taxes on people, or cut services to people to find that money.

Here’s the problem with all of this: The crisis was brought on by corporations and rich people speculating. The government bailed them out. The government provided them with a recovery. The government borrowed from them to bail them out.

But now the government in an austerity program wants the mass of people to pay for it all – either with higher taxes, or with reduced government services, or both. Simply put, an austerity program is a way to shift the costs and burdens of a capitalist crisis on the mass of people who had the least to do with causing it, and who have so far suffered the lion’s share of the pain all crises impose. Austerity is the last thing that should be done in this situation. And it should be resisted by all people with even an elementary sense of fairness.”

» Posted By Smirnonn On February 15, 2011 @ 3:42 pm

“Taxes need to be raised and taxes of those who have most benefited from the US economy of the last 30 years are those who should now pay the piper.”

Exactly. It’s not “punishing success” as so many right wing pundits frame it. I heard a radio show recently where an economist was being interviewed about tax rates. His analogy for higher tax rates for those who benefitted the most from our economy was that it’s like insurance. If you have a really nice home, you pay more to insure it. If you have a shack, not so much. I’m not paraphrasing the concept eloquently, but I hope you get the picture.

Funny thing is, a lot of extremely rich people have openly said they don’t mind and SHOULD be taxed more. And they would be foolish not to do so, especially in this economy. As you pointed out, inequality leads to social unrest. And, a healthy middle class drives the economy, increases spending and therefore increases income to those who profit from consumption.

» Posted By Smirnonn On February 15, 2011 @ 2:12 pm

“I mentioned before that the REAL culture wars comes from a marked difference between those of us who believe in the Common Good – the general welfare – and those who are invested utterly in hyper individualism.”

Extremely well put, choicelady!! And closely tied to the difference between “those who believe in the Common Good” and “those who are invested utterly in hyper individualism” are baser human traits like racism, xenophobia and greed.

» Posted By Smirnonn On February 15, 2011 @ 2:00 pm

That’s a GREAT analogy, PocketWatch. Deficit and debt reduction do nothing to stimulate the economy in a recession. The best way to recovery is to get money circulating again, which is exactly what we need to be doing right now. Spending on things like infrastructure, renewable energy, mass transit, education, research and development, etc. is actually an investment which has proven time and time again to pay back in spades while creating jobs and priming the economic pump, so to speak.

» Posted By Smirnonn On February 15, 2011 @ 1:54 pm

Everything from “Over There” belongs “Here!”

LOL 🙂 Thanks, PW. Good to see you again.

» Posted By Smirnonn On February 13, 2011 @ 7:07 pm

Thanks, Buddy!

» Posted By Smirnonn On February 13, 2011 @ 7:06 pm

Thanks, Truth. Yes, the edit feature is extremely cool! I can go back and fix my tpyo’s.

» Posted By Smirnonn On February 13, 2011 @ 7:03 pm

Well this is a pleasant surprise for a Sunday morning!! Thanks to Caru for posting a link to PlanetPOV. This is my first time here – great to see so many of my favorite HP posters! 🙂

I’m curious – anyone else here feel they were being “targeted” by HP? I was on just this morning and EVERYTHING I posted went to modland. Even if it was completely uncontroversial and on one of the now rare un-modded threads. I even replied to a post with a simple “exactly” and it went pending. I think I may have ruffled a few feathers over there…….

One more point – it’s nice to see there’s no need to misspell or double space everything here. Hey, I never knew all of you were such good spellers 🙂

» Posted By Smirnonn On February 13, 2011 @ 6:50 am

For Auld Lang Syne

What a beautiful story! My first house was an old duplex which was built in a blue-collar neighborhood in the late 1800’s. I got curious whenever I did work on it because I’d find little artifacts like German language newspapers used for insulation (the area had a lot of German immigrants), an old beer bottle sealed in the wall (presumably from the lunch break of a construction worker), etc. I went to the local historical society and to my delight the old phone books had reverse lookup – I could search the addresses of the duplex and find out the names AND professions of the occupants. It fascinated me to think of all of the everyday and special occurrences that happened in my house and how impermanent everything really is.

» Posted By Smirnonn On February 13, 2011 @ 7:30 pm

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