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Formerly Feckless Republicans ... learning to sell sex on a troop train.

This requires an explanation?

Vote Easy

Submitted by Roanman on Wed, 10/06/2010 - 14:36

 

From Project Vote Smart, here's just the best interactive you're ever going to see.

You're asked your opinion on twelve issues, and then you are asked to evaluate how important each issue is to your ultimate voting decision.

Vote Easy then gets busy and provides you with an interactive chart of the candidates in you state and a percentage evaluation of the extent to which they share your opinions on the issues.

Thanks to Kerry and to Chartporn both of whom called this site to my attention at about the same instant.

Big fun.

Recommended.

Click the JPEG below for the link.

 

 

The Professional Left vs. the Amateur Right

Submitted by Roanman on Tue, 08/24/2010 - 14:38

It's all yours!

Submitted by Roanman on Tue, 08/03/2010 - 07:54

 

Carolyn, Paul A. and Don C. (my new best email buddy, having replaced Teddy who went to Florida for Easter and hasn't been heard from since) have been sending me some real good political cartoons.

As the Little Wiffer, my secretary, and anyone else charged with the responsibility of taking care of me can attest, sometimes it's hard to get me to pay attention.

Up until this morning, it never dawned on me to check the artist.

It's all the same guy.

A.F. Branco.

Click on the cartoon below to link to his fine site.

He's looking for donations and selling coffee mugs, tee shirts and some other stuff.

I'm guessing the New York Times isn't returning his calls.

And for damn sure the Freep ain't.

 



 Teddyyyyyyyyyy, where are youuuuuuuuu??????

 

The following is an editorial comment

Submitted by Roanman on Mon, 06/28/2010 - 15:56

 

Chad Selweski, the local columnist for The Macomb Daily, published an opinion piece in Sunday's edition of that newspaper the beginning of which follows below.

The point of the article being that issues having to do with the deficit are extraordinarily difficult, and the real problem with Tea Party types being that they want to enjoy the services provided by government, they just don't want to pay for them.

Click anywhere below to read the entire article.

 

I wonder how our local Tea Party activists spent their Saturday afternoon.

How many took advantage of yesterday’s national forum, a teleconference held in 19 cities (including Detroit) and for thousands of individuals online, to seek solutions to the nation’s bulging budget deficit?

Organized by a nonpartisan group, AmericaSpeaks, the unprecedented event provided a sobering view of our country’s $13 trillion debt and the limited options facing Congress if it tries to tackle the problem.

 

The op-ed ends as follows:

 

Much of this entire fiscal responsibility issue centers on arithmetic, not politics.

 

The following is my reply.

 

To begin with .....

I'm not a member of any Tea Party affiliate.

I do like them and will support them.

I belong to no organized political party, I'm a Libertarian ..... probably.

Having said that.

Here are some ideas which if applied would probably enable principal payments on the deficit in year 1.

Not necessarily in this order.

 

1.  Remove all American troops and military bases from foreign soil, excepting those troops stationed within embassies.

Leave NATO, abandon Okinawa, and allow Europe, Japan, The House of Saud etc. to defend themselves.

American military personnel are presently posted on some 760 military sites within 63 countries.

I haven't checked it today, but most years our military budget has exceeded that of the rest of the world combined.

Europe is cutting military spending in response to their deficits because we defend them.

Europe, Japan and the rest of the world needs to defend itself.

Their defense ain't our job.

We need to maintain fearsome defensive military power.

We do not need offensive military weaponry such as carrier groups (they are nothing more than big assed targets anyway), long range bombers, etc.

Scrap half of them out.

We do not need to be maintaining military bases on foreign soil, anywhere.

And we damn sure don't need to be defending foreign despots while allowing them to abuse their own people.

Ya listening Faisel?

As an aside.

While you're at it, reduce our payment to the United Nations to a pro-rata share.

Those guys are hopelessly corrupt and largely a waste of skin.

 

2.  Raise the retirement age to 67 and 71.

From 1950 to 2005, life expectancy for an American male has increased from 65.47 to 75.2 years while the median retirement age has decreased from 66.9 years to 61.7 years.

At it's inception there were 41.9 workers per Social Security beneficiary, we are now pushing toward 3 workers per beneficiary.

As you would expect, we now have over 50 million beneficiaries, 10 million of which are collecting Social Security benefits for disabilities.

While we're on the subject, reviewing every last disability claimant seems prudent.

 

3.  Rather than paying 100% of medical costs for medicare and medicaid recipients and attempting to fix costs by legislation, provide for the federal government to reimburse 67% of all health care costs for those eligible for medicare and medicaid benefits.

Prudence will reign by virtue of people now being responsible for a third of their own medical expenses.

They can insure or not, negotiate or not, get care or not, but the fact that a third of the cost is skin (so to speak) will save a ton of money and probably improve care.

If you're flat broke, charities can and will pick up the slack.

Hell, you might be able to provide 30% to maybe 50% coverage for everybody else under that kind of an arrangement and still come out ahead.

And while we're on the subject.

 

4. Loser pays.

As a sop to my many and dear attorney friends, limiting liability is nonsense, but nuisances gotta pay.

 

5. Deduct the first $20,000 of income for every individual and corporate taxpayer, and apply a flat 20% tax on every dime of income thereafter, from every source, cash as well as the cash value of benefits.

End all payroll taxes, they're going into the general fund anyway.

Remove all deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions (Americans give because Americans give, the deduction is gravy ... lose it), IRA's, dependants, state and local taxes, depreciation, depletion ..... and every other damn thing.

 

Bigger incomes pay higher taxes.

Identical incomes pay identical taxes.

Account across the board, Cash in, Cash out.

While you're at it require public companies to account to shareholders exactly as they account to the IRS.

Businesses acquiring buildings and capital equipment can write purchases off in the year acquired (the economy will boom), that's cash out.  If buildings and equipment are sold or scrapped later on, that's cash in.  

Removing mortgage interest as a deductible item will cause huge problems in such a debt infested environment, and as such would probably have to be phased, do it as ruthlessly as possible.

In the interest of financing growth, you probably want interest to be a deductible item for business adventures, but not against personal income, you want to prohibit the LLC from buying the homestead, or at least deducting the mortgage interest.

Dividends should be a deduction at the corporate level (cash out) and income to the recipient (cash in) at the ordinary rate. 

Income from federal debt should be taxed at the same rate as all other income.

Capital gains should be taxed at the same rate as all other income.

 

6.  Close the Commerce Department, the Department of Education, and HUD, as well as the Department of Homeland Security (it's a joke).

Somebody has been stealing from HUD my entire adult life.

End it.

 

7.  Sell Fanny, Freddie, Ginnie Mae and whatever acronym handles student loans.

Never guarantee or imply a guarantee of anything or anybody, to anybody, ever again.

 

8.  Legalize it!  Then tax it.

 

9.  Tax foreign oil at the border ... big time.

Develop gasified coal (it worked for Hitler, it'll work for us), along with nuclear, wind, solar, etc.

 

10.  Invest a little money and finish the fence.

Invest a little more to find and deport every last illegal residing in this country.

While you're at it fine employers of illegals, while significantly reducing unemployment benefits.

Think it through.

Jobs will come open, wages will probably increase with subsequent increases in tax revenues and reductions in federal expenses.

That Compton might have to drive out to the fields and pick a little lettuce is a also good thing.

 

You may choose to disagree with individual items, but that there be one helluva start.

Do the arithmetic!!!

People should listen to their Uncle Roany ... I got answers.

 

Peggy Noonan says it all

Submitted by Roanman on Mon, 05/03/2010 - 16:31

$200 Million per

Submitted by Roanman on Sat, 04/10/2010 - 12:05

Reading on a Saturday Morning

Submitted by Roanman on Sat, 04/10/2010 - 11:22

 

As far as I'm concerned, Peggy Noonan is one of the finest writers in America.

I make my son read her editorials in the Wall Street Journal (he hates it) ... (I don't care).

Here's her analysis of what went wrong with the mortgage market.

Click anywhere below to get the entire piece.

 

You, for political reasons, both Republicans and Democrats, finagled the mortgage system so that people who make, like, zero dollars a year were given mortgages for $600,000 houses.

You got to run around and crow about how under your watch everyone became a homeowner.

You shook down the taxpayer and hoped for the best. 

"Democrats did it because they thought it would make everyone Democrats:

'Look what I give you!'

Republicans did it because they thought it would make everyone Republicans:

'I'm a homeowner, I've got a stake, don't raise my property taxes, get off my lawn!'

And Wall Street?

We went to town, baby.

We bundled the mortgages and sold them to fools, or we held them, called them assets, and made believe everyone would pay their mortgage.

As if we cared.

We invented financial instruments so complicated no one, even the people who sold them, understood what they were.

"You're finaglers and we're finaglers.

I play for dollars, you play for votes.

In our own ways we're all thieves.

We would be called desperadoes if we weren't so boring, so utterly banal in our soft-jawed, full-jowled selfishness.

If there were any justice, we'd be forced to duel, with the peasants of America holding our cloaks.

Only we'd both make sure we missed, wouldn't we?"

 

I think that just about covers it.

 

Reading on a Sunday Morning

Submitted by Roanman on Sun, 03/28/2010 - 09:19

 

This bit of fun is brought to you by Doctor, Senator Tom Coburn, Republican from Oklahoma.

The idea here being that since Democrats, having boxed themselves in by virtue of the tactics they employed to pass their Obamacare legislation, now were forced to go on the record in the Senate and vote against an unlimited number of Republican amendments.

Then defend that record in the fall. 

Among those amendments Democrats rejected:

  

No Erectile Dysfunction Drugs To Sex Offenders

(Amendment 3556)

This amendment would enact recommendations from the Government Accountability Office to stop fraudulent payments for prescription drugs prescribed by dead providers or, to dead patients. This amendment also prohibits coverage of Viagra and other ED medications to convicted child molesters, rapists, and sex offenders, and prohibits coverage of abortion drugs.

A 2005 survey found that some 800 convicted sex offenders had received Medicaid-funded impotence drugs.

 

Congress Should Not Lecture Americans About Fiscal Responsibility

(Amendment 3563)

This amendment would strike the creation of a new $375 million government program the new health bill (The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) intended to promote personal and financial responsibility. It is ironic that Congress, that amassed a $12 trillion deficit, should lecture Americans about financial responsibility. This government “responsibility” program duplicates existing government programs and adds hundreds of millions of dollars to the tax burden funds. In short, there is nothing responsible about the new responsibility program.

 

If You Like the Health Plan You Have, You Can Keep It

(Amendment 3559) 

President Obama promised that Americans who like their health care plan would be able to keep it. However, the Congressional Budget Office has said that millions of people will lose their current coverage under The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Unfortunately, for many Americans, the reconciliation bill is even worse news, as it made changes to some grandfathering provisions. The changes to grandfathering provisions would mean that individuals with guaranteed renewable plans in the individual market will NOT be able to keep their current coverage at the current price, but would immediately be issued a new policy and charged more. This amendment strikes changes to grandfathered plans, so Americans who like the health care they have actually can keep it.

 

Implement Republican Ideas President Obama Has Endorsed To Crack Down on Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

(Amendment 3560) 

The President’s Proposal for health reform, released on February 22, 2010, highlighted nine Republican ideas to combat waste, fraud, and abuse. This amendment includes each of those policy provisions which have been endorsed by President Obama. Certainly Washington politicians should be serious about stemming the hemorrhaging of taxpayer dollars lost to waste, fraud, and abuse. Senators will have an opportunity to vote on proposals which have received bipartisan support, and which the President has endorsed.

 

Abortion Conscience Amendment

(Amendment 3561) 

This amendment would ensure health care providers are not forced to participate in abortions or discriminated against because they choose not to perform abortions. The federal government should never require health care providers to violate their deeply held moral, ethical or religious beliefs or discriminate against them because they choose to exercise their consciences and not be involved with abortion. This amendment would protect health care providers from being required or coerced to perform abortions.

 

Exempt Class I Medical Devices from New Taxation. 

Taxing latex gloves and band-aids is not health reform and only increases the cost of health care for patients. This amendment would exempt all Class I medical devices – such as band-aids, wheelchairs, hospital beds, and surgical gowns – from new federal taxation.

 

Highly Qualified Bureaucrats in the Department of Education Office of Federal Student Aid

(Amendment 3649) 

As the U.S. Department of Education prepares to become one of the world’s largest banks, this amendment holds government bureaucrats to the same high standards applied to U.S. teachers by requiring each employee within the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Federal Student Aid to become “Highly Qualified” in fiscal management.

This amendment requires each employee within the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Federal Student Aid to become “Highly Qualified” in fiscal management by earning a bachelor’s degree in finance or business management/administration within six years of the date of enactment.

 

Prohibits Members of Congress from receiving a pay increase until the budget is balanced

(Amendment 3689)

This amendment freezes the pay of Members of Congress until they balance the U.S. government’s budget. Members of Congress are paid an annual salary of $174,000 and, under a law passed by Congress, that amount is automatically increased every year. This amendment would block this automatic congressional pay raise until Congress stops borrowing money to pay for its excessive spending.

 

For the complete list of Senator Coburn's ammendments, click below.

I could not find the complete Senate list published at any one place. 

The complete list of amendments offered and rejected by House Democrats can be found here.

It's long, but worthy of some fast scrolling.

 

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