Re: Gifts
 

This is true. I have never argued more bitterly with GOP friends than when I start slamming corporate welfare and crony capitalism. And their logic sucks. They try to argue welfare is a handout, while sweetheart govt contracts for Big Pharma, or Big Defense, aren't on the basis one form of redistribution creates jobs, while another does not. When reminded both groups are wards of the state on equivalent moral footing, and neither has any business criticizing the other, these "capitalist" friends get really fucking pissed.

I don't think it's based on race or ethnicity so much. I think it's what I noted above: The Subsidized-And-Doing-Well don't understand that they are still, nevertheless, Subsidized.

I've told my friends who do govt contracting work as much. Fuck them. They're wards of the state. They don't get to bitch about the poor getting handouts until they work in the real private sector, which I define, for starters, as organizations with less than 10% of revenue accruing from govt contracting.

Re: Gifts
 

You really don't see how if you were a black or latino voter, you might not like someone saying, "you just voted for that guy because he gives you stuff?"

As far as I can think of, Obama didn't promise me any gifts. In a good year, he might have been promising to raise my taxes.

So why'd I vote for him? Because I'm dim?

Tens of millions of voters think the mythical welfare queen's monthly checks are gifts, while their social security, Medicare, mortgage interest deduction, subsidized student loans, and jobs in the defense industry are not.

Much of that commentary is equally dumb.

But you also left out "not advocate for policies that will harm them." Is it a "gift" to not place as many obstacles as possible on abortion, for example?

If "gift" mean "policy they agree with" then maybe you have a point. But we both know that's not what Romney meant.

Re: Gifts
 

That's one of them. The other one lives with Alice on the other side of the looking glass.

Re: Gifts
 

Yet somehow it never seems targetted at whites. Someday, I want to see the Republican candidate stand up at a county fair in one of the prarie states and talk about how people who get agricultural subsidies are just a bunch of takers.

Then I won't laugh at lines like the above.

Re: Gifts
 

Because there is a strong desire among Republicans to say that they lost this election because of the messenger rather than the message, so it's important to pile onto Romney and suggest that he keeps making gaffes. He's not saying anything many, many Republicans don't think. But it's very important not to acknowledge that the party's core beliefs may be a problem with voters.

If Romney had won and said the same thing, Republicans would have praised him for uttering hard truths.

eta:

See? You're singing from the same hymnal. It was all Romney's fault. (And Bush before him.) They just need to find a better candidate. Sure.

Re: Gifts
 

I didn't say Romney's position was abhorrent. I think it's entitled, near-sighted, and wrong. Not necessarily abhorrent. I think it is also indicative of the reason the Republican Party is in the slow process of circling the drain.

I also think that characterizing the policies Obama was pushing as "giving people what they want" is not accurate. I think he was favoring providing people with the social goods they are entitled to. Calling them gifts is saying that these constituencies got favors they were not deserving of and not entitled to.

In the end, the Republicans as a party just don't get it. And they are attacking each other in a feeding frenzy because the big fish got away and feeding on themselves is all they have left.

Re: Gifts
 

I don't think people are entitled to immigration reform or health care insurance. I think immigration is a good thing from which this nation has historically drawn strength, and see the economic benefits of both policies (much more so with immigration; not so much with HC) and so I don't hold a strong objection to either. But I don't see either as entitlement.

But then, I don't know of any valid entitlement. We have rights. You're not "entitled" to anything but, perhaps, if you're lucky, to be left alone. I don't have any obligation to give you anything, nor do you have one to me, or to anyone else. In a democracy, you and I can be compelled to give things to others, and they to us, but that doesn't mean anyone can claim he is "owed" what's given, or has some special basis to demand it. Entitlements are compelled by the power of the state - they are takings. That we're all addicted to them on some level doesn't grant them some unique sanctity. It's just people voting themselves stuff. Those who seek entitlements do so. Those who seek favorable government contracts do so. de Tocqueville can give you the rest.

Re: Gifts
 

N.B. -- No one holds it against Paul Ryan.

Re: Gifts
 

Tocqueville was wrong. We have lasted longer than he expected we would, and we will cotinue to be here generations after he has faded into a distant footnote in ancient history.

And I've said it time and time again. I will probably have it carved on my tombstone, if I have a tombstone. Rights carry duties. There is a commonwealth in this country. Part of the vast wealth we have inherited from the Earth, that drove us into the industrial age, belongs to all of us. It may reward each of us differently, but it belongs to all of us. That commonwealth is to be used to provide for the security, comfort, and protection of each of us.

Re: Gifts
 

It's how big and expensive a barrel of "entitlements" we rope under "security, comfort, and protection" that's the problem. The bar is getting too high. A nation of crony capitalists and subsistence transfer recipients sucking wealth out of the rest is commonrotten.

Re: Gifts
 

We now know that many in OFA most feared a Huntsman candidacy. Luckily, every candidate in the primary, even Michele Bachman, caught fire at some point OTHER than the one guy who might have won. Rudy did just as poorly.

You have to imagine Chris Christie looking at 2016, and thinking, well, I can run as a god-damned moderate in that crowd and know I won't stand the chance of a peanut in a pig sty, or, I can take this job in the 2nd administration, switch my party registration, and hope Hilary doesn't feel like running.

I say let them think it was the messanger. Let Limbaugh and company make the case that it has nothing to do with them.

Re: Gifts
 

It also rejects the notion that people voted for Obama because they actually think he is better for the country.

People like me. I didn't get any gifts and would personally do a lot better under Romney.... in the short term.

Re: Gifts
 

Man, do you never get out? Our governmental sector is significantly smaller than almost every other developed country, and more of it is devoted to supporting business than most of them.

Re: Gifts
 

He didn't win by that much. Like every other President in my voting life Obama won not because of people who thought he'd be better, he won because of people who thought he'd be less bad.

Team rape did more harm to Romney than Romney did to Romney. He would have put moderate judges on the Court and would have backed away from the anti-abortion and antigay positions in a quick second. But the insanity of the R's drove too many people away. It's one thing when all that hate is buried, but you would have to have one economically tunnel visioned voter to have ignored all that bike this time.

Re: Gifts
 

You have a point. What we really need is a new paradigm. Instead of agricultural subsidies, paying farmers not to grow soybeans hedgerow to hedgerow, alternating with field corn, we should be lending rural families money to buy small farms, and providing them with education to re-learn crop rotation, animal husbandry on a small scale, and stop devoting all of our arable land to either raw materials to make fake food or chemicals.

We need a negative income tax or other welfare transfer system that doesn't penalize people for working part-time or working at a below-subsistence level over the short-term. If they can supplement their welfare and not lose the support, people have more incentive to do some work.

We need to stop subsidizing the banks and large corporate behemoths. If they can't survive on their own, then it is time for them to shrink to a sustainable size.

We need massive tax reform. First, I would make choice of entity (taxable or passthrough) purely elective. I would try to take some steps toward integrating corporate and individual taxes by enacting a dividends-paid deduction for corporations. That would allow a taxable entity to limit the amount of its income subject to double taxation by paying unneeded earnings out to shareholders. I favor a dividends-paid deduction because it provides tax relief for money that is circulated through the economy. If a corporation chooses to hold on to earnings to defer payment, then I would subject it to tax at the entity level. I would also eliminate the preference for dividends and capital gains. Wealth is wealth; it should be taxed the same no matter how it is earned.

I would leaglize pot, regulate its growth so it isn't fucked with by adding pcp or god knows what else, and tax it like booze or cigarettes.

I would also shrink the military. If the new warfare really consists of murdering individuals far, far away by sending drones over, we don't need to keep building battleships, jets, and tanks that don't work. Instead, we can invest a lot less teaching high school graduates the technical skils to play video games with real human victims.

I would also make health care universal by offering a public option, and capping the amount that private insurance can pay in order to keep resources available for the public option. I am considering, but haven't yet decided, to make it legal to shoot claims adjusters and case managers who engage in bad faith denials of claims or drag out approvals until the insured dies.

I would also pass a law that provides that any nation (China) caugh engaged in a persistent pattern of violating patent and trademarkl law would have its interest payments on US debt offset by damages for that violation.

That's just off the top of my head. But it is a start to the discussion.