It's morning in Wisconsin

[Razgovory]

Billionaires and Corporations love taxes and regulations, since they have the werewithals to get around them, creating a competitive advantage against small business, which is why they tend to support Democrats.

Although Corporations tend to give to both sides as a for of protection.  The argument that the rich and corporations favor the GOP is another bunch of uneducated claptrap without evidence.

Crap Hans said something I agree with completely

I suddenly feel pangs of self doubt.

You should.  I see a bunch of people who make above average salaries and wages(as previous Languish polls indicated), who are jumping for joy that other people are going to lose income and benefits.  It really makes me sick.

[Hansmeister]

Billionaires and Corporations love taxes and regulations, since they have the werewithals to get around them, creating a competitive advantage against small business, which is why they tend to support Democrats.

Although Corporations tend to give to both sides as a for of protection.  The argument that the rich and corporations favor the GOP is another bunch of uneducated claptrap without evidence.

You are a fucking moron.

See above post.

I don't know, there is only so much retardation I can put up with.

OTOH, the good thing about public Unions is that as long as they are around it guarantees that government services will be extremely shitty and ineffective, undermining the Democrats call for ever greater government.

[Valmy]

You should.  I see a bunch of people who make above average salaries and wages(as previous Languish polls indicated), who are jumping for joy that other people are going to lose income and benefits.  It really makes me sick.

That is not why I am jumping for joy.  I am jumping for joy because a popular mandate won out over special interests.  Nothing personal at all towards those teachers, I wish we could pay them all 100k with generous benefits but we cannot afford to....or at least the people of Wisconsin do not want to and that is their choice.  The consequences, whatever they might be, will ultimately be on their heads which is how it should be.

[Razgovory]

Why would they?  In our hypothetical why would they endorse the ideas of party that couldn't cut it?

The same reasons the old Republicans ended up endorsing the Federalists ideas.

Which is why the GOP went to war with France, continues to raise taxes, and refuses to recognize the Louisiana purchase.

[Viking]

Billionaires and Corporations love taxes and regulations, since they have the werewithals to get around them, creating a competitive advantage against small business, which is why they tend to support Democrats.

Although Corporations tend to give to both sides as a for of protection.  The argument that the rich and corporations favor the GOP is another bunch of uneducated claptrap without evidence.

Crap Hans said something I agree with completely

I suddenly feel pangs of self doubt.

I'm gonna go and agree with some of that as well. Big business (defined as any business large enough to move the market itself) has an incentive to get the regulations written to benefit themselves. This is why in socialist europe the largest corporations tend to cooperate most intimately with government. A former employer (and wholly owned by one owner) of mine managed to arrange with the state to to sell 49% of its owners shares in exchange for more than enough cash to pay off the loans the owner took to buy the whole thing in the first place. The owner contributes to the Labour Party regularly than and his "Suggestion" that he might move production abroad is what got him that sweeheart deal.

Now he runs the company with a passive owner less demanding than a bank that wants its intrest. Now he just has to arrange that his wholly owned companies within the same group of companies get all the profit.

Adam Smith got it right, the worst enemy of free market capitalism is large capitalists.

[Razgovory]

You should.  I see a bunch of people who make above average salaries and wages(as previous Languish polls indicated), who are jumping for joy that other people are going to lose income and benefits.  It really makes me sick.

That is not why I am jumping for joy.  I am jumping for joy because a popular mandate won out over special interests.  Nothing personal at all towards those teachers, I wish we could pay them all 100k with generous benefits but we cannot afford to....or at least the people of Wisconsin do not want to and that is their choice.  The consequences, whatever they might be, will ultimately be on their heads which is how it should be.

Lets not pretend that this is divorced from teacher pay and benefits, okay?  We aren't that naive.

[Razgovory]

Billionaires and Corporations love taxes and regulations, since they have the werewithals to get around them, creating a competitive advantage against small business, which is why they tend to support Democrats.

Although Corporations tend to give to both sides as a for of protection.  The argument that the rich and corporations favor the GOP is another bunch of uneducated claptrap without evidence.

You are a fucking moron.

See above post.

I don't know, there is only so much retardation I can put up with.

OTOH, the good thing about public Unions is that as long as they are around it guarantees that government services will be extremely shitty and ineffective, undermining the Democrats call for ever greater government.

You are in the army, and the Republican stalwart.  Your ability to deal with retardation must be astronomical.  Can you perhaps prove that states with Public unions have less effective government services then those that don't?  Please use a multiple regression model with a 95% confidence factor.

[derspiess]

And no, the school districts have not increased spending on "actual" education, what with the voucher program eliminating $71 million to Milwaukee public schools alone.  But that's where all the niggers live, so it's OK.

I can see why that pisses you off.  With vouchers, inner city black students might actually get a chance to get a decent education and leave the vicious cycle that keeps them voting Democratic.

[Valmy]

Which is why the GOP went to war with France, continues to raise taxes, and refuses to recognize the Louisiana purchase.

Ok Raz.

[Valmy]

I can see why that pisses you off.  With vouchers, inner city black students might actually get a chance to get a decent education and leave the vicious cycle that keeps them voting Democratic.

Inner city black kids: A plague that has rocked Wisconsin for years!

By the way how has the voucher thing been going?  I was never very optimistic about its prospects but surely it has been going in a few states by now.

[Razgovory]

It's shit like this that will ever prevent me from being a Republican.  My parents worked at state jobs.  There was no Union, (some positions had a Union like teachers but there's was toothless)., and it was hard to get jobs in the early 1980's and the only employment in Jefferson City is state work.  They made very poor wages.  We had to live on food stamps.  Missouri happens to have the worst paid state employees in the nation.  I remember my dad working till past 10 in the evening just to make ends meet.  I remember my dad having to go to see the Governor sing (in these days it was Ashcroft), for fear of losing his job.  I saw state workers regularly shit on by politicians and other citizens.  "They were overpaid, and lazy".  No matter how hard people worked and how little they made they were they were always "Overpaid and lazy".  Every time the business owners who happen to moonlight as state reps wanted to give themselves a tax cut, state employees wages were cut or employees were laid off. 

And you know what happens when you barely pay people and cut the number of positions down so each employee is doing the work of three people?  The quality of services declines.  Then when one of those shit eating Republican farmer-Senators (who rakes in cash from farming subsidies), decides it's best to privatize.  Cause you know, the free market is always better.   And guess what?  He knows just the guy to take this lucrative new contract.

Fuck you.

[Razgovory]

I can see why that pisses you off.  With vouchers, inner city black students might actually get a chance to get a decent education and leave the vicious cycle that keeps them voting Democratic.

Inner city black kids: A plague that has rocked Wisconsin for years!

By the way how has the voucher thing been going?  I was never very optimistic about its prospects but surely it has been going in a few states by now.

It's a good way to funnel money into creationist schools and some of those former all white academies that dot the south.

[DGuller]

There are lots of states that are NOT dominated by very powerful public sector unions, and I don't buy your assumption that they must therefore all be in the pockets of "crony capitalism". That is a pretty difficult claim to evidence I think.

The idea that we should preserve the perversion of the democracy (not to mention the incredible expense) that public sector unions represent because the ONLY alternative is this undefined "crony capitalism" might be the weakest argument I have ever seen for maintaining unions.

There aren't strong arguments for maintaining public employee unions, because they are a terrible thing.  As for crony capitalism, the term is very-well definited, actually.  Google it or read it on Wiki.

Of course, it is a fiction that the Dems MUST have this source of political power to counter Republican power from large financial backers. The Dems have their own large financial backers, and it isn't like there is anything stopping them from raising billions in super-pacs as well.

Except, maybe, lack of enough fat cats to actually hand over these billions.  Just because there is nothing stopping me from earning aa $50 million salary doesn't mean that I'm likely to actually get that much.

This is a case where the political parties alignments have resulted in the Republicans being on the right side of the issue, and the Dems on the wrong side. That helped the Dems for a very long time, and now it is not.

They may be on the right side of the issue, but they are on the right side of it for the wrong reasons.  If that's were Republicans stop, then we shouldn't care much about whether they're right for the right or wrong reasons, but we know that they're just warming up for more radical moves.

[derspiess]

I can see why that pisses you off.  With vouchers, inner city black students might actually get a chance to get a decent education and leave the vicious cycle that keeps them voting Democratic.

Inner city black kids: A plague that has rocked Wisconsin for years!

By the way how has the voucher thing been going?  I was never very optimistic about its prospects but surely it has been going in a few states by now.

Dunno-- haven't paid a whole lot of attention since vouchers haven't been a hot-button issue for a while. 

It defunds the public school system & forces it to compete, so that's a good start.

[CountDeMoney]

I don't know, there is only so much retardation I can put up with.

Hell, nothing prevent us from being forced to participate in your psychotic performance art, either.




Pfft, Languish on the iHipster sucks.