GOP Primary Megathread!

[Ed Anger]

Yi probably means Kirsten Gillibrand, who is a US Senator, not a Lt. Governor.

Yi: politically uninformed.

Smart man actually. Trying to keep up with the rats in government causes impotence.

[Ed Anger]

wut

[jimmy olsen]

If Mitt loses Michigan he's gonna have problems
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/mi/michigan_republican_presidential_primary-1589.html

[11B4V]

If Mitt loses Michigan he's gonna have problems
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/mi/michigan_republican_presidential_primary-1589.html

It doesnt matter. Who ever gets in there will be crushed by Obamanation.

[Admiral Yi]

Yi probably means Kirsten Gillibrand, who is a US Senator, not a Lt. Governor.

Yi: politically uninformed.

Lt. governor or somethinig accurately describes her office.

[Sheilbh]

Yi probably means Kirsten Gillibrand, who is a US Senator, not a Lt. Governor.

Yi: politically uninformed.

Lt. governor or somethinig accurately describes her office.

She's also a Democrat.  Did you mean someone else entirely?

This is Gillibrand:

[Admiral Yi]

She's also a Democrat.  Did you mean someone else entirely?

I meant her.  The topic was attractive women in US politics.

[Sheilbh]

I meant her.  The topic was attractive women in US politics.

Ok.  I thought it was more over Ide's contention that Republican women are ugly monsters, apparently citing Nancy Pelosi to demonstrate that.  Which is novel.

[Darth Wagtaros]

If Mitt loses Michigan he's gonna have problems
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/mi/michigan_republican_presidential_primary-1589.html

He can make up for it in the West.

[alfred russel]

If Mitt loses Michigan he's gonna have problems
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/mi/michigan_republican_presidential_primary-1589.html

He can make up for it in the West.

States like Colorado with significant Mormon populations will be a reliable levy against the surge of santorum.

[PDH]

Wyoming will go for the weirdest one...so it seems a toss-up.

[11B4V]

 

Yi probably means Kirsten Gillibrand, who is a US Senator, not a Lt. Governor.

Yi: politically uninformed.

Lt. governor or somethinig accurately describes her office.

She's also a Democrat.  Did you mean someone else entirely?

This is Gillibrand:

[garbon]

She got old.  Give her a break.  She's still not bad looking for her age cohort, and the eyes are the same.

[The Minsky Moment]

Fourthly, despite the corporate shareholders basic if attenuated responsibility for damages done in their name, it's far more administratively convenient to charge either a corporate income tax, or a capital gains tax, or both, as a form of "social insurance" paid by all limited liability entities, to make up for the social harms some of them commit, by financing a strong, rich government, which will ameliorate that harm either through its functioning courts or through its generous social safety net.

This is hard to square with your apparent view on Citizens United (yes grinding that axe again).

What you are implicitly advancing here is a theory of the corporation that is consistent with what the literature calls the "conessionary" theory (though I don't care for the terminology).  Basically the idea is that corporations as creatures of state law are merely "concessions" that can be modified or revoked by the will of the Legislature and therefore exist to serve the public welfare.  There are two key things to keep in mind about this view: (1) it unquestionably reflects how corporations were understood and viewed at the time of the drafting of the Constitution - when under many state statutes a special  act of the Legislature was required to grant each individual corporate charter, and (2) legally speaking, the theory is a truism - that is the corporate form is entirely a creation of state legislatures and nothing more.  If all 50 states decided tomorrow to strike their corporation statutes from the book, every corporation in America would dissolve.

Notwithstanding all this, in certain academic circles the concessionary theory is considered quaint and passe.  How can this be?  The origin point is the Law and Economics movement and the work of Ronald Coase in particular, who theorized the business fim as a  "nexus of contracts."    That in turn gave rise to an "associationist" view of corporations that sees them as voluntary associations of free citizens who agree to bind themselves together through a complex web of contracts.

The associationist view is all very nice as a way of analyzing corporations from a sociological perspective, but it is also in a sense dodging the issue.  The issue is that there is a very real and significant difference between human people and corporate "persons".  Human beings are legal Persons axiomatically under a free, democractic constitution - the American Constitution captures this axiomatic position quite well by beginning with the phrase "We the People".  Human Personhood is natural, inherent, irrevocable, even tautological.   Corporations, on the ohter hand are legal Persons only because some state legislature says they are so.  Their Personhood is artificial, conditional and revocable. 

Once you accept this distinction then the justification for corporate control and taxation by the state is clear - corporations are creations of public law and therefore their raison d'etre is to increase the general welfare.  The state should therefore adjust corporate institutional arrangements as appropriate to achieve that goal.

But if you don't accept that view and conflate corporate and individual Personhood, it becomes far more murky.  If a couple of friends and I form a bowling team and compete for prize money, the state can tax us for whatever we take individually but can't impose an additional tax on the Team as a whole.  Indeed unincorporated associations of citizens of all kinds are typically exempt from entity-level taxation, regardless of whether they enjoy limitation of liability or not.  But if corporations are entitled to all the usual rights of constitutional persons, then how can taxation be imposed on the entity level without violating Equal Protection?

[Eddie Teach]

She got old.  Give her a break.  She's still not bad looking for her age cohort, and the eyes are the same.

70 year olds look hideous as a rule. Pelosi's skin may be falling off, but her facial structure is still intact. She's got good genes.