BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
Life is not a right?
Then how shall we define rights?
Then how shall we define rights?
So you feel a person with no insurance has a right to walk into a hospital; get lab work, physician care, medications and possibly a room and meals--for free? And that is paid for by others or provided pro bono? If he is turned away can he sue for having his right to health care violated?
I recognize the constitutional power of governments to levy taxes. But for traditional, constitutional roles. Not income redistribution for example.
And which political party has been in charge of most urban governments for decades? See below answer.
No. The stats showing the number of black children living in a two adult family for the years prior to 1960 and the number today certainly makes for a strong argument.
What he doesn't, what liberals are in denial about and can't say, is that too many fathers are missing because the government has stepped in to assume their role as provider and popular culture now provides the role models. You may not admit a cause and effect but there is no denying the ensuing negative social pathologies.
Thanks for the discussion by the way. I really think most Americans have the best intentions when these programs are introduced. It's the hostility to admit failure or even subjectively review these programs that frustrates me. And when there is such an acknowledgement the only acceptable answer seems to be... they aren't working because we haven't spent enough money!! That and "Why do hate poor people?" of course.
So you feel a person with no insurance has a right to walk into a hospital; get lab work, physician care, medications and possibly a room and meals--for free? And that is paid for by others or provided pro bono? If he is turned away can he sue for having his right to health care violated? That is what I mean by indentured servitude. One person forces another person to serve him. The exercise of true rights, such as those in our Constitution or natural rights, do not diminish those held by another.
No. The stats showing the number of black children living in a two adult family for the years prior to 1960 and the number today certainly makes for a strong argument.
Thanks for the discussion by the way. I really think most Americans have the best intentions when these programs are introduced. It's the hostility to admit failure or even subjectively review these programs that frustrates me. And when there is such an acknowledgement the only acceptable answer seems to be... they aren't working because we haven't spent enough money!! That and "Why do hate poor people?" of course.
Also, the "War on Poverty" policies were instituted in the first place largely because these trends were already apparent--black unemployment was higher in the mid-60s than it had been in the mid-50s, increases in black incomes relative to white incomes were stagnating, black unemployment rates were no longer in parallel with black welfare dependency rates, and divorce and out-of-wedlock birthrates in the black community were shooting up (see: Moynihan Report). It goes without saying those policies were not a resounding success, and yes there are substantive arguments to be made that they often exacerbated existing problems, but they certainly didn't create the very situations they were designed to address.the problems of the urban black underclass has very little to do with welfare and teacher's unions than it does with an entrenched history of poverty due to racist housing codes of the earlier part of the 20th century, as well as the influx of drugs and especially crack in the 1980s, and the quick money to be made from the selling of said drugs. and that's just the tip of the iceberg. it can be argued that teacher's unions and welfare may not help in the way that they should, or maybe even exacerbate certain problems, but to identify them as the cause seems really inaccurate.
I'd be inclined to say you see similar problems among the rural underclass (black and white), thinking here of growing up in the Deep South--lack of a longterm vision for the family, self-destructive preoccupation with short-lived and/or risky gratifications and "distinctions," passive attitude towards education, lack of civic awareness, and I think maybe also a kind of overly sex-segregated social world where the notion of men and women as partners and players on the same team is not really taken seriously. And the public schools in areas with high incidences of these problems do tend to reinforce them--by which I mean not teachers but peers: even if your own family has its act relatively together, socially you do tend to get backed up against the wall by peers whose families don't.and if i could be possibly horrible sounding, but based on observed, anecdotal experience, i'd say that there's an enormous lack of parenting skills in the inner city. some of the stuff i see shocks me. i feel like so many kids would do so much better if their parents were to take a simple (likely government funded) parenting class that would teach them to teach their children basic conflict resolution skills and techniques for delaying gratification. teachers can't do it all.
I don't know that "a simple parenting class" is likely to achieve much though.
So you feel a person with no insurance has a right to walk into a hospital; get lab work, physician care, medications and possibly a room and meals--for free?
L Overall life
expectancy Male Female
20 United Kingdom 79.4 77.2 81.6
36 United States 78.3 75.6 80.8
the problems of the urban black underclass has very little to do with welfare and teacher's unions than it does with an entrenched history of poverty due to racist housing codes of the earlier part of the 20th century, as well as the influx of drugs and especially crack in the 1980s, and the quick money to be made from the selling of said drugs. and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
What many Americans don't realise is that the set of problems seen in black urban communities in the US - hard drugs, unemployment, lack of education, welfare dependence, poor diet & nutrition, etc - are also seen in inner city communities in many European cities - Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester and others - except that the welfare-dependent underclasses in those cities are 95% white!
You have a point in relation to the drugs, but, to be honest, and I don't mean to be rude, blaming racist housing codes from 100 years ago isn't really going to cut it in my book. Because, if racism is the issue here, I'd like someone to explain to me the existence of the white Irish, white English or white Scottish urban underclass. Welfare dependence is in the mix here somewhere, it can't just be dismissed as a factor.
What many Americans don't realise is that the set of problems seen in black urban communities in the US - hard drugs, unemployment, lack of education, welfare dependence, poor diet & nutrition, etc - are also seen in inner city communities in many European cities - Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester and others - except that the welfare-dependent underclasses in those cities are 95% white!
You have a point in relation to the drugs, but, to be honest, and I don't mean to be rude, blaming racist housing codes from 100 years ago isn't really going to cut it in my book. Because, if racism is the issue here, I'd like someone to explain to me the existence of the white Irish, white English or white Scottish urban underclass. Welfare dependence is in the mix here somewhere, it can't just be dismissed as a factor.
Thanks, Boener!S&P Will Slash U.S. Credit Rating if Debt Payment Is Missed
Elspeth Reeve 1:27 PM ET
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/06/sp-will-slash-us-credit-rating-if-debt-payment-missed/39416/
Standard & Poor's will drop the U.S.'s credit rating from its current triple-A to a D if the government misses its debt payment on August 4, Reuters' Walter Brandimarte reports. S&P's managing director John Chambers explained, "If the U.S. government misses a payment, it goes to D. ... That would happen right after August 4, when the bills mature, because they don't have a grace period." The company would downgrade Treasury bills unaffected by the blown deadline, but not as much.
The Treasury Department says that the federal debt ceiling must be raised by August 2. Two days later, the department must pay $30 billion in short-term debt. But negotiations between the White House and Congressional Republicans have broken down to the extent that some Democrats are debating whether to just declare the debt limit unconstitutional and ignore it.
Moody's has said it, too, would downgrade the U.S. if it defaults, though less severely.
So you feel a person with no insurance has a right to walk into a hospital; get lab work, physician care, medications and possibly a room and meals--for free?
I don't think this was so much Halperin's inner coarseness and intellectual shallowness revealing itself, as his pathetically overblown self-regard revealing itself.Mark Halperin, the Time magazine columnist and MSNBC contributor, was assessing Obama’s performance at a news conference when he delivered this opinion Thursday morning on Morning Joe:
“I thought he was a dick yesterday.”
...Host Joe Scarborough was not pleased, saying: “Delay that. Delay that. What are you doing?” But the program has a new executive producer who didn’t react by hitting the seven-second delay button.
Now I would be a dick if I didn’t point out that Halperin quickly tried to make amends: “Joking aside, this is an absolute apology. I shouldn't have said it. I apologize to the president and the viewers who heard me say that.” But as more than one wit has pointed out, playing off the title of the best-seller co-authored by Halperin, that was a game changer. Two hours after Morning Joe went off the air, MSNBC suspended him.
Daily Beast, June 30
I don't think this was so much Halperin's inner coarseness and intellectual shallowness revealing itself, as his pathetically overblown self-regard revealing itself.
Basically, that he openly criticized the GOP's negotiating tactics on the debt ceiling debate. Why that struck Halperin as an unprecedentedly dirty move justifying unprecedentedly vulgar language (for the media outlet in question), I have no idea.
When did hatin' on our black president become anything but the angry ranting of a racist?
Air Force and Navy aircraft are still flying hundreds of strike missions over Libya despite the Obama administration’s claim that American forces are playing only a limited support role in the NATO operation.
An Africa Command (AFRICOM) spokeswoman confirmed Wednesday that since NATO’s Operation Unified Protector (OUP) took over from the American-led Operation Odyssey Dawn on March 31, the U.S. military has flown hundreds of strike sorties. Previously, Washington had claimed that it was mostly providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and tanker support to NATO forces operating over Libya.
“U.S. aircraft continue to fly support [ISR and refueling] missions, as well as strike sorties under NATO tasking,” AFRICOM spokeswoman Nicole Dalrymple said in an emailed statement. “As of today, and since 31 March, the U.S. has flown a total of 3,475 sorties in support of OUP. Of those, 801 were strike sorties, 132 of which actually dropped ordnance.”
A White House report on Libya sent to Congress on June 15 says that “American strikes are limited to the suppression of enemy air defense and occasional strikes by unmanned Predator UAVs against a specific set of targets.” The report also says the U.S. provides an “alert strike package.”
Dalrymple named the Air Force’s F-16CJ and Navy’s EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft as the primary platforms that have been suppressing enemy air defenses.
However, those F-16s are not solely drawn from units based in Spangdahlem, Germany, or Aviano, Italy. The service has reportedly deployed U.S.-based units to Europe to conduct these operations.
Earlier this month, Malta Today reported that two F-16s from the 77th Fighter Squadron, 20th Fighter Wing, made emergency landings on the island. The 20th Fighter Wing is based at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C.
The AFRICOM spokeswoman did not address why U.S.-based units were deployed for the mission.
Government has to start living within its means, just like families do. We have to cut the spending we can’t afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs.
Who would you guess pays more in federal taxes: me or Boeing?
I don't mean in rates but in actual dollars. Has the federal Treasury gotten more money of late from the huge aerospace company, which booked $4.5 billion in pretax profits last year? Or from me?
"It's not even close," says Bob McIntyre. "In the past three years, you have paid way more into the system than Boeing."
McIntyre is a tax wonk, the director of a couple Washington, D.C., think tanks that focus on who actually pays the government's bills.
Last month, his group, Citizens for Tax Justice, released a study showing that 12 major U.S. businesses, with $171 billion in profits, combined to pay negative $2.5 billion in federal taxes the past three years. Meaning that even with all that profit, they paid no taxes.
Boeing was in this group. The company made $9.7 billion in profits in 2008, 2009 and 2010. It paid nothing in federal taxes, booking $178 million back from the government in various credits, for a total federal tax rate of -1.8 percent.
These figures are from the company's financial reports. Still, I was expecting when Boeing executives went to Congress recently to ask for even lower taxes that they would deny this report. But they didn't.
"Over the last three years, we have not paid," confirmed James Zrust, Boeing's vice president for tax.
One congressman was incredulous.
"I think in testimony I heard earlier that Boeing would like lower taxes," said Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif. "How much lower could you possibly need?"
Zrust explained the zero tax bill isn't likely to last. It's due to temporary factors, he said. Such as pension payments, and the costs of the development — but not yet any deliveries — of the 787 Dreamliner.
"Those same things that gave rise to low tax payments in the last three years will reverse in the next few years and result in considerable tax payments," Zrust predicted.
I asked McIntyre about that. Is he casting Boeing as a tax freeloader by looking at only a three-year window?
"Well, let's look at 10 years," he suggested. He tapped away at a database he keeps of financial statements.
"In the 10 years ending in 2010, Boeing had $29 billion in profits, and paid minus-$948 million in federal taxes."
McIntyre said if you include the past 11 years, Boeing's effective tax rate was positive, but only barely.
First GE, now Boeing:
This is totally insane:
Well, it does eventually come out of the workers' paychecks. Let's not impede the confidence of big business by increasing their negative tax rate.
Very good decision
The White House says that families of service members who commit suicide while deployed abroad are now getting condolence letters from the president just like families of troops who die in other ways.
The White House has been reviewing the policy since 2009, lobbied by some military families. A White House official said Tuesday that the change was made this week. The official spoke anonymously to discuss policy deliberations.
“The president feels strongly that we need to destigmatize the mental health costs of war to prevent these tragic deaths, and changing this policy is part of that process,” a senior White House official said in a statement.
Previously, the White House would send presidential condolences to the families of those who died either in combat or as a result of noncombat incidents in a war zone. Condolence letters were not sent to the families of those who commit suicide.
CNN reports that a coalition of senators recently joined the push for a change in policy.
The move comes nearly six weeks after a group of senators -- 10 Democrats and one Republican -- asked President Barack Obama to change what they called an "insensitive" policy that dates back several administrations and has been the subject of protest by some military families.
According to CBS News, the change went into effect Tuesday for soldiers who commit suicide while serving abroad, but will not be enacted retroactively, meaning that soldiers such as Chance Keesling, who killed himself on his second tour in Iraq, will not be eligible for the presidential recognition.
"He was a good soldier and that's the part that I want to know -- that the country appreciates that he fought he did everything that he was asked to do. It didn't turn out well for him, but at least this country could write a simple letter and that president represents our country and just say thank you for our son's service," Keesling's father, Gregg, told CBS News.
While the elder Keesling won't be getting an official presidential condolence letter, he's been told that his son will receive some kind of recognition from the White House to commemorate his service.
Samuel Beckett’s famous phrase “You must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on” is a pretty good summation of what will face Treasury come August 3 if there’s no deal on the debt limit. Reuters has a fantastic story this evening on the impossible quandary facing Treasury officials should the unthinkable come to pass; purely as a practical matter, it’s far from clear that it’s even possible to stop making the 3 million payments that Treasury makes automatically every day. Doing so involves a massive computer-reprogramming effort which I’m sure could not be implemented overnight — and for political reasons nobody is going to get started on such an effort until after all hope is lost for a deal in Congress.
Realistically, then, the government is likely to breach the current debt ceiling no matter what Congress agrees. A failure to lift it would be a bit like an edict to a steaming supertanker that it had to stop dead: no matter how much force of law that edict has, sheer momentum is going force many basic operations of the public fisc to continue for some period of days or weeks.
Something that I think has gone missing in most discussions of the “constitutional option” of simply ignoring the debt ceiling is that if you think that’s illegal, it’s not clear what the legal alternative is. Bondholders have a legal right to be paid. But so do Social Security beneficiaries. Contractors have, well, contracts. All the federal government’s spending obligations are spelled out in appropriations bills or laws providing for mandatory spending. If you look at any particular option, it seems legally questionable. But obviously something has to be done.
clearly, we needed more stimulus in light of today's job's report.
much more.
jobs > deficits.
but, of course, unemployment hurts Obama, and the only thing that matters is harming him so the GOP has a shot at the presidency in 2012.