Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on the growing calls from Democratic presidential candidates for “wealth taxes” targeting the increasingly demonized “super rich.” Putting aside serious questions over the constitutionality of such wealth taxes (despite being the core cause of candidates like Elizabeth Warren), Democrats appear to be moving from Rousseauian to a Robespierrean rhetoric in this new class warfare.
Here is the column with a few of the underlying facts beyond the rhetoric:
“When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.” Philosopher Rousseau said those words about the French Revolution more than 200 years ago, but they could well have been a talking point in the Democratic debates this week. The candidates brushed aside repeated questions about raising taxes to pay the trillions promised for free college, universal health care, reparations and new homes for African Americans, free health care for the undocumented, massive investment in traditionally black colleges, and other “big ideas” that various candidates pledged.
What they all agreed on was that the “rich” would pay for much of it. The loudest in this declaration of class warfare was New York Mayor Bill De Blasio, who promised that “we will tax the hell out of the wealthy.” The growing Rousseauian chant to “tax the rich” is, of course, hardly new in politics. However, the current age of rage makes this call more menacing. Suddenly, the wealthiest citizens are being portrayed as virtual predators of the poor.
Senator Elizabeth Warren even seemed to be poking the chest of an imaginary tycoon in declaring that she was coming after “your Rembrandts, your stock portfolio, your diamonds and your yachts.” I previously wrote that Warren’s concept of a wealth tax appears unconstitutional. Nevertheless, Warren continues to pledge to impose taxes on the most wealthy (2 percent for more than $50 million in assets, and 3 percent for more than $1 billion). Not to be outdone, De Blasio promised to top her tax plan, with a wealth tax on everyone worth $10 million or more.
The demonization of the wealthy continued as candidate after candidate spoke of how the top 1 percent was a virtual class of robber barons who are avoiding taxes or paying little back to society. Other Democrats like Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez have called to increase the tax rate to 70 percent from the current 37 percent for income over $10 million. Just for the record, the top 1 percent of federal taxpayers paid 37.3 percent of taxes, more than the bottom 90 percent combined that paid 30.5 percent. The top 50 percent of taxpayers paid 97 percent of total individual income taxes. That means that the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers are paying virtually no income taxes.
To qualify as the top 5 percent of earners, your household needs to make $300,000 or more. To qualify as one of the top 10 percent, the cut-off is around $118,000. That does not mean that the wealthy should not pay more in taxes. However, Democrats are undermining their push for higher taxes by pledging trillion-dollar programs as if those would involve chump change. Want a house? Senator Kamala Harris will help pay for it if you are African American. Want free college tuition? Virtually all of the candidates are guaranteeing it. Hate your college loans? Gone, by order of Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders.
Warren created a lasting gift during the debate when she gleefully rubbed her hands together after saying that she would take some of the wealth of fellow presidential candidate and former congressman John Delaney, a self made millionaire worth $65 million. For Republicans, it is the gift that will keep on giving well into the 2020 election. Warren relished the idea of grabbing the wealth of Delaney and others as she promised freebees to every swing group of voters. Like many politicians referring to “my” programs, the glee is in the spending, not the making of the money.
With polls showing him at a practical zero in terms of support and currently less popular than Trump in his own city De Blasio left Rousseau behind and went full Robespierre in promising a virtual reign of tax terror for the wealthy. De Blasio declared that he “would go farther than any other 2020 candidate to reshape society.” He dismissed the need to explain where the necessary trillions in tax dollars will come from with a casual, “There’s plenty of money in this country. It is just in the wrong hands.” He promised to lead the proletariat and, “When I am president, we will even up the score.” He even promised to hit Americans who are renouncing their citizenship with a 40 percent “Turncoat Tax.”
He did not explain how he would deduce which people are changing citizenship for tax reasons, or how he intends to tax citizens of another country. That does not matter when you are “reshaping society.” De Blasio’s portrayal of tax increases as a type of caged hunt for fat cats is, of course, ridiculous. The problem is that the wealthy can leave. Now that New Yorkers cannot write off their higher taxes on their federal forms, many indeed are fleeing and, faced with a $2.3 billion budget shortfall, even New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has admitted, “This is the flip side. Tax the rich, tax the rich, tax the rich. The rich leave, and now what do you do?”
The loss of those top earners can be devastating. The top 1 percent, who are being constantly attacked by Democrats, pay for nearly half of the income tax revenue in New York City. A family of four in New York earning $175,000 will pay 25 percent of their income in New York in taxes, in contrast to the 14 percent paid by the same family in Florida. The problem is that the wealthy can leave not just New York but the country. Moreover, many wealthy foreign investors are unlikely to come to the United States just to end up in a De Blasio tumbrel on their way to the Internal Revenue Service.
Our tax system remains a mess and there is a real wealth disparity that must be addressed. However, we have to do so in a constitutional, logical way, including possible tax increases. Moreover, President Trump and the Republicans in Congress have proven just as irresponsible on spending as the Democrats. Both parties have continued to lift the debt ceiling and, with the new appropriations bill, Trump will have added $4.1 trillion to the national debt, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Our total national debt surpassed $22 trillion in February.
Rather than deal with the economic meltdown caused by such a debt load, Democrats are pledging to hunt down the wealthy, while Trump is bizarrely insisting he can wipe out our debt in eight years. They all are kicking the can down the road for the next generation to pay. In the meantime, class warfare is now a virtual political-platform item for Democrats. Aerosmith already has a theme song ready to go for the Democratic Convention. It’s called “Eat the Rich.” While not complaining about the “diamonds, yachts and Rembrandts,” it does denounce the wealthy for their “poodles and pills.” The rest is a good sound byte that you can literally dance to: “There is only one thing that they are good for. Eat the rich. Take one bite now. Come back for more. Eat the rich.”
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.
Cue Rodney King…..
Trump and Warren and Violence
While the El Paso shooter left a manifesto, the Dayton shooter’s beliefs seem to be up for debate. For example, left-leaning news outlets are generally saying there was no clear motive while some right-leaning outlets are pointing to a report from a website called Heavy.com which states:
Connor Betts, the Dayton, Ohio mass shooter, was a self-described “leftist,” who wrote that he would happily vote for Democrat Elizabeth Warren, praised Satan, was upset about the 2016 presidential election results, and added, “I want socialism, and i’ll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding.”
Betts’ Twitter profile read, “he/him / anime fan / metalhead / leftist / i’m going to hell and i’m not coming back.”
The Twitter page that Heavy says belonged to Betts has been disabled so it’s difficult to make an independent judgment. As for the source, in 2017 Will Oremus, writing in the left-leaning online magazine Slate, called Heavy.com “the biggest national news site you’ve never heard of” and wrote a generally favorable review. According to Mr. Oremus:
It’s an outlet that has managed to thrive in a hypercompetitive era by combining some old-school news virtues with a tight strategic focus… the goals Heavy.com seems to strive for are clarity, speed, and ease of reading, with accuracy and comprehensiveness sometimes emerging iteratively as more information comes in.
Readers trying to evaluate the competing claims about Betts may wish to consider a report from a website called Snopes which presents itself as a debunker of contemporary legends. According to Snopes, Heavy.com is correct:
Betts’ Twitter bio used the term “leftist” as a personal descriptor… Police have stated that they are “not close at all” to figuring out a motive for the shooting. The specific claim that Betts described himself on social media as a leftist, as pro-Satan, and as an Elizabeth Warren supporter, however, is true.
Even if the reporting by the Heavy and Snopes websites is completely accurate in this case, it doesn’t mean that Sen. Warren is responsible, any more than Sen. Bernie Sanders deserved the blame when one of his followers opened fire on Republicans.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-and-warren-and-violence-11565042024
Estovir, are you saying that because the shooter in Dayton was ‘leftist’ he cancels out the rightwing shooter in El Paso? The idea seems to be that Republicans can blow off El Paso because the Dayton shooter was ‘leftist’. That’s how dumb it gets!
The idea seems to be that Republicans can blow off El Paso because the Dayton shooter was ‘leftist’. That’s how dumb it gets!
I agree. Like nearly every theory you put forth, they are as dumb as it gets.
Like nearly every theory you put forth, they are as dumb as it gets.
LOL
I am stunned he is still able to troll this forum given he threatened Jonathan Turley recently in one of his most recent apoplectic state of mind. He said he would contact George Washington University to report Prof Turley. Wow. I find that stunning. I thought for sure that would have had him banned or perhaps the men in white coats would have carted him to the rubber room heavily medicated via IV. To think he gets paid by David Brock to be this obnoxious and off the chain…kinda like Elizabeth Warren, Elizah Cummings, Barbara Streisand, Chuck Todd…..
I think I’ll call him numb-nuts from now on, assuming he’s a he and and not a she… shim?
oy!
Estovir, are we to believe the Cuban refugees are the ‘good Hispanics’?
And how can Trumpers distinguish Cubans from Mexicans or Guatemalans?
Peter, are you as dumb as you sound?
I am ok with liking some more than others. I like Mexicans most, I like Cubans a lot too. I don’t care too much for most central Americans, except for Costa Ricans, who are awesome, but they never come here. Because Costa Rica is too much fun. LOL
How much we like them or not is not the issue however. They can’t be allowed to invade our country and replace the native born population. This is totally unfair to native born americans of every race and to say nothing of migrants that have gone through the legal ways.
It’s happened too much already. the numbers in Chicago are staggering. To say nothing of Texas. You might as well be in Mexico in certain cities in Texas.
Invasion has not been by force of arms, it is meek and mild, kids and women and pobrecitos. But by massive numbers alone. The heart aches but a nation must have borders. Failure to police the border is one of the causes of the current strife.
The lyrics are in Spanish but if you take the time to translate them you will find a great deal of humor, self-deprecating comments, sadness infused with hope. It is the story of all immigrants coming to America fleeing oppression seeking brighter horizons…starting with the first invaders of Jamestown, Virginia
Estovir, I’m asking for Trumpers. This video won’t mean anything to them.
This video won’t mean anything to them.
No, something you haven’t figured out yet is that you don’t mean anything to them. You can attribute that to your impersonation of Rachel Madcow and your fake news headlines.
I think the issue here is even-handed reporting. The boogie man for the violence if I am to believe a lot of candidates and news sources is DT.
But humans regardless of stripes or spots can instigate horrendous violence. The left can cause bloodshed as well as the right, see Robespierre above.
The ultra tribal polarization from the two parties has been going on for a while now in vicious cycles. The exacerbation of loonie bin mega murders is in part caused by the ‘purification’ of the parties with the loss of moderates.
“the rightwing shooter in El Paso”
What makes you think the shooter in El Paso was right wing. Only idiots, prevaricators, and the ill informed can make that argument. How can you designate him right wing if he supports national health insurance, universal income, and claims that the American lifestyle is destroying the environment? The guy expressed disdain for both parties.
It seems, Peter, you are under the impression that the right supports national health insurance. A lot of the people you call right wing actually support national health insurance and outright socialism. You are a very confused person.
Alan, you’re as disoriented as usual. Show me a link to a recognizable mainstream source saying the El Paso shooter is a ‘leftist’.
At one point his memorandum was available and one could read it there. The site I have was closed. I didn’t call him a leftist. I said he wasn’t a “rightwinger”. You can’t read! Let me repeat that, YOU CAN’T READ! You believe that everyone that doesn’t agree with you is a rightwinger so you think this guy who believes in national health insurance is a rightwinger? Isn’t national health insurance the big issue for the left? Doesn’t that make you see how foolish you are in how you categorize people?
What you read is garbage. The NYTimes misatributed language and confused themselves and their readers.
The problem with you is that you are a hateful person. 22 people are dead and all you are concerned about is blaming the other party when it is clear that this person was a racist who had ideas that coincided with the left and possibly the right. You do this all the time. Remember the key (the easiest key) leftists want bigger government with national health care and the right wants smaller government and doesn’t want national healthcare. I would think you would have more concern for the dead.
Cesar Chavez was a Democrat and a labor leader. He didn’t want immigrants. Was he a racist? He sent people to the border to report illegals and try to have them sent back. Some illegals were beaten up by the same people doing his bidding. Though I don’t think he committed violence those sent to do the dirty work at times acted in a violent fashion towards illegals. Was he a racist? Was he a right winger?
Alan, the El Paso shooter is linked to White Supremest’s in every news story I’ve seen. Yet you deceptively dispute that. How come?
Then you seque into a “What About–” naming Cesar Chavez, of all people. Like Chavez wants a role in your befuddled argument? Leave him out of it.
There is nothing that prevents a white supremacist from being a socialist. Richard Spencer is a white supremacist and espouses socialist ideas. You want more government. That moves you to the left. I want less government. That moves me to the right. You want national health insurance. That moves you to the left. I don’t want national health insurance. That moves me to the right. The El Paso killer wanted national health insurance. That moves him to the left next to you.
You assume that everyone who is against illegal immigration is a racist. Cesar Chavez was against such immigration. Why should he be left out of the discussion since he fought the same battle Trump is fighting today?
You are reading junk and don’t know it. You are being confused by words that are misatributed. You have to learn to look at the elements involved. Left= bigger government. Right=smaller government. White supremecist that believes in national health insurance and bigger government is on the left.
Estovir, take note of Peter’s request : ” recognizable mainstream source”. In prior requests he asks for ‘legitimate news sources’ emphasis on the word ‘legitimate’. That is the word used by one in charge of manipulating the news for Google heard on the most recent video Part 2 NYTimes. Who chooses what is ‘legitimate’? Peter’s betters. The one’s that feed Peter the news. Or as you would have it, the one’s that pay Peter.
Slogans and key words are pushed onto the gullible and they repeat those same slogans and key words for the world, but what they are repeating is mindlessly said because there is no or very little legitimate content attached.
Sorry, Alan, I’m not in your rightwing bubble. Nor am I in your 1950’s time warp.
Peter, you are nowhere and remain in an insulated balloon so that you lack the information and facts to defend any position you desire to make. Ignorance is bliss so perhaps in the political realm it makes you comfortable. I hope you have comfort in the rest of your life where your type of ignorance frequently leaves people lacking and envious of the success of others.
In 2020 we should be aware of communist interference in our election. We need a Senator McCarthy from days of old to hold some hearings. These commies need to be exposed. If you go communist like Russia did then you get capitalist oligarchs who the government has no control and monopoly capitalism. That is what Putin wants to impose on us. Do not trust anyone who smokes tobacco. Or does opioids or who vapes. Those who drink, stink. Keep America Great!
Ben Franklin, 1789, we gave you “…a republic, if you can keep it.”
Ben Franklin, 2019, we gave you “…a republic, if you can take it back.”
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The democrat party is communist. RINO’s are communist. The entire American welfare state is communist including, but not limited to, affirmative action, quotas, welfare, food stamps, rent control, social services, forced busing, minimum wage, utility subsidies, WIC, TANF, HAMP, HARP, Dept.’s of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Labor, Energy, Obamacare, Obamaphones, Social Security, Social
Security Disability, Social Security Supplemental Income, Medicare, Medicaid, “Fair Housing” laws, “Non-Discrimination” laws, etc.
“Crazy Abe” Lincoln was influenced by communists who permeated New York and Illinois. Those communists were forced to flee prosecution in Germany and Europe. America was infested and infected by communists who placed it on a “Progressive” path to communism. Lincoln was not religious and was obsessed with eliminating the slave “class” making America “classless.” Lincoln was useful to the Westward Expansionists who needed the “Union” to remain intact. The relationship was akin to the Communist Chinese using the Capitalist Google to censor and control the population while increasing profits. Of Course, it was up to Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt to fully impose communism on America while Lyndon Johnson and Obama enhanced it – there is always room for more “free stuff” for parasites.
– Lincoln born: February 12, 1809
– Marx born: May 5, 1818
– Marx publishes a book about Emancipation: 1843
– Marx expelled from France as a radical: 1845
– Lincoln elected to US House: 1846
– Marx publishes the Communist Manifesto: February 1848
– Marx is a contributor to the New York Tribune (Lincoln’s favorite newspaper), 1851-1861
– Lincoln runs for U.S. Senate vs. Douglas, famous Lincoln-Douglas debates occur: 1858
– Lincoln becomes US President: 1860
– Civil War Starts: 1861
– Emancipation Proclamation: January 1, 1863
Unless, of course, we bother to examine the tattered copies of the American outlet for Marx’s revolutionary preachments during the period when Lincoln was preparing to leave the political wilderness and make his march to the presidency. That journal, the New York Tribune, was the most consistently influential of nineteenth-century American newspapers. Indeed, this was the newspaper that engineered the unexpected and in many ways counterintuitive delivery of the Republican nomination for president, in that most critical year of 1860, to an Illinoisan who just two years earlier had lost the competition for a home-state U.S. Senate seat…
…
Lincoln’s involvement was not just with Greeley but with his sub-editors and writers, so much so that the first Republican president appointed one of Greeley’s most radical lieutenants—the Fourier- and Proudhon-inspired socialist and longtime editor of Marx’s European correspondence, Charles Dana—as his assistant secretary of war.
…
Long before 1848, German radicals had begun to arrive in Illinois, where they quickly entered into the legal and political circles in which Lincoln traveled. One of them, Gustav Korner, was a student revolutionary at the University of Munich who had been imprisoned by German authorities…
The failure of the 1848 revolts, and the brutal crackdowns that followed, led many leading European radicals to take refuge in the United States, and Lincoln’s circle of supporters would eventually include some of Karl Marx’s closest associates and intellectual sparring partners, including Joseph Weydemeyer and August Willich.
…
http://www.isreview.org/issues/79/fe…-lincoln.shtml
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Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto 59 years after the adoption of the Constitution because none of the principles of the Communist Manifesto were in the Constitution. Had the principles of the Communist Manifesto been in the Constitution, Karl Marx would have had no reason to write the Communist Manifesto. The principles of the Communist Manifesto were not in the Constitution then and the principles of the Communist Manifesto are not in the Constitution now.
hey geo read this
https://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm
“The problem is that the wealthy can leave.” Which is why true Socialist nations trap their citizens. Leaving is called “defecting” and is considered a crime. Mikhail Baryshnikov defected back in the 70’s while on tour with his ballet company.
Socialism is so great, you need a detailed plan, a great deal of courage, and often the cover of darkness to escape from it.
Karen, I had a handyman who did repairs for our old house in South Florida, he didn’t speak a word of English, was hungry for work and came to America on an inner tube floating on the Florida Streets fleeing communism. He landed in the upper Keyes.I never forgot his keen sense of appetite: he would ask me if I needed x, y and z repaired at our solid poured concrete historic home, just so that he could earn more money, and I paid well but expected results. He never failed me over the years.
I had a landscaper who also did not know any English, also fled communism but fled in a large boat with several other refugees. He used to push a lawnmower around Homestead, south of Miami, to raise money for his wife and kids. His extended family joined him as well: in-laws, cousnis, you name it. In a few years he started a company, bought land in Homestead, founded a nursery of palm trees and tropical plants and I rarely saw him mow my lawn anymore. He had an army of hungry workers doing it for him. If I needed him he would come but his employees were just as hungry….all immigrants.
We used to have a cleaning lady from Central America, and she lived in an efficiency apartment with her 2 young daughters in South Beach. She too knew no English, and she used to catch 2 buses to come to our house to clean it every 2 weeks. In a few years she drove up to our property in a shining red new car, 4 doors, compact, as proud as could be. I just about fell out of the house when I went to see it because I was literally floored at what this “ignorant, uneducated, poor” woman had accomplished. She put her daughters through school and eventually did not need to clean houses anymore. She trained others how to clean the way she did and she launched.
I know so many stories like this. I’m a product of such a story.
America is a great country. These individuals were deprived in their own countries to do what they did in the USA. Work, dream, build, thrive, make it in America.
Hunger….it’s a good thing
It’s true, that immigrants, legal or otherwise, tend to be very hard working. I ride horses, and there are a great many immigrants working in that industry. While the entitled teenager no longer wants to get off his mother’s couch to make gas money, his contemporary who came here from another country works his tail off and helps take care of his parents.
Some lines of my family have old roots in America, while my grandmother’s family immigrated here. That strong work ethic is one of the reasons why I strongly believe that “merit based immigration” should not preclude the poor, but rather require a willingness to assimilate and hold Western values. That group should be further modified to coincide with the housing and jobs markets, as well as our benefits infrastructure. We need to ensure that our support structure can handle both our citizen and immigrant populations, and that there are sufficient housing. When the jobs market needs more unskilled labor, increase that amount, and decrease it in years where there are too many people competing for jobs. When we need more skilled labor, or particular skills, adjust accordingly. But always ensure that in a managed immigration system, that people from around the world get a chance at the American dream, without restricting that exclusively for those already well off. It is only when the flow of poor is too great and unmanaged that it can strain the system, and of course it affects the national wage gap.
I know what you mean about feeling joyful when witnessing an immigrant really make it. One of our friends who cleaned stalls for extra money recently bought his first home, and he’s got a daughter in college. That kind of happiness is a glow that warms everyone around them.
One of our friends who cleaned stalls for extra money recently bought his first home, and he’s got a daughter in college.
I love these stories. They are an inspiration to all Americans. I’m all for immigration legal, of course, but also know that immigrants, like the stories I described, create and fill jobs that no American wants to do. Shoveling manure in stalls, as you reference, creating businesses to clean homes, plant nurseries and lawn maintenance, handyman jobs, etc. Miami is flush with immigrants doing “menial” jobs that eventually afford them homes, cars, travels and more. Meanwhile Americans who have been here for centuries can’t find it within them to work, create a job, create a business, get off the government doll and contribute to the welfare of their own families and neighborhoods. Eric Garner
In Physics Work is defined as W = F * d
Work is a Force carried through a distance. Like pushing a crate across the floor, work involves a force (within) over the long haul.
Work is a good thing. Work is our friend. Work is our means to change our situation. Work is freedom. Work builds muscles, strengthens our skeleton, keeps our heart fit, it provides great euphoria too with endogenous compounds.
so here’s to cleaning horse stalls to get ahead.
G’nite!
Here Estovir tells us that a little starvation is good for the poor. Walmart agrees. They actually feel it’s a good idea to keep employees poor (so their attitudes are ‘positive’).
Estovir, how can immigrants prove they’re working hard if they can’t afford a new car? What if a hard-working immigrant drives a beater truck?
And what if they’re not escaping communism? Is that too bad for them?
if you’re talking asylum claims, being a hard worker or not or poor or not is not the issue. from the USCIS website:
“Every year people come to the United States seeking protection because they have suffered persecution or fear that they will suffer persecution due to:
Race
Religion
Nationality
Membership in a particular social group
Political opinion”
—————-
poverty, class, financial need, hunger, none of those are valid for asylum here. see my exchange with Natch above. follow the law !
2.6 – 10.4million votes to Clinton from Google
15 million to the Democrat in 2020 from high tech.
2018 more to Dems than 2016
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4808035/googles-election
It very well may be that America was never possible – that self-governance is impossible. Since “Crazy Abe” Lincoln, voting and elections have been corrupted and manipulated. Lincoln used his army to generate election results. Modern communists “import” voters by the millions to vote for “free stuff” from “democrats. Never did the American Founders intend for this as they precluded redistribution and social engineering in the Constitution and they required citizens to be “…free white person(s)…” and voters to be male, European, 21 with 50 lbs. Sterling or 50 acres. The Greeks and Romans created and perpetuated RESTRICTED-VOTE republicanism not one man, one vote democrazy.
Globalist communists have fully abrogated the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
OT, but the recent attacks in Dayton and El Paso are being discussed downthread…
“I Spent 25 Years Fighting Jihadis. White Supremacists Aren’t So Different.”
“We can’t fight domestic terror groups efficiently until the law treats them the way we treat foreign ones.”
By Ali H. Soufan
‘Mr. Soufan is a former F.B.I. special agent and the author of “Anatomy of Terror.”’
Aug. 5, 2019
Excerpt:
The F.B.I. should follow MI5’s lead, with appropriate safeguards for our constitutional freedoms. But this can happen only if Congress updates our post-9/11 legislation to allow domestic terror groups to be designated in the same way as foreign ones. This will allow our law-enforcement agencies access to the full suite of monitoring tools and our prosecutors the ability to bring meaningful charges for aiding domestic terrorism.
Twenty years ago, we grossly underestimated the rising threat of Islamist terrorism. That inattention cost us dearly on Sept. 11, 2001. We cannot afford to wait for the white-supremacist equivalent.
Ali H. Soufan (@Ali_H_Soufan) is a former F.B.I. special agent and the author, most recently, of “Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of Bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State.”
ALI can shove it.
Make no mistake, the government “monitors” anybody it wants to monitor. It regularly sends informants into “Racist” enclaves and in the 60s Roy Frankhouser estimated half of all klansmen were informants.
Think about that for a minute. Half? Seriously? At what point do informants and provocateurs simply take over and start running these outfits? I suspect it’s happened before. I won’t provide examples, oh, but I could.
Ali is up to some other agenda besides a supposed lack of tools for law enforcement. This is a rhetorical objective not a LE one.
There is no lack of surveillance power. That is really preposterous
9/11 was a deliberate HaMossad leModiʿin uleTafkidim Meyuḥadim operation.
The “big picture” effect of 9/11 was long-term solidification of the Israeli position in the Middle East and the enhancement of the defense of Israel.
Osama bin Laden was facilitated by Israeli/American/UK et al. Intel.
The Saudis were knowingly allowed to take flying lessons in Arizona that taught takeoff/flying only while excluding landings. The Saudis would have no need to land.
The buildings were brought down through controlled detonations as referenced by the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth and by Firefighters and other first-responders who testified to hearing multiple “explosions.”
https://www.ae911truth.org/
But this can happen only if Congress updates our post-9/11 legislation to allow domestic terror groups to be designated in the same way as foreign ones.
Has the Asset Forfeiture Program changed to stop taking the property of innocent people? Has the No Fly List process been improved so that innocent people are not detained and/or prevented from air travel? Is anyone confident the process to be designated part of a Domestic Terrorist Group won’t be abused?
What are the odds that legislation is introduced to permit government agencies even greater surveillance powers, greater latitude for domestic terrorist designations, gun rights limitations and so on; all before the Horowitz and Durham reports hit the streets?
They would probably refer to the Southern Poverty Law Center for the list of domestic terrorists, and start harassing anyone opposing transgenders in sports or women’s showers.
SPLC, sure. The point is we already have “laws” empowering federal agencies to take property (asset forfeiture) and restrict liberty (no-fly list), with due process being defined as proving you’re not guilty. Even if you succeed in proving it, the harm has already been done and in many cases the assets are never recovered. It does not take any imagination to know exactly how the Domestic Terrorist list may be used to do both of the above and remove your 2nd amendment rights.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –VIOLATED
-That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, – DISARMED
So what are innocent people to do when the government has taken their property, liberty and weapons? There will be other innocent people that will rise up in their defense and guess what happens with them? Add them to the list. This won’t go well.
There were at least two other attacks may have been thwarted this past week.
“Another Would-Be Mass Shooter Arrested Days Before El Paso, Dayton Massacres”
“Federal agents arrested a 19-year-old in Lubbock, Texas, after his grandmother reported his alleged plan to “shoot up” a local hotel.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lubbock-texas-man-arrested-mass-shooting_n_5d484133e4b0aca341218ae3
A Fatal Tendency of Mankind
Self-preservation and self-development are common aspirations among all people. And if everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor, social progress would be ceaseless, uninterrupted, and unfailing.
But there is also another tendency that is common among people. When they can, they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others. This is no rash accusation. Nor does it come from a gloomy and uncharitable spirit. The annals of history bear witness to the truth of it: the incessant wars, mass migrations, religious persecutions, universal slavery, dishonesty in commerce, and monopolies. This fatal desire has its origin in the very nature of man — in that primitive, universal, and insuppressible instinct that impels him to satisfy his desires with the least possible pain.
Property and Plunder
Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property.
But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This process is the origin of plunder.
Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain — and since labor is pain in itself — it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it.
When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.
It is evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder.
But, generally, the law is made by one man or one class of men. And since law cannot operate without the sanction and support of a dominating force, this force must be entrusted to those who make the laws.
This fact, combined with the fatal tendency that exists in the heart of man to satisfy his wants with the least possible effort, explains the almost universal perversion of the law. Thus it is easy to understand how law, instead of checking injustice, becomes the invincible weapon of injustice. It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people, their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in proportion to the power that he holds.
http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html
That was a great post. I’ll have to check out the link.
Thanks Karen. I suspect as you read The Law, you’ll see just how far off track this country has gone.
Professor Turley implies that guillotines are appropriate at this juncture.
Could we start with the Nouveau Royal Supreme Court and its broader judicial branch?
The judicial branch has insidiously transformed itself into the 2nd legislative branch. Never did the Founders intend that the judicial branch should deceptively and treasonously seek power rather than simply assure that actions of the legislative and executive branches comport with law and fundamental law.
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‘…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
Some might say “the politics of greed” are at work…
Professor Turley’s blog relates to “law” not the religious morality of a church on Sunday or the secular version of “do-gooder,”
“interfering philanthropists.”
Greed is greed. Greed is not immoral, illegal or unconstitutional.
“Greed” is condemnation which is the weapon of choice you use to defend your failure against the success of others.
You deliberately conflate greed with a refusal to help others when it is necessary and appropriate.
It is not appropriate to give a fish to a person who is fully capable of putting a line in the water which is the essence of the modern
American welfare state.
“Class Warfare!” “Eat the Rich!” “French Revolution!”
The Democrats just want to raise taxes on the wealthy. They’ll only be able to do it if they get the votes. Proposing a hike in taxes is hardly “warfare” or “revolution.” Why the hysteria?
This is Turley’s second post on the topic in four days. In neither does the word “inequality” (as in wealth or economic inequality) appear. But that’s the problem the Democrats are addressing.
yyy
At what point does taxation become confiscation (or theft)?
Emotion aside, at what point do tax rates become counterproductive?
I’d say that taxes become theft at the point where they are levied for the benefit of those who don’t need assistance.
As for when taxes become counterproductive, that’s a tough one. I personally believe that economic inequality has become too great in the US, and it should be addressed (in part) by raising taxes on the highest income earners and corporations. (Not sure about a direct tax on wealth – that does seem legally dubious.) I posted statistics under Turley’s previous post on this issue that show that a large majority of Americans think as I do. So, why not give it a try? My basic point is that if we were to do that it should not be considered “class warfare.” I don’t understand why Turley is using such provocative language. Taxes go up and down depending on what’s happening and who’s in power. The highest income tax rate used to be much higher than it is today. If the Democrats win and they raise taxes and it makes our problems worse, they can be voted out and Republicans can lower taxes again. That’s how this “democracy” works. Proposing higher taxes on the wealthy is nothing to get hysterical about.
Get back to us when you’ve learned the meaning of the term ‘public good’
Please cite that in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
I think you meant public “freedom” with reference to America.
In fact, CHARITY, your ‘public good,’ in America is to be conducted voluntarily in the free markets of the private sector.
Some projects, like public education and public transportation, are for the general “public good.” Perhaps programs that are only for the disadvantaged, such as public housing or food assistance, can be described as “charity.” Have any such programs ever been declared unconstitutional?
That was not a citation; “…general Welfare…” is in Article 1, Section 8 and it is all that Congress has the power to tax for. Congress does not have any power to tax for “individual Welfare” which is comprised of redistribution of wealth or charity.
General means all.
Wel means well.
Fare means proceed.
Congress has the power to tax for ALL WELL PROCEED. The only goods and services that include “all” are water, electricity, post office, sewer, roads, etc. – things that all citizens use in similar amounts and frequencies. People use food and clothing differently. Education and Medicare address small population segments not “all.”
Public education is not “…general Welfare.” Public education is unconstitutional dictatorship. Public education teaches very little that is useful as it engages massively in communist propaganda and indoctrination. No freedom and self-reliance or principles of the Constitution and Bill of Rights are taught. Public schools have been corrupted and expanded into wasteful and expensive redistribution projects for lazy, greedy, striking, thug teachers unions.
The singular American failure has been the Supreme Court. America could only arrive at the redistributionist welfare state by deliberately and treasonously misreading the Constitution.
Education must be accomplished voluntarily in the free markets of the private sector.
“The singular American failure has been the Supreme Court.”
Can you even point to a DISSENTING opinion in a case where the constitutionality of a “charitable” government program was challenged? If not, can you at least point to a case that was ACCEPTED FOR REVIEW by the Supreme Court? If not, then you’re right, the court is a complete failure and should be immediately disbanded, and you, George, should be appointed the Chief and Sole Justice of the US Supreme Court. It’s like no one else has even read the Constitution.
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Tanney told Lincoln that Lincoln’s suspension of Habeas Corpus, his destruction of businesses and printing presses and other of his acts were unconstitutional. Tanney had no effect on the brutal, despotic and dictatorial tyrant, “Crazy Abe” Lincoln.
The Supreme Court struck down much of Roosevelt’s communism, “work” programs, Social Security, Medicare, etc., then reversed itself and allowed it.
The Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare was unconstitutional then lied, calling it a tax, and allowed it.
The Supreme Court knows well that it is and has been fully corrupted, is anti-American and unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court knows well that private property is ABSOLUTE but it declared the right to private property “not absolute” and started confiscating the disposition of private property as affirmative action, quotas, rent control, “Non-Discrimination” laws, “Fair-Housing” laws, etc. James Madison defined private property as “that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
The Supreme Court has become the 2nd legislative branch by “legislating from the bench.”
“…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
You conflate public and poor. You deceptively misuse “disadvantaged.” You apply to the Constitution that which is not applicable. Congress has no power to tax for individual welfare only general. Free people in America must find voluntary methods of accomplishing their philanthropic concepts in the free markets of the private sector. Go open a GoFundMe account for the education of your favorite children but Congress has no power to tax for individual welfare. What you’re proposing is the abrogation of the Constitution in favor of children whose parents refuse to pay for their education. Think about it. Marx called it redistribution of wealth.
Oops. You’re a communist.
I’d say that taxes become theft at the point where they are levied for the benefit of those who don’t need assistance.
Find us an American who willingly declares they don’t need government assistance, and we will show you a politician who has integrity.
In my line of work none of my “clients” ever tell my staff or me they can do without government sponsored assistance. They always want more for their self-induced maladies and are terribly non-compliant about taking charge of their lives, looking within and taking responsibility for their lives.
No one needs public assistance. That’s what family, friends and community/neighbors are for.
Here Estovir pretends he never had elderly relatives collecting Social Security or Medicare. And we’re supposed to believe that friends and family alone got us through The Great Depression. Like friends and family can pick up the costs for end of life medical care!
But in making these inane points, Estovir ignores the biggest moochers of all: Corporate America! Rare is the corporation that isn’t seeking special subsidies of some kind.
Here Estovir would have us believe that no elderly relation of his ever collected Social Security or Medicare. Estovir goes on to assert that friends and family alone got us through The Great Depression. What’s more ‘friends and family can easily absorb the medical costs Seniors rack up in their final days’.
But Estovir forgets to mention the biggest moochers of all: Corporate America. Rare is the company ‘not’ seeking special subsides or tax write-offs.
Is ‘Burgoyne’ your handle on Grindr?
OMG!!!!
love it
We notice Estovir can’t respond to the comment. He’s good at dirty tricks but can’t form an argument.
LOL!
You have ‘no’ sex life, right Tabby? Just a neutered old guy smoking a lot of cigarettes. But you are, by default, the intellectual in your community. Or what passes as ‘intellectual’. This older, affected neutered guy making up statistics. To bolster some Libertarian assertion with no basis in fact.
Imagine what would happen if wealthy donors and corporations finally shrugged the Democrats? Not to worry, they would simply find another demographic of American they could demonize. Many politicians succeed only in labeling one group of citizens as the enemy. It would be best of course working toward the betterment of all of us without the discrimination. But I don’t see politicians as a whole as capable or smart enough to accept such a notion.
Leadership emerges from social groups
Social groups are what they are
America is very “Diverse” this is lauded and sometimes is a strength.,
other times it is not a strength it is a liability. context matter!
In our identity which admittedly does involve an aspect of “creedal nation,” that is to say, belonging according to volitionally chosen ideas rather than inherent identity– is the difficulty with any sort of “coming together” as a whole
this will become more and more obvious as time goes by.
“Distrust diversifications, which usually turn out to be diworseifications.”
– Peter Lynch, One Up Wall Street, 1989
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“The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all-important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.”
– Alexander Hamilton
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Diworseity or diversity is forcibly imposed, communistic “social engineering” and precisely the opposite of constitutional freedom of thought, speech, publication, press, belief, religion, assembly and every other conceivable, natural and God-given right and freedom per the 9th Amendment. In fact, the Americans Founders thrice iterated a requirement that citizens be “…free white person(s)…” in the Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795 and 1802 clearly establishing homogeneity as the manifest “original intent.”
Oil and water do not mix. Temporary, compulsory amalgamation is accomplished through the forced imposition of emulsifiers. Affirmative action privilege, generational welfare, forced busing, food stamps, rent control, price controls, “Non-Discrimination” laws, “Fair-Housing” laws, etc. are used as societal emulsifiers by the communist dictatorship in America – they are most certainly not allowed by the Constitution and violate the Bill of Rights.
America achieved “Exceptionalism” as a homogeneous nation.
The modern American welfare state is a result of decay and “diversity” which is a euphemism for “put your hands up and gimme your money.”
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PUNITIVE TAXATION IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL
REDISTRIBUTIVE TAXATION IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL
REGULATION IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL
Good morning, children. Today’s lesson is that Congress cannot engage in taxation for corrupt payoffs to favorites, impose any punitive tax and that Congress has the power to tax merely for “…general Welfare…” omitting and, thereby, excluding any power to tax for “…individual Welfare.” Charity and redistribution of wealth must be voluntarily accomplished in the free markets of the private sector observing the implicit policy of Separation of Charity and State.
Additionally, Congress has no power to regulate anything other than trade, exchange or “…commerce among the several States…” to preclude bias or favor by one state over another.
Make no mistake. The American Founders overthrew the British monarchy and dictatorship and individuals were deliberately provided maximal freedom by the Constitution and Bill of Rights as government was deliberately severely limited and restricted. Restriction is on government not individual Americans.
Citizens may “…petition” the Government for a redress of grievances.” Citizens may not conduct a virulent dictatorship or otherwise breach the Constitution and/or Bill of Rights through that process of “redress.” Courts of law exist to deter and penalize crime and to remediate civil damages – to effect “…redress of grievances.”
We are all obligated, as Americans, to familiarize ourselves with the law and obey the law including fundamental law – that includes all of you corrupt, anti-American, one-world-globalist Justices at the Supreme Court and all of you corrupt, anti-American, one-world-globalist judges throughout the judicial (i.e. 2nd legislative) branch.
Your homework today, children, is to study Article 1, Section 8. There will be a quiz tomorrow.
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Article 1, Section 8
“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;…”
Communism is unconstitutional.
– Central Planning is unconstitutional.
– Control of the Means of Production (i.e regulation) is unconstitutional.
– Redistribution of Wealth is unconstitutional.
– Social Engineering is unconstitutional.
The entire communist American welfare state is unconstitutional, including, but not limited to, affirmative action, quotas, welfare, food stamps, rent control, social services, forced busing, minimum wage, utility subsidies, WIC, TANF, HAMP, HARP, Dept.’s of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Labor, Energy, Obamacare, Obamaphones, Social Security, Social Security Disability, Social Security Supplemental Income, Medicare, Medicaid, “Fair Housing” laws, “Non-Discrimination” laws, etc.
Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto 59 years after the adoption of the Constitution because none of the principles of the Communist Manifesto were in the Constitution. Had the principles of the Communist Manifesto been in the Constitution, Karl Marx would have had no reason to write the Communist Manifesto. The principles of the Communist Manifesto were not in the Constitution then and the principles of the Communist Manifesto are not in the Constitution now.
ah, but the War of Independence against the English Crown, was integrated into Marxist theory
http://www.marxist.com/class-struggle-and-the-american-revolution.htm
this is the seed of “progressivism,” the notion that “progress” or social change, is generally good.
It isn’t. Marx was wrong, and progressives are too. Revolution is often what makes things worse.
Even the American Revolution may have sown some poisonous seeds along with the good ones.
Pure prevarication through obfuscation. The Constitution provided “free-dom” not “free-stuff.” Marx promised a better life, utopia, through the enslavement of the total “dictatorship of the proletariat” and the “principles” in the Communist Manifesto. The American Founders, through their Constitution and Bill of Rights, provided the one thing that is more important: Individual Freedom in conjunction with severely restricted and limited government – leaving the “pursuit of happiness, endeavor, fulfillment, success and failure entirely to the effort of the individual.
Stateless freedom is the law. Stateless freedom is the fundamental law. Stateless freedom is the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Article 1, Section 8 – read it.
Then read about the right to private property which means the absolute right to private property entirely bereft of qualification and without any intercession or interference by government, with the sole exception of the congressional imposition of Eminent Domain. Congress has no power to nullify the constitutional absolute right to private property and Congress has no power to possess or dispose of private property, period. None. No maybes. No perhapses.
The government is what is severely limited and restricted by the Constitution and Bill of Rights, not individuals.
the historical change from feudalism to capitalism that was the essence of the American war of independence, also the French Revolution, was postively regarded by Marxists. As one in which the larger masses of American people freed themselves from a system of aristocratic exploitation and what economists sometimes call “rent seeking.” I am just repeating what i heard from them. That is not prevarication, that is their viewpoint.
but then they said:
“The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.”
American powers did not fail to appreciate this insight. Lincoln, also was praised by Marx.
They 1848 Manifesto is remarkable in how much of its “demands” has actually been phased into effect in American society.
American overlords have never limited themselves to the Constitution. They have used it or ignored it, as it suited them, but kept it as something of a gradualistic check on the pace of change.
Today, the overlords are at odds, As some question the pace of globalism
Marx predicted globalism too. From the Manifesto– tell me this does not describe “globalism”:
“”The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.”
the historical change from feudalism to capitalism that was the essence of the American war of independence,
It wasn’t.
To you it’s a bloviating, six volume treatise of prevaricating obfuscation.
To Marie Antoinette it was quite simply, “Oh, my head is gone.”
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Freedom includes free enterprise which means one may be enterprising with one’s money. Freedom includes enterprise and money may be employed as a tool of free enterprise. A free man may use his back, his brain or his money.
I completely disagree, not being a scholar by any means, that the American Founders established “capitalism.” I think you are wrong. The American Founders established FREEDOM and that FREEDOM included COMMERCE which is ENTERPRISE indicating that the American Founders established FREE ENTERPRISE distinctly not “capitalism” which was a pejorative coined by Marx.
The American Founders established freedom in all things including free enterprise and the enterprise of the employment of money.
Investing one’s money has everything to do with the freedom established by the American Founders and nothing to do with the pathetic megalomaniacal delusions of a self-styled dictatorial tyrant – Karl Marx.
just in the sense of describing economic systems, the marxist use of capitalism is not inherently perjorative, even if the commies used it later that way, i was trying to point out that they were actually favorable towards our war of independence as what they considered a necessary evolutionary phase in history
in my mind, the basic thesis of the american war of independence as a turning point marking the ascendancy of capitalism over feudalism is valid. of course it does not happen overnight.
commerce has existed long before industry or mechanization, since the dawn of history really, or before, since hammurabi, and property and contract and inheritance rights too. i would still call the ancient systems, feudalistic
capitalism is definited in part by its focus on individual rights . feudalism was a system which included individual rights but subjected them to a caste based system of entitlements and obligations.
merriam webster defines capitalism as: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market
freedom is a latitude or range of action within legal rights. the idea of individual freedom has been around since hammurabi too
freedom in a more abstract social sense, often meant Liberty, which meant self government by a people, which is something different. so, even in strict ancient regimes like Sparta, where there was not much individual freedom, the Spartans could still speak of freedom of autonomous Spartan self rule as opposed to rule by Persians or Athenians etc.
we often use these words freedom and liberty, to mean these two different things, without giving it much thought.
Romans depicted Libertas, the goddess of freedom, as wearing a Phyrigian cap, which related to there being a lot of Phyrigian slaves in the ancient world, and this related even for them both to an idea of individual freedom but at times, also, by analogy to the people as a whole, freedom of self government versus rule by foreign satrap
Who are the injured parties from the Democratic tax and spend policies?
Mostly working class Americans.
Who are the beneficiaries of the Democratic tax and spend policies?
People that do not wish to work but are able.
People that rip the system off.
Democratic politicians
Illegal aliens.
If I lived in the slums of Baltimore I would be jealous of those illegals that have broken our laws but are getting free healthcare and a much cleaner environment.
Allan – it appears that several million dollars of federal aid to Baltimore has “disappeared.” Are we surprised?
“Warren Buffett has a simple explanation for why rich Americans should pay higher taxes”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-has-a-simple–rational-explanation-for-why-rich-americans-should-pay-higher-taxes-123214184.html
Excerpts:
Buffett defended his support of lower-income populations within a capitalist framework in a 2015 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.
“The economic rewards flowing to people with specialized talents have grown dramatically faster than those going to equally decent men and women possessing more commonplace skills,” he wrote. …
In a 2011 op-ed in the New York Times, Buffett wrote, “Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4% of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33% to 41% and averaged 36%.” He added, “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.”
“The 400 of us pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you’re in the luckiest 1% of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99%,” he said this while speaking at a political fundraiser for Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2007.
In his 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope,” Barack Obama quoted Buffett, who said that fellow billionaires “have this idea that it’s ‘their money’ and they deserve to keep every penny of it. What they don’t factor in is all the public investment that lets us live the way we do. Take me as an example. I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I’d been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I can’t run very fast. I’m not particularly strong. I’d probably end up as some wild animal’s dinner. But I was lucky enough to be born into a time and place where society values my talent, and gave me a good education to develop that talent, and set up the laws and the financial system to let me do what I love doing—and make a lot of money doing it. The least I can do is help pay for all that.”
The Buffett Rule was not in the President’s 2012 budget proposal and the White House initially stressed it as a guideline rather than a legislative initiative. The rule, however, was later submitted for deliberation in the Senate. In April 2012 the bill received 51 affirmative votes but was stopped.
Buffett pays himself a salary of 100k. That is his taxable payroll income. He is duping people calling for higher income taxes when the vast majority of his money is investment income.
Buffet is an Obama loving stooge.
anonymous:
Great sentiments, but let’s talk reality. A significant percentage of the population (over 40%) pay no income taxes. That means that they have no stake in tax rates, but will benefit from confiscatory taxes.
So the Dems appeal to them with talk of seizing the wealth and are therefor automatically guaranteed a sizeable minority of support.
Remember your Shaw: “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”
That is not ethics or good government – that is a cynical power grab.
That means that the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers are paying virtually no income taxes…That does not mean that the wealthy should not pay more in taxes…
Actually, that’s exactly what that means. The bottom 50% of taxpayers does not mean the bottom 50% of voters. Right now approximately 44% of Americans pay no taxes at all. So approximately 70% of Americans have no incentive to change the direction of our fiscal policies. $22T in debt is a meaningless number if the burden is not perceived to be yours. Of course this is vote buying, but who benefits from these schemes? Forget auditing the Fed, let’s audit the politicians and find out how they are accumulating their wealth.
Anyone believe all laws should apply to all people equally? No discriminatory tax system, one rate for all on all income.
Class warfare is not unlike any other natural disputes between natural factions. And what must be done is to control the effects, and mischiefs, of these factions through government based upon republican Governing Principles.
“The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection”, Federalist #’s 9 & 10 by Hamilton and Madison Respectively.
I’ll leave it to you to read for yourself, but the conclusion is that even political parties are factions, and that dilution is the Solution through Representative density, and the resulting assembly and distribution of power through rights of Suffrage to make the improper consolidation of the power of factious groups impossible.
If you don’t understand these concepts, I would advise you to study the basic principles of republican Government, and why what we call American Democracy is not a form of republican Government, or even Democracy, and it Definitely isn’t Of, By, and For the People.
The politics of Envy. It really is that simple.
“The politics of Envy. It really is that simple.”
So says FF Simple.
No. It really isn’t.
“The politics of Envy. It really is that simple.” -FFS
But it sounds good.
Yes and both sides need each other. Turning one against the other is bad for both business and labor and the nation as well.
What about the politics of greed?
It’s a rhetorical term propagated by partisan Democrats in the media ca. 1982, as well as by red-haze twits like Barbara Ehrenreich.
Just as partisan Republicans use the term “the politics of envy”…
I wasn’t aware that Ehrenreich’s father was a miner, as was her grandfather:
http://barbaraehrenreich.com/barbara-ehrenreich-bio/
Actually, her father was a plant manager and she went to Radcliffe.
Oh, I see the current capsule biographies have it that she attended Reed College (transferred?)
Amusing things you learn with a subscription to Ancestry.com.
1. Her paternal-side grandfather, Gordon Alexander listed his occupation (for the edification of his draft board and various census enumerators) as ‘railway conductor’ in 1917, 1920, 1930, and 1940. His father, ca. 1900, was employed as a salesman.
2. Her maternal-side grandfather, one Thos. Oxley, actually did work in copper mines. He listed his occupation in 1927 (to immigration authorities) as ‘mine foreman’, in 1930 (to census enumerators) as ‘miner’, and in 1940 as ‘assistant foreman’.
3. Her father listed no occupation for the enumerators in 1940. When he filled out his draft card in 1942, he listed himself as a student at the Montana School of Mines.
4. Her maternal-side grandmother noted on her petition for naturalization in 1946 that her daughter Isabelle (BE’s mother) was then resident in Pittsburgh.
5. Her parents were divorced some time between 1946 and 1954. Her father was married at least twice more, once in Los Angeles (in 1954) and once in Phoenix (in 1963). He did some air travel in 1960 at which he listed his home address as ‘Pacific Palisades, Ca.’. That was a glam section of Los Angeles at that time.
6. Her mother was issued a Social Security number in California in 1962. Her maternal-side uncle decamped to southern California at some point between 1950 and 1962.
From Wikipedia — “father was a copper miner”…
“As a little girl,” she told The New York Times in 1993, “I would go to school and have to decide if my parents were the evil people they were talking about, part of the Red Menace we read about in the Weekly Reader, just because my mother was a liberal Democrat who would always talk about racial injustice.”[8] Her father was a copper miner who went to the Montana School of Mines (renamed Montana Technological University since 2018[9]), and then to Carnegie Mellon University. He eventually became a senior executive at the Gillette Corporation. Her parents later divorced.
Ehrenreich studied chemistry at Reed College, graduating in 1963. Her senior thesis was entitled Electrochemical oscillations of the silicon anode. In 1968, she received a Ph.D in cellular immunology from Rockefeller University.[10]
In 1970, Ehrenreich gave birth to her daughter Rosa Brooks in a public clinic in New York. “I was the only white patient at the clinic,” she told The Globe and Mail newspaper in 1987. “They induced my labor because it was late in the evening and the doctor wanted to go home. I was enraged. The experience made me a feminist.”[11]
Relevance, or only in your strange, teeny tiny mind?
You’re an utter jerk, Canuck. Read the earlier comments.
Well, guess what? She’s conning you. Norman Maclean (A River Runs through It) in his youth put in time working as a lumberjack for the U.S. Forest Service. I think he had several stints of it during his time as a college student. If Benj. Alexander was a copper miner it was like this – seasonal work while he was enrolled at the School of Mines. He’d decamped to Pittsburgh by 1946. It’s a passable guess that he had GI Bill benefits and that she had little contact with him between the ages of 1 and 4 because he was in the military.
You wouldn’t last a day in any mine, TIA. I don’t care if it was seasonal work.
And she’s certainly not “conning” me. Go do some mining work and get back to us, TIA.
anonymous – I know of at least one major copper mine where DSS would be fine and probably a shift manager by the end of the year.
BTW, what is your mining background?
And she’s certainly not “conning” me. Go do some mining work and get back to us, TIA.
You’re happy to be conned. And thanks for the red herring. It’s been an education.
Who cares about some dyed in the wool feminist whose only claim to fame might be that she coined a phrase? Now you’re so upset you negate replies? So mature of you, about what we expect.
Well, if the discussion doesn’t interest you, you’re free not to enter it.
Unfortunately, I end up having to read the drivel to discover its lack of utility.
back to Canuckistan, then
DeBlasio is feckless, but it’s not about him, although “There’s plenty of money in this country. It is just in the wrong hands” is a true statement, even if one only looks at the trillions that have been spent on the military over the last 19 years. Accusing the Democrats of a form of “waving the bloody shirt” against the rich does not negate the fact that wealth is not distributed remotely equitably in the United States, and that this is partly because the rich do not have to pay remotely what they should have to pay in taxes, which they frequently avoid nearly wholesale through tax havens, offshoring, and so forth, e.g. the Panama Papers. This is true even if individual income tax payments at the higher end of the income scale contribute to a larger absolute share of public revenue. By means that are familiar to anyone who has been paying minimal attention since 2008, the wealthy still pay less than they should: differential tax rates that favor the wealthy (as Warren Buffet has noted), e.g. the rate for capital gains vs. wages, and various legal fictions and entities through which the wealthy evade vastly more than their fair share of the admission price of civil society, such as corporations, trusts, business partnerships, shell companies. What does professor Turley say to the fact that, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, 60 of the Fortune 500 corporations used deductions, credits and other tax loopholes to avoid paying any federal income tax for 2018? Trump joked about this stuff. He called it a sport.
Bernie Sanders said, “the American people have got to conclude whether we think it is appropriate and what America is about to have three families owning more wealth than the bottom half of the American society, 160 million people; whether it’s appropriate for the top 1% to own more wealth than the bottom 92%.” The various lukewarm tax proposals on the left side of the Democratic Party to redress this situation are only scary to class warriors at the top, who make class war for decades and then accuse those at the bottom and middle, to the extent that they fight back at all, of perpetrating it. It’s a form of gaslighting.
No one person can ever plausibly be said to have “earned” as much as the colossal fortunes of Besos et al., or anywhere even close to those amounts. Mark Zuckerberg did not earn $55 billion. Jeff Besos did not earn $141 billion. This represents a private seizure of public wealth. The idea of a one-to-one correspondence between the amount of wealth a person controls and what he legitimately derived from his own effort and labor is just an inappropriate application of the Lockean “sweat of the brow” agricultural metaphor. It is long past questioning time, especially in the U.S., where wealth is worshiped and mythologized. We had no trouble with this thinking in the 1950s, and we shouldn’t now. As Joseph Stiglitz has pointed out, then the U.S. “aspired to be the first middle-class society. And we talked about education for all. We had infrastructure investment. We had a tax rate at the top of 90%, and we had the fastest rate of growth that we’ve ever had[.]”
@ Wortmanberg – your comment is very much like faeces wrapped in brocade. It’s very nice on the outside, but when you unwrap it, one finds a quantity of waste material. (quote from Steve Sword, my grade 11 English teacher who taught me more about English and writing by giving me a failing grade that year and forcing me to go to summer school. The quote is very applicable to your remarks here).
The mark of a troll is the absence of argument.
oh, I could debate this, but when you say something like “No one person can ever plausibly be said to have “earned” as much as the colossal fortunes of Besos et al., or anywhere even close to those amounts. Mark Zuckerberg did not earn $55 billion.”, you’ve outed yourself as an Obama “you didn’t build that” clone and you aren’t worth the discussion.
You’re simply too indoctrinated to understand. Best to ignore you, and hope you don’t speak to impressionable children with this stupidity.
Exactly. And Wortmanburg can tell Obama “you didn’t do squat to build that” billionaire lifestyles of the rich and famous celebrity wealthy lifestyle you and Moochelle are now enjoying. We all know you didn’t even write the books you got absurd advance payments for. What a load of you know what….
The past is not going to work in the present.
Well done, Wortmanberg. I wonder why Turley chose to write about this in view of the slaughters over this past weekend and the migrant-hate inspiration for the El Paso shooter. Less than 3 months ago, Trump joked about shooting migrants, a solution to what he called the “invasion” by South Americans that was offered by one of his disciples, saying you could only get away with suggesting this in the FL panhandle. He still refuses to own any responsibility for the likely effect of his rhetoric on this particular shooter, or in general, and as a solution, along with background checks, he demands “immigration reform”. Machine-gun, Moscow Mitch McConnell is sitting on 2 different assault-rifle and background check bills he refuses to call to the floor for a vote. Yet today, Turley thought it was more important to try to drum up sympathy for the very wealthy and to attack various Democratic candidates.
https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/2019/08/04/dayton-shooter-leftist-elizabeth-warren-fan/
This is probably something CNN won’t be sharing with its audience, but there’s some pretty striking news on the shooter who perpetrated the Dayton, OH shooting, which followed an equally tragic shooting in El Paso, TX by what appears to be a white supremacist.
Heavy.com got access to the shooter’s social media. Contrary to the media narrative currently boiling over, this shooter was not a Trump fan. In fact, he hated Trump, hated Republicans, was an avowed leftist, used antifa style language in his posts, and loved Elizabeth Warren.
Here’s some of what was found.
Bett’s Twitter profile read, “he/him / anime fan / metalhead / leftist / i’m going to hell and i’m not coming back.” One tweet on his page read, “Off to Midnight Mass. At least the songs are good. #athiestsonchristmas.” The page handle? I am the spookster. On one selfie, he included the hashtags, “#selfie4satan #HailSatan @SatanTweeting.” On the date of Republican Sen. John McCain’s death, he wrote, “F*ck John McCain.”
On Nov. 2, 2018, he wrote: “Vote blue for gods sake.”
Ironically, he was even a rabid supporter of gun control, using it to levy attacks against Republicans.
“This is America: Guns on every corner, guns in every house, no freedom but that to kill,” he wrote in December 2018. And, “’Tis! The pistol is a Beretta 93R, called the REK7 in BO4. Do love me some guns!” He also wrote, “Hammer, brick, gun.” On Feb. 14, 2018, he tweeted this at Sen. Rob Portman: “@robportman hey rob. How much did they pay you to look the other way? 17 kids are dead. If not now, when?” That was the date of the mass shooting at a school in Parkland, Florida…
He used language often used by Antifa, exclaiming that he wants to “kill every fascist.” He also liked and commented on posts expressing support for the group.
“#2016ElectionIn3Words This is bad,” he wrote on Nov. 8, 2016. “You can’t kill 50+ people and injure 600(!) In 10 minutes with cigarettes my dude,” he wrote in 2017. In response to a Buzzfeed story that read, “Virginia has declared a state of emergency in anticipation of the “Unite the Right” rally anniversary in Charlottesville this weekend,” he wrote: “Kill every fascist.”
Betts was a politically active socialist who supported Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
——————————
ROUND UP THE ANTIFA NOW!!!!!!!!!!!
According to the Huffington Post: “Crusius allegedly walked into a Walmart in El Paso late Saturday morning and opened fire on shoppers and employees. Security footage of the scene shows a man entering the building and holding a long firearm.The manifesto describes a mass attack as a response “to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” “They are the instigators, not me,” it says. “I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.”
In May, at a Florida campaign rally, Trump decried the “invasion” of brown people. He asked rhetorically: “what can we do about it.”? One of his supporters shouted: “Shoot them”. Trump paused, gave that cutesy little narcissistic smile of his, indicating his clear approval and amusement, and commented that you could only get away with saying this in the panhandle. The message couldn’t have been clearer. Not only did he fail to condemn the idea of killing migrants, his smile and comment made clear that doing this was fine with him.
So, Trump’s tiny little hands are far from clean in this matter. He still refuses to accept responsibility for the effect of his comments. What’s a narcissist to do? He depends on the racist xenophobes for his base. He has never, in his pathetic life, apologized for anything because he’s never been wrong about anything. He isn’t about to start now. His fragile ego requires him to fight to “win the victory” again, but his big mouth and bigger ego caused people to get murdered by someone who was so inspired by his xenophobic rhetoric about migrants invading this country that he went on a killing spree. What to do? Offer thoughts and prayers. Yeah. That’ll help. As if this pig has any idea about prayer. But it helps with the Evangelicals.
Representative Escobar, whose district includes the killing field, has said he’s not welcome in El Paso, and she has asked him not to come. Watch him, his complicit stupid wife and Mr. & Mrs. Evangelilst Hypocrite show up to offer their sympathy, holding hands as a show for you gullilbles (we know where those little hands have been), but also to get some free air time.
Commenters have noted that even George Wallace wasn’t as openly racist as Trump.
You dolt. Based on your reasoning, we can now blame Ferguson and several other events on Obama as the direct results of his speech. Thank you. We’ve waited a long time for permission to do this.
You’ve said some mindless things here, but this really is close to the top of the list.
Canuck, there are uninformed and ignorant people on this list. That the media doesn’t report the leftist attitudes of this killer doesn’t surprise me. The MSM is biased and therefore people like Natacha, Peter and Anon don’t have the slightest idea of what is going on.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/4/connor-betts-ohio-gunman-was-elizabeth-warren-supp/
“Connor Betts, Ohio gunman, was Elizabeth Warren supporter – Washington Times
The Ohio gunman described himself on social media as a pro-Satan “leftist” who wanted Joe Biden’s generation to die off, hated President Trump and law enforcement, and hoped to vote for Sen. Elizabeth Warren for president. … “I want socialism, and i’ll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding,” he wrote in one tweet, according to Heavy.com. … The Twitter account painted a picture of a left-wing anarchist and discontent, very far from the anti-immigration manifesto posted by Saturday’s El Paso gunman. … Though he had a fascination for guns, Betts also was a fan of gun control and blamed Republicans for school shootings. … According to Heavy, Betts also shared posts about “concentration camps” at the border and wrote, “Cut the fences down. Slice ICE tires. Throw bolt cutters over the fences.””
An interesting video of a hero who understands duty. Watch out for the kids. In an article he says first thing to do is pull out the gun and seek shelter while figuring out what to do..
Both were deplorable murderers. But, it seems that Betts was just a typical ANTIFA style anarchist who wanted to break stuff and be naughty. the other guy had a political objective.
Which is worse, a terrorist or an anarchist? I would submit an anarchist is the worst the very worst kind of never do well, and a higher priority for law enforcement than anything. Observe that historically they were strongly opposed by everyone. Even this: anarchists (of the Bakunin variety) were generally suppressed by their early comrades, the communists. This was a process that was going on for decades, both before the 1917 Russian revolution and for some time after. (Orwell called it a “betrayal” in the context of the Spanish Civil war and the neglect of the POUM in Catalonia by the pro Soviet main body of the Spanish Republic)
The reasons for this were obvious. No government of any kind can exist when insane anarchists are allowed to run about breaking stuff for fun.
that is why I say “round up the antifa.” they are a dangerous social toxin that if it is allowed to run free will provoke and harm everything and everyone in its path.
then again, maybe Betts was more sophisticated than I am giving him credit. If he was for gun control, what better way to help advance that agenda, than an act of mass violence with firearms?
Think about it. This is the strange logic of low intensity conflict. LIC
It could be worse – even the HIll is infested with idiots from the left. Seriously, it used to be a good place for a debate. Then, suddenly, hundreds of leftist trolls infested the place, making an intelligent discussion impossible. I am certain that these are paid, or directed in some way, but I cannot prove it. Still, the timing, the consistency of their idiotic remarks, and the types of articles they show up on en masse, convince me of this.
Canuck, I cannot believe anyone is paying these guys because they are so inept and dumb. Their critical thinking skills are virtually non-existent. If they are being paid my guess is they are doing more harm than good for their cause.
Natacha – technically, Hispanics are white.
Natch says:
Commenters have noted that even George Wallace wasn’t as openly racist as Trump.
Like who? Citation please
Even the guy on NPR talking about that very topic today said no such thing
I am familiar with Geo Wallace campaign in 68 and to compare it to Trump is not entirely false exercise but the assertion he was less racist than Trump is totally preposterous. Trump is not a segregationist for starters. Gosh!
And the guy in El Paso? The one that you’re conveniently overlooking?
Where did Crusius get the idea that the US is being “invaded”? Could it be from Trump? Not only has he used this term multiple times, but when a supporter shouted “shoot them”, he smiled that ugly, hateful little narcissistic smile of his and commented that you could only get away with saying this in the Florida panhandle.
What you Trumpsers are conveniently overlooking is the fact that Trump’s supporters buy the “invasion” argument. He panders to White Supremacists who feel threatened by what they perceive is the erosion of what they believe to be their power. That’s why he insults Congressional women of color, and the reason behind his blanket Musllim ban. It’s an US v. THEM narrative, and for the more fanatical wing of deplorables, a call to arms. What should someone who thinks he is reasonable do when the POTUS says the US is under invasion? Fight back. Crusius said that’s why he went on the rampage. He used Trump’s “invasion” word. Trump bears a measure of responsibility.
Oh, and it was just announced that Trump and the Hypocrite in Chief are planning to go to Texas despite being asked not to do so. Free publicity, don’t you know. Who cares how the victims of this community feel? Who cares how much it costs for security, or the inconvenience for others traveling by air and by vehicle? Free publicity, don’t you know.
how many illegal immigrants reside in the US? Whether it is 10. 15, or 30 millions– who knows; even the smallest number is arguably an invasion.
Invasion is a term that was used long before Trump. It is a foreign invasion. It is not strictly “Racist’ or “White supremacist” To say so, because, the negative social effects of illegal immigration are borne not only be Americans of all races in general, but, as I have pointed out, the economic competition for low and unskilled jobs, hurts black american men the most.
You guys always fail to deal with that point, don’t you? how about for once, you come clean, and admit that and deal with it?
But it’s easier to demonize your adversaries as “white supremacists”
Instead of taking away the incentive to come here–jobs–by punishing those who knowingly hire the illegals, it’s easier to demonize the uneducated brown people. That stirs up the xenophobes that Trump depends on. Watch him go right back to the same rhetoric after the funerals, like he always does after he walks back some comment that went too far. The real bad guys here are those whose larger profit margin depends on this pool of slave labor that they can take advantage of. Black Americans know their rights, which include overtime pay, workers compensation, unemployment benefits, and, in some cases, fringe benefits. They also have the right to redress civil rights abuses and to press sexual harassment claims. That’s why employers prefer illegals. They don’t demand these things.
The migrants don’t come here for the climate, or the “friendly welcome”, for the culture or for anything other than to work. A commenter last week said that even those who know they’ll get sent back hope to be able to work awhile and save some money while their cases are pending. Taking, say, $10,000 that 2 parents could save up by working a couple of jobs for a year and living with other migrants is a lot of money to them because it goes a lot further in El Salvador, Honduras or Guatemala. It’s more than they could ever hope to save in their home country. Giving illegals jobs has created this crisis, and it’s not going to go away until someone starts seriously punishing those who hire them. But, blaming the brown people stirs up the deplorables, so Trump will keep doing it. Plus, it gives him the argument “see, I’m no racist. I’m punishing the brown people to benefit the black people because the brown people are taking away their jobs.” This is straight out of the Kellyanne/Faux News playbook.
Natacha, you’re a milicious and bilious individual and you project that on others. Go away.
It’s Natacha’s perfect right to post comments, TIA x XI.
Some of us would like you to “go away”, but unfortunately we’re stuck with you.
Anonymous – Natacha, nor you, does not have a right to post on this site. Professor Turley can restrict your access at any time and he has done this to people.
i didnt really understand what you said.
and I would say, eliminate the bogus asylum claims, but don’t get rid of asylum altogether. it’s a worthy institution, but just incredibly abused now
not that Democrats care. and you said “they only come here for work” so maybe you don’t think any asylum claims are valid?
of course asylum applicants fall into a liminal area between illegal immigrants and legal ones. a large class of temporary migrants who people may not realize, generally get to work. they are a large source of documented migrant workers besides h1bs and all that. anyhow, asylum abuse was not a big thing really until the Central Americans picked up on it during Obama term, is my impression., I could be wrong about that of course
Natch, you touched on the assertion I made, concerning who is most harmed by mass migration, so I will give you two cents of credit for that, even though you skirted the issue for the most part
Kurtz: whether they would admit it or not, EVERYONE knows that MOST asylum claims aren’t really about asylum for things like religious persecution, racial profiling or abuse directed toward political opponents. It’s mostly for economic reasons, although some are domestic violence victims, gang violence victims or could be the target of some hoodlum or another or a family feud or personal vengeance that the local constabulary won’t do anything about, which might not qualify as asylum. People do, however, have the right to request asylum.
Yes, hundreds of thousands of people coming here per month are a problem, but that does not entitle Trump or anyone else to dehumanize them, cage them, separate children from their families, pander to xenophobic sentiments or hold them in unsanitary conditions. Again, if it were not for jobs, they would not come here, and the things Trump is doing isn’t going to significantly deter them. For decades, there have been permits for agricultural workers for the planting, growing and harvesting seasons*, but migrants occupy millions of non-agricultural jobs all over the US, mostly due to no one being willing to take on the powerful owners and CEOs of restaurants, hotels, landscaping and other low-skill jobs that hire these people. The problem is huge, and business owners who are benefitting aren’t going to give up the profits they make by saving on fringe benefits, overtime, unemployment, workers compensation and civil rights and sexual harassment claims. Building a wall isn’t much of a deterrent, either. Without tackling the root cause, the problem isn’t going to get better any time soon.
*Ever see the film “Border Incident”, starring Ricardo Mantalban?
Obama built the cages. Obama did not make sure to change the laws. Obama put kids in cages and there was ZERO outrage. Obama had Al Sharpton and BLM activists visiting the Oval Office stoking racial tensions with cops and Sharpton of all people “advising” him on race issues!!! Outrageous! But there was no outrage in the media. Shocker. Not.
No i never saw that movie
you said: “Kurtz: whether they would admit it or not, EVERYONE knows that MOST asylum claims aren’t really about asylum for things like religious persecution, racial profiling or abuse directed toward political opponents. It’s mostly for economic reasons, although some are domestic violence victims, gang violence victims or could be the target of some hoodlum or another or a family feud or personal vengeance that the local constabulary won’t do anything about, which might not qualify as asylum. People do, however, have the right to request asylum.”
NAtch, do you realize in this you have just conceded one of the main points of “IMMIGRATION RESTRICTIONISTS?”
I know numerous people whose asylum claims were valid and have been adjudicated as such, from various corners of the globe. People may not realize also that many Chinese people have come as asylees due to the oppressive “one child policy,” It also would be wrong to pretend that we have not taken in many Vietnamese who had to flee due to their association with the RVN; or Chinese ethics from Vietnam who were persecuted in the postwar period by Communists, etc. Many Asian residents in America have come here by way of asylum and legitimately so. Other national examples are easy to find as well.
moreover obviously the US benefited muich from asylees in the past such as German-Jewish physicists in the pre-WW 2 period
Many postwar DPs made asylum claims in the wake of the collapse of the Axis. Tons of hungarians and other people from eastern Europe had to flee the vengeful communists out for blood after the war. and I don’t just mean operation paper clip nazi scientists eiteher, I mean regular decent people
I think asylum has done well for the US and we should keep it. the main problem came under Obama, when the Mexican coyotes began to tutor their customers in the basics of asylum claims, and then they came in droves. That is the problem we still are dealing with. It needs to be cut off, to stop the land invasion from the South, at all costs, while still not throwin the baby out with the bathwater
about 20 years ago, I heard somebody say that there were at least a million white americans who believed in general, that they were being discriminated against according to race, and their nativity, by pro immigration forces, by affirmative action, etc. These are not conspiratorial fantasies, they are legitimate group concerns.
when a people– that is to say, an identifiable social group bound by ancestry and culture– is attacked with special government programs which involve disparate taxation, disparate treatment, disparate governmental policies specifically intended to favor other populations over that people– normally people call that “discrimination”
there is a perception by white americans that they are discirminated against by their own govenment. recently, the focus has come onto the failure to police the border and correct the abuses of our social welfare programs and asylum system, by migrants who are savvy to “the system”
when white americans bring these topics up, people like you natacha, call them “white supremacists” which is a label intended to delegitimize and actually dehumanize them,. to make them into monstrous neonazis who should be liquidated like so many german bad guys in a quentin tarantino movie.
this is indeed discrimination.
the odd thing is that mostly it’s advanced by overly educated and privileged white people staffing universities and social agencies and so forth.
this is a paradox. oddly, you have to turn to Marxism, to find the keys to pick that intellectual lock.
it seems that the Texas shooter also had concerns about the takeover of social and politics by “corporations,” and also with global warming.
It may be that he had some of the intellectual keys necesary to pick these locks, and he walked into a dark corridor where it seemed the doors to the other side were very few
https://heavy.com/news/2019/08/connor-betts-twitter-politics-social-media/
LEFTIST MASS SHOOTER. stop the hate!
Again:
And the guy in El Paso? The one that you’re conveniently overlooking?
i have made a comment about him just now. we can discuss this peacefully, I hope. I reject violence and call for free speech.
the Texas guy, not sure he was nuts or what. maybe not nuts:
““In general, I support the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto. This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. They are the instigators, not me. I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion. Some people will think this statement is hypocritical because of the nearly complete ethnic and cultural destruction brought to the Native Americans by our European ancestors, but this just reinforces my point. The natives didn’t take the invasion of Europeans seriously, and now what’s left is just a shadow of what was. My motives for this attack are not at all personal. Actually the Hispanic community was not my target before I read The Great Replacement. …”
I didn’t think these thoughts up, but yeah I said something like this here before, about 20 or 200 times. Including the point about the genocide of Native Americans and it can happen to us, too.
He also said, according to the Heavy.com profile:
““Due to the death of the baby boomers, the increasingly anti-immigrant rhetoric of the right and the ever increasing Hispanic population, America will soon become a one party-state. The Democrat party will own America and they know it,” it said.
It described Democratic policies of open borders, healthcare for undocumented immigrants and citizenship as a way to enact a coup by recruiting voters.”
This guy did horrible, awful thing. Nonetheless, the underlying concerns may be valid. Suppressing discussion of these things– which is precisely what google and other social media dictators, and the mass media bosses do– suppressing these concerns will only drive further acts of violence.
Let free speech make a comeback, quit telling white kids they are bad just because they are white, quit trying to import new voters to replace the old ones, and maybe we can talk things out peaceably.
Seems like that is probably a vain hope.
I reject all unlawful acts, btw. Is it unlawful for a candidate to call for a change in law, abolishing border guards and legalizing invasion? I tell you that is precisely what will lead to more of this stuff.
And the budding “ANTIFA” types like the Dayton shooter, who want to “kill all the fascists,” almost certainly ensure that a civil war is a much likelier outcome today than it was a few years ago.
When the Americans tried to prop up a corrupt RVN regime against the well organized peasant militia of the Viet Cong, bound together more so by hatred for foreign round eyed devils than by any supposed communist ideology, the result after huge expenditure of men and material and money, was that the Americans had to leave the field.
The Viet Cong did not just hate us however; they loved their own kind., They loved their own country. Ho Chi Minh himself was an anti Japanese freedom fighter; so one might call it a sort of nationalism which bound them together. It would be wrong to have called it racism, since they fought the Japs as much as the French and Americans.
It was nationalism. Nationalism is a real force. It is defined mostly by NATUS. The Latin word for nativity, which is to say, the place of your birth.
Foreign invasion by refugees, women, children, and the poor, rather than by soldiers, is still a form of invasion. The book “Camp of the Saints” by Jean Raspail made the point in fiction decades ago
http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDFs/Camp_of_the_Saints.pdf
back in 1973 Raspail wrote a book of fiction about a massive flotilla of poor refugees coming round the horn to France’s shores, and the collapse of French society in a fit of altruistic suicide in response.
What will happen here? Remains to be seen.
Before the work the shooter mentioned, “Le Grand Remplacement,” Was Camp of the Saints.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Replacement
I welcome a civil discussion of these topics. I reject unlawful acts.
The Viet Cong used tactics of targeting civilians who had received aid from Americans
That may properly be called, terrorism,
But that is stock in trade of guerilla warfare. it is illegal, under the Geneva Convention, but it is an enduring tactic. It may never go away, any more than guns or poison.
The word guerilla comes from the Spanish resisters to the French Napoleonic occupation of Spain. There were not nice!
The pro-Allied “Resistance” of World War two did not just commit acts of sabotage. It too used tactics which violated the Geneva Convention and laws of war and engaged in assassination of unarmed people and even civilians. These things are not much discussed.
The mujahadeen of Afganistan were “Freedom fighters” when we paid them to fight the Russians; but when the very same turned against the US, they became, “terrorists”
One may demonize the Viet Cong, but are you familiar with how the American Patriots treated Loyalists? They tarred and feathered them. Tar does not flow unless it is hot. Very hot, blistering hot. If you were tarred and feathered, and “run out on a rail” to make an exampel to other loyalists, you probably would die from massive systemic shock and burns. Kids are not taught this about our own war of independence.
http://americainclass.org/sources/makingrevolution/rebellion/text2/text2.htm
Are people ready for the rapid social change that they say is “inevitable?” or what it would take to make it happen?
Kurtz : I’ve seen horrors… horrors that you’ve seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that… but you have no right to judge me. It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror… Horror has a face… and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces… seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember… I… I… I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn’t know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it… I never want to forget. And then I realized… like I was shot… like I was shot with a diamond… a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God… the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men… trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love… but they had the strength… the strength… to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral… and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling… without passion… without judgment… without judgment! Because it’s judgment that defeats us.”
The VietCong were liquidated as a military force by the end of 1972. South VietNam fell to a conventional invasion, not to an insurgency.
The viet cong’s struggle, however unsuccessful in terms of battle victories– few if any– was socially and politically successful. And was necessary to the strategic and conventional victory of the NVA. Surely know understand that.
It wasn’t.
LOl it was not successful? RVN fell, the North won, and the entire country was consolidated under Communist state leadership. They may have lost every single battle and been dissolved but their objective was achieved. Now if you are trying to argue something else, you bear the burden of explaining it. I would be amused to hear it.
TIA is an insufferable know-it-all.
He is a nowitall and a pain in the neck sometimes and I envision him with a bowtie. but i like his contributions. I’m even glad you keep coming back too. otherwise I might have no outlet at all for my political opinions, and be tempted to tell folks in the real world what i really think and they would know, instead of guess, that i am crazy, lol
I enjoy TIA even if he is a tad confident in his assertions. When I’ve checked on his facts, he generally correct. He does have a linear flow to his thoights and they seem evidence based. All in all a fine addition to the debate.
What must you guys say about me when I’m gone for a couple of days? Yeesh
mespo – you are better off not knowing. Ignorance is bliss.
Anonymous – you, on the other hand, are just insufferable.
The cure for that suffering is to prove him wrong. Anything short of that effort is just whining,
Actually the Viet Kong were rendered an ineffective fighting force after their disaster in the ’68 Tet Offensive which the American press played as a victory for them but was, in fact, a staggering loss with the Kong killed, captured or missing (40,000 communist dead). The American media has hated America for decades.
Ooops should read “with half the Viet Kong killed, captured or missing.”
tactical loss, strategic victory
both in the intermediate term as you note by demoralizing the “occupier’s” population at home– and long term by laying the necessary foundations (american withdrawal most of all) for eventual successful invasion by NVA
hence, an incredibly successful guerilla operation even if it mostly did not do much as a fighting force
the partisan succeeds just by existing and living to fight another day, not winning engagements
read William S Lind, he is a smart on the evolving nature of war
You mean they lose on every sale, make it up on volume?
I remembering a North Vietnamese official discussing the war in retrospect and saying that they knew they couldn’t win and they had lost terribly in the Tet offensive but they were counting on the American Press.
Good point, Mespo. The VC were badly mauled during the Tet Offensive, and never regained their former effectiveness.
The NVA also suffered heavy losses, and it was 4 years before they tried anything anywhere near the scale of the Tet Offensive.
U.S. combat troops had mostly been withdrawn by the time of the 1972 Easter Offensive, but American air power and a satisfactory showing by the South Vietnamese Army stopped them from overrunning South Vietnam.
Pulling American air support completely less than 18 months later, and reducing economic aid, sealed the fate of South Vietnam.
I’m not a fan of Henry Kissinger, but his comment that “the North Vietnamese could hardly believe their good fortune” at America’s clear signals that it would not lift a finger in supporting the South was probably true.
“South Viet Nam fell to a conventional invasion,…”
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That is just as inane and erroneous as saying Woodward and Bernstein were “journalists.” Nothing could be further from the truth in both cases.
Woodward and Bernstein were “patsies,” “fake journalists,” used by “Deep Throat,” Mark Felt, a disgruntled FBI employee who was passed over for promotion. Woodward and Bernstein couldn’t “investigativly report” their way out of a wet paper bag. Mark Felt contacted this clown show and fed them information about Nixon et al.
South Viet Nam did not fall “…to a conventional invasion…,” the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) was violently sucked into South Viet Nam by a massive vacuum, the giant “sucking sound,” created by the hasty, panicked retreat of American forces. Jane Fonda and the communists in America prevailed. That stinking Viet Nam war should have been won decisively in the same fashion as when Harry Truman displayed his family jewels and made a decision to win, to not lose and to preserve American lives at Hiroshima (Congrats, Col. Tibbets!).
South Viet Nam did not “fall to a conventional invasion,” South Viet Nam was handed to the communists in North Viet Nam on a silver platter.
South Viet Nam did not “fall to a conventional invasion,” America pulled its punches. America refused to fight, kill the enemy and win. America, under liberal communist dominion, ran home with its tail between its legs.
August 6, 1945
Where is Harry Truman when you need him?
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“He who hesitates is lost.”
― Cato
EXAMPLE OF CALL TO CENSOR POLITICALLY INCORRECT SPEECH BY WHITES ON THE INTERNET
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/el-paso-shooter-wasn-t-lone-wolf-his-so-called-ncna1039201
Fool, this would only guarantee far worse to come.
Thanks for the link. Excerpt follows below my text.
Personality disorders do not discriminate. Pathology strikes people of all stripes, physical or psychological. The paid trolls on here (e.g. Natacha, Anon1, Anonymous, Ynot, Peter Shill, et al) are sadists and reflect sociopathy and the Dark Triad of personalities. They repeat the same talking points of insults day after day, targeting the same gullible rubes, knowing they will get a reaction in addition to getting paid for trolling. Sociopathy is pronounced today because the news media and the internet give these a platform to make revenue.
The answer is creating family, friends, community. We are wired for relationships
Disconnect from the internet and ignore news media reports, and life looks very differently. Interact with your fellow neighbor and you will be surprised how similar they are to you.
Connor Betts: Twitter Posts on Being a Leftist, Guns
Connor Betts, the Dayton, Ohio mass shooter, was a self-described “leftist,” who wrote that he would happily vote for Democrat Elizabeth Warren, praised Satan, was upset about the 2016 presidential election results, and added, “I want socialism, and i’ll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding.”
Betts’ Twitter profile read, “he/him / anime fan / metalhead / leftist / i’m going to hell and i’m not coming back.” One tweet on his page read, “Off to Midnight Mass. At least the songs are good. #athiestsonchristmas.” The page handle? I am the spookster. On one selfie, he included the hashtags, “#selfie4satan #HailSatan @SatanTweeting.” On the date of Republican Sen. John McCain’s death, he wrote, “F*ck John McCain.” He also liked tweets referencing the El Paso mass shooting in the hours before Dayton.
Twitter has now suspended the Twitter page, removing it. It was up for several hours after the mass shooting.
On Nov. 2, 2018, he wrote: “Vote blue for gods sake.”
Natacha – I consider it an invasion and you are ignorant not to.
Here’s another point for Natty Boo Boo to consider. But she won’t, because, as you say, she is ignorant.
“When the media claim Trump has criticized “immigrants” but fail to distinguish between legal immigrants (whom he has embraced, literally) and illegal immigrants (whom both parties used to pretend to want to keep out and remove), they are sowing unnecessary hatred in this country.” – Joel B. Pollak
In response to Obama’s statement on the shootings, Joel B. Pollak said this:
“They will do anything to obscure the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants, which is the core of the issue. It allows them to transform the ordinary and NECESSARY defense of the rule of law into racism by definition. Demagoguery from the master.”
Fact check? True. Dems and their hate-filled, anti-Trump media will do anything to bury, hide, deflect, and tell egregious lies to the people who actually listen to them. Shocker.