#1
To add insult to injury, according to the OECD, the U.S. "has the most progressive tax system and collects the largest share of taxes from the richest 10% of the population."
Taxes on income reduce the money left to hire other people to do tasks (comparative advantage), and thus cause unemployment.
MORE IMPORTANTLY I believe the relative productivity (pay) ratio between two people is maintained POST TAX! This means lowering the pay of the productive lowers the pay of the less productive!
#3
I'm all for a flat tax. Everyone pays a percentage. That way the "poor" feel the bite of Obamacare just like the "rich". More than likely they won't vote for progressive bullshit if they have to pay for it too.
#6
Meh. Regulatory costs are actually quite a bit more damaging than taxation at this point. The latest figures I heard indicated that imposed federal regulatory costs are around 35% of GDP. At least they're not spending that much. Yet.
#2
One of the interesting graphs in the actual report shows the ANA shrank back to 5000 people in 2006. In essence we are starting over from that point.
To any 'burger who were there: What happened?
(I don't remember anything about it in the MSM)
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
09/28/2010 11:35 Comments ||
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I apologise to readers around the world for having defended the emergency stimulus policies of the US Federal Reserve, and for arguing like an imbecile naif that the Fed would not succumb to drug addiction, political abuse, and mad intoxicated debauchery, once it began taking its first shots of quantitative easing.
My pathetic assumption was that Ben Bernanke would deploy further QE only to stave off DEFLATION, not to create INFLATION. If the Federal Open Market Committee cannot see the difference, God help America.
We now learn from last weeks minutes that the Fed is willing to provide additional accommodation if needed to return inflation, over time, to levels consistent with its mandate.
NO, NO, NO, this cannot possibly be true.
Ben Bernanke has not only refused to abandon his idee fixe of an inflation target, a key cause of the global central banking catastrophe of the last twenty years (because it can and did allow asset booms to run amok, and let credit levels reach dangerous extremes).
Worse still, he seems determined to print trillions of emergency stimulus without commensurate emergency justification to test his Princeton theories, which by the way are as old as the hills. Keynes ridiculed the tyranny of the general price level in the early 1930s, and quite rightly so. Bernanke is reviving a doctrine that was already shown to be bunk eighty years ago.
#1
The Fed was established to address the cyclic problem of recession/depression that America had experienced in the 19th Century. Since then, we've had the Great Depression and, now, the Great Recession. If you believe in fundamentals, it's time to reexamine if an institution is fulfilling the rationale for its existence.
#2
IIRC some of the Founders were against a Nat'l bank because of manipulation possibilities that would create unintended consequences not desired in a free and open market.
James Delingpole at The Daily Telegraph reports on this summers Bilderberg meeting, where the secret rulers of the universe meet every year to decide how to destroy Alex Jones. Delingpole has noticed an unusual item on the Bilderberg agenda:
The 58th Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Sitges, Spain 3 6 June 2010. The Conference will deal mainly with Financial Reform, Security, Cyber Technology, Energy, Pakistan, Afghanistan, World Food Problem, Global Cooling, Social Networking, Medical Science, EU-US relations.
Global cooling. Its kind of like global warming, except the exact opposite.
I dont know about you, but every once in a while I hear about how I shouldnt drive a car, or use proper light bulbs, or basically live the life of a 21st Century American because its melting the icebergs and making Al Gore cry. Why are these guys worried about global cooling? Could it have something to do with the way global warming became climate change became global climate disruption? Will they now try to shift from the polar bears need life jackets to the polar bears need comfy sweaters and hope nobody notices?
Delingpole says:
The next few years are going to be very interesting. Watch the global power elite squirming to reposition itself as it slowly distances itself from Anthropogenic Global Warming (Who? Us? No. We never thought of it as more than a quaint theory ), and tries to find new ways of justifying green taxation and control. (Ocean acidification; biodiversity; et al).
Thats what its all about: using science, or something that resembles science, to control how you live your life. Whatll happen when everybody stops panicking about yesterdays doomsday and they try to get us all worked up about tomorrows?
Posted by: Martini ||
09/28/2010 15:47 Comments ||
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#4
IMO it still comes down to there is NO SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS on the Sun's behavior, nor on its role, etc. as per effects on Local, Global Environment.
In any case, NATURAL OR MAN-MADE, GW IS NOT A GOOD REASON ENOUGH TO IMPOSE NATIONAL, GLOBAL SOCIALIST-GOVTIST ORDER + OWG + POLICE-WELFARE STATE, ETC, WIDOUT A POPULAR VOTE.
LEST WE FERGIT, THE US-WORLD LEFTS HAVE HISTORICALLY ALWAYS PROMOTED THEMSELVES AS THE "TRUE DEFENDERS/PROTECTORS" OF THE POPULAR VOTE + "WILL OF THE PEOPLE", as compared to the Right or Center-Right.
#5
Actually, we were afraid of global cooling in the 1970s. Anyone else remember "the new ice age," "nuclear winter," "shortening growing seasons," etc.?
Posted by: Tom ||
09/28/2010 21:10 Comments ||
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#6
WAFF > [Poster Analysis] I WILL PROVE WID A CALCULATION THAT GLOBAL WARMING IS NOT CAUSED BY [Man's]BURNING OF FOSSIL FUELS.
WAFF POSTER attempts to mathematically show other WAFF'ers that any simul burning of all of the World's known fossil fuel reserves + consequent release of gases into the atmosphere will NOT significantly increase CO2, etc. to dangerous levels???
#7
Oh, yeah, I remember, Tom. Particularly memorable is the Time magazine cover story about "The Coming Ice Age."
That's one (of many) reason I don't take the Warmenists seriously - they don't seem to understand (or more likely are unwilling to admit, because then there's no money and power in it for them) that the climate cycles. Not a damn one of them seems to know about the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age.
Educated ignoramuses, the lot of 'em. :-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/28/2010 22:25 Comments ||
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#2
Dunno if Israel feels the time is right to attack. If this is from Israel (and that is a big IF at this point), it might be a multi-pronged attack on the infrastructure of Iran. A virus here, a sabotage attack there, a bomb from Kurds there, suddenly the country's ability to move goods, electricity and fuel is severely cut. This will completely undermine Short Round and his government and might actually cause the collapse of the government without a Israeli shot fired.
All speculation on my part, but I doubt the Israelis are ready to let lead fly over Iran yet. Lebanon maybe.
[Al Arabiya] Iran has limited capacity to retaliate in kind to an apparent cyber attack that infected computers at its sole nuclear power plant, analysts say, but some worry it could seek to hit back by other means.
Security experts say they believe the release of the Stuxnet computer worm may have been a state-backed attack on Iran's nuclear program, most likely originating in the United States or Israel. But they say the truth may never be known.
Little information is available on how much damage, if any, Iran's nuclear and wider infrastructure has suffered from Stuxnet--and Tehran will probably never share the full details. Officials said on Sunday the worm had hit staff computers at the Bushehr nuclear power plant but had not affected major systems there.
Some analysts believe Iran may be suffering wider sabotage aimed at slowing down its nuclear ambitions, and point to unexplained technical problems that have cut the number of working centrifuges in its uranium enrichment program.
In the short term, intelligence experts believe Tehran's priority will be trying to identify the source of the attack and examining how the worm was uploaded onto its systems.
"The Iranian internal security and counterintelligence departments will need to nail down the culprits first, then work out how to turn the tables," said Fred Burton, a former U.S. counterintelligence expert who is now vice president of political risk consultancy Stratfor.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/28/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11128 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
No. But they can, and do, a lot of proxy terrorism.
#8
Just a wild thought, but suppose the Stuxnet virus was merely a warning, meant to be discovered. Someone could be sending a subtle message that ALL of Iran's computing power is corrupted with an even more devastating worm capable of far greater damage unless Iran backs off its enrichment process. After all, Short Round is suddenly willing to "accept" foreign nuclear fuel, and allowing the "used" fuel to be reprocessed elsewhere. They were strongly against this before.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
09/28/2010 16:09 Comments ||
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#9
#6: #4 is correct: only early versions of BASIC were case sensitive.
#1
Compare wid RENSE > {DailyMail.UK] EU TELLS BRITAIN IT MUST GIVE WELFARE TO [foreign]MIGRANTS, as the UK's restrictions have been found by the EU to be INCOMPATIBLE wid EU regulations + protocols???
#2
B - that's from 2009. Surely, under Teh Messiah, the revived City of Detroit has become a new Mecca?
wait...what?
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/28/2010 21:21 Comments ||
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#3
D *** NG IT, CLEARLY THE PROB WID BANKRUPT "BIG/HYPER-GOVTS" IS THAT THEY ARE NOT BANKRUPT ENOUGH.
NET > Certain Perts claim US DEBT-TO-GDP IS ACTUALLY AT 93& OF US GDP, NOT THE OFFICIAL "83%", HENCE THE US FED-GOVT ONLY HAS A MERE 7.0% TO GO IN SPENDING BEFORE REACHING THAT MAGICAL 100% = "TOTE DEBT = TOTE REVENUE" EQUALIST IDEAL OF PERFECTION.
* HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER > SOVIET "ALPHA" SUB SKIPPER > [paraph]"D *** NG IT, 100% IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH - I WANT DEM COUPLINGS LOOSENED NOW - NOW, NOW, N-O-E, NOW - TO GET 110-125%"!
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