Who will take on Obama in 2012?

The relative cost of teh ability to pay higher property taxes that provide an excellent school system is the greatest return on investment going.

I don't see the merit in allowing a system to exist that ensures that the majority of the population has access to a substandard formative education.

That, i dont think i'll ever quite understand.

On the other hand, the liberals up here have decided to make legalizing pot a part of thieir federal platform, which puts Conservative me in a real quandary.

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"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.

It wasn't that it wasn't a serious proposal because it was extreme (though that's true, too), it's that it was literally the opposite of what makes rational sense. I wouldn't have bothered to reply if it was just some overzealous statement.

But anyway, you agree. Great.

...But then you got high.

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It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula

Better than private schools? Even fairly high-end ones can cost way less than those property taxes, which can be absolutely brutal. Education is a huge ROI, but if you're rich there are any number of places you can get it, so the actual value relative to the next-best option is pretty muted for the wealthy.

I assume the key is the word "substandard." If it's an objective standard, then yeah, big problem. If it just means lower than the others around it, then I think that'll always exist. It'd be impossible to have a nationwide school system where all schools were of perfectly equal quality, for a variety of reasons.

That said, if you're making out that the current system is a mess, you're preaching to the choir.

Heh. Do they enforce it much now anyway, by the by?

You know what I don't understand about conservatives, it's this idea that everything should go back to the states and that the federal government should have basically no, or very little, role in a wide variety of the major issues of our day. For the libertarians, it seems as if the only role of the federal government is basically national defense. Any other issue they don't want the government involved at all. Even for mainstream conservatives, it appears a large part of their appeal is garnered from saying how everything should go back to the states. I think that the notion that government doesn't do certain things very well, or is inefficient and needs to be streamlined is a defensible conservative argument, but that's not what most of the Republican candidates are saying. They're not just saying government is inefficient and we need to make it work better. They are saying the role of the government is to "get out of the way" and let states craft their own solutions to basically every major policy issue of our time. I don't really understand this.

How will this work on a practical level? If everything is a state responsibility, and each state should be allowed to craft its own solutions to virtually every public policy challenge of the day, then why even have a nation? That doesn't sound like a United States of America to me. It sounds like a collection of loosely affiliated geographical regions which have very little to do with each other. On every issue, from health care, to education, to the environment, to immigration...if you go down the line, the Republican position is that the government should basically do nothing. What is the point of having a Congress and a President, if under the conservative vision, they basically are left with very little to do?

Yoda, and all other conservative-leaning members of the board, would you care to comment?

Of course there are proposals out there from republicans that would make the poor pay more federal tax. It is called the flat tax:

"The details of flat-tax proposals vary, of course. But all of them end up benefitting the rich more than the poor for one simple reason: Today’s tax code is still at least moderately progressive. The rich usually pay a higher percent of their incomes in income taxes than do the poor. A flat tax would eliminate that slight progressivity.
Nowadays most low-income households pay no federal income tax at all – a fact that sends many regressives into spasms of indignation. They conveniently ignore the fact that poor households pay a much larger share of their incomes in payroll taxes, sales taxes, and property taxes (directly, if they own their homes; indirectly, if they rent) than do people with high incomes."

http://robertreich.org/post/11753807617

Gingrich won SC big, but can he take Florida?

I doubt it.

SC gave him a standing ovation for being a serial adulterer. Good for them, that can be their legacy in this election.

Definitely tempting to imagine that the GOP really will commit electoral suicide, and that Gingrich`s crushing defeat against Obama will foreshadow real reflection, realignment and realism among the Republicans.

The Democrats haven`t been good enough to deserve that, though, and surely the marginally less awful Romney can still rely on his massively superior organisation and the fact that he has many less party potentates who viscerally hate him and come through the primaries.

And again, the goalposts move. Your initial claim was "Republicans only want to cut taxes for the rich." That was utter nonsense. The position you're now defending is a dramatically watered down version of your first accusation.

Er, no, that's not why they gave him a standing ovation, and I suspect you know as much. Disingenuous arguments are beneath you.

I was just wondering where AKA's been. Hi there.

Well, then you don't understand the Founders, I dare say. They fully intended for the states to be "laboratories of democracy" that could largely run their own affairs and even compete with one another to see which ideas worked and which didn't. They also recognized that, almost by definition, the further removed a government is from the effects of its laws, the less effective it will be. Who knows the needs of your community better? I'll bet your Governor knows better than your President, and I'll bet your Congressperson knows better than your Governor, and I'll bet your Mayor knows better than your Congressperson. It's no different than educational claims about class size, really. The broader a law or regulation or mandate is, the more one-size-fits-all it has to be, and the less it fits individual areas. In a nation this size and this diverse, that's a problem.


You ask how it will work on a practical level: quite easily. Police aren't handled by the federal government. Neither are fire departments. The idea that this is some dangerous, unprecedented thought is backwards: it's the heavily-centralized government that is far more unusual throughout American history. That is the new idea, historically speaking.

As for what makes it a nation: the fact that we band together in times of crisis, be it war or natural disaster. The fact that we still elect federal leaders for those things that must transcend state level. Why not ask the opposite question? What's the point of having states if most of what they do is controlled jointly by one body?

Regardless, There are still plenty of issues that even the biggest proponents of decentralized government are happy to have the federal government involved in. But even if there were not that many...so what? The government should exist insofar as it is useful to the people. It isn't our job to find things for them to do. It isn't our job to give them some arbitrary amount of power or responsibility, it's our job to determine what type of government is best.

Frankly, the focus on state government strikes me as a rather ingenuous compromise between ideologies with vastly different ideas of government's effectiveness. State government is still government and can still enact social change, as most liberals tend to prefer, but being local it can cut down on the inevitably clumsy, top-down federal mandates that conservatives hate. There's still going to be a lot of disagreement, but this is an idea that seems to contain far more common ground between conservatives and liberals than most others. I'm not sure why conservatives seem to be the only ones embracing it; there's nothing about enacting policies on a local level, as opposed to a federal one, that should upset most of them, unless the goal is power rather than genuine social change.

Let us put it this way. Their priority these days is the rich. A lot of Republicans especially the tea party type including Bachmann didn't want anything to do under any circumstances with a payroll tax, which benefited the middle class and working poor. They want to increase taxes for those who don't pay them under the current system and that is almost fifty percent.

And if I am shifting goalposts (and actually just being a little loose with words, their intent is clear enough, to focus on protecting the rich from tax increases, but flexible about jacking them up for other folks) so have you. They are just symbolic arguments, not specific proposals? You obviously are no longer claiming that.

I don't know how many "a lot of Republicans" is, but it can't be that many, because the Republican leadership simply asked that the payroll tax extension be accompanied by matching spending cuts. They were willing to have plenty to do with it.

Yes I am, at least in Bachmann's case: she said "even if only a dollar." That's a symbolic gesture, not a serious attempt to raise taxes. I think it's a silly idea anyway, but it's not a serious example of someone wanting to raise taxes on the poor, let alone an example of the party as a whole trying to do so.

I would love to see them nominate Newt Gingrich to answer all those whiny right wingers who complain they lose when their candidate is what they call a RINO, which is ridiculous and an arrogant term, as if there is such a thing. There isn't.

Well, that is still shifting goal posts, isn't it? You can argue about Bachmann's stance, but the way I see it she was throwing out a dollar using "even if" language, but what she was really saying the poor should pay more so the wealthy can pay less. She didn't have a specific proposal. But other Republicans have had specific proposals and it is working and middle class that pay more, not the wealthiest. I'll be back with the link.



"The GOP plan would place sharp limits on popular tax breaks like the mortgage interest deduction in exchange for significantly lower income tax rates. At the same time, Republicans are willing to accept a net increase in individual income tax revenues of about $300 billion over the coming decade.
Democrats say the GOP proposal would cut the top rate so sharply -- from 35 percent to 28 percent -- that wealthier earners would get large tax cuts while middle class workers would have to lose out on deductions for mortgage interest and state and local taxes."


http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011...#ixzz1kF0HVSYm

What part of that article is supposed to support your assertion? Some Republicans (it mentions, like, 2-3 specifically) wanted to let it expire, and Boehner tried to forge some kind of compromise they could agree to. None of this suggests their support was a determining factor and none of this contradicts what I said in the slightest.

I can't help but notice that, when I question the claims you make, a whole lot of them come back to really hazy references to "some Republicans," even if you have absolutely no idea who or how many "some" are, or how much influence they're actually exerting. Suffice to say, it's awfully easy to make any party look bad if you don't care about those sorts of things and are willing to extrapolate them without finding out.

Eh? How is that shifting goalposts? Shifting goalposts is making one claim, then trying to defend a different one (an easier one to defend, generally) when it's questioned. The Bachmann quote you provided was silly, but symbolic. More importantly, Bachmann is not a Republican bellwether, so whatever kooky thing she might have suggested is light years away from defending the idea that Republicans want to raise taxes on the poor. You might recall I made this same point a number of posts ago.


So, they want to limit special deductions but also lower general tax rates. That isn't raising taxes at all, let alone on the poor, specifically. Parts of the article you didn't quote reveal, for example, that it also includes a cost-of-living increase for SS recipients. And that the negotiations in question were not normal and open, but secret and part of the Super Committee, which is operating under some important constraints. You also didn't quote the part that says Democrats weren't discussing any of the specifics of the plan, though you did see fit to quote the part where they offer their own interpretation of it. Yeah, big shock that they interpret it to hose the little guy.

On the last one do your math. The proposal was to increase revenue, but slash tax rates at the top. So who took it in the shorts? The middle class.

And Bachmann is a leader in the tea party movement. What she says isn't a lone voice. It represents many in that movement, as does the other link provided. You want to pretend every time i cite some Republican saying something he just speaks for himself. Boehner was running into problems with tea party Republicans who didn't want a payroll extension cut period. They were not a few people. There are a lot of them and many were recently elected.

Do your reading. They mention several ways revenue would be raised: a tax code overhaul, aviation security fees, and broadcast spectrum auctions, among others. There is no "math," because there are no specifics.

There are a lot of Tea Party Republicans, but that's not the same thing as saying all of them opposed this no matter what. The mere fact that Boehner tried to craft a compromise undermines the idea; why would he attempt to craft an acceptable trade if they weren't open to anything? I suppose you have a better sense of their willingness to bend on this than the Speaker of the House?

I assume when you say there are others, you have no idea who or how many, yes?

Bachmann isn't a lone voice, no. But neither is she anything near a majority, as you seem to like to pretend. This discussion started with a claim about the entire party, and now we've whittled that all the way down to trying to figure out how many Tea Partiers Bachmann speaks for. This is what I mean when I talk about moving goalposts.

The Republican Party is not going to put in their platform the poor and middle class should pay more so the rich can pay less. But you have to look at what Republican politicans are saying and proposing.