I don’t remember asking for this, but Romney says you did: Cut jobs for teachers, cops and firefighters?
It’s not that the majority is silent, it is that the Republican Party is completely deaf.
That whirring noise is Milton Friedman, Friedrich von Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises, all spinning in their graves.
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(The Life of Reason, vol. 1: Reason in Common Sense)
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
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And then there is Indiana which is apparently going to legalize the shooting of cops in self defense:
http://rt.com/usa/news/indiana-shooting-law-state-591/
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Well lets see what the Republicans refuse to cut.
First off is the tax credit that US businesses get for shipping US jobs overseas.
Per year cost of recent tax cuts for millionaires estates: $11.5 billion
Cost of allowing mortgage interest deduction for vacation homes for 10 years: $8.9 billion
“Estate planning” techniques used by wealthy to avoid taxes: $6.7 billion
Cost of removing limit on itemized deductions for high income taxpayers, FY 2011: $5.2 billion
Cost of tax breaks for offshore operations of US financial companies: $4.1 billion
Tax breaks for oil companies, FY 2012: $2.5 billion (note..this doesn’t include the subsidies that said oil companies get)
Cost of extending alcohol fuel tax breaks: $4.9 billion
Tax loopholes for managers of hedge funds and private equity funds, FY 2012: $2.3 billion
Cost of allowing companies to write off punitive damages for 10 years: $312 million
Cost of special tax breaks for the timber industry: $303 million
One year cost of extending Bush tax cuts for top brackets, FY 2012: $42 billion.
But we should be cutting firemen, teachers and police, Dave?
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Ed says, Oceania has not always been at war, and your saying it doesn’t make it so.
Brilliant. Exactly correct, Ed.
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To quote:Any layoffs were a direct result of Democract sabotage, they fled the capital to prevent a quorum, and any layoffs were unwanted by Walker…..
Ok first off we’re not stupid enough to believe that bull of yours. So the real question is why are you stupid enough to believe that bull of yours?
But yours and Walkers argument is that the state was facing such a budget shortfall that Walker had to do what he did.
Ok..then why was the first thing he did upon getting into office was to make that supposed shortfall worse by cutting taxes on the rich? Because its not like you nor he nor any other Republican on the planet can make the claim that cutting taxes on the rich either brings in more tax revenue or creates jobs or creates prosperity for everyone and not be lying through your teeth from start to finish.
Oh and despite what you’re going to claim..the unions were already paying a significant portion of their health benefits and pensions already.
In reality Walker turned a small budget surplus into a huge budget shortfall by cutting taxes on the rich. And then instead of doing the responsible thing…instead of doing what Reagan did and acknowledge the mistake as his..Walker and his fellow Republicans turned around and blamed it on the unions who had nothing to do with it.
Why? Because you and your fellow Republicans, Dave, are a bunch of mealy mouthed five year olds who have no concept of being responsibile, taking responsibility or acknowledging when you make mistakes. You jokers have become a political cult. You all live in a bubble world..a world of right wing fantasy that has nothing whatsoever to do with the real world.
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[…] What’s that? […]
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Reducing pay is not reform. Making poor and working people pay more taxes is not tax reform. Making poor and working people pay more taxes is not tax reduction. Cutting jobs is not improving the economy.
Down is not up. Oceania has not always been at war, and your saying it doesn’t make it so.
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That’s not accurate. State funding to education was cut, as were funds for firefighters and cops — and saying that being able to cut the salaries of cops would have saved their jobs is a cop-out (no pun really intended).
Yeah, the law gave the county governments and school districts the right to reduce salaries of everybody to save a few jobs — but the cuts were more severe than that, making in impossible in the best of cases to save all the jobs.
Why cut the spending in the first place? Prior to Walker’s fiddling with the books (a crime in private industry, by the way), there was enough money in the state budget to keep all teachers employed AND not force them to pay additional money for health care.
What happened to the money to make that happen? That was not because the Democrats outmaneuvered Walker for a while with parliamentary procedures.
Nor would the cuts having come a few weeks earlier have in any way reduced the size of the cuts.
Davex, do you have any familiarity with Wisconsin, and how state budgets work?
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To quote:
I mean, just ask any group of mouth-breathers who listen to Mr. Oxycontin everyday. These are the same people who will swear on a stack of Bibles that they have seen a morbidly obese, African-American woman using food stamps to purchase malt liquor, cartons of smokes and condoms in the grocery store.
Yeah..and their name is Rush Limbaugh.
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But James,
Everyone knows a school janitor who naps most of the day, has a “cadillac” health plan, the promise of a golden handshake severance package if he takes early retirement and who has an annual salary of about 120-K plus perks. Ditto all the teachers, bus drivers and lunch ladies.
Right?
I mean, just ask any group of mouth-breathers who listen to Mr. Oxycontin everyday. These are the same people who will swear on a stack of Bibles that they have seen a morbidly obese, African-American woman using food stamps to purchase malt liquor, cartons of smokes and condoms in the grocery store.
And if they haven’t seen it personally, they are still SURE. Because their mother’s hairdresser knows a man whose cousin saw it happen.
Point being, everyone has an anecdote. Where is the data to back up their assertion that public employees are overpaid, underworked and on the grift?
It’s time for people to remove their heads from their rectums, turn off talk radio and start thinking for themselves. Either that, or leave the country for Glennbeckistan.
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I find it amusing that people like Dave so buy into this right wing notion that the public unions live high off the hog with overly generous pensions and all that…..
…and yet it never occurs to people like Dave that the Republicans in Congress who are feeding him that nonsense about the public unions are themselves living high off the hog with generous pensions and generous benefit packages….
So tell us, Dave, when are you and yours going to hold the Republicans in Congress to the same standard you want applied to the unions? When are you going to demand that the Republicans in Congress give up their pensions and their benefits? When are you going to demand that Governor Walker give up his pension and his health care and all the rest of the benefits he gets?
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To quote:
Scott Walker saved teacher jobs and balanced the budget saving firefighter and police jobs as well by reining in the high spending ways of the Government Unions. Instead of another inefficient stimulus being proposed by Obama ,we need structural reform similar to what Scott did in Wisconsin
Huh? Lets see. Scott Walker became governor of Wisconsin, turned Wisconsin’s budget SURPLUS into a budget deficit by handing out stupid tax cuts to the rich. THen blamed the budget deficit he created on the unions, which had nothing to do with it, and then promptly proceeded to screw them over.
Walker saved no jobs whatsoever. He did not balance the budget. He created the budget deficit and then proceeded to wreck Wisconsin’s economy with his policies.
And you can sit there and pretend different all you want but you are living in fantasy land.
The unions ain’t to blame for the government’s problems. It’s the Republicans who are to blame for so gleefully ****ing up the government and then equally ****ing up the economy.
As I said, Dave, you can live in fantasy land all you want but it is still just a right wing delusion that you are engaging in that is wrecking the country. So get off the computer, find the orifice you buried your head in, pull your head out and go find your brain.
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“If the Senate Democrats come back to Wisconsin, these notices may be able to be rescinded and layoffs avoided,” Walker said in a statement. “This action is necessary due to the delay in passage of the budget repair bill.” – SW
Any layoffs were a direct result of Democract sabotage, they fled the capital to prevent a quorum, and any layoffs were unwanted by Walker…..
‘Walker’s budget repair bill increased worker contributions to their pensions and health care and Walker said it provides tools for local governments to cut expenses, reducing the need for layoffs in the current fiscal year.’
‘Something that can’t go on, won’t. Public-sector unions, acting, as FDR had feared, with an inherent conflict of interest regarding their own duties, were devouring the institution they were supposed to serve, rendering state government as economically unsustainable as the collapsing entitlement states of southern Europe.’
‘Walker was able to make the case that years of corrupt union-politician back-scratching had been bankrupting the state. And he had just enough time to demonstrate the beneficial effects of overturning that arrangement: a huge budget deficit closed without raising taxes, significant school-district savings from ending cozy insider health-insurance contracts, and a modest growth in jobs.’
Now if we can just spread the reform. Of course Obama wants more firemen , teachers cops, but he doesnt want reform…..so he’ll just increase deficit to pay for it. and the money will disappear like the last stimulus…..on existing unfunded entitlements….so more ‘jobs’ means no jobs just more union fat……what’s the word to describe wilful deception?…. Orwellian.
its all about the economic imperitive .you must be able to live within one’s means. Reform is always nessary especially at government level were peope are dealing with other peoples money …
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Firing a few thousand teachers is “saving teachers?”
Laying off and firing a few thousand firefighters is “saving fire fighting jobs?”
It would appear Orwell was right about the Ministry of Doublespeak, but wrong about the orientation of the totalitarians who would run it — not the communists, but the fascists.
Oy.
That’s on top of the fact that Wisconsin had plenty of money in the budget to pay those firefighters, cops and teachers, but Walker decided to give it away to millionaires as “tax breaks.”
Not in Orwell’s greatest nightmares could he have seen this one.
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Current public employees are being laid off because of unfunded, overly generous pension and medical retirement benefits. It would be unproductive, as was shown in the last stimulus bill, to give money to the states and cities until they address this issue.
Romney’s response should be that the last thing we need is more government-union administrators. Heck, cops, firefighters, and teachers are getting laid off while the bureaucrats retain their jobs.
Scott Walker saved teacher jobs and balanced the budget saving firefighter and police jobs as well by reining in the high spending ways of the Government Unions. Instead of another inefficient stimulus being proposed by Obama ,we need structural reform similar to what Scott did in Wisconsin
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Whereas I am wont to believe that all 3 reasons are the reason.
Along with #4: That Mittens and his fellow Republicans have become so mired in hate that they hate the entirety of the United States except for their own little gated community corner of it that they’re perfectly willing to let the country crash and burn and become a third world nation.
After all..if we were a third world nation they can have slaves and still have all the modern toys and companies because of the rest of the world.
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James (Nick) asks what Mint Romney thinks will happen if cops, teachers and firefighters are laid off?
Well, there are several possibilities.
1. He thinks there will be more crime, but it won’t affect him and it won’t impact most of his supporters. They can afford their own gated communities and armed security guards. There will be more fires, but most of them will be in seedy tenements where brown people and poor white folks gather. Call it an R+1 at least. Addition by subtraction. Again, Mint and his tribe can afford paramedics and firefighters that serve only their gated communities. As to fewer teachers, of course we will have more dumbs. Dumbs vote Republican. R+1 at least.
2. He believes in the road and bridge fairies. Why not in the education and public safety fairies? If we simply stop paying teachers, firefighters and police officers…by virtue of layoffs and union-busting…then the money saved will be returned to the rightful owners: who, in Mint’s mind, are the fabulously rich. Because they bear such an oppressive tax burden, dontchaknow. Once they are no longer taxed, what will they do with all that extra cash? Why, of course — out of the goodness of their own hearts — they will donate it to communities for fire protection, highway maintenance and policing. And they’ll donate the rest to private schools so the poor, disadvantaged kids will have free rides. Right? Riiiiiiiiight??? Oh yes, people still believe in the Easter Bunny.
3. Mint DOESN’T think. His brain is incapable of handling more than one recording on a continuous loop. And the current one keeps saying, “I’ve got mine, Jack. Now root, hog or die.”
Actually, I am wont to believe that #2 is closest to what he thinks. #1 would make him a malignant tumor bent on class warfare. And #3 would make him a moron bent on class warfare. So because I prefer to believe the best of people, I’d say he believes in the road and bridge fairies.
Odd, though, that he doesn’t much care for police officers. From what I have heard, he rather enjoyed pretending to be one when he was a college lad.
Jim
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But it’s kinda like the old Lena and Ole joke, when Lena calls Ole on his new cell phone to warn him she’s heard “there’s a nut driving the wrong way on the freeway.”
“One nut!!” Ole says. “There must be thousands of ’em.”
If only it were one crazy woman . . . instead of the entire Eagle Forum and Consternated Women of America, and the Republican Ladies Auxiliary.
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Well the Republicans are actively trying to privatize the prison system and the schools. And I’m sure they have no objection to privatizing the police and firemen too. After all..only the rich should have such things.
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No, Ed, it wasn’t me. In fact, I can’t imagine anyone saying, “Please take away my police protection and the fire departments, because they are unnecessary. I’d rather have my home burn down, and the jails are too crowded anyway.” Although, you never know in today’s world. There might actually be one moron out there who said it, and Willard was lucky enough to find her.
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So what dimwitted thing does Mittens think will happen if cops, teachers and firemen are laid off?
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