when the Dems control the House.
Today, this would be akin to a Constitutional Convention. It sounds good until you get it going and you never know which way it's going to end up. With Ryan, Cantor, Boehner in the House leadership, they would fight hard and we could end up with something worse.

while accepting as inevitable the continuation of the larger beating.

All the rhetoric is being set up to praise the President if he merely *refrains* from taking this or that additional bludgeon to the poor and middle classes.

We are owed a complete change in rhetoric and in direction. We are owed a clear plan not just to refrain from certain types of further assaults, but to REVERSE the crimes that have been perpetrated on millions of us.

How pathetic are we in our sea of corporate propaganda, if we can be suckered to be grateful merely for being spared certain particular, additional swipes of the axe.

That jackass CEO from Goldman Sachs came right out and said "they need to learn to expect less".. it's like they are inviting a real class war, where the toothless get ruthless.

concept of profit in a system in which the coded 0s and 1s that we call money are so completely fluid and it also addresses the relationship between profit and carbon-based flues, but I have also heard that conventional ideas about VAT are not acceptable to some & that's something I need to understand better.

A VAT tax hits the rich very little, the middle class quite a bit more, and the poor very very hard,
since the less you make, the greater the percentage of your income you spend.

Basic fact of management is you can't spend more than your profits or revenue forever.

Governments run in perpetuity, so the debt never really has to be paid off... it just gets refinanced over and over again. As long as the debt is not growing faster than the rate of the economy, deficits can last forever.

dollars could be spent on useful things like education and health care. See http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm

So the government is in debt to Social Security for ~2.8T, and then pays itself interest to the social security fund, and since it makes more than it pays out in payroll taxes, combined with the interest payments it pays itself, the fund then buys more debt from itself (which it later pays interest on).

Isn't Debt fun.

critical social needs.

Debt for investment in expectation of a return is one thing but debt for entitlements is very different.

Not that the tax code doesn't need fixing; but letting the cuts expire on everyone is politically short-sighted and gives away real leverage.

The strategy, IMO, should be for House and Senate Democrats to demand that boehner put the Senate Bill to a vote in the House. If it passes ... Cool, then we have 2 years to change the tax code. Plus, we foreclose on the gop's ability to deflect blame by pointing to Candidate Obama's campaign pledge not to raise taxes on those "earning" $250K or less.

If it fails, or if boehner refuses to put it to a vote, then we have two years of asking why the gop refused to protect the middle and working classes, when they had the chance ... and we take back the House in 2014.

...and his no-tax pledge. It is not rational and is detrimental to our country.

Political advantage that resonates with a majority of the people, in the context of a fight that, if your gambit is unsuccessful will damage the country, hand your opposition a ready-made talking point and foreclose on your ability to take the House back in 2014,.is a detriment to our country?

Okay!

I suspect if you play Poker, you would go all in from the #1 position with a Jack-Hi Flush, with no over cards on the board, and two betting players still in. Sure, you might win a couple pots that way ... but it'll cost you a lot of money.

Why do we need revenues anyway? We don't need no stinking government programs?

most of what we see in that regard IS dishonest, coming from folks who don't know the first thing about freedom.

your head, or your heart?

least, but most intrinsically necessary, control/regulation possible.

Passion = heart
Know = head
Control = self, which intrinsically does include others, I:Thou at one level, Individual:Government at another level.

I don't think there are "parts"; there are no walls, no hard divisions, inside us; just different dimensions/perspectives of the same thing, which thing is an event/happening/verb, btw.

over" have to say about those who will be very definitely hurt, permanently damaged, and even killed by that approach because they have less/no buffer against the effects of tearing it down, like the guilty do, and they do not have the time, years to a decade or more, that will be required to authentically and effectively "start all over", that is, IF such an opportunity actually authentically presented itself out of the chaos ensuing upon tearing it down and we don't just end up with another sham: meet the "new" boss, same as the old boss, just wearing different labels.

I wonder if you could tell me your thoughts on this.

So nobody is asking people to starve in order to save the tax cuts.

Depending upon precisely HOW those changes are done, they are more likely to be hurt by what is going on than ANYONE else is, even if you are willing to throw them upon the rancid breast of noblesse oblige/"charity" or into the hot arms of those who WILL take advantage of them in many intimate ways with various schemes and such.

I continue to need to understand HOW you think this is going to work out for such people.

What do you propose we do? This sounds familiar to the unemployment argument that was made the last time the taxcuts were extended. What happened to Democrats that fight for what they believe in, rather than surrendering to the fears and threats of the Republican Party. There is no gain without pain. It is a sad reality but there it is.

changes and anything one does supports the beast. People who see things in oversimplified terms and predict one and only one solution, which just ever so co-incidentally happens to be the exact same as their own. And when they don't see what they think should happen, they decide that what IS happening is ALL evil and hence they are justified in coalescing with various other contararians (of various unknown and perhaps even counter varieties) in destroying something that, were they to become more constructively engaged, COULD actually manifest at least some of their own very basic principles in various alternative forms, forms which they reject because they've already decided PRECISELY what the outcomes should be FOR EVERYONE ELSE (based, mind you, on an extreme PAUCITY of SIGNIFICANT information) and anything that doesn't fit their own PERSONAL prescriptions should be destroyed, so "we" (HA!) can "start over" whatever the fuck that means, NO MATTER WHAT IT DOES TO THE MOST POWERLESS AND ENSLAVED AMONGST US.

shut down that amounts to tearing it all down, will hurt you and please compare that to how it will hurt those who are more vulnerable than you are and then they will hurt others and others yet for at least a generation.

Is this not possible?

Your pain may be bearable, but YOU HAVE NO RIGHT to CHOOSE PAIN FOR OTHERS. They have a right to be asked specifically what it's all worth to them and then to decide whether it is or is not and what they're going to do about any of it. Yes, our system for doing that is flawed, but pretending that there NOTHING that can be done about any of that under the status quo IS A LIE and pretending that nothing can be done is most profoundly and truly part of the very thing that enslaves us all in the first place - AND - will continue to enslave us after whatever you think should happen happens.

I would prefer to be on food stamps than to be on my knees, as you seem to suggest?

starting over means?

The way that I understand that proposal, YOU are the one proposing not only SOME (and ONLY some) people being "on their knees" but a SIGNIFICANT CRITICAL MASS who will be legless entirely and you're saying that doesn't matter. You're saying there will be no significant consequences from that fact.

Sounds like panic?

Do you have "health" "care"?

for that family earning about $60K per year that is facing an additional $2,500 per year in taxes, up to those earning 249,999 facing about $10,200 in additional taxes?

And more concern for the economic harm done when those families can't spend that $2,500-$10,020?

and the right to organize, what was called the EFCA, rates right up there with Single Payer Health Care, developing alternative energy, appropriate/comprehensive education, and peace.

then as it needs to be addressed given local areas,costs higher in some then others,a dollar figure derived to meet that.
That becomes the minimum wage and no taxes collected.
Anything over that will carry a progressive tax system up to the point of a maximum yearly income that is still well over the minimum.
If we are stuck with a capitalist system it should have fairness and justice as its basis.

In a nation as wealthy as the USA, it is unconscionable that any one of us would EVER have to worry about homelessness, hunger, or lack of medical care.

...that 97% of all millionaires and billionaires do not create jobs. They are not job creators - they are wealth collectors.

from those individuals who claim a right that the state provide "A basic standard of living".

You have a corrupt political system driving forward an infinite growth machine poised to destroy the globe in maybe just 100 years. Why stop anywhere?

south east DC then we'll hear a different tune.

I used to think this way, too.

The problem is that it will only result in the same players coming to the table with the same ideas and a mostly same system will result.

If you want radical change you need to propose an actual plan.

or force AMT on the 1%'ers, at a minimum of 50% after 1m or more.