Forbidden Donut

If I am going to have to pay more taxes then other people, and have a greater responsibility towards this coutry, why shouldn't I receive more votes?

You want to think about America as a business? That's exactly what I'm doing here. I have no quarrels with paying more taxes if my vote counts for more than those who don't pay taxes at all. With power comes responsibility, and the reverse is absolutely true. In business, the more you invest in a corporation the more you you control. If Obama is elected and my taxes are increased, what's in it for me? I say my vote should count as 3.

The HUGE number of poor people don't find you and burn your house down before raping your family and peeing on your pets.

/You also get to use the roads, schools, police, military, firefighters, etc.
//You also have more to lose if those things go away...
///What do I care if my little dinky rented apartment with a bed, tv, and couch in it burns to the ground?
////Probably less than the guy who's house is worth 750k and is full of their hard earned shit.

should people on welfare be allowed to vote, wont they just vote themselves more benefits? should people with low IQs be allowed to vote, should there be a voter test?

Taking away welfare would be a death sentence to thousands of people.
Welfare is not a huge problem

Corporate welfare is though. And we don't suggest disenfranchising, or even investigating the CEO's who have been stealing from us for 20 years...

great priorities guys.

/I'm seriously ashamed that this thread even exists. It's possibly the most upsetting view of the poor I've seen on these boards.
//Who's fighting our war again guys?

While I totally understand what you're saying with the welfare thing, the solution is getting rid of welfare, not making those that are on it second-class citizens. Fundamentally, I'm opposed to stripping the right to vote from anyone.

What's a few nights out that I don't go this year. What I do care about is a tax plan that has the opportunity to hurt businesses, and between the two, Obama's is much more potentially damaging because of the effects on small business.

There sure are better things to spend your tax dollars on than your fellow Americans? Should all of your tax money go right back to you? Since the government's so bad at spending money why don't we just let everybody skip out on paying taxes for a few years and let them help the poor themselves. I know you hate taxes and the fact that the government's inefficient. But you've been advocating a unilateral stance on the federal government. And ANY unilateral stance is bad. (unilaterally)

We could hash out on EVERY issue how much the federal gov't sucks at something and how it would be better run at the state or local level, sure. But when you say:

You're advocating a position that would result in the deaths of thousands of your fellow citizens as an alternative to disenfranchisement, instead of a position that would you know... allow them to continue to live AND vote.

The feds are actually pretty good at welfare by the way. It's 2.7% of our GDP. Or about half the cost of the bailout only with miles of red tape instead of a blank check. It includes:
"Medicaid
food stamps
family support assistance (AFDC)
supplemental security income (SSI)
child nutrition programs
refundable portions of earned income tax credits (EITC and HITC) and child tax credit
welfare contingency fund
child care entitlement to States
temporary assistance to needy families
foster care and adoption assistance
State children’s health insurance and veterans pensions."

And all you guys can do is disparage it as a wasteful project that encourages people to stay poor and lazy and not get a job and have kids to make more money.

/disgraceful IMO.
//Haters.

Well that's vague.

/our world is too complicated to paint with your brush, IMO.

ya lost me right at the end.

Small businesses are exempt from ANY capital gains tax, which is what stifles growth of a small business under Obama's plan, but not McCain's.
98% of small businesses make less than 250,000 dollars a year.
Nobody under either plan making less than 250k will see a tax increase.

try again.

I hate that. It's the same stupid argument that people said about Ron Paul's proposed fixes to our monetary system. The problems we face are not complicated. The solutions to those problems are not complicated. What complicates shit is when people start trying to identify problems and solutions without a specific or obtainable ideal in mind. If you're ideal is "help make the lives better of as many people as possible", then you're problems and solutions will be infinitely complex and therefore infinitely unobtainable.

Pretty simple to follow though. If person A receives x and y, but gives z, the person B receives x and y, but gives z.

Equality only works if we all start with equal footing. Think of it like a soapbox derby race.

Person B only gets to start after Person A makes it halfway down the course. Person A and Person B have to follow all the same rules about size of the car and shit like that. They are both on the same course. Person B can never win. There are rules in place to make sure that if your car crashes you get to race again though! But since crashing would only affect Person A, person B doesn't benefit from that rule, even when applied fairly. And the winner of the race gets to make the rules for the next race.

No need to equalize that... no siree.

Person B is poor now, Person A is rich now.

Equality only works if we all start with equal footing. Think of it like a soapbox derby race.

Person B only gets to start after Person A makes it halfway down the course. Person A and Person B have to follow all the same rules about size of the car and shit like that. They are both on the same course. Person B can never win. There are rules in place to make sure that if your car crashes you get to race again though! But since crashing would only affect Person A, person B doesn't benefit from that rule, even when applied fairly. And the winner of the race gets to make the rules for the next race.

I was just explaining equality. It doesn't mean that it is a great policy. But on the same note, if you worked for 20 years and saved your money to become rich, is it fair to take away from you to give to the person who took out three mortgages and maxed out his/her credit cards so they can live the way you do while refusing to save any income?

The thing is, that's not a realistic situation. If it was, then there would be no new rich people. You wouldn't have your Bill Gates, Michael Jordans, Elton Johns, the guy that decided that Pet Rocks would make him rich. You're stuck on the fact that only rich people get rich. You want to equalize everything, fine. Redistribute all the money so everyone has the same amount. While we're at it, let's lobotomize everyone down to the same intelligence. Cut off their feet so they can't be the best at sports. Make everyone drink acid so that no one can get record deals. Hell, that will do wonders for society, but at least everyone will be equal in terms of becoming successful.

That's an imaginary person.
A non-imaginary example would be taking money out of MY pocket to let hudge-fund managers continue going on monthly retreats.


not even worth replying to.
but here goes:
once again: L-Curve.

You Can't Argue Math. Period. You're worldview is wrong, get over it.

/Sure Person B could attach a rocket booster to his whip and have a fighting chance, but if he loses he just wasted his life savings on a rocket pack. Person A can buy a rocket pack and win, or not, and not care either way.

//COMMUNISM OOGA BOOGA!
///it's a new millenium guy.

Communism is: A theoretical economic system characterized by the collective ownership of property and by the organization of labor for the common advantage of all members.

Not: A temporary adjustment of our tax policy that results in fewer people going bankrupt over the next 4 years.

The biggest step towards communism this country has ever seen happened a earlier this month. Obama's tax policy is a slight shuffle to the left from the extreme position on the economy we've been practicing since Clinton left office. It's a shuffle slightly to Clinton's right actually. By characterizing Obama's tax policy as communist you (or rather anybody who does so) is/are denoting a lack of understanding about communism in the first place.

And yeah. Nail on the head for why it's frustrating. I'll start taking deep breaths before I post from now on.

I do not, nor have I ever, said that Obama's policy was communistic. I've never even alluded to it.

And to clarify, I don't believe Obama's tax plan is to the right of Clinton's. Clinton's "new democrats" are generally considered to be the conservative branch of the party.

@ eve:
If you don't employ anybody you are called a microbusiness and don't have the same exemptions as small business
again. Nice try.
"those small businesses are usually taxed under the owner's personal income tax (at least thats how my stepdads co works) and so raising taxes for people making over 250k fucking screws business growth."
a. your stepdad needs a better accountant
b. learn the difference between income and taxable income
c. businesses employing less than 10 people are the number 1 provider of jobs in the country. businesses hiring between 10 and 20 coming in second and businesses between 20 and 50 employees at 3rd. So well... you're wrong.

I think that people's liberties are now a function of their monetary value, and this thread's very subject is an excellent example of how deeply that perception has permeated our society. If equality is a function of a persons liberties, then it too must be a function of that persons wealth, especially when wealth is distributed so inconsistently with how hard a person works. Nobody is suggesting that we give everybody equal income with no regards to improvement, but right now there's no motivation to move up in life because you'll just go from 25k per year to 30 k per year and still struggle, while your bosses are pulling in 6 figures for doing.... what? Then you have people making BILLIONS for driving companies into the ground. Those people have access to more services, more goods, and a more direct access to representation in government than I ever will. THAT undermines liberty. This is a result of the mold we've formed in this country and it's about time we broke it and tried something SLIGHTLY different. Nobody is proposing communism or anything like it. The republicans (and democrats) have been working towards a society where money is power, and money is freedom. Then they "distribute the wealth" in one direction and it's called the free market. When a guy comes along and says maybe we need to "distribute the wealth" the other way a little bit suddenly it's a direct assault on our freedom.

And I'm done talking about this.

Scranton, Pa.

One morning earlier this month, a black bear ambled into town and climbed a tree across from Charles Sumner Elementary School.

Children arriving at school that morning watched as a state wildlife officer scrambled up a ladder and shot some tranquilizers into the bear, which plopped onto the pavement. Before carting off the snoozing giant, the officer gave students a talk on bears and Mother Nature.

The presidential campaign season has brought extraordinary attention to a place better known for its hardships than its charms (and perhaps best known as the setting of NBC's comedy, "The Office"). It has received visits this year from all four candidates on the national tickets, including appearances this week by both vice-presidential candidates. In an election that could turn on the working-class vote, "Scranton has become the poster boy for small-town blue-collar America," says Austin J. Burke, president of the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce.

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Robert Caplin for The Wall Street Journal
County Courthouse
This month, "Saturday Night Live" parodied the tendency of Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden to invoke his hard-scrabble childhood here. "Don't be telling me that I'm part of the Washington elite, because I come from the absolute worst place on Earth: Scranton, Pennsylvania," said SNL's Jason Sudeikis, playing Sen. Biden. "It's a hellhole! It is just an awful, awful sad place filled with sad, desperate people with no ambition!"

But life in Scranton is more nuanced than the cliché of a once-powerful industrial center in decline. The population here is growing for the first time in 60 years, following a decades-long exodus that halved the city to barely 70,000 people. Its architecturally distinctive downtown, long vacant, is undergoing a dramatic renovation. And tourism is spiking, thanks in no small part to "The Office," NBC's hit show about the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin, a fictional New York-based paper company. The century-old "Electric City" sign -- dark for decades -- shines again above the town square.

There's a distinctly white-collar movement behind Scranton's comeback. A return of college-educated natives from cities like New York and Philadelphia is fueling a population rise and a civic makeover. Bringing them back are the very small-town qualities many once wanted to escape: the likelihood of meeting acquaintances and relatives on the streets. The embrace here of modest ambition. The deeply held belief -- only heightened by ridicule from the outside world -- that Scranton matters.

Of course, a long-term downturn in the U.S. economy could thwart Scranton's revival, making employment here harder yet to come by. But hard times also tend to increase the appeal of small-town life, in part because of costs. Scranton sits only two hours from Philadelphia and New York City, yet has a median house value of less than $120,000, about $20,000 below the national average.

"I didn't appreciate what Scranton had to offer until I left," says Michele Dempsey, a 36-year-old University of Pennsylvania-trained architect who worked for nationally renowned firms in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., before coming home five years ago.

Children mostly walk or ride their bikes to school, often to the same ones their parents and grandparents attended. In a city that averages barely two murders a year, Scranton parents don't worry much about violence, or understand how anyone could live in a city like Chicago, for example, where more than 20 children were shot to death during each of the last two school years.

"Here's the kind of place it is," says Christopher A. Doherty, a 50-year-old native who isn't without a basis of comparison. For eight years he worked as a technology executive in New York, commuting from Greenwich, Conn. Now he is Scranton's mayor. "My best friends are people I've known since first grade. There are people here who still know me as Duke Doherty's little brother."

Blue-collar communities and small towns have long been perceived as places to flee. In books as old as "Winesburg, Ohio" and films as recent as "Gone, Baby, Gone," blue-collar culture is portrayed as mean, miserable and small-minded. Merely getting away from such a place has been seen as upward mobility.

For six decades Scranton lost an average of a thousand residents a year, many bound for college. The return of even a fraction of them -- along with their families -- could confer substantial economic benefits. "There was a diaspora of Scrantonians, and now we're inviting them back," says the Chamber's Mr. Burke. The group has a campaign called Rediscovering Scranton, which includes a Web site with testimonials from returning natives.

A population rise of about 3,000 in the last two years, to about 75,000, has given hope that the long exodus is over. School enrollment is up to 10,000 from 8,500 seven years ago. And downtown is buzzing with the sounds of construction. A Radisson hotel is in the city's old train station. Other recently vacant buildings now house advertising agencies, architectural firms and financial offices, many started by professionals who have returned.

Precisely how many natives have heeded the call isn't known. But many returnees seem to orbit in a large circle of other returnees, as the case of Ms. Dempsey illustrates. At her firm she employs an architect who moved back to Scranton from New York City, and a designer who moved here with his boyfriend -- a Scranton native who has started a wine bar in town. One of Ms. Dempsey's siblings, a fashion designer, quit a job at Burberry Group PLC in New York City to join a Scranton-area technology firm, while a brother-in-law left a Wall Street investment bank for a Scranton software startup.

Economic opportunities -- the bait that lured away so many of Scranton's young -- remain limited, however. In a county with an unemployment rate of 6.4% -- compared with a national average of 6.1% -- professionals often start their own businesses to survive.

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Scranton Times Tribune
The restored Electric City sign.
Once influential, Scranton was the 38th most-populous American city in 1900, with its coal and iron proceeds putting it near the top in per-capita income. It erected an array of architecturally magnificent buildings, and introduced the nation's first electric trolley, giving rise to its "Electric City" nickname.

But calamity struck again and again: floods, mining accidents, factory and mine closings, the rejection of coal in favor of oil and natural gas. While the rest of America prospered after World War II, fast-shrinking Scranton became known as the armpit of Pennsylvania, a designation it has never entirely shaken. Its median household income remains nearly $7,000 below the national average.

But Scranton has never lacked publicity, and has learned to laugh at itself. As the fictional setting of NBC's "The Office" -- featuring characters lacking either common sense or ambition -- Scranton has become such a tourism magnet that this month NBC is opening a Dunder Mifflin store in the Steamtown mall here.

The very qualities that once gave Scrantonians an inferiority complex are now being touted as virtues, not least by the presidential campaigns. The town won mention at both parties' national conventions, and experts believe that Sen. Biden's Scranton roots helped win the nomination as Barack Obama's running mate. Some pundits are calling Scranton the new Peoria -- a symbol of middle-class America.


Associated Press
Mike Munchak at the NFL Hall of Fame.
As a swing town in a swing state, Scranton could help determine the outcome of the election. The electorate here is more than 90% white, heavily Catholic and traditionally Democratic, although it leans to the right on social issues. Four of eight elected judges here in Lackawanna County are Republican, as is the district attorney.

Outside Scranton, the return of some natives has spawned disbelief. When James Peters, 37, resigned as a principal of a venture-capital firm just outside New York City to take a Scranton-area corporate position, "I don't think there was a person who didn't think I was crazy," says Mr. Peters, whose late grandfather, "Smokey" Joe Peters, is still remembered hereabouts as a gas-station proprietor.

A similar disbelief can arise from a Scrantonian's success, as when Mike Munchak was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2001. Never mind that he'd won nine trips to the Pro Bowl as a Houston Oilers offensive lineman -- he was from Scranton. "I've been envisioning," his acceptance speech began, "that someone from NFL security is going to show up and say, 'Hey, Munchak. Get off that stage. It's for the Hall of Famers. You're just some blue-collar guy from Scranton, Pennsylvania.' "