The Heritage Foundation has a series of graphs which appear to depict two trends: an ever increasing dependency of the American population on government transfer payments and a narrowing income tax base. It writes, “it is the conjunction of these two trends—higher spending on dependence-creating programs, and an ever-shrinking number of taxpayers who pay for these programs—that concerns those interested in the fate of the American form of government.”
The 2012 publication of the Index of Dependence on Government marks the tenth year that The Heritage Foundation has flashed warning lights about Americans’ growing dependence on government programs. For a decade, the Index has signaled troubling and rapid increases in the growth of dependence-creating federal programs, and every year Heritage has raised concerns about the challenges that rapidly growing dependence poses to this country’s republican form of government, its economy, and for the broader civil society. Index measurements begin in 1962; since then, the Index score has grown by more than 15 times its original amount. This means that, keeping inflation neutral in the calculations, more than 15 times the resources were committed to paying for people who depend on government in 2010 than in 1962. In 2010 alone, the Index of Dependence on Government grew by 8.1 percent. The Index variables that grew the most were:
AdvertisementHousing: 13 percent
Health Care and Welfare: 13.1 percent
Retirement: 3.1 percent.The increase from the previous Index means that the Index has now grown by 60.7 percent just since 2001. One of the most worrying trends in the Index is the coinciding growth in the non-taxpaying public. The percentage of people who do not pay federal income taxes, and who are not claimed as dependents by someone who does pay them, jumped from 14.8 percent in 1984 to 49.5 percent in 2009. This means that in 1984, 34.8 million tax filers paid no taxes; in 2009, 151.7 million paid nothing.
Tim Wise, who is a regular guest on CNN, says the dependency question is only another way of looking at the history of racism in America. The idea of small government, he argues, is the nothing more than a code word in the “politics of nostalgia”; the a desire to return to the inequities of the past.
Oh, and not to put too fine a point on it, but the founders actually did foster quite a lot of government dependence: enshrining slavery was about government protecting white people from the competition of free black labor, and white folks becoming quite dependent on that protection. Stealing native land and then redistributing it to white people was about dependence on government-imposed violence. And later, yet still in the supposedly “good old days,” government dependence was at the heart of segregation–which artificially subsidized white people in the job, school and housing markets–and was at the heart of the FHA and VA loans that white families used (and from which black families were all but completely blocked) in the 40s and 50s, which literally built the white middle class.
But I’m guessing that when she uses a phrase like “dependence on government” she isn’t thinking about the white folks who were given 270 million acres of essentially free land under the Homestead Act. Or the 15 million or so white families who got those racially preferential home loans, with government underwriting and guarantees, thanks to programs implemented by liberals and thanks to pressure from the left. I’m thinking she isn’t talking about the white soldiers (but typically not the black ones) who were able to return from World War II and make use of the GI Bill to go to college, or get job training. And the fact that she likely doesn’t think of those kinds of things and those kinds of people as being dependent on government is, of course, precisely the problem, and the point I was trying to make. …
Indeed several of the e-mails made this same argument about opposing “government dependence,” all the while oblivious, it appears, to the way in which that concept has become so color-coded in the white imagination over the past several decades. In fact, this is a point I had made on the program: that according to a significant body of social science research (among the most prominent, Martin Gilens’s brilliant book, Why Americans Hate Welfare), most whites perceive social program spending aimed at helping the have-nots (be they income have-nots, housing have-nots, or health care-have nots) as being about giving something tothose people, who are, of course, conceived of in black and brown terms, and taking from “hard-working” white folks in order to do it. So if the notion of government dependence itself has been racialized–and the evidence says it has been–to say that it is only this dependence you oppose, and that racism has nothing to do with it is to either lie or engage in self-deception of a most unfortunate and unbecoming variety. …
In the end, although there are many people, with many different reasons for opposing the President or his health care proposal, the role that race and racism is playing cannot be ignored. With major conservative spokespersons stoking the fires of racial resentment daily, and with most whites having long ago come to the conclusion that social program spending is something done on behalf of racial “minorities” at their own white expense, it is not too much to insist that race is operating, for some quite overtly and for others more subtly.
According to this point of view, “government dependence” is nothing more than an index of the frontline in class struggle. Small government is nothing but the effect of Big Property. Big government on the other hand, just represents sharing the wealth. And there is nothing wrong in that; it simply represents the flow of resources, for so long in the direction from the poor to the rich, back in the direction it should go. At least so goes the argument.
Whichever side of the issue one takes on this matter, the question might be if that line is where it should be. Is the growing role of government as a redistributor of incomes a bug or a feature? Is it good or bad? Underneath the differences in personalities which supposedly underlies each campaign, the question of whether this boundary is what actually divides the country lies at the heart of the 2012 election.
What is the role of government in the social context of America? Is it a promoter of ‘freedom’ or a champion of ‘fairness’?
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Ya, Tim Wise! “thanks to programs implemented by liberals” “liberals” the alternate Code Word for Progressive’s, whose founding fathers were all about gett’n rid of the “Other’s” code words for the Poor and the Minority thru Family Planning (Abortion) and dummying “them” down in the Public School systems that barely teach Reading and Writing, just enough to pull the lever for them, the noble crusaders of Political Correctness (Liberal=Progressives)! Political Correctness, the Religion that cuts thru all divides to divide us all.
Those graphs are grim. They’re all too good at showing the end of the ability of ‘everybody else’s money’ to provide a cozy cocoon for the takers.
OK.
Tom Wise is an idiot quoting PC-crap that would make Marx blush, and showing the same gross ignorance of even Marxist economics that Obambus seems to share. The “founders” protecting whites from free black labor – this is such a pig-ignorant claim, I’m embarrassed this person is allowed to vote, much less that a TV network would solicit his gibberish.
Here’s my position. I’m afraid that we suffered a political/economic disconnect about thirty years ago, for what seem to be accounting reasons. If 49% don’t pay income taxes, but do pay (including employer side) 14% regressive social security taxes, well, that’s just a mess. The idea that social security is a separate fund has been a fantasy since FDR. The problem is not the total tax rate – if anything, I’d be happy to cut the combined income and payroll tax for smaller incomes (and maybe then do away with the earned-income credits??). The problem is that when people don’t pay “taxes”, they don’t care how they are spent, either. So, I think EVERYONE should have to pay “income taxes” starting from dollar #1. Say, 5%. So, that’s one thing. The only alternative would be to have anyone lose their voting franchise, if they don’t pay taxes, but that causes all sorts of other problems.
OK, separate topic. I’m very much afraid that the future (that is, starting twenty years ago), does have us building up the “safety net” and providing increasing benefits to an increasing number of people at the bottom of our economic system. This is Marxist “humanist” heaven, but there it is. Maybe it just won’t work, socially, psychologically, I don’t know. But we’re basically there already, and I suggest trying to *manage* it rather than fight the trend, ride the wave. Provide education and a slew of jobs that pay better than being on the dole, in the net, an easy ladder up. Heck, some of those jobs can be subsidized, it still comes out cheaper in the end.
Finally – doesn’t that Heritage chart about “dependency programs” include social security and medicare, that spend more on middle class than on poor people? What about the retired people who don’t pay taxes, want to factor them out of even the 49% before getting too exercised. There’s a lot of info further down that Heritage article that I don’t have time to sort through, but I don’t really see what their *point* is. Yes the charts are ugly, but what are they suggesting?
So, for me, the bottom line is that the 49% is a bit misleading, you have to figure in the social security and medicare funds into all of this, and always, quit yer bitchin’ and state your positive alternatives.
Sound to me like winter is finally coming, grasshoppers beware.
Unfortunately, Tim Wise makes a “clever” argument when you consider how a large part of his underlying narrative has become seared into the minds of a majority of Americans. Even many who want less government in their particular lives will “concede” (largely erroneously) that “there’s this unfairness in the American system” or something. I have heard that many teachers use Howard Zinn’s The People’s History as their primary (or even exclusive) textbook on American history.
So many adult Americans react to rational economic and governance arguments the same way that bored, ill-adjusted teens in a classroom do. People who cite facts, figures and charts are deemed “assholes,” and are tuned out.
A lot of Americans may not actually care about an optimal economic system. A defined-down American dream may work for them. Keep in mind that the “imminent collapses” we keep talking about keep getting postponed, so that like the Climate Change alarmists on the other side, we can get tuned out over time.
The strategy is to bankrupt the government as quickly as possible….everyone should apply for foodstamps, disability payments, housing assistance, etc. We’re heading off the cliff anyway, so let’s get it over with asap. Then the real ‘war’ will start about what happens next.
That is the other charge, isn’t it? That the welfare system is bad, directed mostly at the corporations or the middle class. Hence the analysis of welfare from the left has two aspects. The first that it is nothing but equitable redistribution to compensate for historical wrongs. The second is that within it is concealed more candy for the Fat Cats.
The first analysis leads to the conclusion that bigger government is better. The second says most government spending is really based on shafting the “poor”. When the two are combined the result is the compound proposition that bigger government is better BUT it should be run by the people so the shafting goes the other way.
What everyone appears to agree on is that government is the high ground, the hill that has to be taken. Except for Tim Wise, who may not be thinking his own arguments through. Government to him has always been “big”, just in different, and in the original sense, hidden ways: it was big by being small.
He seems to think the welfare is in principle good but seems unable to account for why, if it is, then why it has had such bad results. He should really default to the normal leftist position because that at least has the virtue of a kind of twisted consistency: more government is good, so long as it is government by the enlightened sort of people, namely them.
Unfortunately reality may be about to take a hand. The question of whether government is good or bad may soon be moot. Greece is a perfect example. There the consensus was that government was “good”. PASOK thought it was good. The hard left thought it was good. But so what? Neither can afford it.
The hard left is going to take power in Greece at the rate things are going. But it will be like taking possession of a corpse. What will the hard left spend? Socialism has never solved the problem of production. Repeat, never solved the problem of production. About the best they can hope for is to become like North Korea which relies on its biggest food aid donor to actually live. That donor is the United States. And so much for socialism.
The problem with big government, whoever the spoils go to, is that it creates incomes that are alienated from production, except as determined by redistributive policy. At some point, it is the magnitude, not the character of the redistribution that is relevant. Let it get big enough and it doesn’t matter where all the money goes. All the chickens have been cooked and tomorrow there will be no eggs.
So there is a natural limit to the size of a welfare state. The trouble is that once the escalator of redistribution is built, there’s nowhere to go but to the upper floor, unless one is prepared to leap off. By those lights the welfare system is probably going to inflate like a balloon until, like all bubbles before it, it pops.
The hard left is going to take power in Greece at the rate things are going. But it will be like taking possession of a corpse.
Which is probably going to be fine with them, isn’t it? What they want most of all, is to be in charge. That seems to be the ultimate goal of The Universal Left, and perhaps of all statists. We have seen how the Left even wants to be in charge of the weather.
The Income Tax was enacted — for the robber barons and the rentier class — and was muted to be limited to only 6% — and only to apply to the top 1% — all this kicked around circa 1912.
Because the Republican Progressives and Republican classical liberals split the vote in 1912 the nation was stiffed: Wilson was elected by default — and he brought Jim Crow to Washington D.C.
And by the end of 1913 America laid on the Income Tax, the Federal Reserve System ( dead of night Xmass eve ) and, of course Richard M Nixon. ( He of Affirmative Action infame, the sundering of the US dollar from gold, wage and price controls, and all around Keynesianism. ” We’re all Keynesians, now.” (!) ) By comparison Watergate’s a joke.
We desperately need a repeal of the Income Tax. It, de facto, overturns the protections of the fourth and fifth amendments. It’s a neutron bomb against a helpless citizenry.
Before the Income Tax the Federal Government’s main source of revenue was tariffs — collected by the EXTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE. ( Hence, the word shift for the IRS we all know and love. ) This taxing authority was joined at the hip with the US Coast Guard — which is why for so many years the USCG was part of the US Treasury Department.
It’s other big tax collector was the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco ( and ultimately ) Firearms.
Nineteenth Century tariffs were debated at every presidential election – and were always huge platform elements.
Today, tariffs should still be used. Smoot and Hawley gave them a very bad name. ( Their signature legislation went hog wild with earmarks ( targeted tariffs ) to the point of game meltdown. )
But tariffs can’t carry the freight. America needs to move to a VAT tax — which goes after consumption.
As for motor fuels: our excise taxes are too low. They need to keep pace with fuel economies happening in the vehicle fleet. Road repair didn’t suddenly drop in cost because average motor economy leapt up to 28 mpg from 16 mpg. It is linked to the number of miles driven.
We’ve also got to stop urban centers from looting the Highway Trust Fund for graft and payola in ‘rapid transit systems.’ Such expenditures are entirely anti-economic. But, then, that largely defines the Congress that’s been bought.
=======
The Tax Ways and Means Committee is a standing threat to the nation. As its chairmen have shown — it’s a node of corruption like no other. And, overwhelmingly, ( e.g. GE ) that corruption takes the form of custom tax freedoms.
Such antics entirely did in classic Rome. It has to be stopped ASAP.
Corporate Income Taxes are also ruinous. America’s march to the top of the heap occurred without income taxes. Subsequent events destroyed our commercial rivals in the 20th Century — World War I was even more punishing than WWII in this regard.
[ Lost in all of the smoke and blood: the First World War featured far, far more fatalities in peer competitors than WWII ever did. British, German, French and Italian losses were drastically higher. Now throw on the SPANISH FLU, a pandemic that rolled east into Poland and Russia. It killed more souls than the fighting at the front.
It was the death of all these European souls that threw America to the top of the global peeking order. It is a well neigh universal conceit that this event occurred during WWII. Leftists / anti-Americans sling this falsehood constantly. It's a meme you'll see everywhere. But the turn occurred a full generation earlier. That's why America had the Roaring Twenties and Europe was a complete mess -- pretty much all the way through until the Marshall ( nee Truman ) Plan.]
To put some focus on our relative competitive position: by 1937 America had drained so much central bank gold from Europe that every nation there either went to fiat money or was in crisis. FDR had sucked in seventy to eighty percent of all of the mobile gold reserves of the entire planet! ONLY a hyper competitive economy has that kind of power. It didn’t come from FDR’s pen alone.
==========
The retirement age HAS to go up — because the ENTIRE planet is living longer, the first world in particular.
Which is why I laugh at the Japanese ‘crisis.’ All that is ever going to happen is that they work longer careers.
Has the commentariat forgotten that the Japanese retired at AGE 55 as recently as the 1970s? Such a policy was possible because American combat operations had so thinned out the relevant age cohorts — in the early 1940s.
Remember?
The Japanese would have to be the world’s biggest fools to change their polity. It’s not rigged for it. Later retirements, robotics and staggering advances in medicine will solve all of her troubles.
Importing anti-cultural dunces from the third world will bring a sea of troubles.
========
Which brings us back to America.
We’ve got to humbly accept that we cannot great-leap-forward third world nationals into our society. Particularly because machine automation is ripping along so fast that even the native born are hard put.
In all of not-so Wise’s commentary/ spew there is scant mention that vast, vast numbers of the down trodden brown people mentioned are ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS — which no other country/ society on Earth permits. And this phenomenon is so massive it’s overwhelming our polity.
It’s plainly affecting all political calculus — Tammany Hall writ large. And we know what a sea of corruption that was.
But worst of all: IQs are greatly baked-in-the-cake at birth. With global IQs a full standard deviation lower than white America — these poor fellows can’t make a living in modern America.
Instead, the rentier class is abusing them as peons / serfs / slaves — with Hollywood and Manhattan at the top of the list.
We gave amnesty to vast numbers of illegals circa 1986. Once these people were ‘on-the-books’ and able to claim full labor rights — they were fired/ let got / rotated out.
FRESH ONES were then imported to re-boot modern American slavery all over again.
And it is notable that, time after time, Democrat attorneys nominated for the US Supreme Court are shot down when it’s revealed that almost every last urbanite has been using house slaves. That is: illegal immigrants — and stiffing them on their Social Security Taxes, to boot.
This even bit Meg Whitman — and she wasn’t even playing that game. She terminated the employee when she found out the gal was an illegal. She was pilloried during her campaign — for following the law! ( And Gloria Allred married for the name – -but doesn’t it fit to a tee.)
The Wan as Gonnabee:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/how_obama_makes_decisions.html
Be very afraid.
I post it here…
And somehow it gets embellished on the Web:
http://www.piie.com/blogs/?p=2698
Trevor Houser remakes all of my points.
His blurb is timely.
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2012/02/19/davis-bacon-equality/
An eye opener even for the jaded reader.
I have done some consulting work for a large federal agency.
Success is measured by the speedy processing of applications for aid. The majority of them are approved. So success for the agency equates to paying more people more aid.
The agency provides an additional incentive to approve – if they deny a claim it requires a lengthy explanation and due process rights including multiple levels of appeal. An approval requires checking a box and sometimes adding a few words of justification.
I’ve seen cases that should have been paid be denied, and more often the opposite. I have also seen the agency deny claims, issue a proper explanation, spend thousands to defend the appeal, then turn around and pay the same person without explanation.
Some days I feel like Roy Batty: “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe”
wretchard @ 7 said:
“The hard left is going to take power in Greece at the rate things are going. But it will be like taking possession of a corpse. What will the hard left spend? Socialism has never solved the problem of production. Repeat, never solved the problem of production.”
The hard left in Greece is the Communist Party of Greece. The initials for the Communist Party of Greece is KKE. For more details refer to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Greece#KKE_and_the_Greek_Civil_War
When traveling in Greece, you can see KKE graffiti almost everywhere. The Soviet Union saw strategic advantage in making Greece into a client state. The Soviets pumped many hundreds of millions of dollars into the KKE. Unfortunately for the Soviets, the United States and Britain opposed their action and funded anti-communist groups in Greece. This resulted in the Greek Civil war that was fought during 1946-1949. The Soviets made some strategic miscalculations in their relationship with Yugoslavia, that cut off their logistics train to the KKE. Consequently the KKE lost the civil war and had to go underground. The KKE remained underground until 1974 when they were allowed to become a legal political party. The KKE’s external funding significantly diminished in 1990 after the Soviet Union imploded along with the Warsaw Pact. However the KKE responded by becoming more of a main stream political party rather than a band of radical bomb throwers (they still do a fair amount of that as can be seen in the Athens demonstrations). The KKE is a serious danger to democracy in Greece. Wretchard’s scenario is real because the KKE might be the only guys left standing after the Greek economy implodes (that will probably happen next month).
Getting back to Wretchard’s charts: My mother and father are over 80 years old. Neither of them pay taxes. Both of them are dependent upon savings, Social Security payments and Medicare. They supplement their Medicare with AARP insurance. My parents have a fair amount of money squirreled away in real estate and investments. However due to their advanced age, their health is deteriorating and their medical expenses are becoming extreme. I would say that my parent’s financial situation is better than 90% of their generation. However if it were not for Medicare, most of their estate would already have been consumed by medical expenses. I have no clue how that other 90% stays alive after they become very elderly, their health fails and their medical expenses become ridiculous. I guess it boils down to the simple fact that one stays alive until they run out of money and then some treatable medical condition kills them. I might add that Obamacare only worsens this problem. Somehow we need to reattach market forces to medical expense, i.e. get lawyers, socialists and other blood suckers out of the process of providing medical care.
“The hard left is going to take power in Greece at the rate things are going. But it will be like taking possession of a corpse.”
It’ll be even worse than that: given Greek birth rates (1.5 births per female) and certain human/capital flight, the hard left will discover they’ve taken possession of a corpse…within a rapidly-collapsing house.
Seems to me if the above scenario plays out to its logical conclusion, the hard left will only be able to stabilize its new possession by a) building a “Great Wall of Greece” around the entire country, b) banning abortion, and c) banning contraception.
Fat chance of these happening, huh?
And the hard left will also be “dependent upon the kindness of strangers” since what’s to keep the Turks from “not letting a crisis go to waste” and suddenly deciding to acquire additional Lebensraum in the Aegean?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegean_dispute
Wise is a self-flagellating white guy, pseudo academic/intellectual. He never passes the opportunity to throw the race card. He preaches only to the choir.
MarkJ @ 13 said:
“And the hard left will also be “dependent upon the kindness of strangers” since what’s to keep the Turks from “not letting a crisis go to waste” and suddenly deciding to acquire additional Lebensraum in the Aegean?”
That’s a very nasty scenario that I did not consider. If the Turks choose to reestablish an Ottoman Empire, reconquering Greece would be a logical step. The Turks would probably do that after reconquering Syria. If the Turks played their cards right, they could find themselves in a very interesting strategic position after the collapse of the current political order in MENA.
The Turks could slough off NATO like a lizard sloughs off an old skin. The powerless Europeans could only stand by impotently as the Turks expanded their new empire. Of course the $64,000 question: Could the Turks derive any economic benefit through reestablishment of the Ottoman Empire. Assuming Arab petroleum was fully depleted, my guess is the Turks would gain no economic benefit at all from conquering the Arab world, i.e. it would be a bombed out husk populated with religious fanatics. However a wiser tactic for the Turks might be to go northeast and conquer former Soviet republics that are inhabited by ethnic Turks. Turkey will have lots of options open to them assuming they can keep their economy stable and aren’t stupid about their religion (major assumptions). It occurs to me that the Europeans may rue the day that they did not offer membership into the EU to the Turks. As members of the EU, the northern Europeans could have controlled Turkish imperial ambitions. I wonder if the Turkish angle is going through Russian thinking towards their relationship with Iran? The Middle East is certainly a complicated place.
Turkey invading Greece is absurd as a military proposition.
Right now the Government of Turkey is at war with its own military.
And, as the Spartans have shown, NOTHING gets the Greeks to drop their internal difficulties like an Anatolian invader.
Sheesh.
Doubt that the Turks would undertake to conquer the Greek mainland; they might, however, press their claim to the Dodecanese shelf–if not to the islands themselves, then at least to the sea floor beneath them. I was traveling in the Dodecanese Islands the last time the Greeks and Turks disputed this region. Both sides partially mobilized: troops were moving about the islands and there were overflights by military aircraft. The Greeks told me they almost went to war but it seemed to me that it was mostly bluster and saber rattling. At the height of the crisis boatmen on Kos were advertising openly to take tourists (supposedly “illegally,” wink wink) across the narrows to mainland Turkey, which should say something about how unserious the locals were about the crisis. Next time might be different, however.
Tim Wise’s comments quoted in the article are perfect liberal word speak, carefully honed and cultivated in the cocoon of that time honored liberal tradition of community activism. One can just taste three buck chuck wine, smell the cigarette smoke and the faint whiff of marijuana, for strictly medical reasons of course, that were the fuel during those crucial late night incubation sessions that helped him develop the stunning historical insight that he so generously shared when he was preaching to the choir on CNN.
“After graduating in 1990, Wise started his work as an anti-racist activist after receiving training in methods for undoing racism from the New Orleans-based People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. Wise began his anti-racism work as a youth coordinator, and then associate director, of the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism, the largest of the various organizations founded for the purpose of defeating political candidate, David Duke, when Duke ran for U.S. Senate and Governor of Louisiana in 1990 and 1991, respectively.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Wise
The problem with his oh so well constructed, in your face fact after fact about how racist White America was, is and will always be is that he simply ignores the simple fact that the government cannot continue to have 70% of government tax revenue redistributed to dependence programs. I simply can’t continue. 49.5% of Americans pay no federal taxes at all. However, they continue to receive the benefits from the federal government. This is unsustainable. The money has got to come from somewhere. As an avid reader of history I hope we never repeat the mistakes of the past. The problem with people like Tim is that now it’s payback time. They’re coming for the White Man in their Volvo’s with their $5 Starbucks café lattes in recycled materials cups and their kids securely strapped into car seats so that years later they can say that they were there when the stuck it to the Man. And they really hope the GPS doesn’t take them through ghetto on the way to the march…maybe they can find a nice Thai restaurant on the way back to their home in the chic gated suburban community.
“As members of the EU, the northern Europeans could have controlled Turkish imperial ambitions. I wonder if the Turkish angle is going through Russian thinking towards their relationship with Iran? The Middle East is certainly a complicated place.” Yes. What a shame it will be for Washington and London’s neocons when they discover after gleefully kicking the Russians out of Tartus post-Assad next year that Putin has lent the Greeks $10 billion in return for a 25-year lease on a Russian naval base at the Pireaus, or wherever else it’s convenient for the flag of St. Andrew to fly.
All ‘gains’ in Oceania’s perpetual war with Eurasia (or is Eastasia) being short lived indeed.
This brings to mind something that happened in Congress in the early 90′s, from the esteemed Maxine Waters.
When someone proposed an amendment that would require recipients of Federal housing assistance to pick up the trash that had been noted to be common in such areas, Waters rose in opposition. “People who get to deduct their mortgage interest from their taxes are not required to pick trash around their homes, so such a requirement for people receive Federal housing assistance would be like something that occurred in the Soviet Union. I oppose us adopting the policies of the Evil Empire.” There was laughter from the other Congressmen – and then the Democrats voted down the amendment.
Equating people being able to take a tax deduction – a deduction from taxable income, not a credit – from the taxes they pay, with welfare given to people who do not pay taxes is an example of how Marxists think. It is once again on display in Tim Wise’s comments.
Tim Wise must’ve missed the last 50 years. That would be the period of time when America completely overhauled its society to ensure minority success and acceptance. The period of time when literally trillions of dollars were transferred from working people to other people based solely on the color of their skin in an attempt to right past wrongs. A time when white racism was (rightly) banished to the fringes of society where it continues to have no political power and no social influence. I started school 50 years ago. In all that time I cannot remember when the black kids were not the biggest, strongest, fastest, coolest, most popular kids in school. When whatever endeavor they chose was met with administration and faculty pre-invested with ensuring their every need was met, every interest satisfied, every door opened. It also corresponded to a period of time when black people voted for Democrats in percentages that mimic the winning margins of third world dictators. And after all that, after willingly remaking our society and reframing our laws to become the world’s only true multiracial society, where blacks can become literally anything they desire, the people who thought that societal overhaul and enormous wealth transfer was right and necessary still get called names and told it is not enough by its beneficiaries. And worst of all, we still have to put up with the likes of Tim Wise’s absurd view of the world.
Why do these leftist morons think everything’s a “codeword”? THEY’RE the ones who never say what they actually mean. THEY’RE the ones who use Orwellian “codewords” for every statist POS they plan to enact at midnight when no one is looking. Projection isn’t a symptom with these people, it’s a political strategy.
“the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism”
Tim Wise is a Carnie. Tim Wise is the only racist I see in the room.
re 17. Roughcoat
“Doubt that the Turks would undertake to conquer the Greek mainland; they might, however, press their claim to the Dodecanese shelf–if not to the islands themselves, then at least to the sea floor beneath them”
It looks like the Turk play is for the oil and natgas off of Cyprus. This has driven the Greek Cypriots closer to Israel in response. Also, the company contracted to drill off Cyprus is American so we could get involved if the Turks get aggressive.
I agree there is not much benefit in conquering a bankrupt nation, but if significant undersea energy resources are there then you never know.
Also, as the Turkish and Egyptian economies flounder I would not be surprised to see their economic refugees head to Greece and from there into Europe.
The Homestead Act was not a Federal welfare program. Unfortunately there are a lot of very stupid people who don’t know the difference.
I am beginning to believe that the Bush-implementation of Milton Friedman’s “reverse income tax” is a mistake – not because it fails as a social redistribution program, but because it amplifies the power of big money.
Big labor ruled from the 1930′s to the 1980′s. Now it is big money (funds, markets, etc.) that is the major power in American politics. By forcing the burden of the Federal government on the upper 50% income bracket we are also taking away the political voice of the lower 50%.
KWB gets it. Even if Wise’s hallucinatory account of history were accurate, he misses the elephant in the room. We simply can’t afford borrowing and spending at these levels, and no amount of ‘social justice’ taxation, pillage or get-even confiscation will make it afforadble.
Also, as VANGUARD points out, Wise left out the last 50 years. Maybe that’s because he doesn’t want to be held to account for all the virulent social pathologies loosed upon this country by ‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’ policies. But that would be giving a rank propagandist far too much credit for insight and cleverness.
The Left has found racism a useful club, they will continue to use until long after it loses its effectiveness.