Forum Replies Created
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(from the 2nd thoughts file). As the moderator, I want to caution zn on being too argumentative. Anyone can think anything about Harold Bloom they want to…let a thousand Blooms…uh…flower.
ZN,
Thanks. But you are risking the entire space-time continuum with this, I hope you know. And we’ve already been through all of that. If you insist on continuing down this, um, er, continuum, we will be forced to call for an intervention, get JJ Abrams involved, so he can set up a new worm hole to fix the old one you seem intent on exploding.
You should be ashamed.
. He’s perhaps the best-read, most erudite reader of the Bard alive today.
Take my word for this.
No.
Nothing wrong with Bloom, I like Bloom. But he’s not the best Shakespeare scholar or however you want to put that.
.
Didn’t say the best. I said the best-read and most erudite. I stand by that. The man is a voracious reader, and has been for well over half a century. Tremendous intellectual range as well.
A demonstrator protesting the shooting death of Alton Sterling is detained by law enforcement in Baton Rouge on July 9, 2016. (Jonathan Bachman/Reuters)
Amazing photo. Beauty in the midst of tragedy, brutality, violence.
You do not get the simplest of concepts. Either a politician has principles or doesn’t. Once elected the principled politician works for the people rather than courting special interest money and relying upon congressional privilege yielding a very high re-election rate to ignore the best interests of their constituents.
You do not get the simplest of concepts. The private sector has far more power to harm individual Americans on a day to day basis than the government, and it owns that govermment. Whether we have venal politicians or not, the private sector, especially under capitalism, will screw people over, create massive poverty and suffering, and there is little the government can do about it. Unless, of course, you favor strong governmental intrusion and control over the economy, along with redress and mitigation — which, unless I misread you, you don’t.
So which is it? Do you want those politicians to crack down on all detrimental private sector activities, to constrain their bad practices, to prevent them from doing as they please? Or do you believe government should let business do business as business sees fit?
You can’t have it both ways.
Oh, and you also have to fund those public sector efforts, if you want government to stop the private sector from screwing over the people and corrupting society. You’d have to be in favor of much, much higher tax rates, especially on the rich for that — and, if I am not mistaken, you called our incredibly low taxes, “egregious beyond belief.”
So, please, bnw, spell it out. Because I’m very confused by your comments. Are you in favor of government letting business owners do as they please? Are you in favor of minarchy? Are you in favor of laissez faire? Or do you want the government to have the funding, staffing and power to come down hard on private sector wrongdoers.
In short, you can’t have it both ways, and I think you’re tying to do just that.
We’re a democratic republic, to distinguish us from other forms.
From Wiki:
Montesquieu included in his work “The Spirit of the Laws” both democracies, where all the people have a share in rule, and aristocracies or oligarchies, where only some of the people rule, as republican forms of government.[6]
At least in theory. In practice, we’ve become an oligarchy, with a capitalist aristocracy running the show.
Beyond all of that, America is what we make it. It’s never been anything set in stone. It’s never remained “as the founders wanted it.” If that were so, we’d still have a slaveocracy, and only white men with property could vote.
If we want it to be a full and direct democracy, we have the ability to make that happen, as a people, and there is nothing to prevent that. If we want to democratize the economy, we can do that too. It’s up to us.
Thanks for the article, WV.
Speaking of Walter Karp. I read his excellent Liberty Under Siege, and highly recommend it.
And the book that pointed me in its direction, George Scialabba’s What are Intellectuals Good For. To me, it’s a must-read, especially for leftists.
(I’ve had discussions online with Scialabba. He has a very sharp mind, and a good heart. Good sense of humor as well.)
The thing is…if 9/11 was an elaborate inside job…and ELABORATE is what it would have been…they would have made it look like Iraqis did it. How easy would that have been? And that would have been that.
Instead, it inconveniently involved Saudis (our allies) and the trail led to Afghanistan, a country that is a complete waste of time to invade economically or strategically.
I mean…if you are going to go the monumental effort of working through the logistics of demolishing the WTC, it would have been small potatoes to frame somebody worth framing.
Very true. And, again, why on earth would the powers that be try to blow up the powers that be? It makes zero sense. It’s far too easy to inflict great harm on others outside the power structure, and blame whomever they want. It’s just absurd to believe they would try to blow up the Pentagon, the White House and one of the strongholds of the financial world in NYC.
Matt Taibbi demolished the truthers in several articles back in the day.
Edit: Now this is weird. Try googling “matt taibbi demolishes truthers.” It will take you to sites like the Rolling Stone, where he published them, but the stories seem to be gone. Hmmm. Perhaps the rabid truthers did their best to shut down anyone who dared suggest they were nuts. Online, I remember them being like flying monkeys. Crazed stalkers, too.
I view workers under contract as stakeholders too.
Thanks, bnw. That helps a lot. But you also probably know that most people, when they say “stakeholders,” mean investors, not workers. So that’s what threw me. I agree with your definition, btw, not “most people.”
Edit: But that leads to the next part of my confusion. Do you also consider those who are fired as a result of bankruptcies and takeovers as “stakeholders” too? Or just the workers who end up keeping their jobs even after the shenanigans go down?
bnw,
Okay. Well, if I read in volumes, please explain why you made most of your post about “protecting stakeholders,” and not workers. If I misread you, please say specifically what I got wrong. Me misreading someone wouldn’t be the first time, and it won’t be the last. So I’m fine with being corrected.
BTW,
I googled capital gains rates. They’re far, far lower than they were from the 1930s through the 1970s (until Reagan lowered them):
2016 federal income tax brackets
Tax rate on ordinary income Single Tax rate on qualified dividends and long term capital gains
over to
10% $0 $9,275 0%
15% $9,275 $37,650 0%
25% $37,650 $91,150 15%
28% $91,150 $190,150 15%
33% $190,150 $413,350 15%
35% $413,350 $415,050 15%
39.60% $415,050 20%I brought up the two taxes as examples of what politicians can legislate, taxes so egregious as to defy belief. Therefore protecting stakeholders as those in the Hostess Cakes scam would be a step in the right direction.
“So egregious as to defy belief”? Given the fact that American business and rich people in America in general pay the lowest in effective taxes of all but two OECD nations, you might want to dig deeper into that claim. And beyond those low, low effective taxes, no nation on earth is so good to business overall . . . in terms of defending, protecting, bailing out and promoting capitalism, externalizing its costs, supplementing its rotten wages, etc. . . . nor does any other nation on earth spend as much in wars designed to cram capitalism down the throats of nations that don’t want it.
In short, businesses in America pay a tiny fraction of a fraction of what they receive from government. They never come close to giving value for value.
Also, you’ve emphasized Trump’s supposed focus on jobs jobs jobs. But your main concern here appears to be with “stakeholders,” most of whom don’t hold their stocks for more than a day, and none of whom lifts a finger for that company. Labor appears as an after-thought, and you also qualify that with those under contract. Of course, in these situations, hundreds or thousands tend to be fired, so would they be justly compensated as well? Or, better yet, not fired in the first place?
From where I sit, your focus is misplaced and the idea that any American taxes on business and the rich are “egregious beyond belief” really, really baffles me — to put it most gently.
Talking monkeys with weapons-of-mass-destruction,
and a mega-efficient-corporate-system.Ah well.
At least we can embrace the knowledge that humans
have a ‘cooperative’ nature to go along with their
savage-nature. So, ya know, tribes of humans can cooperate
while their destroying the ‘others’.How should one live on such a planet-of-the-apes,
Billy? Such a challenge. I think i will have a banana
and weed my yard.I have no idea. And I’m guessing that question was mostly rhetorical, and you asked it with hands up in the air, flailing away. And I can only answer in the same way, hands in the air, flailing away.
Perhaps it’s all just another fiction to believe in, but I honestly think our best hope is that most people want to live in peace, and that most people don’t want to be Napoleons or caesars or tsars. And if we ever get to the point where no one needs to go to work for those Napoleons or caesars or tsars . . . we won’t have any real support for sociopaths, so they won’t be able to hurt others any more. No one will support their savagery.
Another lesson I’m drawing from the bio of the Romanovs — and strangely enough, from watching Game of Thrones over the years — is that those all-powerful leaders, even those with absolute power, are a mere mistake or two away from being assassinated themselves, and that they never could have terrorized their own people, much less others, on their own. It took massive compliance and complicity, from people who didn’t get the chance, or didn’t believe it was possible, to band together and resist.
So, I hope someday — and I won’t live to see it — we evolve enough that a critical mass of people see they don’t need to submit to monsters anymore. That those monsters really are nothing without mass support and the weapons of war. And that no one fears monsters any longer. Reverse engineer that . . . and the answer is kind of obvious to me. People need to join hands and say no to sociopaths and all forms of hierarchy.
The Bundys are right-wing domestic terrorists, deadbeats and criminals. Nothing more. No, the government didn’t “sucker them.” The government has been letting them off the hook for years for their unpaid fees and criminal abuse of public lands . . . and when the Bundy terrorists gathered, fully armed, to prevent the lawful execution of government duties a few years ago, regarding the Bundy’s own failure to pay their debts, the government backed down.
Imagine a group of armed blacks doing that. Or Native Americans. They’d be slaughtered.
And then there was Oregon. No one asked them to grandstand there. The town didn’t want them there. Hell, the two pyromaniacs they supposedly came to support admitted their guilt and didn’t want any more trouble. The Bundys threatened the locals and scared the people thier half to death. The Bundy terrorists, fully armed, decided they needed to occupy a national park preserve and prevent all other Americans from enjoying it.
They’re classic terrorists. They sought to threaten locals towns people, park employees and local authorities and their families in order to make a political statement. That statement boils down to the bizarre belief that our national park lands somehow belong rightfully to private ranchers, and not all of us.
They’re scum, and most of them are white supremacists to boot.
