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PoliGAF 2012 Community Thread |OT2| This thread title is now under military control

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P

PantherLotus

Professional Schmuck
Dude Romney really said both:

BUSINESS IS DOING FINE

BECAUSE OF LOW TAX HAVENS


Lmao_Obama.jpg
 
P

PantherLotus

Professional Schmuck
Well any of them, really. Giving money to churches that undermine science, women's rights, and equality across the board is against my cold (but bleeding) -hearted interest.
 
C

codhand

Member
PantherLotus said:
Dude Romney really said both:

BUSINESS IS DOING FINE

BECAUSE OF LOW TAX HAVENS
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Reminds me the Laura Ingram incident

INGRAHAM: Isn't that a hard argument to make if you're saying -- Okay, he [Obama] inherited this recession, and he took a bunch of steps to try to turn the economy around, and now we're seeing some more jobs, but vote against him anyway?

Isn't that a hard argument to make? Is that a stark enough contrast?

ROMNEY: Have you got a better one, Laura? [laughter] It just happens to be the truth.... at some point it's going to get better, but I don't think President Obama's helping it.
 
D

Drek

Member
eznark said:
You like charity, you just want the confiscation and distribution centralized. Welfare is just intermediated charity.
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Welfare is charity in the same way that having highways we all get to drive on is charity.

Not letting the bottom end fall completely out of the economic race is a key part of keeping this capitalist model successful. The U.S. has functioned with a trade deficit since the 1960's, yet has still seen strong economic prosperity during those periods. Compare that to places like China where the current lag in their trade surplus is directly responsible for the economic slow down they're experiencing, with the threat of a bigger slow down looming as that trade surplus continues to shrink.

So why is the U.S. able to play by a different set of rules with regards to trade deficit as most nations? Because programs like welfare, food stamps, social security, medicaid/medicare, etc. keep even the bottom end of the economic spectrum in the U.S. as a viable consumer.

Only a very, very small percentage of the U.S. population is a non-consumer. That near universal consumerism gives our industry the largest, highest buying power market to constantly ply their wares to. Economic downturns like the most recent recession would have been even more of a blood bath if we lacked a social construct to keep the unemployed housed and fed because even the most core market companies would have taken hard economic hits.

That is why tax money spent on social services is not charity. Essential legs of infrastructure can't be charity as they serve to better society for ALL of us long term.
 
C

codhand

Member
Cyan said:
Seriously though, for anyone here who's interested in doing the most good with their charitable donations, you really need to check out GiveWell.

A different way of looking at charities than the standard "overheads=oh teh noes", and a much better one.
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I used to have homeless guys buy me 40s and let them keep the change doesn't that count?
 
C

Chichikov

Member
empty vessel said:
Charity is what happens when societies are dysfunctional. Functional societies don't require much in the way of charity. I, personally, do not find charitable giving admirable. I find people who are working to create societies that don't require charity admirable.
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That's true, but in the real world, charity still fill important functions in our society, and realistically, will continue to do so for quite a while even under (what I think is) the best possible scenario.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
Romney just can't help digging further:

Mittens said:
I don't see what the big deal is. The President himself has joked about his birth certificate before. Why can't the American people?
Click to expand...


Okay, he hasn't said this....yet. But come on, this is the Mittster we're talking about.
 
C

codhand

Member
Dude Abides said:
Re: charity, does donation to any 501(c)(3) count? E.g. Planned Parenthood or the Heritage Foundation?
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Ya know, my waifu does NARAL (Pro-choice Org) bowl-a-thons, and each team raises money, I remember one time we saw the only team in Kansas had like literally 10 dollars raised with a meager $300 goal, it made my heart hurt, so we donated to it. It's rough for pro-choice peoples in certain parts of the country.
 
P

pigeon

Banned
Cyan said:
While we're on the subject, here's a really interesting blog post from 80,000 hours that helps illustrate why social intervention programs in general need much better planning and research than they currently get (note that this is not a trick question where all the programs are good or bad--some of these programs had a positive effect, some did nothing, some had a negative effect):
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This was a really interesting post. I got 7 right, so I guess I should run for office. I note that the key element in the two most successful programs is that they both involve building a long-term one-on-one relationship with a mentor -- modelling behavior and all that. This would probably be a good approach for all kinds of social programs if we could find enough mentors. (It's also unsurprising then that sitting delinquent kids down to chat with inmates would make them worse -- although I suspect just the contempt is enough to ruin that program.)
 
C

codhand

Member
AlteredBeast said:
EXACTLY. I remember them playing Eric Clapton's Cocaine as being something of a bad influence that it was supposed to be. The track was great, however, so I went out and bought the tape.
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I remember DARE scaring the shit out of me with the LSD tabs in the form of fake tattoos.
 
P

PhoenixDark

Banned
Wow

CNN just released a new presidential poll showing a tight 2 point margin for President Obama going into the Republican convention. I’d say the even bigger story is down in the details. This is the first poll that CNN has released with “likely voters” — just like Fox’s most recent poll did. If you look at the number for registered voters it’s a 9 point Obama margin.

What that means is that President Obama has actually gained a bit of ground (obviously within the margin of error) on last week’s eye-popping poll showing him with a 7 point lead over Mitt Romney. But it also shows that turnout and propensity to vote are going to be the whole game going into November.

Likely voter screens almost always provide some GOP edge. But 7 points is an extremely large one for a presidential contest.
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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/08/wow_13.php?ref=fpblg

full poll:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/24/cnn-poll-obama-49-romney-47-among-likely-voters/
 
P

pigeon

Banned
Cyan said:
Yeah, I got the two mentor programs correct. Not surprising that they'd be the best programs, although unfortunate in that they're also presumably the most resource-intensive, given that you need actual people in there working on building those one-on-one relationships.

I was surprised at the literacy program and the educational software being ineffective. It seemed intuitively like they ought to do some good.
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I think the takeaway is that providing resources to people in the hopes that they will engage in self-directed learning just isn't that effective for most people. Low-income families, for example, probably don't have time to take reading classes. The one I got wrong were the after-school programs -- I thought they'd help test scores but hurt behavior. Now that I think about it, I should've known based on my after-school program experience that kids will selectively target activities that don't look like school. (Although I note the post doesn't say whether the kids benefited in non-test ways from the enrichment activities.) Similarly, I knew the software wouldn't work because I have been in computer classrooms where the teachers sat us all down in front of Number Munchers or whatever, and I know first-hand how much time the kids spent actually learning. (Mostly we learned different ways to die horribly on the Oregon Trail and also why the bison is endangered.)
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
Suikoguy said:
Eh, find a better charity then the salvation army if you want to donate to a charity.
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The Salvies send the money back into the local economy, though.

Disclaimer: atheist, but volunteered for them through multiple years and they've given my brother a job for the last 5 years straight. I also had to count the money from the buckets.

So many buckets.

edit: also a majority of the bellringers you see are being paid by the Salvies to ring
 
mckmas8808

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Stephen Colbert said:
Someone please start a separate thread about this news.... this was a massive fuck up

Fox News just outed the name and identify of the chief in the elite Navy SEAL Team 6 who was one of the first men in the room where bin Laden died.

Bin Laden was revered by Muslim fundamentalists everywhere. Now, this hero and his family members will forever be targets of Muslim fundamentalists that wish to avenge Bin Laden's death

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/fox-news-outs-navy-seal-163126050.html;_ylt=A2KJ3CYaezZQvjUAHXnQtDMD
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Why did they leak the name?
 
W

worldrunover

Member
mckmas8808 said:
Why did they leak the name?
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The Bin Laden raid made Obama look good. This book (presumably) makes the Bin Laden raid look good. Out the guy to make him look like a traitor who is jeopardizing national security somehow. I'm not sure exactly how the pieces fit but that seems to be the gist of the puzzle.
 
B

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
AlteredBeast said:
EXACTLY. I remember them playing Eric Clapton's Cocaine as being something of a bad influence that it was supposed to be. The track was great, however, so I went out and bought the tape.
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Man the DARE guy at my old middle school was the biggest drug dealer in the area. He'd be all "Don't do weed....but if ya need some....I can help with that."
 
A

AlteredBeast

Fork 'em, Sparky!
mckmas8808 said:
To be honest I didn't know this either until guys in PoliGaf informed me before the '08 election. And I'm 28 years old!
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Well, the way the news reports it, I could see why you, he, and many others would be confused.

Now if the "Millionaires tax" would ever get enacted, i guess that would be the first legitimate worry for higher income workers to not make 1 million dollars, but instead 999,999, but come on.
 
B

Beer Monkey

Member
Cyan said:
Isn't that just a new tax bracket?
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No new brackets needed. The ultrarich typically make their money on capital gains. Just start taxing capital gains as regular income over a certain level, or even better just pass an Alternative Minimum Tax.

Do basic stuff like this and uncap social security taxes and we can kill the deficit.
 
S

sc0la

Unconfirmed Member
That's my problem with the buffet rule. It's just AMT 2: Electric Boogaloo

I used to think taxing capital gains directly as income was the best answer (and indeed the simplest), but now I am moving towards the idea that capital gains should be taxed separately from income, but with the exact same brackets. That gets rid of the CEOs getting 1 dollar because there is a tax advantage over stock for the first few hundred thousand in wages. A millionaire would ideally half a million in wages and in capital gains.

EDIT: this is really to tie income to the actual state of residence to reduce local tax avoidance and to tie more people into payroll taxes.

The simplest solution is still simply to abolish the payroll tax and tax all earned and unearned money as income.
 
D

Dram

Member
Romney Staffer Responsible For Akin Stipulations Demoted

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/08/romney-colorado-spox-offduty-for-prohibiting-akin-133120.html

Ciara Matthews, the Romney campaign's Colorado communications director, has been asked not to speak to the media after her decision to prohibit a reporter from asking Mitt Romney questions about abortion, sources tell POLITICO.

The restriction was made public yesterday when Shaun Boyd, a reporter for Denver's CBS affiliate, told viewers that the campaign had prohibited her from asking questions about abortion or Rep. Todd Akin during her interview with the candidate. The Obama campaign immediately blasted a video of Boyd's remarks, creating a small firestorm over campaign efforts to restrict the press and side-step discussion of Romney's stance on abortion.

A spokesperson with the Romney campaign told POLITICO yesterday that the campaign did not prohbit questions, and other networks said that their questions were not influenced by the campaign. "This is not how we operate," the spokesperson said. "The matter is being addressed."
Click to expand...
 
W

War Peaceman

You're a big guy.
Cyan said:
Seriously though, for anyone here who's interested in doing the most good with their charitable donations, you really need to check out GiveWell.

A different way of looking at charities than the standard "overheads=oh teh noes", and a much better one.
Click to expand...

Oh yes, now I remember, you made that excellent charity thread a little while back.
 
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