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nomotog wrote:

TheHammer wrote:
Are people seriously saying that there is nothing factually wrong with what Romney said?

Really? Reallllllly?

The statement that 47% of people don't pay federal income tax is factually accurate and according to the minute of research not all that misleading. The people in this group are poor working families who take the child tax credit. Or elderly households who no longer have income. Oh and unemployed households also don't pay taxes.

The other stuff sounds like bull.

Also (combat deployed) soldiers.

They obviously need bootstraps so they can pay income taxes!

TheHammer wrote:
Good catch!

But, I think you get my point: Businesses exist to create profit, and will do anything and everything they can do to make that profit. If it means poisoning drinking water or corrupting officials, they will do it. And if business A won't, business B will.

I figured that

I wouldn't ever say a business is going to poison someones water just to poison someones water even if it makes a profit.

They may poison water as a side result of some activity that helps them make a profit, but this is mearely the result of them not having a better alternative.

Why should it cost so much to dispose of waste? Why do we put insane regulations up that are so expensive to comply with that its cheaper just to ignore them and pay the violation fines?

Regulations need to be cheaper to comply with then just paying the fine.

Currently, its cheaper just to dump waste into the nearby creek and pay the $100,000 fine each year then it is to set up a waste disposal plant that costs $2,000,000 to set up and $200,000 a year to run. Make it cheaper and easier to set up that disposal plant(like not having so many regulations regarding its setup and operation)

 labmouse42 wrote:

nomotog wrote:
The statement that 47% of people don't pay federal income tax is factually accurate and according to the minute of research not all that misleading. The people in this group are poor working families who take the child tax credit.

My buddy makes 70k a year. He has a stay-at-home wife, 3 kids, and a house. He pays no federal taxes every year.
70k a year is more than the average college earner makes. Hes not rich, but it's not poor either.
The statement that 47% of people don't pay federal income tax is factually accurate but misleading. He still pays payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, etc...

He must have a great accountant, but it really just serves to illustrate how broken the system is. Sales taxes and property taxes are out of control...


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 daedalus-templarius wrote:

nomotog wrote:

TheHammer wrote:
Are people seriously saying that there is nothing factually wrong with what Romney said?

Really? Reallllllly?

The statement that 47% of people don't pay federal income tax is factually accurate and according to the minute of research not all that misleading. The people in this group are poor working families who take the child tax credit. Or elderly households who no longer have income. Oh and unemployed households also don't pay taxes.

The other stuff sounds like bull.

Also (combat deployed) soldiers.

They obviously need bootstraps so they can pay income taxes!

The fact you are willing to try to use soldiers, clearly the most visible of the 1%, says a lot about you and the character of your discourse.

Actually we do get federally taxed while in a combat zone. Comes out on the first. By the third we're paid back in full what they took out.

This was brought up awhile back

 AustonT wrote:


The fact you are willing to try to use soldiers, clearly the most visible of the 1%, says a lot about you and the character of your discourse.

Can you not tell I am being facetious with my posts?

You have to careful with remarks about the US military. There are some who have quite a perception and will go off on the deep in. Take my sig for example. I'm consider a "Murderer" because I shot back in anger

 Jihadin wrote:
You have to careful with remarks about the US military. There are some who have quite a perception and will go off on the deep in. Take my sig for example. I'm consider a "Murderer" because I shot back in anger

Wait I thought thats because of what you did to that bathroom after you ate Thai that one time.

I dislocated my knee on that grabber of an incident Frazz

edit

just want to leave this here

49% of all Americans pay no fed income tax

*47% receive a check from the government of which more than half are means tested welfare checks (Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, etc.)

*36% of all Americans of working age are either not working or looking for work.

I assume this has already been posted, but according to the BBC:

53.6% paid income taxes, 46.4% did not
28.3% paid payroll taxes but not income taxes
10.3% were elderly and retired and were not taxed on Social Security benefits
6.9% did not pay any tax with household incomes of less than $20,000 (£12,300)

 Manchu wrote:
Romney said the exact right thing for what he thought was his audience.

The problem is, it ended up in front of the wrong audience.

@jihadin- Was that 'thing" you left in here from the main article?

 Easy E wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Romney said the exact right thing for what he thought was his audience.

The problem is, it ended up in front of the wrong audience.

That's kind of what I was alluding to ... but also the idea that Romney is not an incompetent politician for saying these remarks. I'd be surprised if this story made anyone change their mind one way or the other about him.

 Manchu wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Romney said the exact right thing for what he thought was his audience.

The problem is, it ended up in front of the wrong audience.

That's kind of what I was alluding to ... but also the idea that Romney is not an incompetent politician for saying these remarks. I'd be surprised if this story made anyone change their mind one way or the other about him.

I would, too. Romney is by necessity running a get-out-the-base campaign, because the far right doesn't trust his ass. Nor should they, given his record. The Republican narrative has been "half the country mooches!" for two or three years now, thus that's the message Romney needs to put out when addressing the base.

The irony of all this is that, underneath the campaigning, I suspect he's probably exactly the sort of fiscally moderate, socially indifferent candidate who theoretically should be able to win easily. They're just trying to run the "not a McCain-style moderate" campaign, 'cause the base is unenthusiastic.

I wish I didn't pay income taxes... I end up making dog food every year...

Grey Templar wrote:

TheHammer wrote:
Good catch!

But, I think you get my point: Businesses exist to create profit, and will do anything and everything they can do to make that profit. If it means poisoning drinking water or corrupting officials, they will do it. And if business A won't, business B will.

I figured that

I wouldn't ever say a business is going to poison someones water just to poison someones water even if it makes a profit.

They may poison water as a side result of some activity that helps them make a profit, but this is mearely the result of them not having a better alternative.

Why should it cost so much to dispose of waste? Why do we put insane regulations up that are so expensive to comply with that its cheaper just to ignore them and pay the violation fines?

Regulations need to be cheaper to comply with then just paying the fine.

Currently, its cheaper just to dump waste into the nearby creek and pay the $100,000 fine each year then it is to set up a waste disposal plant that costs $2,000,000 to set up and $200,000 a year to run. Make it cheaper and easier to set up that disposal plant(like not having so many regulations regarding its setup and operation)

Actually, it sounds more like someone needs to increase those fines to a level where it's cheaper to comply with the regulations than it is to pay the fines.

Jihadin wrote:You have to careful with remarks about the US military. There are some who have quite a perception and will go off on the deep in. Take my sig for example. I'm consider a "Murderer" because I shot back in anger

The people who think that are morons who do not understand the concept of acts made between enemy combatants, and should be disregarded.

 Manchu wrote:
Romney said the exact right thing for what he thought was his audience.

True, but he should have anticipated that he wouldn't know what his audience was.

He has made many such "audience gaffes". So has Obama (and every other politician), of course, and they are to be expected. But the Romney campaign has expressed a clear inability to cope with the realities of modern media.

Interestingly the ratings have been responding positively for Romney. Maybe this line-in-the-sand gaffe is what his campaign needed to get some energy.

I usaully wait about three days before I attribute anything to the points. For what he said might not be why. At this point in time the perception of Obama handling of the ME riots might be shifting it (I said MIGHT people)

 sourclams wrote:
Interestingly the ratings have been responding positively for Romney. Maybe this line-in-the-sand gaffe is what his campaign needed to get some energy.

Only Rasmussen's.

These are priceless:

 d-usa wrote:
These are priceless:

Spoiler:

This one came pre captioned

 Manchu wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
Blue collar conservatives have never warmed up to Romney, and this isn't going to motivate them to actually vote.

I dunno, Romney did a good job serving up apple pie at the convention. I think lower middle-class Republicans correctly perceive themselves as the most vulnerable in relation to this election. One way or another, they are going to be the least satisfied group by late 2014 so Romney effectively plays to their memories of 2010. The insight I see again and again about Romney from this group is that his personality is immaterial.

A round here, people see Obama as someone choking off jobs and Romney as the onewho will get industry going again. That plays pretty well if you're trying to feed a family.

Relapse wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
Blue collar conservatives have never warmed up to Romney, and this isn't going to motivate them to actually vote.

I dunno, Romney did a good job serving up apple pie at the convention. I think lower middle-class Republicans correctly perceive themselves as the most vulnerable in relation to this election. One way or another, they are going to be the least satisfied group by late 2014 so Romney effectively plays to their memories of 2010. The insight I see again and again about Romney from this group is that his personality is immaterial.

A round here, people see Obama as someone choking off jobs and Romney as the onewho will get industry going again. That plays pretty well if you're trying to feed a family.

Historically, economically depressed regions tend to vote counter to the sitting president since it's easy to pander to them with promises of reform that are rarely realistic. There's little precedent for a sitting president to survive into a second term during a recession or economic stagnation. It's happened, but it runs counter to typical election conventions. That Romney hasn't already been coronated says something about the strength of his candidacy and just how weak the republican platform is, even now.

The most annoying thing about Romney's comment is how terrible his understanding of politics is.

While 47% percent of the population may vote Democrat, and while 47% of the population may not earn enough money to pay income tax, they're not the same people. Plenty of struggling people vote Republican, for all sorts of reasons. And plenty of affluent people vote Democrat, for all sorts of reasons.

More than anything else, Romney's speach just strikes me a basically lazy. It's the product of a rich guy with a focus on free enterprise, who can't be bothered to figure out that's not everybody else's priority. Which explains, in part, why his politics are so limited, and so unappealling to the USA at large.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Which considering how little I make, and that I pay income taxes, is pretty goddamn pathetic/scary.

Well, it isn't that they pay no income tax. The first dollar you earn you're paying 10%. It's that for 47% of Americans the amount they pay in tax is less than the tax credits available to them, most commonly due to the Earned Income Tax Credit.


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 Frazzled wrote:
He's right. Half the US doesn't pay income taxes. We've become like Europe, expecting someone else to help us, to pay for it, to tell us what to do. Just look at the threads on this section. Everyone's whining about how someone else is evil for the decisions they made, and they should get "help."

Only 54% of Americans think the government is doing too much. A full 67% of the party of "help me, tell me what to do" believes government should do more. The party of Kennedy is dead.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/157481/majority-say-government-doing.aspx

Oh look, it's rhetoric that's even more superficial than Romney's.


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 Frazzled wrote:
Greece. Spain. Italy. France.

And now you're claiming the problem in Spain is due to welfare, and not due to a property bubble coupled with poor financial sector practice.

And that Greece's government debt problem is due to welfare, and not due to outrageous levels of corruption at the highest levels of the public and private sectors that had been in existance since before Greece restored democracy.

At some point you just have to realise that you don't get to just make up the world you want to live in, you actually have to spend some time learning about what is actually going on in the world.


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 Frazzled wrote:
He's not. He works for the NYT.

That's hopelessly simplistic.

So, when Brooks worked for the National Review was he a liberal then? What about when he argued for the invasion of Iraq?


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 labmouse42 wrote:
After Obama oversaw the killing of Osama Bin Laden, I think that solid republican candidates like Chris Christie or Mike Huckabee decided not to run this time because they knew if they were nominated they would have to run against the president who oversaw the killing of America's biggest enemy for a generation.

You build a serious tilt at the Presidency about four years out, pretty much as soon as the last election is over. Serious candidates saw Obama's winning margin and the general mood of the election, and figured they'd wait out a cycle. The only ones left were the crazies (Gingrich, Cain) and guys running out of time (Romney, who is only a few years younger than McCain, and was unwilling to wait eight years to have his chance at the presidency).

Turns out the GFC has lasted way longer than anyone realised it would, and the GOP managed to rebuild its base through the Tea Party and healthcare protests. Obama was actually pretty vulnerable as a result, but no strong candidate had lined up.

Instead you've got Romney.


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 Ahtman wrote:
Or if you are so far right that anyone left of you is considered liberal, regardless of whether they are actually right of center or not.

We're actually at a point where a guy can call himself a conservative, state he became a conservative by being out-debated by other conservatives, and meet and work with other conservatives as part of the conservative establishment... and people like Fraz will still declare they're not conservative for no sensible reason.

We're post-reality now, people. We're actually at the place where Fraz looks reality square in the eye and says 'feth you, I prefer my own personal fantasy'


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 Manchu wrote:
Anyway, back on topic, people are kidding themselves if they think this will actually hurt Mitt Romney. Those remarks are a frank statement of what his whole campaign is about -- no surprise here, folks.

The insight, to me, is not that that is what Romney really thinks - as you said that's been more or less the core of his campaign. The insight is how shoddy his political thinking is, as if he actually believes it's the bottom 47% against the top 47%.


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TheHammer wrote:
Yes, but the entire election is hinging on the 5-7% of stupid people who could go either way, and those people usually hate this type of overt class warfare.

It doesn't put any states in play, but it definitely cements President Obama's lead and will likely hurt Romney with the awful and stupid undecideds, and those are literally the only people who matter.

The undecideds don't matter. They make up about 4% of the electorate, and most of them don't vote anyway. You could all of them and it won't matter one bit if participation among your core voting blocs doesn't show up on election day.

What the campaign is really all about is energising your base. If this makes any difference at all, it'll be in convincing some left leaning people, particularly among groups who have poor participation rates like college kids, that Romney is some kind of Bond villain and they have to vote against him.


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 Easy E wrote:
I saw some compleling evidence that the % of "true" swing voters is so miniscule that it is almost pointless. That is not where elections are won and lost.

We saw in 2010 the "real" election process. Demotivate your opponents base, and whip up yours. Swing voters play little part in the decision so don't matter. Instead, you try to convince others that their vote is useless. That both parties represent the same thing, so don't go vote, the government is in gridlock, nothing will change, etc. Then, you tell your specific voting blocks exactly what they want to hear to get them to the polls about abortion, guns, and gays.

Therefore, moderation is for chumps!

Well said. I've been trying to make this point on Dakka for a long time now, and you said it perfectly.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
Indeed, a Free market works when businesses are trying to make it a controlled monopoly, but are prevented from doing so by their competitors and market forces.

Yep, and when that happens you get something close to the perfect market. The problem is that the perfect market is a point in time, and unless the market expands as fast as a capital grows, you get crowding out and an inevitable move to oligopoly/monopoly.

At which point you either need to regulate the industry, or accept reduced competition. Neither position is ideal, but in different markets each may be preferable to the other.


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TheHammer wrote:
Good catch!

But, I think you get my point: Businesses exist to create profit, and will do anything and everything they can do to make that profit. If it means poisoning drinking water or corrupting officials, they will do it. And if business A won't, business B will.

Sure, which is why we create systems, or at least try to create systems, in which the profit incentive of the company broadly lines up with the overall interests of society.

The point is in realising that aligning business interests with society is a complex thing, that requires not so much lots of regulation, but the right pieces of legislation.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
Regulations need to be cheaper to comply with then just paying the fine.

Couldn't the fine also be greater?!


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 AustonT wrote:
The fact you are willing to try to use soldiers, clearly the most visible of the 1%, says a lot about you and the character of your discourse.

Um, soldiers aren't part of the 1%.


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Relapse wrote:
A round here, people see Obama as someone choking off jobs and Romney as the onewho will get industry going again. That plays pretty well if you're trying to feed a family.

And could a single one of them outline the actual policies Romney plans to use to revitalise industry?

Or is it pretty much just a gut level kind of thing?

 sebster wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Regulations need to be cheaper to comply with then just paying the fine.

Couldn't the fine also be greater?

It could, but it is far easier politically to make something easier then it is to make something more punishing.

Politicians will get almost no flak for making it easier to be good on the environment compared to increasing fines.

Tax breaks for eco-friendly waste processing along with maybe some softening of other regulations will make businesses more likely to follow regulations then increasing the fine.

It would be political suicide to do something as drastic as doubling fines. And even if you did, fines are currently so absurdly low that businesses would still just as soon keep paying the fines.

You would have to take fines up by the power of 10 or more to make corporations even begin to think about going through the "proper" channels. An increase like that doesn't have a snowballs chance in Hell.

 Grey Templar wrote:
It could, but it is far easier politically to make something easier then it is to make something more punishing.

Politicians will get almost no flak for making it easier to be good on the environment compared to increasing fines.

Tax breaks for eco-friendly waste processing along with maybe some softening of other regulations will make businesses more likely to follow regulations then increasing the fine.

It would be political suicide to do something as drastic as doubling fines. And even if you did, fines are currently so absurdly low that businesses would still just as soon keep paying the fines.

You would have to take fines up by the power of 10 or more to make corporations even begin to think about going through the "proper" channels. An increase like that doesn't have a snowballs chance in Hell.

Or you could just drop the 1950s style fine system and move to penalties based on the harm caused and the cost of clean up.

And yeah, direct subsidy for more environmental behaviour is solid policy. Hey, you can even build a model that places a tariff on undesirable behaviour, and uses that money to fund desirable behaviour


Oh, and I think 'its far easier politically to make something easier than it is to make it more punishing' is about the most succinct explanation of the US deficit problem I've heard

hahaha Bill Kristol and Peggy Noonan jumping ship now too. Hiiilarious. I think the grand strategy of the more intelligent, educated Republicans is working out. This thinking was this: the Republican party needs an enema to free itself from the Tea Party red-necks. The best way to achieve this purge is to give these jackasses free reign--enter Paul Ryan. After Obama cruises to victory the Republican primary system can rid itslef of Tea-Baggers who are unelectable nationally. Even the dimmest right-winger will be able to grasp this. The focus can then return to 2016 with a bump in the mid-term elections and the 'regular' Republican makes a return.

That didn't work with Palin in 2008 though..

 d-usa wrote:
That didn't work with Palin in 2008 though..

I would argue that it's with Palin that the trouble started. Her participation marks the beginning of the Tea-Bagging of the Republican Party. The Romney-Ryan debacle marks the end of it--at least that is the hope of the traditional Republicans.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/romney-repulsed-by-everyone-under-six-foot-2012091941507?utm_campaign=19092012&utm_source=emailCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=

Well, the Mitt has truly hit the fan. As far as I'm concerned, Mitt will only see 1600 Pennsylvania as a tourist. He looks awkward, he doesn't look confident, and he sure as hell doesn't look presidential.
He screwed up in London with the Olympics, and with the not so secret meeting with MI6
The guy just can't keep his mouth shut and now he's put another nail in his coffin.

It was mentioned earlier that it's hard to beat an incumbent but looking back at the Reagan in '79 campaign or the Clinton in '91 campaign, these guys looked the part. Their policies may have been bull, but they talked like winners and they looked like winners. Romney looks clumsy in comparison.
Obama is there for the taking, and any half decent Republican (are there any) would have been a shoe-in.