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Right, any other view is "rotten eggs"
Yup, no need to say more about your repubs way of doing things...
Wow man, you guys are so far gone...
Well good luck selling each other your one-sided view points and finagling until they sound right...
Yeah and if they don't work out, you could always blame Obama.
Good luck with your mess, and buddy we share one thing, exasperation!!!
Blah blah blah, try thinking outside the repub box for a change dude...
The problems faced by America, and by extensions other countries as well, are more important then yourself political desires or wants...
Again, it is not difficult, start by reading something from an unbiased source...
"At some point, some of us will awaken to the fact that many of our social ills — including the American economy’s stubborn refusal to recover — can be traced back to a 30-year stagnation in middle-class incomes. The economy, stock market and executive pay have all increased by several multiples in that time. But between 1976 and 2009, median income for Canadians rose just 5.5 per cent."
Not talking reagn, clinton blah blah. Talking the current President and the baboon who preceded him...
The public is not very appreciative to the repuds playing politics at this time.
Although necessary though, as the tea party must be brought out into the open and held to account for the damage they are causing...
So all is good at the end...
Whatever Bruce, you are a lawyer and by training a professional person of argument, I am not, I am simple...
You can disguise the truth only for so long Bruce, sorry...you can not continue to defend the unfair advantage of the wealthy class, as yourself, and not have people see through your arguments anymore...
Sorry guy, you seem like a nice man and a great dad, but on this we are on absolute different sides...
"At some point, some of us will awaken to the fact that many of our social ills — including the American economy’s stubborn refusal to recover — can be traced back to a 30-year stagnation in middle-class incomes. The economy, stock market and executive pay have all increased by several multiples in that time. But between 1976 and 2009, median income for Canadians rose just 5.5 per cent."
Some say the law now has no semblance of justice anymore. Might be because of all the arguing eh..?
Same is now happening to your economy and political system, yet you continue to play games,
and continue to try and sell the same thing to those who are already sold...like two salesmen at a party selling each other the same product, without having an open, UNPOLITICAL discussion.
Well, looks like Obama is increasing his chances of a second term with all of this...
Truth always surfaces, no matter how forceful the opposition is...
"At some point, some of us will awaken to the fact that many of our social ills — including the American economy’s stubborn refusal to recover — can be traced back to a 30-year stagnation in middle-class incomes. The economy, stock market and executive pay have all increased by several multiples in that time. But between 1976 and 2009, median income for Canadians rose just 5.5 per cent."
It really isn't rocket science...
Widening income gap hurts us all
I may live to see an uprising over the widening gap between rich and poor in North America. After all, that’s the cause of the regime change this year in North Africa and the Middle East.
Westerners have no less acute a sense of fairness than Tunisians and Egyptians. A few of us don’t get the $9.7 million (Canadian) severance payoff for top managers at Rupert Murdoch’s late, scandal-ridden News of the World. And in particular the $3.9 million golden parachute for Rebekah Brooks, who oversaw that paper’s regime of spying and police bribery, and was arrested this week over those alleged improprieties.
Meanwhile, the 200 or so front line NOTW employees laid off with the paper’s closure will be fortunate to collect on their pensions. Their fate is akin to the 1,200 employees of call-centre operator IQT Solutions in Oshawa and Quebec abruptly laid off this week. Declaring their firm bankrupt, the IQT owners hightailed it to parts unknown without giving the affected workers proper notice, their last paycheques, or accumulated vacation and severance pay.
That’s how it goes for the little people. But you have to wonder how much longer the cancer of excessive CEO pay will remain socially sustainable.
At some point, some of us will awaken to the fact that many of our social ills — including the American economy’s stubborn refusal to recover — can be traced back to a 30-year stagnation in middle-class incomes. The economy, stock market and executive pay have all increased by several multiples in that time. But between 1976 and 2009, median income for Canadians rose just 5.5 per cent.
Median pay for Standard & Poor’s 500 CEOs jumped 35 per cent last year alone, to $8.4 million (U.S.) The economy, inflation, the stock market, and dividend payouts to pension funds and other institutional investors did not increase that much. Nor, between 2009 and 2010, did CEOs become 35 per cent smarter or harder-working.
Pay for the average U.S. worker actually fell last year, after inflation. Not accounting for inflation, it rose a meagre 0.5 per cent. Americans are bracing for a forecast additional six million home foreclosures, having suffered the loss of about two million homes already since the Great Recession began in 2007.
The household debt of Canadians now surpasses that of the U.S., where consumer indebtedness remains at levels too high to allow for the usual consumer-led recovery that follows recessions.
No, we didn’t entirely lose our sense of prudence. As tuition, housing, gasoline, food and other costs rose over the past three decades while middle-class incomes stagnated, Canada and the U.S. first became nations of two-income earners. And when that didn’t suffice, we began borrowing for essentials.
“We are feeling the deferred pain of 25 years of excess, as people try to rebuild their depleted savings,” is New York Times economics editor David Leonhardt’s explanation for the current consumer strike.
But that’s not the whole story. Many of us did not engage in “excess,” yet are struggling to make ends meet. The real story is where did all the money go that has been generated by a North American economy that has greatly expanded since 1980?
And the answer is to be found in decades of outsourcing, offshoring, declining union membership and bargaining power, and productivity gains that have enabled employers to generate ever more revenue with steadily fewer employees.
What grates in this transformation is the sense of entitlement among the sole, conspicuous CEO beneficiaries of our New-and-Not-Improved-Economy.
In the erosion of the “social contract” between capital and labour dating from the end of World War II, we are not suffering equally. Indeed, we now reward failure in high places.
The shares of General Electric Co. have plunged in value by 60.8 per cent during the tenure of CEO Jeffrey Immelt, who was rewarded for this performance with $37.2 million in free stock in 2010. Shares in Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drugmaker, have dropped in value by 48.1 per cent over the past decade. Yet CEO Jeffrey Kinder retired in December clutching a $34.4-million severance package.
Rex Tillerson was paid $88 million in 2010, a year in which shares of his company, ExxonMobil Corp., generated a 5.8 per cent negative return. Shares of banking giant J.P. MorganChase & Co. inched up in value by 3.5 per cent last year, good enough for a 1,474 per cent hike in CEO Jamie Dimon’s pay, to $20.8 million.
For the approximately 17 million North Americans who are unemployed, the economy has not recovered. But use of corporate jets has picked up, by 6.2 per cent. And 24,666 of last year’s flights were to West Palm Beach, Nantucket and the Hamptons, not known as hives of business activity.
We need to have an adult conversation about income distribution before we’re forced into an unruly one. For now, the occupant of the corner office isn’t ready. Asked about Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s role in helping put the match to the Great Recession, CEO Lloyd Blankfein snapped that he is “doing God’s work.”
Jamie Dimon regards his bank’s eviction notices as an act of altruism. “Giving debt relief to people that really need it, that’s what foreclosure is.” And Stephen Schwarzman, chairman and co-founder of private-equity giant Blackstone Group, who has a net worth of $8 billion, balked over a rumoured Obama administration increase in taxes on private equity firms from a loophole-engineered 15 per cent to the traditional 35 per cent. “It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland,” Schwarzman said of the barbarian at his gate.
Decrying “short-termism” as central to the U.S. economic malaise, Sheila Bair, outgoing head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), noted the failure to accept responsibility among directors and management of failed banks, who had neglected their fiduciary duties. “The rationales the executives come up with to try to escape accountability for their actions never cease to amaze me,” Bair wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed. “They blame the failure of their institutions on market forces, on ‘deadbeat borrowers,’ on regulators, on space aliens. They will reach for any excuse to avoid responsibility.”
A dialogue of the deaf would be one thing, but we’re not even talking about our greatest social ill, the maldistribution of income in North America.
Well short of a revolution, this dangerous imbalance could easily be corrected simply by restoring the system of progressive taxation to where it was in the booming 1950s and 1960s. That’s when leadership meant responsibility, not a hurried grasp for the brass ring, with the little guy paying for the consequences. That, history teaches us, is a lousy business plan.
Venom, dysfunction and paralysis
NEW YORK
In the standoff over the U.S. debt crisis, it’s easy to point fingers at the Tea Party. Even conservative commentators have argued that its uncompromising ideology is at the heart of the problem. But there have often been strong ideological movements in American politics, represented by politicians such as William Jennings Bryan, Barry Goldwater and George McGovern. Yet between elections, people still found ways to compromise and govern. What has steadily changed over the past three or four decades is not so much the ideological intensity (though it has grown) but the structure of politics, making it more beholden to narrow, specialized interests — including ideological ones — rather than broader national ones.
There was no golden age in Washington when people were more high-minded than they are today. But 40 years ago, the rules and organizing framework of politics made it easier for the two parties to work together. Since then, a series of changes has led to the narrowcasting of American politics. Redistricting has created safe seats so that, for most House members, their only concern is a challenge from the right (for Republicans) and the left (for Democrats).
Party primaries have been taken over by small groups of activists who push even popular senators to extreme positions. In Utah, 3,500 conservative activists managed to take the well-regarded Republican Sen. Robert Bennett off the ballot. GOP senators such as Orrin Hatch and John McCain have moved farther to the right, hoping to stave off similar assaults.
Changes in congressional rules have also made it far more difficult to enact large, compromise legislation. In the wake of Watergate, “sunshine rules” were put in place that required open committee meetings and recorded votes. The purpose was to make Congress more open and responsive, and so it has become — to lobbyists, money and special interests.
The political scientist James Thurber recalled watching lobbyists with their cellphones at a congressional hearing on the 1986 tax reforms. “They started dialling the instant anyone in that room even thought about changing a tax break. Their calls . . . brought a deluge of protest borne by phone, letter, or fax. There is no buffer allowing representatives to think about what’s going on. In the old days you had a few months or weeks, at least a few days. Now you may have a few seconds before the wave hits.” To pass that landmark legislation, eliminating hundreds of tax deductions and loopholes, Dan Rostenkowski, then chairman of the House ways and means committee, had to insist on a return to closed hearings during the bill’s markup.
Polarization has been fuelled by a new media, which have also been narrowcast. Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, told The Wall Street Journal that he might further the conservative agenda through an occasional compromise. That provoked a tirade from Rush Limbaugh, which then produced a torrent of angry emails and phone calls to Issa’s office. Issa quickly and publicly apologized to Limbaugh and promised only opposition to President Barack Obama. Multiply that example a thousandfold, and you have the daily dynamic of Congress.
It’s depressing — but the fact that our politics is the result of structural shifts means that it can be changed. Mickey Edwards, a Republican and a former House member from Oklahoma, has a highly intelligent essay in Atlantic magazine, suggesting a series of reforms that could make a difference. Some of them are large-scale, such as creating truly open primaries and giving the power of redistricting to independent commissions. Others are seemingly small but crucial changes in congressional procedure and practice, for example, filling committee vacancies by lot and staffing committees with professionals instead of political apparatchiks.
Some political scientists long hoped that American parties would become more ideologically pure and coherent, like European parties. They have gotten their wish, and the result is abysmal — and predictable. America does not have a parliamentary system in which one party takes control of all levers of power — executive and legislative — enacts its agenda and then goes back to the voters. Power in the United States is shared by a set of institutions with overlapping authorities. The parties have to cooperate for anything to get done. That’s why the Founding Fathers despised political parties — Tea Party please note — and barely tolerated even the looser notion of “factions.”
Edwards’ proposed reforms are smart. There are others to consider as well. What’s most important is to recognize that we can change the incentives that produce demonstrably bad government in Washington. We are not condemned to have a political system whose chief characteristics are venom, dysfunction and paralysis.
Fareed Zakaria is editor-at-large of Time magazine and a Washington Post columnist. comments@fareedzakaria.com.
"slanting of the truth"
You're surprised by it Tex?
really?
Isn't most things American now treated the same way...
Have you noticed even your OWN viewpoints have a "slanting of the truth"
Why do you expect difference from others, that you are not willing to give yourself?
Oh right, that too is the new American way...
It always comes back around, don't it..?
How could you possibly know???
Bush W, yeah, he inherited a great economy. Everything was better before Bushy touches it.
He will go down as the Dumbest President ever, face it.
Obama, inherited a condition that was almost a great depression. His intellect when compared to George is not even in the same range.
You have no clue on how well Obama would have done, if he didn't follow an idiot.
You have no idea on how bad it would have been if McCain got elected. Can you imagine McCain handling what Obama did in his first 100 days...
If repuds won, we would be in a depression right now.
Get real please...
Jim, try reading something that does not come from, or is sponsored by the Fox propaganda department.
Again, the right winged conjob being sold is only being heard by your own believers. You arelike two salesmen, each trying to sepl the other one.
Lets see, will the American electorate apprecíate these repub games?
Oh and Jim, maybe start easy when you read content that is not on the approved Fox list. Start with a search of income tax on Wiki, and notice the tax rates on thewealtier Americans back then, you may recall, when America was the worl leader.
Sell the others of the same view, yeah that will work, while china just eats up your country.
Brilliant!!!
Lol
Yeah except there was a near financial depression that the incopetance and dim-wittedness from George W.
Truth will always come out, do a simple wiki search on income taxes and see when the wealthy paid their share, usa led the world.
People try and finagle the facts, but the us public is not buying it anymore, sorry.
This will not do the hi-jacked Right. Sorry, nice try playing politics...
ROFL, it's true eh...
So Stock, are you going Igloo hopping this summer, during skiing...lol
Yup a barren white waste land all year long with loyalists sipping Tea and playing Curling in July...lol
LOL, you never miss a chance eh...
We're not British Dude. My family goes back to the 1840's here.
Most are coffee drinkers (as you know)...
I swear the politics of the day have made spinning/finagling/lying the new national past-time...
How can he still get away with his BS, it's unreal...
Wow, I thought Tom was a straight up guy...
What is happening with the Swap, is there anything happening in that direction???
Does anyone know anything more on that. Have not had an email from the group for awhile...
I know I heard, it is great news...
When the USA works together it has an unstoppable force that sets it apart in the world and through history.
It is a large care to wear, the economic responsibility and a light for good in the world, but it is yours at this time in history.
When all is said and done the USA does a pretty good job.
Of course this is done SOLELY because Canada gives you the best advice...lol
j/k nice to see, as many stand or fall with you guys...
With this your economy should continue on a road to recovery. In 2012 I think the American economy will be the one to watch, IMO...
Hey if my kid couldn't kick my butt, I would kick his until he toughened up and showed some spine...lol
No way man, they'd kick my a$$$...
Agree 100% dude...
I don't no where you get your figures dude, and for research start by looking outside of the approved Fox TV list...
Canada is working towards a combine federal and provincial tax rate of 25%... so where you got 16%, I don't know. maybe you are referencing the federal portion only. There is a Provincial portion added to that. Same as our federal debt, everyone thinks it's so good, it is not when you add in provincial debt, we are almost at your levels.
The concentration of wealth at the top is the highest it has been in 40 years. PERIOD
We have a huge deficit. PERIOD
Raise taxes to alter the concentration of wealth at the top. PERIOD
It is extremely dangerous for a society to have such a large concentration of wealth held by so few PERIOD.
Spin any which way you like, The public is waking up to the simple facts I have listed above and this time, you can be as loud as you like, I'm afraid the majority is no longer buying it...
The population of the country one lives in has little bearing in this context. I live in a metro area of more then 5 Million people, larger than most US metro areas...
Yeah it's nuts, my kid had to stop rugby cause some kid broke his collar bone when he was in high school...
Sheet happens, boys break bones playing rough, and that's the way they like it, otherwise wouldn't be as fun...
and bones heal, wimps don't!!!
Not too many people are advocating no cuts, just a balanced approach and a reducing of the concentration of wealth at the top percentile...
Enough corporate and hedge fund welfare...
Seems like the group of 6 or whatever they are called are working toward that end and making some progress thankfully
Woops... Sorry for my big mouth then Tex...thought you guys were on the headline of the day...
About the one book thing, that would be a hard sell and would exclude people of other beliefs...
ya know, that freedom of worship thing in the constitution...lol
28 Million volume already...
smoke and mirrors or what eh...
How did you get a picture of my mother-in-law...
Are you relating to Murdoch Dude...
Taping into my family photos are ya...lol
I'll keep my eyes open for ya...lol
Free loading homo sapiens, lol, that's a new one...
Hey, don't call me a homo...lol
Although it may be comforting to some, the world will not go backwards Tex. The good ol'days are gone and will not return in the same way they were.
Many thought the advent of the microwave was a bad thing. That the Fax would change the world.
Many hated the production lines brought in by Ford, instead of life on the farm, history has many examples...
Many are comfortable with what they took security in when they were young. But the world will never go back to those days as they were. No matter how comforting they are to some, IMO.
I think the problem referred in Texas schools was directed to the suspended and expulsion rates, and the differences between some of the kids.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/60-percent-texans-suspended-high-school-graduation-140117066.html
LOL, Yes, and all of our Sasquatches have full medical...lol
ROFL, maybe the sasq has the munchies too dude...LOL
Stock, better grab the bong Dude, another post...lol (that was funny man)
By the way, I would like to add that my conservative views include caning for the real problems of criminality.
Not for economic mis-direction of kids, addiction or soft drug use, but for other hard crimes, yup a good smack on the tush is what is needed sometimes.
My friend from Singapore tells me they have a very low repeat offender rate over there, and it is because of the cane.
Some sentences can be for 10-12 canes. After 3 or 4 most will pass out. If they are healthy, they are revived and hit again until they pass out again. If they do not finish their full sentence the first time, they are brought back until it is finished.
On interviews of hard criminals over there, they have been asked why they do not re-offend, and they have all said it was that they did not want to ever be caned again.
Rehabilitate the ones that can be. Offer sustenance to those who have not enough, and punish hard the ones that are truly bad.
ROFLMAO...
That was friggen funny man LOL
Good one dude, Sheet I'm still laughing as I type this lol
Okay Anvil, I truly hope this is not one of those fascist tests, that if you don't have the exact views I do, or the fringe party does, then you can't be a conservative. Because that is a big part of the problem right now, as I see it.
Anvil, out of all the nations on this earth, in all of recorded history of all nations and man, the United States of America has more of it's citizens incarcerated than any other nation has ever had in the history of the world, with the exception perhaps of Nazi Germany.
The US is almost at 1% of it's population behind bars!
If this does not scream out at you as being some sort of problem, I truly do not know what will make you see.
The prison, or prisoner problem of the USA is an economic one. Those at the bottom are given so little opportunity to provide for the necessities of life that the criminal element and drugs takes over, family life is torn apart or gradually eroded by the unbalanced struggle - a common expression I hear up here constantly is "Americans eat their own".
I mean just your "War on Drugs" stuff is absolutely foolish. How much evidence to you need before the stubbornness wears off?
Pot really? Illegal, really?
Okay, if all things are equal then, let's make alcohol illegal as it has a mountain of evidence that it is more harmful in all respects, than Pot. Why is it that the sentences for crack are different than for cocaine. Some have said that it is because crack is used by the poor and cocaine by the not-poor.
So to boil down your question and assertion "of my conservative views", yes I believe in correction, but I also have enough common sense to know that no matter how many times a human being is punished, if they are hungry, if they are addicted, your problem will not go away - no matter how hard you are.
I can be a conservative with a hardness, but I can also have common sense. The two do not have to be separate.
Think it is about time for some adult conversations on many things, instead of simpleton base logic, groupthink mob mentality, and those willing to sacrifice others for profit and advantage.
If this does not earn me the flag of being a conservative in your eyes, well that is probably a good thing.
Well put iwonder...
Yes I am a conservative and have read and "read between the lines" of what the Tea party is proposing and the people who believe in the Tea party.
I am Right but much more conciliatory, and believe we are great societies for our ability to compromise.
The media must be vetted as the Free Press is no longer free, but doing the bidding of what ever side that owns them.
Good post iwonder, I respect your view,
Cheers,
Over regulation, Hhmmm what about Penson, were they over regulated too LOL
What about the banks, were they over regulated.
What about the Hedge Funds, are they over regulated.
Start putting some of the guilty behind real bars, and maybe we get to a point iwonder was referring to again
Actually, ya know what, you are right.
It would be best for the Tea Party to take over the repubs, and then be out there for everyone to see...
Agreed, hope they go all out and totally take over the right.
"sometimes before something can be fixed, it must be totally broken first"
Let's hope so this can be eventually brought down to the will of the people.
As long as if the Right loses AGAIN, are you going to respect the will of the people this time. Even if you don't agree with it...
Really, like when your banks were not being watched...
Yeah that's worked out well for ya hasn't it...
Sounds nostalgic to me.
Hey Cat I respect your opinion.
Here even our Right newspaper considers them a fringe Party that does more damage then good.
Believe the World sees it the same. We shall see.
Most expect the Tea party will be no more than a memory very soon.
We shall see...
ROFLMAO
Man I am splitting a gut on that one Dude...
Thanks for that, I will be laughing all day at that one.
That is funny!
Gee, can't figure out why ya left her Bull
LMAO...
that was funny Bull,
Cool, thanks Stock...
My letter to my Mother-in-law, AKA Sasquatch
"We have moved, no forwarding address"
Lol