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Bob, Kodak and the steel industries paid a price for their complacency. What is the price government agencies pay for complacency? Why are the bridges and roads (the all-improtant infrastructure) in this nation so poorly maintained? The government solution is not to replace ineffective management and labor policies, but to give agencies that have proven themselves ineffective more funding.
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I know several people who voted for Bush a second time because they thought he should be given the opportunity to fix or finish what he started. Rewarding incompetence with a second or third chance in business is rarely tolerated but does happen much to the dismay of clients paying by the hour. http://www.cusdi.org/reelection.htm Quote:
Figure 2. Proportion of House Incumbents Reelected by Region and Decade http://www.emergingdemocraticmajorityweblog.com/spsa/spsa.html http://www.emergingdemocraticmajorit...s/image004.gif |
As if Kerry was an alternative?
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kach, much of the problem with government is illustrated by the Kerry/Bush comparison. What is presented for the populace to vote on is an offering of very little choice. Liberals were quick to blame Bush for the disasterous response after Katrina, but few were ready to place the blame on a bloated FEMA, likewise conservatives immediately pointed their fingers at liberal links in the chain. Choose your poison Bush or Nagin either way tons of cash was wasted and lots of people in need were not helped. When private industry performs like that, they are replaced, when government performs like that they get a bigger budget.
A new governor does not bring a new DOT with them, they simply influence the flow of money to the agency. What do you think the budget would look like if the population got an opportunity to vote on each line item? |
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Not true at the local level and not always true at the state level. In the Northeast (the Rust Belt if you prefe) have shrinking tax bases due to the loss of industry and population, but still have the same number of structures, roads and bridges to maintain. One could say that the need for certain services would be reduced, such as Police and refuse collection, but the need for fire protection stays basicaly the same and because of the vacant buildings can actually increase. The roadways need constant repair as do water systems. So....Where does the money come from to provide the services that will at least keep the infrastructure from deteriorating ever further. As far as complacency in Government, you have a valid point. It should be obvious, but the further removed govenment is from those it is presumed to serve, the more complacent it is. Hence, local government is far more responsive than the state, and the state is more responsive than the feds. I am fairly confident that the average citizen feels there is nothing he or she can do to change things in Washington. If this is the case, what would we expect from those in the Capitol other than complacency? We are well on our way to the disassembly of the Country as we know it. It may take a few more decades, but it will happen. What will replace it I do not even want to contemplate, but I would not rule out a dictatorship of some kind. |
I pay 40% in income taxes..
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Do you guys have deductions and that is your base rate or is it "how much did you make? Send in 40%.."
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Basically the latter I am afraid. It is a fairly complex system of course (must be to fool us paying those rates), but at my income level about 40% has been deducted from my paycheck already when I get it in my hand.
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I wish you guys would stop arguing about politics.
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That is totally wrong. You don't know what the Census Bureau does.
In a nutshell, the Census Bureau has the ongoing - not every 10 years - job of collecting an enormous amount of data about the US economy and population, which is used by everyone - government, industry, investors - who needs to understand what is going on with our economy. Almost all of the economic and demographic data that you hear about - construction spending, new home sales, monthly retail sales, durable goods orders, household income, trade balance - and thousands of data series you've never heard of, are collected by the Census Bureau, sometimes in cooperation with the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Together they are the Economics and Statistics Administration, which is part of the Dept of Commerce. Thanks to the ESA, we in the USA have more timely, detailed, and accurate information about our economy and population than any other country in the world. If you think of us - primarily our government but also private industry, capital markets, and individual consumers - as collectively piloting an huge airplane called the U S of A, the ESA is like our instruments. The cost of the instruments is well worth it compared to the value of the airplane and the need for accurate data. Compare to countries like China, where no-one really knows what the economy is doing or the condition of the population, because accurate data is, for the most part, not available. It is very interesting to spend some time with the ESA's data, available at www.census.gov and www.bea.gov, or more conveniently by checking out a copy of the Statistical Abstract Of the United States at your local library. Quote:
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You are crazy.
Go look up the budgets for the County of LA, State of Calif, and US of A. Take 10% of those numbers. See what you can pay for. County of LA: 10% of the 2007/2008 budget will basically get you the Sheriff's Dept. Nothing else. NO hospitals, no other health care, no courts, no prosecutors, no prisons, no parks, no nothing. Including, by the way, no infrastructure, so no roads and so on. Or, you can choose to have roads, but no law enforcement and nothing else either. And so on. State of Calif: 10% of the budget will basically get you about 1/3 of the current K-12 schools. Nothing else. NO roads or other infrastructure, no hospitals, no health care, no higher education, no prisons, no OSHA, no court system, no nothing. Get the idea? I'll let you look up the federal budget and figure it out for yourself. Hint - 10% of the budget won't even get you a military able to defend the country. So, after you have examined these budgets and thought about your statement, come back and figure out how you would like to live in a USA where government spending/services are cut to 10% of today's level. In such a USA, your profession would not be viable, your cars couldn't be driven, and you'd be huddling in your bedroom clutching your shotgun. Quote:
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Some small percentage of the press releases the Census Bureau puts out may be pointless.
That's a long way from saying the Bureau only has a job to do every 10 years. Or needs funding only for two years very eight years. Which you did say. |
Well, the original intent was for them to take a census every ten yrs. by actual enumeration. Sounds pretty simple, eh? I don't recall it being about counting people by race or ethnicity or indoor plumbing or household income or.....or....coming up with new things to count and publicize so as to keep the doors open between censuses. That what bureacracies do - find new ways to grow and justify their existance and increasing budgets. Name some federal programs that went away once their original mission had been completed. Reagan once said, "The closest thing on Earth to life everlasting is a government program." Truer words were never spoken.
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Whoa, we've veered off course! Granholm was interviewed this morning by Frank Beckman on WJR. It was taped. Afterwards, Granholm had 2nd thoughts and had her press secretary call WJR demanding that the interview not be aired - "it would damage the Governor's integrity". So Beckman agreed. After several irate listeners called in accusing Frank of 'being afraid to hit a girl' :D, he played the interview which included a clip from the campaign trail last fall when she promised to not raise the income tax or implement a service tax. She said she misunderstood the question .... :rolleyes:
No matter. What was amazing was she insisted that the new taxes were fair because the pain was shared by the "working man" and business :eek: Is she really as clueless as the 'working men' she represents or is she so engrossed in the rhetoric that she doesn't think about what she's saying? When Frank pointed out that businesses don't pay taxes, they simply pass them along in higher prices, she said 'well, some business might do that, but not all'. WTF?????? Then she went on to blame everything on the Engler admin from 7 years ago. Unbelievable. |
I suppose we shouldn't know about the US trade balance, retail sales, durable goods orders, inflation, and thousands of other important data series either, because no-one had heard of these concepts in 1789. Or maybe we should only get a glimpse of the state of the economy and country every 10 years, and fly blind the rest of the time.
And I suppose we shouldn't have a Federal Reserve, Treasury Dept, Federal Bureau Of Investigation, Federal Communications Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission, Department of Justice, US Air Force, NASA, Center For Disease Control, Department Of Transportation, and any number of other government functions, because no-one had heard of such things in 1789. Hey, let's strip the US government down to just what existed in 1789. Volunteers can go live in that alternate USA for awhile, and report back to us how they like it. Meanwhile, I'll stay in reality. And reality is that the world in 2007 is thousands of times more complex than the American colonies were in 1789, and that government, like everything else, has to adapt to the time. |
And then there's the deceptive nature of the legislation itself. The only service businesses called out by name were similar to those I listed earlier - baby shoe bronzing, dating services, palm reading and the like. That was done deceptively, deliberately and for the specific goal of fooling the public. Most people look at the list and think, 'I don't use any of those services so this isn't that big a deal.' But the businesses that will bear the brunt of the tax were simply lumped together as 'consultants', 'design services', etc. with no specificity. It's all a F'king ruse by our elected officials. In the interview, Granholm openly admitted without shame that this legislation was shaped by the lobbyists.
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