Tennessee getting ready to throw poor students under the bus.

[Salty]

WAAH, CRACKHEADS SLEEP IN THE GUTTERS I PAY FOR.
       /
 


'S funny, Corporations stealing billions of dollars from us every year frustrates me. Those same corporations supporting legislation that furthers their own interests and degrades human beings further frustrates me. But maybe if we make poor kids hungrier they'll finally pull them self out of those gutters.

An impetus for productivity, as though they didn't steal jobs from us as well, as though there were alternatives raining from the sky like mana from heaven.

Excuse me while I puke.

WAAAH, TEH CORPORASHUNS BE STEALIN' MAH SUCCESSESS!
             /
   



I have a feeling we're literally deadlocked in an argument that amounts to stopping an unstoppable force with an immovable object.

Um, yeah, except for the part where I'm referring to actual ethics and legal violations that corporations have been PROVED to have committed, while you are referring to the individuals who receive the bill.

By any measure of things, I could just as well twist around the fact that extracting that bill violates "actual ethics" in that it is theft.

Don't get me wrong, I hate corporate assholes too, but principally because barriers to entry make it such that I cannot compete with them...

[Cain]

I guess I'm just frustrated at seeing my cash:hours worked ratio DROP as I work longer hours due to taxation. It just kinda frustrates me. I guess I rationalise my hatred for welfare systems on the false assumption that "killing the worthless poor" would make my paycheck bigger.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html

The Fed didn't tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn't mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed's below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/secret-and-lies-of-the-bailout-20130104?page=2

Today, excess reserves at the Fed total an astonishing $1.4 trillion."The money is just doing nothing," says Nomi Prins, a former Goldman executive who has spent years monitoring the distribution of bailout money.

Nothing, that is, except earning a few crumbs of risk-free interest for the banks. Prins estimates that the annual haul in interest­ on Fed reserves is about $3.6 billion – a relatively tiny subsidy in the scheme of things, but one that, ironically, just about matches the total amount of bailout money spent on aid to homeowners. Put another way, banks are getting paid about as much every year for not lending money as 1 million Americans received for mortgage modifications and other housing aid in the whole of the past four years.

Banks could apply to the Fed and other regulators for waivers, which were often approved (one senior FDIC official tells me he recommended denying "golden parachute" payments to Citigroup officials, only to see them approved by superiors). They could get bailouts through programs other than TARP that did not place limits on bonuses. Or they could simply pay bonuses not prohibited under TARP. In one of the worst episodes, the notorious lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac paid out more than $200 million in bonuses­ between 2008 and 2010, even though the firms (a) lost more than $100 billion in 2008 alone, and (b) required nearly $400 billion in federal assistance during the bailout period.

Even worse was the incredible episode in which bailout recipient AIG paid more than $1 million each to 73 employees of AIG Financial Products, the tiny unit widely blamed for having destroyed the insurance giant (and perhaps even triggered the whole crisis) with its reckless issuance of nearly half a trillion dollars in toxic credit-default swaps. The "retention bonuses," paid after the bailout, went to 11 employees who no longer worked for AIG.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-real-housewives-of-wall-street-look-whos-cashing-in-on-the-bailout-20110411

But if you want to get a true sense of what the "shadow budget" is all about, all you have to do is look closely at the taxpayer money handed over to a single company that goes by a seemingly innocuous name: Waterfall TALF Opportunity. At first glance, Waterfall's haul doesn't seem all that huge — just nine loans totaling some $220 million, made through a Fed bailout program. That doesn't seem like a whole lot, considering that Goldman Sachs alone received roughly $800 billion in loans from the Fed. But upon closer inspection, Waterfall TALF Opportunity boasts a couple of interesting names among its chief investors: Christy Mack and Susan Karches.

Christy is the wife of John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley. Susan is the widow of Peter Karches, a close friend of the Macks who served as president of Morgan Stanley's investment-banking division. Neither woman appears to have any serious history in business, apart from a few philanthropic experiences. Yet the Federal Reserve handed them both low-interest loans of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars through a complicated bailout program that virtually guaranteed them millions in risk-free income.

[Salty]

I just can't stop laughing. I'm sitting in my car after grabbing bananas at the store and I can't go anywhere because I CANT STOP LAUGHING.

[Banned User 1]

Here's another way to look at it Von Switracht. 

Would you prefer that the people around you be hungry enough to potentially steal your food, uneducated enough that they don't have options aside from stealing your food, and unhealthy enough to give you diseases?  Or is it worth spending some of your income on taxes to address these problems?

This is good...I actually like this.

However, I will challenge it: if solving this problem means giving them food/health/etc anyway, what benefit does it provide over defending my stash of these things?

I see it as either I have the minor inconvenience of alleviating these people's ails, or the minor inconvenience of defending my property/white flighting my ass away from those who'd steal from me.

Seriously, though. I think your point will stick with me through the week and may even change my outlook on things if I consiter it long enough...Verily, I gave my rebut to your opinion only to further the topic and because as a human, I must maintain the appearance of being undeterred...

Still, I like this point, and It's something I will debate with myself through the week...thanks man!

[Cain]

I just can't stop laughing. I'm sitting in my car after grabbing bananas at the store and I can't go anywhere because I CANT STOP LAUGHING.

Heh, and posting the above has bought out the bots in force.  Again.  Hello dear readers.  Yes I'm keeping tabs on you keeping tabs on me keeping tabs on you.  It's all very meta, isn't it?

[Banned User 1]

I guess I'm just frustrated at seeing my cash:hours worked ratio DROP as I work longer hours due to taxation. It just kinda frustrates me. I guess I rationalise my hatred for welfare systems on the false assumption that "killing the worthless poor" would make my paycheck bigger.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html

The Fed didn't tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn't mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed's below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/secret-and-lies-of-the-bailout-20130104?page=2

Today, excess reserves at the Fed total an astonishing $1.4 trillion."The money is just doing nothing," says Nomi Prins, a former Goldman executive who has spent years monitoring the distribution of bailout money.

Nothing, that is, except earning a few crumbs of risk-free interest for the banks. Prins estimates that the annual haul in interest­ on Fed reserves is about $3.6 billion – a relatively tiny subsidy in the scheme of things, but one that, ironically, just about matches the total amount of bailout money spent on aid to homeowners. Put another way, banks are getting paid about as much every year for not lending money as 1 million Americans received for mortgage modifications and other housing aid in the whole of the past four years.

Banks could apply to the Fed and other regulators for waivers, which were often approved (one senior FDIC official tells me he recommended denying "golden parachute" payments to Citigroup officials, only to see them approved by superiors). They could get bailouts through programs other than TARP that did not place limits on bonuses. Or they could simply pay bonuses not prohibited under TARP. In one of the worst episodes, the notorious lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac paid out more than $200 million in bonuses­ between 2008 and 2010, even though the firms (a) lost more than $100 billion in 2008 alone, and (b) required nearly $400 billion in federal assistance during the bailout period.

Even worse was the incredible episode in which bailout recipient AIG paid more than $1 million each to 73 employees of AIG Financial Products, the tiny unit widely blamed for having destroyed the insurance giant (and perhaps even triggered the whole crisis) with its reckless issuance of nearly half a trillion dollars in toxic credit-default swaps. The "retention bonuses," paid after the bailout, went to 11 employees who no longer worked for AIG.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-real-housewives-of-wall-street-look-whos-cashing-in-on-the-bailout-20110411

But if you want to get a true sense of what the "shadow budget" is all about, all you have to do is look closely at the taxpayer money handed over to a single company that goes by a seemingly innocuous name: Waterfall TALF Opportunity. At first glance, Waterfall's haul doesn't seem all that huge — just nine loans totaling some $220 million, made through a Fed bailout program. That doesn't seem like a whole lot, considering that Goldman Sachs alone received roughly $800 billion in loans from the Fed. But upon closer inspection, Waterfall TALF Opportunity boasts a couple of interesting names among its chief investors: Christy Mack and Susan Karches.

Christy is the wife of John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley. Susan is the widow of Peter Karches, a close friend of the Macks who served as president of Morgan Stanley's investment-banking division. Neither woman appears to have any serious history in business, apart from a few philanthropic experiences. Yet the Federal Reserve handed them both low-interest loans of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars through a complicated bailout program that virtually guaranteed them millions in risk-free income.

My opinions:

Status: SOLD
Bidder: Cain

[Junkenstein]

Ok, mabey I did make my statement a bit broad. I'll concede that we need roads...
Where you're going, you won't need roads

I guess I'm just frustrated at seeing my cash:hours worked ratio DROP as I work longer hours due to taxation. It just kinda frustrates me.
Son, welcome to a recession. This is the first one you've worked through. It's shitty and they come around quite frequently. All part of the boom/bust economy built on house prices.Get used to it. It sucks.

I guess I rationalise my hatred for welfare systems on the false assumption that "killing the worthless poor" would make my paycheck bigger.

This is where you can begin to fuck off. Read that sentance few times and think about what this says about you as a person and for you reasoning abilities. The fact you deem someone as "worthless" due to needing aid. Fuck man. Really?

I'll still hold true to the fact that, as it stands, I don't really benefit from government.

What you mean is you feel you do not currently benefit. They've sunk a lot of cost into you in many ways, including education

I pay for my water and electricity,

As do those "worthless poor

I drive to work on roads funded by the corporation I work for,
Selective argument. Do you exclusively use roads funded by your corporation? No? Null and void. Next.

at 9.50/hr, I'm "too rich" to take advantage of any of my government's social welfare systems,

Boo hoo. Same here. I just wish I could earn less money to be better off you know? Or maybe the fact that you're struggling on this level should give you some FUCKING EMPATHY for those below it. They way forward is not to fuck everyone in a more vulnerable position that you. 

I don't have kids, so I don't really concern myself with the school system,
Did you go through it? Do you foresee children within your lifetime? Yes to either means you should think about this shit. The kids going through that system now are not a lot younger than you. Need a primer on how shitty children become shitty adults? Look at schools.

and I CC, so when it comes down to it, it's not the police protecting me from crime...
Yeah, all the police do is mop up after the fact. They don't help society at large. The ME-ISM is starting to grate now.

in short, I don't really see anything but a few under-maintained in-town roads as being something I fund with taxes that I get a return on.
You're a fucking "libertarian" aren't you?

I'll concede, though, that welfare isn't my problem. Perhaps military spending, police spending or corrections spending should be cut as a "less evil" way to make my paycheck bigger...

Look, Welfare IS a problem. However it's A problem. Just like all the other things are problems. I guaranfuckingtee you that the best way out of a problem is not vilifying the fuck out of group of people until everyone just blames them. If you need a history lesson on why that's a bad thing then I can agree that your education was essentially free and worthless.


At the end of it, you're young. You need to read a shitload more, shut the fuck up more and seriously fucking think about what the fuck you are saying. Some of that up there is pretty fucking abhorrent.

[Cain]

My opinions:

Status: SOLD
Bidder: Cain

Please start here.

[Junkenstein]

A child. Fine. That explains a lot.

Are we going to move beyond this, or can I have an equally valid point to make in saying:

"A statist. Fine. That explains a lot."

And by the by kid, read a couple of my posts before trying to give me a label.I'd hardly call myself a statist but at 21 and with this level of insight, you are a fucking child.

Edit for idiot typo.

[Juana]

I see it as either I have the minor inconvenience of alleviating these people's ails, or the minor inconvenience of defending my property/white flighting my ass away from those who'd steal from me.

_{edited because this monkey encapsulates my feelings perfectly.}

[Juana]

Like, you know what "white flight" is, don't you?

[Junkenstein]

Well I only know about this version:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight

Which fits perfectly with what I'm seeing here.

[Juana]

Yeah, that's it.

I mean, it's not like a lot of classism doesn't depend on racism, right?

[Juana]

Or the "poor people are degenerate crackheads" thing doesn't have a lot to do with the fact that PoC are seen as degenerate and inherently more criminal.

Or that white wealth on the scale it is on has anything to do with racism.

[Junkenstein]

Entitlement has a good racist pedigree too, and this thread is dripping in it.