kimmy

Pathetic? As you're fond of pointing out, what happens in America matters around the world. It's certainly not pathetic for people in Canada to worry what might happen if Paul Ryan or one of his imitators becomes president. We're still dealing with the mess the last round of regulation-cutting dummies left behind. -k

Hey, my job is in your top 40. Yay me. "Permanent victim mode"? Hardly. It's not victimhood to say "bullshit!" when sock-puppets like Paul Ryan stand up to lie about the imaginary benefits of policy ideas that are quite obviously not in anybody's interest except for the people who are bank-rolling their campaigns. -k

Yeah, I have "sincerely held beliefs", and the difference between me and the religious people lobbying for these exemptions is that I've never presumed that my "sincerely held beliefs" should give me a legally-protected right to inflict harm on people. And as I said before (and you missed): while on paper a "sincerely held belief" could describe anybody, in practice the only people who would be able to successfully employ it as a legal strategy are religious people. That's how it worked with Conscientious Objectors, and that's how it would work any time such a case ever actually made it to a court of law. -k

Haha, sure. You're allowed to be a bully as long as it's a "sincerely held belief". In practice, that means you have to belong to a church. That language was put in there at the demand of religious lobbyists, for use by religious people. And yes, if you ask, I can do a bit of research and name the specific lobby groups that wanted the religious exemptions put in the laws. In Canada, in theory you didn't have to be religious to claim Conscientious Objector status during the draft. But in practice, the only way your Conscientious Objector status claim could succeed is if you could show you belonged to a pacifist religious congregation. Same deal with this "sincerely held belief" premise you're clinging to. "Hey, it could be used by somebody who's bullying a gay kid because he just has strongly-held moral reasons to hate fags." Is that supposed to make me feel better about the original legislation? Does it make YOU feel better about the original legislation? If it does, you're not a good person, Sharkman. -k

For as long as I can recall the message us younger people have been fed is that your employment prospects depend on higher education. What does it say that right now the best advice you could give a young person is "DON'T GO TO COLLEGE!!!" ? It's funny, I kind of feel like I dodged a bullet on that one. One of my friends that went to university is making pretty good coin and paid her student loans off early. The rest of my friends that attended university are making less than I am, or have struggled with long-term unemployment. Yeah, must have been nice back in the good old days. -k

Many of your compatriots apparently didn't get the memo. The falling real-estate market worked out quite nicely for me. Perhaps not so great for you guys. I don't see the point of your response. I don't think you or any other members of Elephant Team really believe that economic activity means destroying the planet, so I'm not sure why you'd be suggesting that Mitt and Paul campaigned on "A Rising Tide Raises All Boats!" but if Cruz or Christie or whoever comes next wants to campaign on "Falling tides will save the trees" then I applaud their audacity. It will take immense cahones to convince voters that outsourcing jobs and cutting wages are good for America. I don't much care if that Sears CEO runs his business into the ground, aside from feeling bad for the people that work there. But if folks like Paul Ryan are going to talk about how lower Capital Gains taxes Create Jobs~~! then Sears CEO Guy making huge amount of money by running his company into the ground is a pertinent counter-example that they should be confronted with. -k

The getting married and having kids part is all happening later in life because young people today are too broke and indebted to raise families. -k

Sure, but that's completely beside the point. (although, it's no skin off my nose if Boomers have to keep working. I would expect that Boomers would be the ones most upset about that. Whatever happened to that "Freedom 55" idea we used to hear about so much? Sounds like it turned into "Pipe Dream 65.") And they are. And that's what they're griping about. "Millennials Ruining Housing Market :( " was one headline I recall. (The emoticons weren't there, although they were certainly implied.) The "I got mine" generation really couldn't give a crap, up until we get to the part where they find out their assets aren't worth much in a market with no buyers. Much like the corporations that are doing everything possible to cut jobs, cut wages, cut benefits, then conduct focus groups to figure out why their stores are empty. That reminds me of another of these "creating money without creating wealth" stories we've talked about recently. The Sears CEO who decided that they would use all the money they used to set aside for capital improvements for share buy-backs instead, to drive the stock price up. Yep, the shares went up, even though sales have been going down steadily. Been in a Sears store lately? Were you put off by the rotting carpets, decomposing ceiling-tiles and overall dilapidation? I certainly was. If my local Sears was a residence, it would be condemned. But hey, the share price went up, so it was a good decision, right? Well, it was a great decision for the CEO, because his compensation package included one hell of a lot of shares. Maybe it was a good decision for the shareholders too, for a while at least. But now they have falling sales, less money to prop up the share price with, no money to fixed their dilapidated stores, no money to build new stores, so has this really been a successful business strategy for "creating wealth"? Sell your Sears shares quick, Dick. -k

And now we're talking about Doris Day? Slap yourself upside the head, Michael, for letting this guy troll you like this. -k

Of course. But again, I stress this isn't "the fringes" of the Republican party, these "religious freedom" measures are mainstream within the party in many states. In Michigan, "Matt's Safe School Law" --the one that would have provided legal protection for bullies as long as they were religious bullies-- passed the state senate with majority Republican support, and would have passed the state house of representatives as well until an impassioned speech by a state Democrat, and an angry denouncement from "Matt's" father saying he was disgusted that his son's name was being attached to the bill, went viral and brought national shame to them. They amended the law to remove the religion exemptions. Other states like Illinois have had similar fights regarding anti-bullying laws. Currently Arizona and Maine (and probably other states as well) are working on laws that will protect businesses that want to discriminate by providing a legal "religious freedom" defense. You want to play it off like this is just some fringe movement, but it's not. These are being made law in Republican states. -k

And yet corporations are worried that people aren't buying their stuff, Boomers are now griping that they can't downsize because younger people aren't buying houses... -k

"some whacko group"? That wacko group is the Republican Party that you usually defend by sheer reflex. -k

Go to Somalia and enjoy a low-tax, low-regulation paradise. -k

Churches aren't subject to these laws, so it's a moot point. But a hotel or a restaurant or a flower shop isn't a private club, it's subject to laws regarding public accommodation. And if some religious group is in the business of renting out facilities to the general public, then so are they. A church is exempt, but a Knights of Columbus community hall isn't. I'm not a fan of hate speech laws either, but if one group is to be made exempt, then everybody should be made exempt. As I said before, these are legislative efforts being made by mainstream elected lawmakers. If their demands are unreasonable, then waving the banner of "Protecting religious freedom!" doesn't make them any less so. -k

When we're talking about a guy who gets millions of dollars by purchasing stocks at a "preferred investor" price and flipping him the same day, or gutting a company Bain style, the claim that anything at all has been "made" is ridiculous. -k

hmm? Who said anything about welfare being "earned"? I don't know where that came from. "Wealth is earned" is, however, a big part of the message you guys are peddling. "We built this!" "Makers vs takers!" etc. -k

If that's the case, why is Rich Guy Team always trying to market their policies in terms of what is good for the common man? -k

To be clear, I wasn't talking about CEO pay at all. If Jamie Dimon makes his shareholders wealthier, then he deserves the $20 million raise they just gave him. That's between him and his shareholders. The part I care about is when some politician steps up to the microphone and advocates for (for example) lower capital gains taxes because that's how you stimulate investment to create more jobs. That's a fine theory, except that now that the financial sector is able to create capital gains without actually engaging in any capitalism, there's no longer any reason to think that lowering the capital gains tax actually helps create jobs. Maybe instead of lowering the taxable gains tax, we should lower the taxes on things that actually create jobs. Or, basically, same argument in regard to any policy that the financial industry says will boost the economy or create jobs. "Cutting financial regulations will create jobs!" Yeah, like fun it will. -k

"The common good" has been the core of the argument that capitalism and the free market is a good thing. It is the core of Republican arguments why they should be in office. Creating more wealth is good for everybody! If we bake a bigger pie, there's more pie for everybody, even if some people get more pie than others. "A rising tide lifts all boats!" And those are reasonable messages to take to the voters. But that only applies when we're talking about activities that actually create more wealth, bigger pies, and rising tides. Trying to get voters to support policies that just allow the financial sector to take more pie without actually making more pie should be a tough sell. -k

I'm not talking about lawsuits, I'm talking about lawmakers. These are bills being brought into legislatures by mainstream elected officials in many states. -k

Yeah, but only the religious person gets to claim that his religious freedom entitles him to cause harm to others without consequence. You want a society where if one kid torments the gay student it's bullying, but another kid torments the gay student it's a legally protected expression of religious belief? That's what they almost had in Michigan, Or if one hotelier refuses to rent a room to someone it's a violation of public accommodation laws, but another hotelier does that it's a protected expression of religious belief? That's what they're working on right now in some states. -k

This is one of the things that's becoming grating. The term "earned" is becoming dubious when applied to the financial industry. I have no complaint about using the word "earned" to describe the investor who puts money into a business, helps the business grow, and reaps the rewards later. But it is ridiculous to use the word "earned" to describe the way "preferred investors" have cashed in on IPOs (as wrote previously regarding the Twitter IPO). Simply by being "preferred clients" of an investment bank, these "preferred investors" afforded the opportunity to purchase shares at an undervalued price and flip them the same day at an obscene profit. That has nothing to do with creating wealth, in fact it's essentially a tax on the people who actually created the wealth-- the entrepreneurs and the early investors that created the whole thing. Or the Bain Capital - Sealy Mattress thing. They bought a profitable company, and as directors they issue "special dividends" to themselves to recoup the money they used to buy Sealy- by saddling Sealy with debt. And to repay the debt Sealy goes through cost-cutting including layoffs and sacrifices to product quality that leave the company a shell of itself that eventually gets sold to a competitor at a bargain-basement price. That's not wealth creation, that's wealth destruction. "Harvesting" was the term used by Bain for this sort of deal. We saw a similar story recently with Warren Buffett's takeover of Heinz. And we've seen derivatives market scams and all of these things that earn money without actually creating anything. We've seen that they can earn "capital gains" tax breaks without actually investing capital. In theory capitalism serves the common good by investing their wealth to create new businesses and jobs. But at this point the wealthy are finding ways to get more money without actually creating wealth at all. -k

Christians are demanding legal exemption from laws based on religious beliefs. They've lobbied to have religious exemptions put into anti-bullying laws. They want exemption from non-discrimination laws. Here's a politician who wants to protect parents from charges if their kids die of negligence... as long as it's religious negligence. These people indeed are demanding special legal protection for their brand of ignorance. -k

On the subject of "atheist churches": one of the few tangible benefits of religious affiliation that can be objectively demonstrated is the benefit of belonging to a community. Some atheists even attend United Universalist congregations just for the sake of belonging to a community. The existence of "atheist churches" isn't evidence that atheism is actually a religion, it's evidence that atheists would like to enjoy the good parts of belonging to a church without the parts that suck. -k

Playing semantics with the definition of "atheism" is a debating antic used by people like Christian apologist William Lane Craig, or by internet forum trolls and keyboard warriors like some we've seen here at the MLW. Insisting that atheism means nothing less than compete certainty that no god exists is a rhetorical stunt meant to demand one of two concessions. Either "yes, I am absolutely certain that there is no god", in which point you're demanded to provide proof of the non-existence of something. Or else, "no, I can not say with absolute certainty that there is no god," in which you are told "well then you're not actually an atheist, you are an agnostic. You're actually open to the possibility that god exists. You have no position on the matter." It's a sleezy rhetorical tactic that is intended to either nullify your opinion, or force you into an ideological corner. Previously when this debate came around, I asked American Whatsherface (and betsy, the time before) a question in response. "Do you believe in Leprechauns?" Tim and sharkman: do you believe in Leprechauns? I will have some follow-up questions once I get your answers. -k