57 responses to “Message to Team Romney”

1. 

   Gregory

   20 May 2012

   The punch line about the closing of GST Steel came out on Meet the [De]Press[ed]… again, Kim Strassel of the WSJ.
   Romney was no longer running Bain Capital at the time of the closing. The guy who WAS at the helm of Bain when it closed is now a megadonor for the Obama campaign, one of the guys Obama was courting in his just concluded Manhattan fundraising tour.
   You just can’t make this stuff up.

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2. 

   Brad Croul

   20 May 2012

   If taxes for businesses were equal across the board, local municipalities would still be competing to lure those businesses into their communities. Look at the athletic league wars going on in big cities around the country. So, taxes must be raised to support the poor orphan corporations looking for a home. Then, the CEOs take home ten of millions in salary a year, while the average taxpayers stay stuck in their economic ruts.

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3. 

   George Rebane

   20 May 2012

   BradC 1220pm – So, how do we get off of this merry-go-round?

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4. 

   Todd Juvinall

   20 May 2012

   BillyT, actually the econuts are now claiming dinosaur farts did change the planet’s climate 65 plus million years ago. As Greg says, “you just can’t make this stuff up”.
   BradC has a major misconception about the source of taxes from business and their host cities or counties. In California, property taxes used to be a county job. The Board of Supervisors set the rate after the staff came up with a number on running the county, schools and things like roads. When Prop 13 passed, the State decided to take our property taxes and then send a few percent back along with a gazillion mandates. So, cities and counties had to make up the difference for the state and federal mandates. What they did was try and attract sales tax producers. It worked for a few years and created all those malls and business districts (mainly retail like car malls)many were placed right outside the borders of the jurisdictions that did not want them. Sort of like the surrounding counties of Nevada County. Anyway, the state would send us back some of the sales tax but then they started mandating how it was to be spent. Over time the state robbed all of it so we are right back to the beginning. They stole the property tax, the sales tax and then fee’d everything that moved or didn’t move. So California has achieved business “socialism” by ensuring equality in outcomes of a person’s business endeavors. What a state eh?

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5. 

   Ryan Mount

   21 May 2012

   Greg 11:38 AM-
   I spent way too much time on this stuff. But at least I was paying attention, I think. Because as we know, America is a vacuum of exceptional thought and action. (Actually, that was meant sarcastically but it seems true.)
   I see nothing wrong with mentioning (name-dropping) these guys. It’s an important footnote to these discussions. I was hoping for a chuckle out of the observation that Anarcho-Capitalist leaning Austrians read Marx very carefully and then took the ball and ran with it 50 yards in the opposite direction. Apparently no one (not you) reads anymore, so folks just prefer to huddle in ideological camps and just repeats 3rd or 4th generation talking points unaware that they’re carrying water for some school of thought. It’s gossip by that point, really. Entertaining, but gossip.
   George, for the record, is a student of history and it is my hope that he would appreciate discussing the assumptions of topics like this. Maybe not, because it’s just easier to call someone a Socialist or a Fascist or a Neo-Con or a jerk or a Dr. Oz (I see Dr. Oz has officially jumped the shark by inviting mediums on his show now) fan even if /s/he has no understanding what that means.
   Unless you’re implying that thinkers like Hegel, Marx and Schumpeter (creative destruction) aren’t important or germane to this discussion other than name-dropping them for coarse, fallacious (attack) reasons.
   George 1108am-
   I’m just trying to frame/understand the Left’s position. I don’t necessarily agree with it although it seems to fit ironically into both Marx’s and Schumpeter’s thinking. How can it be both?

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6. 

   George Rebane

   21 May 2012

   Ryan 834am – I am sorry if my use of ideological labels is either confusing or irritating. By training, I am a proponent of using carefully defined labels (search RR for them). Labels expand language and make communications efficient, as I have noted numerous times here. I am not deterred in their use because someone evinces their underlying ideology yet gets offended when the well-known, -accepted, and -used label is attached to their proposing the tenets of said ideology.
   I also use (hopefully) the appropriate collectivist label because my history and experiences are rife with collectivist atrocities; to me these discussions are more than intellectual banter. I fear that the Great Experiment – ‘can Man govern himself?’ – of our Founders will fail under the renewed onslaught of collectivism.
   American socialist Norman Thomas famously said, “The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened.”
   That is not the situation in Europe. There people speaking of the various forms of collectivism and capitalism, with a rich use of the relevant labels, is everyday dinner table conversation. Collectivist thought has long been accepted as an acceptable basis for governance, and the use of the appropriate labels allows the debate to proceed on the tenets of the philosophy instead of sniffing that someone gets insulted by having their expressed tenet assigned to its proper domain.
   Our long political isolationism and living long under the world’s most benign form government for two centuries has not prepared us for effectively debating the alternatives that now encroach from every side. The debate has become richer and more complex, and the politically correct eschewing of needed labels will not help matters.
   http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2011/11/a-readers-complaint-answered.html#more

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7. 

   billy T

   21 May 2012

   Off topic to Todd J, even though Mr. Mount’s last post was most thought provoking. Too much thinking for my blood. Ah, never mind: never had one, never will. Todd, if my schooling was correct, the oceans cover 70% of Earth’s surface. 30% is dry land, if that adds up correctly. So, dinosaurs roamed on 30% of the Earth’s mass and by farting changed the climate in drastic ways? Call me a dummy, but it seems more likely that all the hundreds of millions of tuna and whales and sharks and anchovies probably farted a heck of a lot more in the 70% of the Earth’s surface where they dwelt. This begs the question: How much climate change is due to fish flatulence?

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