Taxing & Spending

Re: 2009 House Bill 4682 (Ban foreclosure on elderly or disabled property tax delinquents )

Thomas mas — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 04:26:09 GMT

There is nothing unconstitutional about the union or the government having ownership in a corporation. There is a very big risk for the union, and a very great need by the government, to keep our auto industry alive. The union workers have a stake in their company, and the government has a stake in domestic manufacturing. The bondholders were not "coerced". They were asked to sacrifice, as the union and other investers were, and they refused. Bankruptcy is, and always was, the final option.

http://www.caringuk.com

Re: 2009 House Bill 4682 (Ban foreclosure on elderly or disabled property tax delinquents )

gypsy — Sun, 24 May 2009 09:38:57 GMT

I know this sounds inadequate robert40, but I'm sorry. I'm sorry for your situation, and I'm sorry our nation hasn't got a universal healthcare program. The economy has it's ups and downs, but people should be able to expect healthcare from the wealthiest nation on earth, in good times and bad. Losing your job shouldn't cost you your life. I wish you luck.

Re: 2009 House Bill 4682 (Ban foreclosure on elderly or disabled property tax delinquents )

robert40 — Sat, 23 May 2009 13:34:04 GMT

My wife bacame disabled from a car accident in which she was a passenger in a car that was struck at 80 mph by a drunk driver. I just found out after months of being sick that I have cancer. I have not worked in months due to being unable to. I was on Short Term Disability from my last employer until that about ran out. Then my first dr treating me failed to run proper tests on me and could not figure out what was going on so he sent me back to work (being sick). I was told that the company was slow and that they would have to lay me off. I then started seeing a new doctor not satisfied with "its all in your head" from my first doctor only to find out I have cancer! I know it sounds weird but at the same time I was in shock I was relieved it was not "in my head". I am afraid I will end up losing my Cobra, my home and my life all in the next few years. I applied for Social Security Disability but I found out medicare has a 24 month waiting period. So after my cobra runs out and until medicare kicks in I can not get any treatment putting my life in further jeopardy. I just know that it was not my choice to get cancer, and now my family is not only facing the bad economy but the possibility of losing me shortly.

Re: 2009 House Bill 4682 (Ban foreclosure on elderly or disabled property tax delinquents )

gypsy — Sat, 09 May 2009 13:13:17 GMT

An apology is a good last word.

Re: 2009 House Bill 4682 (Ban foreclosure on elderly or disabled property tax delinquents )

Minnie — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:13:24 GMT

I honestly didn't mean it as a personal insult, rather as a mildly humorous, if obvious, explanation of how my side (meaning me) feels about even the most reasonable person on your side (meaning you). Sorry if you took it as an insult. So...I apologize.

Too often your side characterizes my side as greedy and evil. Too often my side characterizes your side as greedy and ignorant, or even stupid.

However, I was determined to have the last word. [Ha! again.]

Re: 2009 House Bill 4682 (Ban foreclosure on elderly or disabled property tax delinquents )

gypsy — Thu, 07 May 2009 01:04:57 GMT

Had to end it with a personal insult, eh?

Re: 2009 House Bill 4682 (Ban foreclosure on elderly or disabled property tax delinquents )

Minnie — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:28:24 GMT

Nope, to my knowledge, none of the Tea Party participants called themselves teabaggers; see how easy it is to be led into parroting the party line?? And the Tea Parties weren't just about taxes, they were about all kinds of overreaching in the current climate of "crisis."

McVeigh's nasty bit of terrorism was a response to a single event carried out by the Clinton administration (for which Ms. Reno took "full responsibility" as you may recall--but paid NO price). Insane as McVeigh was, he has been punished (what ever happened to "no death penalty for the insane"?) Ayers is, to this day, unrepentant, he never paid a penalty, due to "prosecutorial overreaching" and dismissal of the charges against him ("Is this a great country??" or something like that, Ayers crowed as he walked free). And he continues to advocate radicalism, now in the classrooms financed by the Annenberg Project, the direction of which was shared by Mr. (at the time) Obama. I'm sure you saw photos of Ayers standing proudly atop a crumpled American flag; I believe that may have been on the cover of one of his books, I'm not sure. McVeigh was an insane aberration and is now dead; Ayers is a continuing force and is now lauded. If I were to choose which is more dangerous to America as I know it, I think I'd pass on McVeigh.

When I referred to Democrats fighting harder (and dirtier), I was not referring to their advocates (James Carville?) or liberal radio personalities (Janeanne Garofalo?), or liberal commedians (Al Franken?--he's not a legislator--yet), I was referring to the lawmakers in both houses. How about Harry "This war is lost!" Reid or Nancy "I have to save the planet" Pelosi? There's really no one comparable on the Republican side, unless I'm blinded by the fact I agree with what "my" guy/gal is saying. It just seems the Democrats fight--hard--for everything and the Republicans make suggestions. I don't remember Bush ever responding to a Democrat argument with, "I won." (I won't say "Do you?" since I'm happy to end the long slog, too.)

Don't bring up Nixon as a conservative. He's the one who started the EPA, among other government agencies that have become overbearing. Carbon dioxide is a pollutant? Oye! We exhale it, plants eat it and exhale oxygen; wow, how polluting!

No one could buy any part of government if government wasn't so very intrusive into every corner of our lives; how cheaply a muti-billion-dollar contract can be bought! THAT's another reason to have smaller government. That's also a reason government will never become smaller (absent another Revolution, which I don't foresee).

Americans' "rights" have grown since the country's beginning. I think it's fine that we help people who are trying to help themselves but who can't, really can't, for whatever reason. But I think it's counterproductive to instruct people that they have "rights" to other people's stuff, simply because they're Americans.

I'm happy to end it here, too. It does look like we've wandered just a tiny bit off-topic, doesn't it. On the other hand, in a way everything we've argued about relates to the special treatment for some people, just because they're who they are (elderly, disabled), so I don't feel TOO guilty.

Good to argue with someone who is just underinformed and misled, not evil (Ha!) and who appears to have an open mind.

Re: 2009 House Bill 4682 (Ban foreclosure on elderly or disabled property tax delinquents )

gypsy — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:35:17 GMT

My apologies to the teabaggers, I thought they were calling themselves that. Funny thing about that Boston Tea Party story. Most people think the Americans dumped the tea in Boston Harbor because of the English tax on it. Just the opposite. The English taxed the American tea, and not their own. This made the American tea more expensive to the colonist than English tea, so the American merchants, in order to be able to sell their tea to the colonist, dressed up as Mohawk Indians and dumped the cheaper, untaxed, English tea in the harbor. Seems merchants were manipulating the government for profit even then. It's the American way.

I don't really think we need a fairness doctrine in regards to domestic terrorist. "Reaching back" to McVeigh seems an easier reach than reaching back to Bill Ayers. The Oklahoma bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack until 9/11. I'm pretty sure Janet Napolitano knows how the 9/11 terrorist came to this country, as we all do. And I'll bet she knows about the warnings Bush and Rice ignored from Clinton and Clarke about Bin Laden attacking us here too. Keep in mind the worst terrorist attack in our nation's history took place on Bush's watch. For a Republican, who's party holds national security as the most important role of the President, that's got to be hard to take. Those pesky facts are quite a nuisance.

I really am trying hard to believe you when you say the Democrats fight harder and dirtier than the Republicans. Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage all come to mind and cloud my memory. There must be some really evil Democrat somewhere in our history.

In case you didn't get the memo, Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. That was, well, to put it gently, a misconception by Bush. You're right, many Democrats went along with the notion, for political reasons, as most Republicans did. After 9/11, it was fashionable to be angry at Arabs. But one Democrat didn't buy the Iraq "misconception", and he got elected President. Smart people, us Americans.

I enjoy videos on youtube also. You might say, as far as politicians go, it cuts both ways.

Democrats as well as Republicans can be bought, in our system, by wealthy corporations. Such was the case with Hillary's attempt at national healthcare. Maybe you're forgetting that Nixon tried it too. The insurance corporations are too powerful to allow us to join the rest of the developed world in taking care of our citizens. The profits are too large. Being a pragmatist, I think we can work around this eventually. We are too great a nation to continue to have second rate healthcare for our citizens.

Relax. I don't presume to speak for the President, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to take your wealth. I think he wants our system to provide the basic needs for it's citizens, and then let the free market function. The productive, as you call them, are productive because our government provides a system for their efforts to flourish. We are all members of this society, the productive, and the not so productive. But we all have the right to share in the fruits of this nation. Not equal shares of course, but basic needs must be met for all, if we are to be a moral society.

I apologize to the administration for wondering so far off topic, and will end my part of the discussion here.

Re: 2009 House Bill 4682 (Ban foreclosure on elderly or disabled property tax delinquents )

Minnie — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:57:31 GMT

Sorry about the small font. I don't know how it got there and I couldn't seem to change it. My eyes are probably no better than yours--and it's so very hard to use a magnifying glass on a computer screen!!

I don't know if you're aware of it but "teabagging" is apparently a slang term for a somewhat unsavory homosexual sex act, so when you glom onto the term "teabaggers," you're glomming onto a derogatory term adopted by many left-wing commentators and bloggers to demean the people involved in the tea parties. I had never heard the term before, but the left has consistently used it ever since the tea parties, and it has been explained by several people (using delicate language, of course).

As to Janet Napolitano's choice of potential terrorists, do you not wonder why she did not mention any of the left-wing radical groups who actually have destroyed private property, bombed places, injured people, trashed their demonstration sites, acted in violent ways that resulted in multiple arrests? Maybe she assumes they will abandon their terrorist ways now that their champion is in the White House and maybe she assumes conservatives will turn to similar terrorist activities, but reaching back to McVeigh and the violent anti-abortion activists seems just a bit selective to me. Note, too, that she is director of Homeland Security and yet has not quite figured out how the 9/11 terrorists came to America (though by now she certainly realizes that they did not come across the border from Canada).

The current financial mess certainly did start before Obama was elected to the Senate, but he did nothing--nothing--to try to stop the snowball. And it's clear when he says he "inherited" the mess that he means "from the Bush administration." If he has ever mentioned the Clinton administration, I have never heard it. If you can't tell from the videos you apparently watched the other day, the Republicans had neither the numbers nor the will to push their agenda. The Democrats just fight harder (I would say dirtier, but I know you'd disagree).

I looked for video of Clinton, surrounded by cheering Dems, announcing in 1998 that our policy in Iraq would henceforth be "regime change," and explaining why. During the Clinton reighn, the Democrats were all shouting about the danger Saddam presented, and they continued for a time after 9/11, when, you may recall, there was genuine fear in America because another attack was expected at any time (and could still come at any time). I have seen the footage but could not find it, but here's a link to several videos in which Democrats were not so opposed to the war in Iraq. http://brianakira.wordpress.com/2008/02/03/clinton-kerry-gore-call-for-war-against-saddams-iraq/

After everyone's nerves settled and it became apparent that their radical left constituency opposed the war, they changed their tunes. Politicians in general depend on our short memories; YouTube is their worst enemy. I know you think it's Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, but it's much harder to claim that a video of yourself is lying.

As to government healthcare being more efficient than the private sector, recall that under the proposed HillaryCare, which even the Democrat Congress could not bring itself to approve (Bill would have signed it), it would have been illegal for a doctor to treat any private-payment patient. But like the terrorists, Government is patient; they'll enact HillaryCare bit by bit. And when they have power over your finances, your retirement, and your healthcare, you might wonder why kids quit choosing medicine as a career; not everyone wants to work for the government. You might wonder why pharmaceutical companies quit searching for cures. You might wish you had private insurance again; a private insurer might refuse to pay for a particular treatment but it has no power to stop you from paying for it yourself if you really believe in the treatment.

If Barack Obama believes the Constitution should be changed to allow for more wealth redistribution, he should go about it by that cumbersome amendment process laid out in the Constitution. If enough of the Congress and enough of the States agree that redistribution of wealth is the best course to a strong America, then whether or not I agree, I'll have to accept it. Obama is correct, the founding fathers were not in favor of confiscating the property of the productive to support the unproductive, but they surely did provide for changing their preferred organization of the country. But for 9 people in robes to decide to change the Constitution by edict is definitely NOT what the founders had in mind.

You dislike S.C. Justices who interpret the Constitution as written. I like the predictability of a set of rules which are difficult to change. You will like President Obama's appointment. I will not. Elections do have consequences. Conservatives accept the consequences much more quietly than do liberals.

Re: 2009 House Bill 4682 (Ban foreclosure on elderly or disabled property tax delinquents )

gypsy — Tue, 05 May 2009 11:03:08 GMT

My eyes are not as good as in my youth. Your font is very small, and hard to read.

I have no objections to the teabaggers, kind of wonder what your point is in mentioning them. They expressed their opinion in a peaceful manner, which is their right. The President didn't belittle them, he doesn't agree with them. That is his right. He won the election, the majority of people agree with his policies, and the polls indicate that. Janet Napolintano is correct in thinking some of them might be domestic terrorist, judging from some of the signs they were carrying. Most political movements have their fringe elements. It's her job to protect us from those dangers. McVeigh was a veteran, and pro-lifers have been responsible for acts of violence. That is not saying all veterans and all pro-lifers are terrorist. Only a fool would assume that, and only a fool would ignore the facts.

This financial mess did not begin when Obama was in the Senate. It has been in the making for many years before that. The factcheck.org information I provided explains this.

The constitution has been amended and interpreted since it's inception. It is the constitutional role of the Supreme Court to interpret and apply it's meaning to the times. It is the constitutional role of the President to appoint the Judges, and the Senate to give advice and consent. Elections have consequenses. I'm quite certain you were pleased with Bush's appointments to the Courts. I was not. Now it's my turn to be pleased. That's democracy.

I will look in to New Harmony.

In asking myself if I want my federal government deciding what care I should have, or if any, my answer is; I would much rather my federal government decide, a government I have a voice in, than a for profit insurance company, in which I have no say whatsoever, and who's only goal is to make money, mostly by denying care. But this is really not an issue, since a single payer plan has not been proposed.

Re: 2009 House Bill 4682 (Ban foreclosure on elderly or disabled property tax delinquents )

Minnie — Tue, 05 May 2009 03:50:48 GMT

The thousands of people who attended the Tea Parties were trying to send a message. They didn't destroy property, nor even leave trash in their wake. There were no arrests, no injuries. The president belittled them, Janet Napolitano seemed to think they might be or become terrorists (finally she's willing to use the "t" word!), along with our returning veterans and any pro-lifer.

I know Obama says we can't fix this financial mess (which began while he was a Senator in the party in the majority--but he "inherited") until we fix our health care system. Yet as you say, the 8 years of Clinton were quite prosperous. Yet no one (yet) claims that Bush spoiled our health care system (other than his refusal to be the first president to federally fund embryonic stem cell research), so how can Obama be right?

Obama lamented on PBS that the founding fathers erred in forming the Constitution in that they failed to sufficiently provide for redistribution of wealth. I believe he will select a Supreme Court justice with an eye to correcting that error--without that cumbersome "Constitutional amendment" process provided for in the Constitution. I don't look forward to the new Court or Obama's remade country--I rather like the one we have.

If you have a chance, do check out New Harmony. I studied it in Indiana history as a child. Maybe that's where I got the my twisted ideas about Adam Smith's Invisible Hand.

If you really want examples of extreme greed, check out our federal government. And ask if you want a government bureaucrat deciding what care you should have, or whether you should have any care at all.

Re: 2009 House Bill 4682 (Ban foreclosure on elderly or disabled property tax delinquents )

gypsy — Tue, 05 May 2009 02:05:20 GMT

I definitely consider other viewpoints, and try to understand why people have the opinions they do. The reasons usually have more to do with how they view themselves than how they view others.

ARM's are not all the same. I've had one myself, and managed very well with it. It was tied to the LIBOR index, and kept my mortgage rate quite low for many years. The sub-prime ARM's were another story. I would definitely call them predatory lending.

You let Bush off the hook way to easily. He had a majority in Congress, and could have reined in Fannie and Freddie quite easily. He didn't, I believe, for ideological reasons, and because he was too occupied in a war we should have never been in. I feel quite strongly he was the worst President of my lifetime, possibly our nations lifetime. Not because he was evil, but because he was weak and incompetent. Fannie and Freddie are not the only issue in this financial mess. They are merely one piece to the puzzle.

Clinton shares some of the blame, as he admits. If he would have been more truthful over his sexual dalliance in the Oval Office, he may have secured himself a much higher ranking as President, since he led or nation through a very prosperous 8 years.

I cannot agree with your coercion theory. I do think your "invisible hand" was much more at work than coercion. In fact, the hand became quite greedy. Funny how you think the Democrats could have prevented this, but portray the Republicans as near helpless.

Your fear of Obama and his policies are misplaced. He was dealt a terrible hand, and must take bold steps to strenghthen our economy and protect us in the world we find ourselves. His story is yet to be written. John McCain and Sarah Palin offered nothing. No ideas, no vision, no plan.

We elect our representatives to "mess" with how our nation works. They are not royalty, they don't get the job for life, and it isn't easy what they do. We have a job to do too. We must communicate with them, support them when they please us, criticize them when they don't. Our views may not always agree with the majority, they must serve the majority. That's what elections are about.

Finally, the statement you made last is not accurate. Our poor don't have it better than the poor of any other country. The poor of many other developed nations have health care. Not just emergency room healthcare, but preventive and basic healthcare. We are sorely lacking in that department in this nation. We need to fix it.

Re: 2009 House Bill 4682 (Ban foreclosure on elderly or disabled property tax delinquents )

Minnie — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:22:34 GMT

gypsy,

I appreciate your considering the two videos and hope they at least bolster my case that it's not all Bush's fault. I'm not Bush's biggest fan, but I do believe he had a realistic view of the snowballing financial problem; I only fault him for not trying harder to do what he could to slow it.

I knew that the Fed's low interest rates had something to do with the mortgage debacle, but I was surprised to read that Alan Greenspan advocated lenders' offering (I didn't read that he was encouraging Americans to take out the loans--though those who were stung probably don't listen too much to Mr. Greenspan anyway) adjustable-rate loans (which have since become "predatory lending"), but he did state that the guarantee inherent in a fixed rate loan comes at a price--which is undoubtedly true, since lenders have to guess at interest rates coming in the next 20 or 30 years in establishing a fixed rate for today. Adjustable-rate loans are all that hard to understand and might be a good bet for a gambler--they're always cheaper than the fixed rate on the day you take the loan and probably do make good sense in some situations, in the same way that government's new "inflation protected" bonds do.

I hesitate to blame Bush for insufficient oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market; you saw what happened when he tried to regulate Freddie and Fannie, and it wasn't pretty (in retrospect).

What Clinton said in 2008 was revealing, especially since he's not one to genuinely accept his own responsibility for anything:

Clinton, however, said that Democrats weren’t entirely blameless, stating that they should have highlighted problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and “tried more aggressively to regulate derivatives.”

He also acknowledged that there was possible danger in his administration’s policy of pressing Fannie Mae, the mortgage company, to lower its credit standards for lower- and middle-income families seeking homes.

I believe he understated the Democrats' role in keeping Fannie and Freddie loosely regulated. And while he took some responsibility for urging the two GSEs to loosen lending requirements, he took NO responsibility for coercing banks into making the loans. In fact, nowhere in the whole blame-game piece you posted was lender-coercion addressed, yet it DID happen. The Government used both stick (CRA) and carrot (GSEs will buy these risky loans) to get unqualified people into homes. My personal opinion is that the Democrats badly overestimated the strength of America's financial system, assuming there was no loss it couldn't absorb.

I'm a firm believer in The Invisible Hand. I know the butcher will never provide a steak for me just because I'm a nice person, he does it to make a profit such that he can feed his family (and maybe buy a second home, a fast boat and a nice car :-)). And I don't buy that steak from him so that he can feed his family, I do it because I willing to buy that steak at that price for that quality. After government guarantees that the butcher doesn't knock me on the head for my money, I'd like them to do very little more for me. (Yes, yes, they can inspect the beef and even the processing plant, though even there, do they do all that competent a job?)

Government interference with The Invisible Hand is everywhere and skews both incentives and results. The current crisis is not one of capitalism and greed but of wrong incentives for wrong reasons. Those people we elect are NOT way, way smarter than we are, yet they mess with everything we do. And the new Obama administration, with its demonization of businesses and profit and its "empathy" for ignorance and sloth, scares the heck out of me.

Check out the history of New Harmony, Indiana, for an experiment in utopian community organization. It sounds good but fails to take human nature into account. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" just doesn't incentivize effort; no failure--but no success, either. And somehow even the poorest among us live a pretty good life, especially compared to the poor of any other country.

I genuinely appreciate your considering another viewpoint. Thanks.

Re: 2009 House Bill 4682 (Ban foreclosure on elderly or disabled property tax delinquents )

gypsy — Mon, 04 May 2009 13:43:50 GMT

In keeping with my "firm grasp on fairness", here is a fair presetation of the facts behind the present economic crisis. After visiting your suggested references, I thought presenting a somewhat unbiased opinion to you might help. This is from factcheck.org.

So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:

The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.

Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.

Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.

Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.

Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.

The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.

An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.

Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) the crisis is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.

Re: 2009 House Bill 4682 (Ban foreclosure on elderly or disabled property tax delinquents )

Minnie — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:39:36 GMT

You and gypsy need to run for office. You both seem to have a firm grasp on "fairness."