61–70 of 483 posts
"Mr. Koch has written (with Brian Hooks) a new book, “Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World,”" Can it get any more cynical than this?
Forgive my asking - what's cynical about this title? Should we not believe in people? Is the world not top-down oriented? Sorry - just confused.
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Elections are in the public interest and therefore should be publicly funded -- exclusively. Each registered candidate with more than a certain number of signatures of support should be given a budget of money and pre-paid airtime on all major networks by the FEC, and that's it. Once it's out, it's out. All other contributions (including in-kind) to political campaigns are tantamount to bribery and should just be ill…
There is a approximate approach in Austria. Parties are allowed donations, but they can't spend more than x on election campaigns, no matter where the money is coming from. Time on public TV is kind-of regulated. TV ads are not really a thing, mostly billboards and print. Can be circumvented though, since it requires parties to declare spendings correctly (and labelled correctly). "Oh, those fancy pens that look like…
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> Do you seriously think Scalia cared about protecting people's rights to bear arms beyond the text of the 2nd amendment? Whatever rights to bear arms there are, they come from the 2nd Amendment. It is absurd to stretch an Amendment about "well regulated Militia" to mean D.C. can't require people to store a handgun with a trigger lock because it would impinge on their ability to use it for personal protection. Yet th…
Let me push back one more time. If what you're saying is true, and no judge no matter how much integrity they have can be truly originalist - what do we do? Is our judicial system dead? Should we even try to pick originalists or give up on a third branch and let it be a super legislature? What comes of rule of law? Doesn't this seem like a problem?
Originalism is a modern invention. It was not even a philosophy of jurisprudence until approximately the 1970s.
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If rich people payed tax at the same rate as ordinary people, we'd be living in the same system without harmful extremes of inequality.
This isn’t true. To take the US tax system as an example it’s much more progressive than the flat tax starter you’re describing, where all income is taxed at the same rate. This does not stop inequality. > In 2016, the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers—those with adjusted gross incomes (AGI) below $40,078—earned 11.6 percent of total AGI. However, this group of taxpayers paid just 3 percent of all income taxes in 2016.…
I think a flat 20% above a certain rate is probably the most 'fair', but what needs to change is remove most loopholes that exist now. So everyone above a certain income level pays the same proportion of their income.
Of course the tax base ends up really top heavy, if you earn most of the income, you pay most of the tax. That seems fair to me.
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I believe for the last 30 years or so (after the late Antonin Scalia) 'conservative' judge is almost synonymous with originalist. I think you may be falling victim to correlation is not causation? IE there are no liberal originalists by definition (above). If I'm wrong, could you give me an example of a liberal originalist? I would be very happy to be wrong about this. The correlation here is that conservative presid…
Conservative judges have no problem with legislation from the bench when they're the ones doing it. Again, they pretend to use an impartial "originalist" principle when decision-making but cherry-pick the "original" texts they use or ignore them when they would lead to ruling in a way conservatives don't like. How is it "originalist" to take the 2nd Amendment, which refers to "well regulated Militia," and using it to…
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He's 85, his brother died recently, and he's very likely concerned about "legacy". According to Greenpeace, these assholes have poured $145,555,197 into groups that worked counter to climate policy changes being enacted (from 1997 to 2018). _Partisanship_ should be the least of his worries - he'll be remembered as a key figure who spurred inaction at the exact time that we should have been taking drastic action.
Is everybody you disagree with an ?
(Consequentially, the difference is sadly zero.)
“Dark Money” by Jane Mayer was extremely enlightening. The influence of the Koch family on politics and public opinion has been devastating. The Federalist Society is a conspiracy against democracy.
Can you give a brief synopsis about how the federalist society is a conspiracy against democracy? I thought it was about originalism which seems to me to be pro-democracy by maintaining proper separation of powers etc.
It's a hour of ranting against democracy. He didn't even hide the fact that he doesn't care that gay marriage or other issues were approved by voters; he would judicially end gay marriage in the name of "religious freedom." But this freedom only extends to particular forms of Christianity, as Alito is quite comfortable with restricting the religious practices of Muslims and Wiccans.
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If rich people payed tax at the same rate as ordinary people, we'd be living in the same system without harmful extremes of inequality.
This isn’t true. To take the US tax system as an example it’s much more progressive than the flat tax starter you’re describing, where all income is taxed at the same rate. This does not stop inequality. > In 2016, the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers—those with adjusted gross incomes (AGI) below $40,078—earned 11.6 percent of total AGI. However, this group of taxpayers paid just 3 percent of all income taxes in 2016.…
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So why is it that Buffett himself doesn't pay more tax? It's because the bulk of his income comes from dividends and long-term capital gains, which are taxed at a much lower rate than ordinary income.
https://www.fool.com/taxes/2020/09/25/why-does-billionaire-w...