Sen. Clinton stakes socialist claim to profits

[Conan71]

quote:Originally posted by iplaw

quote:Originally posted by tim huntzinger

You socialist, Kurt! By your own admission only two traders allegedly did something wrong (what is the crime) but the whole Williams Cos should be punished? Socialist!

It's amazing to me that some people like can even tie their own shoes without help, of course I'm assuming alot here...

Is he ducking a running from my questions again?

And who the eff is Kurt?

Would someone explain to Timmy that forum etiquette dictates using screen names?

[iplaw]

Conan:

He's never once attempted to answer your questions...

quote:Originally posted by tim huntzinger

Originally posted by iplaw I am a troll.  I am so inherently offensive and stoopid that I have a thread dedicated to my ignorance.  I am a bizarre whack-job!

Amen!

Awwwwwwww. does someone else need a kiss from Helen Thomas too Corky?

[Conan71]

[tim huntzinger]

I assumed you would know KurtSimmons.com inasmuch as that is the domain name you swiped the bunny image from.

[Conan71]

[cannon_fodder]

Hometown -

I would love to roll back the new deal.  It was the largest usurpation of power by our government to date.  It led the way to our current government of limitless powers - taking what it wants, regulating where it wants, and spending on anything it wants.  Yay for limited government.

The new deal, nor social security, have NOTHING to do with civic responsibility.  Civic responsibility is a virtuous sense of need to take care of ones community.  Carnegie should great civic responsibility when he built libraries across America.  Likewise, the commitments of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are a terrific example of civic responsibility.  When done at the point of a gun (I dont pay taxes they come with guns to take me to jail) you are no longer exhibiting any virtuous quality nor civic responsibility... you are merely in compliance with what everyone else must do.  To pretend paying taxes is somehow virtuous is an insult to anyone who has given time or money to their community.

While nothing cheap is worth having, being expensive doesn't mean its worth it.  In my working lifetime the federal government will take about 25% of my earnings for Social Security, Medicaid, and other wealth redistribution programs.  It is very unlikely that I will ever see any of this money and it is even more likely the money will be outright squandered.

I don't have a problem with social welfare.  I both prefer and insist that people that are down are given a chance to get back up. It is better for everyone in society, equitable, and it is what I would want if I ever fail. However, such a system should not be administered blindly.  So as to promote leaching off the system as a lifestyle choice.  The person who tries and fails or the person who gets horribly sick or the person who is abused gets the same help as the person who is simply too lazy to do anything different.  

In that instance they are taking my money, which I invested a great deal for and worked hard to earn, and giving it to someone who took an easier path.  Perhaps that person chose to party instead of going to classes.  Maybe they did too many drugs or drank too much.  Or maybe they were just too lazy to do anything to improve their situation.  In those instance you deserve help only if you have decided to do something to improve and be a member of society - not a leach on it.  I dont give money to the scam artists standing on street corners and I dont want to give money to you - but I have to.

In fact, you'll have everything I had for the first 9 years of my adult life.  A roof over your head, food in the pantry, a bus ride to work, low quality medical care, and some spending money in your pocket.  The difference is, I was going to school during the day and working 2nd shift at a factory to make sure I had those things.  I worked my donkey off to live in a sh!t hole, drive a POS, eat mostly ramen noodles, potatoes & corn (It was Iowa, ok?), have laughable medical coverage, and have no spending money.  Meanwhile, title 19, section 8, food stamps, medicaid, a welfare check and the EITC ensure someone who either sitting at home watching their cable TV or working some menial job and not trying to improve, had all the same things.

Now, the tables have turned.  My hard work is starting to pay off.  I have spending money, drive a nice car (its a 2000 Nissan with 80K miles... but its nice to me damnit) and boost great health coverage (that I never use).  So the government sees fit to siphon off some of my income to fund the guy that is still sitting at home or still working his no risk, 9-5, easy job.  That's awesome.

Some people just need to be allowed to fail. If you are a more compassionate man than I, I applaud you.  But forcing others to fund your compassion seems somehow very, very backwards.

[Conan71]

Pre-New Deal, welfare was a spiritual and family concept, if you will.

People went to their Churches and families for help when they were down and out, faced an unexpected disaster, or prolonged illness.

Since that sort of help was more face-to-face, it instilled a sense of personal responsibility to pull onesself back up, self-esteem, and an appreciation of what others were doing to help out and created a desire to improve one's station in life.  If a capable individual refused to display any inclination toward self-help, they eventually were cut off.

Since the dawn of the human race, there have been lazy people.  However the anonymous "giving" of the tax-paying public and anonymous distribution by the government do nothing to inspire a change within the people who recieve our largesse.  

I do realize that not everyone on the government dole is lazy.  There are retirees who contributed to SS and Medicare who have earned the right, there are truly disabled people who simply cannot work.  However, there are many, many people who have no business being on the gov't teat who make it difficult to near impossible for those who really do need the help to get it.

Government-sponsored assistance programs guarantee something for those who have no more ambition in life than to sit in a skanky apartment, watching Jerry Springer, smoking a joint, and eating pork rinds all day and night.  It encourages people to over-populate, and do nothing to give back to society.

[Hometown]

You heard it here folks:

Cannon Fodder, "I would love to roll back the new deal."

This is where the middle to right of the Republican Party is now.

[iplaw]

quote:Originally posted by Hometown

You heard it here folks:

Cannon Fodder, "I would love to roll back the new deal."

This is where the middle to right of the Republican Party is now.

Thank God.  Finally.

[USRufnex]

Oh, yeah... like I'd trust a republican party that can't even balance federal budgets to administrate a fair and equitable rollback of the new deal... [B)]

I know a couple of people who are on supplemental social security... and they don't "sit in a skanky apartment, watching Jerry Springer, smoking a joint, and eating pork rinds all day and night."  There have always been and will always be "bad apples."  But there ARE older folks on social security who've worked their entire lives... who can have the necessities of life without having to resort to begging on the streets and eating cans of cat food...

I'll make ya a NEW deal... if the republicans can dismantle the corporate welfare state, I'll promise to give them a chance to "reform" social security...

In the meantime, I'll continue voting for tax-and-spend democrats over spend-and-spend republicans... []

[USRufnex]

Back to topic...

"I want to take those profits and put them into an alternative energy fund that will begin to fund alternative smart energy, alternatives that will actually begin to move us toward the direction of independence."
--Hillary Clinton

These words will be very popular in non-oil states... like it or not...

And no matter what any dem could say to appeal to Oklahomans, this state will still vote Republican in the next presidential election... you can take that one to the bank... OK has become as reliable for the repubs as Massachusetts is for the dems...

It could be worse for oil people in Oklahoma... the USA doesn't have a state-run oil company...

Pemex provides about one-third of government revenues in Mexico...
http://migration.ucdavis.edu/MN/more.php?id=1973_0_2_0

quote:Mexico collects about 11 percent of GDP in taxes [18 percent including Pemex], one of the lowest tax takes in the world; Chile collects 20 percent, and the US, 31 percent. Most Mexican taxes flow to the federal government, which then returns tax monies to the 31 states on the basis of complex formulae that reflect their needs. Northern states such as Nuevo Leon (Monterrey) in 1998 accounted for nine percent of taxes paid and received only four percent of federal tax monies, and are complaining about the "unfairness" of federal redistribution formulae. Mexican states can add a two percent sales tax that they keep, but few have done so.

Iraq had a nationalized oil company, much like Iran and Saudi Arabia still have today, but that is about to change...
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article2132467.ece

quote:For more than three decades, foreign oil companies wanting into Iraq have been like children pressed against the sweet shop window - desperately seeking to feast on the goodies but having no way of getting through the door.

That could soon change.

The Iraqi Council of Ministers is expected to approve, as early as today, a controversial new hydrocarbon law, heavily pushed by the US and UK governments, that will radically redraw the Iraqi oil industry and throw open the doors to the third-largest oil reserves in the world. It would allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil companies in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.

-----------------------------------------

Critical to whether the petro-leum industry will be able to exploit Iraq's buried treasure will be the introduction of production-sharing agreements (PSAs). These are contracts that allow the state to retain legal ownership of its reserves but let international companies share in the profits from extracting oil, in exchange for investing in the infrastructure and operation of the wells, pipelines and refineries. The agreements would be the key to the sweeping development of the Iraqi industry by international companies.

According to an early draft of the legislation that was sent to oil companies this past summer and obtained by The Independent on Sunday, PSAs are the centrepiece of the new legal framework.

Their introduction would be a first for a major Middle Eastern power and is sure to be highly contentious. Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's number one and two producers, both control their industries tightly with no appreciable foreign company collaboration. According to the Iraqi draft legislation, the PSAs could be fixed for as long as 30 years, which would provide a welcome framework in which the companies could work. Though they are preferred by the oil industry, PSAs don't always guarantee profits for Western companies.

[Conan71]

quote:Originally posted by USRufnex


I know a couple of people who are on supplemental social security... and they don't "sit in a skanky apartment, watching Jerry Springer, smoking a joint, and eating pork rinds all day and night."  There have always been and will always be "bad apples."  But there ARE older folks on social security who've worked their entire lives... who can have the necessities of life without having to resort to begging on the streets and eating cans of cat food...

I'll make ya a NEW deal... if the republicans can dismantle the corporate welfare state, I'll promise to give them a chance to "reform" social security...

Thanks for paraphrasing me on the first paragraph, I'm flattered.  Did you have an original idea you wanted to add to that?

All Hillary is talking about is more corporate welfare with the oil profits, how does that escape you?  Take profits from a productive entity and give it to another- that IS corporate welfare.  I guess it just sounds better to you when a Democrat says it.

[iplaw]

quote:Originally posted by USRufnex

Oh, yeah... like I'd trust a republican party that can't even balance federal budgets to administrate a fair and equitable rollback of the new deal... [B)]

I know a couple of people who are on supplemental social security... and they don't "sit in a skanky apartment, watching Jerry Springer, smoking a joint, and eating pork rinds all day and night."  There have always been and will always be "bad apples."  But there ARE older folks on social security who've worked their entire lives... who can have the necessities of life without having to resort to begging on the streets and eating cans of cat food...

I'll make ya a NEW deal... if the republicans can dismantle the corporate welfare state, I'll promise to give them a chance to "reform" social security...

In the meantime, I'll continue voting for tax-and-spend democrats over spend-and-spend republicans... []

I don't think anyone ever said SS should be eliminated, or that deserving people shouldn't get it.  The idea of the new deal is bigger than the narrow definition you want to give it.  You're just desperate to make a point.

I'm sure you're okay with more of the same, with our politicians just driving it into bankruptcy.  Democrats had 40 years to fix it and they punted the issue.  

I'm actually smart enough not to depend on SS and I feel sorry for you if you think it's going to be around when you need it.

SS was designed to provide for people at age 65, when the average life expectancy was 67.  It was a stop-gap measure to offset a pensions and savings plans.  It was never meant to be used as a primary source of income.

I could care less if you never change a damned thing about SS, just don't come begging from those of us who planned ahead.

[USRufnex]

Yeah, it's welfare moms, illegals and the working poor who are gaming the system... right?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,108066,00.html

quote:In the three years since Bush took office, discretionary spending — money that is not tied to long-term entitlements, including defense, domestic security, education and transportation — has grown by 31.5 percent. Non-discretionary spending — mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — has reached record highs.

Overall, federal spending grew on average by 7.6 percent in each of the last two years, more than double the 3.4 percent average annual growth under the Clinton administration.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/116678.html

quote:The Republican Congress that has expanded federal spending by 45 percent since fiscal year 2001, more than doubled education spending, and enacted insanely expensive agriculture, highway, energy, and prescription drug bills is still bingeing on our tax dollars. But instead of working through the regular appropriations process, Congress is hiding behind "emergency" supplemental bills.

[Rico]

Originally posted by conan71

quote:
All Hillary is talking about is more corporate welfare with the oil profits

Part of those oil profits may be slipping away as President Chavez has now signed an order to Nationalize the oil companies in Venezuela..