Saturday, October 27, 2012
Miscellaneous 144
1) At the end of the American Civil War, the black literacy rate in this country was practically zero. By the end of the 19th Century, it had exceeded 50%. This represents one of the greatest accomplishments in human history and it transpired decades prior to affirmative action and the welfare state. This whole notion that African-Americans have only achieved via political agitation is an absurdity and this is simply more prima facie evidence of that.............2) I really wish that Mr. Obama would stop lumping millionaires and billionaires together. A 65 year-old retiree who worked and saved wisely could easily be a millionaire (if, I'm saying, you combined their savings, pension, and property) in this society. To compare that person to people such as Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Ross Perot, and Mark Zuckerberg is asinine, and I really think that the President should knock it off.............3) Sean Hannity is now saying on nightly basis that the "mainstream media" refuses to cover the Libya story. Mr. Hannity is either a lazy idiot or he's lying. CNN (most notably, Anderson Cooper and the hottie, Erin Burnett) has been covering it on an almost nightly basis and the coverage has been far from exculpatory for President Obama (courtesy the sources of Fran Townsend and Bob Baer). For Mr. Hannity to continue to follow this delusional narrative is really and truly embarrassing, I think.
Affirmative action has nothing at all to do with black achievement and advancement. For example, in the post civil rights area, a lot of doors were opened by simply outlawing discrimination (a movement I strongly supported and support, since it gets rid of racism and adds none).
ReplyDeleteOther policies, helped too, such as Reagan's economic policies which caused significant growth in the black middle class.
Also, where does Hannity get off complaining about the mainstream media? He is one of the most popular figures at the biggest cable news channel. He's as mainstream as it gets.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that when Obama refers to millionaires he means people with annual incomes over one million dollars, not net worthy over one million...unless you think he is proposing taxing people on worth not income.
ReplyDeleteJerry said: "unless you think he is proposing taxing people on worth not income."
ReplyDeleteIf we are talking about worth as a human being, the Federal government could take Donald Trump for all he's worth and still not get a penny.
So true, dmarks!
ReplyDeleteRumor Trump is starting a line of
ReplyDeletehair salon franchises: called the
'Curl Up & Dye'...
The millionaire thing reminds me of Samuel L. Jackson's recent plea for Obama votes.
ReplyDeleteHe bashed Romney as an out of touch millionaire in it.
So ironic, considering that Jackson himself is a multi-millionaire, and his preferred candidate is also one.
Given Fox's ratings for the debates, I think we have to officially consider the network part of the mainstream media. They no longer get to pretend to be outside the mainstream, in my book.
ReplyDeleteJerry, then Obama should say, "people who make over a million dollars a year" and not simply, "millionaires". And I obviously agree with you and dmarks on Trump.............HR, I like the fact that Fox has hired Ed Henry and John Roberts and frequently use A.B. Stoddard as an analyst. So, yeah, I guess that they have become a little more mainstream.
ReplyDeleteBut his comments on millionaires are generally related to paying more taxes which would be on income not net worth.
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDelete"Mr. Hannity is either a lazy idiot or he's lying."
Not even close!
Mr. Hannity is a lazy idiot, he's lying, and he is being paid to lie. It is Murdoch Media/Fox Networks - no accountability; no responsibility: lie, lie, lie.
The saddest aspect is, the lying is blatant and oh so profitable.
Ema Nymton
~@:o?
.
And he wants to raise taxes on individuals making over $200,000 a year, a significant percentage of which are not millionaires.
ReplyDeleteEma: " It is Murdoch Media/Fox Networks - no accountability; no responsibility"
ReplyDeleteAs an expression of the free press, it is entirely accountable.
And here's the Merriam Webster definition of millionaire - : "a person whose wealth is estimated at a million or more (as of dollars or pounds)." At the very least Mr. Obama is being rather sloppy with the language (and, yes, Mr. Romney has as well been) here.
ReplyDeleteYes, Ema, he is in fact one lazy idiot. I would even put him right up there with Ed Schultz, Joy Behar, and Rosie O'Donnell.
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDelete"Yes, Ema, he is in fact one lazy idiot."
Well that cleared that up.
Ema Nymton
~@:o?
.
For most of this century, the top marginal rate has been over 50%; IMO, it did not affect growth...and
ReplyDeletewe piled up no national debt.
Ema, I'm not a partisan and I don't defend the indefensible. If you're looking for someone to argue with on stuff like that, you'll just have to go somewhere else.
ReplyDeleteVery few people actually paid those exorbitant rates (as high as 91% for a while), BB Idaho. There were a myriad of deductions back then and it wasn't until the Tax Reform Act of 1986 that people finally started paying in the ballpark of their rates. That being said, I don't necessarily have an aversion to the rates going back to the Clinton era 39.6.
ReplyDeleteWill: Ema is just filling space since she can't keep repeating those old Electoral College numbers.
ReplyDeleteAt least she spelled Hannity's name correctly, which is rare evidence that she has more than a 3rd grade education.
BB said; "For most of this century, the top marginal rate has been over 50%; IMO, it did not affect growth...and
ReplyDeletewe piled up no national debt."
The 63% or so top marginal rate didn't pile up much of anything during the Great Depression.
As for how it affected growth, it was like using weedkiller in the Sahara.
Actually the economic growth over the last 80 or so years maxs out with a top marginal tax rate of about 60%.
ReplyDeleteRegarding "The 63% or so top marginal rate didn't pile up much of anything during the Great Depression." Not as much as the
ReplyDelete24% rate until 1929..and the piling
led to the great depression. Pile
building seemed to thrive fine from 1940-1981, as I recall those years...with a top marginal rate
above 70% in that era. We realize that was a different era: DuPont
building and running the huge Hanford operations AT COST during
the Manhattan Project, comes to mind. As for weedkiller in the Sahara, the tax cuts pretty well
are in direct proportion with the
national debt. BTW, Ema Nympton
spelled backwards is 'not my name'. I'm slow to pick up on
cryptography, but kinda neat.
"As for weedkiller in the Sahara, the tax cuts pretty well
ReplyDeleteare in direct proportion with the
national debt."
Yet, BB, revenue increased strongly after the passage of the major tax cut packages. Which is good evidence that these tax cuts reduce the national deb problem.
I suggest you read the following:
ReplyDeleteGDP Growth Caused By Tax Cuts Has Never Happened
Jerry, 60% today would be a hell of a lot different than 60% in the 1950s was. You really have to look at pre 1986 and post 1986 comparisons.......And, while I'm not a big "tax-cuts can cure everything" kind of a guy, it is rather curious that the unemployment rate was actually going down in 1930 and it wasn't until Hoover (the country would have been far better off had Al Smith been elected, I think) raised taxes 152%, meddled with price controls, and markedly restricted trade that the economy seriously started to tank.
ReplyDeleteJerry, I'm not that big of a Reagan guy (Iran-Contra, the S&L fiasco, the Lebanon fiasco, etc.). But the guy did inherit a 7% unemployment rate, a 14% inflation rate, and interest rates that eventually hit close to 20% by April of 1980. I'd say that the guy did a pretty job on the economy (well, other than the deficits and even there he had a fair amount of help from the Dems).
ReplyDeleteJerry: I was referring to strong growth in actual tax revenues after the tax cuts, not growth in GDP.
ReplyDeleteI'd question
ReplyDeletethe relation between lower taxes
and increased revenues.
BB: Try again. I'd first question your using the official newsletter of the Moonie criminal cult as any sort of source for any information.
ReplyDeleteUsually it is conservatives who make this mistake.
Moonie criminal cult? Yikes! OK,
ReplyDeletehow about Forbes and
the economics gurus Lazear, Autor,
Greenstone, Judd, Kashyup, Klenow,Hall, Goolsbee and Thoma of
Stanford, MIT, U of Chicago and U of Oregon? ..suppose they could be
moonies, but I don't think so.
BB: Yeah. check into the Washington Times and who runs it. For a while it was even run out of a prison cell by a pedophile. It's not even a real newspaper business: it is subsidized by the criminal cult.
ReplyDeleteForbes, yeah better. So would the Wash Post. In fact I can only think of one newspaper that is a money laundering scheme for an organized crime operation that operates as a religion.
Still, there was a strong growth in revenue after the Bush middle-class tax cut package early in his administration.
ReplyDeleteGood civil debate, fellows. Nicely done.
ReplyDeleteInteresting, that Washington Times . The article was by
ReplyDeletePatrice Hill, their economics editor. An Oberlin grad, she is noted
in one of Oberlin's publications,
"Many newspapers take a liberal slant, but would never admit it, and even seem oblivious to the bias when it's obvious to readers," said Patrice Hill '76, chief economics correspondent for the conservative Washington Times. "The result is, the public discounts what it reads in the newspapers, and assumes it's not accurate or balanced." Not sure what to make of the moonies*, other than
"The Times was read every day by President Ronald Reagan during his terms in office. In 1997 he said:
The American people know the truth. You, my friends at The Washington Times, have told it to them. It wasn't always the popular thing to do. But you were a loud and powerful voice. Like me, you arrived in Washington at the beginning of the most momentous decade of the century. Together, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. And—oh, yes—we won the Cold War." So, I shall add them to
my list of questionable sources.
D-marks sure makes ya dig. *moonies-young ladies in long white dresses that sold cheap plastic flowers at airports to a
gullible young me when I was doing
a lot of military TDY travel in the early sixties.
Conservatives tend to love it. Well, many do.
ReplyDeleteMoon had also had a friendship of sorts with some high-level Republicans.
They also had a magazine called 'Insight' that was around for a while.
Dig? You should not have had to dig deep. A simple search of washington times moonies turns up a lot.
So, an article from a conservative
ReplyDeletepaper is wrong?
I am sure it is fine as an article from a cult newsletter, but it is not a real newspaper, and only by lucky accident instead of intent can resemble real journalism.
DeleteI'd say the same thing if we were discussing a cult bulletin shaped like a newspaper that too many Democrats loved instead of Republicans. Only I can't think of one at the moment.
So sorry, BB. I am not that partisan.
I get the Washington Times and the Washington Examiner confused sometimes. It's the latter that I like with writers like Byron York and Michael Barone.
ReplyDelete