This nation was founded on whining about taxes, taxes that were much, much lower than those being "whined" about now. So were the Founders wrong? They might have been if it was merely taxes that they whined about. But it was not merely taxes. It was principle. They were willing to pay taxes if they had a say in how much and for what. To merely pay taxes at the whim of a magesterial government broke faith with a principle by which they had created a better life than that from which their forefathers had escaped. It was a better life than the common man in the mother country across the sea was living. It was a fledgling principle of freedom that created that better life. Of individual liberty within a society that respected and promoted that principle. They recognized the intrusion of taxes against their will not so much as an incursion on their wealth, though that too, but as such against their liberty. And their violent adherence to that principle of liberty inspired not only the creation of this country, but a worldwide movement against tyranny. That battle still exists, and will probably always exist.

Just so, in our still colonial way, it exists in America. The Tories don't mind the power of the king, or president, or government . . . take your pick. So long as their life is comfortable all is well. The form and size of government, the Constitution, the power of our magistrates . . . those are merely incidental . . . so long as we are comfortable.

The rebels understand that life, existence, flows in the direction that various principles and laws lead. That comfort is relative to the freedom to achieve it. That comfort given from higher powers is not dependable and can be taken or limited. That comfort earned, fought for, and created and protected by the hands of the comforted is more durable. And the principle that leads in the direction of the latter is liberty.

What many who "whine too much about taxes" are doing is verbally rebelling not so much about the taxes, but about the tyranny of their imposition.

"Who implemented the income tax in Conn?"

Gov Lowell Weicker, who was an independent.

"Didn't we just have years of Repub. govs"

Yes, we did. But I'm not sure of your point, because (1) a republican, particularly in The People's Republic Of Konnecticut. is not necessarily the same thing as a conservative. And (2) even if the republican governors were fiscally conservative (which they were not), the legislature was dominated by liberals. I'm not sure how much you know about the way a democracy works, but the executive branch cannot unilaterally do away with the income tax. You see, the legislative branch controls the legislative agenda.

I love it when people say, as you were implying, that CT isn't all that liberal, because after all, we have had Republican governors. A state (or country) isn't defined as liberal or conservative simply by the party affiliation of its chief executive. The state's implemented policies define that state as liberal or conservative.

On that basis, you can't get more liberal than CT, you just can't. Astronomical taxes, massive government presence, massive spending, massive borrowing. Giving insane perks to labor unions. Endorsing gay marriage. Refusing to enforce duly constituted immigration laws. Giving tuition breaks to the children of undocumented citizens.

The political landscape of CT cannot be any more liberal than it is. It has been that way for 2 generations. And what have the liberals done? Created a liberal utopia with crippling taxes, staggering debt, astronomical cost of living, lousy business climate, shrinking population, horribly failing cities, forcing Catholic hospitals to offer abortions to rape victims, repeal of the death penalty, radically pro-abortion.

Yes, not every single elected official in CT is a Democrat. That doesn't mean this isn't a BLUE state.

There are Democrats in Texas. That doesn't mean that Texas isn't a very conservative place.

Paul, what policies exist in CT that you would define as "conservative" in nature? Our low taxes and balanced budget?

Knockout blow...

[QUOTE=Jim in CT;949498Gov Lowell Weicker, who was an independent.

[/QUOTE]

you sure about that? Didn't he run for Pres. as a Repub?

I actually had to come back and respond again b/c your whole post made me laugh. So you can't label someone or thing based on one aspect of something?

ISN'T THAT WHAT YOU CONSTANTLY DO??????

Atleast I got a good laugh today. Thanks for the joke.

Yes, he ran for President as a Republican. But he didn't ram the state income tax down our throats as a candidate for President. He did that when he was governor. And when he ran (successfully) as governor, he was representing the Independent party.

Paul, that is irrelevent. Simple political affiliation does not define a state as conservative or liberal. The state's political landscape defines that state as liberal or conservative.

CT isn't liberal because most of its legislature is Democrat. CT is liberal because this state has an almost unblemished record of adopting pure liberal policies.

Similarly, TX isn't conservative simply because most of its legislators are Republican. It's conservative because those elected officials have embraced conservative ideology.

Many of my liberal friends think liberal economics works, simply because Bill Clinton (a Democrat) turned the economy around. But do you know what he actually did? He cut taxes, cut spending, balanced the budget, and told millions on welfare to get back to work. The fact that Clinton was a Democrat does not mean that those ideas are liberal ideals...

A person's party affiliation doesn't define them as liberal or conservative. Their ideas define them as liberal or conservative.

"ISN'T THAT WHAT YOU CONSTANTLY DO?????? "

Ummm, no, that isn't remotely what I do. I judge people on what they say and do. If a Democrat wants to cut taxes, I call him conservative. If a Republican supports abortion, I call that a liberal idea.

Your posts might make me laugh, if they weren't so breathtakingly wrong all the time.

Doesn't get any plainer than that.

Bingo, too many painting with a wide brush.
Canidates need to be voted for on their policies and not blanket party affliation.

To clarify...I make conclusions when they are valid. For example, if a sitting President explicitly says that entrepeneurs didn't create their businesses, I would say that President (1) has no affection/understanding for free market capitalism, and (2) has a screw loose.

However...if a politician is a Democrat, I would not therefore conclude that he is liberal. YOU are the one who implied that CT is not a liberal place because we have had governors who were Republicans. You are therefore necessarily assuming that 'Republican' and 'liberal' cannot occur together. Nonsense.

I connect dots when the connection makes a great deal of sense. You do it out of blind desperation either to prove your points, or to refute mine. And it shows.

So you knew he was a Repub. but wrote that he was an Independant - Sounds dishonest.

he was independant when gov of CT, that was the context of Jim's post.

Another example is Romney, he is a repub, but was gov of MA, an extremely liberal state.

What I said was that during the time he was governor, he was not a registered Republican, but rather affiliated with the Independent Party. That's 100% accurate.

I also said his party affiliation is meaningless in trying to decide whether or not CT is a liberal place.

Howling at the moon a bit?

No. no. According to PaulS, if Mass elected a Republican governor, it's therefore not a liberal place.

Did I say that or is this more of your dishonesty?

Yes, I know when he was governor he ran as an independant. He was a Repub. when he was 1st. selectman of Greenwich and as a Sentator. I knew that and Jim knew that, but he tried to imply he didn't have a very long time reg. as a Repub. by not mentioning it.

As Jim just said, what party a person is in is irrelevant as compared to how they vote. A con. Mass/Ct pol. is far different than a TX con.

But that is not how the vast majority of Jim threads read and I'm just showing the falicy in that thinking.

No, just as I do frequently, just laughing at your posts.

Yet Again....Knock it off gentlemen...or we'll be shutting down another thread.

Notice any patterns her Kev?

You're right. During my statement that CT is a liberal place, I failed to mention that Lowell Weicker was once a Republican. I also failed to mention that it's cloudy in Portugal today. Because neither of those facts (Weicker's one-time party affiliation, and the weather in Portugal) matters at all, if the topic at hand is whether or not CT is a liberal place.

CT is a liberal place because its elected officials (the vast majority of whom have been Democrats, but not all of them) have embraced, and enacted, liberal policies.

If you diasgree with that statement, that's your right.

I don't appreciate being called "dishonest" simply because I neglected to include facts which have no bearing whatsoever.

The 'pattern' you mention is, at best, both of us. Not just me. Look at the posts that TDF has closed. I'm being civilized and restrained here.

You are right, it was definitely plain. I guess lack of representation is still an issue? I missed the part about the forefathers whining over taxation because they didnt like what their representatives were doing.

Zimmy, he asked you a question...do you think the founding fathers were wrong to whine about taxes? I'd be genuinely interested in hearing your response...

I think lack of representation is a huge issue. The founding fathers' plan was for the feds to do things (and only those things) that cannot be done at the local level...like national defense, interstate highways, things like that.

Today, we have the department of education, for example. They get some of my tax dollars, some of which go to other states. Clearly, I have no say in how that money gets spent. If my tax dollars go to San Francisco, there is a great likelihood that San Francisco officials (who do not answer to me) will spend my money on things I object to. If I wanted to pay for 6 year olds to get condoms in a San Francisco elementary school, I'd move to San Francisco and advocate for that.

It's not just the lack of representation, because clearly our own legislators have a say in how $$ gets allocated. But that's part of it...

Yep...you two take over threads arguing about what the other one meant.

The thread loses its way, and then I end up Shutting her down.

Deja Vu...all over again

ban them both from this godforesaken place and be done with it!

That would make it a "Kinder, Gentler place for all"

I found it very helpful to impose bans via the User CP. If we all did it, Paul, nebe, Spence, RIRock and I could have our own private threads about corporate tax loopholes and the value of insurance and preventative care in driving down health costs. The four J's and their compadres could lament life in the gulag that is Obama's America :devil2:

I don't like corporate tax-cheats (though Obama, for all his talk, doesn't seem to mind corporate tax cheats, at least not GE...)...

I think health insurance is very valuable (which is why it isn't cheap).

Preventative care drives down costs? Hardly. Preventative care is cheaper for the folks whose problem is identified earlier. But that savings is usually more than offset by the cost of administering the preventative care to huge numbers of people who turn out to be healthy. If preventative care reduced costs, then who on Earth would be opposed to it? By the way, I'm not saying we do away with preventative care...but it usually does not lower aggregate costs...

Life is not a gulag under Obama. But he as added trillions to our debt. He has failed to do one single thing to fix social security and Medicare, meaning that the solutions will have to be that much more drastic whenever we get around to it. Those things make us less free, do they not?

You, apparently, missed a lot of parts that I have been saying here for a while. And you tend, as here, to interject strawmen into the conversation. There was no part about the Founders whining over taxation by their representatives beacuse their representatives did not have the power they do now (by design of those Founders) to tax. The ability of the federal gvt. to tax was so limited that it was difficult for it to expand its power beyond that which was enumerated in the Constitution. That's why progressives, among so many other things, instituted the federal income tax (which you may have missed has massively expanded beyond its original parameters). It is also why States were wealthy enough to run their business then--they had power beyond the fedgov and with closer representation to their constituents.

As well as the examples that Jim in CT gave, you apparently missed the part of my discussion in other threads about the administrative federal state, the real shadow government, that creates most of the federal regulations and associated taxes without our vote and in which we are not truly represented since the regulatory agencies and departments operate independently for the most part from the congress that appoints them. These agencies are akin to one of the complaints against the King in the Declaration of Independence--"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance." And we are little informed about the formation of these well over 300 agencies. And the representatives that create and appoint these agences have more power over us in the aggregate now than they did or were given in the Founders' time.

There is no dispute that the fedgov has grown way beyond its original constitutional powers. The only dispute now is whether that is a better thing, or worse.

Though the Founders would be repulsed by what has happened to the Constitution and how power has been transferred from individuals and local and State gvts. to the central gvt., they would not be stunned. They understood human nature. It is that nature that inspired them to devise a gvt. that would protect the intrinsic human desire for liberty from the tyranny of a leviathan state. But they knew also the weakness in our nature, of the desire for security and comfort above the desire for freedom and the rigors it requires once that freedom was established. They understood that lack of virtue could or would be the downfall of the system they created. Madison and others opined that it would only last 100 years. And he was not far off in that prediction as the progressive era with its anti-constitutional, pro-administrative central state, anti-individual, pro-collective philosophies began to make inroads a little over a century later and took firm hold another generation later under FDR. The fedgov has continued since then to grow in power and in debt and in its need for taxes. And the virtue and freedom of our people has progressively decayed, sold out by more and more to a fragile and unsecured promise of security and comfort by a leviathan gvt. that has outgrown even its ability to pay for its gifts.

Perhaps you've missed, besides past myriad examples of central gvt. tyranny, the latest tyrannical version of taxation for not buying something, or the now limitless power of gvt. to tax everything. If that is not tyrannical to you, then let us just discard the word.

Or, rather, you approve. That this is better not worse. After all, it is NECESSARY to tax everything in order to make the government work. Yes, necessity is not only not the mother of invention, it is the dictate of tyranny itself. All tyrannical goverments do what is necessary to rule the people.

It is interesting to end up on this page not logged in. You can see everyone's posts. Sorry det. I only saw what you said because jplug quoted you. Didn't mean to write something that initiated a response to me from you. And Jim, i wasn't ignoring his or your questions per se, i just don't see them.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

No need to waste your beautiful sarcasm or self-satisfied equilibrium on things that don't exist. Better to stay within your perfect private threads where bothersome and boring (stupid actually) opinions are banned, and have satisfying conversations with those that agree with you.

don't know if he'll actually see this unless someone that still plays in his sandbox happens to quote it or something... but I'm now convinced that Zimmy is about 12 years old....I've suspected it for a while based on the content, nature and tone of his posts.... :rotf2: this explains why you never get an answer when you ask how his thinking fits into Constitutional parameters, he either doesn't get the message because he only sees a fraction of what is written or hasn't covered it in Social Studies yet and doesn't really know.......

Getting back to the original topic...

Obama is now saying that when he stated business owners "didn't build that", he was referring to the infastructure that exists. The "that" that they didn't build isn't their business, but rather highways and bridges.

OK. So if American taxpayers didn't build that infastructure, then who the heck did?

Furthermore, that wasn't the only kooky comment Obama made. He also dismissed entrepeneurs who feel that their success is due to intelligence and hard work. Obama said that there are a lot of hard-working smart people out there. The irrefutable implication is that entrepeneurs arwe no different than peopl ewho do not start businesses from scratch.

How would Obama know this, anyway? What business has he built? On what does he base his knowledge that entrepeneurs are no different than anyone else?

JohnnyD, what do you think of that?

This is what you get when you have a guy whose life experience includes student, community organizer (rabble rouser), professor, and politician. No one with that background would be expected to have any clue how hard it is, for example, to start a business or meet payroll.

Then, Obama says any criticism of his idiotic remarks is "bogus". This is the guy who was supposed to unite all of us, now anyone who dares to criticize him is "bogus".

If this guy was polling at 5%, I'd be worried that 5% of this country is so easily manipulated by a charlatan. That he's polling in the mid 40's is nothing short of scary. Hilary Clinton never, ever looked so good.

Earth to Obama...folks who start a business and turn it into a success are absolutely different than those who never attempt that most American of endeavors. They are different. And they deserve to be honored and encouraged, not to be dismissed with an elitist wave of Obama's hand. Because in Obamaworld, drinking hot toddies in the Harvard faculty lounge is impressive...starting a business, like serving in the military, is for folks not good enough for the Ivy League. And not only are entrepeneurs inferior to Ivy League academocs, they are also the enemy...clearly they are all sinister tycoons, hell-bent on getting rich by exploiting the ignorant masses, who are too stupid to know they are being exploited, and thus need Obama to save them.

I see the posts from 1035 of the 1038 active members. Tough odds for three in a row.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

he very well may have been...but the words used and the tone with which they were delivered at the time cannot be misconstrued regarding the "intent" with which he stated this .....he's done this over and over...offer a convoluted statement intended to inflame, stand back and watch the carnage for a bit and then jump in as saviour along with his apologists claiming that anyone who didn't understand what he really meant is just a hater....it's getting old from an American President who should be very much above this if he respects his office and the American people.....:uhuh:

By Shannen W. Coffin
July 20, 2012 10:05 A.M.

James Taranto labels as “bunk” the Obama campaign’s argument that Obama didn’t mean that a business owner didn’t build his business when he said “you didn’t build that.” The Obama campaign claims that it is obvious that Obama was referring to the roads, bridges, and infrastructure that a business depends upon when he said “you didn’t build that.” I’ve listened to the portion of the speech and actually agree that Obama — who was speaking without aid of his pacifier, er, teleprompter — was probably referring to the roads and bridges mentioned in his prior sentence when he said, “You didn’t build that.” I’ll give Taranto the benefit of the doubt that it is at least a debatable point, but listening to the speech in context, it is likely that Obama was really saying “If you’re a business owner, you didn’t build the infrastructure your business depends on. Government did.” That he can’t articulate the thought cleanly without the assistance of a teleprompter should not be that surprising.

The thing is, even accepting that as true and accepting the less nefarious construction of the sentence, it doesn’t make Obama’s statement that much more palatable. He’s still claiming that the small-business owner who toils to eke out a living while putting food on the table of his employees and serving the needs of some portion of the community owes much of his success to government, and is not the singular cause of his own success. It’s a silly and specious strawman, and it doesn’t take into account that the business owner is already paying taxes to fund those roads, bridges, and other government services that his business benefits from. Obama seems to suggest that much more is owed to the government that makes all things possible. All of the naysaying from the Obama campaign is for naught. In context or out of context, the speech is equally appalling and runs counter to how most Americans view individual success.

So, after 1035 you're just too tired to get to the last three--always the same three? Something else than "tough odds" goin on there.

This little tidbit, of course, is not for you since, after reading the other 1035 posts you will not have enough time, or energy, or ability to read it. It is for the other 1036 that might see it, as are my other posts. The willingness to engage in conversation, debate, shows that character to those listening who see, as well, the character of those who are reluctant.

Among the other contadictions in his speech, does anyone else see the glaring contradiction in "If youve got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made it happen."? If none of us is responsible for our success and can't achieve it without the help of others, then how can "somebody else" make it happen"? Aren't all somebody elses also not capable of building it? His camouflage of political pablums on how we must cooperate and work together for any individual success to happen is not disputed by his opponents. That basic societal necessity of working together to build a society is not disputed by Romney nor conservatives nor any save, perhaps, anarchists. That, in itself, is not a point of distinction. In his speech, Obama, says that this election is between two fundamentally different views. But, though he tries to paint the picture of his view that cooperation is necessary, and that it is not necessary for his opposition, that picture is BS. The distinction is not whether we work together or not, it is how we work together. The difference is a society built by and for individuals who have inalienable rights, who govern from the bottom up, and a society that is governed from the top down, a society whose individuals are granted rights by the government.

His rhetoric and the you didn't build your business sound bites imply the top down form of government. That is the true distinction.

"falling on deaf ears" comes to mind..............

I'm just hoping for more brilliant analysis like this....:biglaugh:

maybe while he's on a roll he can also answer Buckman's question(if he saw it)...wondering if those who "pay their fair share" with taxes like sales tax while having no Federal obligation and pay for their goods and services with some sort of government transfer payment which we know is a direct transfer from one American to another less the Ferderal bureaucracy processing costs.....who is ACTUALLY paying that fair share?:)

The New American Dream
Government assistance expands
By Tami Luhby @CNNMoney February 7, 2012:

More than a third of Americans lived in households receiving government assistance in 2010.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- More than one in three Americans lived in households that received Medicaid, food stamps or other means-based government assistance in mid-2010, according to a new report.

And when Social Security, Medicare and unemployment benefits are included, nearly half of the nation lived in a household that received a government check, according to the analysis of third-quarter 2010 Census data done by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a libertarian-leaning think tank. That's more than 148 million Americans.

Those numbers are on their way up thanks to the Great Recession and its aftermath, which have pushed record numbers of people onto public assistance programs. In particular, the stubbornly high unemployment rate has left millions of Americans in dire straits.

In 2008, one-quarter of people lived in households receiving a government lifeline and about 45 percent a government check, according to the Census Bureau.


The federal government sent a record $2 trillion to individuals in fiscal 2010, up nearly 75% from 10 years earlier.




we do know who built this..................:uhuh: