You can feel like you earn more, to pretend to have meritocracy, but really, everyone needs all of their needs cared for at all times. The doctor has no right to his labor – he has to labor for the community good. The farmer has no right to his crops – he is there to provide for the eaters. The builder has no right to the house he builds – he is there to provide for those who want houses. The woman has no right to herself – she is there to provide for men who need her body. The healthy man has no right to his parts – he is there to be disassembled and harvested by those who need his organs.
To each according to your ability, to each according to your need! Eat the rich!
Chicago’s Chief of Police, who previously blamed ”government-sponsored racism” and Sarah Palin for Chicago’s gun violence, declared that the law-ful exercise of the Second Amendment was a threat to public safety. From the Illinois State Rifle Association:
Chicago’s embattled police superintendent dug himself deeper into a pit of controversy today by claiming that lawful firearm owners are agents of political corruption. Appearing on a Chicago Sunday morning talk show, superintendent Garry McCarthy expressed his conviction that firearm owners who lobby their elected representatives or who donate money to political campaigns are engaged in corruption that endangers public safety. McCarthy went on to express his belief that judges and legislators should rely on public opinion polls when interpreting our Constitution.
After totally dismissing the citizen’s right to redress grievances, McCarthy trained his constitutional wisdom on the 2nd Amendment. Despite recent court decisions to the contrary, McCarthy opined that the 2ndAmendment limits citizens to owning smooth-bore muskets. McCarthy went on to say that he believes that the 2nd Amendment supports mandatory liability insurance for firearm owners and the mandatory application of GPS tracking devices to civilian owned firearms.
The head of the Chicagograd Regional Police Battalion, Comrade Chief Garry McCarthy, has declared that the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution only applied to the 18th century, and that all matters of civil rights hinge on workers’ and peasants’ need for safety guaranteed by State security apparatuses. Therefore, all attempts to use the US Constitution to oppose security operations by State Law Enforcement organs are a danger to the public and will be suppressed.
Comrade McCarthy, known for his heroic service which has led to Chicagograd having the reputation as one of the safest cities in the USSA, is an expert in constitutional interpretation. In recent remarks on a local broadcast from the American Media Collective, the Chief explained that the Constitution was only intended to cover the current issues of 18th century America, making is a reactionary and decadent document.
In our Progressive era, where all citizens are equal and endowed by their membership in the Proletariat with the unalienable rights to complete protection and the provision of all their needs by the State, the Constitution now represents a threat to public safety when it is evoked as limiting the proper mandatory services of the State for the protection and care of the Masses.
…
Down with bourgeois ‘rights’! Up with the Right to Security Through Universal Disarmament!
Prog on:
Clearly the People’s Revolutionary City Directorate Commisar Rahm Emanuel has chosen well in his police chief, who clearly understands that the bourgeois notion of individual self defense is not only obsolete, but counterrevolutionary and dangerous. These kinds of reminders are good to have, in case the mothers of future generations of the glorious proletariat forget that their wombs are the property of the state and thus of all of their fellow workers. The Chicagograd Regional Police Battalion commander’s ideas ensure that no mother of future workers will be able to resist the glorious will of the most powerful of the proletariat laborers when they wish to provide her with a future worker for the state, and that any resistance she has to such an action would be counterrevolutionary and dangerous.
Glorious Motherhood! Down with the War on Women! Women’s rights means the power for women to bear strong workers for the state, and the strongest of workers are the ones who can catch and battle the strongest of women to a defeat in unarmed combat, mirroring the revolutionary workers’ struggle against reactionary capitalists.
U.S. Economy Unexpectedly Contracts in Fourth Quarter
U.S. economic momentum screeched to a halt in the final months of 2012, as lawmakers’ struggle to reach a deal on tax increases and budget cuts likely led businesses to pare inventories and the government to cut spending.
The nation’s gross domestic product shrank for the first time in 3 1/2 years during the fourth quarter, declining at an annual rate of 0.1% between October and December, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.
We’ve had four years under Obama of “unexpected” job losses. Now we have an “unexpected” drop in GDP.
Constantly, experts are being “surprised” by “unexpected” losses that go against every forecast they make. Every forecast is bright and shining, a horizon of a wonderous land where the ocean stop rising and the sun is shining and everyone is employed and everything is fantastic. And every time, it’s “unexpected” when plans made by socialist planners fail.
There are so many people who see the poor direction taken by government. The solutions that everyone supports are ignored in favor of socialist/social justice objectives. And every time, the social engineering fails.
This is a surpise only to The Anointed (as Thomas Sowell calls them), who seriously rule and truly live by Adam Savage’s humorous quote:
Then again, I bet most people would rather have Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman running the government. A discussion over the use of rocket boots versus a backpackable hang glider to save us from the fiscal cliff would actually be more productive than raising taxes on job creators and increasing handouts to those who aren’t working.
For the fourth time this year, a murky haze has descended over north China, leaving residents of Beijing choking on toxic smog. China’s air hasn’t been this bad since 1954, according to the state-run People’s Daily newspaper.
In a remarkable record of dirty air, 24 out of January’s first 29 days this year had air classified as hazardous. And the skies have still not cleared.
…
The air is so bad that wealthy Chinese entrepreneur, Chen Guangbiao, is selling fresh air in soft drinks cans, similar to bottled drinking water. Each can is sold for 5RMB or about 80 cents.
Via HotAir, a reminder that we’re about to be taxed after death.
Part of the upcoming “Forward, over the fiscal cliff!”-scenario we’re potentially looking at includes a big hike in estate taxes (or, as they’re perhaps more aptly called, death taxes). Currently, the estate tax is applied to inherited assets at 35 percent after a $5 million exemption; most Republicans and even a mix of Democrats are in favor of lessening or eliminating the death tax altogether, but if President Obama gets the tax deal he wants, estate taxes will go up to 45 percent after a $3.5 million exemption.
In the event of neither a Bush-era extension nor President Obama’s plan, however, going over the cliff means that the estate tax shoots back up to the pre-Bush level of 55 percent after a $1 million exemption — and that has disastrous implications for our economy (which is just great, because we clearly don’t have enough disastrous economic implications looming over our heads already).
HotAir has a good video by Milton Friedman that breaks it down a bit more.
For those not quite clear on what that 55% of 1 million really entails, revisit this:
As the fiscal debate focuses on whether to raise the federal income tax rates for the top 2 percent of Americans, other possible tax increases have taken a backseat in the debate.
But a group of billionaires led by Warren Buffett and George Soros to change that — by raising rates for the much-maligned estate tax.
The wealthy taxpayers — organized by Responsible Wealth, which advocates for “progressive tax policies” — have signed a pledge calling for a “responsible estate tax proposal” as part of any fiscal cliff deal. In addition to Buffett and Soros, signatories of the pledge include other left-leaning billionaires, including Bill Gates Sr., Richard Rockefeller and Abigail Disney, as well as politicians like former President Jimmy Carter.
Let’s say you’re a super-wealthy conglomerate hedge fund megacorporation owner whose only real threats are from more agile upstarts. What better way to destroy them than by using the tax code?
Family farm owner dies? Drown his family in taxes so they have to sell the farm. Small business owner dies? Drown his family in taxes so they have to sell the business.
Responsible Wealth is calling for only the first $4 million of a couple’s income to not be subject to a tax. After that, it would be taxed at 45 percent, which would gradually rise on the largest incomes.
Yeah, only. So if you’re land-rich and cash-poor, like many farmers and ranchers, you’re up shit creek. If you have a few thousand acres of land you bought for cheap decades ago, the government will go in and appraise it again, adjust it for inflation, adjust it for whatever Agenda 21 zoning crap is going on, and adjust it for residences and improvements, and when they come up a few million higher than it was before you die, well… your kids are now stuck with that bill. Or, you can sell… and who’s going to be the big agricultural conglomerate there to snatch up your land, bulldoze your farmhouse and barn, and plant some genetic uber corn where you buried your old bird dog Duke? Oh, that’ll be Warren “TAX YOU TILL YOU F***ING DIE BECAUSE I GOT MINE B****ES!!!” Buffet.
The death tax itself is a destructive, regressive, horrible tax instituted by communists and their sympathizers. Again, it’s in the bloody manifesto. The death tax argument usually goes “well, they benefited in life, so they should pay back”. What that ignores is that they paid taxes their whole lives. Those who are veterans signed a line that said “up to and including my life”; and yet some bureaucrat communist oligarch tells them they need to “give back to society?”
“It’s shameful to leave revenue on the table from those who can afford to pay,” said Rockefeller, the great-grandson of industrialist John D. Rockefeller, said in a conference call organized by Responsible Wealth Tuesday.
So because they have something to take, it’s shameful not to take it from them by force? This isn’t “revenue”, it’s confiscation from the citizen by force.
John Bogle, founder and former CEO of The Vanguard Group, added: ”If we’ve been privileged in life and weren’t paying our fair share of taxes, somebody else is going to have to pay them. It will inevitably be those who are less able to do so.”
Bogle, like Soros, Buffet, and the rest, can always opt to pay more taxes. They can always cut a check for more.
“Every step, large or small, to come after that deficit is good,” Bogle said. “Who bears the burden? … Our position is that those who have most resources to bear the burden ought to step up to the plate.”
His position is that we need to liquidate the kulaks. He’s the oligarch, they’re the damned tight-fisted landed peasants. Kill the have-some want-more farmer.
MATT LAUER, TODAY: So bottom line, would raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans have a chilling effect on hiring in this country?
WARREN BUFFETT: No, and I think would have a great effect in terms of the morale of the middle class, who have seen themselves paying high payroll taxes, income taxes. And then they watch guys like me end up paying a rate that’s below that, you know, paid by the people in my office.
Eat the rich!
Bill Whittle’s Firewall covers the practical problems and why it makes no sense even if the arch-left got everything they want – even if everyone was liquidated, it wouldn’t work:
Though that’s from last year, it’s worth noting that blaming “the rich” is sure easy to do.
Seeing as how Warren Buffet is a multi-billionaire, his idea of pushing for a higher income tax would hurt up-and-coming businesses – not Berkshire Hathaway, which unless you’re rich, you can’t even buy a real share of – is only going to act as a barrier to entry for new businesses. This is just good ol’ crony capitalism. The ultra-big business makes deals with government that make it more difficult for new businesses to threaten them. This is why, for example, Obamacare affects companies with 50 employees. It keeps small business small, while big business gets a waiver. The business currying favor with the government gets to use the government’s monopoly on force against the up-and-coming business, making sure they never make it up.
Warren Buffet will never find his wealth taken away anyway, and whatever he earns in income from a salary or wages is meaningless. He earns money from investments and capital gains. The small husband and wife business that does $300,000 and that they file together suddenly becomes the target as “the rich”. He wants to raise income tax on those people as a means to crush them, and prevent them from getting to where he is. As the expression goes, he’s pulling the ladder up behind him.
The left loves wealth. Obama’s rich, Boxer, Feinstein, Edwards, Durbin, Schumer, the Kennedy clan, Kerry, the Clintons, and so on and so forth are all incredibly rich. Boxer made money on oil which she then pushed to tax, Feinstein made money by steering government contracts to her husband (as well as other investments), John Edwards made his in frivolous lawsuits, Kerry made his by marrying a billionaire, the Kennedys made theirs through bootlegging and influence peddling, the Clintons made theirs through criminal deals and now speaking engagements, and so on and so forth. They have their money, and they love it. They’re on top, and now they need to tell you how to live.
It’s also like Al Gore, who has a mansion, jets around the country, is a multi-millionaire set up to profit from a carbon exchange, and yet lives by none of his own rules. Because, you see, he’s too important.
Socialism is for the people, not the socialist. Taxes are for the people, not Warren Buffet.
They are the Ruling Class. You are not. And they set up institutions to keep things that way. But they want you to hate the “evil rich” as they hold you down - pitting you against your fellow Country Class citizens who are improving their own lot in life – and yours.
The greatest threat to the social order of the royalty of Europe were the rise of the burghers and merchants, who weren’t peasants or serfs tied to the land and owned by their lord, nor nobility.
The French politician who said Indian steel company ArcelorMittal should leave the country has told CNBC that his government is only acting like U.S. President Barack Obama.
Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg, a member of the governing Socialist party, caused controversy last week when he said that the Indian company, which employs close to 20,000 people in France, should leave after it said it would have to close down a factory.
The French government announced on Thursday that it could nationalize the factory in question, with backing from an unnamed businessman.
The news raised the specter of the nationalizations of the early 1980s, which were instigated by Hollande’s predecessor Francois Mitterrand.
Montebourg told CNBC after a meeting with trade unions in Paris: “Barack Obama’s nationalized. The Germans are nationalizing. All countries are nationalizing. I’ve also noticed the British nationalized 6 banks.”
Montebourg is believed to be referring to the takeover of struggling automakers by the U.S. government earlier in the financial crisis.
Y’know, when socialists justify their actions by saying the US president is a socialist and he’s nationalizing industries, that’s bad.
Well, any normal individual understands that as true but liberalism is a psychosis . O’bomber even keeps the war going along the Mexican border with projects like “fast and furious” and there is still no sign of ending it. He is a Communist without question promoting the Communist Manifesto without calling it so. How shrewd he is in America. His cult of personality mesmerizes those who cannot go beyond their ignorance. They will continue to follow him like those fools who still praise Lenin and Stalin in Russia. Obama’s fools and Stalin’s fools share the same drink of illusion.
Normally it’d be so easy to say “it’s Pravda, synonymous with anti-American lies”, but when international socialists are using Obama as an example of how their nationalizing policies should expand… well… if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, and has advisors who are self-avowed ducks, cabinet members that consider ducks their favorite philosophers, and it was raised by ducks, it stands a pretty good chance of being a duck… especially when other ducks are saying “he’s a duck”.
I’d laugh more, but The People’s Cube is predicting the future. The beginning of the piece is about how the author moved from the former USSR to the US, and how the jokes didn’t translate because of the wild differences between the US and the USSR. I studied the former Soviet Union in college, and many of my professors and instructors had lived under the USSR’s rule and managed to escape one way or another. The “great ideas” of communism and socialism are reprehensible, and a turn away from self-reliant liberty back to the thousands of years of human history in which man has lived subjugated by tyrannical rulers and governments. It is very sobering to realize that we live today in an anomaly, where the mass of men are for the most part free… for now.
With our fundamental transformation firmly underway, things are beginning to change, and the jokes are beginning to fit.
No one is working – yet the factory quotas are fulfilled.
The factory quotas are fulfilled – yet the stores have nothing to sell.
The stores have nothing to sell – yet people’s homes are full of stuff.
People’s homes are full of stuff – yet no one is happy.
No one is happy – yet the voting is always unanimous.
Already in America I discovered that most of my old Soviet jokes didn’t work in translation. It wasn’t so much the language difference as the fact that Americans had no first-hand knowledge of a totalitarian government, ideological uniformity, and shameless propaganda.
But that is changing. The more America “progresses” back to the Soviet model, the more translatable the old Soviet jokes become.
Let’s see how an old Soviet joke can be rewritten into a new American joke.
The six contradictions of socialism in the United States of America
America is capitalist and greedy – yet half of the population is subsidized.
Half of the population is subsidized – yet they think they are victims.
They think they are victims – yet their representatives run the government.
Their representatives run the government – yet the poor keep getting poorer.
The poor keep getting poorer – yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.
They have things that people in other countries only dream about – yet they want America to be more like those other countries.
There’s more where it came from – or where we’re going, whichever the case may be.
- Why do authorities in United States respect their people?
- Because their people can easily and legally buy fire-arms.
It’s perhaps the only heartening thing in the entire slew of jokes that are otherwise depressing, and given that it’s the emergency last-ditch dump-the-warp-core option, it’s not very cheery either.
Except it’s not the bankers of the 1980s (the origins of which could be a series of posts on its own)… it’s the GOVERNMENT that’s going to be taking lands and homes away.
Rancher Kevin Kester works dawn to dusk, drives a 12-year-old pick-up truck and earns less than a typical bureaucrat in Washington D.C., yet the federal government considers him rich enough to pay the estate tax — also known as the “death tax.”
And with that tax set to soar at the beginning of 2013 without some kind of intervention from Congress, farmers and ranchers like Kester are waiting anxiously.
“There is no way financially my kids can pay what the IRS is going to demand from them nine months after death and keep this ranch intact for their generation and future generations,” said Kester, of the Bear Valley Ranch in Central California.
Two decades ago, Kester paid the IRS $2 million when he inherited a 22,000-acre cattle ranch from his grandfather. Come January, the tax burden on his children will be more than $13 million.
For supporters of a high estate tax, which is imposed on somebody’s estate after death, Kester is the kind of person they rarely mention. He doesn’t own a mansion. He’s not the CEO of a multi-national. But because of his line of work, he owns a lot of property that would be subject to a lot of tax.
“Our number one goal is to repeal the estate tax, to get rid of it, not have it for every generation, when I die and my kids die and so on,” he told Fox News. “For everyone to have to re-purchase the ranch or farm over and over for each generation, that’s inherently unjust. So what we’re doing is asking our politicians to understand that and repeal the estate tax.”
Not going to happen, Kevin. Your land is going away. This is part of the plan to equalize wealth by destroying you. It is unfair that you worked hard and earned something.
From a couple paragraphs later:
“The idea behind the estate tax is to prevent the very wealthy among us from accumulating vast fortunes that they can pass along to the next generation,” said Patrick Lester, director of Federal Fiscal Policy with the progressive think tank — OMB Watch.
Many Democrats argue the tax promotes equality among classes, especially in capital gains — or stocks passed from one generation to another. Since stocks are only taxed when they are sold, the government can’t profit from long-term investments without the estate tax.
“Very large portions of very wealthy estates are tied up in stocks and they have never been taxed,” said Lester. “The estate tax is one of the ways we make sure the wealthy pay a little bit more as an overall share of their wealth and income compared to low-income individuals.”
For those unfamiliar with how this idea works, I go to the first three planks of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx:
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
That’s what the Death Tax/Estate Tax is. It’s the most critical part of communism – destroying wealth and destroying Jefferson’s ideal American, the yeoman farmer. This is just calling for the liquidation of the kulaks.
Worth noting is who imported this communist drivel:
The estate tax dates back to 1916 when then-President Woodrow Wilson imposed the tax of 1 to 10 percent on the wealthy because World War I reduced federal government revenues. Under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the tax rose to 77 percent, as Congress tried to prevent wealth from becoming concentrated among a few powerful and super-rich families.
One used it to fund a war we didn’t belong in, the other to crush prosperous American citizens… in order to defend the existing rich from the new rich. The Ruling Class kept the Country Class down, using the best tools of oppression – communist ideas.
From the transcript of the President’s speech in Roanoke, Va.
President Barack Obama delivers remarks to small business owners, community lenders and members of Congress in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy F. Geithner has his back to the camera. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Emphasis added)
Business Owner: Well what if I didn’t have help, what if I am that smart, what if I do put in a 60 or 70 hour week Mr. President? What if I do have the best product out there? What if people like how I run my business better than the next guy?
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. [Emphasis added]
Business Owner: You know what I might have had a good teacher along the way, but did they actually help me start and run my business, their INFLUENCE may have helped me, but did they actually participate in the blood, sweat and tears that got me to the level of success I have experienced today? How did a road and a bridge help me start a business, sir? People had businesses before interstate highways. I did build my business on my own, I planned it, I executed it, I hired others who wanted to work for me, I constantly made my product better and now its the best out there. How dare you sir, tell me that my business is NOT the RESULT of my OWN HARD WORK!
JBH: Ownership of property is the hallmark of the American way. It has made us what we are today, without it we are no better than the next social democracy out there. For the president to make his comment that business owners did not make their own success is a fallacy in the worst sense. It is an out right lie and should be insulting to every business own out there. You business owners are what make the American economy turn without you there would be no American Dream.
Business Owners please remember the following:
YOU are the ENGINE of the economy, not government.
YOU are the JOB CREATORS, not government.
YOU are the INNOVATORS,not government.
YOU are the epitome of the AMERICAN DREAM, not government.
DO NOT feel guilt, YOU are VIRTUOUS, not government.
For the record on the internet take a look here. For the record I didn’t see the word government mentioned anywhere.
ShortTimer
JBH
