Posted on 10/07/2010 8:49:15 PM PDT by Inyokern
In 2010, the citizens of Illinois should send to the Capitol a senator who will bring expertise and independence. The candidate who fits that bill is Mark Kirk.
Today the Tribune endorses Kirk, a Republican, for the U.S. Senate seat that Roland Burris soon vacates. To understand our verdict, watch Giannoulias and Kirk's appearance before us this week. You'll find the video at chicagotribune.com/senate. Judge each man's depth and preparedness for the job. Judge knowledge and scope. Judge accomplishment. Judge which candidate has a proven record of thoughtful independence — of bucking his party when the good of this nation is at stake. You won't have difficulty making these judgments.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
We should of course, keep in mind that the revenue enhancement has limits. The laffer curve is a curve, after all.
If we reduced tax rates to .01%, revenues would decrease despite the increased economic activity.
To some degree, ANY tax code is a form of social engineering. The type of tax you choose, exemptions, etc. affect how people behave and there will be winners and losers.
Elk isn’t interested in punishing the rich, but just like those who support fair trade, he is certainly tired of the local realtors’ groups promoting Property tax increases that hit regular folks, and the local state affiliates of the Chambers of Commerce that promote state income taxes, thinking that it means they’ll be spared. Finally, the bandwagon-jumping most businesses do in their political contributions. You can maintain it is only rational, in a cynical, utilitarian sort of way. That kind of behavior begs for a response. Even though these folks don’t think of themselves as class warriors, they are playing the fixed-size pie game as well.
Of course. But we are nowhere near the bottom of the Laffer Curve -- a great deal of slack remains.
I'll stand by the judgment that lower taxes benefit everybody. Moving taxes around -- as you cite in your example -- only penalizes one group in favor of another.
Personally, I'm not particularly in favor of lowering taxes in order to increase revenues. I'm in favor of lowering taxes sufficiently far as to starve the beast that government has become.
It's time for the bureaucrats to make some hard decisions -- and do without.
I’m all for taxcuts. But PRIORITY is spending cuts.
We have in the House the ability to just not appropriate money for spending.
We should not appropriate money for small departments and small programs. We should not appropriate money for big departments and big programs.
Where we do appropriate money we should appropriate at 1998 levels. If Bill Clinton could do that and have a booming economy what’s the problem with it?
... OK so 1998 * rate of inflation for a few programs.
This includes the military. The civilian pentagon workforce of the military is the fastest growing part of the military, not the cost of Iraq or Afghanistan.
This civilian pentagon is obsessed with social engineering in the military. We need to appropriate no money for them.
But even beyond that, we have military spending that the generals don’t want and is essentially pork barrel projects disguised and defense. We need to remove all pork and earmarks from defense appropriations.
We need to remove all pork and earmarks from everything. the reality is that they are small. But they are just bribes to get moderates to vote for big spending.
Which will do absolutely nothing to help dig us out of the hole we are in. If reviving the economy in order to produce jobs is the #1 priority, you'll have done nothing to achieve that aim.
Better to stand fast...and try to break the back of the opposition...rather than be bought off for a mere tuppence.
Most people understand this now. We can win the argument...and the nation will be better off if we do, in fact, win it.
I don’t like the man but I hate the Chicago Machine more and will never aid it.
I need not fall back for any reason. But I don’t indulge my fantasies that I will find many politicians I like very much. Fringe candidates might be of my liking but they don’t get elected.
No fan of JBT either. Who was Blago “respected” by? Certainly no one who ever met the slimy bastard.
In Illinois there barely IS a Republican party nothing I do will harm it.
Plenty of Demonrats will announce their support for extending most of the Bush tax cuts but NOT the rate cut from about 39.5% to 35% on the top marginal incomes above the $250,000 line. Then the Demonrats will draw the line against the latter and will say that they were willing to give the Republicans virtually all of the tax cuts with that one exception and the Republicans stopped the tax cuts because of that one exception. There will be wealthy people who will be po’d because the estate tax will be restored through the ritual GOP stupidity. We are already hearing tales about wealthy codgers in poor health planning pre-12/31/10 suicides to avoid restored estate taxes.
Why not treat everyone equally and either raise or keep low everyones’ taxes?
I am a lifelong Yankee fan. Casey Stengel was the manager when I was a kid. In 1960, he made some really grave errors in the World Series against the Pittsburgh Pirates. They played the seventh and final game well but were losing by three runs very late in the game. The Yankees were having their customary pitching problems and loaded the bases with Pirates in the eighth or ninth inning. Two pitchers were in the bullpen: Ralph Terry and Whitey Ford (the greatest money pitcher I ever hope to see who had three days rest with the whole winter to recuperate). Ford had shut the Pirates out twice in the series but Casey slavishly followed the notion of wanting a right-handed pitcher (Ralph Terry) to face a right-handed batter (Bill Mazeroski). Terry became known as Ralph "Home Run" Terry and was soon enough a golf pro. Bill Mazeroski hit the home run (a rarity in his career) and somehow wound up in the Hall of Fame. Casey was fired and was hired to manage the appalling Mets the next year. In 1961, surveying his team made up of used to almostbes, wannabes but never weres and nobodies, Casey, in frustration, asked: Doesn't anyone here know how to play this game???
Politics can be like baseball. The Republicans when not led by Ronaldus Maximus more resemble Casey's Mets than Casey's Yankees (aka The Dynasty). The Demonrats live and breathe politics, are past masters at exploiting every resentment of almost ever voter. While the Republicans raise the alienation of voters to an art form, the Democrats collect most of the alienated voters often in entire ethnic groups or occupational groups. The Demonrats and those voters really don't care what is equal or fair regardless of their lying rhetoric. When we cling to tax cuts for the big guys even when it jeopardizes some of the tax cuts for the big guys (i.e., eliminating the estate tax) as well as everyone else's tax cuts, the Demonrats eat us for lunch smirking all the way.
There are two great traditions in American politics.
One is the Democratic Party of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. The Democrats are the oldest party and objectively the greatest party when viewed from the point of view of party success. That party was captured by outright communists under George McGovern in the anti-Vietnam War insanity. The reds have run that party ever since and Obamao is merely an example of what they now want to offer. Nonetheless, Andrew Jackson was a stupendously great man and great POTUS.
The other great tradition is the Republican tradition. It appears to be far newer but is not. The idea of a political party genuflecting to business interests and wealthy folks began under George Washington and the Federalists. Study the Mount Vernon Conference, the Annapolis Conference and the resulting Constitutional Convention which massacred the law and the amendment provisions of the Articles of Confederation. The two conferences were supposed to be about navigation of the Potomac but were actually Federalist scheming to empower a new federal regime usable by Federalists to enhance their business interests. The Federalists lasted two terms of George Washington and one of John Adams and were gone altogether soon enough thereafter because of popular revulsion against their Hamiltonian heresies against the interests of ordinary Americans. BUT, there had to be a money party so the Whigs were invented to work at federal funding of "internal improvements" benefiting Whig businessmen. The Whigs fell apart over slavery but also were seldom elected nationally. They disappeared in the 1850s. The Republican Party added the abolitionist crowd who were not notably poor folks but insufferably elitist New England Unitarians and Congregationalists whose ancestors rode the Mayflower and had owned the Northeast because they stole it fair and square from the Indians. The Republicans have been divided at least since the day Lincoln was shot. Reconstruction was not just about principle but also about economically raping the Southland. Fortunately, the early Republicans also tended to be moral spokesmen and that has been an important base of party support ever since. Today, we defend the babies, marriage, morality, guns, the contract that is the Constitution, and the right of folks to live their lives unmolested, unbought and unbossed by nanny nag liberals.
There is often a class bias to the nanny nags. They just know that being affluent and having elite educations and what not proves that they know better than the rest of us how we should live our lives. The GOP response to the lifestyle nannynags should be MYOB.
The late Senator Henry Jackson, staunch anti-communist but himself a socialist, observed as his Democrat Party was being seized by McGovern and the reds: "I take second place to no man in calling myself a liberal but I do not have to be a damn fool." His style, if not his ideology, was that of Andrew Jackson. If the Demonrats have abandoned Andrew Jackson, maybe we should acquire him and make him a GOP icon.
Finally, bear in mind that in the conscious lifetimes of early Baby Boomers, the tax rates on high marginal income were probably at 80% or more. Reagan brought those scandalous rates down to the range of about 39%. However despotic the original rates were, no one said that we must cut everyone's taxes by 40% or so to give everyone else the benefit enjoyed by the big guys or not have tax cuts at all. Most of us recognized a far greater need for taxes on those very wealthy folks to be drastically reduced as a matter of justice. Only the Demonratic Party hacks complained. The big guys drew major benefit from Reagan's tax policies as they should have but Reagan is no longer with us and Obamao is no Reagan and we should take whatever tax cuts we can get. If the wealthy don't get everything they want with Obamao in the White House, that is no reason to reject other cuts.
What you are arguing for today, I would have argued for a couple of decades ago. With all due respect, I no longer agree with what I believed then. You and I may respectfully disagree on this and I suspect we do but I have been pinging you in spite of that not to change your mind but to keep you in the conversation.
Electing Kirk restores the sweet federal sugar that that the Combine Republicans live for. It also continues the Combine myth that only unprincipled slimeballs like Kirk can be elected as “Republicans” in Illinois. They are motivated not by policy but by money, jobs, contracts. Now they have been granted a new lease on life and extended control of the Illinois GOP (such as it is).
Your conspiracy theory is pretty funny stuff. No one sensible takes it seriously however.
Still waiting.....
Still waiting.....
Still waiting......
Still...Oh, wait!
You should note that I have stop pinging others to highlight your self-humiliation. You are pretty well disposed of now. Thanks for playing though.
I still await your resume and for good reason because you have none. I have many achievements in conservatism and have posted some. You have none which is why you do not post them.
Whether you and Nancyboy are Rats or Republicans is a matter of ideology rather than claimed affiliation. Nancyboy is no Republican any more than was Lowell Weicker, Jake Javits, Charles Mathias, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Snarlin' Arlen, Lincoln Chaffee or you.
You can trash talk that’s for sure but I can see how effectively you have been taking out the trash from your great success in electing extreme rightists. To you 90% of the GOP is RINO. I’ll bet there are Commies under your bed too.
Walsh who apparently beat Melissa Bean is the one who stomped the "moderator" from the Plague of Women Vipers at a Plague debate by asking for the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, being indignantly refused by Nurse Ratchet, the Plague "moderator," and then Walsh led the Pledge of Allegiance himself leaving Nurse Ratchet spluttering mad as a wet radical. The Pledge is intolerable because it mentions God, right out in public in front of children!!! and everything, thanks to the Knights of Columbus's success in lobbying Congress to get that in 1954, and it is also an expression of forbidden patriotism and nationalism. It is offensive to finely honed radical hysteria. Bean looked like a deer blinded by the headlights. Walsh will make a good Congressman, a lot better than Bean and still much better than Nancyboy going away.
I reside in Winnebago County (greater Rockford to the Cheddar Curtain) and this county has all conservative Republican State Senate representation (for the many years I have lived here), all Republican State Assembly representation save the black district in Rockford during the same period, an overwhelmingly Republican County Board, etc. Rockford has a promising young and new Assembly member in Joe Sosnowski, a social conservative, who was elected to the Rockford Board of Aldermen last year at 21 or so and this year to the Assembly at 22.
If you have the same level of success and are electing actual Republicans not morally and intellectually and ideologically corrupt quislings like Nancyboy or Jailbird Ryan or Bob Edgar or James Thompson or Tom Doublecross or that execrable abortion-loving social revolutionary woman who is "GOP" leader in the State Senate or Judy Baah Baah Tooooopinka, then you may have some right to participate in this discussion but if your political ambition is to see RINOs and DIABLOs such as that named group in the ascendancy, then you are an enemy of the party, the state of Illinois, Illinoisans and of conservative ideology. You may speak as a volunteer for the Combine but you are certainly not representative of actual Republicans. Real Republicans MUST be the majority or the self-perpetuating "leaders" of the "GOP" here would have no problem with SB600 to return control of the party to its rank and file and no problem with partisan primaries limited to registered party voters with restraints on changing parties within six months prior to a primary and, in fact, with actual party registration. The GOP itself is nothing like 90% RINO or DIABLO but an awful lot of GOP primary voters are no better than Obamao in their views because they are in fact Demonrats in GOP drag just like Nancyboy and his Combine pals.
Still awaiting that resume of yours.....
Still awaiting.....
Still awaiting.....
Oh, that's right, you don't have one but you sure do have opinions and ideas as to why the Illinois GOP should nominate, elect and be run by its mortal enemies like Nancyboy and the lot lizard Tooooopinka. Checked under my bed, no commies tonight. Like there are no patriots on top of yours.
What is your obsession with my personal life? Rather than deal with the obvious fact that Kirk was about as conservative as could be elected from this state you act as though there is some kind of acceptable background I must have before I even speak.
Look at the FACTS. Kirk won the primary because there was no one more conservative capable of winning the primary. Illinois hasn’t elected a conservative on a statewide basis since Fitzgerald. Only by keeping the Machine from major offices will it be weakened enough that a conservative can be elected. Yet you seek to further empower it.
90% of the GOP is not RINO? Just 90% of the leadership?
The term "right wing extremists" as used by you and your Combine friends to justify the ongoing degeneracy ideological and otherwise of the Illinois GOP such as it is translates in normal English to folks of normal values, conventional morality, patriotism, believing in self-defense, opposed to funding their enemies through tax policy, i.e., decent citizens. Ther use of the term "right wing extremists is almost inevitably a marker that the user is part of the problem in our politics and not part of the solution. The best of these (not acceptable but best of these) are merely folks addled by their own personal materialism and think that politics is an exercise in obtaining jobs and contracts and money and, ummm, BIG tax breaks for BIG income. Their allies are the worst scum in our politics: Nancyboy, Edgar, Jailbird Ryan, Jim Thompson, Tom Doublecross, Judy Baah Baah Toooopinka, that other babykiller woman who runs the State Senate "GOP" caucus, etc.
The Combine rigs the rules of the state party to assure a self-perpetuating oligarchy. They do this by allowing every Tom, Dick and Harriet in the general population, regardless of ideology or even mere loyalty to the brand name to participate in phony primaries like the one that produced Nancyboy. Then the self-satisfied nonsense out of the usual gang of quislings is: The time to disagree on Nancyboy is in the primary and NOT in the general election when we MUST beat the Democrats!!! What vapid nonsense. The only results of electing the Nancyboy "Republicans" and the rest of the corrupt nest of vipers running the party is a) more rapid degeneration of the party, b) deeper degeneracy posing as Illinois "Republicanism," c) a bigger share of the Combine spoils for the "Republican" club within the Combine. As an example of how serious your pals and idols are not about politics, we understand that Doublecross was out on the links on election day getting in eighteen holes befiore he would have to rub elbows with the peasants at Republican functions that evening. If only he could avoid such unpleasantries and socialize exclusively with Muffy, Skipper, the polo players, the yacht afficionados and the Junior League and avoid the peasants altogether but NOOOO, the appearances of actual decuision-making by the public must be preserved.
If Saul Alinsky were still among us, he would undoubtedly be one of those "Republican" primary voters, voting to see to it that only philosophical and moral degenerates are nominated by the incredibly dimwitted Preppy Pubbies. His vote would be welcomed by Combinasaurus, the monster that ate Republicanism in the name of "fiscal conservatism." Senator Jim DeMont is the latest actual Republican leader to puboicly deny the existence of any such thing as a "fiscal conservative" who is not a social conservative.
The other answer to why anyone cares about your "personal life" as you put it, by which one assumes you are referencing your understandably non-existent resume since any relationship you might have with giraffes invokes no interest so long as it is not rubbed in the faces of ordinary folk, is that you have apparently done nothing, achieved nothing, caused nothing succeeded at nothing of any value whatsoever to the conservative cause (since you apparently cannot cite even one) but you sure do feel free to rant on in favor of the Combine and its continued thwarting of actually conservative agendas.
The Machine (actually the Demonratic wing of the Combine with particular reference to Sickago) will soon be weakened by the retirement of Daley the Lesser. Even if Rahmbo is elected, he won't last. If it is Carol Mostly Fraud, or any of the other pretenders to competence, then Sickago will be back to the days after the death of Daley the Greater and will be "governed" by a variety of 3rd World leftists sort of like Mugabe and friends in Zimbabwe. Remember those halcyon days of Michael Bilandic (probably the best of the bunch despite the snowstorm), Jane Byrne, Harold Washington, Eugene Sawyer and the barrel of circus performers on the Board of Aldermen in those days??? Well, this time, the Sickago Machine will make that bunch look responsible to people outside Crook County. That will weaken the Machine's hold on state elections as Sickago is racked by street warfare (revolutions and counterrevolutions/this gang vs. that gang vs. those three other gangs all with shifting allegiances du jour). Think the end of civilization as the Machine wing of the Combine has known it. To what places will da Bears, da Cubbies, da White Sox, da Bulls, da Blackhawks relocate???
"Keeping the Machine from major offices?????" Slaving to install Nancyboy in the Senate does that???? Meanwhile Chicago hack Pat Quinn gets a totally unexpected four year extension of his corrupt career as governor where he can run tyhe finances of the state in the same brilliant modern day Machine fashion as Chicago's finances are run. That will sure teach that Machine a thing or two. What are the RINOs and DIABLOs to do? Certainly not elect Brady. If Brady were elected, where is the Combine's vig???
Unless and until actual formal party registration is allowed and required for participation in the GOP, there is no GOP. The percentages are the percentages of the general population. If Jesse Jackass, Jr., wants to pull a GOP ballot, he is allowed every bit as much as actual Republicans (qualified by beliefs) are allowed. I am not sure if the RINOs (and DIABLOs) are only 90% of the self-perpetuating oligarchy. There is no leadership either.
The saviors of the Machine Demons wilo be the spineless "Republicans" who will prop them up with money and patronage until the Machine is back on its feet.
It is time to ping a few former participants here.
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