Politics you SHOULD be talking about

[Banned]

Pro union is anti capitalism. This country is very socialist right now. The top 5% of wage earners pay about 60% of the income taxes. A progressive taxation policy like that is very socialist. But you are not satisfied with these people paying 60% of the total income tax, you want more. Disgusting class envy behavior.

[lonewolf]

i love PA. but how can you guys talk about Pa and still bring up whether or not obama or mccain are better for president? i hate politics.

Like I said. Our small town / county would die without money trickling down from state and federal taxes. Apparently this would be Joe's wish.

I strongly disagree. If the totally inept federal government got their nose out of state & local issues (i.e. education, welfare, healthcare, ad nauseum) and reduced taxes accordingly, the much more efficient state governments could raise their taxes by a lesser amount and have more than enough revenues to handle these problems more efficiently.

Even poorer states would be better off without the incompetent hand of the federal government returning less than $1 for every social program dollar taken from their citizens.

That was the way the Constitution was intended to work.

[Hawk]

Pro union is anti capitalism. This country is very socialist right now. The top 5% of wage earners pay about 60% of the income taxes. A progressive taxation policy like that is very socialist. But you are not satisfied with these people paying 60% of the total income tax, you want more. Disgusting class envy behavior.

\\

Sources ?

[Banned]

http://www.ntu.org/main/page.php?PageID=6

[Banned]

i love PA. but how can you guys talk about Pa and still bring up whether or not obama or mccain are better for president? i hate politics.

Like I said. Our small town / county would die without money trickling down from state and federal taxes. Apparently this would be Joe's wish.

I strongly disagree. If the totally inept federal government got their nose out of state & local issues (i.e. education, welfare, healthcare, ad nauseum) and reduced taxes accordingly, the much more efficient state governments could raise their taxes by a lesser amount and have more than enough revenues to handle these problems more efficiently.

Even poorer states would be better off without the incompetent hand of the federal government returning less that $1 for every social program dollar taken from its citizens.

That was the way the Constitution was intended to work.

Thank you for reminding a few here that there is a Constitution we are supposed to be following.

[tornandfrayed]

Police force = Socialism

Social Security = Socialism

Fire department = Socialism

City workers = Socialism

The fight is already lost, you live in a socialist society. It happened without a word. Without a line being drawn we have become what we fear.

So if we don't tax how do we get our government back on its feet? Maybe the kindness of rich strangers! Ha HA HA!

Right, wealth trickles down because all the really rich people are generous to a fault....

Welcome to the new America....

I think it is "An interesting time to be alive" and I welcome the opportunities and challenges that will be presented to us as citizens of the greatest country in the world.

[Banned]

This government is not worth getting back on its feet.

We need to get back to a Constitutional government.

[Ron]

Because of my job, I spend a lot of time in Germany. Germany is a fairly socialist country, but... I can guarantee you one thing... if you have a job there, (any kind of job), you can afford to have a place to live and raise a family with one income. If you're sick, you go get it fixed, (for free) and you still get at least a month of paid vacation every year. If you don't use all of your vacation time, the gov't taxes you more. How does that work?

I've been all through the downtown areas of a lot of German cities, and I've only ever seen one homeless dude... one.

"Socialism" is just a word that people use as a scare tactic. In its purest form it is fantastic, but capitalism in its purest form is basically a "dog eat dog" world. I'm smart enough to live in our "dog eat dog" world, but unless you've spent time in a (so-called) "socialist" area, you have no idea how good the (so-called) "socialists" have it.

Like "torn and frayed" said, we are already a socialist country, we are just new at it. By definition, capitalism makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. How many people bitch about that?

Germany also has this thing called "Octoberfest". Mmmmmm BEER!

[ToonaRockGuy]

I bet that walmart does start their employees higher than min. wage so you aren't going to penalize them at all.

If I remember correctly, Walmart starts a few cents about min. wage. Can anyone back me up here? Kevin? It also doesn't help that the Walmart hiring and training procedure is one long captive audience speech to make sure that everyone knows that unions = bad, and you shouldn't bargain for a better wage and better working conditions.

Actually, Paul, I started at Walmart back in February at well over $10 per hour. I've never ever worked in retail before, either. And as for the long "captive audience" speech regarding unionization, Wal-Mart is not anti-union, they just don't need them.

Quite honestly, I have great working conditions. The only thing that sucks is we lost our smoking room, but that's thanks to Harrisburg and not Walmart. I'm treated with respect, I never work past 9PM, I get paid well for putting in a full week, I have a great 401K, stock purchase plan, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, quarterly bonuses, yearly bonuses, access to any human resource need that I desire, and more.

Why the hell would I need a union?

[tom]

Kevin's original post should be the point of discussion, BUT some people can't look away from their script long enough to discuss anything but the presidential race.

All homeowners in Blair County are going to be SCREWED if the reasessment goes thru...... and, NO, I DON't think that we need to pay more taxes.

[ToonaRockGuy]

Kevin's original post should be the point of discussion, BUT some people can't look away from their script long enough to discuss anything but the presidential race.

All homeowners in Blair County are going to be SCREWED if the reasessment goes thru...... and, NO, I DON't think that we need to pay more taxes.

THANK YOU.

[Hawk]

I bet that walmart does start their employees higher than min. wage so you aren't going to penalize them at all.

If I remember correctly, Walmart starts a few cents about min. wage. Can anyone back me up here? Kevin? It also doesn't help that the Walmart hiring and training procedure is one long captive audience speech to make sure that everyone knows that unions = bad, and you shouldn't bargain for a better wage and better working conditions.

Actually, Paul, I started at Walmart back in February at well over $10 per hour. I've never ever worked in retail before, either. And as for the long "captive audience" speech regarding unionization, Wal-Mart is not anti-union, they just don't need them.

Quite honestly, I have great working conditions. The only thing that sucks is we lost our smoking room, but that's thanks to Harrisburg and not Walmart. I'm treated with respect, I never work past 9PM, I get paid well for putting in a full week, I have a great 401K, stock purchase plan, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, quarterly bonuses, yearly bonuses, access to any human resource need that I desire, and more.

Why the hell would I need a union?

Many of the things we have today are because of the OLD unions. Men literally gave their lives (killed in fights with police etc.) just to get a 40 hour work week. They fought for better working conditions and better pay.

They do get carried away sometimes though.

BTE GW tried his best to REMOVE the 40 hour work week. He wanted to allow (force) poeple to work over 40 hours without overtime pay. Thus eliminating the 40 hour work week.

[tornandfrayed]

So to address the original articles, looks like we are going to pay higher property taxes. I don't have an attorney to try to find any type of loopholes to get out of it, and I don't know any way around it. If they raise the property taxes then we are going to pay.

Strictly on a local basis I would have to say that there are ways around this. We have lost almost all the mfg that we ever had. Why?

The way that we address this is by bringing back mfg to Blair county. How do we do that? I don't know. I do know that we have a lot of Buildings sitting around that are empty and doing nothing.

So how do we address this locally and is it really that different from addressing it on a national level? Isn't it the same problem?

How do we address this other then by legislating NAFTA to define penalties for imports. If Toyota wants to sell a car in America they build plants here to build the cars they want to sell. Make it easy to export and hard to import. That will piss off some lobbyists and some big business guys though.....

No Campaign rhetoric....

[ToonaRockGuy]

Many of the things we have today are because of the OLD unions. Men literally gave their lives (killed in fights with police etc.) just to get a 40 hour work week. They fought for better working conditions and better pay.

They do get carried away sometimes though.

There's actually a really good documentary movie that is shown on IFC from time to time, it's from the 70's during the coal mine strikes in Kentucky. Some of the stuff that is there is really disturbing, and it's a good watch. Can't remember the name, though. But the movie ends with one of my favorite songs, "Paradise" by John Prine. Very appropo.

Also, here's an update from the Mirror...Blair Co. spent $85,000 on a study to fix the budget...and came up with dick. Nice. Very nice.

http://altoonamirror.com/page/content.d ... ml?nav=742

No wonder the county is friggin' broke. What a waste.

[JackANSI]

I strongly disagree. If the totally inept federal government got their nose out of state & local issues (i.e. education, welfare, healthcare, ad nauseum) and reduced taxes accordingly, the much more efficient state governments could raise their taxes by a lesser amount and have more than enough revenues to handle these problems more efficiently.

Even poorer states would be better off without the incompetent hand of the federal government returning less than $1 for every social program dollar taken from their citizens.

That was the way the Constitution was intended to work.

Word.

[Ron]

Many of the things we have today are because of the OLD unions. Men literally gave their lives (killed in fights with police etc.) just to get a 40 hour work week. They fought for better working conditions and better pay.

I can agree that back in the late 19th and early 20th century, unions were needed. Back then a company could easily get away with abusing their workforce. That just doesn't happen in this day and age in the US, so now unions are simply purveyors of greed and laziness in the workforce.

Why are many of the large industries in the US are moving overseas? I think that a big reason is that they can't afford to pay union wages. Look at the automotive industry. The people who park cars after they come off of the assembly line in Detroit make a lot of money. The UAW makes sure that menial workers in the auto industry get paid well, but it can't guarantee that the auto makers will outlast their worker's greed. One of the only business models that works well with unions is the defense industry. We taxpayers have deep collective pockets.

[songsmith]

And CNN sources are not objective.

Please list objective sources.

Also, nationalizing banks= socialism.----->JMS

[Banned]

And CNN sources are not objective.

Please list objective sources.

Also, nationalizing banks= socialism.----->JMS

Primary news source like AP and Breitbart. Fox colors everything towards a republican tint and ALL the others to the democrat tint.

In a post someone stated that we have lost so much of our manufacturing. Well Lonewolf answered that one, Pa. has the highest state corporate income tax. The US has the second highest corporate tax rates.

Lets try an anti-socialist idea and lower state and national corporate tax rates. Corporations will be more willing to relocate here and we could end up with some real good blue collar jobs. (Is jobs 3 or 4 letters? , I 'll have to ask Joe Biden )

[YankeeRose]

Because of my job, I spend a lot of time in Germany. Germany is a fairly socialist country, but... I can guarantee you one thing... if you have a job there, (any kind of job), you can afford to have a place to live and raise a family with one income. If you're sick, you go get it fixed, (for free) and you still get at least a month of paid vacation every year. If you don't use all of your vacation time, the gov't taxes you more. How does that work?

I've been all through the downtown areas of a lot of German cities, and I've only ever seen one homeless dude... one.

"Socialism" is just a word that people use as a scare tactic. In its purest form it is fantastic, but capitalism in its purest form is basically a "dog eat dog" world. I'm smart enough to live in our "dog eat dog" world, but unless you've spent time in a (so-called) "socialist" area, you have no idea how good the (so-called) "socialists" have it.

Like "torn and frayed" said, we are already a socialist country, we are just new at it. By definition, capitalism makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. How many people bitch about that?

Germany also has this thing called "Octoberfest". Mmmmmm BEER!

I have only lived in VA and TX, traveled through quite a few states, briefly visited Mexico and vacationed in Canada. Ty for that window on the rest of the world, comrade.




Kevin, "Paradise" is one of my favorites too. I grew up in an area where hardly any mine reclamation has been done, and if the Molly Maguires ring a bell with anyone on RP, that area (Schuylkill County) is also rife with early union history.




Imo, it is common sense to figure out the local and state fiscal crises are directly related to government cuts and the current financial nightmare involving the entire country.

[lonewolf]

In a post someone stated that we have lost so much of our manufacturing. Well Lonewolf answered that one, Pa. has the highest state corporate income tax. The US has the second highest corporate tax rates.

That depends on the state. #1 Japan has the highest overall effective rate at 40.9%. The US feds start taxing at 34% over $100,000 and it goes up from there. Any states that have 7% or greater income tax is higher than in Japan. Of course at 9.99%, Pennsylvania is 3% higher than Japan.

Effing 9.99%

Were they afraid people might get pissed off at 10% even?

Or maybe the accountants thought they might lose work because a 10% tax might make it too easy for businesses to keep the books, so they lobbied Harrisburg?

Effing government. Effing politicians. Effing lawyers.

[songsmith]

Lets try an anti-socialist idea and lower state and national corporate tax rates. Corporations will be more willing to relocate here and we could end up with some real good blue collar jobs.

Nope. You can't lower taxes enough to keep those wonderfully patriotic corporations from taking OUR jobs overseas. Free market, baby! Why the hell would you have a factory full of Americans earning $12 an hour to start, PLUS benefits, PLUS environmental concerns, PLUS taxation; when you can pull down that American plant, send the tooling to China, and pay those people $2 and hour, no bennies, and dump your PCB's directly into the Yangtze? Instead of upkeep on a big factory here, and all it's attendant problems, like actually having to LOOK at the people you're f*cking, you sit in an office building and daytrade with this month's bonus check. Bone your secretary, check your e-mails, wow, it's 3:30pm, time to go home to the castle.
I'm still not getting where lowering taxes for rich people helps anyone but rich people. It's trickle-down economics, Reaganomics, and it never worked. Rich people have a need to be rich. They don't trickle success down to us. They keep every goddamn dime they can, same as anyone (I just require fewer dimes to feel like a man). I've noted here before that Lee Raymond received 4500 times the average wage at Exxon-Mobil as a golden parachute. If you took that money, which was above his salary, and hired people instead, at $85,000 per year, you would be the largest employer in Central PA, and people would LOVE you. Think it'll happen? They're not interested at all in my well-being, but I have to be interested in THEIR success, if I want to keep the job they "allow" me to do.
It's flat-out class warfare, the Haves vs. the Have-nots. Anything that hurts the Haves is called Socialism. Like it's communist unless rich people get richer.
No sale. Support small business.-------->JMS

[Banned]

[rates.

Lets try an anti-socialist idea and lower state and national corporate tax rates. Corporations will be more willing to relocate here and we could end up with some real good blue collar jobs.

Nope. You can't lower taxes enough to keep those wonderfully patriotic corporations from taking OUR jobs overseas. Free market, baby! Why the hell would you have a factory full of Americans earning $12 an hour to start, PLUS benefits, PLUS environmental concerns, PLUS taxation; when you can pull down that American plant, send the tooling to China, and pay those people $2 and hour, no bennies, and dump your PCB's directly into the Yangtze? Instead of upkeep on a big factory here, and all it's attendant problems, like actually having to LOOK at the people you're f*cking, you sit in an office building and daytrade with this month's bonus check. Bone your secretary, check your e-mails, wow, it's 3:30pm, time to go home to the castle.
I'm still not getting where lowering taxes for rich people helps anyone but rich people. It's trickle-down economics, Reaganomics, and it never worked. Rich people have a need to be rich. They don't trickle success down to us. They keep every goddamn dime they can, same as anyone (I just require fewer dimes to feel like a man). I've noted here before that Lee Raymond received 4500 times the average wage at Exxon-Mobil as a golden parachute. If you took that money, which was above his salary, and hired people instead, at $85,000 per year, you would be the largest employer in Central PA, and people would LOVE you. Think it'll happen? They're not interested at all in my well-being, but I have to be interested in THEIR success, if I want to keep the job they "allow" me to do.
It's flat-out class warfare, the Haves vs. the Have-nots. Anything that hurts the Haves is called Socialism. Like it's communist unless rich people get richer.
No sale. Support small business.-------->JMS

With a class envy attitude like this, keep waving bye-bye to all the corporations that leave Pa. and this area.

[songsmith]

Okay, Bye-bye, MegaloMart. Howdy, Joe's Baitshop. ------->JMS

[Lisa]

Why should I or anyone bust our butt to work 72 hours a week so I can earn that $250,000 a year income and pay for the bum that wants to shot his arm full of drugs and alcohol to go to rehab or to help that lady who got pregnant again with her 5th kid at the age of 24 and can't get child support because she doesn't know the father of the kid.

Ok, so I'm not making $250,000...yet. Maybe some day though. I do work 72 hours a week. Its what my parent taught me. You WORK for your OWN. I do those hours, so my husband can work 70+ hours to own the business without a paycheck. So we can hire 8 people and pay them a paycheck. So we can pay extra taxes on their payroll. (For every $500 in payroll earned, the employee pays $225 in taxes and we throw in another $85)

We do this hard work in hopes that some day we will earn a descent family income. What's the incentive for that if there is a chance that our descent family income will be taxed at even a higher tax rate than what it already is???

Our dream is to make the business work and work well. And maybe someday have a second location. Where we have even more employees. Its the American dream.

My family too came over from Ireland and is of Scot-Irish descent. We came over in 1725. We are a family of hard workers who know that we must work for what we want and help our own who need.

The American dream.....today...find someone else to work to help me when I screw up.

[bassist_25]

Nope. You can't lower taxes enough to keep those wonderfully patriotic corporations from taking OUR jobs overseas. Free market, baby! Why the hell would you have a factory full of Americans earning $12 an hour to start, PLUS benefits, PLUS environmental concerns, PLUS taxation; when you can pull down that American plant, send the tooling to China, and pay those people $2 and hour, no bennies, and dump your PCB's directly into the Yangtze? Instead of upkeep on a big factory here, and all it's attendant problems, like actually having to LOOK at the people you're f*cking, you sit in an office building and daytrade with this month's bonus check. Bone your secretary, check your e-mails, wow, it's 3:30pm, time to go home to the castle.
I'm still not getting where lowering taxes for rich people helps anyone but rich people. It's trickle-down economics, Reaganomics, and it never worked. Rich people have a need to be rich. They don't trickle success down to us. They keep every goddamn dime they can, same as anyone (I just require fewer dimes to feel like a man). I've noted here before that Lee Raymond received 4500 times the average wage at Exxon-Mobil as a golden parachute. If you took that money, which was above his salary, and hired people instead, at $85,000 per year, you would be the largest employer in Central PA, and people would LOVE you. Think it'll happen? They're not interested at all in my well-being, but I have to be interested in THEIR success, if I want to keep the job they "allow" me to do.
It's flat-out class warfare, the Haves vs. the Have-nots. Anything that hurts the Haves is called Socialism. Like it's communist unless rich people get richer.
No sale. Support small business.-------->JMS

Class-envy or not, I have to agree with Johnny here. It blows my mind that people still advocate trickle-down economics for large corporations when history has shown time and time again that it just doesn't work for one simple reason: Greed! Lowering the taxes a couple of percentage points isn't going to bring manufactering back when the CEOs still have to deal with pesky little things such as living wages, ADA, and OSHA. For better or for worse, we are existing in a global economy, and the future generation is going to have to choose career paths that are not easy to offshore. On the plus side, this may mean a rise in people choosing the trades, since there has been a decline in that in the recent years. On a related note - and I've pointed this out before - I laugh when people say people get rich because they "worked hard." Aside from doctors, highly-paid lawyers, and celebrities, wealth is generally created through investment of capital, not through wages.

On the other hand, I fully advocate lowering taxes to help smaller businesses, such as Lisa's. I'm a firm believer that you have to prop up from the bottom, not throw money and programs to the top. As we keep offshoring and laying off, I'm wondering where the money's going to come from to increase our GDP.