#151
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Would the 20% sales tax exempt groceries, medicine, and home purchases?
The gov't gets taxes from your house forever, I don't see how it is fair to tax someone on the purchase of one house. If they own like six, sure, but as long as you keep it to one house, I say exempt it. I love the sales tax idea. Who cares where you hide your money, once you spend it, it's taxed. Wealthy people with no "income" get taxed as they spend as well. Spend less on luxury items and more on necessities, and you pay less of your income to the gov't, thus rewarding frugality. Wanna push solar panels or electric cars? Wave the sales tax on them (Norway does this, it seems to work). No term limits. If you run for office, even if you are an incumbent, you get a set number of dollars to spend on your campaign, and a set number of minutes on TV and radio - PBS and NPR/M only. No campaign donations - they are just bribes anyway. In fact, you can't even spend your own money - that gets rid of out-of-touch rich dudes running for office.
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John Adams "There is a lot of rocketry under 20ns" |
#152
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Yes, yes and no. First home stead house is exempt, any extras would be taxed. After home purchase is taxed, property taxes would be abolished, this is another illegal tax any way. Quote:
Exactly, we're taxed on income, then taxed when spending, then there's gas tax, automobile tax, (tags), property tax, the new health care tax, and the ultimate hidden tax of all, inflation. I'll bet most people don't realize inflation is actually a tax. Quote:
Exactly...didn't McCain push a bill through congress about ten years ago to address this problem..oh yea, I forgot, as long as the candidate states, "this message approved by Joe Blow" then all contributions are legal. The bright eyed, new, idealistic freshman electee goes the capitol to clean up the cesspool that is Washington, after about six months the cesspool becomes a jacuzzi.
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"A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed. When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic." "The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves." |
#153
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Obama's got all ya'll beat! He makes you guys look like a bunch of amateurs.
He figured out how to tax everyone and everything, including the black market. How you ask? Inflation! And don't even get me started on how they figure out how much to pad the cost of living numbers, so the rate of inflation don't look too bad. If you ask me, if you have to purchase it and you have to figure it into your budget, then it should count towards figuring up inflation rates. The Fed took the cost of gasoline out of the equation for inflation years ago, yet just about everyone buys it, in one form or another, and when it goes up, it drives up the cost of everything else on the store shelves. Then you've the mandate for ethanol inclusion, that is derived most commonly form corn, which drives up the cost of feed for the farms, that drives up the cost of milk, eggs, meat, cheese, etc. They can very easily make ethanol from sugar beat or some other legume that people and animals don't primarily eat. You catch my drift. End rant. David P.S. On a side note. I just read the NSA targeted smart phone apps, games like angry birds, mapping apps, and social media apps. NICE. I'm starting to figure out that there is a rampant computer virus out there. It's called the NSA. Ha...ha.. remember the NET from Terminator. I also read they developed technology back 2008 that let's them hack computers that aren't even connected to the internet. All I can say is Dayum!
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I used to have super powers, but then one day, my Therapist took them away from me. NAR #96285 SoAR #503 My Low Power Rocket Fleet Level 1 (2-22-2014) GRITS Winternationals Level 2 TBD Level 3 TBD |
#154
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OK... this is a joke. I get it. Quote:
In other words, infringe on their First Amendment rights. Quote:
Reasonable. Many people in public service, especially in sensitive positions, must undergo random drug and alcohol screening. Quote:
I like the idea of making the cook eat what he serves for dinner. Quote:
So how are you going to attract America's best and brightest to be our leaders? We're already not doing a good job of attracting our best people to give up whatever it is they are doing with their lives to commit to public service. How is a pay cut going to help? -Wolf |
#155
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This is worth a bump. I also recommend reading "The 5000-year Leap." http://www.amazon.com/5000-Year-Lea...d/dp/0880801484 You can find this book for a lot less than what Amazon is selling it for. -Wolf |
#156
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#157
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No joke. No one in public office should be allowed to play golf. Quote:
But it's for their own good Quote:
Like you said, the current system is not working to attract the best and brightest. I say give it a shot for six years. If it doesn't work no no worse off, and we saved some cash.
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John Adams "There is a lot of rocketry under 20ns" |
#158
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This is the whole problem, the best and brightest don't want any thing to do with politics. Thats why they're the best and brightest: Look now, the Eternal, the Lord of hosts, will take away from Jerusalem and from Judah (U.S. Briton, the Jewish state), the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water. The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, the prudent, and the ancient, the captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the skilled craftsman, and the eloquent orator. And I will give children to be their leaders, and babes shall rule over them. And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable.
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"A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed. When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic." "The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves." |
#159
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Only like about 5% of corn goes for human food anyway... "fresh" corn (IE, on the cob, frozen, niblets, in the can, whatever) is sweet corn-- entirely different crop. Of the actual 95% of the corn grown in the country for grain, that's dent corn, and only a tiny fraction of that (white corn, usually) goes for making stuff like cornmeal and corn starch and corn flour for stuff like corn chips and tortillas and stuff... the VAST majority of the corn grown in the country went for animal feed and the ever-increasing high fructose corn syrup market... of course now with the corn ethanol mandate in motor fuels, that's making a lot of competition in the grain markets between livestock feeders buying corn for animal feed and ethanol makers buying grain for mash. Of course out of every 56 pound bushel of corn that goes through the ethanol process, you get 44 pounds of dry distiller's grain back at the end of the process, (or even more with the residual water and alcohol from wet distiller's grain, which doesn't require drying and thus is more economical to produce). Actually DDG and WDG is a higher protein feed that is better for livestock, since the starch is partially used up (converted to sugars to make ethanol by the yeast in the fermentation process) while the protein part of the grain goes through the process pretty much unscathed, and thus concentrated in the final product... You're correct that the "competition" for corn just pushes up feed prices for livestock, and thus pushes up meat and dairy prices in the supermarket as a secondary effect. Cattle feeders are really feeling the pinch, because despite about 5-7 years of steady "growth signals" from the market that signifies the cattle cycle (a seven-year predictable cycle of high and low prices, and increasing and decreasing cattle numbers in response) should be growing cattle numbers and expanding the national herd size, the US has also gone through one drought right after another, with SOME part of the cattle country being wiped out virtually every year, or hit multiple years in succession, or a bad drought year, a "normal" year, followed by another bad drought year... SO the US cattle herd is actually shrinking-- currently we're at the lowest cattle numbers since the late 60's, and there's really no end in sight. As soon as one area starts to recover, another area suffers a debilitating drought and ranchers are forced to sell their herds down or sell out entirely due to lack of grass/hay/feed, depending on the severity of it. During drought, with the glut of cattle hitting the market in drought afflicted areas, cattle will bring a fraction of the going price... then of course when conditions improve and you're in a position to buy cattle and increase your herd size, the prices are at a premium... selling cows at 30 cents a pound and buying them back a year later at a dollar a pound isn't a moneymaking proposition... even if you bank the money, you're still stuck buying back maybe 1/3-1/2 of the number of cattle you sold with that money... so the herd continues to shrink. As for ethanol, the Brazilians have the right idea... they use sugarcane. There was a NatGeo magazine report on biofuels I read a few years ago, that showed the "oil equivalent" used to produce the various biofuels, when you considered the energy requirements to plant, grow, fertilize, spray, and harvest the crop, and then process it into finished ethanol... Corn ethanol is really TERRIBLY inefficient-- it takes a gallon of "oil equivalent" to produce FIVE QUARTS of ethanol... IOW only 25% efficient. Some idiots jump up and down and point at ethanol and shout, "See, we can grow all the fuel we'd ever need" but what they don't realize is, that to replace ALL the imported gasoline we now use, we'd have to increase our present oil imports FOUR-FOLD to produce that ethanol... definitely NOT going to happen... LOL Sugar-cane ethanol, OTOH, is about 33% efficient-- it takes 2 gallons of "oil equivalent" to produce 3 gallons of ethanol... That's why the Brazilians basically switched their national energy strategy to sugarcane ethanol DECADES ago... I watched a program about agriculture in South America on RFD awhile back, and they were showing the sugarcane ethanol process-- Brazil has an ENORMOUS sugar industry, and thanks to the "Sugar Compact" every country has their "sugar allotment" that they're allowed to produce and market internationally (the sugar compact was originally dreamed up in the 1800's to prevent a worldwide collapse of sugar prices due to overproduction-- sort of the same way OPEC does for oil, only about 100 years earlier, and for sugar... the countries agree to specific sugar quotas that are periodically revised as the need arises). Brazil grows WAY WAY more sugar than they could ever export, so what they do it, there's a valve in a "Y" in the pipe in the factory-- as the sugar mill is producing the liquid sugar, they can either send it down one side of the "Y" to produce good old granulated, dry table sugar, or when their production quota is complete, the turn the valve and the liquid sucrose goes down the other side of the "Y" directly into fermentation tanks. Since it's pure sugar and water, no solids, they inject yeast into the flow, and seal the tanks and keep their temperature stable-- the yeast turn it into 100% alcohol, at which point they only need distill it to remove the water from it... no solids, no waste, no byproducts like WDG or DDG to handle and sell-- clean the fermentation tank and you're ready for another batch... What's REALLY a shame is, once upon a time HUGE SWATHS of the southern US were sugarcane growing areas... Heck we live about 20 miles from "Sugarland", which is a big suburb of Houston, and which for the better part of a century has hosted the Imperial Sugar plant... back in the early part of the 20th century, the sugarcane that was processed at the Imperial Sugar plant in Sugarland was grown in the surrounding areas, mostly between Rosenberg and Katy. Sugar production collapsed by the end of WWII and all that land went into rice production. With improvements in rice yields coupled with high production costs for rice, and more favorable rice ground readily available elsewhere, most of that land went fallow or turned into poor cattle grazing ground... I used to drive across 50 year old rice levees (used to contain water when flood-irrigating the rice fields back after WWII) in the middle of subdivisions when I cut rights of way for United Gas Pipeline Company back in the early 90's... Most of all those fields are now taken up by suburban sprawl and those fields are covered with cheap brick homes in upscale "neighborhoods" of various subdivisions... doubt 99.5% of the people living there have ANY idea of the history of the land their living on... Anyway, last I heard Imperial Sugar was bringing in ALL the raw materials they were processing into sugar from LOUISIANA where sugarcane is actually still grown... that's the closest supply of sugarcane nowdays. Heck I'm not even sure that the Imperial Sugar plant is still operating anymore... it's more cost-effective to locate the sugar plants next to the cane production areas, since the raw cane from the field has to be ground and the liquid sap extracted ASAP to prevent spoilage and losses due to fermentation... Plus rail shipment of low-concentration sugar sap isn't cost-effective-- in the same way that it takes like 100 gallons of maple sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup, so it is with sugarcane sap to finished sugar... It's a shame because while the cotton industry is slowly dying and grain and row crops are increasingly unprofitable and expensive to produce, sugarcane would be an EXCELLENT crop alternative, and need not impact the US sugar quotas, if it were all going to ethanol... Heck as you said, sugar beets can be used just as well, which would provide a valuable crop alternative in larger areas of the sugar beet belt, which lies in places like Minnesota and Michigan and stuff like that... Just a few years ago (in the last decade) there was a couple years of unusually high sugar beet yields coupled with a downturn in the sugar market, and the US quota was cut under the Sugar Compact... resulting in a huge glut of sugar beets, that COULD have been processed and turned into sugar beet ethanol... did the government do it?? NO! They paid the sugar beet farmers in "sugar certificates", ie an equivalent amount of finished refined sugar to what their crop would have yielded in refined sugar (essentially, tons per acre of sugarbeets, times the Brix reading (percentage of sucrose in the beet juice) times the extraction percentage and refining turnout). The farmers could then sell these "sugar certificates" on the open market just like finished sugar from their own crop. The government then took delivery of the surplus sugar beets and LET HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF TONS OF THEM ROT!!! Good use of your tax dollars, eh?? Just like the medical/health care industry, agriculture is severely 'screwed up' by government control and intervention... most of it definitely negative... Later! OL JR PS. Legumes aren't used to make ethanol. They're high in protein, which isn't what you want for ethanol-- you want HIGH STARCH (to convert to sugar, or better yet sucrose which doesn't need converting) that yeast eat and turn into alcohol.
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#160
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10 years later we know the ending....
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I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Rev 22:13 |
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