Who is responsible for YOU?

[KittenKoder]

I talked to people about a new Union and they all laughed at me. Know what it would cost you to join? Just $12 a year. That's it. Just $12 a year and you are in the union. And if we feel that corporate America is taking advantage of the middle class or poor, we strike. We don't all have to work for the same company. There may be only 2 people in my company that are in the union, but the company has to respect the union when we strike. They can't fire me for striking.

Of course the Democrats would have to pass a few laws to make this possible, because right now my company can fire me for any reason they want.

Not everyone can start their own business. And the GOP economy is ruining a lot of small business' too. Plus, good luck getting a loan to start a new business.

Back in the day, people could try to start new business and if they failed, there were safety nets for them. Today, there are no safety nets.

Republicans talk about owning your own business, but their policies created an environment that deters people from trying to do so. Same with home ownership. Didn't they say they wanted everyone to own a home? Isn't it fascinating how many people lost their home under GOP rule?

The problem with unions is that they are predatory, and never any better than the companies they oppose. Look back at who use to run them, they haven't changed much since they started really. Coordinating such efforts doesn't need a union really, it just needs all the workers to be on the same page.

Ha! Good luck with that. Just look at the house slaves on these boards who defend the corporations and bash labor, which they happen to be.

And look at how easily companies find scabs to take the strikers place.

This is something that annoys me, to no end. These "scabs" are working stiffs just like the strikers, only because they can't or won't join the union they are demonized by union members, they need a job to and when a work force goes on strike it's often the only time they can get work because of them not being in the union. This is also one of the many throwbacks to the gangster days of when they first got organized.

 

[Gurdari]

Yourself, or government?

It is a mixture. I think the government should enforce the law, do things like keep people from selling me poison in the guise of drinking water, for example. While I am responsible for how I act, and what I do to others and my relationship with the laws of the land. Which may mean changing them, too.

If you have a society where the government is ostensibly made up of 'you' the people, then the lines are blurry, as you (the people's) will decides what directions and responsibilities are taken. If you have an authoritarian system without democracy, well... the government is making itself more responsible whether you like it or not.

maybe it depends on how you see your country - and the answer changes not based on your ethics, but your point of view.

 

[sealybobo]

The problem with unions is that they are predatory, and never any better than the companies they oppose. Look back at who use to run them, they haven't changed much since they started really. Coordinating such efforts doesn't need a union really, it just needs all the workers to be on the same page.

Ha! Good luck with that. Just look at the house slaves on these boards who defend the corporations and bash labor, which they happen to be.

And look at how easily companies find scabs to take the strikers place.

This is something that annoys me, to no end. These "scabs" are working stiffs just like the strikers, only because they can't or won't join the union they are demonized by union members, they need a job to and when a work force goes on strike it's often the only time they can get work because of them not being in the union. This is also one of the many throwbacks to the gangster days of when they first got organized.

Then why did you say this? "it just needs all the workers to be on the same page."

Companies will always be able to find other people that need work.

 

[KittenKoder]

Ha! Good luck with that. Just look at the house slaves on these boards who defend the corporations and bash labor, which they happen to be.

And look at how easily companies find scabs to take the strikers place.

This is something that annoys me, to no end. These "scabs" are working stiffs just like the strikers, only because they can't or won't join the union they are demonized by union members, they need a job to and when a work force goes on strike it's often the only time they can get work because of them not being in the union. This is also one of the many throwbacks to the gangster days of when they first got organized.

Then why did you say this? "it just needs all the workers to be on the same page."

Companies will always be able to find other people that need work.

There is the problem they aren't all on the same page, each union is on their own page anyway and they only care about their own.

 

[Bern80]

This fits a little better over here......

Here's what I know...people work their asses off and yet are losing ground economically.

True. The problem is you think 'hard' work is what should garuantee financial stability. There are all kinds of problems with that notion. What is 'hard' work? Long hours, physically demanding, what exactley? I guess that's what I think of when i think of 'hard' work. The problem with that particular skill set is that an awful lot of people can do that. If this society wants to get better it needs to start working SMARTER. If working on the assembly line isn't meeting your needs, for Gods's sake, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! But people like yourself and Shogun constantly complain about how all the blue collar jobs are leaving. Your solution to this 'problem' is that we bring manufacturing back which would take some major tweaking of trade laws to feasible. Instead of getting people to figure out how to adapt to our changing economy you think the best coure of action is to keep trying to do things the way we've always done them. That generally doesn't work well for any society.

The working class lives in a world of captialism, and the master class doesn't seem to.

Since capitalism is essentially competition, I don't suppose an alternative would be that some have simply competed better than others?

It is impossible for me to believe that anyone with a lick of sense really thought to deindustrializing the USA would make it a wealthier nation.

It is impossible for me to believe what lick of sense it makes to think we would never have to adapt as a society and that we should get to count on things staying the way the were or that such a concept is even good for society.

 

[sealybobo]

This fits a little better over here......

Here's what I know...people work their asses off and yet are losing ground economically.

True. The problem is you think 'hard' work is what should garuantee financial stability. There are all kinds of problems with that notion. What is 'hard' work? Long hours, physically demanding, what exactley? I guess that's what I think of when i think of 'hard' work. The problem with that particular skill set is that an awful lot of people can do that. If this society wants to get better it needs to start working SMARTER. If working on the assembly line isn't meeting your needs, for Gods's sake, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! But people like yourself and Shogun constantly complain about how all the blue collar jobs are leaving. Your solution to this 'problem' is that we bring manufacturing back which would take some major tweaking of trade laws to feasible. Instead of getting people to figure out how to adapt to our changing economy you think the best coure of action is to keep trying to do things the way we've always done them. That generally doesn't work well for any society.

The working class lives in a world of captialism, and the master class doesn't seem to.

Since capitalism is essentially competition, I don't suppose an alternative would be that some have simply competed better than others?

It is impossible for me to believe that anyone with a lick of sense really thought to deindustrializing the USA would make it a wealthier nation.

It is impossible for me to believe what lick of sense it makes to think we would never have to adapt as a society and that we should get to count on things staying the way the were or that such a concept is even good for society.

See everyone! This was the GOP in 2002-2006. The middle class was moving backward and this was the bullshit arguments we were having with right wing jack offs like Bern.

Meanwhile, the man was taking from us!!!!

First they started with the unions, but oh boy they did not stop there.

And in 2008, guys like Bern were arguing that the fundamentals of our economy were strong!!!

So Bern, you flip flopping mother fucker. Do you approve of the state of the economy, or is the state of the economy Freddy Mack's fault?

You stupid son of a bitch! Talk out of both sides of your mouth, intellectually dishonest conservative prick.

You guys deserve to have everything taken away from you so you can show us all your hard work, oh wait, today you don't value hard work, now its only smart work. I forgot, which asshole am I talking to today?

Not just you Bern, but all you jerk off republicans. You can all really go fuck yourselves!!!!

 

[editec]

This is something that annoys me, to no end. These "scabs" are working stiffs just like the strikers, only because they can't or won't join the union they are demonized by union members, they need a job to and when a work force goes on strike it's often the only time they can get work because of them not being in the union. This is also one of the many throwbacks to the gangster days of when they first got organized.

Then why did you say this? "it just needs all the workers to be on the same page."

Companies will always be able to find other people that need work.

There is the problem they aren't all on the same page, each union is on their own page anyway and they only care about their own.

You mean EXACTLY like the CORPORATIONS are?

Yes, that is true.

Just as the officers of the coporation are sworn to increase net worth of the corporation on behalf of the stockholders, so too are unions officers sworn to increase the incomes and imprrove and protect the working conditions of their members.

I see nothing wrong with such motivations for either the corporation or the unions, to be honest.

As to the thuggery of union busting scabs?

They are seeking to interject themselves into a private dispute between the current workers and the current managment.

They deserve no quarter.

Neither does the managment which attempts to hire them, for that matter.

 

[Bern80]

See everyone! This was the GOP in 2002-2006. The middle class was moving backward and this was the bullshit arguments we were having with right wing jack offs like Bern.

The argument quite simply is that if what worked before isn't working now, do something else. Don't sit there with your thumb up your butt thinking you have the right to expect someone else to fix YOUR problem.

[Meanwhile, the man was taking from us!!!!

What 'man'? What was being taken?

And in 2008, guys like Bern were arguing that the fundamentals of our economy were strong!!!

Where/when did I say this?

So Bern, you flip flopping mother fucker. Do you approve of the state of the economy, or is the state of the economy Freddy Mack's fault?

Freddie and Fannie are organizaitions, as inanimate entities nothing can be their fault. I would argue that Barney Frank was in comlete denial about how those organizations were ran. Had he not been, perhaps things would not be quite as bad as they are now.

You stupid son of a bitch! Talk out of both sides of your mouth, intellectually dishonest conservative prick.

You're in know place to ridicule people about their intellectual dishonesty. You run entirelty on emotion fueled hat for the GOP and are void of any objectivity. In the broadest of terms we are in this mess because people were irresponsibile with money. From banks, to the government, to citizens. Banks exercised poor lending practices. The government, instead of staying out of it, made policy that encouraged those practices. Citizens took loans they couldn't afford and refused to educate themselves about what they were doing with their own money and worst of all they have citizens like your dumb ass in their corner that want to absolve them of all responsibility.

You guys deserve to have everything taken away from you so you can show us all your hard work, oh wait, today you don't value hard work, now its only smart work. I forgot, which asshole am I talking to today?

Again value is based on scarcity. The dollar figure that gets put on any product, including labor, is based on that scarcity. Having done 'hard' work I do appreciate it, but at the same time understand why it doesn't pay that well cause pretty much anyone can do it.

 

[sealybobo]

See everyone! This was the GOP in 2002-2006. The middle class was moving backward and this was the bullshit arguments we were having with right wing jack offs like Bern.

The argument quite simply is that if what worked before isn't working now, do something else. Don't sit there with your thumb up your butt thinking you have the right to expect someone else to fix YOUR problem.

[Meanwhile, the man was taking from us!!!!

What 'man'? What was being taken?

Where/when did I say this?

Freddie and Fannie are organizaitions, as inanimate entities nothing can be their fault. I would argue that Barney Frank was in comlete denial about how those organizations were ran. Had he not been, perhaps things would not be quite as bad as they are now.

You stupid son of a bitch! Talk out of both sides of your mouth, intellectually dishonest conservative prick.

You're in know place to ridicule people about their intellectual dishonesty. You run entirelty on emotion fueled hat for the GOP and are void of any objectivity. In the broadest of terms we are in this mess because people were irresponsibile with money. From banks, to the government, to citizens. Banks exercised poor lending practices. The government, instead of staying out of it, made policy that encouraged those practices. Citizens took loans they couldn't afford and refused to educate themselves about what they were doing with their own money and worst of all they have citizens like your dumb ass in their corner that want to absolve them of all responsibility.

You guys deserve to have everything taken away from you so you can show us all your hard work, oh wait, today you don't value hard work, now its only smart work. I forgot, which asshole am I talking to today?

Again value is based on scarcity. The dollar figure that gets put on any product, including labor, is based on that scarcity. Having done 'hard' work I do appreciate it, but at the same time understand why it doesn't pay that well cause pretty much anyone can do it.

It is this simple Bern. The GOP takes away from the people and the Dems take it back from the Corporations.

From the Gilded Age to the Great Depression to today, the economic agenda of conservatives has been easily summarized in two words: "cheap labor." Nowhere was that more clearly on display than in the recent decision by Judge William S. Howard that "relieved" coal companies from having to pay already-earned retirement benefits to coal miners in Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana, and Illinois.

None of this could have been possible without generous corporate "reforms" to bankruptcy laws pushed through Congress in the last few years by conservatives, and the lifetime appointment of conservative judges to seats on federal courts by conservative administrations. Judge Howard, for example, was appointed during the reign of George H.W. Bush, and his decisions continue to destroy union jobs and reduce labor costs for mining companies under the reign of George W. Bush.

Unions have been a bulwark of the middle class ever since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Prior to Roosevelt’s 1935 Wagner Act, which guaranteed workers' rights to unionize, America had been mostly either very rich or very poor.

At the founding of America, the closest we'd had to a middle class was the "plowmanry" class Jefferson exalted - small family farmers – who were a major force in American politics from the time of the Revolution until the Civil War. But the industrialization of America, and the formation of huge agricultural monopolies made possible by rail transportation, began to wipe out the farming middle class (leading to the progressive Grange movement in the late 1800s), and from that time until 1935 America was increasingly a Dickensian nation of richer and poorer, with a rapidly vanishing middle class.

Workers protested, but conservatives of the Gilded Age held both economic and political power. Eleven workers were murdered in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 when the B&O Railroad cut wages: That year only three national unions existed, and all were under siege.

In 1886, Boston police fired into a crowd of protestors – part of 340,000 strikers nationwide – who were calling for a change in the national workday from 12 hours to 8. One Boston worker died in the hail of police gunfire that injured scores of others, and four labor leaders were hanged, seriously crippling the union movement.

 

[sealybobo]

Following the Wagner Act's implementation, and Roosevelt’s raising of the top marginal income tax rate on multi-millionaires to 90 percent, however, the first true American middle class came into being. By 1947, over a third (roughly 35%) of America's workers were unionized, and for every union job there was a non-union job in the private sector with nearly identical pay and benefits, because unions had set the floor for labor costs and employers had to compete for workers. This meant that about 70% of American workers were able to raise a family, put children through school, pay for health care, and plan a good retirement, all on a single wage earner's salary. During this era, CEOs earned, on average, around 30 to 35 times what their lowest paid employees did, and senior management salary ratio caps averaging 20:1 were put into place in civil service, the military, and most colleges.

But in 1947 the cheap-labor conservatives fought back. In the elections of 1946, Democrats lost control of both the U.S. House and the Senate, allowing Republican legislators to push through the Taft-Hartley bill, which essentially allowed individual states to opt out of portions of the Wagner act. It was an early domestic version of the "free trade" disaster we're seeing now with NAFTA and GATT/WTO - a race to the cheap labor bottom - that started to take root in the American south right after passage of Taft-Hartley. Although President Harry Truman vetoed the Taft-Hartley assault on labor, Republicans in the House and Senate overrode his veto and it became law.

From then until the end of the Jimmy Carter presidency, unionization - and, thus, average worker wages in the United States - only gradually declined. When Ronald Reagan came into office, a quarter of the American workforce was unionized, meaning half of Americans could raise a middle-class family on a single salary.

But then Reagan declared war on the middle class, starting with the air traffic controller's union (PATCO) during his first year in office. The conservative assault on labor has been unrelenting since then: Today only about 8 percent of the private-sector American workforce is unionized, and at the same time Education Secretary Rod Paige described the teachers' union as a "terrorist organization," George W. Bush announced plans to lay off over 700,000 unionized government employees and replace them with non-union "contractors."

While gutting the American middle class, conservatives also launched a well-funded propaganda campaign - using right-wing "think tanks" and talk radio - to convince workers that their growing economic woes were the fault of minorities ("affirmative action") and the poor ("welfare queens"). At the same time, they began stacking federal benches with conservative judges, and passing thousands of federal, state, and local laws, ordinances, and regulations that further weakened the powers of organized labor and their ability to unionize.

It's just fine, they said, for capital to organize in the form of a corporation. It's great when corporations organize into trade associations, chambers of commerce, industry groups, and lobbying consortiums. But to have workers organize to level the playing field? Inconceivable.

The result has been an explosion in CEO and executive pay, a rush of wealth to the conservative elite (the top 10 percent of Americans now own 71 percent of the nation’s wealth), and this year's cut in taxes to a maximum 15 percent for those who "earn their living" by sitting around the pool waiting for their dividend checks to arrive.

In 1999, Washington Post writer Dan Balz profiled Karl Rove, pointing to Rove’s affection for the Gilded Age’s most aggressive advocate for the strike-breakers and Robber Barons, and declarer of the Spanish-American war, President William McKinley (1896-1901). Writes Balz: “‘A successful party,’ Rove says of the GOP under McKinley, ‘had to take its fundamental principles and style them in such a way that they seemed to have relevance to the new economy, the new nature of the country and the new electorate.’”

So too, today. Will it be Rove’s McKinleyian Bush, with a “new economy” of terrified minimum-wage workers, an entrenched private-jet conservative elite, and wars in faraway places? Or might John F. Kerry, who often quotes Franklin D. Roosevelt and is a friend of labor, return America to its postwar era of a growing middle class, peace, and prosperity?

"The economy is booming," millionaire TV commentators tell us from their billion-dollar corporate studio empires. "The economy is creating more and more wealth," say rich conservatives. And for them, it's true, as money continues to flow from the working class up to the conservative elite and billion-dollar corporate tax cuts head legislative agendas.

Americans have a clear choice in this election year, from national to local elections. But unless average Americans wake up to the scam that's been foisted on them by the likes of Reagan, Limbaugh, and the Bush family, the American middle class will continue to evaporate just as fast as the now-stripped pensions of West Virginia coal miners.


ThomHartmann.com - McKinley or Roosevelt? This Election is as Much About the Past as the Future

 

[Jon]

HEY LOOK SEALY POSTED A LINK TO THOMHARTMANN. Who's surprised? I'm very surprised.

 

[KittenKoder]

Then why did you say this? "it just needs all the workers to be on the same page."

Companies will always be able to find other people that need work.

There is the problem they aren't all on the same page, each union is on their own page anyway and they only care about their own.

You mean EXACTLY like the CORPORATIONS are?

Yes, that is true.

Just as the officers of the coporation are sworn to increase net worth of the corporation on behalf of the stockholders, so too are unions officers sworn to increase the incomes and imprrove and protect the working conditions of their members.

I see nothing wrong with such motivations for either the corporation or the unions, to be honest.

As to the thuggery of union busting scabs?

They are seeking to interject themselves into a private dispute between the current workers and the current managment.

They deserve no quarter.

Neither does the managment which attempts to hire them, for that matter.

However, this is the weakness on both sides and why they are both screwed. Corporations have to always compete, otherwise they will fail, however the workers do not. If the vast majority of all laborers (doesn't even have to be 100%, just enough that most jobs can't be filled), if they were all to strike at once ... it would bring our country to it's knees, the corporations would have to give into the demands, no holds barred, but they would also have to add to their demands that prices of the products and services are NOT raised to cover this, that instead the higher ups take pay cuts. Otherwise it will be for nothing, as we see with the minimum raise bull. They raise the wages, sure, but then soon after costs rise to cover this instead of CEOs getting paid what they should they raise their own wages by the same percentage. The end result is that by raising the minimum wage by any percentage increases the cost of living by the same percentage, as well as the cost of luxury items, at least if not more. So ... the paychecks don't go any further and retirement packages become worth less unless interest rates increase as well.

 

[PubliusInfinitum]

Please, it's a myth that progressive taxation (which redistributes based on simple acknowledgment of the diminishing rate of marginal utility), "steals" wealth from those in the upper class that have earned it. The majority of those in the upper class maintain their wealth due to the state acting as a stabilizing agent within the capitalist economy, as well as an agent that has traditionally protected the wealthy.

Would ya explain what it is SPECIFICALLY, that leads you to believe that confiscating the product of Person A's labor and giving it to Person B; who did NOT earn it and is NOT required to even CONSIDER paying it back, can be argued to be anything EXCEPT theft? And while you're at it, ya might as well explain what it is that you've propped this notion that 'the State' is protecting through their acting as a 'stabilizing agent'...

This is the second time which you've been directly challenged to do so...

And YES... at some point, your refusal to substantiate your feelings will be a sufficient basis to conclude that you're 'feelings' amount to little more that ethereal wishes, which rest upon no substantial basis... OKA: you being full of anarcho-communist shit.

Another day; another idiotic comment from you. We've already devoted ample discussion to the manner in which private ownership benefits a class at the expense of generations of toil by lower classes. That being said, you clearly don't even understand the principle of the diminishing rate of marginal utility, so you'd better gain a greater understanding of political economy before commenting.

So you can't explain what it is SPECIFICALLY, that leads you to believe that confiscating the product of Person A's labor and giving it to Person B; who did NOT earn it and is NOT required to even CONSIDER paying it back, can be argued to be anything EXCEPT theft?

thus you're refusing to substantiate your feelings with even a discernable, let alone a sufficient basis to avoid the conclusion that you're 'feelings' amount to little more than anarcho-communist bull-shit.

TOTAL, UNMITIGATED: FAILURE

See kids, there's nothing difficult about exposing leftists as fools... ya just need to let them to speak long enough to make an assertion and ask them to support it; whereupon they'll fail every single TIME...

 

[Meister]

Would ya explain what it is SPECIFICALLY, that leads you to believe that confiscating the product of Person A's labor and giving it to Person B; who did NOT earn it and is NOT required to even CONSIDER paying it back, can be argued to be anything EXCEPT theft? And while you're at it, ya might as well explain what it is that you've propped this notion that 'the State' is protecting through their acting as a 'stabilizing agent'...

This is the second time which you've been directly challenged to do so...

And YES... at some point, your refusal to substantiate your feelings will be a sufficient basis to conclude that you're 'feelings' amount to little more that ethereal wishes, which rest upon no substantial basis... OKA: you being full of anarcho-communist shit.

Another day; another idiotic comment from you. We've already devoted ample discussion to the manner in which private ownership benefits a class at the expense of generations of toil by lower classes. That being said, you clearly don't even understand the principle of the diminishing rate of marginal utility, so you'd better gain a greater understanding of political economy before commenting.

So you can't explain what it is SPECIFICALLY, that leads you to believe that confiscating the product of Person A's labor and giving it to Person B; who did NOT earn it and is NOT required to even CONSIDER paying it back, can be argued to be anything EXCEPT theft?

thus you're refusing to substantiate your feelings with even a discernable, let alone a sufficient basis to avoid the conclusion that you're 'feelings' amount to little more than anarcho-communist bull-shit.

TOTAL, UNMITIGATED: FAILURE

See kids, there's nothing difficult about exposing leftists as fools... ya just need to let them to speak long enough to make an assertion and ask them to support it; whereupon they'll fail every single TIME...

I'm glad you fielded that one, Pub. I thought he was talking about the marginal difference between my December utility bill, and my January Utility bill.

 

[Agnapostate]

So you can't explain what it is SPECIFICALLY, that leads you to believe that confiscating the product of Person A's labor and giving it to Person B; who did NOT earn it and is NOT required to even CONSIDER paying it back, can be argued to be anything EXCEPT theft?

thus you're refusing to substantiate your feelings with even a discernable, let alone a sufficient basis to avoid the conclusion that you're 'feelings' amount to little more than anarcho-communist bull-shit.

(snip'd annoyingly large idiocy)

See kids, there's nothing difficult about exposing leftists as fools... ya just need to let them to speak long enough to make an assertion and ask them to support it; whereupon they'll fail every single TIME...

Are you a complete and utter moron? Did someone bash you in the head with a heavy or sharp object? Apart from AllieBabble, I've never encountered such rancid, putrid stupidity.

You have such an absurdly fallacious conception of market exchange, believing in your utopian (and possibly drug-induced) free market fantasies. This is why you've failed to answer any criticisms of your moronic position based on the absence of perfect or costless information in a market. Asymmetric information exists in a market; hence, adverse selection and moral hazard problems will exist in a capitalist economy.

The original theft springs from the subordination of labor under capital, given the nature of imperfect contracting (which you are incapable of understanding).

 

[Bern80]

It is this simple Bern. The GOP takes away from the people and the Dems take it back from the Corporations.

Perhaps you need to examine these transactions a bit. Corporations sell things. Corporations only make money by providing what people want. When people want something from the corporation the market determines the best price that both parties (the buyer and seller) will agree on. When 'the people' purchase something they have inherently agreed that the price the corporation offered, was fair. there is no victim in this transaction. A corporation can not 'take' anything from anyone that they don't agree to give.

It is you bobo who are a self professed thief. You are the only one thieving in these equation. In seeking to take from corporations what someone agreed to give them. What business do you have sticking your fat nose, as third party, into an agreed upon transaction between two parties?

 

[PubliusInfinitum]

You guys deserve to have everything taken away from you so you can show us all your hard work...

ROFL... Sis you are one pathetic exhibit of the human condition.

I'm 48 years old and it's all 'been taken from me' at LEAST 3 times in my life... And every time it's gone away it's been BECAUSE I DESERVED IT!

But it was 'given to me' for THE SAME REASON: I DESERVED IT!

You idiots can't take anything from US without screwing yourself DUMBASS!

Educate yourself... Now you're an Imbecile... so you should start with the fundamentals:

Aesopps Fables: Good Ol' number two... The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs...

Familiarize yourself with the bedrock principles, which have never changed, will never change and this without regard to how many idiots wish they would.

 

[Agnapostate]

Forgetting something, Pubic?

 

[Tigerlils13]

My words were clear, and don’t require correction to suit your interpretation. The Golden Rule is a very simple concept that is easily understood by most people, whether religious or not, and I clearly explained why I among them think it is a valuable philosophy.....And wanting to live by the Golden Rule, and forseeing it's usefulness, does not mean they necessarily are "preachy" about it. Most Christians I know simply try to do the right thing most of the time without making a fuss about it.
Sorry…if you can’t see the point I was making without bastardizing it to suit your purpose, I can’t see any real use in going further. To want to treat others as you would like to be treated is a far cry from bible beating, in my book.

Being confused in the face of a simple truth is a rhetorical device. Just try taking that simple phrase in the "Golden Rule" without embellishing it, and you won't be confused.

I was not talking about the masses of poor, I was simply explaining why this specific group, and many people like them who know themselves to not be wealthy, and maybe they more than the wealthy, find utility in charitable giving. And they find their own value in deciding for themselves to do that, rather than having that option usurped by their goverment.

And I see no problem that those you mention vote Liberal. They are welcome to do that. But the opposite, that ordinary poor folks don't necessarily vote liberal; that's something the Liberal mind can't understand: "why would they, or anyone vote against what appears to be 'their own self interests'?". They do, and it's not because they are sheep. It's because they are convinced of their own potential.

1) You're the one who mentioned that the Golden Rule was the one that church goers especially took to heart. I was just telling you exactly what it was that church goers took to heart. And, just so you know, it's not my interpretation. It's Mark's. Look it up- 12:30-31. Any church goer would know that. Duh.

2)You use obscene language to make a point. How... childish. Even my 16 year old brother doesn't stoop that low.

3) Your website stated that the working poor tended to vote conservative and that the working poor also tended to be the most charitable. You, however, have contradicted that website and have, as such, essentially agreed with me. Bravo.

4) According to your website and your contradictory self, these working poor arn't lazy, but are instead hard working people who are "convinced of their own potential." Are you Conservative types ever going to give me a straight answer for once? Are people poor because they're lazy or not?!?!? One second you say yes and the next no. You say that these people who are so lazy don't deserve basic human necessities such as healthcare. You say they don't deserve to send they're children to college. You condemn and condemn and condemn and then you turn around and (do correct me if I'm wrong) say that if a poor person votes Republican it obviously means that that person is a harder worker than a poor person who votes liberal. If a poor person votes liberal then it means that they expect everything to be handed to them on a silver platter. Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound to a girl who's grown up on both sides of the traintracks and knows what it's like to be poor and knows what it's like to actually be able to afford nice clothes and heat and healthy food? My parents have been poor. They worked hard. And now I can go to college. I can buy clothes at such ridiculously priced places as American Eagle. I don't have to worry about the electricity going out anymore. And guess what? My parents are STILL voting liberal.
Just because you work hard doesn't mean you're Conservative. It doesn't mean you're a liberal. It just means you know that value of hard work.
You've got to come up with a better undertone to your arguments because your's just arn't working.

I'll just let my post stand next to yours as they relate respectively to their undertone. I've bolded the only word in my post which could conceivably be described as obscene language. I don't think we are both operating with the same set of definitions and probably further discussion is a waste of time and energy for both of us. Thanks for the enlightenment.

You, dear child, are an idiot.

 

[PubliusInfinitum]

Forgetting something, Pubic?

Well, Einstien... IF I forgot something, then I wouldn't remember what it was, now would I?

So, for this attempt to have been effective, you would have made the assertion that I had forgotten 'something', then run to note what it was... YET! Ya didn't... which leads one with no ohter alternative but to conclude that you're ONCE AGAIN trotting off into yet another intellectual dead end.