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Bruce Leroy posted:How many times do tax cuts have to fail at providing economic growth until they understand that tax cuts don't work and are just handouts to the wealthy and corporations? Who said that tax cuts have failed in their objective? As you said, they're handouts to the wealthy and corporations, that sounds like mission accomplished to me. The folly is in believing that Republicans actually want to stimulate economic growth.
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# ? Aug 9, 2011 03:49 |
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# ? Apr 27, 2024 02:27 |
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thefncrow posted:Who said that tax cuts have failed in their objective? As you said, they're handouts to the wealthy and corporations, that sounds like mission accomplished to me. I understand that, but their widely publicized, expressed goal of providing economic growth and opportunity has spectacularly failed many times over. I guess I'm more perplexed as to why the average conservative voter who isn't a politician or part of the capitalist economic elite still thinks tax cuts are a good thing and are even some kind of panacea that will create new jobs and bring back all the outsourced ones. How much evidence is necessary for the average person to actually understand economics and reality, rather than simply believing a bunch of conservative platitudes?
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# ? Aug 9, 2011 09:49 |
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Charles Fuckhammer posted:cutting marginal tax rates (thereby spurring growth) This bit is what always bugs me, every time I hear someone say it. Lowering tax rates does not loving create growth. If anything it discourages growth as it presents incentive to hoard post-tax wealth. Since the decision would be as follows: "If I start cashing bigger checks from my business" a) It won't go into my pockets b) It won't go to my business c) I'm better off letting that wealth reside within the company and leverage it into expanding so that my company retains longevity and lasting value as opposed to being a short-term flash in the pan after which I get no more checks. Instead, cutting those taxes generates the incentive to take the money out of the company instead of leaving it in the company as the tax rates are conducive to money not being in the company.
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# ? Aug 9, 2011 11:05 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:It always seems like the people who believe those things about the "professional poor" or "welfare queens" are people who have never been poor and don't personally know anyone who is poor. They just hear these apocryphal anecdotes about poor people with iphones, new SUVs, etc. and think that these stories are not only true but represent how the typical poor person lives. It doesn't help that the phrase "poor people" seems to evoke in these idiots some kind of Depression-era image of dirty people huddled in a squalid tin shack with a dirt floor and six children wearing diapers. Or something.
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# ? Aug 9, 2011 22:23 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:For some new content, here's a crazy and loving stupid editorial from Charles Krauthammer. A Letter To The Arizona Republic posted:Let Krauthammer Fix Fiscal Mess He's got a fan already!
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# ? Aug 9, 2011 22:59 |
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Dr. Tough posted:
That explains a lot.
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# ? Aug 11, 2011 10:31 |
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Oh Cal, I hope you get your head bashed in.Cal Thomas posted:PORTSTEWART, Northern Ireland – Some have compared the riots in the UK to the London Blitz. It’s a flawed comparison. The strategic bombing of London in 1940 came from an external enemy, Nazi Germany. Enemies from within are carrying out the free-for-all that began in Tottenham, England, on Saturday – quickly spreading to London and other parts of the UK – following the shooting death of suspected gang member Mark Duggan by Metropolitan Police.
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# ? Aug 12, 2011 02:27 |
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Saint Sputnik posted:Oh Cal, I hope you get your head bashed in. Wow, I didn't think anyone could make "Sons of Anarchy" uncool. I stand corrected.
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# ? Aug 12, 2011 03:21 |
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"There's a TV program called 'Full House.' It is fiction. The real White House is full of socialists who want to outlaw guns and Bibles. Aw, nuts. Have mercy! You got it, dude."
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# ? Aug 12, 2011 04:46 |
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Saint Sputnik posted:"There's a TV program called 'Full House.' It is fiction. The real White House is full of socialists who want to outlaw guns and Bibles. Aw, nuts. Have mercy! You got it, dude." I don't know if he'd reference Full House because it was three grown men living together and raising kids without a mother involved. It's basically what it's like in the homes of all those married/committed gay couples with children in America.
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# ? Aug 12, 2011 10:16 |
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Like Cal Thomas has actually watched an episode of Sons of Anarchy.
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# ? Aug 12, 2011 14:09 |
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Saint Sputnik posted:When a society refuses to impose a moral code in its schools, homes and culture, pandemonium is the result – think Detroit, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. Well thats not a very subtle implication right there.
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# ? Aug 12, 2011 14:40 |
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"In the beginning america was white, but liberals, hating god's creation of white people, and unable to create them selves, instead decided to corrupt and destroy. Blacks were created by liberals taking white people, but raising them without government mandated christian morals. Detroit, LA, Washington DC have all fallen to this pandemonium! If we don't institute strong imposed christian morals on the nation I predict we will all be black within 20 years."
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# ? Aug 12, 2011 17:37 |
Bruce Leroy posted:But even if it's a not lie (it is a lie), the assholes who parrot it don't understand it. Ere go, the assholes spouting that tripe have presented an invalid argument.(big shock there!)
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# ? Aug 13, 2011 05:51 |
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Disgruntled Medic posted:Ere go, the assholes spouting that tripe have presented an invalid argument.(big shock there!) I'm less concerned that it's an invalid argument and more worried by their absurd idea that somehow the poor are freeloaders and the wealthy are being unfairly picked on. The idea that we should tax the poor and middle class more to alleviate the slight burden upon the richest people who control the majority of the wealth is pretty good evidence that conservative propaganda is working and people are stupidly falling for it.
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# ? Aug 13, 2011 06:43 |
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Shalebridge Cradle posted:Well thats not a very subtle implication right there. It's actually quite clever. It gives him plausible deniability to claim that he isn't racist because he's simply referring to the relatively high crime rates in those cities, while his actual intent is to dogwhistle to his readers that all those cities are bad because of brown people and the effete, urban liberals who tolerate them. Regardless, I've always wondered whether those major cities with supposedly high crime rates are actually more crime-ridden than other places, especially more rural and suburban areas. Basically, if we adjust for population and density, are there really more crimes in cities like Chicago, DC, and Detroit than Palin's Wasilla per capita or is it just that there are so many people in those densely packed metro areas that it just seems like they have worse problems with crime. So, if you multiplied the crime rate of Wasilla by the factor necessary for it's population to equal that of Detroit, would you get approximately the same level of crime in both places, but Detroit seems worse because all those crimes are labeled as happening in one city?
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# ? Aug 13, 2011 10:43 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:Regardless, I've always wondered whether those major cities with supposedly high crime rates are actually more crime-ridden than other places, especially more rural and suburban areas. Basically, if we adjust for population and density, are there really more crimes in cities like Chicago, DC, and Detroit than Palin's Wasilla per capita or is it just that there are so many people in those densely packed metro areas that it just seems like they have worse problems with crime. So, if you multiplied the crime rate of Wasilla by the factor necessary for it's population to equal that of Detroit, would you get approximately the same level of crime in both places, but Detroit seems worse because all those crimes are labeled as happening in one city? Well, murder's probably not the best one to look at - since Wasilla only has about 11,000 people, even a similar murder rate to Detroit would only predict about four murders. Wasilla had 49 burglaries, for a rate of 446 per hundred thousand; Detroit had 18,993, for a rate of 2091 per hundred thousand, so the burglary rate is indeed about 4.7 times higher.
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# ? Aug 13, 2011 10:55 |
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Strudel Man posted:Crime rates are generally measured as a fraction of population for this reason. And yes, it is indeed higher. For example, Detroit in 2009 had 365 homicides with a population of 908,000, for a rate of 40 per hundred thousand. while Wasilla had...um, zero. Interesting. It seems like it may depend on the type of crime and would interesting to study in more depth, especially as to why certain crimes are more prevalent in certain areas than others.
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# ? Aug 13, 2011 12:14 |
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What do you all think if this insightful and nuanced op-ed:Norman Podhoretz posted:It's open season on President Obama. Which is to say that the usual suspects on the right (among whom I include myself) are increasingly being joined in attacking him by erstwhile worshipers on the left. Even before the S&P downgrade, there were reports of Democrats lamenting that Hillary Clinton had lost to him in 2008. Some were comparing him not, as most of them originally had, to Lincoln and Roosevelt but to the hapless Jimmy Carter. There was even talk of finding a candidate to stage a primary run against him. But since the downgrade, more and more liberal pundits have been deserting what they clearly fear is a sinking ship. I know which way WSJ leans, but I still find it hard to believe that a mainstream publication would publish this.
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# ? Aug 14, 2011 01:02 |
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OatBoy posted:What do you all think if this insightful and nuanced op-ed:
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# ? Aug 14, 2011 01:32 |
Bruce Leroy posted:I'm less concerned that it's an invalid argument and more worried by their absurd idea that somehow the poor are freeloaders and the wealthy are being unfairly picked on. The idea that we should tax the poor and middle class more to alleviate the slight burden upon the richest people who control the majority of the wealth is pretty good evidence that conservative propaganda is working and people are stupidly falling for it. I'm sorry. I oversimplified the issue in a zealous attempt at being succinct. I agree with you; regressive taxes do not work,and such a fool notion should warrant a good shaking. As for conservative propaganda, the conservatives won the U.S. with the election of Reagan, and anyone who tells you his term was a golden time for the U.S is delusional, lying, or both. While I'm not saying his policies were evil as some like to say, I will reiterate my previous statement and say that trickle down economics is bunk.
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# ? Aug 14, 2011 03:24 |
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Disgruntled Medic posted:I'm sorry. What's funny is that there was a recent biographical documentary about Reagan that aired on HBO and it was hilarious how so many of the historians and Reagan biographers kept noting how the Reagan that is cited by modern conservatives is often demonstrably false when compared to the things Reagan actually did. PrBacterio posted:Aaand I continue to be amazed by the amount of words the right wing keeps managing to come up with in search of an explanation for *why* Obama is such a radical left-wing extremist, without being able to supply even one example of anything he's ever actually *done* that could be considered even slightly leftist. It's really just because they don't even know what a "leftist" or "left-winger" is, let alone what a "communist," "socialist," or "fascist" is. The GOP has skewed so far to the right compared just to where they were 20 years ago that positions their party previous had look like something from Marx himself. E.g. the individual mandates of "Obamacare" were originally proposed by conservatives in the 1990s when Hilary Clinton was trying to get healthcare reform done, but all the current right-wing pundits act like it's some evil communist, socialist, fascistic thing Obama invented while doing cocaine off of Bill Ayers' penis. Bruce Leroy fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Aug 14, 2011 |
# ? Aug 14, 2011 04:31 |
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I'm a big fan of Right Wing Watch, mostly because they post direct quotes from crazy conservative opinion pieces/editorials that are perfect for this thread. The emphasis is mine. Rick Perry, Alice Patterson, And The Demons Who Control Our Politics Alice Patterson posted:Passivity caused the court cases that removed prayer from our public schools to remain, causing the protective wall around the United States, our schools and our government to crumble. The very next year President John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. The country mourned but the protective walls were not restored. Barton On Spanking: "We Do The Same Thing With Horses" David Barton posted:Always in the Bible, discipline is with a rod, it’s not with a hand. ’Cause the hand is supposed to reach out in love, you don’t want kids flinching from your hand. We do the same thing with horses. When I reach my hand to the face of a horse, I don’t want to flinch him from my hand. So if I have to beat a horse, and occasionally I do, you take something like a switch or a little crop or something else. And you can’t hurt a horse, I mean you can, but you have to convince a 1,200 lbs horse that me at 150 lbs is tougher than you and you do that by training. But when I extend my hand to my horse he doesn’t run from my hand, now he may not like that crop if he sees it, but after he’s had it a few time he’ll do exactly what I want, we have no difficulty, that’s why you also use spurs at times. I really hope David Barton doesn't have any kids and I want the ASPCA or some other organization to take away his horses.
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# ? Aug 15, 2011 07:07 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:In 2004 President Bush campaigned in favor of a Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that says that marriage is between one man and one woman. However, when he was elected, he said no more about it. If he had put as much importance on it as he did in reforming Social Security, the Marriage Amendment would have passed through Congress. Because we all know how easily Bush's social security reform passed through congress.
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# ? Aug 15, 2011 14:27 |
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Shalebridge Cradle posted:Because we all know how easily Bush's social security reform passed through congress. More importantly, they think that a new amendment to the US Constitution would pass through Congress as easily as any regular legislation. Also, it's not exactly clear if she understands what it takes to amend the Constitution, because the states would have to vote on any amendment, not just Congress.
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# ? Aug 16, 2011 00:15 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:I'm a big fan of Right Wing Watch, mostly because they post direct quotes from crazy conservative opinion pieces/editorials that are perfect for this thread. I think I've read that the first president to invite Muslims to the White House for an end of Ramadan feast was Jefferson.
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# ? Aug 20, 2011 19:09 |
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OatBoy posted:I know which way WSJ leans, but I still find it hard to believe that a mainstream publication would publish this. WSJ is no longer mainstream. This is exactly the kind of bullshit I was afraid of when Murdoch bought the drat thing. Anything he buys quickly becomes a mouthpiece for his private interests. He's still riding out the publication's previous reputation but that won't last forever.
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# ? Aug 20, 2011 23:46 |
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OatBoy posted:What do you all think if this insightful and nuanced op-ed: As Mark Adomanis said, it's the intellectual equivalent of fart noises.
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# ? Aug 20, 2011 23:58 |
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Sock on a Fish posted:I think I've read that the first president to invite Muslims to the White House for an end of Ramadan feast was Jefferson. Yep http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/inbrief/2011/07/20110729153019kram0.3508199.html#ixzz1U4EHpDrE In addition right wing pundits like to portray Jefferson as some kind of noble warrior fighting the Muslim hordes. The great irony being this is the opposite of the truth. He fought the Barbary pirates(who were Muslim) but held firm to the belief in protecting the rights of all religions. quote:In his autobiography, Jefferson recounted with satisfaction that in the struggle to pass his landmark Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786), the Virginia legislature "rejected by a great majority" an effort to limit the bill's scope "in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan."
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# ? Aug 21, 2011 03:06 |
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Shalebridge Cradle posted:Yep Even more awesome was when Keith Ellison was sworn into Congress, he asked that he be sworn in on a Quran and he got to use Jefferson's Quran for the ceremony. Just imagine the cognitive dissonance from all the Islamophobes watching/hearing about that. Nathilus posted:WSJ is no longer mainstream. This is exactly the kind of bullshit I was afraid of when Murdoch bought the drat thing. Anything he buys quickly becomes a mouthpiece for his private interests. He's still riding out the publication's previous reputation but that won't last forever. The funny thing is that Murdoch really isn't as much of a right-wing ideologues as Fox News and the current Wall Street journal seem to make him out. He's really just a brazen, selfish corporatist that generally only seems to care about himself and his money. Most people cite the regular Fox Channel content (e.g. Temptation Island) when noting this phenomenon, but I think the recent News of the World scandal also highlights this. Murdoch and his top cronies really don't give a gently caress about all the conservative jingoism and family values poo poo, they just care about readership/ratings and money, which is why they were willing to hack the phones and voicemails of terrorism victims and British soldiers. As a contrast, look at American conservative ideologues like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin that fetishize the 9/11 victims and American soldiers. Obviously they exploit these people for their own benefit (e.g. establishing their conservative bona fides by expressing jinogism and militarism and harping on 9/11), but I believe that they genuinely care about these people they fetishize, whereas a guy like Murdoch really only sees them as a means to the end of profits.
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# ? Aug 22, 2011 08:26 |
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Thanks for reminding me what a piece of poo poo you are Jay Ambrose.quote:The misinformation was so great in a recent guest op-ed n the Denver Post that it could not have been manufactured by one person alone. It took a consumer group organizer, a member of the Sierra Club and a trouper from George Soros’s MoveOn.org to misrepresent a salvational technology known as fracking as a weapon of mass destruction.
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# ? Aug 23, 2011 01:45 |
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Saint Sputnik posted:What we get is the inexpensive, environmentally sound snatching of enough energy from deep-down solid stone to make us free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, free at last. Are you loving kidding me? Is he seriously drawing a direct comparison between injecting benzene (and a bunch of chemicals you aren't allowed to know about) into the ground with MLK and civil rights? Is he insane? I can't even comprehend how he thought this was a smart thing to say.
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# ? Aug 23, 2011 01:57 |
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quote:Let My People Work The local far-right paper gets the best letters.
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# ? Aug 23, 2011 03:40 |
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Shalebridge Cradle posted:Are you loving kidding me? Is he seriously drawing a direct comparison between injecting benzene (and a bunch of chemicals you aren't allowed to know about) into the ground with MLK and civil rights? Better yet, check out the level of stupidity and ignorance required to call switching to another finite source of fossil fuel energy as "free." It's basically like switching from heroin to crack because there's more available and it's cheaper. Dr. Tough posted:The local far-right paper gets the best letters. Excellent find. Idiot posted:But the federal government can do something; it can stop throwing road blocks like minimum wage laws and workplace restrictions in the path of job creation. And, even more immediately, the states do not need to wait for the federal government to act because all 50 states have their own road blocks to employment that could be lifted. Right, it's that pesky minimum wage that's getting in the way of bringing all those nice slave-wage jobs from China that cause people to literally kill themselves out of despair. Also, who needs OSHA, the FDA, SEC, or any other regulatory body, it's not like corporations and businesses would ever do something greedy and irresponsible if there was a profit motive in it. Idiot posted:The most damaging of these state road blocks is occupational licensing. The mere idea that anyone should be required to ask government’s permission to practice a profession should be offensive to anyone who cares about liberty and productivity. In Arizona there are scores of such laws and most of these government prohibitions also involve a regulatory board or commission to enforce the rules. Because we all know the best doctors are the ones that haven't given into those med school cartels and licensing boards. I for one look forward to having home repairs done by a plumber who is not licensed or regulated. Who is the government to tell me that I'm not qualified to run a clinical psychology practice? It's not like there's anything bad that could come from it. Idiot posted:Thoreau said “Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of the way." Let’s get this economy moving by ending government restraints on people who want to work. Yeah, because, as great a philosopher and writer as he was, it's a great idea to take economic advice from the guy who lived as a forest hobo. Idiot posted:Some employee terminations help the economy Yeah, those newly-unemployed former-government employees can just get all of those private sector jobs that are currently available. Also, what are "demand," "consumption," and the "New Deal"?
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# ? Aug 23, 2011 06:37 |
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Dr. Tough posted:The local far-right paper gets the best letters. Oh yes how wonderful it would be to be able to take my car to a dangerously incompetent mechanic, or have my house rewired by a guy who's never installed a light switch before. Then head on over to the guy who says he's a dentist because he read 1 book on the subject for a root canal before purchasing a poorly constructed and improperly installed natural gas water heater.
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# ? Aug 23, 2011 07:15 |
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quote:it can stop throwing road blocks like minimum wage laws and workplace restrictions in the path of job creation You guys are losers. I dream of the day when I can have a job that pays $1.50/hr that involves working 14 hr shifts without breaks, or stifling regulations that stop me from going deaf or blind, being hurt, maimed, or killed just by working at my workstation. quote:Does anyone seriously believe that we should have to ask government’s permission to be a barber or a cosmetologist or, for that matter, to practice any profession?...These licensing laws also require a lot of up-front education and continuing education so, naturally, there is another whole group of people in the education arena who support these economically harmful laws. Because my hair dresser should be so uneducated that she doesn't know how to use tools and chemicals that if used incorrectly, can cause me to lose my hair, develop traction alopecia, suffer chemical or hot iron burns, or contract disease. Also my surgeon doesn't need to go through over a decade worth of education and job training, the free market will tell him the difference between my liver and my spleen.
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# ? Aug 23, 2011 07:19 |
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constantIllusion posted:You guys are losers. I dream of the day when I can have a job that pays $1.50/hr that involves working 14 hr shifts without breaks, or stifling regulations that stop me from going deaf or blind, being hurt, maimed, or killed just by working at my workstation. The free market will decide who the best doctors are. Once all the consumers hear how many patients a surgeon has killed, they'll shift demand to a doctor who has killed fewer people.
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# ? Aug 23, 2011 10:07 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:The free market will decide who the best doctors are. The crappy surgeons will have to lower their prices to stay competitive, 50 dollar heart surgery ahoy! Who needs Obamacare? Affordable healthcare is here!
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# ? Aug 23, 2011 10:25 |
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vxskud posted:The crappy surgeons will have to lower their prices to stay competitive, 50 dollar heart surgery ahoy! Don't forget haggling. You could probably negotiate a discount if you buy x-rays and MRIs in bulk. And remember US Senate candidate Sharron Angle's advice to barter for medical services with livestock.
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# ? Aug 23, 2011 10:34 |
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# ? Apr 27, 2024 02:27 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:And remember US Senate candidate Sharron Angle's advice to barter for medical services with livestock.
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# ? Aug 23, 2011 13:02 |