The American Way.

Fentoine Lum said:
Bush1's adventure into Panama was another fine example of how we still refuse to hold our own war criminals accountable.
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That one is included in the list of the US's nearly 40 wars of aggression since WW2.

Anybody who wants to learn can google: 37 US wars commondreams.org

Or something like that. They'll find it if they're interested in knowing.
 
montgomery said:
Russia couldn't not hold onto the Crimea because it was a direct challenge by Nato to Russia's security. Look at a map
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Look at a map!? Well, geographically, Poland is right next to Germany, so that gives Germany license to invade and occupy Poland? Come on.


And really, what's the point of discussing Russia's peaceful annexation of the Crimea when we compare that to what the US had done to the ME. Iraq? A phony war that slaughtered half a million or more for control of Iraq's oil resources? And nearly 40 US wars of aggression since WW2 alone?
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So this is whataboutism, which is a KGB tactic employed by ex-KGB operatives. Whatever the US did has no bearing on Russia acting as it acted with respect to Crimea. You're not going to find me supporting any US military adventures post-WWII that weren't solely humanitarian missions. So you're barking up the wrong tree.

Putin's stated goal is to destroy western democracy. He's ex-KGB.
 
montgomery said:
Bush1, the dead Bush was the equivalent and acted his priorities out with the invasion of Iraq on the same false pretenses as the son the next time.
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Stop with the whatabouting and deal with Putin's direct quote.

He said his goal is to destroy western democracy. That's what he wants. You cannot cooperate with someone who wages an existential fight with you for the same reason you cannot cooperate with Nazis.


You're accusing Putin on the Ukraine so see that invitation for a discussion.
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Whatever the "referendum" was, or how questionable that vote was (and it was questionable and not regarded by the UN as a legitimate election either), does not give Russia license to illegally invade and occupy a sovereign nation.
 
LV426 said:
Look at a map!? Well, geographically, Poland is right next to Germany, so that gives Germany license to invade and occupy Poland? Come on.




So this is whataboutism, which is a KGB tactic employed by ex-KGB operatives. Whatever the US did has no bearing on Russia acting as it acted with respect to Crimea. You're not going to find me supporting any US military adventures post-WWII that weren't solely humanitarian missions. So you're barking up the wrong tree.

Putin's stated goal is to destroy western democracy. He's ex-KGB.
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I'll end my part in the conversation with: Mexico peacefully annexed San Diego which is the main US naval base on west coast. Otherwise, your manner tells me you are totally convinced on the right of your country to plunder the world and you can't understand how Russia needed to hold it's ground on the Ukraine/Crimea.
 
cawacko said:
I posted articles from the SF Chronicle, LA Times, NY Times, Sac Bee, SD Tribune, CalMatters.Org and Forbes among others. All speaking about the unfunded California pension crisis. If you think they're all wrong, if you think they're all lying then take their numbers and tell them so. Since you don't live in California you wouldn't read about the chunks of our budgets that go to pay pensions and why they can't hire new police or other needed pubic servants because of the pension crisis in various cities.

So if you know something that all these other folks don't be my guest and show it to them. Don't ask me to do your work for you.
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NOTHING YOU POSTED PROVIDED THE CONTEXT.

And now you're appealing to authority because you don't want to do the work.

So you just posted propaganda because it confirmed your bias. You didn't bother to question it. You didn't bother to do the work. That's because you're lazy.

The equation is very simple, and it's revealing why you refuse to show your work.

(Pension expenditures - baseline revenues) x # of years = liability

There's your equation. All you have to do is swap in numbers. In fact, you've already provided one of those numbers:

(Pension expenditures - baseline revenues) x # of years = $1T Liability

So how are you getting to that $1T liability?

Show your work, stop posturing.
 
LV426 said:
NOTHING YOU POSTED PROVIDED THE CONTEXT.

And now you're appealing to authority because you don't want to do the work.

So you just posted propaganda because it confirmed your bias. You didn't bother to question it. You didn't bother to do the work. That's because you're lazy.
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Show us these liberal sources are all wrong. You're claiming they are. You do the work.
 
kudzu said:
None of the living members of these families founded the companies from which their fortunes come — all were started by earlier generations. In fact, more than a third of the Forbes 400 inherited the businesses that generated their wealth. These modern wealth dynasties exercise significant economic power in our current gilded age of extreme inequality.

A new report I co-authored with my colleague Chuck Collins at the Institute for Policy Studies, Billionaire Bonanza 2018, looks at the rise of these wealth dynasties. The Forbes 400 combined own $2.89 trillion, we found. That’s more than the combined wealth of the bottom 64 percent of the United States.

The median family in the United States owns just over $80,000 in household wealth. The richest person in the United States (and the world), Jeff Bezos, has accumulated a fortune nearly 2 million times that amount.

These pictures paint a grim picture of wealth inequality in the United States in 2018. Wealth is concentrating into fewer and fewer hands while the rest of the country struggles to get by. One in five families has zero or negative wealth. Two in five Americans couldn’t come up with $400 if they needed it in an emergency.

Previous generations tried to warn us about economic inequality. Former President Teddy Roosevelt said in 1913, “Of all forms of tyranny, the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy.”

A generation later, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned in 1941, “We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

And for a time, we heeded these warnings. Wealth and income inequality peaked in the 1920s before the passage of high personal income tax rates on the rich, a federal estate tax, and other inequality-fighting public policy measures took hold. Americans enjoyed a general flattening of the economic pyramid up until the 1980s when the modern period of tax cuts for the rich and austerity for the rest of us begun.

It’s safe to say that a country in which three individuals own more wealth than half the country — as Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett do now — is not what Brandeis or Roosevelt hoped for the direction of the country.

Without action, French economist Thomas Piketty warns, the United States will devolve into a “patrimonial capitalism” where the heirs of today’s billionaires dominate our politics, culture, and economy.

The good news is we have solutions to avoid this. A smart step forward would be instituting a federal wealth tax on assets above $20 million, which would raise an estimated $1.9 trillion over 10 years that could be invested in generating economic opportunities for low-wealth families. Another good idea is to tax large inheritances — people’s genetic lottery winnings — as ordinary income.

There’s nothing natural or inevitable about wealth dynasties. Our ancestors recognized this and took action. We can too.

https://wakeup-world.com/2018/12/06/how-aristocracies-are-born/
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I have no problem with those having founded the companies having THEIR family members benefit from it. Perhaps you can explain why those founding them shouldn't be the ones to say who benefits from it. Are you saying you should determine who benefits from it?

Why is your answer to support taxing those of which you are jealous? Everything you bleeding hearts support involves someone else paying the price while you take credit for claiming you care.

It's very natural for those that made the fortune to determine who gets the fortune. What's unnatural is the jealousy of people like you that consider compassion as saying you want to help others then using someone else's money to fund it while believing it was the same as you using your own money.
 
montgomery said:
Bush1, the dead Bush was the equivalent and acted his priorities out with the invasion of Iraq on the same false pretenses as the son the next time.

You're accusing Putin on the Ukraine so see that invitation for a discussion.
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mmmkay russo bot hole
 
CFM said:
I have no problem with those having founded the companies having THEIR family members benefit from it. Perhaps you can explain why those founding them shouldn't be the ones to say who benefits from it. Are you saying you should determine who benefits from it?

Why is your answer to support taxing those of which you are jealous? Everything you bleeding hearts support involves someone else paying the price while you take credit for claiming you care.

It's very natural for those that made the fortune to determine who gets the fortune. What's unnatural is the jealousy of people like you that consider compassion as saying you want to help others then using someone else's money to fund it while believing it was the same as you using your own money.
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they also benefit the most from our infrastructure

so they need to pay for it
 
LV426 said:
NOTHING YOU POSTED PROVIDED THE CONTEXT.

And now you're appealing to authority because you don't want to do the work.

So you just posted propaganda because it confirmed your bias. You didn't bother to question it. You didn't bother to do the work. That's because you're lazy.

The equation is very simple, and it's revealing why you refuse to show your work.

(Pension expenditures - baseline revenues) x # of years = liability

There's your equation. All you have to do is swap in numbers. In fact, you've already provided one of those numbers:

(Pension expenditures - baseline revenues) x # of years = $1T Liability

So how are you getting to that $1T liability?

Show your work, stop posturing.
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He thinks all those "sources are from the liberal left".

He's not fooling anyone.
 
LV426 said:
Are you serious?

There is nothing peaceful about an illegal invasion and occupation of a sovereign country's territory.
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The annexation of the Crimea was bloodless and peaceful and the choice of the people by referendum.

That differs from all of the US wars of aggression.

My invitation to a decent and rational discussion is always open. I won't entertain you repeating yourself on denial of the facts.
 
montgomery said:
That one is included in the list of the US's nearly 40 wars of aggression since WW2.

Anybody who wants to learn can google: 37 US wars commondreams.org

Or something like that. They'll find it if they're interested in knowing.
Click to expand...

Which is why many many americans will avoid that knowledge.
 
montgomery said:
The annexation of the Crimea was bloodless and peaceful and the choice of the people by referendum.

That differs from all of the US wars of aggression.

My invitation to a decent and rational discussion is always open. I won't entertain you repeating yourself on denial of the facts.
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One officer was killed and another wounded, it was not bloodless.
 
montgomery said:
The annexation of the Crimea was bloodless and peaceful and the choice of the people by referendum.

That differs from all of the US wars of aggression.

My invitation to a decent and rational discussion is always open. I won't entertain you repeating yourself on denial of the facts.
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Hell, just look at our annexation of the middle east.
 
LV426 said:
Stop with the whatabouting and deal with Putin's direct quote.
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Link to that quote if you can. I don't believe it. It can only be a mistranslation at best. Or something from history during the Soviet era when the US was making the same cold war statements.
 
cawacko said:
Show us these liberal sources are all wrong. You're claiming they are. You do the work.
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I told you that it's incumbent on you to do the work here.

You've resisted doing that work because these Op-Eds confirm your bias.

You're unable to overcome your bias and think critically because you're lazy.

In all this time, you could have gotten yourself a better grasp of this so you can speak to the context. But you aren't and the reason you're not is because you're lazy.

So once again, you lob something out there that you cannot defend, then try to defer in an appeal to authority while exhibiting lazy behavior.

If I was making an argument about pension liabilities, I'd want to be able to speak to the math. I'd want to be able to say "Here is the expenditure, here is the revenue baseline, and here's the period I'm looking across". You didn't establish any of those things, and neither did any of the links you posted.

You simply disseminated propaganda that confirmed your bias.

So fucking lazy.
 
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