jcp026

Guys, I think we're fooling ourselves if we think either one of the candidates is going to fix the economy. Let's talk about the economy...NOW:

So, there's no question that the major problem with the economy right now is a lack of demand. Demand is down because people aren't stupid enough to put everything on credit cards anymore, people can't borrow against their homes any more because they're either underwater or have lost the house entirely, and wages, though mostly stagnant, have actually gone down in the last thirty years. The minimum wage now, adjusted for inflation, is lower than it was at its inception. And, last I heard, there are still four job seekers for every one job opening. Demand is down. No doubt about it.

How do we get wages up?
-Well, the minimum wage could be tied to inflation, which would push it up a bit now and increase the buying power of the working poor and help increase demand.
-Employer based health care places a HUGE BURDEN on our businesses. When you factor in what businesses spend to help pay for our insurance, which the government is already subsidizing, compensation has gone up. While not as high as profits, still a considerable amount. We can't keep subsidizing this and, with the ever increasing cost of health care, business can't afford to keep it up. We could stop subsidizing this and, naturally, most business will stop paying for our health coverage. Now, I'm not going to pretend that the bulk of money that would be freed up wouldn't just increase the profit margins, but, over time, I think we'd see wages tick up and removing this burden would make the U.S. more attractive to foreign business. I know of at least one case where a Japanese car company built a factor in Canada instead of the U.S. because of the cost of health care (and no, Obama Care doesn't have anything to do with it).
-Another, and more awesome, way to increase demand while simultaneously stabilizing the financial system would be what is a good tax (known as a Pigouvian Tax) that Luigi Zingales mentions in A Capitalism For The People. He talks about "a tax on short-term debt (with maturity of less than a year, for example), [can] discourage both excessive leverage and short-term leverage, preventing a crisis. Also, a 1 percent tax on outstanding short-term debt would raise $21.5 billion dollars annually just among the top nine institutions." He goes on to say that that amount would equal the tax liabilities of the bottom 65 million households who make less than $35,000. He doesn't exactly advocate this, but I'd take it one step further and say that for 5 years (a reasonable time to "fix" the economy, if we do what I want) the taxes of those 65 million households SHOULD be exempted. Paid for by this type of Pigouvian Tax and we put $21.5 billion dollars in the hands of the people most likely to spend it and, voila, we increase demand. But I have to stress that we write into this tax bill that those cuts for the bottom 65 million CAN NOT BE EXTENDED! It can be a BS political weapon. We have to take the debt seriously and, outside of Bill Clinton and Dwight Eisenhower, we haven't been very good at doing that.

-But what about my health insurance, you douche?!
GREAT QUESTION! A Public Option, where people opt in and pay some rate (just like with private insurance) then the federal government can insure them. It could be set up in a way that IT WOULD ALWAYS BREAK EVEN. Not bilking the taxpayer or the people using the insurance, and not adding to the debt. We could also allow people to purchase insurance across state lines, which would probably lead to crappier private insurance, but it would be cheaper insurance.

What about the job creators?
-Traditional Supply Side (Trickle-Down) Economics DOES NOT WORK! But we can tweak it. Just giving rich people and corporations money doesn't create jobs. That should be obvious right now with near record high corporate profits and taxes at, at least, 30 year lows. So how do we "tweak" it? We could say to corporations that all of the loopholes are gone. The corporate tax rate is 28%, but if you create a certain number (or percentage) of jobs in the U.S. then you can push your rate down to 18%. You could also include a couple of tax breaks that we know work and, if they took advantage of them, they could get their rate down to 12% (or pretty much the lowest in the world). But 12% is the absolute rock bottom. You will pay taxes. You will contribute.

What about taxes in general, you douche?
-Now you're just being mean. I believe that the best way to "clean up" the tax code is to get rid of all tax breaks. Then we can leave all of the rates the same and increase revenue. I also support raising the top rate to 39.6% also known as the rate from about 12 years ago.
-But what about small businesses, you stupid ass? Ouch. The "Small Business" label includes Bechtel, which took in $31 BILLION a couple of years ago. Not what most of us think of when we think of a small business. I think we should change the definition of "small business" or, if it's possible, pull them out of the individual tax system that we're in and into a system just for small businesses. A progressive system, to be sure, but a system that wouldn't lead to big tax increases for Mom and Pop spots. I don't have any idea how this would be done and haven't heard anyone talk mention it, so I can't elaborate. I'd like to add, though, that under the current system, with loopholes included, raising the top rate back to 39.6% would only affect about 2% of "small businesses."

With our current political system, how does this get done?
-It doesn't. Without campaign finance reform, getting rid of gerrymandering, reforming Congress and the filibuster, and pulling more people into the voting booths (Australian-style), none of this is possible.

Someone, please, respond seriously to this. I don't have anyone to talk to about it.

jcp026

Some of you guys are special.

foreverfan

Halo

SloMotion

... this is what I'm talking about, partisan politics has the system so gummed up that nothing gets done unless it's along party lines ... screw all the agendas and get back to running the country.

Hawaii was like a third-world country back then and after experiencing my daughter being born in a third-world country back in the '80s (she knew growing up she could never be President), I could see how it would be difficult to produce accurate/original records. However, knowing this, I procured about 20 copies of my daughter's original long-form birth certificate as a precaution, and it boggles my mind that Obama's mother/grandparents did not think to do the same ... it would be common sense. For this reason and if anything, if he wasn't born in the US, then it's more then likely he was born in Canada and his grandparents registered his birth in Hawaii ... you could do stuff like that back then.

SaintsBro

OK, here's a question for the birthers. I like you, so it's not an argument between us, just a conversation.

But let's take a look at this....okay, the birth certificate is a fake, I'll grant you the end result you want. Now let's get there, step by step.

Here's one example: the woman in Hawaii who is the official State Recorder of Records or whatever her title is (I forget her name, but you know who I mean) she has officially said, on the record, that the "certificate of live birth" or the copy of the birth certificate, if you will, that Obama has is official and matches what is recorded in the microfilm or microfiche -- it not only meets the requirements as a document, but it matches the original information that is on file, in the file that exists in the records but they can't show to people. She clearly said that.

Okay, she is probably a Democrat, appointed by a Democratic governor, and we all know Democrats lie. But how do we get there exactly? Follow with me here. If it EVER comes out that she lied about this thing, she could lose her job and really seriously go to jail. And not just lying or malfeasance in office, but probably for treason. Her name would forever go down in history as a nationally-hated loser, like Aaron Burr or Lee Harvey Oswald or Jefferson Davis or something. That's quite a lot to have hanging over your head on a $48,000 a year salary. If it's not there, it doesn't match, and she's lying, a Republican governor could win Hawaii and come in there at any time, dig it up and expose her. Off to jail she goes. And the treason thing does not really have a statue of limitations on it, so this is for the rest of her life.

Does she lie and endanger her own career and freedom, because hey, she wants the Democrats to win or because she REALLY likes Obama? Ask yourself, would you personally -- any of you -- would you personally lie for a politician in your party of choice, risking your career at whatever job you have. Are you that into politics? Are you willing? Of course you're not.

So there has to be a payoff in here. This recorder lady is getting money from somewhere. OK, now ask yourself, and I mean REALLY ask yourself, would you really lie for money? They say every man has a price. How much? What's YOUR price? $10,000? $1 million? I want to know YOUR price, if this were you. So once we establish YOUR price, if they told you to lie about something at your job, then we can talk and discuss what her theoretical price might be.

I mean, work with me on this. It's a massive cover-up, involving numerous people over the years. Let's start breaking it down, into prices and component parts and discussing how it would actually have to work, if WE were going to do it.

This Hawaiian records lady is just one of dozens of people we will need to get on board, if we are going to bamboozle the American people. And if she dies, or retires or loses her job at any time, if after a few years she gets a better job keeping records at the DMV across the street, someone new is going to come in to that records job, into that Hawaiian records office, and when they do, what do you think the FIRST DAMN THING THEY ARE GONNA DO ON THEIR FIRST DAY ON THE JOB is? If it was YOU, your first day on the job as custodian of Hawaiian records? OF COURSE they are gonna go look up August 1961! It's gonna be getting looked at for the next 150 years! So our massive conspiracy is only going to be able to last how long? A decade? Two?

SloMotion

I have a little government experience and I think it could be done by one higher level GS employee with access to the archives ... you wouldn't even need to involve the recorder-lady ... then you just use all legal means available to block/impede access or investigation of the archives ... just playing devil's advocate, , if I'm gonna' assume they're smart enough to forge a birth certificate, I gotta' also assume that the opposition would have the resources to definitively prove the birth certificate was false ... there's a lot of questions for me that I know I'm never gonna' get an answer to, but at the rate they're going, if they ever did find the birth certificate was false, it would be long after Obama is outta' office, eh?

SaintsBro

Okay! I'm with you! Let's do it, SloMo! So, we are some high level official in the state of Hawaii (who exactly are we?) and we are using our pass key (does that really exist? Which officials in another part of government would have keys to a vital records departmental office and its vault? Not many) to sneak into the archives vital records division...okay we're in, what are we doing in here exactly? I guess, since "recorder lady" is NOT involved, then I guess we have to somehow either FAKE the microfilm and/or the original record books, enough to fool her. Since she said publicly that our FAKE birth certificate we made, matches the records she has on file. So we have to line these ducks up. How do we do it? What do we do?

Do we find the roll and replace the page in the microfilm for Obama's birthday, with a duplicate page that we created, that shows his listing? Then we have to reproduce the whole roll, thousands of frames, because we can't just splice in one page, that'd be too obvious. Microfilm is FILM, you can't cut it and then stick it back together again without seeing the seam. To forge this, we would have to simulate not only the page of the microfilm, but the whole reel, the age of the microfilm itself, the reel, the box, the type of paper label on the box, the type of typewriter used on the original microfilm boxes, the yellowing of the plastic....very complex and expensive to forge all this, especially in order to fool one person (archival lady, who says our fake birth certifcate matches the vital records she has).

Let's just assume for sake of argument, that the records we want to tamper with were microfilmed in the 1980s sometime. We have to simulate not just the page of the 1961 birth ledger to insert Obama's name, we need to simulate the appearance of the roll of microfilm from the 1980s, too!

I suppose we could just find the original book and rip the page out, the one that doesn't list Obama being born, and burn it or something. That's pretty low tech. But what happens if a Republican later comes in and discovers the book with its missing page? All hell would break loose! I mean it would be freaking insane. And to get to your other point, SloMo, sure, we could cover this up until Obama gets out of office. That's easy. That's fairly do-able. But just until Obama gets out of office is not good enough -- we need to cover this thing up until Obama and virtually everybody who is responsible is dead, or beyond prosecution, so we can't get caught, right? Not to even mention the damage that would happen to our political party if/when we were caught doing this. So before we do this, before we can commit this massive conspiracy to forge this birth certificate, we have to understand -- if we're caught, we will go to jail, lose everything, our names will be mud and even our descendents will have to live with the burden of shame for years to come. It's pretty high stakes.

SloMotion

Well, I think a GS-10 or higher would be in the position to tamper with records like this, not be questioned or look suspicious, but not higher then a GS-12.

Another scenario would be that it would be that any high level operative with the proper clearance could access that area, remove and/or tamper with the documentation in question ... those records are not going to be 'locked down', no need to bribe anyone & your standard recording clerk is going to accept, rather then question, discrepancies in a record that's 50yrs old. It all slips through the cracks and when it does come under scrutiney, you only allow high level officials sympathetic to your position to view and confirm the authenticity of the material in question for national security reasons ... easy-peasey, lemon-squeezy ... I'm sure the editing of documents goes on at all levels of government everyday without question, big-corporations too for that matter, it's the way we do business.

Now, what would motivate someone to do this, IDK, especially in something as serious as the President of the United States, but that's just what makes it possible ... the more outrageous it seems, the less likely people will take it's possibility seriously or investigate ... it's like robbing a bank in broad daylight, except the prize here is control of the country ... and for the coverup, they've done a pretty good job keeping that whole JFK thing under wraps for so long.

Tell you the truth, I just don't trust either side at the moment ...

SaintsBro

Actually, no, if these are vital records then they would be on kind of a lockdown, at the very minimum least they'd be in a secure area that most employees did not have access to, only the director and a handful of departmental employees would have access. It's not like the governor is walking around with a master key that can open any lock on any government office in the state. And you can't walk in the Vital Records building as a civilian, act like you know what you're doing, saunter around, then open some doors in a corridor off from the employee lunch room and go in and edit up somebody's vital records from fifty years ago. Breaking in at night, possible, but not exactly easy to do. Because you have to leave everything undisturbed etc. Tough job, even for a seasoned criminal. So how DO we do this. Who does it --exactly who, not just "they." I really want to figure this out, how it could be done.

And yes, editing of documents goes on all the time in government, but it doesn't go on in archival documents, which are something entirely different. Archival documents and vital records are like, okay, we're microfilming everything from 1947 to 1972, BOOM, it's done. It sits on a shelf and does not get used. And the process of creating these records or maintaining them is very thorough and not done half-assed, because you are talking about the proof of existence of people...very important to the state...if you go to the local DMV and say, "look, I don't really have any proof of residence, or good proof of who I am, but I live over on Elm Street, can you please give me an ID that says I live on Elm Street," what happens, what do they say to you? Do they let you fudge on things?


Discrepancies in a record are a pretty big deal. Unfortunately all we have is the word of the top person in the vital records office, who is trained and is more than a standard clerk, who has all eyes on her and a LOT to lose personally by lying -- I mean not just possible prison time but GENERATIONS of disgrace for her family and her name if she's caught lying about this zillion dollar question, what's in the file -- and she says that at least on her watch, as far as her own integrity is concerned, there are no discrepancies, and the records are authentic and match what our forged birth certificate says.

But she HAS to be lying, because we agreed he was born in Kenya. Again, would YOU lie about something so important if someone asked you to, and how much would it cost to keep your mouth shut? So, if we are the conspirators, running this conspiracy, how much are we paying this woman for this service of lying for us? How much? Also, what do we do if she comes back to us and asks for MORE money? Do we kill her? Someone tell me how this plan works.