Employees’ contribution to the FICA payroll tax is without a doubt the most regressive federal tax. In addition to the employees’ direct contribution, the employers’ contribution to the payroll tax hinders job creation and is thus of some detriment to the nation’s median wage.

In addition to discouraging hiring, employers’ contribution, (a tax upon business enterprises) is passed onto customers and thus behaves similar to a sales tax.

There is absolutely no logical relationship between income and medical need. No portion of FICA payroll tax should used to fund any portion of Medicare. A broader based tax such as an actual sales tax would be the more appropriate choice.

It is logical but unfeasible for wage earners’ in general to entirely fund their own social security retirement annuities. It is politically unfeasible to grant employees less FICA payroll tax reduction than that granted to employers.

The historic lack of a federal retirement program for wage earners, (despite historically shorter life spans) was greatly detrimental to our nation. If Social Security were now terminated, the economic detriment due to the additional extent of USA’s population segment driven into poverty would be an economic disaster.

I advocate that 1/3 of FICA’s portion earmarked for Social Security Retirement should be funded by a federal sales tax. The entire portion of FICA earmarked for Medicare should also be funded by a federal sales tax.

Economically sales tax is superior to a payroll tax.

Employers and employees now equally contribute to the 12.6% of our nation’s total payrolls’ earmarked for Social Security retirement annuities and 2.9% earmarked for Medicare.

I advocate that we reduce the FICA tax by 7.1% of total payrolls. We can replace 1/3 of the Social Security earmark and the entire Medicare earmark with a federal sales tax rate significantly less than 7.1% .

Respectfully, Supposn

The christian god and how it's described in popular culture makes no sense to me.
Let's look at some of the items that don't make sense:
1) it's said that only good things come from god, and at the same time, it's said god is the creator of everything. If only good things come from god, then god isn't all powerful being as it lacks the ability to create bad/evil things. If it allows bad/evil things to be created, this means it either can't stop them from being created (not all powerful) or doesn't want to (is that something really perfect and worth worship?) If god is the creator of everything, then he had to create the bad/evil things too. This means he had to create "bad/evil/sin". The story of satan says god created the angels to worship him, lucifer (an angel) rebelled against him. Now then, this would mean that god created an angel whose purpose was to rebel against him, or he made a mistake with lucifer (and the roughly 1/3 of the other angels). Either way, not perfection.
2) it's said god is perfect, and at the same time, god isn't bad/evil. Perfection means having without fault, satisfying all requirements. By definition of the word, god would have to be both good and evil and everything in between. if god seperated evil from himself, then he ceases to be perfect. If god never "had" evil, it was never perfect.
3) god is said to create a perfect environment in which Adam and Eve was introduced. Yet, because Adam and Eve sinned, it ceased being perfect. Why was the devil allowed to enter Perfection Land and tempt two (as close to perfect as possible without being gods) beings created from a perfect being to begin with if the creation was perfect?
4) why did god allow the temtation and fall of man, while knowing it would happen? If he didn't know, he wouldn't be all knowing. And to create something knowing it will fail, isn't exactly what one would call a perfect and all loving creator.
5) why did god seems so upset and surprised at the fall of man? He obviously had to know what the outcome would be, or he's not all knowing.
6) why would god tempt Adam and Eve be telling them not to eat from the tree, knowing they would?
7) while we're at it, why put the tree there in the first place?
8) why would such a loving god, need sacrifices to appease it? They are beyond barbaric
9) god is said to have created all things, yet he needed flawed humans (for which he is responsible for) to write his words. It's harder to write a book than it is to create everything that exists?
10) so many people claim to worship the same god, but can't agree on certain beliefs? If god is perfect and truly speaking to the people, their opinion of a person/situation/belief be the same. This concept included differnt faiths, but also same individuals within the same church.
11) the OT god seems to be a murder-happy kill-joy, while the NT god is said to be so loving and concerned about his creation - the same creation that he had to know the outcome of because of his actions.

One would think, after thousand of years, people would have perfected the christian god myth. Yet it's not, and people continue to believe in it.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/interna...E2xfbjKf9Kx00K

Israel has agreed to, of all things, partition Jerusalem. :o I must say, I wasn't expecting this.

Thoughts? Israeli refusal to partition the city was the only thing that killed the peace talks in 2000. This obstacle being eliminated has made peace less then a pipe dream and, if this kind of thinking continues, even likely. Hamas on the other hand still needs to be handled.

The “Fair tax” must be enacted incrementally

I’m a proponent of replacing income tax revenues (to the maximum feasible extent with a federal sales tax, (i.e. the “fair tax”.

I doubt sales tax of 23% could replace all federal income taxes and I do not believe the U.S. Congress would attempt to transfer our overwhelming majority source of federal revenue in a single step. It’s conceivable they’d pass transformations accomplished by incremental steps.

Due to imbedded hidden sales taxes from prior transactions within a conventional sales tax method, a 23% sales tax would result in a significantly greater amount of actual sales taxs paid by purchasers at the final links of commercial transactions chains.

[The European Common Market nations and most other nation’s that have since then enacted or modified a sales tax, have adopted the “value added tax”, (VAT) method of sales tax because the total amount of government revenue realized from any chain of commercial transactions never exceeds the total sales taxes paid by all purchasers within all of the chain’s links].

The majority of states have their own sales taxes and additionally many cities and counties within those states also levy sales taxes. For example NY City’s total state and city sales tax is in excess of 8% and other states have similarly high tax rates. A 23% (conventional) rate would be a total sales tax exceeding 30%. Purchasers within the final links of transaction chains will pay high rates within many U.S. states. Even if a 23% a rate should be acceptable to the U.S. Congress, I do not believe it will be sufficient to replace all federal income taxes.

Respectfully, Supposn

Some here may, or may not recognize my username. I've been around political discussion forums for many years, usually under that name.

I use the Canadian flag because that's where I live and the country I love, but I'm half-American and half-British by birth with family spread across all three countries.

I also have a BA in Political Science and a MA Philosophy and a strong interest in history as well (particulary classical and medieval eras).

Anyway, I find the larger forums to be totally over-run with trolls, idiots and racists, so I tend to post only at smaller forums where these types are less numerous.

I am also the owner/admin of a discussion forum - I found this place via Admin Zone.

link to my blog article



IPCC's findings and predictions eviscerated by an independent panel.

New York Post article here.

To those of us who pointed out that the famous hockey stick was removed from UN reports, who pointed out that claimed "hottest" years on record weren't, that temperature monitoring site included one placed under a exhaust vent etc etc this is further evidence that global warming is a matter of politics not science.


The simple fact is that the models relied on by AGM (anthropogenic global warming) advocates that asserted was manmade are inherently unreliable. The vast amount of necessary data far exceeds what we have. Small changes in assumptions caused widely varying predictions.

However, what can be used with a great deal more confidence is anecdotal evidence and secondary evidence of climate. Plankton fossils can be used to track temperature changes in bodies of water, ice cores can reveal atmospheric composition, crops that cannot withstand colder temperature being grown in areas that they cannot survive in today, the list is very long and has been scoffed at by those who bought the claims of the AGW advocates hook line and sinker. However, they are more reliable indicators than models because they are a product of actual evidence rather than a prediction using modeling of an incredibly complicated system: climate.


Some links that people may finally take seriously

The Roman Warming Period was likely warmer than the Modern Warming Period, according to a new technique devised to develop proxy data.
Roman Warm Period (Summary)
Warmest Year on Record is 1934… NASA goofed
Viking Dairy Farms on Greenland
Everyone Complains about Global Warming but Nobody Does Anything About It
Ellen Goodman Calls AGW deniers on par with Holocaust Deniers

Let’s Look at Al Gore shall we?
Al Gore’s ownership in a company (often referred to as Blood and Gore) positioned to make millions on global warming mandates imposed by governments.
English Court Identifies Al Gore’s errors in “An Inconvenient Truth” – inconvenient indeed.
Think Al might oughta should give his Oscar back?


Remember the polar bear die off? Polar bear populations are at record highs and those bears that were said to have drowned? There were four bears relied upon for that claim in Gore’s film. They drowned as a result of a nasty storm, not a lack of ice.

What is so troubling about all of this, imo, is the widespread willingness to accept the claims of a very small cabal of scientists who until recently refused to permit peer reviews of their findings (and now we know why). This is a symptom of self-loathing when one is so quick to accept blame (in this case blame for an illusion). Further, it is evidence of the Wilsonian view of social progress in so far as we are willing to cede vast authority to the very few because, “the experts said so.” Hopefully this fiasco will result in greater skepticism and chill our willingness to agree with those who tell us the sky is falling…. but they can fix it for a mere couple hundred billion.

So far we do not know what may happen should it escape into the wild, come into contact with water or be fed after midnight. These and many more questions will need to be addressed. In the meantime I give you video nicked from a pal of mine that is kinda creepy from a variety of perspectives.

I give up trying to link youtube.... here's the linky to the creepy robot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUQsR...layer_embedded#!

He's very angry about world population growth. Problem is he's got bad facts.

World population growth is slowing. Population levels are expected to peak in 2050 and then begin to decline (which brings a new set of problems)

Here's a link to my blog that even has pretty pictures and links to stats etc.

The following article appeared in The Washington Post under the headline below in last Saturday's edition, 28 August 2010.

In Iran: Shackling The Bahai Torchbearers by Roxana Saberi
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For several weeks last year, I shared a cell in Tehran's notorious Evin prison with Mahvash Sabet and Fariba Kamalabadi, two leaders of Iran's minority Bahai faith. I came to see them as my sisters, women whose only crimes were to peacefully practice their religion and resist pressure from their captors to compromise their principles. For this, apparently, they and five male colleagues were sentenced this month to 20 years in prison.

I had heard about Mahvash and Fariba before I met them. Other prisoners spoke of the two middle-aged mothers whose high spirits lifted the morale of fellow inmates. The Bahai faith, thought to be the largest non-Muslim minority religion in Iran, originated in 19th-century Persia. It is based on the belief that the world will one day attain peace and unity. Iranian authorities consider it a heretical offshoot of Islam.

After I was transferred to their cell, I learned that Mahvash had been incarcerated for one year and Fariba for eight months. Each had spent half her detention in solitary confinement, during which time they were allowed almost no contact with their families and only the Koran to read. Recently the two had been permitted to have a pen. Oh, how they cherished it! But they were allowed to use it only to do Sudoku and crossword puzzles in the conservative newspapers the prison guards occasionally gave them.

Mahvash, Fariba and their five colleagues faced accusations that included spying for Israel, insulting religious sanctities and, later, "spreading corruption on earth." All three could have resulted in the death penalty. The Bahais denied these charges. Far from posing a threat to the Islamic regime, Mahvash and Fariba told me, Iran's estimated 300,000 Bahais are non-violent and politically impartial.

Despite the gravity of the accusations against them, Mahvash and Fariba had not once been allowed to see attorneys. Yet my cellmates' spirits would not be broken, and they boosted mine. They taught me to, as they put it, turn challenges into opportunities -- to make the most of difficult situations and to grow from adversity. We kept a daily routine, reading the books we were eventually allowed and discussing them; exercising in our small cell; and praying -- they in their way, I in mine. They asked me to teach them English and were eager to learn vocabulary for shopping, cooking and travelling. They would use the new words one day, they told me, when they journeyed abroad. But the two women also said they never wanted to live overseas. They felt it their duty to serve not only Bahais but all Iranians.

Later, when I went on a hunger strike, Mahvash and Fariba washed my clothes by hand after I lost my energy and told me stories to keep my mind off my stomach. Their kindness and love gave me sustenance. It pained me to leave them behind when I was freed in May 2009. I later heard that Mahvash, Fariba and their colleagues refused to make false confessions, as many political prisoners in Iran are pressured to do.

It was January when the Bahais' trial began. This month, the same Iranian judge who had sentenced me to eight years in prison on a false charge of spying for the United States sentenced the Bahais to 20 years. The charges they were convicted of have not yet been reported.

Human rights advocates have said the trial was riddled with irregularities. The defendants were eventually allowed to see attorneys but only briefly. The lawyers were given only a few hours to examine the thousands of pages in the prosecution's files. Early in the trial, state-run TV crews were present at what were supposed to be closed hearings. After the Bahais' attorneys objected, family members were allowed to attend the hearings, but foreign diplomats were barred, and the only journalists permitted were with state-run media. It appears that no evidence was presented against the defendants.

As their lawyers appeal, Mahvash and Fariba sit in Rajai Shahr prison outside Tehran. Even Evin prison, cellmates told me last year, is preferable to Rajai Shahr. The facility is known for torture, unsanitary conditions and inadequate medical care for inmates, who include murderers, drug addicts and thieves.

While Iranian authorities deny that the regime discriminates against citizens for religious beliefs, the Bahai faith is not recognized under the Iranian constitution. The known persecution of many Bahais includes being fired from jobs and denied access to higher education, as well as cemetery desecration. The Bahais created their own unofficial university, which Mahvash used to direct; Fariba earned a degree in psychology there. In addition to the seven leaders, 44 other Bahais are in prisons in Iran, the Baha'i International Community reports.

People of many nations and faiths have called for the release of the Bahai leaders. But many more must speak out -- such as by signing letters of support through Web sites such as United4Iran.com. Protests of these harsh sentences can make clear to authorities in Iran and elsewhere that they will be held accountable when they trample on human rights. Mahvash and Fariba occasionally hear news of this support, and it gives them strength to carry on, just as the international outcry against my imprisonment empowered me.

I know that despite what they have been through and what lies ahead, these women feel no hatred in their hearts. When I struggled not to despise my interrogators and the judge, Mahvash and Fariba told me they do not hate anyone, not even their captors. We believe in love and compassion for humanity, they said, even for those who wrong us.
----------------------------------
Roxana Saberi, a journalist detained in Iran last year, is the author of "Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran."
-----------------------------------------
The fundamental principle enunciated by Baha’u’llah … is that religious truth is not absolute but relative, that Divine Revelation is a continuous and progressive process, that all the great religions of the world are divine in origin, that their basic principles are in complete harmony, that their aims and purposes are one and the same, that their teachings are but facets of one truth, that their functions are complementary, that they differ only in the nonessential aspects of their doctrines, and that their missions represent successive stages in the spiritual evolution of human society…--Shoghi Effendi, The Promised Day is Come. (1100 words)
--Posted by Ron Price of George Town Tasmania Australia. Mr Price is a writer and editor, poet and publisher, journalist and independent scholar.

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/67993,news-comment,news-politics,the-mole-william-hague-denies-relationship-with-aide-chris-myers


Its all hitting the fan now!

One early dawn towards the doom namely the last decades of the earth
They shall be awakened by the sweet sermon of Jesus the Christ
Who is assumed by all the believers of one god religions
That shall reign for a time of absolute peace
Shutting the windows of evil and opening those of tolerance after having parleyed
For some time with a every creature in below compared with
His celestial position of miracles
Above all dead or alive units or particles!
He shall come as the greatest teacher
Teaching every letter
From the alphabet of the holly spirit
And as the biggest savoir-yes the biggest
He shall pull short the infliction induced grievances
Wrapping living souls up in the blanket of eternal vengeance...



One early dawn towards the doom namely the last decades of the earth
They shall be awakened by the sweet sermon of Jesus the Christ
Who is assumed by all the believers of one god religions
That shall reign for a time of absolute peace
Shutting the windows of evil and opening those of tolerance after having parleyed
For some time with a every creature in below compared with
His celestial position of miracles
Above all dead or alive units or particles!
He shall come as the greatest teacher
Teaching every letter
From the alphabet of the holly spirit
And as the biggest savoir-yes the biggest
He shall pull short the infliction induced grievances
Wrapping living souls up in the blanket of eternal vengeance...

President Obama signed into effect an expansion of American sanctions against North Korea today in response to a sunken South Korean warship. 46 S. Korean sailors had died in the incident.

source: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67T49Z20100830

Thoughts?

Greetings fellow forum members. My name is Gunny and I am the proverbial FNG around here. At least until I get some posts under my belt.

I am a moderator on another forum and was looking for another board to post on and found you guys.

I'll give you a quick SITREP on me. I'm a 55-year old born and raised in Gainesville, Florida (GO GATORS!!!!!). Joined the USMC right after high school when I was 18 and never looked back. I served in my beloved Corps for 31 years. I've now been retired for about six years.

I currently fill my time reading, working out, shooting, watching movies, watching sports, listening to music (classic rock, jazz, blues) and watching news channels. I am heavily into politics and love a good heated (but productive) debate. I am blunt, often speaking my mind for better or for worse.

My family is very important to me. I have three children (twin girls and a son). My one daughter is a high school teacher and married to a real estate agent. They have 2 children. . My other daughter is a stay-at-home mom and married to a firefighter. They have 4 children. My only son is currently in his 15th year in the Corps and on his third tour in Afghanistan. He is married and has 2 children.

My wife passed away in 2001 while I was still in the Corps. In 2005 I met a wonderful and beautiful woman originally from Russia, Rada. She mioved to the country in her early 20s. We hit it off instantly and are now engaged. We get along perfectly despite her being 20 years my junior (35). But age is just a number. We have an excellent relationship.

I look forward to chatting and debating you all.

Semper Fi.

I was surprised to see this piece on WSJ this morning, but it really shows how far the Austrian school has come in recent years in terms of growth and acceptability and how it continues to further itself in those regards. As someone who does respect the school and thinks it would do us all good to listen to those viewpoints more and to some other schools a bit less, it is a nice change.

source: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/...zEyNDcyWj.html

Any thoughts?