laklak wrote:Trump promises to lower tax rates, change accounting procedures, eliminate inheritance taxes, lower or even eliminate capital gains, reduce regulation, and in general foster a more business friendly environment. What's not to like, from their perspective?

Robert Reich wrote:You are the captains of American industry, the titans of Wall Street, and the billionaires who for decades have been the backbone of the Republican Party.

You’ve invested your millions in the GOP in order to get lower taxes, wider tax loopholes, bigger subsidies, more generous bailouts, less regulation, lengthier patents and copyrights and stronger market power allowing you to raise prices, weaker unions and bigger trade deals allowing you outsource abroad to reduce wages, easier bankruptcy for you but harder bankruptcy for homeowners and student debtors, and judges who will let you to engage in insider trading and who won’t prosecute you for white-collar crimes.

All of which have made you enormously wealthy. Congratulations.

But I have some disturbing news for you. You’re paying a big price – and about to pay far more.

more ...

laklak wrote:Over the past 8 years it has become increasingly difficult for small business owners to stay in business, the level of frankly onerous regulation has increased dramatically.

Republican politicians in particular have descended into the muck of bigotry, hatefulness, and lies. They’re splitting America by race, ethnicity, and religion. The moral authority America once had in the world as a beacon of democracy and common sense is in jeopardy. And that’s not good for you, or your businesses.

laklak wrote:The problem is, I think, that there is no national source for the raw data. It's like trying to get firm stats on gun crime, for example. No one tracks why a small business goes under - they could be retiring, found a better job, any reason at all. We don't even know how many small businesses there are out there. Each state has it's own set of regulations, and within each state each county, sometimes each municipality.

I tried to get some information on a marine diesel mechanic who fucked me out of some money. He did business out of Pinellas county, and they don't require a business license. He wasn't incorporated, so there was no information on a state level. A clusterfuck, basically. Caveat emptor. That's probably an argument for MORE regulation, though.

proudfootz wrote:People sometimes forget that regulations are sometimes there for a reason - they don't just fall from the sky. They generally exist because of some recurring problem.

Macdoc wrote:The one reason his competitors are cheaper is they also pay minimum wage. There is a point that a business is not viable regardless of wage costs.
You cannot have wage earners subsidizing landlords of the business either which low wages tend to do.

Macdoc wrote:You mean his business is not viable except by not paying his employees a living wage.....that's a crock...he is being subsidized by the local welfare system just as Walmart is.

Your's is just the kind of bullshit argument the right wing ding screw the employees like to haul out. Y'know Australia is an expenisive place to live, has a minimum wage of $17 an hour and on top of that every employee gets substantial benefits as well as superannuation that gives them a substantial sum over their working life ( on average maybe $300k over a 40 year work period ) and it moves from employer to employer.

GF is a nurse ...40 year working period and will come out with 5-600,000 in superannuation in 3-4 years.

Progressive nations take care of their citizens as a group....not to the benefit of the 1%ers.
Isn't it odd that Walmart fights unions tooth and nail everywhere ......except China.

Even Henry fucking Ford understood he had to play his employees enough wages for them to be able to afford his products.

If his employees forgive a living wage for a future share in the business....good on them...it's hardly a paradyme tho.

The next big day in the presidential nominating contest is Tuesday when voters in Arizona, Utah and Idaho head to the polls.

But the votes are already in for another overlooked primary — Democrats Abroad. Between March 1 and March 8, Democrats living across the globe cast their votes for who they want to see as their party's nominee. The votes have now been tallied, and Bernie Sanders won by a wide margin, according to results released Monday.

Sanders beat Clinton 69 to 31 percent in a year of record turnout for American Democratic voters living overseas. More than 34,000 people participated, a 50 percent jump from 2008. Sanders picked up 9 pledged delegates to Clinton's 4.

But who are Democrats Abroad? Where did the votes come from?

http://www.npr.org/2016/03/21/471308455 ... o-are-they

On Monday, Bernie Sanders did something his campaign has been toying with for months: He gave a speech laying out his vision for Middle East peace. With the other four remaining major party candidates traveling to Washington, DC, to speak at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, Sanders opted to stay in Utah, where he is banking on a strong showing in Tuesday's Democratic caucus. Prior to addressing a packed Salt Lake City gymnasium, he spoke to a smaller crowd, offering the speech his people say he would have delivered at AIPAC.

Consistent with his ongoing critique of economic inequality, Sanders, who is Jewish and spent time at a kibbutz after college, offered a plea for a more humane handling of the Israel–Palestine conflict. "To be successful, we have to be a friend not only to Israel, but to the Palestinian people, where in Gaza, they suffer from an unemployment rate of 44 percent—the highest in the world—and a poverty rate nearly equal to that," Sanders said, according to a prepared text of his remarks.

Israel, he argued, is compounding the suffering with its own aggressive policies. Sanders called on Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to pull back settlements in the West Bank and turn over hundreds of millions of shekels in tax revenue to Palestinians. Peace, he also said, "will mean a sustainable and equitable distribution of precious water resources so that Israel and Palestine can both thrive as neighbors…Right now, Israel controls 80 percent of the water reserves in the West Bank. Inadequate water supply has contributed to the degradation and desertification of Palestinian land. A lasting a peace will have to recognize Palestinians are entitled to control their own lives, and there is nothing human life needs more than water."

As he moved on to a rehashing of his positions on ISIS and the Iran nuclear deal, Sanders hit on familiar themes, framing the failure of Middle Eastern nations to stop ISIS, in part, as a failure of wealthy elites. If Qatar could spend $200 billion on World Cup soccer stadiums, he said, it could surely spend as much fighting terrorists. Singling out Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, both of which have benefited from America's defense budget, Sanders added that, "wealthy and powerful nations in the region can no longer expect the United States to do their work for them."

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2016/03 ... peech-utah