The wheel is turning and you can’t slow down,
You can’t let go and you can’t hold on,
You can’t go back and you can’t stand still,
If the thunder don’t get you then the lightning will.

-–The Grateful Dead , The Wheel

Deductions and Standard Deductions on your taxes are the same thing as the government giving you a subsidy.

Think about it.

You’ve already paid the money. When you fill out the tax forms, you are applying to receive some of this money back or — god forbid — how much you owe. But you already gave the government the money last year.

Subtracting from something you’ve already paid is the same as someone giving you money to pay for something.

I just thought I’d make this thought process clear for anyone out there who cares.

I am responding to this blog post by Matthew Yglesias, who is an interesting and intelligent fellow -- except that his economic views tend to be colored more with a philosophical predilection than are flavored by a view of history.

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even if we manage to halt the slide into recession we’ll have created a situation in which it’s difficult to return again to growth.

We ain't halting this slide. Every volcano must run its course, and right now the pyroclastic flow is still not near completion.

Also, government providing funds for an end result is different than government paying off the debts of the company, or buying the shares of the company, or appointing officials to the management of the company.

Acting like this is a fluke or an historical aberration is indicative of someone who doesn't know the history of laws and government interaction with the legal basis of the marketplace over the last 350 when we were a few British colonies on the East coast, or the same said history for the entire 4,000 years of human civilization.

Corn is subsidized by the government. So are you. That's why you get "deductions" and "Standard deductions" on your tax form. So are various vegetable crops, and peanuts, and steel, and even the big daddy, oil. More than 1,000 companies are allowed to use Bermuda banks to skirt the tax laws. When toxins from China were found in baby food, when spoiled meat and poisoned spinach spread across the nation, government actions had everything to do with the banning and recalls.

Selling government bonds and using government debt instruments as elements in the portfolio baskets of companies is an inescapable fact.

And don't you ever wonder why a lot of "public service ads" appear on radio shows and various advertising outlets, ... yes, just like the favored national newspapers back to the Andrew Jackson days, government business is another form of subsidization.

Did someone say Halliburton?

Government is always involved, one way or another. We however make the choice as to how government -- we the people -- is involved and to what extent. We can choose the best use of resources or we can deny that those resources exist and call it socialism like it was a whore.

And furthermore ... as for this comment ...

A lot of this talk has an air of socialistic hubris about it...outside of a relatively narrow range of utility-type activities, [state-owned enterprises] are collosal flops

Utility-type activities only??

The post office The FAA The DMV The Police The National Forest Service OSHA The Coast Guard The National Guard CSPAN The GAO

With all due respect, Mr. Yglesias, Me-thinks you applied the philosophical principle to thickly.

After eight years of having Republicans call me an un-American troop-hating fag-loving socialist, after months of John McCain embracing the hate to a level where his own supporters were calling out for Barack Obama to be assassinated, no one is going to be permitted to tell me with a straight face that "oh you know, both sides do it."

Your side was abominable. Your side was hateful. Your side race-baited. Your side gay-baited. Your side lied like we've never seen in recent presidential campaign history. Your side used a tax-cheat who would do better under Obama's tax proposal to be your everyman on the issue of taxes. Your side, in a veiled effort at race-baiting, said Obama doesn't put his country first. Your side had the audacity to call Obama a socialist. Your side suggested he was a Muslim. Your side suggested he was a terrorist. Your side suggested he was Osama bin Laden.

Spare me the crap about how both sides do it. You people are a disgrace, you've been a disgrace for eight long years, and all your hate and lying and venom and vitriol finally bit you in your collective fat ass.

Democrats don't do nasty, and they certainly don't do it well. Lord knows I wish they did, but they don't. Republicans elevate it to a religion. You are the party of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity. Angry, bitchy, bitter and elitist. What do we have to compare? Jesse Jackson, I often hear from my Republican friends. Um, maybe in 1980 when he was relevant. It's been 28 years, got any other examples? Michael Moore, you say? What has Michael Moore said - name one thing - that's comparable to the filth that regularly issues forth from Limbaugh, Hannity and Coulter and, of late, McCain and Palin?

Democrats, when they skewer (which isn't often enough), do it with biting truth. Republicans skewer, early and often, with vicious lies. It goes back to a more general philosophy that liberals have: If we just tell them the truth, the people will agree with us. Republicans are far less sanguine. They know that a good lie beats the truth any day of the week.

He may have done some good in the 1970's and 1980's when he was younger, but he's not the same person now. Makes me wonder if someone has something on Nader (blackmail) because otherwise, WTF (what the f**k) is he talking about in this Fox segment?

Really. It is quite pathetic.

Notice how Ralph's left eye ( on the right side of the screen) is droppy whenever he talks. Could this be cognitive dissonance from the right side of his brain?

You tell me.

Ralph has now become a puppet, squawking about the duplicity of so-called reformers in order to avoid his own duplicity.

NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin's shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent "tens of thousands" more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

A Palin aide said: "Governor Palin was not directing staffers to put anything on their personal credit cards, and anything that staffers put on their credit cards has been reimbursed, like an expense. Nasty and false accusations following a defeat say more about the person who made them than they do about Governor Palin."

McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and aides kept him in the dark about the details of her spending on clothes because they were sure he would be offended. Palin asked to speak along with McCain at his Arizona concession speech Tuesday night, but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt vetoed the request.

If you click the link, the following is on page 2 at the very bottom of the bullet list.

When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, "I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

Yeh, like Brian Williams knows something about "personal".

Systematic problems cannot be effectively managed if the method is dependent upon voluntary behavior.

We can't just advertise actors or real people who show us "the way" on the television. Some people will respond, but many others will not. Yet the impression of the effect is still the same, because everyone will "see" the same advertisements. This is not how you solve systemic problems.

If you want to improve the entire system, you can't think that a small percentage of the elements that create the system will change the system if the remaining elements don't change. When you clean the house, you don't clean a small percentage of the house and actually call it clean.

The only way to treat a systematic problem is to involve 100% of the elements that make up the system in the collective solution to the systematic problem. The necessary functions of the government need to be paid for? Solution: assess taxes on every single citizen, maybe even while taking into account income. Want to make sure everyone has access to sanitation and water? Make a law that mandates every abode has to have running water and needs to get inspected by a government official.

I've spoken about this many times. The idea that we can run a government based on voluntary compliant with the law is ridiculous.

Joe "the plumber" says its a matter of "principles" whenever he was asked why people making more than $250,000 (less than 2% of the entire population) shouldn't pay more taxes. He'll talk about how people who "work hard" shouldn't be penalized in order to help others who don't work. "Why should my hard earned money pay for someone else?" is the typical rhetorical question this line of argument will use to unhinge the notion of collective responsibility. This is the selfish position. I makes my money and I owns my property.

But it is also the most dysfunctional, because we are all connected and interdependent whether we like it or not. The right-wing conservative belief in "liberty" and "freedom" from government presumes otherwise, and here is the important point: their linking to those words are through the filter of this presumption. The idea that the roads they drive on, the toilets they flush, and the telephone systems they use have anything to do with government and collective responsibility is vanished from these "principles".

Self-flattery will always use the most elated words as justification for selfishness.

This is hella funny. She actually thinks President Sarkozy is calling her.

Village Voice::14 May 2002

''[The Wall Street Journal's John Fund] was supposed to spend Thanksgiving with me and didn't,'' she recalls. ''I questioned him when he got home and he beat me up. I was cowering in the corner. He was screaming. He said, 'Get out, bitch,' and he left, and I called the police. He came back and beat me up again. When the police arrived, I was shaking and crying and very upset. He was very calm. A lady officer walked in and asked me if I was on drugs. John told me that none of the charges would stick.'' In mid January, the mainstream media first reported on Fund's alleged abuse.

Around that time, Pillbury says, she moved out and Fund agreed to give her money to help pay her bills. He watched her write checks from his account and deposit them in her account. Soon after, she says, ''I found out that my accounts were frozen and he told me that they were going to stay frozen until I contacted these members of the media and gave them papers saying that I had lied about the abuse.'' She says the bank did not return her calls. Says Pillsbury-Foster, ''This is obviously part of a pattern of abuse and attempted control, and yet the D.A. refused to listen to her.''

SF Chronicle::5 February 2003

The California Federation of Republican Women holds its big two-day conference down in Ontario (San Bernardino County) over the weekend -- but the private buzz isn't about President Bush, it's about John Fund. If the name escapes you, he's the Wall Street Journal's online columnist who -- after taking aim at Bill Clinton's sexual exploits -- wound up with his own tabloid troubles. Fund's fun in the sun began with an affair with Melinda Pillsbury-Foster some two decades ago. It ended in 1998 when Fund took up with Pillsbury-Foster's grown daughter, who accused him of getting her pregnant and then asking her to have an abortion -- all of which he's denied. Fund was later charged with domestic abuse, but a judge dismissed the case in December.

John Fund is an evil, unrepentant liar who despises democracy and the very American values that it represents.

[SOURCE: Cynthia Cotts | Village Voice | 14 May 2002]
[SOURCE: Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross | SF Chronicle | 5 February 2003]
[SOURCE: Brad Friedmann | Bradblog.com | 19 May 2007]

Video: [SOURCE: interview with John Fund | Bill Maher Show | 18 May 2007]

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John Fund wrote a book called "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy" that is filled with lies and completely fraudulent selective details. Look at his eyes when you watch the above video. Turn the sound off and just look at his eyes.

You see what I mean.

His eyes get tight and very deep with the darkness of deception. Funny how he resurfaces in 2007 with all the turmoil of 2002- 2003 behind him. But of course.

This writer is always dead onto something interesting. I have personally never read anything from her that is not relevant and profoundly interesting. Digby is a sweet additive to our cultural heritage.

We live in a world where the right wing ruthlessly and without mercy degrades and attacks by any means necessary what they perceive as the enemy, and then uses the great principles of democracy and fair play when the same is done to them. They leave the rest of us standing on the sidelines looking like fools for ever caring about anything but winning.