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#240524 - 10/11/2004 02:55 Re: (much less) Bush-bashing Version 2.0 (with much more ramble) [Re: mcomb]
Daria
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/01/2002
Posts: 3937
Loc: Providence, RI
Quote:
Quote:
In other cases they give you a tax credit, e.g. your taxable income is reduced, and there are weird rules and games you can play.

In this case you simply wouldn't be charged tax for this purpose. You'd be eligible for whatever tax credit you might otherwise, the point is not to change the tax code, the point is to meet a need, if possible outside the government's budgeting powers, and having done so, allow reaping of the reward for it.


So would you have to prove that you gave in order to be eligible for the tax rebate? I guess you are saying no, that the tax rate would simple be lowered as the "need" was met by whoever felt like it.


Correct.
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I suppose that is consistent with libertarian goals. Of course as a liberal I don't see it ever happening (and I suspect you don't either).


I don't, but it would also satisfy my goal of meeting the need; I'm not fussy about how it's met.

Quote:
Those who have the most to give are the least likely to (they have the most incentive not to due to being out of touch with the needs of those who most desperately need the assistance).


That's not clear to me, though I think many of the people who are giving might give more in other circumstances (and these might not be those)

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Not to mention that if the scheme doesn't work you are penalizing those who did try to help by taxing them regardless.


Understood.

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If you do attempt to verify that someone at least attempted to give by setting some minimum gift percentage to be eligible for the tax cut then you have all the same game-ability and other issues that the current tax incentives have.


I don't propose to solve that issue. I'm not sure it can be solved.

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#240525 - 10/11/2004 03:06 Re: (much less) Bush-bashing Version 2.0 (with much more ramble) [Re: genixia]
jimhogan
carpal tunnel

Registered: 06/10/1999
Posts: 2591
Loc: Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
Quote:
What I don't get is why people are so vocally against federal social programmes in this country,

I was going to say something like "Most everybody in the US already knows how to sing 'Onward Christian Soldiers'", but the Afganis haven't yet so they *need* the programs.

Oh, that's not a good answer. I don't know what is. Anybody?

Oh, but I see we haven't lost our unique perspective:
"It is not what you do, but who you are that the extremists hate," he says. "That is what people have discovered in Iraq. Now they are learning it here."
_________________________
Jim


'Tis the exceptional fellow who lies awake at night thinking of his successes.

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#240526 - 11/11/2004 01:10 Re: Bush-bashing Version 2.0 (ramble) [Re: bonzi]
kayakjazz
member

Registered: 10/09/2004
Posts: 127
Loc: Bay Area, CA/Anchorage, AK
Quote:
BTW, what is it that makes Christians (all three descendants of ancient judaism, actually) so obsessed with sex?


Wanted to get back to this, but as I'm no Talmudic scholar, I wanted to check with the source, which meant catching up wth my co-ex-wife. She reinforced my impression that for the time (and yet, for the Middle East) Jewish law was remarkably liberal regarding women and sex. At least women HAD some rights, as opposed to being regarded as chattel...! A new Fact of the Day: It is in Jewish law that a man has a moral duty to sexually satisfy his wife...what a concept.

And Christ was a pretty tolerant guy, as demonstrated by the story of the woman taken in adultery; I know zip about the Koran's stance. But as in the other cases, I suspect, the further one gets away from the original ideology, the more corrupted the principles become in codification and practice.


Edited by wfaulk (11/11/2004 12:28)

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#240527 - 11/11/2004 03:15 Re: Bush-bashing Version 2.0 (ramble) [Re: kayakjazz]
JeffS
carpal tunnel

Registered: 14/01/2002
Posts: 2858
Loc: Atlanta, GA
Quote:
And Christ was a pretty tolerant guy, as demonstrated by the story of the woman taken in adultery
More than that, the fact that he spoke to and taught women directly was very progressive for the time. He was more than tolerant; he was empowering.
_________________________
-Jeff
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.

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#240528 - 11/11/2004 21:27 Re: Bush-bashing Version 2.0 (ramble) [Re: JeffS]
bonzi
pooh-bah

Registered: 13/09/1999
Posts: 2401
Loc: Croatia
Quote:
FWIW, most churches I've attended view sex as a good thing: the most intimate of acts, reserved for the union of marriage. Sex is not sin, or even close to it; using it for the wrong purposes is. [...] I realize that there are some Christians who've regarded sex as necessary only for the bearing of children, but this is VERY hard to support from the perspective of the bible. What I (and most Christians I know) come away with is that God intended sex to build/show intimacy between marital partners in a unique and special way.

Hm, then I must have been too exposed to those some Christian (but then, I am here surrounded by Catholics... )

This almost makes sense: if we take the formal marriage as the only way of expresing commitment between partners, and given that sex was until recently more or less inevitably leading to pregnancy, limiting sex to married couples is not entirely unreasonable.

But then, I don't think that commitment equals marriage, in either direction, so for me one of two premises does not hold. Contraception removes the other.

You are right, it is prevention of "sex for wrong purposes" or in "wrong circumstances", so we get everything from Ashcroft covering sculpture of Justice and that stupid uproar over equaly stupid Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction" stunt, to fundamentalist Jews in Jerusalem calling their American guests "Nazis" for women and men praying together at the Wailing Wall, to burqhas and Talibans stoning women for infractions they were not even aware of.

I wanted to go on about women being threated as father's (or brother's) then husband's propetry, non-virgins being 'damaged goods' (even if being raped and even now) etc, but somehow I have trouble puting it clearly. Some other time.
_________________________
Dragi "Bonzi" Raos Q#5196 MkII #080000376, 18GB green MkIIa #040103247, 60GB blue

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#240529 - 12/11/2004 01:19 Re: Bush-bashing Version 2.0 (ramble) [Re: bonzi]
tanstaafl.
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/07/1999
Posts: 5546
Loc: Ajijic, Mexico
This almost makes sense: if we take the formal marriage as the only way of expresing commitment between partners, and given that sex was until recently more or less inevitably leading to pregnancy, limiting sex to married couples is not entirely unreasonable.


Dragi, that is insightful. I had never considered it from that perspective before. It gives me more tolerance towards what I had always felt were excessively puritannical attitudes towards sex and marriage traditionally held by religious practitioners.

tanstaafl.
_________________________
"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

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#240530 - 16/11/2004 01:40 Re: Bush-bashing Version 2.0 (ramble) [Re: Daria]
Daria
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/01/2002
Posts: 3937
Loc: Providence, RI
Quote:

I am 31. In view of the quote variously attributed here I am heartless *and* brainless.


I think I know now who I want to run in 2008, but it will never happen.


He spoke plain and simple and I began to understand
I was listening to quite a man, talking to me.
I began to see...
We need Jimmy Carter!
Why settle for less?
America --
Once and for all, why not the best?

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#240531 - 16/11/2004 10:45 Re: Bush-bashing Version 2.0 (ramble) [Re: tanstaafl.]
canuckInOR
carpal tunnel

Registered: 13/02/2002
Posts: 3212
Loc: Portland, OR
Quote:
This almost makes sense: if we take the formal marriage as the only way of expresing commitment between partners, and given that sex was until recently more or less inevitably leading to pregnancy, limiting sex to married couples is not entirely unreasonable.


Dragi, that is insightful. I had never considered it from that perspective before.

Likewise. This is only the second time I've heard this argument, the last was just a few months ago, during a discussion with a friend I was visiting in Boston.

Of course, it's still wise to remember that no method of birth control, save abstinance or complete removal of body parts, is 100% effective (says the guy that beat the <1% failure rate of an IUD). Not all abstinance is due to puritanical reasoning. Sadly, it's the puritans who seem to push for it the most (to the exclusion of safe-sex education, and the detriment of society), giving it a worse rap than it should have.

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#240532 - 16/11/2004 12:31 Re: Bush-bashing Version 2.0 (ramble) [Re: canuckInOR]
jmwking
old hand

Registered: 27/02/2003
Posts: 775
Loc: Washington, DC metro
Quote:
Of course, it's still wise to remember that no method of birth control, save abstinance or complete removal of body parts, is 100% effective (says the guy that beat the <1% failure rate of an IUD).

Reminds me of a couple of friends of mine: They had two kids. Happy family. She went on the pill. They had their third kid. She had her tubes tied. They had their fourth kid. She had a hysterectomy. No more kids. Still a happy, if larger, family.

-jk

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#240533 - 16/11/2004 15:54 Re: Bush-bashing Version 2.0 (ramble) [Re: jmwking]
bonzi
pooh-bah

Registered: 13/09/1999
Posts: 2401
Loc: Croatia
Reminds me of "Nine Months Blues" by Peggy Seeger (from "Period Pieces"); the marriage discussion reminded me of "Darling Annie", from the same record.

Actually, the Seegers and related folks covered awfull lot of ground in their songs and those they just popularized...
_________________________
Dragi "Bonzi" Raos Q#5196 MkII #080000376, 18GB green MkIIa #040103247, 60GB blue

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