Posts by Sara Annie

83

Legalize ALL Drugs. Yes or No?

by SpannerintheWorks in

jw
friends

i thought it would be interesting to get a cross-sectional view of your opinions on whether all drugs (lsd, heroin, cocaine, etc.

be legalized so that they then became freely available to the general population, in the same way that alcohol and tobacco are .

spanner

Sara Annie

Do you ever hear of Alcoholics breaking into cars and homes to support their booze habbit?? NO! Why? Because beer is CHEAP. I know alot of smokers and I have yet to hear one them say, "Shit I cant support my habbit, im going to have start stealing stuff....."

Well, yes. There are a whole lot of homeless alcoholics who have been arrested for larceny of various degrees to feed their addictions. Beer isn't so cheap when you have no income...

As for smokers and functioning alcoholics, the difference here is that they are still able to function in society and hold down jobs that permit them the luxury of affording their habit. A heroin junkie or a crack addict aren't likely to be working down at the 7-11 or sitting next to you at the office and taking home a paycheck to support their habit. When your drug of choice makes you unfit for civilized society, you're going to have to find the money to support your habit somewhere. The only difference will be that one mugging is enough to pay for a few fixes, not just one.

Drugs could be issued by prescription to addicts and would be much much cheaper than those coming from illegal sources.

Prescriptions for crack? You've got to be kidding me. That whole hypocratic oath thing about 'first do no harm' would just be out the window, I guess.

No one on this planet has any right to tell me what to do with my brain or body, so long as I am not harming others...

Pretty wide net you've casted, there. Sure, you can smoke crack all you want. Lock yourself in a room, never get in a car, never expose children (unborn or already delivered) to you or your filthy habit, use your independent wealth to fund it, and do as you want to ONLY your body, and I'll probaby pity you but it won't much affect me. If you can accomplish total isolation, smoke away. But the minute you want to collect any goverment funds to support you in your addiction, the first second you collect unemployment because your crack-destroyed self can't hold a job, the moment you want my tax dollars to subsidize your habit through distribution or production, or the first time someone else is harmed by your inability to function normally as a result of your addiction, you're no longer an island.

83

Legalize ALL Drugs. Yes or No?

by SpannerintheWorks in

jw
friends

i thought it would be interesting to get a cross-sectional view of your opinions on whether all drugs (lsd, heroin, cocaine, etc.

be legalized so that they then became freely available to the general population, in the same way that alcohol and tobacco are .

spanner

Sara Annie

Yes!!! Trying to control peoples' behavior creates far more problems than drugs ever will. All victimless "crimes" should be eliminated. Drugs, prostitution, pornography, gambling, etc. should all be legalized because the consequences are felt soley by those who choose to engage in such activities.

Drug use is a victimless crime? Are you high right now?

Go and try to sell that to every baby born addicted to crack. Tell the woman whose husband was shot so some idiot strung out on heroin could get the 50 bucks in his pocket to buy another fix. Tell that to the woman raped by the two morons who were so high they thought it would be "fun". Tell that to the families of a bunch of dead teenagers after an acid-trip turned some loser into an assassin in the local high school. Legalizing drugs won't make them less expensive, it won't make them less addictive. Junkies will still be junkies. The only difference is that they'll be committing crimes to feed their legal habit.

142

The State of the Union

by Marvin Shilmer in

jw
friends

i am an american, and so is my president.

this is an iron no speech can hold.

it can only be experienced.

Sara Annie

So Sara, is this tax cut by Bush a good thing? Does it go far enough? Are more tax cuts needed? I mean for the ideal; is the current tax load wrong, with this change making it better?

Very good questions. All of them. As all of my on the record information for Bush's proposed tax cut(s) presently consists of him saying "Hey, let's do a tax cut!" with a complicated rough draft of legislation that reads like hieroglyphics and will change dramatically if/when it passes, I can't answer the specific tax-plan questions with a great deal of informed confidence.

I'm the first to admit that assigning a label of "better" or "worse" in relation to new (and previously recently introduced) tax legislation is largely relative. Will eliminating the double-taxation of dividends be good for me personally? Yes. Are the increases in allowable pre-tax 401K contributions good for me? Yep. Is the recent change in capital gains handling for homeowners claiming home-office deductions good for me? Very. That's the effect that they will have on ME. I think that many recent changes in the code have been positive for middle-income families (using my own as a litmus test).

Do I think the present tax burden is fair? If you define fairness as people paying proportionate amounts of their income in taxes, the answer is: Yes. Do I subscribe to the theory of trickle-down economics? I do. Do I love paying taxes? Do I just giggle with glee when I see that someone named FICA has all my money on my monthly paystubs? Heck no. I recognize the need, though. Welcome to America, you gotta pay if you want to stay.

(edited because I'm having a heck of a time on the spelling front today!)

Edited by - Sara Annie on 29 January 2003 14:42:3

142

The State of the Union

by Marvin Shilmer in

jw
friends

i am an american, and so is my president.

this is an iron no speech can hold.

it can only be experienced.

Sara Annie

Teejay,

Please accept my apology for pointing that comment at you. While I used your quotation, I intended my comments to be directed more broadly at those who make rash assumptions without any suppporting information. It was unfair of me to cite your post and then comment as I did without a disclaimer. In reading your response to Scarlet's post, I can see more clearly how your specific comments were intended.

The point I was trying to make (albeit not very effectively) was that people tend to make ridiculously broad assumptions based on very little information, and then state them with alarming conviction. As someone who appreciates irony it all it's various forms, I can say that it looks like I was guilty of just that phenomenon. I'm sorry, please forgive.

Thanks,

Sara

142

The State of the Union

by Marvin Shilmer in

jw
friends

i am an american, and so is my president.

this is an iron no speech can hold.

it can only be experienced.

Sara Annie

If the tax code were as simple as your little story of ten men eating a meal, then you'd have a good point. The problem is is that the way taxes are levied isn't quite that simple. If taxes were figured as a percentage of one's gross earnings your analogy might fit a little better. As you know, that isn't how taxes are figured.

As stated, the above illustration is a simplified one. That does not, however, mean that it is invalid. It presents an understandable (and, again, simplified) explanation of how tax cuts work. The analogy stands up to scrutiny, and it's intentions cannot be dismissed on the grounds that it's too simple. It is not a story about the intricacies of the tax code, the theory behind adjusted gross income, or the conspiracy against the poor that is being waged by the big bad IRS and our legal system. It's a logical, straightforward presentation of who benefits from tax cuts, and how clouded the issue can become by those who cry out for equality without weighting the benefit gained against the original contribution made.

Of course taxes are not based on a flat percentage against gross income. That's just silly. If that were the case, the poorest among us would not be excluded from payment of federal taxes, and none of us would not have the benefit of pre-tax expense and interest deductions and GI reduction allowances for a large variety of expenses. Yes, the tax code is complicated. Taxation is a complicated business. Do some of the policies and practices benefit the wealthy? You bet. But the tax code certainly does NOT benefit only the rich. If you want to add a dimension to the dinner-bill story, you might want to consider that the few of the four poorest diners are actually being PAID to eat by virtue of the tax code (i.e. the Earned Income Credit).

There's a lot about the tax system that I don't know, but one thing I know very well is that the rich are able to hide much of the wealth on which their fair share of taxes should be based but isn't. Since it's (educated and wealthy) lawyers who write the tax code to begin with, it should come as no surprise that they would be interested in helping their own. And they do.

If someone takes the stance that the tax code only benefits the rich and that the little guy is getting constantly and repeatedly screwed, but in the same breath admits they don't know much about the system they are railing against, they have little hope of having credibility assigned to their assertions.

Funny, thing when I was your age I was a liberal and anti-business. That changed over the years when I came to work in a management position and got to understand how business works. On the issue of your envy of the rich, I say, get over it.

Larc-it's funny how that works, isn't it? I think sometimes we get attached to the way we view ourselves, and it's difficult to recognize we've changed. I was a dyed in the wool liberal in college. As my views began to shift after I moved into my career, started a family, and grew older, it was almost painful to admit how much different the kid I used to be was from the woman I've become. I remember my husband grinning a few years ago after one of our discussions about various socio-economic/political issues and saying "You know what this means, honey? You're a republican!"

142

The State of the Union

by Marvin Shilmer in

jw
friends

i am an american, and so is my president.

this is an iron no speech can hold.

it can only be experienced.

Sara Annie

Just in reading this thread, it's pretty apparent that most people don't much understand how taxes, tax theory, and tax cuts work. As an accountant, the following illustration by the chair of accounting and business law at the University of South Dakota has always made a great deal of sense to me. It's worth the read:

How Taxes Work . . .

This is a VERY simple way to understand the tax laws. Read on -- it does make you think!!

Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men -- the poorest -- would pay nothing; the fifth would pay $1, the sixth would pay $3, the seventh $7, the eighth $12, the ninth $18, and the tenth man -- the richest -- would pay $59.

That's what they decided to do. The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement -- until one day, the owner threw them a curve (in tax language a tax cut).

"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20." So now dinner for the ten only cost $80.00.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free. But what about the other six -- the paying customers? How could they divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his "fair share?"

The six men realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, Then the fifth man and the sixth man would end up being PAID to eat their meal. So the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so the fifth man paid nothing, the sixth pitched in $2, the seventh paid $5, the eighth paid $9, the ninth paid $12, leaving the tenth man with a bill of $52 instead of his earlier $59. Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to eat for free.

But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. "I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man who pointed to the tenth. "But he got $7!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man, "I only saved a dollar, too . . . It's unfair that he got seven times more than me!".

"That's true!" shouted the seventh man, "why should he get $7 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison, "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night he didn't show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered, a little late what was very important. They were FIFTY-TWO DOLLARS short of paying the bill! Imagine that!

And that, boys and girls, is how the tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table anymore.

I am perfectly willing to listen to the rantings of the average person about how unfair our tax system is in America, provided that they arm themselves with a little bit of actual information instead of just self-righteous blathering assumptions.

70

WHERE DID ALL THAT WATER GO?

by MYOHNSEPH in

as i recall, "the society" at one time taught the flood waters of noah's day came from an immense canopy of water, which formed sometime during creation and hovered above the earth until it all broke loose in the flood.

o.k., cool.

but does anyone know of an explanation of where it all went afterwards?

Sara Annie

Young Earth Creationism.

Simply, it's the school of thinking that holds the earth was created by God exactly the way the Bible describes (and uses biblical chronology as a timeline). They deny that evolution is possible.

I'm not going to enter this debate other than to say that it always amuses me when people believe in a divine, almighty creator, and then limit his powers of creation denying that ANY other explanation but the simplest one man has recorded ("He pointed a finger, and it happened...it says right here!") is possible. Talk about hubris.

I'm just sayin'.

90

Would You Kiss A Smoker?

by Englishman in

jw
friends

just wondering!.

i remember when i was about 16 having a snog with a girl who smoked.

it really was like sticking your tongue into an old ash tray.

Sara Annie

I kissed a smoker daily for almost five years. Recently, my husband quit his pack-and-a-half a day habit. I couldn't be prouder of him, and it is nice to kiss him without tasting the last cigarette he smoked for a change. I will dissent and say that it's not quite as bad as licking an ashtray. The taste is present, but it was incidental to the reasons I love to kiss him *smile*.

As an attempt to inject a little common sense, I will say that the theory that genetics determines your fate is mostly hogwash. True, I think that some people seem to live long lives while smoking, but there are small percentages of lucky people who dodge the odds on almost any dangerous practice or passtime. I have an uncle who died at 52 from lung cancer and complications thereof after years of incredibly heavy smoking. Now, is it possible that he may have died at a similar age if he hadn't smoked most of his life? Sure. But it sure as hell wouldn't have been after having a lung removed, a tracheotomy, constantly having oxygen nearby and fighting for every breath the last two years of his life. The jury is in, the studies have been done, the facts remain. Smoking can kill you. Period.

23

The thing I love about America the most is...

by dolphman in

jw
friends

i won't get executed for leaving it.

in other words, it's not like n.korea... http://www.msnbc.com/news/863322.asp?0cv=cb20.

but i guess if we're to believe the saddam lovers and communist/socialist and honda prius driving folks here then america is much, much worse than i think it is..... .

Sara Annie

...that I can stand in front of a) The White House, b) The Supreme Court, c) The Capitol Bldg. and speak my full mind and heart at the top of my lungs, and pass out printed copies of my condemnation of my government to all passers-by. I can call down fire and brimstone on the leader of my country in no uncertain terms....And I can do all this without fear that I will one night soon thereafter hear the feared midnight knock on my door and hear the jackbooted feet of government police stomping through my front door, freshly broken in by a fire axe.

Francois took my answer!

111

Are You In Support Of Starting A War In Iraq ?

by minimus in

jw
friends

it looks inevitable.

do you think this is more a carry over from president pappy bush's not getting the job done while he was in office?

do you think the usa and it's allies can fight multiple wars??

Sara Annie

Edited because I somehow accidentally posted the above twice... Sorry!

(Jeesh, I know I was being emphatic, but that was just overkill!)

Edited by - Sara Annie on 24 January 2003 18:18:5