Soaking the Rich: Guess who is paying more in taxes now?

18 thoughts on “Soaking the Rich: Guess who is paying more in taxes now?”

1. There are only two reasons the rich could be paying more taxes. Either the income tax rates have become more progressive, forcing the rich to pay a higher percentage of their incomes in taxes, or the rich now possess a greater share of the nation’s wealth and income. Well we know tax rates for the rich have not gone up – not with George Bush and the GOP congress working so hard to bring them down. So the answer is that the rich are paying more taxes because their share of national income has increased even further, as the middle class copes with continued wage stagnation and the poverty rate for America’s poor continues to climb.

   So the rich are paying more taxes because they have more income. Am i supposed to feel sorry for them? Is the Wall Street Journal arguing that we could use the increased revenue to expand access to health care and education or provide more assistance for our nation’s returning Iraq veterans but that would be wrong. Whate we really need to do is give the billionaires another tax cut.

   By the way be sure not to choke on the smoke or walk into the mirrors as you review the Bush budget numbers. The Bush administatrion high-balled the budget estimate, setting it at an artificially high $521 billion that they knew would never be reached deliberately so they could say later, “look the deficit is only $312 billion, aren’t we doing great?”

   In fact the long-term deficit outlook remains gloomy. “The long-term outlook is such a deep well of sorrow that I can’t get much happiness out of this year,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and a former White House economist under President Bush.

   http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/washington/09econ.html?pagewanted=2

   Despite almost five years of economic growth, individual income taxes — the biggest component of federal tax revenues — have yet to reach the levels of 2000. Even with surging payments for investment profits and business income, individual tax payments in 2005 were only $972 billion — below the $1 trillion reached in 2000, even without adjusting for inflation.

   Over all, individual and corporate taxes have lagged well behind the economy’s growth over the past five years. Government spending, by contrast, mushroomed far faster than the economy.

   And federal debt has ballooned to $8.3 trillion, up from $5.6 trillion when Mr. Bush took office. Republicans are trying to raise the authorized debt ceiling to $9.6 trillion.

   Remember: Bill Clinton eliminated the deficit completely after a modest tax increase. Bush has been unable to stimulate the economy to the level seen under Clitnon despite massive deficit spending.

2. “There are only two reasons the rich could be paying more taxes. Either the income tax rates have become more progressive, forcing the rich to pay a higher percentage of their incomes in taxes, or the rich now possess a greater share of the nation’s wealth and income.”

   Wrong, wrong, and wrong again. Did you READ the article?

3. Christopher: I read the article and found nothing to validate the Voodoo / supply side economics explanation for the modest increase in revenue. Is there something in particular you wanted to direct to my attention?

4. Dean,

   How about this validation

   “This growth in turn has produced a record flood of tax revenues, just as the most ebullient supply-siders predicted.”

   Now, if someone is correctly predicting something, and they can point past correlation to causation, then what you are calling “Voodoo” in this case is the truth…I know, it’s tough when the facts are against ya…;)

5. Note 4. Dean, an increase in income of 3% (after inflation) in one year is a respectable rate of growth. Further, this does not take into account increases in retirement accounts (IRA’s, 401K’s, etc.), home values, etc. that a healthy economy engenders. Further, with unemployment at less than 5% (considered full employment in economic terms), wage pressure is upwards. Next year expect to see an additional 3% or more on top of this year’s gain. (Remember too that the 2006 increase incorporates the 2005 3% gain thus in real terms the worker will receive even more than the year before.)

   Further, the notion that income ought to be measured in terms of the percentage of increase between different income groups is dubious. The premise is that the percentage of increase has to be equal between all groups; a statist notion that informs a lot of your thinking about economic policy unfortunately, and one that is guaranteed to reduce economic expansion by removing the investment capital that fuels expansion. Remember, the lowest 30% of wage earners pay no taxes as all.

   You’ve argued here incessantly that the rich should pay more taxes. Well, since the Bush tax cuts they are — more than you or anyone else anticipated. BTW, did you know Kennedy did the same in the early sixties? Back then the Democrats understood that if you let people keep their money, they managed to make more with it — a lot like the faithful servant who was rewarded for investing his talent.

   Tax cuts are not a panacea. They have to work hand in hand with reduced spending and Congressional Republicans are proving to be as irresponsible here as the Democrats have been. Still, the windfall is more than monetary. The Republicans will claim credit (and get it) because the Democratic warnings about an increasing deficit proved wrong. A potential downside is that Republican leadership will be less prone to reduce spending.

6. My professor in Statistics class once asked “If people who eat carrots have more car accidents on Tuesdays, is that causality or just correlation?”

   In that vein, we have to ask ourselves whether the President’s tax cuts and the modest increase in federal tax revenue are concurrent, but unrelated events, or whether they do, in fact, share a cause-and-effect relationship.

   The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities provides some arguments that suggest the former:

   Revenue “surprises” are relatively common. Unanticipated revenue gains occurred in nearly every year of the 1990s expansion. Those revenue “surprises” followed tax increases rather than tax cuts. Moreover, there were negative revenue “surprises” in each year from 2001 through 2003, with end-of-year revenues well below the levels OMB had projected earlier in the year, even after adjusting for the cost of enacted tax cuts. When tax cut supporters take recent positive revenue “surprises” as evidence that tax cuts are “paying for themselves,” they ignore these other facts.

   There is no evidence of a tax-cut fueled economic boom. Economic data, now available through the first quarter of 2006, show that the current economic expansion remains weaker than the average post-World War II economic recovery, with GDP and non-residential investment growth falling below — and employment and wage and salary growth falling far below — historical norms. While economic growth has been stronger in the past three years than in the earlier part of the current recovery, the evidence does not support Administration claims that the 2003 tax cuts caused the improvement. The economy’s performance improved at about the same point in the 1990s recovery, and that improvement coincided with tax increases enacted in 1993.

   There is strong evidence that increased income disparities between high-income households and the rest of the population have contributed to the recent revenue gains. High-income taxpayers pay taxes at higher rates. As a result, an increase in the share of the nation’s income that goes to these households leads to an increase in revenues, even if there is no increase in overall economic growth. In its May Monthly Budget Review, the Congressional Budget Office wrote that this year’s stronger-than-expected increases in revenues may be due in part to increased income concentration. This is consistent with other recent evidence of rapidly rising income inequality.

   Much of the unanticipated revenue increase comes from strong growth in corporate revenues, which reflects exceptionally strong growth of corporate profits during the current business cycle. Corporate profits have increased more rapidly during the current economic expansion to date than in any other comparable post-World War II period. This reflects the fact that corporate profits have captured an unusually large share of the total economic gains during the current recovery, while wages and salaries have captured an unusually small share. Wages and salaries have grown more slowly during the current recovery than in any comparable post-World War II period. Moreover, OMB now projects significantly more rapid growth in corporate profits in 2006 than it forecast in February, and notably slower wage and salary growth.

   Even with higher-than-anticipated revenues this year, budget deficits remain disturbingly large for a mature economic recovery. OMB now projects a 2006 deficit of $296 billion. While that is lower than the deficit estimate issued at the start of the year, it still amounts to a deficit equal to 2.3 percent of GDP. That the deficit remains so large this year is particularly disturbing given that the U.S. is now in the fifth year of an economic expansion, and deficits likely will rise when the expansion ends, or even before. (The Administration itself still projects the deficit will rise again in 2007.[2]) It is also distressing given the major fiscal challenges the nation will face in the coming decades, as the baby boomers begin to retire in large numbers.

   THE RECENT UPTURN IN REVENUES AND OMB’S MID-SESSION REVIEW

7. Your statistics professor was right. However, the evidence that these tax cuts are directly related to the increase in revenues is overwhelming. They were designed to do just what they did – increase overall revenues, and increase business investment/growth. You might not like it because they are not based in marxist thinking, but causation is there plain as day…

8. How do you explain the fact that the during the 90’s the US economy experienced one of its strongest periods of economic growth after President Clinton raised taxes? Additionally the economy grew during the nineties without the benefit of the credit card, as it were, as the federal deficit was steadily reduced and then eliminated.

   Conservative economics writer Paul Samuelson of the Washington Post today joins the ranks of other conservatives who have been driven to exasperation by the mendacity, malevolence, incompetence, and disconnection from reality of George W. Bush and his administration. This morning he writes:

   The tendency for politicians to claim credit for favorable news is as natural as flatulence in cows. Still, the Republicans’ orgy of self-approval amounts to a campaign of public disinformation. It obscures our true budget predicament. Let’s go back to basics. Here are two essential points:

   First, budget deficits are not automatically an economic calamity. Their effects depend on their timing, their size and other economic conditions. ..What truly matters is government spending. If it rises, then future taxes or deficits must follow. There’s no escaping that logic. The spending that dominates the budget is for retirees. Social Security, Medicare (health insurance for those 65 and over) and Medicaid (partial insurance for nursing homes) already exceed 40 percent of federal spending. As baby boomers retire, these costs will explode. Unless they’re curbed, they’ll require tax increases of 30 percent to 50 percent over the next 25 years.

   Second, the budget should be balanced — or run a surplus — when the economy is close to “full employment,” as it is now. Balancing the budget forces politicians to make uncomfortable choices. Which programs are sufficiently needed or popular to justify unpleasant taxes? Balancing the budget also lightens the debt burden. One figure Bush doesn’t praise is the annual interest payment on the growing federal debt. Even by White House estimates, it will rise from $184 billion in 2005 to $302 billion in 2011.

   
   
   No Shame, No Sense and a $296 Billion Bill

   So bottom line: Even if the Bush tax cuts have resulted in one year of mildly good news, no serious economist, conservative of liberal, is optimistic about the budget situation over the long-term and all agree that running deficits and adding to the national debt at this point, with the looming retirement of the baby-boomers just years away, is highly irresponsible.

9. Christopher writes: “However, the evidence that these tax cuts are directly related to the increase in revenues is overwhelming.”

   Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Look it up yourself. Philosophy 101. Sorry you were gone that day.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

10. “How do you explain the fact that the during the 90’s the US economy experienced one of its strongest periods of economic growth after President Clinton raised taxes? ”

    Easy – the government is not the end all and be all of the market here in the US. At least, not yet – we seem to be moving toward marxist/central planning more and more.

    “Additionally the economy grew during the nineties without the benefit of the credit card, as it were, as the federal deficit was steadily reduced and then eliminated.”

    Because the Republican House actually restrained spending. The Democrats only went along because it came largely from reduction in defense spending.

    As a conservative, I agree we are spending more than we should be. The SOLUTION is not to raise tax’s an overtaxed population, but to drastically cut spending on harmful/evil programs like Soc Sec, Medicare, Section 8, etc…

11. Here is yet another conservative, John Derbyshire of the National Review, who is alarmed, rather than thrilled, by the latest budget figures:

    I’m no friend of socialism. It is nonetheless true that America’s glory and strength is our middle class, and the ease of getting into the middle class by working hard and shunning antisocial habits.

    If the rich get richer while the middle class thrives, and some decent provision is made for the poor, I’m a happy man, living in a society I consider healthy and am proud of. If, however, the rich get richer while the middle class is struggling, or actually declining, I am not a happy man. There are some reasons to think that is happening, and you don’t have to be a socialist to worry about this.

    The Economist, for example, offers the opinion that: “The prominence of corporate tax revenue is due largely to the peculiarities of the current cycle, in which wage growth has been remarkably weak and the share of the national economic pie going to firm’s profits has hit a record high.”

    ..I believe there are reasons to think our middle class is in trouble. Randall Parker lists some here. Yeah, yeah, he’s quoting a Center for American Progress report (i.e. lefty think tank), but the numbers look good and agree with what I hear from friends and neighbors. (And Randall himself is a conservative, though no fan of the current administration.) Young, married, both-working couples who are living with their parents also seem to be an ever-more-common feature of the demographic landscape, at least here in the NY burbs.

    I am fine with income inequality. I am not fine with a choking, shrinking middle class. I am really not fine with Latin-American-style class structures. Is that where we are headed? Let’s hope not.

    Rich And Poor

12. Morality or MORALISM?

    How can Christians consider it to be an authentic expression of morality to oppose the killing of unborn children while ignoring the killing of children who are already born? Is it truly moral to protect the lives of unborn children but ignore or trivialize the fact that they will have to grow up in a world where, because of our own excess, they may not have sufficient food and many of the necessary natural resources will have been squandered and climate change will have made their lives precarious and uncertain? Is it actually moral to demand that governments enforce the sort of correct personal behaviour that our own ideologies demand while turning consumer capitalism into a religious doctrine that cannot be subjected to critique and criticism?

    http://clarionjournal.typepad.com/clarion_journal_of_spirit/lazar_puhalo/index.html

    There has been a great deal of interest, in the last decade, by many Christians, in returning to the Classic phase of the Christian Tradition. . . This turn comes as both a critique of a faltering and failing liberal ecumenism and the fragmentary nature of much modern and postmodern thought. There has been a quest, in short, for an era and ethos in the Great Tradition when there was some sort of depth and unity. . .

    The problem with much of this turn to Tradition, by Evangelicals, Roman Catholics and Orthodox, is that it is, for the most part, an American phenomena, and, more to the point, a turn by those within the USA of REPUBLICAN sympathies to the Great Tradition.

    It might be more honest to state that the return, interpretation and read of the Fathers and the Great Tradition is more a RIGHT of centre REPUBLICAN approach to the past. It is within such a context that we, as Canadians, welcome a book on the Orthodox theology of Archbishop Lazar Puhalo. . .

    (More like reading ‘into’ the Fathers and Tradition, projecting – and come to think of it, I hardly even hear the Fathers cited on this blog – ds)

    http://clarionjournal.typepad.com/clarion_journal_of_spirit/2006/06/for_a_culture_o.html

    http://www.dstall.com/lazar.html

    http://www.dstall.com/

13. Note 13. DStall writes:

    How can Christians consider it to be an authentic expression of morality to oppose the killing of unborn children while ignoring the killing of children who are already born? Is it truly moral to protect the lives of unborn children but ignore or trivialize the fact that they will have to grow up in a world where, because of our own excess, they may not have sufficient food and many of the necessary natural resources will have been squandered and climate change will have made their lives precarious and uncertain? Is it actually moral to demand that governments enforce the sort of correct personal behaviour that our own ideologies demand while turning consumer capitalism into a religious doctrine that cannot be subjected to critique and criticism?

    Well, no, but who here is doing what you say they are? Where have you read anyone “turning consumer capitalism into a religious doctrine that cannot be subjected to critique and criticism” — unless of course you are refering to someone else in which case a citation would be helpful.

    (More like reading ‘into’ the Fathers and Tradition, projecting – and come to think of it, I hardly even hear the Fathers cited on this blog – ds)

    This too is a bit puzzling (if I am reading it correctly). If the Fathers are not quoted on this blog, how can a contributor be “reading ‘into'” the Fathers?

    To answer the question though, one has to be very careful of claiming that current policy is in accord with the Fathers or Tradition. The tradition must certainly be carried forward, but one must show that his position is in accord with the tradition before making the claim that it is. That is what discussion is all about. It also explains why there is no hurry to claim that one’s position is in accord with the Fathers.

    Of course some issues are clear. More are not. It takes a considerable amount of effort to sort out the unclear ones. Moreover, many of the issues are nuanced. A good example is my critique of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship (OPF) on the war in Iraq. The paper they wrote claimed they stood in the Orthodox moral tradition. My argument was that one can oppose the war in Iraq, but the moral ground the OPF choose to make their case was in violation of that tradition. You can read it here.

14. If you bothered to click on the links in my post, you would easily have seen that I was quoting “Morality or Moralism” from Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, an abbot (i.e. a monk) of an Orthodox monastery, not making up my own words.

    Spending time on a Kindergarten playground and in the classroom will show just what honest reaction to double standard is produced by intellectualizations like yours. Children are much simpler and more forthright than those who have grown old and ‘adulterated’. I don’t think any reasonably experienced adult would pull the kind of nonsense on children that you put forth, because they wouldn’t want the mess produced when it backfired, in particular the child’s loss of trust and respect in the one who is trying to lead them.

    What is the point of your lengthy ‘discussion’ on the OPF’s imbalanced basis for its stance for peace? What is the point of proclaiming the US the moral IN-equivalent of a dictator, and more right(eous) than someone like them? To put a stop to peace efforts? Why? To further relativism, different strokes for different folks since no-one can say what is an “Orthodox” response to the situation? You provide no reasonable conclusion but that you want to intellectually justify acts of war and your support for such.

    It’s common knowledge nowdays that the US government sponsors dictatorships in foreign countries to create regimes favorable to its interests. So it is nonsensible to claim that when US bureaucrats (who do not follow Orthopraxis) want to remove a foreign leader who is not favorable, that there is even any point in considering that such aggression might be deemed a ‘just’ war in the Tradition of the Fathers!

    Instead of clarifying OPF’s stance and correcting their imbalanced error, so that it might be clear that support of US invasion of a sovereign country is highly UN-Orthodox and does not fall under the category of a ‘just’ war, but that it WOULD be blessed by Orthodox heirarchs if we were under threat of invasion on our own shores . . . instead, you turn the OPF’s error into another situation for moral relativism. So much for ‘communion’, for unity. If no one can say what’s Orthodox, then why bother attempting to become Orthodox?

    You do not mention or seem to take into account that the ONE act of serious terrorism on US soil, just might be a staged act in some Hegelian drama, like that for which national ‘intelligence’ (read spy) groups such as Israeli Mossad, US CIA, etc are IN-famous. Do you ‘know’ something that the scientists and professors at Physics911 don’t?
    http://www.physics911.ca/Main_Page

    There is a big difference between defending one’s national borders and trampling all over the globe to create advantages for oneself. Yes, I’ve read your other ‘discussion’ that deems as ‘blamers of victims’ those who take the view that the US brought such terror on itself by its foreign policy. You argue as if those who have this view ignore, or whitewash the terrorists, which is wholly UN-true. Obviously, you don’t consider that the US could now be ‘playing the victim’ to its advantage no differently than Section 8 welfare recipients might, you know that ‘evil’ ‘leftist’ ‘social WELFARE’ program your kind loves to hate. This late in the game, few even mention the 911 card in their arguments any more, simply because it no longer flies.

    I see little difference in your rationalizations and those of an evangelical protestant fundamentalist, which result in the same, blanket support for their favorite son and do no wrong in the White(house) hat. If you pulled such stupidity with children, they would quickly accuse you of favoritism, and would be JUSTIFIED in doing so. Shame on you. As a priest you are as much a leader to laity as an adult is to children.

    But all of this is old hat and hot air, and all I have come to expect from you is more rebuttal. When I hear what you refer to as ‘discussion’, most of what’s represented on this site, it calls to mind Orthodox Psychotherapy by Metropolitan Heirotheos Vlachos and reminds me that the Church is a Spiritual Hospital. The condition of OrthodoxyToday in the west is, in typical western cultural fashion, one wherein the patients insist on running the hospital. The west is much more comfortable with making noise than in keeping still and silence. The biggest noise being made about OrthodoxyToday is by those who would serve themselves and others best by keeping their mouths shut. Orthodoxy would be better off remaining a best kept secret if such ‘discussion’ is all there is to offer.

    I don’t pretend to be a mouthpiece for Orthodoxy, but I’ve grown weary with the charade of those who are opinionated and filled with contention and conjecture, who use the ‘humility’ and ‘non-judgement’ card in their favor to discredit any footnote that anyone might bring up from the Fathers that might shine Light on their conjecture, and who only consult or refer to the Fathers when its convenient to their opinions.

    Oh yes the Fathers wrote of a ‘just’ war. I’ve heard all the justifications for pronouncing the Iraq War ‘just’. Just what do you think Met. Vlachos would say about it? I think he might declare the rationale you put forth to be mad, and best committed to hospitalization until the nous has recreated the organic mind suffering in delusion.

    Which by the way, is what any laity, much less priest, could and should be doing if they consider themselves to have any desire to BE Orthodox. I don’t hear any monks mouthing the sort of things you seem to favor, and suspect that anyone as serious about theosis and Orthopraxis as a monk must be, knows better. Perhaps reassignment away from the richmans’ ‘winter’ vacation paradise is a worthy prescription for what’s ailing.

    The ones who decry abortion usually also decry stem cell research. They have no problem accepting dismembered organs from the dead into their bodies in Frankenstein-ian FASHION (after all they were dying anyway), or with defining ‘life’ by the ability to have machines for ‘support’ (ala Schiavo), or with artificial conception, but NO we must throw away extra fertilized human eggs and not use those cells for research, because we must ‘respect HUMAN life’ by committing it to death. What Tripe! What baseless inconsistency and absurdity. What shameless psychological projection on the guilt of others in order to assuage ones own guilt for seeking the ‘good’ life in prolonging the fallen human condition instead of seeking Light and Life in theosis, divinization, in Divine Communion.

    Is anyone familiar with the work of Phillip Sherrard? Have you read The Sacred in Life and Art, or The Rape of Man and Nature, or HUMAN Image: World Image? Now THERE’s respect for LIFE!

    I find it equally inconsistent when abortion is decried, but the failings of consumer capitalism are put on the back burner. You deny that you support this and of course you haven’t DIRECTLY. SO before you argue in support of ‘just’ war or decry abortion (the immorality of another), tell me how much do you put yourself out to conserve energy for the children’s future that you claim to humanly care so much about, of those alive today much less those to come? Do you pay more (put yourself out financially) in order to pollute less by your consumption? Where are the discussions in OrthodoxyToday on this issue?

    How big is your foot? (the same size as your mouth?)
    Try measuring it here:
    http://www.earthday.net/footprint/index.asp

    And try measuring your ‘faith’, your “Orthodoxy” against that of so called pagans and savages.
    And tell me, which would an UN-believerToday chose after listening to you?

    If you haven’t, you should read The Chesterton Review, Vol. XXVI, Nos.1& 2 Feb/May 2000 The Light Within: The New Age & Christian Spirituality
    http://academic.shu.edu/chesterton/backissue.htm
    and ask yourself, am I drawing others to Christ by my Orthodoxy?
    Or am I part of the problem, the reason that so many began culturally rejecting Christianity in large measure in the ’60s as having failed to satisfy their most basic spiritual longings?

    How much do you seek the wisdom of your superiors? your elders? How much of a superior, an elder are you? If none, or not much, then maybe your silence should be guaged accordingly.

    “Silence was meaningful with the Dakota. Also in the midst of sorrow, sickness, and death, or misfortune of any kind, and in the presence of the notable and great, silence was the mark of respect. More powerful than words was silence with the Lakota.”
    ~ Standing Bear, Sioux

    “It was our belief that the love of possessions is a weakness to be overcome. Its appeal is to the material part, and if allowed its way it will in time disturb the spiritual balance of the man.”
    ~ Ohiyesa, Sioux

    “I am blind and do not see the things of this world; but when the Light comes from Above, it enlightens my heart and I can see, for the Eye of my heart sees everything. The heart is a sanctuary at the center of which there is a little space, wherein the Great Spirit dwells, and this is the Eye. This is the Eye of the Great Spirit by which He sees all things and through which we see Him. If the heart is not pure, the Great Spirit cannot be seen, and if you should die in this ignorance, your soul cannot return immediately to the Great Spirit, but it must be purified by wandering about in the world. In order to know the center of the heart where the Great Spirit dwells you must be pure and good, and live in the manner that the Great Spirit has taught us. The man who is thus pure contains the Universe in the pocket of his heart.”
    “It is good to have a reminder of death before us, for it helps us to understand the impermanence of life on this earth, and this understanding may aid us in preparing for our own death. He who is well prepared is he who knows that he is nothing compared with Wakan Tanka, who is everything; then he knows that world which is real.”
    ~ Black Elk, Sioux

    SEE Slideshows: How can we UNDERSTAND Native American TRADITION?
    http://www.worldwisdom.com/Public/Books/ItemDetail.asp?ProductID=108

15. So, what DSTALL is saying is that American Orthodox are not really Orthodox at all, but simple idol worshipers – in this case our idol is a political party – the Republican party (I think that is what he is trying to say…).

    Yet, when you visit his web site you see an Icon with the words “simplicity, sustainability, stewardship” superimposed over the top of it. Unless DSTALL wants to refute, I will make the reasonable assumption that he would define these terms in the same way a modern “pangiaist” would. They mean certain things, most of all they mean an attitude toward the Creation that has almost nothing to do with Orthodoxy. They mean a way of life that confuses God with His Creation, confuses an Icon with the Saint himself, and conflates so many issues as to be undecipherable. It is not really even really gnosticism, or heresy, or anything like that – it is lower, in that it reverses the hierarchy of creation thereby changing the role of man from that of a servant to a slave.

    So now I am really confused, who was the idol worshiper again?….;)

16. Dstall

    Black Elk was a Roman Catholic. in fact a Roman Catholic missionary.

17. Last warning Dstall. Focus the argument. Deal with ideas. I am not interested in screeds or finger wagging.

18. DSTALL,

    “What is the point of your lengthy ‘discussion’ on the OPF’s imbalanced basis for its stance for peace? ”

    The point is crucial. If the “stance for peace” is standing on false grounds, then it is not peace (or Peace) at all, but a bloody idol that goes by the false name of “peace”

    “I see little difference in your rationalizations and those of an evangelical protestant fundamentalist”

    Look harder.

    “Obviously, you don’t consider that the US could now be ‘playing the victim’ to its advantage no differently than Section 8 welfare recipients might, you know that ‘evil’ ‘leftist’ ’social WELFARE’ program your kind loves to hate.”

    LOL! Apparently Section 8 is sacred ground – to even begin to question it and it’s real results in the lives of the people it is supposed to be “helping” is blasphemy. Talk about your idols…

    On his website DSTALL mentions a psycho/pathological condition he suffers from (too much external stimulation). I wonder about the veracity of that claim based on the above post. He certainly has absorbed much of the conversation around here in the last few weeks.

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