Metro Times cover package on Moroun

[BShea]

Well, Shea, that's quite a screed.

Yes, and it deconstructed you completely.

Where in my argument did I mention the Inheritance Tax, which you on the right love to label the "death tax?" This is yet another fascist attempt to control the language by shape-shifting terms to suit your beliefs.

Um, the entire conversation is about coercive government seizure of money after death, and the morality debate of what should happen to fortunes after death. Try to keep up, please.

And you have the gall to attempt to accuse me of manipulate language when you toss around hyperbole, Daily Kos talking points and pejorative terms like fascist in an attempt to smear me. Anyone to the Right of Che, to you, seems to be a fascist. It's juvenile. I'll paint you a Leftist because your wear it with pride and a total lack of irony.

You are really paranoid that what you earn is going to be taken away.

No, I'm trying to get you to explain how having the government do the exact same thing I want to do it somehow more "moral." You've failed every time, and try to deflect and dodge with nonsense about Bush and the GOP, etc. FAIL.

And who decides what is "rich enough?" You? Obama? Congress? A panel of experts? LMFAO.

As I have mentioned ad nauseum, you are free to earn as much as you want under the system we had up to Reagan, and set up any number of tax shelters and trusts so your kids won't have to work for a living, but over that maximum dollar amount in earnings, whatever the new figure should be, there should be a 90% taxation rate.

No, there shouldn't. And this isn't about my children. It's about my freedom as an individual to do whatever I choose with my money. You prefer the incremental loss of liberty in the name of "the greater good" and you believe self-appointed bureaucrats in Washington know better than the typical American. The ancient criticism of the Far Left is it hates freedom and individuality, and you reinforce that notion with your lust for authoritarianism and government control. Jonah Goldberg had you in mind for his "Liberal Fascists."

Your screed also contradicts itself in stating on one hand that personal liberty and freedom to earn as much as you like without giving back to the system which allowed you to do so, is somehow a birthright.

It's not "giving back." It's being forced to hand it over. The money was taxed when I earned it. Why do you want it taxed again? Does your government need more cruise missiles? Or do you really think all that money is being spent on your precious welfare state programs? Check out the DoD's budget, comrade. Why do you want to inflate the military-industrial complex with even more money?

And "the system" doesn't "allow" me to do anything. We the people allow the government to do things, not vice versa. And that's the difference between me and authority-loving people like you, haters of freedom and individualism. You lust for forced equality and collectivism. Yours is a bankrupt ideology, except in places like North Korea and Cuba. Nice company you keep.

Next you mention that wealthy individuals like Bill Gates have done fantastic things with their surplus wealth. A little note- Gates did nothing for years, until he was basically shamed into starting a foundation, since the public's perception of him as a skinflint was beginning to color his reputation.

Regardless of his motivation -- which is his right -- he does it. And he does things no government can do, except maybe in the your delusional mind pining for a world in which the government does everything for you.

And for thousands of other members of the UberRich, they have, like Matted Moron decided to forego the philanthropy route in favor of the Ebenezer Scrooge model. And the current system allows them to do so.

Again, you argue for forced charity. Nice.

Great wealth, whether concentrated in the hands of a few monopolistic corporations, or a group of individuals does nothing to better the common good, which is what a large "D" Democracy is all about.

Who says it is? Communists? The Far Left? Democracy is a form of governance. Why can't you grasp that? Coercive redistribution of wealth in the name of forced equality is NOT democracy, and such methods quickly require guns and walls and secret police ... not the typical symbols of democracy.

Rethugnicans love living in a small"d" Democracy which has allowed them the window dressing of being legitimate, without the regulation and oversight necessary to achieve a true Democratic Republic.

I'm a big believer in oversight. It's needed. I'm a big fan of Teddy Roosevelt. He was all about oversight and trust-busting, but he sure as hell didn't buy into your freedom-hating fantasies of wealth redistribution as "social justice."

It will be great to see the right wing nutjobs explode when Bush's tax cuts for the rich are allowed to expire, since they'll be reduced to living under tax rates they had under Bill Clinton.

Again, who was talking about this? Yet again, you're tossing out stuff to avoid the conversation at hand.

And as we all know, those were tough times for repugnicans- many had to cut back to only two Rolls Royces per year instead of three. My heart bleeds

I'm sure it does. But none of that has anything to do with what we were talking about. We get it - you dislike rich people.

[barnesfoto]

and we get it, you like rich people's asses, and want to live in a developed country, but with the tax structure of an undeveloped country...

Who built our nations interstate freeway system again?

[BShea]

and we get it, you like rich people's asses, and want to live in a developed country, but with the tax structure of an undeveloped country...

We get it: You hate the individualism and free-market economy that made us into the greatest nation on Earth, and you prefer to see the United States become an authoritarian Leftist state in which the prole-like population meekly hands over its earnings to the government in return for nanny state programs and "the greater good."

Who built our nations interstate freeway system again?

The highways built to move tanks, you mean? I have nothing against normal income taxes. But this entire conversation has been about confiscation of earned wealth after a person's death, which Leftists on here believe is more "moral" [[giving it to people who didn't earn it as a social justice notion) than the person who earned it decided what happens to it.

[Lorax]

Barnesfoto put it more succinctly than I could, Shea is just another ass kissing apoligist for the Rethugnican right, who never met a sludge fund he didn't like.

He'll negate the deeds of past republicans like Eisenhower as being too "socialist" at least that's the inference, and in the same breath worship at the feet of Tedddy Roosevelt as if he bore any resemblance to a modern day conservative.

In case you weren't aware Nostradamus, President Benjamin Harrison, a Republican, signed the Sherman Antitrust Act into law in 1890, which as we all know broke up Standard Oil, and funny, it didn't seem to put a hole in the bank account of John D. Rockefeller, he died 47 years later the richest man on earth.

It was your modern day "conservatives" like Alan Greenspan, Milton Friedman, and Robert Bork who wrote lengthy diatribes against the Sherman Act as "stifiling free markets" that would be the cause of negative growth in the future.

Well, like much of what these three stooges wrote and believed in, it ended up being just another bag of fascist tripe.

So don't give me your sad sack stories of feeling jilted on the way to the tax altar, Simon Legree.

You live in a mind construct that defies any sort of logic, and now that I know you work for Crain's it sort of all makes sense- you might as well be working for the Murdoch Street Journal.

Why your insistence that anyone here mentioned the Inheritance Tax, and your continued carping about losing your income to the government after you're dead and buried is really disturbing on all levels.

First of all that it has any relevence to what any of us were talking about, secondly that there is an iota of truth that Obama is even considering such a move.

Obama is actually more conservative that Bush ever was, and certainly more conservative than your beloved Teddy Roosevelt.

And your opening line about how you've deconstructed my arguments applies only to those who share your medieval ideology, Torquemada.

Oh, and the cheap shot about my using "fascist" as much as I do, well, if the shoe fits.

There is no more accurate description, since you and your kind advocate for corporations and government to be co-mingled to a point we can't tell them apart. Except that when rethugnicans control both, the rest of us get screwed.

That's what fascism is, and no amount of rethugnican shape shifting the language will change that.

In fact, with your level of understanding of government and how it works, perhaps you should partner with Saracuda Failin, the Witch from Wasilla, for a run at White House in 2012.

With her broomstick and your time machine, you could probably bring back the 15th century, much as the Taliban has in the middle east.

I would actually donate to that campaign!

[Diehard]

Umm... I forgot... was this post about Matty Maroun and the bridge and the effect of his actions on Southwest Detroit?

[BShea]

More tired canards and empty rhetoric from another bottom-shelf, dime store coffeehouse radical, all of which continues to avoid the central question I put forward:

How is it more moral or "right" for the government to seize my wealth after my death and redistribute it to people that didn't earn it versus me deciding where that money goes?

You can't answer it. Instead, you retreat into unoriginal bromides and insults straight from a typical adolescent radical's blog.

Seriously, put aside your Daily Kos talking points, quit creating these silly ideological strawmen and sack up and answer the question. I don't want more Mother Jones nonsense, I want an answer.

Also, after you wipe the spittle from your chin after that breathless post, show me where I advocated from completely unrestrained commerce or co-mingling of private enterprise and government?

You are the one that apparently with a rigid dogmatic devotion to all things Far Left, and utterly incapable of a pragmatic approach to government and business. And you also fire salvo after salvo of absurd accusations about my personal philosophy and ideology, of which you know zero about apart from my abhorrence of sending more money to a corrupt and inept government to misspend.

You also apparently don't know much about TR. Shocker, that.

Countdown to more schoolyard insults and colorful political rhetoric that completely avoids answering the question I posed.

3 ...

2 ...

1 ...

[Lorax]

I won't be baited by your fascist rhetoric.

Typical move to discredit the message without so much as a single proven workable piece of ideology from the elitist right.

Every backward looking, free-market crap bag of tricks your tribe has tried the last 30 years brought us to this moment.

Quite a Welcome Wagon gift basket to leave at Obama's doorstep. It's your president, George Tush who did this to us, standing on the shoulders of midgets like GB41, and RR.

Blah, blah, blah on the point of the Inheritance Tax, which is apparently your flogging pony of the moment.

If you're a Rethugnican worthy of the name, you've already set up an offshore corporation, and a living trust to protect your immense wealth from the greedy hands of Uncle Sam.

If you don't have one, I know a great liberal lawyer who can set you up.

Amazing how much low-rent rhetoric you're capable of while speaking for a discredited party of flatulating southern, white cotton-tops without a shred of decency or gratitude as to the incredible luck they had in being ditch-delivered in the United States.

Ungrateful and greedy are words to best describe it.

Well, the only solace the liberals have in all of this is knowing you've been hoisted on your own petard.

Like Prick Cheney leaving office in a wheelchair, and Jerry Flawell leaving his office in a bodybag- an incidental pleasure

[BShea]

I won't be baited by your fascist rhetoric.

LMFAO.

Are you for real? Or did Central Casting send you here?

You can't answer the question. CAN'T. There's no rhetoric involved. You've been exposed as a simple dupe who parrots talking points. You retreat into insults and the safety of Bush-bashing [[the political equivalent of knock-knock jokes, with all the depth and intellectual horsepower).

This is both an epic FAIL and epic MELT on your part.

I'll try again: How is it more moral or "right" for the government to seize my wealth after my death and redistribute it to people that didn't earn it versus me deciding where that money goes?

There's nothing fascist about that question. You should be able to answer it, comrade.

[Lorax]

I won't be baited by your fascist rhetoric.

LMFAO.

Are you for real? Or did Central Casting send you here?

You can't answer the question. CAN'T. There's no rhetoric involved. You've been exposed as a simple dupe who parrots talking points. You retreat into insults and the safety of Bush-bashing [[the political equivalent of knock-knock jokes, with all the depth and intellectual horsepower).

This is both an epic FAIL and epic MELT on your part.

I'll try again: How is it more moral or "right" for the government to seize my wealth after my death and redistribute it to people that didn't earn it versus me deciding where that money goes?

There's nothing fascist about that question. You should be able to answer it, comrade.

I could say the same for you, Comrade.

Since taxation is your new talking point, tell me, which government are you so paranoid of that has announced the pending seizure of your estate?

Certainly not the US government. This red-herring argument isn't even a topic on this thread, much less on the radar of anyone but the wealth-afflicted.

It's more "moral" to use an overused Rethugnican term, to tax you at the 90% rate while you're still cranking out those millions.

Personally, I have never been an advocate of income taxes for anyone earning under 2 million per year- I have been in favor of taxing wealth over that amount on a graduated scale, up to 90% over, say, 5 million per annum.

Corporations should bear the brunt of the heavy lifting when it comes to taxation, combined with tarrifs and other forms of income to supply the fed with the funds necessary to provide us socialized health care, a military, paid-for public education, etc.

Of course, corporations would have to curtail the pay for their executives, something they constantly fight, thinking somehow any individual's labor is worth hundreds of millions per year.

Then there wouldn't even be the need for an Inheritance Tax

Again, I want names of those who have proposed seizing your immense wealth, which is apparently dangling out there like plums on a tree, unprotected from seizure, telling me you have a really lousy estate planner.

The policies of your presidents Tush & Cheney have taken more from your kids future than any amount of Inheritance Tax would.

With the collapsing dollar, and the massive deficits, Interitance Tax is the least of their worries.

I guess I've given up on trying to elicit an answer from you.

Your paranoia is breathtaking.

[Doma]

BShea, you are my new hero on this board.

It's amazing that people who have watched democratic leadership dismantle the cities wealth over decades are begging for more socialist policies.

It's like watching a crack fiend who has lost it all from his or her habit do anything to get just one more precious rock.

Detroit NEEDS property taxes to be in the .30-.40 mil range, like it's suburban counterparts.

Detroit NEEDS the city income tax eliminated.

Detroit NEEDS to do the Cobo deal, as is.

Detroit NEEDS to have all regulatory processes streamlined to be more conducive to businesses.

Detroit NEEDS privatization of as many city services as possible

Detroit NEEDS a smaller, smarter and more efficient government

Do all or most of these things, and watch businesses flourish around the city, watch several multinational companies look to set up shop, watch home prices skyrocket.

Detroit must now take it's clamps off and stop chasing companies into the suburbs/out of state.

I won't be baited by your fascist rhetoric.

LMFAO.

Are you for real? Or did Central Casting send you here?

You can't answer the question. CAN'T. There's no rhetoric involved. You've been exposed as a simple dupe who parrots talking points. You retreat into insults and the safety of Bush-bashing [[the political equivalent of knock-knock jokes, with all the depth and intellectual horsepower).

This is both an epic FAIL and epic MELT on your part.

I'll try again: How is it more moral or "right" for the government to seize my wealth after my death and redistribute it to people that didn't earn it versus me deciding where that money goes?

There's nothing fascist about that question. You should be able to answer it, comrade.