Steve Schacher

quote:They did answer that. Conquer the country, install a friendly regime, privatize the oil, big oil wins, the ousted aristocracy can return and become part of the new aristocracy as business men and everyone wins...I don't know what to make of this statement. If you look at the history of Saudi Arabia, American "big oil" developed that country and then the royal family nationalized the oil companies and kicked out "big oil." Today's "big oil" includes companies like British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell. If the "friendly regime" comes from the country itself, who cares? As long as that regime sets up a process where the Iraqi people can oust the regime if they don't like them, then what's wrong with that? quote:we keep bases to insure that any self determination that Washington finds questionable can be "shaped and molded" into something pleasing to the corporate lobbyists. Again, look at Saudi Arabia. America "made" that country and then the royal family turned it over to Islamic extremists without America intervening -- what history leads you to believe that America won't take a hands-off approach in Iraq after their regime change? quote:The revenues, as always, stay in the hands of local elites and the big oil share holders for whom the world turns. Share holders get their hard earned cut and the world is saved from inefficiency and any economic hiccups..we all know what happens when our normally docile middle class finds over a buck fifty at the pumps.From where I sit, that's a good thing. As far as a "buck fifty" at the pumps goes, have you priced a gallon of milk lately? How about a gallon of mountain spring water? When you look at what you get for your "buck fifty," how come people aren't complaining about the cost of a gallon of the other things? You know what? The plastic container that the water comes in costs more than the water itself, but nobody complains about paying $2.00 for a liter of water on a hot day at the ballpark, so what's the big deal about a gallon of gasoline when you consider what you can do with it compared to a gallon of milk or a liter of water?

Jag: Good article. Mother Jones: The article seems a bit paranoid to me. It talks at great length about an imperialist United States seizing control of the oilfields. What it stops short of saying is why? Are they implying that the United States wants to hoard all the oil for themselves? I don't think so. If anything, the United States wants to instill some security to the region so that we don't have a few madmen with one hand on the oil spigot and the other hand on the detonator. Oil is the lifeblood of all the industrial nations of the world, not just the United States. All have a vested interest in seeing a stable Middle East that allows the countries to predict what their fixed expenses will be from year to year. Security and stability in the region is in everyone's interest -- we're just the one's with the ability to do something about it. Mother Jones has to answer the question: what will the United States do with control of the region? Will we hoard the oil? Will be become the new despotic rulers who dole out the oil only to those that we like or will we flush out the dictators, allow the people of the region to establish new governments, and then leave?

The tee-shirt story: there is either: 1) more to the story, or 2) an over-zealous private guard. The people should have been left alone. Library porn: the issue is the use of taxpayer dollars. The Supreme Court has already ruled that pornography is protected speech. However, just because speech is protected does not mean that the government must be forced to provide it to anyone who wants it where ever they want it. There are plenty of private outlets for speech. Maybe it should be compared to the way the government handles gun rights. The right to own a gun is protected by the Supreme Court. However, people are not allowed to carry a gun whenever they want where ever they want. In both cases, is that "abridging" the person's rights?

Say hello to The Borderlands Of WestWorld.

quote:If teachers are paid to teach facts, then why aren't our children taught that our forefather's came to this land, raped and killed the current inhabitants and took ALL the land from them. They do (or did). They also teach that Alexander The Great conquered all from Persia to India, the Romans conquered most of Europe, Napoleon marched all the way to Egypt, Cortes in Mexico... So, what's your point?

quote:while free speech exists, should a person in a position of authority; like the school teacher be able to use it to influence the minds of people so young they don't have the ability to fully comprehend something so big?The answer is in your definition of "Authority." Teachers (public school teachers), in today's society, are considered an extension of government when it suits the Left's arguments on the First Amendment freedom of (from?) religion in the schools. However, when First Amendment free speech rights of the teachers are in question, then the teachers aren't considered an arm of government. Okay, so that was a rant. However, First Amendment free speech rights do not protect me against my private-sector employer firing me for something I said. It only protects me against the government taking action against me for something I said (that's the part about "Congress shall pass no laws abridging the freedom of speech"). Loosely interpreted, "Congress" becomes anyone in government. There was an old "joke" (proverb?) floating around the internet a while back. It goes like this: The first man walks up to the second man and asks, "Do you believe in the first amendment right to freedom of speech?" The second man replies, "Of course I do." The first man then asks, "Do you believe in the second amendment right to own a gun?" The second man says, "No, I don't." The first man then says, "Well then, shut the hell up!" The moral of the story is that you can have your freedoms and rights, but also have to be able to keep and protect them.

Good post. As far as destabilizing the region goes, I'm of the mind to finally let the crumbs fall where they may, and we'll clean it up later. The time of "realpolitik" is over (another Cold War holdover). With all the troops in the area, regime change in Iraq may go a long way towards preventing overall destabilization in the region. Many countries in the region are silently hoping for change in Iraq. There are still a few "hot-spots" like Iran (where a civil split still exists) and Saudi Arabia, but maybe the Palestinian issue will be solvable after Hussein is ousted. I always wondered why "refugee camps" like Jenin still exist after decades. I don't think it's because the Israelis are keeping the Palestinians down, I think it's because "other interests" want to keep the Palestinians living in rubble. Maybe a little "shake-up" is in order in the region, as troubling as it will be in the short-term.

I just saw it. One question: Can you say "Shyte" in a PG-13 movie?

If you go back and reread my last post on the State Of The Union thread, you will see that the French and British have been sparring for centuries. The Statue of Liberty was given to the USA at a time when the French were still glowing in the bask of their former glory days, and before the USA emerged as a dominant world player. The NATO rift is really about France and England (again). It is France's last grab to be relevent in the EU by undermining the rise of Tony Blair. Here's a column that lays it all out pretty nicely: It's not really about Saddam. An excerpt: quote:To the French, something very astonishing has happened: "Europe" was supposed to be France writ large, a "union" built in France's image. To that end, they took it for granted that the entire Continent would inevitably come to be as semi-detached from NATO as the French have been since 1966. To M. Chirac, Tony Blair is the odd man out, with his strange Anglo-Saxon hang-ups about the transatlantic alliance. But, as has become obvious, to the Czechs, Poles, Bulgars, Romanians and everybody else, it's Chirac who's the misfit. What to do about this appalling l├¿se-majest├®? Answer: Get rid of Blair.It's a long, but well-written piece. I highly recommend reading it.

I think Jaguar is more right about more things than most everyone else on this board (except me, of course ). And I've been here a long, long time.

Maybe I'll check this one out sometime. Right now, I'm playing Stronghold: Crusader. By the looks of things, Crusader is a simpler, similarly themed game.

quote:When on earth did the government go from being the Protector of the people to the provider for the people? I am seriously interested on how this ideology got itself so engrained into the ideology of what a government is to do.When "equal opportunity" became "equal outcome."

Coalitions have been forming, disbanding, and reforming all throughout history. One could make the argument that all the modern era's troubles actually stem from the sibling rivalry between England and France. Consider history: France and England were the dominant empires in the Western world. They had the navies. In the Americas, France and England were fighting their colonial wars here. The French-Indian wars of the early 1700's were the French hiring mercenary Indians to attack British colonies. The American Revolution against England: America won largely because of France's navy. France was willing to help because it despised England. After the American Revolution, England and France were again at war. American neutral shipping to Europe antagonized England, which was blockading France, and was a tool for France, which was blockading England. English resentment eventually led to the War of 1812 in America. Napoleon Bonaparte led the French Army on attacks across Europe and northern Africa in the late 1790's, ending in Egypt. He was ultimately defeated at Waterloo (Belgium) by Wellington of England in 1815. The Opium Wars of the mid-1800's, between England and China (1840's), and then England/France and China (1850's) led to long-lasting anti-Western sentiment in Indo-China . The French Foreign Legion was created for French colonialism of Western Africa during the mid-1800's, especially in Morocco and Algeria. The Boxer Rebellion in China in 1898 was an attempt to oust Western influence in China. After the Opium Wars, the Chinese were forced to grant commercial concessions to England and France, and then Germany and Russia. Feeling weakend by European encroachment, the Chinese rebelled, but failed, and put themselves deeply in debt to the West, becoming in effect, a subject nation. The Boer War in Southern Africa in 1898 was an attempt to oust British colonialism in Africa. England had been working its way south into Africa when gold was discovered. This resulted in a great influx of British into South Africa. The Boers (Dutch) had already settled those areas and reject British attempts to control the commercialization of the area. They fought back and won sovereignty, leaving much bitternes with the English. During all of this, America was a small, but growing, country. We were still focused on Manifest Destiny, the march westward toward the Pacific. We were not a super-power. The 1900's saw World War I and World War II, both mostly European conflicts, and both ended by American might. World War II saw the emergence of the United States as a super-power. With this chronology in mind, one can argue that America is paying for the sins of England and France (and the ill-will they left behind) from the 1700's forward.

No, you win if you learned something about finance and accounting.

I'll second the Thomas Covenent series. First book: Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson. Many people liked the Shannara series by Terry Brooks. The Sword of Shannara was first. The Myth series was cute (a parody of puns). The author's (Robert Asprin) Thieve's World series was a collection of short stories by different authors set in his imaginary realm. [ 02-04-2003, 02:26 PM: Message edited by: Steve Schacher ]

quote:And since the Enron execs knew they weren't going to get anymore moola from the scam, they raided their employees 401k accounts. This is where Democrat hypocrisy began. Enron only had about 19,000 employees, and far less were affected by the 401(k) loss, yet Jesse Jackson organized a protest over the Enron employees and bused his rent-a-mob down to Houston. How often do we hear of General Motors closing down a plant and laying off thousands of workers, and yet there are no protests by Jackson over that? Enron was also a political attempt by Democrats to bring down the Bush administration, but as they delved deeper into the scandal, they found Clinton's fingerprints all over it and quickly stopped the investigation and all congressional hearings for fear of what would come out. Now, take a company like Adelphia in Pennsylvania. That company was truly looted by the executives right from the start. It wasn't a bad management practice that got out of hand, it was a CEO's personal bank account right from the start. Then there's Global Crossing, MCI Worldcom, and a few others that had improper accounting, all certified by Arthur Andersen. Then there are some who call for all corporate taxes to be eliminated. Why? Because corporations are only concepts, not real living breathing things. Corporations are groups of people. There are some who say that the shareholders should pay all the taxes and the corporations should not be taxed at all. [ 02-02-2003, 04:12 PM: Message edited by: Steve Schacher ]

quote:The bad thing is I'm trying to use the govt's own definition of income. Look at how precisely they define income. By the govt's own tax book at best it's unearned income.We'll see shortly. quote:If I borrow money from a bank that money is not really income because I will pay it back. But I pay it back with interest. That interest eventually becomes profit to the bank and is taxed right?Correct. Let's look at this transaction from the borrower's point of view. The loan from the bank is a liability to you. Your net worth is negative until the loan is repaid. Income has not been affected. Your loan repayment contains two parts: principle and interest. The principle portion of your payment goes towards reducing your liability, the interest portion is an expense to you. Study amortization if you want to pull more of your hair out (90% of your payment goes towards interest in the early days). Depending on the type of loan (home loans), you can deduct the interest expense from your income tax. quote:In investment that process is reversed. You become the "bank" by loaning money to the company (investing). When you get dividends that money is profit to you from your investment. In other words income. If it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck it's a duck. It is income. That's part one of my point.This is where your argument breaks down. Your investment is not a loan to the company. You, as an owner, are buying an asset, that is, shares of stock in a company. You are transferring one asset for another, cash for shares of stock. Again, income is not affected. This transaction does not result in a liability for anyone. You may have an expense in the broker fees paid for the purchase, but that is it. Dividends paid by the company to the owners is not loan repayment, it is distribution of income to the owners. You may be making a mistake in lumping owners with wage earners. You only see income in terms of wage earners. Many wage earners are also owners, and the financial transactions have to be kept separate. The stock owner owns part of a company that has its income taxed. The after-tax distribution of the profits to the owners is dividend that has already been taxed from the perspective of the owner. The fact that an owner is also a wage earner or not is immaterial to the fact that the owner had their income taxed prior to distribution of the profits. Any othe wages earned by the owner will also be taxed as income, but the dividend the owner received was taxed as income to the company of which the owner is a part. quote:Part two is the argument over whether it should be taxed or not. I feel it should. AT least at some level. Even a nominal "feel good" level to avoid the jealously and huge debate that has arisen over this issue. That is the makings of class warfare. Rather than punish the successes of some because of what others don't have, it should be an incentive for others to reach for more. quote:That way the medium investor could have gotten a break but the super uber rich who really do live off the income of dividends would still pay taxes like they were receiving a paycheck. Remember, they are not living off of the income of dividends, they are living off of the income of the company of which they are an owner. The income of the company was taxed. As much as it makes you feel good, it is not a paycheck. quote:Tell that to my checkbook. I have a for more simplistic view. If it goes out it's an expense regardless. You need to take some basic courses in accounting and finance. Try setting up your accounts and managing your money in a program like Quicken to better appreciate how money is accounted for. That's the wrong argument to use. That money should definitely be taxed again because it's a profit to you. Why should unearned income be tax free when my earned income is taxed? The money is not unearned income. The company (of which you are an owner) did plenty to earn that income. quote:You aren't doing anything noble with that money. That's probably how this got started. "Look at all those noble investors propping up the country's infrastructure by investing. Let's give them a tax break for being so noble and selfless." It's not noble or selfless. You are making a profit.I'm not directing this comment to you, but this is where the tax arguments become shrill. This is where opponents claim to know how to better spend your money than you, and try to take it away from you because you aren't using it properly. quote:Snip Steve's very good explanation of Dirty CEO tricks to inflate stock valueActually, I didn't explain the dirty tricks. I explained how changes in the corporate tax structure caused corporations to move away from dividend incentive to stock price growth incentive. Let me explain the "dirty tricks" that went on at Enron for you to see how abusing the financial definitions led to problems (I'm going to be very simplistic): Enron was in the business of brokering energy -- buy it here and sell it there. They weren't actually producing energy, just trading it. It was a very speculative business and they made a lot of money (income) off of California's energy crisis (legally, the problem was in the way that California set up their market). However, Enron had a lot of losses (expense greater than income). Enron would borrow money from banks (liabilities) in order to stay in business. So far, so good. Then Enron did something illegal and got their accountants (Arthur Andersen) to certify it. The banks that held the loans to Enron would book the loan as an Asset (a future cash flow from Enron). The interest on the loan would be future income). They'd do all the proper net present value calculations to get today's value of tomorrow's cash flow, and that would be their balance sheet. Enron figured that they could buy the bank that held their loans. They tried to hide the loans (liabilities to Enron) by booking the bank (now a wholly-owned subsidiary) as an asset (the suppposed loan payments that Enron would have made that was an asset to the bank) instead of keeping their liability separate. They mis-valued the bank, and instead of recording their debts, they doubled their value, swapping their loan liability for the asset of the bank. This ignored the fact that the asset of the bank was propped up by the future loan repayments from Enron. Confused yet? Enron played this game with hundreds of shell companies. They wildly exaggerated their value, when in fact the were deeply in debt.

quote:Law as a profession has been perhaps fatally wounded by the legions of corporate lawyers that have destroyed our justice system. Haggling over the meaning of the words "is" and "alone" didn't help, either. quote:J.W.B. John Wilkes Booth.

quote:I will say I find it distasteful to sit back and discuss issues in cool robotic fashion.maybe when I get older.Maybe.

quote:In my mind that's income just the same as a paycheck. So why not tax it? What's different? What's different is that you're forgetting the up-front investment. Dividends are not manna from heaven, they are return on investment. The owner is giving up money today for the chance for more money tomorrow; they are not just getting dividends. Perhaps some perspective is necessary. Many shares of stock pay dividends between 65 cents per share to 85 cents per share. When we talk about dividend, we're not talking about huge sums of money unless you have lots of shares. But, many people take a long-term perspective and reinvest their dividends into more stock purchases. After 20 years or so, the miracle of compounding takes over and before you know it, you're rich (at least by our government's definition). When you look at it from a balance sheet perspective, different definitions apply. You have income and expense, and assests and liabilities. Income is what you earn, assets is what you own, expense is what it costs, and liabilities is what you owe. The income statement compares income to expense, the measure your your cash flow. The balance sheet compares your assets to your liabilities to measure your net worth. As you earn income, you save some of it in order to acquire assets, like a new car, a TV, or a house. What you don't save goes to expenses like food, and electricity, and such. If you can't save enough for a new car, you can put some money down and take out a loan for the rest. The loan is a liability, but the car is an asset. You're net worth is zero (actually it is the amount of your down-payment, which was a transfer of wealth from your checking account into your car). The draw on your income to pay the monthly car payment is not an expense to you, it is a transfer of wealth into your asset , the car (actually a reduction of your liability that increases your net worth by reducing the negative), minus the interest due on the liability. The value of the car depreciates over time, causing the value of your asset to dip below the cost of your liability if you're not wise in your purchase. You don't have to buy a car, though. You can buy shares of stock in a corporation. The money you put down is the purchase price on the share of stock. You don't borrow -- you own 100%. Therefore, you don't make additional payments from your income because you don't have an offsetting liability. Your net worth is the value of the shares of stock, your share of the corporation. As an owner, you are entitled to a share of the profits. However, the corporation also has income and expense (sales vs. manufacturing costs, employee salaries, overhead, etc), assets and liabilities (factories, machines, land, vs loans), and their profit is based on their income minus expense as well. That profit is taxed by the government as corporate income tax (which is not also overhead), and then what is left is distributed back to shareholders as dividend. That should not be taxed again when the shareholder receives it because the shareholder already put up money up front to buy into the company. What is taxed is the capital gain when the shareholder sells the stock for a higher price than was bought at. quote:when people lose their jobs and their pentions and college options are destroyed by a reckless company....then that same company covers the execs and cuts everyone else loose with nothing....people wake up. I agree. I don't think there are as many corrupt companies out there as you might. quote:When media focus on rags to riches BS stories utilizing synergistic strategies to inflate the reality of the situation ...During the tech bubble of the Clinton era, there were a lot of bookkeeping games going to get around the tax code. One of them was the practice of devaluing the dividend payout as an incentive and focusing on stock price instead via the stock option. Stock options were bets on the future price of a stock. The bet was that a CEO would be offered a future option to buy a chunk of stock today at today's price, but they can't sell the stock unless it reaches a certain value after a period of time. No money changes hands, the CEO hasn't purchased anything. Today he is given the option in the future to buy a stock at today's price, say $65, if the stock reaches $100 in a year. If the stock reaches $100 in a year, the CEO can exercise his option and buy the stock for $65 and then sell it for $100, pocketing $35 as profit. All the CEO has to do is inflate the stock price. There are lots of ways to inflate the stock price while hurting the value of the company in the long run. The short-term switch to stock options to get around tax policy (or, in my opinion, to loot some companies), is what is behind the business scandals. If companies focused on the proven methods of valuing performance, then they will survive. quote:In our country workers were told it was wrong to think in those terms and were beaten, shot, and legislated against until they lost track of themselves. I sense a lot of anger from this point on, so I'll leave the rest uncommented. [ 01-31-2003, 04:13 PM: Message edited by: Steve Schacher ]

The school problem is something else, entirely. You touch on the state legislature passing the buck to voters who vote their own self-interest. The fault lies with the legislature, not the voters. What's wrong with self-interest? Nations thrive on it. The problem isn't even with the legislatures, it's with the oppressive tax structure that only favors Congress. The problem in the states is that local money is being channeled to Washington via confiscatory tax policy instead of remaining local for the states, counties, cities, and towns to use. The money is being siphoned off to Washington where it is being doled back to the states with strings attached, or as payback to supporters. The money should never have left the states in the first place.

The problem with your argument is the fallacy that the "poor" is a constant class, when it is actually a churning turnover class. Everybody has aspirations of improving themselves, or at least, make life better for their children. People start out at the bottom and work their way up. Many corporations are headed by people who started out in the mail room (or equivalent) 25 years ago. The issue of double taxation resonates with the lower, middle, and upper classes because even the poor envision a day when they will do better, and they don't want to see their successes taken away from them. They want their children to be better off than they were. Regarding the captains of industry: these things go in cycles. New technologies breed new captains. Look at Bill Gates. Going back in time, look at John Rockefeller. Look at Ben and Jerry. Ted Turner. Dot-Com instant millionaires who got out in time. The market can be a fickle place. I don't begrudge the successes of others. What does it mean to be an owner? There is a difference between being an owner of a small business and being an owner in a corporation. The small businessman must deal with the day-to-day logistics, the shareholder does not. The shareholder is offering up their capital in exchange for a future revenue stream. Most stockbrokers will explain that their portfolios are either: 1) growth stocks, 2) income stocks, or 3) growth and income stocks. This means that: 1) you're in the market for capital gains, 2) you're in the market for a secure revenue stream, or 3) you're willing to trade a little risk for the chance of a bigger payout. People who depend on dividends are in group #2. They are not speculating that the market will go up, they are becoming part of a corporation that will be around for a while. Have you seen the latest round of TV commercials where people overhear cell-phone conversations about buying stocks in companies and then mistake the caller for the "owner?"

quote:Bush wants to do away with taxes on dividends. The whole dividend tax cut was never properly explained. I've heard people on the radio complain by comparing their hard-earned $50,000 income being tax, but someone receiving a $50,000 dividend check as something akin to "free money" that they didn't really earn like the hard-worker did, so why not tax it? The problem with this lack of understanding is that the complainer is failing to recognize the original transaction that resulted in the dividend. That original transaction is that someone bought into a company and became an owner. What does it mean to be an owner of something? As an owner, you are entitled to a share of the profits of the business. Otherwise, why own anything? Buying into a company is not just purchasing stocks that you intend to sell later for a profit -- that is capital gains. It is also to reap the rewards in terms of your share of the profits. Dividends are the company's disbursement of profits to the owners (shareholders). If the government taxes the profits of the company and then taxes the dividends after being disbursed, then that money is being taxed twice. In order to buy enough shares in a stock to garner $50,000 in dividends, one must have put a lot of money down in the first place, but being rich enough to purchase a large chunk of a company shouldn't disqualify that person from fair treatment by the government.

quote:Whine, whine, whine...Now, where have I heard THAT before?

Go Raiders!