ACORN

[kandrathe]

Kandrathe "Yes, but is it the tip of the iceberg?" I can only agree with Jester, regarding this remark. There is nothing to warrant insinuations, false or not.

This is not a new issue this year. Acorn trying to game the system has been a problem for many years. Here is an article from 2006 in the WSJ.

Kandrathe "Not really. There is time to get familiar with candidates and vote your conscience."

Most of what you see now is distraction, and the rest is what you already knew (or maybe not, but in that case you really should consider not voting, because you may not be able to tell the difference at this stage). You should distrust accusations like this one against ACORN, for example, for the mere fact that it appears so close to the elections.

I have a problem with a European telling Americans they are too ignorant to vote in their own election.

Kandrathe "A little bit of fraud in a few States can have a huge impact on electoral votes."

Sure, but I wasn't talking about election fraud. This whole issue with ACORN is about registrations, and so were previous election related cases. You still need real voters to abuse registrations, as Jester pointed out.

Right, but where does the fraud start? If Donald Duck is a registered voter in Ohio, will you have much faith in the election system whether or not he votes? If he does vote, then someone committed a crime.

I was talking about the fact that so many people apparently want to believe such groundless accusations. It can't be that hard to find a better motivation for your political choice, I hope? Do you really want the government that wins a mud slinging contest?

What do you mean "groundless"? It seems there is ample evidence to be suspicious when 1/3 of the 600,000 some new registered voters in Ohio have discrepancies.

Kandrathe "I'm of the same mind on this as congressman Davy Crockett who..."

Would you also give away a week income for the benefit of a widow you didn't know? And again for the second? Third? How many widows would Davy Crockett have been able to support on his own? Like he said, only if other members of the Congress would do the same, there would be enough money to succeed. Doesn't that make him a socialist, asking the rich to help bear the burden of the poor? Or do you also need to hate corporations for that?

Well, you missed the point. The point was that in order to give the money to the widow, you need to take it from someone else. If you feel like giving someone money, then you should dig into your own pocket rather than the fellow next to you. I guess you don't have a problem taking money from people.

You also don't really understand socialism then either. If individuals decide to give money to a worthy cause it is not socialism. Asking the wealthy to help the poor is not the same as taking the money from those defined as "rich" (as defined by income) to give to the poor. The very wealthy have lots of wealth, but only a moderate income. We have a system where Warren Buffet pays a 17.7% effective tax rate while his employees on average pay 32.9% effective tax rate. Mr. Buffet sets his own salary at $100K, which is all he needs and yet on paper he is supposedly the wealthiest person on the planet. When he retires he will probably pay much less. He also intends to give away the bulk of his money to charities.

And, yes, I do give away money beyond my taxes for the causes that I want to support. I wish I could do more, but I do what I can do.

If all people were like the Davy Crockett you describe, we might not need taxes. But since that is obviously not the case, you better accept we can't do without, Kandrathe. Unless you want to start donating a lot, of course.

Maybe all people are not like Rep. Crockett, but that doesn't mean the government needs to force everyone to be beneficent (especially when the money goes to stroke important campaign contributors). How many people in the US really wanted to give their tax money to support the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago?

Kandrathe "So, it goes back to my old axiom... " I looks to me that your axiom is not to accept responsibility and always blame others.

Yeah, like the latest financial crisis was all my fault.