Reason Morning Links: Chrysler Gets Federal Loans, Kenyan Sex Boycott, Obama Targets Tax Shelters

• Learning to love the Dutch welfare state.

• Obama goes after offshore tax shelters.

• State attorneys general to meet with Craigslist officials, expected to ask them to eliminate "erotic services" category.

• Chrysler will get $4.5 billion in federal loans.

• U.S. journalist imprisoned in Iran admitted to prison hospital due to hunger strike.

• Kenyan prime minister's wife joins other women in nationwide "sex boycott" urging feuding political factions to reconcile.

Comments

[High Every Body]

? Obama goes after offshore tax shelters.

Great. Make sure our firms are taxed offshore and here. That should bring this economy back around.

? State attorneys general to meet with Craigslist officials, expected to ask them to eliminate “erotic services” category.

‘State attorneys general’ is another term for “all kinda stupid”.

? Kenyan prime minister’s wife joins other women in nationwide “sex boycott” urging feuding political factions to reconcile.

Ah, the Achilles heel of the Feminist movement. Women do have all the power when they have something to bargain with and the Kenyan women know how to wield it.

[Pro Libertate]

Sounds like some of the Kenyan women have read Lysistrata.

[Naga Sadow]

Chrysler lost $16.8 billion last year and expects to lose $4.7 billion this year but believes it will be profitable by 2012, assuming the bankruptcy proceeding goes quickly, according to the filing. The company said in the filing it expects to start making money in 2012 and reach $3 billion in profit in 2016

It’s gonna take them SEVEN years just to make a third of Toyota’s profits? The holdout lenders are right. Just liquidate the whole damn thing. It’s pointless.

[Naga Sadow]

Pro Lib,

Ah yes. Not that it really helped end the Peloponisian War or anything but it was a good play.

“I will not crouch down like the lioness nor lift my slippers to the ceiling”

[Naga Sadow]

Goddammit! My grammar and spelling has gotten progressively worse since I began posting comments here. But how do I fix it?

[High Every Body]

Goddammit! My grammar and spelling has gotten progressively worse since I began posting comments here. But how do I fix it?

Replace your guilt with smug arrogance.

[Blue]

“Guardino said he …found it “surprising to be construed in the same way as tax cheats.”

Like Tim Geithner? Charlie Rangel?

“Chrysler will get $4.5 billion in federal loans.”

Loans. Yeah that’s what we’re calling them this week. Loans

[Naga Sadow]

HEB,

That’s my usual MO. You’re suggesting I’m not doing that correctly?

[Naga Sadow]

Interesting. It’s mostly Democrats who oppose going after tax shelters. HA!!! Suck it, you “progressive” fucks!

[hmm]

Ah, the Achilles heel of the Feminist movement. Women do have all the power when they have something to bargain with and the Kenyan women know how to wield it.

In Kenya there’s an awful lot of “goat” mitigation of that power.

[Pro Libertate]

Naga,

I think I found a flaw in Lysistrata’s plan. I’ll let you work it out for yourself:

CALONICE

But if–which heaven forbid–we should refrain
As you would have us, how is Peace induced?

LYSISTRATA

By the two Goddesses, now can’t you see
All we have to do is idly sit indoors
With smooth roses powdered on our cheeks,
Our bodies burning naked through the folds
Of shining Amorgos’ silk, and meet the men
With our dear Venus-plats plucked trim and neat.
Their stirring love will rise up furiously,
They’ll beg our arms to open. That’s our time!
We’ll disregard their knocking, beat them off–
And they will soon be rabid for a Peace.
I’m sure of it.

[MaterialMonkee]

“Kenyan prime minister’s wife joins other women in nationwide “sex boycott” urging feuding political factions to reconcile.”

Man if my wife looked like that I would have enacted a sex boycott a long time ago

“No sex til you get in the gym darlin”

[Naga Sadow]

Pro Liberate,

Ah. So you’re saying the women aren’t aware of the old saying, “You can’t cut me off, you don’t know where I’m getting it from.”?

[MaterialMonkee]

“With our dear Venus-plats plucked trim and neat.”

When I read that book I was stuck by just how advanced the Ancient Greeks were

That’s a Brazillian she talking about right there

[Naga Sadow]

MM! A warning, please. I just spit my redbull out on the screen! The university pricks get pissy when someone seems bent on ruining their shit.

[Pro Libertate]

Naga,

No. The flaw is more immediate: “We’ll disregard their knocking, beat them off. . . .”

[Naga Sadow]

You may be taking a more literal interpretation than is warranted. If I recall correctly, the women of Sparta were no pushovers. As for Athenian women . . . (shrugs).

[High Every Body]

You guys are not going to start singing show tunes are you?

[Seward]

Obama goes after offshore tax shelters.

Not the first person to note this, but one of the great things about tax shelters is that thye provide competition for other states to contend with.

[P Brooks]

The U.S. has “a broken tax system” that is “full of corporate loopholes that makes it perfectly legal for companies to avoid paying their fair share,” Obama said

DRINK!

[P Brooks]

Tim Geithner is the guy we need out in front of a campaign for “fairer” tax policy.

What a rabble of dumb fucks.

[Jack]

Obama has already turned the entire nation into one big Chicago.

Soon it will be like Kenya also.

Buy gold and canned food now, before its’ too late. You dont want to be on Obamas death list.

[Telly]

Didn’t dandy Charlie Rangel have some sort of off-shore tax shelter with some island properties where he neglected to pay even the small 2% of taxes that was required?

I suggest they start looking for these worrisome tax shelters in congress.

[Alcibiades]

A Sex boycott? I can’t have sex? They can’t do this to me, I’ll . . .

Wait, you mean sex with *women?* Oh, well, I guess I’ll have to learn to live without.

[Pro Libertate]

That’s another flaw, though Greek sexual mores were more complicated than that.

[Naga Sadow]

That isn’t historically accurate. Where’s Alcibiades’ lisp?

[Seward]

The U.S. has “a broken tax system” that is “full of corporate loopholes…,” Obama said.

Ahh, that’s a feature of the system we have, a very predictable one I must add, not a bug. A flat tax would of course get rid of this feature by making our tax system much less of a lottery. This is like public choice 101.

[Seward]

Pro Libertate,

As a general rule only males were shown having face to face sex on pottery during several periods of classical Greece’s history.

[Jack]

We should all go Galt now. Join the 9/12 Project!

[High Every Body]

The tax problem through the Leftoid lense is: “Evil” Corporations are not paying enough taxes and the good guys are paying too many.*

*Oil companies and drug are still making a profit, that needs to be ‘fixed’. Painters and poets are still starving, that needs to be ‘fixed’ too.

[P Brooks]

United Auto Workers president Ron Gettelfinger told reporters at an event in Michigan yesterday that a union retiree health trust would quickly sell the 55 percent stake it is due to receive in the restructured Chrysler.

There’s a vote of confidence from an insider. Who will buy those shares, Ron?

[Episiarch]

How could the BBC article fail to mention that the Kenyan sex boycott was straight out of Aristophanes? I thought those limey dorks all got a classical education. I have to say, Lysistrata is probably my favorite of his. Well, maybe second after The Clouds.

[Pro Libertate]

Seward,

That’s because the artists were gay, man.

[JP]

The takeaway from the Dutch-welfare-state piece seems to be that Dutch people are really different from Americans. So there’s no reason to expect that what works there will work here.

Don’t think that’s what the writer intended.

[Jack]

Corporations should hide their money from taxes as much as possible. Even if we end up paying more, for they’re Atlas holding up the sky.

[Naga Sadow]

Pro Lib,

Wait. I’m confused. I thought ancient Greek = gay?

[SugarFree]

Wikipedia leaves out the good parts:

One night during preparations for the expedition, the hermai, heads of the god Hermes on a plinth with a phallus, were mutilated throughout Athens. This was a religious scandal and was seen as a bad omen for the mission. Plutarch explains that Androcles, a political leader, used false witnesses who accused Alcibiades and his friends of mutilating the statues, and of profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries.

How were the hermai mutilated? Their phalli were broken off. All of the city, severed penises littered the ground.

[Pro Libertate]

Naga,

Only as a hobby.

SugarFree,

Don’t let Alcibiades off the hook. Bastard probably did vandalize the herms. Traitor.

[Episiarch]

All of the city, severed penises littered the ground.

“Apparently, Carl, when you bought that medium drink, you entered a binding contract that enables them to rip off your dick.”

[SugarFree]

The mere existence of shelters puts a lie to the liberal myth that taxes are voluntary and reasonable. Faced with tangible evidence that taxes are too high (because tax shelters aren’t free, but they are still cheaper than excessive taxation), the liberal response is to shut down the competition with force rather than adjust their behavior.

A light suckling is ignored, but when the tick really burrows in it gets scraped away.

We really don’t need The 2009 Bloated Tick Protection Act.

[Episiarch]

By the way, ProL and others, I don’t know if you realized that we’ve begun serializing LONEWHACKO: THE NOVEL in this thread. All contributions are welcome, or just carry over to other threads and continue the story.

[SugarFree]

Pro Libertate,

I’m taking no stance on if he really did or not. Castrated statues are funny either way.

[Craig Newmark]

What’s that? Shut down erotic services? What will half of you do for sex? Tell you what, come back to me with a plan for licensing and testing hookers for STD’s, and I’ll restrict erotic services to properly licensed ho’s. Till then, no dice, people could get hurt!

[Pro Libertate]

SugarFree,

You are in error. It’s not the castration that is funny–castration is never funny–it’s the fact that Greek religious symbols included statues with giant, erect penises.

[SugarFree]

Novel update: I’m currently editing the first chapter together. I’m not making any changes (so as to not rewrite it), except spelling and some sentence construction. Would anyone like to host the first chapter off board to not swamp the board? O’ wise Urkobold perhaps?

[SugarFree]

it’s the fact that Greek religious symbols included statues with giant, erect penises.

It must have been a lot like living in Bravo.

[Pro Libertate]

SugarFree,

Sure. We’ll post anything. So long as it is in keeping with our NC-17 rating.

[SugarFree]

Well, I could throw in some cunts and fucks at random if you like.

[jsh]

The mere existence of shelters puts a lie to the liberal myth that taxes are voluntary and reasonable.

They’re voluntary in that the people your taxes to go voluntarily decided you will pay them. You, as a class enemy, don’t count.

The collective will punish you if you don’t submit is the voluntary, collective decision of the masses.

[Episiarch]

So long as it is in keeping with our NC-17 rating.

Slaves to the MPAA as always, aren’t you.

[P Brooks]

The mere existence of shelters puts a lie to the liberal myth that taxes are voluntary and reasonable.

I think there’s a tie-in here to the Feministing chick who wanted to tax her neighbors to pay for her health insurance.

Of course, if you make your case in mime, you shouldn’t be surprised if nobody knows what the fuck you’re after.

[Tomcat1066]

State attorneys general to meet with Craigslist officials, expected to ask them to eliminate “erotic services” category.

Without Craigslist’s “erotic services” category, there’s a LOT of guys who’ll never get laid!

[Hazel Meade]

Latest new world order consirpiracy revealed.

[J sub D]

I read the morning links and say to myself “Self, surely somebody has already mentioned Lysistrata, don’t do it without reading the comments”.

Pro Lib at comment #2 proves me right.

[Pro Libertate]

J sub D,

Well, without gaius marius around, someone has to make the classical references.

[J sub D]

How could the BBC article fail to mention that the Kenyan sex boycott was straight out of Aristophanes? I thought those limey dorks all got a classical education. I have to say, Lysistrata is probably my favorite of his. Well, maybe second after The Clouds.

I was in a high school production of The Birds. We had an outstanding drama teacher and I’m not bragging, just reporting, we did three hilarious pereformances.

Mr S. was the rare public school teacher who excelled at his job.

[libertymike]

Jack-

I don’t think your invitation will be accepted in these here parts. As I have noted from day 1, most here are too concerned about how such talk will “make us look” to the masses and to the communist cognoscenti.

[Tomcat1066]

I was in a high school production of The Birds.

I was in a college production of The Birds. I played Pisthetaerus 🙂

[wingnutx]

Shut down craigslist and all the escorts will just move over to backpage.com.

That’s what the evil gun owners tend to do.

[perilisk]

“The U.S. has “a broken tax system” that is “full of corporate loopholes…,” Obama said.

Ahh, that’s a feature of the system we have, a very predictable one I must add, not a bug. A flat tax would of course get rid of this feature by making our tax system much less of a lottery. This is like public choice 101.”

Hate to destroy my fiscal conservative bona fides, such as they are, but I had always assumed the ‘loopholes’ in the income tax system had to do with determining how much taxable income you actually had in a year, not the horrendously complex process of taking that figure and determining how much goes into a few income brackets and corresponding tax rate on each, which I think anyone capable of basic arithmetic can achieve. Unless “flat tax” has some other connotations of which I am not aware.

I’m not sure how simplifying the final formula in a way that will only directly benefit the wealthiest members of society actually has any impact on the actual calculation of taxable income in the first place or would save much time regarding the multitude of deductions, exemptions, and credits that politicians hand out to their compatriots. Maybe it gives the wealthy less incentive to cheat, but I doubt that the net result is higher tax revenue (whether or not you consider that a worthwhile objective in the first place).

Or are we talking about special taxes unrelated to the normal income tax people have to deal with, generally related to punishing some person/company/industry without the hassle of due process (“windfall profits”, “90% TARP bonus confiscation”, etc.) While ridiculous and harmful, I think that’s a different subject altogether.

[mark]

perilisk, that’s true, and I think people need to recognize that as long as there are income taxes for people making less than $500,000 there will always be deductions in the name of social engineering, whereas if only rich people were taxed it would be much simpler to eliminate deductions, etc., and simplify the system. If the gov could get by on a 35% tax above $500,000 or so (isn’t that what the AMT is anyway?) I doubt many rich people would care to invest all that time and money in tax shelters.

[the innominate one]

perilisk and mark – beat me to it – good points

[R C Dean]

perilisk, your point is a good one. I think the “flat taxers” generally advocate doing away with all or nearly all deductions.

That still leaves plenty of room for determining what counts as net income, especially in defining what counts as an expense that can be used to reduce your gross income to net income.

The whole income tax is a libertarian death star, as our Founders so wisely perceived. Just go to a frickin’ national sales tax already.

[Isaac Bartram]

While I am categorically opposed to selective tarriffs for protectionist purposes, I am not at all sure that an across the board tarriff on all imports would not be a sound idea to raise money to fund the Navy, Coast Guard and port security. User pays and all.

But then, I guess by that token I’d have to be in favor of an export tax with an equal rate as well. But I don’t think I’d ever want to hear the squealing that would arise when that was proposed.

Better forget the whole thing, OK. 🙂

[Erica]

I suspect the Kenyan women don’t really care if their men go elsewhere. Given the way the Kenyan tribal men tend to look and smell, they’ve probably been looking for an excuse to cut them off for years.

[crimethink]

That face transplant recipient really should try getting her money back. Don’t view that article while eating, btw.

[Ian]

The dutch socialism article is really good. I would enjoy parts of the Dutch system. I would work less hard though, knowing that my health and security isn’t tied to my income. I think the take away from it is that the dutch system would never, ever work in the U.S. because we dont have the same shared history and culture. If we had a smaller federal government, individual states could develop analogs of the dutch system that is suited for that state’s culture. I would move to a state that gives me the initiative to donate money to charity, pay for my own vacations and healthcare. And as long as other states that have more collectivist economies dont ask for money from my state to offset their low GDP that doesn’t need to be my problem.

[Ian]

Oh, I just remembered, the article is a classic example of liberals claiming to like diversity and not liking what that actually means, or in this case it’s corollary that liberals claim to dislike homogeneity, but love the result of it.
But the good thing is that he realizes that individuality, personal freedoms, initiative, and diversity is in conflict with the dutch system. The problem is that he redefines freedom to mean economic security.

[BG]

BG

Jack-

I don’t think your invitation will be accepted in these here parts. As I have noted from day 1, most here are too concerned about how such talk will “make us look” to the masses and to the communist cognoscenti.

Libertymike, I think Jack is a parody of certain varieties of libertarianism (or quasi-libertarianism, or pseudo-libertarianism or whatever).

Not very many people who want to stock up on canned food before it is too late also believe this:

Corporations should hide their money from taxes as much as possible. Even if we end up paying more, for they’re Atlas holding up the sky.

[BG]

I’m not sure why my own screen name was at the beginning of that comment, I guess I’ll have to preview next time.