Nerd is my Gender
What's yours?
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The federal government "can cut all of the non-military discretionary spending and not balance the budget."
During a Feb. 14, 2011, interview with Fox Business News, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told anchor Andrew Napolitano that balancing the budget cannot be done without touching sacrosanct areas such as the military.
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Exactly.
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Redefining Marriage By Getting Rid of It?
Separation of church and state - I’m down with this.
A note: this doesn’t actually eliminate the ability of people to become legally partnered. It simply puts the state in charge of domestic partnerships for all, and leaves the marrying to the churches. Churches marry people; governments partner people; everyone’s happy, right?
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Priority Issues:
54% Economy/Jobs
23% Medicare & Social Security
19% Education
5% Marriage
Someone kindly alert Congress: what good is it if a man not marry another man but we forfeit our livelihoods?
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So that's what they mean by the “War on Poverty”
Minnesota Republicans are pushing legislation that would make it a crime for people on public assistance to have more $20 in cash in their pockets any given month. This represents a change from their initial proposal, which banned them from having any money at all.
Oh, well that’s only slightly less evil. How good of them.
The bill also calls for unconstitutional residency requirements, not allowing the debit card to be used across state lines and other provisions that the Welfare Rights Committee and others consider unacceptable.
Buechner testified, “We’ll leave you with this. It is not right to punish a whole group because of the supposed actions of a few. You in this room could have a pretty rough time if that was the case. It is not right to stigmatize and dehumanize women living the hard life of trying to raise children while living 60% below the poverty level. It is not right to use racist, bumper-sticker hate to inflict human misery for political gain.”
Oh yeah, well how else would the Tea Party function? Didn’t think of that, now did you!
(Source: fightbacknews.org)
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Daily Show: John Oliver demonstrates how America’s freedom packages will turn any country’s civil war into a catastro-tunity.
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Meet the gay Republican running for President in 2012
I hope he wins the Republican candidacy. Not in a “I hope Sarah Palin wins, because she’s so crazy then nobody will vote for her!” kind of way. But in a “I could actually be okay with him as a Republican president” kind of way.
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Family Research Council believes that countries should be allowed to persecute queers
This is why the Family Research Council is on the SPLC hate group list. Pretending like queer and trans* people are not victims of state-supported discrimination and violence worldwide, and then opposing measures to make the world a safer place - this is hate, pure and simple.
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Report: General Electric Paid No Federal Taxes Last Year
But corporations are people too!
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Huckabee: Americans Should Be Forced, At Gunpoint, To Learn From David Barton
Imagine if Obama said something like this!
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A ban on same-sex marriage is not going to make people less gay.Indianapolis Star columnist Erika D. Smith (via pansexualpride)
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Wait… what is going on?!@ZerlinaMaxwell: “I have to say that three dudes in a room negotiating women’s rights in order to avoid a government shutdown does not sit well with me.”
This: http://feministing.com/2011/04/08/it-comes-down-to-this-again/
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http://incorporatemyuterus.com/
“The point is that Republicans are always talking about deregulation and big government. But I say their philosophy is small government for the big guy and big government for the little guy. And so, if my wife’s uterus was incorporated or my friend’s bedroom was incorporated, maybe the Republicans would be talking about deregulating.”
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Rex Sinquefield is at it again!
That’s right, the same rich asshole who is trying to kill St. Louis is also attacking the entire state! Why can I use words like “attack” and “asshole”? Because there’s no other way to describe a 12.25% tax on food.
Here’s the PDF in text format for you:
There are currently nine initiative petitions and two legislative proposals to place a constitutional amendment before voters in November 2012 that would eliminate personal and corporate incomes taxes and replace them with a greatly expanded sales tax. The proposals have significant costs for the state and its residents, and are fraught with uncertainty.
What Would the Mega Sales Tax Proposal Do?
• Eliminate state personal and corporate income taxes;
• Eliminate earnings taxes in St. Louis and Kansas City (even if the cities vote to continue the tax in April); [and we did!]
• Eliminate current dedicated state sales taxes that fund conservation and other services;
• Eliminate current state sales tax exemptions, including the exemption for food;
• Eliminate all tax credits except the Senior Circuit Breaker Tax Credit*; and
• Replace the current sales taxes with a higher sales tax on purchased goods AND almost all services.
The mega tax shifts from the diversified revenue structure that currently funds the state services that benefit Missouri’s local communities and economy to one that relies entirely on the consumption of individuals.
The Proposal Taxes Essential, Basic Products and Services
This is not the current sales tax, but a greatly expanded sales tax that would apply to nearly every product and service that Missourians need – including basic necessities and services required by working families. It is unlike anything ever seen before in any state.
• Basic necessities currently exempt from sales tax, like food, prescription medication, rent, and child care would be taxed.
• SJR 1 & HJR 8 tax health-related services including family counseling, mental health treatment, copayments for doctors’ office visits, and even nursing home care.
• Nearly every service industry becomes taxable. Transportation, realtor services, legal and financial services and even funeral services would be subject to the tax.
These Essential Products and Services Would Be Taxed at a Much Higher Rate
Estimates of the tax rate needed to pay for the cost of the proposal range from 10 to 15 percent, depending on which version of the proposal is evaluated. Jim Moody, former budget director under Governor Ashcroft, recently reported that the initiative petitions would require a rate of 15 percent (12.25 percent state rate plus an additional average local tax rate of 2.75 percent). Every time an exemption is added, the rate would need to be adjusted even higher.
The Vast Majority of Missourians Will Pay More in Taxes under the Proposal
A 2010 analysis by the Missouri Budget Project and Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy found that even with a prebate to every household, 95 percent of Missourians actually pay considerably more tax under this plan than they currently do.
The Mega Sales Tax Proposals are Constitutional Amendments
By locking in the policy as a constitutional amendment, any future changes would be extremely difficult and would require another vote of the people.
The Mega Sales Tax Will Likely Have a Negative Impact on Missouri’s Economy
Seventy percent of Missourians live near the borders of other states. The state’s 12.25 percent mega sales tax will likely provide an incentive for them to shop for goods and services in other states.
The Mega Sales Tax Creates Potential Financial Insecurities
• It is not clear who may get a prebate (a payment made to taxpayers to offset the cost of higher sales taxes), how the prebate would be funded, and how to assure that it holds its value over time without decreasing state revenue.
• Legislators will be pressed to exempt additional products/services from the mega sales tax, which means the rate will have to be higher than the estimated 15 percent (12.25 percent state, 2.75 percent local).
• The tax rates called for in the proposals are insufficient to replace current revenue. If the tax rate is capped at 7 percent (as called for in the petitions), instead of the 12.25 percent needed to replace revenue, the Missouri Budget Project roughly estimates the state will have a general revenue shortfall of more than $3 billion. (Missouri’s general fund budget is currently $7.9 billion.) This shortfall would have tremendous negative impact on education, health care, transportation, services for seniors, and the infrastructure that makes Missouri a desirable place to live and work.
• There will be considerable administrative cost to administer the prebates, particularly if monthly checks are sent to taxpayers to offset the cost of the mega sales tax.
• By taxing new goods, but not used goods, there is a potential disincentive to purchase things like newcars and houses. This could have a dramatic negative effect on manufacturing and building industries.
For more information, contact the Missouri Budget Project.
*The senior citizen circuit breaker is a property tax credit for seniors, disabled veterans, those who are 100% disabled, and certain widow(er)s.
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It took place in one of those countries currently going through upheaval. Agents of the government followed parents as they took their children to school. As parents left the school, the agents approached them , detained them, and in full view of the school, two of the parents were hustled away in unmarked vans. Inside, other parents were terrified to leave, fearing they would share the same fate. Stuck in the lobby, they made frantic cell phone calls, and peering out the windows, worried for those unlucky enough to be outside. All day long the school received calls, parents asking anxiously if it was safe to retrieve their children. Finally, after hours of this terror, the agents were convinced to leave, all the while insisting they had every right to be there and do as they pleased. Can you imagine this? Imagine the anguish those parents must have felt, torn between protecting their children and protecting themselves from persecution. Can you imagine the toll, the pain inflicted? Can you imagine your own children, yourself in that situation, and what you would do or hope to do? I know when I read stories like these, I think of my own children, and thank God we live in a country where this could never happen. I thank God we live in America. Ahh, but here is the most horrible part of all. You see, it was this country. It was America. Everything I described happened last week in Detroit. ICE was the agency, and the Hope of Detroit Academy the school. The crime of the parents was not having legal documents, and for that two of them were made to disappear.
This could never happen in America… could it? | Fair Immigration Reform Movement
Just sickening. Fucking sickening. (via bigbadcolored)
I don’t have a place in my brain for this, for having so little regard for human feeling that you would allow children to watch from afar while you load their parents into an unmarked van and take them away. The politics don’t matter - how do you ignore when children are forced to go through that kind of trauma over paperwork?
(via thetart)
Police State, USA. Anti-Immigration fascists torture latinos, on the taxpayer dime.
(via sexgenderbody)
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27% of communication by members of Congress is taunting, professor concludes
The entire article can be condensed into this single line:
“I think most people,” he said, “would say that this is not a good thing.”
Genderqueer with a touch of happy humanism.
