You have to read this to believe it:
But then in mid to late June, along came the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy. The Democratic triumvirate’s intent to starve the nation of energy, regardless of the consequences, and newly minted presidential nominee Barack Obama’s designs on punitively taxing 5% of the nation’s most productive in the name of redistributing money to everyone else, both became crystal clear. As a result, paraphrasing what I wrote at the time, businesses, investors, and entrepreneurs responded to the trio’s total lack of seriousness by battening down the hatches and preparing for the worst.
They haven’t stopped, which is why the POR economy is now the POR recession as normal people define it. It is also why tax collections have taken a dive.
***Through March 31 of last year, according to the Daily Treasury Statement, “individual income and employment taxes not withheld,” which are largely payments made by the self-employed, partners, and those in S corporations whose income flows through to individual tax returns, are down about 13%, or almost $15 billion, from a year ago. These not-withheld taxes are what drove last April’s all-time collections record, which is definitely not going to repeat itself.
It’s clear that quite a few ordinarily industrious people “went Galt” months before the tea party movement even came into existence. As a result, fiscal 2009’s deficit could come in closer to $2 trillion than to the Obama administration’s estimate of $1.75 trillion, or even the Congressional Budget Office’s $1.85 trillion.
The title of the piece is “Tax Receipts Plummet as Americans ‘Go Galt.'”
You have to kind of admire the mental gymnastics that piece took. The author ignores the fact that the recession started in December ’07, instead blaming it on Obama/Reid/Pelosi in the summer of ’08, and then ignored that recession when considering tax receipts have dropped and attributed that to people “Going Galt” instead of, you know, the worldwide recession.
And you know what? As stupid as that piece is, you can guarantee some wingnut will repeat it. Why? Because it has numbers in it, so it must be true. That is a veritable dissertation compared to the movement that brought us Liberal Fascism.
*** Update ***
I’m John Cole, not Juan Cole, you fricking clown. I was a member of PJM from the beginning. You’re attributing quotes to me that were made by a completely different person. Can you get ANYTHING right? Those things you are linking to at Anti-war and Zombietime- WERE NOT WRITTEN BY ME. THEY WERE WRITTEN BY JUAN COLE, A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSON.
Buffoon.
JL
Can someone please explain to me what liberal fascism is?
Is Obama the next Mussollini?
mcc
I’ve always thought that unemployment is a lot like a sort of "going galt".
RueM
I think I just hit my peak wingnut tolerance of the day. Off to lolcats!
El Cid
I’ve been joking about this ever since this ridiculous "Going Galt" was mentioned.
"Hey, man, sorry, I heard you were laid off."
"Naw, man, I, um, it’s a protest. I’m Going Galt."
"Going ‘alt’? You mean, like, survivalist, or off the grid?"
"No, no, Going Galt, where I’m so frustrated by socialist government that I withdraw my valuable contribution from society."
"Yeah? Huh. Okay. Right. Sure. All those other people walking out of the building same time as you with their pink slips were ‘Going Galt’ too, I guess, or maybe that was just you. Yeah, good luck with that, prick."
Left Coast Tom
Having numbers is one step above a Republican "budget".
trizzlor
Something I’d like to see that no one has yet done is tighten the knot between US economic collapse and unstable failed-states around the world. David Kulcullen (Petraeus’s advisor) discussed this in an interview recently: his biggest fear is that the economic crisis will ripple to unstable and nuclear countries such as Pakistan, which can easily be flipped to extremism with obviously disastrous results.
The tea-baggers want creative destruction? Fine, first justify the cost of potential nuclear war. Of course, thinking about consequences doesn’t align well with a movement built on rage.
Not In Our Name
Liberal Fascism is in an impostor from Kenya who won’t release his birth certificate robs me at gun point and spends that money lining the pockets of thieves.
ed
So where did they go?
El Cid
Oh, jeebus, I forgot to do the soci@list trick, can someone spring my comment free from moderation pls?
TenguPhule
Galt’s Law: The Probability of Galt being mentioned approaches 1 on any post about Republicans.
arguingwithsignposts
I must have missed Obama’s part in the economy in 2008 since he was just a sitting senator at the time. And didn’t Bush have to sign off on budgets during his term as president? Or am I just missing something?
My GOD, teh stupid is strong in these people. How big must the clue-by-four be to get these people to stop with teh stupid?
SpotWeld
Words have no meaning any more, do they?
El Cid
I demand the original vault copy birth certificate, the original Social Security card, a blood sample, the ATM card and PIN number of the commenter who made that comment otherwise I have no choice but to assume it’s a lizard person imposter hired by the gray aliens to confuse the rods and shadowpeople.
Also, I demand to be refunded all taxes I paid during the Bush Jr., Bush Sr., and Reagan regimes since I view them all as illegitimate thief impostors.
dmsilev
@arguingwithsignposts:
He reached back in time and caused the recession and the budget deficit and everything. Same way that he faked that birth announcement in the Honolulu newspaper.
-dms
Colette
@NOIN:
You were robbed at gunpoint? Instead of making slightly incoherent comments on blogs, shouldn’t you, you know, call the police?
Ninerdave
@Not In Our Name:
You forgot rapes your daughter then forces a gay abortion on her.
Mnemosyne
At least he’ll make the high-speed train between Disneyland and Las Vegas run on time.
arguingwithsignposts
@dmsilev:
Damned space/time continuum!
mellowjohn
and he was able to do it using a super-secret george soros-funded tim machine.
shhh, don’t let anyone else know.
mellowjohn
time machine
joe from Lowell
They aren’t even trying anymore. The nonsense that comes out the wingnuts these days isn’t supposed to reflect reality. Hell, it isn’t even supposed to be plausible.
These people say things to make themselves feel better about their irrelevance. The fact that it bears no resemblance to the truth isn’t the point.
Not In Our Name
@El Cid: I’m a regular American, you can tell where I am from just by looking at me. With Obama, we just don’t know. He won’t even show allegiance to our Flag. How dare he try to run OUR economy!
What we need to do is string up the criminals and then let people have more of THEIR money so they can invest it in the market. keep your laws out of the way of my capital gains.
We need to have a recall election so that the voice of the voters can be heard.
@Colette: The police were the people with the guns. Just try paying paying taxes for only the services you received. The Feds get mighty disagreeable when you make taxes fair in your own way.
Dennis-SGMM
Prunes or bran?
opium4themasses
Neither. Full of shit.
arguingwithsignposts
@Not In Our Name: We need to have a recall election so that the voice of the voters can be heard.
Wait, I thought elections were the way voters’ voices were heard? I’m so confused. Your temper tantrums means more than the regularly scheduled representative democratic elections?
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@El Cid: "Yeah? Huh. Okay. Right. Sure. All those other people walking out of the building same time as you with their pink slips were ‘Going Galt’ too, I guess, or maybe that was just you. Yeah, good luck with that, prick."
Hee hee
Of course! They lay off the really indispensable linchpins of society first.
Svensker
We have a good friend who is one of these suffering overtaxed business people — he has gone Galt so thoroughly that he is declaring bankruptcy on his store and moving into our very small 3rd bedroom in 2 weeks because his other choice is becoming homeless. What he needs is a capital gains tax cut!
Ninerdave
Wow….
Doug H.
@Not With Our White Women:
White, right? The Klan rally you’re looking for is down the hall and to the right.
GSD
I love the warped concept that the wealthiest are also the most productive.
Ah yes, look at Paris Hilton produce.
-GSD
qwerty42
Heck yeah. We need one. ‘Cause, you know, the election in November was so last year.
AkaDad
It’s an…oxymoron.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@Ninerdave: That has to be an infiltrator. Srsly.
Seanly
You are a first rate idiot. We all benefit from many of the services provided by our local, state & federal governments. Do you get mail? Do you have electrical, water, sewer or garbage service? Do you drive on the roads? Even if you don’t have any children you benefit from the education system when you communicate or interact with other people.
Dennis-SGMM
@Ninerdave:
Nothing like a unified movement with clear goals to shake the pillars of society.
AkaDad
Even her sex tapes have low-production value.
Socraticsilence
Man remember a few months ago when Madoff and Standford went Galt, that was weird.
N M
@Not In Our Name
Brick Oven Bill? Is that you?
Dennis-SGMM
@Socraticsilence:
You’ll mock no more once Chrysler and GM go Galt.
Bill Teefy
I am hoping that more of my competitors go Galt.
And please, right-wingers in California, we are too liberal for you so move to Galtiguay or Galtistan where they don’t have unions, OSHA, less sudsy detergents or whatever we are oppressing you with.
My taxes were higher this year than they were each of the last three and they are almost to where they were before Bush took office. The amazing thing is, I had more money after taxes the last three years too.
r€nato
You know, not all that long ago – about a month or less ago – I was openly joking that pretty soon the right would begin characterizing all the unemployed as part of their "Going Galt" movement.
It seems the gap between "they can’t possibly be ridiculous enough to say THAT" to "wow, they really are that ridiculous" has shrank from years to months to weeks to perhaps mere days now.
For some time now I’ve been sarcastically joking that Al Gore is a hypocrite because HE EXHALES CO2!
Any day now I fully expect to hear that, in all seriousness, from some rightard…
chuck
"punitively taxing 5% of the nation’s most productive"
Since they’re so productive, you shouldn’t have a problem forking over bailout money to them. Right?
Oh I tried to use logic on wingnuts. Sorry. I’ll try to think up a slogan I can screech out while I go rustle up a sign to wave.
arguingwithsignposts
@N M:
Indeed. Anyone find irony in fact that Not In Our Name takes the nom de plume of a known anti-Iraq War protest group?
chuck
@Not In Our Name:
And as Carl Kassel says at the end of every Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me: If any of these things come true, we’ll let you know.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@r€nato: about a month or less ago – I was openly joking that pretty soon the right would begin characterizing all the unemployed as part of their "Going Galt" movement.
When you’re right, you’re right! You called that one.
What it all reminds me of is that scene in Say Anything where the leading man, smarting from a breakup, consults with the losers hanging out at the convenience store on Friday night. They bullshit at him some and he asks "…if you guys know so much about women, why are you here on Friday night?" They gibber a bit and come back with "We chose this!"
r€nato
@Not In Our Name:
fixt.
(John, your web goddess has done so much for this blog… can’t she fix the goddamn blockquotes so that they can handle a stupid line return without breaking?)
trizzlor
@chuck: It’s not that complicated, the tea-baggers oppose government meddling in any way – weather it helps the poor through progressive taxation, or it helps the wealthy through bail-outs. They’re short-sighted, but at least they’re consistent.
Not In Our Name
@Seanly: I pay fees for all of those things. Stamps for mail, bills for water, garbage, electricity. I pay gas taxes which fund the roads.
As far as education, I would rather they gave me a voucher so I can choose where to spend my education money. Well actually, I’d prefer to just keep the money myself and spend it on an efficient privately fun school. Education would be much less expensive if the government kept its hands out of it.
Socraticsilence
"We need to have a recall election so that the voice of the voters can be heard."
Dude- its been 6 months, the voice of the voters was heard-loudly- It said "We’re the Real American’s now, and you can love it or leave it."
Get it through your skull we are the majority now. You know how people always go on about the Silent Majority- well, they woke up in 2006 and took their country back from the elitists who usurped it- first through the courts and their Activists judges (those dictators in Black Robes who imposed their choice for President on us) then by exploiting our fears to consolidate power, and finally through lies and propaganda in order to get us to accept their martial desires. Oh and behind the scenes- they shredded the very values we hold dear- apparently to feed their perverted Hollywood Inspired delusions.
– That work for you I thought if I put it in terms you’d understand you might begin to grasp why we’re getting sick of the anger you have over being "disenfranchised" (ironically something you guys actually did to large sections of the populace in order to win in 2000)- or the lectures on spending from the Red or more accurately "welfare" states.
omen
not only the author, but the bulk of rightwing radio. all throughout the presidential primary season, the right stayed in denial and ignored signs that the economy was headed south. hannity told one worried caller who expressed concern about all the neighborhood shops closing up all around her to stop listening to mainstream media and she would feel better. said the news was making her sick. stories about a bad economy were treated as a liberal conspiracy designed to steal the election. it wasn’t until sept 15th, the day wall street collapsed, were they forced to pull their collective ostrich heads out of the sand. that any of these people still retain a shred of credibility about the economy after being spectacularly wrong – is beyond me.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@Not In Our Name: I’d prefer to just keep the money myself and spend it on an efficient privately fun school.
If school is fun, kids won’t learn. They need beatings!
Socraticsilence
Can we use Galt in everyday life- like if I finish my term paper on Saturday, can I say I plan to "Go Galt" from sobriety?
cleek
i’ll just post this again.
this graph is all you need to know about the Obama deficit.
LD50
How much longer til the wingnuts start denying that they even know who GW Bush is?
jenniebee
@Not In Our Name:
Just try paying paying taxes for only the services you received.
That’s the Blue State dream…
Left Coast Tom
I guess I missed the Teabagger Protest against no-bid contracts to politically favored companies. They must have been too busy…teabagging.
The "tax" angle is particularly weird. While the corporate sponsors whom they follow unquestioningly are likely to see their tax rate rise…all the way to where it was under Clinton…, most of the actual…baggers…have already seen a reduction.
Martian Buddy
I’m starting to suspect that Randroids, like fundies, don’t actually read their sacred scriptures all that much. The whole point of "Galt’s Gulch" was that Galt and his fellow Nietzschean supermen were forming their own little enclave in order to build the foundation of a glittering new Capitalist’s Paradise. In common usage, however, it seems to mean "make snarky comments on Freep about quitting your job and waiting for the government checks to roll in."
I detested "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" and I know this — what’s their excuse?
Anoniminous
Sometimes teh snark is SO unnecessary.
LD50
Where exactly were you last November? I seem to recall a lot of voters being heard.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@Martian Buddy: In common usage, however, it seems to mean "make snarky comments on Freep about quitting your job and waiting for the government checks to roll in."
Remember, these are the same dickweeds who referred to petulant or bombastic warblogging from a dim basement in a cloud of Cheeto farts as "the war of ideas at home".
Jenkins
man, Neil Peart has put on a lot of weight.
gizmo
My guess is that at least 99% of the Teabaggers are people who make less than $250,000 a year. Thus, they will all be getting a tax break from Obama and the Democrats.
Go figure….
jenniebee
@Not In Our Name:
Vouchers being (apparently) dispensed not by the government, but by the Voucher Fairy.
LD50
"Productive" is wingnut jargon for ‘rich’. Christianists esp. like this term. Gets around all that negative stuff Jesus said about the rich.
See here
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Not In Our Name:
My goodness, this is almost as good as the old DougJ. I think it just made my evening.
Socraticsilence
Out of curiousity when will my Iraq War and Bloated Defense Budget Refund check arrive? Cause somehow I think my cash back for that might be a bit larger than yours for all that unused education.
r€nato
@cleek:
that graph is confusing. The numbers under each president’s name do not add up at all to the cumulative yearly deficits/surpluses on their watch. See, for instance, the 0 under Carter’s name, even though every year he was in office there was a deficit. What is that number supposed to mean? I looked and looked at that graph and I could not make heads nor tails of that part of it.
Not In Our Name
@arguingwithsignposts: ACORN and its "community organizers" stole the election with all their Mickey Mouse registrations.
We need REAL IDs for REAL Americans. We can’t have all those illegals who don’t pay taxes voting in OUR elections.
Then we can have a REAL election.
Montysano
@Not In Our Name:
I read this as spoof and/or snark and blew right past it. This is getting too complicated. Balloon Juice-ing is hard work also.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Not In Our Name:
…
This is brilliant! Does the old DougJ have a sockpuppet?
arguingwithsignposts
@Not In Our Name:
The myth of "your money" wrt education is that your measly $700 or so per year actually pays for your child’s education (speaking as someone who paid property taxes in a local school district – not that much really).
Idiot. The only reason there is public education is that the pooled money of all the taxpayers helps fund it (analogy? think insurance). That’s why private school is so expensive.
Here’s a bargain: take the money YOU pay for education through school taxes and spend it on your child’s education. See where that gets you.
LD50
I guess they’re just enraged to have their taxes lowered by a Negro liberal. Seems like a worthwhile reason to protest.
r€nato
@Not In Our Name:
Instead of socialized policing and socialized fire protection (which we all know is EVIL), we should instead have every citizen be responsible for providing for their own safety and security. Give them all a voucher (which, as pointed out, comes from the magical voucher tree) and have them hire their own security firm and fire protection.
I’m sure that will be just as successful and efficient as privatized electricity markets were earlier in this decade.
And if my neighbor’s house goes up in flames because he didn’t hire a good enough fire security firm (or none at all), that won’t affect me at all so what do I care. Amirite?
…even better, just require all citizens to arm themselves rather than hiring private security to replace socialized policing. What could possibly go wrong with that?
omen
@trizzlor:
It’s not that complicated, the tea-baggers oppose government meddling in any way – weather it helps the poor through progressive taxation, or it helps the wealthy through bail-outs. They’re short-sighted, but at least they’re consistent.
consistent if you overlook the minor case of government meddling like invading iraq.
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
@Ninerdave:
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Also at TPM was an article about tea baggers finally getting a memo explaining the double meaning of the term "teabag". The thing that caught my eye was the following warning that was also included:
"[n]etroots interviewers might ask leading questions about immigration, President Obama, etc., to bait you into making comments they can paint as racist [and] might also ask questions designed to show you are uneducated and ignorant."
omen
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
is dougj bob?
arguingwithsignposts
@Not In Our Name:
OK, now I don’t even believe this is real. Teh snark is difficult to discern from teh stupid.
LD50
ACORN registered 10 million FAKE votes to ILLEGAL aliens?
AND here you WINGNUTS say community ORGANIZERS are ineffectual!
Oh, you FORGOT to mention AYERS and REZKO.
Oh BTW, if you’re just spoofing for giggles here, well done.
Bill Teefy
@jenniebee: Voucher Fairy. Win.
There is nothing that prevents any American from setting up private schools. But some of those who want "private" schools actually want government funded schools for profit.
r€nato
@arguingwithsignposts:
Great point. If we did it NINM’s way, not only would only those with kids pay for their education… they would pay for their education only so long as those kids were in school and that’s it. Once the kids were out of school the parents would no longer be responsible for paying for anybody else’s education.
That would only cost… let’s see… what, $10,000 or more per kid per year? That sounds like a winner of a plan to me. I bet the Mormons and Catholics would really get behind that one.
arguingwithsignposts
@LD50:
Yeah, that’s the problem. There’s no way to tell which is true, because the REAL wingnut stupid is not distinguishable from the mockery. Wingularity indeed.
Left Coast Tom
Of course not. But, as I understand loonytarianism, you are free to sue your neighbor for allowing the flying embers from his house to burn down your house. Of course, your neighbor may not answer the suit, or may not pay any judgment. But we can’t have gummint enforcing gummint judgments. So, instead, your community is free to decide whether your neighbor should be banished for his non-payment. He will not be compelled to comply with this banishment, because that would be gummint coercion. But he might choose to do so.
Hopefully this provides adequate satisfaction for your house being a pile of embers.
Not In Our Name
@r€nato: I can police my own land, thank you very much. You’ll pry my gun from my cold, dead hands.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@arguingwithsignposts:
This is what vouchers are for. Wingnuts want to keep THEIR $700 and combine that with a government voucher for $9300, which is made up of LIBERALS $700 contributions, and send their child to a private school with compulsory school prayer and unicorns.
omen
"not in our name" was a leftwing anti-war protest slogan. must the right co-opt everything from the left?
arguingwithsignposts
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
what, no ponies? Dammit. I was promised ponies! And pie!
You bring up an interesting point, though. If we’re talking about being "selective" in our tax payments, as Not In Our Name is, then I damned sure don’t want my tax dollars paying for this idiots’ kids’ educatiamum. Social Darwinism in extremis.
Bostondreams
@Not In Our Name:
You do realize that for the most part, the average private school is no better than the average public school, and in many cases have less qualified teachers? Oh, and Christian private schools? The worst.
Not In Our Name
@omen: I am simply taking the phrase back just like our neighborhood watch took back the night.
AkaDad
I think the solution is to have kids work and pay their way through school. It’s that type of bootstrappiness that makes America great.
arguingwithsignposts
@Bostondreams:
Why bring logic into the discussion.
Ironically, my step-sister was enrolled in private school for a year while she was a student because my parents didn’t want her mixing with teh blacks, but the teaching was so abysmal that after one year she was put back in public school.
Anecdotal but true.
jenniebee
@r€nato: that’s the spirit, Renato! And if our ability to supply a well educated work force slips because we don’t provide public education any more, that won’t affect my kids, because even if companies that need scores of highly educated workers start to look elsewhere for large enough populations of them, my honer roll studint will still have no trouble getting a job at the Pitch ‘n’ Putt.
Bonus points for Med Schools that "teach the controversy" on evolution because to do otherwise would violate their students’ Freedom of Religion.
Triple Bonus Points for defending tax breaks for Christian Scientist pharmacists who can’t be demoted or fired for refusing to fill any prescriptions because their religion forbids medical intervention, and who therefore "earn" $0.25Million a year for doing absolutely nothing other than making a nuisance of themselves. But hey, at least they’re not doing anything damaging for their quarter mil, like, say, bringing down the entire economy, amirite?
Ninerdave
@Not In Our Name:
But what if your future husband that Obama forces you to gay marry doesn’t like guns?
asiangrrlMN
Mwahahahaha! An elaborate, time-consuming parody troll. I was undecided until he threw the word ‘ACORN’ in his last post. That was so fricking stereotypical, I knew it was a parody troll.
ACORN ACORN ACORN! Did that scare him off?
I, too, want my taxes back that I spent on the wars and the massive defense budget. What the hell? This is like when I was in college and there were brouhahas about using student activity money to support gay-friendly groups. The rightwingers didn’t want their money used to support queer groups.
It was rightly decided that the money had to go to ALL student activity groups.
I really wish the Republicans would grasp that.
P.S. You stole the election in 2000, and we dealt with it. No matter what you believe about the last election and the constant polls from around the world that say how insanely popular Obama is, SUCK IT UP!
Sheesh. Wusses.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Bostondreams:
That what diploma mills like Liberty University are for. You can send your wingnut child to substandard Christian private schools, where your wingnut child can pray all day long, and then off to Liberty University* where they give you a law diploma, a job at the justice departmart, a pony and two unicorns.
Or, you can work at the National Review.
– Bob Jones U. is another option.
trizzlor
Left Coast Tom:
omen:
Sure, the "cut everything but defense" mentality is hypocritical on it’s face, but the wingnuts have always claimed that the military is the only thing the government has done right – this has always been their caveat and it continues to be so.
As a side note, having familiarity with the software industry where projects are over-budget 80% of the time, I think no-bid contracts have their place; there’s many companies who simply don’t have the capacity to carry out a project on spec, but would win in open bidding and end up costing more to clean up afterward.
Sheesh, you know it’s a bad day when you’re defending the wingnuts.
omen
@Ninerdave:
lol
he should have made the sign bigger.
asiangrrlMN
@Not In Our Name:
Gladly.
Litlebritdifrnt
I have not yet read all the comments so forgive me if this has been stated above but has anyone stopped to think (and you know throw into the calculations) the amount of boomers that are retiring? Jebus Christ on a cracker, we were all warned about all of the boomers retiring and how it was going to cripple social security, so noone thought to throw into that equation the loss of tax revenue from all of those boomers, I mean really? What part of the "paying into the system v. drawing from the system" bit didn’t they foresee?
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@jenniebee:
Libtards watch Idiocracy and see a future of wingnut rule.
Wingnuts watch Idiocracy and see nirvana.
WOLVERINES! And too, also.
arguingwithsignposts
@trizzlor:
Brings up an interesting point about bidding for contracts. However, don’t think the solution is as you suppose.
Especially related to Iraq contracts, it was clear that contracts were politically motivated.
More to the point, would be better for gov’t./others to judge the validity of the bids on more than the "low bid" value. Low bid is not always best bid.
Of course, that assumes that any human group could make that decision apart from personal/professional manipulation. Gov’t here is no better/worse than private, as far as I’m concerned.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I have. My solution is Boomer Green! It’s made of old people!
jenniebee
@Not In Our Name:
They say this and then they act all mystified when the DHS describes them as armed and potentially violent. Go figure.
omen
@trizzlor:
as ninerdave’s sign reminded me, wingnuts are still entrenched in the culture wars, lobbying to deny gay marriage and to outlaw abortions. i’d call that pretty meddlesome.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@AkaDad: I think the solution is to have kids work and pay their way through school. It’s that type of bootstrappiness that makes America great.
IIRC there was a privatized school somewhere back East that, predictably enough, fuxx0red things up heavily enough that they ran out of money and proposed exactly this. I’ll have to see if I can chase that down.
– Aha, yeah. Edison Schools in PA. Here we go.
Halteclere
@trizzlor:
Or, like the state contracts my company is involved with, companies bid on a specific proposal and the winning company is held to significant penalties if deadlines aren’t met. Most all major civil works (roadway construction) is done this way. And if the states don’t believe that a company has the financial backing to withstand being significantly late on completing a project, that company is dismissed from the proposal process.
With this bidding system cost overruns are definitely contained.
Which is also how I’d love to see military contracts enforced. Plus include a $100M penalty for every US personnel killed due to sloppy design or implementation (I.e. terrible electrical wiring).
omen
@jenniebee:
i heard a clip of g. gordon liddy urging people not to register their guns.
r€nato
You know, before the evil liberals took over the world, there was a time when we didn’t have socialized medicine and socialized education and socialized policing and socialized fire protection and welfare and all this nanny-state bullshit.
Of course, that was when crippled people were left to die in the cold and people with epileptic seizures were regarded as possessed by the devil and anybody who didn’t conform to their pre-determined role in society was burned as a witch or a heretic and it was believed that disease was caused by ‘ill humors’ and an angry, vengeful God and the universe revolved around the Earth and the stars were pinholes in the firmament of Heaven.
But hey, if NIMN – about whom I cannot quite figure whether he’s a spoof or the real deal – wants to live in Libertarian Fantasyland, put up a PayPal page and I’ll pitch in for a one-way ticket to Somalia. There they have few if any taxes, VERY small government, and each citizen is responsible for his or her own security and education.
Nirvana!
gbear
With that quote, I call NIONrod as a fake. Nobody is that cliched.
trizzlor
@Halteclere: This sounds like a very reasonable solution, but I’m curious now well this works in an unpredictable area where money needs to be spent quickly:
You and arguingwithsignposts propose a "bid" system which is based on the "value" of the company (where incapable corporations are disqualified): in a situation such as Iraq where contracts need to be assigned rapidly, how much research needs to go into figuring out if a wide field of proposals is feasible, as opposed to just going with the company that has always done your work (i.e. Halliburton).
The other alternative – charging companies for over-bid or over-due projects; in a completely unpredictable situation like Iraq, how many credible companies do you think would participate in these contracts with no protection from the government? In an environment where a hostile insurgency can overwhelm even an honest plan?
Honest questions that I don’t know the answers to.
Left Coast Tom
@trizzlor:
Having formerly worked for a defense contractor, the usual answer to that issue is cost-plus contracting. Which is disfavored, of course, because it can be abused, particularly in the absence of a strong program manager on the government side. So it’s use should be restricted. And when it is used, the question of "cost-plus…what?"…that "what?" matter is rather important.
But no-bid seems far worse than the worst abuses of cost-plus.
Tax Analyst
Uh-uh…they meant "Mooslem-meanie". See? Now it makes sense, doesn’t it?
New headline for Faux News: "Obama-trauma" sweeps the Nation!"
Question: Could these nut-wing ass-hats get any more unhinged?
Answer: Yes. Watch and see.
omen
@Litlebritdifrnt:
i was listening to a forum on cspan where i was surprised to hear there are more millennials than there are boomers.
http://www.ncoc.net/index.php?tray=content&tid=top5&cid=226
r€nato
@Litlebritdifrnt:
well, see, conservatism is simply a means to rationalize narcissism. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
Conservatives want the advantages of taxation – clean water, good schools, good streets, public safety, clean air, consumer protections against fraudulent and negligent corporations, workplace safety, food and drug safety – but like spoiled children (or really, mooches), they don’t want to have to actually pay for any of that.
Economist Uwe Reinhardt said something very interesting and pertinent in a Fresh Air interview, with regards to this peculiar attitude Americans have towards ‘socialized medicine’ but it can easily extend to the ‘fuck you, I got mine’ right-wing mentality:
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: My solution is Boomer Green! It’s made of old people!
Don’t eat that stuff! You go around all day afterwards believing that any music made after 1970 sucks.
Mike in NC
Ladies and gentlemen, introducing the 2010 Chrysler Galtmobile! It just sits in your driveway and rusts.
Merely the latest incarnation of one of the resident BJ spoofers. Bah!
Ed Marshall
I was riding my bike to work this morning and passed the thirty people or so with the teabags outside the PSB. I’ve never seen a demonstration stationed directly at the front door of a police department before, that’s uhhh, not the way this stuff normally works.
I got caught at a light with them, and one of them was a guy I was sitting next to at a bar eating lunch with back in December. He was drunk, harassing the bartender about how he couldn’t pay for lunch and needed a bailout. He kept asking me if I needed a bailout. I told him if he was really strapped I’d buy his lunch. No, he pulls out a Franklin and pays for lunch after fucking with the server for ten minutes. "You know who is going to pay for all these bailouts? You and me!" At some point he had said he was a contractor, and he had pulled that $100 out of a big thick stack in his wallet, I don’t know any contractor’s that work in cash that actually pay taxes. Maybe he does, I don’t know, but I seriously doubt it.
Then he started telling me some Obama joke about food stamps, and I told him I had worked for the campaign and spent the election in Gary, IN as a flusher and that after the last eight years, I didn’t want to hear anything out of him and went back to work.
This guy sees me today, four months later and yells "That’s that prick I was talking about, that’s the ACORN guy!". I thought I was up on my wingnut, but those fuckers started yelling about shit I’ve never even heard of, and they were MAD! I still don’t know what Obama or me (or ACORN which I have a very fuzzy idea of what they even do) *did* exactly, but I was nervous as hell and blew the light in front of the cop shop.
Not In Our Name
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Excuse me. Is sock puppet like teabag, another innocent phrase you sex-crazed liberals have stolen from us normal people?
Dave_Violence
In order to "Go Galt" one must throw his lot in with a pirate and have lots of gold – along with the ability to "produce," unlike the "looters."
I don’t really see any of these folks out there "going Galt" being great producers of anything other than wasted tea.
Tax Analyst
A bad example, because she actually DOES produce. Maybe not anything you think is worth a squat, but she is actually a somewhat productive person, albeit mostly as a "brand".
Whatever, I think lumping her in with the truly totally unproductive and indolent heir/heiress types is unfair and undermines the point. You want "unproductive, indolent, and a total pimple-on-the-ass-of-society-and-the-world? OK, I’ll give yah one: Andrew Luster, heir to the Max Factor fortune. His personal "claim to fame"? GHB rape. Now THAT’S your unproductive, useless, born to wealth asshole. Fortunately his worthless ass is in prison now and probably will be a long, long time. Good riddance.
But while Paris Hilton might not be to your taste, her "rap sheet" would show exactly one .08 DUI and a fair bit of poor judgment in it’s wake, which caused exactly zero harm to anyone except herself. Since then? Not a single episode involving law-enforcement. She has businesses that presumbly employ people and she makes paid appearances at fashion shows and has done several paid commercials. I would be willing to venture that unlike those very rich who live off Tax-Preferenced Investment Income, she very likely pays a tidy sum in Federal Income Taxes each year. She certainly would for her fashion appearances and commercial endorsements. If her businesses make money I would imagine they yield a decent amount of tax revenue as well. Unproductive? Hardly.
So make your point about "the unproductive wealthy", but please do a better job of picking your poster person, por favor.
Halteclere
@trizzlor:
Yea, these are situations where a full bidding process is not feasible. But I have a hard time imagining any situation where the proposer (in the above instances the US Government) doesn’t have some rough concept of the expected services to be delivered. Sure, the more vague the proposal bounds are the more a potential contractor will bid. Plus there are always change order processes that can be implemented if unknowns are expected to pop up. But this is still better than no-bid, no-bounds awarding of a contract, and therefore no-performance metrics, no-measure of contractor success or failure.
Maybe support of the Iraq invasion was both too complex and too hastily conceived for wrapping any bounds on the support contracts, and therefore the bidding process was abandoned and a single company had to be given an unlimited check to cover any eventuality.
Or maybe the above was the excuse to thwart the bidding process on purpose.
trizzlor
@Halteclere:
This is essentially what I’ve come around to – I guess we can agree that certain situations require a no-bid contract, and those are situations that the US government should not be involved in.
kay
@Ed Marshall:
Good story. There’s nothing nefarious about ACORN. They’re earnest, and they actually walk the walk, in other words, do difficult, boring, ground-level organizational work, for peanuts.
It kills me when Republicans screech that they’re subsidizing ACORN, because, as you probably know, you and I subsidize Catholic Charities, Lutheran Ministries, and hundreds of right-leaning "activists" within those religious organizations every day, and we have for years.
We run millions in government funds right through right-leaning religious organizations, and they provide everything from addiction treatment to "family planning" counseling. They’re contractors, basically, for state and federal government social services.
And we funnel a lot more money to religious organization "contractors" that provide social services than we ever have, or will, to ACORN. Not even close.
Mary
@Ed Marshall
That is a really creepy scary story you told. Bullies and liars all.
arguingwithsignposts
@trizzlor:
How do we know unless we ask, which is the exact opposite from the "no-bid" contract. seriously, how do we know if we don’t try?
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@trizzlor: I guess we can agree that certain situations require a no-bid contract, and those are situations that the US government should not be involved in.
Sounds good. Especially when, as has been pointed out above, the government has no inkling of an intention of acting in anything vaguely considering approaching starting to begin to be good faith.
Ninerdave
@omen:
But that’s a "good" type of meddlesome, duh.
demimondian
@kay: Hmm.
Kay, in my youth, I lived and worked in a church, and, as a result, wound up running into ACORN on a regular basis. They were, at the time, the next best thing to a fund-raising scam, with exorbitant overhead levels, and a very poor effectiveness score. (That is to say, the organization payed itself first, and didn’t do a good job supporting the community at all.)
Now, they may have reformed since then — but I look at ACORN as one of the bad ‘uns, no matter what their politics are.
Ed Marshall
I work upstairs from a Catholic Charities and it would take some shit to beat them for wasting money. I’m pretty damn sure they are making a profit on that scam.
They cap out giving out electric grants to keep people from having their lights turned out at $50 if you can score some ridiculous red-tape hurdles and charge fees that dwarf that for court mandated counseling.
omen
@r€nato:
narcissism connotes selfishness. but when people support policies that ultimately do not benefit them but actually are harmful to their interests, that’s not selfishness, that’s self-hatred.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@omen: that’s not selfishness, that’s self-hatred.
I dunno – it can still be selfishness. It’s just stupid selfishness.
asiangrrlMN
@Ed Marshall: That’s really creepy. That would freak me out.
Ok, folks. The pictures of these teabaggers have reminded me of the McCain/Palin rallies, and now I am sad. asiangrrl has officially lost her snark–which is not a pretty sight.
TenguPhule
Your offer is acceptable, Earthling.
mclaren
Like all mouth-breathing libtards, you just don’t get it. The economy crashed in December 2007 because the mere thought of the election of the socialist Afro-Maoist Black Panther Muslim Manchurian candidate Obama so unnerved the financial geniuses who run Wall Street that they started to miscalculate, and suddenly all the hedge funds collapsed.
Don’t you see???? It was OBAMA’S FAULT!!!!! The mere prospect of that sinister Nubian mastermind (born in Manchuria and carefully nurtured to destroy America from within) attaining the highest office in the land filled the minds of our best & brightest with such unreasoning terror that it toppled the entire American Empire and deracinated our economy. Yes, clawing and screaming in terror as the polls showed Obama edging closer toward the presidency, the directors of large companies throughout America hurled themselves from their boardrooms into waiting limousines, howling with mindless fear for the future of America… Meanwhile, following this nefarious master plan of destruction, liberal fascist professors at elite colleges throughout the country hypnotized their helpless students with brain-control indoctrination, destroying an entire generation of Americans! O woe, alack, alas, for what had been (as Spiro Agnew once averred) "the greatest nation in the country."
Yes, now America has been laid waste by the Nubian anti-Christ! I have seen the best minds of my generation dragging themselves through the trading floors, starving, hysterical naked, burning for the ancient connection with the starry dynamo of laissez faire capitalism, and driven to madness by inconvenient facts and inappropriate logic. Only Glenn Beck can save us now by simulating tossing gasoline on his fellow studio guests and pretending to set them on fire.
kay
@demimondian:
I didn’t say ACORN were effective. I said they aren’t nefarious. I think hiring people to register voters, like ACORN does, is incredibly stupid.
The fact is, though, we’re running tens of millions of dollars through religious organizations to contract out court-ordered social services, and I haven’t found that to be wildly effective or efficient.
Catholics and Lutherans are the big players here locally, although Mennonites have recently entered into the county-fund bidding wars. The Mennonites are running court-ordered "parenting" programs. I’m not screaming about a vast right wing conspiracy.
They also (in my experience) are filled with people who are right-leaning, and have an overt religious agenda. No one has any problem with that. They’re religious conservative "activists" and they’re taxpayer funded.
ACORN’s big sin seems to be that they are 1. liberal and 2. secular
They’re a government contractor, for social services, just like the religious groups. Why the disparate treatment?
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Not In Our Name:
You rock. Rock, rock, rock, rock…
omen
@kay:
catholics, lutherans & mennonites don’t run free workshops that teach people how to avoid predatory lending like acorn does.
clearly acorn is evil.
Svensker
@Not In Our Name:
Just another right wing perv.
kay
@omen:
I tell my juvenile clients, when they’re court-ordered to the church-run groups, that the Lutherans will talk them to death, and the Catholics will test them to death.
I have never had a client ordered to Catholic Charities who was not immediately drug tested, no matter the circumstances of the arrest or the nature of the charges, and I have never had a client ordered to the Lutheran shop who was not sent to "anger management".
Is it a coincidence that the Catholic hospital does the drug testing and the Lutheran minister is also a LSW and does the anger management workshops? They’re both billing the gubmint. Not the feds, as far as I know, but what’s the difference? We’re paying for it.
Vast right wing conspiracy! I need a placard, and a permit. I’m outraged.
Comrade Darkness
Gah! what a sexy idea for a character.
Excuse me, I have to go write a novel now…
Dennis-SGMM
Didn’t they open for Ozzie Osbourne?
vacuumslayer
That was my favorite part, too. I really do think these douches think they are the ones who keeps this world and this economy moving. Wake up, assholes, it’s the middle class doing all the little things you probably find beneath you that keeps this country going it. It’s the nurses, the teachers, the social workers, the sanitation workers, nail technicians, people in the food services who make the incredibly priveleged lives you live possible. They work their asses off. They are the productive ones. How dare you assume otherwise?
Deborah Testa
As the owner of a struggling S-corporation, I’m staggered by the stupidity of the conclusion that because my payroll taxes are down I must have GG. Let me assure the author of the quoted text: I’m not paying my payroll taxes because I’m not generating any income and therefore I’m not paying myself. As soon as I can pay myself, I will — and I will grudgingly pay my payroll taxes and hope that Obama can use the money to fix the mess Bush & Co. left us in. I’ve lost four clients in the last year, mostly to overseas outsourcing, and partly because of the frozen credit market.
My mother is someone who argues that rich people shouldn’t pay taxes because they create jobs. I’ve always wanted to ask: should they have their taxes cut when they take those jobs out of the country?
ksmiami
I love Uwe R. I saw him at Princeton – I think he has a better sense of humor than Krugman and is especially brilliant about Health care economics… which is killing our economy by forcing people to work in positions that may not serve society as a whole just to keep insurance and because the costs of our system are eating into GDP at an incredibly alarming rate, but you see, with the current crop of Republicans, you can’t even mention these realities without them getting their freaky socialism thing on… the only rational debate to be had is within the independent / democratic areas and that is why these people have to be cut off from any media coverage if we want to actually, well solve these long term issues…
Comrade Kevin
This should be enough for anyone to know that Not In Our Name is a spoof..
Herb
Tom Blumer is a hack and a half. I’ve been a major troll in his side. You should see the last post he wrote. Some lady scammed the food stamp program in Michigan and in Tom’s slanted eyes, it was evidence of a national trend! The guy’s a hack and proud of it.
Richard Bottoms
Deal.
Michael Hartford
So if I tell the unemployment office I’ve "gone Galt," will they still cut me my check? This might be a clever way to paper over the resume gap …
LFC
How come so many right-wing pundits are as dumb as a bag of rocks?
MNPundit
@Left Coast Tom: Imagine how relevant that piece would be if it’s numbers were encased in little bubbles!
PS
A recall election seems like an interesting idea. Could you remind me again where that is in the constitution? Oh, wait, it’s not?
Luckily Republicans support activist judges who will surely read this into the constitution. Oh wait…
You can IMPEACH the President – and you should feel free to try. In case you’re wondering, the first four in the line of succession right now are below. Take your pick.
Joe Biden
Nancy Pelosi
Hillary Clinton
Timothy Geithner
PS
A recall election seems like an interesting idea. Could you remind me again where that is in the constitution? Oh, wait, it’s not?
Luckily Republicans support activist judges who will surely read this into the constitution. Oh wait…
You can IMPEACH the President – and you should feel free to try. In case you’re wondering, the first five in the line of succession right now are below. Take your pick.
Joe Biden
Nancy Pelosi
Robert Byrd
Hillary Clinton
Timothy Geithner
John B
This is the dumbest thing ever.
Everybody knows that gay marriage caused the recession.
RobG2
Is "going Galt" anything like "going Commando"? Just asking.
Charlie Miller
@JL: Liberal fascism is a desperate attempt on the part of the far-right to deny their true identity.
Facism = extreme nationalism, worship of the military, intolerance of minorities, loathing for labor unions, propaganda presented as news, and suppression of dissent.
Sound like anyone we know?
sheiler
@Deborah Testa…amen sister. Hope your biz picks up.
Mark Palko
Scoff if you will, but look at what this has already cost our culture.
tompain
Not In Our Name:
How much have you paid just for the privelege of living in the richest, most free nation that has ever existed on the planet? How much have you paid to compensate the children and grandchildren of the people who died so that you could be free to pretend that you are an island of self-sufficiency? How much have you paid for the right to have your property rights protected rather than live in a society in which anything you think you own could be taken from you at any time?
How much did you pay for the lottery ticket that allowed you to be born here rather than in Sudan?
Dennis
This is one of the times that politics reminds me so much of religion.. It all comes down to faith, in what stack of papers and words you have chosen to believe in..
You have accepted these words to be the true faith, and all others are heresy. And the heretics are nothing more than liars and demons and deserve nothing less than burned at the stake.
The gulf between is getting ever wider between the left and right due a lot to the refusal of either side to compremise. To either side it has turned into all or nothing scenario, and either way it goes, the winners make the losers pay
nana2roaw
I am loath to put forth this theory because for years, the "looney left" (as opposed to the left) hurled the term racist at anyone with whom they disagreed. However, the wingnuts are so over the top with irrational, anti-Obama vitriol that I now firmly believe that racism is the real cause for their anger.
Kathy W
It’s the "5% of the nation’s most productive" claim that makes me hoot with laughter. Productive like, say, Paris Hilton? Ruth Madoff? Wall Street bankers? Hedge fund managers? The folks lounging by the pool down at the country club? This attempt to tie the possession of enormous wealth to "productivity" or "hard work" is laughable. The game is rigged, and we all know it.
You want to know what being productive REALLY means? It means getting up at 5 a.m. to study, then getting your kids ready for school, then packing in a 10 hour workday followed by an ESL class before dragging your weary feet home at night. THAT’S productive.
Julian
The really idiotic thing about this concept is that, as any one actually paying attention to the economy knows, the recession of today is really just the recession of Bush’s first term, amplified by the damage done through years of policy which, far from resolving that crisis, merely suppressed it with cheap credit and artificially reduced prices.
The collapse of our housing market was part of a larger, global trend that has been playing out for the last decade. It hit England ~ 2002, was beating up the Spanish economy between 2003 and 2005, it slowed the Irish economy for awhile during the same period until they started emulating our behavior. If we had really wanted to avoid this, then we would have been focusing on reducing consumer spending and indebtedness over the last 6 years. Instead, we continued to encourage indebtedness in almost every way a government can so that the Bushies could claim their Reaganomics were causing growth, and the populace, ignorant to the workings of finance and banking, continued to believe their bankers and credit card companies; piling new cards atop maxed out ones, and acquiring third mortgages to put off paying for it. The current line being pushed by friends of finance, that they didn’t see this coming, is also malarkey, something which becomes obvious when you consider that, at the same time they were pushing these mortgage plans, they were also lobbying state governments to remove Homsteader protections. In other words, at the same time that the banks were selling people mortgages they knew these people couldn’t pay back, they were fighting to change the laws so that they could seize their homes when they defaulted.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@LFC: How come so many right-wing pundits are as dumb as a bag of rocks?
No idea.
BTW – I’m trying to choose a really good-smelling turd to use in a project, but every one in the whole pile of them smells, well, like shit. Any advice?
SFAW
Don’t you see???? It was OBAMA’S FAULT!!
WTF? I thought it was all Clinton’s Fault!!!1!2!????
Will someone PLEASE add me to distribution when the Official Wingnut Talking Point memo gets e-mailed? It’s really embarrassing when I blame the wrong Liberal Fascist (whether Islamocommunofascist or not) for everything that’s wrong in the country.
How come so many right-wing pundits are as dumb as a bag of rocks?
HEY! No need to insult rocks! What have they ever done to YOU?!?!?!
You have accepted these words to be the true faith, and all others are heresy.
My friends at the Judean People’s Front would agree.
FSMSTER
About the no-bid contracts, the military could do it the way they did in the past, on their own. It definitely would force them to plan out past the part where everyone throws roses at them.
Sort of like the underpants gnomes:
1) steal underpants – go to war
2)????
3) make money – make money in the even friendlier business climate that is modern Iraq.
sinner
yes this piece is flawed,,,,, but so is everyone who thinks that this administration is going to do anything but help usher in the 2012 end of the world as we know it as predicted in years past. No that is not from the Bible iether. But i’m sure you have all heard of it(2012),and just blow it off .
JM
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
SFAW
yes this piece is flawed,,,,, but so is everyone who thinks that this administration is going to do anything but help usher in the 2012 end of the world as we know it as predicted in years past.
Is that in dog years?
Or per the Mayan calendar? If the latter, then I would respectfully suggest that their 2012 occurred about 300 years ago, so maybe their calcs were a little bit off.
Now, if you told me that those Tibetan monks had just reached God’s 8,900,000,000th name – well, then I would be concerned.
Butler T. Reynolds
Ayn Rand was no conservative. Republicans who adopt the term "going Galt" don’t fully grasp what it represents.
To write an interesting story, Rand used John Galt to simply speed up what happens naturally in an economy where free enterprise is not respected. (It does not matter if that disrespect comes from a Republican or Democrat.)
Most people who "go Galt" are not making a political statement. They are either going out of business or just deciding that the return on an investment of money and/or time is not worth it.
Europe is a prime example. Europeans are thought to value leisure more than Americans. It just turns out that leisure gives a greater return than working like Americans do.
It happens in America, too. A former employer of mine intentionally kept his company at about 75 employees. He said that there were regulatory and tax implications that he did not want to deal with if his company approached the neighborhood of 100 employees. It wasn’t a political statement, just a value judgment.
I say that Republicans "don’t get it" because they want to blame this mess entirely on Barney Frank and Obama. It is obvious that they do not fully appreciate the extent to which their darling W spit in the face of free markets over the previous 8 years.
Nunnsense
Prez Obama not only wasn’t born in the U.S., he also nuked whales for Jesus on the weekends while growing up in Hawaii. His grandpa made him do it. Obama got away with that b/c of affirmative action. So what if he was editor of Harvard Law Review? Anybody can do that, big deal. Everybody knows Obama was responsible for the faked Moon landing in 1969, July I think.
See how easy it is to fake being a Republican? You just make stuff up mixed with real things and people believe you. Bush knew this. While governor, he executed more than one convict per week. And millions of people voted for that twisted freak of a human…twice. They knew they were getting a modern Caligula but hey, who cares?
John Cole is not Juan Cole. Thanks for clearing that up.