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He said the schools are making out like bandits and he has no children.  Schools rarely make out like bandits and not having kids is no reason you don't pay taxes.

 

LouieB

 

My lord. It's a figure of speech. To make out like bandits simply means that they are getting money and providing nothing to him, personally.

 

You claimed he said this:

 

Oh I get it, only people with children should pay for schools. And if you can't pay then I guess your kids don't get educated.

 

I love the word Dickensian.

 

LouieB

 

You're ridiculous.

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Anyone hear George Tenet spew his defense of the CIA's torture policy while it under his reign? Pathetic.

 

The various defenses and rationales behind the use of torture are driving me nuts. Moral and ethical reasons aside, it's not even effective.

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But you don't remember the FEAR after 9/11!! We were certain we were going to get hit again and had to whatever it took to stop it!! 9/11! Seig USA! Seig..... Wait, I mean USA USA USA!

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But you don't remember the FEAR after 9/11!! We were certain we were going to get hit again and had to whatever it took to stop it!! 9/11! Seig USA! Seig..... Wait, I mean USA USA USA!

 

If you are not with us you are against us.  

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Remember this?

 

"Based on global chatter, we are raising the national alert threat level to code red today"

 

Anytime things went wrong with the bush administration, they would crank up the fear to cow the populace. The bastards.

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Again, the problems you're having with the city are a direct result of the policies of the state of TX. They tried an experiment that sounded nice to a lot of people but doesn't work. 

An experiment? As far as I know, Texas has never had a state income tax.They must be doing something right, because millions of people are flocking here from other states and the last time I checked the state had a multibillion dollar surplus. (Frack, baby, frack.)

 

I don't know if this is your intent, but you sound like a cranky old man, yelling about how schools are taking money from you.

As I've said more than once now, I have no problem with paying taxes for schools. I certainly haven't yelled about anything and I've also said more than once that the whole mention of school taxes was a mere aside, an off-the-cuff remark in a post about involuntary annexations.

 

Of course I have not looked into your school district --- if they are underachieving (both students and administrators) - you can have a beef about wasting your tax dollars

Our district is one of the best in the state and our teachers are well-compensated; I would never say that my tax dollars are being wasted. Some people might be bothered by the fact that we have schools named Bush and Reagan, but the newest was named after LBJ so there's a semblance of bipartisanship.

 

My favorite part of this thread is Hixter saying he didn't say something he said.

Putting words in someone's mouth is not the same thing as them saying it. I don't feel badly about correcting the record when it happens.

 

He said the schools are making out like bandits and he has no children.

No, I didn't. I said that I raised two children and put them through public schools. 

 

not having kids is no reason you don't pay taxes.

I've also clarified my views on school taxes several times now, but I never said that not having kids was a reason to not pay taxes. Perhaps you misread my post, but those words were your invention, not mine.

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The ACLU is now saying that Obama should pardon Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet, etc. to at least acknowledge that crimes were committed (since it's obvious that there's no desire to prosecute them). While I understand the argument, I don't think I could support that -- especially given how aggressively those folks have defended their actions. If they showed some remorse -- or at least acknowledged that they stretched the boundaries of the law -- that would be one thing. But as long as they're adamant that what they ordered was legal, I'd rather keep pressure on the POTUS to pursue legal action.

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Mostly from Mexican states, right?

Nope, California leads the way. (I was one of them.)

 

Last year Texas gained more out-of-state residents than any other state – 584,034 people. Most of the migrants came from California (66,318), Florida (32,619), Oklahoma (29,169), Louisiana (29,042) and Illinois (28,900), according to the Realtors’ report, which is based on census data. http://bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com/2014/10/texas-tops-nation-in-domestic-migration.html/

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Hixter doesn't like taxes and thinks government is wasteful (and TX >>> CA). Shocker. Yet it seems like people aren't phased by the CIA torture report. Are we that jaded or do we think the U.S. operated in a legal and ethical manner in the immediate post-9/11 years?

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And they boast an underfunded state that kicks things down to their cities and counties while making property taxes unusually high. Awesome plan lone star.

Does it really matter whether a state derives most of its tax revenue from property taxes or income tax? Or Sales tax, for that matter? Six other states also have no state income tax, yet they all seem to be doing fairly well. Washington state springs to mind.

 

Texas has one of the lowest tax burdens of any state, yet our schools routinely perform better than highly taxed California. People and jobs are flocking to the state, so it's hard to see it as a failed "experiment" at this time.

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Does it really matter whether a state derives most of its tax revenue from property taxes or income tax? Or Sales tax, for that matter?

These decisions all affect the market and working people in different ways. In your case it meant your neighborhood was annexed.

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Texas has some finer points. Tacos in El Paso, rock music in Austin. It just seems weird to complain about a side effect to an economic approach while you're championing it. Like: no income tax is so rad, but the real problem with this country is a franchise tax that burdens small businesses who are barely profiting and property taxes that drive away big industry. Low tax burden right?

 

I just like noticing where cognitive dissonance pulls the wool, my own kind does it with "go green" slogans and single occupant vehicles, or "race doesn't matter" folks.

 

PS: Also worth mentioning, Hixter is a real sport for kicking the ball around with all these leftists. He's also really smart, so it's fun to probe a point where he's empirically wrong.

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The Democratic party is a little sore over the latest loss at the polls (no more Democrat senators from the deep south, most governors are Republicans) so now there's a "let's just forget about the south" attitude. Doesn't really bother me any.

 

I know you lean to the right, but I would think it would bother you, at least somewhat.  The South is very diverse and many different types of people live there.  Even though you don't necessarily agree with their politics, it means they are not being represented properly.  You may not necessarily agree with their politics, but you should be troubled that large groups are not being represented in the governmental process.  

 

Take for example Austin, a large urban and very liberal, however the city itself does not have an "anchor district."  The largest city in the nation not have one.  So instead the people of Austin are represented by 5 pretty conservative Congressmen.  

 

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/kwgaxa/democalypse-2014---south-by-south-mess--austin-s-real-weirdness

 

And now, because of gerrymandering, the attack on voting rights, the invalidation of several key parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 , and general apathy towards the political process, millions upon millions of people are not being represented.  And now with the Dems effectively abandoning the South there is even less of a chance of actually having someone who actually represents the diverse population.  

 

That is troubling, not from a progressive/left standpoint, that is troubling from a democracy standpoint.  People need to feel that they are represented, that their elected officials are doing what they need to do to help their lives.  If not we will have a a government who can unilaterally oppose the will of the people and do things like having a city annex large portions of unincorporated areas to bolster its tax base.  

 

A government only works when all people are being represented properly.  When people are excluded from the process, regardless of political affiliation, it is bad.   

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