“Building a new stadium down the street does not work unless (Ron) Lancaster spilled some DNA in the lot where they’re going to build the new stadium,” he added. “You have to refurbish (Mosaic Stadium). You’ve got to can all new ideas you might have and use the sacred ground. Fenway did that and that is why Fenway is loved. The new Yankee Stadium isn’t the same as it used to be.”
The former Boston Red Sox and Montreal Expos pitcher will not be running for the vacant mayor’s position in Regina later this year. With his opinion on the new stadium, he wasn’t sure he would garner many votes anyway. But that is nothing new to the former member of the Rhinoceros Party. Lee ran on the Rhino ticket in 1988 for president of the United States. Not surprisingly, he didn’t make the ballot in a single state. He said one of the high-ranking members within the party gave him a six-pack of Molson Canadian and asked him to run for president.
“I adhered to their funny philosophy,” Lee said. “My campaign slogan was ‘No guns, no butter. They’ll both kill you.’ And I only campaigned in federal prisons where I knew they couldn’t vote, and I only accepted a quarter in campaign contributions.”
With it being an election year in the U.S., Lee said he is all in for the re-election of Barack Obama.
“The only time (Mitt) Romney opens his mouth is when he needs to change feet,” Lee said of the Republican nominee. “If Obama does lose this, which I can’t see happening, then it’s because of a lady in Florida who works for Jeb Bush and Diebold, the voting-machine company. If Obama even comes close to losing this election, it’ll be fraud.”
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Oddly enough, I did do a Google search, Steve. Enjoy.
Law school is basically about: Can you do IRAC. Once you prove that you can, you'll be able to pass any exam, given at any school, and against any base of students. And you'll be able to pass the bar exam.
If you can't do IRAC, you're basically not going to jump through the hoops.
And there are some very smart people who can't do this. They might make good engineers, doctors, politicians... but they won't be lawyers. You need to be able to think like a lawyer to succeed as a lawyer.
I'm sure you must be right, but it's hard for me to understand how anyone could think a legal argument could proceed any differently. The difference is probably less in what goes on in the brain and more in how what goes on in the brain gets written down onto the paper.
The study I mentioned on the last page has some crazy stats about the bar exam. It claims that 22 percent of black law-school grads never pass the bar, along with 9 percent of Asians, 15 percent of Native Americans, and so on [chart on page 3]. Those numbers seem incredibly high. I can't imagine laboring through 3 years of law school, being awarded a degree, and then not being able to practice law. It seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
A major difficulty people have is hearing a set of facts and spotting the issues. Which is essentially what you need to be able to do when a client or potential client tells you his story.
And you need to understand what the law is and how to apply it to the facts, so that you know which questions to ask.
And you need to be able to accurately assess the situation, and make the proper arguments if need be.
Please note that I'm not saying people who can do this are geniuses. Far from it. But it's a specific skill that a lot of smart people don't have. Lots of people get tripped up along the way.
According to US News its 48% female now, although that still seems low because I believe there are more women then men in law school now.
Students going directly from undergrad are generally the cream of the crop because the only thing admissions has to go off of are grades and LSAT. Older students are also further away from school which is an adjustment. Its not 100% the same, but when I went and got my MBA, the older students (including myself) were more likely to go get drunk because it was going back to school after a couple of years of "real life." Also some of the older students had not taken a math course since high school which became an big issue.
God, no. He looks like he's in his 50s to me. I was shocked to hear he was that young.
Law schools have to pay the professors pretty well but the other costs are low so they are money makers for their universities - causing quite a few new law schools and expansions of old ones over the last 30 years. That has opened a lot of slots for more marginal students. The bar passage rates of some schools are appalling, IMHO. That hasn't seemed to bother folks, although the ABA accreditors threaten to crack down from time to time.
Heh.
Some old bag spits at another old bag at a political event of some sort
His body looks 32. His face looks 52. On balance, 42 seems about right.
Oh come on. We all know that a 9% failure rate for Asians is unrealistic.
Next time she'll get out of her face.
1. They freak out.
2. They don't take their bar review course seriously.
3. They don't even take a bar review course.
One of the great LOLs of legal education is that you're not really qualified to take the bar upon graduation. There are lots of bar subjects that students will have never seen prior to their bar review course. And guess what costs a few grand over and above your tuition?
You make it sound like some sort of racket. I mean, you can't even sit for the bar in most states without having graduated from an ABA-accredited law school. That has to be because there's something about what you learn in those three years that makes you qualified to practice law.
It's not like people are making tons and tons of money by forcing prospective lawyers to jump through a bunch of hoops or anything.
What's worse is if you happen to go to a law school in a different state than the one you take the bar in.
I found a company that sold the materials only, interned* with a local lawyer who also reviewed the materials to make sure they were right, and skipped the summer bar and took the winter one instead. Those extra 6 months or so of actual legal work made the bar easy.
* I followed him around in court, helped with legal research and drafting motions, and so on. Learning criminal law that way made the bar review materials pretty much superfluous so I could concentrate on the stuff I was less familiar with - torts, contracts, property.
A fair number of lower tier schools now, as I understand it, basically teach to the exam now as a draw to some students. So they can pass the bar just fine, sorta. Of course, good luck to you if you have to deal with one of those lawyers later.
As I think it was Ray above - law school teaches people to 'think' like a lawyer. The bar makes sure you actually know the laws in the place you practice.
Perhaps in theory, but likely not in practice. Half of the bar exam tests basic areas of generic law that aren't tied to any particular jurisdiction (and often can deviate significantly from the actual law of the state); basically your first year of law school plus two other subjects. The second half tests a few different things, one of which requires no local knowledge. Even the areas where you should know the law often give significant partial credit: you can absolutely screw up the actual rule, but get most of the points just by properly spotting the issues and applying your made-up version of the law properly to that set of facts.
If you are good at thinking like a lawyer, you're very likely to pass the bar exam with even a mediocre amount of preparation. I took a course and didn't take it nearly as seriously as I should have, and then about a week before the exam, freaked out a bit and went into a full-on cram. I wrote essays on areas of the law that I knew pretty much nothing about and ended up passing my first time.
Now, whether in grading they will give you the points even if you completely get the law wrong - I have no idea. Seems a ridiculous proposition, but I've seen some people that have passed and it makes me wonder.
And a quick correction to Sam's claim that Associate professors are untenured: it's actually the opposite-- the progression goes Assistant (usually tenure-track)-> Associate (after getting tenure)-> Full (best pay, but hardest rank to achieve, a lot of people spend the bulk of their careers at the Associate level, because they don't ever have the track record-- mainly publishing cred-- to go up for Full). The titles are regrettable and confusing to students.
There's a whole range of designations, some of them idiosyncratic, to refer to "contingent" non-tenure track faculty-- adjunct, clinical, "teaching fellows", teaching associates (this may be where Sam's term came from), ect. As a Teaching Fellow and Adjunct Instructor (my official titles at the time), my students referred to me as "professor, and it was never really worth correcting them on, but I would never have referred to myself as such around the tenured and tenure track faculty, because that word has a specific meaning to them.
At my current institution, students are encouraged to refer to profs as "Dr.", I think in large part because we have a lot of non-PhDs teaching in the program as contingent faculty, and this serves as a way to differentiate between the two classes of instructors.
This is sarcasm, right? It has to be.
We are told that we can not refer to contingent faculty as Professor and that we're supposed to correct students, so the premise is call all professors--any rank--Professor. Call non-professors (Lecturers, who may have lifetime employment, and contingent faculty) Dr. if they have it or Mr. Ms. if they don't.
Yes, your detector is functioning properly.
Having just listened to that short interview, it's hard to see the justification for callilng it a "media obsession", which implies that there's something unseemly about wanting to find out where Ryan got his hardcore right wing economic ideas. One would think that this would be a natural point for the media to pursue when the person in question is running for such a high position.
In fact, as the interview makes clear, Ryan's economic / "moral" worldview was greatly influenced by Rand's writings, especially Atlas Shrugged, and it continues to be heavily influenced by them. It's also rather obvious that the sole reason that Ryan has begun to back off from wrapping her legs around him is because religious conservatives were beginning to give him flack about Rand's militant atheism.
So now he's paying homage to Thomas Acquinas instead of Ayn Rand. That makes perfect strategic and tactical sense at this point in his career, but it shouldn't fool anyone into thinking that he's repudiated the worldview of John Galt. This ain't no compassionate Catholic conservative we're looking at. Let's call it for what it is: From the standpoint of economic philosophy, we're looking at a more media-schooled version of Ray and Nieporent.
Does. Not. Follow.
EDIT: Also, what everyone else said about the median age of law students; Joe's implication that 27 is particularly old to be starting law school is absurd, and the "25 year old in the NY/P League" analogy is spectacularly inapt. (FWIW, the guy who graduated top of my law school class went straight from undergrad to law school. Hence my original "Does. Not. Follow.")
Of course it doesn't. I sincerely wonder if Joe himself believes half of the nonsense he writes.
He does seem to be straining especially hard to come up with novel arguments to make Obama look bad of late. Which, if Obama's a tenth as awful as Kehoskie claims, scarcely seems worth the effort.
Very nicely done. Though I was hoping you'd hit CLEs and Bar fees in there somewhere, too.
"Even after the Bar Exam... the CON GOES ON!"
Both this (and 2725) sound weird to me. Maybe it was just the size of the school I went to, but pretty much all profs preferred students to just go by their first name. In fact, I think the only time I ever referred to a prof as Dr. So-and-so, is when I was talking about them when they weren't present. For some reason that struck me as being too familiar. In my entire undergrad I only had one prof who asked to be called Dr. and it struck me as kind of pompous. But I guess it's what you're used to.
Different places, different conventions.* I had never referred to a prof as Dr. either, but after 3 years (at my current job) of having my chair introduce me to students and parents as "Dr.", I've gotten used to it and see the value, from marketing/pedagogical perspectives. I taught a freshmen seminar last year, and one of the things I re-learned was how much of academia is a mystery to undergrads, especially if they're the first generation to attend college (it's a state school, so we get a lot of those). I prefer "Prof" and discourage the first name thing, but part of that comes from the fact that I still look grad student enough to be confused for one.
*I teach in the southeastern US, not sure if this has anything to do with it, as all of my prior education/work experience was in the northeast.
===
I thought the segment served its purpose, and was pretty even-handed, but you're right that they oversold the "obsession" factor. In general, I find OTM to do a fantastic job with their politics segments, as they're more interested in meta questions about how politics is covered than they are with politics itself.
Yup; I'll co-sign this. And they were very clear on that in the review courses: even if you don't remember the rule, make one up that sounds good, and then apply that one. You will get partial credit. (Unlike in real life, where you will get fired or hit with a malpractice charge.)
This is exactly how my bar exam prep went - although I started my cramming about two weeks before, not one, so you must be smarter than me. But with two weeks to go before the exam, I was hopelessly behind on the material; we had taken two mock exams, and I had failed them both with flying colors. But thereafter I just went at it hard for two weeks, and voila.
I've never read Atlast Shrugged. I've actually never read a word of Ayn Rand.
"Even after the Bar Exam... the CON GOES ON!"
Indeed.
Also, whatever one thinks of its lefty political leanings, the Lawyers, Guns and Money blog is essential reading on what a con legal education is (and I say that as one who's done OK for himself in the field).
I actually took bar exam prep more seriously than I took law school, probably. It was probably the most miserable 10 weeks I've ever spent in my life, but there you go. (Plus, by virtue of having the particular prof at our school who taught first year property while seeming to pride himself on how little actual substance he imparted to his students--if you took him, you know who I'm talking about--I pretty much had to learn all the black-letter real property stuff during those ten weeks, along with solidifying my hold on the other stuff [along with learning the state-specific essay material for the first time].)
I think that when a congressman talks about requiring their interns to read a book (or lie about having done so) as a condition of working there, then it's pretty fair to call him obsessed with it.
I took Huber, if that's who you're talking about. He was horrible.
The most important thing that I learned from him was that the proper English phrase is "X is different from Y" and not "X is different than Y." At least, I assume he was correct on that point. He spent 5 minutes in his office one day commenting on how I had used the wrong phrase in one of my arguments.
I managed to just clear that bar. 153. (I've historically sucked at multiple choice tests, which is why I took the "do 2,000 practice multiple choice questions during your bar prep" maxim seriously. Think I did around 2,500.) This is fortunate for me; though I'm a lawyer, I have the handwriting of a physician. (Any recent bar-takers know if they let you type/word process the essays now? I would've benefited from that. Aside from having lousy handwriting to start with, it was so damned cold in the testing area my hands started to cramp.)
I've never read Atlast Shrugged. I've actually never read a word of Ayn Rand.
Trust me, sport yourself a few weeks in Famous Writers School and pop a few sugar cubes, and you'd be capable of writing a passable parody.
----------------------------------------------------
Having just listened to that short interview, it's hard to see the justification for callilng it a "media obsession", which implies that there's something unseemly about wanting to find out where Ryan got his hardcore right wing economic ideas. One would think that this would be a natural point for the media to pursue when the person in question is running for such a high position.
I think that when a congressman talks about requiring their interns to read a book (or lie about having done so) as a condition of working there, then it's pretty fair to call him obsessed with it.
The congressman, yes, but not the media. The media would just be doing their job.
Sheeit....those of us who had Ross DREAMED of having Huber.
There was a graffito in one of the stalls in the law library men's room listing the worst profs on our faculty. Number one, with a bullet: Tom "I Don't Teach Property" Ross. Quoted verbatim. It was no exaggeration. I got a B in first year property while being literally unable to tell you what a fee simple is. (For the most part, I thought our faculty was good to excellent, with that one glaring exception. The irony was, my first year civ pro guy (Steinberg), who I liked a lot, was denied tenure soon after I had him, and then got a tenure track position at the same school (Vermont) that reportedly fired Ross a few years before.)
Yes, this is the case in New York: according to the prep course instructors, there is a bar for the multistate exam such that if you score higher than it you simply will not fail the exam. I cleared that bar, and I don't think I ever did see a grade for the essay portion. I understood at the time that if you're seeing your grade for the essay portion, it's because you've failed the exam.
Peter Falk in Columbo: "My handwriting is so bad sometimes I think I should have become a doctor."
Michigan's my state of licensure, but yeah--same story.
I once ran into a stripper in Vegas who claimed she was in law school, and to prove it I asked her what the rule against perpetuities is, and she proceeded to explain it - and better than I understood it.
I think you and I were in either tax law together (Frolich) or commercial paper (that funny looking short guy with the mustache).
So that's what you kids are calling it these days.
I know how he feels. But dealing with those insurers...
I don't think I took commercial paper, so it had to be tax. My most lasting memory of that class was causing him to throw a chalk-throwing hissy fit by zoning out midway through a question.
I vaguely remember he erupted one day, which seemed to be out of character for him. I forget whether chalk throwing was involved.
Or just more foolhardy. I'm sure that I got at least a point or two worth of value on the essays by memorizing statutes of limitation right before the exam in the morning.
On the handwriting front, states now offer a limited number of laptop seats but (surprise!) you have to throw in a few hundred more dollars to get them. Also, the software you are required to use is notoriously glitchy.
I thought a stripper with brains and a future was something only a liberal would be laughable enough to invent, Ray.
Several non-UW/Marq. JD graduates recently challenged this privilege and were unsuccessful. The bar exam, for now, is for outside graduates only. Still a segment of the legal community that wants to change this. The only hoops for the UW/Marq JDs are to take a certain # of courses which meet some (my opinion) arbitrary measure which satisfies the standards of the Board of Bar Examiners. Don't forget the 'character and fitness' requirements, which are a major paperchasing headache. Small price to pay.
The base 1L courses, plus T&E, Crim Pro., Evidence, Adv. Evidence, Legal Ethics and a couple of others, which I've since forgotten are the courses to meet acceptance. I cannot imagine there's a student who neglects to hit those notes.
I haven't been straining at all. A brief recap of the last couple pages looks something like this: Person bashed Romney for being rich. I point out that Romney's wealth was made in the private sector, while Obama became a multimillionaire from "public service." A few lefties go nuts, claiming this is nonsense. Then some lefties concede that maybe, possibly, some of Obama's wealth was from public service, but only a very small percentage. Then more back and forth.
Then a lefty claims that even if Obama's millions were made from public service, he assuredly would have been just as rich and famous, if not more so, even if he had avoided politics, because he managed to get elected president. I point out that no such concession was made by lefties re: the similarly if not better-educated George W. Bush, who also had a better pre-White House private-sector resume. From there, the topic of grades came up, and I pointed out that we don't know Obama's grades; we're just supposed to trust that he's the "smartest man to ever become president," as serious historians have claimed. More lefty outrage ensues.
Instead of simply conceding the obvious — Obama became rich from public life — lefties are engaging in their typical BBTF flimflammery, in which they "refute" a position by focusing on a minor, irrelevant aspect of the dialogue (i.e., my minor error about the average age of first-year law students).
Straw-horse set up. Straw-horse knocked down.
2. If Obama, armed with Romney family levels of inherited wealth and fat cat contacts, and fresh out of Harvard Law, had decided to spend a year or two converting the heathens to Mormonism and then driven full speed ahead in the pursuit of maximizing his income, he could very well have been a lot richer than he is today. And if he'd been blessed with Romney's complete lack of consideration for the collateral damages caused by his "business decisions" beancounting, he might well have done even better than otherwise. But we'll never know one way or the other, since that sort of option never entered his mind, thank God.
3. Strip G.W. Bush and Barack Obama of their backgrounds, and put them on a level playing field from birth, and there's no way of knowing which one of them would have come out ahead, though Shrub would have had to do something about that alcohol thingy in a world where he didn't have a Daddy like G.H.W.B. to bail him out. G.W.B.'s no dummy, but he's been given the sort of easy second and third and fourth (etc.) chances that someone like Barack Obama could never have dreamed of, and without those many Mulligans he wouldn't have had a prayer of being where he is today.
This is pretty much true.
But what's always seemed bizarre to me is that the law schools themselves don't act like it's true: typically, the only class that even mentions "IRAC"* is legal writing, and that course is treated as an afterthought by absolutely everybody. Most classes are taught by adjuncts; the units credit is very low compared to the time commitment required, so students tend to blow it off; and at many schools it's apparently pass/fail. No professor** is going to take time out of, say, Civil Procedure, to discuss what IRAC is and how it might help to use it to answer questions on an essay exam.
Like whistling or playing first base or a lot of other things, good legal writing is harder than it looks.
* non-lawyers: the basic formula for any legal argument is, state the Issue, identify the legal Rule, Apply the rule to the facts, and Conclude with however the question comes out.
** I'm sure someone somewhere had a professor that did this, but it's still very unusual.
obama's been in office for 43 months. and you're talking about income he earned in 2004, that was obtained neither through illegal, immoral, or nefarious means, and which was the product of actual work, not just accumulated wealth.
The last president to die with less than a million dollars to his estate's name was Harry S Truman. The president who accumulated the biggest fortune on his own without the benefit of inherited jumpstart was probably Herbert Hoover. Right now at $5 M, Obama's just south of Ford and Carter ($7 M each), but give him another term and a few more memoirs and by the time he's Clinton's age (66 today) he'll be right up there in Good Ole Boy ($38 M) territory.
Unlike, of course, Obama's perfectly legal and healthy cocaine usage.
Obama wrote his memoirs long before he got famous from "public service." Have you seen his sales numbers from 1995?
Right, and the money Mitt Romney made was just handed to him. Everyone knows how easy the business world is. No competition out there.
Also, if Obama's money from 2004 is off-limits, why isn't Romney's income from the '80s and '90s off-limits?
for romney, that's kind of a quaint thing, i'm sure, but for someone like obama, it should make a difference.
also, obama's not centering his campaign around his experience writing books in the same way that romney is centering his campaign around his business experience.
do you really not see how there's a difference?
Yeah, god forbid Obama be left to scrape by on his ~$8 to $12 million net worth and his millions in future earnings.
The difference is being invented by lefties. Everyone knows Romney is rich, but how often does the media talk about the ~$8 to $12 million that Obama has banked as a "public servant"?
I can play this game too. Copies of Atlas Shrugged after decades of dormancy sold millions in 2009 based on part of people in the government like Ryan, and Conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck pimped the book in response to the 2009 Financial Crisis and stimulus effort.
Have you seen the sales numbers for Atlas Shrugged?
Unlike, of course, Obama's perfectly legal and healthy cocaine usage.
Which was a brief and passing phase in high school, as opposed to this:
The ongoing assassinations and collateral killings of civilians (redefined as "terrorists" by their proximity to targeted terrorists) by the Nobel Peace Prize winner are not a bad indication of what might have been.
Ayn Rand died in 1982. I doubt she enjoyed any of those 2009 book royalties.
Anyway, stories like this are why I tend to put "public service" in scare quotes lately. The corruption and cronyism in modern-day "public service" make corporate America seem like the epitome of a meritocracy.
on the other hand, obama has been president for 43 months, and as was pointed out above, if his performance in office was so terrible, that should be more than enough of an issue for you to focus on, without having to resort to attacking his legally obtained, entirely ethical, pre-presidential income.
Ah, so being rich is only a crime if the wealth was obtained in ways disliked by the media. Got it.
My impression is that Democrats aren't focusing on their own record. Though this belief is based mostly on my FB feed, in which the good people of the Democratic Party want very badly for me to know what rotten people Romney and Ryan are, and that the Obamas are a beautiful family. Anyway, I would be surprised if the Rs focused on parts of the Ds record that simply continue and extend the rotten stuff the Rs were doing before.
EDIT: removed double negative
THAT LINK YOU POSTED HAS NO RELEVANCE TO THE #### THAT YOU HAVE BEEN RAGING ON FOR THE LAST WEEK OR SO.
If you really want to believe that Obama's money comes from some idea that he stole it from the public, fine whatever, at some point you just need to stop arguing about it and accept that some people ideas about some things won't be changed.
But I'm certainly done with it.
it is a legitimate issue to explore what he did to be successful.
how are you not getting this?
when john kerry was running against george bush in 2004, he wasn't talking about bush being an alcoholic fratboy deserter, he was talking about the fact that bush blew a hole in this country's finances by passing massive tax cuts and starting two wars without paying for either.
the issue for obama is no longer what he did prior to being elected (within reasonable terms. if it came out that he was lobotomizing classmates in indonesia as a child, that would be a fairly legitimate issue to attack him on), it's what he's done in office. if you are now arguing that he's been so clean as president that the best way for you tear down his credibility is to claim he improperly monetized his ability to read from a teleprompter, well, you might as well admit that your guy has no chance.
First of all, the Obama/book money issue is no more than 2 days old, not a week. Second, since when are we constrained to discussing one specific topic at a time around here?
Generally, I believe the concept of "public service" is a joke given the myriad ways so-called public servants manage to line their pockets at taxpayer expense. With regards to Obama, I believe it's doubly ludicrous to consider him a pubic servant given that modern-day senators and presidents are the elite of the elite, and that they tend to get very rich while "serving the public." School-board volunteers and $3,000 town councilors are public servants. Federal officeholders and local six-figure cronies, not so much.
Why do people here feel such a need to announce that they're done with a topic? Do people actually think readers say to themselves, "Oh, 'Tripon' is done discussing this topic. If 'Tripon' is done with it, it must be a waste of everyone's time to continue"?
I've never made any such argument. Obama's putrid record as president is far and away the "best way to tear down his credibility." The business about the book money was just an aside to someone bashing Romney for being rich, as if Obama wasn't fabulously rich himself.
I was well into law school - or may even have graduated - before I ever heard the term "IRAC." (And I think the first time I heard it it was "CIRAC," i.e., presenting the Conclusion first as well as last.) In fact, I may have heard this term for the first time in the bar review course.
But I had already been briefing cases that way. My law school case books are littered with me writing "H" (Holding), or "I1" or "I2" or "L" (Law) or "Arg." Either some professor taught me that early on without using the term "IRAC," or I quickly realized that students in class were being called upon to state what the issue was, and what the holding of a case was, etc. In fact, it was probably the latter.
Obama, for a variety of reasons relating to political calculations, has decided to emphasize a different argument: Mitt Romney's private experience is a disqualifying factor because he made a lot of money in part by cheating the system and not paying taxes. Further, Romney wants to take money away from government programs that benefit people and that they like and use that money to give people like himself larger tax cuts than the ones they've already received.
In the 2012 campaign, both sides want to elevate discussion of Romney's credentials to run the country economically. Neither campaign wants to emphasize Obama's finances because it isn't politically relevant for either party.
As such, Romney's finances are relevant while Obama's are not. This is not that hard to understand, but I'm sure Kehoskie can last another couple pages. Btw: I miss Nieporent. Where did he go? Is he still trying a case?
It's a valid observation, and not a value judgment. Many voters DO find his extreme wealth off-putting. No bashing was involved. At least initially.
being rich--wealthy--is not the grounds on which romney is being attacked. he's being attacked on the grounds of whether he became rich by laying off american workers and shipping their jobs overseas. he's being attacked on the grounds that his tax plan raises taxes on 95% of american to give him, and people like him, a $250,000 tax break. he's being attacked because he plans on slashing government investment in education and research and infrastructure. he's being attacked because his plan on health care is to take it away from 30,000,000 people who were just given coverage.
romney's wealth isn't the issue. the policy positions that are influenced by his wealth are what's being challenged, and i really can't imagine how that would be considered unacceptable in a presidential campaign.
Technically this is not true. His tax plan is impossible, but it does not explicitly raise taxes on anyone. That said, it is mathematically impossible, and I wish that were a bigger disqualifier than that it might raise taxes on middle-class people.
Sometime in the next 20 years we're likely to move to some kind of progressive consumption tax and move away from income/payroll/cap gains. I wish that the D's would get out in front on it, but this seems unlikely.
This is the obvious solution. Though I shudder to think how a consumption tax would look after the legislators and lobbyists did their dirty work to it. Yikes.
Yeah, Romney's spending several years of his life and a lot of his own money running for president so he can reduce his taxes by a couple percentage points.
Education spending has tripled since 1970 and test scores remain flat. Money isn't the problem when it comes to education. The parents are the problem.
I heard it from another student in the middle of my first year, and I think I was naturally doing the "IRAC" form on my own (it's similar enough to the hypothesis-data-interpretation-conclusion structure of science work). I suppose it's useful if you don't already know how to structure an argument.
But I had already been briefing cases that way. My law school case books are littered with me writing "H" (Holding), or "I1" or "I2" or "L" (Law) or "Arg."
One of my quirks is that I pretty much never wrote in a textbook during my entire college career (outside of perhaps my name on the inside cover). My textbooks are in nearly perfect condition.
If you actually think this is the argument being made, there really is no hope.
I think it's weird that the two reforms that I think are the most important that the country could implement (progressive consumption tax and ranked-choice voting) are reasonably non-partisan and yet have absolutely no constituency.
Pre-K education is pretty systematically under-invested in, especially in an economy that has transitioned to a two-paycheck per household model. This is another reform without a constituency for reasons outside of my understanding.
Interesting point.
Not even in the same league as Ted Kennedy. Say, didn't Kennedy have that wealth thing going for him, too? Only he inherited it all?
How would this work? Would we all need to show an ID card every time we buy something, so we could be charged the correct tax rate?
EDIT: So if you're buying luxury goods, you're paying luxury type taxes.
EDIT 2.0: The post below is an alternative method for a comprehensive scheme.
From this article:
Those are the major factors.
I'm all for eliminating all personal and corporate income taxes, but I can't see how implementing a consumption tax that exempts things like food would come close to recouping the lost revenue.
Most PCT systems end up generating more revenue due to increased taxation of high wage earners and fewer exemptions for the middle class.
For instance, just getting rid of the home ownership and charity deductions is a big chunk of that.
(I am assuming Joe must have me on ignore or something because he never responds, but fair enough)
Also, flip.
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