I posted a comment to this article from the Beaumont Enterprise:
Realtor's expression of political opinion doesn't set well with passerby
By GREG HAYES
July, 17, 2008
NEDERLAND - "A taxpayer voting Barack Obama is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders."
A number of drivers on Twin City Highway Thursday might have seen this message on the sign in front of Bob Costilow Realtors. And at least one was offended.
"They put themselves in a crossfire," said Jevyn McDowell, who passed the sign on the way to her job. "We had our primary elections and Obama came out on top. I'm an African-American, and it looks like (Bob Costilow Realtors) is comparing black folks to chickens."
Bob Costilow, company owner, said that was not what the sign meant.
"I don't agree with what Obama proposes for taxes," Costilow said. "No more. No less."
Costilow said one of the main things he finds appalling about Obama's tax plan is his stance on the capital gains tax.
"When you sell your house, under current tax laws, you do not have to pay any capital gains tax," he said. "My view is that I don't want any more taxes."
On the US News Web site, Obama was quoted as saying during an earlier interview this year that he would see no problem with a higher capital gains rate.
A capital gains tax is charged on the profit on sales of assets purchased at a lower price, such as stocks, bonds, property and precious metals.
Obama was quoted as saying, "I think that we can have a capital gains rate that is higher than 15 percent," ... how much of a difference is it going to be if it's 20 or 25 percent รข€¦ if it's within that range, then it's not going to distort, I think, economic decision-making."
For Costilow, that is enough reason to put up a sign.
"I saw it in an e-mail on a sign put up by a State Farm agent in Mandeville, La.," he said. "I loved it. I have gotten some calls about it, and some of them were even congratulatory in nature."
But McDowell said she feels that Costilow was intending to be offensive to the black community.
"To me, that is more offensive than that magazine cover," she said, referring to a recent issue of The New Yorker that had a drawing of Obama on the cover in a turban with an American flag burning in the fireplace, among other things. "People at any company should not be openly offensive when it comes to politics, religion or sexual preference. As a consumer, if I was needing to buy or sell a home, I would certainly not go to that realty company."
Costilow said that he is not out to offend anyone, but if they get offended, he doesn't care.
"I don't give a damn," he said. "We have free speech in this country, and if it fluffs somebody's feathers, I'm sorry. I don't agree with Obama's tax plan."
This was my comment:
Before any of you comment, you need to learn how to spell and the proper grammar to use when you do. Obama would know. Until you learn, keep your comments to yourself. Obviously all of you like paying $4.00 for a gallon of gas and like that your President is a total buffoon. Anyone who thinks that John McCain is going to bring us anything other than what we have had in the last eight years is fooling themselves. And none of it has anything to do with racism. Though in this part of the country what do you expect people to think? It's the same old, same old. Everything around Southeast Texas is about racism. So, this is my use of free speech. At least all of my words are spelled correctly and my grammar is correct. And I definitely do not have to apologize about that.
Then some complete idiot replied with this (misspelled words in red):
Kim A is a typical LIB. Instead of discussing a side of the argument she instead chooses to pcik (uh, I think it should be "pick") on other people's writing skills. I am under the impression that she does not understand how government works as is evidenced by her statement "Anyone who thinks that John McCain is going to bring us anything other than what we have had in the last eight years is fooling themselves." Does she not understand that CONGRESS is the one who finalizes all issues, and that the President can only do what is allowed by congress? She talks about the last 8 eight year (Should be plural), but we really need to simply look at the last TWO years since the Democrats took control of congress. In that time period gasoline and food prices have skyrocketed and congress (capitalization?) has done nothing to slow down the train. In fact the liberal side of congress (again?) hopes that the increases in prices will continue so that American consumption, specifically of fossil fuels, will be reduced. So yes, IF you do like paying nearly $4 for gas or over $2 for a loaf of bread, just vote Democrat in this election and you can continue to enjoy the price increases we have seen over the last two years, AND you can pay more taxes to boot. What a winning proposition the Democrats have provided.
So having shown that he cannot spell, like I was inferring, I replied with this:
As a matter of fact, I do understand how the government works. I know that CONGRESS passes legislation and that the PRESIDENT signs the laws. It is called checks and balances. Unfortunately, the Congress does not have the 2/3 majority to override vetoes, and they do not have the power of the line item veto. As far as Congress finalizing things, that is not true. The President signs things in to law. I think you need to read about this subject again, Das. Or maybe you just need to listen to "Schoolhouse Rock" again. When Bill Clinton was in office, the line item veto was in place, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1998. Also during the Clinton administration, the economy grew for 116 straight months, 22.5 million jobs were created, unemployment was at it lowest level in 30 years at 4.0%, the poverty rate declined from 15.1% to 11.8%. I also know that the year Bush took office my husband lost his job and couldn't find one for almost a year. So, before you go making assumptions that I know nothing about the government or the way it runs, think again. I understand completely. (Still no spelling errors and all the facts are correct.)
And I made this correction:
I am sorry, I meant to say that the President does not have the power of the line item veto.
And then corrected his spelling:
And I "pick" a side, not "pcik" one. And Bush has been in office for 8 "years" not 8 "year". Yes, I have a thing about grammar. It makes you look foolish to use it incorrectly.
Then came the personal attack (so it goes with every Republican), with spelling errors in red:
Kim A. As I said, you don't know much about government. congress finalizes everything. they write the legislation and the president has to power to either sign it into law, or veto it. if he veto's it, congress can then override it (if they have the votes), therefore, congress has the power to finalize every piece of legislation, either before sending it to the president or through veto. bill clinton's era was also the largest time of corporate malfeasance ever, and which was the building block for your husband to lose his job. Anyone who thinks that ANYTHING that happens in the economy in the first year of a president's administration is the result of said administration is ignorant of the lag time required for cycles to rotate. BTW...you mention the economy during the clinton administration, I bet you never heard of an economic cycle. that is when the economy goes (where?) and then down and then up and then down. I bet you are also the type that is panicking and selling your stocks too (if you have any), instead of buying while the market is down. One more thing, your sentence is graamatically incorrect: "It makes you look foolish to use it incorrectly." The sentence should read "Using grammar incorrectly makes you look foolish." (It was correct the way I wrote it, check for yourself.) That would be a grammatically proper sentence. So before you throw stones, you might want to make sure you are as smart as you think you (are?). BTW...you are still a LIB who probably hates America, like most LIBs do. i bet you want higher taxes too, so your money can be given to those who don't work, as well as homosexual marriage and killing unborn babies, all things supported by the LIB democrats.
I hate idiots. I hate ignorance. I hate misspelled words in a public forum. I hate the corner of the world in which I live. There is just too much ignorance here. Too many people get online, think they have something to say that means something, and then proceed to mess it up with spelling and grammar errors. Too many people in this corner of the world think that everything revolves around the color of their skin. Then proceed to whine about non-existant injustices done them.
I know that it was pointless to argue with him in the first place. Those who speak of free speech do not really believe in it, unless it will help them.
President Bush is a buffoon. His entire administration is a joke. He has brought this country to the brink of failure and still the rednecks that live around me defend him. All my facts about the Clinton administration are correct. One fact I did not include is the amount of the national deficit when he left office. Well let me tell you what it was: there was no debt, there was a $237 million SURPLUS. Know what the national debt is today? $9,521,870,255,076.92 or $31,282.09 per American citizen. That is $9 TRILLION. And all owed against a war that we should not be waging.
Why am I the one who is wrong? Because Republicans think that they are the only ones who know anything. Face it, Republicans are a bunch of idiots.
2 years ago
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In response to the following: Also during the Clinton administration, the economy grew for 116 straight months, 22.5 million jobs were created, unemployment was at it lowest level in 30 years at 4.0%, the poverty rate declined from 15.1% to 11.8%. I also know that the year Bush took office my husband lost his job and couldn't find one for almost a year.
Bill Clinton served as the forty-second President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Clinton presided over the longest period of peace-time economic expansion in American history.
The "dot-com bubble" was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2001 (with a climax on March 10, 2000 with the NASDAQ peaking at 5132.52) during which stock markets in Western nations saw their value increase rapidly from growth in the new Internet sector and related fields. The period was marked by the founding (and, in many cases, spectacular failure) of a group of new Internet-based companies commonly referred to as dot-coms. A combination of rapidly increasing stock prices, individual speculation in stocks, and widely available venture capital created an exuberant environment in which many of these businesses dismissed standard business models, focusing on increasing market share at the expense of the bottom line. The bursting of the dot-com bubble marked the beginning of a relatively mild yet rather lengthy early 2000s recession in the developed world.
The technology-heavy NASDAQ Composite index peaked at 5,048 in March 2000, reflecting the high point of the dot-com bubble.
Over 1999 and early 2000, the Federal Reserve had increased interest rates six times, and the runaway economy was beginning to lose speed. The dot-com bubble burst, numerically, on March 10, 2000, when the technology heavy NASDAQ Composite index peaked at 5,048.62 (intra-day peak 5,132.52), more than double its value just a year before. The NASDAQ fell slightly after that, but this was attributed to correction by most market analysts; the actual reversal and subsequent bear market may have been triggered by the adverse findings of fact in the United States v. Microsoft case which was being heard in federal court. The findings, which declared Microsoft a monopoly, were widely expected in the weeks before their release on April 3.
One possible cause for the collapse of the NASDAQ (and all dotcoms) were massive, multi-billion dollar sell orders for major bellwether high tech stocks (Cisco, IBM, Dell, etc.) that happened by chance to be processed simultaneously on the Monday morning following the March 10 weekend. This selling resulted in the NASDAQ opening roughly four percentage points lower on Monday March 13 from 5,038 to 4,879—the greatest percentage 'pre-market' selloff for the entire year.
The massive initial batch of sell orders processed on Monday, March 13 triggered a chain reaction of selling that fed on itself as investors, funds, and institutions liquidated positions. In just three days the NASDAQ had lost nearly nine percent, falling from roughly 5,050 on March 10 to 4,580 on March 15.
Another reason may have been accelerated business spending in preparation for the Y2K switchover. Once New Year had passed without incident, businesses found themselves with all the equipment they needed for some time, and business spending quickly declined. This correlates quite closely to the peak of U.S. stock markets. The Dow Jones peaked on January 14, 2000 (closed at 11,722.98, with an intra-day peak of 11,750.28 and theoretical peak of 11,908.50) and the broader S&P 500 on March 24, 2000 (closed at 1,527.46, with an intra-day peak of 1,553.11); while, even more dramatically the UK's FTSE 100 Index peaked at 6,950.60 on the last day of trading in 1999 (December 30). Hiring freezes, layoffs, and consolidations followed in several industries, especially in the dot-com sector.
The bursting of the bubble may also have been related to the poor results of Internet retailers following the 1999 Christmas season. This was the first unequivocal and public evidence that the "Get Big Fast" Internet strategy was flawed for most companies. These retailers' results were made public in March when annual and quarterly reports of public firms were released.
By 2001 the bubble was deflating at full speed. A majority of the dot-coms ceased trading after burning through their venture capital, many having never made a net profit. Investors often jokingly referred to these failed dot-coms as either "dot-bombs" or "dot-compost".
Dot-bom Bubble Aftermath
On January 11, 2001, America Online, a favorite of dot-com investors and pioneer of dial-up Internet access, acquired Time Warner, the world's largest media company. Within two years, boardroom disagreements drove out both of the CEOs who made the deal, and in October 2003 AOL Time Warner dropped "AOL" from its name. The acquisition thus became a symbol of the dot-coms' challenge to "old economy" companies and the old economy's ultimate survival. The revolutionary optimism of the boom faded, and analysts once again recognized the relevance of traditional business thinking.
Several communication companies, burdened with unredeemable debts from their expansion projects, sold their assets for cash or filed for bankruptcy. WorldCom, the largest of these, was found to have used illegal accounting practices to overstate its profits by billions of dollars. The company's stock crashed when these irregularities were revealed, and within days it filed the largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history. Other examples include NorthPoint Communications, Global Crossing, JDS Uniphase, XO Communications, and Covad Communications. Demand for the new high-speed infrastructure never materialized, and it became dark fiber. Some analysts believe that there is so much dark fiber worldwide that only a small percentage of it will be "lit" in the decades to come.
Many dot-coms ran out of capital and were acquired or liquidated; the domain names were picked up by old-economy competitors or domain name investors. Several companies and their executives were accused or convicted of fraud for misusing shareholders' money, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission fined top investment firms like Citigroup and Merrill Lynch millions of dollars for misleading investors. Various supporting industries, such as advertising and shipping, scaled back their operations as demand for their services fell. A few large dot-com companies, such as Amazon.com and eBay, survived the turmoil and appear assured of long-term survival.
The Dot-com bubble crash wiped out $5 trillion in market value of technology companies from March 2000 to October 2002.
Recent research suggests, however, that as many as 50% of the dot-coms survived through 2004, reflecting two facts: the destruction of public market wealth did not necessarily correspond to firm closings, and second, that most of the dot-coms were small players who were able to weather the financial markets storm.
Nevertheless, laid-off technology experts, such as computer programmers, found a glutted job market. In the U.S., International outsourcing and the recently allowed increase of skilled visa "guest workers" (e.g., those participating in the U.S. H-1B visa program) exacerbated the situation. University degree programs for computer-related careers saw a noticeable drop in new students. Anecdotes of unemployed programmers going back to school to become accountants or lawyers were common. I went back to school in 2002 to get an accounting degree after graduating with an MIS degree in 2001. I couldn't find a job after 911
Some believe the crash of the dot-com bubble contributed to the housing bubble in the U.S. Yale economist Robert Shiller said in 2005, “Once stocks fell, real estate became the primary outlet for the speculative frenzy that the stock market had unleashed. Where else could plungers apply their newly acquired trading talents? The materialistic display of the big house also has become a salve to bruised egos of disappointed stock investors. These days, the only thing that comes close to real estate as a national obsession is poker.”
September 11, 2001 Economic aftermath
The attacks had a significant economic impact on the United States and world markets. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the American Stock Exchange, and NASDAQ did not open on September 11 and remained closed until September 17. When the stock markets reopened, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (“DJIA”) stock market index fell 684 points, or 7.1%, to 8921, its biggest-ever one-day point decline. By the end of the week, the DJIA had fallen 1,369.7 points (14.3%), its largest one-week point drop in history.[162] U.S. stocks lost $1.4 trillion in value for the week. In New York City, there were approximately 430,000 lost job months and $2.8 billion in lost wages, which occurred in the three months following the 9/11 attacks. The economic effects were mainly focused on the city's export economy sectors. The GDP for New York City was estimated to have declined by $27.3 billion for the last three months of 2001 and all of 2002. The Federal government provided $11.2 billion in immediate assistance to the Government of New York City in September 2001, and $10.5 billion in early 2002 for economic development and infrastructure needs.
The 9/11 attacks also had great impact on small businesses in Lower Manhattan, located near the World Trade Center. Approximately 18,000 small businesses were destroyed or displaced after the attacks. The Small Business Administration provided loans as assistance, while Community Development Block Grants and Economic Injury Disaster Loans were other ways that the Federal Government provided assistance to small business effected by the 9/11 attacks. 31.9 million square feet of Lower Manhattan office space was either damaged or destroyed. Many questioned whether these lost jobs would ever be restored, and whether the damaged tax base could ever recover. Economic studies of the effects of 9/11 have confirmed that the impact of the attacks on the Manhattan office market as well as on office employment was more limited than initially expected because of the strong need for face-to-face interaction in the financial services industry.
North American air space was closed for several days after the attacks and air travel decreased significantly upon its reopening. The attacks led to nearly a 20% cutback in air travel capacity, and severely exacerbated financial problems in the struggling U.S. airline industry.
I am posted all of this to say that it doesn’t matter who the President is…the economy goes up and down.
Clinton did in fact leave office with a balanced budget and a reported federal surplus. But, Clinton presided over the longest period of peace-time economic expansion in American history. So, the economic odds were in his favor. It was merely a coincidence that he was President when the dot-com boom began, and was leaving soon after it burst.
President bush was inaugurated as President on January 20, 2001. The dot-com bubble burst, numerically, on March 10, 2000, a little less than a year before Bush was inaugurated. Less than eight months later America was attacked. So, the economic odds were against Bush from the very beginning. His choices? Save the surplus or protect the country...
Maybe it doesn’t matter what Bush should have done, or what Clinton did or didn’t do. Did either one of them have anything to do with the dot-com bubble or burst, or the attacks that lead to the ultimate war on terror? No. And neither one of them could have foreseen these events or prevented them from happening.
I actually don’t care for either of the Presidential candidates this time. I don’t even know who I’m going to vote for!? All I know is that whoever wins, the economy will follow its own course, regardless of what either one of them plan to do about it.
By the way, I have a blog now (as of this weekend). It’s Exploring Texas. No politics please, just family and Texas stuff. Keep the political arguments on your site, I know you like the controversy…BTW you can pick on my grammer and my spelling...it won't hurt my feelings since I don't really care...I SPEAK TEXAN!!!
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