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EntheogenicPeace said:

P.S. You missed a 'c' in the latter term.

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  That was on purpose to make you feel better, I swear





I went to the first local tea party rally on tax day a few years ago.  After that I lost interest pretty quick.  It was just the same politicians saying the same crap, slightly modified to appeal to the mood of the day.
Some of the tea party people might be your best shot at finding non-racist secessionists.  Tea party is already kind of dying out around here though.

I don't think you'll find many secessionists that aren't assciated with right wing militia type nonsense or white nationalism.

I know a few 'white national' type people.  They're just fucking nuts.  Incredibly stupid people following a few brilliant people who are absolutely fucking nuts.  They're the only ones I think will ever go far enough to try to start their own country.



I don't think progressives will ever try to break away.  The goal of a progressive is to change the country they're already in.

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Bartering occurs when you exchange goods or services without exchanging money. An example of bartering is a plumber doing repair work for a dentist in exchange for dental services. You must include in gross income in the year of receipt the fair market value of goods and services received in exchange for goods or services you provide.

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After bartering groups exploded in popularity in the 1970s, the IRS formalized its rules on taxing bartered income [source: Risen]. Now, the IRS taxes barter transactions in dollars and cents, even though no money changes hands. This means you have to keep tabs on the trades you make and keep good records of them so they can be properly taxed. The IRS measures bartered exchanges by using the market price of the goods or services someone receives. In a swap, both parties have to list the market value of what they received as taxable income. This means that commercial and corporate bartering exchanges require filing a tax form -- a 1099-B, "Proceeds from Broker and Barter Exchange Transactions" [source: IRS].

http://money.howstuffworks.com/bartering4.htm

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EntheogenicPeace said:
Interesting. That was kind of one of the areas I had in mind where such a movement might exist. If it ever gained some real autonomy from D.C. & Wall Street, I would definitely be interested in moving there as I think I would like the region in general (both from reading about things, as well as hearing things from a couple of friends I have that are from out there).

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psilynut said:
I think all the poor GOP honky peckerwood states should secede and stop living off the more successful democratic states tits.

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You ain't kidding.  Here's a few maps from when Obama got elected.  Notice any similarities between the two???

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psilynut said:
I think all the poor GOP honky peckerwood states should secede and stop living off the more successful democratic states tits.

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None of the deficits in the states with the largest budget holes–New York, Illinois, New Jersey and California–exceeded 3% of the state’s GDP in 2008-2009. Most of the countries in the PIIGS group had deficits that exceeded 6% of GDP.

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In California, efforts to close the budget deficit by taxing the rich resulted in the deficit shrinking from $9 billion all the way to $16 billion. Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed solution: Tax the rich even more (and tax everybody else, too, by hiking sales tax).

California contains about one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients (despite having 12% of the nation’s population) and is planning a high-speed rail system that will cost an estimated $68 billion, including $4 billion on a section The Los Angeles Times dubbed a “train to nowhere.” Its pension costs for public employees, 85% of them unionized, rose 2,000% in the first decade of this century, which is 1,976% more than revenues increased. A CEO survey in April ruled that California was the least business-friendly state in the US.

In 1999, when the state was flooded with dotcom tax revenue, it set in place a law, SB 400, that assumed the good times would continue forever and allowed government workers as young as 50 to retire on 90% of salary they earned in their final year, when they would ramp up the overtime. In order to cover these commitments through the CALPERS investment fund, the Dow Jones Industrial Average would have to be over 25,000 by now.

Pension and health-care spending for retirees are set to triple this decade. More than 12,000 state and local workers are collecting more than $100,000 a year in pensions. Even convicted felons can collect pensions.

Greek and Californian politicians made the same mistake: They wanted union backing so badly that they promised far more than they could ever deliver. They knew that they’d be long gone before the crisis kicked in, or maybe it would solve itself. Either way, they didn’t care. They were happy to use tomorrow’s seed corn to buy themselves power. California’s pension plans face a $500 billion hole in unfunded promises.

Gov. Brown says he wants to reform the cost structure of California by raising the retirement age and making other adjustments in a 12-point plan that looks much like pouring a glass of water on a forest fire. He won’t be able to get it through his union-bought Democratic legislature anyway. And courts have ruled that pension plans can’t be changed retroactively for current workers or retirees.

There are only so many Mark Zuckerbergs to tax (and Zuck’s old roommate Eduardo Saverin renounced his US citizenship and moved to low-tax Singapore. He saved himself at least $67 million in capital gains taxes by so doing.) California could default on its bonds, but then how would it borrow again? For a state to declare bankruptcy is unprecedented, and there is no provision for it under federal law anyway.

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Nice job with the unions destroying California along with the auto industry.

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When the boom busted, revenues fell, but Sacramento neither rolled back the tax cuts nor repealed the spending increases. Desperate for revenues, Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, in 2003 tripled the vehicle license fee, which generated $4 billion a year by boosting fees by $130 on a typical car. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, swept into office that same year in part by promising to roll back the unpopular increase in the "car tax." He kept his pledge and plunged the state into an even deeper budget crisis.

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Prop. 13 "capped property taxes" and "created a constitutional requirement that all tax increases pass the [state] Legislature by a two-thirds majority," which "made California virtually ungovernable." Cohen and Dreier further explained that the "most important budget problem is the fiscal straitjacket created by Proposition 13, the original tax-revolt ballot proposition that voters approved in 1978, which capped property taxes and made it extremely difficult to raise revenues." They explain that the law "did more than simply limit property taxes. It created a constitutional requirement that all tax increases pass the Legislature by a two-thirds majority," which Cohen and Dreier argue "has made California virtually ungovernable

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still definitely better than here in the U.S. I would also imagine that a much smaller segment is the population of Canada is hyper-militaristic & extreme nationalist… as is the case in the rest of the developed world, sans the one country where religious conservatism/fundamentalism is still quite strong (what a total coincidence I’m sure).

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zappaisgod said:

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psilynut said:
I think all the poor GOP honky peckerwood states should secede and stop living off the more successful democratic states tits.

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http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2010/03/24/who-will-default-first-greece-or-california/

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