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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (427523)	10/17/2008 3:48:21 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578683

Yawn. We are talking 39% vs. 36%. Yes an 8 and a third percent increase in the amount of taxes paid on the marginal dollar. That provides a disincentive at the margin. 60% or more would provide a much large one, but its not like there is some magic threshold, below which there is no effect and all the sudden there is a massive one. Each small increase, each percent, or even less, puts a new group of people at the margin. GM has 171.86B ttm revenue. If it could have increased its prices by 3% (all prices, including services and financing, anything it makes revenue from) it could have reduced its loss by over $5bil. Why didn't it do this? Because it would have decreased sales. 3 percent is enough to make people at the margin change. Sure it wouldn't have meant that no GM cars where sold, but it likely would have reduced sales enough that their would have been no clear net benefit, and quite possibly a noticeable additional loss. People might look at any sort of situation, and say "I wouldn't change if it cost me 3% more", and maybe they are right, that only means they are not at the margin at the current price levels. But someone else will be. And as prices increase, eventually they will be at the margin where another 3% increase gets them to move from buying a car or expanding their business, to not doing so.

To: combjelly who wrote (427523)	10/17/2008 4:52:20 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1578683

I haven't followed the ACORN story very closely but I had a sense GOPers were using it to validate its explanation for why they are lagging at the polls......namely that the Dems are trying to steal the election. In other words, a political attempt to cover the ass of the GOP which most likely will experience a serious rout on 4 November. So what happens when Republicans are unhappy? Vandalism and death threats.........every frigging time! Death threat, vandalism hit ACORN after McCain comments By Greg Gordon \| McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — An ACORN community organizer received a death threat and the liberal activist group's Boston and Seattle offices were vandalized Thursday, reflecting mounting tensions over its role in registering 1.3 million mostly poor and minority Americans to vote next month. Attorneys for the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now were notifying the FBI and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division of the incidents, said Brian Kettenring, a Florida-based spokesman for the group. Republicans, including presidential candidate John McCain, have verbally attacked the group repeatedly in recent days, alleging a widespread vote-fraud scheme, although they've provided little proof. It was disclosed Thursday that the FBI is examining whether thousands of fraudulent voter-registration applications submitted by some ACORN workers were part of a systematic effort or isolated incidents. Kettenring said that a senior ACORN staffer in Cleveland, after appearing on television this week, got an e-mail that said she "is going to have her life ended." A female staffer in Providence, R.I., got a threatening call from someone who said words to the effect of "We know you get off work at 9," then uttered racial epithets, he said. McClatchy is withholding the women's names because of the threats. Separately, vandals broke into the group's Boston and Seattle offices and stole computers, Kettenring said. The incidents came the day after McCain charged in the final presidential debate that ACORN's voter-registration drive "may be perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history" and may be "destroying the fabric of democracy." McCain's comments provoked a response from ACORN. "I would not say that Senator McCain is inciting violence," Kettenring said, "but I would say that his statements about the role of this manufactured scandal were totally outlandish. We would call on Senator McCain to tamp down the fringe elements in his party." McCain's campaign didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Kettenring said that ACORN had received growing amounts of hate mail in recent weeks, but "the campaign debate sort of tipped it over to a scary point, where raising allegations of voter fraud went from a cynical campaign ploy to really inciting racial violence." Since McCain's remarks, ACORN's 87 offices across the country have received hundreds of hostile e-mails, many of them containing racial slurs, Kettenring said. "We believe that these are specifically McCain supporters" sending the messages, he said. The e-mail to the Cleveland employee was traced to a Facebook Web page in the name of a Baltimore man. It featured a photo of a McCain-Palin sign. Kettenring said that the bulk of the e-mails had been either "flat-out racist" or had racial overtones. Most of the group's 400 members and about 80 percent of the 13,000 voter-registration canvassers are African-American or Latino. It's unclear whether the alleged threats violated federal law, but Jonah Goldman, the director of the National Campaign for Fair Elections at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonpartisan, nonprofit legal organization that battles discrimination, argued that the Voting Rights Act should apply. "A real concern is the impact that these terrible acts have on the people who registered through these registration drives," Goldman said. "Legitimate, eligible voters who sign up through these registration drives may be understandably intimidated and choose not to show up at the polls, and the Voting Rights Act prevents voter intimidation." mcclatchydc.com