Mike Huckabee:Poor People Should be Treated Like Dogs

[dpndetfarm]

8 hours ago, rhianna said:

Well, I did open with "I'm hardly a Huckabee fan," and at least one person did openly state they didn't read the article, so maybe someone else needs to work on their reflexive hand-slapping. 

And I stand by my point, which is that stating, "I believe that increasing the percentage of your income of which your are taxed as you become more wealthy is effectively a disincentive to wealth creation. I also believe that basic principles of rewarding desirable behavior and punishing undesirable behavior, the same concepts one uses to raise children or train dogs, should guide fiscal policy in this country" is a far cry from, "poor people should be treated like dogs." It's like saying, "Bernie Sanders says that very poor people in this country are treated just the same as very rich people!!!!11" because in one speech he stated that he thought our current government is socialist towards the very rich and very poor and capitalistic towards everyone else. 

For the record, I am again NOT defending Huckabee. But I think that to intelligently debate a topic, you have to fairly assess and reasonably discuss the stances of the parties involved. Spouting off inaccurate talking points to rally the masses is a well-known tool of the demagogues of the right and we should hold ourselves to higher standards. 

So here is the line from Bernie's speech I assume you are referring to: "What we have now, Sanders tirelessly notes, is socialism for the very rich and the very poor, but pitiless free market capitalism for everyone else."  I would say that yes, they are treated the same as far as being accorded socialist programs.  However Bernie goes on to clarify that the socialist    benefits the two classes receive  are very different.  Huckabee basically says he sees no difference between children, dogs, and poor people in the way they should be treated trained.  That's the extent of his clarification.

  If you interpret this as something other than poor (and children) should be treated like dogs I guess we will just have to disagree. I see the headline as an accurate summation of Huckabee's stand.  And if one trains(?) children and dogs with the same methods he or she will fail at both.

*yes I saw where you said you were hardly a Huckabee fan.

*I am a Bernie supporter.

[rhianna]

I have a feeling this will boil down to, "we will just have to disagree" although I find that a very unsatisfying conclusion to a discussion like there where there is much more to tease out. 

I actually re-read the Huckabee article AND watched the video at the end. He does not actually ever use the word "poor" or "disadvantaged" or anything very much like that. He does refer to people, "having trouble getting ahead." But honestly I'm fairly certain when he talks about incentivizing certain behavior, he's not actually speaking to the very poor; I think he's speaking more to the middle class or maybe lower-middle class. 

Anyways, since he never directly mentions the poor, for that reason alone I think it's inaccurate to say (and this is a direct quote from you earlier), "He doesn't think of the poor or working class as anything more than stray dogs." I mean, I actually don't understand how you can draw that conclusion from his actual words. 

Now going to the Sanders' speech, did you listen to the actual speech or were you going off the article? Because in the article there is no further mention, that I can see, of how the very poor are treated differently from the very rich. Here is the quotation from the argument, 

"What we have now, Sanders tirelessly notes, is socialism for the very rich and the very poor, but pitiless free market capitalism for everyone else. Our economy has been steadily deregulated since the 1980s, when neoliberalism first triumphed under President Reagan. Corporations run the country and write the laws now. Wall Street banks call the shots on Capitol Hill.

“We have a system,” Sanders said, “which during the 1990s allowed Wall Street to spend $5 billion in lobbying and campaign contributions to get deregulated. Then, ten years later, after the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior of Wall Street led to their collapse, it is a system which provided trillions in government aid to bail them out. Wall Street used their wealth and power to get Congress to do their bidding for deregulation and then, when their greed caused their collapse, they used their wealth and power to get Congress to bail them out.”

The point I am making is NOT that one could reasonably assume from the article that Bernie Sanders thinks the poor have it good in America. It's that such a reading of that statement is deliberately disingenuous for the purpose of rabble-rousing and deliberately ignores the broader context. 

I actually don't understand how you can go from, "tax policy should punish bad behavior and reward good behavior, like I do when I train my dogs," to "poor people should be treated like dogs in all respects." It's like saying, "A is like B in this respect, therefore, A = B." Except it makes even less sense than that, because A (poor people) are not clearly referred to in this article!

Let me ask you, If the title of the thread wasn't, "Poor People Should Be Treated Like Dogs," is that the exact conclusion you would have drawn on your own? 

In addition, are you bristling at the use of the word "dog"? I agree with others that it was ill-advised choice of words. Or are you disagreeing with the concept of government policies incentivizing certain behaviors? 

[salex]

21 hours ago, amandaaries said:

Maybe he flipped a coin thrice and is now assured that God's will is being done by him (Fuckabee) being in the race -- same logic JB applied to running for office.

 

I don't think he has any expectation of winning any office, however, this is a moneymaking deal for Huckabee.. he is ten times richer than he was when he ran in 2008.... I suspect he hopes to expand his wealth after this run.  http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/08/04/gop-rich-list-how-republican-presidential-candidates-rank-in-terms-of-wealth/

Quote

 

Mike Huckabee: At least $7 million

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and his wife are worth more than 10 times as they were the last time he ran for president, in 2008, when he had just left the Arkansas governor’s mansion. Since then, he has hosted a syndicated radio show and a weekly Fox News program, in addition to publishing five books since 2008.

Mr. Huckabee reported between $4.3 and $6.4 million in income in 2014 and the first half of 2015. Of that, nearly $1 million came from fees for 44 speeches between January 2014 and March 2015. The average speaking fee was $22,175. He reported $2.9 million in income from Blue Diamond Horizons, the publisher of his books. He disclosed between $200,000 and $2 million in income from two rental properties.

 

 

[FloraKitty35]

Huckabee will always have suckers to fleece money out of (just like Palin).

[paganbaby]

On 1/17/2016 at 8:18 PM, Artemesia said:

A flat tax rate is less fair to the poor. Someone making for instance $200,000 per year paying 10% tax won't feel the pinch. Someone making $20,000 per year will.

Good point. Poor people already pay a large percentage of their income in sales tax, gas taxes, etc. Richer people are able to save some and make that money work for them. (And get a break on taxes for unearned income, mortgage interest for payments on an asset that my increase their net income, etc. I didn't pay taxes on almost all the money I saved for my kids' college education because I used a good 529 plan, for instance.) Poor people not only live from paycheck to paycheck, they're often at the mercy of payday lenders who charge insane amounts of interest.

[PraiseDog]

Hmmm.  Dumfuckabee and his dog and child training failures aside, I think "rewarding desirable behavior and penalizing bad" is kind of a backwards way to formulate tax policy, except in a general, big-picture sense, such as climate change policy or global trade policy, for example.
It should be more focused on "how do we generate enough taxes to pay for everything we need in a way that is as fair as possible to all citizens, and keeps the economy as a whole sustainable."  (Not trying to imply that this is simple, at all...)
So many politicians and policy-makers try to use tax policy to influence specific behaviors of individuals, and IMO this gets us into trouble and leads us into negative unintended consequences, more often than not.

[DaisyD]

Not to mention a huge amount of blame and shaming of people who they perceive to be a problem. (Side eye to anyone complaining about having to pay for food stamps)

[bingbangboom]

There is a woman with two small children in the city I live in. I've had the pleasure of meeting her and her very well behaved children at the food pantry I help out at. She is disabled and one of her kids is too. They take the bus. Cold weather, snow, pouring rain, extreme heat-bus.  She told me to do a shopping trip at Walmart, it takes over 2 hours of travel time. 

This lady deserves to be treated to anything she or her children may need. 

Being poor sucks. Being cold, hungry and treated less than sucks, even if it is all packaged up as a Skinner type idea...