2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

They both are. The Greatests put in programs that are unsustainable. The Boomers will milk those programs until there's nothing left in this country. Plenty of blame to go around here guys. No need to squabble over it.

I find it funny that someone leaving college today is saddled with having to pay someone else's retirement and medical bills while at the same time they're saddled with huge loan debt from getting the education we told them to get.

The Boomers can all go to hell.

[Bob Gray]

Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

I find it funny that someone leaving college today is saddled with having to pay someone else's retirement and medical bills while at the same time they're saddled with huge loan debt from getting the education we told them to get.

The Boomers can all go to hell.

But the government will pay for it all if they can't. That's how it works, at least until it breaks.

[Rover]

Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

Gotta give Sanitarium a lot of credit here. Scary what could have happened if he had his own sugar daddy like Newtie did, or if he had planned his campaign with the idea that he'd actually end up as the alternative to The Mittster, as I don't get the sense Santorum ever thought he'd get this far. His inability to gain access on the ballot in congressional districts and even whole states that would have leaned his way (Virginia) is the proof of that.

So he drops out, probably gets a sympathy win in his home state of PA, and sets himself up to be Next In Line after Mittens gets crushed in the general election. Next time around the party will be looking for a True Believer, and you don't get much more righty than Santorum. Huckleberry and Palin are now entertainers, Christie is an obese, obnoxious version of Romney who is 50/50 to lose re-election before then, and Pawlenty isn't going to be any less boring nor Perry any less of a buffoon. Really, his competition could either be a Paul Ryan bid or a Rubio one unless Jeb Bush gives it a go. That's not bad odds.

Bottom line is, the old boy did his job. Romney's unfavorable ratings are approaching GWB levels and he's cost his corporate overlords a pretty penny to dispatch a pack of dwarfs. Rick, I'll make sure Barry O gives you a job parking cars at his inauguration address.

[FreshFish]

Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

An interesting (and probably accurate) observation from an unlikely source....

George W. Bush acknowledged the obstructive connotation that still attaches to his name, particularly when it comes to tax policy.
“I wish they weren’t called the Bush tax cuts,” he said. “If they’re called some other body’s tax cuts, they’re probably less likely to be raised."

“Allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire” sounds innocuous. It’d be a different story if Democrats said what they really want to do: “We want to raise taxes by $166 billion.” That’s what allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire amounts to — a massive tax increase on income-taxpaying Americans.

[Priceless]

Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

It only impacts the ultra-rich and they would be paying the same tax rate they somehow managed to pay in the 90's. The economy really sucked back then.

Again, if anyone feels like the tax rates are unfair, I'll switch incomes with you and pay your tremendous tax burden and you can pay my measly taxes.

[Kepler]

Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

Don't you realize that the only people who matter are the ultra rich? The rest of us should thank them every moment for allowing us to continue to exist.

[FreshFish]

Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

It only impacts the ultra-rich and they would be paying the same tax rate they somehow managed to pay in the 90's.

Do you ever use facts to support your opinions? or are they merely these troublesome annoyances that you swat away like gnats?

The so-called "Bush" tax cuts affect everyone who pays income taxes. It was an across the board tax cut, NOT a tax cut only for "the rich", and far more of the cuts affected people with incomes below $250,000 per year.

From Wikipedia: in the 2001 Act
> for single filers with taxable income up to $6,000, joint filers up to $12,000, and heads of households up to $10,000, the rate was reduced from 15% to 10% (or a 33% reduction)
> the 15% bracket's lower threshold was indexed to the new 10% bracket
> the 28% bracket would be lowered to 25% by 2006 (or an 11% reduction)
> the 31% bracket would be lowered to 28% by 2006 (or a 10% reduction)
> the 36% bracket would be lowered to 33% by 2006 (or an 8% reduction)
> the 39.6% bracket would be lowered to 35% by 2006 (or a 10% reduction).

The 2003 Act accelerated the schedule of reductions from 2006 forward into 2003. Also, the reduced dividend and capital gains tax rate led to increases in income tax revenue collected from those sources. The dividend tax rate cut led to Microsoft declaring their first ever dividend, and it was a big one.

As you can see, it was pretty much an across the board cut of 10% for everyone, with the lowest on the ladder getting an even larger cut.


Yeah, we get it, some people really despise Bush, and the rest of us usually remain silent rather than deal with the annoyance of trying to talk reason to people who have an aversion to reasonableness.

What I find even more striking is the bizarre language....these rates have been in effect for nine years now. If you change them, you are not "letting the cuts expire" you are raising rates while trying to lie about it. There is no way that taxing the rich can possibly raise enough revenue; Obama knows it, the Dems know it, most thoughtful reasonable people know it. IRS data indicates you could tax "the rich" at 100% and still not have anywhere near enough revenue.

Envy is a terrible thing when it twists and distorts as it has. It's one thing to feel envy, it's a whole 'nother matter deliberately to stir up envy in others.

[Slap Shot]

Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

But the government will pay for it all if they can't. That's how it works, at least until it breaks.

Are you talking about the plan where someone has to pay 10% of their income for 20 straight years to become eligible for said forgiveness?

[Priceless]

Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

blah blah blah

These are the rates we had in the 90's. The economy was a tad bit stronger then than it is now. We were told these tax cuts would lead to more jobs. Where are they? Asia? Tax policy failed. Time to undo the damage the last decade has caused.

No one is saying we can tax our way to prosperity...that's a nice GOP talking point, but that's all it is. The idea is to get people working again, grow the economy and help get the deficit under control.

You can try to blame all this on envy if you want to resort to that garbage, but when it comes to tax policy and the budget, your side can stuff it.

Go back and read what I wrote in the budget thread last year. Read my letter to Senator Snowe then tell me I suffer from envy.

For all the complaining about unfair tax rates, not a single person has taken me up on my offer to take their horrible tax burden off their hands (I've made it on a regular basis in many forums for several years). I wonder why that is...

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

Puke Puke Puke

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011...ca-chart-graph

[duper]

Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

I'm not really clear at what you're getting at. The tribal lands are huge, but the actual populations are relatively small (I know, having driven across the Navajo Reservation a number of times when visiting my future wife). The main issue I've ever heard here regarding tribal lands and elections is that it's a problem to have elections/primaries to early in the calendar year as it's harder to get around in some places on the Res, so they tend to have them a little later.

I wasn't "getting at" anything. I was pretty clearly pointing out the fact that congressional districts are clearly and obviously designed to ensure that they each include at least part of a metropolitan area. I won't speculate in this forum as to why. As to the point that the larger reservations are sparsely populated, that is assuredly true. Certainly, though, a district could be made up of Northern Arizona in such a way as to not include any of the Phoenix area. That congressional district would be, physically, very large. In any case, I wasn't actually making any political point. I will say honestly that I was curious as to whether you or OP would take issue with my pointing out the obvious gerrymandering. And it's not like AZ is the only state that does it, but I have only ever lived in 4 states, and one of them has only one rep, so I am only really personally familiar with the level of gerrymandering in three states. And frankly, I'm not even criticizing. Just seeing if I can raise any hackles.

Edit: I would put money down that you are exactly correct about the Hopi/Navajo thing.

More edit: Sorry about bringing back up something from so far past. I haven't been on the boards much in a couple of days.

[FreshFish]

Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

For all the complaining about unfair tax rates, not a single person has taken me up on my offer to take their horrible tax burden off their hands (I've made it on a regular basis in many forums for several years). I wonder why that is...

Well, let's see....from an economic perspective, your offer is a no-lose situation for me, as I am subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax. Based purely on that consideration, I could take you up on your offer and be assured that I would not be any worse off than I am now.

Nevertheless, I have not taken you up on your offer. Can you think of a non-economic reason why?

[FreshFish]

Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

You have to hand it to Obama. He knows that there is no way taxes on the rich will be anywhere near sufficient to address the deficit issues. Yet it is a handy way to distract people, to get otherwise reasonable people to be sniping and carping at each other.

The issues are front and square: too much spending, and overzealous, single-minded (bordering on fanatical) regulation (I saw a story the other day that two different government agencies were arguing with each other about who had jurisdiction).

The empirical evidence from 1961, the early 80's and the 00's was clear, when tax rates were reduced, tax revenues increased. Unfortunately for us, spending increased by more than tax revenues.

The spending problem is particularly difficult and contentious...."my one little program is so very very important; by itself it can't possibly make that big a difference, yet its benefits are so much worth preserving" yet multiply that by several hundred and we have a real problem.

Yet Obama manages to get all of that swept aside. Nice trick. We all know that raising taxes on the rich won't be anywhere near sufficient, yet we ourselves here are also distracted and falling into the same trap that is playing out around water coolers and over after-sports beers around the country.

[Kepler]

Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

You have to hand it to Obama. He knows that there is no way taxes on the rich will be anywhere near sufficient to address the deficit issues. Yet it is a handy way to distract people, to get otherwise reasonable people to be sniping and carping at each other.

It's interesting to hear this perspective, since you strike me in other places to be quite sincere. I have to ask: do you really think that's what this is about? Because, quite frankly, you're completely wrong.

In no way does introducing one policy imply that it is completely sufficient to deal with a problem. Readjusting the tax rates to some semblance of their former structure is only one of many things we have to do to rebuild the middle class and reestablish this country as a place where people can hope to move up. The tax policies of the last thirty years have gone far towards creating a perpetual class system here -- one of the things America was a protest against. I see Obama's attempt to very, very slightly undo some of that damage as part of the long tradition of America as a land of opportunity, rather than just another boring plutocracy where wealth and poverty are frozen forever.

I understand you may disagree with trying to do this -- we all have different opinions about effective economics. And I understand that the people who got the windfall from the the last thirty years will say and do anything to keep their gravy train -- they may in a way even somehow believe they are entitled to it, because we all transform our personal preferences into "the right and the good."

But I don't understand how you can miss the larger point of what those of us who are trying to restore opportunity are really trying to do. This is all assuming you are arguing in good faith, though I do think based on a lot of other discussions that you are.

Maybe this just comes down to the distrust people feel when it's "the other side's guy." Personally, I would never have trusted a word Dubya or Cheney said. I suppose people who approve of what the Reagan types did would also distrust those of us trying our best to undo it. All quite normal. But just so you know: it's not a diversion, it's what we really believe is necessary to soften up the ossifying of American classes that has been happening ever since we gave those guys their way. They were wrong and it's hurt the country. We want to repair it.

That's tax policy. If you want to talk spending, that's a different discussion, and one which I believe we are in much closer agreement. The third leg is fiscal policy, but to be honest the last ten years have just taught me that everything everybody believes about fiscal policy is probably wrong, and nobody really knows what will help or hurt.

[FreshFish]

Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

But I don't understand how you can miss the larger point of what those of us who are trying to restore opportunity are really trying to do.

But just so you know: it's not a diversion, it's what we really believe is necessary to soften up the ossifying of American classes ..... We want to repair it.

I am quite sympathetic to your professed goals and share them myself. I highly doubt government compulsion will be very effective. If anything, government compulsion will intensify the very condition you say you want to rectify. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." So instead of private sector millionaires you will have government mandarins flying around on taxpayer-funded jets. You say you decry "corporate welfare" yet you support a person who wants to dole out ever-larger government contracts to preferred industries...the people who manage those industries will still be very well paid, and they will get hidden tax preferences written into the fine print (corporate jets will still be tax deductible so that the "green energy" czars can fly to meetings in Davos with government regulators flown there in taxpayer funded jets).

Now, let's take Obama out of the situation. Insert "Person X." If you see Person X contradicting himself repeatedly, what do you think? Ignore the "who" and focus only on the "what."


If you view the track record of Person X, might the term "cynical manipulator" seem to fit? Ordinary people are "bitter, clinging to guns and religion" when he thinks the microphone is turned off, yet when he needs their votes he is their champion and protector? He sits in a pew for 20 years listening to "God D&mn America" every Sunday then wants us to believe he slept through the sermon every week? He says "if you like your health plan you can keep it" while the fine print of the law that was passed says exactly the opposite?

I'm trying to have this NOT be about what "I believe" I'm trying merely to point out material that is in the public record, the number of times he has contradicted himself. You can comfort yourself by saying he is merely being expedient, that's the nature of 21st century politics in the USA, and I won't disagree (nor will I agree). I'll respect that as your opinion, maybe you see something I'm missing. Myself, I won't trust anything a person says after they have lied to me several times. That's just my nature.