Additional budget cuts this year could result in fewer meals for seniors, larger class sizes in public schools and deeper cuts to state programs that already have gone through several reductions, The Eagle reported Tuesday. That makes even more indefensible the refusal last session by most GOP state lawmakers to temporarily delay the phase-in of tax cuts for estates and corporations. If everything is on the budget-cutting table, as GOP lawmakers have said, then that should include tax cuts to the wealthy, not just services to the poor.
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234 Comments
Kansas is turning into Repubic Party Paradise.
If there’s anything you don’t like about the state government — anything at all — you have no one to blame but the Repubic Party.
Highway maintenance? Pot holes? Schools (From K-12, to WSU, all the way to college-level institutions)? It’s exactly what the Repubic Party of Kansas has mandated.
Abortion? Just who has been passing the laws, appointing the judges, hiring the cops, and enforcing the laws in Kansas since… y’know… forever? The Repubic Party.
Estate taxes? Just where would David Koch be today if he couldn’t inherit a third of his daddy’s fortune? Here’s the answer: he’d have to eke out a living with a mere $3 Million Dollar inheritance from his trust fund. Were it not for the Repubic Party, that is.
Sorry, CONs. But if you’re living in Kansas and you have a problem with state and/or local government, you have only the Repubic Party to blame.
How’s that worked out for ya?
Additional budget cuts this year could result in fewer meals for seniors, larger class sizes in public schools
Yeah the bad old Republicans…blah blah…
According to the article, the Democratic Party Governor makes the decision on what gets cut in state agencies.
Times are lean – everyone has to put another notch in their belt.
Lowering taxes on corporations isn’t going to create more jobs. It will eliminate services to the public.
Maybe Republicons will vote to eliminate their own salaries this year? They don’t want taxes to pay for anything so might as well cut what taxes pay for them first.
Services have been cut drastically as it is, they cannot sustain more cuts. Our elderly and poor are truly suffering as it is. Schools can’t take another cut.
Sorry but it is time to raise taxes.
“Sorry but it is time to raise taxes.”
Or support the charitable and faith based programs that can help these people WITHOUT government intervention. Tax dollars have a tendency to only support more administration and bureaucracy.
politicalmama
Posted October 16, 2009 at 7:42 am | Permalink
Maybe Republicons will vote to eliminate their own salaries this year? They don’t want taxes to pay for anything so might as well cut what taxes pay for them first.
Services have been cut drastically as it is, they cannot sustain more cuts. Our elderly and poor are truly suffering as it is. Schools can’t take another cut.
Sorry but it is time to raise taxes.
___________________________
Pmom, don’t underestimate Republican’s ability to wreak even more havoc for the poor and children in our state. It’s what they like….what they do best.
God forbid we should raise taxes.
Yes, Brownlee and lemmings, giving money to people that have the opportunity to do something with it would crush the economy.
What gives you the right to sit on people’s laps and help yourselves to the money in people’s pockets?
Shame on the evil GOP. Citizens of this country have no business keeping the money and assets they have worked for and saved all their lives.
The WPE and the demoncrats need to immediately step in and seize these assets and give them to those that didn’t work and save…..
“What gives you the right to sit on people’s laps and help yourselves to the money in people’s pockets?”
They are dead and we have decided we would rather not live in a feudal type state?
I support the reduction or elimination of estate taxes. However, there is a time for everything. In this particularly challenging time, it would be prudent to temporarily delay the tax cut phase in.
Well pmom, xxx and bj the time has come. Put your money where your mouth is. You all have three squares a day I am sure. At least two of you smoke. Time to make a sacrifice instead of telling others what they need to give up.
Show us your hearts are in the right place. Write a check. Volunteer to cook somewhere like the Lords Diner. Take food to a food pantry.
Many things YOU can do instead of asking everyone else to do it for you.
Show us.
Yep, as I sit here on my first of 14 furlough days which I will not be at work helping the citizens of the State. I think back to this past state legislative session.
I thought for sure the legislature would want to talk to the persons who make the jobs. Because it is jobs that cause people to pay taxes. I thought the guvment would ask them, WHAT can we do as the legislature to let you develop jobs? What can we do to get the guvment out of your way, so you can do business and make jobs.
Nope, this did not happen. My state legislature and Governor (Dem and Dem majority) did NONE of this. They simply raised taxes on the so called “rich” and businesses to the tune of 600 million dollars. YEP, GREAT PLAN in the current economic times.
I will say this though, the governor DID talk about developing jobs. But ONLY if they were “green” jobs. Those were the only ones that the guvment would even think about developing.
“If everything is on the budget-cutting table, as GOP lawmakers have said, then that should include tax cuts to the wealthy, not just services to the poor.
What sort of sick society even CONTEMPLATES cutting services for the poor before tax cuts for the rich? It’s so medieval.
“What sort of sick society even CONTEMPLATES cutting services for the poor before tax cuts for the rich? It’s so medieval”
The schedule tax cuts were passed before the current economic crisis. So it was CONTEMPLATED beforehand. As I said, temporarily putting them on hold is a good idea.
Generaston, if your state legislature has a Democratic majority, you’re not in Kansas. The Republicans are in control of the Kansas House and Senate, and have been for 99% (literally) of this state’s history. They write the laws; the governor only gets to sign or veto them.
Here’s an idea. Maybe the poor, for a slightly larger check, could be persuaded to helpt hte state save money by helping to maintain the public properties owned by the state? You know, like helping to keep the parks clean? Or pickup up roadside trash? Or helping out elsewhere?
Tom-
While you are correct about the legislationin Congress, the Governor does have much more to do than just sign or veto bills. In fact, it is the governor that proposes budgets, and makes the overall decisions thru the executive branch finances in accordance with the monies allocated by the legislature. Nice thing about the legislature. YOu can tell the Governor she has to cut the budget in xxx, but doesn’t have to get their hands dirty doing the job.
So tell me P mom, when your children do (or did) bring home A’s on their report cards, did you just ground them or did you just give them a good beating?
I can only assume this because you are advocating that persons should be PENALIZED for doing well. That if they work hard, make good decisions to provide for their families, THEY are in the wrong and should be punished.
littlejohn
Posted October 16, 2009 at 9:32 am | Permalink
“What sort of sick society even CONTEMPLATES cutting services for the poor before tax cuts for the rich? It’s so medieval”
///////////////////////////////////////////////////
What sort of society, even CONTEMPLATES penalizing those who do well or penalizing those who make the jobs? It’s so SOCIALIST.
okobserver
Posted October 16, 2009 at 9:24 am | Permalink
Well pmom, xxx and bj the time has come. Put your money where your mouth is. You all have three squares a day I am sure. At least two of you smoke. Time to make a sacrifice instead of telling others what they need to give up.
Show us your hearts are in the right place. Write a check. Volunteer to cook somewhere like the Lords Diner. Take food to a food pantry.
_____________________________
Okobserver, that’s a cheap shot. You have no idea what I do or have done for those less fortunate.
You get on back to us when the rich are hurting there gene.
okobserver
Posted October 16, 2009 at 9:24 am | Permalink
Well pmom, xxx and bj the time has come. Put your money where your mouth is. You all have three squares a day I am sure. At least two of you smoke.
______________________________
Do you or have you ever drank alcohol?
“penalizing those who do well or penalizing those who make the jobs?”
Government makes jobs. Why do you and yours insist on attacking a Government that employs people?
Let them eat cake (and spend their $250.00 buying it).
For the life of me I will never understand those who resent those who are successfull,gusee it boils down to jealousy and an entitlement mentality
Really bluejay, wouldn’t it just be sooooo much easier just to move to China or Cuba. There is your utopia, WHY do you have to drag the rest of us down with you?
BlueJay
Posted October 16, 2009 at 9:57 am | Permalink
You get on back to us when the rich are hurting there gene.
—————————————————-
It’s not a matter of hurting. It’s a manner of the value of a dollar spent/invested vs. a dollar taxed.
XXX Says-
“Okobserver, that’s a cheap shot. You have no idea what I do or have done for those less fortunate”
Perhaps, but examples abound where those who are able to give more, don;t, yet want to penalize those who do. For instance:
PrePresidential candidate Obama
How about you move gene?
Get yourself an island where it is just you and other self centered individualists.
I believe there is a TV show you can consult to see how that plan would work for society.
So that would make you happy blue jay? That would fix all of the problems? Just do away with corporations, just do away with the free market system. Just give everybody a guvment job, that will fix all of our problems? Again, there is YOUR utopia, 90 miles off the coast. HELL, you could boat there in a few hours.
WHY even have a guvment. IF all that is going to happen is the guvment give you money and you turn around and give it right back, why bother having a guvment?
You sound like a lot of those people in detroit standing in line to get their “obama money.” A reporter asked them, why they are in line. They said to get obama money. And WHERE did obama get the money to give away, the reporter asked. I DON’T KNOW was the reply, that’s why I voted for obama, because he said he was gonna give me money.
THERE’S your self centered folks.
I’m just suppose to do nothing but get money from obama. ME ME ME
I rather doubt a productive or even interesting (perhaps comedic though) discussion can be had with someone who cannot correctly spell “government”.
The issue is what we cut first, scant assistance to the needy or tax cuts for the rich. As noted above, the rich do not seem to be much afflicted and I am at something of a loss to understand how they need a defense from the nearly rich, not rich, or just plain stupid.
I’m not suppose to work for it.
I don’t care that I’m taking it from those that truly need it.
As long as I get my share, without working for it, I DESERVE free money from obama, simply because I voted for him.
Gene is up early there in Oregon.
Why don’t you stick to posting on blogs where you live and we’ll do the same.
What do poor people really want in your opinion? Crumbs and mearly survive which the Government provides?
The CONs have a religious faith in the tenants of their “econmics.”
Higher taxes are ALWAYS bad, lower taxes are ALWAYS good.
Nevermind that during the periods of highest GDP growth and increase of standard of living were during periods of highest taxation. (The late 40’s and 50’s)
No, facts be damned. CONs believe in low taxes the way the Price boys believe in a ten-thousand year old universe–because it’s easier than thinking.
generaston
Posted October 16, 2009 at 10:16 am | Permalink
So that would make you happy blue jay? That would fix all of the problems? Just do away with corporations, just do away with the free market system.
__________________________
The “free market system” has done such a great job lately. I guess it would be ok if we could shake out the greedy and dishonest. I’m not convinced that capitalism is such a great thing anymore. It seems that some people think capitalism is a license to steal.
The Koch Bros.–9th richest Americans–buy the RepubliCONs in the State Legislature and screw everybody else in Kansas, and the “useful idiots” say “thank you, sir, may I have another.”
Unbelievable.
Ah, words of wisdom from the;
White male, who hates White males,
The self proclaimed Christian, who hates Christians,
The 6 figure earner, who hates the rich,
The heterosexual, who hates heterosexuals.
Preach on Capn’A!
OHHHHH NICE DODGE THERE BLUE, just declare me stupid for my spelling of guvment.
Okay answer me this blue. How MANY jobs will be created by giving 250.00 to SSI recipients? We’ll basically have another cash for clunkers fiasco. People will get paid for doing something they would have done anyway and the guvment is now out that money and a whole lot of interest to pay on it.
Let me guess, YOU are surprised that the bottom has fallen out of the car market over the last month since cash for clunkers.
Anyway, you are a business owner and you are thinking maybe the economy is rebounding or steadying out, maybe now I feel that I can expand and hire another 4 or 5 people and my business will grow. Maybe I can then hire 4 or 5 more persons next year.
BUT WAIT, the guvment just came in and said I have to give them more money so they can give 250.00 to people on SSI.
That means not only can I now not afford to expand, BUT I’ll also have to raise prices on my product. But if I raise prices (to get back this 250.00) (and the higher prices will eat up the 250.00 the guvment gave away.) There will be less business because more companies will also have to pay this, they will have to cut costs as well and maybe they can afford to cut prices more than I can, so now I don’t get the sales and I’ll have to lay off another 5 or 6 people or possibly end up going out of business.
BRILLIANT.
But hey, as long as blue jay FEEEELLLLLSSSS SO SUPERIOR. Who cares how many people lose their jobs and can no longer pay taxes. It is more important for me to feelll like I care about the little people more than those mean conservatives who want dirty, filthy corporations to make jobs and pay taxes to care for the truly needy.
CapnAmerica
Posted October 16, 2009 at 10:41 am | Permalink
The Koch Bros.–9th richest Americans–buy the RepubliCONs in the State Legislature and screw everybody else in Kansas, and the “useful idiots” say “thank you, sir, may I have another.”
Unbelievable.
=======================
I suppose you will be demanding the Evolution program at the Smithsonian should not accept the 15 million dollar donation given by Koch.
“They are dead and we have decided we would rather not live in a feudal type state?”
Is that what folks who grew up in POVERTY during the Great Depression lived, worked hard, deprived themselves, saved for? … So that the government can tax it away and use it to buy votes and power?
People should have the right to disperse the money they earned in the manner in which they desire. What RIGHT do the citizens have to vote into office those who will rob others and give the money to themselves?
“The Koch Bros.–9th richest Americans–buy the RepubliCONs in the State Legislature and screw everybody else in Kansas”
“David Koch donates 15 million Museum”
“David H. Koch donates $100M to NY City Ballet, Opera ”
“Koch donates $US100m for cancer research”
And CapnAmerica gave?
And PrePresidential candidate Obama gave? ANd Vice President Biden gave?
“The Koch Bros.–9th richest Americans–buy the RepubliCONs in the State Legislature and screw everybody else in Kansas”
“David Koch donates 15 million Museum”
“David H. Koch donates $100M to NY City Ballet, Opera ”
“Koch donates $US100m for cancer research”
And CapnAmerica gave?
And PrePresidential candidate Obama gave? ANd Vice President Biden gave?
XXX–
A lot of economists are coming to the conclusion that free market capitalism works well for simple supplier-consumer interactions.
It doesn’t work well for complex financial transactions. People don’t have the necessary information to know if they are in a Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme or if their mutual fund is over-charging them with hidden fees.
The only thing big enough to deal with these big problems is a big government.
People should have the right to disperse the money they earned in the manner in which they desire
———————————————–
Not according to those who have done nothing to earn it. They think just because they are alive they are entitled to the fruits of others labor.
I still say they are jealous of success and want to see it punished by confiscating the wealth of others
Eff that, LittleJohn.
I’m surprised at your naivite. They “give” so that they don’t have to give to the gov’t in taxes–AND they make sure that their names are plastered in six foot letters on every thing they donate for all posterity to see.
Considering the 15 BILLION dollars that they’re worth, their civic contributions are negligable.
And btw, I give a lot. I give not only in money but in time, for which I’m not paid.
In the final reckoning on Judgment Day, I’d much rather be me than them.
XXX right back at you. I get really sick of the attitude on here that corporations are evil. That all ‘rich’ people should pay. We own a small business and employ several people. My son has started his own small business and is struggling just as the economy is. The mentality on this blog by the BJs and the Pmoms is that we need to give more and more and more. Well businesses have just about given to the breaking point. We have a community colloge instructor that gives us lessons on capitalism.
There is something screwy about this whole debate.
I just said instead of saying we need to tax corporations more and the evil rich need to do their part that everyone needs to look at their ownselves. In ninty percent of the world even Bluejay would be considered rich. Is this the standard we want to set for the US.
Well rant done. Back to work.
“They “give” so that they don’t have to give to the gov’t in taxes–”
yeah sure, give up 100 million dollars, so they don;t have to pay 35 million in taxes. yeah, that makes sense.
” Considering the 15 BILLION dollars that they’re worth, their civic contributions are negligable”
How do you know? Seen their tax returns? i thought not
The Capn believes there are no gangsters or crooks in a Socialist society.
He should revisit the old Soviet Union to look and see who held the money. Or perhaps look at England or Germany where the money goes. Why it’s those good old capitalistic industry and services guys. Selling those cars, houses, insurance and chains of stores that sell you your hankies and toliet tissue.
Name one modern country that made it big without venture capital and capitilism. There isn’t any, you won’t find it.
yeah sure, give up 100 million dollars, so they don;t have to pay 35 million in taxes. yeah, that makes sense.
==========================
Yep, a fine business decision.
So Capn’A, why aren’t you protesting their donations?
“In the final reckoning on Judgment Day, I’d much rather be me than them”
Judging others, eh? Well, goody for you.
Koch funds Hank’s infamous source, the Heritage Foundation.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_Family_Foundations
CapnAmerica
Posted October 16, 2009 at 10:51 am | Permalink
Eff that, LittleJohn.
I’m surprised at your naivite. They “give” so that they don’t have to give to the gov’t in taxes–AND they make sure that their names are plastered in six foot letters on every thing they donate for all posterity to see.
—————
That cap in a bunch of krap and you know it. You surely aren’t stupid enough to think that for every dollar in donations you give you get a dollar off your taxes. You are rich by many countries standards. And stop bragging about what you do and give. The saintly Linda said that isn’t nice.
You guys are just a bunch of whiners today and have a real pity party going on.
CapnAmerica: so it is o.k. that citizens can vote politicians into power who will rob, I mean tax, the rich and give it back to those who voted for them?
How is this honest?
BTW Capn’A, the majority of charities would be nowhere without corporate donations.
All I hear is jealousy
Freebird–
Weren’t you in the military?
Consider this. You fought to defend this country.
You defended the single mom working as a cashier at Wal-Mart making a couple dollars over minimum wage.
You defended the Koch bros who are among the richest 100 people in the world.
Now . . . who benefited more from your service?
I think you can make a strong case that the Koch’s benefited a lot more, because they had a lot more to lose.
So, they should have to pay more.
No one is confiscating anything.
The government is taking more from the people who benefit more.
Or let’s take roads. Who benefits more from our good road system. Grandma, who drives once a week to church and once a week to Dillons, or the Koch Bros, who have a vast army of oil trucks collecting their profits every day, 24-7?
The Koch Bros benefit far more.
Hence, they should pay far more.
“Or let’s take roads. Who benefits more from our good road system. Grandma, who drives once a week to church and once a week to Dillons, or the Koch Bros, who have a vast army of oil trucks collecting their profits every day, 24-7?
The Koch Bros benefit far more.
Hence, they should pay far more.”
they do. It’s called road use tax.
So it is o.k. that citizens can vote politicians into power who will rob, I mean tax, the rich and give it back to those who voted for them?
How is this honest?
*****
When has this ever happened?
“No one is confiscating anything.
The government is taking more from the people who benefit more.”
There’s a pair of statments. HAHAHAHAHA
Deb–
Does it occur to you how ludicrous–how incredibly stupid–it is to turn people who make more in ONE HOUR than you’ll make in your entire lifetime . . . into vitims?
Fer gosh sakes, woman, the Koch Bros are not vicitms. They have succeeded beyond what you can even imagine success to be.
Lord, please let me be vicitmized like they are victimized. Hear my prayer, oh Lord.
Little John–
Don’t you pay more for things that are worth more?
So if you are worth more, shouldn’t you have to pay more as your share?
It’s not at all complicated, except to those worshipping at the Church of the Holy Marketplace.
Isn’t that what this call for estate or “death” taxes amounts to?
Isn’t that what all the social and corporate welfare programs amount to?
Of course even if the rich pay taxes at the SAME rate as poor people they are ALREADY paying more in taxes since 10% of 1,000,000 dollars is a lot more than 10% of 10,000 dollars. But this is not enough for greedy citizens and politicians. They want to tax the rich at higher rates at EVERY opportunity.
“So if you are worth more, shouldn’t you have to pay more as your share?”
I bet they pay a hell of a lot more than you. As their share. Wanna make a bet?
So if you are worth more, shouldn’t you have to pay more as your share?
==========================
Good idea.
Say Capn’A since your income is at least 3X mine, how much or your money should I expect you to give to me? I think 1/3 is fair.
When should I expect your check to clear?
Here’s the damned if you do, damned if you don’t arguing tactics of the CONs–
LJ throws down the gauntlet that I don’t give like the Kochs’ give.
I defend myself.
Then OkieO pops on and condemns me for “bragging.”
Sheesh . . .
Or let’s take roads. Who benefits more from our good road system. Grandma, who drives once a week to church and once a week to Dillons, or the Koch Bros, who have a vast army of oil trucks collecting their profits every day, 24-7?
The Koch Bros benefit far more.
Hence, they should pay far more.”
they do. It’s called road use tax.
So what’s your point?
CapnAmerica
Posted October 16, 2009 at 10:47 am | Permalink
XXX–
A lot of economists are coming to the conclusion that free market capitalism works well for simple supplier-consumer interactions.
It doesn’t work well for complex financial transactions. People don’t have the necessary information to know if they are in a Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme or if their mutual fund is over-charging them with hidden fees.
The only thing big enough to deal with these big problems is a big government.
______________________________
I agree.
I’m not just defending the Koch’s. I’m defending every American who works hard their entire lives and sees it taxed away.
What are the ethics of taking money from ANYONE, rich or poor, just to benefit someone else?
I understand taxes to pay for roads or for the defense from invaders into our country, I do NOT understand robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Your right Capn I served America with no thought to economic or social standing,but the thing that I see is that those who are successful are being made to feel guilty for their success. I see people like Blue Jay wanting to hurt the rich and successful just because they are rich and successful. I just don’t understand. You want to see inovation and job growth stagnate in this country just keep keep on with the entitlement mentality and let’s see what happens.
CapnAmerica-
You are the one that brought up the Koch Bros.
CapnAmerica
Posted October 16, 2009 at 10:41 am | Permalink
The Koch Bros.–9th richest Americans–buy the RepubliCONs in the State Legislature and screw everybody else in Kansas, and the “useful idiots” say “thank you, sir, may I have another.”
Unbelievable.
—————————————————-
They’re also the only major local employer (minus the guberment) not contributing to our rising unemployment rate.
Anti illustrates a frequent non-sequitor used by the true believers in the Church of the Holy Marketplace: that money collected in taxes from one person is “given” to some one else who didn’t earn it and doesn’t deserve it.
Does the soldier not deserve her pay?
Does the teacher not earn his wages?
Does the road crew?
The governor?
The governor’s staff?
The dairy inspector? The restaurant inspector? The CDC?
The unemployed who have paid in while they’re working?
The old folks who paid into Social Security?
*****
Taxes are the necessary dues that everybody must pay to live in a civilized society. I would guess that taxes on the rich are quite low in Somalia.
Don’t find many rich people living there though, do you.
“I see people like Blue Jay wanting to hurt the rich and successful ”
” You get on back to us when the rich are hurting there gene.”
I believe I have expressed my honest concern for any possible “plight” of the wealthy in advance there “Freebird”. Let me also express my clear intent to rush to the aid of any dead person who comes into need!
Taxes are the necessary dues that everybody must pay to live in a civilized society. I would guess that taxes on the rich are quite low in Somalia.
Don’t find many rich people living there though, do you.
===============================
Speaking of “non-sequitors”…..
You want to see inovation and job growth stagnate in this country just keep keep on with the entitlement mentality and let’s see what happens.
Freebird–
I don’t think mentality influences much. BlueJay’s alleged hatred of the rich has very little influence on how the rich live today.
As for being made to “feel guilty” . . . dude, you don’t know many really rich people, do you.
What has a huge influence on how we and the rich and the poor live are the POLICIES that the government enacts.
Right now, we have a historically LOW taxation level. You have to go back to the 20’s to find taxation on the rich as low as it is now. And you have to go back to the 20’s to find the rich as rich as they are relative to the rest of us.
The rich really are getting richer. And the rest of us are treading water or sinking.
The rich are not in any measurable way victimized.
Lastly, if I make 3x as much as Anti, then I should pay 3x as much taxes.
No question about it.
I believe I have expressed my honest concern for any possible “plight” of the wealthy in advance there “Freebird”. Let me also express my clear intent to rush to the aid of any dead person who comes into need!
————————————-
So you don’t have a problem of taking the fruit of the dead’s labor and not letting the family go along with the wishes of their loved one?
So Capn’A,
I take it you will be keeping a firm grasp on your own wealth…Let others pay.
Typical self-hating Liberal.
Anti–
Let me spell it out for you.
Somalia has no taxes. Somalia is a failed state in which nothing works.
There’s a cause and effect there.
Lastly, if I make 3x as much as Anti, then I should pay 3x as much taxes.
===========================
Get ready for the .gov to take 90% of your pay. At the minimum of your 6 figure income, that leaves you with $10,000.
Good Luck.
Somalia has no taxes. Somalia is a failed state in which nothing works.
There’s a cause and effect there.
===============================
True, but they have a schitt load of sand, and according to Jed that should make them filthy rich.
Evidently they are idiots.
Capn’A,
Good luck with your self-hating one man circus.
Anti–
There’s never been a time in our nation’s history in which the gov’t confiscated 90 percent of someone’s wealth.
There were times when the top income tax was 90 percent, but that was only on the part of the income that was above a certain level.
That high tax period also corresponded to excellent economic growth and improving standard of living for everyone in the US.
No less than Warren Buffett — not exactly a flaming liberal — has warned of the dangers of low estate taxes. He believes it is not good for our economy to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few–especially those few like Paris Hilton who did nothing productive to earn it.
okobserver
Posted October 16, 2009 at 10:54 am | Permalink
XXX right back at you. I get really sick of the attitude on here that corporations are evil.
______________________________
Okobserver, I don’t think I’ve ever said or indicated that “corporations are evil”. My problem is with the crooks that seem to run some of them.
______________________________
That all ‘rich’ people should pay. We own a small business and employ several people. My son has started his own small business and is struggling just as the economy is.
______________________________
And I have the greatest respect for people who build their own business. Small business is what makes this country work. But rich people should pay their fair share.
Okobserver, what percentage of your income do you think should go to taxes?
_________________________________
The mentality on this blog by the BJs and the Pmoms is that we need to give more and more and more.
__________________________________
You finally got it right in that you didn’t lump me in with people I don’t agree with.
__________________________________
Well businesses have just about given to the breaking point. We have a community colloge instructor that gives us lessons on capitalism.
__________________________________
??????
Define “breaking point”. Is your business going broke because you’ve been too charitable?
________________________________
There is something screwy about this whole debate.
_________________________________
We agree on that.
_________________________________
I just said instead of saying we need to tax corporations more and the evil rich need to do their part that everyone needs to look at their ownselves. In ninty percent of the world even Bluejay would be considered rich. Is this the standard we want to set for the US.
________________________________
People who are able need to get off their lazy azz and get to work.
But if you’re not able?
I’ll take the Christian path on that one.
I don’t think mentality influences much. BlueJay’s alleged hatred of the rich has very little influence on how the rich live today.
—————————————————-
If that mentality votes (which it does) it has as much influence as I. And unfortunately it is in power.
Anti–
So Somalis are poor because they have no natural resources?
Interesting.
And Hong Kong? And Taiwan? And Japan? And Ireland”
Well . . . Ireland does have peat.
No natural resource is as good as human productivity. And you need a functioning, civil society to allow human productivity.
And that means taxes.
The best thing you can do for the poor is to keep taxes low for everybody. That frees up more money that can be used for job creation.
The poor who depend on other people’s tax bills without any effort to provide for themselves, will always be poor and happy.
That’s kind the whole point. The more the government blindly gives to the poor, the more people will be content to be “poor”.
Charity (funded by tax exempt contributions) helps those who are really the most needy. The government does not have the means to make sure who is needy and who is not.
If that mentality votes (which it does) it has as much influence as I. And unfortunately it is in power.
*****
See, this is what is really scary about you CONs.
You get everything you want politically–you got your invasion of Iraq, you got your low taxes on the rich (down to a ridiculous 15 percent of “capital gains” i.e., buying and trading real estate or stocks instead of working for a living), you got estate taxes cut, you passed your Patriot Act so the gov’t can spy on you whenever and for whatever without any just cause.
But still you point fingers and claim–YOU are the reason things are so bad!
CapnAmerica
Posted October 16, 2009 at 11:34 am | Permalink
Anti–
So Somalis are poor because they have no natural resources?
================================
Capn’A perhaps you are uninformed.
Genocide takes up quite a bit of the day and doesn’t leave much time for being productive.
Most of Africa has very intrusive governments, their citizens pay for this with their lives.
Phinatic–
Thanks for reciting the Ten Commandments from the Church of the Holy Marketplace.
You might do a little digging to see if there’s an iota of evidence to back up what you say.
It’s been my experience that the poor work harder than anybody else.
Yes, yes YOU are.
Again Capn’A,
Good luck with the self-hating one man circus.
They don’t have genocide in Somalia, Anti.
They have warlordism.
That’s what happens when you don’t have a government.
BIg deal. I have yet to see anyone here or any conservative on the national front, state there is no need for government. The disagreement is on the level of government necessary.
That’s what happens when you don’t have a government.
=========================
I don’t believe I have seen anyone here post that they want absolutely NO GOVERNMENT.
I scrolled over most of this morning’s posts as I had work to do.
But I’m reminded of the story of Jesus and the Widow’s mite.
Many professed “christians” on this thread have chosen to neglect that lesson.
The Koch Brothers take their inherited billions and toss a smattering of their fortune around, mostly to protect their oil and chemical businesses and are WE Blog saints. “They gave more!”
Yeah, well. They inherited way more to give. And they didn’t give as much as they could have. They’ve never come close to the Widow’s mite.
Last night, Rachel Maddow totally pwned Tim Phillips of David Koch’s astro-turf “grassroots” campaign “Americans for Prosperity.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#33337020
“You are a parasite that gets fat on America’s fears.”
LJ beat me to it!
Anti–
So far you CONs have said that anyone who disagrees with you is “self-hating,” is “jealous,” is a “braggart.”
How about just looking at the facts.
Taxation on the rich is lower than it’s been since the Great Depression. The Estate Tax has been cut and now it’s going to be cut again at the state level.
The rich control TWICE AS MUCH wealth now as they did in 1985. The rest of us control HALF AS MUCH as we did then.
The Wal-Mart family, most of whom had nothing to do with Sam Walton’s original marketing plan, are now richer than the bottom 100 MILLION AMERICANS.
The CEO of Wal-Mart makes more in two weeks than a Wal-Mart cashier will make in her entire life at Wal-Mart.
The top 1 percent of income earners in the US make more than the bottom 95 percent combined.
And on and on it goes . . .
Yet those who worship at the Church of the Holy Marketplace are only worried about . . . those poor, poor victimized RICH PEOPLE.
“You are a parasite that gets fat on America’s fears.”
—————————————————-
Yes she is. And the guy who proceeds her too.
Somalia, the fire department, sewer system, etc. are all LIB Nerf Bats.
Swing away Capn’A.
“You are a parasite that gets fat on America’s fears.”
===========================
If you think Rachel isn’t doing the same thing, you are an idiot.
Yet those who worship at the Church of the Holy Marketplace are only worried about . . . those poor, poor victimized RICH PEOPLE.
—————————————————-
I don’t feel sorry for rich people.
But I don’t see poor people giving me a job either.
I have yet to see anyone here or any conservative on the national front, state there is no need for government.
*****
Ronald Reagan, 1961: If Medicare passes, there will come a time in our sunset years when we will tell our children and our grand-children what it was once like to be free in America.
Ronald Reagan, 1980’s: Government doesn’t solve problems. Government IS the problem.
Grover Norquist, trusted George W. Bush advisor: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
Okobserver must not be available, so I’ll throw open the question to anybody who feels up to answering.
How much of your income should go to taxes?
Don’t be bashful.
How much of your income should go to taxes?
=====================================
10% total.
“And they didn’t give as much as they could have. They’ve never come close to the Widow’s mite.”
And neither did the Obamas, or the Bidens, or the Kennedys with their offshore family trusts. Yet, they want to FORCE people to do what they refused to do voluntarily. Hypocrites all.
But I don’t see poor people giving me a job either.
*****
I thought you CONs were all for STARTING YOUR OWN BUISNESS!
But I digress.
I’ve worked for a lot of poor people.
I worked as a pest control operator — spraying for bugs — in college. Those folks were far from rich.
I worked in a little family greenhouse that was ekeing by.
If poor people stopped working for one hour, this country would come to a grinding halt.
Of that 10%:
2% to Federal
8% to State.
I worked as a pest control operator — spraying for bugs — in college. Those folks were far from rich.
—————————————————-
But as a Business Owner in the eyes of your view of Government, he is.
Speaking of Maddow and Oberman, did anybody watch Glen Beck last night? He had another one of his blubbering spells….Bigtime!
And yes, I admit to watching Glen Beck.
“You get everything you want politically–you got your invasion of Iraq, you got your low taxes on the rich (down to a ridiculous 15 percent of “capital gains” i.e., buying and trading real estate or stocks instead of working for a living), you got estate taxes cut, you passed your Patriot Act so the gov’t can spy on you whenever and for whatever without any just cause.”
Cap you really aren’t too sharp when it comes to capitalism or you wouldn’t make such a dumb statement. Capital gains taxes are taxes on what. I make money and I invest said money. I pay taxes on this money when I earn it. I then pay taxes on this money again when I invest it wisely. If I don’t invest wisely or the market tanks as it does frequently then the gov doesn’t reimburse me for those loses does it.
The Patriot Act can be repealed by your prez whenever he pleases. He doesn’t please because he realizes that it saved this country from at least one attack that we know of.
Libs like you are sitting back in the lap of luxury telling the others around you some who aren’t nearly as well off that they don’t ‘give’ enough.
There is nothing to stop you from writing a ck to the gov. How much will you write it for? Where do you want to lower your living level to. To poverty level or a little above. Maybe lower middle class. It is in your power to do that . Write the ck.
You have the executive branch and both houses of congress. What is holding back all the things you want to see done. Could it be that the problem is within your own party. Politicians that have finally listened to their constitutents from both parties.
Go for it. Write your ck. Call the prez and tell him to get off the campaign circuit as he was yesterday and sit down in the oval office and get something done.
Four more soldiers were killed today in Afganistan. I for one am tired of the inaction we are seeing from this prez. Listening to his speech in San Francisco yesterday just made me sick when I look around at the state of our nation. Instead of placing the blame on conservatives man up and put the blame where it belongs.
And if you took all the wealth in the United States, and restributed it evenly, within 10 years, it would be still a fact that a few control more wealth than the many. It’s just human nature. Would it be the same ones? Some yes, some no.
XXX
Posted October 16, 2009 at 12:03 pm | Permalink
Speaking of Maddow and Oberman, did anybody watch Glen Beck last night? He had another one of his blubbering spells….Bigtime!
And yes, I admit to watching Glen Beck.
————-
I don’t watch Beck but did see him on O’Reilly last night. He said he has a private phone line reserved for calls from the White House. He wants them to call him whenever they think something about them has been reported in error. This seems like a sensible solution to me. If FOX is reporting something wrong. Call them on it. They have a line in. Just for them. Instead of fighting over abstracts – fight over real facts. Sounded right to me.
Part of the problem is that CONs imagine this scenario:
Some able-bodied black guy is living in an inner-city slum driving a 1989 pimped out Lincoln Town Car and watching day time TV all day.
He is able to subsist in his life-style choice because the big dumb liberal government steals money from productive people like Okie and Deb and give it to Mr. Slum Jockey in the form of welfare payments, food stamps, and rent subsidies.
This produces more Slum Jockies in a vicious downward spiral.
This is a straw man. Clinton passed welfare to work reform that only allows someone to collect welfare for a few years before they are kicked off. Very few people elect to live on welfare by choice.
If this were a massive problem, then the CONs would be justified in their criticism.
However, it’s not a big problem. Welfare, food stamps, etc are a tiny percentage of what the gov’t spends money on.
Most of the real gov’t welfare is going to rich people–Boeing, Blackwater, Halliburton etc.–that provide little or no benefit and massively overcharge for it.
Trouble is,
Tax Payment
Dear IRS,
Enclosed is my Tax Return&payment.Please take note of the attached article from the USA Today newspaper. In the article, you will see that the Pentagon is paying $171.50 for hammers and NASA has paid$600.00 for a toilet seat.
Please find enclosed four toilet seats(value $2,400) and six hammers (value $1,029). This brings my total payment to $3,429.00. Please note the overpayment of $22.00 and apply it to the “Presidential Election Fund,” as noted on my return.
Might I suggest that you send the above mentioned fund a “1.5inch screw.” ( See attached article…HUD paid $22.00 for a 1.5 inch Phillips Head Screw.)
It has been a pleasure to pay my tax bill this year, and I look forward to paying it again next year. I just saw an article about the Pentagon and “screwdrivers.”
Okie–
Practically everything Fox says is wrong or a lie.
The WH doesn’t have time to call them on each one.
It’s like trying to clean up after a herd of elephants with a soup spoon.
XXX sorry I have to work and blog at the same time. I am trying to keep jobs for our employees. We struggle with this daily. Not sure how much longer we can keep from joining the long line of small business that have to lay off workers.
This is why I get really frosted to hear the BJs of the world spew their ignorance and just as annoyed to hear the Capn with absolutely no idea of what drives an economy trying to make a case for higher taxes.
As business owners we pay well over 40% in taxes when you consider our matching funds for futa, fica, suta, medicare and all of the other corporate taxes we pay.
As an individual We pay in the 32% range. This is too high. I could go into why it is too high but time would run out on my day before I finished.
As for Capns stupid remark about Grandma driving on the roads and paying the same thing that the Kochs paid is just another example of ignorance of what drives a capitalistic society.
Everytime you or I or the Koch Corp buys a tank of gas we pay a tax. Same tax on every gallon. We don’t fill out a questionaire to see how much money we each have. But for every gallon we buy we pay the tax. If grandma only drives to church on Sunday she probably only buy a gallon of gas per week as compared to the fleet of the Koch corp. that drives thousand of miles a week.
Do you get the drift? Who is paying for the roads we drive. Grandmas taxes on one gallon a week or the Koch corp which buy thousands of gallons a week and pays tax on every gallon they buy.
CapnAmerica
Posted October 16, 2009 at 12:16 pm | Permalink
Okie–
Practically everything Fox says is wrong or a lie.
The WH doesn’t have time to call them on each one.
It’s like trying to clean up after a herd of elephants with a soup spoon.
—————
Words are cheap capn which I guess is why you use them so often. When you have any proof of what you post get back to us. Until then you are just irrelevant drivel and deserve to be ignored.
Most of the real gov’t welfare is going to rich people–Boeing, Blackwater, Halliburton etc.–that provide little or no benefit and massively overcharge for it.
—————————————————-
How many do those companies employ?
How much of the overcharge is due to union labor?
“and you need a functioning, civil society to allow human productivity.
And that means taxes.”
Taxes produce productivity?
CapnAmerica
Posted October 16, 2009 at 12:14 pm | Permalink
Part of the problem is that CONs imagine this scenario:
Some able-bodied black guy is living in an inner-city slum driving a 1989 pimped out Lincoln Town Car and watching day time TV all day.
—————
Why are you such a racist? It everything about race to you? Or is this the path you have to use because your argument is so weak?
Very few people elect to go on welfare by choice.
Strangely, Rush Limbaugh was one of them . . .
BTW, Fox News is owned by Rupert Murdoch, another big BILLIONAIRE with a world-wide media empire.
Does it make sense that someone who basically owns the printing press would report on information that hurts his financial position?
Does it make more sense that someone like Rupert Murdoch would use his giant megaphone to protect his own wealth or to do what is in the best interest of society or his viewers?
The CON crowd think as they sit in their pathetic plastic lazy boys sipping their grocery store coffee that the big players of Fox News with their houses in Vail and their condos in Paris and their yachts in Nassau have their ordinary viewers best interest at heart.
“How many times do you have to get hit over the head before you see who’s hitting you?” Harry Truman
Okay . . . that’s it.
Catch ya on the flip flop as the CBer’s say . . .
The CON crowd think as they sit in their pathetic plastic lazy boys sipping their grocery store coffee that the big players of Fox News with their houses in Vail and their condos in Paris and their yachts in Nassau have their ordinary viewers best interest at heart.
—————————————————-
And the liberal commentators are different?
Difference being, the politics that are spouted by conservative voices allow for anyone of us to achieve that kind of wealth.
The liberal voices, keeps everyone else a servant or slave to the Government while the wealthy few enjoy those luxuries.
I’d like to think that all the critics here are of good intention, so I must give them the benefit of the doubt. It sounds really good when looked at in it’s simplest form. They are screwing the poor, and giving the rich a bone.
HOWEVER, while I am critical of the wealthy, even out right leery of them…just had an aspect of my own compensation altered WITHOUT EVEN A WORD MENTIONED TO ME, THEY JUST STOPPED PAYING ME A PORTION OF MY EXPECTED PAY. The change is a small change, won’t really even benefit them much, or hurt me, it was however a shove, a nudge, just to prove they can in these tough economic times… ya, that’s why so many people take it out on all of the “rich”… some ruin it for everybody, and the people do have their pitch forks out,and they are on the hunt. I understand why!
But one fact does remain true. Many businesses are hanging on by a thread right now. Even in good times, placing an anchor on business costs people jobs, investors / entrepeneurs (yes, I can’t spell) take less risks, tax revenue goes down. ALL OF THIS IS TRUE! WE KNOW IT AS WE KNOW THE SUN WILL RISE IN THE EAST, AND SET IN THE WEST!
But their are different types of “rich” people as well. Their is the small business owner with 0-199 employees who is just normal folks. Maybe they were a red hot drywaller and decided to work for themselves, or an auto mechanic who opens up a shop and brings on a couple mechanics. A lot of those folks aren’t rich in reality, at times can make less than their employees or loose money.
Where self will has run riot is in BIG BUSINESS! Mainly publically traded companies, and not just any of them, I’m talking “mega corporations.” They are politically connected, they don’t pay any taxes, and they are supported by the United States Treasury DIRECTLY! They are nestled high up in their perches, and the folks with their pitch forks… only going to eliminate the competation for the real fat cats, who are protected by our own government.
The middle of the road, or small business people who I refer to as the working rich. They actually get screwed pretty bad. They are an equal partner with fed/state/local governing bodies. THAT’S WRONG! That’s theft!
Let’s take our poor on the other hand. They live slightly ABOVE an average Europeaner! Our poor tend to be ungrateful. Tend to expect something for nothing. Go work at the Lords Diner if you don’t believe me! You will be called a mother fornicator if you don’t serve the kind of jello they like. If a work training and day labor facility were there instead of a hand out the people would not come!
Charity is VERY important, but it’s best done by individuals, and organizations of individuals, NOT government. Have YOU fed a someone or a family who was down on their luck? I HAVE! Have you let into your a home someone who was in a crisis? I HAVE. What difference have I made? WOW, 1% would be such a joyous number for me. But what I got in my heart… THAT’S NOT SOMETHING I CAN PUT A NUMBER ON!
So why is it that success in helping the down and out is so low? Well, it’s like dealing with an alcoholic. When doing so, one speaks with their families, and says “don’t help them, make them feel the consequences for every decession they make, just let them know you DO love them….” YOU CANNOT ENABLE THEM! Well, we have a powerful enabler, the government of the United STates of America! Those who are devoted to charity and helping others JUST CAN’T COMPETE WITH THAT ENTITY!
I can take anyone in any situation, and have them self sufficient in less than 6 months IF THEY WANT IT! It’s frustrating, I remember one time I was working with a family who were about to be homeless, and within 6 months they were doing OK. The 1st thing they did to celebrate is get new tatoos! NOT save money, put money aside for their childrens college education, maybe look into getting some health insurance and off health wave. NOPE! THEY GOT TATOOS.
They made that choice because they could, because the wall of money flying from the top down is so huge, they all but drown in it. They had no interest in getting beyond the point of near homlessness.
Look, I can go on all day. The point is that we have to do three things. 1. Stop aid to people who are using it to make themselves more and more worthless, so that they can change, and be something. 2. Individually and through groups of individuals invest into each other with time, advice, and temporary relief. 3. CLEAR THE PATH FOR THOSE WHO ARE DOING SOMETHING TO MAKE OUR NATION AND COMMUNITY BETTER… GET OUT OF THEIR WAY!
“So you don’t have a problem of taking the fruit of the dead’s labor and not letting the family go along with the wishes of their loved one?”
The alternative is the establishment (as our country WELL demonstrates) of a class of permanently wealthy few and a HUGE population of those with next to nothing.
The threshold for the old national estate tax was five million dollars. If the bereaved cannot live comfortably on 5 million dollars or less, they are living too large.
“Their is the small business owner with 0-199 employees who is just normal folks.”
That doesn’t sound like a small business to me. And except for the service industries, there are very few such business opportunities in this country that do not answer to franchisers.
Semperfi you make a lot of sense but I have to straighten out one part of your post. No matter how big your corporation is you never get out of paying taxes completely because for every employee you have you will always pay social security, medicare, state withholding, federal withholding, fed unemployment tax, state unemployment tax, etc… – these are paid by every employer for every employee.
No corporation gets away tax free. They may get tax forgiveness on their corp taxes for creating jobs, etc… but they pay taxes. Make no mistake about this.
The alternative is the establishment (as our country WELL demonstrates) of a class of permanently wealthy few and a HUGE population of those with next to nothing.
——————————–
like the Kennedys?
BlueJay
Posted October 16, 2009 at 12:40 pm | Permalink
“Their is the small business owner with 0-199 employees who is just normal folks.”
That doesn’t sound like a small business to me. And except for the service industries, there are very few such business opportunities in this country that do not answer to franchisers.
————
You are such an uninformed idiot.
“Additional budget cuts this year could result in fewer meals for seniors, larger class sizes in public schools and deeper cuts to state programs that already have gone through several reductions”
Now, let’s weigh that against some rich guy might have to settle for the Mercedes instead of the Bentley. I’m having trouble feeling anything for their unwilling “sacrifice”.
“like the Kennedys?”
The Kennedys are well known for their efforts in and outside Government to help their fellow man.
The threshold for the old national estate tax was five million dollars. If the bereaved cannot live comfortably on 5 million dollars or less, they are living too large.
—————————————–
I don’t have a problem with people living as large as they can afford
“like the Kennedys?”
The Kennedys are well known for their efforts in and outside Government to help their fellow man.”
Yeah, with their offshore family trust. Heh.
In major flip, House Dems now represent richest regions
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
Democratic members of the House of Representatives now represent most of the nation’s wealthiest people, a sharp turnaround from the long-standing dominance that Republicans have held over affluent districts.
A USA TODAY analysis of new Census data found that Democrats represent a far different constituency today than they did in 2005, when they were the minority in the House, or in 1990, when they were the majority.
———————-
Free and still the dems on this blog pretend they are the party of the common people. Those rich people at the head of the party like George Soros sit back and laugh their but ts off and the ‘little people’ like our bloggers wax eloquently about the evil conservatives.
“That doesn’t sound like a small business to me. And except for the service industries, there are very few such business opportunities in this country that do not answer to franchisers”
yeah, right.
I’m having trouble feeling anything for their unwilling “sacrifice”.
—————————————-
I have no sympathy for those who won’t do what is necessary to provide for themselves but would rather live off others
“I don’t have a problem with people living as large as they can afford.”
“Additional budget cuts this year could result in fewer meals for seniors, larger class sizes in public schools and deeper cuts to state programs that already have gone through several reductions,”
Do you have a “problem” with that?
nope,because your side is in control if that happens look in the mirror to see where the blame belongs
My “side” (Liberals, Democrats, people who have a heart) could hardly be called in control of the state of Kansas.
The dems have the votes. They won the election. They are in control. What is the holdup?
BlueJay: do you have a problem if all your assets go to the government to dispense after you die? Well perhaps they leave your descendants a portion…whatever the politicians decide. What if your children are not even of age yet when this happens?
If the dems in control in DC would get off their duffs and fix the economy then the states wouldn’t be suffering so badly. What is the current administration doing to bring us those ’shovel ready’ jobs?
As SNL said Obama hasn’t done Jack Squat to fix anything. Nothing he has promised has happened. All spit and no polish. All talk.
When will the jobs be created so the states will start to bring in the tax dollars they need to keep the states from having to cut services.
The fed has put us where we are. What will they do about it? It is time for the democrat party to put up or shut up.
“BlueJay: do you have a problem if all your assets go to the government to dispense after you die? ”
Not really, no. Not that that actually HAPPENS to anyone. Or do you have an example?
Have a heart with your own money BlueJay. Don’t confiscate other people’s money and give it to the poor and say you “have a heart.”
XXX
Posted October 16, 2009 at 12:03 pm | Permalink
Speaking of Maddow and Oberman, did anybody watch Glen Beck last night?
========================
I don’t watch any of them.
I’m only allowed one day per month for blood to shoot out of my eyes.
Were you going to give us an example of the ENTIRE estate of some dead billionaire being confiscated and redistributed Deb? Or do you just (probably) not know any better?
It’s easy to be generous with other peoples money
BlueJay
Posted October 16, 2009 at 12:49 pm | Permalink
“like the Kennedys?”
The Kennedys are well known for their efforts in and outside Government to help their fellow man.
——————-
I watched the History channel show the other night about the Kennedys. JFK was quoted as saying; ” I learned about he depression while I was in Harvard.” At the same time he lided the
‘bourgeoisie’ life cruising Europe as the son of a Ambassorder to Britain.
The Kennedy’s must have felt real guilty.
Are you a billionaire BlueJay? I referred to you, not a billionaire.
But why does it matter whether a person is a billionaire or has$5000 when they die?
They have already been taxed on their wealth. Why does anyone need to pay more taxes?
When I said “all”, it is in the sense that politicians think they can play with the rate of confiscation. In other words they think they have the right to all of it, but graciously let the descendants retain part of it. You think it is justified as long as all is not taken. And yet in some nations they have taken all of a person’s property in some cases.
Just for Capn’A:
News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch said on Friday that White House criticism of commentators on his Fox News television channel had served to “tremendously” increase their ratings.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.76196516c169324ccab7851697322dbf.61&show_article=1
Why is it so wrong to expect that someone who successfully used our society to enrich himself to return to the society a portion of what he made off it? Nobody ever got rich all by themselves, and it always amazes me how many people it takes to make a “self-made man” This “Take all you can! Give nothing back!” attitude may work for movie pirates, but we live in a real society of real people, and what we do to the less fortunate members we end up doing to ourselves.
ANTI
Posted October 16, 2009 at 1:09 pm | Permalink
XXX
Posted October 16, 2009 at 12:03 pm | Permalink
Speaking of Maddow and Oberman, did anybody watch Glen Beck last night?
========================
I don’t watch any of them.
I’m only allowed one day per month for blood to shoot out of my eyes.
____________________________
ROTFLMFAO!!!!!
Shouldn’t there be some limit on how much you can pass on to your kin? It occurs to me that if the richest families continue to get richer, eventually a very few will own everything and the rest of us will be serfs.
I’m just sayin….
How much should the Soros clan be able to keep?
Shouldn’t there be some limit on how much you can pass on to your kin?
========================================
No.
I should be able to give what is mine, to anyone I choose.
Why should my property be stolen?
Jed-
How do you know that they haven;t already given back to the society which allowed them to amass a measure of wealth? How much is enough?
But, for interesting conversation, I will play.
At what point should estate taxes kick in, and how big a percentage should be taken, in your view?
XXX,
I guess I am the only one who responded to your “how much should you pay in taxes” question.
You may not like my answers, but I did answer honestly.
I notice the other LOUD voices in this debate ignored the question.
Just cut what goes to the Serfs so the land overlords can keep more of what they’ve inherited, and pass it down.
Who are the serfs? We live in America!
If public education was supposed to “solve” all these problems (everyone gets an education so everyone has an equal chance), why hasn’t it?
They have already been taxed on their wealth. Why does anyone need to pay more taxes?
I’ll let Warren Buffett answer that question:
Published on Wednesday, February 14, 2001 in the New York Times
Dozens of the Wealthy Join to Fight Estate Tax Repeal
by David Cay Johnston
Some 120 wealthy Americans, including Warren E. Buffett, George Soros and the father of William H. Gates, are urging Congress not to repeal taxes on estates and gifts.
President Bush has proposed phasing out those taxes by 2009. But a petition drive being organized here by Mr. Gates’s father, William H. Gates Sr., argues that “repealing the estate tax would enrich the heirs of America’s millionaires and billionaires while hurting families who struggle to make ends meet.”
The billions of dollars in government revenue lost “will inevitably be made up either by increasing taxes on those less able to pay or by cutting Social Security, Medicare, environmental protection and many other government programs so important to our nation’s continued well-being,” the petition says.
In addition to the loss of government revenue, the petition says, repeal would harm charities, to which many of the affluent make contributions as a way of reducing the size of their estates.
“The estate tax,” it says, “exerts a powerful and positive effect on charitable giving. Repeal would have a devastating impact on public charities.”
Mr. Buffett, the Omaha investor who ranks fourth on the Forbes magazine list of the richest Americans, said in an interview that he had not signed the petition itself because he thought it did not go far enough in defending “the critical role” that he said the estate tax played in promoting economic growth, by helping create a society in which success is based on merit rather than inheritance.
Mr. Buffett said repealing the estate tax “would be a terrible mistake,” the equivalent of “choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics.”
“We would regard that as absolute folly in terms of athletic competition,” he said.
“We have come closer to a true meritocracy than anywhere else around the world,” he said. “You have mobility so people with talents can be put to the best use. Without the estate tax, you in effect will have an aristocracy of wealth, which means you pass down the ability to command the resources of the nation based on heredity rather than merit.“
The Paris Hilton Preservation Act.
Yeah, CONs.
Run with that issue.
But the CONs don’t really believe in economic competition . . . they believe that the rich are actually better people, people blessed by God who deserve everything they have.
Of course, Paris Hilton deserves her wealth–she has the wealth-giving blessed genes. This is what the Church of the Holy Marketplace preaches.
Some have, others want. The sheep and the goats. The washed and the unwashed.
It has always been so, it is natural and inevitable.
Even more . . . it is God’s will!
Communism, it’s fantastic!
Yeah, LIBs.
Run with that issue.
CapnAmerica
Posted October 16, 2009 at 2:28 pm | Permalink
But the CONs don’t really believe in economic competition . . . they believe that the rich are actually better people, people blessed by God who deserve everything they have
===================================
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!!!
Oversimplification to make your point, eh? Funny as well as completely…..wrong
“Some have, others want. The sheep and the goats. The washed and the unwashed.”
It has always been so, it is natural and inevitable”
================================
True enough. More specifically. Some will do what it takes to get it, some won;t It has always beenso, it is natural and inevitable.
Semperfiguy–
I agree with most of what you write.
And thanks for taking the position that people have reasons that seem good to them for what they believe.
But I have to differ with you on this: Let’s take our poor on the other hand. They live slightly ABOVE an average Europeaner!
I haven’t found that to be true when I’ve gone to Europe or the UK. In fact, I was rather stunned to find none of the thatched roofs and smoky fires in Ireland that the old photos showed from the early part of the 20th century.
The cities and towns are shiny and clean. It seems like everyone is living in new, well-built houses. Didn’t see a single street person. Didn’t see a single slum. In fact, I didn’t even see anything that looked like Grove street east of East High in Wichita.
The low European standard of living seems to be a myth that Americans who haven’t spent much time there take some kind of comfort in.
The low European standard of living seems to be a myth that Americans who haven’t spent much time there take some kind of comfort in.
================================
It must not be that great.
After all, you came back to the USA.
MHawk–
The ironic thing is that Paris Hilton’s grand father made all the money.
When he died, he specified that the vast majority of his wealth go to Catholic orphanages. He did leave a respectable 1.8 million to Paris’s father.
Of course that wasn’t good enough for a spoiled rotten rich kid. He sued the estate and took control of all the money.
Screw the orphans.
On the other hand, Paris did give us that naked BJ video . . . and for free.
So we can’t say she has done nothing to repay her debt.
lj,
“At what point should estate taxes kick in, and how big a percentage should be taken, in your view?”
Well, you can’t take it with them, can you? I suppose an estate ought to provide a reasonable retirement for your wife and an education for your kids. Maybe a little to get them started in life. But beyond that, it’s harmful to your family and society at large, and ought to be returned to the society either through governmental or honestly charitable means to provide similar opportunities for those who somehow failed to choose rich enough parents to leave them an estate. As long as it does some good in the world. We currently seem oversupplied with snotty trust-fund brats.
With the European’s safety nets, do they even have ‘poor’?
Anti–
Yeah, I did come back.
Damn kids . . .
Last I read about it, their average work week was a lot fewer hours than here, also.
Jed-\
That sounds all nice and comforting, but in hard numbers….how large should the estate be before the estate tax kicks in, andhow much should be confiscated?
“We currently seem oversupplied with snotty trust-fund brats.”
i would not necessarily disagree with that.
Anti–
Yeah, I did come back.
Damn kids . . .
=======================
Well Capn’A, you are considered a man of wealth among most of the population.
Why didn’t you take them with you, I mean it’s a freakin’ utopia over there from what the LIBs spew around this place.
Funny how you all prefer to sit here in the USA and complain how bad you have it.
Perhaps it’s the “doin” part you people have a problem with.
There is no room for social communism in America, the politicians are firmly behind the Corporate Communism agenda, and both can not be funded simultaneously, also the Corporate Communist are better paymasters.
“Although poverty seems to have decreased overall, a form of extreme misery has reappeared in the 2000s. The media have attracted attention to bidonvilles (shanty towns), which were thought to have disappeared in the 1970s, with the transformation of Nanterre’s bidonville into a modern city (at the end of the 1960s, there were 89 shanty towns on the outskirts of Paris, and 43% of French Algerians lived in bidonvilles in 1963, a year after the Evian Accords put an end to the Algerian War[9]). Such urban communities, without roads or public services (no electricity, one access point to water), are a reality for example in Villeurbanne (Lyon), where a bidonville contains 500 persons with Roma origins, a third of them being children.[10][11][12] In February 2007, bulldozers destroyed a bidonville in Bobigny, near Paris, where 266 Romanian and Bulgarian citizens had been registered.[13][14][15][16]
Furthermore, bidonvilles are common in the overseas departments.[17″
From WIki.
ANTI
Posted October 16, 2009 at 2:04 pm | Permalink
XXX,
I guess I am the only one who responded to your “how much should you pay in taxes” question.
You may not like my answers, but I did answer honestly.
_____________________________
How could I ask for more? I give you credit for being one of the more reasonable posters on this blog.
Capn’A,
Get on a plane.
Ooogle at the Ocean.
Find your Socialist utopia.
Unpack.
Consider yourselves lucky to be in Europe.
Kick back.
You’ll do fine
Over there in that wonderful
Utopia of
Ramped
Socialism in
Europe.
Liberals should all be able to
Find happiness away from our shores.
So, is the wiki article referring to illegal alliens living in the shanty towns?
Anti–
I don’t complain about how bad I have it.
I complain about how bad the poor have it, and how the middle class is getting shafted.
And quite frankly if I could find a job there like the job I have here, I would move there.
I’ve worked overseas before, and I liked it for the most part. But being separated from family and one’s home culture is not something that everyone is willing to do. I don’t think my wife would be up for it.
People live where they live for other reasons than just the money. I guess that surprises CONs.
I give you credit for being one of the more reasonable posters on this blog.-XXX
====================
Well, I may have destroyed that with my previous post to Capn’A.
Ooops.
But beyond that, it’s harmful to your family and society at large, and ought to be returned to the society
If the above statement does not scare the schitte out of you, that people actually think like this, you are living in the wrong country. I hear France needs workers. None of their people want to work anymore.
“http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/world/europe/11iht-paris.html”
More poverty in France
People live where they live for other reasons than just the money.
=================
I know Capn’A, I’m just busting your balls.
;)
You Commie bastid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abRykcjp-XE
Here’s Rachel Maddow ripping Americans for Prosperity the billionaire front group a new one.
Enjoy.
Speakin of the monied class, I saw that the founder of Galleon hedge fund (262nd most wealthy on Forbes) has been arrested and charged along with a handful of other big wigs for insider trading by the FBI. This isn’t the bush fbi anylonger.
Rachel Maddow
======================
I don’t think that 14 year old boy could bench press a ground squirrel….
I saw that ‘interview’ last night, doubt he’ll be quick to come back on.
CapnAmerica
Posted October 16, 2009 at 2:57 pm | Permalink
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abRykcjp-XE
—————————————————-
Rachel Maddow ripping one off, that definitely wasn’t about what I thought it was gonna be about.
I gonna call it a day.
Over and Out.
While the United States’ mean wealth is the highest of any major country, its median income is considerably lower relative to many other countries, reflecting a relatively unequal income distribution. Much of the extra money in the United States is the result of a much wealthier top section of the population. If the top five percent of the population is not included the average Canadian would be wealthier than the average American. The United States also has more people below the poverty line than 26 other countries
. . .
Compared with some other countries, such as France and Germany, the US has much average higher hours worked per person, and it may be argued that much of the reason for higher incomes in the US is that people work more. If leisure time were taken into account in measuring the standard of living, the advantage of the US would be reduced.
http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Standard:of:living:in:the:United:States.html
There are over 650,000 millionaires in Hollyfornia alone. Heck, that’s a larger population than the biggest cities in Kansas combined.
Most of the millionaires live blue states – so draw your own conclusions.
Duh Libs talk a good game about the Cons being rich, blah dee blah blah blah, but the facts say otherwise.
I’m reminded by a joke I heard was really popular in Russia in the 1960s.
“Under Capitalism, man exploits man.
Under Communism, it’s the other way around.”
WE Blog CONs toss around epithets such as “SOCIALISM!!!! and “COMMUNISM” and “FASCISIST” and Teen-Aged Loose Women without having a clue what they’re talking about.
The Human Development Index which looks at life expectancy and literacy rates as well as income ranks the US 13th after mostly European countries, Australia, Canada, and Japan.
“The United States measures better in certain categories than others. Americans are some of the wealthiest people in the world, with a very high GDP per capita. Americans are top in the world for most material possessions. The number of televisions, vehicles, and other such products per person are considerably higher than in any other country. For instance the United States has some 754 televisions for every thousand people, no other major state is even above 700, with Japan being closest at 680/1000.
The United States also consistently has one the lowest unemployment rates in the world, usually only beaten by Japan. ”
More good news from the Captains link.
“The United States measures better in certain categories than others. Americans are some of the wealthiest people in the world, with a very high GDP per capita. Americans are top in the world for most material possessions. The number of televisions, vehicles, and other such products per person are considerably higher than in any other country. For instance the United States has some 754 televisions for every thousand people, no other major state is even above 700, with Japan being closest at 680/1000.
The United States also consistently has one the lowest unemployment rates in the world, usually only beaten by Japan. ”
More good news from the Captains link.
lj,
Hard numbers vary with geography. What you can get by nicely on here would be poverty level in New York or LA.
What you can go to school on at a state university wouldn’t pay the beer tab at an ivy league school. Ideally, the school should be chosen on talent, not daddy’s bucks, and sometimes that’s the case. I’d vote for somewhere in between and use the surplus to fund scholarships and/or Pell Grants. We need to move away from a good-ole-boy-network society and make what you know more valuable than the who-you-know attitude of the big-name schools.
I’m sure some reasonable figures can be arrived at to assure an opportunity for your family to do well after you’re gone, but I’m of the opinion it should be just that- an opportunity, not a megabuck trust fund. Your kids will eventually thank you for it.
China has only slightly fewer millionaires than the U.S., bet shortly they’ll have more.
I see that CapnCommunist has been using his hammer and sickle to pound out the socialist agenda.
Smells like wodka…tastes like panther pi$$…
Jed-
And for exactly those reasons, and others, the government should stay out of it, not dictating how much is too much. The estate tax is either 1) just another tax to confiscate money to spend on whatever the government deems important at the time or 2) a penalty imposed on those who, by whatever legals means, did better than the jealous who want some of it whether the deserve it or not
Regardless, the very wealthy will continue to exempt itself from estate taxes by moving money into offshore trusts, much like the Kennedys.
“Or support the charitable and faith based programs that can help these people WITHOUT government intervention. Tax dollars have a tendency to only support more administration and bureaucracy.”
This is false, Sam, even if you sincerely believe it. The service system for people with disabilities would utterly collapse without tax dollars.
“The United States also has more people below the poverty line than 26 other countries”
———–
I wonder. Do these “26 other countries” have the same definition of “poverty line” as the US? Or is the “poverty line” here, high income in a lot of those places?
I know that CapnAmerica never wants to misrepresent things, or for people to get the wrong idea, so maybe he could clarify that for us.
The point is, the issue is that the state, by necessity, is making deep cuts in all services, including vital human services. Given that such cuts are necessary, it is inexcusable to further cut revenues by not deferring tax cuts to those who can easily afford the taxes they are already paying.
The ‘jawless fish’ responds with This is false, Sam, even if you sincerely believe it. The service system for people with disabilities would utterly collapse without tax dollars.
to SAMKAN’s: Tax dollars have a tendency to only support more administration and bureaucracy.”
———————————
The disability programs ran by the government is almost all administrative, so KANSAM is correct.
SSDI is a huge and the biggest program for disabled people and I bet 90 percent of all programs operated are for adminitrative costs.
lj,
You seem to consider taxes as a punishment rather than paying your dues back to the society you live in for the benefits and opportunities it offers. Maybe you should consider living on a desert island where you can be just as successful as you wanna be, with nobody around to cast an envious eye on your pathetic stash of trinkets.
Agnatha-
While I disagree with the estate tax in principal, I agreed with your position over 7 hours ago.
outlander
Posted October 16, 2009 at 3:52 pm | Permalink
—————————————————-
I find 20 including human rights mecca’s as Libya, Syria, China, Thailand and Malaysia.
Jed-
You seem to make a supposition about others out of thin air. Perhaps you should conside moving somewhere where that “talent” is appreciated, or where consficatory taxes are appreciated.
By they way Jed-
You are free to give the government all the money you want. there is no limit on it you know.
“on your pathetic stash of trinkets”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Now that was so meaningful to the conversation, wasn;t it.. Oh,no.. I guess it wasn;t.
David Letterman once defined the lottery as “A tax on stupid people.”
The estate tax is a tax on stupid rich people.
As some CONs have pointed out, there are many ways the very rich can adjust assets to pass them on to future generations. Trusts, stocks, off-shore accounts, investments, gifts… all are fully within the law for rewarding kids who happen to pick the right parents.
Bottom line (and that’s what this is about, isn’t it?) –
If the Estate Tax is an issue that bothers you you’re an idiot.
Maybe you’re a Scrooge McDuck wanna-be who sits up in the mansion and rolls around in your wealth. Maybe you hate your no-account kids and don’t want them to get anything of your largess. Maybe you think somehow, some way, you might be able to take it with you. Or maybe you’re just selfish and ignorant sombich.
Because if your estate comes under the provisions of the estate tax, you’re stupid.
First off, the estate tax doesn’t even come into question unless you’re leaving more than $3 Million Dollars cash to your heirs. And, since you’ll be dead at the time, you won’t have to spend a dime on taxes. (Good use of the loophole, there. Still, it’s stupid.)
And unless one of your heirs actually inherits more than $3 Million Dollars, the issue is also moot. Because it isn’t a “death” tax, it’s an inheritance tax. And if gramps left you more than $3 Million Dollars simply due to an accident of birth you hit the genealogical lottery and any not-stupid person would probably pay the tax, take the money, and run.
But no…
It’s a safe bet some WE Blog CON is posting from a trailer park in Haysville defending the rights of Paris Hilton not tipping for her luck in accidental birth.
That’s your Estate Tax issue, CONs.
Bring it on.
reggie,
“SSDI is a huge and the biggest program for disabled people and I bet 90 percent of all programs operated are for adminitrative costs.”
Administative expenses for SSDI run less than 5% of the benefits paid out. You think you could do better?
“If the Estate Tax is an issue that bothers you you’re an idiot.”
It doesn;t bother me at all. It certainly seems to bother a whole lot of people who are whiny about other people’s money.
“First off, the estate tax doesn’t even come into question unless you’re leaving more than $3 Million Dollars cash”
I believe it is all assets, not just cash
lj,
“Perhaps you should conside moving somewhere where that “talent” is appreciated, or where consficatory taxes are appreciated.”
One of my customers has been extolling the virtues of moving to a studio near his orchard in the Basque region of Spain- only a couple hours to the mountains, the ocean and to that fantastic Gehry gallery in Bilbao, low cost of living and artists are given a tax break. Family has been my main reason for staying in Kansas, but with one son living in Buenos Aires now and the other planning a move to Houston, and winter coming on, it’s really starting to look good!
Jed-
sounds like you have a plan that would be suitable for you. SOunds like an adventure. If the time is right, I’d say for for it!
Bye Jed.
Okie, you cant tell the difference between spit and polish… So, what are you talking about?? Your problem with Obama — I say the ONLY problem you have with Obama, other than that he has great hope for the American People, is that Obama is Black… And YOU havent got that idea through your thick, numb skull yet!! Go pedddle your unique brand of witch craft somewhere else…
Chas you are a racist. Too bad you are too dumb to know it. You would support Obama no matter what he did. Thinking people aren’t falling for that one anymore.
Pass his bill if you can. Your party has the vote or do they?
He is trying to rush them through because they are poor policy and not good for the country. It isn’t working anymore. The recent Gallup poll showed that even dems who supported him are now sorry they did. Hillary Clinton is ahead of him in the polls. For that matter Sarah Palin has higher positives than he does now.
He is a community organizer without any executive experience and it has shown in everything he has attempted to do. His speech in San Francisco showed he still thinks he is campaigning.
Jed
Posted October 16, 2009 at 4:11 pm | Permalink
reggie,
“SSDI is a huge and the biggest program for disabled people and I bet 90 percent of all programs operated are for adminitrative costs.”
Administative expenses for SSDI run less than 5% of the benefits paid out. You think you could do better?
————————
Evidently Jed, you don’t know what “adminstrative costs of a program means.
Besides, you offered no source for your dubious answer.
SSDI Fast Facts
Year Established:
1954
Number of Employees:
63,000 SSA employees (FY 2008)
SSDI Budget:
$109 Billion
SSDI Applicants Backlog: (2009)
Level 1:
833,000
Level 2:
112,000
Level 3:
755,000
Level 4:
69,000
Total:
1,769,000
Average SSA wait time
across all levels:
942 days
Average Monthly SSDI
Benefit (2009):
$1,064
http://www.allsup.com/about-ssdi/ssdi-overview.aspx
Okie, what ISNT working anymore is you and your kind, and your NOT IN MY BACK “YARD attitudes, and all the LIES, and all the silliness of being opposed to actually HELPING people in NEED…
If you dont lose that attitude, you all are going to keep on losing elections… People arent going to sit around and DIE anymore because of the people of NO like you and all the CONS and neo-CONS
Ya know Okie, when people like YOU call people like me racists, I just about fall out of my chair LAUGHING — See, witch, I sit on two anti-racism committees in TWO major denominations…. So, you go right on ahead and think whatever delusionary thoughts you want… I KNOW BETTER….
You people think you make fun of Obama, when you call him a Community Organizer… BUT… This nation is one big community… And, what more does this nation need right now more than it needs a Community Organizer… And ya know, WE ELECTED WHAT WE NEED… The negativity against this man is simply all smoke and mirrors… Just watch this thing unfold… And you will see the underlying currents… Those currents are sparked on by ignorant people that waste their time going to tea parties, and cheering for all the things you people have tried for years to make happen, and it just aint gonna happen….
You cry, bi**h and whine that you want government off the backs of people… BUt, yet, you keep screaming because we have legalized abortion, and even YOU Okie, are in favor of making people pass a facts test before voting…. And you want government off the backs of the American People???? I will call you out on that — You want the government off the backs of people like YOU who want to take over this country, and turn back the clock at least 80 years, if not more!!
Grannie, you and others like you are ignorant, and WAY undereducated idiots… And I am most PROUD to say so… And if the Democrats are smart, they will start saying it in every speech….
And the sad thing is, nothing will interfere with the Stupidity that you CONS promote on a daily basis all over this great Nation….
I’m outta here, so dont bother responding!!
The protocols for establishing unemployment rates differ from country to country for some actually show how many people are out or work vs the covered-up-don’t-hinder-my-get-chances-to-get-re-elected system used here. Employment means different things as well for topography and climate can mean that seasonal work in the bush or at sea is compensated for by a more level system of unemployment insurance monies and of course they don’t have to worry about loosing their health care either. When we refer to the average income in the US it includes the ubercapitlaist 1% who brings up the national average, not reflecting the mean income which is what most people make, so the avergage Joe Stateside ain’t as well off as in other places….you know those socilaist havens of Commonwealth distributon? The places with highest standards of living, national health care results and education are ususally inclusive of Australia, Norway, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and Sweden, all of whom will “show” higher unemployment rates than America. Something wrong in how we calculate perhaps?
The poverty threshold or poverty line, is the minimum level of income deemed necessary to achieve an adequate standard of living in a given country. Many countries see that their citizens do not fall below than line moreso than America or as they like to call it, maintain a tigher social safety net. Those places may also have lower crime rates as well thanks to a more equitable distribution of their nation’s wealth. So poverty lines are a national statement not international brownie points.
Chas you can rant on at me all you want. The truth is out. No slur intended. Obama is a community organizer that was elected to a job outside the level of his expertise. Nothing whatsoever to do with his race. You constantly bring that up as if it is important.
His policies are important. The public has looked at them and said ‘No Way’. That isn’t me. Look at the democrat party. Hillary Clinton is ahead of Obama in their polls.
During the election racism was raised when Geraldine Ferro was drummed out of the Clinton camp. It was brought up against Bill Clinton. And now because Obama’s policies have been exposed it is being touted again. It was used against Rush Limbaugh this week and he shot them down. CNN has apologized because they didn’t fact check the statements Rush was supposed to have said.
You do the same thing on a daily basis. Well that tactic isn’t working anymore so you had better find a new handle.
The troll posits: “The disability programs ran by the government is almost all administrative, so KANSAM is correct.”
As the old saying goes, better to stay silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and prove it beyond a doubt. The troll doesn’t know what it is talking about.
“SSDI is a huge and the biggest program for disabled people and I bet 90 percent of all programs operated are for adminitrative costs.”
1) That would be wrong.
2) SSDI is indeed “huge”, it is also a FEDERAL program (specifically run by Social Security). The subject at the header of this thread is the state budget, and it is in fact the STATE budget I had in mind when I responded to Sam as I did.
3) The programs I had in mind primarily include the Home and Community Based Services waivers that fund the daily provision of services for people with developmental disabilities, and also comprise by far the largest proportion of funding for day to day operations for community service providers (including faith based service providers by the way). And, given what Sam tends to say, while I would guess he works for an agency that is entirely supported by private donations, many of the people who recieve services from his agency also recieve important services from taxpayer supported community agencies, such as mental health. I would be the first to agree that mental health services are weak in this country, and this state in particular, but things would be far worse if those services didn’t exist.
But in the worlds I work in, I know for a fact that the administrative overhead for these funding sources on the government side is very small (in large part because the actual services are provided by private entities, everything from families to non-profit agencies that affiliate with county CDDO’s.
4) Going back to the SSDI red herring, the troll posted the costs of a federal program, and I am not sure why it thinks the “figures” that it posted reveals anything about the administrative costs versus direct payment costs of the SSDI program. The actual administrative costs estimates for the 2010 budgetary year are 2.1 percent, which is a bit off from “90 percent”.
http://www.ssa.gov/budget/FY10KeyTables.pdf
Which is again, a red herring since the subject here is the STATE budget.
The dumbest damn administration EVER!!!
“WASHINGTON (AP) – What is $1.42 trillion? It’s more than the total national debt for the first 200 years of the Republic, more than the entire economy of India, almost as much as Canada’s, and more than $4,700 for every man, woman and child in the United States.
It’s the federal budget deficit for 2009, more than three times the most red ink ever amassed in a single year.
And, some economists warn, unless the government makes hard decisions to cut spending or raise taxes, it could be the seeds of another economic crisis.
Treasury figures released Friday showed that the government spent $46.6 billion more in September than it took in, a month that normally records a surplus. That boosted the shortfall for the full fiscal year ending Sept. 30 to $1.42 trillion. The previous year’s deficit was $459 billion.
As a percentage of U.S. economic output, it’s the biggest deficit since World War II.
“The rudderless U.S. fiscal policy is the biggest long-term risk to the U.S. economy,” says Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard professor and former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund. “As we accumulate more and more debt, we leave ourselves very vulnerable.”
Forecasts of more red ink mean the federal government is heading toward spending 15 percent of its money by 2019 just to pay interest on the debt, up from 5 percent this fiscal year.
President Barack Obama has pledged to reduce the deficit once the Great Recession ends and the unemployment rate starts falling, but economists worry that the government lacks the will to make the hard political choices to get control of the imbalances.
Friday’s report showed that the government paid $190 billion in interest over the last 12 months on Treasury securities sold to finance the federal debt. Experts say this tab could quadruple in a decade as the size of the government’s total debt rises to $17.1 trillion by 2019.
Without significant budget cuts, that would crowd out government spending in such areas as transportation, law enforcement and education. Already, interest on the debt is the third-largest category of government spending, after the government’s popular entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare, and the military.
As the biggest borrower in the world, the government has been the prime beneficiary of today’s record low interest rates. The new budget report showed that interest payments fell by $62 billion this year even as the debt was soaring. Yields on three-month Treasury bills, sold every week by the Treasury to raise fresh cash to pay for maturing government debt, are now at 0.065 percent while six-month bills have fallen to 0.150 percent, the lowest ever in a half-century of selling these bills on a weekly basis.
The risk is that any significant increase in the rates at Treasury auctions could send the government’s interest expenses soaring. That could happen several ways – higher inflation could push the Federal Reserve to increase the short-term interest rates it controls, or the dollar could slump in value, or a combination of both.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that the nation’s debt held by investors both at home and abroad will increase by $9.1 trillion over the next decade, pushing the total to $17.1 trillion decade under Obama’s spending plans.
The biggest factor behind this increase is the anticipated surge in government spending when the baby boomers retire and start receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits. Also contributing will be Obama’s plans to extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone except the wealthy.
The $1.42 trillion deficit for 2009 – which was less than the $1.75 trillion that Obama had projected in February – includes the cost of the government’s financial sector bailout and the economic stimulus program passed in February. Individual and corporate income taxes dwindled as a result of the recession. Coupled with the impact of the Bush tax cuts earlier in the decade, tax revenues fell 16.6 percent, the biggest decline since 1932.
Immense as it was, many economists say the 2009 deficit was necessary to fight the financial crisis. But analysts worry about the long-term trajectory.
The administration estimates that government debt will reach 76.5 percent of gross domestic product – the value of all goods and services produced in the United States – in 2019. It stood at 41 percent of GDP last year. The record was 113 percent of GDP in 1945.
Much of that debt is in foreign hands. China holds the most – more than $800 billion. In all, investors – domestic and foreign – hold close to $8 trillion in what is called publicly held debt. There is another $4.4 trillion in government debt that is not held by investors but owed by the government to itself in the Social Security and other trust funds.
The CBO’s 10-year deficit projections already have raised alarms among big investors such as the Chinese. If those investors started dumping their holdings, or even buying fewer U.S. Treasurys, the dollar’s value could drop. The government would have to start paying higher interest rates to try to attract investors and bolster the dollar.
A lower dollar would cause prices of imported goods to rise. Inflation would surge. And higher interest rates would force consumers and companies to pay more to borrow to buy a house or a car or expand their business.
“We should be desperately worried about deficits of this size,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “The economic pain will be felt much sooner than people think, in the form of much higher interest rates and much higher rates of inflation.”
If all that happened rapidly, it could send stock prices crashing and the economy tipping into recession. It could revive the pain of the 1970s, when the country battled stagflation – a toxic mix of inflation and economic stagnation.
Paul Volcker, then the chairman of the Federal Reserve, responded by raising interest rates to the highest levels since the Civil War in a determined effort to combat a decade-long bout of inflation. His campaign pushed banks’ prime lending rate above 20 percent in 1981 and sent the country into what would be the longest post-World War II downturn before the current slump. Unemployment jumped to a postwar high of 10.8 percent in December 1982.
The battle against inflation, though, was won.
Most economists say we have time before any crisis hits. In part, that’s because the recession erased worries about inflation for now. In its effort to stimulate the economy, the Fed cut a key interest rate to a record low last December and is expected to keep it there possibly through all of next year. Demand for loans by businesses and consumers is so weak that low rates are not seen as a recipe for inflation.
Some hold out hope that Congress and the administration will act before another crisis erupts.
Robert Reischauer, a former head of CBO, said that in an optimum scenario, Congress will tackle the deficits next year. A package of tax increases and spending cuts could be phased in starting in 2013 and gradually grow over the next decade.
The administration has pledged to include a deficit-reduction plan in its 2011 budget, which will go to Congress in February.
Stanley Collender, a budget expert at Qorvis Communications and a former staff aide to House and Senate budget committees, cautions that unless investors show nervousness about the debt, the budget debate next year could feature more posturing between the two parties than any real action to fix the problems.
But Alan Greenspan, who led the 1983 commission that made changes to avert a crisis in Social Security, said in an interview that he was optimistic that politicians will eventually work out a solution.”
“I have always been a great supporter of Winston Churchill’s statement about the United States,” Greenspan said. “The United States can be counted on to do the right thing, after having tried all other conceivable alternatives.”
lj, Granny,
You’re a bit premature in wishing me off. First I’d have take at least a couple semesters of Spanish (the Castillian version) and I’d have to sell my house, which in the current market won’t be easy.
Then I’ve got all that pesky paper-passports and visas and hope I’m not on anybody’s terrorist watch-list, and make arrangements for shipping the 8,000lbs or so of cast iron that constitutes my workshop. And even if I get all that done and get moved, be aware that the web really is worldwide. I’ll be back on here in short order!
Jed-
You miss my point altogether. I have no desire to “wish anyone off” on any trip that they don;t want to go on. You sounded intrigued, and interested, and thought it might be great. I wished you well in your adventure if that is what you wanted. It deed indeed sound like fun.
Let me give you an idea of what a bunch of hicks we were. My great great grandfather started that farm, each year, they chopped down trees, and worked out the stumps with oxen, fire, and at times TNT. The kids walked and walked the newly cleared land, picking up rocks that would damage the plows. Year after year, more and more was cleared, cattle grazed the new prarie, leaving behind the necessary elements to make fertile farm land. Once it was suitable, the land was plowed up again and row crops went in. As each male grew old enough, he’d have a plot he was responsible for, it usually took until he was about 25, and according to court house records, they tended to wed and breed a good strong 14-15 year old female to make more kids to work the land. I imagine with all the labor and years of blood and sweat, that bride had better have her hymen in tact on her wedding night, that way the fruits of all that hard work would never be passed down to the spawn of someone elses seed!
It was a different world back then I guess!
Granny,
Sorry. I haven’t made any decisions yet. I do have a significant other I’ll want to talk into going along, but my customer in Spain is a fantastic professional photographer and his pictures of the area ought to be convincing enough. It’ll still be quite a hassle to get all those necessary scraps of paper. I’ll be around for a while yet.