Campaign 2008

[At Home 0]

Heaven forbid that Marvin procure a trustworthy source, and, even according to that math, people saving 3% of their income would have a 2.1% negative effect on the nation's GDP, or roughly 1/50th of 14 trillion, or $280 billion. GDP grows at 3-5% a year, so that number would be virtually erased by the end of the next fiscal year.

 

Furthermore, we're not even talking about the good that saving can do in the long and short run, such as bring down the number of bankruptcies and amounts of debt.

[At Home 0]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/opinion/...tml?ref=opinion

 

Comprehensive yet cumulative and comparative (alliteration ftw) look at the candidates health care plans.

[At Home 0]

[snuffbox 0]

Has Matt Drudge thrown in the towel?

[Mecca 0]

What I don't understand about some right wingers like Marvin and others, is why they are so virulently opposed to taxing the wealthy it seems. It seems like they actually think that they (I don't think Marvin makes 250,000 grand a year being a chef) will be affected by more taxes to a class that they don't belong in (like they think they are rich are something). I also don't understand why small business owners think they are going to be taxed to death. If I were a small business owner I would support the Democratic economic plan because it seems to put more money into the hands of the middle class (the main customers of small businesses), which in turn would be able to buy more what small businesses are selling which would lead to growth and more job opportunities for middle class folks. I know I'm probably beating a dead horse with this, but it seems like people are still brainwashed (and we have had iterations of of trickle down since Reagan) by the Republican party's mantra of more money for rich people=good, more money for middle class=bad.

 

Edit: apologies for the repetitious use of "seems"

 

My opinion on that is that it's kind of like high school they see the rich people as the cool club and they so badly want to believe they are in that club when in reality they aren't.

 

Of course some will argue just because someone makes more money doesn't mean they should get taxed more which is actually an asinine argument because if you don't tax them who are you gonna tax the people with less money? So then you get what we have now rich people get even richer while everyone else becomes poorer.

 

This is why a flat tax is a horrendous idea, in this country the only conceivable way to make the economy work properly is to tax the rich more because any sort of flat tax or rich people tax breaks idea basically causes everyone but the people who already have money to be poorer.

[Jingus 0]

This is why a flat tax is a horrendous idea, in this country the only conceivable way to make the economy work properly is to tax the rich more because any sort of flat tax or rich people tax breaks idea basically causes everyone but the people who already have money to be poorer.

Which is a great theory, except under our current tax code there are so many loopholes and back doors for a sharp accountant to exploit that usually the truly rich portion of the population don't pay what they're supposed to anyway. A flat tax would end all that noise. And how would a flat tax be unfair? Let's say, arbitrarily, it's 10% of all income. Someone who makes $20,000 per year pays $2,000. Someone who makes $20,000,000 per year pays $2,000,000. Hey, lookit that, the rich person is paying more dollars than the poor one.

[CanadianChris 0]

This is why a flat tax is a horrendous idea, in this country the only conceivable way to make the economy work properly is to tax the rich more because any sort of flat tax or rich people tax breaks idea basically causes everyone but the people who already have money to be poorer.

Which is a great theory, except under our current tax code there are so many loopholes and back doors for a sharp accountant to exploit that usually the truly rich portion of the population don't pay what they're supposed to anyway. A flat tax would end all that noise. And how would a flat tax be unfair? Let's say, arbitrarily, it's 10% of all income. Someone who makes $20,000 per year pays $2,000. Someone who makes $20,000,000 per year pays $2,000,000. Hey, lookit that, the rich person is paying more dollars than the poor one.

Except that the poor person will probably miss $2,000 a hell of a lot more than the rich person will miss $2,000,000.

[Jingus 0]

But you follow that line of thinking, and you get to where you're essentially punishing people who succeed. Which is exactly how the current tax code got the way it is. Rich people are taxed at higher rates, they didn't take kindly to it, they lobbied to have changes made to tax laws in order to keep more of their money. Like I said, plenty of rich folks are paying less right now than poor ones; check out Warren Buffet's comments on the matter. Or look up some of the insane stories about how corporate accountants can twist the books to minimize taxable income; Hollywood is the most infamous for it (they tried to claim that frigging Lord of the Rings didn't turn a profit), but plenty of industries do it. And it's all legal! The only fair tax would be a flat tax which charges everyone at the same uniform rate with no exemptions.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

Jingus, I think you're mixing up income taxes, capital gains taxes, and corporate income tax. The tax where there are myriad loopholes for corporate accountants to avoid is the corporate income tax. The reason Warren Buffett pays lower taxes than the average middle class person is because of the capital gains rate. For whatever reason, we have decided that we should tax capital gains at a lower rate than money earned through work.

 

A progressive income tax rate may "punish the rich", but what we have now, what we had under Clinton in the 90s, and what Obama has proposed (which is an income tax cut for the middle & working class & a return to Clinton-era levels for the rich), all still feature far lower rates in the highest bracket than at any time between WW2 and the 1980s, when the United States probably saw the most amazing economic growth of any country at any period in history.

 

The marginal tax rate on the very richest under Obama would be 35-39.6 percent. The highest rate (beware...PDF!) under, for example, President Eisenhower, was 92 percent! Ike lowered it to 91 percent.

 

We had a 94 percent bracket toward the end of WWII! There were still 50 percent brackets under the most famous tax cutter in history, Ronald Reagan.

 

If Obama's tax plan is "socialist" then Presidents FDR through Carter must have been downright Maoist or Stalinist and President Reagan Marxist-Leninist.

[snuffbox 0]

Why is it bad to to tax/punish the wealthiest but its cool for a person working overtime too long to be doing it largely for the government?

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

One more point--"the rich don't even pay the taxes they're supposed to!" is not a powerful argument in favor a flat tax. It's may be a powerful argument in favor of closing tax loopholes, but really impugns tax dodgers far more than the tax structure.

[Jingus 0]

A progressive income tax rate may "punish the rich", but what we have now, what we had under Clinton in the 90s, and what Obama has proposed (which is an income tax cut for the middle & working class & a return to Clinton-era levels for the rich), all still feature far lower rates in the highest bracket than at any time between WW2 and the 1980s, when the United States probably saw the most amazing economic growth of any country at any period in history.

So, we lowered taxes on rich people... and the economy consistently got better? It's a big overgeneralization, I know, but it still happened.

 

Since Obama is probably going to be elected and we're also possibly having a democrat supermajority in Congress, well, we'll see if the new system works or not. Starting off with the lousiest economy in recent history isn't going to do them any favors, obviously. I actually do agree with the left on a lot of the domestic policy, but just always felt that taxing people at different rates wasn't fair. Now is the time where we officially find out if Tax Teh Rich actually works. For the country's sake, I hope it does. Getting some of that bailout money back would be nice.

[Lord of The Curry 0]

I'm curious to see what everybody's local scene, culturally, is planning for the day after the election. Case in point: most pubs/bars here in Toronto have "Obama Victory" parties scheduled for Wednesday if he wins but I have yet to see any for McCain. I guess voting demographic locally plays a big part but I just don't see huge celebrations anywhere in our country if McCain pulls it off.

[PILLS! PILLS! PILLS! 0]

I'm curious to see what everybody's local scene, culturally, is planning for the day after the election. Case in point: most pubs/bars here in Toronto have "Obama Victory" parties scheduled for Wednesday if he wins but I have yet to see any for McCain. I guess voting demographic locally plays a big part but I just don't see huge celebrations anywhere in our country if McCain pulls it off.

 

Tortonto, Ontario?

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

A progressive income tax rate may "punish the rich", but what we have now, what we had under Clinton in the 90s, and what Obama has proposed (which is an income tax cut for the middle & working class & a return to Clinton-era levels for the rich), all still feature far lower rates in the highest bracket than at any time between WW2 and the 1980s, when the United States probably saw the most amazing economic growth of any country at any period in history.

So, we lowered taxes on rich people... and the economy consistently got better? It's a big overgeneralization, I know, but it still happened.

 

No, the most dramatic economic growth in American history actually happened between WWII and the 1970s, prior to the oil shocks and prior to the tax cuts of the 80s. Go back and look at the growth during that period. The economic gulf between the US and the rest of the world was staggering. There is still a wide gulf, but the rest of the world has actually caught up since.

 

That is of course, not to say that the high marginal tax rates on the rich were the cause of the growth from WWII through the 70s, but it would be very difficult to argue that high marginal tax rates on the rich are prohibitive of economic growth, given that the most dramatic economic growth in world history occurred in the US in a time period where the tax structure was this way.

[At Home 0]

It's just insane to call Obama's tax increases on the highest echelons of the income bracket anything like socialism or punishing the wealthy. Did we forget the fact that George Bush lowered these rates by ridiculous proportions pretty much for the sole purpose of serving his special interests? They're just going back to Clinton-era rates, those people were still rich under Clinton.

 

I just do not understand how many people are fervently opposed to these tax rate increases on the rich. It is just beyond me 100%.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Because it's going to fast food workers and negroes on welfare, duh.

 

My dad isn't happy about the potentially forthcoming tax changes, because he owns his own business and may also see a slight uptick in his and my mom's taxes; I'm not sure how much of his income is the company's income and how much is a salary he gives himself. He wrote me a small hypothetical narrative to show me his point of view and various taxation scenarios that could arise in the future, and my mom made him edit in a scenario where the hypothetical protagonist (that's me) gets married and has two kids, and also moves closer to home. Kudos to them for creativity.

[At Home 0]

So how's it like having a gay dad?

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Fucking sweet.

[Mecca 0]

Think about this, some of the poorest states in the union are states that consistently go Republican, tell me how that makes sense when they are the big business party..have there have been some books written on it like What happened to Kansas?

 

I'll sum it up because it explains what has happened in some areas of the country.

 

In the early 20th century the midwest was the most politically liberal part of the country. They elected socialist congressmen, and advocated very radical causes, and favored an aggressive form of populism. Kansas was one of the most progressive states.

 

Flash forward to today where it is among the reddest of red states, deeply culturally as well as economically conservative, despite the fact that conservative policies have crushed the average person in these areas.

 

Republicans have been many things, but have always been the party of big business. In order for them to win elections, they had to appeal to something other than business elites. Therefore, the Republican think tanks concocted a strategy to play to the cultural conservatism of people in the midwest, cloaking nearly everything with a religious rhetoric, and placing the importance of those issues above all else.

 

What they reaped was an incredibly active and secure voter bloc that will continually vote for them, despite the fact that Republican pro-business policies have absolutely destroyed the livelihoods of these same people. From the individual running the mom and pop to the single farmer, these people can't subsist in these professions any more, don't benefit from their economic plans, and yet continually vote for R's because of the cultural issues--when nothing is ever done about them.

 

This has been written about extensively by Noam Chomsky and Reinhold Niebuhr.

 

Basically, 80% of the people exist to simply follow orders from the upper 20%. They are given orders, and because they are indoctrinated to be ignorant sheep, they follow them.

 

To make their acquiescence easier they use "emotionally potent oversimplifications" of issues--basically boiling down complex and nuanced ideas into reductive soundbytes that the low information voter of the world can digest, all the while they have no concept what the framework of the actual issue is.

 

These same people, who don't understand the issues, will then become the most vociferous supporters of the status quo, precisely because they have been indoctrinated their entire lives to follow orders, not to ask questions, not to think.

 

The real brilliance of the system is that you are rewarded for being stupid by being part of the group. If you speak out, you are ostracized as a radical, or a communist, or whatever the current scare word is. So not only do you have intellectual constraints, you also have social controls that keep people from speaking out.

 

Being smart means you think you're better than the common man, which is something to be frowned upon.

[Hogan Made Wrestling 0]

Hitchens can be hit or miss (to put it mildly), but he absolutely nails Palin here:

 

Sarah Palin's War on Science

 

In an election that has been fought on an astoundingly low cultural and intellectual level, with both candidates pretending that tax cuts can go like peaches and cream with the staggering new levels of federal deficit, and paltry charges being traded in petty ways, and with Joe the Plumber becoming the emblematic stupidity of the campaign, it didn't seem possible that things could go any lower or get any dumber. But they did last Friday, when, at a speech in Pittsburgh, Gov. Sarah Palin denounced wasteful expenditure on fruit-fly research, adding for good xenophobic and anti-elitist measure that some of this research took place "in Paris, France" and winding up with a folksy "I kid you not."

 

...

 

This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

I can't imagine that Reinhold Niebuhr wrote much about working class folks voting Republican due to cultural issues, since he died in the early 70s and the Republicans didn't adopt this strategy until the Nixon era.

[Mecca 0]

I can't imagine that Reinhold Niebuhr wrote much about working class folks voting Republican due to cultural issues, since he died in the early 70s and the Republicans didn't adopt this strategy until the Nixon era.

 

That was more in reference to the part after not before in turning people into sheep that follow orders.

[At Home 0]

I'll just give that whole sheep comment a big roll of the eyes thankyouverymuch.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

[milliondollarchamp 0]

 

She does say she would support the first responder's and 9-11 victim's family's push for a new investigation.

 

At first I thought she is just trying to look supportive of 9-11 victims so just agrees with anything they request. Then she explains the reason why she agrees so I think to myself maybee she does fully understand the gravity of the question posed to her but then I think of her interviews and indifferent attitude towards Iraq (last year) and I am back at square 1 not sure whether she really understood what she was agreeing too.

[Guest]

I would really like it if she just went away forever rather than run my party further into the depths.

[At Home 0]

Are you trying to tell me that Sarah Palin is a truther?

 

---------------------------------------------

 

 

 

 

[Nightwing 0]

WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

NARCOLEPTIC JUMPER IS BACK!

 

BRYAN/PAUL 1908!

[UZI Suicide 0]

I'm curious to see what everybody's local scene, culturally, is planning for the day after the election. Case in point: most pubs/bars here in Toronto have "Obama Victory" parties scheduled for Wednesday if he wins but I have yet to see any for McCain. I guess voting demographic locally plays a big part but I just don't see huge celebrations anywhere in our country if McCain pulls it off.

 

Here in Los Angeles, if McCain wins, I expect a bunch of black people to riot, loot stores, turn over cars and light shit on fire.

 

If Obama wins, I expect a bunch of black people to riot, loot stores, turn over cars and light shit on fire.