If you are rich you are now a victim…insert violin
The war on the wealthy, is just a full of shit as the people spewing it. Slate writer Daniel Gross lays it out in typical factual form
Obama’s proposals don’t mean the government would steal every penny you make above the $250,000 threshold, or that making more than $250,000 would somehow subject all of your income to higher taxes. Rather, you’d pay 36 cents to the government in income taxes on every dollar over the threshold, rather than 33 cents.
well, lookie, lookie…on a thousand dollars that’s….$30.
OH
MY
GOD!
COMMUNISM!
Distributing weatlh. Sound the Dive Bell…Battlestations! Batten the Hatches!
Do you know how much stuff you’d have to buy at a charity auction to offset that kind of income? Boy, those silent auctions where you can buy cases of wine, trips to the beach, gift certificates to dinner would become so much more wildly popular!
Second, this return to 2001’s tax rates was actually part of the Bush tax plan. The Republicans who controlled the White House and the Republicans who controlled the Congress earlier this decade decreed that all the tax cuts they passed would sunset in 2010. They put in this sunset provision to hide the long-term fiscal costs of the cuts. The Bush team and congressional supporters had seven years to manage fiscal affairs in such a way that they would be able to extend the tax cuts in 2010. But they screwed it up. Instead of controlling spending and aligning tax revenues with outlays, the Bush administration and its congressional allies ramped up spending massively—on two wars, on a prescription drug benefit for Medicare, on earmarks, etc.
WAIT! WTF!????? These were going to expire anyway? Hu? Wha? You mean? But that would mean? And? If? But? How?
But Obama ruined the stock market in 40 days!
It was the Bush Administration’s greatest failure that, despite several attempts, they did not get the tax cuts made permanent.
But the article is certainly right on one thing: the Bush Administration ramped up spending massively, on a prescription drug benefit for Medicare anjd earmarks, and all sorts of social welfare spending. That should never have happened.
The FY2008 deficit was $455 billion; total FY2008 spending for Iraq was $133 billion. If the Iraq war could be Harry Potter magically vanished, we’d still have run a large deficit.
WTF? Bush’s biggest failure is that he didn’t make the tax cuts permanent? What color is the sky in your world? Iraq? Schiavo? Katrina? Justice Department? No wonder Republicans are wandering in the wilderness, they live in some kind of alternate reality world where he was just not “conservative” enough. I pity you.
As far as the poor, poor rich people go it’s amazing that they’re rich since they don’t know how to do math. Do they even know that socialist commie Reagan had higher tax rates for the rich?
Well, ya gotta admit, Dana – they TRIED to make the Iraqi war funding vanish.
Of course, forget 100’s of thousands of innocents dead and wounded, 9/11, and the huge increase in children living in extreme poverty:
It was the Bush Administration’s greatest failure that, despite several attempts, they did not get the tax cuts made permanent.
Dana is an example of compassionate conservatism at its finest.
And a part of that deficit is the tax cut. It never “paid for itself”.
despite several attempts, they did not get the tax cuts made permanent.
despite several attempts with a Republican Majority…go figure
The FY2008 deficit was $455 billion; total FY2008 spending for Iraq was $133 billion. If the Iraq war could be Harry Potter magically vanished, we’d still have run a large deficit.
crazy huh? I thought a war and cutting taxes at the same time would have had the opposite effect. or so we were told
The facts are this, the very rich are more reluctant to support the poor because their greed has created so many more of them.
George Bush ran on tax cuts. The others did, too, but Mr Bush ran on the largest tax cut program, and he was the one elected. Therefore, the people voted for tax cuts. The problem was that the Congress and President lacked the courage to match spending to the tax cuts.
Therefore, the people voted for tax cuts. The problem was that the Congress and President lacked the courage to match spending to the tax cuts.
Except that the people re-elected Bush and validated that his spending was OK. So the people are stupid. That’s OK, they come to their senses eventually, but it takes a few election cycles (e.g. 2006, 2008). But conservatives never wise up, they always want less taxes and more spending.
Congress and the President equally lacked the courage to raise taxes to pay for their spending.
The Federal largesse after Katrina was part of the problem.
The dirty face of politics was shown by Mayor Nagin and Representative (Cold Cash) Jefferson. Mayor Blanco certainly showed her stuff.
The problem was that the Congress and President lacked the courage to match spending to the tax cuts.
Dana… Reagan proved definitively in 1982 that this was an impossibility. They tried cutting everything. Remember “Ketchup is a vegetable?” That came from Reagan’s effort to match spending to his tax cuts. But he couldn’t do it, so he raised taxes and gave up on balancing the budget.
Blanco was the governor of Louisiana during Katrina, not a mayor.
So you’re saying the $130B the federal government gave to Louisiana is much more of a problem than the trillions we’ve spent in Iraq without any oversight?
“The Federal largesse after Katrina was part of the problem. ”
What the f—-?????
Have you lost you ever living mind? When you lose everything you have because your governement failed in one of its essential duties (yes the levies) come talk to us about “largesse.”
I am willing to bet nearly everything that the amount of money spent on Katrina rebuilding – at least in NOLA, not where Haley Barbour holds court – has paled in comparison to the earmarks in the Omnibus Bill, even if you limit it to the R backed pork. Granted GWB and his cronies threw a few dollars that way, if they didn’t they would have been crass calculating politicians who didn’t care about poor black folk. So they had a press conference and declared a war on poverty and put some mercury-vapor trailers down there and left everyone to rot in their own stew. Another mission accomplished.
I dare you to go down there, even today – three and a half years later – and show me where there was any “largesse.” Those folks who have returned are living very small indeed.
God, with friends like you, Art, the R’s don’t need any enemies.
I think my head just exploded, but then, that’s what Art had in mind. Uggg!!!
This whole thread has pretty much been a lot of Republican head-asploding. According to Republicans, Bush’s greatest failures are 1) failing to make the tax cuts permanent and 2) giving money to LA after Katrina.
They live in an alternate reality fantasy world in which gravity makes apples rise like helium balloons instead of fall to the ground.
George Bush ran on tax cuts. The others did, too, but Mr Bush ran on the largest tax cut program, and he was the one elected. Therefore, the people voted for tax cuts.
Isn’t this interesting? BushCo ran on tax cuts which people voted for. Barack Obama ran on largely rolling back Reaganomics which is what the people voted for (by larger margins than BushCo got). So if you follow Dana’s formulation here, Obama is doing exactly what he was elected to do, which somehow isn’t worthy of the legitimacy of what people voted for.
Gravity is only a theory. It is more likely that the Earth is held up by Intelligent Levitation.
LOL!
Teach the DEBATE!!
People are getting exactly what they voted for in Obama. In fact, you could even say that Americans voted for socialism since McCain and the Republicans went around shouting it during the election, and people voted for Obama despite it.