Rep. Heath Shuler and the Democrats were successful in ending President Bush’s income-tax cuts. Now they want to raise payroll taxes across the board.
Is this the “change we can believe in”? A taxpayer voting for Rep. Shuler is like a chicken voting for Col. Sanders!
— John Batson
Asheville
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Mr. Batson, not only have the Democrats decided that middle income wage earners should pay higher taxes but if they have their way in November, the middle income wage earners will find more hikes to pay for extravagant social spending programs. Those here in Asheville who find themselves working two or more jobs to get by had better get used to it because there is nothing in the Democrat package for them at all. In Democrat eyes success is frowned upon and the desired function of government is to take more and more. That’s the change they want and that is probably what they are going to get.
Yes travelah, the Repugs are doing things so well these days….so long as you support our steady march toward Third World Status. Time for the liars and criminals to be thrown out of office; a couple of them will no doubt end up in jail for high crimes and treasonous actions.
Mr. Batson, you are misinformed, travelah, you continue with your smarmy prevarications.
Apparently, John Batson and travelah object more to ‘tax and spend’ Democrats than they do to ‘borrow and spend’ Republicans. If I were one of their kids, I’d bury my piggy bank.
The non-partisan Tax Policy Center recently released a study of the two candidate’s tax plans; among the findings:
“If enacted, the Obama and McCain tax plans would have radically different effects on the distribution of tax burdens in the United States. The Obama tax plan would make the tax system significantly more progressive by providing large tax breaks to those at the bottom of the income scale and raising taxes significantly on upper-income earners. The McCain tax plan would make the tax system more regressive, even compared with a system in which the 2001–06 tax cuts are made permanent. It would do so by providing relatively little tax relief to those at the bottom of the income scale while providing huge tax cuts to households at the very top of the income distribution…
Despite McCain’s recent claim that Obama would raise taxes for all, it turns out that middle-class families would do better under Obama (who would cut their taxes by $1000 in 2009) than McCain (who would cut them by only $300)…
McCain, who once opposed President Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cut as a give-away to the rich, but now embraces them, has designed a plan more consistent with the New McCain than the old. It is as Republican a plan as Obama’s is Democratic. The top 20% of taxpayers get a 3% reduction in after-tax income in 2009, while the lowest-earning 60% would get less than 1%.”
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2008/06/comparison-of-t.html
Of course, one can always blithely accept disproven stereotypical mantras (‘tax and spend Democrats’) and ignore the fact that today’s Republicons have indebted future generations to the tune (currently) of nearly a trillion dollars, owed mostly to Communist China, to fund perpetual war.
Let John McSame and his key economic guru, banking lobbyist lackey and primary cause of today’s housing disaster, Phil Gramm, have their way and the lower and middle class (what’s left of it) will look back at today’s economic mess wistfully.
Lawrence, my objections are not an endorsement of the past few years of fiscal mismanagement. Instead, they are a serious concern over how tax dollars are to be spent and how much of a burden should the average citizen put up with to fund further social welfare programs.
The non-partisan Tax Policy Center recently released a study of the two candidate’s tax plans; among the findings:
The Tax Policy Center is an cooperative arm of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institute. While they are both “non-partisan”, neither is ideologically neutral. The Brookings Institute is decidely leftist-liberal and the Urban Institute is a Lyndon Johnson creation out of the “Great Society” era.
Let John McSame and his key economic guru, banking lobbyist lackey and primary cause of today’s housing disaster, Phil Gramm, have their way and the lower and middle class (what’s left of it) will look back at today’s economic mess wistfully.
The housing “crisis” today is not a disaster. It is a predictable result of providing mortgages to people who were not financially qualified for a mortgage. Many economists view the current real estate conditions to be a corrective burst of an over-inflated speculative bubble. So, to try to link Jhn McCain to the foolishness of people taking out unqualified ARMs is nothing more than dishonest rhetoric.
The top 20% of taxpayers get a 3% reduction in after-tax income in 2009, while the lowest-earning 60% would get less than 1%
Thats an interesting statement. Almost all taxes are already being paid by those over the 50% threshhold.
Where do you support your tax dollars going? To continue to be poured down the black hole of ideological pipe dreams, initiated by deception and lies, or in things that will actually benefit the citizens of this country?
“With just the amount of the Iraq budget of 2007, $138 billion, the government could instead have provided Medicaid-level health insurance for all 45 million Americans who are uninsured. What’s more, we could have added 30,000 elementary and secondary schoolteachers and built 400 schools in which they could teach. And we could have provided basic home weatherization for about 1.6 million existing homes, reducing energy consumption in these homes by 30 percent.
But the economic consequences of Iraq run even deeper than the squandered opportunities for vital public investments. Spending on Iraq is also a job killer. Every $1 billion spent on a combination of education, healthcare, energy conservation and infrastructure investments creates between 50 and 100 percent more jobs than the same money going to Iraq. Taking the 2007 Iraq budget of $138 billion, this means that upward of 1 million jobs were lost because the Bush Administration chose the Iraq sinkhole over public investment…
The government spent an estimated $572 billion on the military in 2007. This amounts to about $1,800 for every resident of the country. That’s more than the combined GDPs of Sweden and Thailand, and eight times federal spending on education…
How does it happen that government spending devoted to healthcare, education, environmental sustainability and infrastructure can generate up to twice as many jobs per dollar as spending on militarism?
Three factors play a role in determining the overall job effects of any target of government spending…
http://www.veteranstoday.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2921
“Paul Krugman noted…week that most reasonable people seem to realize that we’re in serious need of financial reform and expanded regulation. That is, except, Gramm, who’s championed financial deregulation for years. “I’d argue that aside from Alan Greenspan, nobody did as much as Mr. Gramm to make this crisis possible,” Krugman said.
The general co-chairman of John McCain’s presidential campaign, former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), led the charge in 1999 to repeal a Depression-era banking regulation law that Democrat Barack Obama claimed on Thursday contributed significantly to today’s economic turmoil.
A year after the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed the old regulations, Swiss Bank UBS gobbled up brokerage house Paine Weber. Two years later, Gramm settled in as a vice chairman of UBS’s new investment banking arm.
Later, he became a major player in its government affairs operation. According to federal lobbying disclosure records, Gramm lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department about banking and mortgage issues in 2005 and 2006.
During those years, the mortgage industry pressed Congress to roll back strong state rules that sought to stem the rise of predatory tactics used by lenders and brokers to place homeowners in high-cost mortgages.
For his work, Gramm and two other lobbyists collected $750,000 in fees from UBS’s American subsidiary. In the past year, UBS has written down more then $18 billion in exposure to subprime loans and other risky securities and is considering cutting as many as 8,000 jobs.
Confronted with a fire, John McCain is taking advice from an arsonist. If elected, he intends to put the arsonist in charge of fire safety.”
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/15050.html
Where do you support your tax dollars going?
I support spending for national defense, transportation infrastructures and a concerted effort to move this country away from dependence on oil controlled by hostile nations.
The ONLY person to blame for being buried under an ARM is the unqualified borrower who signed his/her life away.
“dependence on oil controlled by hostile nations.”
The top 15 oil exporting countries to the U.S. are, according the Dept. of Energy:
1. Canada
2. Saudi Arabia
3. Mexico
4. Venezuela
5. Iraq
6. Angola
7. Algeria
8. Brazil
9. Kuwait
10.Ecuador
11.Colombia
12.Chad
13.Russia
14.Libya
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html
How many of these countries are “hostile” to the U.S.?
“The ONLY person to blame for being buried under an ARM is the unqualified borrower who signed his/her life away.”
A ‘talking point answer’ factually refuted.
May I have your attention…travelah just answered a direct question!
Dionysis, speaking of the mortgage issue and how all the poor people are being swindled by corrupt politicians, it seems another corrupt Chicago politician, Barack Hussein Obama, finagled another real estate sweetheart deal from Northern Trust. He got a very favorable mortgage rate and undeservedly so. Ed Lasky at American Thinker had some interesting comments on this issue a couple days ago … http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/07/the_obamas_mortgage_cont.html
So travelah, when faced with facts, you ignore them in favor of trying to discredit the messenger (the Tax Policy Center and the Brookings Institute are ideologically driven…a variation of the smear) while ignoring the report, yet think everyone should accept the opinion of some blogger named Ed Lasky who writes for a right-wing website. That would be another example of your incessant hypocrisy.
Now, aside from the $2,800 you claim you gained from the Bush tax cuts, make an affirmative case as to why voters should choose John McSame.
And with regard to your efforts to blame this unparalleled mortgage debacle on the borrowers, while it is true some inflated their incomes and should not have been deemed credit-worthy, you would have people believe they and they alone are to blame for their plight. Let’s see now…
“The debate over what caused the mortgage mess and how best to fix it is now taking a sharp turn, as new problems surrounding liar’s loans and payment-option mortgages reveal the pervasive fraud, lying and deceit that permeated the market at its height.
As loans made to borrowers with decent credit begin to fail at a surprisingly rapid rate, it’s becoming clear that widespread fraud helped support the entire mortgage system — from borrowers who lied on their loans, to brokers who encouraged it, to lenders who misled some low income borrowers, to the many lenders, investors and ratings agencies that conveniently and deliberately looked the other way as profits rolled in…
…the search for causes of the crisis may challenge long-held but erroneous beliefs about what homeowners did and why. Many people think borrowers got in trouble by buying bigger houses than they could afford, but the numbers show the majority were refinancing their homes…
The meltdown of these mortgages is prompting a new spotlight on the extensive role that fraud played in loans gone bad, and who was responsible for it. Lending that required little proof clearly opened the door to widespread cheating, by borrowers who inflated their incomes, or by brokers who did it for them, with or without their knowledge…
Others familiar with the mortgage industry contend that pervasive fraud was, indeed, a problem – on the lender’s side. At the peak of the housing boom, they say, the nation’s mortgage system was set up to promote and encourage outright fraud in order to close a loan – and everyone, from brokers to loan officers to Wall Street, looked the other way. Borrowers also were put into products like payment-option arms that were unsuitable — and lenders knew it. “They were pushed like Vioxx, with very little regard for their dangers,” said Kathleen Keest, senior policy counsel with the Center for Responsible Lending, a research group that investigates predatory lending.
http://washingtonindependent.com/view/how-fraud-fueled-the
travelah is not one to let the facts get in the way of his opinion, delivered in a declarative sentence as if that makes it true.
Ooooh, i love me some dionysis.
“travelah is not one to let the facts get in the way of his opinion, delivered in a declarative sentence as if that makes it true”
no doubt.
Dionysis-
“How many of these (top 15 oil exporting countries) countries are “hostile” to the U.S.?”
Sadly, except for Colombia and perhaps one or two others, all of them – thanks to Shrub and Dick.
So travelah, when faced with facts, you ignore them in favor of trying to discredit the messenger (the Tax Policy Center and the Brookings Institute are ideologically driven…a variation of the smear) while ignoring the report, yet think everyone should accept the opinion of some blogger named Ed Lasky who writes for a right-wing website. That would be another example of your incessant hypocrisy.
I am not sure if Dionysis actually pays attention to what he/she writes. My comments regarding the two institutions was in response to your inference that being non-partisan gave them an air of impartiality. Clearly, that is not the case. Instead it is a fact that the the two institutions are predominantly liberal in their outlook. As for smearing and labeling based on political affiliations, Mr. Lasky offers solid opinions based on established fact. While you disagree, you offer no rebuttal.
It remains a fact that anybody who takes on an ARM is doing so to their own peril especially if they are unqualified to begin with.
Dionysis, if you think for a moment this country is not strategically tied energy wise to nations who are ideologically hostile to the US, you should study the matter much further.
Canada is hardly ‘hostile’ to the U.S.
Okay let me ask a question here
How many boys and girls here think banks lend you “money” please raise your hands?
Travelah have you ever heard of Gull Island in Alaska?
David –
It depends on your definition of hostile. Have you spoken with a Canadian lately about their views on U.S. policy? For example, they have not yet decided whether to return U.S. military deserters.
Dr. Anti, I am quite familiar with Gull Island in Prudhoe Bay and the oil and natural gas reserves laying underneath it and around it. It is tapped and ready to produce.
Lawrence,
Actually, they decided last week to allow them to stay. And, in general, The Canadian government is very cozy with the US, of course.
canadian citizens sometimes like to talk smack about the states, yes, but most of them still come down every chance they can get.