American Politics

[Hardbarg]

[QUOTE=Prefer Anal]

"Almost everyone here seems to be missing the point.
Wake up people! The top 1/4 of 1% have received 75% of the tax cuts."

They deserve the tax cuts:

People with incomes $200,000 and over pay 42.7% of the taxes, $377 Billion.
People with incomes $100,000 to 200,000 pay 24.1% of the taxes, $213 Billion.

People with incomes $75,000 to 100,000 pay 12.8% of the taxes, $113 Billion.

People with incomes 50,000 to 75,000 pay 12.9% of the taxes $114 Billion.

People with incomes of $40,000 to 50,000 pay 4.4% of the taxes, or $39 Billion, and

people with incomes of$30,000 to 40,000 pay only 3.4% of the taxes, or $30 Billion!

Finally, people with incomes of only $20,000 to 30,000 pay only 1.1% of the taxes, or $10 Billion!

More info: the TOP 1% of income earners pay 33.6% of all the taxes!

Can you document the sources on any of your tax figures. I've seen the right wing media figures use some pretty creative math to make their cases.....or just outright lie with math.....most of their followers don't have advanced degrees in quantitative subjects...I'm calling bullshit.

http://www.house.gov/jec/publications/109/rr109-36.pdf

Some examples:

AGI $200,000 and over pay ~$313 Billion
AGI $100,000 to 200,000 pay ~$163 Billion
AGI $20,000 to 30,000 pay ~$9 Billion

The top 1% of tax filers paid 34.27% of federal personal income taxes in 2003.

Bullshit is in the eye of the beholder.

[Bart9000]

I know I should keep my mouth shut but here goes.

The average illegal alien costs $87,000 more than they will ever produce and that's before Social Security is added in. The average family of 4 in California costs the taxpayers $57,000 per year!

It does't save the US economy money. If it did, why do the states with the largest illegal populations have massive budget problems? It is cost shifting; so one person gets thier lawn cut cheaper but we all subsidize it through taxes.

Military spending as a percentage of the overall budget is historically and for a time of war it is unheard of.

Over 65% of the Federal Budget is entitlements: Medicaid, Medicare, Welfare, Food Stamps, etc. All programs started since WWII and dramatically expanded under Johnson during the War of Poverty. We have spent trillions on that war with very little sign of success. When do we "redeploy" on subsidizing failure?

Why pay billions for illegal aliens on one hand and pay billions in welfare subsidizing unemployment and failure on the other? Call me crazy but somethings wrong with this picture.

Ok, quote your sources, and substantiate it....this sounds like more Rush Limbaugh or clone therof type bullshit.....now there may be a grain of truth to this-what I have been maybe somewhat erroneously referring to as social spending is welfare, subsidized housing, and food stamps, which don't amount to much in the grand scheme of things....if you throw in subsidized student loans, medicaid and medicare, school lunches, and whatever, it may get to be a decent sized chunk..........I have to ask this however.....do you REALLY want to get rid of say Medicaid/Medicare? I have an 86 year old Grandmother who is in the hospital about every 3-4 months, plus takes all kinds of expensive pills etc. Do you have ny idea what health insurance for her would cost? If you could even get a private insurer to write her a policy, it would probably cost between $1000-2000 a month. The government at least has the ability to dictate terms and regulations to health care providers, and is consequently at an advantage for purchasing healthcare for senior citizens. Same thing with student loans and other education entitlements.....are you aware that a large segment of African Americans have come up from generally lesser means and become upper middle class/lower upper class ("blackistocracy")......alot of this was because education entitlements helped get them educated, into non-menial jobs, and eventually a great success. If they didn't have those, many would probably, well frankly still poor and would be getting maligned by you for getting social benefits for that....talk about damned if you do, damned if you don't........

By the way do you have any idea what we give to scummy corporations in the form of tax breaks?

B9k

[Beavis]

Regardless of the # of vets, it was simply an example that we have plenty of problems here we should address before we try to fix everybody elses. The immigration bill is a joke but then again, what has this adminstration did that wasn't a joke? Just my opinion but, my mnd is made up I am out of here ASAP prediction 06/01/09. By then we should have plenty of homeless Mexicans so we will see how they get treated. I could give a Rat's ass, lol.

[Bart9000]

The 300,000 was a figure that my mother (a private high school teacher) got from some source but here is what I found:

According to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”), nearly 33% of the nation’s adult homeless population served in the United States Armed Services. The VA further states that on any given day, as many as 200,000 male and female veterans are living on the streets or in shelters, and perhaps twice as many experience homelessness at some point during the course of a year. As if to underscore the seriousness of the problem of homeless military veterans throughout the nation, the VA characterizes the predicament another way: currently, the number of homeless male and female Vietnam era veterans is greater than the number of service persons who died during the Vietnam War.


VIVA LA MIGRA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A couple things real quick...

Are you sure that there is a disproportionate percentage of the general populace that are homeless vets. What percentage of the overall populace currently living did serve in the Vietnam war......I don't know for sure, but it is possible that there is simply a representative cross sample and you (with encouragement) are focusing on the vets.

Homelessness itself is a complex issue (correlates highly with mental illness and substance abuse), and it cannot necessarily be solved by simply writing a check. This is a wild ass guess, but I strongly suspect that even if we were to give every homeless vet 4 months rent free in a decent apartment, $1500, and a decent job that would more than pay his rent and living expenses, he would still be back on the street in a short time. It might astound you to know (this is something I've heard, but don't have a source)for example that when it gets to be -15 to -20 in Chicago, the police round up the homeless guys to make them go to a shelter.....and a good number of them have to be dragged, kicking and screaming all the way there.

Service to country is awfully abstract, and hard to quantify(for recompense).....you are basically saying that our Vietnam vets got a raw deal....you won't get an argument from me about that, although military service (assuming you don't get killed doing it) is like anything else you get out of it what you put into it. My father volunteered for Vietnam (though he was going to get drafted anyways), got out after 5 years, and then served another 17 in reserve, a good portion of that time as n E-8, getting nice fat paychecks for a part time career...now when he retires in 18 months, he is going to get big fat pension, on top of his big fat pension from work (he went to college free on the GI bill by the way-I owe 52K myself), Social Security, and healthy personal savings.


I hear you about the hassles in bringing your wife here legally....my take on this however isn't that everyone should have to suffer like you did.....but that NO ONE should.
B9k


Adding on: I realized what was bothering me about the situation....the problems aren't the least bit interrelated in my opinion. In my estimation, you could line a National Guardsman every 10 feet along the border with orders to shoot to kill, round up all the others, and ship them back, and you would still have your veteran problems....on the other hand, you could open the borders and let every Juan, Julio and Sergio in Mexico (yes I'm ignoring illegals from other parts of the world) come up here to work if they feel like it.....and still have your vet problems.

I was going to bring up some stat mumbo jumbo about skewed samples, and the tail wagging the dog, but I don't think it's necessary in light of the preceding.

[Beavis]

Does this mean that we need to help every homeless person who ever served in the armed forces ? No it doesn't but, these people served their country and should rank higher on the help list than illegal aliens.

[Beavis]

The 300,000 was a figure that my mother (a private high school teacher) got from some source but here is what I found:

According to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”), nearly 33% of the nation’s adult homeless population served in the United States Armed Services. The VA further states that on any given day, as many as 200,000 male and female veterans are living on the streets or in shelters, and perhaps twice as many experience homelessness at some point during the course of a year. As if to underscore the seriousness of the problem of homeless military veterans throughout the nation, the VA characterizes the predicament another way: currently, the number of homeless male and female Vietnam era veterans is greater than the number of service persons who died during the Vietnam War.


VIVA LA MIGRA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Beavis]

Of course the poor buy more than the rich as they are an overwhelmingly larger group of people. If the aliens come here to just work they aren't hurting the economy but, when the majority of them are sending every dime they can out of the country, how is this helping the economy?

Once they become citizens they are going to change drastically. Just watch and see, perhaps you work with some of them but, I have lived and worked in their country for many years and have a son there. Once you have witnessed the average level of class and living standards you won't want 50 million of them living in your country. Yes there are some good people there but not many of them swim the river.

The point is why must be bend over backwards to help these illegal aliens when we have plenty of U.S. citizens who should be helped first. This is indeed going to add heavily to an already ridiculous debt we have, and the only way it will ever be paid back is by increasing taxes. My wife is from Colombia and I spent over 10,000 USD and almost 2 years to get her here. Then these assholes want to allow the illegals to stay without any punishment and be granted amnesty? Yes I have a big problem with this.

If this goes through then they should refund every dollar spent on immigration and filing fees to each and every person who ever brought an alien here as a spouse. Also, an immigrant coming in on a K1 or any other immigrant visa must have extensive health checks, bloodwork, and medical reviews performed prior to entry. Upon entry, before their status can be adjusted these procedures must be done again in the U.S. Who is going to examine these people. I won't count on that happening but it isn't going to matter to me. If Bush doesn't get us blown off of the map before he gets out of office I will soon be residing outside of the United States. It will take me about 3 years to make this happen but I refuse to have my tax dollars spent on paying for a war a I never supported or feeding some illegal alien's kid.

Hillary or McCain in 2008? Makes one shudder at the thought.

[Ocean Traveler]

I know I should keep my mouth shut but here goes.

The average illegal alien costs $87,000 more than they will ever produce and that's before Social Security is added in. The average family of 4 in California costs the taxpayers $57,000 per year!

It does't save the US economy money. If it did, why do the states with the largest illegal populations have massive budget problems? It is cost shifting; so one person gets thier lawn cut cheaper but we all subsidize it through taxes.

Military spending as a percentage of the overall budget is historically and for a time of war it is unheard of.

Over 65% of the Federal Budget is entitlements: Medicaid, Medicare, Welfare, Food Stamps, etc. All programs started since WWII and dramatically expanded under Johnson during the War of Poverty. We have spent trillions on that war with very little sign of success. When do we "redeploy" on subsidizing failure?

Why pay billions for illegal aliens on one hand and pay billions in welfare subsidizing unemployment and failure on the other? Call me crazy but somethings wrong with this picture.

[Bart9000]

OK

You are on the right track here, so I won't berate you



Social spending is a pittance relative to what is kicked over to the military industrial complex, and other corporations usually in the form of tax breaks. I't's basically a non issue that the right uses to drum up business......it's easy to do because it's a visible issue, and on the surface reeks of unfairness, and paritism of people who are different from you....it is human nature to be resentful given that level of information about a subject. If it werent' there, there would be people starving (and killing and stealing) in the streets (yes, I know, some of them put themselves in the situation through stupidity and irresponsibility), and we as a relatively wealthy nation find this to be unseemly enough to throw a little money at it

I don't know a lot about the situation with the veterans......you should check your stats however....as I proved below, a lot of people just flat out lie when they are trying to get funding and political support.

The big complaint with imigrants is that they are taking jobs.. Here is the thing. I work with a lot of these guys....in my estimation, they mostly have a sixth grade education, and know maybe 100 words in English. Now even if they are willing to work harder for less money, do you know anyone who can't compete successfully with someone like this......if in fact you do, they are probably going to be at the bottom of the heap anyways.

Also, increasing the population of working poor is good for the economy.......THEY BUY THINGS (on a percentage basis much more than wealthy people-I can put you to sleep with econ talk if you want me to), which creates profit, and spurs additional demand.....increases the demand for labor, which increases wages across the board.

B9k

[Beavis]

Yes and just how are we going to pay for this senseless war. The one that we are borrowing money to pay for. Then on top of that Dumbo and Cheney are sucking up to their corporate buddies to give amnesty to the unknown number of illegal aliens. Each and every one of them are going to have 3-10 children that are also going to need amnesty, welfare, food stamps, government housing, free health care, ect.

We have 300,000 homeless veterans in this country who went to war for us but instead of helping them we have to roll out the red carpet for a bunch of fucking wetbacks. The terrorists we need to worry about are U.S, Citizens who reside in Washington, D.C. I for one am very proud to say that I did not vote for him.

[Bart9000]

I actually sent that story suggestion to a major national newspaper......trying to demonstrate that once again, the guardians of our moral values don't hold themselves to the standards they prescribe for the rest of us.

Here is the funny thing. This prefer anal guy is probably a social liberal if he is posting on this board, but ID's with the right wing because of their bullshit about taxes, business, and economics. I actually used to be like this until I became highly educated in those subjects

B9k

[Chocha Monger]

Bart,

You forgot to mention that Rush Limbaugh is also a monger. He got busted with his remaining Viagra stash upon returning from a pussy pounding trip to the Dominican Republic.

[Bart9000]

Can you document the sources on any of your tax figures. I've seen the right wing media figures use some pretty creative math to make their cases.....or just outright lie with math.....most of their followers don't have advanced degrees in quantitative subjects. Oh yes, I know "That Rush Limbaugh is a good man, he wouldn't lie"

Just quick and dirty, people on your low end of 20-30k are in like a 15% tax bracket

People who are in the 100-200K bracket pay about 28% give or take a bit.....and by the way, they have a lot more access to tax avoidance vehicles here, but I won't get into that. I think that the top marginal rate now is like 35%

So ROUGHLY people in the high range pay on percentage basis twice as much tax

So with an equal distribution of the population between the two tax brackets, if the 20-30K set is paying 1.1, then the 100-200K should be paying 2.2%....you claim they are paying 24%

Now, are you really going to tell me that there are as many people in this country making 100-200 as there are making 20-30K.

I'm calling bullshit.


The chemical WMD thing is a mamby-pamby rationalization. The American public was sold on NUKES to have the idiot oil war

This is like the police getting massive funding to to stage a massive multi-state manhunt for a serial murderer........and then them coming back without their killer but saying......"yea, but we picked up a couple of nickel and dime pot dealers"

Yes, Saddam Hussein is a scumbag, and a ruthless cutthroat (although we are finding out the hard way that to some degree he HAD to be to keep the warring factions under control.......however, there are plenty of scumbags who are world leaders......why didn't we take them out......oh yea, they aren't major oil produces.....I suppose it is just an accident that energy prices have doubled.
B9k

[Prefer Anal]

[QUOTE=Digital Curry]"Almost everyone here seems to be missing the point.
Wake up people! The top 1/4 of 1% have received 75% of the tax cuts."

They deserve the tax cuts:

People with incomes $200,000 and over pay 42.7% of the taxes, $377 Billion.
People with incomes $100,000 to 200,000 pay 24.1% of the taxes, $213 Billion.

People with incomes $75,000 to 100,000 pay 12.8% of the taxes, $113 Billion.

People with incomes 50,000 to 75,000 pay 12.9% of the taxes $114 Billion.

People with incomes of $40,000 to 50,000 pay 4.4% of the taxes, or $39 Billion, and

people with incomes of$30,000 to 40,000 pay only 3.4% of the taxes, or $30 Billion!

Finally, people with incomes of only $20,000 to 30,000 pay only 1.1% of the taxes, or $10 Billion!

More info: the TOP 1% of income earners pay 33.6% of all the taxes!

"We captured Saddam Hussein, there were no weapons of mass destruction:"

Despite the mainstream media and the Democrats' lying to the contrary, several chemical weapons have been found that qualify as WMD. But people have ignored the evidence...since it would blow a hole in their 'Bush Lied, people died' nonsense. To be fair, the Bush Administration has done little to correct the record on this issue.

Now a new report from the Pentagon sheds some light on just how many WMDs have been found, and it's a lot. We're not just talking an old Sarin shell here and there. No less than 500 chemical weapons have been found since 2003, according to a recently declassified defense department intelligence report. The weapons are of the mustard gas and Sarin nerve gas variety...nasty stuff.

[Bart9000]

You do have some valid points. Now I generally identify with the left because they are economically paternalistic (necessary in my opinion-I don't want to start a tangent), and socially less judgemental and generally (there are exceptions-Tipper Gore had a bug up her ass about censoring song lyrics) more laizes faire. Also they embrace rationalism, and intellectualism whereas the right gets into "common sense"-simplistic answers that are mostly much more wrong than they are right.

That being said, it is problematic for me to be on the same team with the people who came up with feminism, and sexual harassment......I generally just take the position that only a simpleton blindly jumps onto one side or another, embracing whole platform regardless of whether or not it is his self interest......


B9k