WatchA small group of protesters in Elkhart, Indiana gathered near a tea party billboard on Monday, decrying the political ad for comparing President Barack Obama to terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.
The billboard, paid for by a tea party group We the People of Marshall and Fulton County, says: “The Navy Seals removed one threat to America. The voters must remove the other.”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/14/tea-party-billboard-compares-obama-to-osama-bin-laden/
Given that Obama killed bin Laden when Bush failed and Romney said he would not go into Pakistan to kill bin Laden, it seems really stupid to make the comparison the Tea Party just did. Killing bin Laden is going to be Obama's "Mission Accomplished" campaign point.
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Cloud says
You have a very serious lack of comprehension skills.
It's not a man, in fact Romney is a moderate. It's a movement with a puppet for a figurehead and massive amounts of propaganda. A couple more seats in the Senate and a White House willing to appease your corporate masters, and all is done.
My "bankrupt party" is all that stands in the way. You're the one holding the torch and taking your marching orders from NewsCrap.
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robertoaribas's website
Cloud says
yes, nazism had no effect on anyone. Neither did Japanese imperialism. You are correct, bad political leadership cannot really harm a country, complete defeat and nuclear bombs on cities overlooked...
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Cloud says
I've never bad mouthed American capitalism. How many times can you lie in a single thread?
Cloud says
Let me define a fucking idiot for you.
A fucking idiot wants to know what Obama's grades were 20 years ago but doesn't think Romney should have to reveal how much he paid in taxes 2 years ago.
That my friend is a fucking idiot.
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Cloud says
No doubt you believe that but you're simply full of crap and totally wrong.
Cloud says
No you don't, you just lie about it.
Cloud says
Another lie. Obama has had a plan since he was elected, a very specific plan. He wants to extend the tax cuts for everyone but the top tax bracket, raise dividend and capital gains taxes by 5%, and reform Medicare through a plan very similar to what Romney says he wants.
Cloud says
And the lies continue. More hysterical AM radio bullshit. I can't wait for you to deny who pulls your strings again.
Cloud says
No you're not, you're sick of the fantasy you have in your head. There's no reality left, just this brainwashed image of evil Democrats.
Cloud says
We tried your way before. Many times. It resulted in corporations murdering union agitators and poverty for all workers. Your way sucks.
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thomaswong.1986 says
No it's not clear. There is no legitimate reason why investments are taxed lower than wages. It's a fraud created by the Heritage Foundation decades ago and has been spread around as a neoconservative myth ever since.
Warren Buffett is an excellent example of someone who has paid very high investment taxes and very low investment taxes. Here's a direct quote. Why don't you go lecture him about not being a finance major:
~ Warren Buffett
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iwog says
Amen. And this should be so obvious to ANYONE that I can't believe it is seriously discussed.
It's akin to me telling someone I don't want a free $10 because the IRS will take $4 today instead of the $3 they took last year. Yes, I'm not making as much, but I'm still $6 ahead.
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krusty says
Out of short-sighted hate for "liberals", gays, blacks, and pretty much everyone who can spell.
Poor Republicans are little hate machines with easily pushed buttons. If you're extremely rich and want save billions, just push their hate buttons and watch them pay your taxes for you!
They never question why every Congressman who votes to ban gay marriage also happens to vote for ultra-low taxes on unearned investment income.
Rich Republicans know exactly what they're doing, and they push those buttons well.
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iwog says
Buffet is saying just what I said; an investor will always invest if the expected return is positive because any portion of something is better than 100% of nothing. So long as there is a risk-free asset available (e.g. treasuries), there will always be an investment mix available that satisfies your risk/reward tolerance for any tax rate below 100%.
I would add one caveat: the tax code should treat investment losses symmetrically with investment gains. This goes along with my philosophy of treating all sources of income equally. If you made $100k in salary and lost $100k on investments you should be able to net them out to zero income for that year (and carry any excess losses forward indefinitely, too.) Our current tax code only gives you $3k off your AGI, plus a limited term carryforward for the rest. I can tell you from personal experience that this is a disincentive to take risk, though the argument above is still valid: you still invest, just with a less risky mix than one would pick if the taxes were symmetrical.
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Dan8267 :"..Tea Party Stupidity"
Would that be redundant? I can't help myself & there's no help for the Tea Party.
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CaptainShuddup says
Can you name one president you thought wasn't crappy?
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Lafayette, CA
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Cloud says
Individuals can overcome adversity. (sometimes) A hundred million people who make up the bottom 50% of hard working Americans however are not all going to work hard, go back to school, and find a tech job somewhere in the new aristocracy.
History is very clear on what these people do. They live in poverty until enough of them organize to overthrow the government.
Your little fantasy pipe dream that an entrenched noble class with a 0% tax rate is good for America, or even that America can succeed with so many rent-seeking leeches, is a joke.
My "small" world includes all 6000 years of recorded human history. What is in your world? Ayn Rand fairy tales?
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or any man for that matter can put a whole nation in heaven or hell.
policy creates outcomes.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=9wz
rising debt leverage and rising Gini is the road to hell.
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Dan8267 says
Dunno. The housing bubble may have been something that would have blown up on anyone's watch.
The republicans were active agents, but they did still control the House in 2000 and probably through 2006, even if Gore had won.
I think the housing bubble was the system's attempt to mitigate all the harms the 1990s policy changes had accrued -- NAFTA, rising trade deficits with China, rising oil prices.
Gore wasn't so great in these areas, either, AFAIK.
Neither is Obama for that matter.
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Cloud says
The department of defense's global hootenanny and contractor welfare is arguably the largest corporate activity the US undertakes. It's hard to tell who gets more handouts from the gov't: military or banks.
Cloud says
Romney could give a rat's ass about small business.
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thomaswong.1986 says
If that's the worse thing that happened, Gore would have been the best president in at least 50 years.
Even if climate change was bullshit -- which it's not -- I'd take the repercussions on that rather than a million deaths in war, the Second Great Depression, and the end of basic human and civil rights in the United States.
Besides, the one and only thing that we do to fight uncontrolled climate change is to stop polluting, and that's something we should do even if climate change were bullshit.
Pollution itself is bad. Pollution itself is theft of wealth. Pollution itself is a government subsidy that distorts the free market. It's a subsidy because by allowing pollution government offsets the costs of providing goods and services by partially paying for them through depreciating capital resources like the land, air, and sea.
If you so-called conservatives actually believed in any of the economic philosophies you preach, you would be against the cost shifting and socialization of production costs for goods and services from the consumers of those products to the whole of society. Pollution is socialism! It literally makes you pay for a good or service that you do not use but someone else does. It takes your economic freedom away.
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CaptainShuddup says
Yeah that works. You can hold up your little white flag and tell your corporate masters that you're not a soldier in class warfare so they shouldn't lower your wages or send your job to china.
I'm sure you'll appreciate paying federal taxes while billionaires pay nothing.
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Cloud says
I'm not a fan of debt, but it beats the hell out of the alternative right now.
Cloud says
The kind of government Obama wants is far smaller and more conservative than we had in the 1950s. You're scared of classic America?
Cloud says
I created my own business, have employees, and keep this country going. You're not siding with me, you're trying to tear small business apart. Your voting for poverty and a economic depression.
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Call it Crazy says
The reason we talk about percentages and not dollars is that someone who makes $20 million a year needs a much smaller percentage of income to live on while someone who makes $35,000 a year needs every penny.
The other problem is that the person making $20 million a year is hoarding a substantial portion of that $20 million and keeping it out of the economy while the person making $35,000 a year spends every penny back into the economy.
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david1 says
BINGO. Thanks David. When taxes are high, capitalists reinvest their profits to avoid taxation (spending more on advertising, expanding sales offices, upgrading techne, etc.) When taxes are low, capitalists take the money out and buy bonds and engage in non-productive rent-seeking behavior.
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Westport, CT
This tax rate discussion is ridiculous. Let me give you some real numbers. I am a hedge fund employee (this is true), working in NYC. My income is around 10-20 times the national average, and my expenses are also many times the national average: for example, in Connecticut where I live, the $250k national home price wouldn't buy half the land for a garage, let alone the garage itself. Preschool in my town costs me $25k a year and my monthly mortgage payment is around $9000. Even our electricity price is twice the national average.
My tax rate last year was about 38%. That is 28% Federal (would be 35% except for state tax deduction, which activates AMT), plus 10% for New York State. I also had some realized investment return taxed at an average of 17%, but not enough to noticeably affect my overall tax rate.
Since I work in NY, Connecticut receives virtually nothing from me though I do pay real estate tax to my town. If I made a bit more, and as a trader sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, then my taxes would go up to a max of 45%. This is the highest rate you will find in the USA unless you happen to live in New York City, which costs an extra 5% on top. Fortunately since I moved out of the city I don't have to pay that anymore.
I think my tax rate is pretty much where it should be. Of course I wish it were lower, everyone does. However I also understand that the government provides the services that make this a society instead of just a bunch of people competing with each other. If tax rates were much higher I would probably work less, but if they were lower it wouldn't stimulate me to work more. In other words I think its pretty much in the right ballpark for my income now.
What irritates me is that I am at the highest possible tax rate in the country while people like Mitt Romney, who "earned" twenty times more, pay far less than I do as a percentage of income. The reason for this is very simple: our asinine tax code favors passive investment income over employment income. I think this is really the only thing in our tax code that is horribly, horribly out of whack (other than its insane complexity) and yet it receives no discussion at all! People just focus on marginal rates, which have almost no effect whatsoever on the wealthy. The rich do not have significant income relative to their wealth--and when they do, they do whatever it takes to (quite legally) repackage the income and turn it into a capital asset. That's where the lawyers and offshore entities come in, but it can be done totally legit if the amount is worthwhile and you have access to some expensive expertise.
The effects of this system are pretty obvious: if you already have money you will be able to grow it forever and pay almost nothing in tax. But if you are trying to *earn* money by working you will pay ordinary tax rates, which are actually fairly steep already for high earners. This makes wealth an exclusive and hereditary club, especially since we have very, very low estate taxes. In other words, our tax system now creates and nurtures an aristocracy.
The simple fix: treat all income the same. Move dividends and unrealized gains into ordinary income. Rich people would pay as much as I do in percent terms and the deficit would shrink. I would recommend an estate tax in-line with global norms, too; this would be around 75% or so after some deductions. Dead people don't need money.
To anyone who says that raising investment tax rates would reduce capital investment I call total BS: If you have $100mm lying around (I'm talking to you, Mitt) you are going to invest it *somewhere*, or at least spend it, just so long as the tax rate is less than 100%. The only alternative is a guaranteed loss (i.e. opportunity cost) and a rational person would rather get, say, 50% of some return than 100% of no return. This is basic finance and basic common sense to everyone except Republicans.
The weirdest thing to me is that most Republicans don't even have enough investment income to benefit from the dumb system they have supported. Why would someone do that to himself?