Wake up America.
A choice between two evils is no choice. Your country was founded on freedom foe all men. Not a plaything for the rich.
brothers and sisters

Edited by MikefaeDundee on 10/05/2012 12:23:00 MDT.

PMSNBC...woman(?), Rachel Maddow.

Have a ball arguing over who lied and how much, but that's just odious.

" but that's just odious."

Seriously. Really? At least cut and paste the paragraph. BTW, I don't really think Mathews had a squirrel run up his leg. Be my guest to monitor some of the serious name calling. Lighten up on the jokes and I won't guess which side of the fence you're on.

Yes seriously, yes really. Why would I post the paragraph when a few words make your attitude towards insufficiently feminine women and insufficiently manly news coverage clear? I don't care what you call each other but those "jokes" are sexist and juvenile.

Fred

You watch Rachel Maddow? Isn't she great? I first listened to her on radio.

One way lowering taxes can raise revenues is to temporarily lower capital gains rates. People will quickly sell to take advantage of it and pay lower tax. So you'll get more revenue in the short term but you're poaching future tax revenue.

Better to quit all this B.S. and just tax all income the same and leave rates the same.

No C corp tax. That would be gooder. :)

I was just watching this video of Republican leaders like all the ones running for president nomination, trashing Obama for having unemployment rate greater than 8%

Now I see why they're so p...ed tha the unemployment rate is 7.8%

I guess they'll start supporting Obama now

7.8 % using 8 - 10 % worth of exemptions.
Maddow rarely lets a fact get in the way.

Edited by BFThorp on 10/05/2012 20:40:40 MDT.

"J this is so far off base that I can't even begin to address it. Banks in mainstream America try to lend money to borrowers that are able to repay. This is how they make their money which in turn rewards the investors for risking their capital. Without getting into regulations, most of the tightening of credit was due to the fubared policies and oversight of congress and the lack of confidence in the economy."

This was not my experience in 2008-2009. Policy and congressional oversight did not cause the tightening of credit unfortunately. They work much too slow compared to market panic. Background: The mortgage company I work for is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, or Warren Buffett for those who don't follow business closely. Uncle Warren borrows money on the open market at X%, and then loans it to us so that we can create consumer loans at Y%.

In late 2008, when Lehman crashed, AIG, etc, Berkshire went to the market and tried to borrow $1 billion for my company, but had ZERO takers. Keep in mind Berkshire had nearly $40 BILLION in cash on their balance sheet and a AAA credit rating. Outside of the US Govt who can literally create money, is there another entity more credit worthy than Berkshire? Well, maybe General Electric. Wait a minute - they also tried to borrow in 2008 and couldn't. So, BRK loaned them $3 billion at 10% interest. 10% is a huge yield for that size of loan to a company like GE. Ultimately, BRK had to dip into their cash reserves so we could continue to lend. The moral of the story - markets were completely frozen and it happened nearly overnight.

What most people don't realize is that the Gov't bailed out thousands of US banks. Large and small. Imagine if 500 banks failed in a week's time and what the repercussions would be. And another 500. And another 500. Yeah, I'm glad we avoided that.


Ryan

Edited by ViolentGreen on 10/05/2012 21:03:00 MDT.

Big wake up call is coming the next two weeks. Corporate earnings projections are looking terrible. 80 out 103 (78%) of S&P 500 companies are already forecasting they are going to miss expectations. The highest negative outlook since 2006. China growth is slowing down, European crisis continues and companies have cut all the fat. This economy is not recovering and our administration doesn't have a clue. They are bragging about 7.8% unemployment, how they are going to stick it too the rich for a trillion in taxes and how they have to continue spending over a trillion a year more than we collect. I thought all this debt speeding was suppose to jumpstart the economy and grow the GDP. And let's continue ignoring the fiscal cliff approach at year end. Nobody want's to discuss on either side because we are in election season. We need to vote everyone out of office and turn the whole thing upside down. Voters have to take a stand.

"Nobody want's to discuss on either side because we are in election season. We need to vote everyone out of office and turn the whole thing upside down. Voters have to take a stand."

I agree with your frustration

If you vote everyone out, well, there are some good people there, or at least some people that would like to be good. And if the congress people are all replaced with new people, the lobbyists may actually have more power because they're the ones that know how to get anything done.

Maybe the prescription is to prohibit political contributions (bribes) or at least make public the contributors.

Even if someone wants to do good, they know that if they p... off the political contributors, then there will be a huge force against them at the next election

Two years ago, after the election, they resolved that fiscal cliff, will probably be the same this time.

"This was not my experience in 2008-2009. Policy and congressional oversight did not cause the tightening of credit unfortunately."

I wasn't implying that credit tightened because of direct policy, but rather the fallout of policies and oversight prior, which created the uncertainty in the market. The snowball was set in motion long before 2008. Healthy banks were handed money left and right to loan out after the writing was already on the wall.

Maybe the prescription is to prohibit political contributions (bribes) or at least make public the contributors.

Jerry, I agree, 100%. Politicians should be beholden to all those they govern, not just their donors. This would make it easier for them to remember that.

"how they are going to stick it too the rich for a trillion in taxes"

This is not so much an issue of closing the deficit, but it would help

It's an issue that all people should pay their fair share, not bribe the politicians to lower their taxes

A couple charts from wikipedia

The highest income people have been paying progressively less tax, especially since 1980:


And corporate taxes and excise taxes (estate and gift) have been going down, payroll going up. Payroll is only paid up to $108,000 so super rich pay almost zero as percent of their income:


And effective corporate tax rate:

How do people feel about the Environmental positions of either candidate, especially in regards to public lands management? I read Romney's position papers with some interest, and his Energy policy leaves the door open to interpretation.

Specifically:

"Empower states to control onshore energy development
States will be empowered to control all forms of energy production on all lands within their borders, excluding only those that are specifically designated off-limits. Federal agencies will certify, but the states will lead."

By off-limits, that would pertain to wilderness areas and national parks and refuge areas, of course. But it leaves a large swath of lands (more than 500 million acres) under the purview of the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management subject and Fish and Wildlife Service at first blush, to the whims of states.

I am uncertain how his idea would be implemented. It would seem very difficult to have, on one hand, a federal system for managing lands superseded by policies of individual states.

This could create very contentious issues in several western states where the majority of public lands are located. The president nominates members of his cabinet, including the Department of the Interior.

Romney positions have evolved considerably since his term as governor of Massachusetts. His positions towards environmental stewardship has gravitated from a fairly environmentally friendly stance to one that closely mirrors Republican positions (pro-coal, eager to revamp clean water/clean air acts, supportive of fracking and generally not to eager to address emissions.)

Obviously, these issues, as backpackers, affect all of us (just as does the economy).

Dirk

Jerry you and I can post charts all day long, but that is not my point.

The point is. I find it very troubling that the current administration is bragging about taxing the wealthy for a trillion dollars. Why doesn't this bother people? I'm of the opinion that the federal govt is not just entitled to whatever they want. I think they have a responsibility to be good stewards with everyones tax dollars. Sure we need tax law changes, but we also need to stop spending money we don't have.

Brad

But the point of the charts is that the super wealthy and big corporations aren't paying their fair share.

It's not that we should punish people for being wealthy or that we're envious.

Listening to people talking about it, I hear "fair taxation", not "punishing those evil rich people" (unless you're listening to Republicans)


And we had a balanced budget during Clinton, then the Republicans with some support of the Democrats voted in all these programs creating a huge deficit, and now they say "we're broke! we have to cut every program that benefits the middle class!"

This is a strategy the've planned for a long time


Now if you want to look at social security and medicare and notice that it takes 50% of the federal budget and they're growing, maybe we need a reasoned discussion, like maybe we should not let them increase as a percent of federal budget. But that's not what the Republicans are doing, they've never liked these and wanted to eliminate them. And the Democrats won't talk about it for fear of angering recipients.

Who decides fair share? We are not talking about wealthy (defined as those making over 250k per year) paying a trillion more and giving the benefit to lower class, middle class or small businesses. We are talking about the federal government taking another trillion in tax dollars to SPEND!!! Seems that if the wealthy are not paying their fair share the rest are paying too much. BTW a lot of democrats disagree withe this tax hike because they understand the impact on the economy.

BTW this tax increase doesn't balance the budget, so the deficit will continue to raise. When are they going to talk about stopping the madness.

Brad

I agree we have to stop deficit:

Get rid of the tax cuts that were never paid for - especially lower tax for capital gain

Stop the two wars. It worries me that liberals say we should spend these savings but since it was never paid for, it should go to deficit.

Pay for medicare part D for prescriptions - Obamacare has fixed this some, but we need to do more

Get the economy going again


Increasing capital gains tax will not have a negative effect on economy. There have been many periods without this that were economically healthy, like the 1990s. Corporations have large cash holdings but there's nothing to spend it on. It's not a shortage of capital that's the problem, it's demand.

Middle class tax cut would spur demand, but that's a short term kludge.

We have to bring back jobs to U.S. with sensible trade policy.

We need to get more trained people by subsidizing education more. People shouldn't have to borrow $50,000 to get a college education.

Democrats are talking about this some, but not much. Republicans are totally opposed.

Capital gains. Maybe/maybe not. Don't think anyone knows for sure and comparing 2012 economy to 1990's economy doesn't make a lot of sense. Things are just so drastically different. Could go either way in my opinion.

Totally disagree with subsidizing education. The problem with college education is people do not view it as an investment in their future career. Big disconnect with businesses and higher education. My oldest son started college this year. I remember sitting through the parent orientation and having an administrator talk about how important it was for the students to take a lot of different courses and explore. I could see all the parents staring at him like he was the biggest idiot in the room. All the parents are thinking about is the cost and student getting a job. Colleges are focused on selling education and financing it for you. They don't benefit by having you consider it an investment or helping you save money. I've said many times before cutout the BS classes and you could get a 4 yr degree in 3 yrs. This has two benefits: cuts the cost for everyone by 25% and opens more slots for others students. And it doesn't cost the taxpayer any more

Bringing jobs back to the US starts with the consumer and not the company. You can't complain about jobs going overseas and then run down to walmart and buy the cheapest good from China.

I like your approach to paying for things before spending (ie wars, capital gains, Part D). To bad Obama doesn't take your approach. He just overspends a trillion a year the last 4 years.

Brad