Daily Topics - Wednesday February 1st, 2012
By shawnt56
Hour One: Romney says he's not worried about the poor, they have a safety net...really?
Hour Two: Are Libertarians real conservatives? Matt Welch, Reason Magazine
Hour Three: The Buffet Rule bill battle royale begins! Curtis DuBay, Heritage Foundation / Plus, turning red states blue in 2012 - Congressman Steve Israel, Chair-Democratic Congressionional Campaign Committee
Comments
#2
Mitt Romney may as well have sung George Carlin's lyrics:
O beautiful for smoggy skies
Insecticided grain
For strip-mined mountain's majesty
Above the asphalt plain
America, America,
Man sheds his waste on thee
And hides the pines with billboard signs
From sea to oily sea
#3
The strategically timed resignation of Supreme Court justices is another reason to support the idea I had of how to appoint them. You could get another situation like we had from 1969 to 1993. Jimmy Carter never got to nominate anyone, and he was preceded by 2 Republican terms and followed by 3. So for 6 Presidential terms (24 years) all Supreme Court justices were nominated by Republican Presidents.
So the plan is this. At the beginning of each Presidential term, the President gets a freebie nomination.To make up for the increase in the size of the court that this would cause, the President doesn't get to replace the third vacancy that arises during each term.
In order to encourage the Senate to hold a vote as soon as possible, this spontaneous vacancy would count as a seat for determining a majority in court decisions. Another encouragement would be to make nominations be automatically confirmed if the Senate doesn't bother to vote on them within 75 days. (I chose that span of time to match the delay between the election and the inauguration.) I think that rule would do us some good right now if applied to all Presidential nominations.
The Supreme Court would not stay the same size, and would occasionally have an even number, but the Congress can regulate (!) the court to say things like "a split decision leads to not overturning a lower court's ruling", etc.
#4
Curtis DuBay slipped in a fallacy. Capital is not used to pay wages; revenue is where wages come from once a company gets going.
#5
Hum, um, uh. Curtis DuBay doesn't really know where to get to, does he? LOL
Then he says that's ancient history and doesn't apply to today. Liar!
#6
What a load of hooey. This idea that somehow any taxes theoretically paid by the source of your paycheck should count as taxes you pay is simply crap, and has no basis in reality economics. The same source as the "double taxation" garbage.
Let's see, I pay federal and state income taxes, social security and medicare taxes, excise taxes, property taxes, tolls, licensing fees, sales taxes, hotel taxes. That's taxing my income 10 times so far...I'm sure there are more. Add in, by his logic, any taxes paid by my employer and the employer share of FICA and unemployment taxes. I'm taxed at least 13 times on my income.
In short, it's a straw-man arguement, a shell game, that sounds logical, but is simply a deception to protect the wealth of the top 1%. Completely rediculous. And fell completely apart when Thom described dividends and gains from corporations that pay no income taxes at all, and long-term, not just short-term.
#7
If it is unfair to tax corporate derived capital gains, as they "have already been taxed" as part of corporate income, then why should my wages be taxed since they were derived from the same revenue source?
#8
Phylogonously ugly? I hope it wasn't "philogynously" (which would have had a j sound); that refers to loving women. I barely caught it, and there are too many possible ways to spell it for me to be sure. You win this round, Thom.
#9
question if billionaires our pain 15% on dividends and then added to the tax of the Corporation which they claim and that means they are paying 45 or 40% present mean the person in the Corporation who is getting paid 30 -35,000 a year and pays 30% in taxes on their income is really paying 60% because the Corporation is taxed first?
Thom's Blog Is On the Move
By webmaster
Hello All
Thom's blog in this space and moving to a new home.
Please follow us across to hartmannreport.com - this will be the only place going forward to read Thom's blog posts and articles.
Images of Thom
From Cracking the Code:
"Thom Hartmann ought to be bronzed. His new book sets off from the same high plane as the last and offers explicit tools and how-to advice that will allow you to see, hear, and feel propaganda when it's directed at you and use the same techniques to refute it. His book would make a deaf-mute a better communicator. I want him on my reading table every day, and if you try one of his books, so will you."
From Cracking the Code:
"No one communicates more thoughtfully or effectively on the radio airwaves than Thom Hartmann. He gets inside the arguments and helps people to think them through—to understand how to respond when they’re talking about public issues with coworkers, neighbors, and friends. This book explores some of the key perspectives behind his approach, teaching us not just how to find the facts, but to talk about what they mean in a way that people will hear."
From The Thom Hartmann Reader:
"Never one to shy away from the truth, Thom Hartmann’s collected works are inspiring, wise, and compelling. His work lights the way to a better America."
Some Perspective:
Recently, the political world has been all abuzz about the billionaire,Sheldon Adelson, donating $10 million dollars to fund Newt Gingrich's run for the Presidency. Just to put this in perspective, imagine that instead of Sheldon being worth $21 billion he was instead worth just $21 thousand. That would be like him donating $10 to Newt ... or basically the cost of a modest lunch for one.