REPUBLICANS take it all...how bad would it really be?

Major, I'm afraid I have bad news for you: Despite your confidence and condescending tone, you are DEAD WRONG. Please read my link:


That's interesting that it's grown so much from 1996 to 1999, given that there were no real tax increases during that period. Tax rates certainly haven't jumped, so I'm surprised tax revenues did. My mistake!

IRREFUTABLE EVIDENCE

GAME, SET, MATCH -- Thanks for playing, junior

I wasn't playing a "game", nor a "set", nor a "match". I was correcting misinformation you seem to like spreading about the Social Security system, and ended up making an incorrect conclusion.

 

Major is condescending? Not compared to your irrefutable capitalization above. I picture you hitting your keyboard extra hard when you type those caps, TJ. And to be perfectly honest, your little outbursts are, in my world, irrefutable evidence that you grew up in a very posh neighborhood. In a real neighborhood, some other little kid would have broken your nose six ways to Sunday way before you became an "adult."

 

Back on topic. No, it won't be a big shift in power and radical right agendas being passed even if the Repu have slight majorities in both houses. As someone alluded to there are filibusters and senate rules that pretty much always get in the way of real extreme measures. It is why even with Clinton in office and both houses in Demos hands nothing radical was pushed through (though the National Health Care System idea was debated and crushed).

Personally I don’t have a big problem with tax cuts as long as they are TEMPORARY and equitable. The worst thing for our economy and our children’s future however would be not get back on top of debt reduction as soon as we are in a position to.

 

It's nice to see MadMax escaping the chains of denial regarding the recent legacy of his party. Maybe we should get MadMax and TJ to team up with the next Republican Congress and Presidency.
MadMax could head the new faith based cabinet position charged with welcoming the downtrodden and minorities to his party while TJ screws them over with a tax cut for the richest 10% of Americans who just happen to hold 90% of the wealth. Then Dubya could continue to rachet up government spending on whatever foreign wars his puppet masters have in the pipeline and have TJ explain how tax cuts for the rich and monstrous government deficits are a great thing for the economy neverminding that we have a growing 6 trillion dollar national debt for which we will pay $300 billion in interest this year. Yes, $300 billion in interest for debt and $30 billion on education is always a good thing. Then Dubya could show us how he's working on cutting our foreign oil dependence by letting his buddies destroy the Alaskan wilderness to get that whole six months worth of oil. Maybe by the time Dubya's done he could get us to $10 trillion in national debt so we can lay that down on our kids, who by the way are having increased medical problems as they're living with the effects of the Republican policy of learning to live with pollution/global warming, just as long as Dubya looks like a good ole Reagan Republican to his buddies. Then we can hear Republicans in the future decry "big government liberals" in their campaigns even if the national debt is six times larger now than it was before Reagan took office. Ahh... I can't wait!

 

damn, I was about to bust you on it too but you flogged yourself first.

 

Timing, if you keep that up, you'll be accused of "class warfare" or at least "envy" of the wealthy.

 

i feel like i should be offended by this.

again...it comes down to, "if you don't agree with us than you must be a racist."

 

I've been called a hell of a lot worse than that so I guess I'll live. Funny thing is that the things that Republicans accuse liberals of are the things they're actually doing in the first place and are simply getting called out on. It's pretty funny like that.

Like BK talking about J.C. Watts. Watts is about as qualified as Steve Largent but where the hell is Largent when Republicans are putting together a show press conference? Are they interchangeable in Republican strategery? Hell no. Gotta show off your minority members, forget Largent.

 

ummmm...actually largent delivered the republican address after clinton's last state of the union address...kind of a big deal since it's beamed to the whole nation and all as the face of the republican party.

 

No it comes down to show me the money. Your party talks a good game but you've got no game when it comes to the poor and minorities. Show you care about the poor by not screwing them with policy and don't be surprised when you get called out for that screwing. You make it sound like your party can screw whatever segments of society and you're supposed to be insulted when I point it out. WTF?

 

hey, hey, hey...ease up, man! again, from your point of view, "my party" screws over minorities. you would argue that a tax cut would screw over minorities...i'm sorry, i don't see it that way.

i show i care about the poor by donating time through my church at a soup kitchen on weekends each month...i show i care about the poor by mentoring at-risk children in elementary schools.. and on and on...not trying to pat myself on the back here, because that's not my intention...simply pointing out that you can't lump people together like that. you see policy different than i do...fine. but don't accuse me of intentionally setting out to screw other people. got no game? what game do you have, big guy? how much of your time do you spend helping others out and not relying on "big brother" to take care of everyone?

by the way...does "show me the money" mean wealth redistribution? because if it does i have a whole host of arguments of why that's not a great idea...and none of them have to do with setting out to screw minorities!

 

This a fecking *great* post. Hey T_J, you planning on addressing these rather salient points about income distribution as it relates to taxes any time soon?

 

Largent and Watts are not interchangeable in Republican strategy yet they are equally qualified. Why didn't Watts make that speech? They've both been in Congress the same amount of time. Just the luck of the draw I'm sure.

 

but if your earlier points about watts being vaulted ahead simply because he was the "token" black of the group are correct, why in the world wouldn't they have HIM deliver the address?

 

First, it was me who made the points you misrepresent here.

Second, since the mischaracterization of them has now been carried into a second thread while my clarification has gone unanswered, no one called Watts a token black (the misrepresentation is even worse when you add quotes and aren't even quoting).

My point was that the Republican Party both opposes affirmative action AND employs affirmative action. Contrary to what you or BK might believe, that is in no way a dig at Watts. Remember, I support affirmative action and do not in any way believe that a recipient of affirmative action is in any way underqualified for opportunities the program might afford. It's the Republicans who believe that recipients of AA are likely to be less qualified, not me, not Timing, not Democrats.

He WAS skipped ahead in line (and no one in either thread has disputed that), but I doubt he'd have been skipped ahead if his race was his only qualification or if he were in any way unqualified. This is at the heart of the debate over AA. Opposers believe people are unjustly promoted, hired, admitted, whatever, while supporters believe you can level the playing field without quotas, unjust promotions, etc. And once again, Powell is a great example which is why he continues to support the program.

I don't have a problem with the Watts situation. I only sought to point out that there are, apparently, to Republicans anyway, acceptable and unacceptable forms of AA -- acceptable when they do it, unacceptable when anyone else does.

 

I never spoke to Watts being vaulted anywhere. I spoke to him being as qualified as Largent and as tenured as Largent but whenever Hastert needs the look of diversity at some show press conference he's calling Watts and not Largent. Why in the world wouldn't they have Watts delivering the address in place of Largent? What does Largent have on Watts besides being white? And really I would never accuse Republicans of having token minorities. We all know how much influence Condi Rice and Colin Powell have on domestic policy affecting minorities. I would never insinuate that two of the minorities in Bush's cabinet are in no position to affect domestic policy precisely because of their race and at the same time have a honorary Bob Jones Univ. degreed right winger as Attorney General. No, I would never accuse anyone of that because I know Republicans just don't think that way.

And hey really, I didn't try to get personal with you and don't appreciate you trying to get personal with me. If you want to talk about party politics that's fine but don't bother me with "I read books to kids" so my party is great and what about you big boy. I don't have to prove myself to you and vice versa.

 

T-J--

Whenever you bring up your standard conservative fare, here are a few things to chew on:

Passing a tax cut that gives 42.5 percent of the cut to the wealthiest 1 percent of the citizens is class warfare. (Why is it class warfare to point out that a policy will help the rich get richer, but it's not class warfare to actually implement the plan?)

As the tax cuts knock out the surplus and we return to deficit spending, programs will be cut. Which programs? Most likely the ones that affect folks at the bottom of the economic ladder already. Class warfare?

One cannot even make the argument that since the rich pay more in taxes, they should get a bigger cut. The top 1 percent of taxpayers pays 21 percent of all federal taxes but will get 42.5 percent of the tax cut.

One cannot make the argument that tax cuts for the wealthy spur investment which creates a strong economy, because it is consumer demand that drives the economy. If you make investments and build a factory but the consumer demand for your goods is not there, you have not added greatly to the economy--you have bought yourself an empty factory and a big tax write-off. Demand drives investment. I don't understand why conservative idealogues can't grasp this simple fact. Investors do, liberals do, small business owners do. It's Trickle Up, not Trickle Down.

Adam Smith said, "A goal of taxation should be to remedy inequality of riches as much as possible, by relieving the poor and burdening the rich." I have yet to hear a Republican call him a socialist or accuse him of fomenting class warfare. But then again, Republicans only appear to have read selective parts of "A Wealth Of Nations" and conveniently forget the parts (Not to mention his earlier work, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments") where the moral balance to self-interest is presented.

Since you quoted the bastion of economic independence, "Capitalism," let me quote from Molly Ivins:

"All government comes down to three questions:

* "Who benefits, who profits?"

* "Who rules the rulers?"

* "What the hell will they do to us next?"

The "Who benefits?" part of President Bush's proposed tax cut has been thoroughly examined. Even the dimmest of us have got the point that it's a tax cut for the very rich with a little sop thrown in for some of the rest of us. According to the Citizens for Tax Justice, the poorest 20 percent of taxpayers receive on average a $15 tax cut the first year and $37 by 2004. The 20 percent of taxpayers in the middle of the income distribution scale get an average of $170 in tax cuts, rising to $409 in 2004. The average cut to the top 1 percent of taxpayers would be $13,469 in 2002 and $31,201 in 2004. The Bush plan gives 43 percent of all the tax relief to the richest 1 percent of the people.

Few of us seem to be alert to the other shoe here. The counterpart of "Who benefits?" is "Who pays?"

It's obvious that shifting an immense amount of the tax burden off the very wealthy puts more of it on the rest of us. What you get is a shift in the proportional burden of taxation from the rich to the less-well-off. In the curious logic of the Republican Party, anyone who points out this blatant act of class warfare is accused of "fomenting class warfare." As you may have noticed, rich people are not staggering under their burden of taxation -- there are more of them, and they're richer than ever. If this is what the right calls "redistribution of wealth," it's working fine right now to pump money from the poor to the rich.

The further question that almost no one has addressed is: "What does this thing actually cost?"

One of the hardest and most important questions in government is: "How much does it cost to not do it?" It's real easy to find out how much a program -- say, a children's vaccination campaign -- costs. But what does it cost not to do it? We wouldn't know until there was an epidemic of diphtheria or polio, would we? What does it cost to cut community policing? How many more lives are rotting away in prison for more than it costs to send them to Harvard? What does it cost to skimp on prenatal care? What does it cost not to have preschool for children? We know who benefits from this tax cut, but who really pays for it?

One of the silliest arguments that you hear during these fights is: "We're not cutting spending! We're only slowing the rate of growth in spending." That means they're cutting spending. This game gets played all the time. "See? In last year's budget there was only $100 million for children's health care, and this year we have $101 million. That's an increase!" No, it's not. If you know that the program will have to serve 5 percent more children this year than it did last, that's not an increase -- it's a cut.

Look at the cost of Bush's tax cut in terms of what could otherwise be paid for. According to Citizens for Tax Justice, after 10 years, when the Bush cuts have fully kicked in, the cut for the richest 1 percent will total $774 billion. That just happens to be more than the $736 billion needed to provide a high-quality prescription drug plan, and that $736 billion is over and above the inadequate plan proposed by Bush.

Of the actual cuts proposed by Bush, the Energy Department's fuel efficiency and renewable fuels program will be cut 22 percent. Given the number of Texas oilmen in this administration, we should have expected it, but talk about shortsighted. This is who rules the rulers? Reliance on fossil fuels is poisoning the Earth, and this guy wants to cut off research into alternatives. The implications of that decision alone are staggering.

The conservative mantra on tax cuts is: "It's your money." Yes, it is, and it's your national debt too. You have to help fund government because it's the price of living in a civilized society. If you think you would have been better off being born in Rwanda, good luck."

 

"Domestic policy", whether it affects minorities or not, is NOT THEIR JOB. Frankly, their jobs are much more important than the Sec. of Interior, Labor, etc.... How you turn this into a bad thing is beyond me. Doesn't Rod Paige have "influence...on domestic policy", despite the fact that foreign issues have been pushed to the forefront in the past year? What exactly ARE you insinuating with all the "I would never" and "We all know" phrasing?

 

Of course it's not their job however when Bush gets the question about his concern for civil rights issues he points to Condi Rice and Colin Powell. WTF are Condi Rice and Colin Powell able to do with regard to civil rights? It's gloss and he has ultra-conservative Ashcroft in the position of Attorney General. I care for minorities, so I'll appoint two to foreign policy positions and give you Ashcroft! (insert evil laugh here)


Mr. Bush gave a dismissive shake of his head when asked at a press conference yesterday about the attacks on his civil rights record.
"Let's see," the president said before quickly moving on to the next question. "There I was sitting around the leader — the table with foreign leaders, looking at Colin Powell and Condi Rice," as his voice trailed off.

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020709-85173940.htm