Tuesday, October 18, 2011

99% Fantasy League

Ah, yes. My buddy, Richard is at it again. The Occupy movement is just a bunch of lazy, want-everything-for-free idiots that praise Obama, who is the most corrupt President we’ve ever had. And it’s up to big corporations to save us from his tyranny. Rich people are our saviors. Except for rich actors and sports stars, who are also part… of… the… problem…?

Yo no sé.

Talk about complete submission to an ideology and total lack of independent thought. Oh – did I forget to mention he’s a Republican?

And since I've been posting these debates in sort of a random order, this one will introduce Richard's brother. He's been in previous ones, but I'm kind of on an Occupy Wall Street kick, so here he is. It's OK. He uses that smooshy thing between his ears. Unlike a certain brother of his who shall remain anonymous.


The names have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty – and all the shady characters in between.

Enjoy…
Richard
The Other 99%?

Dirk
Just re-posted....this was the point I was making a few weeks ago.

Chuck
The key thing here is the 90% scholarship.

Dirk
...and the savings beginning with the 1st job.

Bill Mancuso
Yes. Having two scholarships is the key. It's so easy, every kid should just get four or five. I hope there are still teachers and schools left funded so the next generations can even reach college. Or have the health care to survive long enough to reach college. Those would also be key things. Also, not ignorantly trying to make people think Occupy is blaming the government and Wall Street for their own poor choices would be key. And also not ignorantly trying to make people think the Occupy movement is about getting things handed to you for free would be key. Also, having a real job to enter after college as opposed to continue working at McDonald's for minimum wage (and only 30 hrs to keep from having to give employee benefits and overtime) would be a key. And that job to not require a move to India or China would be key as well.

Richard
Of course, a scholarship is earned, not demanded, so he definitely is not part of the other 99%...

I wonder why these idiots out protesting are not protesting outside of Hollywood, or Sports arenas? How come they only focus on a CEO that makes $8M a year, and not an actor who employs nobody and makes $40M *per film*, or the athlete that makes a million dollars PER GAME. Or the singer who makes millions touring?

See, the wage gap isn't just between us and CEO's, because most of your celebs, athletes and actors make enough money to buy and sell 99% of the CEO's out there, and contribute a hell of a lot less to society in the process.

These Athletes that get paid tens of millions per year to throw a ball around, what do they contribute? How much more do they make than the other 99%?

We better hope to god that the 1% keeps making lots of money, because with them footing 40% of the income tax bill, if they don't keep making money to pay that, who will? They are the ones keeping this ship afloat at the moment, because all these protestors sure as shit aren't paying for anything...

Without that 1% paying the huge $$ that they are, nobody else could. Without them, we wouldn't be America. We wouldn't even be Mexico.

Scott
Wait till he buys a house and after a few years owes more than the value because of the bullshit wallstreet did bundling mortgage securities

Richard’s Brother
You really are the king of ignoring the forest for the lone tree that fits your world-view.

Bill Mancuso
You have a choice to go to a movie or sporting event. Actors and athletes who draw more viewers drive up their worth. Thousands and thousands of people are tangentially employed behind the scenes of movies and sporting events and concerts.

You do not have a choice when Republicans de-fund your school and health care and every other program then turn around and give the money directly to corporations in the form of tax breaks, which do not create jobs except in other countries that Americans don't get. In many cases, corporations are rewarded with tax breaks specifically for sending jobs overseas.

Celebrities and athletes are not cutting your salaries and benefits to give themselves bonuses. Celebrities and athletes are employees, highly paid, yes, but they are not in charge of hiring and paying people. And no actor gets $40 mil per film, so stop lying to make a false case.

Your analogy yet again has no correlation to the issue. (He LOVES analogies. Uses them all the time. Not one of his analogies has ever been analogous to the issue at hand. Ever.)

Your statement, "Of course, a scholarship is earned, not demanded, so he definitely is not part of the other 99%..." proves you have no idea what you're talking about and are just blindly repeating right-wing partisan bullshit.

Teachers and pilots and Nobel-winning economists and worker unions and original civil rights activists and college graduates and Presidents of other countries are all lazy and looking for free handouts? I suppose you believe the Tea Party is a noble cause? If you remember, back when they first started in April '09 and were calling themselves the Teabaggers before someone told them what that meant, they were protesting Wall Street and big banks - just like the Occupiers are now. But the Republicans hijacked the movement and now it's a Republican PAC/corporate-owned and funded organization supported by FOX "News." Once in control, Republicans then were able to steer them away from their original grievances and toward fake "Obamacare" death panels, fake Obama birth certificate nonsense, the usual immigrant, abortion and gun control fear-mongering, Muslims and non-existent sharia law bullshit and lower taxes for the corporations they originally protested. Then they suddenly became the T.axed E.nough A.lready Party - the opposite of where they started. Now they're just a big, racist, self-interest-defeating joke. Taxed enough? Taxes are the lowest they've been in 50 years. Where are the jobs Boehner and the rest of the mid-term elected Republican Fascists promised? Assholes.

The Occupy movement is an actual grassroots movement of, by and for the people with no party affiliation or corporate sponsorship.

You like to repeat that the top 1% pays 40% of the income tax bill. That's true, but not the whole truth. You're obfuscating to make yourself appear correct. I don't blame you, you're just blindly repeating lies that Rush tells you.

They should actually pay more in relation to their income. But they pay less in relation than does the bottom 90%.

Income tax accounts for less than half of federal taxes and only one-fifth of all taxes. Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance (payroll taxes) are paid mostly by the bottom 90%. That’s because SS tax is capped at $106,800 - you don't pay any taxes above that but the much smaller Medicare tax applies to all wages. Warren Buffett pays the exact same in SS taxes as someone who earns $106,800. So that's about 0.0000001% of his income that he pays SS taxes on. But those making under $106,800 pay 4.2% (only because Obama lowered it from 6.2%)

As for the top 400 highest income earners, whose income gets higher and higher each year, they actually pay less percentage in federal taxes than the bottom 90% due to a variety of loopholes, deductions and shell corporations, etc. According to the IRS, their effective rate has been lowered to 16.6%. Unlike the bottom 90%, which has risen to 22.5%.

We only know this because the Obama administration immediately overturned Bush's policy that the IRS report on the top 400 was a 'state secret.'

And billionaire hedge-fund managers pay no taxes - well, some up to a whopping 2%. Many big real estate investors pay no taxes. Many big corporations pay no taxes.

Then there was that 2004 tax holiday that lowered corporate taxes to 5.25% if companies brought overseas profits back to the U.S. It was supposed to create hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs. Pfizer alone saved $11 billion in taxes. And immediately started firing people. About 40,000 so far. Overall, about 100,000 jobs were destroyed. And Republicans and a few Democrats want to do another tax holiday. Scumbags.

And corporate taxes that are too low can sometimes destroy jobs. Higher tax rates encourage businesses (that don’t want to pay taxes) to keep the profits in the business and reinvest, instead of pulling them out as profits which they'll have to pay high taxes on.

As for trickle-down economics, since 1980, the bottom 90% average income increased 1%. The top 5% doubled. The top 1/10th% went up 400%. That sounds like anti-gravity up-trickling to me.

Maybe this is some of what the lazy, want-everything-for-free, dirty hippies are protesting.

I see your one "Other 99%" example and raise you 309,243,329. (U.S. population as of 10/13/11 = 312,367,000. Ninety-nine percent of that is 309,243,330. Subtract the one “Other 99%” person = 309,243,329.)

Richard
Again, you have no concept of economics.

Tax cuts, don't GIVE money. It means they steal less. A tax cut is merely a reduction in the amount that they confiscate from you.

See if you can find where I declared tax cuts GIVE you money. You can't because I didn't. Richard is on such autopilot during these debates that his pre-programming repeats responses to things that never came up.


It is YOUR MONEY, you earned it, not the government. A tax cut is not Uncle Sam opening his checkbook and giving you free money, Bill. It means that last year they confiscate 39% of your income, and this year they will *only* confiscate 36%. See how simple that is? See, until you grasp that simple concept, it is hard to move forward in a conversation with you.

As for having choices with Athletes and celebs and all that. Sure, you have choices. The point though, is that these idiot "Other 99%" people keep quoting the "wage gap" and they don't realize that the wag gap is not just CEO's. In fact, the average celeb A-lister or athlete makes more in a week than most CEO's do in a year. THEY are also driving that "wage gap" wider and wider. SO if the WAGE GAP is so "unfair", I guess it is only unfair if you run a company? But if you chase a little ball around a field for 10x what the CEO makes, that doesn't count?

You and your fellow Leftists believe that things shouldn't be earned. You think that healthcare should just be free, that somehow doctors, who are exceptional people with intelligence and skill, who sacrifice more than a decade of their lives to train and study, who probably start off life with $300k in student loans, should just give it away? Hospitals, are INCREDIBLY expensive to run, but that should just be free? Do you and your ilk have any concept of just what it takes to provide this healthcare you feel everyone is entitled to?

I’m not sure the order I’ll be posting these debates on my blog, but I’ve explained to Richard about 60 to 80 times that I am not “Left,” “Liberal,” or a Democrat. I’ve also previously pointed out that everything is an extreme scenario to Republicans. If someone doesn’t agree with them, then that automatically makes that person a Lefty, tree-hugging, Socialist Liberal. There is no room for independent thought in a Republican mind.

Also, he keeps repeating that Liberals want everything for free. If you are a simple-minded fucktard that only listens to the lies FOX “News” and that obese drug-addict, Rush Limbaugh tell you, then you believe that is true. To anyone else that might get their news from an even half-credible source, they know this is not the truth.

And the top 1% does pay 40% of the income taxes. (That’s what I said.) The IRS agrees with that (As did I.), so I don't give a shit if you do or not, facts are facts. Those 1% that these idiots are protesting, are paying the damned bill FOR those protesters (Not according to the IRS.). But they are too stupid to realize that. (Um. No.)

Your point that SS is paid by the bottom 90% is bullshit. Yes, there is a cap, but most of the bottom 90% never get anywhere near that cap (But they still pay the same percent of their earnings in SS taxes. Pay the fuck attention.). I hit that cap for several years and soon will again (Lose your job – downsized for profit, were you?). Meaning that I paid more than someone making $40k, who paid very little (No. You paid the same percent in SS taxes until you hit that cap. Then you stopped paying into SS, which means the more you made, the more your percentage went DOWN. Pay the fuck attention.). And it doesn't matter if Warren Buffet pays the same as a guy that makes $106k for SS, because Warren Buffet won't get any more out than the guy that paid $106k. So what's the difference? (Warren Buffett paid less of a percentage of his income into taxes. The less you make, the more of a percentage you pay. Pay the fuck attention.) Regardless of what they made, they both paid in the same amount (In dollars up to $106,800, but not percent-wise. Pay the fuck attention.), and as a result, Warren buffet will only get out what the $106k a year guy gets, he doesn't get a dime more. (But he paid a higher percent of his salary into taxes than Buffet. Pay the fuck attention.)

As for the top 400 seeing a reduction in their "effective rate" due to loopholes and shell companies, etc... Despite that, they still pay the majority of income taxes. (Because they have all the money, so by default they pay more – but they pay less of a percent of their income.) (Moron.)

And they pay a lot of Medicare and other payroll taxes, that their income levels prevent them from being able to even use. (What?)

Richard’s Brother
The problem that will get ignored as Richard tries to contort facts to satisfy his world-view is that this isn't 1950 anymore. The American Dream that has been sold to the newest generation is nearly impossible to achieve. College tuition (even at state schools) is skyrocketing. I went to a state school, too. Rutgers Engineering is up to $25,000 a year if you live on campus. That's more than double what it was when I went there in the mid-90s.

So now, that cheap state school route will cost you at least $100,000 (if you live on campus) if you can graduate in four years (I was in the minority in engineering school, most of my peers took five years).

And when you graduate, you get the pleasure of it being extremely difficult to get a job in your field. And we aren't talking about getting a "frivolous" degree in Ancient American Cave Art or something. Even with a practical degree like computer engineering that you could immediately put to use for your new Corporate Overlords.

No matter how cheaply you can manage to sell your limited skill set (with no experience) - you still can't compete with the hundreds of thousands of programmers working out of sweat shops in India.

You can work really hard, make all the right decisions (based on the bill of goods you've been sold all your life) - and more often than not, you'll still get fuct by the system because the system isn't designed to furnish you with a job or the American dream. The system is now designed to maximize short-term sharehold profits for the massive international corporations.

Spent your adult life building up a local business in your community? Tough. There is no way to compete with Wal-Mart. But hey, it's ok, because Wal-Mart will add a hundred or so minimum wage jobs in your community. You win, right?

The problem that the Occupiers are trying to come to grips with is that they view this country as a large community of human beings. The people that they are protesting against view this country as numbers on a spreadsheet.

Why you defend that worldview - even after it completely screwed you over (Referring to when Richard was downsized to maximize corporate profit.) - is beyond me. Life is about more than corporate profits. The protesters realize that, even if you and the CEOs you religiously defend don't.

And you are complaining about Bill not understanding economics?!?

Richard
The protesters are for the most part idiots who don't understand how anything works. (But the Teabaggers - now THEY know how things work.)

Tell me, Brother, what is the solution? Have government come in and control all the corporations? (An extremist view proposed by no one.) Just tax the shit out of all of them, forcing them overseas? (An extremist view proposed by no one.) Should we make laws that say that there is an official "wage gap" and that if it goes over 25% you get in trouble? (An extremist view proposed by no one.) Should we make laws that say how many jobs you have to maintain if you want to have a company? (An extremist view proposed by no one.)

If these protesters are not just out there whining and complaining, if something "must be done", then what is that something? Who should decide what must be done and how will they monitor and enforce it?

You claim to know so much, so lets hear it, Potsy. What's the solution...

Richard’s Brother
How can you make that claim when YOU don't understand how anything works? You are ridiculing a caricature of the protesters that you fabricated so that it would be easy to ridicule them.

What's the solution?

You are a firm believer in maintaining the rules that the Founding Fathers professed, why don't we go back to the rules that they placed on Corporations to prevent the situation that we find ourselves in now (which they found themselves in before founding this country and were trying to prevent from ever happening again)?

Maybe we could just not have corporations and their lobbying groups writing the legislation that applies to them (as the Pharma lobby did when writing the Medicare Part D legislation)?

I'm open to anything that stops them running the show.

Richard
I have been watching a shitload of clips on them, seeing what they have to say, etc... For the most part, they are idiots.

So back to the question that you side-stepped...

He meant – ‘Back to the question that you answered but I didn’t like the answer because only Republicans are allowed to refer to the Constitution and Founding Fathers and you used that against me, so I’ll ignore it and repeat myself and keep contradicting you because I’m right no matter what you say.’

What's the solution, how would we implement and enforce it and who would we put in charge of doing that?

Let's hear it.

The problem is that the people who would have to put any fixes in place, are the politicians in both parties that are funded by the people that you want them to police.

It isn't "the lobbyists". It's the politicians whose votes are being bought by the lobbyists. The fact that their votes are for sale is the real issue, not the fact that someone is willing to buy someone that is for sale. (Duh, uh, wha?)

And so these morons protesting and calling on the Administration to "do something about Wall St", probably don't have any idea that the current Administration is more in Wall St's back pocket than any other recent president.

Richard
There is a discussion on taxes and corporations going on in a forum that my girlfriend and I are on, and Wendell put a great post up on taxes and how people view corporations in a way that perhaps is not very realistic. This is Wendell's post, they are his words and credit goes to him, but he makes great points and I though I would share them as they are relevant here:

You really don’t have to torture yourself with this rambling nonsense. Suffice it to say, he argues that corporations are people and since employees pay taxes, that means the corporation already paid its taxes through its employees, which is why corporations shouldn’t have to pay taxes, so it can create jobs. I suggest skipping it now, but if you really enjoy being tortured by long, meaningless strings of words grouped together, then go back after you’ve finished this blog. But know you’ve been warned.

"First, I have to respond to this because it is basically untrue. I am a stockholder in an SCorp. The Scorp does not pay taxes. All taxes are paid by the stockholders as regular income taxes. Whatever profit is on the books at the end of a fiscal year is divided up amount the stockholders based on their ownership share and that profit become part of their gross income for income tax purposes, just like their salary or other sources of regular income. I believe that LLCs, partnerships and sole proprietorships are all also treated that way. That is one of the primary reasons for creating such an entity. It gives you some benefits in a variety of ways due to separating the individual from the company (or corporation for an Scorp) but does not create a new, separate taxable entity. This truth helps explain the problem with regular corporate taxes.

Now, on to the valid question of where do you draw the line with regard to who really pays taxes. What are taxes? Taxes are money confiscated from the economy by the government. Where does the money in the economy come from? No, it's not printed by the federal government. That is just a way to make money into something we can easily trade with each other. The dollars the government prints represent wealth that the holder of the dollar owns. The money in the economy comes from value added to goods by the efforts of people. Even if the "goods" are nontangible, like services rendered, they are still a value added entity in the economy. So how do corporations fit into this?

A corporation is a legal construct that describes a group of people working together cooperatively to create added value and thus, wealth. So when you tax a corporation, you are really taxing people. They may be stockholders or employees or both. A corporation may increase its prices for its goods or services in order to have the money needed to pay taxes levied against it if the market will bear the price increase. Arguing about whether or not that will happen is really beside the point. At some point, all of the net income a corporation generates becomes wealth that belongs to individual people because a corporation is actually made up of people.

Lets say a corporation has two stockholders. It buys blocks of aluminum and machines them into rearset brackets. That adds value to the block of aluminum and that added value comes from the efforts of the people in the corporation. That may be the stockholders, in which case they are also employees, or it may be a separate employee. It doesn't matter. The point is that the added value gets taxed. If the government levies a tax directly on the corporation, that tax reduces the money left over so the recipients of that money, the stockholders or the employees, get less income. If the company is able to increase its prices so that their net income isn't reduced by the tax, then the money paid to stockholders and employees is not reduced.

So, from whose pocket is the tax taken. There are several possibilities depending on market forces, stockholder demands and wishes, employee value etc. But the taxes always come out of the pockets of individuals. The corporation itself is just a legal construct for defining the pathway that the wealth follows from the point where it is created (the addition of value) to the point where it is confiscated by the government.

Eliminating taxes levied directly against corporations does not eliminate the taxes. It just means they will be paid by somebody else. That might be the stockholders, who now have more income and thus pay more income tax or the employees for the same reason. Regardless, the income doesn't just evaporate just because the corporation didn't pay it to the government in the form of income tax. It is passed on to somebody who DOES pay tax on it. But look carefully at that equation.

If the corporate taxes were, say, $100 and you eliminate corporate income tax, the government doesn't get $100 from the stockholders. They get a percentage of the $100 because it is income to the stockholder and he doesn't pay 100% of his income in taxes. The government must make up for that shortfall somehow (or reduce government expenditures ) so the tax will end up being collected from the stockholders or employees or customers in the form of increased tax rates. The collective net effect to those people is zero though because the increase will (assuming the government acts ethically and responsibly ) exactly match the loss of revenue from the corporate tax. The only question is how they split that up.

The point is that the corporation never had wealth of its own. All of the wealth that it shows on its balance sheet and all of the income that it shows on its P&L actually belongs to individuals. Taxes take money out of the economy and put it back in. They are a mechanism for forcing society to collectively use some of its accumulated wealth to pay for things that represent the common good. The government does not create wealth (unless it actively engages in some kind of value adding activity which is very rare, the government is generally just a consumer). Only individuals acting on their own or in cooperation with others, possibly in legally defined form of a corporation, create wealth. Income tax is just a way to quantify the confiscation. The government could just impose an arbitrary and absolute tax - everybody pays $5000 to the government each year. Or it can impose an actual direct value added tax - everybody pay 10% of the value added to something they sell to the government. Or it can impose a sales tax - Everybody pays 10% of the price they pay for something to the government. Or it can impose an income tax - everybody pays 10% of the increase in their wealth to the government. All of those other than the arbitrary fixed tax are just efforts to equitably allocate the tax burden based on some transaction that is easy to measure and imparts, theoretically, some inherent fairness in distributing the tax burden. Corporate income taxes are just one of the thousands of tweaks to the underlying basic activity of the tax collector. They are a way of confiscating wealth from the creators of wealth (people, always always people) without them being able to directly see and count the amount confiscated.

I guarantee you that when the concept of taxing corporate income was first put on the table in some committee room in Washington, that is exactly the problem they were trying to solve. How do we increase taxes without actually collecting more money directly from each individual? When we do that, the individuals get upset and may even vote us out of office. "

Bill Mancuso
Wow. Wendell is wordy. Not very accurate, but wordy nonetheless. Used the word 'confiscated' a bit. Not that he was trying to sway any opinions or anything. Don't worry, Richard, I know the credit goes to Wendell for his inaccurate description of corporations. One question. When the corporation Pfizer saved $11 billion in taxes during that 2004 tax holiday and immediately began firing 40,000 employees for an even bigger profit, then gave themselves pay raises and bonuses, how much in taxes did all those jobless ex-employees pay? Aside from all the taxes Pfizer DIDN'T pay.

And, Richard. You're great at missing the point.

It's not at all whatsoever about getting good grades, working hard and earning a living vs. lazy failures that want free handouts. That's called a straw man. That's not real. That's not the issue. That narrow-minded, ignorant viewpoint was designed to make people want to protect rich people against their own best wishes. It's actually about the rich and powerful carving out larger & larger & larger portions of money by buying politicians so every policy is beneficial to the rich and powerful vs. the poor and powerless suffering needlessly because they receive less & less & less leftovers because they have no lobbyists or money to purchase their own politicians to change laws in their favor.

The 99% are not demanding things to be free. They are demanding things to be fair.

Only the lying right-wing is saying they want stuff for free.

I do understand economics. Economics is a little more involved than tax cuts for the wealthy, which is apparently all you believe it is. You are missing the point. It's not about 'wage gap.' It's about shifting the burden onto the poor. Actors and athletes don’t shift anything anywhere. They are employees. Politicians bought by corporations do the shifting.

Nobody thinks things shouldn't be earned. The only people saying that is "you and your ilk" to falsely caricaturize something you don't like or understand. In other words, you are lying.

How I explained the tax situation is real no matter how emphatic you are that it's bullshit.

So, you think Nobel-winning economists are idiots? I'd like to hear your theory on that one.

You are only watching a shitload of clips carefully selected by the right-wing media to falsely portray this movement as idiotic. If I only played clips of Dan Quayle's spelling ability, Sara Palin's grasp of Paul Revere's ride, Michele Bachmann's understanding of John Wayne's birthplace, Rick Santorum's eloquent description of paper towel sex-habits and George Bush's knowledge of how our children is learning, I could easily manipulate it to look like every single politician didn't graduate 3rd grade. It's called propaganda. And you are easily gullible in believing everything the right-wing tells you. Did you see the American Crossroads commercial where Bill Clinton comes out against Obama's jobs plan? Yeah, editing words together from two separate sentences can do that.

The protesters absolutely do understand that the current administration is in bed with Wall Street (although not that lie you made up about “more than any other administration”). They're protesting this administration, too. You ignorantly believe this is a Liberal movement because it makes you feel better about yourself in defending corporate thieves. It is not a liberal movement.

We could re-install Glass-Steagall - separating community banks from Wall Street investment.
We could reverse Citizens United - separating corporations from directly buying politicians.
We could audit the Federal Reserve.
We could allow the Bush tax cuts to expire.
We could end loopholes for millionaires.
We could end tax breaks for sending jobs overseas in particular.
Just a few things we could do.

For a hundred and fifty years, we had a financial crisis every 10 or 20 years. After the Great Depression, we put a bunch of measures in place to prevent that. It worked for 50 years. No crises or bank failures. Then came Ronald Reagan and his deregulation agenda. Savings and loan crisis. Long-Term Capital Portfolio L.P. hedge fund failure and bailout. Enron, the largest bankruptcy reorganization in American history at that time and the biggest audit failure. The current situation stoked by two unpaid for tax breaks and two unpaid for, unnecessary wars. Nah. I guess government regulation doesn't do much but interfere in our lives.

If it's our money and we earned it, why do the 99% not get to enjoy the same tax breaks and loopholes as the obscenely wealthy do?

Hey, I have a solution. We should give the rich more tax breaks, de-fund schools, take away working class pensions, lower their salaries and send a bunch of jobs to India. It's been working so well so far.

Check out this article:

Richard
Hey Bill... When you increase Walmart's taxes by 5%, and they then raise prices by 5%... who pays the taxes... Walmart, or Walmart's customers?

And I like making it so that corporations cannot buy politicians. How about we start with one... FOX NEWS: Solar Project That Received $1.2 Billion Federal Loan Sponsored by Financially Troubled Firm

Bill Mancuso
Yeah, it sucked when WalMart's prices were so outrageously high during the 90's with those Clinton tax levels.

And as much as FOX "News" tries to push this Solyndra scandal, it's no bigger or smaller than any other Presidential scandal.

But you're right, that is part of the problem that the influence of corporate donations has on politics and the inherent destruction of democracy the Citizens United ruling by the Republican dominated USSC represents.

Richard
Bill, what country has ever taxed itself to prosperity? Only Liberals think that taking wealth and divvying it up makes more wealth... LOL

Anyway, nice attempt to side-step the issue, that the President that these protesters are calling on to fix Wall St, is in the back pocket of Wall St more than any other recent President. And the same President that gave away billions to companies that went belly-up, in order to create a couple dozen jobs.

Well done, both of you.

Yeah, a failed attempt to create jobs is much worse than draining billions and billions of dollars from the economy on two needless ten-year wars. We should never try to create jobs again - only start needless wars.

Bill Mancuso
No one is trying to tax America into prosperity. No one wants to divvy up wealth. Stop going every single fucking time directly to a false, ludicrous, bullshit extreme to prove a point that doesn't exist.

If you have to lie to support your case, then your case probably isn't worth supporting. Learn from the past. All of it. Not just the parts you like.

You don't get it. No one is side-stepping the issue. I answered your question. Your brother answered your question. This President is influenced by Wall Street. Just like all the rest. Though not MORE than, as you so desperately want to think. Occupy is about Obama, too. You're completely inventing something that is not the issue just to try and make this seem like a liberal movement - but it is not. Hate to break it to you, but Teabaggers are Occupying as well. Didn't Rush tell you?

Richard
Occupy is stupid. Fact.

Bitching about other people doing well, is WHY they are not. Demanding that government take from one group and give to another, is redistribution.

The irony is that the government that they look to in order to "fix the problem", is the largest contributor *TO* that problem.

I wanted to reply to this with either, “I know you are, but what am I?” or, “I’m rubber and you’re glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.” But I chose to just ignore his third-grade repetitive mentality instead. Either way, I still had no real comeback because he declared Occupy to be stupid for a fact. And how can you argue with fact?

Richard’s Brother
I didn't side step your question. I answered it directly.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Please save your mind and don’t go back and read Wendell’s description of corporations. Just a friendly reminder.

I realized something while injecting my snarky comments. It was when Richard repeated that the top 1% pay 40% of federal taxes. I realized Republicans only look at numbers, not percentages. Naked numbers out of context support their undying support for the wealthy. Percentages - the reality of the situation - support the fact that the rich are NOT paying their fair share. Here’s a simple, exaggerated for ease of understanding example of what I mean:

If I make twenty thousand dollars and pay four thousand in taxes, that’s 20% of my income.

If I make one million dollars and pay forty thousand in taxes, that’s 4% of my income.

The millionaire paid ten times the amount in taxes, which sounds great to Republicans. “Rich people pay all the taxes!” But they ignore that the millionaire has a shit-load more money, so naturally the millionaire pays more in taxes. But the millionaire only paid one-fifth the percent in taxes as the poverty-level earner. Why doesn’t the millionaire also pay 20%? How is this fair?

It is not.




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