“"The problem with the Republican Party is the right hand doesn't know what the far right hand is doing" Barney Frank 2012”

“Isn't being the only Bully Super Power fun? Thanks Raygun you worthless 'b' actor whom the fools worship and the plutocrats copy. Will three more wars fix it?”

““NOW Rosey doesn't care about the dept.” Do you mean the World Police Department? Another of our 60% expenditures payed for with 13% taxes?”

“Liberals are so HATE filled.”

“Do Mississippi horses eat food stamps?”

“Do they?”

“

No spending cuts means bad news for America...Why didn't I think of that?”

“Don't you mean, closing the tax loopholes for big business and eliminating the single biggest expenditure since Shrub wrecked the economy: tax cut for the richies?

Wow. Trickle down is working GREAT!!! Lift the balls and give it a shake!”

“Rosey why can't you understand that there aren't enough rich folks and coperations to pay off this dept?”

“Rosey why can't you understand that there aren't enough rich folks and coperations to pay off this dept?”

“How Much Money Do the Rich Have?

By Robert VerBruggen
Posted on March 14, 2011 8:00 AM My colleague Kevin D. Williamson has a piece today about how hard it would be to close the $1.1 trillion budget gap by taxing �the rich.� I spent some time this weekend going through more detailed IRS data, and they support his conclusion.

Liberals believe, more or less, that once someone�s income reaches the �rich� threshold, they have little right to keep any additional dollars they make. Starting with that assumption, I set out to find how much �extra� money people really have. You can see my results here.

The best numbers I could find came from IRS returns in 2008 (Excel spreadsheet). Unfortunately, the cutoff the IRS uses is $200,000 rather than $250,000, which is the level below which Obama promised no tax hikes. But if anything, counting more taxpayers as �rich� � and thus making more money available for government plundering � will bias the results against Kevin�s argument.

The first question is: How much do these folks make in total? The answer is about $2.5 trillion.

If we wanted, we could stop here: You�d need to grab almost half that to finance the deficits Obama�s talking about, and for many of these taxpayers, the other half is already taken in federal and local taxes. No one works for free. But even if we can�t completely eliminate the deficit, maybe we can mitigate it substantially. So it�s worth going a little farther.

First of all, not all of that money is �extra.� I assume that when Obama talked about raising taxes on the rich, he didn�t mean he�d tax people who made $250,000 so much that they ended up with less than people who�d made $200,000. So, in this analysis, not only is he limited to taxing people who make over $200,000, but he�s limited to taxing the amounts that exceed $200,000. Of the aforementioned $2.5 trillion, only about $1.6 trillion is left after we subtract every rich filer�s first $200,000.

And of course, the federal government can�t take money it�s already taken, so we need to factor in taxes. Because we counted out the first $200,000 each person earned, we also have to count out the federal taxes on that income � about $50,000 per person. When we calculate the taxes paid beyond that, and subtract that number from the $1.6 trillion above, we end up with less than $1.3 trillion.

And then we have to knock off state and local taxes, which probably average 5 to 10 percent. All told, we�re left with about a trillion dollars � dollars that belong to people who already pay high taxes and are good at hiding money when taxes go higher.

Bottom line: If we can�t raise taxes on anyone who�s not rich, the income tax can�t be of much help in increasing revenue.”

“Bush tax breaks = $1.8 TRILLION.

Boy, economy sure is ZOOOOOMING along!”

“total GDP=2 trillion
total dept in 10 years=22 trillion

hmm.....”

“What year was the US GDP $2 trillion strat?

(month?)”

“... and the word is debt.

"Dept" is an abbreviation for department.”

“yes 1.8 trillion over 10 years of OUR money its NOT the Governments Money, STUPID

cut spending”

“*snicker*”

“The rich rule over the poor,
and the borrower is slave to the lender.”

“We saved bankruptcy by raising the dept limit 2.4 trillion!

Wait...wha? We have to borrow more to uhhm.. save the economy...because we have too much deBt...so we need to borrow more...so we don't run out of money...that we have to borrow...because we owe money...so we borrowed more....WHEW! Glad we did that!

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/24-trillion-would-be-largest-debt-limit”

“US borrowing to surge after debt cap raised
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.0d79a84244dc2d4f0de55e87d89bcbfb.811&show_article=1”

“Because we have so many wars to keep the government subsidized churches legally lying to you and because daddie's company now has slaves across the ocean so we don't have to give them our Gold Mine Health Care.”

“yes 1.8 trillion over 10 years of OUR money its NOT the Governments Money, STUPID

Ooooh. So now it's YOUR money. Hahaha. Someone has to pay for Bushie's little ill conceived wars...

Man, I hate parents who make signs for their kids to hold so they can use them as a bill board for their political message. Manipulators.”

“Nazi camps, Beck rite again, eh, dOOd?”

“It's funny how people who come onto a backpacking website can so ardently display their hate of the environment.

Nothing like hiking through a toxic wastedump!

http://news.yahoo.com/gops-hidden-debt-deal-agenda-gut-epa-111500435.html”

“Hate and BUSH, the liberal's answer to all democrap screwups.”

“Taxbreak for the rich in action!

http://news.yahoo.com/americans-cut-spending-first-time-20-months-123819626.html”

“All of our dept just passed away in the Senate vote.”

“Pelosi is on the record stating the bill stinks to high heaven.

The Dems died and let the Reicht steamroll all over them. Pathetic.”

“Osama bin Laden won, Obama and the tea party lost. 9/11 should have been a day of recognition not a day of reactionary foolery.”

““The fact that we are here today to debate raising America ’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America ’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

-- Senator Barack H. Obama, March 2006”

“It's easy to watch and criticize, but a whole different mess when you take on the CEO job of the most messed up organisation in the world.

The board met and after weeks they decided debt can only be paid off with spending cuts. All american business should have to follow those rules and the outcome will be just Honky Dory.

Do you see why Palin, not 'half term', but 'no term' was picked as VP?”

“�Pelosi is on the record stating the bill stinks to high heaven.

The Dems died and let the Reicht steamroll all over them. Pathetic.�
roseymonster
2:29:02 PM
8/02/11

Did Pelosi vote for or against the bill, rosey?”

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure.

Over the past 5 years, our federal debt has increased by $3.5 trillion to $8.6 trillion. That is "trillion'' with a "T.'' That is money that we have borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, borrowed from China and Japan, borrowed from American taxpayers.

This rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy, robbing our cities and States of critical investments in infrastructure like bridges, ports, and levees; robbing our families and our children of critical investments in education and health care reform; robbing our seniors of the retirement and health security they have counted on. Every dollar we pay in interest is a dollar that is not going to investment in America's priorities. Instead, interest payments are a significant tax on all Americans � a debt tax that Washington doesn't want to talk about. If Washington were serious about honest tax relief in this country, we would see an effort to reduce our national debt by returning to responsible fiscal policies.

My friend, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, likes to remind us that it took 42 Presidents 224 years to run up only $1 trillion of foreign-held debt. This administration did more than that in just 5 years.

Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that "the buck stops here.'' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt limit.

Guess who sais that?
*snicker*”

“i'no' who sais that.”

“it's so funny to see violin snivel and snark and rosey point and cry. elections have consequences. now they know.”

“

Debt deal: anger and deceit has led the US into a billionaires' coup

The debt deal will hurt the poorest Americans, convinced by Fox and the Tea Party to act against their own welfare


There are two ways of cutting a deficit: raising taxes or reducing spending. Raising taxes means taking money from the rich. Cutting spending means taking money from the poor. Not in all cases of course: some taxation is regressive; some state spending takes money from ordinary citizens and gives it to banks, arms companies, oil barons and farmers. But in most cases the state transfers wealth from rich to poor, while tax cuts shift it from poor to rich.

So the rich, in a nominal democracy, have a struggle on their hands. Somehow they must persuade the other 99% to vote against their own interests: to shrink the state, supporting spending cuts rather than tax rises. In the US they appear to be succeeding.

Partly as a result of the Bush tax cuts of 2001, 2003 and 2005 (shamefully extended by Barack Obama), taxation of the wealthy, in Obama's words, "is at its lowest level in half a century". The consequence of such regressive policies is a level of inequality unknown in other developed nations. As the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz points out, in the past 10 years the income of the top 1% has risen by 18%, while that of blue-collar male workers has fallen by 12%.

The deal being thrashed out in Congress as this article goes to press seeks only to cut state spending. As the former Republican senator Alan Simpson says: "The little guy is going to be cremated." That means more economic decline, which means a bigger deficit. It's insane. But how did it happen?

The immediate reason is that Republican members of Congress supported by the Tea Party movement won't budge. But this explains nothing. The Tea Party movement mostly consists of people who have been harmed by tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for the poor and middle. Why would they mobilise against their own welfare? You can understand what is happening in Washington only if you remember what everyone seems to have forgotten: how this movement began.

On Sunday the Observer claimed that "the Tea Party rose out of anger over the scale of federal spending, and in particular in bailing out the banks". This is what its members claim. It's nonsense.

The movement started with Rick Santelli's call on CNBC for a tea party of city traders to dump securities in Lake Michigan, in protest at Obama's plan to "subsidise the losers". In other words, it was a demand for a financiers' mobilisation against the bailout of their victims: people losing their homes. On the same day, a group called Americans for Prosperity (AFP) set up a Tea Party Facebook page and started organising Tea Party events. The movement, whose programme is still lavishly supported by AFP, took off from there.

So who or what is Americans for Prosperity? It was founded and is funded by Charles and David Koch. They run what they call "the biggest company you've never heard of", and between them they are worth $43bn. Koch Industries is a massive oil, gas, minerals, timber and chemicals company. In the past 15 years the brothers have poured at least $85m into lobby groups arguing for lower taxes for the rich and weaker regulations for industry. The groups and politicians the Kochs fund also lobby to destroy collective bargaining, to stop laws reducing carbon emissions, to stymie healthcare reform and to hobble attempts to control the banks. During the 2010 election cycle, AFP spent $45m supporting its favoured candidates.

But the Kochs' greatest political triumph is the creation of the Tea Party movement. Taki Oldham's film (Astro)Turf Wars shows Tea Party organisers reporting back to David Koch at their 2009 Defending the Dream summit, explaining the events and protests they've started with AFP help. "Five years ago," he tells them, "my brother Charles and I provided the funds to start Americans for Prosperity. It's beyond my wildest dreams how AFP has grown into this enormous organisation."

AFP mobilised the anger of people who found their conditions of life declining, and channelled it into a campaign to make them worse. Tea Party campaigners take to the streets to demand less tax for billionaires and worse health, education and social insurance for themselves.

Are they stupid? No. They have been misled by another instrument of corporate power: the media. The movement has been relentlessly promoted by Fox News, which belongs to a more familiar billionaire. Like the Kochs, Rupert Murdoch aims to misrepresent the democratic choices we face, in order to persuade us to vote against our own interests and in favour of his.

What's taking place in Congress right now is a kind of political coup. A handful of billionaires have shoved a spanner into the legislative process. Through the candidates they have bought and the movement that supports them, they are now breaking and reshaping the system to serve their interests. We knew this once, but now we've forgotten. What hope do we have of resisting a force we won't even see?


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/01/us-debt-deal-tea-party”

“How's Rumknees Campaign going? I hear it's so exciting they call it the, 'The Mittness Protection Program.”

“The TEa party stands for common sense responsibility in government. The progressives call this "radical" and even Biden and Waxman called them terrorists....The day of reckoning is here and the Tea Party are the adults in the room that see how bad it is and are willing to stand up to the decades of elitism and unsustainable spending in Washington. If they are allowed to continue the status quot, these idiots will kill America for everyone. Rich and poor...and you too.
We need more Tea Party members in congress because even my 12 yr old can see that this is about to blow up and his future will be drastically altered for the worse. We have become a bunch of selfish, entitled, parasites and our actions will affect the entire planet.

Get over the finger pointing, the D vs R, the "He started it".

They work for us, the answer to us. We are awake now and we will have the last word.”

“Debt deal: anger and deceit has led the US into a billionaires' coup
~Rev


Victimization is intelligent politics. Liberals have historically excelled at leveraging a victim mindset into political support. As violin has showed us many times, you don't really need the facts to support your position if you can make an emotional appeal to victimhood.�
Mutt
5:44:43 AM
7/06/11


+1

Nonconformist
10:45:24 AM
7/06/11”

“The debt deal will hurt the poorest Americans, convinced by Fox and the Tea Party to act against their own welfare


LOL---of course.”

“Tea Party campaigners take to the streets to demand less tax for billionaires and worse health, education and social insurance for themselves.

lol - no media bias there!”

“Wow - you guys really tore that to shreds.

I'm in awe.”

“Genius statement of the day:

elections have consequences. now they know.�
Mutt
3:45:31 PM

Is that the scuttlebutt at the french fry machine these days? LOL.”

“You have a question to answer, rosey.”

“Hicks with sticks.”

“The Tea Party has finally broken through the establishment shell of BOTH SIDES. They(establishment politicians of both sides) will stop at nothing to stop us from taking back the power from them.

Uncliff, I suggest you buy stock in a pitchfork company.....”