Clinton to go "scorched earth"

Do you honestly disagree with Obama on everything?

You tend to toss that idea around quite a bit, and honestly, unless you are a sociopath, I am not sure it is possible.

The Clintons will do whatever it takes to win. They see themselves as entitled to power. Hillary will sink to whatever level necessary, up to and including subverting the will of the People, while she makes speeches ripping Bush about subverting the will of the People.

Bill wants a third term. And these two people, in typical 60s kid fashion, think that everyone should submit to their will because they are sooooooo much smarter and more enlightened than everyone else- even their own primary voters.

Obama even came out recently in favor of an individual RKBA. He's got my primary vote.

"http://www.drudgereport.com.

Enough said."

To a large extent that's very true, sadly.*

*Despite Clinton's pledge today that she wouldn't go after pledged delegates.

Shazzam! The whole thing in a nutshell. Well put.

Ohhhhhh, and BTW, Hillary is now a duck hunter. Translation: I need to snow those damn ignorant bubbas in Wisconsin that I "believe" in the 2nd Amendment, while trying to make them forget about a long record of anti-gun and anti-hunting positions. She'll do WHATEVER IT TAKES to get a vote. Simply incredible. Maybe she should ask John Kerry where he "got him a hunting license."

What has our tax dollars been used for under Bush again? I forgot...

........................................ ......"Bush's Plan for Hell on Earth?"

Wrong on all accounts.

Since you honestly disagree with EVERYTHING Obama believes in, then I can arbitrarily suggest that you hate black people, have a penchant for the ass of man, rape small children as a hobby, etc. By your very words, you allow these statements to be made, and be logically true.

It wasn't the content of what you were saying I have a problem with, it is the extreme knee jerk reaction that clearly has caused it. You and I both know that you don't disagree with EVERYTHING Obama believes in. Hardly.

Besides the 14 points that he clearly stated he disagreed with... does it not stand to reason that he, and many of us, can categorically dislike a candidate simply based on the CANDIDATE'S knee-jerk response to advocate ever bigger and more powerful central planning and state control?

It just seems silly that you are grinding away with "knee jerk" language when it is OBAMA (Clinton, whatever liberal you choose) that ALWAYS knee-jerks in the direction of "we need to tax more and create a government program to 'fix' that..."

Seems straightforward to me that someone who categorically dislikes government expansion would categorically dislike a candidate who also categorically advocates things that the voter disagrees with. In this case, Obama advocates a predictable slew of big-government solutions. No shock that some people stand up to resist socialism 100% of the time when it is advocated. Much like many on the left stand up 100% of the time when it comes to lowering taxes and reducing the size and scope of government power.

(I bet I am about to get a lecture on being too "stupid to understand the nuance," to put it in Clintonspeak)

Hey, cool, we're back to "if the liberals and their lowlife consorts don't get what they want, I fear a riot" bit.

Wasn't that Moe in Texas' beat? Gotta do a gut check when you find yourself drifting Moe-ward.

Heh.
And as far as your disagreements are concerned, they are valid points. Arguable but valid in your scope of the issues.

Just admit to me that Hillary is of all that is humanity a lousy and even more dangerous choice for a democratic nominee. She even has less experience as a senator than Obama.

Clinton

Senator Clinton, who has served only one full term (6yrs.) and another year campaigning, has managed to author and pass into law 20, twenty pieces of legislation in her first six years.

These bills can be found on the website of the Library of Congress thomas.loc.gov , but to save you trouble, I’ll post them here for you.

1. Establish the Kate Mullany National Historic Site.
2. Support the goals and ideals of Better Hearing and Speech Month.
3. Recognize the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.
4. Name courthouse after Thurgood Marshall.
5. Name courthouse after James L. Watson.
6. Name post office after Jonn A. O’Shea.
7. Designate Aug. 7, 2003, as National Purple Heart Recognition Day.
8. Support the goals and ideals of National Purple Heart Recognition Day.
9. Honor the life and legacy of Alexander Hamilton on the bicentennial of his death.
10. Congratulate the Syracuse Univ. Orange Men’s Lacrosse Team on winning the championship.
11. Congratulate the Le Moyne College Dolphins Men’s Lacrosse Team on winning the championship.
12. Establish the 225th Anniversary of the American Revolution Commemorative Program.
13. Name post office after Sergeant Riayan A. Tejeda.
14. Honor Shirley Chisholm for her service to the nation and express condolences on her death.
15. Honor John J. Downing, Brian Fahey, and Harry Ford, firefighters who lost their lives on duty. Only five of Clinton’s bills are, more substantive.
16. Extend period of unemployment assistance to victims of 9/11.
17. Pay for city projects in response to 9/11
18. Assist landmine victims in other countries.
19. Assist family caregivers in accessing affordable respite care.
20. Designate part of the National Forest System in Puerto Rico as protected in the wilderness preservation system.

There you have it, the fact’s straight from the Senate Record.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Obama

During the first eight years of his elected service he sponsored over 820 bills. He introduced 233 regarding healthcare reform, 125 on poverty and public assistance, 112 crime fighting bills, 97 economic bills, 60 human rights and anti-discrimination bills, 21 ethics reform bills, 15 gun control, 6 veterans affairs and many others.

NY TImes: Obama’s record in the Illinois Senate

His first year in the U.S. Senate, he authored 152 bills and co- sponsored another 427. These included:

1. The Coburn-Obama Government Transparency Act of 2006 - became law,
2. The Lugar-Obama Nuclear Non-proliferation and Conventional Weapons Threat Reduction Act, - became law,
3. The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, passed the Senate,
4. The 2007 Government Ethics Bill, - became law,
5. The Protection Against Excessive Executive Compensation Bill, In committee, and many more.

In all, since entering the U.S. Senate, Senator Obama has written 890 bills and co-sponsored another 1096.

An impressive record, for someone who supposedly has no record according to some who would prefer that this comparison not be made public or worthy of discussion.

Holy crap, artman - by noticing that Hillary has done jack over the last six years, and by noticing Obama's awesome record, it obviously shows your hidden sexism and bias! (Edit )

My quote:


Humanity. You like spinning shit don't you.

Sarcasm -> over your head, I was on your side just now and you missed it

try using this or this sometimes. It helps.

The first list is only those bills for which Clinton is the original sponsor, and which were successfully signed into law, and counts nothing she otherwise contributed to.

The second list is anything that Obama ever had anything to do with -- original sponsor or not, successfully passed or not.

If you apply the criteria used for Clinton to Obama, Obama's list looks something like this:

1) S.2125: A bill that sought to promote democracy in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
2) S.3757: A bill that named a post office.

Use the more lax criteria for Clinton and you get:

1) A bill that extended the availability of unemployment assistance.
2) A bill which established a program to assist family caregivers.
3) A bill that provided benefits to public safety officers who were killed or injured during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
4) Hillary worked with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to expand access to health care for the National Guard and Reserve.
5) Hillary passed an amendment that created a national program for teacher and principal training and recruitment.
6) Hillary used Senate rules to force the Bush administration to make emergency contraception, also known as Plan B, available over the counter.
7) S. 1240: Compassionate Assistance for Rape Emergencies Act of 2007
8) S. 2415: Protection Against Transmission of HIV for Women and Youth Act of 2007
9) S. 1816: National Women's Rights History Project Act
10) S. 1800: Compassionate Care for Servicewomen Act
11) S. 1075: Unintended Pregnancy Reduction Act of 2007
12) S. 766: Paycheck Fairness Act

(Edit: added some bill #'s I found later.)

Comparing only the 20 authored bills of Hillary's that passed into law against every bill that Obama has ever sponsored can be seen as rather disingenuous. But if you take those 20 bills that Hillary authored and put into law, and compare them against...say...the Lugar-Obama Nuclear Non-proliferation and Conventional Weapons Threat Reduction Act, which is

a) definitely not fluff, and

b) required the type of bipartisan coordination Obama talks about (Lugar is a Republican)... that one bill of Obama's blows away the entirety of Hillary's senate record.

So I agree. Comparing their most substantial bills that got passed into law, or perhaps their top five bills would be very informative. Good to see that there are people that are digging up this information and learning something about it like yourself.

I would present more myself, but I'm at work with the boss lurking around the corner...

Err, you mean Bill Gates' tax dollars? What part don't you get about the fact that the Bush tax cuts (way more expensive that the Iraq War) mostly just applied to the rich, don't you understand? Are you ignorant or lying? Facts are facts. I'll fight to the death for your right to advocate for whatever policy you believe in. But distorting the truth, I just simply will not stand for. Hence, Obama's programs wouldn't be paid for in most part by "our" tax dollars, unless we have a bunch of millionaires on this board. Something just...makes me doubt that. Even though Apple is of course a luxury brand.

Um... "Progressive Income Tax."

Who, on a percentage basis, pays most of the taxes in such a system?
Do we have to go down the rabbit hole again about tax CUTS benefitting tax PAYERS?
The "tax cuts for the rich" thing is old DNC playbook, complete demagoguery and a waste of time to even argue with the committed anti-capital kool-aid types.
How do we give tax cuts to people who pay no tax? Oh, wealth redistribution, of course.

Oh, why don't you stop paying your taxes or something. That should give you some real oppression (unless, of course, orange is flattering on you). But no, Obama's programs will be paid for by tax increases on the rich. Most of us shouldn't see a rate increase, so funding those programs doesn't really affect us in terms of tax liability. Not sure where the disagreement could possibly be here.

In terms of direct tax liability, Ole-bama's plan will not affect many... just the "few" at the "top."

But yet again, I will state what I have been stating since 2006. If my income taxes go up again... I am laying off employees. Without a doubt. A tax increase will cause people, some that work for me, to be out of a job. So instead of me paying them a salary, they can be candidates to draw from the system, which just added itself as middle-men between me and my now-former employees. Their above-DOL category salaries will not be there to be taxed by the feds, either. I'd much prefer to keep them working and producing, getting benefits- you know the kind- 401k and health coverage, and providing for themselves. That whole bullshit "American Dream" that we hear constantly decried.

If there is success in adding to my taxes, then the government SHOULD, with my new tax dollars, provide EXACTLY the level of benefits to those I lay off that I did with the same amount of money. They won't.

Seems funny to me that my "poor downtrodden slaves to a corporate owner" would MUCH rather have MY benefit plan than to lose their jobs and look to the government for some small semblance of their current benefit package.

Actually, If upper income taxes go up it will result in less taxes being taken from the rich, since "income" is much more fluid (for example, it causes a lot of people to wait for long term capital gains instead of taking short term gains at higher tax rates).

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba606/

Jubelem - rather than laying off employees, it seems like it makes more sense to build your business during high tax times (if the return on investment is high enough, the risk low enough, and the money spent is either directly tax deductible or subject to capital depreciation) . Lowering your income from the business in exchange for higher income later when the tax rates go back down again seems like the best bet - let the government price themselves out of the market, IMHO, but I am not an accountant.

When the government raises taxes, it limits the behavior of the rich - but it does not collect extra money from the rich. This is why high corporate and marginal taxes are a bad idea, because it does not buy you any extra government revenue, and it makes the capitalist infrastructure less efficient by limiting the affordable options available for business strategies.

It's true that some people who ordinarily wouldn't wait may wait to cash out LTCG because they receive a tax preference as opposed to no tax preference for STCG. But I think it's pretty incredulous to believe that overall the government would take in less money from taxes by raising the top rates. That's fuzzy math, as they say.

Actually that is dynamic scoring as they say.

So from HRC to go "scorched earth" we end up at one person who threatens to fire employees if tax rates go up.

And another argument that goes something like "the federal government is at it's optimal tax collection because all those that would be taxed higher will just bury their incomes. Simple question: Why aren't those "so called" rich people already burying their incomes elsewhere?

Either the federal government must tighten it's spending belt substantially, or the federal government will have to raise it's tax revenue stream.

Bush's FY09 federal budget is $3.1 trillion dollars!

[CENTER]
Federal outlays through FY 2006[/CENTER]

Add these 3 data points to the above graph;

FY 2007, $2.77 B, Bush
FY 2008, $2.90 B, Bush
FY 2009, $3.10 B, Bush

McCain 2008 election year bumper stickers; 1) Four more years, and 2) Four more wars.

Actually, that doesn't change the basic fact that increasing the top tax rates will increase revenue (as they say). e#'s seems to be claiming that revenues will decrease with tax increases for the top rates. Overall, that's just not true any way you look at it.

I have dealt with many sociopaths/narcissists before. A lack of empathy, regret or apparently logic in a person's argumentative strategies definitely would support such a diagnosis. If we don't know much about a suspected narcissist/sociopath/psychopath's personal life, it would be impossible to nail down the diagnosis. When you do know about someone's personal life, repeated problems with relationships, which the subject never regards as "his fault", is a clear sign of narcissism/sociopathy/psychopathy.

In personal relationships, the narcissist/sociopath/psychopath habitually preys on the weak and beats them down mentally and emotionally, and sometimes, in the case of a partner, through physical abuse, until they have no more ability to act in their own best interests any longer. Then when he tires of them or finds a new supply of support for his narcissism, he first devalues them, arguing in his mind how they are just worthless humen beings, and then discards them without any sentiment whatsoever. He has a complete inability to empathize, and never expresses any regret for any of his actions, no mater how much they may have hurt someone (he doesn't recognize the hurt anyway).

The narcissist may genuinely not intend to do any harm to others, unless they are in "revenge mode", which is frequent, but they never see the need to do anything that might avoid hurting others. The Sociopath is more ambitious, and often takes advantage of his power over others for material gain. The Psychopath actively tries to hurt others for his own pleasure.

You know there is a reason that I included the link.

On a purely logical and mathematical perspective you are right. In otherwords, yes if you use static scoring the numbers should add up to more, the revenues should increase and all should be fine in the world. However static scoring is not as accurate as dynamic scoring because people are not numbers. They will react to policy changes and those reactions will reflect on the revenues. It is guaranteed that if you raise rates 20%, you will not end up with 20% more revenue. More people will begin working less, or seek to be compensated in a different fashion. They might delay their compensation by holding a return long, or leave the return overseas and not bring it back here until the rate changes, etc. etc.

If the rates are raised high enough you will see a decrease due to avoidance of the tax. So it is true in certain examples. If we go from 35-38% top rate are the revenues likely to drop? No but they won't go up 3% either. Raise the rate to 80% though and watch almost everyone begin evading the tax.

I think you just defined the exact tone of your and Hardy's posts. I'm sure someday both you and he will be able to empathize with the fact that political disagreement is not a mental illness and attempting to claim such is a clear sign of extreme narcissism. Anyone else could understand how demanding everyone conform to your opinions and views or else they are mentally sick is clearly a sign of personal problems. I'm sure you don't recognize the hurt, will claim it is not your intention, and the fact that you act this way frequently I'm sure will all be claimed as coincidental.

In the meantime thanks for showing your own lack of logic.

Maybe it's a thought experiment?

Did you read the link? Those numbers were based on actual tax receipts from the top 1%, and they went up faster that income for the 1% during Bush's tax cut tenure.

If you have contradictory evidence (from actual tax receipts, not from thought experiments of intuitive "knowledge"), then please provide it.


Income, not outlay, is what we are talking about. You are making a logic error - the amount spent by the government is entirely different from the amount collected by the government. Tax received from the top 1% went up, and it went up faster than the income collected by the top 1%.

Obviously, the huge government spending is a huge problem - but it is not pertinent when you are examining the relationship between tax rates and tax receipts.

You're kidding.

You're the one making the absurd claim. Where is your evidence that tax revenue paradoxically decreases when you raise the top rates? This is the inverse of the "tax cuts pay for themselves" argument that BRussell has been all over.

... the misrepresentation of tax distribution thread?

Your link is from the National Center for Policy Analysis;


Now which part of the NCPA link you posted are you referring to? This part?


100 * (19/11.3 -1) = 68 percent increase in income share of the top 1 percent.

100 * (37/26 - 1) = 42 percent increase in taxes paid of the top 1 percent..

42% < 68% Relative percentages (normalized) versus NCPA's absolute (and disingenuous) percentages.

As to the rest of that website, where do I begin?

Lies, damned lies, and half assed (presenting the actual raw data in such a fashion that the actual raw data is lost in the shuffle) statistical analyses (e. g. Where's the raw data to validate the NCPA's bogus conclusion).

oops - didn't catch that. But the government still collected more tax revenue from the upper 1% than it did under Clinton (and also more total tax revenue). It would not be good to go back to the old lower level of revenue. Dollar figures in millions:



The whole 42% increase thing kind of pokes a hole in the "supply side economics is for idiots" meme. How come there was a 42% increase in tax collected from the top 1% if "the bush tax cuts are causing the budget defecit"? How come total income jumped from $2 trillion to $2.5 trillion? It wasn't paid by the poor people because the bottom 50% pay only sales and payroll tax, no income tax is collected from them.

The rise in income for the top 1% is kind of besides the point.

That just makes no sense. There's not an economist out there, conservative or liberal, who would suggest that we have collected more revenues as a result of Bush's tax cuts. Look at the blue trend line in your graph - it was cut off while it was heading up, and then has headed up on a much lower trajectory than it would have.

Well, what is causing that? The tax revenue went up way faster than inflation. How do you know how it would have gone with no tax cut? Remember we had a recession right about the same time as that dip. Also, it looks like it started to level off before Bush was able to have any effect - his tax cuts did not take effect that early.

Personally, I think that dip was caused by a drop in capital gains revenue after the dot com and telecom busts. No more capital gains, and a lot of built up capital losses canceled out further gains.

It appears that "new math" is going to return... or maybe "creative modeling" is a better term, or maybe even "statistical manipulations to win a nomination by any cost."

From MSNBC:


Also interesting, from the same article:


I won't believe that Hillary is done until I see her striped stockings sticking out from under the house. I personally think that there is a real possibility that this is the "setup for the comeback" in March (the MSM has telegraphed it already) and an ensuing MSM love-fest of Bill and Hillary to give them momentum moving into the general. Hopefully the Democrats have seen that Clinton has around 50% unfavorable no matter who she gets matched against and are wanting Biden's "clean" guy for the general.

Any honest and accurate discussion of the effect tax rates have on revenue must include the understanding that people's behavior related to tax payment is not inelastic. Meaning that people will adjust their behavior when tax rates change. When tax rates rise they will work harder to find ways to shelter income from taxes. As tax rates decline they will not work as hard. This is the premise that the "Laffer Curve" is based on.

Tax increasers love to think they can just raise rates X amount and they will just automatically get Y amount more revenue by a simple calculation. But this is simplistic and naive because it assumes that people will not (and cannot) change their behavior with regard to tax avoidance which is simply untrue.

This short video explains it pretty well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIqyCpCPrvU