In the midst of all the partisan politicking that is going on, it is very easy to lose sight of unpleasant truths. We hear Republicans railing about the "tax and spend" policies of the Democrats, while Democrats concentrate on the plight of the common folk of the country who have been bled white by paying for the privilege of bidding adieu to their means of employment.
All the Republican candidates have campaigned on the virtue of literally abolishing all taxes, at least on the wealthy, so they can use all their money to make more money and to become even wealthier. Ron Paul even goes as far as pledging to abolish the Internal Revenue Service, while Mike Huckabee is an advocate for the "flat tax" which will further shift the burden of supporting the government even more onto the poor and middle class. Of course, they all want to eliminate all Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other government charitable institutions, leaving the poor to beg at the doors of churches and panhandle on the streets. Meanwhile, they ignore the enormous national debt that is lurking out there, waiting to bite us hard just when we are trying to restore our democracy.
It is easy for them to ignore the fact that this terrible burden has been foisted on the American public by the fair-haired son-of-a-former-President who now occupies the White House. They would have us forget that it was created by the lust for power and greed of a spoiled man who was willing to break his oath by lying to the American people in order to capture Middle Eastern oil and to make a prominent place in history as the man who accomplished what his daddy felt it unwise to do.
But The People know that bills must be paid. The enormity of the bill that has been incurred by this runaway President is sufficient to boggle the mind of any ordinary wage-earner. If every safety-net supplied currently by the federal government were to be ended tomorrow, it would still take years to bring the national debt to a reasonable level and the budget into balance.
The Democrats timidly offer as a solution the end of the war and the timely death of Bush's tax cuts for the rich while the Republicans jump on the old "tax-and-spend" bandwagon again and put the pedal to the metal, hoping that the poor, ignorant peasants will not realize that they have been taken. Not this time. Thanks to the outsourcing and the off-shoring of Bush's "Free Trade" policies, the peasants are all too well aware of the pressures of indebtedness. Some may have lived beyond their means, thanks to the easy-credit policies of the national money machine and are paying dearly for it. Others, simply trying to provide for the needs of their families, have been fiscally destroyed by job loss or illness.
We do understand and we will do what is necessary and that is where the unfaced truth rears its ugly head. We all know that the bills must be paid! They cannot be paid by a Defense of Marriage Amendment. They cannot be paid by outlawing abortion or reinstating prayer in the public schools. There is only one way to pay ourselves out of the bankruptcy that President Bush has inflicted up on us all, and that is by paying taxes. Not just from the meager wages of the working poor and the working class, but by everybody! At the end of World War II, the good Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower had presided over a tax which reached 95% on America's top earners, but the bills were paid.
And that is what must be done now. Regardless of the party affiliation of the governing bodies, regardless of personal and political ambitions, unless that debt is paid -- and paid in full, our nation is not free. So long as our markers are held by foreign powers who may not like us very much, we are hampered in our decisions regarding the rest of the world. We may worry about the recession that is upon us now but it is nothing to compare with the crash that would occur if a couple of those other nations were to call for payment of their debt.
The next Congress should, early on, assess the amount of money that is needed to make substantial payment on the debt in addition to balancing the current budget, and compute from that the amounts of taxes that must be required. This will greatly displease a good many people, particularly those with great wealth, but it is an unpleasant chore that must be done. We have done it before and we can do it again, without ending any safety nets or further disadvantaging our elderly. All that is required is a President and a Congress with the intestinal fortitude to face it and get it done.
For too long, working Americans have given their money, their security, and the blood of their children to accomplish the ambitions of George Bush and his friends. If we dared to complain, we were charged with lack of patriotism, with being un-American, and it was suggested that we "love it or leave it."
For the whiners who have been too long on the high horse of privilege and are crying crocodile tears about the proposed tax rates and the end of their gravy train, I have only one response, "Shut up and pay your damned taxes or get out of my country!"
The author is a very "with-it" old lady who aspires to bring a bit of truth, justice, and commom sense to a nation that has lost touch with its humanity in the search for societal "perfection".
The truth that needs to be faced Mary, is Uncle Sam has shape shifted into a Big Brother, and that Big Brother, has proven with 9-11 and Katrina, The Patriot Act, Military Commissions Acts. the endlass wars on innocent people for the love of foreign oil, the hundreds of military bases and thousands of prisons, some secret, some torturing, all killing innocent people, and the UN...there's a gay wedding for you...The UN isn't preventing or stopping genocide, it's protecting it. Bush went to the UN to get a coalation of the willing to attack the sovreign nation of Iraq on lies that the GOP "Duopoly" Democrats are abetting, and now MSM is delivering us to Obama, who will inheirit the most power of any man on earth in our age, who has never once said he would resend it, nor did Hillary or McCain. Is this really our future? FEMA concentration camps and the honed talents of Hitler and Stalin melded into an anti-christ driven new world order by a man because he's black? Is that evolution? The Federal Reserve is a private bank, income tax is unconstitutional. Life is not one size fits all and you lose if you do not fit. Nature is organic and wild and free and dangerous, EARTHLY and marvelous...The government isn't supposed to be a caretaker!!! The government is meant to provide you security in caring for yourself, and that's why we need to be free, and tolerate each other, and hopefully respect each other. Uncle Sam was not meant to be a Nanny. He does a lousy job and the more money you give him, the worse he gets. Please, ask Uncle Sam to return the money...the tax money, the money for the wars, the money for the FEMA consentration camps, and prisons, and bombs, and subsidies for businesses that don't work. That's what the government has been doing before you and me were born. That's what the government does. That's the truth that must be faced.
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Jeanette Doney (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 304 comments)
on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 10:31:41 PM
But I prefer that we close those bases, bring our troops home, give them the care they need, and put them into productive jobs in our own country, jail a few CEO's of the MIC, end NAFTA, CAFTA, and SHAFTA, take care of our own people, and mind our own business. What would you do with the disabled, the old, and the poor. Euthanasia? Slow starvation? Sorry, but that is not the American way and I will neither promote nor support it. I for one, have had my fill of a government without compassion. A few of the trillions we are spending on killing people "over there" would do a lot of good over here. There is plenty of money. The people just have to decide what should be done with it and see that the government does it. That is, if we have enough sense to elect those who know for whom they are supposed to be working.
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Mary Pitt (60 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 159 comments)
on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 10:43:43 PM
The difference between you and me Mary is you think no matter how big the government is, you can change it. I believe we'd have better chance to do that if our government wasn't so big controlling us from birth to grave.
US Troops are supporting Ron Paul, accroding to FEC records, he's getting the majority contributions from troops..way more than anyone...so what does that tell you? The Trops don't want what YOU want for them. I don't want what YOU want for me. I want you to have what you want, and if that means the government to take care of you, there's a FEMA consentration camp being builr near you today, that Obma will gladly assist you.
I don't know any candidate proposing to cut all social programs immediately, but I do appreciate the one who are seeing they don't want to be my dictator. Some folks need dictators. I understand that. I wish they would move to Venezuela or Cuba and then tell me what they think about government taking care of it's people. It doesn't work. It never has and it never will.
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Jeanette Doney (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 304 comments)
on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 9:35:38 AM
you are one 100% correct..........Americans must wake up to the facts.........our biggest issues in this election are government spending and the WAR...........both are dragging us down the toilet and our children's children will be paying for it years and years to come............
You are right........none of the fore runners are saying the words the people need to hear or making commitments we need to get out of this God Foresaken Mess.....................I personally don't care if the next President is black, pink yellow or blue....but he/she better damn well do the job that will restore our Constitutional Rights and get us out of debt without being on the take......... or I am ready for a "Counter Punch"..........We must stand together this time and get it right...........
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Ernest (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 129 comments)
on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 3:37:39 AM
AREN'T WE GLAD MARY WASN'T LIVING IN 1776 AMERICA!
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government..."
The above excerpt was not lifted directly from the Declaration of Independence. It was lifted from GEORGE ORWELL'S "1984"!
While I haven't yet checked this fact out, I believe Orwell never stepped foot on U S soil, and yet he found a way to insert this excerpt from OUR Declaration of Independence into his book. If this is how dire the situation was in 1948, when Orwell wrote his masterpiece warning, imagine how dire it is today.
So NO, the answer isn't to spread our legs and allow the criminal state to continue the confiscation of our wealth. The answer is to conjure up some courage and FOLLOW THE WISE ADVICE OF OUR FOUNDERS!!!
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Mark Watterson (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 64 comments)
on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 7:49:28 AM
I may not have been alive in 1775 but at least one of my ancestors was and he added his signature to the document in question. If you had read the Constitution recently, you would realize that these words were not in the Constitution at all. They are from the Declaration of Independence! That, of course, is one hundred per cent American original.
And, by the way, whom do you suppose is going to pay the bills?
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Mary Pitt (60 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 159 comments)
on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 8:15:04 AM
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Yes, Declaration of Independence, that's what I wrote. Pay attention, this isn't brain surgery.
Exactly what country do you suggest our founding fathers turn coward and flee to?
All the crimes being committed by the American Corporate State and you're worried about who pays the bills?
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Mark Watterson (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 64 comments)
on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 10:16:08 AM
All this time I thought you were related to Brad Pitt!
I despair of reaching any sort of agreement when there are those like Ms. Dorsey living in fear of the UN (for crying out loud!) and this latest fellow who hasnt a clue as to his historical fact, the intent of the founders but thinks himself an expert on the subject...
"It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide, by their conduct and example, the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are ever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force."
From Federalist Paper #1 (probably Jefferson's words)
and
"But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels no govt would be necesary. If angels were to govern men neither external nor internal controls on govt would be necesary. In framing a govt which is administered by men over men, the greatest difficulty lies in this; you must first enable the govt to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itslef."
Federalist Paper # 51 (probably Madison)
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ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2388 comments)
on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 4:22:55 PM
All the Republican candidates have campaigned on the virtue of literally abolishing all taxes? Hogwash. And furthermore, you know it is. Ron Paul even goes as far as pledging to abolish the Internal Revenue Service? Yes, he does, but not because taxes are eliminated. I believe you know that also. Mike Huckabee is an advocate for the "flat tax"? No. It's the FairTax which isn't even close to the same thing. Of course, they all want to eliminate all Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other government charitable institutions? No, they don't and you know that also. Government is not charitable, my dear. Charity at the point of a gun is not charity at all. And just why is it that you feel people should be economically dependent upon the vagaries of the ruling class? Do you also call that "freedom?"
Some may have lived beyond their means, thanks to the easy-credit policies of the national money machine? So now it's the bank's fault if you borrow money you cannot afford to pay back? It's the lender's fault if one speculates on the future value of their home and gets it wrong?
Not just from the meager wages of the working poor and the working class, but by everybody [paying taxes]! Then you should know that the bottom 50% of wage earners essentially pay no income tax at all. The bottom 20% get money "back" they didn't pay in the first place. So how is it exactly these poor are paying all the taxes?
If you want truth, you're going to have took far beyond this tired rhetoric.
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Joe Reeser (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 23 comments)
on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 8:00:48 AM
we would need no "charity", (which I do not equate with government programs to assure the health and safety of the citizenry). But, once the apple was eaten, man became aquisitive and even greedy. The churches ask for ten per cent of your "increase" but, unfortunately, that is voluntary. Do they get it? Heck, no! Those who moan the loudest about the government taxing them would similarly give the least if charity depended upon their good graces. For that reason, the good citizens of the United States established, among others, the rights of humanity to include freedom from hunger.
As for the poor not paying taxes, that is another right-wing canard. You can't buy a hot dog without paying tax, rent a room in a seedy motel or a ticket to an all-night movie without paying taxes to obtain the basic necessities of life. Those run-down, uninhabitable apartments in the cities charge enopugh rent to pay the owners' property taxes. As a percentage of income, the poor pay far more that the wealthy.
If we do not view the matter of our national indebtedness as serious, we must continue with the selling of our infrastructure and our land and other assets until we will cease to exist as a nation. In the short run, your money is worth less today than it was last week and will continue to depreciate at an accelerating rate until you, too, will understand poverty.
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Mary Pitt (60 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 159 comments)
on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 8:32:07 AM
While the lower-income wage earners pay much less in income taxes, they pay heavily in payroll taxes; taxes the idle rich don't pay a cent to, and the high-income earners pay a miniscule percentage to. And the payroll tax brings in about the same amount of revenue as does the income tax. So, even you should see that a worker paying both payroll tax and income tax is hit heavier than the rich.
The rich also get huge amounts of income from stock dividends and capital gains (with a cute-rate tax schedule) and tax-free bonds, which is never reflected in official income or taxation statistics.
It should also be known that during the Eisenhower years, individuals paid slightly more than half of all taxes (53%), while businesses and corporations paid slightly less than half (47%). Now, that division is more like 90-10 and it has been mostly the political right that has turned this system blatantly unfair.
Get of Mary's back, she understands more than you do.
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tabonsell (28 articles, 0 quicklinks, 21 diaries, 234 comments)
on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 2:46:50 PM
Yes, the poor pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes. I suppose your argument here is that since they directly pay nothing, at best, towards the federal services they receive, they shouldn't have to pay for the retirement they receive either. I can't say that I'm very sympathetic to that approach. And yes, the "idle rich" do pay payroll taxes if they receive a wage. If they don't receive a wage, then they don't. But I fail to see how that is their fault, exactly. And no, capital gains are not figured in with income statistics. Perhaps because it isn't income as defined by the law. If you want it all taxed as regular income then lobby to get the law changed. But I doubt you'll get too many sympathetic ears from the Dems in Congress on that.
You said that during the Eisenhower years individuals paid about 53% of all taxes. I don't know where you found those figures but according to the Congressional Budget Office individual income taxes accounted for an average of 43.84% of all federal receipts during those years. While I would agree that the ratio of Individual vs Corprate income taxes has skewed to the individual, they did so during the Eisenhower years as well. As a percentage of the total of Individual and Corprate income taxes, individual income taxes accounted for 58.4% in 1953 and rose to 66.4% by 1961. It rose to a high of about 89% in 1983 and has remained fairly steady since, fluctuating between 89% and 79% since that time. However, as a function of total federal revenue, individual income taxes have remained a fairly flat percentage, varying from a low of about 40% to a high of just under 50%. These statistics include data through 2005.
As far as the system being unfair, I would say the most unfair thing about the current system is that so much of the taxation people are subject to is hidden so they don't see it. This includes payroll deductions, business taxes and federal excise taxes.
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Joe Reeser (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 23 comments)
on Monday, February 25, 2008 at 1:31:25 PM
Additionally, let me add that working class and poor people are being savaged by a regressive tax code, corporate financial service fees, credit card interest rates, pay-day loan sharks, ATM fees, and sales taxes. Even State lotteries are a form of regressive taxation since they are targeted at the bottom 80% of the population in order to pay for college tuition of more affluent Americans.
The so called “fair tax” will in no way be fair because it’s just a national regressive sales tax that will inevitably further increase wealth inequality. It’s hard to believe that people even consider this idea when the top 1% of the population owns the wealth equivalent of the bottom 95% combined. I think we should eliminate all taxes on the bottom 95% of the population and go to corporate wealth taxes instead.
Also, although the Founding Fathers were great men who generally possessed good judgment based on the knowledge of their day, today too many of their ideas are not consistent with modern knowledge. Classic liberalism (i.e., the ideas of John Locke implemented by the Founding Fathers) had failed by the 1930s because it couldn’teffectively deal with the inequality created by advanced corporate capitalism. Locke’s theory of cognitions is totally obsolete, yet just about every major institution is based on the empiricist model, and that in turn doesn’t bode well for a modern technological society. We’ll never be able to revive the antiquated ideas of the past in order to fix modern problems. The best we can hope to do is to keep the ideas of the past that do work while simultaneously inventing new ideas to replace the ones that no longer work.
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Mark Whittington (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 19 comments)
on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 9:39:36 AM
You covered the problems of the poor very well and did it so that even the most dense of the Wingers could understand. Last week, I spoke to a group of poor and disabled women on managing their meager financing and I covered many of the leeches on the poor that they must avoid at all costs, even including Rent To Own, which is a major factor in their daily lives.
My personal preference for "tax reform" would be an asset tax where all would file certificates of net worth and be taxed accordingly, but that certainly does not gain a following in certain circles! I am a fan of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, sr., who possess the honesty to oppose the Bush tax cuts for the rich on the premise that, since they were fortunate in being born the USA, they were quite willing to pay their dues. Unfortunately, that attitude does not prevail among those who feel that they are weathier than most because of some foreordination that entitles them to the privilege due to simply being better human beings than the hoi polloi.
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Mary Pitt (60 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 159 comments)
on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 10:08:38 AM
There is a line in a Leonard Cohen song TheFuture, "Things are gonna slide, slide in all directions - won't be anything to measure any more ...".
Debt is but one aspect, a huge one indeed, but even if we were to rein it in tomorrow anyone of the other looming disasters eroding stability will bring us to an ignominious end only envisioned by science-friction writers, End-Timers and the few brave or stupid enough to speak the truth - and that is it doesn't make any difference what we do, the entire system, co-dependent on one another is crashing rapidly and whether mankind can survive is highly questionable.
What is needed more is fundamental changes in the way people live, eat and think, and there is no way, with the diversity, division, hate, fear, differences in custom, norms, ideology, over-population, pollution, climate change, depletion of natural resources that is going to happen before the clock runs out. We've screwed the pooch. There is no future.
Mankind may have had a chance to survive if at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution steps were put in place to deal with the negative repercussions of throwing the natural balance out of whack, but they weren't. We did just the opposite, greed, exploitation, oppression, tyranny, war became the false-leaders that mankind followed and the debt we're about to pay for this folly can't be paid simply by getting our fiscal house in order. That's like paying your water bill after the house has burnt down.
This is not an easy knowledge to live with. Most will simply deny it because it's just to spirit draining to accept. Because if you do you can't look at your children, you question why mow the lawn, pay your bills, you become numb and it could very well drive one insane. So if you want to talk about "ONE TRUTH THAT MUST BE FACED", try this one on for size.
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Mr M (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 1024 comments)
on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 10:39:52 AM
The sense of depression that you describe is one that the poor live with every day. Yet they mow the lawn even when they know they will lose their home for non-payment of the mortgage due to illlness or job loss. That is what Americans call hope! I, for one, am embarrassingly close to eighty years old, with a pacemaker, widowed a year ago, and deeply in debt for medical expenses. Should I crawl into a hole and die because there is no hope, leaving the debts for my children? Or should I greet each new day with the attitude that I have lived to fight another day? I opt for the latter; to take care of my mortal body so long as it lasts, to help others with the knowledge I have gained in nearly a century of living, and to look to the future for you and the others who will follow us. We cannot solve all the problems of the world in one lifetime. Jesus Christ, Himself, could not do that and He had the wisdom not to try. What we can do is to pay our own way and not burden future generations with the bill for our own follies.
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Mary Pitt (60 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 159 comments)
on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 11:08:02 AM
File bankruptcy (this law exists for just such a problem).
Seek to understand the underlying cancers that plague America.
And vote for Ron Paul.
Then, write a book to your heirs explaining how you participated in the second American Revolution...and that fleeing your homeland because your government has become tyrannical is NEVER the answer...
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Mark Watterson (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 64 comments)
on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 11:24:31 AM
Hope makes for a good breakfast and a lousy supper. We're somewhere near a mid-night snack.
Hope is about all we have, but it makes for a poor substitute for reality. And the reality is, as I've mentioned, bleak at best.
Should one stop trying? For the sake of one's sanity you can't. If you knew the moment of your own death you'd still most likely stick to the same routine you've become use to. But the view I'm expressing is one of the world pretty much knowing we've reached a precipice and that we're wholly unprepared with what Mother Nature has in store for us.
Madmen have garnered all the power to facilitate any change that's needed and even if by some miracle we were to wrench that power away before they took us all down in a scorched Earth nuclear Armageddon free-for-all the damage already done can't be reversed. This train won't be derailed and mankind is tied to the tracks.
What are people going to do when the lights go out? When the food is no longer being delivered to stores and if it were would be too expensive to purchase? I lived through Katrina, I can pretty much give you a good idea of what every major city will go through shortly. Believe me, whether you have missed a payment or not really doesn't enter your mind.
My contention is we're December's Children. This is it. Last act. Curtain call. It is only our arrogance and consciousness that makes us think we can survive were stronger animals have perished. What makes man think he's any better than any other species that has been wiped out before him? On the scale of things we've been here but for a blink of an eye, and made a damn mess of everything is spite of all our so-called intelligence. There is no power on Earth that will save us from extinction. And I can't see why we should exist any longer than we already have considering our dismal stewardship.
Am I depressed? I don't know, I've been living with this knowledge for most my life. When the words "environment", "ecology" first surfaced I helped start one of the first environmental study groups, The Institute for Environmental Alternatives back in 1969. My involvement in that group only solitified by fatalistic suspicions. And basically this is what the conclusion of those of us at the head of the organization can to, even if we had stopped polluting the planet back then we still had already pumped enough pollutants into Mother Natures veins to kill her. And what have we done since? Did we make smaller cars? Switch to alternative energy sources? Re-frame from meat production? Quit slashing and burning Rain Forests? Hell no! SUV's became the rage! Bigger, more, mass consumption, chicken today, feathers tomorrow was our creed.
Has it effected me? Oh, yes, how can it not? Unless of course you do what most do, deny the reality of the situation, pretend is doesn't exist and keep digging that hole deeper. I decided early on not to bring a child into this world. Why would one other than for their own selfish reasons? The world was overpopulated before most of us were born, but again it didn't stop most from proliferating as though there was no need to worry about shortages to come. A better world for our children? In your dreams.
So sweep the front porch, pay your bills, figure out a fair tax plan if it makes you feel any better, but to me we're just rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic.
And believe me, I would be the happiest man on Earth to be proven wrong, but as history as our judge, I'm not getting my hopes up.
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Mr M (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 1024 comments)
on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 4:09:12 PM
Income tax is the fairest way to tax people, it accounts for their children, losses, etc.
A flat tax would be fine, but make it ALL flat based on income. So include payroll tax (now capped at $90 or something like that), gasoline tax, property tax, sales tax, tolls, and any other government "fee".
Of course the flat-taxers hate this idea (especially the payroll tax) and say that all usage taxes should remain. Ok, then who uses the SEC? banking system, etc. Shouldn’t those who use these institutions pay their share for usage?
What this all boils down to is that the wealthy think that they’re entitled to remain wealthy at the expense of the population.
And don’t even get me started on the "charitable institutions" that are responsible for the myriad of guaranteed loans, rebates, abatements, loop-holes, offshore accounting, etc. gifts to the corporate America.
Some are so stupid as to claim that we have a free market. Nonsense, it is not free enterprise when the government bails you out for making terrible decisions that make your company go down – even though you keep giving your CEOs raises.
One last example: sub-prime loans. Many say that they should have read the fine print and they need to take responsibility for their actions etc - even though the loan practices were predatory. But at about the same time, remember, hedge fund investors were in a bind and losing big time. So what happened? Well the Fed jumped right in and diddled the interest rates. Why didn’t they just say, those investors know the rules, they should just take responsibility for their actions? Excuse me but I have to stop because I can’t stop laughing.
we just need a fair tax, and get rid of the loop-holes
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Houston Radical (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 70 comments)
on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 11:00:55 AM
The Federal Reserve is as governmental as Federal Express. You flks need to wake up to the truth of what really is.
The poor are poor because they are not free to be anything but because our huge massive government is in business to protect the poor's predetors.
Look at how the Democrats are addressing Consumer Advocate, Ralph Nader and tell me, again how much they really plan to save the poor. Feeding them food grown in sewage ditches in China?
And finally, how do you measure poor? A unhappy person, no mater their wealth, is poorer IMO, than a person happy with the pot the've got to piss in.
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Jeanette Doney (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 304 comments)
on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 11:30:32 AM
Suppose the reasonable and necessary expenses (an IRS term that must apply if business expenses are to be deductible) of the U S Government are $100 per year. Suppose that excise taxes on usage of certain products and tarrifs on imported goods bring in about $120 per year. Wouldn't this be nice? In fact, this was the way it was in the U S prior to 1913. So what happened? The answer is that America had completed its manifest destiny (westward expansion)
