They are out there peddling this tax bill like no tomorrow. It's going to pass of course. One must wonder if Democrats planned this all along, waiting until the last minute to even deal with the Bush tax cuts.
The federal judge ruled that "not buying" something is NOT commerce, and therefore falls outside the VERY broad power that Congress has to regulate commerce.
They so blew this. It's just unbelievable. I'm positive most of America doesn't want a lack of financial reform, tax cuts for the rich, offshore outsourcing, bad trade deals and the list goes on and on. But instead, Demcorats do stuff like "amnesty" without even securing the border first or more bad trade deals or give subsidies to their special interest groups and that list goes on and on.
In other words, instead of doing what they say they will in campaigns, which is what got them elected in the first place, it's just the battle of the special interests but you can be sure multinational corporations, lobbyists, especially the financial sector will get theirs regardless.
They should have passed this ages ago. It's like listening to the claim your dog ate your thesis when you had 2 years to work on it sort of story.
Even worse, the press has made taxes such a dirty word and the Republicans just go on and on about the cure to everything is a tax cut.
They should be passing the Chinese currency manipulation bill or ban offshore outsourcing contracts using taxpayer dollars. Something that would really help...
notice how that one you cannot even get in the public sphere.
With bills ready to introduce on emergency basis January 3. Negotiating with a gun to your head is never good -- and the Republicans should remember it's aimed at theirs too. A political poison pill that they do not want to be blamed for. The tax cuts for the rich should be decoupled from the overall tax bill and have to pass on their own merit (??). Unemployment comp should not be tied to tax cuts for the rich.
God bless you, Bernie. I only wish you were president.
Those phrases are what's been called 'poisonous pedagogy.' I like your variation on the marginally acceptable.
Here's one of the worst nostrums - Obama got a much better deal now than he'd get with the new Congress. In that case, why did he ignore entirely the Democratic Caucus in the Senate (according to Landrieu's very public statement). Because the Democrats were never part of the deal. He sent Biden (MasterCard-DE) straight to the House and Senate Republicans because it was a deal they'd accept.
If Obama cared at all for the people, he would have rounded up the House and Senate Dems and done a Jim Jones on them - insisted that they fight and get it all. Pass the 13 months, pass the middle class tax cuts, let the upper level taxes revert back to pre-Bush terms and kill the rest of the garbage. He never did that, we know for sure, because he never talked to the Democrats.
The spinners are out in force as noted in the article. When you've got the "New Deal 2.0" FDR site without a word of specific opposition to a 33% reduction in payroll taxes (6.2-4.2%)AND the self proclaimed heirs to FDR won't fight it, you know that elements of the alternative press have been launched in service to HMS Obama and Co.
This was no compromise. It was a total and complete surrender to the minority terrorist party. I'm starting to think Obama was threatened a painful death for him and his family, either that or he was a wolve in sheeps clothing all along. We the people have been sold out. The economic crisis was manufactured by the same cabal who've been our shadow government since WWII. We're f*cked.
This post was written last night, late, while under the effects of Benadryl, and I mis-read the CBO scoring. Post corrected. Additionally more references to the agenda to destroy & privatize social security are mentioned.
All reading this, firstly, consider creating accounts for anonymous commentators. You bypass the CAPTCHA and can immediately comment, all due to keep spam off of the site.
Secondly, if anyone reads articles, posts on this site and finds an error, please write a comment letting us know.
This site tries very hard to be accurate but when dealing with numbers in a sea of snow, it's very easy to make a mistake. Yes, we know we see mistakes all of the time too in the MSM and assuredly politicians spew nonsense too and even think tanks bias their results...
which is why we try like hell to obtain objective information, esp. on numbers...so come on readers, help out, if you see an error say something.
I think the biggest reason I like him so much is he pays attention to economics, so you don't just get some sort of partisan rancor, he's a party of 1, a Democratic socialist, and he has worked with conservatives on issues such as trade. He's also defending U.S. tech workers on the H-1B Visa. So, he pays attention to the policy, statistics instead of getting this plate of rotten agenda mixed in with something you want, which is both parties.
We need an independent in the White House I think, but these two corrupt parties have the entire electoral college, the entire voting system so locked up, I don't see how anything could happen beyond a Ross Perot or Teddy Roosevelt.
I see now why Ralph Nader was such an ass about it, people just don't have a choice the way the entire system is set up in the U.S., so these corporations and special interests own and run the country through these two corrupt parties.
There is a major point going on here which is why did Democrats wait until the last minute, they could have passed this all a year ago.
The Dems got many Blue Dogs elected in 2006 and 2008 that was the first mistake. Then they had to cater to the likes of Ben Nelson. Obama does not seem to understand that compromising on every thing from financial reform to the public option is hurting our country. Keep trying to get the word out gentlemen. Maybe we will get a real choice one day. I'm not hopeful though. Once the corporate interests have a stranglehold on a nation its pretty much over.
A payroll tax holiday on social security? My god does the money class need anymore reason to call us hypocrites when they gut it? Obama is really blowing it or desperately wants to be one of the elite. I don't know anymore. Thanks for this article.
I don't want to hear any more junk like "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" when the case at hand is "don't let the marginally acceptable be the enemy of the atrocious"! (Take the "Missouri Compromise": how much "good" justified the extension of something like slavery?)
Of course the Social Security "holiday" is temporary, just as the tax cuts for the rich were temporary, just as the war in Iraq was going to be over in six weeks, and the same way we're making "progress" in Afghanistan.
Clinton killed our economy by pushing through GATT and cutting social programs, thus ensuring that jobs would be outsourced and people cut off from welfare would be homeless, and Obama is going to kill off our elderly by destroying Social Security. And Democrats, as usual, will continue to blame the Republicans for everything they do. But they have a point. My guess is that shortly after leaving the White House, Obama will follow Joe Lieberman's lead, admit to being a Republican, and switch parties. Anyone who gets a Democratic Party nomination, has to be a closet Republican, or else the Democratic Party would lose the big corporate donors it needs in order to survive and share power with the Republicans.
I actually believe that Sarah Palin will switch parties and run as the Democratic Presidential nominee in 2012. Nobody is in a position to raise more corporate money for the Democrats than Palin, and liberals and progressives can be bullied into voting for her with a combined threat that the Republicans will win if they don't, and that anyone who doesn't vote for her is a sexist who doesn't want America to have a female President.
Anyone who voted for right wing neo-con extremist Lieberman because he ran as a Democrat, would have no problems voting for Palin if she had a "D" after her name on the ballot. They could even have Grayson, Kucinich, or some other fool as her running mate to provide her with Democratic cover. Palin has the name recognition, the corporate backing, and Democratic voters would vote for Beelzebub if he was a Democrat.
The only differences between Obama and McCain were skin color and political party affiliation. But since they had virtually identical voting records in the Senate, McCain couldn't have pulled off the "greater evil" thing by himself without Palin's help. But once the corporations have spent a few billion dollars rebranding, repackaging, and marketing Sarah Palin, she'll be every bit as acceptable to Democratic voters as Joe Lieberman was.
I don't understand why Americans vote. Poison, razor blades, asphyxiation, jumping off high buildings, and shooting yourself are much quicker, less painful forms of suicide.
You're right on that. Voting is now punishment - a direct message by 55% or so of the 50% who bother to vote.
There are solutions that are not painfully ridiculous like the ones these people come up with. Senators Corker and Landrieu are their canaries in the cave. But this elite, the most useless in the world's history, doesn't have a clue. They've got a permanent Jones for that dough re mi.
is tacking onto social security a progressive tax above the cut off. But it's true, hiring people is expensive and there is a large underground economy, working off the books to avoid it. They need to scale it up so hiring people is cheaper yet funding it much more Progressively.
Also, notice they are out to destroy social security 100%, with even the CBO "warning" on social security when they should be warning on medical costs.
Yet, they cannot present easy remedies, even when we just saw, due to the denial of traditional pensions, most people won't have enough to live on and that's with current social security, in old age.
Your point is excellent, Democrats blew it by doing corporate and special interest bidding, so people are voting for conservatives because they are so pissed. They promised to do something about trade, nothing, offshore outsourcing, nothing, income inequality, nothing really and these are clearly the problems, not the financial crisis, causing another "jobless" recovery.
I have never seen a sadder collection of (s)elected leaders in my life. They are clueless. Balance the budget but turn off a trillion in revenue. Claim tax cuts are to stimulate the economy but do nothing about job creation. It goes on and on.
Here's a simplified version of our troubles. After ten years of gluttony for the upper tier, there are no net new jobs. So much for tax cuts but this president is like the last in philosophy and patronage. If lowering taxes created job, there wouldn't be enough workers to fill them.
Obama and Clinton should have been saying, "it's da plane!"
How utterly revolutionary of you;) This is like the deficit problem and the NYT deficit reduction interactive program. The answers are out there, amongst the people, but the fools running the place don't care.
Republican officially. I have nothing against Obama personally and I think many of the attacks on his birth and religious beliefs have been just awful. But it's necessary to say that as a public leader, he is absolutely without any ethical foundation. His campaign was a fraud, pure and simple. And he's delivered like a champ for all the wrong people. He will be remembered as one of our worst presidents, deservedly so.
They need to make it progressive, this is actually one of the huge reasons for the underground labor economy, i.e. cash under the table. To hire someone is very expensive, between FICA and workman's comp. I think they need to somehow dump that onto multinationals....say if they offshore, make them pay more instead of less.
I don't have an answer just it is really expensive to hire someone.
The Making Work Pay credit was a flat $400 per person. The new payroll tax cut, by contrast, amounts to 2 percent of a person’s earnings below $106,800—the current cap on the Social Security payroll tax. So for someone earning $100,000, this new payroll tax cut is going to be worth $2,000, much more than the Making Work Pay credit. But consider the case of someone making $15,000. They will only get a tax cut of $300, or 25 percent less than they would have received with Making Work Pay. Michael Linden, American Progress, Dec 9
But he buys into the payroll tax cut. What folly. Extend unemployment - $5 bil - and dump the highest income bracket tax cuts.
We can see where this is headed - big crisis in 2012 we can't afford anything! Fear mongering will dominate the election, all created by this lousy, back stabbing deal from President Change. What a burden to carry historically. Obama will be around to her the unanimous condemnation.
Edit: Here's a great opening line, "The recently announced tax framework hammered out by President Barack Obama and Republicans in Congress contains some rather detestable elements." Sweet!
They are out there peddling this tax bill like no tomorrow. It's going to pass of course. One must wonder if Democrats planned this all along, waiting until the last minute to even deal with the Bush tax cuts.
Anyone else feeling no represented?
The federal judge ruled that "not buying" something is NOT commerce, and therefore falls outside the VERY broad power that Congress has to regulate commerce.
They so blew this. It's just unbelievable. I'm positive most of America doesn't want a lack of financial reform, tax cuts for the rich, offshore outsourcing, bad trade deals and the list goes on and on. But instead, Demcorats do stuff like "amnesty" without even securing the border first or more bad trade deals or give subsidies to their special interest groups and that list goes on and on.
In other words, instead of doing what they say they will in campaigns, which is what got them elected in the first place, it's just the battle of the special interests but you can be sure multinational corporations, lobbyists, especially the financial sector will get theirs regardless.
They should have passed this ages ago. It's like listening to the claim your dog ate your thesis when you had 2 years to work on it sort of story.
Even worse, the press has made taxes such a dirty word and the Republicans just go on and on about the cure to everything is a tax cut.
They should be passing the Chinese currency manipulation bill or ban offshore outsourcing contracts using taxpayer dollars. Something that would really help...
notice how that one you cannot even get in the public sphere.
With bills ready to introduce on emergency basis January 3. Negotiating with a gun to your head is never good -- and the Republicans should remember it's aimed at theirs too. A political poison pill that they do not want to be blamed for. The tax cuts for the rich should be decoupled from the overall tax bill and have to pass on their own merit (??). Unemployment comp should not be tied to tax cuts for the rich.
God bless you, Bernie. I only wish you were president.
Those phrases are what's been called 'poisonous pedagogy.' I like your variation on the marginally acceptable.
Here's one of the worst nostrums - Obama got a much better deal now than he'd get with the new Congress. In that case, why did he ignore entirely the Democratic Caucus in the Senate (according to Landrieu's very public statement). Because the Democrats were never part of the deal. He sent Biden (MasterCard-DE) straight to the House and Senate Republicans because it was a deal they'd accept.
If Obama cared at all for the people, he would have rounded up the House and Senate Dems and done a Jim Jones on them - insisted that they fight and get it all. Pass the 13 months, pass the middle class tax cuts, let the upper level taxes revert back to pre-Bush terms and kill the rest of the garbage. He never did that, we know for sure, because he never talked to the Democrats.
The spinners are out in force as noted in the article. When you've got the "New Deal 2.0" FDR site without a word of specific opposition to a 33% reduction in payroll taxes (6.2-4.2%)AND the self proclaimed heirs to FDR won't fight it, you know that elements of the alternative press have been launched in service to HMS Obama and Co.
surrender I stand corrected.
This was no compromise. It was a total and complete surrender to the minority terrorist party. I'm starting to think Obama was threatened a painful death for him and his family, either that or he was a wolve in sheeps clothing all along. We the people have been sold out. The economic crisis was manufactured by the same cabal who've been our shadow government since WWII. We're f*cked.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15949050/Collateral-Damage-911
http://www.scribd.com/doc/9421108/Collateral-Damage-Part-II26122008
This post was written last night, late, while under the effects of Benadryl, and I mis-read the CBO scoring. Post corrected. Additionally more references to the agenda to destroy & privatize social security are mentioned.
All reading this, firstly, consider creating accounts for anonymous commentators. You bypass the CAPTCHA and can immediately comment, all due to keep spam off of the site.
Secondly, if anyone reads articles, posts on this site and finds an error, please write a comment letting us know.
This site tries very hard to be accurate but when dealing with numbers in a sea of snow, it's very easy to make a mistake. Yes, we know we see mistakes all of the time too in the MSM and assuredly politicians spew nonsense too and even think tanks bias their results...
which is why we try like hell to obtain objective information, esp. on numbers...so come on readers, help out, if you see an error say something.
I think the biggest reason I like him so much is he pays attention to economics, so you don't just get some sort of partisan rancor, he's a party of 1, a Democratic socialist, and he has worked with conservatives on issues such as trade. He's also defending U.S. tech workers on the H-1B Visa. So, he pays attention to the policy, statistics instead of getting this plate of rotten agenda mixed in with something you want, which is both parties.
We need an independent in the White House I think, but these two corrupt parties have the entire electoral college, the entire voting system so locked up, I don't see how anything could happen beyond a Ross Perot or Teddy Roosevelt.
I see now why Ralph Nader was such an ass about it, people just don't have a choice the way the entire system is set up in the U.S., so these corporations and special interests own and run the country through these two corrupt parties.
There is a major point going on here which is why did Democrats wait until the last minute, they could have passed this all a year ago.
I watched Bernie Sanders and then, amazingly enough, Senator Landrieu for two hours yesterday. Senator Sanders is a now an American Hero in my eyes.
The Dems got many Blue Dogs elected in 2006 and 2008 that was the first mistake. Then they had to cater to the likes of Ben Nelson. Obama does not seem to understand that compromising on every thing from financial reform to the public option is hurting our country. Keep trying to get the word out gentlemen. Maybe we will get a real choice one day. I'm not hopeful though. Once the corporate interests have a stranglehold on a nation its pretty much over.
A payroll tax holiday on social security? My god does the money class need anymore reason to call us hypocrites when they gut it? Obama is really blowing it or desperately wants to be one of the elite. I don't know anymore. Thanks for this article.
I don't want to hear any more junk like "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" when the case at hand is "don't let the marginally acceptable be the enemy of the atrocious"! (Take the "Missouri Compromise": how much "good" justified the extension of something like slavery?)
Of course the Social Security "holiday" is temporary, just as the tax cuts for the rich were temporary, just as the war in Iraq was going to be over in six weeks, and the same way we're making "progress" in Afghanistan.
Clinton killed our economy by pushing through GATT and cutting social programs, thus ensuring that jobs would be outsourced and people cut off from welfare would be homeless, and Obama is going to kill off our elderly by destroying Social Security. And Democrats, as usual, will continue to blame the Republicans for everything they do. But they have a point. My guess is that shortly after leaving the White House, Obama will follow Joe Lieberman's lead, admit to being a Republican, and switch parties. Anyone who gets a Democratic Party nomination, has to be a closet Republican, or else the Democratic Party would lose the big corporate donors it needs in order to survive and share power with the Republicans.
I actually believe that Sarah Palin will switch parties and run as the Democratic Presidential nominee in 2012. Nobody is in a position to raise more corporate money for the Democrats than Palin, and liberals and progressives can be bullied into voting for her with a combined threat that the Republicans will win if they don't, and that anyone who doesn't vote for her is a sexist who doesn't want America to have a female President.
Anyone who voted for right wing neo-con extremist Lieberman because he ran as a Democrat, would have no problems voting for Palin if she had a "D" after her name on the ballot. They could even have Grayson, Kucinich, or some other fool as her running mate to provide her with Democratic cover. Palin has the name recognition, the corporate backing, and Democratic voters would vote for Beelzebub if he was a Democrat.
The only differences between Obama and McCain were skin color and political party affiliation. But since they had virtually identical voting records in the Senate, McCain couldn't have pulled off the "greater evil" thing by himself without Palin's help. But once the corporations have spent a few billion dollars rebranding, repackaging, and marketing Sarah Palin, she'll be every bit as acceptable to Democratic voters as Joe Lieberman was.
I don't understand why Americans vote. Poison, razor blades, asphyxiation, jumping off high buildings, and shooting yourself are much quicker, less painful forms of suicide.
You're right on that. Voting is now punishment - a direct message by 55% or so of the 50% who bother to vote.
There are solutions that are not painfully ridiculous like the ones these people come up with. Senators Corker and Landrieu are their canaries in the cave. But this elite, the most useless in the world's history, doesn't have a clue. They've got a permanent Jones for that dough re mi.
is tacking onto social security a progressive tax above the cut off. But it's true, hiring people is expensive and there is a large underground economy, working off the books to avoid it. They need to scale it up so hiring people is cheaper yet funding it much more Progressively.
Also, notice they are out to destroy social security 100%, with even the CBO "warning" on social security when they should be warning on medical costs.
Yet, they cannot present easy remedies, even when we just saw, due to the denial of traditional pensions, most people won't have enough to live on and that's with current social security, in old age.
Your point is excellent, Democrats blew it by doing corporate and special interest bidding, so people are voting for conservatives because they are so pissed. They promised to do something about trade, nothing, offshore outsourcing, nothing, income inequality, nothing really and these are clearly the problems, not the financial crisis, causing another "jobless" recovery.
I have never seen a sadder collection of (s)elected leaders in my life. They are clueless. Balance the budget but turn off a trillion in revenue. Claim tax cuts are to stimulate the economy but do nothing about job creation. It goes on and on.
Here's a simplified version of our troubles. After ten years of gluttony for the upper tier, there are no net new jobs. So much for tax cuts but this president is like the last in philosophy and patronage. If lowering taxes created job, there wouldn't be enough workers to fill them.
Obama and Clinton should have been saying, "it's da plane!"
How utterly revolutionary of you;) This is like the deficit problem and the NYT deficit reduction interactive program. The answers are out there, amongst the people, but the fools running the place don't care.
Republican officially. I have nothing against Obama personally and I think many of the attacks on his birth and religious beliefs have been just awful. But it's necessary to say that as a public leader, he is absolutely without any ethical foundation. His campaign was a fraud, pure and simple. And he's delivered like a champ for all the wrong people. He will be remembered as one of our worst presidents, deservedly so.
They need to make it progressive, this is actually one of the huge reasons for the underground labor economy, i.e. cash under the table. To hire someone is very expensive, between FICA and workman's comp. I think they need to somehow dump that onto multinationals....say if they offshore, make them pay more instead of less.
I don't have an answer just it is really expensive to hire someone.
Interesting article with some good analysis:
But he buys into the payroll tax cut. What folly. Extend unemployment - $5 bil - and dump the highest income bracket tax cuts.
We can see where this is headed - big crisis in 2012 we can't afford anything! Fear mongering will dominate the election, all created by this lousy, back stabbing deal from President Change. What a burden to carry historically. Obama will be around to her the unanimous condemnation.
Edit: Here's a great opening line, "The recently announced tax framework hammered out by President Barack Obama and Republicans in Congress contains some rather detestable elements." Sweet!
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