They meet that definition in your world. Be honest. We don’t all, obviously, live in your world.
I find the Democrats, in general, to be far less human. They aren’t demonstrating kindness when they want to raise my taxes. They aren’t showing me compassion when they say I don’t deserve to keep the money I earn (or that I would not use it ‘properly’ if I did keep it). They are definitely being cold when they want to take my earned income and give it to somebody else who never worked for any of it. Aside from that, it is cruel to take (at the threat of imprisonment) assets from one person (who has done nothing wrong) and give them to another.
Fine. Then kindly be human enough to stay off our highways, to cease benefiting from the public education that’s provided, to avoid calling firefighters when your house is burning, and to refuse protection by the police. Also drop a note saying “Thanks, anyway!” to the Defense Department when you ask them to start reducing either the benefits afforded the military or the size of the military, so you can pay less in taxes.
If you want to keep all your earnings, you might want to consider moving out into the woods or a cave, since it costs money to live as a member of society. (But please be kind enough to refrain from connecting yourself to a power grid—rural electrification is just another one of those wasteful liberal programs that sucks up hard-earned taxes!)
How did you equate being against increases in taxes with getting rid of all of it? If you really want to get rid of all taxes, then fine. Let’s start a pay as you go system where everyone has to pay their way. You pay the tolls on the roads you use. I was already going to homeschool my son, so I’m going to be paying for public education that my family never expects to actually use. You pay for the firefighters when you call them out (what you would actually do is probably pay a monthly premium to be covered by the local firefighting crew, or you can pay per the event). Again, you can pay the local police for protection, or put them on retainer as you need them (after all, the US Supreme Court has said they are under no obligation to protect you from crime anyway). They have already been reducing the military for 15 years or more, how would that change anything (people would contribute to that cause, I am sure).
Again, I never talked about keeping all of my earnings. I said I was against tax increases. I further stated I was against wealth redistribution. Of course, I am sure companies would be in the business of providing electricity and you could buy it. If enough of the people in an area ordered the electricity, the rates would be lower. They would not be forced to run it to everyone and be controlled by the government setting prices. They would run it to those people who will pay for it.
This all assumes I was talking about removing all taxes. While I would like that, I understand it would be more feasible to just be opposed to tax increases.
The richest 1% are getting a cut out-of-proportion with the total federal taxes that they pay…i.e., their taxes are reduced by a larger fraction than everyone else’s. See here. (Of course, in dollar amounts rather than fractional amounts, the reduction is obscenely larger because of the very unequal distribution of income in our nation.)
This will be even truer (and apply to the top 5% as well) if the “sunset” provisions are eventually repealed, as the Republicans have made no secret about wanting to do.
Of course, this analysis doesn’t take int account the rises in taxes and cuts in services at the state and local level because of their fiscal situation, brought about in some part by the federal government. These tax hikes and service cuts will likely disproportionately impact the poor and middle class relative to the rich.
Jshore: So what? Upper income people still pay a higher percentage in federal income tax than lower income people pay after the Bush tax cut. You are assuming that the pre-tax cut tax schedule was somehow inherently “fair” and that the post-tax cut tax schedule is somehow inherently “unfair”.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think there’s a slight difference between mocking a woman begging for her life and having to pay a little extra in taxes.
Not if you are mocking a woman that killed two people with a pick-axe. Such ‘people’ are fair game for mocking.
The problem, on the other hand, with paying ‘a little extra in taxes’ is that it is always a ‘little more’ with the tax-happy. God forbid precious gov’t services not be expanded, or perish the thought, eliminated. A ‘little more’ here and there adds up.
If Bush had ONLY mocked her, it would be OK. It was the fact that he mocked her AS he denied her clemency, effectively ending any chance she had at life. Wasn’t killing her enough?
I read posts like Brutus’ and I think maybe people like him would like a little chance to get in there and torture her before she died her miserable little death. I watched a documentary about the woman, which detailed the nastiness of her crime, and I have to tell you that although I oppose the death penalty generally, it is people like this woman who make my opposition half-hearted at times. Human society will get along just fine without her.
In fact, I don’t refer to the woman by name because I don’t particularly want her memory to be extended. She’s been the subject of documentaries and TV movies and such, so she’s probably more famous than anyone posting here, but I’m damned if I’ll contribute to it. She does not deserve to be remembered better than her victims, or most anyone.
That said, what Bush said was still WRONG! It’s just the sort of thing the woman herself would have done as she was hacking up her victims – mocking them as she killed them.
And I know this may seem to be an impossibly high standard that Republicans will be hard-pressed to meet, but I think our elected officials oughtta be just a LEETLE bit better human beings than the folks on Death Row.
Heck. As far as I am concerned, we can get rid of the death penalty. I’ve never been a fan of the government being allowed to sentence people to their deaths, especially when they argue against suicide.
That is true, if you think that the problem in our society is too little inequality (even after the real after-tax income of the top 1% increased by >150% between 1979 and 1997 while those of median income folks increased only 10%) then I see why you would be a big fan of Bush’s tax cuts. Personally, I don’t fall into that category.
[Like the slogan on the “Billionaires for Bush or Gore” satirical website said “Because inequality isn’t growing fast enough…”]
Why not quote the change in income for “the rich” over the period in question , say 2000 - 2002? Could it be that those figures wouldn’t support your conclusion?
You are also making the faulty assumption that the people in those brackets in 1979 are the exact same people in the 1997 brackets.
I guess this isn’t exactly a hijack since it’s relevant to the “no heart” line in the cartoon, but there are a couple very interesting new articles on Bush’s complete abandonment of the clemency process in death penalty cases while governor of Texas.
On a personal note, I will offer that I was personally acquainted with Al Gonzales years ago, and found him to be an honorable (though unimpressive) man. If the descriptions of his clemency memos are accurate, I am surprised and saddened.
It could be (is) simply that I don’t have those figures. I think these numbers usually run a few years behind. It was only months ago I believe that the IRS released year 2000 numbers. But, the point is that there has been a huge trend toward inequality over the past ~25 years. Even if the last few years marked a reversal, they aren’t going to make much a dent in the fact that most of the gains in our economy over the last ~25 years have gone to a select few.
In other words, you are nitpicking here. Yes, the details might change depending on how you look at things but the trend is so dramatic that a little adjustment of years here or there isn’t going to make a heck of a lot of difference to the basic facts.
Well, I did not claim that they were the exact same people. Sure, there is some income mobility but it is limited and it also doesn’t change the fact that we have gone more and more toward a “winner take all” society.
No, the rich are not evil. It is simply that they have reaped most of the rewards over the last 25 years from our economy while the poor and middle class have practically just been treading water. If you listen to Bush, his whole stimulus plan is predicated on the idea of his economic policies benefitting everyone and yet we can see that economic policies over the last 25 years have not really benefitted everyone (at least not significantly) and there is little reason to believe his windfalls for the very rich will.
There are in fact rich people who are concerned about this. Kennedy is one. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates Sr are two others. And these folks are intelligent and self-aware enough to recognize that they earned their wealth within a society that enabled them to do so. To quote Buffet:
I believe the Kennedy fortune was gained from bootlegging during Prohibition. They should be turning over any wealth that can be traced back to that before he is telling me anything about how I should live. Until that day comes, any Kennedy is a joke. I care little, or not at all, what their opinions are about anything.
By the way, I see a bit of an irony here: You are launching cheap shots at the Kennedys [and I see another in preview] but the fact is that Ted Kennedy (and the other Kennedy in Congress?) are voting against huge tax cuts for themselves, while people like Bush, Cheney and the like are voting for (indeed instigating) huge tax cuts for themselves.
What I love about conservatives in these debates is that they claim that we liberals hate the rich or think that the rich are evil simply because we don’t want them to get huge tax breaks and yet they are often then the ones who launch vicious personal attacks against rich people who happen to have a conscience. It’s quite amusing.
My God what a monumentally crappy POS. Who got paid for this awful nonsense? A 10th grader huffing lawnmower gas could have done a better job on the flash animation. If this is what the Democrats think is going to help save them… well… good luck.
Of course the Kennedy’s would vote against huge tax cuts. Those guys have plenty of long since established wealth to keep up their lifestyles. They don’t need to make more.
The Kennedy’s have a conscience? Think back to how that fortune, that paved the way into political office for the sons was made. It wasn’t through legitimate, honest, hard work, was it?
Interesting that you call me a conservative. I might seem that way to some liberal, but conservatives usually call me a liberal. Go figure.
