As the season turns to taxes, Pres. Obama took time during the Super Bowl to campaign for more tax revenue from Americans according to the Business Times, who reported Monday that the president says the government needs more money in order to get out of debt.
Yeah, so what else is new? Isn't that what Republicans in Congress have been saying all along? Yes, but now Obama is saying more tax revenue is needed, so maybe the other half of the country will listen.
The president appears to be listening, and maybe even adopting his opposing party's position given what else the BT reported. The news agency says that in the CBS Obama interview that the president is now agreeing with Republicans that the deficit has got to be addressed. And he thinks raising taxes would help, but he is willing to now consider the need for spending cuts. The only difference between him and Republicans on the matter is he wants "smart" spending cuts. Whatever that is.
The three things Obama mentioned—trimming government waste, reforming health care, and closing certain tax loopholes that were also proposed by the Republican's in the House, but now they are being called "smart spending cuts" even by the president. So there's hope that the government might actually start addressing these deficit-growing issues.
Based upon the ACO hospital video recently aired, however, it doesn't look like the health care reform the Republicans were aiming for is the same one the president plans to keep on making. This video shows that some hospitals believe that the Affordable Care Act really means act like you care and pocket the money instead.
The doctors in the video even show themselves passing the money around. America will never get out of debt that way; it's just moving money from one place to another, allowing abuses to continue, and no patient appears to be benefiting. In fact, they mock how the door will be closed to the patients trying to get back inside the medical facility. So raising the tax on any income group in America would definitely be dumb to support this kind of "health care reform." But have faith. If Pres. Obama can suddenly start supporting spending cuts after refusing to for the past four years, then maybe he will try to pass off the Republican's ideas about better health care reform as his own too. Miracles do happen. One just has to let the right politician claim credit for them.
Photo: Pete Souza/White House
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Comments: 28
Of course, the great unwashed will not like what it does to the price of gasoline...
Yeah, so what else is new? Isn't that what Republicans in Congress have been saying all along?"
Um, no. The Republicans have not being saying that the government needs more money (more revenue) to get out of debt. The Republicans have been insisting on addressing the debt through spending cuts alone, opposing any increase in taxes including until very, very recently any closing of loopholes.
Obama has not been opposing all spending cuts, just the ones proposed by Republicans that target programs to help the poor almost entirely and include no tax increases to enhance revenues.
Very disingenuous spin to this article. Beyond that, you make blanket statements like those two I've addressed above that are either flat out wrong or complete lies.
It just won't have any real impact on the deficit and...
It will make the price of goods and servicers go up...
This is as self evident as 2=2 = 4 so I can see why it annoys a Keynesian like you...
That is, on the high side, 52/1000th of a trillion...the deficit is what...a trillion and a half...
52/1500th of the deficit...A drop in the bucket...
Now...are you seriously going to argue the self evident proposition that raising the price of capturing, gathering, and refining oil into gasoline isn't going to have a significant upward effect on price??? And not just of gasoline but of every product shipped by gasoline (eg...every product)...
You have three choices...
1. Apologize to Mamma and I and admit you are wrong...
2. Remain silent and be deemed by omission to be an idiot and a liar...
3. try to defend your facially redick statement without getting yourself deeper into the idiot and liar category...
Jo Jo awaits your response...
And, PS...Remember...I am in favor of eliminating all big business subsidies...
They allow businesses to continue to exist and get too big to fail when they should die a natural death...
Don't forget, The Inner Party has decreed that two plus two equals five.
Can't talk about over there but in Europe these days the only way a business can grow is by getting it's snout in the trough of tax money. Government takes 50% of everything we earn and spends 60%
Not sure what it is you actually are expecting a reply to, you did not pose any questions or provide any contradiction to anything I said.
Am I to correct your math/typing:
Jo Jo the Dog Faced Boy Feb 4, 2013, 11:55am EST
"This is as self evident as 2=2 = 4 so I can see why it annoys a Keynesian like you..." I expect you meant 2+2 = 4. A Keynesian would pick up on that.
Jo Jo the Dog Faced Boy Feb 4, 2013, 1:37pm EST
"The annual subsidy to oil and coal is between 10 and 53 billion dollars...
That is, on the high side, 52/1000th of a trillion...the deficit is what...a trillion and a half..." No, that would be 53/1000th of a trillion. These are the kind of bookkeeping errors you need Keynesians to reveal for you.
Am I to educate you on the fact that the economy and the government's budget are bigger and more complex than any single industry, even a vital one like the petroleum business? Am I to open your eyes to the fact that there is no one, single thing that will slay the debt like a silver bullet or a magic wand. It will take a number of smaller fractions combined together to make it all work out.
The subsidies to the oil industry are part of that equation. A bigger part is the needed reduction to the military budget. That will have a greater contribution to the whole thing.
Tax increases on those who are, today, paying about half of what they paid during the nation's most prosperous period, are also a bigger part of the whole. Some 2.5 million American reported incomes in excess of $250K in 2009. Recognizing that $250K is the minimum salary of those in this cohort we must realize that many of them make significantly more than that. If the average of those 2.5 million was $300K (it may be a lot higher) and they were taxed at 50% (much lower than they had to pay in the economically robust 1950s and 1960s) it would generate $375 billion in revenue, or about $265 billion more than Romney's 14% tax rate would generate from this cohort.
The rest of America also needs to pay more in taxes. Not as much more, as a percentage, but more. Americans are under taxed both by world standards and by historical American standards, and this is a big reason why you have a deficit and a debt. You have opted to have first class government services while paying third class taxes. This cannot work for long. But there is no reason a country as wealthy as America cannot have first class services, you just have to pay for it.
Combine these cuts to corporate welfare, cuts to the military, cuts based on the elimination of waste and duplication and inefficiency in other government programs with tax increases to the wealthy and to a lesser degree to the rest of the country and you can tame your deficit.
Now, what was your question? Or do you even know?
The rest of your response is not relevant...
You called me a liar.
I gave you both data and irrefutable logic to prove my point.
Your ad hominem attack on my typing does not refute that and, in fact, confirms the truth of what I said. The rest of your "response" is just so much blather not relevant to the subject...
Try again...Focus on the subject...
The oil subsidities are not a significant source of revenue to apply to the deficit; and
Removing the oil subsidies willl cause prices, particularly the price of gas, to go up...
Your sophistry may work on your moron "liberal" pals but not me...
You said this is not true and called me a liar...
Put up some real response of shut the fuck up...
My statement was simple...The oil subsidy is not significant source of revenue in the deficit crisis...(true) and eliminating it will cause the price of everything, especially gas, to go up (self evident)...
You called me a liar.
I called you a liar? Where? Show me the quote.
Why do you think I am obliged to make any response to your remarks about the oil subsidy since I made no mention of it? I know you have come to rely on me for education and to disillusion you, but how this confers any actual obligation on me I fail to see.
Let them get a job.
I will assume you agree with me...
Good call...
Also...I agree with getting the royal family off the teat...they could open up a theme park...like Dollywood...
No more could you back up your oft repeated "ad hominem" dodge, probably because you don't actually know what it means. But you will likely continue to use it ad nauseum.
Argumentum ad hominem, often shortend to simply ad hominem, means an argument directed at the man, or the person, rather than at their argument. In other words, attacking the person instead of their opinions or ideas.
Examples of this kind of argument include:
"I can see why it annoys a Keynesian like you... "
"You called me a liar."
"Thank you...Rory is a Canadian which is a dumb Englishman and a lazy American..."
"The rest of your "response" is just so much blather not relevant to the subject..." (Ad hominem because it attacks my argument as "blather" without offering a single justification for that designation, in other words it is opinion directed at me.)
"Try again...Focus on the subject..."
"And, by your non-response, you obviously agree with me..."
My remarks were, in many cases, critical but the criticism was based on the things you actually said, in other words critical of your argument and of you only through the identified deficiencies in your argument.
Chief amongst those were the fact that you continued to ask for a response when you had posed no question or challenge to which a response could reasonably be offered. This left it up to me to try and parse your stream of consciouness ramblings in search of something to respond to, thus the critique of the math/spelling/typing skills that rendered some of the remarks even less meaningful than if they had been typed correctly.
Of course, the worst insult you offered was your presumption that anything I said or did not say amounted to agreement with you on any point. I know that conservatives are used to the idea that repeating their own opinion over and over gives it, in their minds, the ring of truth. In reality and in the minds of rational actors this is simply not so.
conservatives are used to the idea that repeating their own opinion over and over gives it, in their minds, the ring of truth.
Truer words are rarely spoken, especially in regards to those members who refer to themselves as being a conservative here on GN.
As a Canadian I also pay taxes that go, in part, to pay a very lucrative stipend to these ne'er-do-well inbred embarrassments and I object most vociferously.
Let's face the true fact, the prominently rich, no matter from which country or ethnicity or religious community they reside in or call home, are all asinine selfish greedy bastards who believe that the majority must pay a tax tribute to the minority, simply because the minority are entitled to such tributes by right of birth and status in life. I suspect that it is a hold over in elitist mentality from the days of the European Kings, Queens and their Courts. (We don't work, we collect taxes from those who do)
Monarchy is defended by its supporters as being figureheads that represent something they see as being culturally valuable. However, the behaviour of the Royals is hardly what one might call a role model, given their rampant infidelity, their frequent divorce, their association with Nazis back in the 1930s, and numerous other misdemeanors. Historically what they represent is a long background of murder, treachery, oppression, torture, cruelty, abuse and all kinds of sordid behaviour.
When the French revolution demanded "liberte, egalite, fraternite" it was monarchy they were seeking to overthrow. When Americans issued their Declaration of Independence it was monarchy they sought to be free of.
As a Canadian it is deeply embarrassing to me that our head of state is a foreign monarch.
As a Canadian it is deeply embarrassing to me that our head of state is a foreign monarch.
Canada, not being my country, I am admittedly quite ignorant of the issue as it pertains the majority of the Canadian people.
Before I retired from my professional life (2009) as an International Representative of the IATSE Labor Union, which represents the vast majority of both the American and the Canadian Stage, Television and Film Industry, I never overheard any discussion among my Canadian colleagues concerning the issue.
If you polled Canadians I suspect you'd find about 10% who were ardent supporters of the Monarchy, another 10% who were casual supporters of it, around 30% who were actively against it and the other 50% couldn't give much of a crap about the question.
Being the son of an Irish immigrant whose family had to flee Ireland as refugees and come to Canada in 1920, because of the British oppression still active in Ireland at that time, I am a little more hostile to it than most. Also I just oppose monarchy as an evil and anachronistic institution which can't be thrown on the scrap heap of history soon enough.