I just watched GOP strategist Ed Rogers (used to work for Daddy Bush) deriding Obama's tax reform proposal as "welfare."  Rogers is particularly rude and not terribly bright, but he's not the first right-winger to register this complaint. 

Obama is saying people with annual ancomes of $250,000 or more will go back to paying the rate they paid under Clinton while the 95% of taxpayers in lower brackets should share a proportional percent of the tax burden.

What they REALLY hate is the earned income tax credit for people who pay no "income" tax but certainly pay "payroll" taxes.  One can argue the merits of one tax policy or another; however, I see real fear and anger in the eyes of rich Republicans at the mere suggestion they pay something approaching their fair share of taxes. 

The United States now has a gap between the wealthy and the poor comparable to Mexico and Turkey.  This does not auger well for the future of our democracy or societal stability. 

Reaganomics, Thatcherism, supply side economics, or whatever you'd like to call it simply doesn't work.  It is a proven failure just like Soviet Communism.  The filthy-rich few in this country still like it just fine.  You can find this same class in any Third World hell-hole.  We must not base our economic policies on what will make the top 1% richer.  That promised trickle down becomes a trickle up, and who wants to be trickled on in the first place?

The American working and middle classes have had class warfare waged upon them since Reagan.  The amazing thing is they have not been merely cowed and docile; they have taken up arms against themselves falling for the flimisiest propaganda for the past 26 years. 

The crisis on Wall Street has demonstrated there is nowhere left for the kleptocrats to go.  They've stolen everything that isn't nailed down and pissed on everything that is!  Their reign is at an end. 

The kleptocrats aren't going to go quietly.  They're tossing memes like "socialist," "income redistribution," and "punish the successful."  They're angry.  Well, they've always been angry.  They're swine who can never get enough.  However, for the first time since the Reagan Counter-revolution, I'm seeing defeat in their eyes.  I hope they die like dogs, but it's crucial now to beware!  Never underestimate a desperate opponenent!!!
:o

I hope you are right, that there time is at an end, but I doubt it.

There's no end to greed, corruption, and lying, but each era has its end.  FDR's peers hated his guts for the New Deal, but he knew he had to save the capitalists from themselves!
::)

All they want is just one more dance, like the failed CEO's expecting bonuses and golden parachutes.

All they want is just one more dance, like the failed CEO's expecting bonuses and golden parachutes.



Which they will get, one way or another.

Which they will get, one way or another.




I think they gave me a lead parachute!

They get the golden parachute, we get the golden shower

There is legislation proposed to stop them if they take bailout $$$.  It also includes salary limits of $400,000.

There is legislation proposed to stop them if they take bailout $$$.  It also includes salary limits of $400,000.



The way they get around it is to give them the $400,000 salary, but then pile on the "allowances".  An allowance for housing, travel, entertaining, daily expenses, then there are the bonuses.  When Iaccoca took over Chrysler people got teary eyed when he announced that he would work the first year without a salary.  What they ignored was the fact that he got a $5,000,000(after tax) Christmas bonus, plus a house, vehicles(and driver), and a living allowance.  He kinda started this whole thing Iacrappa

I love how they call it "compensation," as in "Big Boss So-and-So received $30 million compensation upon leaving The Very Big Corporation Indeed, Inc."  As though the guy made some harrowing sacrifice for which the ingrates had to compensate him!
::)

They get the golden parachute, we get the golden shower

Bears repeating, that's the true meaning of "trickle down economics"!
:P

Bears repeating, that's the true meaning of "trickle down economics"!
:P


trickled on

Heh heh! Greeeeed is goooood!!!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/03/diablotin.gif

I love how they call it "compensation," as in "Big Boss So-and-So received $30 million compensation upon leaving The Very Big Corporation Indeed, Inc."  As though the guy made some harrowing sacrifice for which the ingrates had to compensate him!
::)


Yeah, you're both right.  So why do the stock holders put up with this crap?  After all, that $$$ could enhance their dividends.  Paying labor the smallest sum you can get it for doesn't apply to the top, I guess.

Yeah, you're both right.  So why do the stock holders put up with this crap?  After all, that $$$ could enhance their dividends.  Paying labor the smallest sum you can get it for doesn't apply to the top, I guess.


What is this!?  Very un-american of you to advocate "spreading the wealth around"    ::)

What is this!?  Very un-american of you to advocate "spreading the wealth around"    ::)


Call me un American and socialist but I think its a really good idea. Why should people go to bed hungry, when other spend more than my annaul salary on a pair of shoes?

Call me un American and socialist but I think its a really good idea. Why should people go to bed hungry, when other spend more than my annaul salary on a pair of shoes?

Amen to that + Karma!

One of my all-time favorite quotes:

"When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why the poor were hungry, they called me a communist."
-- Dom Helder Camara, Brazilian Archbishop


You can have a society with "savage inequalities" (as Jonathan Kozol phrased it) in which millions upon millions of families struggle daily to keep from going hungry, shoeless, and homeless while an elite corps of billionaires snort cocaine off of South African diamonds, but you can't for long call that society a democracy. 

Barack Obama is not a socialist. Barack Obama is a capitalist.  He believes in free market economics and individual initiative.  What Obama understands is that neither of these essentials for capitalism can function if both are rendered meaningless for the majority of the population.  America has been hurdling in that direction since Reagan.  Herbert Hoover once said, "The biggest problem with capitalism is capitalists; they're too damn greedy."  The Friedman class warfare prosecuted by the rich against the rest of us has denied this fundamental truth for a quarter century and it has driven America to the precipice of Third World status. 

I noted in the '90s that our country was a theocracy enthralled to Mammon.  Mammon manifested as the "free market" was imbued with ifnallible divinity.  Money was God, Alan Greenspan was the Pope, and credit was grace.  My country had gone mad with greed to an obscene degree.

The "Joe-the-Plumber" figurehead is a perfect example of this Mammonism in its death throes.  In the face of undeniable failure, Reaganomics is pressing on with hollow propaganda just like the Soviet Union in 1980. 

Obama is not an analogue of Lenin, but of Gorbachev!
::)