...we have hired them to handle certain management tasks with OUR money.
We have grown too large to defend the country with just a militia. We have high-rise buildings and can no longer get by with volunteer fire departments. We need street crews because we have too much roadway, highways and freeways, and no longer can simply neaten up the road that runs past our property. We produce far too much trash to simply take it out back and burn it (if that were even still legal in some areas.) Some elements of modern life have grown just to large and complicated to handle on our own.
We have a system of compulsory schooling now that is doing SUCH a great job educating our children. Kids were far more literate and better educated when the bulk of their learning occurred in the home. Read anything written by John Taylor Gatto - Weapons of Mass Instruction is his most recent book - about the origins of public education.
I quote here what was in an earlier post: *If you think healthcare is expensive now, wait until the government gives it to you for free.* What the government dispenses, the government rations. Do you really want a government bureaucrat in control of whether you get surgery or some diagnostic test your doctor says you need? Bad enough you have to fight about it with your insurance company now. You really want to turn this over to the government? Really?
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Also, with Obama's tax plan, even if you add the 3% he is talking about, that's what? Another 7500 - after you figure in your deductions, that ain't gonna be nothing.
And as far as their paying higher sales tax, that is a state tax - not a federal tax. And they choose to buy those more expensive items so that tax is their choice - they don't have to pay it.
MQ still pays more for ASR than other
companies. There was one company out there advertising 3 cpl for ASR. Their add said they need MTs who can "hit the ground running." It was on MTdaily a few days ago. There should be "ASR control" where they can't continue to lower our pay. Remember years ago when people voted for "rent control" and won? Time to sign those petitions for "ASR control."
They certainly must for so many MTs to be all atwitter over this plan. Fred Thompson said it perfectly last PM.
So those "moneybags" need to stop griping about MQ and how crappy it pays. You think you have less in your pockets now? You think this crap he's promising is free? How ignorant!
Even he see the unfairness here. Some conservatives are fond of saying that Democrats want to tax the wealthy unfairly, but what I would like to see is the wealthy taxed equally. "Mr. Buffett said that he was taxed at 17.7 per cent on the $46 million he made last year, without trying to avoid paying higher taxes, while his secretary, who earned $60,000, was taxed at 30 per cent." Here is the entire article. It's a great read. Trust me.
June 28, 2007
Buffett blasts system that lets him pay less tax than secretary
Warren Buffett, the third-richest man in the world, has criticised the US tax system for allowing him to pay a lower rate than his secretary and his cleaner.
Speaking at a $4,600-a-seat fundraiser in New York for Senator Hillary Clinton, Mr Buffett, who is worth an estimated $52 billion (£26 billion), said: “The 400 of us [here] pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.”
Mr Buffett said that he was taxed at 17.7 per cent on the $46 million he made last year, without trying to avoid paying higher taxes, while his secretary, who earned $60,000, was taxed at 30 per cent. Mr Buffett told his audience, which included John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley, and Alan Patricof, the founder of the US branch of Apax Partners, that US government policy had accentuated a disparity of wealth that hurt the economy by stifling opportunity and motivation.
The comments are among the most signficant yet in a debate raging on both sides of the Atlantic about growing income inequality and how the super-wealthy are taxed.
They echo those made this month by Nicholas Ferguson, one of the leading figures in Britain’s private equity industry, when he criticised tax rates that left its multimillionaire venture capitalists “paying less tax than a cleaning lady”.
Last week senior members of the US Senate proposed to increase the rate of tax that private equity and hedge fund staff pay on their share of the profits, known as carried interest, from the 15 per cent capital gains rate to about 35 per cent.
Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, acknowledged in an interview yesterday that there were justified concerns about the huge profits generated by private equity firms and that he worried that income inequality was “poisoning democracy”. He also said that he would be voting for the Democrat candidate at the next election. Mr Blankfein is the highest-paid executive on Wall Street, earning $54 million last year.
Mr Buffett, who runs the investment group Berkshire Hathaway and is widely regarded as the world’s most successful investor, said that he was a Democrat because Republicans are more likely to think: “I’m making $80 million a year – God must have intended me to have a lower tax rate.”
Mr Buffett said that a Republican proposal to eliminate elements of inheritance tax, which raises about $30 billion a year from the assets of about 12,000 rich families, would broaden the disparity between rich and poor. He added that the Republicans would seek to recover lost revenue by increasing taxes for the less prosperous.
He said: “You could take that $30 billion and give $1,000 to 30 million poor families. Or should you favour the 12,000 estates and make 30 million families pay an extra $1,000?”
I know I just took an inhouse job that pays me half what I make at home -
I am getting desperate to ensure that I have at least some income. My home-based job line counts are so low lately and I know it is because people are staying home. I am the only money maker in the family and I have to do something.
I am in college to get a degree to get out of this education, but have at least 3 quarters more before I am employable, and then who knows if I will be able to find a job then or not; with the way things are looking, more than likely NOT...
I wonder how it is going to help/hurt the economy and the illegal alien problem - I mean, will it make them go home or will they just draw more benefits off our government? If they go home, does that hurt or or help us?
WASHINGTON - The Republican Party says it still has a zero-tolerance policy for tampering with voters even as it pays the legal bills for a former Bush campaign official charged with conspiring to thwart Democrats from voting in New Hampshire.
James Tobin, the president's 2004 campaign chairman for New England, is charged in New Hampshire federal court with four felonies accusing him of conspiring with a state GOP official and a GOP consultant in Virginia to jam Democratic and labor union get-out-the-vote phone banks in November 2002.
The Republican National Committee already has spent more than $722,000 to provide Tobin, who has pleaded innocent, a team of lawyers from the high-powered Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly. The firm's other clients have included former President Clinton and Sen. Hillary Clinton and former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros.
Republican Party officials said they don't ordinarily discuss specifics of their legal work, but confirmed to The Associated Press they had agreed to underwrite Tobin's defense because he was a longtime supporter and that he assured them he had committed no crimes.
"Jim is a longtime friend who has served as both an employee and an independent contractor for the RNC," a spokeswoman for the RNC, Tracey Schmitt, said Wednesday. "This support is based on his assurance and our belief that Jim has not engaged in any wrongdoing."
A telephone firm was paid to make repeated hang-up phone calls to overwhelm the phone banks in New Hampshire and prevent them from getting Democratic voters to the polls on Election Day 2002, prosecutors allege. Republican John Sununu won a close race that day to be New Hampshire's newest senator.
At the time, Tobin was the RNC's New England regional director, before moving to President Bush's 2004 re-election campaign.
A top New Hampshire Party official and a GOP consultant already have pleaded guilty and cooperated with prosecutors. Tobin's indictment accuses him of specifically calling the GOP consultant to get a telephone firm to help in the scheme.
"The object of the conspiracy was to deprive inhabitants of New Hampshire and more particularly qualified voters ... of their federally secured right to vote," states the latest indictment issued by a federal grand jury on May 18.
The Republican Party has repeatedly and pointedly disavowed any tactics aimed at keeping citizens from voting since allegations of voter suppression surfaced during the Florida recount in 2000 that tipped the presidential race to Bush.
Earlier this week, RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, the former White House political director, reiterated a "zero-tolerance policy" for any GOP official caught trying to block legitimate votes.
"The position of the Republican National Committee is simple: We will not tolerate fraud; we will not tolerate intimidation; we will not tolerate suppression. No employee, associate or any person representing the Republican Party who engages in these kinds of acts will remain in that position," Mehlman wrote Monday to a group that studied voter suppression tactics.
Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean on Thursday questioned Mehlman's commitment to the policy. "This is just another example of his say one thing, do another strategy. Ken Mehlman tells crowds his party is against voter fraud and intimidation, while in the backrooms he supports Republican officials who engage in these dirty tricks," Dean said.
Dennis Black and Dane Butswinkas, two Williams & Connolly lawyers for Tobin, did not return calls seeking comment. Brian Tucker, a New Hampshire lawyer on the team, declined comment.
Tobin's lawyers have attacked the prosecution, suggesting evidence was improperly introduced to the grand jury, that their client originally had been promised he wouldn't be indicted and that he was improperly charged under one of the statutes.
Tobin stepped down from his Bush-Cheney post a couple of weeks before the November 2004 election after Democrats suggested he was involved in the phone bank scheme. He was charged a month after the election.
Paul Twomey, a volunteer lawyer for New Hampshire Democrats who are pursuing a separate lawsuit involving the phone scheme, said he was surprised the RNC was willing to pay Tobin's legal bills and that it suggested more people may be involved.
The new development "really raises the questions of who are they protecting, how high does this go and who was in on this," Twomey said.
Federal prosecutors have secured testimony from the two convicted conspirators in the scheme directly implicating Tobin.
Charles McGee, the New Hampshire GOP official who pleaded guilty, told prosecutors he informed Tobin of the plan and asked for Tobin's help in finding a vendor who could make the calls that would flood the phone banks.
Allen Raymond, a former colleague of Tobin who operated a Virginia-based telephone services firm, told prosecutors Tobin called him in October 2002, explained the telephone plan and asked Raymond's company to help McGee implement it.
Raymond's lawyer told the court that Tobin made the request for help in his official capacity as the top RNC official for New England and his client believed the RNC had sanctioned the activity.
They don't want to run the government...
You are exactly right. And that is twisted beyond belief in my opinion. That has absolutely nothing to do with protecting this country or what is best for the country as a whole. It is personal, and like you said, revenge. I wish every state in the nation would do a recall of senators and reps if they start down that road, though I doubt that would ever happen. I saw another post that likened it to fiddling while Rome is burning. They just really do not have a clue. Not a clue.
You bet the government could come up...
with the money to fund the rest. It's called raising taxes, the Democratic mantra. What would Jesus do? I have no doubt that Jesus would say it was the responsibility of parents to take care of their children, for one. I am sure he would also say that a country that murders millions of babies every year has bigger problems than free health care. I am thinking it would be hard to take you seriously. But that is just me.
Don't get me wrong. I think the rest of us should take care of those who truly cannot take care of themselves. I just do not believe this qualifies. Instead of making the hard choices, trying to cut costs, finding better ways to make health care more affordable by tax cuts for those who pay health care premiums, etc., the Democrats want to do what they do so well...dangle something "free" in faces of people at election time. Clinton promised it, and what they came up with was socialized medicine, which went nowhere, thank God. Democrats just want to add entitlement after entitlement, tax us into oblivion and keep us tied to the government apron strings. Otherwise they would look at solutions like tax cuts for those who pay their insurance premiums. But..oh wait. You don't want that. Because you have to pay the premiums to get the tax break, and you don't want to pay the premiums. Pardon me if I don't want to fund that logic.
Truly destitute people, yes, those truly in need we should do everything we can to help them and do. A family of 4 making 80K is not destitute.
How about this. If you want on SCHIP, you have to sign a paper acknowledging they are going to take an additional 3% in income tax on you from now on to offset it. In return you get your "free" health care for your children. No taxes raised on anyone else, including smokers (and no I don't smoke, but I don't think it is any worse asking smokers to pay for expansion of the program if you are not willing to pay for it yourself, after all, you are going to be a user of it).
That sounds like a fine idea to me. Oh, and raise income taxes on all Democrats 3%. That should cover it. Expand the program, users and Democrats pay for it. Sounds like a plan to me. Don't know what you make, but it would surely come to less than $12K a year.
Run that one by your Democratic congressman.
Have a good night!
so let the government tell us??
Sorry, I want less government intervention, not more, in my life.
How do you think the government will
continue to spend when they can't collect taxes to spend because most people don't have jobs and are in need of welfare????? SOOOOO okay, let's keep fighting about party affiliation. *IF* Obama is elected I sure hope he turns out to be the modern day FDR.
Government
When a president decides to buy banks, they call that FASCISM. This is exactly what Bush has done.
Why do you not have a problem with that?
Are all of you so rich that you don't know what the middle class is going through these days? This country is in a shambles, and people are suffering through no fault of their own.
It's HIGH TIME the plight of the middle class is acknowledged and some help offered.
This "trickle-down" theory is NOT working, and it's time to employ the "trickle-UP" theory.
They are doing all they can to make THEIR life comfortable. As long as they are getting paid and their pockets are getting filled with money......that is all they care about. We can't trust our government. Look at what trusting the government has done to us so far. Our economy is in shambles and the government wants to blow over 800 billion dollars again. This isn't going to fix our economy. It is just going to raise government spending and leave an even bigger deficit than we already had for our grandchildren. This stimulus package is a joke. I am totally against it!
What I want to know is why can't the government start something that would charge companies who outsource production to other countries? Let them open up a factory in another country but they have to pay a huge tax or something to do it. Make it to where it isn't a good financial decision so we can keep the jobs we have now and create more. That would help us MTs out as well. What is the point of creating jobs in our country if companies can still up and leave to go to other countries? Seriously....what is made in America? Even foreign cars like Honda who have factories here in America.....that money still doesn't go to the US. I know it employes Americans but the majority of the money there still goes out of the country. I want American made goods made by Americans. I also think people hiring illegal aliens should be penalized and fined heavily for doing so. That would stop that crap too.
take your money, just like my money, and put it into a package where it gives money to this group and that group and this group over here and just hope that they use that money wisely and that it helps the people who need help? Like I said before....that worked out swell when we gave money to the banks.
I don't want my money to go for irresponsible people either but you know what....it is and it will. You all talk about how everyone should have healthcare and how government should fund healthcare, through taxpayer money, so everyone is insured. Yet you refuse to give money so people can keep their houses? Yes, some were irresponsible and were just plain dumb in their decisions and yet some just got a raw deal during this tough time and got dragged down.
You all talk about conservatives flipping sides when a handout comes along but it sounds to me like all these liberals want to help others out until it comes time to give that help. Healthcare for all paid by taxpayers. You may not have a home and your kids may not have a warm bed to sleep in....but hey....you got healthcare.....whoooopppeee!
This is nothing more than a quick road to total government control of everyone.
Just for arguments sake, they get the stupid "permit." That is nothing but money for the county. The county doesn't care about all these rules and neither do the neighbors. If the folks get their permit and things are the same and don't change.....same amount of people, every week, etc etc, don't you think somebody will find something else to complain about regarding this group?
This is a bunch of nonsense and Christian persecution that Jesus himself said would happen in the last days. Wake up.
Not exactly. The government is getting
100 cartons since 2005, not 1981.
So they don't have to pretend to say anything. They've got documentation from the vendors.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Walter Soehnge is a retired Texas schoolteacher who traveled north with his wife, Deana, saw summer change to fall in Rhode Island and decided this was a place to stay for a while.
So the Soehnges live in Scituate now and Walter sometimes has breakfast at the Gentleman Farmer in Scituate Village, where he has passed the test and become a regular despite an accent that is definitely not local.
And it was there, at his usual table last week, that he told me that he was madder than a panther with kerosene on his tail.
He says things like that. Texas does leave its mark on a man.
What got him so upset might seem trivial to some people who have learned to accept small infringements on their freedom as just part of the way things are in this age of terror-fed paranoia. It's that everything changed after 9/11 thing.
But not Walter.
We're a product of the '60s, he said. We believe government should be way away from us in that regard.
He was referring to the recent decision by him and his wife to be responsible, to do the kind of thing that just about anyone would say makes good, solid financial sense.
They paid down some debt. The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522.
And an alarm went off. A red flag went up. The Soehnges' behavior was found questionable.
And all they did was pay down their debt. They didn't call a suspected terrorist on their cell phone. They didn't try to sneak a machine gun through customs.
They just paid a hefty chunk of their credit card balance. And they learned how frighteningly wide the net of suspicion has been cast.
After sending in the check, they checked online to see if their account had been duly credited. They learned that the check had arrived, but the amount available for credit on their account hadn't changed.
So Deana Soehnge called the credit-card company. Then Walter called.
When you mess with my money, I want to know why, he said.
They both learned the same astounding piece of information about the little things that can set the threat sensors to beeping and blinking.
They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.
Walter called television stations, the American Civil Liberties Union and me. And he went on the Internet to see what he could learn. He learned about changes in something called the Bank Privacy Act.
The more I'm on, the scarier it gets, he said. It's scary how easily someone in Homeland Security can get permission to spy.
Eventually, his and his wife's money was freed up. The Soehnges were apparently found not to be promoting global terrorism under the guise of paying a credit-card bill. They never did learn how a large credit card payment can pose a security threat.
But the experience has been a reminder that a small piece of privacy has been surrendered. Walter Soehnge, who says he holds solid, middle-of-the-road American beliefs, worries about rights being lost.
If it can happen to me, it can happen to others, he said.
(Bob Kerr is a columnist for The Providence Journal. E-mail bkerr@projo.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.) Hmm, I would say most do not trust government.sm
Fear and paranoia are a given, they instill it in us 24/7. Viewership of MSM outlets is way down, so I guess Fox would be #1 with just Bush supporters. I want truth and accountability from the media and our elected officials period. I dumped the Republican party because we are not getting truth or accountability. I will vote for the first candidate that does something about it.
I still don't believe government-controlled...
or provided insurance is the answer. Just today read article about how a bunch of women from Canada who had problem pregnancies had to come to the US to have their babies because of the socialized medicine in Canada because...news flash...you can't put a pregnant woman on a waiting list for treatment because babies are born when babies want to be born...and that is what happens when the government administrates health care. Waiting lists...substandard care...and on and on and on. The VA is a government administered health program...go ahead and tell me THAT works. We need to come up with a better plan than socialized medicine...like prioritizing social spending. If you really want to insure all kids, then give their parents a big tax break for insuring them themselves...don't extend entitlements higher and higher up the income ladder. Sorry, but that makes no sense to me. When the troops come home and the war is over, you can talk about that money then. It is nonstarter while we still have troops in combat, no matter who sent them or why (and by the way, it was not George Bush personally, it was your duly elected Congress). We have to fund them while they are in combat. I don't think even the most liberal (no matter what the definition is) would be for withdrawing funding while we still have men and women in combat.
I don't think the government owes me a job
I just don't understand why they go out of their way to send our jobs overseas. The government's job is to protect and serve the American people - not the people of other countries. They need to work for US. The same goes for businesses. If they start ditching American workers for cheaper overseas labor, then who is going to buy all of their products? Americans won't have the money because we'll be jobless!
Yes, but the government shouldn't be
encouraging companies to outsource either. Our country has way messed up priorities when the only people making big bucks are entertainers and greedy CEOs. Meanwhile, we've got unemployed people and poverty. Hey, let's send our money, our technology and our private data to a country that HATES us.
And put in the hands of government?
No thanks. Every time government manages social programs it fails miserably.
The (unregulated) free market is the best way to handle health care another other things.
The problem now is government has their hands too much into the pot with regulation via the insurance companies. You think it's bad now wait until the government has sole control.
Name 1 things Government does well?
1. The post office? Waited in line lately for stamps or to mail a package?
2. Waited in line to renew drivers licence lately?
Compettion is what drives prices down, not mandates form the government
Is that all you got? I think the fact that she can run a government....
which she has been doing, and well too...and still cook for her kids (let the chef go when she was elected), travels on her own dime (got rid of the state jet)...and still have time to see her kids' hockey games is nothing to sneeze at. She does not have to do one to the exclusion of the other. You sound jealous and snippy. Geez.
government controls
the VA system and I know from experience how well that works!!! NOT!! The VA physicians who dealt with my father diagnosed him with an umbilical hernia that turned out to be a huge tumor and he died two weeks later!! He waited for months and months to even get in for a consult through the VA system and that never did happen, as I took him to a local ER and that same day they diagnosed him with end stage colon cancer. He had seen several physicians within the VA system for years. With the government controlling THAT and then they want to control MY healthcare as well? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? I may have to pay for my insurance but at least I get better healthcare than if the government steps in. I'm so tired of people whining about what the government owes them!! How about people doing for themselves? Everyone goes through hardship. BOOHOO!! I have myself and ya know what???? I got back on my feet by HARD WORK!!! Don't hear me all crying about what the government owes me!!
People need to WAKE UP!!! We all need to take responsibility for ourselves and help who we choose when we choose, not because the government is taking money out of our pockets and telling us who we will help.
Just wondered what everyone thinks about this subject. I haven't seen it discussed yet and if it has been sorry. Do you think the government should bail out these two institutions and if so, or not so, why?
I heard someone on the TV today (didn't recognize the name but he's an idependent) he asked the question, so is it going to be the people who make $30K a year the ones who pay for this or the billionaires and trillionaires? I thought that was a good point.
Also I heard that one of the guys in charge (forget his name right now) made over $90 million and he isn't paying anything. I would think that if you make over $90M on this and you run it into the ground you should have to forfeit whatever you made and pay it back (but that's my own opinion).
Just to narrow their choices down to who they want instead of letting the people decide, as in a free democracy, even the states are changing their rules without the knowledge of its citizens..........
Your post that Jesus loves us even if we don't love him put a song running through my head.....Alzheimer.........what's the name of it, "He loved me ere I knew him, so all my love is due him...." What's the NAME of that hymn?????
Government is and will always be the most corrupt thing in this society. You want a corrupt government taking YOUR money and purportedly giving it to the "needy"? Like I trust them with one red dime of my money!
I feel sorry for you that you don't know how to be civilized without government interference in your life.
I hold government as a whole
responsible and that includes all parties. They are all greedy liars who just want to keep their seat and will say and do anything to draw followers in to get elected. So this promise of change is not change at all. It is the same political game that has been played since the very beginning. They all suck. I say we storm Washington with our pitch forks and torches and get all new people in office. What say you? LOL!
Christianity and government.
The United States of America is comprised of people with many different religious beliefs. Each and every one of us is entitled to a government that is not biased towards any particular religion. We are all equal in this Country whether we are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, atheists, agnostics, Wiccans, etc. I am not a Christian and do not want Christian beliefs forced on me or any other citizen of the United States of America. That is why there are churches, and that is where it should stay.
Who put faith in what government?
Who put faith in what government? I for one put NO faith in Bush from day one....he was a disastrous governor in the Lone Star, and I knew by the time he got finished with America and Americans, that we would barely be able to recognize it. You are right. The shrub did inherit at least something he should have been able to work with, but evidently it was beneath his pay grade to pay attention to such things since he had wars to wage.
Obama wants to restore a little balance...another thing the shrub monkeyed around with...especially his notorious distain for judicial powers and addiction to executive privilege. We need to take out that generic "government" reference and replace it with republicans failed us. The more power they get, the more they will fail us. Voters get that now.
Why are you lying? Obama wants stricter gun controls. He cannot take your precious guns away from you without a constitutional amendment. Defend yourselves against what? You really are a paranoid bunch, aren't you? Uh, oh....your argument just fell apart. So I ask again, can anybody explain Reagan's rambling incoherence? GWB is the king of big government
US Government has grown 27% under Bush - really O can't be much worse than that!
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