Answering the RadRite, Again. I was feeling combative today, so devoted a few hours to reading the comments after a story on AOL falsely titled "How Obama's Budget Proposal May Increase Your Taxes Next Year". I was disgusted by the arrant nonsense and flagrant dishonesty of the Radical Right liars there, so left a bunch of comments of my own to try to achieve some balance against the RadRite lynch mob that assembles at EVERY story about President Obama on AOL. Here are most of my remarks, other than a few that are so specific to the particular comment they reply to that I would have to include that comment, and I have no intention of giving more attention to such vile trash. I also do not include some remarks chastizing people for using BLOCK CAPS, repeating posts, etc. The 82 comments below (comprising over 4,100 words) address many topics, and provide argumentation that other Liberals may wish to use in their own encounters with Radical Rite loons.

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The headline -- about raising "your taxes" -- is misleading. Essentially NOBODY who makes more than 1/4 million dollars a year is reading these stories or participating in these discussions.
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You really don't have a clue as to the way the world, and the U.S. more particularly, works. In a federal union, different levels of government do different things. The locality picks up garbage; the Federal Government provides for national defense. There is no single taxing authority, and no uniform tax rate among the states. People DO move from state to state, but usually NOT because of tax rates -- tho the rich keep threatening to leave because of tax rates. It's all lies. People leave the Frost Belt because of the WEATHER, not the taxes.
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Actually, MANY countries DID send aid to the U.S. after Katrina. They also DID send aid after 9/11, first to the U.S. action in Afghanistan, then to the fraudulent war against Iraq based on lies about Iraqi assistance to Al-Qaeda. I REALLY am tired of Americans lying about the trivial amounts sent to STARVING countries as foreign aid, and denying the FACT that the U.S. has received a great deal of aid and investment from abroad. China is well understood to have subsidized the U.S. deficit, and thousands of foreign corporations and millions of foreign individuals have invested very heavily in the U.S. Illegal aliens do NOT get Social Security or welfare, and legal immigrants get only what people properly here are ENTITLED to. Social Security is NOT bankrupt. And if you think the U.S. is as corrupt as any Third World country, you don't know one dratted thing about corruption in the Third World, which is ASTONISHING. It is not Obama's Administration that DOUBLED the national debt. That was Dumbya's. In short, just about EVERYTHING you say is not just plain wrong, but also maliciously and probably knowingly false.
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Let's explode this lie about poor people not paying taxes. The poor pay sales taxes, excise taxes, gasoline taxes, utility taxes, property taxes (directly or to their landlord), and on and on.
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The U.S. does not give "billions and billions" to foreign countries. Foreign aid is at most 1% of the Federal budget. Mubarak wasn't given a CENT. Egypt was given foreign aid, but much less for its 82M people than was given to Israel, for its 5.6M Jews. Odd that we never hear condemnation of the $3B a year given to Israel, isn't it?
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What a bunch of bull. $250K a year is now poverty-level, you'd have us believe. Be quiet.
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All wrong, esp. the part about Bush knowing you can't spend your way out of a recession. BUSH launched the initial bank bailout.
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Did you even read the article? It refers to tax increases on the RICH, who are the ONLY people who have benefited in any way from anything in the past decade.
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The rich contribute essentially NOTHING to society. They do NOT "keep the economy going"; that would be CONSUMERS, and the rich consume almost nothing per year because they already HAVE everything they need -- and more. The rich do NO WORK. They create NOTHING. They live off OTHER people's labor. But they do manage to do one thing really well: fool stupid people into thinking the rich are indispensable.
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What an interesting concept: PUNISH public service. Why not simply abolish government altogether, since NO ONE will want to serve if public service is PUNISHED.
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[In reply to someone who compared Obama to a skunk, half black, half white, and all smelly:] Pls do not pretend that you object to the President's WHITE half.
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Actually, local taxes ARE up, in many places. My property taxes were raised 16% in one year, in NJ, because our REPUBLICAN Governor cut aid to localities, in his PRETENSE of cutting government. So localities across NJ have had to RAISE taxes. That is [the] Republican version of fiscal responsibility: disown your OWN responsibilities, and push things off onto others.
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Dopy, ridiculous comment. Nobody is talking about KILLING the rich, only about TAXING them.
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And what, exactly, do you think the rich think about the rest of us?
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Your [flat tax] proposal is indeed "simple", as i[n] "retarded". It shows absolutely no understanding of the realities of economics, and does not allow for adjustment to emergencies. If you don't understand something -- and it would seem that you don't understand ANYTHING about the real world -- just be quiet.
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"Joanne" is surely NOT an economist. But then, she doesn't really claim to be an "economist", only an "economis". Perhaps that's her cover.
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The Radical Right is incapable of fairness or truth. You point out the truth, and some dumb Rightwinger says you are ATTACKING! They are incapable of seeing the large picture. Every informed person on planet Earth knows that Brazil is an emerging power of importance: 203 million people in an area larger than the Lower 48, which is largely energy independent, in large part because of biofuel. Every sensible person knows that good relations between the U.S. and Brazil, as well as other parts of OUR Hemisphere, are very important to our future. But the Radical Right knows NOTHING and understands nothing.
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Illegal aliens receive NO government benefits. Stop lying.
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The law does NOT authorize illegals to receive benefits. To say that some illegals violate the law is repetitive, and is akin to saying that thieves are PERMITTED to steal. No, they steal DESPITE the law, not because of the law. Killers kill, thieves steal, but the fault is not in the law.
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So [educational activity by Planned Parenthood] excuses their murdering babies, does it? That's like saying we should not prosecute the Mafia because some of its activities are "victimless crimes", like gambling and prostitution. So we should just turn a blind eye to contract killings.
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"Marxist" actually means something. It is not an empty name, like "poopyhead".
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"Regime" refers to an UNelected government.
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The rich don't "earn" "their" money by any "sweat"! What are you TALKING about? The bulk of the rich don't work hard at all. You will NEVER be rich, because the rich will SEE to that! But you want to serve them. They have FOOLED foolish people into thinking "Oh, you wouldn't want higher taxes on the rich, because YOU might be rich someday." NO YOU WON'T. If you're not rich by age 30, there is essentially no chance that you will EVER be rich, in life.
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The "Fair Tax" is a SCAM upon the stupid. It is Three-Card Monty writ large. It gives the rich even more than they have now, and shifts even more of the burden of everything onto the poor and middle class.
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So the President of the United States should go on vacation without security, eh? I suppose you never heard that SEVERAL Presidents have been ASSASSINATED.
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Seniors are being robbed by a Cost of Living Adjustment rule that does not relate to the real costs. Th[at] needs to be fixed, by Congress and the President working together. But the Republican Party wants to DESTROY Social Security, not fix it.
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As usual, the Radical Right reverts to The Big Lie Technique. Actually, as YOU WELL KNOW, the world ADORES Obama.
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You plainly do not see that the poor and middle class are being set against each other to keep their attention off the RICH, who are the ONLY ones benefiting from the economy. You want to cut off the pittance we give to STARVING countries, so that poor people elsewhere literally STARVE TO DEATH! And all so the rich can have 14 houses and 25 cars!
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How is it that you resent the President's playing golf and such, but not the obscenely RICH doing so? The idle rich are fine with you, but the President of the United States is not entitled to a vacation, even tho he has a job that would CRUSH THE LIFE OUT OF YOU if you had to do it for TEN DAYS.
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Exactly how much do you think YOUR representatives in Congress should get for representing YOU and tending to the demands of 700,000 constituents, THOUSANDS of whom ask their Congressmember or Senator for help with veterans benefits, immigration problems, scholarships, and a HOST of other problems? Oh, I guess $1.49 a year would do. So hundreds of thousands of people entitled to government services can't get them, because members of Congress cannot help, so what?
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Plainly you did not understand what he said, which is to get the economy moving again, and FULLY EMPLOY the presently unemployed and under-employed, but tax the rich more at least until the economy rebounds.
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So the corporations have more money but don't spend it, and it's GOVERNMENT'S fault, not the corporation's fault? Do you really think that ANYONE believes that?
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All nonsense and lies. Taxes are NOT taken out of the economy but RETURNED to the economy for socially useful projects. And the people who do not pay income taxes -- a figure that no one seems to agree on -- include many CHILDREN below the working age, and DO pay other taxes (sales, excise, utility, telefone, property taxes (for their own house or their landlord's), and on, and on. They are also the ones who serve in the military, police, and fire departments. I don't see ANY rich people there, do you?
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All nonsense. The Federal Government has NOTHING to do with the price of gasoline, which is the result of SPECULATORS capitalizing on unrest in the Middle East to line their pockets. Health insurance has been going up by double or triple digits for over a decade, under Bush as much as now. At least the "spend and tax, democrats" want to TAX, not just spend, and want to tax the RICH, who have all the money. The Republicans just wanted to spend, so DOUBLED the national debt under Bush.
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So those TEN MILLION MORE Americans who voted for Obama than for McCain were PAID to vote for him? You speak nonsense.
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You are inventing statistics. Pls stop. Altho deporting illegals is definitely something we should do, it will make very little impact on the larger economics. It won't for a second stop the export of jobs by greedy corporations. Indeed, it would likely raise wages across the board, by some slight amount, once unfair competition is eliminated. That would give the greedy rich an excuse to export even MORE jobs. It is a combination of free trade and the export of jobs that has fundamentally subverted our economy, and illegal aliens' part in this national crisis is relatively trivial.
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Crazy anarchist idiocy! You want the government to tax the government? What does that even MEAN? Let's see you do without government services: no defense department, no border patrol, no garbage pickup, firefiters, police, pothole repair, and on and on. If you think government is unnecessary, pls seek professional help.
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The Radical Right doesn't read the ARTICLES they comment on, so don't know that this article speaks about raising taxes only on the rich. And yes, martbild, Obama IS a multimillionaire, but STILL wants to raise taxes on the rich. You see, there ARE some honorable and decent rich people. There were even, during the "Rockefeller Republican" era, rich Republicans who favored socioeconomic justice for everyone.
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Why should there be "pain" for anyone? The rich would not be "taxed into oblivion". They USED to pay 78% and more in income taxes, but were still RICH. Now they pay a fraction of that and are OBSCENELY rich. And it is only because we REFUSE to tax the rich, because clever liars have persuaded stupid people that we NEED a few people to be obscenely rich, that we don't have all the money we need for all the work we need as a society to do.
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What are you talking about? The Obamas are multimillionaires -- which you are supposed to be all for. Rich people are supposed to be entitled to live a rich life, aren't they? The President of the United States HAS to travel on official visits. And sometimes he has to get out of Washington. I thought all you Radical Rightists WANTED people to get out of the Washington mindset by getting outside the Beltway. Make up your mind.
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Pls submit your own budget for review here. Tell us EXACTLY what can be cut, by how much, and how we can still fulfill our national obligations to our own citizens, to the planet, and to our role as the best, last hope of Earth, while massively cutting spending. If you can't do that, perhaps you should just be quiet.
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I don't understand why there are so many apologists for the crimes of the rich. The UNIONS "made" the rich export jobs. No, they didn't. The Government did. No, it didn't. NOBODY but the rich made these decisions to export jobs and subvert American workers. They and they alone need to be held to account.
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Lies again. The only people who can EASILY afford to pay higher taxes are the RICH. That is whom the Democrats want to tax more, so of course you lie and say it is ordinary people. Shameless!
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Not one of those corporations would move jobs overseas if they were BANNED from doing business in or selling to the United States.
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More lies. Poor people live somewhere, except of course for the homeless whom the rich LOVE to see. They pay RENT. The landlord pays property tax OUT of that rent. You Radical Rightwingers always say that the rich already pay most of the taxes, but now you claim that if we taxed them more, that increase wouldn't achieve a thing. Everyone sees thru your NONSENSE.
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We all know why you and your ilk hate the President, and it has nothing to do with his asserted lack of leadership skills. When he passe[d] "Obamacare", wasn't that a show of leadership skills? No, of course not. He "crammed it down our throats", but that didn't involve leadership! There is only ONE reason the Radical Right hates President Obama, and we all know what it is.
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Old people are supposed to lose SHORT-term memory, not long-term memory. Ronald Reagan TRIPLED the national debt, and by the time Bush the Elder left office, Republicans had QUADRUPLED the national debt. Then Clinton started to reverse it, with the biggest budget surplus in the history of the world in his last year. Bush the Younger DESTROYED that surplus in 9 months, then went on to DOUBLE the national debt that INCLUDED the QUADRUPLING under the Reagan-Bush years.
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emkober3, you have MISREPRESENTED how Social Security works. PRESENT wage earners pay for present SS recipients. The amount that any of us paid in does NOT equal the amount we receive in the future. It is not a bank account but an entitlement to receive in the future what we are paying for others now.
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Cut the "Obama Bin Laden" crap. The President of the United States is not entitled to pick teams in the NCAA? When did his job description require him to spend 0 time on anything but work? And last time I checked, it was oil companies and speculators who set the price of gas and collect all the profits.
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You couldn't take the pressure of being a member of Congress or Senator, and having to deal with the urgent problems of THOUSANDS of constituents -- 700,000 constituents per district, millions per Senator in large states -- but you resent these public servants being paid well -- even tho BILLIONAIRES are to have their taxes cut!
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Yes, the politicians take all the money we give them and stuff it in their pockets. It doesn't go out into the economy to pay the salaries of the military or food inspectors or highway inspectors or anything else. Stop being so meanspirited and ridiculous.
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Kindly cite to a legitimate website's statement that "Obamacare" entails ANY new taxes.
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You don't wonder any such thing. You know that the rest of the world ADORES Obama, and relies upon U.S. leadership and beneficence, be it in the Middle East, Japan, or anyplace else.
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Nonsense. Palin QUIT midterm, after presiding over a state with fewer people than my COUNTY. How is it that the Radical Right is suddenly Radical Feminist?
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NOBODY believes you voted for Obama.
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I suppose you don't know that the Federal portion of the gas tax goes to repair Federal highways. But they don't need repair, do they? They just magically last forever, with no maintenance. All your proposals have similar obvious problems, except for Buy American.
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Go ahead. Ignore that the story speaks to increasing taxes on the RICH, not middle class. No one expects the Radical Right to tell the truth, on anything.
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No, Democrats want working people to get the benefits of their labor. Republicans want to steal the labor, and make people work for peanuts, then take half the peanuts away in taxes so the rich don't have to pay anything.
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Will the Republican Party free itself from the racist chokehold it now suffers? I can remember decent Republicans, like Eisenhower, who sent troops into Little Rock to end segregation, and Nelson Rockefeller, who favored social and economic justice for all. But people complained that the "Big Tent" parties were too much like each other, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and asserted that we needed more ideological parties. Now we have a deep ideological divide. Are we happy yet?
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You focus on TRIVIA, and insult the people who work very hard for their constituents. Perhaps YOU don't deserve any constituent services, or any quality people in Government, but I do. I also want the U.S. to keep poor people in foreign countries from STARVING TO DEATH, but you want them to die! Money is much more important than people, right?
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What "we" has to pay more in taxes? All of us, including those who are lucky to have $2 left when we get our next paycheck? Or the rich, who will have $140,000 left before their next check, or dividend, or whatever?
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Nobody wants to read reams of 'facts' from the Heritage Foundation, a rightwing bunch of loons, except other RadRite loons. This is a verbatim repeat of something posted days ago on another topic, and is followed up by another cut-and-paste comment that SHOULD have been included here. If you are going to repeat things, at least combine the things that are supposed to go together. But better, stop repeating the same posts.
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Welfare was reformed by Democrats and Republicans working together under Clinton, but you assert that it is unchanged.
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Cut the crap. The President's trips are, for the most part, on PUBLIC BUSINESS. All Presidents travel. It's part of the job. And the costs of those trips are TRIVIAL. Stop wasting our time on nonsense.
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Are you delusional in all aspects of life, or only as to politics? The UN just approved a resolution authorizing the U.S., Britain, France, and Arab League states to intervene in Libya, but you call Obama "the joke of the un". Do you think that anyone can look at the actual news, then your assertion, and believe your insane assertion rather than the news?
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Actually, the rich give LESS as a proportion of their income than do the middle class and even poor, who give small amounts to, for instance, their local church, Salvation Army, etc. They also give more of their TIME, whereas the rich give essentially NONE of their time to charitable work.
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So much for your claim to be an economist. Corporations that don't spend on investment, when there are tax credits for investment, do so not because of the tax code but because of their own greed, in wanting to distribute the funds to shareholders rather than create jobs, improve products or processes, increase market share, or any other socially useful activity. It is not stupid to spend on such things. It is stupid NOT to invest in the future.
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You are delusional. For one thing, $181 BILLION of the "bailout" money has already been repaid: http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/04/02/us-usa-bailout-repayments-idUSTRE6312FZ20100402. Oh, I forgot. The Radical Right doesn't care about facts. It just makes up any fact it thinks it needs, on the spur of the moment. $181B has been repaid? Let's say that there is "no hope of recovering any of the bailout money"! Yeah, that's the ticket!
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To Ono: There is no such thing as a Human Immunodeficiency Virus, and thus it doesn't work slowly, because it doesn't work at all. The patterns of AIDS are NOT those of an infection (www.virusmyth.com). Find another comparison.
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The only law Obama has broken is the law that the Radical Right seems to think we had, that all President's must be white.
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Actually, the tax code DID favor the poor and middle class until the Plutocratic Revolution (formally known as the Tax Reform Act of 1986), which starkly cut taxes on the rich.
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Treason is treason, and your loyalty is to the rich, not to workers, so don't pretend to care about American workers. So if ALL profits of ALL corporations go to shareholders in Japan, Germany, etc., no harm is done to the United States? Destroy American corporations for the good of the United States! Oh, that makes good sense. Instead of "What's good for General Motors is good for the USA", it's now "What's good for Toyota is good for the USA". Bull. You and your ilk are TRAITORS, pure and simple.
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Stop lying. Check the figures for the national debt at the TREASURY website: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm. Bush DOUBLED the debt. Obama hasn't remotely even doubled it, much less quadrupled it. If you mean the deficit, you'd still have to provide actual figures, and any short-term emergency is going to increase a temporary deficit. WWII was paid for on credit.
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STOP using block caps. As for our young people dying in the Middle East, very few such young people have died in the Middle East of late, and they are ALL volunteers.
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Cut the "non American" crap. President Obama is more American than you will ever be.
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To casciofl, NO ONE illegally in the United States gets to stay here because their children are citizens. That has NOTHING to do with their legal entitlements, and they can be deported even if they have 100 children born here. You're just LYING. Legal immigrants, I REPEAT, get only what anyone legally here is entitled to. ILLEGAL immigrants get DEPORTED if they show up to claim government benefits.
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To Ray..., $250K is hugely richer than most people, and we are not talking about raising taxes on people at that income level to confiscatory rates, only a trivial percentage increase they can easily afford. Essentially all such people itemize on their income-tax returns, so get credit for all kinds of things that poorer people who do NOT itemize do not get.
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To Joanne, who keeps pretending to be an economist: some excise taxes, gasoline taxes, utility taxes, telephone taxes, etc., ARE Federal taxes. They are not INCOME taxes, because they don't have enuf income to tax. But they are taxes, and do go to support the government. The poor and middle class also give time to service in the military, which the rich do not. If the rich were on the front lines, how eager do you think the rich would be to go to war hither and yon?
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I suppose you haven't heard about the Obama Administration's law to rein in bank fees. That's "one damned thing" that many people have benefited from.
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Why should there be any limit to the amount of income subject to Social Security tax? Most people pay SS tax on every dollar they make, but the rich do not. That's not fair. Make them pay SS tax on every dollar they make too.
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Finally a conservative who makes (a little) sense. The WAY to balance the budget and pay down the national debt is to increase the taxes on the wealthy and CLOSE all loopholes and all tax havens. If tax havens will not reform on their own, we can simply bomb THEM. That's a better use for our military than occupying Iraq.
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I am so TIRED of you meanspirited anarchists attacking the people who work so hard to deal with constituent services, read enormously complicated legislation, hold hearings to try to get some INFORMATION before making decisions (I know: what a CONCEPT!), and consider the possible positive and negative ramifications (unintended consequences, for instance) of anything they legislate. And resenting the STARVING people of the Third World that the PITTANCE (much less than 1% of the budget) that we spend on foreign aid receive! How vile.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,440 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 8:24 PM