To be clear, the Republicans in Congress were willing to shut down the government unless we extended tax cuts to billionaires, even at the cost of $900 billion in additional national debt, but the home mortgage interest deduction…? Well, that they’re not sure our nation can afford.
Merry Republican Christmas.
This idea will die once the servants quarters will result in a “tax increase” for the lord of the manor.
Limit the deduction to primary residence, or first time home buyer.
I sure am glad that people who by race horses will get a tax deduction (that one’s as much the D’s fault as the R’s) and that the Republican’s are vowing to fight the new food safety rules.
To All My Leftist Friends:
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice,
or secular practices of your choice,
with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others,
or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.
I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2011, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great.
Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere.
Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.
To My Conservative Christian Friends:
Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!
Insofar as the deduction has skewed property development toward our wasteful stand alone suburban sprawl housing pattern….I won’t miss it. This subsidy has contributed to one of the greatest economic inefficiencies (read waste) in history.
On the other hand, now that “white flight” is pretty much complete, this strikes me as a mean spirited attempt to pull the ladder up behind us.
shorter KLOWN @ 3
Happy Holidays!
(how long winded is right wing hate???)
Rich people are naked hypocrites. And they bought and paid for the politicians and media to spread their Goebbels propaganda to the masses, who they like poor and ignorant.
Orwell’s 1984 isn’t fiction anymore. Just read the paper or watch FAUX News. The republicans put talking points out there that are pure nonsense, which the press dutifully reports as “one side of the story.”
Facts and reality just get in the way of steering more and more money to the already stinking rich. Isn’t it funny how the Seattle Times completely ignores the explosion in wealth for the upper 1%, while on the other side they preach austerity in the form of pay cuts for average people. God damned hypocrites. They completely ignore the fact that the wealth of this country was looted by the uber rich and the corporations. And now they have the gall to tell average people that we have to sacrifice to get out of this deep hole. They complete ignore what in fact happened to to the wealth of this country through greed and corruption.
This isn’t class warfare. This is a crime. The fleecing of the poor and middle class is the biggest heist in the history of the world. And the Seattle Times completely ignores what happened because they are bought off with dirty money to run dirty lying campaign ads. It is a sick world.
@3 How unoriginal of you.
http://www.oakcreeknow.com/blo.....83144.html
Nice try, passing that comment off as something you came up with.
On a related note, the House Republicans will be renaming the Education and Labor Committee into the Education and Workforce Committee. Guess they were confused about why the committee was dealing with childbirth legislation.
Merry Christmas everybody.
@YLB:
Ran across this:
Thorium reactors: A decade away at least…
And this:
A simple reactor that mimics plants by turning sunlight into fuel has been demonstrated in the laboratory, boosting hopes for a large-scale renewable source of liquid fuel.
Speaking of Republican perfidy:
Instead, the reapportionment process foretells a changing dynamic of American politics, one in which minority voters will play an increasingly important and influential role. The eight states that will gain House seats this year appear to give Republicans an advantage, but, in truth, the redistricting playing field is far more level.
@10
I don’t think thorium is going to play out in any major way.
We’ve seen a lot of really promising research produce bio-fuels in a lot of different ways, but they haven’t been able to scale up to what we need. We need to become more efficient and bring our level of energy and resource use down to what theses fuels, plus a little oil and coal can provide.
Steve@7…
unless, of course, if mr. cynical is the corpulent limbaugh-like mr. kevin fischer in meat space. I do see a resemblance.
I actually agree with phasing out the mortgage interest deduction, but for a completely different reason. It just makes no sense to subsidize one housing type over another in my eyes… not to mention the sorts of distortions in the market this tax break has encouraged.
In fact, we’d do well to end a bunch of tax breaks. Make it simpler, progressive, and less reliant on an industries that design loopholes or find them for their clients.
Well, that deduction disproportionally favors the very wealthy as well…so if that’s what they want to do, I’ll take it.
@7
How disappointing!
I actually thought that Cynical had a bit of wit and generosity of spirit coming up with that greeting. At least he did post it, which was kind of humorous, without any Fox or Rasmussen links. That could be construed as progress.
Thorium is the final goal of India’s nuclear program. If it plays out there, it has to be big. Now the Indians are going about it in a very slow tortuous way but it’s probably unavoidable due to the political stances they’ve taken vis-a-vis the developed world. Frankly, if they’d agree to be a non-proliferation treaty signatory I’m not really sure they’d be all that much more along.
Thorium is 4 times more abundant than uranium. It’s the only way to go for nuclear power save for a breakthrough in the efficacy of proton-Boron fusion.
Zotz: yes of course it’s 10 years away if we go about it in a business-as-usual fashion. Which is unacceptable if anyone is the least bit serious about climate change, the environment, people’s health and safety and rising standards of living for all people on this planet.
The real problem is the fossil fuel industry. It has to die in order for humanity to advance.
Anyone see “The Walking Dead”??? That one scene where the CDC scientist exclaims, “Our civilization runs on fossil fuels. How stupid is that??” – that one scene completely captures the irony of our current situation.
@14
The mortgage deduction and many of the other deductions encourage spending, we need a tax code that encourage saving.
@3 Cynical has gotten lazy in his dotage. Absolutely everything he posts now is a cut-and-paste. Maybe he has Alzheimer’s?
@6 It won’t bother me if the Seattle Times’ circulation dwindles to the upper 1% they cater to. Then Frank Blethen can sell his $150 million printing plant and publish his “newspaper” on a Canon printer.
@18 That’s a paradox. Yes, we need to invest to create the jobs of the future; but saving at the expense of consumption will cost us jobs in the present that we can ill afford to lose.
Zotz: yes that research at Cal Tech looks interesting but the article is pretty sketchy – lots of unknowns there, but that approach is certainly a step in the right direction.
What exactly if a millionaire or a billionaire? I define a millionaire as someone whose net worth exceeds $1,000,000 and a billionaire as someone whose net worth exceeds $1,000,000,000. So, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are definitely billionaires under my definitions.
But here’s the rub – Bill Gates does not make $1,000,000,000 per year with his salary from Microsoft, so he’s taxed on his income at the same level as anyone else whose salary is the same as his. (I know, he has capital gains and interest from his investments, but let’s ignore that for now.) So, his $250,000 salary is taxed the same as a doctor, for example, whose salary is also $250,000 per year. There’s a good chance our doctor isn’t a billionaire, however, but he pays the same as Bill Gates.
There’s the problem for your Neo-socailist: you are insistent on taxing income when, in fact, what you really should tax is accumulated wealth each year. Forget income: people spend that. Go after the wealth and re-distribute it to those who don’t have as much as the millionaires and billionaire’s. Why shouldn’t Bill Gates or Warren buffet pay three or four billion dollars each year until you people exhaust their wealth. That’s only “fair,” right?
@22: What’s cool about it is:
*it can be home brew (3 “free” gallons a day!)
*it’s easily integrated with current transport infrastructure (anything that currently runs on fossil fuel.
*it uses cerium (abundant) catalyst, and
*it recycles atmospheric CO2 in the process.
I’ll grant you that it’ll probably get deep sixed (“someone” will buy and bury the patents) because it makes too much sense…
It’s tempting to demagogue the mortgage interest deduction as another Republican attack on the middle class, but the issue isn’t clear-cut. As PBA pointed out @4, the mortgage deduction distorts the market and causes economic inefficiencies, such as misallocation of capital, overbuilding, and outsized houses. And it not only favors the rich, it also discriminates against the poor.
But rather than speak in generalities or operate on broad assumptions, here are some facts and figures (courtesy of an article reprinted in ST):
1) “75 percent of the [tax savings] in 2008 went to individuals or couples making $100,000 or more”
2) “only one-quarter of all taxpayers benefit from the mortgage-interest deduction”
3) “Replacing the mortgage deduction with a tax credit ‘would reduce the tax subsidy by a decent amount for a small fraction of the population and increase it by a small amount for a large number of lower-income households,’ said Todd Sinai, a real-estate and taxation specialist at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School”
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....ion25.html
Full Disclosure: Roger Rabbit doesn’t benefit from the mortgage deduction because his burrow is free and clear.
@various: One thing that’s clear is states will have to find a new way of paying for roads as gas tax revenues plunge with the advent of electric cars and other vehicles that don’t depend on gasoline purchased from a pump.
23 – Yawwwn…. Yes a wealth tax is perfectly acceptable way of taxing. In Sweden they recently lowered their top income tax rates and substituted a modest wealth tax for the lost revenue.
And sorry socialist-baiter, no one here is supporting taxing to the extent that’s any more than necessary to run the government, and we’re all for cutting spending – in the bloated military and drug enforcement sectors in particular.
What do we want? Education. People can’t afford to go into debt to upgrade their skills. Budgets for community colleges are being cut. Kids “owe a house” once they finish college. This is an abomination.
How about health care? Canada’s unemployment rate is 7.6 percent and they have “Medicare for All”. Go figure. Germany’s unemployment rate is even lower and Germany is NOT exactly regarded by right wingers as a “capitalist paradise”.
@23:
You’re basically describing the old estate tax, except the estate tax is levied once, upon death.
Otherwise you’re continually taxing paper “estimations” of wealth.
Much simpler: Tax interest / dividends (above say $10k to protect small investors) the same as any other income (15% goes to 20-35%) and tax the value of all financial (stock/bond) transactions for assets owned less than 5 years. Note that the banksters received $140B in bonus “skim” (a tiny pecentage of a “big” number) last year for assets that if taxed at the transaction level would net considerable revenue.
@26
Yep!
@26
I’d like to see new road building pretty much stop. We can convert some low use rural roads to gravel and jersey barrier other older rural roads, rather than continue to fix them up. Leave them open to hikers and cyclist. We don’t have the cash to keep the whole system going.
@6: I’d be good with not building ANY new roads and decommissioning some old ones in the hinterlands (including some I now use regularly — I’ll make do).
Sorry @26, Roger.
Pyrtie…
Merry CHRISTmas!
Pyrite,
Merry CHRISTmas!
Happy Halidays to all. Especially to people like Roger Rabbitt, who do a tremendous job of both informing, and exposing right wing bullshit for what it is. Thank you for the public service that you provide.
Yeah, Merry Christmas everybody! I hope everybody’s enjoying the holiday season.
@35, 36: Double ditto.
@3 Back atcha, and then some, from liberal Christian yours truly.
coprolite @ 34
Happy Holidays!
@39:
For thirty years, Republicans have been extolling the virtues of “trickle-down” Economics. Give tax cuts to the wealthy, and the prosperity will trickle down to the rest of us.
Yet, for thirty years, real wages have remained stagnant. And, while Republicans have been quick to point out increased health care benefits, they’ve turned a blind eye to to sky-rocketing health care costs.
By now, the real “tricke-down” agenda should be clear. The prosperity isn’t supposed to tricke down. Only the pain of economic down-turns is supposed to trickle down.
@23 The problem with taxing accumulated wealth instead of income is that people who make $500,000 a year and spend every cent of it on high living would pay no taxes. A lot of the people living in million-dollar homes and driving Porsches have little or no net worth.
@28 I’m for eliminating the estate tax and eliminating the basis step-up heirs get. Most large estates consist of capital gains that have never been taxed before, and the basis step-up means that, without an estate tax, that income would never be taxed at all.
@32 I’ll meet you halfway. I’m for cutting off the road subsidies to the ingrates in the jackrabbit counties and using whatever gas tax money still trickles in to fix the potholes in Seattle streets.
@41 The reason we have recessions is because someone (not the working class) makes money from them.
40 – Thanks. That idiot had it coming for a long time.
And timing as they say is everything.
I am a Civil Servant
I thought this was an interesting passage from the review of the Autobiography of Mark Twain.
The stuff in the parenthesis () is my added interpretation
47 – Roger Rabbit should file that one away.
And every right wing fool should take a look at that one as well especially the likes of those resentment-driven dirtbags ld/LD(iot).
Watched It’s a Wonderful Life as so many of us do every HOLIDAY season.
Potter??? Huh. What’s his political orientation? Can only be one thing – right wing. Any troll who comes here would identify with that dirtbag.
And George Bailey?? A progressive of course.
Enjoy the end of your automatic Pers 1 raises, and most likely with a 24+ Billion defecit (Per Brian Sontag) your entire pension system will soon morph into the private equivalant..IE a 401K that you put all into, no matching funds.
Have a Merry Christmas and a new and exciting benefits year
51 – Potter couldn’t have said it better.
@44
I’m talking about a managed contraction. Giving up bits and pieces here and there and funneling the money into keeping up the highly used places- like Seattle!
The nice thing about asphalt is that it’s 100% recyclable. There might be a few places in Seattle where pavement could be scraped off, parks built, and the old pavement melted down to fix potholes.
http://www.depave.org./
wealth tax!
Ralph Nader “Tax wealth not work”. (Facts Says) The more money you have the easier it is to make more, so you should pay more. Plain and simple.
And by the way “you” didn’t make it. People get rich here in partnership with the government. The government paves the roads so your workers can get to work, has the police and fire dept. protect you. They keep others from pretending to be you, and ignore your patents. They are supposed to keep the playing field fair so the little guy doesn’t get crushed. On, and on, and on. All the self made millionaires had the government helping them all the way. It isn’t “their” money, part of it belongs to the rest of us that suffered in our own way subsidizing their profits.
Sorry to break it to all the John Wayne’s out there.
Disagree? Ask yourself. How hard would you have to work in Somalia to get ahead? Success is created by government, not hindered by it.
Combine wealth tax with a VAT.
What is left to do if youw need to make more money INVEST IT!
@51: So you feel it’s OK to break contracts on a whim…thank you very much. If you EVER bring up here the silly notion of “sanctity of contracts” then I shall be happy to tell you to shove it up your effing ass….lickspittle.
Success is created by government, not hindered by it.
Perfect. Well said.
Malthus to Hatch: The limits of “Christian charity”
Another fine conservative.
@59 Basically, the Cheap Labor Conservatives'(tm) Manifesto.
We’ve had various forms of “wealth taxation” for a long time…such as taxation of real property. Of course, this hits the lower and middle classes the hardest. For most members of the latter group, their primary residence makes up a greater percentage of their net worth than would be the case for the wealthy. People of even lesser means tend to be renters, in effect burdened with the property taxes of their landlords.
It would seem to make a degree of sense to tax holdings in stocks and bonds, or at least tax capital gains at the same rate as earned income–morally, it sucks for someone who sits and watches his portfolio to get off easier than the guy whose livelihood comes from the sweat of his brow. On the other hand, to change that would mean removing an artifice that makes Wall Street’s offerings look like a better deal than they are, and potentially engender a mass bailout from the securities markets. The results of such would most likely be catastrophic.
@61
And this is also the basis of the inheritance tax. It is designed to capture the appropriate tax on wealth/income that grew tax free in someones portfolio at the time that ownership is passed to heirs.
@ 61, 62
This was also the rationale for the original income tax. Income from labor wasn’t part of the original picture, taxes were originally imposed on income from securities and stock holdings. That changed in the mid-1920’s to include all income sources, the greater part of taxes being levied against the lower income brackets. Look at Mississippi and Texas, that old tax structure is still mostly in place.
@51 How much ignorance and factual error is it possible to pack into one short paragraph?
1) The state does not have, and never has had, a “deficit.” What they are talking about is a projected shortfall in anticipated revenues based on estimates of future economic activity in the state. The estimated shortfall for the next biennium is $4 billion, not $24 billion.
2) When they talk about underfunding of the state pension system, they are comparing estimated future benefit obligations to estimated future assets, which are based on actuarial projections of retiree longevity and “best guess” estimates of interest rates and investment returns. A few months ago, the Wall Street Journal listed Washington as one of only four states whose pension systems are fully funded. Based on current figures, it appears the older state pension funds, PERS 1 and TERS 1, are over 90% funded. That’s much, much better than almost any private corporate pension fund.
3) The concept of “matching funds” is largely irrelevant to PERS 1 and TERS 1, because those pension plans were closed to new members in 1977. Employees under PERS 1 and TERS 1 have always paid into the pension fund through payroll deduction, and still do. To the extent the legislature may fail to make employer matching contributions to those plans in the future, that would apply only to the small number of PERS 1 and TERS 1 members still in active employment.
4) The PERS 1 and TERS 1 automatic COLAs were a legislative add-on in 1995, and many PERS 1 and TERS 1 retirees have never received them, because they don’t kick in until age 65. I’m a PERS 1 retiree, and so is Mrs. Rabbit, but neither of us has ever received a pension COLA, automatic or otherwise, so we won’t miss it very much. Many other PERS 1 and TERS 1 retirees are in the same boat as we are.
The troubles of a handful of state pension funds, e.g., New Jersey, have been in the news recently. The wingers on this board have been superimposing those troubled funds on Washington state, which in fact has one of the best-run and most solvent state pension funds in the country — we’re in the top five among the states. They’re comparing rotten apple states to a fresh orange, and it’s intellectually dishonest and factually invalid to do so.
@ 65
Since when is it in the conservative mindset to make rational comparisons? Tell them to legalize gay marriage, and they’ll immediately accuse you of advocating child rape and bestiality. Tell them to legalize marijuana and they’ll immediately accuse you of wanting to sell heroin and cocaine in the elementary schools. Tell them to pay taxes as a fair share of income and they call you a communist.
Conservatives are insane. Nihilistic. Reactionary. Greed and selfishness are their only rationales for everything.
@7 It would appear that plagiarism is yet another of those Right Wing values. I just had to call out another lying conservative for that same thing on another board last week.
@47 Absofuckinglutely.
@64 I add my thanks to you for your seemingly sisyphean task of countering Right Wing bullshit with actual facts.
Roger, Brian Sontag just released his dire 24 Billion dollar shortfall. Mostly Pension related. so Eat it or weep, because soon you will all be joining the ranks of the private sector, and your life long pensions will be gone
Disallowing the interest deductions on homes will make it that much harder for an ordinary citizen to own a home.
Republicans as spoiled ignorant children. We can ALWAYS crank up our debt for toys they like (Iraq, tax cuts to the rich, etc) because according to Reagan and Cheney “Deficits don’t matter.”. But for liberal causes like tax cuts for small businesses, middle class or working poor? NO!!
How Republicans sleep at night without their heads exploding from cognitive dissonance I don’t know.
“CC Bud Baxter” wrote
Yeah George Soros fit your comments perfectly here “Bud”. His propaganda is well known. He is virulently anti-America. He funds his creation Media Morons. Did you know Media Morons was the motivation for Clay Duke to shoot at the Panama City School Florida school board.
Clay Duke wrote he was a Humanist. Sounds like he would have fit the bill on HA. Don’t peeps on Media Morons call themselves “Humanists”?
Clay Duke wrote he was a Freedom Fighter. Sounds like he would have fit the bill on HA. Don’t peeps on Media Morons call themselves “freedom fighters”?
Clay Duke was upset the school board called for lower taxes. Clay Duke thought the lower taxes was the reason his wife lost her job. Don’t peeps on Media Morons rail against “lower taxes”?
Clay Duke was a regular visitor to Media Morons. Clay Duke listed it as one of his favorite sites just like these…
Yet Media Morons dropped Clay Duke like a hot potato.
So one could go further and claim there is blood on Soros hands. Clay Duke was shot by a guard and then Clay Duke killed himself. Hey it’s guilt by association, something played every day here on HA by the moronic liberals.
So now let’s venture further. Replace those sites with “Fox News”, “Bill O’Reilly”, “Rush Limbaugh”, “Tea Party”, Sean Hannity”, Neil Boortz”, Michelle Malkin”, or “Glenn Beck,” and you’d be looking at the lead story on all the nightly newscasts. There would be a small warning about the video as a necessary back drop with the actual shooting playing as a continual loop. Goldy would be linking the video clips. The HA Crew would have Chris I Lost My Tinge Matthews, Keith Worlds Worst Person Odormann and Dr Rachel US Constitution Maddow clips all over the place. The HA moronic class would be calling for death to Fox News.
There is one good thing here “Bud”. Clay was a liberal who probably never shot a gun before. The school board can be glad of that! Didn’t HA leftist call people like Clay who lived in a trailer and drank beer; gun toting redneck racist Tea Party peeps? Another myth destroyed!
Seems the leftist propaganda wing funded by Soros stirs hatred and attempted murder. But all you read on Media Morons are the “supposed” crimes of Glenn Beck and others. Yet, not one of you HA hypocrites called for the shutdown and elimination (death) of Media Morons. Truth is a stranger to HA leftists. Now why is that? How HA moronic leftist sleep at night without their heads exploding from cognitive dissonance Puddy doesn’t know.
Pavlov predicts ylb and Lib Unscientist are already trying to discredit Puddy’s entry.
Good luck idiots!
“CC Bud Baxter” wrote
Yeah George Soros fit your comments perfectly here “Bud”. His propaganda is well known. He is virulently anti-America. He funds his creation Media Morons. Did you know Media Morons was the motivation for Clay Duke to shoot at the Panama City School Florida school board.
Clay Duke wrote he was a Humanist. Sounds like he would have fit the bill on HA. Don’t peeps on Media Morons call themselves “Humanists”?
Clay Duke wrote he was a Freedom Fighter. Sounds like he would have fit the bill on HA. Don’t peeps on Media Morons call themselves “freedom fighters”?
Clay Duke was upset the school board called for lower taxes. Clay Duke thought the lower taxes was the reason his wife lost her job. Don’t peeps on Media Morons rail against “lower taxes”?
Clay Duke was a regular visitor to Media Morons. Clay Duke listed it as one of his favorite sites just like these…
Yet Media Morons dropped Clay Duke like a hot potato.
So one could go further and claim there is blood on Soros hands. Clay Duke was shot by a guard and then Clay Duke killed himself. Hey it’s guilt by association, something played every day here on HA by the moronic liberals.
So now let’s venture further. Replace those sites with “Fox News”, “Bill O’Reilly”, “Rush Limbaugh”, “Tea Party”, Sean Hannity”, Neil Boortz”, Michelle Malkin”, or “Glenn Beck,” and you’d be looking at the lead story on all the nightly newscasts. There would be a small warning about the video as a necessary back drop with the actual shooting playing as a continual loop. Goldy would be linking the video clips. The HA Crew would have Chris I Lost My Tingle Matthews, Keith Worlds Worst Person Odormann and Dr Rachel US Constitution Maddow clips all over the place. The HA moronic class would be calling for death to Fox News.
There is one good thing here “Bud”. Clay was a liberal who probably never shot a gun before. The school board can be glad of that! Didn’t HA leftist call people like Clay who lived in a trailer and drank beer; gun toting redneck racist Tea Party peeps? Another myth destroyed!
Seems the leftist propaganda wing funded by Soros stirs hatred and attempted murder. But all you read on Media Morons are the “supposed” crimes of Glenn Beck and others. Yet, not one of you HA hypocrites called for the shutdown and elimination (death) of Media Morons. Truth is a stranger to HA leftists. Now why is that? How HA moronic leftist sleep at night without their heads exploding from cognitive dissonance Puddy doesn’t know.
Pavlov predicts ylb and Lib Unscientist are already trying to discredit Puddy’s entry.
Good luck idiots!
i think we should call their bluff and watch them “shut down” the government.
@70
easy answer. they sleep smug in knowing they arn’t deluded up in the same way you are.
just like you sleep well in knowing you arn’t deluded in the same way they are.
but under no circumstances do we examine our own delusions. hypocrisy is the american way!
Yes Roger Dumb Rabbit,
Puddy commends you on your
of providing useless facts like the King County Law Enforcement Budget which only proved the King County Sheriff was correct in saying his part was around 2% not around 8% as you were trying to “persuade” the moronic ones who take your swill as gospel!
@72…
The dumb fuck aka the big p’dumbski aka “Colonel Sanders Favorite Chicken” ™ strikes again.
Weakly.