Monday Night Video – Republican Tax Weakness

September 24, 2012 by Leave a comment

Democrats could have been attacking Republicans on taxes all along, particularly for the inequities in the code which mean that the poor and the middle-class pay much more in terms of what they need to pay for food and housing, while the wealthy and corporations get tax incentives to make more profit. But Democrats have traditionally run from the tax fight. Lost in the details — and the fun — of Romney’s tax returns and disdain for the 47% is that the Democrats have finally found a way to reverse the tax debate and force Republicans to pay defense. The Obama campaign is handling this very well in their ads so far, not at all resting on the laurels of their recent advances in the polls.

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Friday Night Charts & Graphs – Non-Payers of Income Tax by State

September 21, 2012 by 7 Comments

As noticed on DailyKos, reminded of by 0dysseus, and featured on the Tax Foundation website.

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Tuesday Night at the DNC – Harry Reid

September 4, 2012 by Leave a comment

I love hard-hittin’ Harry, but is it just my ears, or does Harry Reid actually say “Caylyn Islands” instead of Cayman? Is there some new set of tax-dodging islands used by Mitt Romney that are so obscure that I’ve never heard of them?

REID: Today’s Republicans party believes in two sets of rules — one for millionaires and billionaires, and another for the middle class. And this year they’ve nominated the strongest proponent and clearest beneficiary of this rigged game — Mitt Romney. Never in modern American history has a presidential candidate tried so hard to hide himself from the people he hopes to serve. When you look at the one tax return he has released, it’s obvious why. It’s obvious why there’s only been one. We learned that he pays a lower tax rate than middle class families. We learned that he chose Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island tax shelters over American institutions. And we can only imagine what new secrets would be revealed if he showed the American people a dozen years of tax returns, like his father did.

So, care to rebut this, Mr. Romney? Is this not what we learned?

SEE ALSO
Desert Beacon: Harry’s Right Jab
Blaria: Democratic National Convention: Day One

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Want to Save an Easy Trillion Dollars? Step One, Cancel the Bush Tax Giveaways to the Rich

August 27, 2012 by Leave a comment

ThinkProgress has a short post up which includes this graphic from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, demonstrating how allowing the Bush tax cut for the wealthy to expire would save nearly a trillion dollars over the next ten years.

I would like to point out that this is a slightly conservative option. A centrist option would aim to recover the revenue that we lost from having these tax cuts in the first place. A progressive option would aim to recover the lost revenue and then cut the deficit even further through additional tax hikes on those who can afford it.

As is usually the case, the progressive option would be the most fiscally responsible, but the children in the beltway would rather clap their hands harder so that one day Reaganomics will work.

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We Already Know That Mitt Romney Lied About His Tax Returns

August 17, 2012 by 2 Comments

Most of the traditional press likes to avoid strenuous activities such as research. After all, how could CNN be bothered to “look up” such trivial things as “facts” and “the historical record” when they’re busy figuring out to give their talking heads some substance by turning them into holograms?

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Friday Night Fight – Mitt Romney v. Harry Reid

August 3, 2012 by 2 Comments

Shorter Mitt Romney:

It’s Harry Reid’s responsibility to provide evidence of the precise tax dodges that I refuse to divulge.

Mitt Romney - Caricature

Mitt Romney – Caricature (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)

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Tuesday Night Video – Robert Reich Explains Why Taxes Need to be Raised on the Rich

July 24, 2012 by Leave a comment

H/t: The Fifth Column

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Wednesday Night Charts & Graphs: Historical Precedents for Tax Returns

July 18, 2012 by Leave a comment

Are we all in agreement now that this tax return issue is becoming bigger and bigger the longer and longer that Mitt Romney refuses to disclose his financial past? Even conservatives are saying that now, and while I used to figure he was simply being an ass, now it really seems like he’s hiding something significant. And being an ass. Does the Obama campaign know what it’s talking about when they suggest that Mittens might have avoided paying any taxes at all in 2009?

BUSINESS WEEK: As a member of the ultra-rich, Romney probably wasn’t spared major losses [in 2008]. And it’s possible he suffered a large enough capital loss that, carried forward and coupled with his various offshore tax havens, he wound up paying no U.S. federal taxes at all in 2009. If true, this would be politically deadly for him. Even assuming that his return was thoroughly clean and legal—a safe assumption, it seems to me—the fallout would dwarf the controversy that attended the news that Romney had paid a tax rate of just 14 percent in 2010 and that estimated he’d pay a similar rate in 2011.

Does the Romney campaign know what it’s doing by stonewalling? It’s getting too late to release them now and defend a cover-up in addition to the initial tax avoidance.

Filed under Charts and Graphs, Mitt Romney, Politics Tagged with ,

Tuesday Night Charts & Graphs – Spending, Taxes, and the Deficit under Obama

May 15, 2012 by 5 Comments

Michael Linden, the Director for Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, has provided a terrific chart for ThinkProgress. Turns out that spending, taxes, and the deficit are all lower under President Obama than they were when he took office. I’d rather that strategic spending went up in order to recover from the depression, but hey, it’s nice to have a few facts introduced into the political discussion on deficits and the like. If you know a way to get the mainstream media to pay attention, please let me know!

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Robert Reich on The Daily Show

April 20, 2012 by 2 Comments

Robert Reich appeared on The Daily Show Thursday night, making much sense on taxes, government spending, and the influence of money.

On taxes.

REICH: Under Dwight Eisenhower, the highest marginal income tax rate was 91%. He was a Republican. He was a former general. And, you know, nobody accused him of being a communist or a socialist. And I’m not suggesting we go to 91%. I’m just saying, in those years, we had three decades after the second World War, the economy grew faster than it’s grown since and even after all the deductions and tax credits, people at the top were still taxed around 55, 56 percent.

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Austere Consequences

March 6, 2012 by Leave a comment

Paul Krugman keeps churning out sharp insights that can be difficult to find in the traditional media. He had another terrific piece recently, entitled Austerity, American Style, in which he notes the decline in real government spending during this attempt at recession recovery, in opposition to the past two. Perhaps that’s why it’s taking so long? He makes the point even more directly in Reagan, Obama, Austerity, by comparing recent government spending with that of Reagan’s government in 1982.

At this point in the Reagan recovery government spending had risen 11.6 percent; this time around it’s actually down by 2.6 percent. So if we had followed the Reagan track, spending would be almost 15 percent higher.

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Best of the Week: The Colbert Report on Keystone XL, the Catholic Church, and more…

February 18, 2012 by 2 Comments

MONDAY (Feb. 13, 2012)

The guest was activist Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org and one of the forces against the Keystone XL pipeline.

I love that Stephen Colbert manages to regularly include activists in his entertainment.
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