Banned, I was BANNED!

[Sputty]

That pizza is old...They've had meatlovers for as long as I can remember

[Lexington_Steele]

What were you trying to say there? It was saying that top 50% of the income bracket paid 96% of the taxes and that the top 1% paid 37%.

I am not sure what you were trying to say. Are you saying it is not fair that people that make bucketloads of money have to pay more taxes than those who can barely afford to survive?

[mistled]

Originally posted by Lexington_Steele
What were you trying to say there? It was saying that top 50% of the income bracket paid 96% of the taxes and that the top 1% paid 37%.

I am not sure what you were trying to say. Are you saying it is not fair that people that make bucketloads of money have to pay more taxes than those who can barely afford to survive?

Sorry nav, I've got to get in this pointless mess.

He's obviously pointing out that since the top 50% pay 96% of the taxes, then they are the one's who need the break. Nav was simply giving you the figures to back up MrVic's point.

Here's where liberals screw this up. The rich are always going to pay more in taxes, dollar wise. They should. They do. It's that simple. The problem is that currently if I only make a little bit of money, the government takes 15% (or less depending) of it, but if I make a lot of money, the government takes 42% of it. 15% from the rich would still be more than 15% from the poor, and that would be fair to everyone. What's so hard to get about that?

mistled

[mistled]

Originally posted by Sputty
Heh, stimulating the economy by destroying the surplus even though there is now way of boosting it really becasue it's a post boom recession.

There's no such this as a surplus when you are talking about the federal government. It's not like they spent what they were given wisely and now have extra money to play with.

It's that they stole too much money and got caught with it before they could spend it. A 'surplus' is simply where Americans were overtaxed.

[mistled]

Originally posted by Lexington_Steele
Like I said before, what has bush done about the recession? Besides Greenspan, Bush is in the position that is best equipped to do something about the economy.

No. The American people and business owners are best equipped to do something about the economy. All they need is for the government to stop taking their money and get the hell out of the way.

As far as Enron, are you telling me that there is nothing we could do to try to prevent something like that happeneing again? What do I want them to do? How about something like quarterly audits, or some kind of commision that that keeps an eye on accounting firms. How about we tighten the rules concerning how companies are able to manipulate their reports (like not allowing them to push income or debts back to later reports to manipulate their stock prices). But no, I don't think a republican, especially one coming out of big bussiness, will ever put some kind of check on big bussiness. Bush's stance on Enron was nearly non-existant. The reason for this was that Bush and Cheaney have engaged in similar practices with their companies.

His USA Patriot act is one of my favorites. Who needs fredom anyways.

Did everyone just miss the hypocracy in these statements?? You say that we could regulate everything in business and then have the balls to talk about freedom??

Bush didn't need a stance on Enron. They broke the law. Why would Bush need to come out and say that's a bad thing?? No shit he thinks it's a bad thing. That's like asking why Bush hasn't come out and condemned the murderer they caught here last week. It's just too obvious to mention. This kind of thing isn't even asked unless the person is on a witchhunt.

mistled

[Lexington_Steele]

15% income taxes from everyone is not enough to support our government. (it is not their wages where they are getting heavily taxed, it is their capital gains)

So what are you going to do, raise taxes for everyone so that even more people are below the poverty line? Or are you going to take the money from those who can afford to pay it. (I would miss $10,000 alot more than bill gates would miss $1 billion).

Again, giving a tax break to the rich has nothing to do with what is fair. It is meant to stimulate the economy by allowing bussinesses to expand and create jobs. These benefits are supposed to trickle down to the middle and lower classes.

A tax cut for the rich has absolutely nothing to do with the rich being unfairly over-taxed.

[mistled]

If the federal government would stick to doing its duties as clearly and very specificially stated in the United States Constitution, 15% from everyone would be more than adequate to run on.

I personally find all the class envy among democrats amusing. It's amazing how democrats can have so much animosity towards the rich when all of the democratic leaders are very rich individuals.

By the way, you do realize that a couple that each makes $50,000 a year is among the rich and upper class, don't you? I find it interesting that we always mention Bill Gates when we should be mentioning the lead programmer where we work.

[Lexington_Steele]

Originally posted by {BOHICA}mistled
No. The American people and business owners are best equipped to do something about the economy. All they need is for the government to stop taking their money and get the hell out of the way.

Did everyone just miss the hypocracy in these statements?? You say that we could regulate everything in business and then have the balls to talk about freedom??

Bush didn't need a stance on Enron. They broke the law. Why would Bush need to come out and say that's a bad thing?? No shit he thinks it's a bad thing. That's like asking why Bush hasn't come out and condemned the murderer they caught here last week. It's just too obvious to mention. This kind of thing isn't even asked unless the person is on a witchhunt.

mistled

On the first point I disagree. I believe their needs to be a balance between regulation and freedom for bussinesses. Without regulation we would see things like monopolies. Do you really believe that pure capitalism works?

Do you want your power company to be able to charge you whatever they want because they know you need electricity. How about $1000 a month electric bills. What prevents this from happening? It is regulation of bussiness.

What is preventing microsoft from taking over the world? government regulation.


As far as John Ashcroft and human rights are concerned I think there needs to be a balance there too and the US patriot act went too far. I believe that the government should not be able to hold me indefinately with no charges. I am against military tribunal trials. I think my rights were just fine before 9/11 and it was the FBI and the CIA dropped the ball.

9/11 did not happen because I have the right to a speedy trial.

I noticed you did not comment on Ashcrofts racist tendancies.

With Enron, you say they broke the law, but where are all the arrests and penalties?? I count two arrests. I could be missing some, but it doesn't seem like very many people got punished. I see that somehow our system allowed an Enron to occur. I also see that Bush made no effort to prevent an enron from happenenig in the future.

[mistled]

I don't have a problem with some business regulation. I do have a problem with the idea that we should just keep adding new regulations every time someone breaks an old one. We aren't enforcing the ones we have, why create new ones to not enforce?

What prevents $1000/mon electric bills is that people couldn't pay it and as such, the demand is not there. It doesn't matter that everyoen needs electricity if no one can afford to buy it. The electric company knows this.

As far as monopolies go, look back at the break up of AT&T in the southeast. After they 'fixed' that monopoly, the prices of everything went up and the service got worse. Some fix.

Look at Microsoft since you brought them up. Windows is a monopoly. Linux is free and still can't compete to the average consumer. Everyone runs a Windows OS of somesort (and here come all the people who don't to post). Most of the computers in the world run Windows. And MS doesn't charge $1000 a pop for it. They could. People would still buy it (It'd just be bundled into the cost of the computer they buy). The proliferation of it wouldn't be nearly as great though, and they know that. Regulation hasn't stopped Microsoft because they simply have a better product than anyone else for the average user. (the same can be said for AOL, even if I do despise them).

I agree with you about the Patriot Act. It's a load of crap from what I can remember of it.

I didn't comment on Ashcroft's racist tendancies because I don't know anything about them.

You asked where the arrests were in the Enron case. That's my entire point. We don't need more regulations. We need to arrest people for breaking the laws that we have. Again, Bush shouldn't have to do anything else. Our law enforcement should be enforcing the current law.

mistled

[MrVicchio]

Look,

REAL Simple, and This one is directed at that idiotic comment about trickle down economics. Where do you think the Boom of the 90's came from? Hmm.. It has been nailed down as starting with RONALD REAGANS SUPPLY SIDE TAX CUTS! WOOT! Amazing thing that, economics....

[Sputty]

Wow, here's an oxymoron http://www.cia.gov/cia/information/bush.html

I know it's named after Sr. but it's still funny when you first read see the title.

[Lexington_Steele]

Originally posted by MrVicchio
Look,

REAL Simple, and This one is directed at that idiotic comment about trickle down economics. Where do you think the Boom of the 90's came from? Hmm.. It has been nailed down as starting with RONALD REAGANS SUPPLY SIDE TAX CUTS! WOOT! Amazing thing that, economics....

I don't see Reagan as the one who fixed the economy. If you remeber we were in a recession throughout Bush sr.'s presidency.

The only good thing that Reagan did was the way he dealt with the Soviet Union.

[MrVicchio]

Liquid Lex...

If you are going to be a hata' atleast have your facts right....

We were NOT in a recession throught Bush Sr. term, there was a dip in the economy during the last 18 months of his precidency, WHICH by the way was all ready on its way to recovery when Slick Willy came on to the scene. Go, sersiouly, GO LOOK THIS UP MAN. Go find three, four web sites that break it down, you will see if you look around, that most independant, non-partisan economist say, Reagan's "voodoo economics" are in fact, the genisis of the 90's boom.

[Zanzibar]

Originally posted by Sputty
BTW, Bush has strained relations with almost every close country that U.S. had in the world. Although Blair is for war and following the states polls show that the population is against war.

lol you have no idea the bad p[ress bush gets over in england. not necesserily because of wot hes done in america (we generally dnt give a toss) but for bein bum chums with blair (our prime minister) oh and choking on a pretzil... yeh i really hate blair for doin all this stuff with bush.
yeah and wot makes it worse is that loads of the troops invading afghanistan british. the royal marines led it, bush used british special forces for operations INSTEAD of using delta force for ex.
hes a knob. end of story. lol

Originally posted by MrVicchio

Wow, here's an oxymoron http://www.cia.gov/cia/information/bush.html

I know it's named after Sr. but it's still funny when you first read see the title.

[/B]

hahahaha PRETZEL MAAAAAN!

[Zanzibar]

WE NEED ANOTHER CHURCHILL AND ROOSEVELT!!!