And Allen West and his retarded Tea Party “friends” know it.
Which explains why they have manufactured a budget crisis that need not exist:
And that doesn’t even begin to account for the savings we could have by leaving Afghanistan and Iraq, immediately.
In a side note why don’t I lay out my version of the tax items you raise above. Add them all up together, both the left and right column, subtract the 11.2 billion for estate taxes (what’s mine is mine even if I’m dead) and you can cut it all from the federal budget. The mortgage deduction for vacation homes is new to me since the last time I owned one was only allowed to claim primary domicile but I see that the idiots in the NY State legislature or maybe NYC in an attempt to gouge the rich are declaring that anybody with a second home in NY must pay NY state income taxes for the full amount of their annual total income even if their primary residence is CT or MA. I think if that goes through there will be an awful lot of cheap properties on Long Island.
If you look at those idiotic programs such as Head Start there is no evidence that they improve student performance at all. Most of the tax are bogus too. Legal services or the poor, why not just implement Lawcaide and cap all Lawyer fees at no more than $30/hour.
So, all that said, we’re in near perfect agreement again! How frightening.
The bottom right item is mis-labeled, it is now the Obama tax cut for the rich.
Apple and Google, to name TWO companies, have offices overseas that enable them and OTHERs to avoid taxes. Thanks to the Democrats and Republicans.
The Middle class ALWAYS get stuck with the tax bill, there’s no tax havens for us, we can’t do a Charlie Rangel, by the way, why isn’t he in jail for tax evasion?
I have NO problem in taxing the more wealthy Americans but we ALL know they will find a way.,legal or otherwise to avoid paying their fair share.
By the way, Skippy, per your past comments on Libya..what is this crap from Kerry and McCain about MILITARY intervention(under NATO, yeah, right!!1)
Is a Libyan life worth more than an American?
In the DRC and the Congo people are dying all the time due to intercine violence and what makes a Libyan more valuable than an African?
I guess all these knuckleheads need to watch “Black Hawk Down” or the “Sand Pebbles”…just saying…
“in the DRC and the Congo”‘
oooppps, I meant to say the Cote’ de Ivorie
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2011/03/08/to_fix_the_corporate_tax_tax_gross_receipts_98902.html#
to wit
http://www.realclearmarkets.com
Skippy,
I thought one of the promises from Obama in 2008 was that he was going to “narrow in” on government spending so that we can cut out wasteful spending. Looking at some of those services that go to the poor, why don’t you find out how much states like CA, TX, AZ and others spend on persons who receive those services who are not legal residents.
Instead of the taxpers footing the bill, just tally up how much it costs us for each illegal from each country, and take that money out of the foreign aid that we give them each year.
Mexico should be paying us a barrel of oil of each illegal alien/month that we provide services to.
Skippy,
I found a few more that we can cut:
Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). $420 million. Last year the CEO made a salary of $369,000. Not bad for a government job.
Sesame Street made more than $211 million from toy and consumer product sales from 2003-2006. Sesame Workshop President and CEO Gary Knell received $956,513 in compensation in 2008. With earnings like that, Big Bird doesn’t need the taxpayers to help him compete against the Nickleodeon cable channel’s Dora the Explorer.
Also, Harry Reid, Pelosi and Obama put $105 billion in spending in the Obamacare bill that was included as mandatory spending over the next eight years, meaning it’s automatic and not subject to annual spending votes by Congress.
That comes out to a pretty large dent that should help keep some of the programs that you want to keep.
CPB is not a government entity and that salary is small compared to their coutnerparts at Fox or any other broadcast network.
I’ll say it again-its the revenue! Starting in 2008 federal revenues dropped significantly-and a great deal of that was due to the recession and the tax cuts.
with the severity of the looming crisis, you should cut all the programs on the left AND eliminate all the tax breaks on the right AND pull out of Iraq & Afghanistan (AND Germany, Korea and Japan) – and it still won’t be close to solving the problem…
Which is why -eventually we will have to raise taxes-and if done in a targeted manner, it will actually be the best choice.
Skippy, if CPB is not a government entity, then why do they get $420 million? Sure that pay may be smaller, but he is not really worried about generating ad revenue so it is somewhat a huge cost.
The president emeritus of NPR received more than $1.2 million in compensation in 2009.
PBS paid it’s president $632,233 in annual compensation.
Public broadcasting can pay its presidents half-million and million dollar salaries. Its children’s programs are making hundreds of millions in sales. here’s no reason taxpayers need to subsidize them anymore.
The federal government provides EXACTLY 5.8% of Public Radio and TV funds. The Public Broadcasting Act limits CPB administrative expenses to “not more than 5 percent of all the amounts appropriated.” So as a business entity it is far more efficient than its private counterparts like Fox.
Furthermore-public broadcasting provides much more in depth reporting than the brain dead watchers of Fox will ever experience. We need that if for only to keep the crazification factor at 27%.
Finally, I find it interesting that you will decry a President of Public Broadcasting his salary, but defend the right of a CEO of a worthless banking institution to make 400 times that much.
Skippy,
I never have defended any bank CEO’s and the salary they make. The can do so since it is a private business. So they should be allowed to make as much as they should. What I would like to see is a few more regulations to catch them when they are cheating the system and screwing over the rest of us.
If the CPB gets 5.8% of their income from the Feds, then that should be cut. Why should they get funds and other stations not get them? If their in depth reporting is so good, they should be able to stand on their own legs to gather the necessary ad revenues to keep operating. So what you are saying is that it is enough of us “brain deads” out there to keep the Madison Ave. crowd happy and we have so much spending power, it outweighs what the “deep thinkers” who watch PBS?
The answer is they probably can suceed-in big markets. Stations in smaller markets would die on the vine. That’s the point they have been making-and at the end of the day it doesn’t save as much money as cutting the war in Iraq would.
And besides-hope springs eternal that the brain dead Fox viewers will eventually wake up from their coma and join the smart people like me.
Skippy,
CPB, NPR, and all the rest of the subsidized government programs that compete directly with commercial enterprise are failures. They are like Air America. Too high brow to attract the brain dead who fail to understand why if things like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not PUBLIC mandates wholly funded by the U.S. Government, just like the Post Office and General Motors, we should be made to pay for them or subsidize them.
Why does the USPS still exist? It complains that it has to fork over 7.9 or 9.7 Billion $ in order to pay off it’s pension obligations which it freely signed up to and now cannot afford. So they expect us to bail them out year after year. Sort of like Amtrack. Sort of like all those banks and bankers you’re so fond of.
You and the other crazies keep insisting that there is still lots of money out there. But what we see is any money we turn over to the Feds or State or County just gets pissed away on the special favorites of the politicians. $56 Billion for high speed trains from nowhere to nowhere courtesy of the Fed. I know you’re enthusiastic that in 15 years you’ll be able to buy a $200 one way ticket from Modesto, CA to Fresno or a $400 ticket one way from Orlando to Miami.
No I’m realistic. Because of stupid ideas foisted on us by uneducated specimens of Americana, there will be no light rail. But gas prices will be high thanks to peak oil, and the richest 1% will be able to have whatever they want and the rest of us will be poorer. A lot poorer-but teatards won’t care, they will have John Galt there to console them as they have nothing else to do.
Governments are supposed to provide services. Police, Fire, Mass Transit, mail to my house every day, clean water, regulate industry so I have clean air and don’t get cheated by greedy assholes on Wall Street.
I see so many examples of wasted money in the private sector every day. The government wastes money too-but it usually because of dipshit like Allen West. Now in a perfect world the CEO would paid a reasonable salary and Allen West would be recovering from having the shit beaten out of him.