-No, I recommend a tax system which does not punish the creation of wealth (which is presumably what even progressives would like to do), and which does not require an intrusive and cumbersome regulation process.Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon
You're the one brainlessly posting the supposed number of WH grounds visits by a Bush appointee as some sort of evidence of something.
You're frothing is not only desperate, it's stupid.
That's why they let you drive the clown car.
"The Devil enters the prompter's box and the play is ready to start" - R. Service
“It’s not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed … so, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It’s much more akin to printing money.” - B.Bernanke
"Keep your filthy hands off my guns while I decide what you can & can't do with your uterus" - Sarah Silverman
If you meet a magic pony on the road, kill it. - Playwrite
I, on the other hand, have no interest in a tax system designed to do nothing else. Wealth creation or, more to the point, wealth expansion is not a good reason to tax those least able to pay so a few who are well placed and already well healed pay much less and keep even more. It's a positive feedback loop, and it's destablilizing. At some point, this creates social fissures that can go almost anywhere.-No, I recommend a tax system which does not punish the creation of wealth (which is presumably what even progressives would like to do), and which does not require an intrusive and cumbersome regulation process.
I've lived in the other system, and too much of that isn't healthy either. Of the two, a flat and somewhat boring social enviornment is still vastly preferable.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
I endorse heavy taxation of income obtained through methods that create mass misery. Let's start with a 100% income tax on any income obtained through illegal activities from gangland crime to the garden variety of embezzlement and gains from insider trading. High taxes on executive compensation that comes from treating subordinates badly and elimination of competition? Nice idea, I suppose. Land flips? Such might have prevented some of the run-up in real estate prices of the Double-Zero Decade that culminated in the 2007-2009 meltdown that at a year and a half was indistinguishable from the destructive three-year meltdown that began in late 1929.-No, I recommend a tax system which does not punish the creation of wealth (which is presumably what even progressives would like to do), and which does not require an intrusive and cumbersome regulation process.
The high-tax era of the 15 years that followed World War II should have been ruinous to the American economy -- right? Not really. That was the heyday of small business because small businesses had niches that they do not now have. Giant, vertically-integrated companies can effectively deter anyone from competing with them. Do you remember the record stores that typically morphed into video stores? Where I live, most of those have gone bankrupt. In the same places are typically rent-to-own rip-off entities that offer overpriced electronics and furniture with loan-shark interest attached to the deal to people with fecal credit ratings. The buildings that used to house small-town department stores have typically become "antique" stores that deal old objects that used to be on a farm household to people passing through.
Our elites do not so much create wealth as grab it all -- and keep others as poor as they can be. They would be delighted to have an economic order that reminds one of Russia in the latter years of the Romanov dynasty -- a few people owning everything and the others having no stake in the economic system. That is a pre-revolutionary situation.
Better Gandhi than Lenin.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Finally, the obvious question
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/0...ded-subsidies/
That last line from Ryan is just too funny!Rep. McDermott wonders why tea party groups applied for taxpayer-funded subsidies
...Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) on Tuesday questioned why tea party groups were seeking to be subsidized by the government.
At a House hearing on IRS misconduct, McDermott acknowledged the federal tax agency had inappropriately used political criteria to locate nonprofit applications that needed extra review.
“But as I listen to this discussion, I’d like to remind everyone what we are talking about here,” he continued. “None of your organizations were kept from organizing or silenced. We are talking about whether or not the American taxpayers would subsidize your work. We are talking about a tax break.”
The tea party groups in question were applying to become tax exempt 501(c)4 groups, also known as social welfare organizations. McDermott noted the purpose of such groups was to advance the common good and general welfare a community. Political organizations, on the other hand, are categorized under section 527 of the federal tax code.
“Each of your groups is highly political,” the congressman said. “From opposing the President’s healthcare reform, to abortion restrictions, to gay marriage, you’re all entrenched in some of the most controversial political issues in this country – and with your applications you are asking the American public to pay for that work. Many of you host and endorse candidates. The line between permitted political activity and non-permitted political activity can be very fine, and it’s important that tax payers know which side you fall on.”
McDermott’s remarks angered Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who accused the congressman of blaming the victim.
Poor, poor t-baggers having to go through so much hard paperwork so that the rest of us can pay their taxes and they can send a-holes like Ryan to Congress. I feel so very very bad for them.
"The Devil enters the prompter's box and the play is ready to start" - R. Service
“It’s not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed … so, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It’s much more akin to printing money.” - B.Bernanke
"Keep your filthy hands off my guns while I decide what you can & can't do with your uterus" - Sarah Silverman
If you meet a magic pony on the road, kill it. - Playwrite
I would've been more upset by this whole thing if they hadn't been looked at. Special attention should've been paid to a group that has gone on record as hating taxes when they file for tax exempt status. Most people wouldthink twice before hiring a drunk to run a liquor store.
Last edited by illwill2020; 06-05-2013 at 09:34 PM.
Good analogy.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
-Bad analogy. None of these Tea Party people had ever broken the law, or even had fuzzy backgrounds, unlike Obama's half-brother:
-People being able to keep their own money isn't a "subsidy", except in the twisted progressive view, where "Your" money is really "their" money and they'll decide what you keep.-The issue is obstructionism and harassment. So, PW's view is that the IRS perpetrates felonies against Obama's political opponents, and that the victims deserved it. Sounds like Ryan was right.
Now to find out who gave the orders.
-Strange. I thought the primary purpose of taxation was to acquire revenue for the government. Consumption taxes did that fairly, simply, and efficiently for decades, without the counter-productive aspects of punishing wealth creation.
-And who gets to define "method which creates mass misery"? Oh. You will! Either that, or we might have to throw half of government regulators in jail.
Last edited by JDG 66; 06-06-2013 at 02:38 PM.
IMNSHO, there are very few recent 501(c)4s that are legit. They all should have been denied, since virtually 100% of them planned to engage in partisan politics.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
-Maybe, maybe not. Laws can be changed. But this is about Obama's IRS harassing and obstructing the ones they didn't like, and expediting those they did. Watch for the charges, and then the rollovers...
The current law says no politics in clear terms. That an Eisenhower era bureaucrat made a bad rullng doesn't preclude the curent IRS bureaucrats from making a correction.
Look at the real record. Audits were predominantly of RW groups, but they may have been the predominant applicants (still TBD). The only outright denials have been for liberal groups. So just what case do you have? None.
Give-it-a-rest!
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
-Looks like the IRS agents' testimony is shredding your theory:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/irs-st...000000304.html
Two Internal Revenue Service employees in the agency's Cincinnati office told congressional investigators that IRS officials in Washington helped direct the probe of tea-party groups that began in 2010...
The interviews provide new clues to the puzzle slowly being pieced together in several congressional probes and a criminal investigation by the Justice Department. Investigators want to know exactly how the IRS initiated extra scrutiny to tea-party and other conservative grass roots organizations that were seeking tax-exempt status...
Ms. Hofacre said she was outraged last month when IRS higher-ups, including Lois Lerner, then the head of the IRS tax-exempt division, blamed the problem on employees in Cincinnati. "I was furious," Ms. Hofacre told interviewers. "It looked like Lois Lerner was putting it on us."...
In March 2010... a local manager—whose name was redacted in the transcripts—asked him to find all the tea-party applications in the office's files, both pending and closed. The manager asked him to use the phrase "tea party" to conduct the search.
Around the same time, the local manager "said Washington, D.C., wanted seven" cases, Mr. Muthert said in the transcript.
That month, he said, he "batched up" seven of the cases for "EO Technical," a unit of the Exempt Organizations Division in Washington, then headed by Ms. Lerner, according to his interview.
Around May of 2010, Mr. Muthert said, another local official asked him to locate a couple more applications to send to Washington. Over the next two months, Mr. Muthert said, he located about 40 tea-party cases after expanding his search to include the terms "patriot" and "9/12."...
Ms. Hofacre said Mr. Hull, the IRS attorney in Washington, emailed her letters that he had already sent to two tea-party applicants. She was instructed to use those letters as a "foundation to prepare and review my cases and prepare my letters" to applicants, she said. She said she found the intervention by Mr. Hull "demeaning," according to the transcripts.
Mr. Hull also suggested questions to applicants, she said, and she was told to send him all the responses.
"All I remember saying and thinking is, 'This is ridiculous,'" she said. "Because at the same time, you are getting calls from irate taxpayers. And I see their point. Even if a decision isn't favorable, they deserve some kind of treatment and they deserve, you know, timeliness, and…these applications and their responses were just being sent up there [to Washington] and I am not sure what was happening."
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-...litics-driven/
Most Americans regardless of party believe political reasons drove the Internal Revenue Service to single out for burdensome and unnecessary scrutiny some conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll out Thursday. The public splits across party lines, though, about whether President Obama and his administration were involved...
So, this would mean that most D's believe that the middle management IRS agents were motivated by partisan politics, but that the Obamanation had nothing to do with it. So, that would mean that most D's think that most IRS agents are progressive partisans? Or maybe, that they knew what their master wanted, without asking.
This should be interesting...
Nope, not as long as you moron keep up with the deficit/debt stupidity - tax loopholes have to be paid for just like spending.
Just ask one of the moron kings, Sen. Tom Coburn, who said we have to cut spending somewhere else before we can provide disaster relief to hurricane victims in NJ or tornado victims in his home state of OK.
A moron for sure, but at least big-hearted Tommy's not a hypocrite like you who conveniently argues out of both sides of his mouth whenever it suits best suits your Obama hatred.
"The Devil enters the prompter's box and the play is ready to start" - R. Service
“It’s not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed … so, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It’s much more akin to printing money.” - B.Bernanke
"Keep your filthy hands off my guns while I decide what you can & can't do with your uterus" - Sarah Silverman
If you meet a magic pony on the road, kill it. - Playwrite
_ho hum. Let's see what PW's story is when IRS agents started getting dragged off in handcuffs.
This link provides a pretty good, unbiased, graphical display of the facts and issues -
http://www.topaccountingdegrees.org/irs/
What's shocking is the enormous growth in Conservative 501c(4) groups/money compared to Progressive groups. Even if it was a random sample, the IRS would have to be screening the tax exemption applications from the baggers more so than any other group.
This is about disclosure. 501c4 groups don't have to disclose their donors (think Koch brothers) like 527 PACs because, of course, 501c4 groups are exclusively/primarily about promoting social welfare
That's why so many came about after the Citizen United decision.
Remember the t-baggers are a grass roots movement without that big Koch money!
Yea, right.
You'd be upset too if the Toto was pulling your curtain back!
Poor, poor, baggers. My heart bleeds for them.
"The Devil enters the prompter's box and the play is ready to start" - R. Service
“It’s not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed … so, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It’s much more akin to printing money.” - B.Bernanke
"Keep your filthy hands off my guns while I decide what you can & can't do with your uterus" - Sarah Silverman
If you meet a magic pony on the road, kill it. - Playwrite
And exactly what law was broken?_ho hum. Let's see what PW's story is when IRS agents started getting dragged off in handcuffs.
You do understand that to arrest somebody, the cops have to have some evidence of criminality? Or, do you t-baggers plan to try to put federal employees in handcuffs? Does your clown car have a siren on it?
Wheeeeeee!!!!!!
"The Devil enters the prompter's box and the play is ready to start" - R. Service
“It’s not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed … so, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It’s much more akin to printing money.” - B.Bernanke
"Keep your filthy hands off my guns while I decide what you can & can't do with your uterus" - Sarah Silverman
If you meet a magic pony on the road, kill it. - Playwrite
-My heart won't be bleeding for the dirtbag IRS agents who abused their power, or the officials who gave them their marching orders (between the two, I'm willing to let the schlubs off the hook), all while they while granted obvious crooks like this a free pass:
1) Lying to congress;
2) Leaking confidential information;
3) Abusing power for partisan purposes;
4) Conspiracy for all of the above.
PW does know that Holder (of all people) has already begun criminal investigations, right?
Of course, on the first point, Holder might have to charge himself...
Faux 'Scandal' - it's over
On the Sunday talking heads, Cummings calls Grand Theft Auto Congreeman Issa out -
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/...-ill-release-t
Grand Thief Auto (not the game, the real deal) Issa has a fit -Cummings Calls Issa's IRS Bluff: 'I'll Release' Transcripts Clearing White House if He Doesn't
House Oversight Committee ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings on Sunday said that the so-called scandal involving the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) targeting of tea party groups was "solved," but Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) has refused to release the testimony of a "conservative Republican" IRS manager because it indicated that the White House was not involved.
Last week, Issa had told CNN host Candy Crowley that IRS agents "were directly being ordered from Washington," but he declined to produce complete transcripts of the testimony of IRS employees to back up his claims.
On Sunday, Cummings explained to Crowley that he had "begged" Issa to release the full transcripts.
"He's the chairman of the committee, we're not in power," the Maryland Democrat pointed out. "If he does not release them, I will. Period."
"I'm willing to come on your show next week with the chairman, with the transcripts, if he agrees to do that," he added. "But if he doesn't, I'll release them by the end of the week."
Crowley observed that in a portion of the transcripts that had been released, an IRS screening group manager in the Cincinnati office told Issa's committee that he had "no reason to believe" that the White House had ordered the targeting of conservative groups.
"He was a 21-year veteran," Cummings said of the IRS manager. "He described himself in the interviews in response to a Republican attorney's question as a conservative Republican. Very significant. He is a conservative Republican working for the IRS. I think these interviews and these statements go a long way to showing the White House was not involved in this."
"Based upon everything I've seen, the case is solved. And if it were me, I would wrap this case up and move on."
http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-bel...a-last-word-cu
"His [Cummings'] extreme and reckless assertions are a signal that his true motivation is stopping needed Congressional oversight and he has no genuine interest in working, on a bipartisan basis, to expose the full truth. The American public wants to know why targeting occurred and who was involved."
So according to Grand Thief Auto Issa, coming on a show with his committee's minority leader to release the full transcript is not being bipartisan, not exposing the whole truth; no, actually to suggest such evil is "extreme and reckless. " What a clown.
Thanks to gerrymandering, he's in what is considered a safe GOP seat, but if his clown status grows, maybe they'll get sick of him. It worked with Michelle Bachmann.
"The Devil enters the prompter's box and the play is ready to start" - R. Service
“It’s not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed … so, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It’s much more akin to printing money.” - B.Bernanke
"Keep your filthy hands off my guns while I decide what you can & can't do with your uterus" - Sarah Silverman
If you meet a magic pony on the road, kill it. - Playwrite
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...309012846.html
Perhaps the only useful part of the inspector general's audit of the IRS was its timeline. We know that it was August 2010 when the IRS issued its first "Be On the Lookout" list, flagging applications containing key conservative words and issues...
...The Obama administration and its allies continue to suggest the IRS was working in some political vacuum. What they'd rather everyone forget is that the IRS's first BOLO list coincided with their own attack against "shadowy" or "front" conservative groups...
Aug. 9, 2010: In Texas, President Obama for the first time publicly names a group he is obsessed with—Americans for Prosperity (founded by the Koch Brothers)—and warns about conservative groups...
Aug. 21: Mr. Obama devotes his weekly radio address to the threat of "attack ads run by shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names. . . . The only people who don't want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide." [like the Obamantion?]
Aug. 27: White House economist Austan Goolsbee, in a background briefing with reporters, accuses Koch industries of being a pass-through entity that does "not pay corporate income tax." The Treasury inspector general investigates how it is that Mr. Goolsbee might have confidential tax information...
These were not off-the-cuff remarks. They were repeated by the White House and echoed by its allies in campaign events, emails, social media and TV ads. The president of the United States spent months warning the country that "shadowy," conservative "front" groups—"posing" as tax-exempt entities and illegally controlled by "foreign" players—were engaged in "unsupervised" spending that posed a "threat" to democracy. Yet we are to believe that a few rogue IRS employees just happened during that time to begin systematically targeting conservative groups? A mere coincidence that among the things the IRS demanded of these groups were "copies of any contracts with and training materials provided by Americans for Prosperity"?
This newspaper reported Thursday that Cincinnati IRS employees are now telling investigators that they took their orders from Washington. For anyone with a memory of 2010 politics, that was obvious from the start.
-I say we wait for more whistle-blowers, and more testimony from the IRS agents themselves:
Good stuff. Or corrupt stuff, actually.
Oh, let's do! Cummings said if Issa doesn't release the full transcript by the end of the week, then he will.
Grand Thief Auto Issa blew a cork over that.
My guy wants to expose; your guy wants to hide and obfuscate.
I'm in the catbird seat with the popcorn poppin!
"The Devil enters the prompter's box and the play is ready to start" - R. Service
“It’s not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed … so, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It’s much more akin to printing money.” - B.Bernanke
"Keep your filthy hands off my guns while I decide what you can & can't do with your uterus" - Sarah Silverman
If you meet a magic pony on the road, kill it. - Playwrite
-We've already got this:...does PW think the rest is going to make the DC IRS look better?
I think he's from CA, so gerrymandering isn't a factor for Issa himself, but we did get rid of 4 of his fellow clowns, just by allowing a citizen's commission to draw the borders instead of politicians. But maybe the same hope can be had as what happened with Bachmann anyway.
From wikipedia:
After redistricting, Issa ran in the newly redrawn 49th district. This time, the Riverside portion of the district was cut off, and a portion of Orange county was put in. Issa won re-election to a seventh term, defeating Democrat nominee Jerry Tetalman, 58%-42%. The sixteen-point margin of victory was the smallest in Issa's political career. He carried the San Diego part with just 55% of the vote, while he dominated the Orange County part with 66% of the vote.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 06-11-2013 at 01:01 PM.
-Now if only they could get rid of the progressives who have made CA a place tom flee from.
You're not keeping up, dude.-We've already got this: ...does PW think the rest is going to make the DC IRS look better?
That came from an Issa-controlled partial release of the transcripts of the interviews. Cummings has stated that those comments were taken out of context, and in the actual context,they do not mean what you and little Darrell want them to mean. Sorry.
Moreover, the full transcript has the actual manager, a self-identified conservative Republican, of the unit doing the reviews clearly stating that there was no White House involvement and that the only involvement by anyone in DC was at his request to look at the legal implications (not political) of what he was doing.
Sorry, dude, but this 'scandal, like Benghazi, is over.
Just waiting for the fat lady (Issa) to sing the Blues - "Nobody loves my scandals"
"The Devil enters the prompter's box and the play is ready to start" - R. Service
“It’s not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed … so, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It’s much more akin to printing money.” - B.Bernanke
"Keep your filthy hands off my guns while I decide what you can & can't do with your uterus" - Sarah Silverman
If you meet a magic pony on the road, kill it. - Playwrite
-In the same way that PW keeps screaming that my comments on his postings are "taken out of context", only to have me go back and show that they are in context?
-Newsflash: Government official in a scandal claims that neither he nor his bosses did anything wrong!
