[Parallax]

That is even more onerous than the worst tricks and traps the banking industry has though of. ..........

Yep! Mergers forming one entity from two separate ones may be okay for airlines, car companies, etc; but it doesn't work out so well when you merge the banking industry with the government as Obama did.

[Nesster]

That's not a merger, it's a temporary investment + increased regulatory oversight. Banks are already regulated, some good portion of our current economy can be blamed on these regulations being woefully out of date. Also, as the industry seems unable to police itself when it comes to consumer protection and rights, the government has to step in there as well.

That tax, put this way, isn't going anywhere - a similar concept as an additional exhange fee for institutions (i.e. each time they do a trade) also doesn't have much chance of passing.

[Oldschool]

Income does not equal wealth.

A doctor fresh out of med school could easily be in the top 5% of income earners but have zero or negative wealth due to student loans. A median wage earner who diligently and aggressively saved their entire life could easily be in the top 5% of wealthy households the day he retired even though they aren't very high income.

Income is what is taxed, not wealth.

Well, I was always taught that wealth drove income. The numbers for income vs. wealth change somewhat, but it still doesn't change the fact that the income gap is growing every year.

To be sure, the deficit-exploding Bush tax cuts played an essential role in fueling the gap. (This is evidenced by the fact that between 2001 and 2007, the income share of the 400 richest American taxpayers doubled even as their tax rates were halved.) As the New York Times revealed in October, by 2007 the top 1% - the 1.5 million families earning more than $400,000 - reaped 24% of the nation's income. The bottom 90% - the 136 million families below $110,000 - accounted for just 50%.

The top 1% earned about 24% of the income and paid about 25% of income taxes. Sounds about right.

[Nesster]

Last year, University of California, Berkeley economists Christina Romer (now head of President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers) and David Romer undertook an even more extensive review of the data and came to a similar conclusion.

"Following long-run tax cuts, government spending does not fall," they wrote in the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. "Indeed, if anything, spending rises." In time, "tax cuts tend to lead to tax increases."

Tea partiers will not put much stock in the findings of scholars who hang out in notorious outposts of the counter-culture or in the Obama White House (assuming the two are not the same thing). They may find it harder to ignore University of Alabama political scientist Michael New, an adjunct scholar of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington.

Writing in the Cato Journal, he reports that "federal expenditures grow faster when revenues are relatively low." Even nondefense discretionary spending—which excludes military costs and fast-growing entitlements—experiences a growth spurt when taxes are cut, according to New.

---
Forced to pay for everything they get, right away, Americans would undoubtedly choose to make do with less. But given the opportunity to party now and pay later—or never, if the tab can be billed to the next generation—they find no compelling reason to do without.

---


Think of it this way. If you want people to consume more of something, you reduce the price. If you want them to consume less, you raise the price. For most of the last 30 years, federal programs have been on sale, and they've found lots of buyers.

That's how the low-tax strategy has worked in practice. So if we are going to reduce the size of the federal government, we can't rely on starving the beast. We will have to tackle it and wrestle it to the mat.

How Starving Government Still Gets Fat - Reason Magazine

[cardinal43]

Did I miss the jobs?????????

The mid-terms are over. The republicans don't need to use that "word" anymore.

[JohnInIndy]

No I want ALL Americans to work together.......
I hate being a lone wolf........
Besides it's not that much.. probably can make it up selling Chinese trinkets on ebay... you know be responsible for yourself and help others.....
Besides this is america.. there's money laying everywhere..




EDIT: The'll get it anyways..... somehow some way

You can work together with your Buds from Home Depot and the like. Since there's money laying everywhere go get it and donate it. And all that's in your pension/401K/IRA whatever. It's the right thing to do. For you anyway.

No I want ALL Americans to work together.......
I hate being a lone wolf........
Besides it's not that much.. probably can make it up selling Chinese trinkets on ebay... you know be responsible for yourself and help others.....
Besides this is america.. there's money laying everywhere..




EDIT: The'll get it anyways..... somehow some way

If you want all Americans to work together why not tackle entitlement reform? Or, by all Americans do you mean those of us who are productive, make good choices and are all ready paying most of the taxes?

[shooz]

Hmmmm.
What's your choice on the "Job displacement marketing program"?
Make sure it's a good one.....

[jeffkrol]

You can work together with your Buds from Home Depot and the like. Since there's money laying everywhere go get it and donate it. And all that's in your pension/401K/IRA whatever. It's the right thing to do. For you anyway.

So denigrate all the "small people" that wipe your arse for you????
Maybe you missed the sarcasm..

If you want all Americans to work together why not tackle entitlement reform? Or, by all Americans do you mean those of us who are productive, make good choices and are all ready paying most of the taxes?

You mean those that hate the 1099 reforms enacted BECAUSE someone is cheating the gov...? (BTW I'm not in favor of the 1099 thing BUT it does reveal the lack of legal morality rampant in this country where we each want to make up rules as long as they favor ME)
Selective payments (or selective legal) based on what each of us thinks is "fair" for each of us is NOT err... moral.
We may not like it but that's the law..........
JUST for fun...........

For instance, the bill offers subsidies to help small companies purchase health insurance for their workers. One provision subsidizes up to 35 percent of a company's insurance premiums, starting next year. Up to 4 million workers might qualify. It has already had a demonstrable impact. According to Bernstein Research, the number of very small companies—with three to nine workers—offering health care jumped from 46 percent last year to 59 percent this year, even amid the deep economic slump. But it has not attracted nearly the notice the 1099 change has.

For small businesses, the focus remains on the burdens of the bill. And the real reason small-business owners tend to want to get Democrats out of office lies far beyond regulatory changes: The economy is terrible, and small-businesses have suffered through the recession and recovery. Though banks are sitting on more than $1 trillion in spare capital, with the government providing generous loan-backing and other incentives, credit remains tight. And despite a (slowly) recovering economy, business has not picked up for many small companies.

That's the central fact for small-business owners. Just 6 percent of respondents to the Sage poll said they anticipated business improving in the next six months. Three in four said they were not sure when business would get better or that it would improve after a year. With so little confidence, there's probably no amount of subsidies that could help.

http://www.slate.com/id/2273360/

[Nesster]

On another Spending/Deficit fighting front, the Republican party wants to end the $25 Billion Emergency Welfare fund!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/us/politics/p10spending.html?_r=1

Of the few specific cuts that Congressional Republicans have proposed in their promised assault on annual budget deficits, one of the biggest by far would save $25 billion over 10 years, they claim, by ending an emergency welfare fund.

The Republican Study Committee, which includes more than 100 of the most conservative House Republicans, promoted the idea in a statement this week, saying, “With the national debt quickly approaching $14 trillion, Washington needs to get serious about cutting spending.”

Well, seriously, the fund expired Sept. 30.

At $5 billion, it was part of President Obama’s roughly $800 billion, two-year stimulus plan and was created to help states meet the increased demand for welfare assistance and employment programs due to the recession. House Democrats, with support from state and local officials, voted to extend the fund this year given continued high unemployment, but the Senate balked.

House Republicans have calculated the fund’s annual cost, $2.5 billion, and multiplied by 10 years, which is the common period for projecting budget costs and savings. The product: savings of $25 billion.

The actual math is simpler: 10 x 0 = 0.

On Wednesday, Representative Jim McDermott, a Democrat from Washington State who sponsored the fund proposal, issued his own statement: “What’s next? Claiming savings for cutting New Deal work programs that were terminated over 70 years ago?”

[Nesster]

More Republican fun:
Concrete Steps to Nowhere - NYTimes.com

Like many observers, I’ve been wondering how Republicans are going to deliver on the mandate they believe voters gave them last week. After all, it’s a lot easier to say you’re going to close a yawning budget deficit without raising taxes than to set out plans for doing so, because the plans will involve cutting programs that people like.

So I was delighted to see that Eric Cantor, the likely new House majority leader, issued a document last week titled “Delivering on Our Commitment.” Unlike politicians who talk vaguely about reining in spending, Cantor discusses what he calls “concrete steps” toward a balanced budget.

--

Cantor does have a fleeting encounter with quasi-specificity while discussing entitlements: The Republican House will be “addressing, in a fiscally responsible manner, near-term funding issues, such as Medicare reimbursement policies.” And I guess we can’t ask him to go much further and start detailing new Medicare rules before the Republican majority is even sworn in. Still, if Republicans are really, as Cantor says in a letter accompanying this document, ready to “walk the walk,” could they at least start by stating baldly that “addressing” these “reimbursement policies” in a “fiscally responsible manner” will mean putting new limits on the benefits Medicare recipients get?

Cantor might even sketch out a mechanism for imposing this discipline. For example: How about an executive commission that regularly amends reimbursement rules so that Medicare spending is held down to a specified target — and whose amendments automatically become law unless Congress overrides them and provides alternative amendments that meet the target?

Oh, wait. President Obama’s health care bill already provides for such a thing — and some Republicans have called it a “death panel.” (Cantor’s right — it’s hard to start a conversation about entitlement reform without getting attacked!) So Cantor probably won’t be embracing this particular approach to Medicare reform

---
Give Cantor credit for this much: dismantling the Affordable Care Act is at least a truly concrete step. But, given that the Congressional Budget Office has deemed the act a net money saver, dismantling it is unlikely to do much to close the deficit, even if the C.B.O.’s estimates are way too optimistic.

Failure to shrink the deficit is something this truly concrete step has in common with the other truly concrete step Republicans have been talking about: renewing the tax cuts on income over $250,000, which are slated to expire next year.

All told, it’s enough to make you wonder whether Republicans are serious about closing the deficit! But if closing the deficit isn’t their real priority, what is?

Here’s a clue: both upper-income tax cuts and the evisceration of the health care reform act appeal to many rich people. The act would be a net transfer of resources from the upper regions of the income spectrum to the lower regions, where people who are now getting terrible medical care tend to reside.

This is the great tactical triumph of the Republican party. It harnessed a wave of grass-roots populist rage, of resentment against fat cats who had brought us to economic ruin, and used it to advance an agenda that would enrich fat cats and hurt people at the grass-roots level.

[mikemike]

Looks like the prez is willing to get walked all over and they haven't even finished counting all the votes...

President Barack Obama's top adviser suggested to The Huffington Post late Wednesday that the administration is ready to accept an across-the-board, temporary continuation of steep Bush-era tax cuts, including those for the wealthiest taxpayers.

White House Gives In On Bush Tax Cuts

Back to the bipartisanship policy of borrow and waste.

Don't forget your slurpee, your going to need it. I think I'll spike mine with some gin.

[jeffkrol]

Looks like the prez is willing to get walked all over and they haven't even finished counting all the votes...


White House Gives In On Bush Tax Cuts

Back to the bipartisanship policy of borrow and waste.

Don't forget your slurpee, your going to need it. I think I'll spike mine with some gin.

We agree here, though in some regards this is a ploy.. Repugs want it perminent, Obama want's it "temporary"...
AND HA!

Supporters of the earmark ban say that McConnell and other senior senators are now caving because they sense that DeMint, along with Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, have real momentum to take a harder line on pork-barrel spending – and only backed the plan in March knowing it was destined to be soundly rejected by the full Senate.

Read more: Republican earmark ban down to the wire - Manu Raju - POLITICO.com
And HA again... so much for "transparency"...........

There is no way of precisely predicting the conference vote, since it’ll happen behind closed doors by a secret ballot, giving senators wide latitude to vote however they see fit.

Did I mention that the Repubs are a MORE lying group then Dems.......

There are two things worth mentioning here: Budget-cutting, serious budget-cutting, is very difficult because one person’s pork-barrel is another person’s responsible program. If it were easy, it would have been done already.
But the other thing is this: How funny is it to hear Inhofe denouncing demagoguery? He’s one of the Senate’s chief demagogues. What goes around, senator, comes around.

http://blogs.ajc.com/cynthia-tucker/2010/11/11/first-gop-fratricide-is-comin...cynthia_tucker
MORE backpedaling..........

Critics say Christie is staking out conservative positions on issues like climate change to appease the GOP's conservative wing.

"The only science he's looking at is political science," said Jeff Tittel, executive director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, which did not endorse Christie for governor. "He's making a political calculation that to be a darling of the conservative movement, he has to move to the right on climate change to appease the tea party and others."

Christie's skepticism on the cause of global warming represents a shift in position from the gubernatorial campaign, when he embraced President Obama's energy policies and chided Corzine for doing too little to promote renewable energy and green jobs.

"He gave the appearance, at least during the campaign, that New Jersey was not doing enough to promote renewable energy, promote green jobs and lower the pollution from CO2 (carbon dioxide)," Tittel said. "He never went out during the campaign and said, `I think global warming is manmade.' Even if he didn't say it, the programs he was supporting had the purpose of lowering our carbon footprint."

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9JE57D01.htm
It's an EPIDEMIC........ of epidemic proportions....
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/a-republican-for-higher-taxes/
SAD.........

Astonishingly, instead of pressing our political advantage--which was also clearly the right policy choice, as well -- we flinched (in truth, in response to the political concern of members from high-income states). Voters could have had a last and important impression about who was on their side and who wasn't, but gracious to a fault, we didn't want to anger anyone, and the result was predictably awful.

Now it appears that we may well make the same mistake again (unless you assume the HuffPo writer got it wrong, and I don't). If that's what we do, it will make President Obama's many comments about fiscal responsibility an utter joke -- how can we talk about decimating Social Security, raising gas taxes (which hit low and middle-income folks disproportionately hard), raising fees for veterans' health care, messing with student loans, etc., when we're going to blow a $700 billion dollar hole in the budget because of our concern for folks who make $250k and over, who are doing more than fine? Or because those bad Republicans are just too mean?

There is a prevailing view among many people that both parties are dominated by the rich, and that voting doesn't really make a difference. If we want low and middle-income Americans to think we don't have the spine to fight for them, then how are we going to convince them to vote for us? If David Axelrod has an answer for that, I'd like to know what it is.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/11/tell_me_about_it.php?

[jeffkrol]

Letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the middle class will not materially harm the economy and keeping them for the rich will not help the economy at all and will probably damage the economy further by taking money out of the economy. The middle class is hurting and laying on further lash seems unconscionable. But the GOP put the middle class there in full malice of forethought with the political objective of leveraging their pain, as they have.

I know it's a hard sell that the middle income part of the Bush/conservative tax cut small government ideological package is a pitiful bribe, but it is. The conservatives threw a few crumbs to the middle class and walked off with the wedding banquet in 2001-03. Those few crumbs are what they are betting you will mortgage your future to keep. Democrats in Congress fear that you are willing to do so and so might extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy in order to keep you your crumbs. This is the state to which the once vaunted American middle class, pride and idol of the globe, is already reduced. We can be bribed with a few hundred dollars a year to preordain our future as servants to wealth.

But if you look at it another way, giving up that few hundred bucks a year that Bush bribed you with might be the best investment you can make for your country and your future. The income tax revenues of the U.S.A. are $1.1 trillion a year. About 20 percent of earners -- those making over $265 thousand -- pay 69 percent of the federal income tax bill. The bottom 80 percent of the working public pays only 31 percent. And the bottom half pay practically nothing. Looking at the tax code in a purely business sense, it makes very good sense for the lower 4 quintiles of income to let their taxes go up a little in terms of dollars in order to leverage the resources of the top quintile. The top 20 percent would then pay over twice as much as the lower 4 quintiles combined towards lowering the deficit.

Better to Let the Bush Tax Cuts Expire