Nukular
While the most of you were at home watching American Idol tonight, I was at the bar guzzling $1 Honey Brown pint after $1 Honey Brown pint, cheering on the Illini in their win over Wisconsin. To me there’s nothing better than watching a basketball game at the local pub and banging beer mugs with passionate sports geeks — unless of course it happens to be the night of the State of the Union Address.
Because that means you get to play the State of the Union Address Drinking Game, where Bush saying “bipartisanship” provokes an even louder roar from the bar crowd than any three-pointer from Dee Brown ever could.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
RSS
11 Comments
I watched part of the game with one of the partners at my firm who went to the U of I. I was then at a loss as to how to account for 45 minutes of my day on my timesheet.
I love how Bush wants to make the tax cuts permanent, thus permanently making our deficit hopeless.
I also love how drunk you can get from Bush saying "enemy" or "evildoers" a hundred times.
I love how Democrats continue to try to trick the American people into thinking that tax cuts hurt the national budget. A total falsity. The Bush tax cuts result in higher tax revenue because of the economic growth they create.
I might have seen you last night. If you were the only one that stood up from your seat to applause when Bush defended our NSA phone taps then yeah, I saw you.
Right-on Pete, the Laffer curve lives!
reducing the 'deficit' is more complicated that just taking an even higher percentage of an already over-taxed working class. Pete is right, this has to do with numbers, not feelings
did you see how they nabbed that media-endorsed kook Sheehan? 1st amendment does not protect breaking the rules of the House Chamber. she typifies that dying party...
Bush's "tax cuts" are the tax cuts on the Estate Tax not the income tax. The Estate Tax is designed to tax a wealthy family's ability to keep wealth within the family when a member of the family dies.
In order to be hit with the Estate Tax you must have an estate worth somewhere around $2 million when you die. "Working Class" families probably don't have $2 million or more so they are not affected. When people talk of making the cuts permanent they mean making the Estate Tax go away forever starting in the year 2010. As it stands now the Estate tax goes away for a year in 2010 and then comes back in 2011.
you sound like NBC nightly news with that, it only effects the 'wealthy' family, shit. First, the cutoff is closer to 600K, not 2 million.
lots of people's total estates could equal that. and most people who are fabulously wealthy know that there are ways to slowly move the funds out in pieces so that you essentially pay no estate tax. the 'old money' in this country is called this for a reason; dont think for a second that a kennedy is going to have to pay that. oh, and wait a minute, since they are sitting on a pile of 'old' money in the first place, they arent paying any income tax on it either! I WONDER WHY OLD MONEY LIBERALS PREACH HIGHER INCOME TAX?!? They are the true wealthy in this country, yet have (intelligently) created a system so that they can force most others to pay when they never have to, thus holding their financial power forever.
Lastly, the estate tax mostly effects farmers, who dont have the liquid means and resources to work around it. not this made up army of 'rich' republicans that the NYT wants you to believe exists. the 'wealthy' you speak of are mostly 'poor' farmers that are working on land that has been in their family for generations. Now, with this 'newer' tax, when the owner dies, the feds say, "well, looks like your land is worth 3 mil, wheres my 43%?!?" of course nobody except teresa heinz-ketchup has that $, so there goes the (forclosure on the) farm.
hopefully the tax goes away forever, we were doing fine before it, we were doing fine before we started giving out working people's income...
ok, i was working off of old facts for the numbers, but everything else i said still applies:
Year Estate Tax Exemption Maximum Rate
2001 $ 675,000 55%
2002 $1,000,000 50%
2004 $1,500,000 48%
2006 $2,000,000 46%
Estate tax is just one (minor) component of the Bush tax cuts. The major component (and most expensive) is cap-gains and dividend cuts.
Granted, most middle class families are not directly affected by a cut in cap-gains or dividends, but their pensions are. Also, the money a rich investor (or collection of not-so-rich investors) saves as a result of those tax cuts is likely to be re-invested. That extra money on the balance sheets would fuel job creation and wage increases.
It doesn't matter who is taxed - when the government takes your money, it sucks. I'll support any tax cut, anytime, and for any reason.
My husband (the guy who is actually a nuclear engineer and brings home mad cash) pronounces it 'nukular' ...or at least he did until we made fun of him for a guinness book record breaking 197 hours straight.