Friday News Roundup - Domestic
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-01-27/friday-news-roundup-domestic
The Obama Administration announced the first cuts in the Defense Department budget since 1998; Republican presidential candidates squared off in the second Florida debate as polls showed a dead-heat between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich; and the Federal Reserve announced it would keep interest rates at near zero until late 2014. Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times, Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune and Ron Elving of NPR join Diane for analysis of the week's top national news stories.
Guests
Ron Elving
Washington editor for NPR.
Clarence Page
syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
Doyle McManus
columnist, Los Angeles Times.
Friday News Roundup Video
A caller asked the panelists for their thoughts on President Obama's policies geared towards helping black Americans:
Comments
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Pancake....
It was just a lost leader to see what the conservatives would say. I'm perpetually experimenting.
Reading Pancake and Teece, I need to start considering:
1. Transferring all real property in personal or trust ownership to my children.
2. Finding an island and getting out of Dodge - permanently.
Wing nuts like these two will never find themselves as part of a plurality, much less a majority. However, just in case...
MarcusTullius wrote:
"Does POTUS Obama really want the face and voice of the Democratic Party to be represented by the hideous hypocrite harpy DWS?"
I hope so!
westieaz, that's a very valid comment you make. "Double taxation" is a clever but spurious argument and it says something about the quality (or lack thereof) of supposedly informed commentators that they never question it.
Our economy comprises an infinite network of transactions; money changes hands over and over, and is often taxed along the way. Taxes are part of the network and after being paid re-enter the rest of the economy.
The logical but absurd conclusion of the "double taxation" argument is that any given dollar should only be taxed once in its life and never again.
Teece Bowman wrote:
Pancake...."It was just a lost leader to see what the conservatives would say. I'm perpetually experimenting."
I think that's "loss leader"
Just what I have been saying, a ruse. That's OK, if you think posting shallow empty posts helps your cause feel free. It does offer red meat opportunities to make good points, so I thank you for that! I suspect even some of the most closed minded liberals reading these posts that don't post learned something about the stupid exaggerations from the left about the Koch brothers. I learned plenty myself, so yea, thank you!
On the post in question today, I'm not so sure this one was a ruse, I think you just might have been embarrassed by your compatriot.
B.O.'s Transcripts wrote:
If you paid any attention to the body of Moyers' show, maybe you wouldn't object to his closing monologue. Your idea of "radical left" is where the center of our country used to be before wealthy and corporate interests and their political servants corrupted our nation's government.
mancuroc wrote:
B.O.'s Transcripts wrote:
"If you paid any attention to the body of Moyers' show, maybe you wouldn't object to his closing monologue. Your idea of "radical left" is where the center of our country used to be before wealthy and corporate interests and their political servants corrupted our nation's government."
I paid a lot of attention. In my opinion his monologues made him seem extremist for a government subsidized broadcast, PBS. In any other venue I would not have a problem with him with respect to freedom of speech. But in all honesty the show was too left and it was not countered with anything from a politically right perspective.
mancuroc wrote:
"Double taxation" is a clever but spurious argument and it says something about the quality (or lack thereof) of supposedly informed commentators that they never question it.
...The logical but absurd conclusion of the "double taxation" argument is that any given dollar should only be taxed once in its life and never again."
Utter nonsense - from BOTH of you!
The death tax is the perfect example of double-taxation. When you earn money, you pay tax on the earnings. When you die, your heirs pay tax on the portion that is left. How that is NOT double taxation is beyond me.
How's that for a "supposedly informed commentator"? I wouldn't use that term if I were you unless you are sure you are right. You're not.
I have been a long time listener, but I was very disappointed to hear your and your panel’s response to the Limbaugh listener’s email today about how she (and likely her husband jointly) had earned around $150k and paid 16% effective income tax in 2010
Here’s a very simple fact that every media figure, including you and all your panelists today, should have at your fingertips: In addition to their federal income tax, every typical wage earner in 2010 paid an additional 7.65% in social security (OASD) and Medicare (HI) tax. In fact her real effective tax rate was 23.65% compared to Romney’s 14%.
You ought to know this. It should be a reflex to pointy this out. (Yes, after several minutes. I did hear one panelist note that wage earners are also subject to payroll taxes, without stating the effect of these taxes on their total tax rate.)
But, it’s worse than that: Her and her husband’s employer had to pay an additional 7.65% tax on their wages, which would otherwise have been paid to them. (If you doubt that, try this mind exercise: Suppose Bain Capital had to pay a 7.65% tax on every dollar they paid Romney. Can you seriously believe they wouldn’t have deducted that from his “carried interest?”) Imputing that employer share of OASD and HI to their income, like they do with excess life insurance, they paid an additional 14.2%, bringing their effective tax rate to 30.2% as compared to Romney’s 14%. (Even with his “not so much $374K in speaking fees, his effective OASD/ HI tax rate was as close to zero as makes no difference.)
This information should be at your fingertips – especially when you read, without comment, an email from one of Limbaugh’s ditto heads. I was very disappointed today.
Pancake Rankin wrote:
"Why have a Congress anyway when we possess the means of direct democracy?"
Here's why:
The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.
Art Spander
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
H. L. Mencken
And, by the way, Ms. Dittohead's net tax was almost certainly reduced by her 401K contributions. And here's the kicker: when we cash in our 401Ks, they will be taxed as ordinary income even though a significant portion are capital gains. So, for us ordinary folks capital gains will be taxed as ordinary income, while Mitt and his buddies will pay 15%.
The system is rigged in favor of the 0.1% and against the rest of us.
Actually, estates on which your so called death taxes apply consist mostly of untaxed capital gains.
So you "double taxation" whine is bogus.
jimlsilver 401k's are tax differed income unless a roth ira. So income taxes were not paid on that invested income at all, it will be when withdrawn early or at age 59 at a lower rate. not sure about the rates on this at 59. Anyone?
jimlsilver wrote:
Actually, estates on which your so called death taxes apply consist mostly of untaxed capital gains.
So you "double taxation" whine is bogus.
This is also wrong, but why bother. You need to have a discussion with your accountant.
D. Wasserman Schultz?- Do you wear high cut low rise cotton briefs or dowdy acetate panties?
Maybe I'll start posting as J. Edgar Hoover since DRShow has no objections to such an insulting tactic connected with a mass shooting and attempted assassination. Why is Glock America's gun?
Thank all who quoted me in their posts. It's kind of like having the People's mike on this forum.
Who said anything about the Koch Brothers or George Soros? I searched the transcript of this program in vain. Did I miss something? Nope. Not one word about either. Dominating this site with right-wing diatribes in hopes of squelching out all relevant commentary by sheer weight of ignorance, does nothing to advance your cause. First of all, there is no “left” in America. None, zero, nada. Not, at least, in the organized sense. Not even like Canada’s NDP, for instance. There’s the extremist right-wing ranting of neo-cons, and then there’s Barack Obama, who deserves to be criticized from the left. He talks a good game, but . . . take immigration (discussed by the panel). The registered Democrat who posted comment here relating to her concerns about illegal immigration and Obama’s position regarding it is a good example. Although immigration—legal or illegal—is commonly thought of as a cause championed by the left, on humanitarian grounds; this is the same cause Ronald Reagan championed with amnesty back in ‘86. This is how far to the right we’ve come. Who is more likely to favor an open border policy? businesses and corporations, or union organizers and pro-labor activists? This is essentially a Grapes of Wrath issue, but both conservatives and liberals (Reagan Democrats?) have succeeded in getting all to argue over its race-related component. Real neo-cons LIKE immigration—of all stripes—and mean to keep people perennially divided on the issue. Health care “reform”? A pro-business, Mitt Romney baby. Government subsidies? All directed at the private and corporate sector and contained within the same investor-led, for-profit business model promoted by GW or any administration since LBJ.
There are fair solutions to these problems, but none of them will come by shifting further yet to the right. The goal of capitalism, after all, is not to create competition and free markets, but to control and consolidate wealth, create private monopolies, carve out market share, subordinate labor (and governments), eliminate competition, and build empires. That’s why we once had a progressive income tax structure; not simply because it’s more “fair.” Whether outsourcing American jobs or insourcing immigrants, it all amounts to the same thing: wage arbitrage, which lowers costs to business. You can say that immigration is part and parcel of the history and tradition of the U.S., but to compare recent history with the waves of Irish and European immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries is to ignore eighty years of labor rights organizing and subsequent legislation. What about the sacrifices of previous waves of immigrants, who were exploited during the industrial revolution; who fought for union organization, child labor laws, public education, and public services? The suggestion that we should simply “deport them all,” however, is neither moral nor practical. Most Latinos came here post Reagan; many, likely because of the repressive right-wing and authoritarian regimes of Mexico and Central America. Regimes Reagan supported. I don’t blame them one bit. But there are now 50 million Latinos in America, with 11 million illegal. That is no small number. After decades of incidentally flooding the labor force, driving up rents, and impacting social services (there is no avoiding that), conservatives’ (in power) answer is to roll back social services for everyone so that the same Americans who first paid by losing their jobs can pay again by losing, or paying out of pocket for, their social services. This is capitalism at its nuttiest and most egregious.
Even if we had an aggressive and effective policy of deportation, where, for example, 5000 Latinos (that’s just Latinos, and I’m only singling out Latinos because they’re the largest group) were deported every day, including Sundays and holidays, it would take six years to achieve (not including those born to legal status in the interim). Do the math. Apart from the draconian nature of such a policy, it isn’t going to happen. Building a fence isn’t going to work. Jailing illegal immigrants and putting them to work (Arizona’s plan) isn’t going to work—an idea even more exploitative than exploitation by private industry. What WOULD work is a national registration and public human resources agency that tracks and accounts for all hiring and firing in the U.S. (as well as provide for employment services for the unemployed—competing directly with private HR firms who further disenfranchise American workers). The freedom to slave and displace American workers is not a freedom we should be proud of. In short, the focus should be on illegal hiring, and holding employers accountable, instead of on the targeting of immigrants. A simple data base would do it—updated and monitored on a national scale—and it would immediately create jobs for PUBLIC human resources workers, who would be working for the unemployed, not just employers. It would generate more accurate labor statistics, and eliminate conflict of interest (between employer and HR service). Yes, that’s right: a big government program is the answer, one that favors American workers and the unemployed rather than the interests of the multinationals and the owners of businesses. Think of the tax money saved elsewhere, though. I welcome a multicultural environment, but playing into the hands of one budding authoritarian regime in order to escape another is no answer to the immigration problem, and it certainly isn’t left of center.
gbloper wrote:
"Who said anything about the Koch Brothers or George Soros? I searched the transcript of this program in vain....Dominating this site with right-wing diatribes in hopes of squelching out all relevant commentary by sheer weight of ignorance, does nothing to advance your cause."
Look at the comments on this board day to day, gbloper. Koch brothers are brought up by the left (kathleen, Teece Bowman, and others) about every 20 minutes. You can put "Koch" in the search box and see who is talking about the Koch brothers.
Thanks johnandere, there are certain topics as you suggest that badly need further scrutiny but go un-scrutinized because of time limits. This forum rarely has input in the broadcast, for the most part we have the same people reading and responding to the posts here. There is much unfinished business from previous shows that needs to be fleshed out. Myth busting is critical in an on going debate, particularly when the myths are repeated with extreme regularity.