Good Read

[mylexicon]

Democratic strategy to cast Bush as "The most evil man in the World" is beginning to evolve
Metro - 07/02/03

LOS ANGELES -- Al Sharpton and the other democratic presidential candidates are putting a new emphasis on making healthcare and environmental issues more voter friendly. Instead of talking abstractly about ozone levels or the Superfund budget, they speak of the children who are forced to drink unsafe water because Republicans keep the good water for themselves, or of how minorities cook their food in toxic waste because Republicans are bottling it and selling it off as corn oil.

Even as conservatives have tinkered with their vocabulary in an effort to ward off Democratic attacks over the environment, Democratic leaders have asked their candidates to amp-up the rhetoric and do a better job of explaining the death, destruction and despair being thrust upon the American people by the Bush administration and congressional Republicans.

?George Bush is the most evil man in the World,? said Denny White, Democratic spokesman.

At the same time, Democrats are trying to focus public attention on what they call the Bush administration's cozy relationship with the mortuary business. In a striking example, some have pointed to a little known painting in the Oval Office which depicts a beautiful Forrest Lawn cemetery. ?A cemetery in the Oval Office is proof President Bush wants us all to die?, said DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe.

The Democrats' strategy aims to expand their message to seniors by detailing stories of how Republicans have secretly stolen pacemakers and hearing aids right out from patients who were using them. In one example, George Bush himself breaks into a retirement home and changes the labels on medication bottles, loosens the wheels on wheelchairs and applies crazy glue to several dozen sets of dentures.

The new strategy was on display here on Thursday, when all five of the nine Democratic presidential candidates who appeared at a forum sponsored by the League of Conservation Voters sought to cast traditional issues in larger, more humanizing terms.

Former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, a doctor, said his fellow Democrats should not speak in abstractions. Instead, Dr. Dean said, they should talk about what it was like for that Colorado family who ended up in the emergency room because the city of Denver ran out of air. They were eventually able to get some air from Boulder but for a major city to run out of breathable air is unthinkable. 600,000 city residents were gasping for hours.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, said passage of a global-warming bill he has proposed "would have prevented the air shortage in Denver and would restore us as the moral leader of the world."

As for the other candidates, they all seemed to agree, George W. Bush, the Republicans and conservatives are trying to kill all of the old, disabled, low income and minority children. ?The want to kill all working-class families and the cemetery painting in the oval office is just the proof we need,? said Sen. Kerry.


OMG this is great, came from this site i found today......hilarious stuff

http://www.republicansforsharpton.com/

[cosmo]

?The want to kill all working-class families and the cemetery painting in the oval office is just the proof we need,? said Sen. Kerry.

The class warfare mantra will never end will it?

[FM]

nope...s'one of the main attacks/campaings/et al of both parties....

[delirious]

Re: Good Read

Democratic strategy to cast Bush as "The most evil man in the World" is beginning to evolve

I'm not sure they should get involved... Bush's doing a pretty good job of that all by himself.

[brakada]

Just another proof of the lack of sane politicians in the US. Sad...

[cosmo]

nope...s'one of the main attacks/campaings/et al of both parties....

How is this so? Under Bush's plan the more taxes you pay the more money you get back. Bush doesn't play class warfare. You could make this argument being that certain people do not get a tax break, but you can't please everyone... Well, only in a utopian society.

[mylexicon]

people also forget that 60%-80% of new job growth is fueled by small
business, and they represent 99.7% of all employers. Many small businesses
are sole proprietorships and therefore pay taxes @ personal income
levels. Since over 80% of small businesses rely on borrowed capital
to generate revenue....they have to make sure they maintain a healthy
cash flow to make sure they stay afloat. High tax rates on middle-upper
and upper-class citizens severely limit small business cash flow and raise
the number of small business bankruptcies. Low taxes at upper level
incomes are extremely important even for blue collar entreprenuers.

[cosmo]

Many small businesses are sole proprietorships and therefore pay taxes @ personal income levels. Since over 80% of small businesses rely on borrowed capital to generate revenue....they have to make sure they maintain a healthy cash flow to make sure they stay afloat. High tax rates on middle-upper and upper-class citizens severely limit small business cash flow and raise the number of small business bankruptcies. Low taxes at upper level incomes are extremely important even for blue collar entreprenuers.

As was listed in Forbes the past few months. Too bad you do not hear about this in Newsweek. They're(Newsweek) too intrested in picking the negatives of the tax breaks to acheive their own goals. All I hear is the class warfare from these guys. I can't read Newsweek anymore due to the ultimate negatives that currently flood the top articles in the weekly prints.

It seems that bad news in the end is good news.

It makes me sick.

[delirious]

According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the single
biggest cause of the deficit is the president's massive tax cuts for the
wealthy. Specifically, 36% of the deficit comes from the tax cuts, while only 31% comes from defense/war-related spending increases, and the rest comes from the economic slowdown.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 ? With its rising budget deficit and ballooning trade imbalance, the United States is running up a foreign debt of such record-breaking proportions that it threatens the financial stability of the global economy, according to a report made public today bythe International Monetary Fund.

In nearly 60 pages of carefully worded analysis, the report sounded a loud alarm about the shaky fiscal foundation of the United States, questioning the wisdom of the Bush administration's tax cuts and warning that large budget deficits posed "significant risks" not just for the United States but for the rest of the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/07/politics/07CND-FUND.html?ex=1088568000&en=c6b9aca7a20bd2ca&ei=5070&hp

Costs and Consequences of Tax Cuts and Deficits
by the International Monetary Fund

The sharp erosion in the fiscal position and the recent emphasis on tax cuts have revived a long-standing debate about the extent to which fiscal deficits crowd out private investment, and whether tax cuts, by improving economic incentives, can significantly boost the economy's supply side. The current administration has played an active role in this debate.6 It has emphasized that tax cuts would carry important longer-run supply-side benefits that could help mitigate their budgetary cost. The administration has also stressed that the federal deficit and debt-to-GDP ratios that are projected over the coming 5?10 years are "manageable" and remain well below the peak levels recorded in the 1980s and early 1990s.

There is little doubt that significant macroeconomic gains could be reaped from reforms of the U.S. tax code, with the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA, 2003) citing estimates of potential gains in the range of 2?6 percent of GDP. The tax system places a disproportionate burden on personal and corporate incomes, compared with a consumption-based tax system, discourages labor market participation and saving, and is, hence, economically less efficient. The administration's 2003 proposals were viewed as a significant move toward a consumption-based tax system, because the initial package of measures announced in February would have lowered marginal income tax rates, eliminated the double taxation of dividends, and significantly expanded the extent to which income earned on saving would have been tax free.

Moreover, tax reform that simplified the system could also yield significant gains, given that the multitude of tax deductions and exemptions have imposed considerable administrative and other costs. As noted in CEA (2003), taxpayers are required to spend roughly 3 billion hours a year dealing with federal tax matters, and overall compliance costs are estimated at around 10 percent of total federal tax revenues.It remains an open question whether the tax cuts adopted since early 2001 will have significant supply-side benefits:

Although the cuts in income tax rates will?at the margin?improve incentives to work, the labor participation rate is already high, and empirical studies do not suggest that it is highly tax elastic (Angrist, 1991; Blundell, Duncan, and Meghir, 199.7

* Moreover, in their final form, the tax measures appear to have taken only modest steps toward shifting the tax burden from income to consumption. Although tax rates on dividends and capital gains were lowered, the administration was not successful in eliminating the double taxation of corporate income or expanding the deductibility of saving from income.
* Moreover, there is considerable academic debate about the likely magnitude of any supply-side benefits from reducing taxes on dividends. For example, it has recently been argued that the effect on capital spending would be minimal, especially because increased dividend payouts could reduce funds available for new capital spending (e.g., Gale and Orszag, 2003).
* The measures also did little to address the complexity of the U.S. tax system. A number of the originally proposed simplifications did not pass, including on tax-preferred savings instruments. Indeed, in many respects the legislation appeared to have only added to the complexity of the system, for example, by using phase-ins and sunsets to obscure the true budget cost and expanding the number of tax preferences.

The modest efficiency gains that might arise from the recent tax cuts will also have to be weighed against the effects of a prolonged period of fiscal weakness. As shown in Figure 1.4, the FY2004 budget is expected to result in deficits well into the next decade?a substantial deterioration compared with the January 2002 current services baseline, which saw a return to budgetary surpluses around 2007.Although the deficit ratio is expected to narrow somewhat as the economy recovers in coming years, there are important reasons to worry that these projections may still prove optimistic (Figure 1.5). The strict limits on discretionary spending that have been assumed may be difficult to sustain, especially because of pressures to increase outlays on defense and homeland security, as yet undefined supporting policies for ensuring that limits on other discretionary programs are adhered to, and reduced pressure to maintain spending discipline as a result of the expiration of the Budget Enforcement Act (BEA).8 Also, there are significant uncertainties about tax revenue projections. Notably, the official budget projections do not take into account the costs of reforming the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), and are predicated on the assumption that the recent (and still not fully understood) sharp drop in personal tax revenue will be largely reversed.9 With U.S. fiscal deficits expected to persist into the foreseeable future, will any supply-side benefits be outweighed by the effect of weaker public saving on interest rates and investment? The Council of Economic Advisers (2003) argued strongly that these potential offsetting effects would be minimal. However, the estimates surveyed in Section II generally suggest that the short-term stimulus stemming from the FY2004 budget proposals is likely to wane in several years, with higher deficits beginning to crowd out private investment and dampen output thereafter. In one simulation, for example, the tax cuts would eventually lower U.S. productivity?in terms of labor output per hour?by ? percent in the long run.

http://www.imf.org/external/Pubs/NFT/Op/227/

[dohturdima]

According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the single
biggest cause of the deficit is the president's massive tax cuts for the
wealthy

Above is a singularly moronic statement (rest of number-crunched sex/lies/stats snipped). Deficit accrues when the econonomy is in a slump, and recovers as it improves. Tax relief is one of the few essential (see Reagan in the 80's) to jump start an economy (being that interest rates almost bottomed out). In Japan, the interest rates were at 0 for years, but only now did the Govt realize that shit was really hitting the fan with 0 economic growth and started lowering taxes - they got economic growth. So shut yer piehole, dullard.

[delirious]

According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the single
biggest cause of the deficit is the president's massive tax cuts for the
wealthy

Above is a singularly moronic statement (rest of number-crunched sex/lies/stats snipped)

I was quoting the Congressional Budget Office and the IMF which probably have a better understanding of finances than ourselves.

Tax relief is one of the few essential (see Reagan in the 80's) to jump start an economy (being that interest rates almost bottomed out).

Didn't Reagan then increase taxes? Bush wants to make his permanent.

[dohturdima]

Didn't Reagan then increase taxes? Bush wants to make his permanent.

Bzzt. Read up on yer financial history. One of the first things Reagan did was decrease taxes, and many who lived at the time remember the squalid, sorry state Carter left the economy in. Permanent tax cuts? Good for him, and even more importantly, for us.

And regarding the budget office, no one is denying that there is deficit. What they fail to mention is that having deficit is quite common. As economy goes, so goes the deficit. Back to history reading! More earnings - more tax earnings. Tax relief -> jumpstarts economy -> more earnings -> more tax earnings despite lower taxes. Simple formula.

[delirious]

Didn't Reagan then increase taxes? Bush wants to make his permanent.

Bzzt. Read up on yer financial history. One of the first things Reagan did was decrease taxes, and many who lived at the time remember the squalid, sorry state Carter left the economy in. Permanent tax cuts? Good for him, and even more importantly, for us.

Do you read what I write? I said didn't Reagan then increase taxes? I wasn't arguing whether he cut taxes initiallly.

When President Reagan took office in 1981, he quickly succeeded in passing substantial "supply-side" cuts in both individual and corporate income taxes. He predicted that the 1981 tax cuts would ?pay for themselves? through higher investment and faster growth in productivity and incomes. Once enacted, the 1981 tax cuts opened up wide budget deficits (6% of gross domestic product, the largest peacetime deficit in history), leading Congress and the president to agree to substantially increase taxes on corporations in 1982 and on payrolls in 1983. Although those measures helped to narrow the budget deficit, large deficits persisted and further major tax hikes were adopted in 1990 and 1993. By the time that the tax increases of 1993 took effect, any supply-side effects of the 1981 tax cuts had been largely eliminated.

The Economic Policy Institute

In 1983, Reagan signed legislation raising the Social Security tax rate. This is a tax increase that lives with us still, since it initiated automatic increases in the taxable wage base. As a consequence, those with moderately high earnings see their payroll taxes rise every single year.

The following year, Reagan signed another big tax increase in the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984. This raised taxes by $18 billion per year or 0.4 percent of GDP. A similar sized tax increase today would be about $44 billion.

The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 raised taxes yet again. Even the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which was designed to be revenue-neutral, contained a net tax increase in its first two years. And the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987 raised taxes still more.

The year 1988 appears to be the only year of the Reagan presidency, other than the first, in which taxes were not raised legislatively. Of course, previous tax increases remained in effect. According to a table in the 1990 budget, the net effect of all these tax increases was to raise taxes by $164 billion in 1992, or 2.6 percent of GDP. This is equivalent to almost $300 billion in today's economy.

Bruce Bartlett is a Senior Fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA).

Need more cites?