Gee, if only we could have seen this coming:
The Strengthen Social Security Campaign released a letter Tuesday from 300 organizations urging him to take Social Security off the table in deficit reduction talks. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a liberal activist group, is circulating a petition among Obama donors and volunteers, asking them to withhold their support for the president’s re-election if he embraces cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. In two hours, organizers say they got 40,000 signatures.
Another liberal organization, MoveOn.org, sent out an email survey to its members, asking them to opposed further cuts and to tell the president, “he needs to lay out a truly progressive proposal that strengthens the middle class and makes the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share.”
So what should the president do about the projected $1.6 trillion budget deficit?
“Taxes on the rich, Wall Street, General Electric, oil companies, and other corporations would absolutely do the trick. And it’s 100% reasonable after Wall Street decimated our economy,” said Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign. “Let’s just do it.”
We could do that. Or we could tell you to get stuffed, then mock your manhood by asking you why, if you want to steal shit from society’s most productive members and job providers, you don’t just come take it yourself instead of hiding behind a government and asking it to do the looting for you?
You don’t care about the poor or downtrodden. If you did, you’d never support the kind of socialist paradigm that has everywhere failed and spread misery. Except, of course, to those who do the social engineering and planning. Like, for instance, leaders of groups called “Progressive Change Campaign.” Those types always seem to wind up flush somehow, growing fat off the labor and industry of others — without having invested a single thing and having produced nothing other than whiny, faux-revolutionary rhetoric.
Wannabe slaveowners, the lot of you. And yet so cowardly you look to the state to capture and bind your slaves for you.
But I’m no slave. Meaning, you’d better bring more than bumpersticker slogans and a bad goatee when you come to get me.
Wishes are stronger than math!
What part don’t these useful idiots get. Taxable income for those who made greater than 250k/yr runs on the order of 1.1 trillion dollars. If they imposed a 100% tax on those folks, there’d still be a 1/2 trillion dollar shortfall!
Not to mention the short and long term effects of all of the job creators and rich folks leaving the country following such a draconian act.
In order to pay for the nanny state they desire, the progressive left is going to have to put their hands into the pockets of the middle class; math is not demagoguery…
And somehow, I get the impression that the large middle class, even the most progressive component, won’t respond too well to having their taxes jacked up.
This point needs to be made each and every time a question about tax policy is asked of the GOPers; well, at least the ones who are not stupid or incompetent.
I’m picturing the inebriated socialist Hugo railing about “trinking wine under de villow trees,” from The Iceman Cometh. O’Neill captured the spirit of entitlement and rage in that drunken character, and that character exists to this very day. Lots of them are even Republicans, it seems.
What would Jesus do?
Luke 18:22 Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing:
selltake all thatthouothers hast, and distribute untothe poorCaesar, and thou shalt have treasure inheaventhe bank: andcome, followbe greater than me.I think it’s time for a winner-take-all debate, the left with their “Progressive” budget and Americans with the Republican Study Committee budget.
Like, for instance, leaders of groups called “Progressive Change Campaign.” Those types always seem to wind up flush somehow, growing fat off the labor and industry of others
Like Arianna.
“the kind of socialist paradigm that has everywhere failed and spread misery”
Which is one more reason that I never refer to these clowns as anything other than “reactionary leftists”.
The part that doesn’t fit the narrative. So, yeah, pretty much all of it.
If Obama is going to channel Michael Moore then I’ll channel Bill Whittle.
Bob Reed: actually, if we took 100% of the income over $250K, wouldn’t the shortfall still be greater than half a trillion dollars? Way I figurre it, at least 33% of what is made over $250K is already applied to the budget.
Of course, I could be figuring it wrong (won’t have been the first time).
Ouch, Seth – good point….
“Of course, I could be figuring it wrong (won’t have been the first time).”
You probably are in some way, although there’s no telling just how wrong. There’s a certain amount of income (unknown to me) that is due to capital gains, which is taxed at a lower rate.
AMT complicates this a bit, I think. But I don’t make enough money to have to worry about that yet.
You make a great point Seth, one that I don’t believe was clarified in the summaries I drew those figures from. I’ll have to look into the IRS source data more closely.
But Slart also makes a very good point concerning the distinction between ordinary income and that from dividends and capital gains; which are taxed at different rates and wouldn’t be included in the figures I cited.
So, it looks like I’ll have to do some more digging, eh?
Thanks for the heads-up.