taxes

Perdue pitches tax increase in Charlotte.

Perdue in Charlotte

George Will’s editorial today in our Star-News about the evils of taxation and income redistribution almost had me. As Mr. Will said, government often gives our monies to those who neither need it or deserve it. He correctly states our monies often go to powerful interests but fails to identify those parties until the end of his editorial. Reading along, one thinks he’s talking about billions in tax subsidies to already highly profitable oil companies or capital gains tax breaks for the wealthy, bail-outs given to unethical banks and investment houses, and so on.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/12/30/2884741/twin-gas-tax-increas... On Sunday, we will be paying the highest gas tax ever, 38.9 cents per gallon. There are only 4 states with higher gas taxes. This is not something that we should be proud of. To intice businesses to start up in NC, which will bring jobs, having some of the nation's highest gas taxes is not going in the right direction.

We need to urge our representatives in Raleigh to cut the taxes!

I did not see any mention of Kay Hagan working with McClain in Senate on bill to repatriate some trillions of corporate profits stranded offshore at some ridiculously low (5%?) rate. Check N&O last Friday, Oct 7, 2011. She waxes righteous about making sure that if companies do not comply with concurrent jobs creation part of the bill, we could clawback some of the money. Now, for starters that is sheer horse pooky. The Obama Justice Dpt has not managed to enforce anything of value or pursue massive leads from the financial sector. The SEC is piddling in place, as is the FDIC, OCC and all the other underfunded watchdogs.

Kay is frankly a Republican, disguised as a Blue Dog, and secure in her seat until 2014, when as result of this play, she will be showered with corporate plunder randomly by all. Her arguments are of the caliber one would expect from a fourth grader, not a legislator, attorney and ex-banker (oops, that is the real problem).

Mark Warner had some choice words for the political establishment in his Washington Post op-ed piece today.

If we don’t act boldly before Aug. 2, working from both sides of the balance sheet, the smart money soon will begin to bet against us on world financial markets. Add that to financial upheaval in Europe, and you have a recipe for an economic disaster far worse than we faced in 2008.

Mark Warner is no flaming liberal. In fact, he looks a lot like old-school Republicans, back before they went bat-shit crazy. But since he doesn't speak teh bagger, here's a translation for our illiterate Republican friends: Raise some damn taxes.

Despite all the talk about freedom in Raleigh, political leaders today hate the idea of local governments controlling their own destinies. In the balance of power, the state is an 8000-pound gorilla compared to cities, towns and counties. Raleigh always calls the shots.

We have to raise taxes, again, this time to to pay for George Bush's incompetence.

I told the truth in 1984. “The American people will have to pay Mr. Reagan’s bills,” I said in my acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. “The budget will be squeezed. Taxes will go up. It must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”

I lost the election, but I won the debate. Reagan ended up increasing taxes in 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1987 to mend the budget and tax systems.

In the past few days, while painstakingly filling out my 1040A and D-400's and hearing what seems like non-stop rhetoric about sacrifice and reducing the deficit, I've found it very hard to conceal my rage and disgust at the corporations who have found a way to avoid paying taxes altogether. Though we've long been aware that businesses spend horrific amounts on lobbying to congress to get them to create loopholes and shelters, to then have congress turn around and rail against federal spending is nothing short of insulting. For weeks my senses have been inundated with bluster from capitol hill demanding that social programs and unions be sacrificed to feed the monster of our national debt.

Via Ed Cone, without comment:

For the 400 U.S. taxpayers with the highest adjusted gross income, the effective federal income tax rate—what they actually pay—fell from almost 30 percent in 1995 to just under 17 percent in 2007, according to the IRS. And for the approximately 1.4 million people who make up the top 1 percent of taxpayers, the effective federal income tax rate dropped from 29 percent to 23 percent in 2008. It may seem too fantastic to be true, but the top 400 end up paying a lower rate than the next 1,399,600 or so.

Just shut up and fire some teachers, because we all know that revenue is not part of the budget equation.