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Benen on the Troy Davis Execution

From Steve Benen, on the “appalling” (NYT editors) execution of a probably-innocent man: Reasonable doubt.

This entry was posted by jbc on Wednesday, September 21st, 2011 at 1:56 pm and is filed under the_law, the_usa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

58 Responses to “Benen on the Troy Davis Execution”

enkidu Says:
September 21st, 2011 at 3:22 pm
Can’t wait for the usual wwnj grunting about how capital punishment is so great.

Rick Perry dun exemakutered 234 brown folk? Now ats Prezidintial!
hurf durf!
NorthernLite Says:
September 22nd, 2011 at 7:58 am
Sorry to interrupt but I have to share something:

“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Swoon! :-)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/22/elizabeth-warren-class-warfare-gop-taxes_n_975561.html
knarlyknight Says:
September 22nd, 2011 at 10:58 am
So we don’t have to wait for Lil’ Ricky, I’ll provide the wwnj response:

It’s not my fault you liberals are so wasteful with your money, I owe you nothing for your high spending ways.

I don’t need your stinking roads. Lots of convicts out there can build roads – to pay their debts to us. That’s what my prisons are for.

Ejucation? Public schools don’t ejucate, most graduates can’t count or read. No education meeded to work in my factory. You just gotta be trainable. Ejucated workers are trouble, they don’t know their place. They got an unreasonable expectation for a decent wage. They are hard to train: they got too many damn questions. I’ll pay for a good ejucation for my OWN kids, thank you very much. I got no use for to be paying for ejucating everyone elses kids, thats socialism and that’s wrong.

Maurading bands? But I DO HAVE TO WORRY about that! I’m not going to trust the police to get to my factory in time when there is trouble! No thank you, I’ll hire my own security force and arm them with the firepower to do the job right if they find trouble. That way I won’t get mired in the *oh so precious* court system that’s just coddling the gangs.

Underlying social contract? You’re kidding. Have you got that in writing? I didn’t sign anything. I owe the next kid who comes along NOTHING. It’s tough world out there and if “the next kid that comes along” is worthy he’ll have to make his way by himself, just like I did (thanks to hard work and the $3.8 million trust fund my dear old dad left to me.) There’s no way you can expect me to “pay forward” to “the next kid that comes along” so they can compete with my kids.

Now get the hell out of here before I call my security forces.

Disclaimer: that was sarcasm and was not the view of the author.
enkidu Says:
September 22nd, 2011 at 11:46 am
I think Elizabeth Warren is dynamite. She’s been on the little people’s radar for a few years now. The Rethugs managed to mostly neuter the new consumer financial protection agency she set up (and they wouldn’t allow her to lead it).

I just watched that video of her speaking this AM and she is the anti-Palin: smart, honest, plain spoken but not a low information nitwit (yeah, I’m lookin at you wrong wing nut job).

We are at historic LOWS for taxation. The shrubco regime bankrupted the nation, charged two wars on credit, gave away trillions in tax cuts for millionaires (say, wasn’t that supposed to generate a job-nirvana or something?) And now the low sloping foreheads want to elect another wwnj moran guvnr from (secessionist) Texas? We had a Greater Depression crash the last two years of the dumbya regime and now we fight an active internal insurgency of destructive Rethugglicanism and their even wackier tea-bircher allies. Yet our biggest problem is debt (that Rs wracked up…. sigh… Dyhmerkkkins is soooooo stoopid) right. Glad we cleared that up.
knarlyknight Says:
September 22nd, 2011 at 11:58 am
Yes, you have big troubles fixing the Republican messes.

In Canada, our wannabee Republican government is messing with our laws, in typicall wwnj fashion:

Under the new federal bill, marijuana growers can face more severe penalties than those convicted of more gruesome crimes, such as sexual abuse of a child.

A pedophile who gets a child to watch pornography with him, or a pervert exposing himself to children at a playground, would receive a minimum 90-day sentence — which is half the term of someone convicted of growing six pot plants in their own home.

The maximum sentence for growing marijuana would double from seven to 14 years, the same maximum applied to someone using a weapon during a child rape, and four years more than for someone sexually assaulting a child without using a weapon.

Read more: http://www.canada.com/health/marijuana+guidelines+target+safer/5443398/story.html#ixzz1YiG4Gs2C
shcb Says:
September 22nd, 2011 at 1:47 pm
No arguments here, you guys have us pegged.
enkidu Says:
September 22nd, 2011 at 2:55 pm
http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/22/how-much-do-you-blame-pres-obama-for-struggling-economy/?hpt=hp_t1

from the comments

I’ll take a “socialist” over sociopath every time

(btw the youtube comments for the E Warren clip are funny, wwnjs just blathering about comunizm! sociamalizm! marxizm!)

Me? I don’t blame Obama for bumblebushie’s screw ups. The criminal bush regime damn near destroyed the world economy and they walked away without a scratch (look they are back and richer than ever!) But I do think Obama hasn’t fought very hard for the good guys. This bizarre ‘compromise’ at the start, rather than the end of negotiating style hasn’t worked for America.

Borrow Hillary’s balls and stand up to this nonsense.
Call out the blatant bullsh!t wwnjs can’t stand facts (hey wwnj, how did you like my post on how ‘the boy’ was planning on paying for the Jobs bill? facts got yer tongue?)
shcb Says:
September 23rd, 2011 at 4:35 am
Back to the original topic. Out of curiosity, have any of you read anything other than the liberal spin on this Troy Davis article? Portions of court documents, judge’s opinions of those that redacted, that sort of thing.
knarlyknight Says:
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:26 am
Nope, but I hear the public discussion and court discussions are like two different worlds in this case. As such, I am not commenting on his execution – I know not enough about it and do not want to learn about it. More concerned with the lynchings and state sponsored killings taking place in middle east…
NorthernLite Says:
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:41 am
Yeah I don’t know enough about it to comment either, and not interested enough to bother.

State-sponsored executions are creepy though. I thought they only did that “over there.”
NorthernLite Says:
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:42 am
Btw, booing a solider? Really?

REALLY?
shcb Says:
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:53 am
I hadn’t heard that who booed a soldier. I flew United last week for the first time in a few months and though it was cool that they seat soldiers before first class.
knarlyknight Says:
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:28 am
NL,
What would Harper say? Make sure you click on the pictures too, they make it look like the playhouse is full of plants, LOL.
http://www.theprovince.com/news/Wayward+Abbotsford+teens+nabbed+with+bong+solar+lights+child+playhouse/5449109/story.html
knarlyknight Says:
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:29 am
Sorry, but I have to comment on that playhouse bong story again:

LOL !
enkidu Says:
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:40 am
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/karoli/audience-boos-gay-soldier-gop-debate

ready to throw up a little bit? ‘President Santorum’
I think Dan Savage needs to do the same thing to Rick
I’m sure you loves you some santorum, eh lil ricki?

now if you would have asked about killing an injured uninsured gay soldier, the place would have gone all neanderthal like last time “YEAH!” “no, F!CK YEA!”

heh, funny link knarls click on the photos for a laugh

The teens were caught like a bong – an example of which is pictured here.

“caught like a bong”? musta been stoned when they wrote that! with, not like

We usually just hiked in the woods or drove around (slowly, safely, except that one time my friend’s Dad said we were putting too many miles on the car, so we drove around backwards all night and returned it with a quarter mile less mileage, heh)
enkidu Says:
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:41 am
wish they would have put an actual snap of the playhouse surrounded by all the neighborhood’s solar driveway lights (did they arrange them in a big arrow, pointing at the playhouse? these kids are so dumb, they must be Republicans)
NorthernLite Says:
September 23rd, 2011 at 12:00 pm
LOL that’s hilarious!! Thanks for sharing knarly.

shcb, they booed the soldier at the Fox News/Google GOP debate last night. I already sent The Google a pretty nasty email about it.

Support our troops!*
*Until they come home… and only if they’re blue-eyed hetrosexuals

Drill Baby Drill!*
*But not in my backyard.

Keep the government’s hands off my Medicare!*
*This one doesn’t require a comment.

Stop investing in sustainable technologies!*
*Unless the investment is in my district.
enkidu Says:
September 23rd, 2011 at 12:22 pm
You can actually listen to the handful of loudmouthed bigots booing the soldier’s question. See my link above. I’m sure there were lots of bigots who didn’t shoot off their dang fool pie holes.

lil ricki is about as smart as praise-jeebuz-ricky: when a soldier asks a politician a question, the very first thing out of your mouth isn’t a smirky smug ‘yeah…’ no, the first thing out of your mouth is: thank you for your service.

Hey how about CERN’s (possibly) faster than light neutrino news?
just heard this joke:

“Neutrino!”
“knock knock”
shcb Says:
September 23rd, 2011 at 12:55 pm
Read a little about it, that was uncalled for, he asked a legitimate question, the people that booed him should have been removed from the building.
knarlyknight Says:
September 23rd, 2011 at 1:08 pm
I’m thinking the solar lights were set up like a field or garden of mushrooms for ambience.
Smith Says:
September 23rd, 2011 at 6:23 pm
If this happened in the US, they’d be facing the death penalty. Perhaps we could power the electric chair with the cells from the solar lamps. It could be the latest green initiative.
enkidu Says:
September 24th, 2011 at 10:48 am
We’re all Inequalistanians now.

http://boingboing.net/2011/09/24/inequalistan-chris-hayes-debunks-top-10-pay-70-of-all-income-taxes-baloney.html
shcb Says:
September 25th, 2011 at 5:14 am
Too bad I can’t open the Chris Hayes clip, judging from the comments it was really funny. Sounds like he justifies what he suposedly debunks. The top 10% do pay 70% of federal taxes, that’s from the IRS. What policy makers do with that info and what voters do to those policy makers because of what they do is another story.
shcb Says:
September 26th, 2011 at 10:00 am
The Tea Party darling Herman Cain won the Florida straw poll think he has any better chance than Paul? Just kidding of course, neither has much of a chance, but I sure like Cain, he is a fellow that has actually accomplished something in his life.
enkidu Says:
September 26th, 2011 at 11:10 am
so typically wwnj: I couldn’t see yer link, didn’t read it, it reinforces my point (of course) also, hurf durf

I’ll break it down into baby talk for widdle wicki

If 90% of the wealth is concentrated in 10% of the population and everyone is taxed 10%, the top 10% would pay 90% of the taxes (that’s where the money is) So saying they pay 70% of income taxes would mean the wealthiest aren’t paying their share (it should be 90%). Like John Stewart pointed out a few weeks ago, you could take ALL of the poorest people’s ‘wealth’ and it would barely equal raising the top percent or two’s rates by 3% (basically letting the debt exploding bush tax cuts for kabillionaires expire).

The idea of a progressive tax system is even better: the money that goes into the roads and schools, the bridges and the police, firefighter, the army/navy/af etc these all contributed to Mr Rich’s success. That he’d like to have ZERO taxes is self-evident. If you want to live somewhere where there is no gov at all, no taxes at all (do bribes count for Rethuggles?), I hear Somalia has some nice beachfront property.

Personally, I’d love to pay an extra 3 or 4% in income taxes, just so long as Richie Rich pays 3 or 4% more. Capital gains should be taxed as regular income. There I said it. I’m worse than Marx (groucho or karl, not sure)
shcb Says:
September 27th, 2011 at 4:36 am
Here’s another case of an alpha intellectual. Morgan Freeman, who is one of my favorite actors by the way, says the Tea Party is racist, why? Well because everyone he listens to says they are.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/sep/26/morgan-freeman-tea-party-racism-obama?newsfeed=true

Problem is, Herman Cain is a Tea Party favorite, and he’s black, all black, not half.

http://newsone.com/nation/associatedpress2/herman-cain-2012-tea-party-straw-poll/

Granted, this is just a straw poll and yes there are racists in the Tea Party, just as there are racists in any group, Danny Glover is a racist in the group known as actors, that oddly enough includes another racist, Mel Gibson.

Thanks for a reasonable post Enky, I’ll get to it later, I have to have a woman poke needles in my back right now.
NorthernLite Says:
September 27th, 2011 at 5:52 am
shcb, I think the whole racist charge stems from the fact that this group all of a sudden sprouted after Obama was elected and all of a sudden they were concerned about spending.

Where were they when Bush passed trillions in tax cuts that added to the debt? The Iraq War? The prescription drug plan? More tax cuts? Afghanistan?

Whether that’s a fair assessment or not, I don’t know. But I can see why people would think it stems from race because spending wasn’t a problem when the white cowboy was in office. Then you add in the signs from their rallies, shouting “you lie!” during a state of the union, tar baby… and on any given day take a look at the comment section under any story about Obama on Fox News.
shcb Says:
September 27th, 2011 at 6:27 am
NL, they were there all along, there were plenty of conservatives that criticized Bush for his spending. Go back and look , you will find tons of conservative criticism of the drug plan, tons. How is shouting you lie racist? Do only certain ethnic groups lie? Is it possible the Tea Party doesn’t like Obama, oh I don’t know, maybe they don’t like his policy? If they were racist why would they like Cain, Sowell, Williams (Walter, not Juan all though more conservatives probably like Juan than liberals).

When you look at those comment sections on Fox news are they criticizing Obama because of his policy or his race?

Don’t get me wrong, the racists are out there, we had dinner with a friend a few months ago, conservative friend, she said she was in DC and had been t the “black house” she thought that was so cute, I set her straight. But as I said above there is racism and bigotry everywhere, the inference of Freeman is that the racism is institutionalized in the Tea Party like the KKK, it simply isn’t.
shcb Says:
September 27th, 2011 at 6:31 am
Real quick Enky, the first problem with your figures is the top 10% make about 50% of the income and pay 70% of the taxes, they don’t make 90% of the income.
enkidu Says:
September 27th, 2011 at 6:57 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth
scroll to “In The United States”

In reality (yes yes, so dang lib) the top 20% has 85% of the wealth
and rapidly growing

My hypothetical (actually cribbed from the Chris Hayes segment) case still stands. but of course math (so dang lib) isn’t your strong suit.
If you have a progressive tax, the disparity between what the rich should be paying and what they actually are is even wider. But why let facts (yes yes, so dang lib) get in the way of some numbers you pulled out of your ass.

Taxing hedge fund managers (who just shuffle money around) at 15% is insane.

And the tea party racist? oh yeah. You did catch their signs right? One of the *founders* http://houstontps.org/audio/4995.jpg

The rank n file Rethugglicans are pretty dang racist too: the only time I’ve heard the word π!@@#& in the last several decades has been from the lips of stridently R zealots. example: a couple years ago, my family and my little brothers family were visiting my parents in FL, as we sat around a table eating our halibut sandwiches, my father speaks up quite loudly says “ahhhh! seasoned with π!@@#& sweat!” My elder son asked ‘what did he say?’ nothing, son, nothing. Oh right, i just hang out with all the wrong Rethuggles. (eye roll)

This whole meme that hard workin Rethuggles are supportin lazy mud hut folk is just racism, pure and simple.
enkidu Says:
September 27th, 2011 at 7:02 am
btw wrong wing nut job, not to belabor the whole ‘math’ thing:
85% is a lot closer to 90% than 70%
duh
shcb Says:
September 27th, 2011 at 7:37 am
Wealth and income are two different things. We tax income, not wealth.
enkidu Says:
September 27th, 2011 at 8:23 am
mb we should tax wealth too! great idea! sociamalism! ;)

You guys DO want to reduce the deficit right? Can’t do it all with cuts unless you want to crash the economy (again). Oh wait, your game plan is to crash the economy so that you can blame it on “the boy”. btw if you can’t see the racism in your “the boy” quote, you might have a real racism problem, just sayin.

Face it, you racists and reprobates don’t want to pay ANY taxes. You’ve bought a bunch of hooey that says your taxes pay for Cadillacs and T-bone steaks for The Lazy Poor (mud hut folk n such).

To claim that the tea party (really just the radical John Birch Society nutbars back yet again) aren’t racist is laughable. But you believe it because it’s a comforting lie. There was no great tea party outcry when bush doubled the deficit. Or ruined the economy. Or charged two bungled wars to our credit card. Lots more examples.

A very significant part of the opposition to Obama is racism. Facts is facts.
shcb Says:
September 27th, 2011 at 8:35 am
Just to summarize, Hayes and you are wrong, the top 10% do pay 70% of taxes and the Tea Party does favor a black man as their choice of president seriously undermining your assertion the party as a whole is racist. Are those points correct?
enkidu Says:
September 27th, 2011 at 9:12 am
You’ve mis-stated both of my points (typical)

What part of “a very significant part” don’t you understand?
a part is not the whole
You and your strawman should get a room, sheesh!

Do we really need to go over the definition of the word up? yet again?
NorthernLite Says:
September 27th, 2011 at 9:38 am
The you lie comment was racist because never before was that kind of behaviour displayed in that venue.

The comments on Fox News have nothing to do with policy and you’d be suprised how many different ways these folks can spell the n-word using different characters and symbols. Which is kind of ironic considering they have problems spelling the most basic of english words. But for that word they seem to have it down pat.

A significant portion of the Tea Party is racist there’s no question about it.
NorthernLite Says:
September 27th, 2011 at 9:39 am
And as for taxes, don’t forget about state and local taxes…

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6008/6188616949_3563a18814.jpg
shcb Says:
September 27th, 2011 at 10:36 am
“A very significant part of the opposition to Obama is racism. Facts is facts.” Ok, let’s say that is true. Then why would they support another black man?

NL, the claim was specific, the claim was Hayes was going to debunk the fact the top 10% pay 70% of FEDERAL taxes, he did not do that (as far as I can tell from the comments) he did what Enky just did, he turned it into a discussion of wealth redistribution, different but related subject.

Funny you should show that chart. State taxes tend to be more of a flat tax, which Enky cites as his answer to this “problem” of the rich not paying their fair share but since the top 10% pay 70% but only make 50% of the income, a flat tax would have them paying less than they do now.

You guys really need to look at this stuff more critically.
NorthernLite Says:
September 27th, 2011 at 10:51 am
Actually that chart shows the top 5% pay a lower rate of tax than all the rest. Pretty clear to me.

If Cain wins (or even comes close) to winning the GOP nomination I will apologize and say that the majority of tea baggers are not racist.
NorthernLite Says:
September 27th, 2011 at 11:23 am
“The bottom 50% of the population owns less than 2.5% of the nation’s wealth. If that’s not the result of class warfare, what is?”

-Jon Stewart
enkidu Says:
September 27th, 2011 at 11:45 am
I clearly wasn’t advocating a 10% flat tax. I’m simply using baby talk to try to get a simple point across: the rich have most of the wealth, they make most of the income, thus it is natural for them to pay most of the taxes. Even with my baby steps example of a flat 10% tax. In Inequalistan, like the USA, we have a very unequal society where the top few % of the people have been accumulating more and more wealth while everyone else is basically flat or declining.

I’m in the upper brackets, but I would LOVE to pay another 3% on income and 10% on capital gains. Just so long as Richie Rich does too (good luck with that). Or just make capital gains the same as any other income (watch the nutbar heads explode with that idea, duck n cover boys!)

During the shrub regime, we libs n progressives paid our damn taxes without dressing up like a colonial Williamsburg employees and blathering racist bullsh!t for years on end. Oh wait Cindy Shehan wore a t-shirt that said bush lied. boo hoo hoo

btw wwnj – up is the direction that the sky is
is that simple enough for you?

How about this: Warren Buffet is right.
shcb Says:
September 27th, 2011 at 2:02 pm
I’m going to back off whatever I said on that chart NL, that term “shares of income” could mean anything, you would have to know what was included but it most certainly doesn’t mean the income tax rate of the upper levels is lower than the lower. It probably is a compilation of state and local sales taxes, but is impossible to tell without an explanation. Usually the sales tax takes on this form and the income tax is just the opposite.

As far as Stewart’s quote, that is a different subject than 10% pay 70%.

Also you have to remember this is wealth Stewart is referring to (and Enky), not income. An intern just out of med school has negative wealth until he pays off his student loans, but that doesn’t mean he is poor or will be poor in the next few years, even if he is making 6 figures he may not have any wealth for 10 or 20 years, if ever, it depends on his lifestyle.

We can get into it deeper if you like, things like pensions aren’t usually included in these statistics either. So a teacher of 30 years that still has a mortgage and a car payment or two, a couple student loans for their kids (that the kids will pay back) might show as zero wealth even though his retirement benefits are over a million dollars.

figuring wealth is complicated, this is why people like Stewart and Hayes mix income stats which are simple and wealth stats which aren’t as simple. Then it just depends on how well informed your audience is.
enkidu Says:
September 28th, 2011 at 10:10 am
http://soc101.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/income-distribution-graph-income-sources-cbo.jpg

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/visual-reminder-us-social-stratification

So wwnj wants to continue a tax policy where people making (on average) $27 million dollars pay 15% for capital gains (their largest source of income) while virtually everyone else pays several times that rate… except the poor, who don’t have much of anything left for the rich to steal, err I mean tax, anyway.

If wwnjs are serious about reducing the national debt (it’s all the rage in tea-bircher nutbar land) then they should accept that we can’t afford the bush tax cuts any more. Spending cuts and revenue increases would make sense. But then when have wwnjs made much sense eh?
shcb Says:
September 28th, 2011 at 3:12 pm
That’s because I believe in equal opportunity, not equal outcome. Do you understand why capital gains are taxed at a lower rate?
shcb Says:
September 28th, 2011 at 3:14 pm
Also, are capital gains taxed at a lower rate for the wealthy?
NorthernLite Says:
September 29th, 2011 at 6:21 am
I know there is a difference between wealth and income, but one tends to build wealth by having a high income…

And that still doesn’t negate the fact that the people with most of the wealth can afford to pay a little more in taxes to help save their country from ruin.
shcb Says:
September 29th, 2011 at 6:47 am
Unless you inherit the money or win the lottery you do tend to build wealth with hard work that leads to high income, correct. The proper level of taxation/spending is a never ending debate and a separate issue. The point here is Hayes/Stewart/Enky etc are mixing two separate issues to produce a bogus point that advances their agenda farther than the real data would on its own.
enkidu Says:
September 29th, 2011 at 8:27 am
Actually you and your strawman are the ones mixing up income and wealth.

http://soc101.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/income-distribution-graph-income-sources-cbo.jpg

Capital gains are the majority of the income for the top fraction of a percent. I think those folks aren’t ‘working hard for their money’, they are using lots of money to make more money in a system that taxes capital gains at 15% and the average Joe’s income at several times that (I’m including the wages from folks up until that last few percent).

bush exploded the deficit, bungled two wars (actually, I think a lot of the ‘missing’ Iraq War monies were intentionally lost), didn’t ‘pay-go’ his Medicare drug coverage (also bungled), spent a trillion or more making us take off our shoes before boarding a plane and gave out tax cuts that favored the wealthy. The rich (income and wealth, usually one and the same) have done spectacularly better than everyone else. Time to pay the piper and accept that the bush tax breaks for billionaires simply isn’t affordable. Tax cuts do not increase tax revenue (except at the extremes, but fact is we are at the lowest level of taxation in generations!) Going back to the Clinton levels (mb bump up cap gains) wouldn’t fix the problem (jobs jobs jobs) but it would signal that all Americans are willing to fight our problems together. The problem being the Rethugs aren’t, they are actively fighting against anything positive happening.

While it is canon amongst wwnjs that libs want ‘equality of outcomes’ or some such nonsense, the plain fact is that the rich are getting richer a lot faster than everyone else and that inequality will eventually wind up just like it did the last time (see 1920s/30s). I think we actually DID end up in another Depression, but good steady leadership and pouring tons of money all over the poor poor banksters has allowed the world’s economic system to avert a Greater Depression.
shcb Says:
September 29th, 2011 at 9:33 am
So I guess you don’t know the answers to my questions?
NorthernLite Says:
September 29th, 2011 at 9:37 am
I think this whole debate about cuts only versus a mix of cuts and tax increases is highlighting something I’ve said many times before: it’s the older generation standing in the way of progress and balanced solutions.

And apparently I’m not alone in this thinking:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/29/opinion/navarrette-broken-government/index.html
shcb Says:
September 29th, 2011 at 12:25 pm
If tax increases would give us increased revenue it would be fine to do both but it is a safer bet that it would decrease inflows rather than increase them at this time. Spending cuts and growing jobs (as Enky said above) are a better solution. Only after the economy gets rolling do we want to raise taxes.

Say you start a new business or have a business that is struggling a little, would you raise prices to get activity through the door? No, you would have a sale, that gets people coming into your store. After you have some business, then you raise your prices so you can make some profit so you can weather the next inevitable downturn. Same idea applies here.

As the store owner you also wouldn’t give yourself a raise during the struggling times, you might even down size a little, maybe you lay off one of your employees and take their shift until business picks up, maybe you don’t buy that new car or truck right now, you wait. Now of course world/national economies are much more complex but many of the same dynamics apply.

As to your article, they need a history lesson.
knarlyknight Says:
September 30th, 2011 at 10:37 am
shcb trots out his straw idiot again…

I’m under the impression that the tax increases that progressives propose are NOT on struggling low-medium income businesses. It is to impose taxes on Wall Street et al who are so out of touch with the reality of the American public that they actullay have raised excutive bonuses after receiving millions of dollars in bail-outs.

Trillions of dollars have been created to supposedly be “pumped into the economy” via QE1 & 2 etc. but that is false, it seems that much of the money created has stayed with the banks to subsidize their bottom line. Had merely half of that “new” money gone to infrastructure works instead, you’d have something solid to show for it plus other benefits such as workers actually working and contributing to the economy.

As it is your country appears to be languishing with vastly contrasting visions – that of the power elite e.g. Goldman Sachs and their appointee Timothy Geitner and the war / police / prison economy which has brought America to it’s current low, and that of the people who have had enough and are starting to ask for a fair shake.
shcb Says:
September 30th, 2011 at 11:00 am
Then stop the stimulus spending. It seems you feel a bunch of crooks have taken a bunch of money and you want to now tax them to get the money back. It seems a logical solution is to stop giving them the money, because if you raise taxes you will not only take money from the crooks but you will also take it from the folks that are doing it right.

I’m going to make a statement now you should really, really think about.

Taxes should never be used to punish.
knarlyknight Says:
September 30th, 2011 at 12:22 pm
Agreed, the money was given to the wrong people and the amounts are simply mind-boggling.

Good statement. However, it doesn’t apply so much here, it’s not punishment it’s to correct a gross injustice from this point forward.

Also, with the statement, in future use do not confuse “punish” with “dissuade” or “paying back external costs the revenue earner earned in part by imposing those costs on society”. Neither are punishments despite many wwnj’s who might whine about it, both are legitimate functions of a wise government.
shcb Says:
September 30th, 2011 at 3:16 pm
Hmm, I don’t think I agree, but maybe I don’t understand exactly what you mean.

I don’t like “sin taxes” cigarette smokers are a burden to society so tax them. I don’t like that, outlaw it if you want but don’t target tax, I’m going to loose that argument almost every time but I don’t like it.

Targeted taxes, or user’s fees are ok in some cases, say an airport fee, I think it is ok to charge the people that are using the airport a small tax that the rest don’t pay, but not the whole cost because even if you don’t fly you benefit from those of us that do for business.

If Wall Street played by the rules we imposed and got rich, good for them, if they ruined the economy in the process, bad for us, but shame on us for letting them. That doesn’t mean it is proper to tax them more specifically going ahead to make up for our mistakes, change the rules and move on, if the Wall Street boys break those rules make those individuals pay but don’t hamstring the rest.

That’s my thoughts.
NorthernLite Says:
October 3rd, 2011 at 7:44 am
Taxes should be higher on cigarettes to discourage use and to recoup health costs. This actually works.

What about Denmark’s new “fat tax”? Same principle.

I think you should absolutely tax bad behaviour – especially when it’s the rest of society that has to cover the costs.
enkidu Says:
October 3rd, 2011 at 1:48 pm
wwnj, do tell why you think capital gains tax rates should be lower than regular income tax rates!

Wasn’t it Saint Ronnie who had them at the same rate? 28% iirc? Using math (I know, I know, math (and facts) is so dang lib!) you can estimate that the capital gains tax was nearly twice today’s rate of 15% Taxamagical!

Cigarette taxes are too low considering the damage cigarettes do.
enkidu Says:
October 5th, 2011 at 12:20 pm
Come on wwnj, edumakate us dum libs on why hedge fund managers should be taxed at 15% while the teacher pays several times that rate.

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