How come...

[Charade]

Wasn't this question posed to Kerry during his campaign? Oh yeah he didn't answer it either. Maybe those that want to pay more just don't know they can? We should educate them! You can, you can!!! Give as much as you want!!! Or is it that you are on the other end of the pipeline and you're a beneficiary of various tax driven social programs? That would make more sense. I pay 28% and I'm not willing to pay a dime more.
Thanks for asking though.

Is that your base tax rate (what's taken out of your pay based on your salary) or your effective tax rate (after deductions)?

 

[Charade]

Anyone who's advocating tax increases to help those in need should be willing to state how much of an increase their share will be.

True, but it's still confiscated, not given.

 

[Pugdog007]

Is that your base tax rate (what's taken out of your pay based on your salary) or your effective tax rate (after deductions)?

After deductions.

Edited to say: I paid just shy of $20k in taxes for 2004. It makes me sick every time I think about it.

 

[Charade]

After deductions.

Edited to say: I paid just shy of $20k in taxes for 2004. It makes me sick every time I think about it.

Ouch! Mine was about 11 percent after deductions.

 

[Pugdog007]

Ouch! Mine was about 11 percent after deductions.

oh my gosh I seriously need a new accountant. I have a house to deduct, but I file single with no dependents. It's a killer. I wish I could claim these pug dogs. ug:

 

[Pugdog007]

Ouch! Mine was about 11 percent after deductions.

Ok I had to look at this again after you said you paid only 11. I decided that can't possibly be right. I was taxed at 28% and after deductions I paid 22%.

Sorry can you repeat the question

The bottom line is I paid too much and I want a refund!

 

[Miss Jasmine]

I am another conservative less than enamored with the current spending spree.

 

[toto2]

What is there to do them ? Let the private sector handle everything ? Privatise everything and then have schools only where a corporation thinks you can make money with the school , have only private hightways that go only beteenw places that will be putting greens in the pockets of people ? Taxes , for me , are the great equalizer : everybody pitch in for the common good, according to there means . On this boear , often the people who are the more against taxes , are the ones who agree the more with the war. How do you apy for this war. So far , it it costing a lot more money too wage this war than to rebuilt New-Orlean: It is expected that . by 2010 , the cost of the war will have been $600 billion , wich is 3 times more that the post-katrine effort .The tax cuts alot of the most well-off American citizens amount to $4 trillion over 10 years , that would be between 25 and 30 Katrina .


So the question is : I dont want to pay taxes , but I want the war to continue. I am the one who wanted to first find WMD because they were so dangerous ( and inexistant ) then , I wanted my governement to bring freedom from tyrany to a society that , for many reasons , dont understant the the American definition of democaraty , and now I want to go to the end of this , out of respect for those americans who gave there lifes trying to make my first two wishes come true BUT , I dont want to pay for it.

The truth is , we pay taxes , and taxes have almost always existed. We do pay a lot of taxes here in Canda , and especially in my province , Quebec. Do I like paying them ? No really. Do I think it is nessesary ? You bet ! Taxes makes sure that some money will be spend on things that the private sector will never built because there is no money to be made there . There is no money to be made with levees in New Orlean , it's only value is to protect life , and private property. You cannot charge people to look at them , or walk on them : they have no market value. But they need to be rebuilt. And this exemple is repeated in thousands of way and places all over the USA.


No ' i dont know if I made sense , but I post it anyway !

 

[wvrevy]

I pay what I'm asked to pay. If asked to pay more, I will. Yes, taxes are forced payments. If you don't like that, then you're in the wrong country, though I don't know of any that doesn't have taxes . As toto2 pointed out, the vast majority of the projects that receive funding from taxes are things that no private sector company would touch.

How would you suggest we pay for roads ? National defense ? Police, fire, and such ? Should education only be available to those that can afford it ? Should retirement be unavailable to 98% of the population ? Should medicine be unavailable to the poor ? All of those things have to be paid for somehow...so how do you suggest we do it ? By taxing the poor ? Even though there are a growing number of them, I don't think that would get us very far...Kinda counter-productive, know what I mean ?

As for how much of an increase I'm willing to accept...I'd have to figure that out for my own household. But it's not my household that would see the greatest increases anyway, since our income falls well short of $1,000,000 per year. Just rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the rich would go a long way towards paying for everything that the Republicans are spending.

 

[wvrevy]

I have no problem with that, to a point. But what is the limit, in your mind? At what point is enough, enough? To me, telling a wage earner "OK, from this point on, 33% of everything you make is going to be taken away and given to someone else" is far enough. Would you be willing to work for 2/3 of your regular salary?

I'm no economics expert, Brenda...But if I was making a million-dollar-a-year salary, no I can't say that I'd complain all that much. Sorry, I have a hard time feeling pity for rich people, when the people that money goes to help are struggling to put food on the table. The quote in my signature should give you a pretty good idea of how I feel about that.

I'm all for cutting domestic spending, and the current spending spree (pre-Katrina) is the big failure of this administration, as far as I'm concerned. But what I don't get is this - you want spending cut, but you want more social spending. How does that work exactly?

For one thing, the money has to be spent wisely. No more "no-bid" contracts to political cronies. That'd be a good start. Secondly, we need to cut the fat. 100 million dollar bridges to nowhere benefitting 100 people need to go. Thirdly, we need to take a serious look at waste and abuse throughout our domestic social programs. Again, that would go a long way towards putting the money that is spent into the places that it would do the most good.

The spending I would like to see increased is for things like education, and obviously, emergency planning. We've spent tens - if not hundreds - of billions of dollars on homeland security since 9/11. After watching the aftermath of Katrina and the bungled response at every level, do you really think that money has been well spent ? Are you in the least bit confident that your city is prepared to handle the effects of a devastating disaster, be it natural or man made ?

 

[bsnyder]

We've spent tens - if not hundreds - of billions of dollars on homeland security since 9/11. After watching the aftermath of Katrina and the bungled response at every level, do you really think that money has been well spent ? Are you in the least bit confident that your city is prepared to handle the effects of a devastating disaster, be it natural or man made ?

I think this statement misses the forest for the trees. This doesn't mean there weren't serious mistakes made, or that there's not room for much needed improvement. But the notion that the government (at all levels) "failed" is just simply not backed up by the facts.

September 15, 2005
Katrina, What Went Right
By Lou Dolinar

With body recovery teams in New Orleans finding far fewer than the expected 10,000 to 25,000 dead, despite the flooding of 80 percent of the city, it is time to ask: What went right?

Largely invisible to the media's radar, a broad-based rescue effort by federal, state and local first responders pulled 25,000 to 50,000 people from harm's way in floodwaters in the city. Ironically, FEMA's role, for good or ill, was essentially non-existent, as was the Governor's and the Mayor's. An ad-hoc distributed network responded on its own. Big Government didn't work. Odds and ends of little government did.

The critical period was the immediate aftermath of the levy breaks on Monday, August 29 until the flooding crested on Sept. 2. If people were going to be trapped in attics, drowned in their cars, or washed off roofs, this is when it would have happened. Once the flooding crested, while thousands still needed to be removed from their homes, fed, and relocated, at least the immediate threat of drowning was over.

During the critical period beginning Monday, rescue helicopters were already reeling in at least 2000 people a day. These independent units comprised dozens of Coast Guard, Air Force, Air National Guard and Army choppers. Various boat-rescue operations by New Orleans first responders saved thousands more-even as the media's attention was focused on the Superdome, snipers and scenes of looting. The response to the real threat of Katrina, other words, was immediate and massive -it just wasn't the response the media wanted, expected or was spoon-fed at a press conference.

The precise records of who saved how many, when, are incomplete. However, the bottom line here is the count of the dead. That it is far lower than projections indicates that many of the people who faced imminent doom were rescued as waters rose. By Friday of the first week of operations, chopper crews had literally run out of victims to save and had mostly switched to transporting supplies, dropping sandbags, and rearranging people who were already safe.

The Connecticut Post, of all places, gives the best overview of the operation in a column by Peter Urban. He points out that a single chopper of the Louisiana National Guard, on Monday after the storm hit, pulled some 250 people to safety; there were 16 other 30- passenger Black Hawks in the unit that had been stripped of seating to fly similar rescue missions. If the other choppers only saved half as many people, that one unit alone pulled out 2000 people a day.

But the Louisiana Blackhawks weren't the only rescuers. The Coast Guard was flying as soon as the hurricane passed on Monday as well and had already accounted for several thousand victims by Wednesday.

The Air Force reported 1,300 rescues and some 14,000 "transported" by Sept. 4.

By Tuesday night, the Navy's Bataan hospital ship-cited for its inaction by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman--in fact had five choppers flying rescue missions and had pulled out several hundred people.

But those weren't the only helicopters flying. Overall, 113 choppers were in operation around New Orleans by Sept. 1, according to The Armed Forces Press Service.

Urban also notes one explanation why the rescue operation flew below the radar of the media: Individual federal and state units were not coordinating their efforts overall. There was no central clearing house for information on rescue efforts. What looked like a hurricane relief breakdown was in fact a press release breakdown.

Local rescue efforts by boat were surprisingly robust, contrary to conventional wisdom. The much maligned New Orleans police and fire departments, which began operations Monday afternoon, were able to field 100 to 200 boats in the first 24 hours after the breach, according to local officials quoted in the Times Picayune. However, with the City's communications system broken down, the 500 to 1000 rescue workers had to organize themselves and so were operating without central command and control, thus also below the media radar. How many these police and firefighters saved is unknown, but with so many boats in the water so quickly, the number would have easily been in the thousands.

Meanwhile the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, claimed 20,000 rescues by Sept. 8 at which point it suspended calls for more volunteers and boats. While it is unclear how many of these rescues took place in the critical time frame, the only mention of this staggering achievement came in the Sept. 8 press release. How many national reporters thought to call the Wildlife department, or even thought it was a go-to agency?

This list is by no means exhaustive. State police and deputies from various Sheriff's departments were operating rescue boats, as was the Coast Guard. Individual National Guard units responded on their own initially, as did civilian rescue teams from out of state. Dates and numbers saved simply haven't been added up, or served to a skeptical media.

Besides the large number of rescuers, there was another key reason for the success of rescue efforts. The nature of the flooding differed from the scenarios that would have resulted in 10 to 25 thousand dead. Worst case models projected a storm surge that overtopped the levies by 10 feet, destroying them and creating an instant flood at or near the time a Cat 5 hurricane leveled 80 percent of the structures in the city and environs.

That only happened in parts of the city, eastern New Orleans. It is clear from video footage that even there much of the housing survived, at least insofar as it provided a few days of refuge from flood waters. The flooding elsewhere was extensive, but not always rapid--in many areas the rise was six inches to a foot per hour, easily evaded by a moderately fit adult or child.

Flooding didn't crest until Sept. 2, giving rescuers a five-day window in which to prioritize operations for the most desperate. Even then, few homes were overtopped and submerged.

The death toll from Katrina in New Orleans will inevitably rise, but it will likely be in the hundreds rather than the thousands, contrary to the ghoulish projections. That doesn't absolve authorities from responsibility for some of those deaths. As is the case in any disaster, the old, the sick and the handicapped will disproportionately be victims, bringing into tight focus the City of New Orleans' failure to take the modest steps needed for early evacuation for a few thousand of its most vulnerable. More died at the Superdome after the Governor decided on a Pol Pot solution for evacuation of the city, e.g. Starve the city dwellers to force them into the countryside. And of course FEMA's political appointees, and by extension the Administration, failed to step in to address these and other problems, particularly the lack of coordination between the many agencies that were flying blind for the first 48 hours. Indeed, if it turns out that there are large numbers of dead remaining, they won't have died for lack of resources, but rather, because there was no one to tell the vast and otherwise successful rescue flotilla where to go.

 

[JoeEpcotRocks]

What is there to do them ? Let the private sector handle everything ? Privatise everything and then have schools only where a corporation thinks you can make money with the school , have only private hightways that go only beteenw places that will be putting greens in the pockets of people ? Taxes , for me , are the great equalizer : everybody pitch in for the common good, according to there means . On this boear , often the people who are the more against taxes , are the ones who agree the more with the war. How do you apy for this war. So far , it it costing a lot more money too wage this war than to rebuilt New-Orlean: It is expected that . by 2010 , the cost of the war will have been $600 billion , wich is 3 times more that the post-katrine effort .The tax cuts alot of the most well-off American citizens amount to $4 trillion over 10 years , that would be between 25 and 30 Katrina .


So the question is : I dont want to pay taxes , but I want the war to continue. I am the one who wanted to first find WMD because they were so dangerous ( and inexistant ) then , I wanted my governement to bring freedom from tyrany to a society that , for many reasons , dont understant the the American definition of democaraty , and now I want to go to the end of this , out of respect for those americans who gave there lifes trying to make my first two wishes come true BUT , I dont want to pay for it.

The truth is , we pay taxes , and taxes have almost always existed. We do pay a lot of taxes here in Canda , and especially in my province , Quebec. Do I like paying them ? No really. Do I think it is nessesary ? You bet ! Taxes makes sure that some money will be spend on things that the private sector will never built because there is no money to be made there . There is no money to be made with levees in New Orlean , it's only value is to protect life , and private property. You cannot charge people to look at them , or walk on them : they have no market value. But they need to be rebuilt. And this exemple is repeated in thousands of way and places all over the USA.


No ' i dont know if I made sense , but I post it anyway !

Yes, the more we privatize the better.

Democracy (Republic) is a great form of government, but a poor form of doing business.

Taxes, although necessary, are a form of socialism that need to be kept to a minimum.

 

[ThAnswr]

Dream for what, a tax increase?

Good grief..........You can't make this stuff up.

The dream is that some people on the other side of the political aisle will actually heed some of the personal responsibility lectures and start paying the bills instead of passing it on to the next generation.

Hahahahahahahaha...........broke myself up with that one.

 

[ThAnswr]

The problem is they aren't being asked, they are being forced. If you want to give more than what's taken out on payday, you're more than welcome to but when I'm forced to give more just because someone else thinks I'm not giving enough, I have a problem with that. Why is that so hard to understand?

Hey, I've never endorsed Bush on all of his spending. I think the perscription drug program is a white elephant. That's a really BIG expediture. The problem with healthcare is not finding more ways to pay for the ever rising costs like universal healthcare which just spreads the cost over a wide base, it's finding ways to reduce the costs. My GF was just in the hospital (via the ER) a week or so ago. She was in ONE night and got the bill the other day (she has no insurance). It was $6000!! 1600 for the room, 800 for the ER, 900 for the meds and 700 for a CT scan. IMO, that is OUTRAGEOUS!

What are you complaining about? This is the best system in the world. Isn't that what the Republicans have been saying us and you've been passing on. You got what you wanted. Got a problem with it...........tell the ones who've been making the claims, raking in the campaign contributions, and getting good folks like you to carrry the water for them.

Healthcare costs are rising dramatically because fewer and fewer people are paying the bills. Then number of people who don't have healthcare insurance has increased by over 10,000,000 since Bush took office. That's why costs are going up.

 

[bsnyder]

That's why costs are going up.

You're right about one thing. You can't make this stuff up. Unbelieveable!

Wish I could stick around to watch this one play out, but I gotta run. But I look forward to reading more later.

 

[wvrevy]

I think this statement misses the forest for the trees. This doesn't mean there weren't serious mistakes made, or that there's not room for much needed improvement. But the notion that the government (at all levels) "failed" is just simply not backed up by the facts.

I think maybe you need to look up the meaning of that phrase, Bet. Nationwide disaster preparedness is the big picture. What happened in the aftermath of Katrina (those "serious mistakes") is an indicator of a larger problem: that this country is completely unprepared to deal with the aftermath of a disaster of these proportions, be it natural or man-made. Actually, the indications are that we are considerably less prepared for a man-made disaster, as we would have no warning for that, unlike Katrina.

I don't need a spin-miester essay to tell me what went "right"...like everyone else, I could clearly see all that went wrong unfolding right there on my television screen.

 

[ThAnswr]

Anyone who's advocating tax increases to help those in need should be willing to state how much of an increase their share will be.

My quote: A $0.05-$0.10 cent increase per gallon of gasoline to pay to rebuild the infrastructure in this country. If you can get used to paying $3.00 per gallon, you can used to paying $3.05- $3.10.

Roll back the tax cuts. We've problems to solve, infrastructure to build, and bills to pay.

That's for starters.

The alternative is to get involved in these ridiculous rhetorical arguments over "punishing the successful", "confiscating my income", ad nauseum.

If you like the America you saw the past few weeks, stick with the rhetoric. And sooner or later, there'll be an earthquake in California, a flood in Missouri, a series of killer tornadoes in tornado alley, etc.

And then your rhetoric will bite you in the ***. That's karma.

As for the argument, you're "punishing the successsful", that's the small price you pay for living in the United States of America that gave you this wonderful opportunity to succeed. Or do you think the only people who should be grateful are the single parents, people on welfare and food stamps, Medicaid recipients, etc.

*generic "you"*

 

[ThAnswr]

Yes, the more we privatize the better.

Democracy (Republic) is a great form of government, but a poor form of doing business.

Taxes, although necessary, are a form of socialism that need to be kept to a minimum.

Link please to how successful the "privatization" has been.

 

[JoeEpcotRocks]

Link please to how successful the "privatization" has been.

Capitalism, democracy, and Christian principles are responsible for the success of this nation. The link is 230+ years of our history.

 

[peachgirl]

Capitalism, democracy, and Christian principles are responsible for the success of this nation. The link is 230+ years of our history.

Your link isn't working...