Posts Tagged George Bush
Wonder Why President Obama Raised His Own Taxes?
Posted by Lance Haley in Budget Deficit, Business and Money, Capitalism, Economics, economy, taxes on April 16th, 2010
In case you forgot – and I am almost certain you didn’t – today is April 15th. Tax day. Not that you needed or wanted any reminder.
But there are a few things you might not have considered, and a way to re-frame the notion of taxes in order to understand why we pay them – albeit reluctantly.
As was reported today in the Wall Street Journal, the Obamas just paid $1.8 MILLION in income taxes the year. FYI: that is NOT a typo.
Want to put that in perspective? In 2008, George Bush paid just shy of $204,000 in income taxes; and Dick Cheney paid approximately $600,000 in taxes that same year. That means that President Obama paid over twice as much in income taxes his first year in office than George Bush and Dick Cheney did combined in their last year in office.
So when President Obama increased Medicare contributions on the top 1% of wage earners in this country in order to help fund health care reform, he raised his own taxes. Not your taxes – unless you make in excess of $250,000 a year. His taxes. That is something only one President – George Bush I – has ever agreed to do in almost thirty years.
And the President may later propose to raise taxes again on himself and the very rich. Why, you might ask?
Because this President understands that sublimating his own financial self-interests to that of the greater social good is something Americans have always expected from those who could most afford it – a notion that seems quaint and antiquated in this era of repacious greed and obscene self-interest. Sacrificing a portion of one’s wealth for the good of America was one of the principle things that made this country so great.
Want proof? Read it and weep . . .
This chart from the Citizens for Tax Justice outlines the income tax rates for the top 1% of taxpayers in the United States since 1916. Take note of several very salient facts:
1) It may surprise you to learn that with the exception of 1916 (%15), 1925-31 (25%), and 1988-92 (30% +/-), the current tax rates for the wealthiest Americans has never been lower (35%);
2) In the past, high tax rates on the very rich were able to offset severe economic conditions (The Great Depression), the high costs of war (WW II, Korea, and Vietnam), and helped financed the greatest economic expansion in this country’s history (The Go-Go Years of Wall Street – late 1950’s to mid 1960’s);
3) The reason most Americans now pay a higher rate of taxes in relation to inflation-adjusted income is that the very rich have paid far less in taxes since 1988 – a policy that should not be lost on anyone, Republican or Democrat; the rich DO keep getting richer. Unfortunately, political rhetoric and economic propoganda trumps truth virtually every time.
Here is the reality, America: If you want to reduce deficits, balance the budget for future generations, keep entitlements at their present levels (Social Security and Medicare), and reinforce the middle-class, taxes on the very wealthy are going to have to go up. Significantly.
Call it what you may – “transferring wealth”, Socialism, etc. This is a zero-sum game. Otherwise, many of us will go broke over time while they grow ever richer. It’s that simple. This is not class warfare. This is not social engineering. This is reality, people.
But based on some silly twisted philosophical perception that imposing disporportionately “higher” taxes on the rich is inherently unfair and “Socialist” in nature – which even Warren Buffet, the richest man in America, agrees is nonsense - we vote against our own self-interests, and vicariously support the ultra-rich getting richer. Why? Because we no longer recognize the fact that in the past, America always imposed a proportionally greater financial burden on it’s citizens who have prospered most from her bounty, and were blessed with the gift of wealth.
Against his own self-interest, President Obama readily accepts that duty, as well as the additional burden it imposes on his family, based on the time-honored American principle of self-sacrifice . . .
All for the good of the country.
NOTE: The gentleman pictured at the top of this post is none other than the richest man in America – Warren Buffet.
Cindy Sheehan is “Dishonorably Discharged”
Posted by Lance Haley in 9/11, Government, National Security, War in Afghanistan, War on Terror, White House, al Qaida, foreign policy on March 22nd, 2010
Sheehan is the poster-girl for the U.S. anti-war movement that sprouted after the Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq in March of 2003. Her son Casey was killed-in-action in Iraq in 2004, and within a year she became the leading figure in the Iraq War protests when she appeared on national television in the summer of 2005 near Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas when he was there on summer vacation.
While leading a protest in Washington, D.C. last weekend, Sheehan pointed a bullhorn at the Whitehouse and yelled, “Arrest that war criminal“, obviously calling for President Obama’s prosecution for war crimes because he has not yet ordered the removal of U.S. troops from Iraq. At that moment, Sheehan lost any credibility she may have garnered these past six years.
I opposed the war in Iraq from the day the Bush Administration launched it’s public relations offensive in support of that strategic disaster. Afghanistan was and always will be the right war. That is where the principle threat from terrorism exists, and no amount of debate will ever change that one simple fact.
Nor will the argument that Saddam Hussein was ever any strategic or regional threat to our national security. There were never any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There was never any significant military capability in Iraq. Even our intelligence agencies knew that. After Desert Storm I in 1990, Saddam was reduced to the status of just another tin-horn dictator. Kim Jung Il of North Korea has always been a far greater threat to our nation with his long-range missiles and nuclear weapons. So why didn’t we attack him first?
Because Saddam did possess the one ”threat” to our national security that was of any real value - a big damn oil spigot. Dick Cheney wanted his hand on that faucet, so he set out to convince everyone around him that Hussein was the most dangerous man in the world – when the real danger to global security was right there in Cheney’s mirror. I believe Cheney and his minions are war criminals. There is no hiding my disdain for this man, and I believe he is one of the most evil persons of the 21st Century – Osama bin Laden, notwithstanding.
However, no amount of projection of Sheehan’s anger towards President Obama, simply because she disagrees with his decision to alter the time-table for withdrawal of troops from Iraq, will somehow magically transform him into a war criminal anymore than painting a thin mustache on his likeness will make him Hitler – as his Teabagger foes are prone to doing.
President Obama – like myself – believes we need to leave Iraq. President Obama – like myself – never supported the War in Iraq. President Obama – like myself – understands that undoing the failed war strategies of the previous Administration cannot be accomplished overnight.
Cindy Sheehan – when you metaphorically painted that little black mustache on President Obama’s upper lip last Saturday, you shot yourself in the foot. You are a disgrace to America.
Surrender your bullhorn, and go home.
Going to War With Iraq Was “A Done Deal”
Posted by Lance Haley in 9/11, Congress, Conservatives, Dick Cheney, Government, How and Why We Get Screwed, National Security, Politics, War on Terror, al Qaida, foreign policy on March 17th, 2010
Former CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) agent John Kiriakou has just released his new book, “The Reluctant Spy“.
According to reviews, the book reveals the inner-workings of the U.S. intelligence agency, and regales it’s readers with stories from the front lines in the War on Terror. Kiriakou’s participation in the capture of Abu Zubaydah, one of Al Qaeda’s senior commanders, as well as his prior support of the use of water-boarding as a legitimate means for acquiring intelligence, are just two of the many highlights in the book.
However, the most poignant experience of his career may well be the day he was called into a top-secret meeting while working at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia in the summer of 2002. During that briefing, he was told that the Bush Administration had already made the decision to go to war with Iraq the following Spring (2003). His job was to support the decision.
In other words, it was “A Done Deal”.
Kiriakou was stunned that the question of going to war with Iraq was already pre-determined by the Bush Administration in spite of the fact that Congress and the public were still undecided over the basis for invading another country that posed no serious imminent threat to our national security:
“Here was someone at the CIA, obviously plugged into the plans of the executive branch, telling us that the public debate in Congress, reflected almost daily in the press, meant nothing.”
Approximately seven years later, George Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” is anything but. Those elusive WMD’s are yet to be found. And brave young American men and women are still fighting and dying over there.
As Paul Harvey would say, “and now you know the rest of the story”.