AngryJason
Shared on Wed, 07/18/2012 - 14:11This week, I found a couple news items that have utterly and entirely pissed me off.
I don't try to get political in my posts, but I can't help it this time.
1. Barak Obama's assault on small business
Full context - http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/07/did-obama-say-if-youve-got-a-business-you-didnt-build-that/
I'll cherry pick some nuggets that I took some personal offense to.
"We can make another trillion or trillion-two, and what we then do is ask for the wealthy to pay a little bit more …" Okay, but what about the 46% of the United States that doesn't pay tax? http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/who-doesnt-pay-federal-income-taxes-legally/
"They know they didn’t -look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. " Was the government throwing me a safety net when I paid my employee's salaries and skipped my own when money was tight? Did the government throw me a safety net when I had to eliminate my health insurance benefits for a year while trying to grow a start up and create jobs? Is the government giving me personal tax relief on my company earnings despite me not pulling out one red cent above my salary in order to grow and add more staff? Did the government underwrite any lines of credit or loans, even through the Small Business Association?
"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business. you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. "
Sure, I had some great teachers in my 100% public school career. At the time, my parents and their peers paid taxes which enabled that. Today, me and some of my peers pay taxes to enable the education of our young people. No harm, no foul, despite the quality of public school education declining steadily. Sure, in the American system, we follow in the footsteps of giants. We're currently paying forward for tomorrow's leaders, just as our predecessors paid forward for us, and so on and so forth. Roads and bridges? Okay, I pay taxes that enable the city, state or Federal government to construct roads and bridges. So what? I didn't build my business? I call shenanigans. I took many risks to get to the point I'm at now, and still have a long way to go.
"You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.” - except the entrepreneurs and those 46% who don't have any income tax liability.
My father is a died-in-the-wool Massachusetts democrat. His answer to every fiscal problem the country is facing? "Tax the rich". My point to him is that due to the taxes my company pays, it directly impacts the number of people I can hire. It directly impacts the benefits I can offer my employees. If I paid less in corporate tax, I could hire more Americans. I typically target unemployed, underemployed people for hiring. I am sure that they have more discretionary cash under my salary structure than they do from unemployment benefits or the part time job they had to take at Best Buy in order to get some money in. Every person I can't hire is a person that Obama wants the government to take care of. Make it easier on small business to do business and more people will be hired. More people being hired means more cash in the economy. More cash in the economy means more people being hired. More people being self-sustaining leads to less reliance on the government. Less reliance on the government leads to smaller government. Smaller government leads to reduced debt, reduced debt leads to balanced budgets, balanced budgets lead to budgetary surpluses, budgetary surpluses lead to reduced taxes, reduced taxes lead to more discretionary income for self-sustaining workers.
2. Mark Hamill -
Here's the quote: "And if you don't vote for Barack Obama, you're insane," he added. ''Cause without him, I think the middle class will completely disappear. And you look at Romney and I'm sure he's a nice guy, but I think he's like The Thing, he only imitates human behavior. He's not actually human himself." http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/07/17/Mark-Hamill-Romney-Not-Human
Being lower upper middle class myself, I find this statement somewhat insulting. Mark will be at Celebration VI in Orlando next month. He will be charging $125 for an autograph. Who is the core demographic for Celebration VI? The middle class. Who is he assraping for a 5 second scrawl of his John Hancock? The middle class. He's taking purely capitalistic approaches to his revenue generation - pay what the market will bear. I get that. I applaud that. It's smart business from his side. A case in point - http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2012/07/progressivity-of-taxes-and-transfers.html The middle class, for the first time, is actually receiving more government dollars than they're paying out. We're gladly falling into the nanny state rhetoric. I don't need B-list hollywood personalities telling me what to think. I don't need A-list personalities telling me what to think. Shut up and entertain me.
3. Boy Scouts reaffirm ban on gays. http://www.boston.com/community/moms/2012/07/18/despite-protests-boy-scouts-reaffirm-ban-gays/LdXOZqwuhU9cJyL3NHm2vM/story.html This isn't unexpected, but disappointing. The way I understand it, is that parents and organizers are uncomfortable with the idea of boys being around gays. I can kind of understand it, but the train of thought that homosexuality leads to pedophilia is incorrect. It's akin to saying that all smokers are arsonists because we use lighters. I take some umbrance with the religious angle. Through my research, homosexuality is frowned upon in the Book of Leviticus. That's all well and good as well. However, Leviticus also frowns upon eating shellfish, adultery and being raped - yes being raped, not raping! Are the religious right not serving shrimp at cocktail parties? Not fucking around on their wives? I have no problem with religion. While not "born again", I do consider myself Christian and I do have faith. However, if God has a problem with homosexuality, that's his call, not mine. Live and let live, man. If homosexuality is punishable by an everlasting hell, why make it our point to start the process early with their time on earth? Background check the hell out of any volunteer. The goal is to have the kids learn, and be safe while doing it. Shouldn't tolerance and acceptance (being a Christian principle) be a part of that learning? My girlfriend is active in scouts. Her boys are active in scouts. It's not like I don't have a dog in this hunt. If there's a gay dude out there who can be a positive influence on them to encourage them to continue in scouting and get their eagle, then more power to him.
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Comments
Submitted by ekattan on Wed, 07/18/2012 - 16:05
I don't agree with Taxing the rich idea, just if the companies they own or work for pay their taxes; Fair Taxation. Many of these people Jason, Romney included, take their money elsewhere or find loopholes in the system and end up paying almost 0% taxes with governmental benefits and lobbying. That's who Obama is referring to, people who are successful and end up paying almost zero taxes. Not mid size businesses.
"A recent study examined 280 of the largest companies in America and the taxes they paid in 2008, 2009, and 2010. All were Fortune 500 companies. And all were profitable. In fact, their pre-tax profit over that period totaled $1.4 trillion.
Yet a whopping 25% of them paid federal taxes at a rate of less than 10% (compared to the standard 35% corporate tax rate). And 30 of these companies paid absolutely no income tax on their profits between 2008 and 2010.
The 78 companies that enjoyed at least one year of paying no income tax had profits equaling $156 billion."
http://www.ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/CorporateTaxDodgersReport.pdf
He actually is plagiarizing Elizabeth Warren's speech,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htX2usfqMEs
Submitted by AngryJason on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 08:29
Ekattan,
I did consider including some thoughts around large corporations, but frankly, felt my post was already verbose and I had to jump on a conference call. You are right, loopholes need to be closed. The problem is, both sides are quite unwilling to do it. GOP says closing them would hurt the economy (and it may to some extent), Democrats give it lip service, but never quite get it done. Both sides have tons of lobbyists and campaign dollars coming in from these corporations and don't want to slay their golden goose. I find it troubling that GE was allowed to write it's own tax code http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=21230. That Google paid less in taxes in http://247wallst.com/2010/10/21/how-google-pays-next-to-nothing-in-taxes/. That Apple avoids billions in taxes http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html?pagewanted=all.
GE paid less in taxes on $14B in profit in 2010 than my company of (maybe 30 employees at the time) did? Note the first blurb on the GE link I posted:
"GE Chief Executive is on Obama's innovation board, his company is on top of U.S. Gov't's "friends list"
So, with either Romney or Obama, the large corporations will continue to be protected. The dollar amount has to be set somewhere, and small business doesn't have access to anywhere near that level of protection. Small business doesn't really have any viable loopholes, and frankly, what loopholes are available aren't worth pursuing (company cars, etc...). I won't even get started on the rising health care costs and the penalties under the ACA that will no doubt be waived for a large company with influence (under any administration), but will be passed on to small business.
In Obama's world, my little company is part of the ever trendy to villanize 1%. He talks the talk, but in the end, his policies are damaging to small business much more than the big guys.
If only the Libertarians could put together a "non-crazy" approach. Until then, I have to go with the lesser of two evils and sadly, Cthulhu isn't running.
Submitted by YEM on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 12:19
Romney ran my state. Trust me, you don't want him running this country
Submitted by AngryJason on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 12:43
I'm originally from MA, but wasn't there during the Romney governorship.
The way I see it is that he worked across the aisle in a difficult state to give the people what they wanted. Insurance-wise, Massachusetts is soooooooooo screwed up with their trade laws. I don't think there was any way to get complete statewide coverage without a lot of bumps and bruises.
I could be wrong, but hasn't RomneyCare been in line with state budget increases that were predicted at the time of it's inception? (1-1.5%?). I also believe he had to make a concession with his opposition to the employer mandate part of it.
Aside from RomneyCare, I believe he eliminated a budget deficit. Now, I understand cutting budgets can piss a lot of people off. I remember Weld's tenure led to my mother's state run hospital being shut down and her being laid off.
It is also my understanding that unemployment in the state fell during Romney's tenure.
So he introduced 98% insurance coverage in a state that insurers just refuse to do business in.
He possibly reduced the state deficit and may have balanced the budget (I understand there are some differences of opinion)
He added jobs
He reduced the unemployment rate.
Again, I wasn't there at the time, I don't know. My parents never offered anything tangible to justify him being a horrible governor.
Submitted by YEM on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 13:52
Hows this for tangible?
The economy performed poorly during his tenure. Massachusetts’ unemployment generally follows that of the nation as a whole, but it went from slightly better than the national unemployment rate (5.6 percent in the state versus 5.8 percent in the country) when he took office to slightly worse when he left (4.7 percent in Massachusetts versus 4.4 percent nationally). And his record is even arguably worse than that: Massachusetts lost population for two years in a row during Romney’s term. That means the unemployment number went down because the denominator shrank, but that’s hardly a sign of a growing economy. Total jobs in Massachusetts were the same when he left office as when he started and many key industries actually lost jobs. During Romney’s tenure Massachusetts lost more than 48,000 manufacturing jobs.
There's also absenteeism and trashing the state while running for president, blocking stem cell research that could benefit the state’s strong biotechnology sector, refusing to invest in renewable energy and neglecting the state’s infrastructure.
He's flip-flopped so many times your head would fall off. And It's hilarious how he bashes Obamacare when Romneycare is basically the same thing
Submitted by SarcasmoJones on Sun, 07/22/2012 - 13:12
Wow, yor handle is accurately descriptive. I appreciate you sharing your political opinion, even if I don't agree with everything you said (a Mark Hamill autograph is sooo worth $125.00). I actually write political humor on another website but I never bring politics over to 2o2p. In that same vein I never write about video games over there. I personally believe that the division in our bipartisan system has degraded to the point that our elected officials are more concerned with pandering to their own parties rather than actually debating legislation based on the merits of the legislation. It would be nice to flush out both houses and start with some new guys who are actually willing and able to debate and then shake hands at the end of the day. Some of the folks we have elected have a lot of nerve referring to themselves as "distinguished gentlemen."
Thanks again for sharing!