TRUMP PAYS “HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS IN TAXES”?

Kate Bolduan laughed out loud in Tuesday’s pre-debate panel discussion, when Donald Trump surrogate André Bauer tried to claim that Trump actually pays millions in taxes.

“Number one, Donald Trump pays more in taxes in one year than most people pay in a lifetime,” Bauer claimed, before the panel erupted screaming foul. Trump should pay a lot in federal income tax, but he doesn’t. For most people, when you have a lot of money, you generally pay a larger percentage in taxes. If Trump only earned poverty wages, he would pay less in taxes. As it currently stands, Trump appears to pay little to nothing in federal income taxes if the forms are any indication.

“When people say he didn’t pay tax, that’s not true. He pays hundreds of millions of dollars,” Bauer continued.

“You think that issue is a winning argument?” Bolduan asked.

“Absolutely,” Bauer argued. “Number one, you say 22,000-plus people currently employed by Donald Trump. Over $9.5 billion in annual revenues. So there’s a lot of people that may say you say he’s not paying income taxes but I have a job because of him. Everybody has down years. For Hillary Clinton to talk about what kind of business man is he, she wrote off $700,000 and all she does is give political speeches.

So, no, she doesn’t know what it’s like to have things you can appreciate. To say he wrote off 18 years is incorrect. That’s what, by law, he has. That’s how long he has to use that write-off. That’s not what he wrote off. This is totally a misnomer. It’s the media not clearly stating what’s happening.”

VIDEO COURTESY OF CNN

“We would love to know exactly,” Bolduan noted about Trump’s taxes.

Matt Schlapp wondered how Clinton was able to go from poverty after leaving the White House to being a millionaire while serving in public office. Clinton files her tax returns jointly with her husband former President Bill Clinton. After leaving the White House, while his wife was in the Senate, Clinton toured the country doing paid speeches and also published an autobiography. The book My Life led the bestseller list for quite awhile and Clinton was given a record-breaking advance for over $10 million.

Former Bernie Sanders press secretary Symone Sanders broke in trying to be a voice of reason, “The story here is the Republican nominee for president has gamed the tax system, gloated about it in the first presidential debate and is now out here actively trying to spin it into something good for the American people.”

Clinton surrogate Bakari Sellers brought up the charitable giving for the candidates. Bauer tried to make it a big deal that the Clintons give to their own foundation, but that is a double edge sword as Trump hasn’t donated to his foundation since 2008.Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold is still searching for any charity that has received any donations from Trump, so far he hasn’t found any.

“I love hearing Matt and Andre spin themselves about this,” Sellers grinned. “Because the fact is if Donald Trump was making all of this money, why is he stiffing the contractors who worked every single day?”

Bauer got a little unruly and Bolduan shouted his name several times before resorting to to holding her arms out to stop everyone from speaking.


[h/t the raw story]

NFTOS
STAFF WRITER

JUST HOW DUMB IS A TRUMP SUPPORTER?

Jimmy Kimmel loves lying to people on the street about fake news and asking for their opinion on it. That’s exactly what he did with his “Man on the Street” interview Tuesday night.

Kimmel admitted he thinks that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump should release his tax returns like every other candidate before him. Trump claims that it doesn’t matter and people don’t care about it, but the polls aren’t in his favor.

VIDEO COURTESY OF ABC




Trump supporters were told that Trump recently released his tax returns and did everything from writing off his marriages as “entertainment costs,” and listing his primary occupation on his taxes as “farmer,” as well as admitting his net worth is only $24,000 — not $10 billion.

Other “revelations” included donations to the dentist who killed Cecil the Lion and the legal defense fund of alleged child pornography connoisseur, Jared Fogle.

NFTOS
STAFF WRITER

FIORINA USED TAX INCENTIVES INTENDED FOR RESEARCH AND EMPLOYEE HIRING TO BUY BACK STOCKS…….

Fiorina skirts law again:

Prior to being fired herself, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina used tax incentives from the federal government, intended to increase research and development and employee hiring, to buy back stock before firing thousands of HP workers.

According to The Daily Beast, Fiorina — whose troubled tenure at HP has come under more scrutiny as she moves up in the polls for the GOP presidential nomination — was not the only high-ranking executive to take advantage of a corporate “tax holiday” and work it to her own advantage.

In 2004 Congress passed the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 — after high pressure lobbying from Hewlett-Packard among others — that included an incentive for companies to repatriate profits stashed overseas with the understanding the money would be invested in job-creating research and development.

Instead, under Fiorina’s stewardship, HP took $4 billion of the $4.3 billion in tax breaks and funneled the money into a stock buyback program that enriched shareholders including herself. The move was done despite the fact that the act specifically prohibited the stock manipulation.

Instead of hiring more workers, HP laid off 14,500 workers due to plummeting share prices following Fiorina’s disastrous decision to purchase Compaq that caused profits to plummet.

The following year, Fiorina was fired by the HP after an acrimonious fight, but still managed to depart with a $21 million severance package.

This is not the only time Fiorina has been accused of skirting the law.

During her tenure, HP was accused of selling products into Iran despite an embargo. HP explained that the sales were made by a foreign subsidiary which was not bound by the U.S. government sanctions. Fiorina claimed no knowledge of the $120 million sale.

NFTOS
Blogger-In-chief

Roger West

TAXING THE RICH TRUMP STYLE

On Sunday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump struck a populist tone when talking about hedge funds and the taxes they pay. “They’re paying nothing and it’s ridiculous,” he told John Dickerson on Face the Nation. “They make a fortune, they pay no tax, its ridiculous okay.”

He went on to say they “are getting away with murder” and that “they have to pay tax.” Without specifying exactly how he would change that, he added that he wants to lower tax rates for middle-class Americans. “The middle class is the one, they’re getting absolutely destroyed.”





The money made by hedge fund managers is taxed at significantly lower rates than ordinary income made through wages: capital gains, or investment returns, are subject to a top tax rate of 23.8 percent, compared to a 39.6 percent payroll tax. The benefit of the lower tax rate accrues almost entirely to the wealthy — nearly 70 percent of the money goes to the top 1 percent of income earners, but just 7 percent goes to the bottom 80 percent.

Economists have said that the lower tax rate for capital gains income is “by far” the greatest contributor to growing income inequality, which harms the middle class.

But Trump has not always stuck up for the less well off in his tax reform proposals.

As recently as 2011, in his book Time to Get Tough, he actually called for lowering the tax rate on capital gains income as well as dividends. He also called for eliminating the estate tax — which is already a massive giveaway to the wealthiest Americans — and getting rid of the corporate tax rate altogether.

He also proposed changing income taxes so that income over $1 million would only ever be subject to a 15 percent rate, while taxing lower incomes at 1, 5 or 10 percent, depending on the bracket. As Richard Phillips of Citizens for Tax Justice has written of the plan, “the lower tax rate structure would provide the wealthy with huge tax cuts.” Those plus the changes to the corporate tax rate, capital gains and dividends, and the estate tax would create a “multi-trillion dollar hole” in tax revenues, he added.

More recently, Trump has floated other tax reform ideas that could constitute a big benefit for the best off. In an interview with Time Magazine, he voiced support for a flat tax or fair tax. Different details of a flat tax would produce different results, but an analysis of one such plan put forward by Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) found it would raise taxes for Americans at the bottom of the income scale by $102 to $462, while reducing the tax burden for those making more than $1 million a year by about a half million dollars.

In the same interview, he said that he wants to take on corporate tax inversions, where American companies merge with foreign-based ones in countries with lower tax rates so they can move their headquarters to avoid paying higher taxes. But he said he wants to bring companies back by letting them return to the U.S. by either paying nothing or something like a 10 percent tax rate on their overseas profits. Such a move, called a repatriation tax holiday, has already been tried in 2004. At that time, firms mostly used the repatriated profits not to invest in American jobs but to inflate their own stock prices while laying off large numbers of workers.


[cross-posted from thinkprogress]

NFTOS

STAFF WRITER

SANDERS SAYS HE WOULD TAX THE RICH AT 90%

In an interview with CNBC’s John Harwood, Sen. Bernie Sanders , who is running for the Democratic presidential candidacy, said he could back a 90 percent top marginal tax rate.

Harwood brought up that some have likened efforts to combat income inequality to Nazi Germany. Sanders noted sarcastically, “When radical, socialist Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, I think the highest marginal tax rate was something like 90 percent.”

Harwood followed up by asking, “When you think about something like 90 percent, you don’t think that’s obviously too high?” to which Sanders replied, “No.”

He continued, “What I think is obscene…when you have the top one-tenth of one percent owning almost as much as the bottom 90.”

VIDEO COURTESY OF TYT




Sanders is right that the top marginal tax rate, that paid by the wealthiest Americans, was around 90 percent under Eisenhower — it was actually 92 percent in the 1950s. Today, the top marginal tax rate is 39.6 percent, although the richest 1 percent end up paying less than that on average and the average rate actually fell for many years.

Republicans have consistently claimed that higher tax rates on the wealthy will hold back economic growth, while lowering rates further will spur it forward.

But that’s not likely the case. Last year, economists found that the point at which the top tax rate is high enough to maximize government revenues but not so high that it discourages the rich from trying to earn more is quite high: about 95 percent for the 1 percent. History bears that out. Economists have pointed out that post-war American growth has been higher during periods with much higher top marginal tax rates and lower when tax rates were substantially lower. When the top rate was more than 90 percent in the 50s, economic growth averaged more than 4 percent a year. But recently when the top rate has been closer to 35 percent, growth has been less than 2 percent a year on average.

The point of higher tax rates isn’t just to penalize the rich, of course. They would need to serve a policy function. For Sanders, that’s combating income inequality. “If you have seen a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top tenth of one percent, you’ve got to transfer that back,” he told Harwood.

A 90 percent top tax rate could achieve that goal. The same economists who found that the rich can swallow a 95 percent rate also found that a 90 percent tax rate for the 1 percent could significantly reduce the Gini index, a measure of income inequality. It would also help lower wealth inequality. Meanwhile, everyone’s well-being would improve, rich and poor alike.

So far, many Republican presidential candidates have proposed a radically different approach: a flat tax. Sen. Ted Cruz , Sen. Rand Paul , and Ben Carson have all backed this idea. The details of each proposal differs, but the basic premise is an attempt to simplify the tax code by only having one rate that everyone pays, rather than the current system in which rates increase as income increases. Analysis is of one flat tax plan put forward by Texas Gov. Rick Perry found that it would raise taxes for those at the bottom of the income scale by between $102 and $462, while the tax bill for those making more than $1 million a year would decrease by about a half million dollars.

It would also lower government revenue by between $500 billion and $1 trillion a year. If a candidate wanted to maintain the current level of revenue, it would require taxing everyone, rich or poor, by at least 25 percent.

[h/t thinkproress]

NFTOS

STAFF WRITER

THE COMMON SENSE TEST

                                The Common Sense Test 

                                 By Thomas Vanderbilt 

For months my republican friends have been telling me Romney knows business, he’ll get things moving in the right direction. Okay, so I went into the first debate thinking here’s your chance Gov. Romney. Sell me on why you know better than the President. I’m open-minded; convince me you’re the man for the job.

Forget rhetoric; tell me in simple eighth grade language, the kind my tea bagger friend’s use, what your plan is to stimulate the economy. Well I got my answer: lowering the income tax rate. Simple! Clean! Elegant! Even a caveman understands that lowering the rate means more money in his pocket. More money means I have more to spend. After all, almost 70% of the economy is consumer spending.

While processing and contemplating the Governors comments' the Gov. then continued to explain that he wouldn’t add to the deficit, which is another great concern of mine. Hey, maybe I was wrong about Mitt? Maybe he is the real deal! The governor said he would lower the tax rate and be budget neutral by eliminating certain deductions. BAM! Take that Mr. President! I mean how hard is it to lower taxes and cut deductions?

Then I thought about it. You’re going to lower the tax rate but be budget neutral? What does that mean? How will that help? I don’t know about you, but the last time I looked at my paycheck, I paid my federal taxes in US dollars not US percentage points.

What loopholes are you going to close? If I’m paying the same amount of tax dollars, how will I have more to spend? Someone was lying right to my face and it wasn't my POTUS. Sure Mitt looked and sounded Presidential, but I’m missing something, because I still don’t have the facts I need to see how this is going to work out.

Maybe Mitt did well last night; at least according to all the talking heads, and it all sounded good. That is, until you ponder it some more. Wow, a lie a minute, almost. If Mitt won, we’ve lost!

Mitt Romney’s plan fails my common sense test and should fail yours too. You sure looked like a successful businessman governor; maybe Bain Capital needs its CEO back? Try them for a new job. I maybe open-minded, but I’m no schmuck.

NFTOS

Guest Blogger

Thomas Vanderbilt 

TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH

Once you peel back the layers you shall see Mittens has truth issuse

Polling sources say the verdict is in, and the jury says Mitt Romney handily won last night’s debate, and did what he needed to do to have a fighting chance at winning the election. But what he didn’t do, predictably, was tell the truth.

Romney’s debate performance was chock full of lies, recalling his running mate’s address to the GOP convention, which was also chock full of lies. Hopefully, just as Ryan’s address was dissected and debunked by some media outlets, Romney’s claims are as well, so the debate can move to substantive issues instead of stylistic ones.

Peeling back the layers of Mitts pomp and circumstances last night revels, that on facts Mitt loses horribly, and here are ten of Romney’s fact-challenged claims from last night:

1. An ‘Unelected Board’ Controlling Your Health Care

Despite President Obama trying to push back on this lie, Romney made this claim a few times last night. Obamacare, according to Romney, “puts in place an unelected board that's going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have.” In reality, as the Associated Press points out , the board that is tasked with bringing down Medicare costs is prohibited from “rationing care, shifting costs to retirees, restricting benefits or raising the Medicare eligibility age. So the board doesn't have the power to dictate to doctors what treatments they can prescribe.” This Romney claim also hearkened back to Sarah Palin’s lie that Obamacare created “death panels,” which was a straight up lie.

2. A Bipartisan Record

Romney referred to his alleged “bipartisan” record in Massachusetts as governor during the debate. But what’s the real story on this? ABC News calls the claim “not quite factual.” Indeed: Romney’s health care plan was enacted with the help of a Democratic legislature. But in general, the body was “frustrated” with Romney “because he wanted to govern like a ‘CEO’ and ‘didn’t pay heed to the legislature and they resented that,’” according to the Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation’s Michael Widmer.

3. Dodd-Frank Labels Banks as ‘Too Big to Fail’

One contrast between the candidates that emerged during the debate was over Dodd-Frank, the weak Wall Street reforms and regulations passed after the 2008 financial collapse. Romney wants to repeal Dodd-Frank, and part of the reason why is his claim that the bill designates banks as “too big to fail” and therefore gives them “a blank check.” But as ThinkProgress notes, this is far from the truth: “the law merely says that the biggest, systemically risky banks need to abide by more stringent regulations . If those banks fail, they will be unwound by a new process in the Dodd-Frank law that protects taxpayers from having to pony up for a bailout.”

4. Obamacare Leads to Loss of Healthcare

Governor Romney claimed that the passage of the Affordable Care Act will lead to 20 million people losing health insurance. He based this claim on a Congressional Budget Office report. But according to PolitiFact, Romney “cherry picked” the CBO report and mislead viewers on why people would “lose” coverage.

PolitiFact’s final verdict on the claim is: “That number is cherry-picked, and he’s wrong to describe it as only including people who ‘like’ their coverage, since many of those 20 million will be leaving employer coverage voluntarily for better options. Romney also ignores that under the status quo, many more people today ‘lose’ coverage than even the highest, cherry-picked CBO estimate. We rate his statement False.”

5. The Failure of the Obama Economy

Romney hammered Obama on the economy’s performance over the past four years. One claim Romney made was this: “[We have] 23 million people out of work...The proof of that is that 50 percent of college graduates this year can't find work.”

But here’s the AP breakdown of the facts on this claim: “The number of unemployed is 12.5 million, not 23 million. Romney was also counting 8 million people who are working part time but would like a full-time job and 2.6 million who have stopped looking for work, either because they are discouraged or because they are going back to school or for other reasons.”

And on the college graduate claim, Romney was also wrong. Back to the AP: “A Northeastern University analysis for The Associated Press found that a quarter of graduates were probably unemployed and another quarter were underemployed, which means working in jobs that didn't make full use of their skills or experience.”

6. Obamacare Cuts Billions From Medicare

This was one of Romney’s favorite attack lines last night: the notion that the Affordable Care Act is siphoning off funds from Medicare. The specific claim is that $716 billion was cut from Medicare because of the Affordable Care Act. In reality, this claim is highly misleading. What the number refers to is money that is saved “primarily through reducing over-payments to insurance companies under Medicare Advantage, not payments to beneficiaries. Paul Ryan’s budget plan keeps those same cuts , but directs them toward tax cuts for the rich and deficit reduction,” ThinkProgress notes.

7. Gas Prices Increase

Romney said that “gasoline prices have doubled under the president. Electric rates are up.” This is true--but to blame it on the president is highly misleading. Gasoline prices have little to do with individual policies carried out by a president. Instead, as the Associated Press states, “Gasoline prices are set on financial exchanges around the world and are based on a host of factors, most importantly the price of crude oil used to make gasoline, the amount of finished gasoline ready to be shipped and the capacity of refiners to make enough to meet market demand.”

The AP also skewers Romney’s claim on electric rates going up: “Retail electricity prices have risen since Obama took office — barely. They've grown by an average of less than 1 percent per year, less than the rate of inflation and slower than the historical growth in electricity prices. The unexpectedly modest rise in electricity prices is because of the plummeting cost of natural gas, which is used to generate electricity.”

8. Health Care Costs Rising Under Obama

Romney’s made this statement on the campaign trail--and if it was wrong then, it’s wrong now. Last night, Romney claimed that “health care costs have gone up by $2500 a family.”

But FactCheck.org was on this false claim back when Romney used it on the campaign trail in September. Their take: “Romney says health insurance premiums have gone up $2,500 under Obama. The actual increase has been $1,700, most of which was absorbed by employers and only a small part of which is attributable to the health care law.”

9. Oil and Gas Production Increases Only on Private Land

The former Massachusetts governor said last night that “all of the increase in natural gas and oil has happened on private land...Your Administration has cut the numbers of permit and licenses in half.”

But ABC News says Romney is playing loose with the facts. Data from the Bureau of Land Management shows that “the number of drilling permits on federal lands approved during the fiscal years President Obama has been in office has decreased somewhere between 20 and 37 percent compared to the years before he became president - not the 50 percent Romney claimed.”

10. No Tax Cuts for the Rich

To fend off the perception that he’s only concerned about the wealthy, Romney made sure to emphasize that his economic plan would not lower tax rates on rich people.

Think Progress has the details on that claim: “If Romney were to actually implement his plan to reduce tax rates by 20 percent while eliminating tax deductions in order to pay for it, taxpayers with more than $200,000 would certainly see a tax cut. But everyone else — 95 percent of Americans —will see their taxes increase.”

I have spent two and half years blogging, trying to rile the Democrats to get a backbone, to find their testicle fortitude, to verbally bitch slap the radical righties of our world into submission, and yet POTUS played the nice guy. Having debated often in my life, a passive debater loses his ass 100% of the time.

Not once did POTUS mention Bain Capitol, nor did he mention the 47%. Completely unacceptable! POTUS was trying to be nice man in a nasty mans game, Robme is a liar of epic proportions, Robme was on life support prior to the debate, he was one breath away from political death, and POTUS not only used the defibrillator, He made sure that Robme was upright and ventilated.

Unpacking the substance of Robme's message last night leaves us little doubt that he lies more than his companion, Paul "Lyin" Ryan. But a passive, 'nice" POTUS, or a POTUS unwilling to unleash the wrath on these two tools is political death by being a unprepared wimp. When debating, always assume your audience is dumber than a box of rocks, therefore it forces you to lay out all context of ones policy and weaknesses, never assume all Americans have heard of Bain Capitol nor the derogatory 47% comment, disclose everything!

This was just a bump in the road, and if voters truly see the facts for what they are, they shall see that Mittens puzzle pieces don't fit all together, that his math answers doesn't align with the formula he has laid out, that his modus operandi is to - "when you can't dazzle with brilliance, baffle with bullshit".

UPDATE: Thinkprogress defines Mittens lies as almost one per minute

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

The Facts On Mitt's Taxes

NFTOS

STAFF

TAX FACTS

FOOD STAMPS

If you were to ask 100 people how much they believed a married person with one child would pay in taxes, you'd likely get 100 different answers. Following that, if you asked them to explain the breakdown of where that tax money went, specifically to SNAP (formerly the food stamp program), it would be fair to assume nearly all would be unable to muster a coherent response.

Many people might be surprised to learn that the average contribution to the food stamp program is a little over 10 cents, or one thin dime, a day. Let's look at the numbers.

A married person with one child making $50,000 a year will pay exactly $3,820 in federal taxes. Of those, $2100 is allocated to Social Security, and $725 is distributed Medicare. This leaves a whopping $995 to be used to pay for programs administrated by the Federal government. That money is broken down below in its entirety:

· National Defense $247.75 / 24.9%
· Health care -- $235.81 / 23.7%
· Job and Family Security -- $190.05 / 19.1%
· Net Interest -- $73.63 / 8.1%
· Veterans Benefits -- $44.77 / 4.5%
· Education and Job Training -- $35.82 / 3.6%
· Natural Resources, Energy, and Environment -- $19.90 / 2.0%
· Immigration, Law Enforcement, and Administration of Justice -- $19.90 / 2.0%
· International Affairs -- $15.92 / 1.6%
· Science, Space, and Technology Programs -- $9.95 / 1.0%
· Agriculture -- $6.96 / 0.7%
· Community, Area, and Regional Development -- $4.98 / 0.5%
· Response to Natural Disasters -- $3.98 / 0.4%
· Additional Government Programs -- $78.61 / 7.9%

The category needed for examination is "Job and Family Security", which comprises 19.1% of all of the $995 paid in. In the future I will examine other categories in more detail. The breakdown of the $190.05 is listed below:

· Unemployment insurance -- $22.88 / 2.3%
· Food and nutrition assistance -- $36.82 / 3.7%
· Housing assistance -- $19.90 / 2.0%
· Earned income, Making Work Pay, and child tax credits -- $32.84 / 3.3%
· Supplemental Security Income -- $18.91 / 1.9%
· Federal military and civilian employee retirement and disability -- $43.78 / 4.4%
· Child care, foster care, and adoption support -- $5.97 / 0.6%
· Temporary Assistance for Needy Families -- $6.96 / 0.7%
· Railroad retirement and additional income security -- $4.98 / 0.5%

As is evidenced above, despite a person paying $191.05 for "Job and Family Security", only $36.82 of that is going towards "Food and nutrition assistance."

Therefore, a married person with one child who makes $50,000 a year will pay $36.82 in taxes to ensure the food stamp program is fully funded. But wait, there is more. That $36.82 is not only for food stamps. Indeed, that money is allocated to two other programs that include the school lunch program, and the special supplemental food program for women, infants and children. Keep in mind, this comprises the totality of the costs associated with the program including administrative.

The breakdowns for how the $36.82 is allocated is not readily available, but do the math.

$36.82 divided by 365 days = 10 cents a day.

Consider the context. A person who is paid $50,000 a year earns, on average, $136 every 24 hours. Meaning that in a little over six hours, in the example where a person is paid for every hour of their life in perpetuity, that person would be able to pay for their entire yearly contribution to ensure that hungry people are fed.

By the way if you are curious as to what percentage 10 cents is while being compared to $136 a day the number is: 0.0735%

All of this information, and more, is freely available to the public and can be found on The White House's official website.










NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

SHOW US THE MONEY



Mitt, Release Your Tax Info

Mitt Romney appeared on Fox & Friends Monday morning to respond to the growing number of conservatives who are calling on the former Massachusetts governor to release more of his tax returns.

At least eight Republicans have urged Romney to publicize the records and put the issue behind him, but the candidate is sticking to his guns. The public will see just two years of returns and no more, Romney said, before appearing to admit that the records may contain something politically damaging:

ROMNEY: The Obama people keep on wanting more and more and more. More things to pick through, more things for their opposition research to try make a mountain out of and to distort and to be dishonest about. We’re going to put out two years of tax returns.

Republicans are also raising alarms about Romney’s returns. “The fact is, there are a couple of years he may not have paid any taxes,” MSNBC host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough predicted during Monday’s Morning Joe. “Maybe he’s concerned about that. But if it’s going to come out, he needs to get it out now so he has a couple of months to explain it.”



NFTOS
STAFF

Stephen King Says To Government

Raise My Fucking Taxes Already!

AUTHOR STEPHEN KING

Novelist Stephen King has joined billionaire investor Warren Buffett as a member of the uber-rich who is attempting to have taxes raised on America’s richest citizens.

In a more “colorful” approach than that offered by the Berkshire Hathaway CEO the horror book writer this week proclaimed “Tax Me, for Fuck’s Sake.”

King then goes on to write for the Daily Beast:

“The majority would rather douse their dicks with lighter fluid, strike a match, and dance around singing ‘Disco Inferno’ than pay one more cent in taxes to Uncle Sugar.”

King goes on to note that while he and his wife give out more than $4 million per year to charity, many of the countries uber-rich pay out their taxes and then sit on their “dough.” King writes:

“And hey, why don’t we get real about this? Most rich folks paying 28 percent taxes do not give out another 28 percent of their income to charity. Most rich folks like to keep their dough. They don’t strip their bank accounts and investment portfolios, they keep them and then pass them on to their children, their children’s children. And what they do give away is—like the monies my wife and I donate—totally at their own discretion. That’s the rich-guy philosophy in a nutshell: Don’t tell us how to use our money; we’ll tell you.”

As Stephen King so rightly points out, America’s richest men and women wouldn’t have their riches if it wasn’t for America, they should therefore be protecting their investment by remembering which country’s citizens needs their help and made them rich in the first place.

King goes on to dispel the “job creators” myth, pointing out that investments are largely made in overseas company’s because of “anti-American” job practices set forth by the US government.

Check out the full King post at the Daily Beast and you might just find his scariest true-to-life piece of literature yet.



NFTOS
STAFF

Herman Cain’s Great Plan

Tax the poor people’s food to finance massive tax break for the rich.

The centerpiece of former pizza czar Herman Cain’s presidential campaign is his “999″ plan, which would slash taxes on the wealthy, drive up deficits to the worst point since World War II, and force low-income Americans to pay a massive nine times their current tax rate. In an interview this morning with CNN’s Candy Crowley, Cain even said food and clothing would not be exempt from the 9 percent national sales tax he would put in place if elected president. Indeed, he said it would be “fair” for a poor person to pay as much in sales taxes as Crowley does:

CROWLEY: Is there any exception, as you see it, in this consumption tax? Except for clothing, perhaps? Except for food?

CAIN: Nope, you don’t have to do that. Nope, you don’t have to do that.

CROWLEY: So a poor person is paying the same amount of taxes on groceries as I am? Does that sound fair to you, just in a vacuum?

CAIN: Yes, it does sound fair because of the other point I’m about to make. If they need to buy a car or a home or some hard goods that are used, they pay no taxes.

 
Because he says his plan would lower the income tax for some Americans — and, by his calculations, leave people with more money to spend — Cain seems to think his plan would leave low-income Americans with more money. He is wrong. Presently, the bottom quintile of earners pays about 2 percent of their income in federal taxes. Under Cain’s plan, their taxes would increase all the way up to 18 percent.

Taxing poor people’s food is considered so beyond the pale that even the Tea Party group FreedomWorks assumed that the final version of Cain’s tax plan would exempt food from the sales tax. Only two states, Mississippi and Alabama, charge sales tax on food.

This week, Cain said his plan would not be regressive because “It expands the base so that everybody has a lower rate. And it is not regressive on the poor.” Clearly, he is ignoring how his tax plan would actually affect hardworking Americans, especially when it comes to the food they buy so that they can feed their families.



NFTOS

Koch Brothers Concoct Grandeur of Illusions On Why They Are Above Taxation

Koch Responds To Buffet: ‘My Business And Non-Profit Investments Are Much More Beneficial To Society’.

Lead Tea Baggers Charles & David Koch

America’s current tax system forces people making $50,000 a year to pay a higher rate than hedge fund managers making $2.4 million an hour. Warren Buffett penned an op-ed last week declaring that America’s super-rich have been “coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress.” Lamenting the numerous tax loopholes and special breaks afforded to billionaire investors, Buffett noted that in his entire career, even when capital gains rates were as high as 39.9 percent, he never saw anyone “shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain.”

Charles Koch, head of the massive petrochemical, manufacturing, and commodity speculating Koch Industries corporation, has responded to Warren’s call for shared sacrifice: “No Thanks.” In a statement to right-wing media, Koch states:

Much of what the government spends money on does more harm than good; this is particularly true over the past several years with the massive uncontrolled increase in government spending. I believe my business and non-profit investments are much more beneficial to societal well-being than sending more money to Washington.

Koch’s “non-profit investments” include the group founded by his brother David, “Americans for Prosperity” (formerly known as Citizens for a Sound Economy). It's been reported that AFP was one of the first and most well-resourced drivers of the anti-Obama so-called “Tea Party” movement. Koch-funded Tea Party events have featured speakers comparing health reform to the Holocaust, and in some cases have sponsored rallies with leaders of the “birther” conspiracy theory.

Among the Koch brothers’ other non-profit investments include far-right conservative think tanks dedicated to cheerleading the war in Iraq, spreading anti-science propaganda, and smears claiming that the poor do not really suffer. Koch has given money to educational initiatives, but in exchange for control over academic freedom that simply furthered Koch’s political beliefs. These “investments” at best advance Koch’s political ideology and at worst misinform American voters. Either way, they are hardly a replacement for “government spending” on things like food assistance and basic medical service.

According to Forbes, the Koch brothers have seen their wealth rise $11 billion in recent years, making the Koch brother among the richest in the country by being worth around $22.5 billion each. Much of those profits, however, are due to soaring gas prices and the fact Koch Industries has avoided compensating the public for hundred million tons of carbon pollution the company produces each year. Other Koch companies also receive significant taxpayer subsidies, despite Koch’s supposed opposition to government spending. This company is among the country’s top sources of carcinogenic chemicals and air pollutants.

America has been good to Charles Koch, providing an environment where his family has made billions. But Koch doesn’t want to give back, especially through more taxation. His charitable foundation, which gives largely to right-wing organizations that support his politics and Koch Industries’ business interests, still only donates about $12 million a year — 0.05 percent of Koch’s net worth. If higher rates were imposed on the super-rich, would Koch retreat to the family’s fabulous mansions, like this one in the Hamptons, aboard its fleet of private jets in a John Galt-inspired temper tantrum? Or would they act like any respectable businessman, and continue to make a profit without complaining?


NFTOS

This Is How Much They Care

Minnesota Government Shuts Down As Republicans Refuse To Raise Taxes On Millionaires.

Minnesota’s government will be shutdown over the Fourth of July weekend as the state’s Republican-controlled state legislature and Democratic governor failed to reach an agreement to close a $5 billion budget deficit before midnight. To close the deficit, Gov. Mark Dayton (D) proposed raising taxes on people making over $1 million a year. Republicans, who took control of both houses last November and campaigned on a platform of no tax increases, are digging in their heels and insist on reducing the deficit through major budget cuts.

This state battle closely mirrors the one on the national stage over the debt ceiling:

Without a two-year budget agreement in place, state parks and the Minnesota Zoo will be shut for the July 4 holiday weekend, nonemergency road construction will halt and thousands of state workers will be furloughed.

Government functions deemed critical by a county judge on Wednesday will keep operating, including the state patrol, prisons and the Medicaid health-insurance program for the poor. Courts will stay open, and welfare and food-stamp payments will continue.

Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, a Republican, said late Thursday that the state’s health and human-services budget was a sticking point in the negotiations.

Ms. Koch was interrupted several times by protestors in the Capitol chanting, “Tax the rich

The effects were reportedly already being felt hours ahead of the deadline, as people rushed to get driver’s and fishing licenses, and “park officials began warning campers to pack their gear and leave.”
Dayton is standing by his plan to raise taxes on millionaires in order to spare cuts in services to the most vulnerable residents. He told reporters late Thursday, “This is a night of deep sorrow for me because I don’t want to see this shutdown occur. But I think there are basic principles and the well-being of millions of people in Minnesota that would be damaged not just for the next week or whatever long it takes, but the next two years and beyond with these kind of permanent cuts in personal care attendants and home health services and college tuition increases.”

This is Minnesota’s second government shutdown in the last six years. The first occurred in 2005 under then-Governor Tim Pawlenty (R), and lasted only a few days. However, this year’s shutdown is “expected to become the broadest shutdown of state services in its history.”

Hopefully America has learned its lesson about voting for radical righties, we are now paying a severe price
everywhere we turn due to the mid-term landslide. Republican choke and puke politics, a ideology better left in your nearest landfill!.

NFTOS

YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH

GOP Can’t Handle The Truth: Taxes Are Lower Under Obama Than Reagan.



President Obama met with House Republicans today at the White House to discuss ways to move forward on negotiations regarding the nation’s debt ceiling and the budget. During the discussion, talk evidently turned to taxes, and when Obama noted that taxes today are lower than they were under President Reagan, the GOP, according to The Hill, “engaged in a lot of ‘eye-rolling’“:

Republicans attending a White House meeting on Wednesday didn’t take kindly to President Obama telling them tax rates were higher during the Reagan administration. GOP members engaged in a lot of “eye-rolling,” according to a member who was on hand to hear Obama, who invited House Republicans to the White House for discussions on the debt ceiling.

“The President made a comment like the tax rate is the lightest, even more than (under former President) Reagan,” Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) told The Hill following the meeting. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) joked that during the meeting, “We learned we had the lowest tax rates in history … lower than Reagan!”

That House Republicans find this preposterous is symptomatic of the hold Reagan mythology has over them. After all, for seven of Reagan’s eight years in office, the top tax rate was higher than the current 35 percent. In six of those years, it was 50 percent or more. And every year that Regan was in office, the bottom tax bracket was higher than the current ten percent.

For a family of four, the “average income tax rate under Reagan in 1983 was 11.06 percent. Under Clinton in 1992, it was 9.18 percent. And under Obama in 2010, it was 4.68 percent.” During Reagan’s time, income tax revenue ranged from 7.8 to 9.4 percent of GDP. Last year, it was 6.2 percent and is not projected to climb back to 9 percent until 2016. In fact, in 2009, Americans paid their lowest taxes in 60 years.

Republicans are very fond of saying that the U.S. has “a spending problem, not a revenue problem.” But the truth is that revenue has plunged due to the recession and to continued misguided tax cuts, and revenue needs to be raised to eventually bring the budget into balance. And Reagan knew that taxes were an important part of the budget equation. After all, he “raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,” including four times in just two years.


NFTOS

After Pledging To Not Raise Taxes, Walker Proposes Hiking Taxes And Fees On The Poor And Students

One of the most important ideological commitments of the modern conservative movement is an opposition to tax increases. It is with this ideology that then-Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker signed Americans For Tax Reforms’ “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” a vow not to raise taxes on the people of his state.

Yet in his newly proposed budget, now-governor Walker appears to have already broken this pledge. While the budget would lower taxes overall — it includes $83.3 million in tax cuts “primarily for businesses and investors” — it would make up for lost revenue by eliminating tax credits and exemptions that primarily benefit the poor and even some in the middle class.

Wisconsin’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau — the state’s equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office — finds that this would amount to a $49.9 million tax increase on people who receive these credits over the next two years:

Low and middle income people would lose tax credits worth about $49.4 million over two years, the new Legislative Fiscal Bureau report said.

Those affected most by Walker’s proposal would include low-income families who qualify for the earned income tax credit program, and low-income homeowners who receive tax rebates under the homestead tax credit.

In addition to eliminating these tax credits, Walker also has proposed a spate of new fee increases. The “bulk of the fee increases are for tuition at University of Wisconsin campuses, totaling more than $105 million over two years.”

It appears that Walker is less committed to keeping taxes down on everyone than he is to cutting taxes for some of society’s most fortunate members, while raising them on some of its most vulnerable. He joins many other conservative state legislators across the country who are cutting taxes on the richest while slashing services and raising taxes for Main Street America.

NFTOS

Bank Of America

Paid Nothing In Federal Income Taxes Last Year And Got Almost $1 Billion From Taxpayers.

All around the country, right-wing legislators are asking Main Street Americans to pay for budget deficits resulting mainly from a recession caused by Wall Street by attacking collective bargaining, and cutting necessary services and investments like college tuition aid and health care for the poor.

Yet at the same time, some of the country’s biggest corporations are getting away without being asked to pay anything at all. In 2009, mega corporations like Boeing and General Electric managed to avoid paying a penny in federal taxes — while also netting enormous benefits in tax benefits and subsidies.

Now, with many companies releasing their financial reports for 2010, it appears that Bank of America — the nation’s largest bank — has gone a second year in a row paying absolutely no federal corporate income taxes. In fact, not only did the company use its losses to avoid paying taxes last year, but it actually reported a tax benefit of almost a billion dollars:

After another money-losing year, Bank of America Corp. got the upper hand with Uncle Sam in 2010.


The Charlotte-based bank had no federal income tax expense for a second straight year and actually reported a tax “benefit” of nearly $1 billion. Also, the bank’s billions in accumulated losses could reduce its taxes in future years, a tax expert said.

“Bank of America takes its role as a corporate citizen very seriously, and pays taxes in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations,” bank spokesman Jerry Dubrowski said.

“If you go out and try to make money and you don’t do it, why should the government pay you for your losses?” asked Bob McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice when Bank of America used a similar provision in the tax code to dodge taxes in 2009. Additionally, in one state alone, Connecticut, Bank of America’s state income tax tax dodging cost the state a whopping $500 million.

Over the weekend, the UK-inspired movement US Uncut held demonstrations at Bank of America branches all over the country to protest the bank’s egregious tax dodging. In Washington, D.C., US Uncut protests shut down a major Bank of America branch in the Columbia Heights neighborhood. Watch it:



In a press release from last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) laid out ten corporate tax dodgers who aren’t paying their fair share and called for shared sacrifice. “We have a deficit problem. It has to be addressed,” said Sanders in a press release addressing tax fairness. “But it cannot be addressed on the backs of the sick, the elderly, the poor, young people, the most vulnerable in this country. The wealthiest people and the largest corporations in this country have got to contribute. We’ve got to talk about shared sacrifice.”


NFTOS

NUMBERS DON'T LIE....REPUBLICANS DO

Ed Shultz is on his game of late. The below video provides numbers on President Obama and taxes, and its both heavy and arduous. Taxes are the lowest they have been is sixty years. Huh!? Are you sure NFTOS?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Taxes too high? Actually, as a share of the nation's economy, Uncle Sam's take this year will be the lowest since 1950, when the Korean War was just getting underway.


And for the third straight year, American families and businesses will pay less in federal taxes than they did under former President George W. Bush, thanks to a growing number of tax breaks for the wealthy and poor alike.

Income-tax payments this year will be nearly 13 percent lower than they were in 2008, the last full year of the Bush presidency.

Corporate taxes will be lower by a third, according to projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The poor economy plays a role in the blame game, with corporate profits down and unemployment up. But so is a tax code that grows each year with new deductions, credits and exemptions

In the next few years, many can expect to pay more in taxes. Some increases were enacted as part of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. And many states have raised taxes because — unlike the federal government — they have to balance their budgets each year. State tax receipts are projected to increase in all but seven states this year, according to the National Council of State Legislatures.

But in the third year of Obama's presidency, federal taxes are at historic lows. In the current budget year, federal tax receipts will be equal to 14.8 percent of gross domestic product, the lowest level since Harry Truman was president.




Why the tax bite has eased:

Stimulus law. One-third of last year's $862 billion economic stimulus went for tax cuts. Biggest reduction: The Making Work Pay tax credit reduced income taxes $800 for married couples earning up to $150,000.
 
Progressive tax rates. Presidents Clinton pushed through a series of tax changes — credits, lower rates, higher exemptions — that slashed income taxes for poor and middle-class families. A drop in income now can trigger big tax breaks and sharply lower rates, sometimes falling to zero.
 
Sales tax. Consumers cut spending sharply in this downturn, thereby paying less in sales taxes.
 
A Gallup Poll last month found that 48% thought taxes were "too high" and 45% thought they were "about right." Those saying taxes are "too high" remain near a 50-year low.
 
The lower tax burden should last at least through mid 2011, says Roberton Williams of the Tax Policy Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C. "Virtually all the stimulus tax cuts expire at the end of the year," he says. "So the key decision is whether to extend them into 2011."




No matter how you "slice" it, it's obvious no one is going to modify the radical rightie social engineering tax, budget, warfare crap.

Republicans have added another layer of stupidly and absurdity to the "Obama raises taxes" ideology, although at some point and time to balance the budget taxes should and will have to increase.

The question isn't whether tax cuts or tax increases are always the right answer. The question is at what level of taxes do we stimulate the economy, collect enough revenue to run a functioning government and let people keep as much of their income as we can. No one wants to pay more in taxes personally. We just need to find the right balance so that everyone wins.

NFTOS