Clinton: Bush should raise taxes to pay for recovery

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by irishgrl

thus the reason the Government can "repossess" your property after "just" compensation. as long as there is a nexus of use (in CA)

I know that and did not argue otherwise

[SuzeQuze]

Bill is spinning this himself by leaving out the actual poverty stats so I take it all with a pile of salt.

I forgot to add the stats that on average Americans are saving zero money because they can't afford it. Also, the average household income has dropped while Bush has been in office.

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

...
More Unbelievable Propaganda [pot.kettle.black] in Katrina's Wake

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

By Bill O'Reilly

More unbelievable propaganda in the wake of Katrina: that is the subject of this evening's "Talking Points Memo".

You know, I'm in a rather uncomfortable position of having to defend President Bush, who's being battered by partisan propaganda over Katrina. As we've stated, the president was late reacting to the storm and his hand-picked leaders did not do the job in FEMA and Homeland Security.

But, I just can't sit here and let rank propaganda go unchallenged as most of the elite media [I have no idea what that means and I think it's a bullsh*t term] does all day long. Now yesterday, President Bill Clinton appeared with George Stephanopoulos on ABC and said this about the poor and Katrina.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL CLINTON, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE U.S.: This is a matter of public policy. And whether it's race based or not, if you give your tax cuts to the rich and hope everything works out all right and poverty goes up, and it disproportionately affects black and brown people, that's a consequence of the action made.[The rich got the biggest benefit from the cuts.]

That's what they did in the '80's. That's what they've done in this decade. In the middle, we had a different policy. We concentrated tax cuts on lower income working people, and benefits to low income people to help them move from welfare to work. And we moved 100 times as many people out of poverty. We know what works. And we had a program that was drastically reducing poverty. And they got rid of it. So -- and they don't believe in it...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Believe in what?! What is Mr. Clinton talking about? What program did Mr. Bush get rid of? [I don't know what it is either but I bet when Bill has a moment he will let BO know.]

We called Mr. Clinton's office all day, looking for an answer to that very simple question. We didn't get one. Stephanopoulos sat there like a mummy, challenging nothing. The whole thing's absurd.

Again, here are the facts. Black homeownership is up 2 percent under President Bush. Poverty spending is significantly higher under Bush than it was under Clinton. Educational spending for poor school districts is higher under Bush. And the poverty rate stood at 13.7 percent halfway through Clinton's tenure. It is 12.7 percent halfway through Bush's two terms.[For some reason he conveniently left out how many more people have sunk into poverty since Bush has been in office which is not directly related to home ownership.]

This "tax cuts for the rich" business is also blatantly dishonest. It's a ruse for the secular left [again, what is this? I hate this adjective because it isn't accurate nor does it even apply to this issue] to institute their income redistribution scheme [news to me, if only we had such a scheme]. Under President Clinton, the tax rate climbed higher than at any time in history except in World War II. President Bush then came in and cut taxes for everyone. And guess what? Federal tax revenues will be more this year than at any time during the Clinton administration! [But the money will all be wasted as the deficit grows[

Why? Because business is booming. That's why. Capitalism is working. And the more money corporations and workers make, the more taxes roll in, even at the reduced rate.

So let's recap. Black homeownership up under Bush. Poverty entitlements up under Bush. Educational spending for the poor, up under Bush. Federal tax revenues, up under Bush. Are you taking this down, George Stephanopoulos?

...

[irishgrl]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

I know that and did not argue otherwise

I KNOW silly! I was responding to DAVID'S comment! you and I are on the same page (:woo hoo

[strandinthewind]

^^^^^

I agree with most of your comments Suze, but two:

1. You said "The rich got the biggest benefit from the cuts." - while true, they always paid more into the system. So, that statement is a little misleading in that it sounds like suddenly the rich were paying way less, which is not true statistically and the amount they still pay is huge - though and again, I am all for the flat tax I mentioned earlier.

2. Your statement "For some reason he conveniently left out how many more people have sunk into poverty since Bush has been in office which is not directly related to home ownership" - does not directly refute his that "Poverty spending is significantly higher under Bush than it was under Clinton. Educational spending for poor school districts is higher under Bush. And the poverty rate stood at 13.7 percent halfway through Clinton's tenure. It is 12.7 percent halfway through Bush's two terms." I mean if poverty fell one percent, how can that not be a good thing?

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by irishgrl

I KNOW silly! I was responding to DAVID'S comment! you and I are on the same page (:woo hoo

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[SuzeQuze]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

^^^^^

I agree with most of your comments, but two:

1. You said "The rich got the biggest benefit from the cuts." - while true, they always paid more into the system. So, that statement is a little misleading in that it sounds like suddenly the rich were paying way less, which is not true statistically and the amount they still pay is huge - though and again, I am all for the flat tax I mentioned earlier.

2. Your statement "For some reason he conveniently left out how many more people have sunk into poverty since Bush has been in office which is not directly related to home ownership" - does not directly refute his that "Poverty spending is significantly higher under Bush than it was under Clinton. Educational spending for poor school districts is higher under Bush. And the poverty rate stood at 13.7 percent halfway through Clinton's tenure. It is 12.7 percent halfway through Bush's two terms." I mean if poverty fell one percent, how can that not be a good thing?

Honestly? I don't trust those statistics. I have a feeling they are out of context. What I have heard is an additional 1.5 million people sunk into poverty last year. Poverty has not gone down.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by SuzeQuze

Honestly? I don't trust those statistics. I have a feeling they are out of context. What I have heard is an additional 1.5 million people sunk into poverty last year. Poverty has not gone down.

BO is pretty good about stats Where did you hear your's from?

Here is what I found, which supports his argument even though it is on the rise:

Poverty rate at 12.7 percent, 4th straight rise

Situation better than in the '80s and early '90s

The Associated Press
Updated: 10:45 a.m. ET Aug. 30, 2005

WASHINGTON - The nation’s poverty rate rose to 12.7 percent of the population last year, the fourth consecutive annual increase, the Census Bureau said Tuesday.

The percentage of people without health insurance did not change.

Overall, there were 37 million people living in poverty, up 1.1 million people from 2003.

Asians were the only ethnic group to show a decline in poverty — from 11.8 percent in 2003 to 9.8 percent last year. The poverty rate among the elderly declined as well, from 10.2 percent in 2003 to 9.8 percent last year.

The last decline in overall poverty was in 2000, when 31.1 million people lived under the threshold — 11.3 percent of the population.

The number of people without health insurance grew from 45 million to 45.8 million. At the same time, the number of people with health insurance coverage grew by 2 million last year.

Household income unchanged

The median household income, meanwhile, stood at $44,389, unchanged from 2003. Among racial and ethnic groups blacks had the lowest median income and Asians the highest. Median income refers to the point at which half of households earn more and half earn less.

Regionally, income declined only in the Midwest, down 2.8 percent to $44,657. The South was the poorest region and the Northeast and the West had the highest median incomes.

The increase in poverty came despite strong economic growth, which helped create 2.2 million jobs last year.

Sheldon Danziger, co-director of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan, said the poverty number is still much better than the 80s and early 90s.

“The good news is that poverty is a lot lower than it was in 1993, but we went through a hell of an economic boom,” Danziger said. “Nobody is predicting we’re going to go through another economic boom like that.”

The poverty threshold differs by the size and makeup of a household. For instance, a family of four with two children was considered living in poverty if income was $19,157 or less. For a family of two with no children, it was $12,649. For a person 65 and over living alone, it was 9,060.

The estimates on poverty, uninsured and income are based on supplements to the bureau’s Current Population Survey, and are conducted over three months, beginning in February, at about 100,000 households nationwide.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9130342/

Here is some stuff on the Clinton years, which seemingly indicates Clinton had 12.7 as well apparently via the Welfare Reform Act, which was not a very good thing IMO.

http://www.mikehersh.com/President_C...at_Years.shtml

On edit and though I am not inclined to trust Media Matters - here is a coll article:

O'Reilly cherry-picked census numbers to falsely suggest Bush is better on poverty than Clinton


Fox News host Bill O'Reilly compared the poverty rate in 1996 with the poverty rate in 2004 to falsely suggest that President Bush has done more to reduce poverty in the United States than President Clinton. O'Reilly cited the statistics in response to claims, which he described as "complete nonsense," that the Bush administration has neglected impoverished Americans. While O'Reilly is correct that the poverty rate in 1996 was higher than in 2004, he took those numbers out of context to mask a far more significant fact: The poverty rate declined every year of the Clinton presidency and has increased every year under the Bush presidency. Put another way, the poverty rate was higher now than it was when Clinton left office. During the Clinton presidency, the poverty rate fell from 15.1 percent in 1993 to a low of 11.3 percent in 2000; it has risen every year that Bush has been in office, from 11.7 percent in 2001 to 12.7 percent in 2004.

From the September 13 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: The aftermath of [Hurricane] Katrina has produced a debate over poor Americans. There are about 37 million people living below the poverty line right now. The issue was described this way by Newsweek reporter Evan Thomas, a liberal guy but not alone, who writes, "Liberals will say [the authorities] were indifferent to the plight of poor African-Americans. It is true that Katrina laid bare society's massive neglect of its least fortunate."

Massive neglect? Let's take a look at that bit of overstatement. Halfway through President Clinton's tenure in office in 1996, the poverty rate was 13.7 percent. Halfway through President Bush's tenure, the rate is 12.7 percent, a full point lower. In 1996, the Clinton budget allotted $191 billion for poverty entitlements. That was 12.2 percent of the budget and a whopping amount of money. That's why Bill Clinton was called the first black president by some. However, the Bush 2006 budget allots a record-shattering $368 billion for poverty entitlements, 14.6 percent of the entire budget, a huge increase over Clinton's spending on poverty entitlements.

Did the elite media mention that? Jesse Jackson mention that? Of course they didn't, because it's much more convenient for Evan Thomas and others to imply America under President Bush has turned its back on the poor, but it's absolute nonsense.

O'Reilly's assertion echoed a similar claim by CNN contributor, talk radio host, and Bush-Cheney '04 campaign adviser Rev. Joe Watkins that the United States has experienced a "reduction" in poverty under President Bush.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200509140004

In the end and though the rate has risen under W, we were in a recession the underpinning of which begun in the Clinton era (tech bubble, corp fraud devaluing a sig. % of the market and causing the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, etc. ) -- so, though W could have done more, I think it is wrong to say that W did nothing to help the poor at all or that his policies showed no care for their well being. I mean considering the state of the economy, those numbers are pretty low though they are rising.

Note - I am no fan of W. I am just commenting on the stats.

[SuzeQuze]

I got my numbers from Randi Rhodes and Stephanie Miller. Check this out

http://mediamatters.org/items/200509130002

[David]

Originally Posted by irishgrl

I am aware of that. I was responding to Davids post. Apparently he thinks our private property rights are absolute.

No, I don't believe that. Please reread my post for an exact description of my thoughts.

[David]

Originally Posted by irishgrl

WRONG! the right to property is NOT one of the inaelienable rights. Those are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (as stated in the Declaration of Independence) In the early days of this Nation, only Wealthy WHITE MEN could own property. NO Women. NO minorities. Property Ownership was the sign of the ELITE, and Property has ALWAYS been a Government controlled commodity.

In his Second Treatise of Government, Locke wrote: "Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to but himself. The labor of his body, & the works of his hands, we may say, are properly his." Locke added that "men unite for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name property."

In The Wealth of Nations, Smith wrote: "The first & chief design of every system of government is to maintain justice: to prevent the members of society from encroaching on one another's property, or seizing what is not their own. The design here is to give each one the secure & peaceable possession of his own property."

These ideas influenced the founding fathers. Alexander Hamilton wrote: "One great objective of government is personal protection of the security of property." John Adams wrote: "Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist."

The idea of compensation for the taking of private property was an established common law principle. The colonists linked property ownership with the enjoyment of political liberty. "Liberty & Property" was the motto of the revolutionary movement.

Jefferson borrowed heavily ideas from Locke. Locke used the expression "life, liberty & estates" to describe the inalienable (i.e., natural) rights that government was formed to secure. Jefferson substituted the phrase "pursuit of happiness" for "estates," but this was not a rejection of the emphasis on property rights. In the eighteenth century, happiness was generally equated with economic opportunity -- that is, freedom from arbitrary taxation or usurpation of property (in other words, seizing property without compensation).

Again, it isn't so much the property itself that is protected in absolute terms from government seizure; it's each person's inalienable right to his body & the works of his hands in order to secure happiness. This is the foundation of our republic.

See especially Madison's Federalist No. 10 & Hamilton's Federalist No. 12.

[dissention]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

BO is pretty good about stats

He is?!

Now I've heard it all.

[SuzeQuze]

Originally Posted by dissention

He is?!

Now I've heard it all.

Steph has her "Right Wing World" up on her site now which I did not realize. They were talking about these stats this morning. http://www.stephaniemiller.com/show/ Listen just for her voice guy's impression of O'Reilley, its hysterical.

[dissention]

Originally Posted by SuzeQuze

Steph has her "Right Wing World" up on her site now which I did not realize. They were talking about these stats this morning. http://www.stephaniemiller.com/show/ Listen just for her voice guy's impression of O'Reilley, its hysterical.

I totally will listen to it. Did you ever hear The Best of the Al Franken Show CD? Bebe Neuwirth is a riot as Ann Coulter on the "In the Green Room" tracks.

O'Reilly twists statistics and numbers to fit his argument, it's really pathetic. He does it without shame.

[reebokandlace]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

^^^^

I believe, but please check rather than rely on me - the US has no personal gain on the appreciation gained from the sale of a personal residence for up to $250,000 per owner occupant and after two years as such and there is no requirement to reinvest this money and you can do it once every two years. This is one of the reasons the housing market is on fire.

I believe you may be right. That may have been one of the changes that was made last year. Although, I am not sure about the every two years theory. I know you must reside in the residence for at least two years before selling to be eligible for the $250,000 single or $500,000 couple waiver. It used to be a once in a lifetime waiver, but you may be right and they are now allowing a waiver every two years.

I do know from personal recent experience that you must use a 1031 exchange if you plan to re-invest the gains in non personal residence.

[SuzeQuze]

Originally Posted by dissention

I totally will listen to it. Did you ever hear The Best of the Al Franken Show CD? Bebe Neuwirth is a riot as Ann Coulter on the "In the Green Room" tracks.

O'Reilly twists statistics and numbers to fit his argument, it's really pathetic. He does it without shame.

I think I have heard some of that! Many media outlets do that with statistics. That's why its important that everyone understand stats. I didn't like that class but I learned a lot! Like if someone says, "poverty is down 3%". Well, three percent of what?