Hi Gang:

Richard Mellon Skaith [sp?],owner of one of the largest newspapers in Pennsylvania, came out and endorsed Hillary Clinton for President ,just prior to the Pennsylvania primary.

This is the same guy that Hillary accused of being the head of the the "vast right wing conspiracy "she keeps griping about.

This makes no sense... unless Skaith wants Hillary to win the nomination , believing if Hillary beats Obama out of the nomination, the Blacks and young new voters, inspired by Obama ,will stay home on election day and tell the Democrats to go screw themselves... and the Republicans win in November.

What think you???

hippolips

It's Richard Mellon Scaife: In Pennsylvania's Democrat primary for president: Vote for Clinton

Do people pay much attenion to Scaife?

'That silence you hear is Hillary Clinton not telling the right-wing crackpot Richard Mellon Scaife where he can put the endorsement from his money-losing fringe publication, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review...' www.slate.com

Maybe Scaife just wants to help keep the pot boiling; the longer the Democratic candidates continue to beat each other up, the better McCain's chances look - although there is an argument that the Democratic contest is creating interest, and attracting new voters.

(From the Slate article - '...[Scaife] had his wife arrested and jailed for trespassing when she sought to confront him over his extramarital affair with a woman twice arrested for prostitution. After they separated, he posted on his front lawn a sign that said WIFE AND DOG MISSING—REWARD FOR DOG. How Clinton, who portrays her candidacy as an advance for the cause of feminism, can stomach this creep's support is a mystery.')

Hi NNN:

I think Scaife is trying to turn this election into a Black vs.White thing ,hoping that Blacks will bolt the party in November if Obama is denied the nomination.

If you examine the results from Pennsylvania,you'll see that Obama was unable to make any real headway with White Males or White Females except for the college crowd.

hippolips

But Scaife doesn't mention, or even hint at, race in his endorsement of Clinton. (Unless I'm missing some esoteric code-words or hints; I'm happy to say I'm pretty ignorant about the coded langauge of bigotry.)

Scaife seems more to be following the trend to label Obama as an weak-kneed, panty-waist, liberal, cissy college-boy from the Big City who uses big words and doesn't understand ordinary folks. (...he was a university lecturer, a community organizer, a civil-rights lawyer...') I guess that worked against Kerry. There's also the tedious rehearsal of questions about Obama's patriotism.

Possibly Clinton is buying into this kind of thing, with her "Let's nuke Iran!" nonsense.

On the other hand, maybe there's a Democrat plot, whereby the primary battle is prolonged until all the smears about Obama are done to death, so that when Obama finally comes to face McCain there's little mud left to sling - people will be fed up with talk of lapel-pins, the Rev Wright and college backgrounds.

Actually, Obama did just a bit better with white males in Pennsylvnia that he did in Ohio. Since Clinton was projected to win by anywhere from 4% to a6%, Obama's 9% loss isn't that far off of what most expected. (Clinton actually won by 9.3, definitely not the double digit lead she was projected to have for a very long time.)

Hillary Clinton's solid Pennsylvania primary victory may stem more from Democratic demographics than anything that happened in the bitter six-week campaign leading up to it.

After all, the New York senator's 9-point winning margin and showing with most major constituencies were almost identical to her performance seven weeks ago in neighboring Ohio.

The initial reaction from pundits and the media is that she did more to keep her candidacy alive than to reduce the likelihood that Barack Obama ultimately will be the Democratic nominee to face Republican John McCain.

But Mr. Obama's failure to make more than modest inroads into groups that form the Democratic core only will encourage the questions about his patriotism and ties to controversial associates that marked the campaign.

Even as Mrs. Clinton remains stronger among basic groups that the party needs in order to win such key states as Ohio and Pennsylvania, Mr. Obama continues to show that his appeal extends beyond those groups in a way that is also necessary for victory, since core Democrats are not enough to win an election.

That was evident in Pennsylvania in his strong support among the 300,000 new Democrats who have joined the party since January. In a broader context, he continues to show almost daily an appeal beyond liberal Democrats that Mrs. Clinton can't match. - Dallas Morning News

If anything, the Pennsylvania primary showed that this race isn't over, despite what many (many here, too) have claimed, from both sides.

While polls also show that many of Clinton's and Obama's supporters will not support the other in the general election, those numbers will most certainly fall once the dust has settled, and, more importantly, as McCain continues his move to the right, despite his long history of being close to the middle.

McCain's latest repudiation of his long-held positions:

McCain offers tax policies he once opposed
Now that he is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, however, McCain is marching straight down the party line. The economic package he has laid out embraces many of the tax policies he once decried: extending Bush's tax cuts he voted against, offering investment tax breaks he once believed would have little economic benefit and granting the long-held wishes of tax lobbyists he has often mocked.

McCain's concerns -- about budget deficits, unanticipated defense costs, an Iraq war that would be longer and more costly than advertised -- have proved eerily prescient, usually a plus for politicians who are quick to say they were right when others were wrong. Yet McCain appears determined to leave such predictions behind.

To supporters, McCain has simply seen the light and now understands the power that business tax relief has to spur economic growth and innovation. Said J.D. Foster, a former Bush White House and Treasury tax policy expert, now at the Heritage Foundation: "It's logical that he wouldn't be repeating the arguments he made then. We all learn from experience."

To critics, it is political pandering. "It's just part of the new John McCain that's taking on the conventional wisdom that in tight races, you have to energize the base and win by 50.000001 percent," Chafee said. "I was frankly surprised that he's kept it up after securing the nomination. I thought he'd move to the center, and I haven't seen it." - MSNBC

If McCain, as the tax cut supports say, if just now seeing the light and understanding the power of tax cuts, doesn't that make him somewhat of a slow learner? He's been in Washington for 25 years, 4 in the House and 21 in the Senate. He also has made some very strong anti-tax cut statements over those years.

In December 1994, after his party swept to control of Congress on tax-cut promises, he challenged Ronald Reagan's legacy when he warned, "I think we would be making a terrible mistake to go back to the '80s, where we cut all of those taxes and all of a sudden now we've got a debt that we've got to pay on an annual basis that is bigger than the amount that we spend on defense."

In 1998, Republican leaders and their tobacco industry allies lambasted McCain's $516 billion tobacco regulation bill as the "McCain tax," painting it as big-government overreach and a $1.10 tax increase on every pack of cigarettes.

In 2001, just days before Bush's first tax cut passed, McCain lamented on ABC's "This Week" that, "I'd like to see much more of this tax cut shared by working Americans. . . . I think it still devotes too much of it to the wealthiest Americans."

Almost exactly two years later, Bush was back for more: $350 billion in tax cuts, which accelerated the first round and added deep cuts to the tax rates on dividends and capital gains.

"Most of the economists view this as primarily benefiting wealthier Americans," McCain said on CNBC at the time. "There's a theory, I think, that's prevalent -- it was true in the 2001 tax cuts -- that if you give it to the wealthy people, then they will then, you know, create jobs, et cetera. The interesting thing to me is that most economists will tell you that it's the middle-income Americans that have been keeping the economy afloat." - MSNBC

McCain may very well end up the beneficiary of the Democratic primary squabble. If so, once again, the US gets what it deserves. I have hopes, however, for someone with more spine and less of an overwhelming desire to be president at any cost.

More Republican nonsense:

'... When neither Obama nor Clinton turned out to be particularly skilled bowlers, Matthews [of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews] said gravely, "Maybe that tells you something about the Democratic party."

In the days since, he has returned to the alleged symbolic importance of Obama's lack of bowling skills so often, and with such a combination of glee and indignation, that you would have thought that before launching a gutter ball, Obama had donned a powdered wig, sipped from a snifter of brandy, then smacked Rocky Blier across the face with his riding crop...' How Blue Is Your Collar?

McCain's rather terse comments about Bush's handling of Katrina in New Orleans this week, and his comments about GOP ads in North Carolina, hardly sound like pandering.

Regarding the tax cuts, what if you saw them work in a way you did not imagine? The top 60% of Americans used to pay all of its income taxes. Has anyone else recently seen a chart showing that now the top 40% pay 99.4% of all income taxes? Maybe Bush didn't shirt the tax burden onto the poor or middle class after all. More research (not newspaper reports) is needed...but I believe the IRS accumulates the data for us.

"The top 60% of Americans used to pay all of its income taxes."

Neither my father nor I were ever in the top 60% of earners, yet each of us paid income taxes for most of our lives. When was this statement true?

If the tax burden has, as you say, shifted to the wealthy, why is the gap between the wealthy and the "middle class" growing? Further, when will the wealthy start paying off the nation debt? It's getting rather large, you know.

Actually, since WWII, the highest tax bracket has plummeted with regard to percentage of income. (it was in the 70% range during the war.) Kennedy and Reagan both cut the rates for the highest brackets, and the national debt has gone through the roof since then, especially since Reagan took office. He inherited just under a $1 trillion debt. When he and Bush were through, it had increased by a factor of 4. From Andrew Jackson through Jimmy Carter, the national debt reached a little less that $1 trillion dollars. When Clinton took office, it was over $4 trillion. (Please don't tell me about Reagan's defense spending ending Communism. The Soviet Union, well on its way to bankruptcy, didn't even try to compete with US defense spending. It was overextended in Afghanistan, and the leaders knew it.)

If the trend were to continue such that eventually the top ten, or twenty percent, for instance, paid ALL of the income taxes, mightn't that easily be accomplished by continuing to GROW the impoverished population? Another four or eight years of Bush jr, or Bush light could easily produce such a result. Figures don't lie, of course - but liars do figure!

I thought we had looked at those charts numerous times.

Here is an old one from 1999. The bottom 40% apparently had a negative income tax burden; this, however, does not mean that nobody in that category paid taxes. DG made a good point about this; the statement is true of groups as a whole, not individual taxpayers. The second to the bottom 20% had a positive income tax burden, and the lowest 20% had a larger negative burden.

The U.S. Income Tax Burden

Frank, I see what you are saying here. It might be true. Can this be confirmed? And just how much more income tax do you want higher income earners to pay? It looks like they pay a lot!

I'll see if we can get some more up to date numbers.

Fuse, most things we call 'true' can't be confirmed, at least not to everyone's satsfaction. Think: "God" and "evolution" for instance. As to how much would I want the wealthy to pay in income taxes? How about "their fair share", as determined democratically, not by hired number crunching, handsomely-compensated accountants, aided and abetted by the legislators on their payroll. Can't reasonable people agree, eventually, on a goal of eliminating hunger, poverty, and crime and improving the quality of life - without sacrificing profitability? Is there no hope of a happy medium - ever?

Historic years in the tax rates keyed to administrations (Figures from the National Taxpayers Union) -


TI = Taxable Income

Year..........Bottom Bracket...............Top Bracket
..............Rate (%)/TI Up to............Rate (%)/TI over


1913-15.......1% / $20,000................7% / $500,000
1916..........2% / $20,000................15% / $2,000,000
1932-33.......4% / $4,000.................63% / $1,000,000

1940..........4.4% / $4,000...............81.1% / $5,000,000
1942-43.......19% / $2,000................88% / $200,000
1944-45.......23% / $2,000................94% / $200,000

1954-63.......20% / $4000.................91% / $400,000
1964..........16% / $1,000................77% / $400,000

1981..........13.25% / $2,100.............69% / $212,000
1982..........12% / $2,100................50% / $106,000
1987..........11% / $3,000................38.5% / $90,000
1988..........15 / $29,750................28% / $29,750

1991..........15 / $34,000................31% / $82,150
1992..........15 / $35,800................31% / $86,500
1993..........15 / $36,900................39.6% / $250,000
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I have often commented on Reagan and Bush increasing the national debt by a factor of 4 in their combined 12 years in office. Note what they did to taxes at that time. Also note that Reagan significantly increased defense spending. If doesn't take a trained economist to realize that cutting taxes and increasing spending results in debt. The current administration is doing the same to the debt. (Also note that one of the biggest factors in the collapse of the Soviet Union was their increasing debt due to their war in Afghanistan at a time when their revenues were decreasing. Hmmm....)

It also doesn't take a trained economist to realize that a government wanting money is more likely to find that the wealthy have much more of it than either the poor or the vast majority of the working class. If you are going to build a log cabin, it makes more sense to build it near a forest than in the grasslands.

Note:The Clinton years, with regard to taxes were basically the same, with rates remaining the same, and the lower ceiling raising from $36,900 to $43, 850 and the upper floor going from $250,000 to $288,350.

From Factcheck -

So, assuming that a President Obama or a President Clinton would adhere to these promises, how many people would actually see their taxes go up?

We put the question to the Tax Policy Center, which has a computer model of the tax system similar to the ones used by the Treasury Department and Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation.

For simplicity, we'll just focus on the over-$250,000 group. Those reporting adjusted gross income of more than $250,000 to the IRS are projected to make up 2 percent of households next year, when the new president will take office. Those folks will earn 24.1 percent of all income, and pay 43.6 percent of all personal federal income taxes, the Tax Policy Center figures. Under either Obama or Clinton, they might pay even more.

The candidates haven't said exactly how a $250,000 limit would be applied. But often these figures are meant only for couples filing jointly, and the limit is half that for singles filing alone.

Joint returns with more than $250,000 adjusted gross income and single returns with more than $125,000 adjusted gross income together are estimated to make up 3.1 percent of households next year. That group is projected to earn 27 percent of all personal income and pay 47.9 percent of all personal federal income taxes in 2009, according to the TPC's calculations.

If the ceiling is set at $200,000 for couples and $100,000 for singles, all those percentages would rise, of course.
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Note that 2% of the people earn 24% of the total income. Also note that the minimun income level for that group is about 5 times higher than what the average family earns per year. Remember that that 2% includes pro athletes, most of who make (in the major sports) over $1 million a year, and the CEOs of big companies who make tens of millions a year (regardless of how well the company does).

Now just exactly who does it make sense to tax? Some family who gets hit the hardest when food and gas goes through the roof? Or a guy who spends more when he buys Christmas presents than many make for the year?

If you want to be shocked, compare the upper tax rate year-by-year with the national debt year-by-year. Then, some of you can try to justify cutting taxes for the wealthy; the rest of us need the laughs.

DG, we all know that taxing a CEO so that he pays £8 million tax, instead of £6 million, on his £20 million a year basic has the immediate effect of making him and his company less productive.He immediately loses the incentive to earn £20 million.(The same applies in reverse)So doing that is a bad thing for the country. Why, that's so obvious it hardly needs saying !

Soccer stars, like Mr Beckham, immediately stop running about and passing the ball, or trying to win, when you reduce their income by taxing it more. And Tiger Woods would stop playing golf !

And "we all know that" because that's the straight poop, right from the mouths of the CEO"s ? They surely wouldn't lie! Nor wpuld they emulate Warren Buffet and his ridiculous opinion that his own tax rate is too low. If Beckhan and Tiger Woods rebel against higher taxes by retiring, can we keep them playing and competing into their fifties or sixties by lowering their taxes?? Is money the only incentive to compete, to accomplish, to win recognition? I certainly hope not.