Because the unemployed don’t make huge campaign donation, don’t ya know.

Anxious million/billionaires?

Fuck ‘em.

It would be retroactive AND help over 3,000 taxpayers. My God, the woman is a saint!

Gotta look after them Waltons. Lord knows they need our protection.

At the end of the last decade business leaders were talking about how with the continuing migration of manufacturing and jobs to Asia there would come a point when the only jobs in the US would be services related. How do we put 10 million plus people to work in the “services industry?” That’s a lot of hotel, restaurant, theme park and call center jobs.

There’s gotta be a few available gigs shoveling Blanche’s campaign contributions bribes into a wheelbarrow. That’s a service, isn’t it?

Private school instructors to teach to the test.

Great idea. No child left behind.

Like most Blue Dogs, Blanche suffers from a political form of Stockholm Syndrome. This happened to almost all Democrats during the Republican Revolution, which somehow convinced America that we’re really a nation of white guys in pick-up trucks. The shock of drove our leaders to start acting like the enemy. Just look at Obama…

I don’t know if there is any cure for this condition, but I understand the Senator has an excellent health plan.

I linked to this article from the NYT on Blanche Lincoln in the last thread:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/08/us/politics/08lincoln.html?hpw

It describes her as centrist but also has quotes calling her both conservative and corporate. Maybe Blanche already is lining up the post-defeat gravy train. Lots of Walton heirs in Arkansas you know who just might be interested in this estate tax gimmick.

Edit: I see I owe eCahn a drink at #4.

So if progressives stall and obstruct, the result will be a higher tax on the Walton family starting next year?

That seems worth the lack of a tax now. Republicans would not let a “centrist” proposal pass anyway (as of Dec, I think).

Blanche Lincoln commercial slogan should be:
1. “ONE STUPID WOMAN”
2. WOMAN WHO SOLD HER SOUL TO THE DEVIL”
3. “Woman who speaks with fork tongue”
4. “Woman who hates the little people”
5. “Woman who makes Glenn Beck look smart”

Don’t have a job? Don’t have health care? Tough shit. Got an estate worth $10M? Blanche is ready to help.

Blanch sure fits the description of a C##T. All they care about is themselves!
“Save the rich sacrifice the poor”
Blanches modis operandi!!

Little bit OT:

I realize that Hedges is (sometimes) considered too controversial/extreme/whatever, but he is always provocative and thought-provoking. Here’s the latest.

Isn’t that what millionaires are supposed to do? Help each other out? Taxes and such are for the little people.

What SD says.

What flavor cake does Ms Lambert-Lincoln suggest we peasants eat? My preference is for Devil’s Food, but then this is the bible belt we’re talking about.

if you read anything today, read this:

Calling All Rebels

by Chris Hedges

“No one has discredited American liberalism more than liberals themselves. And I do not hold out any hope for their reform. We have entered an age in which, as William Butler Yeats wrote, “the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

“If we end up with violence in the streets on a large scale, not random riots, but insurrection and things break down, there will be a coup d’état from the right,” Johnston said. “We have already had an economic coup d’état. It will not take much to go further.”

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/08-2

Top 10% of wage earners pay about 65% of the tax burden … Bottom 50% of wage earners pay less than 4% of the tax burden.

I’m no legal scholar (obviously) but as an interested foreigner sitting here reading the constitution, wouldn’t Lincoln’s bill be unconstitutional if any part of it were retroactive?

Article 1 Section 9, Clause 3 of the Constitution states:

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed

Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the Constitution provides that,

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

Somebody help me out here.

Inherited wealth is a clear and present danger to a merit-based democracy. 55% is the very least we can ask these rich do-nothings to pay on money they did not earn. They have many gimmicks — generation-skipping trusts, gifts, family trusts — to escape almost all estate tax already. It’s those loopholes we should be eliminating on estates of more than six million dollars or so.

I’m not a liberal. I’m a libertarian socialist revolutionary and I’m here to take the system away from the elites and turn it over to its rightful owners, the people.

Source of information? Links?

After her defeat by Halter her boss will assign her a new position at Wal-Mart. Greeter.

Gonna have to back that up with some documentation. Blog posts touting those figures are not acceptable.

Welcome to Wal-Mart.
Get yer shit and get out.
Have a nice day.

I think we owe each other a drink on that point.

Catchy slogan. Almost brings a tear to my eye…

Top 3% of the population has over 95% of the wealth. Top 10% has about 90% of the wealth. Any questions?

Nah, I owe you one. It’s what I get for gettin’ verbose.

You can avoid estate tax on life insurance proceeds by setting up an irrevocable life insurance trust to own the policies on your life.

The rich know the tricks, the rest of us don’t need to.

Karmi must be paid by just the post alone and not by the word count.

But it’s bi-partisan(TM)! Gosh, that just makes me feel so warm and fuzzy…

In the photo it looks like Blanche is already wearing her blue Wal-Mart smock.

Blanche Lincoln

We can’t afford you.

They never include that part.

What are those numbers supposed to mean? How can the top 3% have more than the top 10%?

75% of stats are made up 80% of the time.

But But the top 5% own 90% of all the wealth in the country and the top 1% takes home over 95% of GDP. Fuck the Rich I could care less about their woes… They sure don’t care about the rest of us.
I say tax them at 90% of gross income and tax their estates at 80% of anything over 2 million.. Hell it would be about time their kids went out and GOT a REAL Job… Not just cutting coupons for dividends(at what 15%).
CLASS WARFARE Completely… I know I know they will scream and bellyache but hey Fuck them they have been waging on the of us for decades..

I am sure that the Senator is also a deficit peacock. How do you balance the budget and continue to cut taxes. How many Americans have estates valued at 3 million or 2 million?

Great Article By Chris Hedges!

A must read for all progressives

80% of stats are made up 75% of the time. See, statistics can be fun. At least that’s what they tried to buffalo me into in college.

“I’m no legal scholar (obviously) but as an interested foreigner sitting here reading the constitution, wouldn’t Lincoln’s bill be unconstitutional if any part of it were retroactive?”

Nice thought- but perhaps no longer applicable.

The only analysis necessary: IOKIYAR.

See http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=IOKIYAR

I don’t know who this group is, but it provides the info. If it’s to be believed.

http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html

Thanks BT.

Blanche still believes what Reagan/David Stockman preached. The benefits from tax cuts for Americans with ultra high net worth will TRICKLE DOWN.

Hey Blanche, we need investment in the REAL economy, the part that makes stuff.

Thank you.

You can get a sense of who might be behind the group by their header.

And my WAG is that they are probably cheering for Lincoln and Kyl here.

I took my first stats class in the fall of ’72. And the instructor was pretty clueless. But she was SO happy the day after the election because the polling had pretty much hit close to the mark of the actual vote spreads that year.

“who stood for socialism? Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Emma Goldman, Clarence Darrow, Jack London, Upton Sinclair. Yeah, socialism had a good name. It needs to be restored.”

“The longer socialism is identified with the corporatist policies of the Democratic Party, the longer we allow the right wing to tag Obama as a socialist, the more absurd and ineffectual we become.

The right-wing mantra of “Obama the socialist,” repeated a few days ago to a room full of Georgia Republicans, by Newt Gingrich, the former U.S. speaker of the House, is discrediting socialism itself.

Gingrich, who looks set to run for president, called Obama the “most radical president” the country had seen in decades. “By any standard of government control of the economy, he is a socialist,” Gingrich said. If only the critique were true.

The hypocrisy and ineptitude of the Democrats become, in the eyes of the wider public, the hypocrisy and ineptitude of the liberal class. We can continue to tie our own hands and bind our own feet or we can break free, endure the inevitable opprobrium, and fight back.

This means refusing to support the Democrats. It means undertaking the laborious work of building a viable socialist movement.

It is the only alternative left to save our embattled open society. We can begin by sending a message to the Green Party, McKinney and Nader. Let them know they are no longer alone.”

http://politicalleft.blog-city.com/its_time_to_abandon_the_liberals.htm

http://usgovinfo.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=usgovinfo&cdn=newsissues&tm=49&gps=533_170_987_598&f=10&tt=2&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.house.gov/jec/news/2008/July/pr110-45.pdf

I think you have that backwards….

The wage disparity in the country explains that. If you are arguing that the rich are more productive then you are blind.

Look it up.

Percentiles Ranked by AGI Adjusted Gross Income Threshold on Percentiles Percentage of Federal Personal Income Tax Paid
Top 1% $388,806 39.89%
Top 5 % $153,542 60.14%
Top 10% $108,904 70.79%
Top 25% $64,702 86.27%
Top 50% $31,987 97.01%
Bottom 50% < $31,987 2.99%

And 60% of the time, it works all the time.

Jane has a fresh cross-post ready: Massa Says He Was Railroaded Out Over Health Care Vote, Blames Rahm

Ever hear of GOOGLE? There are 152,000,000 results for who pays most income tax. Here, I’ll help – GOOGLE.

BTW, the Top 50% of wage earners pay something like 96% of the tax burden, and that includes individuals or couples filing jointly who earned $26,000…

Elder Waltons must be getting ready to kick the bucket and want to revise their estate planning. Or too eager younger Waltons wish they would.

Sorry but I don’t see press releases from “Ranking Republican Member” as particularly credible.

And when we’re in the middle of a recession larger than anything since the Great Depression, it kinda makes sense that those high income wage earners are paying a higher percentage overall. They’re the only ones with jobs and income. When everyone at the bottom is out of work, they don’t have income to pay taxes on.

So now Blanche is supporting the equivilent of personal TARP packages for the top 0.1%.

Same old Bailout Blanche.

I checked several sources and you are correct. I believe I was thinking of percentage of income as a tax burden – for example, the bottom 50% of wage earners pay 13% of their income in taxes and the top 1% spends 19% of their income in taxes (the top 25% pays 66% of their income) -http://www.american.com/archive/2007/november-december-magazine-contents/guess-who-really-pays-the-taxes scroll down to the bar graph from the IRS. Or maybe I was thinking of Warren Buffet stating how unfair our tax system is – how he pays less in taxes than his secretary does…

It’s hard to argue with BlueTexan here….Arkansas is one of the five (5) poorest states in the country! I know that it’s a tough job to run in a republican state but —is THIS the plan?….Let’s say that Lincoln gets the vote of the half-dozen Arkansans that this bill will impact; does that increase her chances?…Will “Joe Redneck” vote for Lincoln because she rolled back the estate tax?…If so, she should withdraw ——and move to NY like Harold Ford!

Federal Income Tax is but a small portion of the overall tax burden. Add it all up (state, local, county, fees, sales, etc) and you’ll see that the bottom 50% are getting screwed ROYALLY.

Now that’s a better argument.

For Dakine01 and others to say they “don’t believe” stated facts is foolish, but as a percentage of income, etc., that’s worth considering.

Thanks.

Possibly true, but you haven’t “added it all up”, so your argument is unpersuasive.

I didn’t say “I don’t believe” I said, I don’t find it particularly credible.

There is a difference.

And please note my comment describing WHY those high wage earners are paying a larger percentage than before.

When the well-to-do are getting wage hikes while working stiffs are getting unemployment, the lower end is not going to be paying taxes.

If your reasons WHY are true, it’s been getting worse for 30 years.

These numbers from the IRS:

Total Income Tax Shares, 1980-2007 (Percent of federal income tax paid by each group)
Year Total Top 10% Top 50% Bottom 50%
1980 100% 49.28% 92.95% 7.05%
1981 100% 47.96% 92.55% 7.45%
1982 100% 48.59% 92.65% 7.35%
1983 100% 49.71% 92.83% 7.17%
1984 100% 50.56% 92.65% 7.35%
1985 100% 51.46% 92.83% 7.17%
1986 100% 54.69% 93.54% 6.46%
1987 100% 55.61% 93.93% 6.07%
1988 100% 57.28% 94.28% 5.72%
1989 100% 55.78% 94.17% 5.83%
1990 100% 55.36% 94.19% 5.81%
1991 100% 55.82% 94.52% 5.48%
1992 100% 58.01% 94.94% 5.06%
1993 100% 59.24% 95.19% 4.81%
1994 100% 59.45% 95.23% 4.77%
1995 100% 60.75% 95.39% 4.61%
1996 100% 62.51% 95.68% 4.32%
1997 100% 63.20% 95.72% 4.28%
1998 100% 65.04% 95.79% 4.21%
1999 100% 66.45% 96.00% 4.00%
2000 100% 67.33% 96.09% 3.91%
2001 100% 64.89% 96.03% 3.97%
2002 100% 65.73% 96.50% 3.50%
2003 100% 65.84% 96.54% 3.46%
2004 100% 68.19% 96.70% 3.30%
2005 100% 70.30% 96.93% 3.07%
2006 100% 70.79% 97.01% 2.99%
2007 100% 71.22% 97.11% 2.89%

Blanche has simply seen the writing on the wall and has set her eyes on a cushy lobbyist position. As the old saying goes: “You have to give a little to get a little.”

Well, wages for most folks other than at the top have been stagnant since 1980, so you just made my point.

And this is even after the “tax reforms” of the Reagan years.

You are correct, wages for the top 10% have increased X8 since 1980 while the bottom 50% have increased x3.

Conservatives like Lincoln (aka the Republican in Democrat’s clothing) has sold this to conservative serfs using the meme that “mom & pop” businesses and farms simply cannot survive without repealing the dreaded and UNFAIR estate tax. What liars like Lincoln don’t reveal is that most “mom & pop” businesses and small family farms were driven out of business/farming a long time ago by the large corporations, such as the Waltons and Monsanto, via a lot of laws and regulations instituted by conservatives like Lincoln.

The cosmic disconnect is interesting bc my rightwing family tends to rant about how Walmart drove out a lot of smaller businesses, including some of our families’ businesses, but somehow they think that this estate tax repeal will HELP our family and/or similar small businesses. I would laugh, if I wasn’t busy banging my head against the wall (so soothing & distracting).

And so on. This is an old goodie for the richie-riches, and Lincoln is just showing who she works for, once again.

And I cringed through a reading of the NYT article this am, where Lincoln is called a “moderate” and a “centrist.” GAH. I wanted to just barf. So sick of hearing neo-cons called “moderate.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/08/us/politics/08lincoln.html?src=twt&twt=nytimes

That’s why Gingrich “gets away” with calling BHO a socialist. But blah blah blah… we know why they’re doing it… pushing the Overton Window ever rightward, and some of the people are very willing to be fooled all of the time.

Forgot Michael Harrington.

If Lady Blanche is intent on messing with the status quo, everything should be in play. Some liberal lawmaker (if there are any) should propose setting the rate at 99.9999% and applying it to trusts and gifts starting on the day the trust is established or the gift given.

One of the many problems with our “moderate” Democrats is their refusal to play hardball. No wonder the Republicans and Aristocrats like Lady Blanche feel free to come back and reopen the argument on every compromise they win. There is no downside to doing so and every likelihood of getting their way.

alan1tx:
The National Taxpayer’s Union (NTU) is a conservative group-think tank dedicated to amassing statistics showing how over-taxed the top income earners in this country are. Notice two things: their site does not tell you the percentage of income these classes represent, only the percentage of income taxes they pay, and the site refers to the estate tax as the “death tax.”

Here’s a better site, done by a sociology professor at UC Santa Cruz.
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
Scroll down to the first set of pie charts.

What is the matter with you people arguing over what percent of taxes the top 1% or 5% or 10% pays? It doesn’t make any difference if you don’t also show the wealth distribution each group represents. The top 10% pays 70% of the taxes, but they own 90% of the country’s wealth. They should be paying 90% of the taxes, and since they’re not they have no room to squawk.

They just “sit on their asses” and let the unemployment checks keep rolling in.

Ever try to live on unemployment checks?

Ever try to get a job where there are 300 or more people trying for the same job?

I hope you never find yourself in that situation, particularly today.

When people argue with me about estate taxes and the wealthy being able to pass along their money, I just ask them whether they think it is better for America to encourage more Paris Hiltons at the expense of everyone who can’t afford private schools and to have no job skills or to encourage people like Paris to skip a few parties and do something that actually adds to her enjoying this country’s police, fire, leisure and other economic benefits.

I’ve never met anyone who wanted to create more Paris Hiltons. I am amazed at how many of them hadn’t thought in terms of the money having to come from living working people who might barely be making it if it didn’t come from the estates of dead people who didn’t need it any more.

They do trickle down. To China and the Cayman Islands.

Now we know why Obama loves her. And you know those two Obama spawn are the luckiest kids ever too. $28k a year for them to not be left behind and it’s only grade school.

Love me these populist Dems. Always looking out for…. THEMSELVES.

You got it right.
Let me make one over-riding argument in favor of progressive taxes which is extremely fair & resonable taxation method.
GDP isn’t created in vaccum. It is done with resources which all of the tax payers contribute to and maintain ( Army, Police to support infrastructure, Judicial system for arbitrate, land/water/air which all tax payers own and maintain through local taxes). Top 5% which earns 95% of revenue annually cannot be greedy, ship money to Cayman/Bermuda/China etc for tax evasion and expect the system to recover. It’s like over-fishing and system will collapse. Only progressive taxation will save the system.

We need to bring back the progressive taxation which was present till 1970s and also Glass-Steagall Act (to remove bubble and burst cycles). Only that will expand a rapidly shrinking middle class which is the back-bone of this country.