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Literally. Congresswoman McKinney Allegedly Punches Cop...
Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) punched a U.S. Capitol Police officer today after he mistakenly pursued her for failing to pass through a metal detector... The entire incident is on tape. The cop is pressing charges and the USCP are waiting until Congress adjourns to arrest her, a source claims... Developing...
How strange... and she always seemed so stable...
"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it."
UN Council calls on Iran to halt nuclear program Warns will stomp feet, hold breath, run away from home otherwise.
Well, this is disheartening. For this to not only happen but actually be unanimous makes me think that Russia and China believe a UN resolution is worth even less than I do. And that's ain't a lot.
David's recent post about inequities in the tax code reminded me of one of my own, about inequities in wealth distribution. I quote myself:
Is it moral, for example, for a single person to own everything and have employees making just enough to survive. That isn’t likely to happen, of course… but the question is, do we have a moral obligation to avoid extreme wealth disparity?
I also quote David's response:
What I am saying instead is that the distribution of wealth and within society may or may not be morally optimal, but intervention by the government is itself immoral.
So, taxation is immoral (unless it is voluntary). Following this logic, isn't it a preferred choice to immorally take money from fewer people? If less people are taxed, fewer acts of immorality are occuring. Isn't that a better result than more people being taxed?
Also, a couple more points:
Benjamin Hackett, by way of David, sez:
The top 50 percent of wage earners pay 96.54 percent of all income taxes.... Based on 2003 Internal Revenue Service data, the top 50 percent of wage earners included all individuals and jointly filing couples earning $29,019 or more.
I'm curious to know if Mr. Hackett has the faintest idea what a couple living on 29 grand would be going through. I know I don't. I've got no problem having some sort of cutoff, below which no income taxes would be paid. Should it be lower than 29,000? I don't know. But certainly not much lower.
I would add that this statistic refers only to federal income tax. He makes no claim to know what the pie looks like when you throw in state income tax, county income tax, local income tax, gasoline tax, real estate tax, vehicle tax, cell phone tax, and sales tax. Anyone want to suggest what percent of the money brought into the various state governments from lotteries are from people below the 29,000 level?
One more:
Some people will balk at this next statement, but it is empirically sound. There is no way to cut taxes on the lower-income 50 percent of this country when the lower 50 percent do not pay any income taxes!
I don't know about balking, but I can certainly refute it. People at every level, even those living the sweet life at $29K per year are paying taxes out of every paycheck. They just get the money back in April of the following year. (Or do I not understand the system of witholding?) So, if we were to cut taxes for these people, they would receive the time-value of that money for the 8 months (on average) that the government holds the cash.
Also, and this is the one that makes me chuckle, it would be less expensive for the government to do it that way, since they wouldn't have to take the funds and then give them back.
Top al Qaeda operatives and others in U.S. custody said in testimony on Tuesday that Zacarias Moussaoui was untrustworthy and not part of the September 11 attacks.
If top al Qaeda operatives say it, it must be true, because those guys we can trust! Not that I put a lot of stock in Moussaoui’s testimony, either.
Really? Shouldn't that policy statement be even more embarrassing to the AP than the non-attribution itself? Does declaring plagiarism as policy make it okay? Too bad nobody told Howell Raines.
So, since Senator Specter and since Senator McCain and all the supporters of this amnesty program say, "Well, 12 million, 11 million? We can't do anything about it! We've got to come up with some way to deal with them already here because we can't deport them." Fine, how about if I we -- and I'm speaking hypothetically… What if 40 or 50 million of us just refused to pay taxes. What are they going to do? …They don't have that many IRS agents; they don't have that much jail space. They might actually build jails for this, though (laughing) and call it the Rush Limbaugh Correctional Facility. They might actually do it. But then what would have to happen because the government obviously needs revenue, we need for our government to perform various basic functions. But it could be a way to change the tax code, because if 40 or 50 million people just said, "The hell with it and dropped out," they'd have to come up with an alternative way of raising the money, and that's how we would get reform.
In fact, this is more or less the basic premise of Atlas Shrugged, except there it was the wealthy that bailed out, and went into hiding. Anyway, his actual point, regarding the current talk about immigration reform, is this:
…if the number of illegals is simply too large to deal with, the number of criminals is simply too large to deal with, and you're not going to have any enforcement mechanism, then all of this is just… designed to placate you and pander to you to make you think that they reeeally mean it this time.”
I"ll say one thing about the immigration debate: Isn't it nice to have one thing to argue about where there’s some real certainty? I mean, politics is the real of opinion. It’s hard to say anything for certain is right or wrong, because so much of it deals with opinion, differing world views, and fuzzy social science. Here, at least, is one thing that a clear thinking from either side of the immigration debate should be able to recognize, whether or not they are willing to admit it. When you hear Senator Specter claiming one one hand that we can't deport everybody because we have no way of getting so many people to comply with existing immigration laws, and then propose as a solution to this the passage of still more laws, without explaining how we will suddenly, magically, be able to get those same people to comply with these new immigration laws, you can be pretty confident that he’s talking nonsense.
…As it stands now, the numbers show that a shrinking majority of Americans are actually paying taxes. The tax system is inching dangerously close to becoming fully funded by a minority of the population. The top 50 percent of wage earners pay 96.54 percent of all income taxes.
So what do you say? Let the “rich” top 50 percent pay the taxes, right? Based on 2003 Internal Revenue Service data, the top 50 percent of wage earners included all individuals and jointly filing couples earning $29,019 or more. These are not the people that are stereotypically associated with the word “rich.” However, when politicians talk about how only the rich get tax breaks, these particular taxpayers are included in those sentiments.
…Politicians and lobbyists complain that the tax cuts do not give enough money back to this country’s poor. Some people will balk at this next statement, but it is empirically sound. There is no way to cut taxes on the lower-income 50 percent of this country when the lower 50 percent do not pay any income taxes!
The danger here is seen in the current leadership. Traditionally, overspending and entitlement program growth have been liberal problems, but now it is spreading to certain Republican leadership. These alleged Republicans have violated their conservative beliefs in favor of incumbent pork barrel spending.
I'd even say most Republican leadership, including, unfortunately, the president.
…The final scenario that ends all hope of true tax reform is as follows: Less than 50 percent of the population pays 99 percent or more of the federal income tax bill. In the event that the majority of people no longer pays taxes, the politicians — who now barely pay attention to the calls for tax reform — will have no incentive to even consider reform. This is the final scenario that ends all hope of true tax reform.
We must avoid this situation at all costs. It will change our capitalist-based system into a socialist system of wealth redistribution. The United States of America must not allow itself to slide so far to the left that the sometimes attractive but continually disproved practices of socialism pervade the nation.
Once upon a time, there lived an old woman with a goose that laid golden eggs. We haven't learned a lot since Aesop, have we?
The root of economic problems in Europe?: “…Massive deficit spending throughout the eighties and nineties has left Europe with a public debt unequalled in history. The size of Europe's monumental public debt is only surpassed by the hidden liabilities accumulated in Europe’s shortsighted pay-as-you-go public pension schemes. . . .” I suspect Europe today provides a glimpse of where the United States could be headed, if we're not careful.
The Sound of Young America has the first 14 minutes of a rare 1975 interview with Monty Python’s Palin, Jones, Gilliam, and Chapman. They were touring the US promoting their new film, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, which did not yet have a US distributor.
KERA-TV in Dallas was the first PBS station to broadcast Monty Python's Flying Circus, and it was the Pythons' first stop in the US after the premier of Monty Python and the Holy Grail in Los Angeles in 1975. This interview footage first aired live on KERA that year, and hasn't been seen by the public since. It was discovered on an old reel that had been saved by an engineer, and as you can see, it cuts off after about 14 minutes... the engineer taped over the rest. It's a look at the group being candidly questioned by fans at the peak of their fame and creative powers.
Very cool. A stuffed armadillo figures prominently.
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