Inside Obama's Twitter Blitz On the Payroll Tax 294
Hugh Pickens writes "Brandon Rittiman reports that White House officials launched a Twitter campaign Tuesday to put pressure on Congress to reach a deal extending the payroll-tax cut. Using the Twitter hashtag #40dollars, the White House successfully got thousands of people to respond and explain what a $40 cut to each paycheck would mean to them personally. By Wednesday morning, the #40dollars hashtag started 'trending,' which is what happens when Twitter's algorithms see a topic suddenly surge. It's not easy to create that kind of surge, but the White House has 2.5 million Twitter followers to call upon. Macon Phillips, the President's Director of Digital Strategy, says his team has managed to get a few Twitter topics to rise to the level of 'trending' before — most notably when they began tweeting about the death of Osama bin Laden. 'What's very important about a social-media campaign like this is that regular people are making the point about how this would affect them. It's not us here in Washington trying to argue on their behalf.' says Phillips. 'The #40dollars campaign puts a face on that amount to demonstrate the payroll tax cut's real-world impact on middle-class families.'"
But (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought tax cuts are evil and stuff?
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Re:But (Score:4, Insightful)
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Unfortunately they (house republicans) also wanted to trim 200,000+ jobs from the public sector, reduce unemployment benefits, and a bunch of other such nonsense. This being the first tax break they chose to harp about how we are going to pay for it after all. There are a lot more details to the house bill for 12 months which you seem to have excluded from the account.
We can always start with the fact that the bush tax cuts are passed through without payment for them, but when it comes time to renew the tax
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The Republicans (and apparently the President) wanted the tax holiday extended all year. The Democrats talked them down to two months.
is still disingenuous (especially given that you apparently knew the specifics with witch you responded to me).
Re:But (Score:5, Informative)
The Republicans (and apparently the President) wanted the tax holiday extended all year. The Democrats talked them down to two months.
You should really pay more attention. The Democrats presented a plan to extend the payroll cut for a year and keep medicare payouts at the same level. The Republicans presented a plan to extend the payroll cut for a year while at the same time guaranteeing the oil companies can build a pipeline from Alaska to the Gulf through protected wildlife refuges. Both groups compromised on extending it for two months (with some republicans trying to stall it) in order that they might argue more about which additional things should be added. Mostly, the Democrats have been trying to pass the cuts while the Republicans are refusing until they get the oil company benefits they promised lobbyists.
Claims that it is the Democrats that are preventing the passage of these tax cuts on a longer time frame is either disingenuous or reflects a twisted perception of reality. Stop watching Fox "News".
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guaranteeing
Lie: The Republican proposal guaranteed a RULING up or down within 90 days, but did not guarantee approval.
True enough, it just forces a decision on the proposal in a very short timeframe and before the EPA study of probable effects will be finished.
the oil companies can build a pipeline from Alaska
Lie: The Northern end of the pipeline is in Canada.
Umm, I guess you're right it is from Alberta not Alaska, although that seems worse in my opinion not better. We're now risking our protected wildlife area in order to process foreign oil, not even Alaskan?
to the Gulf
Half-lie: The pipeline goes to endpoints in Illinois, Oklahoma, and the eastern coast of Texas. Though the eastern coast of Texas borders the Gulf of Mexico, the pipeline is obviously not dumping oil directly into the Gulf. But thanks for trying to tie a land pipeline to oceanic oil spills.
The pipeline goes to the refineries along the gulf coast for easy transport. Who said anything about oil spills or dumping? Sounds like a truly pathetic strawman t
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Re:But (Score:5, Interesting)
As a fairly regular FOX radio news listener (know thy enemy and all that rot) I can assure you that this IS the tripe they spit out on a daily basis ... which is what the parent post stated, not REP vs DEM's.
If nothing else its the more vocal nutters from the TP that are harping every single day that things like extending unemployment during a very high period of unemployment is a terrible thing to do as it encourages dependence, but giving tax breaks to people / companies that already exploit every single loophole in loopholes is a 100% sure fire way to grow the economy.
I am personally somewhere in the middle, yes people do not need to be accustom to a handout, but giving megacorp a break is just going to help Brazil, India and China cause at the end of the day their only goal is to squeeze every single ounce of profit that they possibly can by any means necessary.
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I never said its morally inferior to helping America, but America really should be helping Americans first. As an American who is scraping up pennies to pay rent and having to make long term budgets in order to buy toilet paper why should I feel guilty that I would rather see my tax dollars helping me out over helping a billionaire exploit labor in China just so they can bring their junk back to America and fuck me over with a 1000x price increase?
Re:But (Score:5, Informative)
In case it really has to be said yet again: the poor often have no federal income tax liability, but if they are working poor, they still have to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, which are deducted from one's paycheck, which is why they're called payroll taxes. These taxes are deducible from gross income, but you don't get the taxes themselves back on April 15th. And it was these taxes that the current tax cut is about.
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It should be noted that we have something called an "Earned Income Credit" that allows a partial (if not complete) refund of your payroll taxes, if your income is low enough.
So, yes, many people do get this back on April 15th...
Re:But (Score:4, Interesting)
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Well, this one is. (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to say it, because it's horribly unpopular from a political perspective, but this payroll tax "holiday" is just disastrous policy. Depending on what numbers and what year you're looking at, anywhere from 81 to 89 percent of the entire U.S. budget goes to two things: defense and entitlements. And of those entitlements, the biggest long-term liabilities and problems that we have are Social Security and Medicare.
When you hear these Presidential candidates talk about how they would fix the budget deficits by getting rid of things like the EPA, the IRS, the Departments of Commerce / Energy / Education, etc., then you know should know that they are not making any sort of good-faith effort at solving the problem, and that they cannot be taken seriously. The dirty little secret is that you could cut out 100% of the discretionary non-defense spending (i.e., everything except for the military and entitlements) and you would have barely made a dent in the problem as a whole.
The whole purpose of the payroll/FICA tax is to provide funds for Social Security and Medicate. Again, these are the two biggest problems that the U.S. has from a budget perspective -- biggest by leaps and bounds. So not only does this policy make the deficit problem worse, it makes it worse in the worst possible way. Politicians can claim that these tax cuts are "paid for", but everybody knows that these types of Washington claims are usually just shell games for political purposes.
For what it's worth, I like the fact that the payroll tax holiday disproportionally benefits those towards the lower end of the income scale. But there has to be a better way to do this, especially at this critical time in history when the Boomers are retiring and we're going to need these trust funds more than at any time in our history.
Re:Well, this one is. (Score:5, Insightful)
You should vote Ron Paul then, because nobody else will cut militarism and bring all troops home from across the globe and would reform the SS and Medicare to keep taking care of people who are on those programs now, the elderly and the children, while giving people option to opt out (at first just the people under age of 25, but eventually to let anybody opt out as these programs will be shut down.) And SS and Medicare will be shut down, whether Ron Paul is elected or not, it's just with Ron Paul the way to shut them down will be gradual, allowing the current recipients to keep getting their support (but probably means testing in order to cut costs). If it's not Ron Paul, then the way these programs will be shut down is going to be by the dollar crashing and the loss of purchasing power will mean that the nominal numbers on the coming checks will buy nothing.
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Re:But (Score:5, Interesting)
No Democrat has ever claimed that all tax cuts are evil. That's just a flagrant lie. By contrast, the Republicans do claim that taxes are always bad and should only ever go down. So why are they set against this one?
Answer: They're not. They're just taking hostages, again. Just as when they secured the extension of the Bush tax cuts on the rich by threatening to cut off unemployment benefits around this time last year. Or when they forced cuts to discretionary spending by threatening to force the country into default. This time they're trying to secure a new oil pipeline, and probably other concessions, by threatening to raise taxes on the middle class.
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These are extending those Bush Tax Cuts, in which the Democrats heavily opposed to... However as we approach an election year and their #1 man needs to get reelected having him raise taxes will make him look bad.
So they change the verbiage around to make it fit their party better. So except for a way stimulate the economy it is helping the middle class.
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Nope, total bullshit. [staradvertiser.com]
*yawn* (Score:5, Informative)
The disagreement was never over the payroll tax holiday. The disagreement was over how to pay for it. The President's initial proposal was to pay for it with the millionaire's surtax, which he knew that Republicans opposed before he proposed it.
For Democrats who are pretending to not understand, this would be the equivalent of the Republicans proposing to pay for it by slashing Obama Care, and then accusing the President of being against the payroll tax holiday when he came out against the legislation.
For some reason, the media has used this as a huge opportunity to bash Republicans. Want to know why Republicans don't want to extend the tax holiday for two months? They don't want to go through the same media circus again in two months.
The bias of our media is pathetic. The stupidity of our population is tragic. The fate of our people is obvious. Next year we elect the last President of the United States. We face serious problems in the next five years, and the media has successfully kept anyone remotely competent out of the race.
This is going to be hilarious.
Re:*yawn* (Score:5, Insightful)
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The thing is, it's only Republican legislaters that are so darn against the millionaire's surtax.
Actually, the money is coming out of Social Security not the general budget. The argument for SS is that it is a government managed retirement fund and that what you get out is based on what you put in. Receiving SS benefits is equivalent to a 401k or pension in that you get what you earned.
Making millionaires contribute to SS is changing the meaning of what it is, from something I earned to getting other peoples' money. This actually makes it less secure because it takes away the moral aspect of receivi
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Re:*yawn* (Score:4, Insightful)
The government really does have a spending problem only. Revenue is quite static; however the big trouble they got themselves into is their deficit spending. GDP is C + I + G +-exports basically. G (government spending) is a huge part of GDP, but government overspending is roughly 12% of our GDP. Think about that - 'fake demand' is really all it is.
If the government spends what they take in next year (which they should) our GDP will shrink 12% automatically. No one wants that - because that cycle gets worse - revenue goes down the year after and now they have to spend even less, etc...
Option 2 is what the President, most dems, and many repubs want - 'kick the can'. Now some are smart enough to know that only makes the inevitable worse. Some probably really do believe we can borrow more and more - even though to even stay at our current state we have to borrow 'exponentially' more every year. Run that through your head - to sustain our current economic situation (which isn't that good) we have to borrow at record rates - to the point where in 10 years we'll have to borrow as much as our entire country produces in one year - just to keep where we are.
Bottom line - we take the hit now and ride through it - or we ride it out until it collapses entirely.
Re:*yawn* (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you forgot to mention one more detail that is important. The tax is marginal - you are taxed on income above 1 million! That is, anyone making 1 million a year will be unaffected by it and anyone making 1,000,100 will pay $2.5 (or $3.5, dollars, I forget) extra taxes. You have to make well over (i.e. several) a million to care.
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Funnier still, vast majority Americans - including most Republican voters! - actually believe [typepad.com] that the best way to distribute income is, essentially, "socialist" (i.e. what Americans themselves normally think as socialist). You just have to be careful to ask them without using that dirty pinko word:
The ideal wealth distribution chosen by the 5,522 people who took the online survey has the top fifth of Americans owning between 30 percent and 40 percent of the wealth. That means Americans believe the ideal distribution of wealth is that of Sweden. Moreover, 90 percent of Republicans share that belief. (Actually, 90.2 percent, as the survey coauthor, Prof. Daniel Ariely of Duke University, noted when we met to discuss his work.) The survey sample, with more than 10 times the 504 people often used in polls, is robust and credible. (For the report, see Doc 2010-21608.) The genius in the survey was to avoid questions using loaded terms like ‘‘estate tax’’ and ‘‘death tax.’’ Instead those surveyed were shown pie charts and asked what they thought was the ideal distribution of wealth and what they estimated to be the wealth distribution in America. They were not told that one of the pie charts was Sweden’s actual wealth distribution, but people gravitated to it like moths to a flame.
Re:*yawn* (Score:4, Insightful)
Are there really people out there that decide whether to hire or fire based on their personal income tax?
If a business is set up to make money to begin with, seems like it'd make more sense to base hiring and layoff decisions around meeting demand. And it would logically follow that policies that increase demand will benefit "job creators" more, unless their taxes are so severe (like, say, 100%+) that meeting increased demand costs them money.
People who make all their income from investments might not like it very much, but by the same token, how many of them hire and fire or base their investment decisions on their personal tax rate?
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Are there really people out there that decide whether to hire or fire based on their personal income tax?
Why should the answer to this be anything other than "Yes, there are."? Let's pretend that there aren't any libertarian rich people out there with incentive to "Go Galt" (or merely move their assets out of the US). Whether greedy or not, we'll assume they'll keep hiring people and playing the economic game.
The problem with higher income taxes for rich people, is that as a result they have less money to spend on things like businesses that employ people or buying things from businesses that employ people.
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No, that's wrong. Higher corporate taxes mean there is less wealth with which to employ people. Once those earnings are personal, they are not going to be used to hire people. That's why it's called personal income.
I imagine most personal income doesn't go into the fireplace. It either pays for jobs directly, as in the person pays for someone's work (there isn't a law against paying someone with personal income to work in the US, but maybe I just don't get the laws in your locale) and indirectly, by buying stuff or investing it.
The thing I don't get here is how people can think that there is some way to tell the difference between money that pays for jobs and money that somehow doesn't.
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If a business is making profits, and there is enough demand for their product or service, why wouldn't they hire another person? Presumable a new hire will be able to take on enough responsibility to make the company enough new cash flow to pay for themself. If that is not the case, and a new hire would cost money, I don't think they'd have a good chance of being hired even if taxes were at 0%.
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Generally if you have employees you'd want to get away from filing as a Schedule C. A good accountant would move you towards a structure where you would draw a fairly low salary while being provided with various fringe benefits (company car, expense accounts, etc.) I once complained to my father about taxes and he said "Taxes? With a good accountant taxes are a second form of income!" Certainly I do much better as a consultant wrapping my work in an LLC than I would as a W2 employee both in terms or pay
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Re:*yawn* (Score:5, Informative)
And pay a disproportionally large amount of tax. First they fall into the highest tax bracket of 35% then pay AMT [wikipedia.org] on top of that, plus capital gains on anything else.
You can be certain that no millionaire pays the full %35 on income tax. They would have to be completely ignorant and stupid about how to handle money.
I work in the financial industry surrounded by people IN that income bracket. What they do is transfer funds or take their income directly into non-liquid (non-cash) capital like stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real-estate, stock ownership whatever. Then they roll their cash over, and over, and over again by transferring it between these assets when they are performing well. This increases the total assets they own without it showing up on their "income" sheet. They bankroll money generating schemes and occasionally start small businesses (mostly geared around how to make themselves more money), but rarely do they start something like a public service industry or a manufacturing firm fresh. They would more likely buy an existing company, layoff 1/2 of the staff, reduce worker pay, "increase productivity", offshore any software development, etc. and then sell their stakes in the company (frequently in exchange for other non-cash assets). This is exactly how Romney has made his money and is exactly where he holds his cash (assets within other companies). He is living off of the dividends payed to him for this sort of work to this day. He no longer "works" for those companies, but he does draw a paycheck. I can assure you he has never done any of the work OF the companies he was employed by either. It's always been in a "how to maximize profits by gutting the existing setup and doing something different" sort of a position.
When they need some liquid assets (cash) they will take it out and pay a 15% capital gains tax or they will run it through another tax shelter (like off-shore accounts). I have known some to pay each other directly in non-liquid assets (trade a ton of stock in something for real-estate, no one made "income" that way).
Most do not create jobs, instead they use their personal income to steam-roll gathering more personal wealth. They buy holdings, stakes, yachts, real estate, and other assets.
Unless you are part of the 1% you cannot adequately defend the 1% as you apparently do NOT have any idea how simplistic your life becomes when you stop living on your paycheck and instead live on your dividends from your existing assets (which are further increasing in value on their own over time). This is exactly why many of the top earners have said, point blank, "Go ahead and tax me more, I can take it!", because you know what happens? They pay their additional on the taxable direct income (which frequently is a fraction of their total assets gained / year) and it still doesn't matter to them because most of their big assets and holdings are tied up in real property, stocks, bonds, etc.
Just let me ask you how many jobs it creates if you buy 100,000 shares of stock in a company outside of it's IPO. How many does it create when you sell them?
Simple answer: none, other than hiring a stock broker. But you CAN live on the dividends of those shares (depending on the company) and you can make a killing if you keep moving your stock holdings around in the market.
The extremely wealthy really don't tend to invest in human capital that much, it's not reliable enough ROI.
- Toast
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I know it's bad form to post a reply to your own post but here is a little thought experiment:
Given $5 million tax-free in the initial state (directly invested into non-liquid funds) or so I could set myself (or anyone else for that matter) up in such a setup as to be able to exist off of nothing but the capital gains and asset improvements so long as they acted like they made the median household income ($40-50k) as opposed to living like a millionaire. Even if you could never ever touch the original $5 mi
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You missed the point.
Once someone has a few million they do not pay %35 income tax (unless they are pretty stupid), they do not struggle to meet any burden related to paying the taxes they do have.
And if you consider hiring a wealth management firm to invest your money to be "work". Or you think $5 million to be hard to come by for the people who already have cash... I might suggest taking a look at what exactly a private equity firm is and does.
Bankrolling is not a hard game compared to working all of your
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Here is a millionaire that pays himself a salary instead of rolling the money over and over [youtube.com], so he pays 35% federal and 7% state income taxes, plus the 3% Medicare and 12% SS, but that 12% is only on the first 100K or so, and so it doesn't matter, because 99% of his income is taxed at marginal rates. He argued this in a Congressional hearing on Obama's "jobs" act, [youtube.com] and this remains his point that near 50% of his money already is paid to gov't in taxes before any sales taxes, property taxes, etc.
You can cont
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No...not everyone is for the millionaire surtax. I am not a millionaire nor will I ever be one because I can say honestly I don't want to work that hard (I wish more people would be honest about this).
Sure, I'll be honest about it. The honest truth is this: almost nobody in the "million dollar a year" crowd works "million dollar a year" hard. There are very few people whose contribution to society is worth that of 20 times the average household income. Much, MUCH fewer that .0001% "deserve" that kind of compensation. And of the few people who do deserve that kind of compensation, very few of them actually get that kind of compensation. The honest, real world truth is that money does not create a mer
Or... (Score:2)
Because it is a pain in the ass and costly to implement [businessweek.com]
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Re:*yawn* (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, as much as I hate how biased Fox news is, CNN surprised me with something I happened to catch when I was in the grocery store and happened to see it on. They were talking to one of the Republican presidential hopefuls about what his view on the whole thing was and he was answering quite well I thought (in terms of explaining his view) that he didn't want to gut the money from elsewhere and that he thought that there needed to be some way to fund the tax cut and was being pretty clear that while he didn't like the idea of allowing it to expire he wasn't seeing an alternative that he thought would work, but the anchor would not let go of trying to ask him if he was in favor of raising taxes even though he was already being pretty direct at stating his view. The CNN anchor was clearly trying to corner him in to having to say something unpopular as opposed to having a dialog and talking about the issues it would cause. It was politics not news and appeared very clearly biased to me.
Re:*yawn* (Score:4, Interesting)
The CNN anchor was clearly trying to corner him in to having to say something unpopular as opposed to having a dialog and talking about the issues it would cause. It was politics not news and appeared very clearly biased to me.
I didn't see it - I don't watch any television news. But if I were doing such an interview, that's exactly what I would be pushing for because few if any republicans had word one to say about how to pay for the extension of the Bush tax cuts. At best it was all magic talk about "job creators" ultimately improving the economy.
I don't think its "politics" at all to zero in on what sure looks like a serious case of hypocrisy. I put a lot more weight on increasing consumer demand as a way to create news jobs than I do on incentives for "job creators" so perhaps I'm biased, and there is some means of explaining the apparent hypocrisy that I've missed.
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That's understandable, but then question them on the hypocrisy, don't try to trap them in to saying what you want them to day because it would be sensational and make them look bad. Ask them how they feel it is different from that situation. Ask them why their view seems to be different. Give them a chance to explain themselves and ask questions if things don't add up. That is the point of the press. Not to try and get someone to trip up so that you can make a big headline and make someone look bad. W
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Here's the thing: at this point, I don't really care anymore what Republicans say. They pretty much lost me for the foreseeable future with their stance on the tax holiday.
Note: I'm pretty fiscally conservative. In my own finances, I only spend money I have, plan for the future with a significant rainy day fund, and consider whether the purchase I'm about to make is a need vs a want, and what its ROI is. I expect my government to work with the same principles. In theory, this should align nicely with the re
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The National Review? Lulz. The National Revue does not have a fucking problem what the issues are with California (hint - looters aren't it). Furthermore, a strong US president won't be able to avoid WW 3. The best he could do is to make sure the good guys win WW 3.
As for seeing an Abraham Lincoln, I can guarantee you that the Republicans of today would crucify him for not being pro-life, pro-Christian and anti-tax enough. You can't save anyone who doesn't want to be saved. And today's Republicans don't wan
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The media picked up on it because it was hypocrisy in action. GOP has taken a position that even closing loop holes is a tax increase that cannot be tolerated. The so-called Bush Tax cuts must be made permeant because you cannot add more taxes to the job creators. And while you are saying that there was never a disagreement over the holiday, that's not true. There was plenty of disagreement about if the middle class "needed" the tax cut. House Tea Party caucus leader Michelle Bachmann called the Tax Ho
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I think it is interesting that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are outing each other on this point. So while both try to paint themselves as being on the side of their constituents, it's clear that neither one is. Nor the President, for that matter.
Using the media to hide the impact (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't thei tax the source of funding for SSI?
It looks like saying "I'm cutting the payroll tax" == "I'm bankrupting SSI faster than ever!"
SSI is in the red, this will not help, it will hurt 'real-world' 'middle-class families'.
This goes well past obfuscation and looks like intentional dishonesty to me.
This will hurt everyone.
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"The two-month version's $33 billion cost will be covered by a .1 percentage point increase on guarantee fees on new home loans backed by mortgage giants Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae"
Re:Using the media to hide the impact (Score:4, Funny)
All I can think of is that Obama lost a ridiculous bet with Boehner on some secret round of golf.
Boehner: "Ten thousand dollars? Chump change. No, I said let's make it interesting."
Obama: "Ok, loser has to wear a dress and an SS armband at their next press conference."
Boehner: "That's getting closer, but people pretty much expect that. The campaigns are on, so wacky attention-whoring is already in."
Obama: "What did you have in mind?"
Boehner: "If I win, you have to be all tax cut, free money, no consequences, wooo! and my party gets to be.."
Obama: "-- Oh my god --"
Boehner "..the voice of.."
Obama: "-- I don't believe this --"
Boehner: "..reason and responsibility."
[Several seconds of silence, then they both burst out laughing]
Boehner: "Scared?"
Obama: "No, you're toast. Speaking of which, what happens when I win?"
Boehner: "We drop the birther thing."
Obama: "Oh please. No seriously, c'mon. I used to think that whole thing was stupid, but it makes people subconsciously think of me as a little more exotic and cool. Try again."
Boehner: *shrugs* "Science."
Obama: "Are you serious?! Holy shit. Really?"
Boenher: "The question is, do you have the balls?"
Obama: "What's your handicap?"
Boehner: "Gingr--" Obama: "Quit fucking around, this is a serious bet."
Boehner: "Minus 5."
Obama: "Oh."
Boehner: "Not so cocky now, are you, Mr Cool?"
Obama should be praised as a hero. So he lost at golf, BFD. He fought for science.
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SS is also hurt by a slow economy. If you don't have a job, you don't pay into SS. If you make less money, SS get less money.
Yes, but since your benefits are tied to your earnings, SS will have to pay out less too.
Ultimately I think SS will be fixed by lifting the cap on the amount of salary that is subject to payroll taxes and an increase in retirement age.
The real problem is Medicare. There is no way that can be fixed with a really drastic change in the US healthcare system, something that has been shown
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If this cut means $40 to you (Score:2)
Of course, what I love is that t
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Re:If this cut means $40 to you (Score:4, Informative)
Most people get paid every two weeks, which is the basis used to come up with the $40. Not weekly.
Also the House got beat up justifiably. The one year extension they passed included stuff like unemployment insurance duration cuts.
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Obama never said WEEKLY. He said $40 per paycheck for a family that earns 50,000.
Do the math. That's biweekly. Most people get paychecks biweekly. Duh.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/12/obama-40-can-make-all-the-difference-in-the-world/1 [usatoday.com]
All the news stories got it right.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/12/putting-a-human-face-on-the-payroll-tax-numbers/ [go.com]
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Pointless. (Score:2)
nothing can fix things in a system that gives 72% of everything to 5%, and gives the rest 95% of the population only 28%. oh, and the bottom 85% in that society, gets only 15% to boot.
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html [ucsc.edu]
i especially like how (Score:2, Insightful)
in their obstinance to defy anything obama tries to do, no matter how good or bad for the american people, the republican leadership is willing to oppose a tax CUT
because the tax cut is not for rich people?
republican robots: if you define yourself as "i'm everything that guy is not" and that guy is actually decent, where does that leave your political future?
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Re:i especially like how (Score:4, Informative)
They intentionally added tons of unrelated, partisan crap to the one year bill. Essentially, they were taking the American people hostage. Obama and the Senate refused to play that game, and so came up with a two month extension to buy time in the hopes that the Republicans will stop taking hostages.
It's a vain hope, and we'll be right back where we started in two months -- the Republicans with a gun to the head of the American people, demanding that we give them the world. Same as they did with the unemployment benefits last year, and the debt ceiling some months ago. So don't you dare try to pretend that the Republicans were behaving ethically in proposing that "one year extension". To do so makes you either ignorant or a liar.
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No you aren't. But that is the point, right? Making it seem like you have more to say than you really do.
#650billionformilitaryisstupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Breaking news (Score:3)
What Twitter trending means (Score:2)
I think it's worth mentioning that on twitter "trending" isn't just a measure of numbers. It's also a large part a measure of proportional increase. This means it's easier to get a trending topic on something that hasn't been talked about much before with a wierd hashtag.
This is a blog discussing how a tag for a gaming tournament became a trending topic.
http://latenightmarketing.com/gsl-trending-twitter-stats/ [latenightmarketing.com]
Diet Coke syndrome (Score:2)
What gets me steamed about budgets is huge debate on small stuff. Geez a $40 payroll tax cut? (which is really Social Security deduction people should get back later as it is an entitlement). All this debate over $40!?!?!? It is like they argue over NASA, NSF, NOAA, etc. budgets that don't amount to diddly. Meanwhile on big ticket items (DoD) is never debated. I'm going to mention Social Security as that is entitlement program separate from budgets that lead to deficits. SS has its own problems (will leave
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Maybe you should read some of the tweets that this article is about where people explain how $40 less will make a difference in their budgets.
No doubt there are other programs that need debating, but for a lot of people, this will make a difference in their day to day lives.
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It is the ***same*** mentality that people who want to lose weight so they have a Diet Coke along with a large meal. If ya want to lose weight you must either reduce intake, do more exercise, or both. A Diet Coke is only 0.05% of the big picture. Be a man and have a real coke.
Completely incorrect. Let's look at McDonald's as an example. Let's say you ate the following for lunch every day:
1/4 Pounder with Cheese: 510 calories
Medium French Fry: 380 calories
Large Coke: 310 calories
Total: 1200 calories
(source) [mcdonalds.com]
In this scenario the Coke accounts for 25.8% of the calories (!!!). If you were to switch from regular to diet coke and change NOTHING ELSE, you would lose 31.5lbs in a year.
310 calories * 365 days in a year / 3500 calories per pound = 31.5 lbs/year
NDAA (Score:2)
$40/pay for 2 months ($160) (Score:2)
Well, it covers one month of electric.
But how much will it cost companies to update their payroll deduction systems?
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Now I'm not sure where you live, but in the state I live it seem to be rare for a company to either get approval to pay biweekly or perhaps rare that they make such a request, for I don't know *anyone* paid biweekly.
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Weekly payment of wages. Exemptions. (Sec. 31-71b). (a) Each employer, by himself, his agent or representative, shall pay weekly all moneys due each employee on a regular pay day, designated in advance by the employer, in cash, by negotiable checks or, upon an employee's written request, by credit to such employee's account in any bank which has agreed with the employer to accept such wage deposits. (b) The end of the pay period for which payment is made on a regular pay day shall be not more tha
They said $40 per paycheck (Score:3)
Paychecks are normally bi-weekly. 40x26 = 1040 so sounds like the math is consistent. If it is correct or not I can't say, but it is consistent.
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FTFA:
The payroll tax holiday would keep an extra $1,000 in the pockets of an average American worker — or $40 per paycheck, according to the administration.
Most people get paid every two weeks. 26 paychecks * $40= $1040. Some get paid twice a month. 24 paychecks * $40 = $960.
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No, they keep claiming $40 per paycheck. Most people are paid every other week. Which maths out to $1040 annually.
Re:$40 figure is bullshit (Score:4, Informative)
Isn't the White House saying $40 / paycheck or did I miss something? For those of us who have real jobs, we get paid once every 2 weeks. Hence, $40 / paycheck is just over $1000 / year.
Quote from Obama
"[On] Tuesday, we asked folks to tell us what would it be like to lose $40 out of your paycheck every week. "
Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/12/22/president-obama-discusses-what-40-means-americans-families [whitehouse.gov]
A more important deception is that it is a reduction in the amount taxpayers pay into Social Security--NOT the general budget. This is more akin to reducing the amount of 401k withholdings than a tax break because you will have to make it up later one way or another--either through reduced SS benefits or increased SS taxes to make up for the deficit.
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you will have to make it up later one way or another--either through reduced SS benefits or increased SS taxes to make up for the deficit.
Nah, they are going to make it up by making our children(or at this point, more likely our grandchildren, they have already spent all the money our children are going to earn) pay more in SS taxes.
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The President said: "[On] Tuesday, we asked folks to tell us what would it be like to lose $40 out of your paycheck every week. And I have to tell you that the response has been overwhelming. We haven't seen anything like this before. Over 30,000 people have written in so far"
Thats a direct quote from the President of The United States, as cited by his website.
Thats $40 per week, another 'liberal' who can't realize when they are being bullshitted.
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This us vs. them attitude where you paint everyone as a 'liberal' really makes it sound like you're in a cult
I demonstrate again and again that it is they that are in a 'cult', that they operate on lies, and blame the shit that they do on the Republicans.
Deregulation of the housing marker.. ie, default swaps? Democrats overwhelmingly voted in favor of it, yet those same Democrats tell everyone that it was the evil Republicans did it, and the liberal drones repeat the nonsense because they couldn't be bothered to actually look up what the fuck their idols voted for. The media doesnt help because most of the peop
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Obama: "we asked folks to tell us what would it be like to lose $40 out of your paycheck every week. And I have to tell you that the response has been overwhelming. We haven't seen anything like this before. Over 30,000 people have written in so far"
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Those fuckers should lose half their pay and half their staff.
Re:Social Media: Removing Money from Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially when it's being used by politicians to manipulate people who don't actually have a broader understandimg of the issues at hand. Yep, great to see.
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Yeah, you're right. There's layers between politicians and their constituents for a reason! We can't just have the peanut gallery talking directly to the people that change their lives, that's just ridiculous and besides, their poor wittle minds are unable to cope with such powerfully-trained bullshit artists, so they'd soon find themselves swaying under their spell instead of asking for what they want anyway!
What we need is controls and regulations between the politicians and people. So that the politician
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