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My Favorite Blogger Post of the Day:
Regarding Mitt Romney’s truly stupid comment about how airliners should have openable windows:
Heh. Indeed.
Does Romney know he doesn’t live in Switzerland? Take a look at his tax return.
Romney, in his 1040 income tax form, listed himself as being in a foreign country…uh…the USA.
“If you have a foreign address,” the tax return instruction reads, “also complete spaces below.” In the space below, under “foreign country name,” Romney’s form reads “USA.”
Of course, it probably points out how rarely Romney actually fills out income tax forms. If he made the 12 years of forms previously available, maybe we could get a true sense of where Romney comes from.
Related articles
- Romney Lists USA Under ‘Foreign Country’ on Tax Return (outsidethebeltway.com)
- Mitt Romney Calls the U.S. A “Foreign Country” On His Tax Returns (alan.com)
- Mitt Romney Calls U.S.A. a ‘Foreign Country’ in His Tax Returns (usnews.com)
- Americans Should be Outraged that Romney Pays Only 0.2% in Payroll Taxes (politicususa.com)
- Paul Abrams: What Romney’s Hiding: ‘It’s the Amnesty, Stupid’ (huffingtonpost.com)
Take the Tax Fairness Pledge…
If you filed on April 15th and want to find out how much you saved in your taxes, you can go to FairEconomy.org and take the Tax Fairness Pledge”… something the top 400 of the very rich could effect our whole economy by taking. The top 1% of the country took in 90% of the income gains in 2010, so they’re doing just fine. But lately the folks at the top have not been asked to pay their fair share in taxes.
If these rich folks had paid their fair taxes, what could it have meant? Just how rich are they?:
Even if they only paid ALL of their Income gains above 35% they could cover at least half of all this stuff!
What about you? Are you paying your fair share (or more) of taxes? You can find out HERE by using the calculator, then sign the Tax Fairness Pledge, where you can select necessary areas to contribute excesses to.
My thanks to United For a Fair Economy.
Related articles
- Why it’s time for a single income tax | Matthew Elliott (guardian.co.uk)
- Those wacky rich folk and their taxes (dontmesswithtaxes.typepad.com)
- Extend austerity measures to allow for major tax cuts, chancellor told (guardian.co.uk)
- Video: What is the Fair Tax? (turbotax.intuit.com)
- Graduate tax proposals divide coalition (confused.com)
- Pennsylvania GOP State Rep. Hasn’t Signed Norquist Tax Pledge Because ‘I Have To Do What’s Right And What’s Fair’ (thinkprogress.org)
- GOP rookies revolt against Grover (politico.com)
Looks like Boehner is ready to raise some taxes… What will Grover Norquist say?
Two quotes for the afternoon:
“I think there is room for revenues, but I think there clearly is a limit to the amount of revenues that are available.”
“The comment was significant because Boehner and other Republican leaders have repeatedly insisted that tax increases are off the table, and most Republicans in the House and Senate have signed a “taxpayer protection pledge” vowing not to raise taxes.
“That pledge was devised by Americans for Tax Reform, an advocacy group run by Grover Norquist, whom Boehner dismissed as “some random person in
America” when he was asked about Norquist today. Later in the day, Boehner revised his comments.”
Related articles
- John Boehner on Grover Norquist: He’s just some ‘random person’ (dailykos.com)
- Boehner calls anti-tax activist ‘random person’ (sfgate.com)
- Debt Plan Will Contain New Tax Revenues: Boehner (newser.com)
- Boehner Calls Grover Norquist Some Random Person; Norquist Agrees (blogs.wsj.com)
- Alan Simpson Takes on Grover Norquist, AARP (blogs.wsj.com)
- Boehner: Grover Who?! (mediaite.com)
Getting a late start on the blog today…
Elly and I had to get up at 6AM today, eat, walk the dogs and head for Baltimore to BWI to pick up our grandson Milo who flew in from Connecticut to visit his Aunt Penny and our other three grandchildren. We had to get to the airport, which is an hour and a half away from us at least, 45 minutes before his plane lands so that one of us (me) can get the consent papers to pick him up, go through the x-ray and search procedures to get down to the gate and then wait for his arrival.
Then we had to reverse direction and get him to Penny’s house for lunch. In all it took about 6 1/2 hours out of our day and now I’m back and can start posting and reading everyone else’s posts.
So give me some time to see what’s going on and I’ll get right back to you.
When you pay your taxes on April 15th, think what life would be like if you were a big corporation…
My niece Kelsey posted this on her Facebook page and I thought it deserved a wider distribution. Thanks to our pal Bernie Sanders, we get a good look at the good deal you get on taxes if you are one of the top 10 corporate entities on his list:
Staying out of the weather and watching the Congress…
It’s been snowing steadily since nine this morning and, while the dogs love walking around in it, I’m looking for reasons to stay inside today. One of those reasons is to watch the Senate debate the START treaty, which is not even close to the action in the tax cut extension debates earlier on, and flipping back to the House of Representatives who nearly completed debate on the rule for taxes when Rep. McGovern (D-MA) pulled the bill off the floor. Lawmakers are uncertain if they have enough votes to bring the tax bill to the floor.
Before the debate on the tax bill starts, the House first needs to pass the rule on how the debate and votes will go, with a simple majority vote. If the rule passes, the will be three hours of general debate and one amendment to change the inheritance tax provisions in the bill. For the last two hours, though, nothing has happened and the House is now out. The Democrats were supposed to go into a closed meeting, but the word from CSpan is that the Closed Meeting has been delayed. Whether or not they come back this evening, I don’t know.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which the House voted to end yesterday, went the to Senate and lost. The Senate has failed to get past a roadblock on a bill that would repeal the policy banning gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the military. The procedural vote failed, 57-40, and was mostly along party lines. Sixty votes were needed to move forward.
All in all, it has been pretty dismal in Congress today.
Related Articles
- Panic at the Disco?: Tax Bill Pulled From House Floor (nicedeb.wordpress.com)
- Democrats hold up tax bill consideration (dontmesswithtaxes.typepad.com)
- Tax cut deal hits “bump” in House (dailykos.com)
- Senate prepares to vote on tax-cut extension (abclocal.go.com)
- Kyl Still Trying to Kill Treaty (politicalwire.com)
Saturday morning and I’m watching the Senate vote on the tax bill…
Right now they are voting on the Baucus Amendment, which is identical to the bill passed by the House last week. This extends tax cuts across the board up up to $250,000 per family income. If this fails they go to the Schumer Amendment which extends the Bush tax cuts up to $1,000,000.00.
I don’t believe either of these will pass, since the Republicans are holding out for complete extension of all Bush tax cuts… including those for the very wealthy which will cost our country over a trillion dollars this year. However, what will be seen in public is that the Democrats are trying to deal with the two problems of the economy and the deficit, while the Republicans are holding out to make the deficit much, much worse and to benefit the very wealth 1% at the top of our population.
It looks like we are getting a straight “NO” from Republicans (even Brown from Massachusetts and Collins from Maine who were hinted at to be crossovers.) I didn’t see on the Democrat side what Ben Nelson did, or if any other Dem went for the Republican side. It’s no surprise but fucking Lieberman just went with the Republicans (What a surprise!, says my wife.)
Vote on this one was 53 to 36… since, due to the filibuster it needs 60 votes, this one didn’t make it.
____
Harry Reid just interrupted the proceedings to go over the next week’s schedule.
Now they are voting on whether to move forward with the Schumer Amendment with the million dollar break.
____
Schumer’s Amendment would extend unemployment for a year as well.Since it looks like all the Senators are on the floor now, this vote should go faster than the last. Looking at the floor I see that Democrats are talking to Democrats and republicans are talking to Republicans and no pleasant interaction is happening between parties. Our Senator Rockefeller has voted against this one, and I’m surprised. Perhaps I shouldn’t be, but when even Ben nelson votes for it, I wonder why Rockefeller ties in with the right on this one. Lieberman voted No on this one as well.
Tom Harkin has voted No on this one… and, if so, there must be a reason. Durbin has voted No as well. Something tells me they want to go to the original drafting of the bill with no amendments. Or else they are trying to make sure nothing gets through and the Taxes are automatically restored on January 1st (which, as you know, would be my preference.)
Vote is 53 – 37 and the motion is not agreed to.
_____
Now Mitch McConnell is giving a speech to insult Democrats for wasting time and claiming that there is BiPartisan demand to extend the tax cuts for everyone, including the wealthy, and he also claims that the public agrees (just not the 70% who have been polled.)
So now we’re going into open speeches by both sides. It begins with Mary landrieu (D – Louisiana) commenting on Mitch McConnell’s insults and questioning if he is not embarrassed by saying publicly that his main goal is to prevent Obama from being reelected in 2012.
God, it’s hard to watch this crap.
Related Articles
- Senate Showdown Over Tax Cuts (abcnews.go.com)
- Senate to Vote on Democratic Tax Cut Plans (abcnews.go.com)
- You: Senators Vie for Last Word on Tax Breaks as Expiration Nears (nytimes.com)
- Senate to vote on Democratic tax cut plans – The Associated Press (news.google.com)
- Senate Sets Votes on Two Proposals to Extend Tax Cuts – BusinessWeek (news.google.com)
- Senate Showdown Saturday: Tax Cut Votes on the Way – ABC News (news.google.com)
- Obama wins symbolic tax vote but battle rages (nationalpost.com)
- The relative ease of finger-pointing (washingtonmonthly.com)
- Saturday Showdown at the Senate: Weekend Tax Cut Votes on the Way (blogs.abcnews.com)
- US’s Schumer: Hopes Senate Tax-Cut Votes On Sat Clarify Debate (forexlive.com)
- Biden: Senate should extend middle class tax cuts (reuters.com)
- Saturday …The Senate will be in Session (ynative77.wordpress.com)
A Quote We Should All Remember…
This from an ABC interview… I think it sums things up pretty well:
“The rich are always going to say that, you know, “Just
give us more money, and we’ll go out and spend more,
and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you.”
But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope
the American public is catching on.”Billionaire Warren Buffett
Related Articles
- Warren Buffett: Cut Taxes For Middle And Lower Class; Rich Should Pay Much More (alan.com)
- Warren Buffett: I ‘Should Be Paying A Lot More In Taxes’ (huffingtonpost.com)
- Warren Buffett: Please, Raise My Taxes (crooksandliars.com)
- “Warren Buffett tells ABC’s ‘This Week’: People like me should be paying a lot more in taxes” and related posts (blogs.orlandosentinel.com)
- Buffett Says Rich Should Pay More (politicalwire.com)
- Buffett Tells ABC Rich People Should Pay Higher Taxes (businessweek.com)
- Warren Buffett: The Rich Should Pay More in Taxes (grantlawrence.blogspot.com)
Picked this up from Op Ed News…
As a blogger, I find this particularly displeasing (and a violation of Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Speech).
This is the opening couple of paragraphs, but the rest is worth reading (and responding to):
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Read the rest HERE.