Greensboring :: Outside The Media. Beyond The News.

...leadership at it's finest

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091229/ap_ ... ner_attack

thesumofyourfears wrote:...leadership at it's finest

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091229/ap_ ... ner_attack

Two federal agencies charged with keeping potential terrorists off airplanes and out of the country have been without their top leaders for nearly a year.

Maybe he doesn't have as many political cronies to place in top positions as Dubya had?

thesumofyourfears wrote:so...what is obama's excuse this time?

How about Republicans holding up health-care and the American legislative process because they're big cry babies? If they would have gone on and passed the thing a few months ago, Obama would probably have given us all world peace by New Years.

Liv wrote:How about Republicans holding up health-care and the American legislative process because they're big cry babies? If they would have gone on and passed the thing a few months ago, Obama would probably have given us all world peace by New Years.

Well, at least we get the next best thing to world peace:

This is a joke surely?

so...what is obama's excuse this time?

And Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., has placed a hold on the president's choice to head the TSA over the senator's concern that the new leader would let TSA screeners join a labor union.

Or are you suggesting that Obama should ignore the law and parliamentary process that the GOP is holding hostage?

A Person wrote:This is a joke surely?

Summy is a living punch line that no one will ever laugh at. Mostly because it's a lame line with no set-up.

A Person wrote:Or are you suggesting that Obama should ignore the law and parliamentary process that the GOP is holding hostage?

It seems that Jim Demint thinks this attempted attack is a perfect illustration of why the TSA should not have Obama's nominee in charge. Because then union bosses would be making management decisions on security procedures. Errrr... WHAT??

No wonder my good conservative friend (who dropped her affiliation with the Republican Party) calls him "DeMented."

Ideology trumps lives. Sad. But remember we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term


Open Video In New Window

A Person wrote:This is a joke surely?

so...what is obama's excuse this time?

And Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., has placed a hold on the president's choice to head the TSA over the senator's concern that the new leader would let TSA screeners join a labor union.

Or are you suggesting that Obama should ignore the law and parliamentary process that the GOP is holding hostage?

How nice of you to ingnore the stonewalling by the demoncrack party that block so many W nominees during his terms...so I guess it is a 2 way street. No joke, A-Fraud...but given the security issues we face today, I think appointing the neccessary leaders in these areas should have taken a certain degree of precedence. He wasted this whole year with the health care issue instead of addressing high, double digit unemployment and stimulating the economy with tax cuts similar to JFK, RR and W's Jobs and GrowthTax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, which did work by the way.

what is thesumofyourfears' excuse this time?

Same as always, "The democrats! They were mean to us so it's their fault we're being assholes now. "

thesumofyourfears wrote:He wasted this whole year with the health care issue instead of addressing high, double digit unemployment and stimulating the economy with tax cuts similar to JFK, RR and W's Jobs and GrowthTax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, which did work by the way.

Obama did stimulate the economy with a tax cut. Please pay attention.

A Person wrote:Ideology trumps lives. Sad. But remember we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term

Wow. They still aren't thinking before talking, are they? No terror attack on America during Dubya's term?

Or maybe they have a rule against correcting each other on the air?

How can they take themselves seriously?

Interesting that the guy who was caught in Somalia trying the same stunt as this guy was acquitted by the courts there. I expect that will be Obama's fault as well...

A Person wrote:Obama did stimulate the economy with a tax cut. Please pay attention.

You can't be serious? with double digit unemployment...you're laughable

thesumofyourfears wrote:

A Person wrote:Obama did stimulate the economy with a tax cut. Please pay attention.

You can't be serious? with double digit unemployment...you're laughable

let's look at the data....



Under Reagan unemployment went to 10.8, so far under Obama it's at 10.2. It was over a year after Reagan's tax bill that unemployment started to drop. Unemployment is a lagging indicator. Would it have been 'laughable' to suggest in December 1983 that the tax bill (and of course the large increase in government spending which accompanied it) was working?

It was of course the Keynesian style jump in spending under Reagan that stimulated the economy. His tax cuts were phased in and did not take effect until after the recovery was well under way.

Your blind partisanship and economic illiteracy would be laughable if it wasn't so predictable.

A Person wrote:

thesumofyourfears wrote:

A Person wrote:Obama did stimulate the economy with a tax cut. Please pay attention.

You can't be serious? with double digit unemployment...you're laughable

let's look at the data....

unemploymen.gif

Under Reagan unemployment went to 10.8, so far under Obama it's at 10.2. It was over a year after Reagan's tax bill that unemployment started to drop. Unemployment is a lagging indicator. Would it have been 'laughable' to suggest in December 1983 that the tax bill (and of course the large increase in government spending which accompanied it) was working?

It was of course the Keynesian style jump in spending under Reagan that stimulated the economy. His tax cuts were phased in and did not take effect until after the recovery was well under way.

Your blind partisanship and economic illiteracy would be laughable if it wasn't so predictable.

Lets look at the data , shall we: RR & Congress did not proportionally spend the kind of money dumbama & co has done and it no, Keynesian style does not work now nor then. The high unemployment is attributed to business cutting where they need to in order to survive and increase the bottom line, even if it means layoffs which the markets/DJI, et al react and stocks creep up giving the illusion that a recovery is attributable to "keynesian spending". Reality is, there is no real recovery. RR & CO. tax cuts were quiet different than the so called obama tax cuts...
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/01/07/tax-cut-mirage
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122385651698727257.html
Keep up the fraud, A-Fraud because it is entertaining.

Interesting. I say "let's look at the data" and provide some. You say 'let's look at the data' and link to right wing electioneering (for the last election too) opinion articles, complete with Michelle Malkin begging for my money.



Not that it really matters. Whatever stimulus package Obama passed would be the 'wrong sort' to you because only Reagan can claim to be reducing debt while increasing it like a drunken Admiral, claim to be reducing government while expanding it - and still be believed 20 years later.

A Person wrote:Interesting. I say "let's look at the data" and provide some.

where was your data?...or was your chart something you conjured up? Agree or not, at least I cite mine.
right wing opinion articles???

http://www.house.gov/jec/fiscal/tx-grwt ... agtxct.htm
April 1996
The Reagan Tax Cuts: Lessons for Tax Reform
During the summer of 1981 the central focus of policy debate was on the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA) of 1981, the Reagan tax cuts. The core of this proposal was a version of the Kemp-Roth bill providing a 25 percent across-the-board cut in personal marginal tax rates. By reducing marginal tax rates and improving economic incentives, ERTA would increase the flow of resources into production, boosting economic growth. Opponents used static revenue projections to argue that ERTA would be a giveaway to the rich because their tax payments would fall.

The criticism that the tax payments of the rich would fall under ERTA was based on a static conception of human behavior. As a 1982 JEC study pointed out,[1] similar across-the-board tax cuts had been implemented in the 1920s as the Mellon tax cuts, and in the 1960s as the Kennedy tax cuts. In both cases the reduction of high marginal tax rates actually increased tax payments by "the rich," also increasing their share of total individual income taxes paid. Unfortunately, estimates of ERTA by the Democrat-controlled CBO continued to show falling tax payment by upper income taxpayers, even after actual IRS data had become available showing a surge of income tax payments by affluent taxpayers.

Given the current interest in tax reform and tax relief, a review of the effects of the Reagan tax cuts on taxpayer behavior and tax burden provides useful information. During the 1980s ERTA had reduced personal tax rates by about 25 percent, while the Tax Reform Act of 1986 chopped them yet again.


Tax Rates and Tax Revenues
High marginal tax rates discourage work effort, saving, and investment, and promote tax avoidance and tax evasion. A reduction in high marginal tax rates would boost long term economic growth, and reduce the attractiveness of tax shelters and other forms of tax avoidance. The economic benefits of ERTA were summarized by President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers in 1994: "It is undeniable that the sharp reduction in taxes in the early 1980s was a strong impetus to economic growth." Unfortunately, the Council could not bring itself to acknowledge the counterproductive effects high marginal tax rates can have upon taxpayer behavior and tax avoidance activities.

Since 1984 the JEC has provided factual information about the impact of the tax cuts of the 1980s. For example, for many years the JEC has published IRS data on federal tax payments of the top 1 percent, top 5 percent, top 10 percent, and other taxpayers. These data show that after the high marginal tax rates of 1981 were cut, tax payments and the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent climbed sharply. For example, in 1981 the top 1 percent paid 17.6 percent of all personal income taxes, but by 1988 their share had jumped to 27.5 percent, a 10 percentage point increase. The graph below illustrates changes in the tax burden during this period.


Click here to see Figure 1.

The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.

A middle class of taxpayers can be defined as those between the 50th percentile and the 95th percentile (those earning between $18,367 and $72,735 in 1988). Between 1981 and 1988, the income tax burden of the middle class declined from 57.5 percent in 1981 to 48.7 percent in 1988. This 8.8 percentage point decline in middle class tax burden is entirely accounted for by the increase borne by the top one percent.

Several conclusions follow from these data. First of all, reduction in high marginal tax rates can induce taxpayers to lessen their reliance on tax shelters and tax avoidance, and expose more of their income to taxation. The result in this case was a 51 percent increase in real tax payments by the top one percent. Meanwhile, the tax rate reduction reduced the tax payments of middle class and poor taxpayers. The net effect was a marked shift in the tax burden toward the top 1 percent amounting to about 10 percentage points. Lower top marginal tax rates had encouraged these taxpayers to generate more taxable income.

The 1993 Clinton tax increase appears to having the opposite effect on the willingness of wealthy taxpayers to expose income to taxation. According to IRS data, the income generated by the top one percent of income earners actually declined in 1993. This decline is especially significant since the retroactivity of the Clinton tax increase in that year limited the ability of taxpayers to deploy tax avoidance strategies, temporarily resulting in an increase in their tax burden. Moreover, according to the FY 1997 Clinton budget submission, individual income tax revenues as a share of GDP will be lower during the first four years of the Clinton tax increase, which include the effects of the 1990 tax increase, than under the last four years of the Reagan tax changes (FY 1986-89). Furthermore, according to a study published by the National Bureau for Economic Research,[2] the Clinton tax hike is failing to collect over 40 percent of the projected revenue increases.

Incidentally, the claim that unrealistic supply side Reagan Administration revenue projections caused large budget deficits during the 1980s is false. Nonetheless, this false allegation is often used against current tax reform proposals. The official Reagan revenue projections immediately following enactment of ERTA did not assume huge revenue increases, and were actually quite close to the CBO revenue projections. Even the Democrat-controlled CBO projected that deficits would fall after the enactment of the Reagan tax cuts. The real problem was a recession that neither CBO nor OMB could foresee. Even so, individual income tax revenues rose from $244 billion in 1980 to $446 billion in 1989.


Conclusion
The Reagan tax cuts, like similar measures enacted in the 1920s and 1960s, showed that reducing excessive tax rates stimulates growth, reduces tax avoidance, and can increase the amount and share of tax payments generated by the rich. High top tax rates can induce counterproductive behavior and suppress revenues, factors that are usually missed or understated in government static revenue analysis. Furthermore, the key assumption of static revenue analysis that economic growth is not affected by tax changes is di sproved by the experience of previous tax reduction programs. There is little reason to expect static revenue analysis to evaluate the economic or distributional effects of current tax reform proposals much better than it evaluated the Reagan tax program 15 years ago.


Christopher Frenze
Chief Economist to the Vice-Chairman



Endnotes:
1. Joint Economic Committee, The Mellon and Kennedy Tax Cuts: A Review and Analysis, 1982.

2. Feldstein, Martin and Daniel Feenberg, The Effect of Increased Tax Rates on Taxable Income and Economic Efficiency: A Preliminary Analysis of the 1993 Tax Rate Increases, NBER, 1995.



Other JEC Reports that deal with this issue:


JEC Annual Report: 1988 through 1994.

Latest Data Show Higher Income Tax Rates Reduce Taxes Paid by the Rich, JEC Report: December 1993.

http://www.house.gov/jec/fiscal/tx-grwt ... agtxct.htm

Kudo's thesumofyourfears... that was an interesting article. Thanks

Liv wrote:

thesumofyourfears wrote:so...what is obama's excuse this time?

How about Republicans holding up health-care and the American legislative process because they're big cry babies? If they would have gone on and passed the thing a few months ago, Obama would probably have given us all world peace by New Years.

~~~~ so he would give "world peace by new years? since when did America become world?

tar wrote:
~~~~ so he would give "world peace by new years? since when did America become world?

Well if you saw "End of Time Part 1" you would know he already ended the recession by Christmas....

thesumofyourfears wrote:

A Person wrote:Interesting. I say "let's look at the data" and provide some.

where was your data?...or was your chart something you conjured up? Agree or not, at least I cite mine.

You're right, I didn't cite the source of the data used to generate the chart. My apologies.

Bureau of Labor Statistics Data

Why do you only focus on the Reagan tax cuts and ignore his spending? No doubt you've seen this chart before (data from http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy ... f/hist.pdf)


Red lines indicate the public debt and black lines indicate the gross debt

Reagan was a big spending, big government president, even though he talked otherwise. Taxes on the very wealthy were high and Reagan cut them, at the same time as he expanded government and sharply increased spending, both likely had an effect but isolating it is impossible. Obama has cut taxes and increased spending to address a potentially very serious financial crisis. It has already had an effect and we'll have to see if it is sufficient.

The challenge is to later reduce government spending to a manageable level without crashing the economy. We can't look to Reagan or either of the Bush's for an example, they only knew how to spend.

right wing opinion articles???
...
(Link to Christopher Frenze opinion article)

Are you suggesting that because Christopher Frenze was employed by the Joint Economic Committee that he's not a Republican, right wing or partisan?

A Person, I never could figure out how people could call Reagan the "Great Communicator" when he said one thing and did another. Great Liar made more sense to me.

Under Ronald Reagan, the greatest transfer of wealth from the middle class and poor the post Revolutionary War world has ever experienced took place. How could so many lower class people have respected him when he impoverished them so badly?????

Questioner wrote:A Person, I never could figure out how people could call Reagan the "Great Communicator" when he said one thing and did another. Great Liar made more sense to me.

The man said the lines given him so convincingly....

Under Ronald Reagan, the greatest transfer of wealth from the middle class and poor the post Revolutionary War world has ever experienced took place.

At least until Dubya got in office...

A Person wrote:Are you suggesting that because Christopher Frenze was employed by the Joint Economic Committee that he's not a Republican, right wing or partisan?

That is not the point and not relevant. Facts are facts. As far as his spending goes, no one is ignoring it. It just shows where your focus is at. I believe I have stated this before, but you seem to ignore it. The "spending" the RR admin did was because of the large increase in revenue from the tax rate cuts that stimulated the economy that brought in revenue...simple concept. Must I remind you that RR had to work with a dem0ncrack party controlled Congress and there were a number of his vetoes overriden. I am old enough to rememeber the economic boom of the RR years. Go ahead a drag up every little bit of dirt to discredit if you want. If don't get it now, you never will.
http://www.ronaldreagan.com/nr_06.html

Questioner wrote:A Person, I never could figure out how people could call Reagan the "Great Communicator" when he said one thing and did another. Great Liar made more sense to me.

Under Ronald Reagan, the greatest transfer of wealth from the middle class and poor the post Revolutionary War world has ever experienced took place. How could so many lower class people have respected him when he impoverished them so badly?????

Can you show proof of your premises. Sounds like rhetoric to me.