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| | Our New President (This is California Residents Only Thread Please)Page 192 of 231 (191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231) | “But unlike states, which have inherent authority to make laws and policies, the federal government has no authority whatever except what the Constitution gives it.”
Fine, I do not have a problem with a state governed healthcare system. I would argue that a Federal mandate to maintain nationwide standards among state health plans would be desirable.
“The authority for some other federal social welfare programs is just as dubious. I don't care if a policy is manna from heaven, if implementing it takes an illegitimate exercise of government power. Using power that way is a form of tyranny, and whatever the presumed public good may be, it can never justify it.”
So the ends never justify the means? Without aid to the least fortunate among us, the social situation would be much worse. I’m sure that you would advocate private help for the poor. This generally comes with strings. “We’d be glad to help you but we’re a Catholic charity, but you happen to be a Methodist’ Sorry. “ Only a government can adequately (or not so adequately) provide a safety net to the poor. Yes, I realize it’s the fault of the poor for being poor. Again call me crazy…
“I've never read any of Ayn Rand's books.”
So you are an Austrian Economic school devotee. Friedrich von Mises anyone?
“I said they don't believe in the system of government expressed in the Constitution. The fact an ignorant bum is aware he can usually hold a sign and holler without getting arrested hardly means he believes in our system of government--many of the group you mentioned openly admit they despise it. And even Americans who worked for the USSR against this country could "take the Fifth" to try to save themselves when being questioned.”
And that is what makes this country a great country. Whether someone “despises” the system or not, the inherent right to free assembly is something that few countries embrace. The Occupy Wall Street was not composed of “ignorant bums” but intelligent people who are upset with the current state of affairs and I would argue that they understand the idea of a free society.
“Are you denying that Johnson wanted to make poor Americans, especially blacks, wards of the federal government to enhance the political power of big-government Democrats like himself?”
OK, let’s examine this. First of all, even registered Republicans take advantage of Medicare/Medical or are you disputing this? All US citizens enjoy these privileges,not just poor people.
And what should poor people expect from the Republican Party, a succinct lecture on individual rights and a Horatio Alger tale? You sound almost bitter that poor people would rather vote for the Democratic Party just because they do not believe in the trickle down theory.
“To the extent they've been successful, especially during the past 75 years or so, we've become a less free people. In more and more corners of our lives, an elite of government administrators now decides what is best for us all. You may think that means progress. I think it means we are on a greased sled headed for hell.”
Your opinion. A society decides for itself what measure to implement to protect itself and its citizens.
The loss of freedom in the last 75 years is mostly due to increasing technological development (computers,sensors,drones,etc/.) which provides a means to obtain information about everyone.
Even the UK now has remote cameras everywhere. This makes sense in view of the terrorist threat. | |
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| Our New President (This is California Residents Only Thread Please)
Posted: 6/6/2012 12:15:12 PM |
OK, let’s examine this.
My examination shows you've now ducked the question twice. You'd do better to admit what I said is true. Johnson made statements that leave no doubt that's just what he wanted to do.
A society decides for itself what measure to implement to protect itself and its citizens.
That's gobbledygook. A society is made up of its citizens. There is no thing called a "society" that decides how to protect both itself and some separate thing called "its citizens." In this democratic republic, the American people decide for themselves, through their representatives, what laws and policies to implement.
Considering that our Constitution guarantees our individual liberties, only fools would hope to protect themselves by abandoning it. But millions of people in this country have come to harbor just that foolish hope. THAT is what insidiously threatens the freedom of us all, and it has nothing to do with technology.
The Occupy Wall Street was not composed of “ignorant bums” but intelligent people
Your opinion. Your idea of an intelligent person is far different from mine. | |
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| Our New President (This is California Residents Only Thread Please)
Posted: 6/7/2012 2:09:08 PM | | Paul, do you know how it will be applied ? Example: if I sell my house for 450K, will I have to pay 3.8 % on the 450 which will come out to 17,ooo ? Good grief. If that is the case, thankfully when Mitt gets elected in November he will reverse it as well as the whole Obama care fiasco | |
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| Our New President (This is California Residents Only Thread Please)
Posted: 6/7/2012 3:10:24 PM | ^^^OMG, Paul, you really shouldn't be advising anyone if you don't know what you are talking about.
@Dave
The answer to your question can only be determined if we know what you bought your house for. Lets say if you bought it for $100K and you are going to sell it for $250K, then your profit is $150K.
There is an exemption on all profit derived from sale of a primary home which is $250K for individual (you) and $500K for a couple.
So, you don't pay diddly squat of the new 3.8% Medicare tax (which by the way goes towards Medicare payments).
Who pays?
If you sold you house and you made over $250K for individuals and/or $500K for couples, you will pays 3.8% on any amount OVER that exemption.....AND you have to be making wages that are OVER 97% of the population, which is $200K per year for an individual or $250K for a couple.
In order to be qualified to pay that tax, you have to meet both of those criterias.
So, if you make over $200K a year and you sell you house for $300K more than what you bought it for, you get taxed at 3.8% on the $50K over the capital gains exemption amount, which is $1,900.00
If you don't believe me, call your accountant and ask. | |
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| Our New President (This is California Residents Only Thread Please)
Posted: 6/7/2012 8:21:48 PM | I'd be interested to know what constitutional power Congress would claim was acting under when it created this provision. There's no question that Article I, section 8, clause 1 gives Congress the power to tax. What's questionable is how Congress exercises that power, and for what purposes. Starting with the New Deal in the mid-Thirties, statists have found that several other clauses make handy "catchalls" to justify exerting federal power over just about everything. Three of the most notorious are:
1. The power to regulate interstate commerce, clause 3 (now being used to justify forcing us all to buy medical insurance)
2. The power to provide for the general welfare (clause 1); and
3. The power to make all laws necessary and proper for executing the powers listed in Art. I, sec. 8, and all other powers the Constitution vests in the U.S. government (clause 18).
Leftists in the government, like the ones on these forums, don't care if what the federal government does is legitimate. They just want to make their wonderful social schemes reality, and they don't give a damn how they do it. If they can get their way by shoving their kind, enlightened policies down everyone else's throat, it's fine by them. | |
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| Our New President (This is California Residents Only Thread Please)
Posted: 6/7/2012 11:24:14 PM | ^^^^^I understand that whether the federal government is exercising power legitimately doesn't interest you, as long as you happen to like what it's doing. I remember Speaker Pelosi was flabbergasted that someone would dare to ask her what part of our Constitution authorized this 2,700-page monstrosity. I'm sure most so-called liberals share her completely illiberal disdain for the Constitution and the rule of law in general.
It doesn't seem very likely any part of the Obamacare law--including this tax--will survive if the Court holds the individual mandate unconstitutional. Apparently the people who drafted this thing neglected to include a severability clause. We'll know for sure in a few weeks. | |
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| Our New President (This is California Residents Only Thread Please)
Posted: 6/12/2012 9:12:56 AM |
It doesn't seem very likely any part of the Obamacare law--including this tax--will survive if the Court holds the individual mandate unconstitutional. Apparently the people who drafted this thing neglected to include a severability clause. We'll know for sure in a few weeks.
Despite the lack of a severability clause, the questioning by Roberts, Scalia and Kennedy makes me believe that the individual mandate will be struck down, but that Roberts and Scalia will vote to allow some provisions to stand, probably those not directly financed by the mandate. It should be interesting. | |
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| Our New President (This is California Residents Only Thread Please)
Posted: 6/12/2012 11:34:34 AM | ^^^^^I don't remember what the Chief Justice said about that, but I took Justice Scalia's remarks just the other way. When the government's lawyer talked about the Court interpreting the rest of the law if it held the individual mandate unconstitutional, Scalia interrupted to ask, "Wait a minute. Whatever happened to the Eighth Amendment?"--meaning it would be cruel and unusual punishment to make his clerks try to read and explain this 2,700-page lump of dross.
He made very clear it wasn't the Court's job to try to guess exactly what provisions those hundreds of people "across the street" meant to survive if the mandate failed. And it's standard practice--or at least should be, by the Court's own rules--for it to refuse to play legislature. The main reason is that doing that violates the Constitution's implied separation of the three branches' powers. When Congress botches the job of writing a law, it's no more the Court's place to edit the mess so it makes sense than it is for an English teacher to rewrite a student's sloppy, incoherent essay. | |
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| Our New President (This is California Residents Only Thread Please)
Posted: 6/12/2012 11:50:25 AM | Thinking...
Really liked your explanation of the tax and it does sound relatively fair and not punishing. 3.8% increase on tax over a certain amount of a specific purchase is far better than a generalized 3.8% tax on something such as income.
However, where does the money go? I can't actually find where the money goes and for what specific purposes this is being allocated to and how is it being tracked and if expected 'revenue' assumptions are reached. How bad are the shortfalls going to be since this really will be a fairly small amount of transactions that actually qualify.
Is it explained what the 'revenue' goals and expectations are for this tax? | |
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| Our New President (This is California Residents Only Thread Please)
Posted: 6/12/2012 2:52:45 PM | When Congress includes a severability clause in a law, it's stating its intent to have the rest of the law survive if one part is ever held unconstitutional. But it didn't do that here. And each legislator who votes on a bill usually favors some things in it and opposes others, the particular mix varying from legislator to legislator. Making laws involves lots of compromises.
So for the rest to survive if the individual mandate fails, the Court would have to guess, after the fact, for each of the many provisions of this very complex act, if a majority of Congress would have favored keeping it. Put another way, if this tax, for example, had been proposed in a separate bill, would that bill have passed?
I think it's impossible ever to know that for everything in this 2,700-page law. I also think more than half the justices will want no part of trying to divine the meaning of this tangled mess, when most of the congressmen who voted for it couldn't even be bothered to read it first. | |
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| Our New President (This is California Residents Only Thread Please)
Posted: 6/12/2012 4:39:49 PM |
However, where does the money go? I can't actually find where the money goes and for what specific purposes this is being allocated to and how is it being tracked and if expected 'revenue' assumptions are reached.
Thanks Aries. Nice comment by you. :)
I explained it above, it goes into Medicare funds....you know, the one that's supposed to be broke in a few days? ;) | |
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| Our New President (This is California Residents Only Thread Please)
Posted: 6/12/2012 5:20:43 PM | http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/realestate.asp
I know it sounds annoying but I really cannot find how the money will be used. The description of the tax does seem to be very low impact for the majority. Even for those that will be impacted it isn't terrible. But that is also part of the problem. There is so little generated and whatever it will be subsidizing will have a virtually insignificant impact on so I would question what good really comes from it.
Everything seems clouded by the misunderstanding that it’s a tax on all home sales and clearing that out but there is really nothing about what will happen to the money and what are the expected benefits of the program.
The closest thing I could find is
http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/04/23/trustees-medicare-will-go-broke-in-2016-if-you-exclude-obamacares-double-counting/
But I'm not really getting the impact this tax will have on the hundreds of billions of dollars claimed necessary to keep Medicare from going bankrupt. The ‘every little bit helps’ argument which is what this seems to be leading to is not the most impressive policy I’ve heard. | |
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| Our New President (This is California Residents Only Thread Please)
Posted: 6/12/2012 11:40:32 PM |
But I'm not really getting the impact this tax will have on the hundreds of billions of dollars claimed necessary to keep Medicare from going bankrupt. The ‘every little bit helps’ argument which is what this seems to be leading to is not the most impressive policy I’ve heard.
Well, here's what I think, but don't hold me to it because I didn't read the Forbes article you linked.
As you know, FICA (which funds Medicare/SS) is paid on incomes up to like $110K or something like that. So for a person with average income, it's a big percentage of their wages, but for someone who makes over say $500K or even a Million or two or more a year, it's a much smaller percentage of their income.
It would have been near impossible to get new funds from those average workers who haven't seen their incomes increase in the last two decades, but many of the high income workers have seen their taxes reduced for the last 10 years, so it's just a way of getting them to put more back into the soon to be broke Medicare funds.
Personally, I wish the tax code changed to abolish capital gains only on investment incomes....I don't understand why a person who labors have to pay higher fee than someone who was left a large inheritance that can live off the interest, that make no sense whatsoever. If anything, the people that have to work for a living should get lower taxes than those who don't. | |
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| Our New President (This is California Residents Only Thread Please)
Posted: 6/13/2012 12:03:52 AM | IMHO since the number of people who don't work very hard or at all is much higher than the "1%" crowd my solution is to reduce taxes by first cutting hand outs and decreasing the size of government. The number of people who have a large inheritance is far fewer than the number of people who don't even try to work let alone as hard as you and me. Cutting those that abuse the system from a free ride and putting it in medicare/ss is more just.
The CEO golden parachutes and other such injustices are also what get me..
When a system supports those who put forth little effort either in the form of cheating welfare or millions from a corporation by legalized swindle and then whips the workhorse that leads. Causes many of the those putting forth at least moderate effort to stop trying so hard and join the ranks of those living of our taxes. | |
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| Our New President (This is California Residents Only Thread Please)
Posted: 6/13/2012 11:14:57 AM | "democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who
would not"
T. Jefferson
Just saw a bumper sticker this morning.. it said " work hard people on welfare depend on you"
Its time for us to shrug:) | |
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| Our New President
Posted: 6/13/2012 2:01:37 PM |
There are also her comments about this country--that it's "just plain mean," and that when her husband was elected, it was the first time in her adult life that she'd been proud of her country.
I could also have used the word "unpatriotic," which I think describes the Obama's whole circle of associates in Chicago. But really, when has any American ever thought any First Lady loved her country? Why, no one would ever even imagine something as strange as that!
Saw that jab coming a mile away.
That is so "conservativism"; an arrogant belief that when someone says the word "America" , that their definition of the word is all that matters.They have an unchanging and utterly outdated view of America which isn't congruent to ALL Americans. If she looks in the mirror and is talking to a certain part of America, or speaking in a certain context, that is not enough for conservatives. They think in absolutes. Something is either a definite right or a definite wrong. That is why conservatives are so apt to use the language of 'war' (the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, he war on women and soon). It helps them to differentiate a deinate good from a definite evil; a hero from an enemy.
That's sort of why I can't understand why conservatives belly ache about liberals. Every liberal movement in the United States (civil rights, feminism, and the forthcoming homosexual sexual movement) has been a movement of conscience which systems of conservativism couldnt tolerate without breaking. This is because systems of conservatism are inflexible. They they break under pressure. L liberalism rises from those breaks. | |
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| Our New President
Posted: 6/13/2012 10:32:46 PM |
Every liberal movement in the United States (civil rights, feminism, and the forthcoming homosexual sexual movement) has been a movement of conscience which systems of conservativism couldnt tolerate without breaking.
I am neither a liberal or a conservative I tend to consider the logic of both to be rather disjointed rhetoric. As someone who has sworn to uphold the constitution I feel the movements you mentioned are well within the constitutional rights of the individuals who sought or are still seeking them. I don't care for the far left and far right just look at the atrocities committed by those with those views though history. The conservatives are not the only ones capable of thinking only in absolutes and being out of touch. As time marches on I can only hope that the independent, libertarian,centrist movement continues to grow and we will see more of them elected. | |
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| Our New President
Posted: 6/14/2012 9:22:39 PM | Here is the problem with both parties as I see it.
Liberals want:
More.Gov Fiscally
Less.Gov Socially
Conservatives want:
More.Gov Socially
Less.Gov Fiscally
But that's getting to be outdated. Liberals want More.Gov all around now especially including all things that are cramming themselves into civil rights.
Civil rights is a sham. It's the .Gov forcing us to like "you", but "you" don't have to like "us". It's a total double standard.
I want the .Gov out of my business and my family and I want them out of my church too. Not completely out, but a lot more out than they are now. Also, I'm so sick of the green movement. The only green I am interested in any more is cash.
If gays want to get married, fine, but don't even think about asking a church to do it that doesn't want to. | |
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| Our New President
Posted: 6/14/2012 9:40:47 PM | The libertarian perspective would just be.
Less Government. | |
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| Our New President
Posted: 6/15/2012 11:00:00 AM | Im with less is more more govt.. dont need them in my life, or my business and people that do need to grow up.
@ the above post... I could never live with myself knowing that I was in a country illegally.. even if I was born there but my parents broke the law in the first place.. its not USA's job to take care of all these people.. its a tired old fashioned notion.. | |
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| Our New President
Posted: 6/28/2012 5:18:35 PM | | ^^^The delusion is strong in this one..... | |
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