the Cheerleader-Prince, and his buddies, now, there’s a different story.

Thank you for your service!

“For everyone to whom much is given, of him shall much be required.” — Luke 12:48

if you can find’em, and they don’t call security on ya when they see ya comin’

Companies do not provide these benefits to the rank and file. Generally they go to people who are already highly compensated the top %5 club. Lets say you have use of a company car. Lets assume they pay $60,000 for the vehicle. So you have a vehicle that someone else has paid for. The company has paid the sales taxes, true, but is there income involved. So you use the car for the year, sometimes for company business, sometimes for personal use. The personal use portion is income to you. If the personal use portion was $12,000 for the year, you get $12,000 added to your W-2. Now when you pay taxes on that you pay at lets say the %33 rate. So you pay $4,000 for the use of a $60,000 car for one year and your employer has paid all the fuel, all the repairs, they might wash and wax it daily (they do at my company), they deduct all the expenses, all the costs. Is that a bargain for you?

How about use of a company plane. Let assume you use it for business but 7 or 8 time a year you take your wife. Normally you are charged commercial fight cost, which is much lower than chartered jet costs. But lets say those trips add up to the equivalent of $3,000 in flights. The company deducts the cost of operating the plane and you get $3,000 added to your W-2 and again you pay $1,000 in taxes. A bargain to get $3,000 of flights for $1,000 don’t you think? This is exactly how it works.

#64 those figures do not include FICA and Medicare. They purposely do not include them because when those figures are included you suddenly see that the top of the pyramid pays a disproportionately low % of taxes. When you add in Sales taxes, property taxes and state taxes the disparity grows even more.

Like all those corporations incorporated in the Caymen Islands? Many of those “corporations” are an individual or a couple. And why do they incorporate in the Caymen Islands? To avoid paying income tax.

Nope, I call a spade a spade. You are a moron and I will continue to call you done as long as you act like one.

And with the help of Ken Blackwell in Ohio, thanks to his disenfranchising voters by only allowing one or two machines for precincts that had thousands of voters.

And yes, cheating doesn’t count. That is the only way Bush could ever win anything, by cheating.

I do not abstain from contact with righties, but I do deny them my essence, Mandrake.

Right. He wanted that top marginal rate lowered to 70% I think.

No kidding, and the public schools and libraries were well-financed, the roads were in good repair and politicians spoke seriously about “extending Medicare to all citizens.”

Our country needs a Reboot after some bug fixes and malicious chimp removal. The world will thank us.

vacation homes in tuscany confer way more status than those in the Ozarks.

Your argument should be ‘So what! they can afford a tax increase’.

I’m all for people making as much money as they can but how much money do you need in order to thrive and survive. When you make a half-a-billion dollars a year and have to pay an additional $50 million you will not have to skimp on wardrobe or food expenses. Your private island would still be waiting.

on the flipside their is a fear that by increasing taxes to much on the very rich they may move their wealth out of the country.

So what. The vast majority of families in the country pay more payroll taxes than they do income taxes. If you take payroll taxes into account, you get completely different money. And, since they’re using Social Security taxes to pay for government and tax returns to the wealthy, what’s the difference? Clinton raised the top marginal rate by a whopping 3.5% and achieved more or less balanced budgets, a stronger dollar and a decline in the rate of our debt growth, not to mention declining poverty rates for 8 straight years. Do you think the wealthiest Americans can’t afford another 3.5% on their top income tax rates? They did just fine with that rate under Clinton.