I just heard Tim Pawlenty on CBS tell me that John McCain is decisive and clear and showed that last night, and then I went over to the Carpetbagger and read this jumbled mess of an answer from McCain:
“Some of the richest people I’ve ever known in my life are the most unhappy. I think that rich is — should be defined by a home, a good job and education and the ability to hand to our children a more prosperous and safer world than the one that we inherited. I don’t want to take any money from the rich. I want everybody to get rich. I don’t believe in class warfare or redistribution of the wealth. But I can tell you for example there are small businessmen and women who are working 16 hours a day, seven days a week that some people would classify as, quote, ‘rich,’ my friends, who want to raise their taxes and raise their payroll taxes. Let’s have — keep taxes low. Let’s give every family in America a $7,000 tax credit for every child they have. Let’s give them a $5,000 refundable tax credit to go out and get the health insurance of their choice. Let’s not have the government take over the health care system in America.
“So I think if you’re just talking about income, how about $5 million. But seriously, I don’t think you can — I don’t think, seriously that — the point is that I’m trying to make here seriously — and I’m sure that comment will be distorted, but the point is — the point is — the point is that we want to keep people’s taxes low and increase revenues. And my friend, it was not taxes that mattered in America in the last several years. It was spending. Spending got completely out of control. We spent money in a way that mortgaged our kids futures. My friends, we spent $3 million of your money to study the DNA of bears in Montana. Now I don’t know if that was a paternity issue or a criminal issue, but the point is — but the point is it was $3 million of your money. It was your money.
“And you know, we laugh about it, but we cry and we should cry because the Congress is supposed to be careful stewards of your tax dollars. so what did they just do in the middle of an energy crisis when in California we are paying $4 a gallon for gas, went on vacation for five weeks. I guarantee you, two things they never miss, a pay raise and a vacation. And we should stop that and call them back and not raise your taxes. We should not and cannot raise taxes in tough economic times. So it doesn’t matter really what my definition of rich is because I don’t want to raise anybody’s taxes.”
I made more sense last night than John McCain.
rachel
He needs to drink more of what you’ve been drinking.
cleek
name the programs you want to cut. let’s see the numbers.
and i’m not your fucking friend, buddy.
D. Mason
People need to really hammer on the fact that McCain seems to think that $5 million in income is the threshold for rich.
demkat620
Coherency is overrated.
dave
Don’t worry…when CBS gets through editing it, it’ll sound great. “Are we clear? Yes sir. Are we CLEAR? Crystal.”
Ted
Remember when the The Daily Show, and even the actual political press, regularly made fun of Kerry’s rambling and elongated answers to questions?
Good times.
Anyway, yeah, the ‘rich beginning at $5 million per year income’ thing would be a great clip in an attack ad.
cleek
1. what happened to the conservative idea that people don’t need government to solve their problems for them ?
2. vacation ? how many votes has McCain missed this term ?
wasabi gasp
People with $5 Million/year income can barely keep up six or seven houses.
Brachiator
Yeah, it was jumbled, and McCain clearly got somewhat more flustered near the end of his hour chat with Warren (two hours, if you take into account that he had to sit and wait for Obama to finish). However, the audience responded strongly to McCain’s core message: “I want everybody to get rich. I don’t believe in class warfare or redistribution of the wealth.”
Now, I think that McCain is full of shit about class warfare, and the Democrats should be able to make the point that the current tax system redistributes income to the wealthy, but Gramps McCain did better here than some people want to give him credit for. A viewer could get a clear idea of the differences between Obama and McCain on taxes. And the venue, a church, and the way the questions were laid out, did not let McCain simplistically attack Obama as a “tax and spend liberal.”
By the way, you simply cannot depend on transcripts of this event. McCain, for instance, rambled here, but he paused, left room for the audience to laugh and go along with him. Both candidates were answering questions and speaking to the audience. As an aside, they both seemed to attempt to connect to the crowd in the room and did not worry about playing to a TV audience. They weren’t reading a speech or trying for maximum debate style points.
Pundits always get hung up on “who won,” and bypass the more central points: Did the candidate answer the questions? Did they connect with the voters? Both candidates did well on this score.
They were also to-the-point on issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, stem cell research and the Supreme Court. Here, people know what the stakes are, and what the choices are.
Any Democrat who tries to latch onto this is a fool. Nobody cares how you define who is rich. They care about whether they have a job, can earn money, and whether the gummint is gonna give them a tax cut or increase their taxes.
And this is America. Except for a few “progressive” morons, everybody wants to be rich.
gbear
Take it from an employee of the state of MN: Tim Pawlenty is a bought and sold, lying sack of shit and a Grover Norquist disciple. He’s wrecked this state with a smile on his face.
D. Mason
Brachiator regardless of what you think of McCain or his statement it surely shows a huge disconnect between him and reality. That disconnect is what needs to be put on parade.
jrg
2+ Trillion in Iraq, now he’s bitching about bears? We spend almost 700,000 times as much money looking for imaginary WMDs and links to Al Qaeda.
Except against elitists and fancy-pants scientists (who may or may not have used their bear DNA funds to buy hallucinogenic mushrooms and wander in the forest). And MLK. And people who make over $5,000,000 in income per year.
McCain is going to get eaten alive in the debates. His rambling, “aw shucks” used car salesman shtick sounds very disingenuous; Bush has been beating that dead horse for years.
This is going to be a very, very bad year for the GOP.
Me and My Friends
Did anyone start to get annoyed by how many times John McCain called the audience “my friends”, its almost like a verbal tic.
I think the next Obama spot should just take outtakes of every time McCain said “my friends” last night and plaster it with images of McCaib’s ‘real’ friends, big business, big Oil, Bush and Cheney!
jonst
Oh, this has long been one of my all time favorites….the “rich are unhappy” line. Coming from the rich.
The Grand Panjandrum
1. McCain sounded like a political hack running for office.
2. Obama sounded like a guy who actually gave a shit about people.
The only people who might be swayed one way or the other are those who are undecided. By the time the conventions are over anyone who is still undecided should be removed from the voting rolls. You are either too stupid, or too fucking wishy-washy, to be allowed to decide who should be the next president.
Dreggas
the 3 million to study the dna of the black bear in montana is just another horseshit line which used to be “to study the fleas on the north american black bear” it’s bullshit and is nothing more than a line to make it sound like the gov’t is spending money on frivolous bullshit. Which is more wasteful? The 80+ million a month being spent in Iraq or the 3 million spent in one YEAR to study some animal?
Warren Terra
Is it worth pointing out by even his own absurd definition (Yglesias posted some of the numbers earlier today, but iirc 5 million would mean a few tens of thousands of people in the whole country) McCain would still be rich, and Obama, for all that he’s made a lot of money from his two bestselling books, wouldn’t even be close?
jnfr
We reached a “My friend” count of 12, but I admit I fast-forwarded just a little.
He was very decisive on abortion, though, and named all four liberal Supreme Court justices as being unfit for their jobs.
Mark S.
$3 million to study bear DNA? That was the best example McCain could come up with for wasteful spending? It’s such a piddling amount, and its probably useful information if you give a shit about preserving a bear population. I think he used it so he could make a lame joke about paternity tests.
If he wanted to talk about outrageous spending, I can think of a war that has cost us over a trillion dollars.
cleek
McCain is going to win the debates in the same way and for the same reason Bush won his against Gore – his personality is enough to buoy his crap answers. Obama will come across as too smart, compared to McCain’s phony down-homey “my friends” act.
demkat620
Yes, and toss in the press and their McCaincrush and there you go. McCain wins 53-47.
wasabi gasp
I’d say both statements are more or less correct.
But, considering most are not rich, the “rich question” itself seems somewhat out of place, especially coming from a pastor. Then again, maybe not when coming from a pastor who opens his book with “It’s not about you.”
Bill Arnold
By the way, you simply cannot depend on transcripts of this event. McCain, for instance, rambled here, but he paused, left room for the audience to laugh and go along with him.
I watched it too. McCain rambled, paused, rambled some more, paused, “$5 million income”, rambled some more. I wonder how well his audience, which is reportedly quite well-off, understand how much of their tax dollars are being spent on the ongoing neocon “Iraq Experiment”, and what the ratios are between Iraq spending and anything discretionary in the budget. If Obama shortened the involvement in Iraq by one month relative to McCain, the savings would be about 3000 times the amount that McCain reports were spent on study of bear DNA. (I would bet a lot that McCain’s comment is a gross caricaturization of said study.)
DBrown
“80+ million a month being spent in Iraq”
What war are you refereancing? That is not even a $billion a year – the CBO says $9 billion per month not including long term costs (injuries, and death benifits, long term medical care, equipment replacement and debt service costs).
Dreggas
I knew it should have been a B. My bad.
Adrienne
Despite having voted for ALL FOUR OF THEM.
Someone ought to point out to Mr. Magoo that he largely supports the out of control spending by supporting the unnecessary Iraq War. I find it horrible that Republicans are so willing to go into war, so willing to sell a war as good, righteous, and necessary yet aren’t willing to ask Americans to sacrifice or pay for it. It boggles the mind. Actually it doesn’t. Repubs know that if they 1) were truthful about how much this war would cost and 2) Told Americans that they would have to sacrifice to pay for it, most Americans would have paid much closer attention during the lead up to this war and we probably wouldn’t be in the war at all.
Any war worth fighting is a war worth paying for. If you can’t ask the American people to sacrifice during war time, that should be your FIRST sign that your war is shit.
Phoebe
I wonder if the numbers are going to shift on the “is he a muslim” poll?
Just Some Fuckhead
The North Vietnamese broke John McCain’s capacity to reason, my friends.
Martin
Pretty much. Democrats seem to want to hear good answers to good questions. Republicans seem to want to hear the gospel. He doesn’t even need a personality to do it – he just needs to stay on script.
Marshall
I have watched all of the Fall “debates” for the last 32 years, and there is no way that W won any of his. Not even close.
The reaction of the pundit class, however, is another matter. It was the Reagan debates when I first started feeling that they were not watching the same television broadcast I was.
J
“Some of the richest people I’ve ever known in my life are the most unhappy… [and some of the happiest too; come to think of it, pretty much everyone I know is filthy rich]…
cleek
right. since nobody watched this event (against Phelps, Torres and Bolt? hah), the only thing most people will know about this is that the pundits give the win to McCain. it will become part of the narrative – and that’s the real win.
cleek
right. since nobody watched this event (against Phelps, Torres and Bolt? hah), the only thing most people will know about this is that the pundits give the win to McCain. it will become part of the narrative – and that’s the real win.
cleek
dammit
bago
I’m not your buddy, guy!
jake
We’ll get the money by clapping our hands and dancing in moon-beams!
Which might work for someone like me since Maryland bars HIPs from restricting coverage based on prior conditions. If I were a family of five in a state without such a rule, I might be a bit fucked.
Did he mention his desire to classify employer health insurance as taxable income? No? Hmmm.
cleek
i’m not your guy, friend!
Phoebe
2 things, cleek:
1. People will be watching the real [actual] debates, and to the extent that the media was paid attention to on this thing, they will have lowered expectations for Obama. And McCain will be arrogant and swell-headed [figuratively I mean].
2. The people who watched this event were the ones who think Obama’s a muslim – he had nowhere to go but up, and he came off as sincere, humble, and empathetic. Christians like that. The ones that aren’t single-issue abortion people.
JGabriel
John McCain:
With about 300 million people in the country, that works out to about a penny per person. Or, at about 100 million taxable workers, it comes to 3 cents per wage earner.
How many such projects does McCain think he can cut? 100? 1000? Let’s call it a thousand. That’s a savings of $30.00. Per year. Yeah, I want that 30 bucks back, John.
Jeebus, I’d rather he spent the 3 million on bear DNA than 1,000,000 times that (3 trillion) on wars.
.
w vincentz
Again I take issue with framing this mess in Iraq as a “WAR”. It isn’t. It’s an occupation wherein the occupiers have been asked to leave by the occupied.
If this was really a “war” there would be many more than appox. 4200 dead US terrorist/occupiers. Only eight dead unemployed-other-than-military is piddly. Real wars claim many more lives.
My friends, there must be much more blood if this quagmire can be termed as “war”. Until now, if you chose to call it anything other than the occupation that it is, at least use the term “war-ette” or “war-ita”.
More dead ‘Merican occupiers please.
Martin
$5M in income would qualify you for a $20M mortgage. The median home price in the U.S. is $206,000, so $5M would allow you to keep 100 typical houses, excluding staff, of course.
$5M in net worth as a threshold for rich I could see, but in income that’s just absurd. A lot of CEOs and household names don’t make $5M a year.
Most of his audience don’t make $5M a year, but he picked $5M to illustrate that he will push for a tax cut to anyone under that line. If he has to yield on taxes, it’ll be for people over that line. People now know where they stand with him. The real question is whether people down in Obama’s income range will look at the pittance of a tax break that McCain is promising them and get pissed off that people with monthly salaries of $400K are getting tax breaks that they need. I doubt it. He’s a POW and a maverick, after all.
Obama basically let people over $150K/yr know that their taxes may go up. The class war lines have been drawn, everyone.
Church Lady
Give him a break, folks. The “five million” was a joke, and was accurate in that defining “rich” depends on where you are coming from. If you make 25K a year, then someone making 100K is rich, from your perspective. Many of us here would be considered “rich” by others making much less. We’re in the second highest tax bracket, and believe me, with one child already in college, another one in private high school and heading for college next year, and frantically trying to sock back money for retirement, we definitely do not feel “rich”.
One point that he made was one that I agree with. Everyone raising children should get a deduction (larger than the one now in the code) and it should not be phased out based on income. If you make more money, the odds are also that you are spending more money raising your children. It absoulutely pisses me off that I pay a higher percentage of my income in taxes than most in our country, but my deductions for charitable donations, property taxes, etc. and exemptions for my children are almost completely phased out. Meanwhile, some yahoo making much less that doesn’t own a home, and has never given a dime to charity gets to take a standard deduction that is almost equal to mine after the IRS has contorted my deductions down by more than half. After all that, the pain continues – no, that 33% of your income we want just isn’t enough, we’d like to add a little more with the AMT.
JGabriel
JNFR:
Corrected. There are no ‘liberals’ on the Supreme Court. The furthest left of them is a centrist.
.
Dreggas
Can we change the meme from “welfare babies” to “tax cut babies”?
One thing that annoys me about the tax cut for people with kids (though they may need it) is that it punishes those of us who don’t want to have kids because they cost too damn much to have in the first place.
w vincentz
@ Church Lady,
My guess is that going to church has brought to to the compassion for the “yahoo making much less” than you.
Perhaps you should change churches and go to one that teaches what Jesus talked about, as the one you attend has fucked up your thinking.
oh really
Mark S. Says:
$3 million to study bear DNA? That was the best example McCain could come up with for wasteful spending? It’s such a piddling amount, and its probably useful information if you give a shit about preserving a bear population. I think he used it so he could make a lame joke about paternity tests.
McCain’s point about the bears is brilliant, my friends.
If we’d just exterminate the bears and every other non-human, non-plant species* on the planet, my friends, we wouldn’t need to study them, we wouldn’t need the Endangered Species Act, and we could save millions (yes, millions!) of dollars a year, thus balancing the budget and permitting us to cut taxes to zero, my friends.
*Some insects, bacteria, and viruses get a pass — we need them to kill the poor.
Dreggas
shorter church lady. Everyone should feel sorry for me because I sent one kid to college, have another in private school and going to college and make more than most people and my property taxes are high because I probably have a big house and I can afford to make charitable contributions.
Sorry if I don’t feel pity for you when I make less than you, can’t afford kids let alone sending them to private school and live paycheck to paycheck. You’ll find my sympathy between shit and syphillis in the dictionary.
Church Lady
w vincentz – my “compassion” (not learned in church, BTW) and my income is what compells and enables me to donate 10% of my annual gross income to charitable giving, the vast majority of which goes to causes serving directly serving the poor. My objection is to our f’d up tax code, not to giving to those in need. Read a little closer next time.
Conservatively Liberal
No shit. I read that post and I had to laugh at how selfish it sounds. The shorter version is ‘I got mine so fuck you’. Never mind that if it was not for this country, they would not have theirs. Nope, they got ‘it’ and they did it all on their own! What a sense of accomplishment. I bet the same people love the lay away plan that the right is using to fund the war. Rack up the bills now and make your grandchildren and their grandchildren pay for it. Brilliant way to pass the
buckbill!Money and religion are the roots of all evil, and they use that evil to get politicians and the government to see things their way.
Reks
A wishy washy answer on abortion a la John Kerry won’t do! Here is what Barack needs to say.
“I am pro-choice. My opponent is anti-abortion. Let’s say that one of our female soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan gets captured and raped by an Al-Qaeda terrorist. My opponent would want or force the soldier to have the terrorist’s baby. I will leave the decision to the soldier. If we can trust our women to protect our country, we can certainly trust them on making the right decision.”
Church Lady
Dreggas, sorry, but I don’t have a big house. Still living in the same one we bought 21 years ago when our income was about 90% of our current level, which only finally started to take off in the last five years. The previous years were spent living paycheck to paycheck, building up a small business, working seven days a week, doing without, providing an income for not only us, but for all those who worked with us, and providing benefits for all, like paying 100% of health insurance premiums and funding retirement plans. We’ve earned every dime we ever made through hard work, sacrifice, and lots of risk, and the ultimate success has been shared with those that made it possible. No one ever gave us anything.
w vincentz
Church Lady,
You should think very well of yourself. REALLY.
only 10%?
And, a question for Pastor Rick, who would Jesus bomb?
Conservatively Liberal
Let me guess.
So as long as you get to decide what groups are worthy of your donations, you are happy. You just don’t want it done by the government because they may give to groups that you do not approve of?
This is like the preacher of Saddleback church ‘giving’ the cash he raised in televising a political event to his church. I am sure that the church does some honorable things, but I am just as sure that their decisions as to who is worthy of assistance are probably in line with their religious values.
While charitable works by the clergy are good and honorable, history has shown that it has barely made a dent in the problems that society has faced (and faces). Government is barely better, but at least more people get helped than those who are found worthy (or not worthy) of assistance by the clergy.
I grew up surrounded and immersed in religion, and I know what I have seen and learned. No sale.
Rebecca
~ I want bigger government because I don’t want to take responsibility for anything
~ I want congress to freely ‘not vote’ themselves a raise for all eternity
~ I want to wait 6 years to get a much needed operation
~ I want to be told what I can and can’t eat
~ I want more American businesses to move to another country with slave labor because it’s more profitable for them
~ I want a way to legally reap the rewards of people that have worked harder and invested more
~ I want to watch our infrastructure crumble while the crooked politicians sit in prison and collect their pension
~ I want to watch museums being built while public schools struggle
~ I want it all ~ I want it free ~ I want it now
PLEASE ~ Wake up people!
Mrs. Peel
Hmmm. Not only arrogant, but cheap, too.
The only problem with calling people like you “the elite” is that it makes it so much harder for those of us who really are.
Oh please. Everyone knows republicans have NEVER earned anything honestly. If no one gave you anything, it doesn’t preclude you lying, cheating and stealing with both hands.
Warren Terra
Church Lady, either you or McCain needs to learn the difference between a tax credit and a tax deduction. A lot of people in the thread objected to McCain’s proposed $7000 tax credit, and you reply that you believe the child tax deduction should indeed be decreased.
What you say might have merit, but it’s only distantly related to the McCain proposal. Under McCain’s plan, the median two-child family would probably pay no taxes, or even pay negative taxes. That’s a pretty extreme position, even more extreme than McCain’s claim, which you term a joke, that there are only about 20,000 rich households in the whole country.
Church Lady
Sorry, amost all our charitable giving goes to secular causes. Our local food bank gets the biggest chunk, followed closely by a local organization that supports children and families affected by HIV/AIDS. After that, to a hospital renowned for children’s cancer research, our local boys/girls clubs, local Race for the Cure event, a few local organizations that I am involved in that cater to a wide variety of causes, and then finally an inter-faith organization that serves homeless families. The last is the closest we get to “regligous” giving. Right now, 10% is all we feel we can afford to give. I wish it could be more. After our children’s educations have been paid for, we will be able to give a larger portion of our income to those causes we believe in so strongly.
Mrs. Peel
The way he did? Does E-Harmony have a “rich, desperate bimbo” catagory? That’s the only way people like him “got rich”.
w vincentz
@ Church Lady,
In Mark 10:21, it is written, …”One thing you lack, go sell EVERYTHING you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me.”
Those “christians” that do less only prove that their words mean more than their actions. Woe to you hypocrites.
Martin
They spend more money raising children because they have more money. My son (10) wanted to take art lessons this summer. He regularly get selected by his school to be showcased. We’ve had a number of professional artists look at his work and tell us that we should send him for lessons because he’s got some real talent. But we just didn’t have the money this summer. They got swim lessons instead since we don’t want them to drown. Thank you for suggesting that because I’m not wealthy that I don’t care enough about my kids to spend money on them.
We’d just let the schools teach him art but the art program got cut in the CA budget. The PTA couldn’t save it this year. The problem with not having a regressive tax is that there are kids out there born to poor parents that have real talent in math, science, medicine, whatever that may never be able to realize that largely because people that can afford to send their kids to do anything that they might be suited to do keep arguing that some kids are more deserving than poor kids. The parents might be more deserving of the poor parents, but we don’t live in a society that relegates people to lesser class status at birth. Except that we keep arguing for exactly that in subtle ways.
We shouldn’t dismiss poor kids the way we dismissed black kids prior to 1964.
Church Lady
Mrs. Peel – it’s funny that you assume I’m a Republican. I’m sure the Republican party would think that’s pretty funny, since I’m a registerd Democrat. The one and only time I voted Republican in a presidential election was in 1976, for Gerald Ford, and, if I remember correctly, only because I was young, a first time ill-informed voter, and thought Jimmy Carter was the ugliest man I had ever seen.
Also, we’re not cheap, just careful and mindful of our priorities. Our first priority is educating our children. Our second is saving for retirement. A bigger house only means more to clean, and I spend enough time cleaning the one I already have.
Martin
Maybe if we had a tax code that didn’t massively favor the rich there wouldn’t be nearly so many poor people that need your 10% donation.
The main problem with the tax code is that there are quite a few people caught in the middle that are carrying too much of the load. Church lady might be in that group, but arguing for a regressive policy only makes it worse.
Payroll taxes stop at $95K, so incomes above that line rise faster because employers can directing the payroll % to the employee if that’s what it takes to retain them. Further, much beyond that line and income shifts dramatically to capital gains at either 28% or 15%. Warren Buffet made more money than anyone in the US last year and paid 17% tax. Steve Jobs earns $1/yr in salary. Everything else is stock options and he’s paying 15% when he cashes them in.
The tax code needs to be more progressive, not less.
zuzu's petals
How many times did McCain use a question to kickstart a patented POW story, does anybody know?
Of course that “gut wrenching” decision he made to refuse early release was one made by many other POWs. To accept would have been a violation of the Code of Conduct.
Philip Butler
And get this. McCain’s trademarked “prison guard draws cross in the dirt” story is identical to the one Solzhenitsyn told in “The Gulag Archipelago”:
DKos
As the GOS diarist points out, McCain is such a Solzhenitsyn fan he even contributed a long essay about him for a book.
Dennis - SGMM
Because adding the cost of employer-provided health care to your taxable income isn’t raising raising anybody’s taxes. But he is offering a rebate of $5000 per family or $2500 for an individual. Anyone getting coverage for their family at five grand a year? Anyone getting coverage for themselves for $2500? Senator I’ve-never-paid-a-dime-for-health care-my-entire-life unveils another plan by rich people to solve the problems of everyday life.
Church Lady
Martin, I believe that the payroll tax limitation this year is $102K (it rises every year). The current limits on payroll taxes are unfair, in that you don’t pay anymore after the limit has been reached. For the good of the system, all wages, no matter how high, should be subject to the tax, which is why I object to Obama’s plan with the donut hole. Why should those between $102K and $200K or $250K not have to pay more. We all should.
As far as a progressive tax policy is concerned, I have no problem with it. Those who make more should pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes for the benefit of everyone. What I do object to is the lack of a level playing field in our current tax code. I just do not think that the phasing out of deductions and exemptions is fair, and does place a burden on the middle class. Maybe I’m crazy, but I do think that most dual income couples earning $150K per year do, in fact, consider themselves middle class, not rich. Yet, not taking into account family size or locale (i.e., living in most major metropolitan areas of the country is more expensive), deductions and exemptions start getting phased out at that threshold. My sister, part of a dual working couple, has six children and over $35K per year in child care expenses. Her deduction last year? Zero. How is that fair?
phobos
The Republican party has no sense of humor that we are aware of.
I’d get my receipts in order if I were you.
Herb
Such a clever old man…
When he’s talking about California, he complains that “WE are paying $4 a gallon.”
But when he’s talking about Congress, it’s “two things THEY never miss, a pay raise and a vacation.”
I wonder…
When has John McCain ever paid $4 a gallon in California?
And, since he joined Congress in 1982, how many vacations and pay raises has he missed?
Church Lady
Dennis, as an employer providing paid health insurance coverage to all employees, I can tell you that McCain’s health insurance plan sucks. We have PPO coverage with a major insurer and our family plan coverage (admittedly partly due to some major health problems with some employees or their dependants) runs approximately $1,500 per month per family. His idea of taxing it as income will cause many of them some hardship as the credit he wants to offer will only cover the cost for three to four months of their coverage.
Bill Arnold
I can tell you that McCain’s health insurance plan sucks.
Minor correction: McCain’s health insurance plan is excellent. It’s his plan for the rest of us that sucks.
Dennis - SGMM
How odd is it that the only health plan that McCain won’t advocate is the one that’s provided for him and his his entire life?
Just Some Fuckhead
At least three of John McCain’s ?seven? houses are in California, so it’s entirely possible he’s paid for California gas.
cleek
more like the limo company he uses paid $4 gas and then billed it @ $6.
Ed Marshall
(I would bet a lot that McCain’s comment is a gross caricaturization of said study.)
and you would win. It wasn’t a study of bear DNA, it’s a study of the DNA patterns of Gizzly Bears over a large region to determine the level of genetic diversity which is used to guage population levels of the bears and determine if they are threatened or not. It’s about the cheapest way I could think of to determine that status, and if he wants to repeal (or ignore) the Endangered Species Act he should say so straightforwadly.
Mrs. Peel
MCCAIN: (blah blah bullshit)… I think that Rich should be defined by a home, a good job, an education, and the ability to hand to our children a more prosperous and safer world than the one that we inherited.
Formerly know as: The Middle Class
jbarntt
I made more sense last night than John McCain.
Congrats, did you stay at a Motel 6 by any chance ?
harlana pepper
‘Everyone raising children should get a deduction (larger than the one now in the code)’
What about the rest of us poor schlubs who haven’t reproduced? Waddawe get!
jake
Well … “Cadillac Driving Tax Cut Queens,” doesn’t have quite the same ring. But since (WARNING: I’m going to leap to a conclusion based on the fact McCain is a ReThug) that $7,000 will be expected to cover the cost of everything people currently get from programs like AFDC and SCHIP the concept will be the same.
I don’t even know if a $7,000 per child tax credit (assuming we can find $518,000,000,000 a year somewhere) would mean shit to most parents. What would that do? Defray the cost of all the things you now have to buy because schools can’t afford to provide supplies?
Dennis - SGMM
You get the same thing that all renters, those without investment income, and anyone making less than 100K/year get. You get the privilege of having every nickle you make taxed to subsidize the aforementioned.
Glocksman
Nope.
You’re fucked anyway.
Part of McCain’s ‘reforms’ include stripping the states of most of their power over HIP’s, all in the name of ‘efficiency’, of course.
Though he does promise to work with state governors to set a ‘guaranteed access plan’ for the uninsurable.
Of course he’s a bit fuzzy on the details.
Walker
Which works out to one penny per person in the U.S., for an animal that contributes significantly to eco-tourism in the U.S. (think how many people annually go on trips to see a bear). For the economic value, this sounds cheap to me.
I am a fiscal conservative. I am incensed that this party of mathematically and economically illiterate policy makers is recognized as the party of fiscal conservatives.
Walker
Sounds like the current Republican platform to me.
Glen
I made more sense last night than John McCain.
So have I, a couple of times. After that second bottle of Stoly, I was positively profound!
Dennis - SGMM
Just as the McCain plan’s underpaying for health insurance will somehow make it cheaper. Note that McCain is not advocating that we pay defense contractors fifty cents on the dollar to make their products cheaper. He’d shit his pants if the price of Budweiser was legislatively reduced to make it more affordable.
Church Lady
Harlana, you get the priveledge of having the bragging rights to not having to pay for the health and welfare of someone who (god willing and congress acting responsible), in your old age, will be making the contributions that will make your social security check possible.
I, on the other hand, have the priviledge of providing food, clothing, shelter, medical and dental care, and educational expenses for my two children, just to start, hoping that as grownups they will make a positive contribution back to our society. The United States govenrnment, in their largess, allowed me to defray a small portion of this expense by allowing a deduction of approximately $1,800 per child from my gross income in 2007. Yes, I really feel like I won the lottery with that one.
dms
Hey, Reagan was considered “The Great Communicator.” He was a rambling fool. Go figure.
jake
I should have known. I guess “Efficiency” is the new “Terrorist Attack,” for the GOP. Let’s see. If people just drop dead because they can’t get health care they’ll learn not to get sick. Yeah!
What a blindingly stupid man. Members of AHIP are slightly less popular than the clap, Bush tried to protect those bozos last month and received his ass on a platter. The AMA and the AHA are about two minutes from declaring fatwa.
So who does McCrackpot side with?
If that asshole gets elected anthropologists will eventually check our bones to see if Americans were exposed to some sort of mind altering drug that made us think up is down, black is white and eight years of Corporate Rule wasn’t quite enough.
Xenos
A lifetime of soundly sleeping through the night. And you get my kids paying taxes for fifty years to make sure that your health care and social insurance is paid for, in case you need it.
Maybe not a fair deal, but everybody rolls the dice, so long as the game is not rigged. As for tax credits for kids, I would not be looking for them if I could get schooling of the same quality for them that I got in the 1970s and health insurance for the same (inflation-adjusted) amount as my parents paid. Clothes and consumer goods are a lot cheaper now, but health insurance and school needs are an order of magnitude greater than the difference.
Church Lady
Xenos – hear, hear. You said it better than I.
jnfr
JGabriel, you are quite right. I should have put “liberal” in scare quotes.
Xenos
The Roman culture collapsed due to Pb. The American culture collapsed due to TV.
phobos
Church Lady, just out of curiosity – would you have voted for Hillary Clinton over John McCain?
Church Lady
phobos – yes, in a heartbeat. I don’t plan on voting for John McCain – I disagree with almost every position he has. However, I am less than impressed with Obama and, if I vote at all, it will be for him, while holding my nose. I was able to work up more enthusiasm for Kerry in 2004. The last presidential candidate I actually looked forward to voting for was Gore in 2000. If only…..
harlana pepper
Church Lady: It was bit of snark. But since you mention it, I made a conscious decision to not have children because I knew I did not have the resources to do what you are doing. Seems like I should get something for that. I was half kidding because I’m not one of these people who bitch about taxes since there is nothing I can do about them. But I think it’d be a hoot if we got incentives for have zero or less children! Or maybe just a pat on the back would be nice instead having to hear people constantly bitch about what they have to do for the children they decided to have.
EL
No one here has yet mentioned how well prepared McCain appeared to be for the specific questions, sometimes answering before Rick Warren finished asking.
Andrea Mitchell raised the question of whether he knew the questions beforehand. Over at dKos someone posted on CNN interviewing Rick Warren, who admitted that McCain was not in fact somewhere in the church in the claimed “cone of silence” where he couldn’t hear the questions. In fact, he didn’t arrive at the Church until later – so he or an aide could easily have heard the questions before his turn.
phobos
Why? Because he wasn’t “ugliest man I had ever seen”, as was Jimmy Carter in 1976?
You are so full of shit.
harlana pepper
hey everybody, my health care is not paid for NOW! wtf?? you don’t know my personal situation at all
harlana pepper
i won’t give it to you but get off your self-righteous bullshit above your children sacrificing for me — why did I oppose the war from the very beginning, i was thinking of ALL your children since i didn’t want to see them die in a senseless war — why did i protest, hold fundraisers for an anti-war candidate in 2004, since i supported Dean, and YOU supported Kerry???? give me a fuckin break
Xenos
Harlana- I was making a vague reference to Medicare. Like any other liberal, I would be glad to increase my tax burden for some version of universal health care. In fact, a lot of the anxiety that leads me to want to stockpile gold would be relieved if there was a functioning universal health care scheme in place.
People with kids and those without kids have a lot in common – fear. Fear for a society that might abandon those who are most vulnerable, whether their own children, or their own selves in the future.
harlana pepper
and taking care of me in my old age, are you fucking kidding me? what planet have you been living on?
harlana pepper
well it is just so funny that even when i had a stable, secure income and health insurance, which i do NOT now, i still tried to do something about what this administration was doing to all of us, i tried really hard to stop the madness, only difference is that now my situation just a reflection of the times i saw coming
Martin
Well, since I presume that her take-home pay is considerably more than $35K/yr, it’s more fair than my wife who does not work in order for us to not have to incur $35K per year in child care expenses. If it’s not, then why is she spending 40 hours a week to pay someone else to take care of her kids? Remember, the tax code can seem awfully stupid when you do stupid things.
But that’s bullshit that she gets no deductions. She has six dependents, so she has those deductions. Assuming she files in a normal manner, she should get at least $1200 deduction on child care expenses as well. Yeah, $1200 is a drop in the bucket, but she shouldn’t get zero. And that $1200 deduction is for any income level over $43K.
zuzu's petals
These people are so damned dishonest:
What Obama was actually asked, and what he actually answered:
Church Lady
Martin, I think you need to go back and take another tax preparation class. I called my sister to confirm – due to phasing out (starts at anything over approximately $150K, even joint income) she got zero childcare tax credit, zero child tax credit, and her exemptions were whittled down to less than $2K per child. She pays a CPA to do her taxes, as the rules and regs are so confusing for anyone without a background in accounting and finance.
My sister works because she has to, not because she wants to. Childcare for six kids is extremely expensive, especially in a major metropolitan area. If she didn’t work, while she and her husband could provide a minimum in the way of food, clothing and shelter, they couldn’t possibly provide any of them with a college education (even now, they’ll require scholarship or loan assistance) or even think of retiring before dropping dead.
I congratulate you and your wife for your decision to have her stay home to care for your children. I did the same thing, at a great financial sacrifice that took us years to overcome. It is great that you have that option, just as it was wonderful that my husband and I were able to find a way to do it. Unfortunately, not everyone is able to make that choice. I have many friends that have to try to balance a job with raising their children, and it is not easy. None of them works because she wants to. Each works because, given the times, they have to, but wishes that they didn’t.
No matter what one’s income level, there is no doubt that our current morass of a tax code is a shambles and damn near impossible to navigate.
Martin
Wait. So they make over $150K – actually decently over $150K since phasing out starts there rather than ends there, and the problem is $35K in child care? I hate to point this out, but even after the child care is paid for, they’re considerably above the national median household income. Even here in my $900K median home price city, they’re above the median household income after child care is covered.
But even with that, publication 503 says that for incomes over $43K – with no limit, you can deduct 20% of work-related child care expenses for 2 or more kids up to a limit of $6K. There is no phasing out on income. My guess is she filed her taxes in a manner that screwed her on the child care deduction in order to maximize deductions elsewhere (and I think that could only happen by moving the expenses so they don’t appear to be child care related). Or she needs a better CPA.
And financial aid takes into account how many college educations you’ll need to be funding. At a median income, they’ll get financial aid even with the first kid. By the 3rd their parental contribution will be nearly zero. If they are above the median, they’ll have to kick in more, but they’ll still have more left over than someone who is kicking in less. They don’t need to save up for all 6 kids – even if they all go to Harvard. They might have an assload of loans, but that’s the whole point of going to college – to get the higher income to pay off the loans, so stick the kids with them.
Church Lady
Martin, I don’t know how the CPA figured the taxes, just what she said the bottom line was. I also know that both she and her husband are “self-employed” under consulting contracts, with no employer paid benefits. Her health insurance costs are through the roof, and there is no employer matching jack on any type of retirement plan. While her husband works regular hours on his consulting job, hers requires about 50 per week outside of the home, and she puts in another 15 to 20 per week at home, either at night or on the weekends.
Both would dearly love to have jobs with “employee” status, and the benefits that can accure from that, but since the dot.com meltdown, jobs like that are somewhat scarce and don’t pay as much as they can earn as independent consultants. After taxes (33% bracket plus two at max FICA), child care, health insurance, housenote, two car notes, utilities, food for a family of eight, clothing, associated other expenses for the kids (two have developmental problems and their local school system doesn’t provide enough assistance in that area) and attempting to save something towards retirement and future education expenses, there’s nothing left. All she wants is to get the maximum tax credit for child care expenses, the full child tax credit, and the full allowable amount for exemptions, none of which she currently gets. Given that she’s paying out the wazoo in taxes, I don’t think that she’s asking for too much, do you?
Morfydd
Church Lady, I don’t mean to sound uncaring. It sounds like she has a great deal to deal with.
“Given that she’s paying out the wazoo in taxes, I don’t think that she’s asking for too much, do you?” It is difficult to respond factually when you keep raising the emotional temperature. Factually, she should be *getting* the full child care expense credit. It maxes at $6000, which sucks for her, but I can’t see any way the CPA would be calculating it so she doesn’t. The other items phase out at high income levels. *They are at a high income level.*
I work in the tech industry too, though I don’t make that kind of money, and would respectfully suggest that one of them look at working for a consulting firm rather than being independent. Many consulting firms, at all financial levels, class their workers as employees, providing health insurance and financial security between contracts.
Her household income is well over the median. Even with 8 people, they’re still wealthy. But trying to raise 6 kids in an upper-class manner is going to be financially exhausting. There is no way around that.
Nancy Irving
But if the bears only got $3 million, and you need $5 million a year to be rich, don’t we have to conclude that these poor middle-class bears really needed the money?
sharon
Shorter ChurchLady ” it’s all about me, me, ME”
trank
decisive strong and clear are synonyms for certain. authoritarians worship certitude in their leaders and avoid uncertainty. their lives are ruled by that dynamic. our civilizations are dominated by it and destroy themselves because of it. nature is uncertain and must be controlled. bummer. but what can you do? it’s what happens when sex energy is used to power the logical side of the brain. certitude satisfies logic.
Bender Bending Rodriguez
Obama: “The reason that people believe there needs to be a constitutional amendment, some people believe, is because, uh, of the concern that, uh, uh, about same-sex marriage. I’m not somebody who’s [sic] promotes same-sec [sic] marriage, but I do believe in civil unions. I do believe that we should not, um, that that for a gay partners [sic] to want to visit each other in the hospital, for the state to say, you know what, that’s all right, I don’t think in any way inhibits my core beliefs about what marriage are [sic].”
What an orator!
Tax Analyst
Question here (from a Tax Professional, BTW). On sister’s 1040 Tax Return was there any Tax Liability on line 46. Since the Child and Dependent Care Benefit Credit on Form 2441 is NON-REFUNDABLE it will not be included in the Tax return if there is no liability, it can only reduce liability to “zero” and not below that.
Beyond that if the children have reached 13 years of age then they are not eligible for the credit. Other possibilities: Care-giver was a relative that was claimed as a Dependent on the Taxpayer’s return. Another possibility, did both Taxpayer and Spouse (if Married Filing Jointly) have EARNED INCOME? That’s a requirement for the credit(unless either or both were disabled or students for at least 5 months of the Tax Year). Another possibility (tying back to EARNED INCOME), if one of the couple had a Schedule C business showing a NET LOSS, then that taxpayer’s Earned Income, being negative, would disqualify them from the credit. There are also situations if the sister’s filing status was “Married Filing Separately” and did not qualify for “Head of Household” status. Also, some other non-refundable credits may have already reduced Tax Liability to zero, although most other non-refundables come in AFTER Child & Dep. Care in the ordering of non-refundable credits.
So you might check more fully on these items, otherwise she should have gotten the credit (See Form 1040, line 47). Also, is she by chance referring to her STATE return? Here in California Taxpayer’s get a percentage of the calculted FED credit amount, but it is phased out after ST AGI reaches 100,000.
Tax Analyst
OK, I didn’t see this before I posted my response a moment ago.
First, as someone else has already mentioned, there is no Income Phase-Out for Form 2441, Child and Dependent care Benefits, at least not on your FEDERAL return. State returns are a diffent issue altogether. In California there IS an Income level phase-out…over $100,000 in CA AGI. ST laws vary from State-to-State.
Questions: Did they file Jointly or “Married Filing Separate” returns. If they filed Separately but lived together then that probably caused the problem.
Question #2: If filing together, did one of them show a Net Loss for their Schedule C? That would also disqualify.
Question #3: Was the Child Care Expense paid to: (a) a Relative they also claimed as a dependent, or (b) to someone who did not provide a Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), meaning either a Social Security #, an Employer Identification # (EIN), or an ITIN, which is issued to illegal alients so they can file an Income Tax Return.
Question #4: Was Form 1040, line 46 more than “0”? It sounds like they may have taken a lot of Itemized deductions and if they somehow reduced that Tax amount to zero then they could not receive Child Care Credit (as I mentioned, it’s “Non-Refundable” and can only lower Tax liability to “0”). They could still actually owe taxes after that…How? Easily. Their Self-Employment Income is Subject to Self-Employment Tax, which comes in AFTER all the non-refundable credits are taken into account (Form 1040, line 58). Thus, SE Tax is not affected by any of those credits.
ALSO – Whoever prepared your taxes, at least if you PAID them for it, ought to be able to explain these concepts to your sister in SIMPLE ENGLISH. It should not be that complicated for a TAX PROFESSIONAL to do so. If they cannot, then sis ought to shop around for a new Tax person. It’s also possible they COULD have explained it, but the person on the other just wanted to bitch about stuff. I know a lot of competent Pro’s who shut down at that point and just hand the client the bill. Sometimes to receive a competent explanation one must STFU and be prepared to listen for a few minutes, something apparently beyond the capabilities of many Americans these days. It’s so much easier to just gripe and complain.
HyperIon
Bacevich on Moyers show on Friday was incredible. He got right to the core of the many problems facing America. I HIGHLY recommend this interview. Two smart adults talking intelligently for an hour….