Harold Holt was not just clearing his head when he went body bashing at portsea. He was in league with the russians and was later picked up by a red submarine and whisked off to the black sea where the shore break bored him to an untimely death.

i suppose, in a sense.  it depends on who you compare him to.  if you're using someone like ceausescu or kim il sung as a frame of reference, this statement is patently ridiculous.  but yes, lincoln did take unprecedented executive measaures, like suspending habeas corpus.  however, i would argue this is precisely what made him a great president, because wars can't be won without strong executives, especially wars on one's own home turf, civil or otherwise.  that's why the romans created the office of dictator.

The fact that Jesus or Moses actual walked on earth.   It is VERY CLEAR they are mythical figures if people actually bothered studying history.

Read the links in my signature to find out the TRUTH!!

yeah a disregard for the constitution and civil liberties are a wonderful thing arent they

unbelievable

The simplicity of this caught me off guard, and I admit, I laughed out loud.

JFK was an asshole who tested chemical weapons in Canada on Canadians and involved the US illegally in Cuba. 20 cheers for his killer.

Did you have a point, or did you just want to get into an argument about politics?

All you did was state two opinions that are obviously open to debate, and when others disagreed you said, "I'm right and you're wrong, neener-neener".

There is a politics forum you know...

wasnt trying to make a point, just was pointing out examples of historical myths and what i thought was the truth

shows how much you know about libertarianism or the free market, just par for the course though i guess

cant dispute the facts then totally misrepresent the oppositions opinion

http://mises.org/story/2902

should help set you straight on hoover, search around that site for more on lincoln if you wish

well, it really isn't worth talking about if you just stick to subjective terms like "great," "wonderful," "tyrant" (in the sense you used it), etc., without even defining them.  i mean, if your idea of "exposing historical myths" is just to say, "lots of people think so-and-so was an admirable guy, but no, he was an asshole," then the only thing a person can say to that is "ok."

i never called the veracity of your ideas into question.  all i did was point out the need for you to give a frame of reference for how you apply ideas like "great" and "tyrant."  i submitted that, in my opinion, one of the qualities of a "great" president is that he can preserve the integrity of the nation and its borders against clearly evident internal and/or external threats.  after all, as commander-in-chief, this is one of the president's constitutional duties, and if a president fulfills his duty--i.e., "does his job"--then he is at least on his way to becoming "great."  

apparently your criteria for "great" are different.  fair enough.  present them and make your argument.  but don't be a fucking asshole.

Thanks for your input, Marquis de Fraud.

I know this isn't what you meant but Jesus and Moses and TOTALLY MYTHICAL in every way and the historical record is clear on that.

We have several writers/historians living during those 33 years the bible CLAIMS Jesus lived but not only is there no account of the resurrection, parting of the red sea, or any of the supposed miracles he performed but the word Jesus even exist in the historical records from that time!!

Neither does the word Moses exist in the historical records of Egypt or Palestine!!

HOW FREAKIN OBVIOUS IS IT THAT CHRISTIANITY IS PURE MYTH??

Click on the links in my sig. to find out more.

About WW2:

Ummm... no. The reason the economy picked back up was because the rest of the world had been devastated from the war, with America being pretty much untouched, leaving the American economic system in a state of near monopoly-esqe power globally. It had nothing to due with "markets being allowed to function".

So, with free markets, the people who get rich did all the work to get there huh? Like building every single product/ transporting all of them/ producing all the materials? No they don't. Most are born into it and most of the others exploit people to get ahead.

OK, I will play this game.

Myth: A flat tax would be fair. Sure, it would be fair to whomever would benefit the most from the idea. However, somebody always gets the shaft on any tax plan.

Myth: Bill Clinton's impeachment was about a blow job. Yah, sure. Hence the reason that he was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice.

Myth: Monica Lewinsky saved the presidential cum stain for...well, I have no fucking clue. Certainly she did not intend to show it to her grand kids. Really, what the fuck was wrong with her. Every other woman with that kind of a mess goes to the dry cleaner.

Myth: There was a “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” against Clinton. Really, after eight years of people hating Bush 43, do you think that the other side had a “Vast Left Wing Conspiracy”? If the left could not put one together despite a much deeper hatred, then how in fuck's sake could the right have done the same thing back in the 90's?

Myth: The War on Drugs is a war in the sense that it may eventually be won. Has anyone from either side of Washington DC ever explicitly stated the victory condition? Um, when all drugs are gone? Sorry, people want drugs and people want to make huge amounts of cash for minimal effort. When nobody wants drugs anymore? See above.

Myth: Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house. Neither her family home nor the capital of Alaska are anywhere near the coast line. Even if she was standing on the western shore, the curve of the earth would have been a huge issue. She is as dumb as a fence post but even she would not look up to see where the rain is coming from and drown.

The church did advocate random killing. Knights who swore service to the church were allowed to kill but not on sundays or, wednesdays. In return for protection from such knights they were awarded..promises of heaven and cash, taken from the taxed peasants, whom the knights often randomly killed or raped.

I intentionally left that vague. Fairness is itself a pretty vague concept.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see everyone pay less tax. The thing is that the people who advocate that a flat tax would be fair are pretty much out for themselves. Those who advocate for a flat tax seem to want to present the idea as, in some way, fair to everyone equally. However, that is really bullshit. What it will do ultimately is be more fair to the people with the most to lose.

The way that I see this, the government has thousands of ways of taking money from people. Picking one of those ways and flattening it out might seem like a good idea. However, if we do that, the government is still going to take all of the money that it wants to spend from all of us somehow.

So let's say that we have a flat 25% income tax. Where does the government get the money from that it otherwise would not have? Something is going to change and pretty much those who are affected will not like it. There may need to be a 10% federal sales tax on top of everything else. The mortgage interest deduction may be lowered quite a bit. Perhaps some kind of luxury tax?

Any way you want to structure taxation is going to suck. The difference with a flat tax is that it sucks differently. It will not suck less.

FUCK YOU! HE WAS THE SON OF GOD.....I MEAN.....THE SON OF HIMSELF..........I MEAN....HIMSELF......I MEAN....STOP CONFUSING ME!

It's fair because everyone is treated equally...

All you have done is say that rich people have more money than poor people. The fact that the rich person has more money does not come from taxes. It comes from the amounts of money the two people make in their salaries.

I'm very sorry that you are poor. However, I don't see how it affects the fairness of a flat tax rate. I realize that different people make different amounts of money, but that discrepancy is not caused by the tax system.

BTW, I also never said that I though a flat tax system is the best one, I only said it was the fairest.

edit: the only way I can see arguing that a flat tax is unfair is to say that the money has different marginal values for people who have different amounts of wealth. Then you would say that instead of taxing money, the government should be taxing the individual's personal evaluation of how much s/he cares about that money. The main problem I see with this is that all the money goes to the same government. The government has one single standard for the value of money. The marginal value of money is the same to government regardless of where it comes from.

I view the flat tax as "fairer" than the current system in the US.  All I have is anecdotal evidence.

It's the mid-1980s.  I was a student, newly married, three children.  We made about $25,000 that year.  We paid over $7000 in federal income taxes.  We both had taxes taken out of our salaries, but had to pay about $1000 in April.  A good thing I usually do taxes early so we had time to scrounge the money.

My husband's boss' father died that year.  The boss' mother sold her house in New Jersey and moved to Tucson.  The deceased was not on the billionaire list, but he had electronic patents, a pension the widow qualified for a piece of, a life insurance policy she cashed and the house on the lake she sold.  She hunted around and found a tax lawyer that got her tax bill down to $600.  No, I am not missing some zeros, that was six hundred dollars.

My beef with the current tax structure is the deductions are all geared towards people who have money.  Working poor take the standard deductions, because that is all they have.  You usually rent so there is no mortgage interest deduction.  Minimum wage jobs don't usually have employment expenses you can deduct.  Unless you are chronically ill or have been hospitalized, your medical expenses are usually less than the minimum amount you have to accrue through the year before you can deduct a percentage of your costs.  You probably don't have losses on the stock market, so no capital losses to deduct.  If anything was stolen, it was probably not worth enough to bother itemizing on your return.  And you probably have no uncollected loans to deduct as you don't have the money to loan out.

At least with a flat tax, you know wealthy people and corporations have to pay something.  For that year in the mid-80s?  25% of $25,000 = $6250.  I would have paid less in taxes with a flat rate.  If I recall correctly - this was in the early 1990s during Bush I - the estimate was a flat rate of 14% would bring in revenue equal to the current amount of income tax revenue with a little left over.  Even better.  The flat tax was defeated because the "middle class" - those with home mortgages - threw a hissy fit and flooded congress with protests.  If most of them had calculated the actual taxes they would have paid under a flat tax, they may have had a different opinion.

As someone who prepares 100s of tax returns every year for one of the major tax preparing companies I'd like to point out several misconceptions that have been presented here:

First:

Clearly deductions only apply to those who actually have income what else could they be? Credits can apply to anyone depending. Consider the following:

1-The 2009 tax season just ended recently with this statistic - approximately 47% of US taxpayers paid no Federal Income taxes in 2009. This does not refer to other payroll taxes such as Social Security & Medicare which are not an income tax.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html?x=0&.v=1

2-Number of taxpayers who received part of $49 Billion in EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit) for 2008 was 24 million.

The EITC is one of the most misused, misunderstood, and largest redistribution method of wealth in the tax codes. Over 7 million more households qualify and never take the credit. Many illegals find a way to claim this credit illegally though the IRS has cracked down hard on this especially for the 2009 tax season.

EITC is a refundable credit, meaning even if you owe no tax you get the money. Nonrefundable credits are only applied against taxes owed and you do not get the difference as a refund.

3-Child tax credits - The US tax system essentially pays you to have children. This is done in 2 ways. EITC previously mentioned and Child Tax Credits.  The Child Tax Credit itself is a non-refundable credit up to $1,000 per child which phases out with increased income. The best deal is for a Head of Household, (essentially a single parent). If you have no income or little income then you don't get this credit but you probably qualify for the Additional Child Tax Credit which is also $1,000 per child and is a refundable credit.

I did uncounted returns this year where the taxpayer had minimum income (or none) and they received $6,000 to $12,000 on tax refunds.

These people probably are also receiving other government support as well as child support in some cases (if lucky) none of which is taxed.

4-Home buyers credit. This began under Bush with up to $7500 credit for new home buyers which was essentially a loan payable each tax year starting in 2010 for 15 years. It was 1st changed in early 2009 up to $8,000 credit with strings that made it a cash giveaway not a loan. However those who got the deal for $7500 were stuck with it as a loan. It was changed in late 2009 to also give up to $6500 to existing homeowners who buy a new replacement home who met certain conditions and was again a cash give out.

5-In 2009 there was a credit that was up to $400 called Make Work Pay. As you made over a certain amount it was phased out and increased as you made no income to the maximum.

Generally all credits have income limits and phase out as you make higher levels as they are used for wealth redistribution in most cases.

Next:

The US Tax structure is really a massive method for redistribution of wealth and not just a means to collect revenue. The poor aren't the only ones that gain under this system. One can argue whether or not its fair or not but it's not as simplistic as you suggest. There are several things going on at once and lumping it altogether is incorrect. Not that I'm defending the major loopholes that allow such disparity it's just not that simple.

Capital gains taxes  again are not as simplistic as you present

Depending on your marginal tax rate the following applied in 2009 and to 2010:

10% tax rate - long term gain rate = 0% - yeah ZERO %

15% tax rate - long term gain - again = 0%

25% to 35% tax rate - long term gain = 15% for 2008 to 2010

Beginning with 2011 tax year the following applies:

10 and 15% revert to 2002 levels  or 10% as do the others unless the tax cut is continued.

28 to 39.6% tax rates - long term gain rate = 20%

Also note the marginal rates change beginning with 2011 returns:

from 15% to a maximun of 39.6%

As someone who has been self employed for over 20 years I understand your frustration. I owned tanning salons until the economy took away all the disposable income of my customers, caused by $4/gallon gas, home foreclosures, mortgage payments that went up by 100 to 150% in less than 5 years, and loss of jobs. I live in Orlando, Florida. Now I'm a self employed manufacturing rep which makes me very little cash right now among other self employed activities I pursue. I do taxes because I have a MBA in Finance & Accounting and it's a way to make enough to eat. The tax preparer job is the only thing I do that essentially involves an employer.

There are several parts to the taxes you pay and it's not all income tax. The greatest majority of taxes you are paying are probably Social Security and Medicare which together are 15.3% of your income after you deduct your business expenses. When the tax cuts were handed out in recent years those of us that derived most of our income from self employment saw absolutely no change generally because we were making so very little in the 1st place and most of the taxes we pay were Social Security taxes. Example - net after expenses for my business of $10,000 means I owe $1,530 X .9235  or $1,413 in self employment taxes approximately.

So if this were the case in 2009, we have this:

Adjusted Gross Income  $10,000

less standard deduction - $5,700 (or itemized deductions)

less 1 exemption            - $3650 (for 2009 changes almost every year higher)

Taxable Income   $650

Income Taxes -  $0.00

Self Employment Tax $1,413

Credits

EITC $200

Make Work Pay $400

Total Credits $600

Amount you owe $813

So this is 8% of your income. Is this rape? Is it fair? Fairness depends on your perspective doesn't it?

As you apply expenses against your gross income you can reduce not only what is taxed for income but what is taxed for self employment taxes. I don't know what you do and why your customers or more likely a tricky employer has you as a contract worker. Most of the time people are incorrectly classified as contract workers though they are really employees. This is probably an employer who is giving you 1099s so they can save their half of the Social Security Tax and avoid paying unemployment taxes and workers comp which saves them a lot and costs you. See tests that determine if you are an employee at the IRS website.

So if his employees are taxed for income tax at 32.9% (really 33% in 08 or 09) this means they are making over $164,000 if single, $208,000 if married or $190,000 if Head of Household. Probably this is not what was meant at all as the Social Security & Medicare taxes were likely included meaning the real marginal tax rate was 25% and they made over $33,000 single, $67,000 married, or $45,000 head of household. Misunderstanding of tax rates also apply to what rate you are actually paying too. You pay the rate up to the limit for each marginal rate then get taxed on the next amount at the next marginal rate. This means each marginal rate is applied as you make more money. So for a single person after all deductions for example, up to $8,350 is taxed at 10%, $8,351 to 33,500 is taxed at 15%, $32,501 to $82,250 is taxed at 25%, $82,251 to $171,550 is taxed at 28%. So for example the real tax rate for someone making net after deductions:

$25,000 - 13%

$50,000 - 18%

$100,000 - 22%

$200,000 - 26%

$450,000 - 30% which is what Buffet's receptionist tax rate is claimed to be in the quote. What does she do for $450,000 a year?

If the claimed tax rate wrongly includes social security & medicare taxes (7.65%) she is still making between $100,000 and $200,000 per year.

 Sources - Irs.gov and one of the major tax preparer companies reference manuals.

There were other great loopholes in the 80s such as income averaging on Schedule G. If you were self employed or even if you got a huge pay increase you could use it to average over the previous years. This was a great thing for small business and went away in one of the tax revisions. 

My point to you was regarding your statement regarding deductions. A deduction is only useful if you have income over the standard deduction. Since most lower income people don't,  deductions are useless to them. Credits began as you correctly point out in the mid to late 90s (1997 I think in regards to the child tax credits) Since like you by then my children were over the age limits they were no help to me either. Historically deductions have always been developed for people with money and lower income people don't benefit.

Correct, capital gains taxes are lower than the marginal rates for regular income, which is not a bad thing even for regular taxpayers.

Lower capital gain taxes also benefit people who have invested over their working years and begin to sell off these investments when they retire. Granted when people retire they are usually in lower tax brackets anyway but the investment income is treated differently than regular taxable income and will benefit you at that point. 

Yes those who engage in only investment activity and keep their holdings over a year get a lower tax rate. Very few of them do this as they trade constantly and are paying short term gains at regular tax rates.

Schedule C is no worse than any other IRS form, you just need to keep records and detail as needed. Agreed, it was originally for the small business owner with a bricks & mortar location,  but these days many of us don't have a location. Doctors and lawyers all seem to be LLC or LLP these days and previously were either schedule C filers or in a partership. My current self employment is a manufacturer's rep and I have no location either. Any time I travel from my tax home all is deductible expense. If your husband does any travel at all this can work for your benefit. Even taking the check to the bank from his clients is deductible business mileage.

I'm grateful to the IRS for making taxes a bitch so I can make money doing taxes for others.

I endorse this book as well.

  Liberia, wasn't that an African nation that was named for the repatriated slaves who were supposed to make a new start there ?  What a f**king joke.

  ( Liberia, a hell hole of drugged up sociopaths who comprised an "army" under *Charles Taylor...a friend of *Pat Robertson and his diamond mines...       Similar to the military conflict in Sierra Leone in the sense that "warfare" consisted mostly of armies of young teenagers who went around mutilating and torturing anything that was alive and could feel pain. )

  edit: sorry XC, I posted before I read your link, my observations are redundant

I am currently reading "The Real Lincoln" by Thomas Dilorenzo. It's a fascinating read. I think it proves Lincoln is not perfect and not the God like figure so many people just assume him to be. Heck, I was one of them for a long time. I still have nothing against him either. I think the book proves that for a long time now, politicians have lied in order to get political support. I think these days, it's a lot harder because today with the internet and TV, there is no way Lincoln could get away with things he said to one audience and then to another. I think a politician lying is like a cop being rude, or a car salesman being pushy or a stripper being friendly: It's all just business.