During the Eisenhower administration the tax rate on the uppermost bracket of incomes was 91%. Ninety one friggin' precent. Yet, there were still obscenely wealthy people. It's time to define new upper income brackets. I don't have a problem with someone's five-million-and-oneth dollar being taxed at 90%.
While there technically was a 91% Tax bracket, that single fact in no way communicates the reality of the situation. There were loopholes big enough to drive a Maybach through, and everyone did so.
The fact is that wealthier Americans pay a higher share of the tax burden today than in 1958, and lower income Americans pay much less in taxes.
More here
Er, I thought everyone knew by now that story was a bs fabrication of the right-wing media?
No, but I can understand why folks would want to spread that line. Here's an excerpt of the latest news on the subject:
The Oversight Committee.... is expressing gross dissatisfaction with Wilkins’s testimony and, in a letter sent to him on Wednesday, offering him the opportunity to amend it. “In your testimony, you stated ‘I don’t recall’ a staggering 80 times in full or partial response to the Committee’s questions,” committee chairman Darrell Issa and Ohio representative Jim Jordan wrote. “Your failure to recollect important aspects of the Committee’s investigation suggests either a deliberate attempt to obfuscate your involvement in this matter or gross incompetence on your part.”
The most pertinent subject on which Wilkins’s memory failed him was the nature of his communications with Treasury Department officials: in particular, whether he discussed the applications of tea-party groups with anybody at the Treasury Department, whether he discussed with Treasury Department officials regulatory guidance for 501(c)(4) entities engaged in political activities, and whether he discussed with them the inspector general’s report that blew the lid off of the targeting scandal in mid May.
"I don't recall" is how you prevent later perjury charges when you're on the wrong side of an investigation and you're doing your best to cover your ass while not advancing the investigation. But you probably knew that.
When a parade of kooks and idiots testified to Congress in 1998 that we were all baby-eating monsters, NO ONE stood up for us. Horrific legislation that left the agency permanently hamstrung resulted.
Over the last 3 decades, the IRS has actually deserved about 1% of the vitriol poured out on it. Morale is a thing of the past.
It'll get worse for the IRS, now that it is enmeshed in partisan politics. President* Obama should be noted with an asterisk from here on out.
*Obama was re-elected in 2012 while the IRS was actively suppressing opposing groups, while rubber stamping liberal political action committees.
Most alternative reactor designs have some major flaw. Sodium reactors have sodium fires. Pebble-bed reactors have pebble jams. (An experimental one in Germany is such a mess there's no way to fully decommission it.) Helium gas-cooled reactors leak helium. (Fort St. Vrain was converted from nuclear to natural gas because of that.) One of the painful lessons of long-life nuclear power plants is that what goes on inside the reactor vessel has to be really, really simple. Anything complex in there will break. It's being shot full of holes at the atomic level, after all. (See "hydrogen embrittlement").
Pressurized water reactors and boiling water reactors at least have only water to deal with. The fuel rods are solid rods. The thing is basically simple,
Came here to say this. Everything at a nuclear power plant is periodically taken apart to fix and clean on routine basis. Maintaining any of these exotic reactors always sounds like a nightmare.
I don't have to 'know the true dogma' to call out a probable liar. If you're not a liar, the line you used has been widely employed by liars, making it a self-defeating thing to say.
See Seminar Caller.
You're not a RINO, you're a leftist. Anyone who makes claim to being a disillusioned 'life-long republican' is likely full of sh*t, especially if such claim follows a litany of cherry-picked, overblown complaints straight out of the Alinsky playbook for mocking opponents.
I'd like to point out the land around Three Mile Island, the site of the worst pressurized water reactor accident, is perfectly inhabitable, and the other unit on that site continues to run with an excellent safety record.
Having a proper containment building helps a great deal.
Certainly, the system in Canada would be superior to Obamacare. Unfortunately, that's not politcally tenable in this country infested with right wing "free market" fanbois such as yourself. So you get what you get.
That's no defense against your callousness and shifting position. However, if cursing me helps you avoid any introspection that might upset you, please continue.
If you lose your job, there's a big difference between losing some service upgrades and being thrown under the bus.
So, DerekLyons there bought individual health insurance on the open market, exactly as you advocated in the previous post, and you don't give a sh*t and may not even understand.
The "Affordable" Care Act made his independantly bought insurance unaffordable. You casually moved the goalposts in this reply, and you blatantantly dismissed the fact that his personal situation got markedly worse.
This marks you as the jerk who will wreck good deals you're not party to because you have some f*cking pie in the sky grand design.
In any case, damn near everyone who has been losing their coverage because of the ACA has been an independant purchaser. The policy you advocate is going backwards.
The problems that grandparent alluded to are under reported and very fucking real, and jackass replies like yours don't help.
Waffle Iron is the sort of person I warned about- perfectly happen to f*ck up deals he's not party to, because he has a grand vision of how things should be that can't possibly be wrong.
This system doesn't have to manage the ENTIRE health insurance industry.
You underestimate the ambition of those that would be your masters. They're so enamored with their own supposed righteousness and capability that they'll destroy anything that stands between them and the implementation of their grand vision.
Note that the Affordable Care act is now resposible for far more people losing their plans ("You can keep your plan if you like it." and if it conforms to the massively expensive requirements now in effect.) than gaining new coverage.
But hey, the people who rammed this bill down our throats have good intentions, so let's excuse the actual destruction we're in the middle of experiencing.
I'm pulling that from my own personal experiences, my observations, and a great deal of reading over the years.
Do you want a bibliography for a slashdot comment? Perhaps some footnotes?
Don't be pedantic. If you disagree, say so and why.
That cute little stick figure holding up a sign that says 'citation needed' got old a while ago.
In theory this sounds very sensible, but it would cost more to tailor curriculum to individual student needs rather than the usual uniform lesson platform and standard droning delivery method (which reaches a minority of students).
You don't need to be that specific- in my high school, we had three different levels for most topics- Gen Ed, College Prep, and Honors. It seemed to be a reasonable seperation of students into relatable groups.
I just listened to Malcolm Gladwell's latest book (I forget the title), and he makes the point that a small class size is also a detriment to learning. Apparently the ideal class size is 18-24 students- too few and the classroom energy goes down and the students are like siblings in the back of a car.
The truth is that kids have their own little privately-run societies in school (on a social plane) that the adults are quite powerless to have any real control over.
You can find similar social structures in prisons, which calls into question the fundamental design of the public school system.
The kid's presence there is largely wasted effort, so they invent oft-destructive social games to use up their intellect and energy. This suggests that making school more rigourous & purposeful.
Specifically:
1) more difficult academics for the kids that can take it
2) meaningful job training in later grades for those whose interests lie elsewhere
We also need to nuke 'no child left behind' and anything that looks like it, so we can acknowledge that different children have different interests & capabilities, and handle them accordingly.
If you're telling me that we could power every home in the United States, with solar energy, for the sacrifice of a square of desert 70 miles on a side? Yeah, that sounds pretty fucking awesome.
A bunch of desert, and $3,000,000,000,000+, not counting increased labor and material costs from such a huge demand.
But what's a few Trillion dollars when green dreams are on the line?
In 2010 there were 114,800,000 U.S. households, 114,800,000 / 70,000 powered homes = 1,640 of these facilities at 3 square miles per facility = 4,900 square miles! Airizona is 114,006 square miles, that is 4.2% of the state covered in panels....or roughly the entire state of Connecticut if you have some room for growth.
I'm curious as to how that would change the weather around there. Extracting that much power from such a large area would certainly have an effect on the local climate.
It is for all spending with CGI Federal over the time that they have been doing business with the Federal government, including payments from fiscal years before Obamacare was even passed.
The figure is now being regurgitated by various right wing websites without anything that even passes for thinking.
And also now slashdot, which is disappointing.
If you chase the links to the original treasury website, half of the $634 million was paid after the passage of the 'Affordable' Care Act, so I'm especially interested in the specifics of those contracts- which are still more than triple the $93 million dollar original ACA website contract.
So perhaps it's a $300 mil website instead of $600 mil. That's not really much of an improvement, to be honest.
"No, it's all lies! The website only cost a bit over a quarter-billion dollars!"
We do have to find out more specifics, to be sure. We've certainly sent that company a massive amount of money since 2010.
Should I care about his opinion?
Well, I read a brief Bio on Wikipedia.
While he's performed some impressive work, I don't see why, in the subject at hand, we should take his opinion over an experienced law professors, or even an ex-police officer's opinion.
Everyone's got a right to their own opinion, Bennett's in this case seems to be no more relevant that a couple college kids in a dorm bullsh*t session.
Further, Bennett talks quite a bit about society's interest, which isn't a concern in the original video. It is in the interest of a Lawyer's individual client to not talk to the police- public interest be damned at that point.
The Art of Diplomacy, it is said,
is saying "nice doggy" whilst you look about
for a large enough stick.
The sad thing about the administration's self-described 'Smart Diplomacy' is that we're in a position where German politicians will openly express contempt for the US- an ally- for some (German) election season points.
This is a consequence of two things:
1) An NSA percieved to be out of control and operating beyond their mandate.
2) A weak president that German politicians see no downside to prodding/angering.
No kidding! This "justification" for "war" is sounding like a broken record.
Wasting money to kill others (who disagree with you) is spiritually retarded.
When are people going to demand that violence is NOT the solution -- it is precisely part of the problem in the first place!
The trouble with that sort of thinking is that it fails to account for the fact that peace requires participation by everyone, whereas war can be started unilaterally. Hitler, for example, actively wanted war, and was frustrated by repeated capitulation to his outrageous and growing demands. We all know how that turned out in the end, of course, but it was a long painful trip for everyone involved.
The other related question- In the face of a belligerent, are you willing to give up everything to maintain a pretense of peace? Is there nothing you wouldn't surrender in order to avoid raising a fist in defense of property, of principal, or of a person?
And even if you would bare your neck to preserve the peace, and gladly be felled for your sense of 'spiritual intellegence', would you sacrifice your family, friends and neighbors for the same?
If somebody wanted to rape your sister/wife/daughter, and it was in your power, but not hers, to stop him, would you let the offense proceed and pat yourself on the back for your restraint?
War between nation-states is often merely an expansion of these scenarios.
The only counter argument I can see to my line of thinking is the notion that you can cure the evil in human hearts with enough love. I know of no basis in the history of human events for this naivety.
Other countries have single payer health care, which delivers better outcomes at a lower cost. Try learning from that.
And those countries do that by either gaming the statistics, or having a homogenized society where social pressure to conserve public resources can be successfully applied.
Slashdot Mirror
While there technically was a 91% Tax bracket, that single fact in no way communicates the reality of the situation. There were loopholes big enough to drive a Maybach through, and everyone did so. The fact is that wealthier Americans pay a higher share of the tax burden today than in 1958, and lower income Americans pay much less in taxes. More here
At some point slamming the Koch brothers will become passé for even the most loyal Lefties. Tell me, do you have another boogeyman lined up already? And do you think this next boogeyman will be a better distraction from Reid and Obama's continued incompetence?
Three resignations so far aren't enough for you to suspect something is up?
No, but I can understand why folks would want to spread that line. Here's an excerpt of the latest news on the subject:
The Oversight Committee .... is expressing gross dissatisfaction with Wilkins’s testimony and, in a letter sent to him on Wednesday, offering him the opportunity to amend it. “In your testimony, you stated ‘I don’t recall’ a staggering 80 times in full or partial response to the Committee’s questions,” committee chairman Darrell Issa and Ohio representative Jim Jordan wrote. “Your failure to recollect important aspects of the Committee’s investigation suggests either a deliberate attempt to obfuscate your involvement in this matter or gross incompetence on your part.”
The most pertinent subject on which Wilkins’s memory failed him was the nature of his communications with Treasury Department officials: in particular, whether he discussed the applications of tea-party groups with anybody at the Treasury Department, whether he discussed with Treasury Department officials regulatory guidance for 501(c)(4) entities engaged in political activities, and whether he discussed with them the inspector general’s report that blew the lid off of the targeting scandal in mid May.
"I don't recall" is how you prevent later perjury charges when you're on the wrong side of an investigation and you're doing your best to cover your ass while not advancing the investigation. But you probably knew that.
It'll get worse for the IRS, now that it is enmeshed in partisan politics. President* Obama should be noted with an asterisk from here on out.
*Obama was re-elected in 2012 while the IRS was actively suppressing opposing groups, while rubber stamping liberal political action committees.
Came here to say this. Everything at a nuclear power plant is periodically taken apart to fix and clean on routine basis. Maintaining any of these exotic reactors always sounds like a nightmare.
I don't have to 'know the true dogma' to call out a probable liar. If you're not a liar, the line you used has been widely employed by liars, making it a self-defeating thing to say. See Seminar Caller.
I'm a lifelong democrat, but then i realized the more democrats win elections, the more they ruin the country.
You're not a RINO, you're a leftist. Anyone who makes claim to being a disillusioned 'life-long republican' is likely full of sh*t, especially if such claim follows a litany of cherry-picked, overblown complaints straight out of the Alinsky playbook for mocking opponents.
I'd like to point out the land around Three Mile Island, the site of the worst pressurized water reactor accident, is perfectly inhabitable, and the other unit on that site continues to run with an excellent safety record. Having a proper containment building helps a great deal.
Certainly, the system in Canada would be superior to Obamacare. Unfortunately, that's not politcally tenable in this country infested with right wing "free market" fanbois such as yourself. So you get what you get.
That's no defense against your callousness and shifting position. However, if cursing me helps you avoid any introspection that might upset you, please continue.
And your point is?
If you lose your job, there's a big difference between losing some service upgrades and being thrown under the bus.
So, DerekLyons there bought individual health insurance on the open market, exactly as you advocated in the previous post, and you don't give a sh*t and may not even understand. The "Affordable" Care Act made his independantly bought insurance unaffordable. You casually moved the goalposts in this reply, and you blatantantly dismissed the fact that his personal situation got markedly worse.
This marks you as the jerk who will wreck good deals you're not party to because you have some f*cking pie in the sky grand design. In any case, damn near everyone who has been losing their coverage because of the ACA has been an independant purchaser. The policy you advocate is going backwards.
Yet you say 'So What?'
The problems that grandparent alluded to are under reported and very fucking real, and jackass replies like yours don't help.
Waffle Iron is the sort of person I warned about- perfectly happen to f*ck up deals he's not party to, because he has a grand vision of how things should be that can't possibly be wrong.
This system doesn't have to manage the ENTIRE health insurance industry.
You underestimate the ambition of those that would be your masters. They're so enamored with their own supposed righteousness and capability that they'll destroy anything that stands between them and the implementation of their grand vision.
Note that the Affordable Care act is now resposible for far more people losing their plans ("You can keep your plan if you like it." and if it conforms to the massively expensive requirements now in effect.) than gaining new coverage. But hey, the people who rammed this bill down our throats have good intentions, so let's excuse the actual destruction we're in the middle of experiencing.
I'm pulling that from my own personal experiences, my observations, and a great deal of reading over the years. Do you want a bibliography for a slashdot comment? Perhaps some footnotes? Don't be pedantic. If you disagree, say so and why. That cute little stick figure holding up a sign that says 'citation needed' got old a while ago.
You don't need to be that specific- in my high school, we had three different levels for most topics- Gen Ed, College Prep, and Honors. It seemed to be a reasonable seperation of students into relatable groups.
I just listened to Malcolm Gladwell's latest book (I forget the title), and he makes the point that a small class size is also a detriment to learning. Apparently the ideal class size is 18-24 students- too few and the classroom energy goes down and the students are like siblings in the back of a car.
The truth is that kids have their own little privately-run societies in school (on a social plane) that the adults are quite powerless to have any real control over.
You can find similar social structures in prisons, which calls into question the fundamental design of the public school system.
The kid's presence there is largely wasted effort, so they invent oft-destructive social games to use up their intellect and energy. This suggests that making school more rigourous & purposeful.
Specifically:
1) more difficult academics for the kids that can take it
2) meaningful job training in later grades for those whose interests lie elsewhere
We also need to nuke 'no child left behind' and anything that looks like it, so we can acknowledge that different children have different interests & capabilities, and handle them accordingly.
If you're telling me that we could power every home in the United States, with solar energy, for the sacrifice of a square of desert 70 miles on a side? Yeah, that sounds pretty fucking awesome.
A bunch of desert, and $3,000,000,000,000+, not counting increased labor and material costs from such a huge demand. But what's a few Trillion dollars when green dreams are on the line?
In 2010 there were 114,800,000 U.S. households, 114,800,000 / 70,000 powered homes = 1,640 of these facilities at 3 square miles per facility = 4,900 square miles! Airizona is 114,006 square miles, that is 4.2% of the state covered in panels....or roughly the entire state of Connecticut if you have some room for growth.
I'm curious as to how that would change the weather around there. Extracting that much power from such a large area would certainly have an effect on the local climate.
This figure is not just for building a website.
It is for all spending with CGI Federal over the time that they have been doing business with the Federal government, including payments from fiscal years before Obamacare was even passed.
The figure is now being regurgitated by various right wing websites without anything that even passes for thinking.
And also now slashdot, which is disappointing.
If you chase the links to the original treasury website, half of the $634 million was paid after the passage of the 'Affordable' Care Act, so I'm especially interested in the specifics of those contracts- which are still more than triple the $93 million dollar original ACA website contract.
So perhaps it's a $300 mil website instead of $600 mil. That's not really much of an improvement, to be honest.
"No, it's all lies! The website only cost a bit over a quarter-billion dollars!"
We do have to find out more specifics, to be sure. We've certainly sent that company a massive amount of money since 2010.
Everyone's got a right to their own opinion, Bennett's in this case seems to be no more relevant that a couple college kids in a dorm bullsh*t session. Further, Bennett talks quite a bit about society's interest, which isn't a concern in the original video. It is in the interest of a Lawyer's individual client to not talk to the police- public interest be damned at that point.
The sad thing about the administration's self-described 'Smart Diplomacy' is that we're in a position where German politicians will openly express contempt for the US- an ally- for some (German) election season points.
This is a consequence of two things:
1) An NSA percieved to be out of control and operating beyond their mandate.
2) A weak president that German politicians see no downside to prodding/angering.
The trouble with that sort of thinking is that it fails to account for the fact that peace requires participation by everyone, whereas war can be started unilaterally. Hitler, for example, actively wanted war, and was frustrated by repeated capitulation to his outrageous and growing demands. We all know how that turned out in the end, of course, but it was a long painful trip for everyone involved.
The other related question- In the face of a belligerent, are you willing to give up everything to maintain a pretense of peace? Is there nothing you wouldn't surrender in order to avoid raising a fist in defense of property, of principal, or of a person?
And even if you would bare your neck to preserve the peace, and gladly be felled for your sense of 'spiritual intellegence', would you sacrifice your family, friends and neighbors for the same? If somebody wanted to rape your sister/wife/daughter, and it was in your power, but not hers, to stop him, would you let the offense proceed and pat yourself on the back for your restraint? War between nation-states is often merely an expansion of these scenarios.
The only counter argument I can see to my line of thinking is the notion that you can cure the evil in human hearts with enough love. I know of no basis in the history of human events for this naivety.
And those countries do that by either gaming the statistics, or having a homogenized society where social pressure to conserve public resources can be successfully applied.