3 Facts That Could Change This Election (If We Share Them With Enough People)

[dutch508]

ihavenobias  (1000+ posts)       Mon Jun-30-08 02:21 PM
Original message http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6430781
3 Facts That Could Change This Election (If We Share Them With Enough People)
 Advertisements [?]Edited on Mon Jun-30-08 03:04 PM by ihavenobias
Here are 3 Stunning facts that could not only change the outcome of this election, but with regard to the first two points, they could change the results of every election for years to come *if* we make enough people aware of them.

I want to keep this as simple and short as possible, so that the people who need to read this actually do. And again, I encourage you to share this information with as many people as you can, either by recommending and commenting on this thread, by emailing these points out and or by posting a link to this thread on the appropriate websites.

1)-Over 70% of our National Debt was created by just 3 Republican presidents.

Go ahead, get out your calculator and add up debt by president/party. Apparently the party that claims fiscally responsibility thinks it's ok to borrow massive amounts of money from foreign countries like China. Consider that we spend hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments on this debt each year. That means more and more of your hard earned money is going to make interest only payments on what is basically a Giant National Credit Card. Not to mention the fact our debt/deficits are largely behind the weakness of our dollar, which in turns makes gas more expensive and creates other serious problems.

If you want to learn more about the National Debt, check out these links:
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock /
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...
http://zfacts.com/p/447.html (A running clock with the cost of the war)
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/business...

2)-According to new research from Larry Bartels out of Princeton, real middle class wage growth is double when a Democrat is president compared to when a Republican is president.

"...Even more remarkable, the real incomes of working-poor families...grew six times as fast when Democrats held the White House. Only the incomes of affluent families were relatively impervious to partisan politics, growing robustly under Democrats and Republicans alike...": http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/magazine/27wwln-ideal...

Here is a short summary of this research: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008...

And here is a good, short audio interview with Larry Bartels: http://youngturks.wmod.llnwd.net/a591/o1/4-25-08Bartels...

3)-90% of Americans would pay less taxes under Obama's proposed tax plan compared to McCain's.

This is according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Institute as reported by CNN: http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/11/news/economy/candidates...

People making under $112,000 a year in individual (not household) income would pay less taxes under Obama's plan.

By contrast, John McCain's tax cuts mostly benefit the top 10% of Americans. Under McCain's plan, people making over 2.9 million dollars in individual annual income would get almost a million dollar tax break.

Conclusion: Countless millions of Americans vote Republican because they believe they'll pay less taxes and that they'll have their money spent more responsibly. As you can see, those beliefs are directly contradicted by the facts. Of course we can choose to ignore the facts and instead focus on which candidate is wearing a flag pin (you ever notice that Hillary and McCain don't wear them? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi5nbZvS9cg ) but I think we're a smarter country than that.

PS---If you're not sure how to respond to those laughably bad, factually inaccurate anti-Obama smear emails and or you want more information on John McCain, here is a nice resource guide of articles, videos and commentary: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

 
Well....not a lot of FACTS to back up the claims...

1. We are fighting a global war against islamic exstremists, almost alone, and against half the country. No huge taxes to support it, no national war footing...No plan from the dems except pull out. (ironic consitering their birth control policies)

2. From the book cited: Bartels argues that, nationally, the white working class has become more loyal to Democratic presidential candidates, not less. He contends that Republican gains have come mainly among middle- and upper-income voters, and that the overall shift away from the Democrats is almost entirely attributable to the partisan transformation of the South over the past 40 years or so.

One of Bartels's most intriguing conclusions is that the political timing of economic growth has influenced voters, and that this has helped Republicans, despite their overall pattern of increasing the gap between rich and poor. Republicans presidents, he concludes, have often generated significant economic growth rates in presidential election years, while Democratic presidents have not. If only election years are counted, families at every income level "turn out to have fared much better under Republican presidents than under Democrats," he writes.

Hmmm...that isn't what the OP said, is it?

3. But the top 10% would pay much much more. One ones creating jobs, businesses, etc, would be TAXED heavily. How would they respond? Maybe by passing the cost on the the consumer.

hmmm...

[Zeus]

Taxes and Income
December 17, 2007

Every Democrat running for President wants to raise taxes on "the rich," but they will have to do something miraculous to outtax President Bush. Based on the latest available tax data, no Administration in modern history has done more to pry tax revenue from the wealthy.

Last week the Congressional Budget Office joined the IRS in releasing tax numbers for 2005, and part of the news is that the richest 1% paid about 39% of all income taxes that year. The richest 5% paid a tad less than 60%, and the richest 10% paid 70%. These tax shares are all up substantially since 1990, and even somewhat since 2000. Meanwhile, Americans with an income below the median -- half of all households -- paid a mere 3% of all income taxes in 2005. The richest 1.3 million tax-filers -- those Americans with adjusted gross incomes of more than $365,000 in 2005 -- paid more income tax than all of the 66 million American tax filers below the median in income. Ten times more.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119786208643933077.html

[DumbAss Tanker]

At the low end of the spectrum, it's not actually possible for the so-called "Working poor" to pay less than they do now, thanks to EIC all that can change is how much of a transfer payment they get from that top 10%.  In order for Obama's tax plan to work there would have to be a massive downward definitional change in the meaning of the word "Rich" which means that the upper half of the middle class is in for a major hose job and the really-rich should think about divestiture and offshore retirement. 

[Chris_]

At the low end of the spectrum, it's not actually possible for the so-called "Working poor" to pay less than they do now, thanks to EIC all that can change is how much of a transfer payment they get from that top 10%.  In order for Obama's tax plan to work there would have to be a massive downward definitional change in the meaning of the word "Rich" which means that the upper half of the middle class is in for a major hose job and the really-rich should think about divestiture and offshore retirement. 

They won't tell you directly, but most democrats start the definition of "rich" at about $40 grand.........

You are also correct about the top tier, as in the bad old days of 70% brackets, these folks will find a way to go offshore, or simply move investments into tax exempt areas, resulting in a significant loss of available growth capital.....whereupon the government, not getting the desired revenue level from the tax increase, will revise the increase downward into the middle class.....the rationale being, of course, to "lessen the gap between rich and poor".....so ultimately the middle class will get screwed......happens every time....

doc

[Zeus]

At the low end of the spectrum, it's not actually possible for the so-called "Working poor" to pay less than they do now, thanks to EIC all that can change is how much of a transfer payment they get from that top 10%.  In order for Obama's tax plan to work there would have to be a massive downward definitional change in the meaning of the word "Rich" which means that the upper half of the middle class is in for a major hose job and the really-rich should think about divestiture and offshore retirement. 

They won't tell you directly, but most democrats start the definition of "rich" at about $40 grand.........

You are also correct about the top tier, as in the bad old days of 70% brackets, these folks will find a way to go offshore, or simply move investments into tax exempt areas, resulting in a significant loss of available growth capital.....whereupon the government, not getting the desired revenue level from the tax increase, will revise the increase downward into the middle class.....the rationale being, of course, to "lessen the gap between rich and poor".....so ultimately the middle class will get screwed......happens every time....

doc

Clintons "Taxcut" that was the largest tax increase in history started the tax increase on the rich at about $32 grand.

Back around that time my wife at the time got a pay increase. The pay increase put us in the next tax bracket and additional taxes added by Clinton's "taxcuts"resulted inmy wifes take home pay decreasing by $6/month. I shit you not.

[miskie]

Clintons "Taxcut" that was the largest tax increase in history started the tax increase on the rich at about $32 grand.

Back around that time my wife at the time got a pay increase. The pay increase put us in the next tax bracket and additional taxes added by Clinton's "taxcuts"resulted inmy wifes take home pay decreasing by $6/month. I shit you not.

The same thing happened to someone I was working with. He had gotten a nice pay raise, got his check before leaving, opened it up - then went through about 5 different emotions in 5 seconds... Happy, Confused, Concerned, Saddened, and then Angry. I asked him what the matter was and he told me that it seemed because of his raise, he was suddenly taking home less money. We never spoke about it again.

[Chris_]

Clintons "Taxcut" that was the largest tax increase in history started the tax increase on the rich at about $32 grand.

Back around that time my wife at the time got a pay increase. The pay increase put us in the next tax bracket and additional taxes added by Clinton's "taxcuts"resulted inmy wifes take home pay decreasing by $6/month. I shit you not.

The same thing happened to someone I was working with. He had gotten a nice pay raise, got his check before leaving, opened it up - then went through about 5 different emotions in 5 seconds... Happy, Confused, Concerned, Saddened, and then Angry. I asked him what the matter was and he told me that it seemed because of his raise, he was suddenly taking home less money. We never spoke about it again.

Bracket creep -- it happened to me many times in the 80s.