The Dynamic Duo

Thanks for your comments Jessica.  That comment thread was getting a little long so I decided to create a new post to carry on the discussion.  For those of you who haven’t been following along, the original post can be found here.

Obama’s plan is to be funded at least in part by:

• Repealing Bush’s tax breaks for the wealthy
• Enacting a windfall profits tax on the oil company’s that are quarter-after-quarter literally making world record profits
• Raising taxes for families with income over $600,000 (approximately—source)
• Increase capital gains tax rates to 20 percent for those earning more than $200,000, $250,000 for married couples (no one expects this to bring in much revenue in the immediate future)
• Phased withdrawal from Iraq

Your argument of $50 billion vs. $700 billion is misguided.  The $700 billion package is an effort to try to stop the financial sector crisis from bringing down the entire economy, and was not George Bush’s plan.  Barack Obama’s $50 billion plan is divided evenly between a State Growth Fund to support state health, education, housing, health, etc programs and prevent increases in property taxes; and a jobs and growth fund to aid infrastructure projects and prevent job loss.  The $700 billion package exists whether Obama’s $50 billion package exists or not, and Bush, McCain, and Obama all supported the $700 billion bill.

“His tax cuts are good for the everyday American, but he can easily say that because the occupants of the $250,000 and up tax brackets pay about 80% off all the income taxes already.”

To be more precise: in 2004 the 25% of the population with the highest earnings paid 84% of the income and at the end of 2001 10% of the population owned 71% of the wealth.  That is why we have a progressive income tax system.  Even paying a higher tax rate, the wealthy keep a much larger amount of money than the poor who are paying a lower rate.

You state in a very general way that you are against all of the regulation that Obama wants to put on the mortgage companies.  I read that as you are against certain elements rather than that you are literally against all regulation.  I find it hard to believe that anyone would still espouse a position in support of predatory lenders, and will not assume that that is your position.  It is hard to go much farther on this without more detail about what you object to.

As to your statement that the subprime mortgage crisis is not solely the bank’s fault, I can cede to you that many of these people could have avoided getting themselves into the mess they are in had they been more savvy.  The same could be said of the victims of con-men.  The parallels here are nearly direct.  Subprime mortgages are called subprime because the lenders know that it is unlikely that they will be paid back.  Even if it was a crime to get yourself into bad financial straights, that would leave each mortgage holder responsible for one crime.  The financial institutions that defrauded these people are responsible for thousands.

A subprime loan is categorized as a subprime loan based on the financial and credit profile of the consumers to which they are marketed.  In other words subprime loans are marketed to those that the lending agency thinks are likely to be unable to pay.  By your own logic these are the people that are least likely to understand credit.  There is a reason why this is also known as predatory lending.

I think it is true that good credit is not hard to achieve when you come from a solid financial foundation to start with, but not everyone is fortunate enough to be in that situation.

I don’t find anything at all ridiculous about making a standard tax return simple enough to do in 5 minutes.  He isn’t saying that if you want to hire an accountant to do your taxes for you or spend a lot of time and claim individual deductions on your own that you can’t.  A lot of people don’t have the time and resources to hire an accountant or pore through the tax code trying to find every possible deduction they could be making.  For those people the standard deductions will probably save them money.  No matter what you do on the bottom end of the tax scale you aren’t going to hugely effect the amount of overall tax revenue the country receives.

His 10% Mortgage Interest Tax Credit is universal.  This means it can be applied to homeowners that do not itemize on their tax returns.  This means approximately 10 million people who are not receiving the credit now will.

“Reform Social Security: John McCain will fight to save the future of Social Security and believes that we may meet our obligations to the retirees of today and the future without raising taxes. John McCain supports supplementing the current Social Security system with personal accounts—but not as a substitute for addressing benefit promises that cannot be kept. John McCain will reach across the aisle, but if the Democrats do not act, he will. No problem is in more need of honesty than the looming financial challenges of entitlement programs. Americans have the right to know the truth and John McCain will not leave office without fixing the problems that threatens our future prosperity and power. ”

This is as close to a statement on Social Security policy as I could find on the McCain website so I’m not sure what his policy really entails, but given the current financial sector crisis, the idea that investing your retirement funds would have been a smart choice seems a bit off.

The embryonic stem cells used in research are created in fertility clinics for the purpose of fertility treatments.  Not all embryos can be used for treatment and many are discarded.  I have never been able to understand why it would be the argument that it is superior to throw away these tiny clusters of cells (that were never going to develop into a human being anyway), instead of than using them to try to improve actual living people’s lives.  Whether you are anti-abortion or pro-choice this doesn’t seem like an issue that should be controversial.

I don’t know about you, but I never managed to find a job in college that would pay me $40/hour.  How is getting a job better than doing 100 hours of public service to receive a $4,000 credit for school?  Obama’s plan benefits the community, thee student, and the future of the workforce and economy all at the same time.

As for Obama’s policy on family farms, how is the tax code to distinguish from the “family farms” and the agricorps if not by overall income?  It may be the case that some who have started off as family farms have done well enough that they can bear the higher tax bracket.  Having grown up on a farm it is certainly not my experience that most farms are incorporated or large.  Regardless, Obama is not anti-farm, if anything he is just not giving large farms preferential treatment

I won’t argue with you on education.  I think you are likely right on this issue, but it is kind of a non-sequitur, as McCain doesn’t state any position on this issue either.

Regarding gun control, Obama supports a permanent reinstatement of the assault weapons ban, he is opposed to the confiscation of guns from private citizens.  The basic difference between he and McCain is that McCain supports the repeal of the assault weapons ban.  Please have a look at the definition of the weapons that would be banned and consider whether civilians really need to have these types of weapons.

Tighter control of mentally unstable people who go shoot up schools is great, but the problem is that they’ve already gone and shot up schools.  I’m not sure that we are all that lax on people once they go shoot up schools.  Perhaps I am unclear as to exactly what you are trying to propose in this regard, and how it is related with not wanting gun control.

Bill Ayers’ terrorist activities took place 40 years ago when Obama was 8.  They are not close and Obama has publicly denounced Ayer’s radical actions from the 1960’s.  McCain was in the room when Marylin Shannon praised domestic terrorist Shelley Shannon (no relation) at a conference of the Oregon Citizen’s Alliance in the early 90’s.  In fact he spoke right after her and never disavowed her comments.  Shelley Shannon is an abortion doctor shooter, and Marylin Shannon was a McCain delegate at this years convention!  By the Ayer’s standard according to the McCain campaign; McCain is a supporter of domestic terrorists.  I think you can agree that the notion is as ridiculous in the case of McCain as it is in the case of Obama.

Finally on the bailout issue, I think we’ve run this into the ground a little bit, but this bailout of the financial industry harkens back to a bailout during the 80’s of the Savings and Loan Industry.  McCain was one of the 5 Senators implicated in the Keating 5 scandal.  In fact McCain was the only one of the five with close social and personal ties to Keating, and in 1989 Phoenix New Times writer Tom Fitzpatrick opined that McCain was the “most reprehensible” of the five senators.  There is no dispute about this and it is a matter of congressional record.  If you aren’t familiar with it please go look it up.