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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (266540)	12/30/2005 7:41:49 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1575767

Editorial The New Year in Taxes A surprise awaits the nation's highest earners when they file their 2006 tax returns. Their taxes are going down again - whether or not Congress passes the investor tax cuts the lawmakers have been promising. On New Year's Day, two additional tax cuts will kick in, allowing people who earn upward of $200,000 a year to claim bigger write-offs for a spouse, their children and other expenses, like mortgage interest on a vacation home. The bolstered write-offs were enacted in 2001, but with a delayed start date because of their high cost: according to Congressional estimates, the new breaks will cost $27 billion over the short term, exploding to $146 billion from 2010 through 2019. By then, most of the benefits would flow to taxpayers who make more than $1 million a year. With the nation deep in debt, at war in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Congress voting last month to slash programs for health care and student loans, and with a debilitating shortfall building in Medicare - the decision by Congress to let these particular tax breaks take effect now is flabbergasting. But it is not out of character. The Bush family has a long history with this particular part of the tax code. In 1990, the first President Bush - in a move that now seems quaint in its sense of responsibility - had to raise revenue to rein in the budget deficit. He was loath to hike the top tax rate, then 31 percent. So he opted instead for a provision that limited the amount well-heeled Americans could deduct from their taxes for a spouse and dependents, and for certain expenses, like vacation home mortgages. Tax cutters in Congress, known then as supply-siders, were furious. The second President Bush has been guilty of irresponsibility and fuzzy math when it comes to taxes, but rescinding his father's reasonable legislation was not among his priorities. During his first year in office, however, he set off a tax-cutting frenzy when he proposed to give back the Clinton-era budget surplus via hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. Congress then added some cuts of its own - including a provision to revoke the limits on write-offs put in place by the elder Mr. Bush. The provision's effective date was set for Jan. 1, 2006, and, like other tax cuts from 2001, it is scheduled to expire at the end of 2010. Such "phase-ins" and "sunsets" are ploys to cram as many tax giveaways as possible into one law without overtly busting the budget. Here's where the tale turns absurd: The tax cuts of 2001, followed by those of 2002 and 2003, have busted the budget. The surplus - the original rationale for the tax cuts - is long gone, replaced by a deficit projected to reach $530 billion by 2015, if the cuts are made permanent. And yet Mr. Bush and Congress persist with tax cuts - for people who don't need the extra help and for purposes that have nothing to do with the country's obvious problems. It's a heck of a way to begin the new year. Copyright 2005The New York Times Company

To: TimF who wrote (266540)	12/30/2005 12:41:31 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575767

When you go out of your way to invite people to your country, the people have a right to believe they will be treated fairly. The Australian government didn't just allow the Lebanese to immigrate but aggressively promote the immigration?? Yes. During and after WW II, Australia experienced severe labor shortages and determined that its population was too small. Prior to WW II, only Brits were encouraged to immigrate. However, AU was too far away for many Brits to make the move. So after WWII, AU significantly loosened their immigration policies to all of Europe and to allow more people to come each year. I have a couple of German friends who have been living and working in Sydney for several years now. Unlike the US or Europe, its relatively easy to get a worker's permit in AU. Here's more discussion on the subject: "Further immigration The war had emphasized Australia's relative emptiness, and the labour shortage continued after the war. This encouraged the development of a government-sponsored immigration scheme, starting in 1948. It was initially decided that an intake of 70,000 a year, together with natural increase, would result in a 2% population increase annually, this being considered the maximum increase possible without economic strain (although later this maximum was revised). Old immigration policies were abandoned: no longer were immigrants settled on the land, and no longer was immigration only encouraged from Britain, as it was realized that the large number of displaced persons in Europe offered a ready source of immigrant labour. Numerically, the programme was very successful. In the first three decades following the war over 2 million new immigrants settled in Australia, including about one-third from Britain, which included children who were shipped from UK orphanages from the end of World War II until the late 1960s." tiscali.co.uk Even if they did I don't see how you can say the government victimized them. The government didn't require that they live in certain "special neighborhoods". I doubt the government aggressively discriminated against them for jobs. It may have failed to prevent the discrimination but that isn't the same thing. AU has never been a very open society. If you are going to make a dramatic change in your immigration policies, then you best make sure that things are changed on every level. I don't know if the gov't did that. What I do know is that immigrant groups in AU have faced significant discrimination. As late as the early 1990s, we were getting films out of AU where Anglo Saxon girls would start going out with a Spaniard, or a Gypsy or a Greek much to the consternation and disgust of her Anglo Saxon parents. Ethnic tensions between Anglo Saxon Aussies and the Lebanese are not something new. That's why PM Howard's comments that the problems weren't racially inspired is a bunch of baloney. So under the circumstances, I see the gov't to be the one at fault here. If I accept some of your statements and assumptions I can see why you blame the Australian government for helping to create the situation, but even if I did accept these statements I don't see how that means that they are the victims of the government. The government didn't attack them, the rioters did. The lesser acts of discrimination and hostility where also not for the most part committed by the government. While the governments actions are part of the chain of events that led to the circumstances in which the attacks and discrimination occurred I think someone is the victim of the actual perp, and the government isn't it. I am not surprised........apparently, you don't believe gov'ts and/or their leaders should be held accountable for their behavior or lack thereof. I do. ted

To: TimF who wrote (266540)	1/2/2006 9:10:43 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1575767

The Machete Budget By BOB HERBERT If Congress were merely useless, the country would be better off. But it's worse than useless. In the iron grip of a Republican Party that is almost slavishly devoted to the Bush administration, it's downright destructive, especially to the interests of poor and working people. Consider the budget that will soon be sent to the president for his signature. Members of the House and Senate have agreed on legislation that achieves something approaching $40 billion in savings over five years primarily by hammering the sick, the poor, the elderly and college students and their families. This is the same Congress that genuflects each time the president asks for yet another gift-wrapped tax cut for the wealthiest among us. The textbooks tell us that the U.S. is a representative democracy, but only the upper strata are truly represented. The nearly 800-page budget bill would allow states to jack up the premiums and co-payments of millions of low-income Medicaid recipients. It would also allow some Medicaid benefits to be rolled back. One of worst aspects of the Medicaid provisions is that large numbers of poor people, faced with the higher premiums and co-payments, will inevitably decide to take a pass on the health care they need. Some will die. "The Congressional Budget Office," wrote Kevin Freking of The Associated Press, "has concluded that such increases would lead many poor people to forgo health care or not to enroll in Medicaid at all - contributing to some of the $4.8 billion in Medicaid savings envisioned over the next five years." (I listened the other day to a story about a woman who had repeatedly postponed a visit to the doctor because she was broke and had no health insurance. It turned out she had breast cancer. By the time it was diagnosed, the cancer had already spread through much of her body. The prognosis for this woman is not good, and it should not be the policy of the United States government to encourage this kind of situation.) You would think that a conservative, family-values, Republican-dominated Congress would, at the very least, go to the mat on behalf of child support payments. Think again. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which has closely studied the budget agreement, noted that "its reductions in child support enforcement funding would, according to the C.B.O., mean that $2.9 billion in child support that otherwise would be collected over the next five years - and $8.4 billion that otherwise would be collected over the next 10 years - would go uncollected instead." As the center noted: "The conference agreement also includes provisions that would delay certain [Supplemental Security Income] payments for up to a year for many poor individuals with disabilities who are found eligible for S.S.I. In addition, the bill cuts federal foster care aid in a way that will make it much more difficult for states to provide federally funded foster care benefits to certain relatives who are raising children because the children's parents are unable or unfit to do so." This is ugly stuff: mean-spirited legislators hacking like wild men with machetes at the already ragged safety net. Poor children, the very sick and the disabled are among those most likely to tumble into the abyss. The largest chunk of "savings" in the budget bill would come from student aid. With the special interests driving up in 18-wheelers to haul away our tax dollars, Congress and the administration apparently felt that mugging college students would be a good way to recoup a bit of those losses. "This is the biggest cut in the history of the federal student loan program," said David Ward, who heads the American Council on Education, an umbrella group for public and private colleges. Republican leaders in Congress, working in tandem with the Bush administration on this issue, tried to throw up the usual smoke screen. As The Times reported: "Republican negotiators said virtually all the cuts in student aid would be borne by banks and other lenders, an assertion sharply disputed by Democrats and college administrators, who said that two-thirds of the savings would be at the expense of students and their families." Because of some minor, last-minute changes that have to be dealt with, the House will have one more crack at this bill before it goes to the president. It would be an opportunity for some Republican "moderates," who should be appalled at what is happening, to step up and be heard. Don't hold your breath.