Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SiouxPal who wrote (56808)	1/31/2006 3:03:32 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 362456

Wanted: A Wary Audience _____________________________________________________ Lead Editorial The New York Times January 31, 2006 nytimes.com When President Bush gives his State of the Union address tonight, expect to hear a renewed call for setting the administration's first-term tax cuts in concrete, combined with warnings that letting the cuts expire would retard economic growth. Nothing could be further from the truth. As proof of tax cuts' ability to spur the economy, Mr. Bush generally cites productivity growth, job creation and the rise in personal income. Productivity has indeed been stellar, and supply-siders claim that is because tax cuts have led to investment, which led to higher productivity. But business investment has been flat for five years. Meanwhile, the benefits of productivity growth have been concentrated among the wealthy. So tax cuts haven't unleashed investment, but they have contributed to inequality. Job growth during the Bush-era recovery has been worse, by far, than in any comparable economic upturn since the 1960's. It would take some 500,000 new jobs a month every month this year just to equal the second worst job-creation record in the modern era. And while working Americans are laboring harder, hourly wages and weekly salaries — the financial lifeblood of most Americans — have been flat or falling, after inflation, since the middle of 2003. That last inconvenient fact isn't likely to stop Mr. Bush from bragging about rising "real after-tax income." Besides paychecks, that much-cited statistic includes things like bonuses, stock dividends and health insurance. Dividends flow mainly to the top 5 percent of the income ladder, and health benefits, while valuable, are increasingly provided in lieu of salary. So the fact that personal income, writ large, is up "by 7 percent since I've been your president," as Mr. Bush boasted recently, isn't a measure of what is in most Americans' pockets. (Besides, a 7 percent gain is hardly worth bragging about, since the average from other comparable recoveries is 12.5 percent.) Mr. Bush bristles at the oft-repeated criticism that cutting taxes on dividends and capital gains mainly benefits the wealthy. That's odd, because the criticism is simply a statement of the obvious, given the facts: almost half of all dividends are earned by people making more than $200,000, and more than half of all capital gains are earned by people with incomes over $1 million. Of late, the president has taken to saying that cutting taxes on dividends and capital gains helps "workers in the automobile plant" and the other millions of Americans who own stock through their 401(k) plans. But in truth, when taxes on dividends and capital gains are cut, investing in a 401(k) plan becomes less attractive. That's because tax- deferred buildup in a 401(k) is a big part of its allure, but the lower the tax rate, the less valuable the deferral. Investors in 401(k)'s also lose out when wages and salaries are taxed at higher rates than investments, as they are now and as Mr. Bush wants to ensure they remain. That's because money that's withdrawn from a 401(k) is taxed like salary, not like investments. In his State of the Union speech, the president will also undoubtedly return to his promise to do something about the deficit, which he often vows to halve by 2009. His audience should remember that this claim assumes minimal spending going forward for Iraq and Afghanistan as well as a continuation of the voracious alternative minimum tax, which everyone in government knows must be reformed. This month Congress's budget agency forecast that if the tax cuts are made permanent and the alternative tax fixed, the United States will face large and growing deficits over the next decade, with red ink of between $3.5 trillion and $4 trillion over that time. Tonight is Mr. Bush's night to speak. But it's the job of all of us to be critical listeners.

To: SiouxPal who wrote (56808)	1/31/2006 3:10:10 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 362456

SOTU: A Cancer of Corruption huffingtonpost.com By Trey Ellis 01/31/2006 There is a cancer of corruption in the Republican Party. Where? The brain? The liver? The spleen? Tragically, the cancer of corruption has metastasized throughout the Bush administration and the Republican legislative majority. The cancer of corruption has spread from Bush's top contributor and Dick Cheney energy advisor Ken Lay to another Bush Ranger Jack Abramoff and the scores of GOP politicians in his pocket to accusations against former top GOP congressman Tom Delay and current top GOP senator Bill Frist to confessed crook GOP congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham to the K Street Payola Project to the young Republican turks who flooded into Iraq to staff the Coalition Provisional Authority and "misplaced" over 9 billion dollars. And that is just the beginning of the gleeful lawlessness that characterizes this regime. The Vice President's chief of staff is under indictment for lying, the President knowingly broke the law when he ordered warrantless eavesdropping and there is the little matter of the most powerful nation the world has ever known being lied into one of the most disastrous and pointless wars in history. Speaking of oil, did I mention that Exxon/Mobil just posted a record-breaking $36 billion profit last year? Oilmen Bush and Cheney and the Republican Party as a whole get four times the amount of campaign contributions as the Democrats from Big Oil and Gas. If the President finally wanted to be honest with the American people tonight he would just look into the TelePrompTer and say, "My fellow Americans...I'm sorry."