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

To: TimF who wrote (362652)	12/13/2007 3:46:23 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571714

Unless they are getting rich from fraud or theft or from government advantages that enable them to rent seek they are getting rich to the benefit for the non-rich, and in many cases to the benefit of the poor. Is it fraud to manipulate the gov't in ways that they pass legislation which benefits your industry and your business? Is it fraud when the gov't passes pork that benefits your business.....like the bridge to no where? Is it fraud to convince the gov't to cut your taxes under the dubious theory that cutting the taxes of the rich stimulates the economy? Maybe not fraud but its using your power and wealth to maximize that power and wealth at the expense of the poor. So one of their own, FDR, came into power and he made sure a little more of the wealth got down to the lower classes. Yeah FDR's policies really helped the poor. Prosecute people for discounting (after all poor people don't benefit from low prices right?) burn agricultural products (after all poor people don't have to eat), impose more regulations, taxes, and restrictions on entities that create jobs (the poor don't need jobs right?) Yeah, the rich got nervous. Their worst nightmare....the communist party.....was gaining strength with the American working class. If they didn't want to end up on the guillotine, they had to do a little bit more sharing. However, that was over 60 years ago and it seems that lesson has been forgotten.

To: TimF who wrote (362652)	12/24/2007 7:26:27 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1571714

Editorial Alternative Tax Folly Congress has passed and President Bush is sure to sign into law a bill that will spare some 23 million Americans from having to pay the alternative minimum tax next April. Mr. Bush and the bill’s Congressional supporters are right when they say the new law will provide much-needed shelter from a tax that was never supposed to apply to this many Americans. What they fail to say is that the bill doesn’t include a way to make up for the lost revenue — $51 billion for the one-year reprieve, an amount roughly equal to the annual budgets of the Departments of Energy, Justice and Interior. To make up the shortfall, the government plans to borrow the money, which will have to be paid back later with interest, either by raising taxes or reducing government services. There’s a lot less relief than advertised in this tax relief bill. That’s at best bait and switch, or at worst gross negligence. No one disputes the need to fix the alternative minimum tax, or A.M.T. The tax is supposed to apply to tax-avoiding multimillionaires. But during the Bush years, it has increasingly failed to catch tax-avoiding titans while ensnaring people who make between $75,000 and $500,000 a year. Real relief would have lifted the alternative tax burden from wrongly afflicted taxpayers while enacting a fair way to raise the tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue that is forgone. Instead, the soon-to-become law simply shifts the burden to a later date and to other taxpayers. With Congress under Democratic leadership, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. And to their credit, lawmakers in the House passed a relief measure that would have made up the lost revenue by imposing higher taxes on private equity partners and hedge fund managers, who currently enjoy some of the lowest tax rates and biggest tax shelters in the code. But Senate Democrats were unable to pass the House measure, enfeebled by their unwillingness to impose tax increases on Wall Street contributors, their bare majority and Republicans’ filibuster threats. The result is exactly what Mr. Bush wanted: another unpaid-for tax cut and, with it, a bigger deficit and more debt. America’s middle-class and upper-middle-class taxpayers are being shielded from the alternative tax today, but they and their children will pay the cost tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Is there a leader out there who will put an end to this irresponsibility? Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company