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To: koan who wrote (47417)	7/1/2013 7:01:13 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 85487

Gay man gets 40-year sentence for molesting boy he adopted from Russia *Warning: The following story may be disturbing and offensive to some readers. Reader discretion is advised.* UPDATE: The Australian Broadcasting Corporation published an article praising the gay adoption by Mark Newton in 2010. I have posted the full text in this post and saved off a PDF. The article has since been pulled. The Sydney Morning Herald reports on the latest example of gay adoption gone awry – this time from Australia. (H/T Mysterious S.) Excerpt: Standing before an American court convicted of the most heinous of child sex crimes, the double lives of Australian citizen Mark J. Newton and his long-term boyfriend Peter Truong were laid bare. [...]Moments later Newton was sentenced to 40 years in prison for sexually abusing the boy he and Truong, 36 from Queensland, had ‘‘adopted’’ after paying a Russian woman $8000 to be their surrogate in 2005. Police believe the pair had adopted the boy ‘‘for the sole purpose of exploitation’’. The abuse began just days after his birth and over six years the couple travelled the world, offering him up for sex with at least eight men, recording the abuse and uploading the footage to an international syndicate known as the Boy Lovers Network. [...]Evidence before the court revealed the abuse began before the couple returned to Australia. One video is said to show Newton performing a sex act on the boy when he was less than two weeks old. Judge Barker said the pair brainwashed the child to believe the sexual abuse was normal. Newton was also said to have trained the boy to deny any inappropriate behaviour if he was ever questioned by authorities. Newton and Truong came to the attention of police in August 2011 after their connections to three men arrested over the possession of child exploitation material came to light. The couple had visited the three men in the US, New Zealand and Germany with their son. [...]Newton and Truong claimed they were being targeted because they were homosexual. This story comes on the heels of the new Labour Party leader Kevin Rudd’s promise to legalize gay marriage. Related posts: Washington Examiner: Duke University official offered his 5-year-old adopted son for sex on the Internet UK Telegraph: Adopted boy’s complaints about his gay guardians were ignored by social workers Associated Press: Homosexual Penn State University coach who sexually abused boys Sky News: Head of a gay youth organization was running a child sex ring Sun News: Gay man kidnapped teen, chained him up and raped him multiple times over several days Jewish World Review: Jesse Dirkhising dies of suffocation after being tortured and raped San Francisco gay activist arrested for possession of child p@rnography winteryknight.wordpress.com

To: koan who wrote (47417)

7/1/2013 7:01:23 PM

From: Sdgla

1 Recommendation

Recommended By
TimF

Respond to of 85487

The Facts On Tax Rates: Who Pays What

Harry Jacobson, Contributor

The current discussion led by President Obama that top earners are not paying “their fair share” of taxes is not supported by the facts. His claim could result from an unfortunate reliance on anecdotal information or (as is more likely) a political strategy to gain support for tax increases from an unwitting public and media.So what is rhetoric and what is fact? The most common way this issue is presented by the president and his supporters is that millionaires and billionaires don’t pay as much in taxes as their secretaries. To quote directly from the recent State of the Union address, “Now you can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.” Most Americans should know (but unfortunately do not) that millionaires and billionaires pay a whopping amount in federal taxes and disproportionately much more than their secretaries.

Tax Rates, Tax Revenues And The GDP
Harry Jacobson

The Obama Tax Plan: Who's In The Crosshairs?
Roberton WilliamsContributor

Let’s look at the numbers. Using data from the Internal Revenue Service in 2009, the top 1% of earners, including individuals with incomes of $343,927 or greater, represented 16.9% of all income and paid 36.7% of all federal taxes. Their average tax rate was 24.01%. The top 0.1% who had incomes of $1,432,890 or greater represented 7.8% of all income and paid 17.11% of all taxes. Their average rate was 24.3%. If we assume that a secretary’s adjusted gross income falls between $32,396 and $66,193 in 2009, the average tax rate for that income group (which represents individuals in the top 25%-50% of all earners) was 5.56%. (The entire group of earners between the top 25%-top 50% earned 20.7% of all income and paid 11.0% of all Federal income taxes.)
If we take a closer look at the top 0.1% of earners, their average adjusted gross income in 2009 was $4.4 million and their average tax bill was $1.07 million. Included in this group were 137,982 tax returns. Their total tax bill was $147.6 billion. Several sources indicate that the average income range for Secretary III’s and Administrative Assistants is between $38,000 and $43,000, and that there are 4.3 million secretaries and administrative assistants in the U.S. (www.bis.gov). Using the average 5.6% tax rate for the tax payors in the top 25%-50% of earners, each secretary on the average pays between $2,128 and $2,408 in taxes.

So what do the facts tell us? First, the average tax payor in the top 0.1% of all earners (the group which includes the vast majority of millionaires and billionaires) pays a tax rate over four (4) times that of an average secretary. Second, the average tax payor in the top 0.1% of all earners pays as much in taxes as 444 secretaries (the income of these top 0.1% earners is about 102 times the income of the average secretary). Third, if one raised the tax rate paid by these 137,982 tax payors to 30% (as is being proposed in the so-called Buffet rule), it would take over 43 years of collecting this additional tax revenue to just equal the Federal budget deficit for one year, 2011. (We have a huge spending problem.)

In no way is my presentation of the above data meant to lessen the status and importance of secretaries and administrative assistants (nor is it intended to make a judgment about the appropriateness of income levels). Indeed, my professional life, and I venture to say the professional lives of almost all of those individuals in the top 0.1% of earners, has been blessed and made immeasurably more successful because of the secretarial and administrative support we were fortunate to have. The one and only reason for this factual essay is to make the data available for all to assess and to understand that the popular claim that the wealthy do not pay as much in taxes as do their secretaries is totally absurd.

This country has serious challenges: a government which spends well beyond its means, an education system that is expensive and doesn’t fully prepare our young people for competitive and financially rewarding careers, an energy policy that puts our country in jeopardy vis a vis other world powers, a healthcare system that is too expensive for the health outcomes it delivers, a regulatory and tax environment that restrains economic growth, and the list goes on. Let’s not spend another minute on the debate over tax rates and commit ourselves to address these challenges. Doing so successfully is the key to a better and economically stronger nation.

To: koan who wrote (47417)	7/1/2013 7:33:05 PM
From: Sdgla	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

Who Pays Taxes in America? April 4, 2012 02:47 PM \| Click Here for the 2013 Edition of this Report Read the PDF of this report. It’s often claimed that the richest Americans pay a disproportionate share of taxes while those in the bottom half pay nothing. These claims ignore the many taxes that most Americans are subject to — federal payroll taxes, federal excise taxes, state and local taxes — and focus instead on just one tax, the federal personal income tax. The other taxes are mostly regressive, meaning they take a larger share of income from a poor or middle-income family than they take from a rich family. [1] Many Americans do not have enough income to owe federal personal income taxes, but do pay these other taxes. The federal personal income tax is a progressive tax, and the combination of this tax with the other (mostly regressive) taxes results in a tax system that is, overall, just barely progressive. Total tax obligations are, on average, fairly proportional to income. This table illustrates the share of total taxes (all federal, state and local taxes) paid by Americans in different income groups in 2011. • The share of total taxes paid by each income group is similar to that group’s share of total income. • The share of total taxes paid by the richest one percent (21.6 percent) is almost identical to that group’s share of total income (21.0 percent). • The total effective tax rate for the richest one percent (29.0 percent) is only about four percentage points higher than the total effective tax rate for the middle fifth of taxpayers (25.2 percent). [2] • The share of total taxes paid by the poorest fifth of Americans (2.1 percent) is only slightly less than this group’s share of total income (3.4 percent). Virtually every person in America pays some type of tax. Everyone who works pays federal payroll taxes. Everyone who buys gasoline pays federal and state gas taxes. People who shop in stores pay the sales taxes that most state and local governments impose. State and local property taxes affect everyone who owns or rents a home. (Even renters pay property taxes because landlords pass some of the tax on to them in the form of higher rents). Most states also have income taxes, most of which are not particularly progressive. Why the Federal Personal Income Tax Is Progressive We need the federal personal income tax to be progressive to offset the regressive impacts of these other taxes. For example, the federal personal income tax provides refundable tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, which can reduce or eliminate personal income tax liability and even result in negative personal income tax liability, meaning families receive a check from the IRS. These tax credits are only available to taxpayers who work, and who therefore pay federal payroll taxes, not to mention the other taxes that disproportionately affect low- and middle-income Americans. In other words, the parts of the federal personal income tax that seem like a boon to the poor are justified because they offset some of the other taxes that poor and middle-income families must pay. As these figures illustrate, America’s tax system as a whole is just barely progressive. [1] For a state-by-state break down of the distribution of state and local taxes, see Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Who Pays: A Distributional Analysis of the Tax System in All 50 States, November 2009.http://www.itepnet.org/whopays.htm [2] There are some high-income individuals who have effective federal tax rates that are much lower than average for their income group. See Citizens for Tax Justice, “How to Implement the Buffett Rule,” October 19, 2011. ctj.org