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I couldn't agree with you more OverMyHead. There is one specific instance in my life where I just couldn't believe some of the BS gov't programs out there. I was working as carpenter for a general contractor, but for his tax and insurance reasons had all his employees as sub contractors. We had our own contractors liability insurance and "paid" all our own taxes, no health or other benefits. I have to admit that after some of my own generous write offs, I made around $28,000 per year, I ended up paying $2500 per year in state and federal taxes. However, there was a more experienced co worker of mine who made about twice as much as I did. He knocked a girl up and because he had a kid, recieved free health insurance from the state of WI. Also, he would have enough bs write offs to get his income around 0 so he would qualify for food stamps. On top of all of that he had a pretty bad drug and alcohol problem, which pissed me off the most. He could afford $600 to sometimes probably $1000 per month in drugs and booze but not food or his own insurance. So basicaly what the state is telling me to do, is be irresponsible and don't take care of my own issues because in the long run I will come out ahead by letting them take care of me.

drtybrdy9 wrote: I couldn't agree with you more OverMyHead. There is one specific instance in my life where I just couldn't believe some of the BS gov't programs out there. I was working as carpenter for a general contractor, but for his tax and insurance reasons had all his employees as sub contractors. We had our own contractors liability insurance and "paid" all our own taxes, no health or other benefits. I have to admit that after some of my own generous write offs, I made around $28,000 per year, I ended up paying $2500 per year in state and federal taxes. However, there was a more experienced co worker of mine who made about twice as much as I did. He knocked a girl up and because he had a kid, recieved free health insurance from the state of WI. Also, he would have enough bs write offs to get his income around 0 so he would qualify for food stamps. On top of all of that he had a pretty bad drug and alcohol problem, which pissed me off the most. He could afford $600 to sometimes probably $1000 per month in drugs and booze but not food or his own insurance. So basicaly what the state is telling me to do, is be irresponsible and don't take care of my own issues because in the long run I will come out ahead by letting them take care of me.

I think your talking about Badgercare there are co-pays and premiums for Badgercare. There is one program that is free for qualifying individuals but that didn't start until 2009. So I'm not sure how he would get healthcare for free? Now, if your co-worker was spending all that money on drugs and some how manipulating his tax writeoffs to get food stamps then that is illegal and he should be reported. Also, you are only elegible for Badgercare up to 300% the povertly level which today is $52,800 for a family of three. Not a lot of money.


"The BadgerCare program is a health insurance program that provides health coverage to low-income, uninsured families with children under the age of 19 who are not eligible for Medicaid and who are uninsured."

Well said Joe.

phospher wrote: Remeber, Reagan raised taxes.

Reagan raised taxes?

phospher wrote: But I will say, the republican party is nothing like it was back in the 80's nor do they have anything in common with the republican Abe Lincoln.

I agree, hence my comment earlier on getting back to conservative roots.

Before you condemn all those on Fox you really need to watch MSNBC.
Mattews, Shultz, Oberman, and Maddow are the angriest, most opinionated, self indulging group on TV.

Hey Seb, do you guys have these discussions down there? lol

Joe (JoeInNY), great points! It's good to see that their can be level headed discussion once you take away a lot of the nonsense. I also agree their is a lot of conservative sensationalism and nonsense, just as their is a lot of liberal sensationalism and nonsense. Your right too, that there is way to much money invested in trying to impact change on our legislative process and that both liberal and conservative media personalities make money off their sensationalism, Bruce (Riley) provides some fine examples.

As Hansel pointed out, Campaign finance control, and as I mentioned term limits would go along way to making the lobbiest legitimate and getting a lot of the money out of the process. You are absolutely correct, the way Haliburton milked the system, wasting taxpayer money was criminal, those are the kinds of things that need to be fixed. But the "lever" to pull to fix it should not be taxation.

Speaking of taxes, I don't think there is anyone on this site who wants to pay more taxes (maybe I am way out on a limb here and could be wrong). It's well documented who pays the taxes in this country, its the people who make the most money which means that somewhere around 40 to 50% of the people pay next to nothing in taxes. I have a hard time getting my head around this as being fair. Maybe it goes back to my simpleton Iowan upbringing, "did you bring candy for everyone?" then you should keep it to yourself. What I am trying to say, is if you have a job, you should pay taxes and my opinion is that everyone should pay close to the same amount. I am okay with those that make more paying more taxes, but really does it have to be such a wide variance? I am a huge proponent of a "mostly" flat tax. The only way it would work, as Joe points out, is if you remove the loopholes, make it impossible for the really rich to find ways to hide the money. Perhaps if the burden wasn't so high on these very wealthy people, the tendency to want to hide the money would decrease.

For me the system isn't working, I pay very high taxes and my government has failed me. In my opinion they have wasted all the money I have given them. I can't send my kids to the government provided schools in my area because the education they provide is horrible, furthermore they are not safe. In a sense, I have to pay "double tax" to send my kids to a private school. I am blessed because I have applied my talents and have worked hard to secure a position that affords me this luxury but by no means am I wealthy.

As Dave (OverMyHead) said, I would rather work hard for myself and then share with the charities I choose, and also like Dave I get great satisfaction from doing that. I really get upset when I drive through my downtown and see lots of people hanging out on the streets, its obvious they don't have jobs. But why not, why are they not out looking for work, or better yet coming up with something they can do on there own. I have been there, when I was laid off, my job was finding a job but I made money doing work for neighbors cutting their grass, raking leaves. Thank God that I found a job soon, but I knew I needed money, so I did work, I have a Masters degree and I am out mowing grass to be able to pay my electric bill and mortgage. Why don't the people in the streets do this? No opportunity? Make your own.

Wow really rambling on here. People need to take some more accountability for making their own situations better. We the "common folk" need to insist that our elected officials do the things we want, I think that any of us that are reasonable (and I count all of the people on this site as reasonable) can and have agreed that term limits and campaign finance limits need to be put in place. I think we all can also agree that personally, individually none of us want to pay more taxes (but we all want to buy more stuff for out boats). Politicians have made a lot of bad/wrong decisions in the past and some good ones too, we all need to be more tolerant of the bad decision learn from them and elect people that are of the same opinions. If they don't we need to throw them out and find someone who will.

Once you wipe away all the rhetoric, there is way more in common then not...

You will note I did not say anything about using taxes as lever, or taxes in general. My problem with the current big money plays is that they use taxes and small government arguements to call for less regulation, and while regulation can also be taken too far we know exactly what happens without it .. the great depression and the great recession. And no regulation doesnt mean they are coming to get your guns, but if they make you think it does they just got another 20 percent of the electorate to vote against their own interests. I think we can all agree that the MSNBC commentators are leftys, but to equate them with fox who now employs most of the republican front runners for the next election and has ties at the highest level to the republican party is not getting the point. Fox continually claims to be fair and balanced not what they clearly are which is promoting a view point. That is what is dangerous and right out of "1984", beyond that they go out of thier way to paint the "lamestream" media as evil and trying to ruin the world.. my point is you need to listen to both sides and understand thier agenda and not let one tell you that you are smarter because you don't let them evil lefties fool you.

It is obvious to me that half the country are arent hard working genuises and other half evil morons frankly because most people have too much going on in thier own lives to find time to be evil morons. It is therefore obvious to me that neither party is worth a damn.

If someone tells you there are easy solutions to taxes, dont believe them.. if you want personal responsibilty so bad get off your butt and run for office

phospher wrote: Reagan raised taxes? Yes, look at the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982.

Wait a minute. I'm confused. First you're saying Reagan raised taxes, then you're pointing to a bill that Congress put in to place. I could have swore Reagan was our President, not a Congressman, when that bill was signed into law.

By the way, an few interesting things to note about the bill...

President of the United States Ronald Reagan agreed to the tax hikes on the promise from Congress of a $3 reduction in spending for every $1 increase in taxes.

IOW, he didn't like it, but was willing to compromise on what Congress was proposing as long as they reduced their spending.

The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982[1] was a United States federal law that rescinded some of the effects of the Kemp-Roth Act passed the year before.

*Note: The Kemp-Roth act was full of tax cuts. Why would Congress push to rescind the previous act that was a reduction in taxes just one year prior?

One week after TEFRA was signed, H.R. 6863 - the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 1982 which Ronald Reagan claimed would "bust the budget" [4] was passed by both houses of Congress over his veto[5].

Over his veto? Now, why is it Reagan wouldn't want this one passed?

Here's a pretty good link showing a table of the bottom and top tax brackets.


I think the table shows pretty clearly when taxes were increased or decreased.

Okie, furthermore...


According to Josh Green, writing for Washington Monthly, Reagan’s 1982 tax hike raised $100 billion over three years, which at the time was the biggest tax increase since World War II. He also raised the tax on gasoline that year, as Sen. Simpson noted, and then raised taxes overall again in 1984 — the year he was reelected — by $50 billion over three years, primarily by rewriting the code to close business loopholes. In his second term, Reagan’s historic Tax Reform Act of 1986 increased taxes on corporations by $120 billion over five years — the largest corporate tax increase in history.


src: http://www.pensitoreview.com/2010/07/02/reagan-raised-taxes-7-times/

If it weren't for Fox you would never hear any good about Republicans. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, are all pro democrat stations. So fair & balanced can mean showing there is another side. If they didn't have to spend so much time defending the republicans against the propoganda from the other channels you would see they are fair. The other cable channels gave jobs to all the helpers that Obama ignored.



I don't take everything on Fox as Gospel and no one should. I only usually watch Brett Baer, and listen to Megyn Kelly or Martha MaCallum which are news programs. ( I do know this is backwards as Megyn & Martha are better to look at)

People rant about Fox because they have the viewers.


Getting to the politics, Democrats will give everyone what they want and then just charge for it.

The Republicans give what you need, and try to not charge as much and as often.

When either party is in power we suffer, Now the houses are pretty evenly split and one of two things can happen. They can work together and we all enefit or fight and get nothing done at all. Hopefully the newbies and Tea partiers will keep a watchful eye on things and we actually see progress.

At work we now alternate 1 week fox news, 1 week of cnn to watch during lunch. I would like to challange all of you to a 1/2 hour per day of watching the news at lunch alternating fox/cnn for a month then till me what news channel you would watch by choice. Just try it make up your own mind and let me know.

Waterdog wrote: At work we now alternate 1 week fox news, 1 week of cnn to watch during lunch. I would like to challange all of you to a 1/2 hour per day of watching the news at lunch alternating fox/cnn for a month then till me what news channel you would watch by choice. Just try it make up your own mind and let me know.

This is a good idea but I think that a better comparison would be to watch Fox and MSNBC at night once all the talking heads come on. I'm sure you think CNN is liberal but they are actually much more centered when compared with MSNBC or FoxNews. I think that for the most part that CNN and Fox both actually report somewhat news during the day... Though I can't say I've watched fox during the day in a while. Nor CNN for that matter.

OverMyHead wrote: Followed and enjoyed the dialog all day but no time to respond. I was impressed by the number of thought out long responses

Same here.