McCain-Obama Race Leaves No Candidate for Mainstream Voters or the Socially-Conscious Entrepreneurial Class

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Look: We OWE - We OWE so off the Cash upper 2% of the American people that steal from from the poor and give to the rich we GO. Look we Owe China Trillion's of dollars and Iraq has a 80 billion dollar surplus and we are Policeing them for free at our expense! WHY?
WAKE UP AMERICA! Bonnie you must be making over that 250K mark or you wouldn't think it is mainstream America. I'm not sure where you are from but I could live very good if I was making 200K a year. If I was making that much cheese then I would not mind paying another 15K in Social Security taxes that the Baby Boomers are going to wipe out at our current tax rate. I'm not sure if you took Economic's 101 but I took it and if you pay more than you take in then eventually you spend all that is in that account.
They aughta fire you making such a Ludicrous statement but I hope they don't because we need dumb$^% Journalist to let other people just like you see how stupid they are as well.
OBAMA&Biden 08

Concerned Citizen:Palin's Husband is a Separatist of TN 9:00AM September 05, 2008

If you haven't seen the movie, "Idiocracy", check it out and watch it. It's gross, vulgar, and childish, but VISIONARY when it comes to electing someone like Barack. The movie shows what the country could become if left to leaders the likes of Obama and to people with the profiles of his supporters.
Thinking people realize that, despite being articulate, he has yet to say anything. He speaks in generalities, and makes conceptual statements about what he's going to fix, but is without a plan. Some of the things he says are so grossly false, you have to believe he's just reading what people put in front of him, totally lacking the intelligence to catch on the the errors himself.
College students, with very little understanding of real life, could be the undoing of this country in this election. This is the price we pay for allowing the voting age to be lowered to 18 in an effort to ease our national conscience about drafting kids too young to vote, and sending them to Vietnam. Maybe we could do a better job preparing them to vote before the country goes too far under.
Our one hope for salvation is that the voting statistics are not quite what they appear. Last fall, the GOP stated that Hillary or Obama would be the easiest to defeat in a general election. In the same message, they mentioned that everyone would be able to vote in the primaries this time, and you didn't have to vote your party. I personally know of Republicans who voted for Obama or Hillary in the Primary, yet the pollsters nor the media seem to be aware of that tactic. Let's hope that millions of others did the same, and that those votes cast for Obama in the primaries will actually go to McCain in the General Election. Wouldn't that be a fantastic October Surprise!

Jacob Hall of AL 6:14PM May 15, 2008

The current payroll tax (i.e. Social Security tax) is the most regressive of taxes possible.
For you on the right, that means that the less you make or earn, the higher the percentage of your income goes to that tax.
So what the author of this column is saying, is that if you make more than $200,000 then you should pay a smaller percentage of your income in taxes. Robin Hood in reverse.
from http://www.retiredamericans.org/ht/display/ArticleDetails/i/1433/pid/324
What is the Social Security Tax Cap?
The Social Security payroll tax is 12.4 percent of wages - paid equally by the employer and the employee (6.2 percent each). The federal government currently imposes a $90,000 "cap" on taxable salary under Social Security. So President Bush - whose annual salary is $400,000 - will stop paying all his Social Security taxes on or around March 24, while American workers earning less than $90,000 will pay Social Security taxes all year long.
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It is beyond time to get rid of this tax cap and make those making more money pay their fair share. I don't mind paying my own taxes, but I take offense at paying those for those who make more money than I do.
It takes money to build roads and bridges.
It takes money to maintain these.
It takes money to pay for police and fire departments and schools.
Nothing is free.
We have taxes for a reason and it is about time that those at the top of the economic ladder who are the only one who have really gotten a raise since 1972, help by paying their share of the maintenance costs for this country.
Under the current cap, a person making $45,000 a year pays 6.2% in social security taxes. But a person making $200,000 pays only 2.79% in social security taxes.
A person making $300,000 pays only 1.86%. A person making $500,000 pays only 1.11%, and a person that makes $1,000,000 pays a mere 0.56% and that is after rounding up.
Do you think that it is fair that the school teacher that makes $45,000 a year should pay a higher percentage of her income in taxes than an attorney making $250,000 a year? Is that fair?
Maybe if that attorney paid his or her fair share of the burden, we could afford to pay that teacher better than $45,000.
Obama is right about this. That tax cap needs to go. In fact, it should be reversed. If you make less that $90,000, you should not have to pay social security.

Amy of TX 3:26PM May 13, 2008

Remember when people came to America en masse with nothing on their backs and no money in their pockets because all they wanted was the opportunity to earn a living for themselves and better their lives?
Sometimes I wish the US government would collapse. Then people would have no more handouts and would have to provide for themselves. The truly resourceful and intelligent will always find ways to make the most of their opportunities and carve out their little piece. I'm pretty sure they have a name in today's society...oh yeah, RICH.

America the Beautiful of CA 2:38PM May 13, 2008

Hey Daniel David, instead of being so bitter about the income of movies stars and the guy who had the BRILLIANT idea of Girls of Gone Wild, go out and find a way to tap into these revenue streams and make some of that money your own. Do you have any idea the time, talent, dedication, and hard work it takes to get to that point? The CEO of Home Depot competed against the all the other executives with 20+ years of management experience and Harvard Business School degrees and was chosen as the best fit for that job. If they wanted some schmuck middle manager to run the multi-billion dollar corporation for $200k, I'm sure they would give you a call. But no, he EARNED that job and they paid him what the shareholders felt was a compensatory amount, since he helps to drive BILLIONS in additional revenue growth a year through his strategic management of the company. So he didn't do a good job; I blame that on the selection, not the salary.
You want to talk about waking up and thinking? Think about this...the "low-tax crowd" would not be such an issue, ESPECIALLY in sheer macroeconomic terms (since you so kindly referred to Freakonomics, which you obviously didn't understand), IF GOVERNMENT DIDN'T SPEND SO MUCH. Government spending in this nation was not created as a panacea for every economic hardship the country encounters. Government spending is necessary for two things: national security and effective government operation, and the public good. In simple economic terms, spending on the public good should be only that which entails a benefit for the masses (such as park systems, libraries, primary education) or that which will create incentives for additional economic growth in this country. Not your precious healthcare. You want better healthcare? Earn more money. Or else save the money you do make, and stop spending it on Playstations and cable TV. And use your spare time trying to start an entrepreneurial venture to make some additional income, not watching wrestling.
By the way, your arguments make no sense and completely defeat their own purposes. You are entirely correct, revenues (and incomes of stars,CEOs, etc) do not come from thin air...they come from sales or products and services. How about that...the definition of capitalism...so doesn't that mean that ultimately the power is in the hands of the consumer? If $12-$15 for a movie ticket (as it is in NYC) in order to cover the $20M payday for Tom Cruise is what you deem to be too much, then DO NOT GO SEE IT! Instead, spend $5 at your local independent theater, or better yet watch free films on YouTube! If everyone felt that Tom Cruise movies weren't worth it and cheaper alternatives were better entertainment, you'd see the studios stop spending the money on the films, and they wouldn't need to make as much to cover costs, so the theaters would charge less, and you wouldn't pay as much for that ticket. Pretty simple, huh?
What is that called??? Oh yes, personal responsibility. Ask your typical American what that means...

Banker of NY 2:29PM May 13, 2008

Ed has a theme that is often repeated. Those who have earnings have a "right" to keep most or even all the fruit, because their earning of this money was always preceded by hard work. Sounds fine. Easy to accept on face. The presumption is the "harder" the work, the richer one gets.
I believe this simplification of taxes ignores something though. Massive earnings in millions or billions do not come from thin air. They come via money that somebody else (or millions of them) paid for some product or service, sometimes unnecessary ones at that, money that often represents merely being "first" with something or somehow cornering a market. A couple of examples coming to mind are the guy who started "Girls Gone Wild" and the guy who started Red Bull caffiene "energy" drink. They both made very large fortunes and hardly need tax cuts for "job creation". Others include hedge fund managers wealthy beyond imagination from short-selling and that A-list of $20 million-a-picture movie stars.
Yet another is the recent CEO of Home Depot paid hundreds of millions to do a poor job and then quit.
When taxes are levied at percentages sliding up to very high on earnings sliding up to astronomical, two things happen. Government gets funded and the board members of Home Depot for instance are not pressured to pay a mediocre guy hundreds of millions---knowing say 75% of it is going to income tax. And plenty of "good enough" stars are happy to be in movies for just $1 million, not twenty.
We knew this and it worked pretty well for decades before we "got stupid" beginning with Ronald Reagan. Some economists will say no, that we somehow need to return to the gilded era. I say tax until the American national debt is zero, read Freakonomics 3 or 4 times, and then let's talk again. The low-tax crowd sold us a lemon, and us media-sedated sheep need to WAKE UP AND THINK.

Daniel David of 11:50AM May 12, 2008

You can boil down every domestic Democrat issue to the following:
"You have problems, they have more money/property. Vote for us and we'll take their money/property and give it to you".
It's immoral. We need to get rid of the income tax and find another way.

Ed Larkin of TN 1:07PM May 10, 2008

Perhaps Bonnie, if you had some decent, affordable healthcare you'd be able to come up with a couple a hundred dollars to help the starving people of the US.

ILikeCheese of PA 5:47PM May 09, 2008

The need to get food on the table, put gas in the car and have decent healthcare for the many, far outweighs the needs of the Entrepreneurs to keep their taxes low. All I read into this is the same selfish right wing balony that got us into this mess in the first place. It is the ME attitude - not the WE attitude. Sorry you poor Entrepreneurs, but Barack Obama is the People's Choice.

gwennie of PA 5:39PM May 09, 2008

REALITY is that the payers of income and estate taxes have borrowed more than $2,000,000,000,000.00 from the payers of payroll tax (ie., from the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds---the surpluses of those programs). REALITY also is that the payers of income and estate taxes have also borrowed more than $7,000,000,000,000.00 other dollars from elsewhere, including from such places as China and Saudi Arabia.
The Bush party era of running up national debt for tax cuts that never should have been authorized and for wars that no one ever plans to pay for is about over.
Obama is being realistic and truthful, for a change. Most people know it, too.

Daniel David of NM 3:49PM May 09, 2008