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Friday, August 31, 2012

The "Opportunity Society" conjob

I heard (for as long as it took me to find something else to listen to) some reptilidrone nattering on about changing this country from one of "entitlement" to one of "opportunity. What a load of bullshit.
I haven't had a real job since 2006. Part of that is because I've been doing things that conflict with a regular schedule, part of it is due to some medical/body issues (all good, at the moment), part of is due to my ageistic decrepitude. The bulk of it is due to hiring/labor practices and the LACK of jobs.

The GOPlutocratwannabes pontificate about not wanting a country filled with "entitled" people (I think that must be the new, 300#, chain smoking--crack--booze' guzzlin', oxy poppin', 80" LED screen addicted, Cadillac CTS drivin' welfare queen*) .  I'm all for shitcanning entitlements.  I think a great place to start would be with the home mortgage tax deduction. Moving on, we could make sure that none of the leeches currently borrowing money at lower than market rates or paying for their education with Pell Grants and the like are allowed to continue bleeding the state (that's us) white.

After that we can discontinue all of the tax incentives and actual handouts to big business and, well, I think you can see where I'm goin with this.

Bottom line is that:

A.)  There are millions of credulous boobs who conflate the GOP's (or, more to the point, their deep pocketed underwriters') desire to erase most taxes NOT paid by the little people with actual, y'know, tax relief.

B.)  One man's "incentive" is another's "welfare handout". 

There, are, beyond any doubt, many thousands of people who scam the social safety network. There are, also beyond any doubt, thousands of capitalists and corporate entities (only "REAL PEOPLE" where political campaign donations are concerned, otherwise they're faceless and cannot be held to any genuine accountability for their actions) who scam the the gummint handout network.

It was revealed, a few days back, that Mittmoroni may have been in a "passive" mode at Bain--for campaign purposes--while being in an "active mode, for tax purposes. Considering the arcane and confusing nature of the U.S. tax code and corporate legal rules it may be impossible to determine if Romney is guilty of having broken any laws or violating any of the provisions of the tax code. It is not so difficult to look at what he says v what he does and conclude that he's a typical reptilicanlyin'fuckbag.



*  Sorry, I forgot; she's BLACK, BLACK, BLACKITY, BLACKING BLACK, TOO, ALSO!!

4 comments:

democommie said...

dog gone:

I'm sorry that I did not see the comment that you had put in the "spam" folder the other day--I've never used the spam folder--from serrasshat.

It's always nice to see that folks like him who have nothing of substance to say about anything are somehow able to muster the courage to be mean to people. Maybe that's why he has allathem gunz, 'cuz he's a little boy with a dirty mouth who hasn't got any self-esteem. Just one theory.

And, for you, Serrtaint; I do collect all of your bons mal and catalogue them, honey. They and the shit that passes for commentary from your slimetrailing buds like Weer'dy and mikeyw are held in a diaper pail where such infantile shit belong.

dog gone said...

Thankd dc.

They're gone now, and I doubt especially that Serrh8tred will be back any time soon.

If we are going to end entitlements, then we should start with big oil, move on to other fossil fuels, which given their curent profits should lower prices, not raise them. Every time they start raising prices, demand goes waaaaaaaay down.

That it turn might finally get more serious efforts at renewables moving in the right direction for a change.

Lets cut out any tax advantages to more than one home, luxury yachts, corporate jets, and up the capital gains tax, marginal tax rate, and all the other rackets behind which R-money has been hiding along with his friends. Lets put the inheritance tax back in place while we're at it. And stop giving away cheap to free money from the treasury to select beneficiaries. Lets take away all those juicy entitlements - but from the top down, until we pay off a good chunk of that deficit, AND repair our failing infrastructure which is making us look like a third world country. The expenditures in replacement versus repair is HUGE - a smarter move is to repair, many times over.

Anyone who is not a 1% that would vote for Mitts on R-money or the Lyin' Ryan is voting against not only their own interests, but the nation's interest. They also are like the boobs who pretended the emperor was wearing clothes; they're neither wise or knowledgable OR honest about their limitations and intellectual deficits.

democommie said...

dog gone:

Thanks for that. I talk to people every day who are sure that their entitlements are not entitlements. My brother who is a conservative CPA told me, some years back, that the home mortgage tax deduction was easily the biggest single entitlement program.

Bukko Boomeranger said...

the home mortgage tax deduction was easily the biggest single entitlement program.

When we moved to Australia and were (briefly) considering buying a house there (not that we COULD, because at that time we were merely immigrants who only were allowed in the country on a temporary work visa, and we were legally forbidden from owning the place where we lived. We could have bought a place as an INVESTMENT, provided that we rented it out to other people, though...)

Sorry, I got lost in the weeds. What I was starting to say is that it surprised me to find that home mortgage interest was NOT tax deductible in Australia. (I don't think it is in Canuckistan, either, but we haven't had the slightest thought of buying a house in Vancouver, home to one of the world's last-surviving epic housing bubbles.) Growing up as an American who's owned a couple of houses in my life, I thought that home mortgage interest deductibility was as natural as breathing oxygen. Living elsewhere, I see what a giant tax-bone it is that's thrown to the bankrentier class and the house-building racket.

FWIW, in Australia the thrown bone is something called "negative gearing" which is hard to explain, but basically it means the difference between what you collect in rent vs. what you pay to the bank on your mortgage. You can write your losses off against your taxable income. In theory, that way, renters get lower rent because rentiers can absorb a little loss, and "owners" pay owners pay lower tax bills.

The system down there is oriented toward making everyone into a little rent-collecting landlord. "Buy" (i.e. rent it from a bank with your monthly mortgage payments) a house or a flat, then rent it out to someone lower on the economic ladder than YOU are. Even if YOU'RE still renting, you can be a rentier to someone else!

The underlying political theory behind that is that "owning" property which you rent to someone else makes you a solid citizen member of the bourgeoisie, so you're more likely to act Tory. That's what I gleaned from some reading I did about Australian tax policy.) Fascinating how different countries set up their systems for something as basic as the zeitgeist of paying for where you live. From what I've read, in Europe, it's even more unusual and varied amongst the many countries there.