Remember when Republicans were Rational? Remember when they weren't Selfish Greedy Lying Sociopaths?

[cascadiance]

33. Yep, you are right about Teddy being a warmonger. So was LBJ in the 60's...

Had LBJ not had the bad mistakes he made in the Vietnam War hanging over him, he might have been known as one of the greatest progressive presidents in recent times, having done things like starting much of what has become our modern day safety net, passing the Voting Rights Act, and a lot of other decent legislation that he pushed in many cases literally physically through congress that we all should be very thankful for that are in place today.

Teddy Roosevelt had his heart in the right place for many things that stood up for the common man, even if he also made a lot of mistakes on the world stage that started us in our 20th century empire building mistakes.

Reagan also recognized that capital gains taxation should be the same as regular income tax rates, even though the Grover Norquist types of today try to conveniently have all of us ignore that amongst other things that Reagan did then. Reagan on balance though did more to destroy our economy and was on balance one of the worst presidents even with some of the good aspects he had.

And Eisenhower, even if he is far better on many things than his Republican successors were, he arguably laid the ground work for what happened in the Vietnam War when he sent a lot of military "advisors" to Vietnam to help "train" the South Vietnamese prepare for the vacuum that was happening when the French withdrew from Vietnam then. Perhaps not as much of a "conscious" war monger then and didn't perhaps want to be that involved there, nevertheless he did get us more involved then to keep the "domino theory" from becoming a reality they believed would cause tremendous problems then. It was later Kennedy that turned these advisors in to combat forces and grew there sizes significantly, as did LBJ and Nixon did as well.

The problem we have today, is that the media which has never been so corrupt and "owned" and NOT serving the public good the way our constitution has written it should be as an institution has a warped image to try and push through the radical extreme Republican ideas and ignore the sane areas in the past that many Republicans had, in an effort to greedily flush any remaining sanity that party has left today. That is why this party (AND the corrupt corporate media that serves it) needs to be taken on heavily through bottom up grass roots efforts to shut it down and bring back sane discussions of our history and not allow them to define their false image of it for the rest of us.

And any effort to "simplify" and "reform" our income taxes should look back at the forgotten history there that the corporatocracy wants us (especially the younger generation) to not know about and forget.

Think how valuable these pieces of the tax code would be today if they were still there instead of removed back in the 70's and 80's.

1) sales tax deductions - helped a lot of people contributing to our economic growth keep more of their wealth while spending in society, and it also helped states that depend on sales tax revenue not feel more of a pinch with less people spending money when they could get added tax deductions spending money in their states.
2) interest deductions on more than just home mortgage interest - This would help ALL Americans, not just home owners, especially with the a lot of the huge and high interest credit card debt that people have today when their income hasn't kept up with inflation. And if we hadn't lost this deduction, arguably perhaps the home mortgage bubble might not have been as big as it was when it blew up a few years ago, if more people didn't move all of their debt in to their home mortgages in order to qualify for tax deductions on it. This would also hep students with record debt levels now in student loans in getting back some of that expense too.
3) income averaging - I remember when I was first moving from being a student with lower paying jobs to being a college graduate with higher paying jobs that this deduction was very valuable in helping me out at least the first year or so not paying as much taxes, and would also help many people today when they finally get a job after being unemployed for a year or so to get their lives restarted again. I certainly could use it in that regard this coming year in that regard.

It's this kind of tax subsidies that I'll bet Romney and his crowd were looking at going after, but not wanting to tell us up front about, so that they could screw us again to reward themselves and their rich buddies again. We need to be conscious of the details of how these deductions and others were taken away from us and were one more factor in the decline of the middle class (along with reduced tariffs, etc.), since the 80's. The corporate (so called "liberal&quot media won't tell us about this part of our history. We need to make sure ourselves that we and our children are informed on these details so that the same mistakes aren't made again in allowing the corporate raiders rig the system in their favor again.