According to this chart the only protests we should be seeing are ones in front of Bush’s new mansion, Dick Cheney’s bunker or your Republican Senator/Congressman, Historical Debt Outstanding - Annual 2000 - 2008
09/30/2008 10,024,724,896,912.49
09/30/2007 9,007,653,372,262.48
09/30/2006 8,506,973,899,215.23
09/30/2005 7,932,709,661,723.50
09/30/2004 7,379,052,696,330.32
09/30/2003 6,783,231,062,743.62
09/30/2002 6,228,235,965,597.16
09/30/2001 5,807,463,412,200.06
09/30/2000 5,674,178,209,886.86
War on the Rich? - The bogus GOP claim that Obama is trying to bleed wealthy Americans.
By Daniel Gross
Say you’re a CNBC anchor, or a Washington Post columnist with a seat at the Council on Foreign Relations, or a dentist, and you managed to cobble together $350,000 a year in income. You’re doing quite well. If you subtract deductions for state and property taxes, mortgage interest and charitable deductions, and other deductions, the amount on which tax rates are calculated might total $300,000. What would happen if the marginal rate on the portion of your income above $250,000 were to rise from 33 percent to 36 percent? Under the old regime, you’d pay $16,500 in federal taxes on that amount. Under the new one, you’d pay $18,000. The difference is $1,500 per year, or $4.10 per day. Obviously, the numbers rise as you make more. But is $4.10 a day bleeding the rich, a war on the wealthy, a killer of innovation and enterprise? That dentist eager to slash her income from $320,000 to $250,000 would avoid the pain of paying an extra $2,100 in federal taxes. But she’d also deprive herself of an additional $70,000 in income!
The dentist that Mr. Gross refers to has gotten all her information about President Obama’s budget plans from wing-nut central. According to whom she’ll be facing new taxes that will hardly make it worth while to continue work. Here’s a bright person who couldn’t be bothered to read the Recovery Act that is contains about one third tax cuts - aimed primarily at people like the assistant and hygienist that work for her. Then do a little math or have her accountant explain the numbers and what her tax will be if Congress let’s the Bush tax cuts expire. Trashing $70k is like cutting off her nose to spite her face. You have to wonder about people that make $320k that panic at the sound of real numbers, asking themselves how they’ll get by on $2 thousand less a year. One could safely bet that her customers will use the improved roads and repaired bridges that carry them to her office, or get a education so they can afford her services.
Conservative NYT columnists David Brooks comes as close to saying Obama is right and everyone else needs a new calculator as we’re likely to hear from the Right, “the White House made a case that was sophisticated and fact-based.”
Republicans aren’t just hoping President Obama and thus the economy fail, they working to make sure he does, Hoping He Fails? The Republican attitude about the consequences of an economy that stays in the tank is similar to the one they have when they hear about innoncent women and children dying in Iraq, its all just collateral damage. Lost your job, taken a pay cut, lost your house - to the Right, you’re just a nameless faceless necessary casualty.
A few pictures here of the Revulters and their revolution. One protest sign reads, “Your mortage is not my problem”. Some people get and some probably never will. Ordinary people, even the wingers at that protest do live live in an insular bubble, Denver neighbors team up to fix foreclosed homes
“Even if you haven’t lost your home, the fact that someone else did affects everyone on the block,” says Patti Schwartzberg. She has lived on the same street in Denver’s University Hills neighborhood for more than 20 years. Last year, the area had 31 foreclosure filings, according to The Piton Foundation.
< >…”It isn’t just the property value that is affected,” Rundstrom says about her motivation to clean up the foreclosure property. “Your quality of life suffers when you have to look at something that is such an eyesore every time you drive down the street. It detracts from all of your efforts to make your own house look good.”
She suspects banks and mortgage companies are so overwhelmed that they can’t keep up with maintaining the thousands of foreclosed properties throughout the city. Those “lenders should see neighbors as an untapped resource,” Rundstrom says.
In many cases, a foreclosed property sits vacant and neglected for a year or more before a new buyer steps in, says Kathi Williams, director of the Colorado Division of Housing. During that time, banks are more concerned with getting the property sold than they are with its condition.
Foreclosures become forgotten burdens in neighborhoods
Fallout from the foreclosure crisis is forcing neighbors and local officials to research who is legally responsible for mowing the lawn, cleaning the swimming pool, etc.
Continued>>>
http://thelonggoodbye.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/please-save-the-poor-wealthy-humans/
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