Who said that? I've never heard that quote, and are you quite sure that it wasn't referring to specific individuals who indeed are probably guilty of muder, as the Blackwater employees who recently hit the news surely are? Why have Republicans not condemned Blackwater?

Oh, so it WAS a specific group of individuals. Well I'm sure that Republicans have never denounced people who turned out to be totally innocent ... oh wait.
Yeah. Against the war. Not against the troops. Like I've been saying all along. What was the point you were trying to make?

I believe you refer to this incident (which I was not aware of until now): In 1998, Reid bought some land, zoned for residential use, for $400,000. In 2001, Reid sold the land for no profit to a friend, getting a share of the limited liability company that held the property. The LLC tried to get the land rezoned for commercial use, but was rebuffed by the Clark County Zoning Commission. The LLC then appealled the decision to the full Clark County Commission and lobbied the commission, going so far as invoking Reid's name to the commission in a public hearing on the matter. The zoning commission's original decision was then vetoed, and they rezoned the property for commercial use. In 2004, the property was sold for $1.6 million, netting the LLC $1.2 million profit. Reid never reported the sale of the property to the LLC, as he is required by law to do. Harry Reid's son, Rory Reid, was sworn in as a Clark County Commissioner in 2003, and has been County Commission Chairman since 2005. His election to the commission and appointment to the position of chairman both happened after the land deal... (actually, he was elected after the land was rezoned ... the land was rezoned for commercial use in September 2001). (Info lifted from http://www.theneweditor.com/index.php?/archives/4381-The-Harry-Reid-Land-Deal.html ) Clearly this is just like the Duke Cunningham scandal, and the connection to Democratic policy WRT Iraq is even more obvious.
This would be the proposal to call the Ottoman Empire's extermination of over a million Armenians circa World War I an act of "genocide". Which it clearly was. I'm not even sure why the Turks are so pissed about it -- the crime was committed by a different government entirely -- but this is clearly a case of calling a spade a spade.
Or more likely it's because we don't have very reliable numbers, or because we care about our own people more than the enemy, or because some of us don't delight in "winning" the body count score as you do. I almost can't believe you said that.

Eomund said: Final-Fan said: Eomund said: Final-Fan said: Eomund said: /sigh Kamekazai, if you give money to support the fight, then you support the fight. If you ideologically disagree with the fight, yet still give you are not being honest with yourself. So because you pay your taxes, you support Medicare, Social Security, etc.? I pay my taxes so I do not get sent to Jail by the IRS. I do not support the government running those programs, and I want them removed from the government budget. But because the programs are there and people "depend" on them I simply will not rip it out from under them. They must be given benchmarks to improve themselves if they can. I don't apply this to handicapped people. Though everyone should give themselves benchmarks to improve themselves in life. Social Security is going backrupt and any attempt to fix it seems to backfire. Medicare is inefficent and the doctors who accept Medicare coverage get pennies on the dollar in payment for their services. I want the government to shrink to the smallest size if a century. But expanding the power and influence of the federal government is the way politicians, on both sides I might add, stay in power. They create more government dependency which keeps people down, since they get free handouts why would they want to give that up? Not everyone currently depending on the government will stay down, but the majority will. When you take incentive to work away, people don't work. Politicans cannot keep their hands out of my wallet, that is why I support the FairTax. Right. You pay taxes so you won't go to jail. Meanwhile, you support what you believe to be a better system. The Democrats fund the troops so they won't die. Meanwhile, they try to pass legislation that will bring them home. Please explain what is wrong with this analogy.  The Democrats are trying to cut the funding for the troops. They are trying to force them to come home, not because they truely care about America, but because it is a politically expediant way to push your agenda. This is especially true if you have control of the Media. It isn't working for them because of the New Media.  If we were to bring home the troops, the terrorists would be able to attack us, US, on our own soil AGAIN! I am saying that they are over there to prevent the loss of American life within our own borders due to Islamic Terrorist attacks. Some people will die in a war, as regretable as that is. If you cannot stomach that, then look away when real leaders lead us through a war that was declared upon us. Not only that but I do not want the deaths of millions of people to be laid at the feet of America because we didn't finish what we started. I would not be able to stomach that.

Beat your war drum all you want. I tried to keep this on a low key level by not attacking your own tragically wrong beliefs whilst I explained how funding the troops while trying to bring them home was NOT hypocritical. You completely ignored that argument in your response, so I can only conclude that you concede by your silence that I am right and you are wrong in that instance.

Eomund said: Final-Fan said: Oh and by the way didn't you see the evidence I presented showing that the FairTax will actually cost you MORE money unless you make less than $15-20k or more than $200k? Apparently not Final. I do not believe that this current system is good, but I have to live with it until we change it. I do not know where you got those numbers but I call BS. I believe that having the tax haven of the world would create more jobs and more opportunities to improve my standing. I further believe in taking home my whole paycheck. I do want the FairTax to pass. There is not much that can deter me of that wish. If you take out the Cost of Compliance of the current tax code for businesses and the matching payroll taxes for businesses the costs of business decrease and then the companies can lower the prices of good and services. The FairTax isn't applied to Used Items. That could reduce the cost of housing too (not saying for sure that it will, but it could). If I got all my money from my work, then I could shop for used items in such categories as: Clothing, furnishings, electronics, other non-perishable items, etc. and not pay taxes. PLUS I get my Prebate check every month, so I am taking home more useable money than I could under the current system. For more detailed examples, read some of my earlier posts in this thread.

Here is a post I made in thread 10441, reproduced verbatim:

FactCheck.org is about as neutral and accurate as they come. Here's what they have to say about the FairTax:

http://www.factcheck.org/taxes/unspinning_the_fairtax.html

This is the Treasury Department's graph of who will pay what percentage of tax revenue under the FairTax as opposed to current tax law. Notice how everyone is actually paying MORE except for the extremely poor and very rich?

You should also check out the part about the misleading "tax-inclusive price" tax rate.

In conclusion: the FairTax would be LESS FAIR THAN THE CURRENT TAX SYSTEM. (Giving handouts -- shades of welfare? -- to the poor while effectively dropping taxes on the rich and raising them on everyone else.)

(End quote)

If you distrust Treasury Department numbers, Americans for Fair Taxation came up with a graph that says people under $25k will come out ahead, and above $25k you pay more -- but interestingly, everything above $75k is lumped into one section. Perhaps this is to hide the "tax cuts for the very rich" part of the deal?

For the first time ever, I posted a popular topic! :)

Eomund said: When the Leader of the Dems of the House doesn't stop a obvious insult to Turkey, and by that nearly, if not entirely, starting conflict where there should not have been she is either a hollow-eyed empty headed liberal, or she is acting against the US. Which is it? When the media gives a daily body count of US Soldiers, but mentions nothing of the number of enemy terrorists those brave men and women have put down like the rabid dogs they are, what is that? It is a one-sided view of things. They do not like to report good news unless it is hitting them in the face so hard, that they would lose all credibility if they did not report it.

You're obviously pretty riled up about this, so I'm just going to let it go.  Try to chill out in the future, and maybe you can have a rational discussion about it.

I'm actually in favor of the FairTax.  A system that taxes what you buy instead of what you make is fundamentally more "fair" and has lots of other side benefits.  I see we've broken out the graphs -- but you have to realize that these analyses are done under the assumption of "all else being equal."  That is, assuming spending habits will be the same, investing habits will be the same, etc.  Also, I don't see any discussion of tax breaks or incentives with that graph, which greatly reduce the tax burden for the wealthy under the current system, so I don't know if those were taken into account in the analysis.

At any rate, I do see problems with the FairTax.  In most states, sales taxes are set up so that the most basic consumer goods like food are taxed at a lower rate than everything else, and I would rather see that than a "prebate" system.  IMO prebates sound too much like all the tax breaks and incentives under the current system.  One of the ideas of a consumption tax instead of an income tax is to get rid of all that crap and keep it simple.  I also agree with factcheck's assertion that the 23% figure is bogus, but that doesn't change the nature of the tax itself, it just means the AFT is being misleading.

I completley back final fan on this one

Your attacks on democrats is really degrading.

Yeah, I get fed up very quickly with people who use the word "liberal" like it's an insult.

indeed liberal conservative who cares


btw i took a test and im liberal and it based it on my young age......

Sorry I wasn't near a computer to reply. I was trying to be rational. I can also be passionate at the same time. I am glad that more people have posted providing new points of view.

Regarding the FairTax again... This is from your link.

"The Advisory Panel did in fact begin with the 30 percent figure that proponents of the FairTax submitted. But the panel rejected those figures, claiming that they were based, at least in part, on the unrealistic assumption that there would be full compliance with the FairTax. In other words, proponents assume that no one will cheat on taxes. However, the Treasury Department estimates that the evasion rate for the entire U.S. tax system under current law is approximately 15 percent. The Advisory Panel accordingly assumed a 15 percent evasion rate for the FairTax."

The problem with assuming the 15% is that to evade the FairTax it takes more than one person. How many companies would be willing compliant with illegal activities? Granted there will be some evasion but to assume 15% evasion rate for something that would be obvious to the people overseeing the collection would be ludicrous. Not that many companies would be willing to commit an illegal activity with such a harsh penalty. Again it will happen, but not at the 15% they are claiming. As such the group's chart are bogus.
(BTW when you ASSUME, you make an "ASS-out of-U-and-ME")

SO again I call BS.

I still think your passion is getting the best of you. The charts aren't "bogus", but they did make a lot of assumptions to come up with them. Honestly, you HAVE to make assumptions in order to predict anything, that's the whole nature of modeling and prediction. They're assuming the same evasion rate as now, you're assuming the evasion rate would be less. I happen to think it would be less, but that's still an assumption, because we haven't tried it to find out.