The Housing Bubble

I am not sure who your comment was directed at but here are more of my thoughts. If you look at European welfare states they have high taxes on the middle class both through the VAT and income tax rates. It is essential to run a cradle to grave welfare state. Democrats never wanted the Bush tax cuts for people between 50 and 250K but Obama knew that he would lose both elections if he went very far below 250K. You know that a lot of polling went into his number of 250K. It is also why carbon taxes and VAT is being bounced around for later. Republicans should jump of the chance to make the tax cuts permanent on 98% of Americans since you cannot run a welfare state with that amount of revenue nor can you do what we are doing with deficits very much longer. The natural result is a smaller government.
Reagan would have jumped on getting so much of his agenda and Republicans should be practical. Concern for people making more than 250,000 and certainly making more than one million is not very high right now and cannot be politically justified. The economic unsoundness of tax increases will either be shown or not after it occurs and Obama will own it either way. So if you believe in your theory, just let it happen.

“Now, it’s all about how to retain money, power and control over the rest of the population.”

Sounds like we have returned to the colonial days of King George of England…

I’m talking to you, dan.

It is no longer about “what should be done”. Or about Boehner’s stall tactics, concessions or lack thereof. None of that matters.

What “should be done” no longer can be via Washington.

Washington is in a bubble, both a monetary and power bubble. As inevitabilities and stresses progress, Washington will become either increasingly erratic or increasing dogmatic as it finds it cannot sustain its current size or modus operandi.

Individuals interested in the notion of liberty won’t be able to look to Washington. Our answers can no longer be found or supported there.

Yep.

Cantankerous:

Do you personally feel you were adequately represented when…

…Pulosi hammered her gavel, then later said we had to pass it so we could discover what’s in it?

…QE1, 2, 3 and 4 were passed?

…bankers were/are allowed to run scott-free?

…NDAA was put into law via executive powers?

…as Washington became the wealthiest metropolitan area in the nation?

Just wondering.

“Most people here don’t see it, IMO.”

I think lots of folks realize who/what has happened. The issue now is how to unravel it. If the safety net fails all bets are off.

The natural result is a smaller government.

It would seem there are no longer any “natural results”. Not when money can be printed as needed. Nature has been suspended until it reasserts itself in some grand fashion.

The raises?

Do you know how to read, sloth?

“it” = one of something

“they” = more than one of something.

I usually don’t make the mistake of reading your tired talking points, but I thought you actually said something interesting for once.

I was wrong.

Has America gone downhill from there or was it just an illusion all along?
————–

It was always an illusion. Devo tried to warn us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hPoj4qPXEo

It’s an illusion that fades in and out in luminosity.

Illusions must increase as government increases. The government is a net operating loss to society, so it must lie if it wishes to survive and grow.

If you want society to revert to a simpler era, to be more investment-minded and less wasteful, government must decrease in size.

PROFUNDITY HERE: If government decreases in size, it needs to lie less often, and the lies it must tell tend to decrease in magnitude.

Ethics and morals tend to be more highly rewarded as government shrinks.

“If government decreases in size, it needs to lie less often, and the lies it must tell tend to decrease in magnitude.”

For the record, the government has nothing on the private sector when it comes to lies and leeching. In fact, I suggest the cost of bailing out the private banking system in 2008, including the Fed’s ongoing financially engineered subsidy stream to Wall Street’s Megabank, Inc, dwarfs the cost of routine government operations.

I say this based on no hard data whatsoever. But I am confident that anyone who cared could show the federal subsidies flowing to the private sector are a huge drain on the tax base…I just don’t care enough to bother with it, as it should be self-evident to anyone except for idiots…

Glad that you brought this up.

Has it occurred to you that with every law passed by a growing government that the private sector also lies more often?

Do you think ObamaCare and ongoing QE deals are going to result in more laws being broken? Fewer?

Why does government give subsidies to the private sector? That’s not government’s role. So why does it do so? How does government benefit?

Subsidies = less resistance to enacting laws = more power and money for government.

Again, C-Bear, which metropolitian area is the wealthiest in the country?

How is that so when it produces next to nothing?

MacBeth — I am going to concede this debate to you, pal.

Sorry to be so agreeable.

“(But it doesn’t work.)”

What evidence do you have that tinkle-down theory doesn’t work?

What evidence do you have that tinkle-down theory doesn’t work?

The last thirty years of falling wages and living standards for the middle class, the extreme wealth concentration in the hands of the few, the increase in our national debt, and our chronic boom and bust economy.

I thought Polly or someone said that SS and Medicare checks will continue to go out whatever happens.

SS will always go out even if it goes “broke” its just you may not get 100%…say *80% and an IOU for the rest.

If we hit the debt ceiling, the checks can only go out to the extent that there is money coming in. At a guess, SS might go out, but the amounts would be slashed. Medicare is anyone’s guess, but the docs won’t see patients forever while knowing there will be no reimbursement or substantially less reimbursement.

In the case of a lack of a budget/budget extension SS checks and Medicare reimbursements go out anyway since they are not part of the appropriations process. The people who process new applications would be sent home, but the very few people who need to be around to get the checks sent would be kept on. In my department the plans for there not being a budget in place would send home everyone except for an executive or two to field calls from higher ups to explain what work isn’t getting done and maybe respond to press inquiries. Those executives probably wouldn’t get paid, at least not until after it was resolved.

Good to know. But even a 20% cut in the SS check is enough of a reminded of what an entitlement cut is.
If there is a shutdown, my department keeps a week or so in reserve, then most of us go home, and it doesn’t matter because we’d be reimbursed later anyway. I talked to an old hand in my department who was around for the 1995 shutdown. He said that most people took papers home with them and did some work during the shutdown anyway.

“and it doesn’t matter because we’d be reimbursed later anyway.”

That is what happened the last time. It doesn’t mean it would happen this time. And it isn’t really reimbursement. It is being paid for time in which you were not working. How likely is this Congress to pass a reverse furlough for federal employees? Not much.

As for taking home work? OK if your boss is willing to look the other way, but you are not allowed to work while there is no appropriation in place unless you are one of the very few who stays in place to deal with the shut down itself. Taking home a few papers is one thing, but logging on to the office system from home is traceable. Could you do anything useful without being on the network or at least on your computer? I could think about the stuff I’m doing and read paper records, but I couldn’t actually accomplish anything (modify and/or create documents, do research, etc.) without leaving an electronic trail.

The past is no guarantee of the future.

“If we hit the debt ceiling, the checks can only go out to the extent that there is money coming in.”

I assume this is for political reasons, not technical ones? For instance, so long as the Fed has a printing press technology, there is potentially enough money to fund any and all government expenditures that might arise, provided there are no political impediments.

Does that sound right, or am I missing something?

You are missing everything.

The fact that the Fed can “print money” to buy US debt is irrelevant if the Treasury can’t issue new debt. Not being able to issue new debt is the definition of hitting the debt ceiling. Hitting the debt ceiling is automatic contraction of the government to the amount of money currently coming in. New debt could be issued as old debt is paid off (using the money coming in to pay the currently due payments) up to the current level of the debt ceiling, but no more. This would be contrary to the current budget in place that requires the spending to be made, but with no cash and no ability to borrow, the required spending would have to contract to what was coming in.

What other mechanism do you think the Fed could use to fund government expenditures?

“You are missing everything.”

You are missing my question. Sorry if it was too hard for you.

“Not being able to issue new debt is the definition of hitting the debt ceiling.”

But since you through out a complicated legal answer to my simple question, I will have to answer it for myself: Political, not technical, just like the entire fiscal cliff hobgoblin…

Sorry Bear, but you are posting so much garbage today (or, as Oxide is hypothesizing, someone is posting it under your name) that I can’t be expected to figure out if your apparently serious questions are really some sort of elaborate tongue in cheek thing that is meant to tease people who really are as uninformed as you are pretending to be.

If you want to be sure we know when you are being sarcastic, use a “sarc off” tag.

Let me try.

Printing money by the fed alone does not fund the govt. The next step is the treasury has to borrow that printed money but is prevented from doing so when the debt ceiling is reached.

Speaking of garbage, why can’t you answer a simple question without going off on a tirade of legalese and insults?

Charlie, thanks for the simple, clear answer.

I guess it was too much to ask an inside-the-Beltway attorney to do the same.

There isn’t a single word of legalese in my answers. Not even one.

Sorry you aren’t feeling well today, Bear. Must be something nasty. Get well soon.

“…aren’t feeling well…”

It’s probably the lingering effects of attending a midnight showing of The Hobbit on Thursday.

Since when is something you pay for an “entitlement”?

If SS checks stop going out, SS taxes stop going in.

SS is not charity from the government.

Entitlement in government budget speak doesn’t mean something that you get that you didn’t pay for. It means something that is paid out without the funds having to be appropriated by Congress. That is why a regular government shut down doesn’t stop SS checks, but a debt ceiling confrontation can.

” you through out ”

Some illiterate prole jacked bear’s moniker.

You don’t get it either.

The ‘deal’ is decided, the republicrats just have to slowly detail it in the media. That way the feeble-minded public believe that some sort of special compromise happened and not just a predetermined play from the playbook.

The tax on the top 2% just raises $50 billion. Obama wants $160 billion. The democrats lose extended unemployment benefits and all sort of programs such as alternative energy credits if we go over the cliff. How, long before the solar lobby is screaming like a stuck pig? Plus as I have said for days Obama wants the defense spending as bad as the Republicans since he is a Keynesian. Going over the Cliff and then restoring the tax cut to the 98%, in fact making them permanent, is the best plan for those that don’t want big government. BTW, the conservative party has roared back into power in Japan and had reopening nuclear plants part of their agenda. Didn’t take long for the people to get sick of those higher electric bills.

“so terrible we will never really let it happen”

QE4 Is Here: Bernanke Delivers $85B-A-Month Until Unemployment Falls Below 6.5%

|12/12/2012 @ 12:48PM

Ben Bernanke continues to make history at the Federal Reserve. On Wednesday, the FOMC announced more quantitative easing at a rate of $85 billion a month for an extended period of time. The Bernanke Fed has also modified its guidance, noting its ultra-accommodative stance will remain in place until the unemployment rate falls below 6.5% and inflation projections remain no more than half a percentage point above 2% two years out.

QE4 is here. Only a few months after announcing what had been dubbed QE3, an open-ended $40 billion a month program to buy up mortgage backed securities (MBS), the FOMC decided to extend its asset purchases in 2013 as Operation Twist expires.

The Fed will therefore accelerate its rate of balance sheet expansion, easing monetary conditions further. While Operation Twist had been sterilized, which means the Fed sold assets at the same rate as it was gobbling them up, the new program will consist purely of Treasury purchases. Combined with QE3, the Fed will be taking $85 billion in bonds, both Treasuries and MBS, out of the market. The FOMC also decided to begin rolling over its maturing Treasuries as of January.

Bernanke’s biggest surprise came in terms of the Fed’s forward guidance. The FOMC moved from a calendar-based guidance to one tied to economic factors, specifically, inflation and unemployment (which constitute the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate):

http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2012/12/12/qe4-is-here-bernanke-delivers-85b-a-month-until-unemployment-falls-below-6-5/ - 93k -

Dan, this might surprise you but the US domestic solar market has collapsed already. There are no federal grants or tax breaks or credits available for 2013 or any year after that I am aware of. New residential installations actually plunged and retail companies are dropping out of the business. Most of the panel manufactures are shifting to utility scale projects only and most of those are international. They can’t compete with $3.50 Nat. Gas or cheap coal because the water is free and waste carbon has no cost. The solar industry will be depressed until they can solve the storage problem which seems to sound a lot like the often repeated claim that fusion power is just a few more years away.

Yet another example of the Government Bubble!

Government Bubble = no grants/tax breaks = collapse of non-producers.

I actually do know about the troubles with solar and that the tax credit is to end, I believe at the end of this month. Too bad Obama had not pushed NG cars, solar would not be competing with 3.50 NG.

However the main point is that I do not believe that the Republicans that are really for the working class and the countries best interests,(and there are more of them than people think on this board),have more pressure to compromise than Obama. I think that the first thing conservatives must accept is that no billionaire is a true conservative. The agenda of the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdock and the Democratic billionaires Soros and Buffett is much closer than people want to admit be it liberal or conservative. They all want open borders and you see Rupert pushing gun control. Fox pushes Rove conservatives not true conservatives.

The billionaires certainly support food stamps over policies that raise wages such as border control. Even paying a few percent more in taxes is certainly better than supporting policies that increase wages. Given that, no conservative should fall on his or her sword to protect billionaires. I bet that the illegal immigration problem would be solved in a year, if we imposed a tax on the wealth of billionaires to offset illegal immigrants costs and it would not expire until the number of illegals in the U.S. was below one million. Right now they get all the advantages of depressed wages with very little costs to them, which is why the problem continues.

“Rob Parker is no longer “from ESPN.” He has been indefinitely suspended.”

Too bad his line of thinking has not been “indefinitely suspended.”

Agree. And I admit “cornball brother” is a new term for me. I thought Parker’s line of thinking was already well-covered by “oreo.”

The ESPN show he made them on was intended to be looser than the usual serious sport analysis

You misspelled “loser”.

Agree, it was a loser show too.

You guys that pay $150/month for cable slay me.

“You guys that pay $150/month for cable slay me.”

A friend has four smart phones in a family plan at $240/month; his son burns through the plan’s data apparently. I just couldn’t write that check every month.

Remember when you could buy a nice car for $240 a month?

“Remember when you could buy a nice car for $240 a month?”

I do, and it’s still too much to spend for transportation even today, IMHO.

How is RGIII even remotely like Rosa Parks?

She risked getting arrested for sitting in the wrong seat of a bus.

He was criticized for not acting black enough or some such garbage by a half-witted sports commentator who has lost his job for being such a twit.

There have been serious race issues in football, specifically with respect to white owners and coaches refusing to hire black quarterbacks because they didn’t think a black guy could be the on-field leader of the team. I’m not even sure if that has gone by the way side slowly (through high school and college coaches realizing what they were doing and stopping it so that eventually enough black players had experience in the position so that some are now getting to play that position in the NFL) or by some other method.

Whatever it is that has changed that means RGIII gets to be a starting quarterback, he didn’t risk arrest for doing something that a white person could do as a matter of course. That is what Rosa Parks did.

A shame that you can’t understand the importance of someone not willing to stay on the plantation, and effectively saying so publicly.

That you don’t see it as a potential watershed moment in favbor of individual right to self-determination comes as no surprise.

Yours is a world dominated by laws and favored policy, Polly. His isn’t.

He strives for something greater.

I agree with you Mc….that’s why I like zydeco music, black people who are not ghetto. And we need to encourage this behavior

Image blacks and whites dancing with each other in backwoods Louisiana…of all places

Please. The richest neighborhoods in my home town were filled with black families that had no interest in being stereotyped. A lot of them were New England Patriots players as the stadium was in the town next door. The real estate agents were delighted to sell to the nice young men with pretty wives, little kids and big salaries. The nice houses were a draw, but the excellent school system was a close second. Once it was well known that they were welcome in our town, a lot more moved in. This has been going on for decades.

The fact that you think it is something new for a black football player to not fit into some stereotype is kind of pathetic.

Get off your high horse, Polly. You’re just yet another Washington attorney feeding at the trough.

That said, who said the guy represented something new? I didn’t. I said it might become notable as a watershed moment. Learn to read.

Note that it also isn’t new for the Left to attempt to keep blacks on the plantation. It isn’t conservatives who can’t wait to trot out Jesse Jackson, Rev Wright and others who demand that entire races of people behave and belief in ways deemed appropriate.

In fact, our very own Spook was presumed to be a fraud by various liberals here because he doesn’t follow the scripted playbook.

In the liberal world, there are plantations for blacks, Hispanics, Asians and gays.

How could any black, any Hispanic, any Asian or any gay be in favor of self determination?!

The thought of any such individual thinking anything other than what is in the liberal playbook drives liberals insane.

‘The richest neighborhoods in my home town were filled with black families that had no interest in being stereotyped.’

Classic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPIzLPx6T-U

As I’ve said before, the next radicals will make 1960s-era Boomers look like pikers.

Boomers will be remembered for their musical contribution and their credit-driven madness.

Not much else.

They believe their societal contributions re: race and sex will be remembered.

Neither “contribution” will be remembered favorably.

Progressives and other big government adherents co-opted the true gains presented in both race and sex to grow Big Government and seize power for themselves.

Future 2050s-era radicals will regard this very negatively, as their freedoms will have been sacrificed for the progressives leap to power.

Future 2050s-era radicals will regard this very negatively, as their freedoms will have been sacrificed for the progressives leap to power.

Yet every time I tell young people that google peeks at their gmail to gather personal information about them, they shrug.

I made this same comment on the other chart from the article below. From the chart, it looks like the savings are from MID, not a comparison of MID vs. standard deduction. So the numbers themselves are valid.

However, I agree with you that they aren’t publishing a column showing the comparison between the two, i.e. the net value. The comparison would show that the MID doesn’t have as much net value as we are led to believe. It’s a sin of omission, not arithmetic.

You need to finance $150-$200 to receive any benefit from the MID.

“… it looks like the savings are from MID, not a comparison of MID vs. standard deduction. So the numbers themselves are valid.”

Why do you keep trying to defend incorrect maths? If you work some arithmetic which answers a different question than the one you pretend it answers, then the answer is wrong. Is this really that difficult for you to grasp?

“It’s a sin of omission, not arithmetic.”

OK, let me commit another one:

1 + 1 = 2.

Therefore we are all doomed if the MID is eliminated.

I proved it!

The MID can be helpful if you pay your own health care costs, live in a high tax state and/or are charitable. Especially if you are single.

But yeah, for the average Joe & Jane it is mostly smoke and mirrors promoted by the realtors.

“There is no screw up or deception. Those figures are for absolute tax savings, not a comparison of the tax savings using standard deduction vs. tax savings using MID. Those figures are still valid.”

Thanks for sharing the evidence that you never took an undergraduate economics course; we long suspected, and now we know.

How is figuring out what the reporter did evidence of not taking an undergraduate economics class?

Polly, I really wonder this particular post of CIBT’s was hacked. This is too sharp a tone for him. It’s happened before.

Does California state income tax have a MID?

In the Centennial State you take your net federal income (after deductions), add back in any state income and property tax deductions you took and that’s your taxable income as far as the state is concerned.

“…too sharp a tone…”

I reserve it for too stupid a post.

I think a lot of states do it that way. Easier to piggy back on the fed return in some way. They can pick the number they want to use as their base and then deal with any stuff they want to add back in.

“How is figuring out what the reporter did evidence of not taking an undergraduate economics class?”

You didn’t take one either, or else you are just pretending to be too thick to understand my point.

Your point was to attack Oxide for explaining how a reporter came up with a set of numbers. The fact that the numbers needed to compared to a different set of numbers to be meaningful is an appropriate critique of the article, not of Oxide. You lashed out at the wrong person.

Though you are quite right that I didn’t take an undergraduate economics course. I took several economics courses at Columbia Business School.

“Your point was to attack Oxide for explaining how a reporter came up with a set of numbers.”

Pointing out the flaw in somebody’s logic is not an attack — it’s a courtesy.

“I took several economics courses at Columbia Business School.”

Did they omit discussion of the marginal effects of policy changes? Because that is what Oxide (and the SF Chronicle journalist) seem to overlook.

P.S. I never took a law course, which I guess is why I am frequently baffled with the crap attorneys pull out of the air.

Notice how my calling out possible hacking unleashed even more one-line insults even more out of character from CIBT. I might be on to something.

But either way, what difference does it make if I took economics classes or not? (I did not, btw.) I thought the issue was “arithmetic.” I did take a couple Arithmetic courses in the late 1970’s.

Anyone can use any screen name here, no “hacking” required.

Hacking is probably the wrong word. Jacking? Poaching? Using?

Only in states without an income tax, buddy. And you get to take a certain amount whether you actually spend it on items that incur a sales tax or not - a standard sales tax deduction that you read off a table so a big purchase is not necessary to get some benefit. And your argument only makes sense over the life of the loan if you buy a new car every year.

Motor vehicles are a specific call out for sales tax; as are boats and other “big ticket” items.

And yes, only if you live in a state with no income tax. However, this year, I’ve got about 4K in specific sales tax to report, so, it’s not chicken feed.

Oh, also, leases don’t have sales tax upfront, it’s a monthly expense, so that extends over the life of ownership. Also, in FL, you don’t pay sales tax on the total value of the car, only the lease payment amount (off topic, I know)..

The sales tax provision is expired(unless Congress extends it before the recess for the year).

I know that but its on Monster and just about every board i post….employers Violate labor laws daily and Obewanna doesn’t care unless you are illegal, then you get a free lawyer to sue for back wages and more.

The Intern problem is ridiculous …and then want you to have a mac and iphone just to apply for no pay. Clear Channel and Sirius XM come to mind.

Where is our Deadbeat prez….silent as usual.

Reading on-line job boards is not a job search strategy either. Neither is competing with college kids for intern positions. There are lots of job search books at the library which I normally wouldn’t recommend, but your current strategy is so bad that even mass market advice would be an improvement. I already gave you an idea for a business that could work in NYC and fit with your self-proclaimed talents.

Try something different.

Polly most of those jobs were Paid 5 years ago before obewanna….and now they are reclassified as Interns and you have to bring your own tools to work….and EEOC doesn’t apply…

Its his silence on these issues that offends me.

Ya know….. you really are a nasty character.

Never work for free.

Its worse then you think skroodle…..its work for Free or have nothing on your resume, and get discriminated against for not working.

We have fallen so far in America…

“…We have fallen so far in America….”

For the gods’ sake, man! Five years and 7500+ whinging posts all giving us (literally, if not literately) the same old sob, and blaming it on everything but your own intellectual sloppiness.

If you’d spent 5% as much time getting your act together as you have giving us bs excuses, you’d…

(fill in the blanks)

I love it…..its fun to read old posts…..I’m not blaming anyone I just report what i see and sometimes.. ok a lot is really sad.

Being a dj you have to be an entrepreneur but then I get to keep all the money, Now its you have to bring your own people and promote their business and get a small cut.

Come on Ahanasen be honest if we really did hire the best and the brightest I’d have multiple job offers and we’d be in a incredible Booming economy…..fact is they fired all the smart people and now we have to deal with whats left over.

Hate to blow one of your many delusions, dj, but a lot of those interns aren’t working for free.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/12/13/facebook_interns_make_5_600_a_month_glassdoor_report_says.html

. Glassdoor estimates that the average Facebook product manager makes $132,000 a year, while software engineers take in $114,000. Ah, but what about the poor interns that the company surely exploits for some cheap coding help? Oh, they make between $5,600 and $6,300 a month—the equivalent of $65,000 to $75,000 a year. Yes, the interns. As Business Insider notes, that’s some $25,000 more than the average American worker.

That might sound outrageous, but those sorts of intern wages are not unique to Facebook. Top software-engineering talent has been at a premium for years, and Facebook is competing for the best of the best with companies like Google, which pay just as much. And lest you think it’s just the tech industry that pays top dollar for promising greenhorns, those numbers are also in line with the average pay for summer analyst interns in the investment banking industry. Glassdoor reports that Citi, for instance, pays its i-banking interns a healthy $5,570 a month.

Yes at the top 1%. The rest maybe you get a metro card and lunch…blatantly Illegal but who cares anymore…right?

Come to think of it charlie, you are right! They used box cutters and OC spray didn’t they?

One guy with a shoe bomb tried to blow up a plane and now everybody who flies HAS to take their shoes off. Hundreds die by guns and…NOTHING!!!!

Let me spell it out for you Howie.

Let’s assume we make firearms illegal and confiscate them from the public (some will rejoice, others will fight). When the dust settles, as time goes by another president is elected (let’s say it’s Mitt). He comes out and says to the American public: Today you aren’t Mormons, tomorrow you will be. Mormonism is now the national religion.

You sitting at home, looking at your children say: “I will be damned if my kids worship the mystical underpants!” The only problem is, how do you fight back now if the government is against you? Your kids school are making your kids wear tacky white dress shirts and black trousers riding 10-speeds around the neighborhood proselytizing to the hard cases. This isn’t what you want for your family but now you could be thrown in jail if you don’t comply.

The 2nd Amendment is your insurance policy on the rest of your freedoms.

Nice example :-).

‘You sitting at home, looking at your children say: “I will be damned if my kids worship the mystical underpants!” The only problem is, how do you fight back now if the government is against you? Your kids school are making your kids wear tacky white dress shirts and black trousers riding 10-speeds around the neighborhood proselytizing to the hard cases.’

LOL

The 2nd amendment is their for us to protect ourselves from the government when it becomes necessary ??

Yeah…I feel so friggen safe with my assault weapon…Hell, I am Rambo so I have two…One for each hand…I am going to show them when that SWATT team shows up…Ditto for the National Guard….Bring-em on !!

Didn’t a small group bring down the WTC without guns ??

And many things were banned from bringing on a plane after that correct…

Removing assault weapons provides no higher level of safety to the general public. To claim otherwise is idiotic ??

Well, go tell that to the kids at Sandy Hook or their families in Newtown…You are the idiotic one…

Reactionary vitriol pointed towards the NRA and gun owners validates my belief ??

Yeah, your friggen gun toten neocon belief…

Your interest in assault weapons has nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with removing personal freedom ??

Its better than 50/50 that I have more f*&King guns than you do none of which are assault weapons or even semi-auto..So take your neocon talking point and put it where the sun doesn’t shine…

What I deduce from your response is: I have no cogent argument, I will resort to ad hominem attacks and name calling.

scdave,

Put down the paint brush. I despise neocons and don’t belong to the NRA. I also despise the nanny state mentality of those “enlightened” people telling me how I should live my life.

To them, I respectfully say “F*ck you”.

Good day sir.

I think the point Ryan is trying to make is that having a large number of private citizen gun-owners with “assault” weapons handy forces would-be tyrants to think twice about overstepping their authority and instituting martial law.

The irony is that it tends to be those same citizen gun-owners who parrot what authoritarian forces tell them to parrot.

That having been said, there’s a reason the debate tends to separate along city/rural demographics, and it’s not all about ideology.

“I think the point Ryan is trying to make is that having a large number of private citizen gun-owners with “assault” weapons handy forces would-be tyrants to think twice about overstepping their authority and instituting martial law.”

With diesel and fertilizer being demonstrably effective against US government buildings, why do you need assault weapons to keep tyrants in check? IEDs are being used effectively in Afghanistan and Iraq. They don’t need assault weapons to fight back.

Assault weapons and IEDs complement each other nicely. You don’t want to be a one trick pony.

‘in Afghanistan and Iraq…They don’t need assault weapons to fight back’

You’re kidding right?

“‘in Afghanistan and Iraq…They don’t need assault weapons to fight back’

You’re kidding right?”

Please clarify.

My point is that people are creative in finding ways to destroy each other. Are assault weapons really necessary to reign in a potential dictator?

If you think assault weapons should be available to the general public, why stop there? Should tanks and drones also be available? Are assault weapons sufficient to stop potential oppression?

You’re kidding right?

Are these people kidding who think they can hold off the US Army if they just own an assault rifle?

Amen, Carl.
Freedom costs a buck-o-five…

But would you have even had those freedoms had France not saved your skin first? We’ll never know.

Would you like Freedom Fries with that?

The power elites are enslaving people with debt and not with weapons. Is violence the appropriate response?

Eventually that may the only one left other than
slavery.

They have been plenty forgiving on debt forgiveness income over the past few years.

News Headlines - Top Stories
Mortgage Debt Relief Act set to expire Dec. 31
by Tami Hoey
Posted on December 14, 2012 at 10:37 AM

PHOENIX — A big deadline is looming that could affect thousands of valley homeowners.

The Mortgage Debt Relief Act is set to expire at the end of this year.

The act had allowed homeowners who sold their homes in short sales, to avoid paying taxes on mortgage balances that had been forgiven.

That policy has been in effect since 2007, but it could soon come to an end.

CPA Bob Hockensmith sat down with Good Morning Arizona’s Kaley O’Kelley to explain what it all means for homeowners.

“Once a bank or a mortgage company takes back a house, the bank can’t come after you for the excess mortgage that they’d forgiven,” he says.

That’s what’s called the “anti-deficiency rule”. But Hockensmith says the tax rule is something entirely different.

“From 2007 through 2012, if you had your debt relieved, you didn’t have to pay taxes on that debt relief,” Hockensmith tells us. “So if you owed $200K and walked away from that house, you don’t pay taxes on the $200K.”
…

“So if you owed $200K and walked away from that house, you don’t pay taxes on the $200K.”

Is there a better way to take $200K in tax-free income than to walk away from your underwater mortgage and never look back?

PB:

I was hoping it would expire then on Jan 2nd banks would approve every short sale & modification and then sue for the difference.

They have been plenty forgiving on debt forgiveness income over the past few years.

But isn’t that legislated? The IRS has no say on that.

I was thinking more along the lines of claiming deductions you aren’t legally entitled to take, such as deducting mortgage interest you didn’t actually pay. I think they call that “tax evasion” and they aren’t very forgiving about it. Of course if they never audit you, you’ll never get caught. Or do they do a “smoke test” on every return to see if the MID claimed matches what the bank reports as paid?

As far as I know (I’ve never had a mortgage), a loan servicer reports mortgage interest paid by borrowers to the IRS just like a bank reports any interest the bank pays to you or a college reports tuition and fees that you paid during the year or your employer reports your wages. It is the primary reason all of them need your SS number.

Does anyone honestly think that the Democrats won’t push for an extension of this giveaway (helping out the victims), and the Republicans won’t go along with it, since it reduces taxes (and in theory will help the economy)?

I suspect an extension of this is going to be part of the fiscal cliff deal (as well as unemployment benefits, etc.). I think we’ll see the Payroll Tax cut get rolled back, and tax rates rise on the wealthy…any spending cuts I’m guessing will be minimal at this point.

I was thinking it’s more like Darth Sidious/Palpatine. Remember when Vader tells the Death Star commander “The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am.”?

It’s the time of the Old West.

A citizen of the town comes running into the saloon and screams, “Big Bad Bart is coming! Big Bad Bart is coming! We gotta get outta town.”

Everyone gets up in a hurry and takes off as fast as they can, including the saloonkeeper, who when hopping over the bar slips on a beer and knocks himself unconscious.

When he comes to, he makes his way outside to see the biggest, meanest man he’s ever seen riding down the center of the town on two buffaloes, whipping them with a rattlesnake screaming, “Giddyup! Let’s go, come on.”

He makes his way over to the saloonkeeper, dismounts, and enters the saloon.

Breaking both doors off the hinges while entering, he walks up to the bar, slams his fist down, breaking the bar in half and hollers, “Gimme some beer in a gallon jug.”

After the saloonkeeper hands him the jug, he watches as the man drinks it in three seconds flat.

When he’s done with his drink, the man turns around to walk out the door.

The saloonkeeper couldn’t believe his eyes and wanted to see him do it again. He asks him, “Don’t you want another beer?”

The man turns around and says, “Heck no, Big Bad Bart is coming! I gotta get outta town!”