Posted on 10/25/2007 9:23:26 PM PDT by gpapa
You can't say Charlie Rangel lacks for ambition. The House Ways and Means Chairman has been saying he wants to pass "the mother of all tax reforms," and even that doesn't do justice to the trillion-dollar tax baby he delivered unto Washington yesterday.
No one thinks his plan has a chance of becoming law this year, but its beauty is as a signal of Democratic intentions for 2009. In proposing what would be the largest tax increase in history, Mr. Rangel is showing the world what he wants the tax code to look like if Democrats run the entire government. None of the Presidential candidates will admit this before November 2008, but give Mr. Rangel credit for having the courage of Hillary Clinton's convictions.
The New Yorker is wily enough to realize he has to wrap this homely child in the ribbon of "tax reform," and yesterday he even invoked the memory of Ronald Reagan's 1986 reform success. If only the Gipper were still here to have fun with that one. Readers of a certain age might recall that the 1986 reform traded lower tax rates (a top rate of 28%) for fewer loopholes and deductions. Mr. Rangel's idea of reform is to raise tax rates in order to offer more deductions.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Beware Democrats “bearing gifts”.
Gawd, these Dems sure are stupid for showing their true natures so soon, and before an election, too.
Liberals are always very generous... with other people’s money.
Kings were overthrown for taking one out of every two farmers animals. Taking 55% of my pay is worse. i want these politicians drawn and quartered on Pay per View with proceeds paying off the deficit.
So she’ll be a hero because the taxpayers will only be screwed as opposed to royally screwed.
Hey, buddy - I’m with you.
Why tax successful people into anger? Why try to give free college educations to illegal aliens? And as for threatening to force people into government controlled healthcare, well, sometimes it seems the whole country has gone insane.
Other day a driver was stopped near Federal Way, Washington. Said he had a live hand grenade and intended to use it on the Federal Building in Seattle. Those feelings I understand. I wouldn’t have done what he did, but I understand.
It has never made much sense to me in this day of global competitiveness why the Democrats seem so intent on taking money away from those who are capable of making it grow exponentially and giving it to people who can’t even balance a check book.
Not exactly the recipe for success in the global marketplace. That’s for sure.
Charlie Rangel — the new Adam Clayton Powell.
ping
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatreds.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
This seems to be the antithesis of the Democrat party who are hellbent of destroying America by taking away our liberties and creating the Govt controlled nanny state.
And as a PS, it isn’t widely known that in 1956 then-Congressman Adam Clayton Powell broke with his Party and supported President Eisenhower for reelection, accusing the Democrats of having a far weaker platform position on civil rights.
I can’t tell you how happy my spouse was to hear that we are now considered “rich”.
The article is a complete distortion. Nowhere does it point out how incredibly rich these people (High executives as well as entrepreneurs) are, how wide the gap is between them and everyone else, how fast that gap is increasing.
Both Alan Greenspan, in "The Age of Turbulence", and John Bogle, in "Battle for the Soul of Capitalism", worry a great deal about it, about its fairness, about its destabilizing effect on society. I am still reading these books so I can't yet truly comment on them. But I know Greenspan concludes that no alternative is available; that these enormously well-paid CEO's are worth what they get because they run the best corporations in the world.
Rangel thinks otherwise - that redistribution is necessary to preserve social peace. He may be right. Can we pay our CEOs fortunes to destroy the American middle class standard of living because of the benefits free trade and globalization will supposedly bring to everyone? Or is Greenspan right to believe that unfettered global capitalism is still the best hope for humanity? Or are one or both these guys just shills for greedy special interests?
It's a tough choice, as everyone recogizes.
Trillion-Dollar Baby - Charlie Rangel’s very revealing tax increase...
lib/dems....cannot wait to raise taxes....but as the piaps states...we will take things away from you for the good of others!!!!
Yikes...not only does Hillary talk with a black accent when she’s with blacks, she took on Rangel’s GREASY HAIR also!
The people at the top will always figure out ways to structure things to minimize their tax burden. Efforts to "soak the rich" end up landing primarily on the "almost rich", increasing the disparity between the super-rich and those below them.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with somebody like liberallarry about the death tax. This person was extolling the virtues of the Democrats who wanted to keep the death tax so that the rich would be sure to properly return to society the vast fortunes they manage to amass in their lifetime. Since he and his wife were very wealthy, I asked him whether he wasn’t worried about the death tax himself. Oh no, he assured me, they’ve got a tax lawyer who had already shown them how to shield their wealth from it. I then asked him for the name of the lawyer. Very haughtily he told me that I could not afford that kind of lawyer.
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