{"id":4008,"date":"2010-04-15T19:20:38","date_gmt":"2010-04-15T23:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=4008"},"modified":"2010-04-15T19:22:46","modified_gmt":"2010-04-15T23:22:46","slug":"not-in-the-ranks-of-the-informed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/04\/15\/not-in-the-ranks-of-the-informed\/","title":{"rendered":"not in the ranks of the informed&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<br \/>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"center\"><strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/jon-perr\/10-inconvenient-truths-for-tax-day\">10 Inconvenient Truths for  Tax Day<\/a><br \/>   Crooks and Liars<\/strong><br \/>   By Jon Perr<br \/>   Apr 15, 2010                                   \t\t<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fivethirtyeight.com\/2010\/04\/jonah-goldberg-quarter-slave.html\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/taxes1.gif\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"justify\">With Tax Day again upon us, two story lines will predictably dominate  the media coverage on April 15th.  In their perpetual war on taxes,  conservatives will claim that rates are too high even as those Americans  who receive tax credits get &quot;welfare.&quot;   Meanwhile, frothing-at-the-mouth Tea Partiers will protest about being  &quot;Taxed Enough Already.&quot;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Sadly, the numbers tell a different tale.  After a decade of the Bush  tax cuts, it&#8217;s clear that only one side is fighting &#8211; and winning  &#8211; the class war.  As for the Tea Baggers, they aren&#8217;t merely, as Jon  Stewart suggested last year, &quot;confusing  tyranny with losing.&quot;  They are confused about so much more.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Here, then, are 10 Inconvenient Truths for Tax Day:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/jon-perr\/10-inconvenient-truths-for-tax-day#one\">Over  95% of Working Households Got Tax Cuts<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/jon-perr\/10-inconvenient-truths-for-tax-day#two\">Only  2% of Tea Baggers Know Obama Cut Their Taxes&#8230;<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/jon-perr\/10-inconvenient-truths-for-tax-day#three\">&#8230;and  52% of Tea Partiers Think Their Taxes are Fair&#8230;<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/jon-perr\/10-inconvenient-truths-for-tax-day#four\">&#8230;and  Think the Federal Tax Level is Over Double What It Is<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/jon-perr\/10-inconvenient-truths-for-tax-day#five\">1%  of Families Earned 24% of All Income&#8230;<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/jon-perr\/10-inconvenient-truths-for-tax-day#six\">&#8230;and  57% of All Capital Income<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/jon-perr\/10-inconvenient-truths-for-tax-day#seven\">400  Richest Taxpayers Saw Incomes Double, Tax Rates Halved<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/jon-perr\/10-inconvenient-truths-for-tax-day#eight\">Only  1 in 500 Families Pay the Estate Tax<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/jon-perr\/10-inconvenient-truths-for-tax-day#nine\">Corporate  Taxes Have Plummeted as a Share of GDP<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/jon-perr\/10-inconvenient-truths-for-tax-day#ten\">The  U.S. Loses $345 Billion a Year to Tax Evasion and Fraud<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>and&#8230;<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"center\"><strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/john-amato\/new-aei-poll-you-really-dont-hate-payin\">New AEI poll: You really don&#8217;t hate paying taxes<\/a><\/strong><br \/>  <strong> Crooks and Liars<\/strong><br \/>  By John Amato<br \/>  April 15, 2010    <\/div>\n<p align=\"justify\">As crazy as the tea party movement is over taxes  along with Limbaugh\/Palin\/O&#8217;Reilly and the rest of the teabaggers, a new  survey by the very conservative <strong>American Enterprise Institute<\/strong> says that Americans  feel they are paying just about the right amount of taxes and that  Bush&#8217;s tax cuts only helped the rich and Big Business and should be  ended.<\/p>\n<div><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2010\/04\/14\/you-dont-really-hate-payi_n_538028.html?ref=twitter\" target=\"_blank\">Dan Froomkin:<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<ul> For all the  grousing about taxes these days, a new survey concludes that it&#8217;s <em>doing<\/em>  taxes rather than <em>paying<\/em> them that really rankles.    <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">A  plurality of Americans think they&#8217;re paying about the right amount in  taxes, and a significant majority say they&#8217;re paying the fair amount. <\/p>\n<div>\n<div align=\"justify\">There  is widespread agreement that the rich and corporations are paying too  little in taxes. And a majority of Americans think the Bush tax cuts  helped the rich the most and should be eliminated  <\/div>\n<p align=\"justify\">Americans are  also vastly more concerned right now about unemployment and the economy  than they are about taxes &#8212; or deficits, for that matter.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"justify\">A  troubling answer that Dan highlights is that Americans, by a slim  margin, prefer Republicans over Democrats when it comes to taxes. <strong><font color=\"#200020\">We can  thank the right wing noise machine for that. Only in America can a  president like George Bush screw up the country for almost a decade and  in a blink of an eye it&#8217;s lost on most people that all these  conservatives acting like racist sore losers stood by every one of  Bush&#8217;s economic policies.<\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">As in my earlier post [<strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/wp-admin\/..\/index.php\/2010\/04\/15\/deja-vu-all-over-again\/\">d\u00c3\u00a9j&agrave; vu <sub>[all over again]<\/sub>&hellip;<\/a><\/strong>], it feels like somebody has widely dispersed a <strong>Talking Point<\/strong> and hopes to fan it into a winner like <strong>Abortion<\/strong> or <strong>Gay Marriage<\/strong>, something that will swing the election their way. They&#8217;ve incorporated the Healthcare Bill into it as well. It&#8217;s a major assault on the old monster &quot;creeping socialism&quot; from our political past. <\/div>\n<p align=\"justify\">I think it&#8217;s sad that the political debate in our country is not about specific issues. It&#8217;s about Straw Men &#8211; Socialism, Communism, Fascism, Liberalism, Conservativism. And who even cares about the last round of this malarkry &#8211; Stem Cell Reasearch, Gay Marriage, Abortion? None of those Talking Point things are really even on the table. This Tea Party business doesn&#8217;t feel grass roots to me. It feels like a great big fat manipulation of the political process. We&#8217;re not overtaxed. The majority of people don&#8217;t even think we&#8217;re overtaxed, even when polled by the center of the Conservative Universe &#8211; <strong>A.E.I.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">I used to think there was something to do about all of this. Nowadays, I think that Democracy <u>is<\/u> the best solution to the phenomenon of Mass Hysteria. An informed Democracy is even better. So it&#8217;s up to the media, the real media and the good sense of the people. I just hope enough people see where the facts lead. The posts above makes it clear that the Teapartiers are not in the ranks of the informed&#8230;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>10 Inconvenient Truths for Tax Day Crooks and Liars By Jon Perr Apr 15, 2010 With Tax Day again upon us, two story lines will predictably dominate the media coverage on April 15th. In their perpetual war on taxes, conservatives will claim that rates are too high even as those Americans who receive tax credits [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}