Reality-Based Engineering

McCain and Taxes

Yeah, uh, I remember him hammering W on taxes during the 2000 debates in South Carolina (and so do others here, you can search for more here )...so, here's a JedReport montage of McCain's tax ideas...sounds like Obama's ideas to me, peeps...



And, here's the exact money quote that recall from that debate that made me proud, at the time, to vote for him in the Mass primaries:

I want a balanced approach. A working families tax cut—Governor Bush has 38 percent of his tax cut go to the wealthiest one percent of Americans—pay down the debt, Social Security and Medicare. If we're going to save Social Security, we've got to take a bunch of the non-Social Security surplus, pump it into the Social Security system, because we all know that it's going broke. If we do that, then people can then invest part of their own payroll taxes in investments of their choice. The difference between Governor Bush's proposal and mine is that I put a whole lot of money into Social Security, Medicare and paying down the debt. He puts a whole lot of money into tax cuts.... Because we'd lay this obligation on another generation of young Americans—$3.6 trillion. At town hall meeting after town hall meeting, I have average Americans stand up to me and say to me, Senator McCain, all these years of running deficits, we've accumulated this debt. We're paying more interest—as much interest, almost, on it as we are in spending on national defense. We ought to pay down that debt, and not saddle the next generation of young Americans with it.... Look, Alan Greenspan just recently said we shouldn't have these massive tax cuts like Governor Bush is proposing. We should pay down the debt. But working families need the tax cut.

The green highlighted text is what I recalled clearly from the debate, but note what I highlighted in red...the $3.6 trillion debt he alludes to in the 2000 debates is, sadly, a low projection but a heckuva lookahead by McCain at the time. And, per this bonddad post from this morning, here are the debt loads carried by the USG at the end of each fiscal year of the Bush administration:

09/30/2001 $5,807,463,412,200.06
09/30/2002 $6,228,235,965,597.16
09/30/2003 $6,783,231,062,743.62
09/30/2004 $7,379,052,696,330.32
09/30/2005 $7,932,709,661,723.50
09/30/2006 $8,506,973,899,215.23
09/30/2007 $9,007,653,372,262.48
09/30/2008 $10,024,724,896,912.49

We've added $4,217,261,484,712.43 to the debt...so, actually, McCain was closer (numerically, at least) than I thought!!

[update oct30] A good journal entry about historic tax rates.

Labels: 2000 Elections, 2008 Elections, dubya, John McCain, South Carolina, taxes

posted by jimboses @ 2:18 PM 0 comments

Delving Into Worcester Politics...

...this is something that I rarely, if ever, do on this blog...however, here goes:

Bob Spellane is my state rep in the MA Statehouse...in the several elections that wifey and I have lived in Worcester, I've voted for him, especially after his office helped me out of a jam with the DMV. Well, it would appear that it pays to pay attention to your local politics...I guess Tip O'Neill was right when he said that "All politics is local." Anyways, Monday night when I got home, there was a note jammed into out storm door, a xerox double sided copy of multiple issues regarding Bob Spellane, and saying that John Mahoney was running a Write-In campaign for Spellane's seat because of multiple ethics violations that Spellane had been involved in...well, wifey and I started looking around the internets to see what we could see...

...and, as a side note, whomever wrote the flyer that got stuck in our door, learn how to use your spellchecker...writing crappily, even tho you might be right, only makes me think you're someone like these people from VA trying to suppress the black vote this coming Tuesday...and when I get my hands on the Mahoney flyer, I'll scan it in and add it to this post...

...anyways, it appears that Bob has diverted campaign funds to personal use, (another Howie Carr-penned link here to this whole issue) and that he's got some sort of semi-sweetheart deal with the bank that gave him his mortgage and (maybe?) a second home equity loan...although he was silly enough to get himself into an ARM, too, and they're trying to get him to start repaying, or be forclosed upon...AND, he had a year's worth of mortgage forgiven...he was also hit with ethics violations WRT to taking $50,000 from his campaign fund for personal use...so, the home equity loan was used, in part, to settle the ethics claim...and why do we know all of this? Bob Spellane's divorce proceedings...which also spell out why he's getting divorced...he's had an affair with a former WCTR-TV3 reporter who now MIGHT have gotten a cush job b/c of Spellane's relationship with her now-employer...ack. Too much.

Along the way to writing this post, I found a tremendous number of worcester-related blogs that I never knew were out there...I might just have to (finally!) start a Worcester bloglinks section on this site...there are more than I imagined...here are the specific links that I used to find some details of this story:

• Wormtown Taxi
• Daily Worcesteria
• Worcester Activist
• Colleges of Worcester Consortium (this one I knew about)
• T&G Article
• (ack.) Howie Carr Commentary
• Bob Spellane's website

Labels: Bob Spellane, John Mahoney, politics, Telegram and Gazette, William Trotta, Worcester

posted by jimboses @ 12:13 PM 0 comments

Reminder: GOP Voter Supression Is Underway

I gave a link to the mydd.com post that's covering it...but the efforts are out there...I'll add other links as I find them:

• Election Protection
• Wikipedia entry explaining voter suppression
• Voter Suppression wiki
• [update] TPM's GOP Voter Suppression Guide
  
• FL Gov Crist Extends Early Voting Hours, fixing a little of what's broke about Florida elections...[update] but Georgia does not follow suit [upd oct30] More on the Georgia mess
  
• AdamB's post which has some good links hanging off of it re: previous supression efforts
• All AMERICABlog voter suppression entries (by label)
• NOW on PBS talks about 2008 voter suppression
  
• A WV voting machine flipping votes - seems to me that the voting technology is strangely unreliable - I use touchscreens all the time at my work, and we don't see this problem EVER!! You dont see this at ATMs, either, and they spit out to you a friggin' paper trail that's accurate! [Update] more from Wired magazine...
  
• The scheme to supress votes in VA telling people to vote on Nov 5th for democrats
  

Labels: 2008 Elections, GOP, voter supression

posted by jimboses @ 11:47 AM 0 comments

wicked funny vids

Labels: 2008 Elections, John McCain, video, youtube

posted by jimboses @ 11:00 PM 0 comments

NPR On The Ball With Understanding The Financial Mess

Two things -

• NPR has a blog that they update regularly
• A special This American Life ep. that explains in simple terms what all the hub-bub is all about. This one Wifey and I listened to, and then we each would say "oh, NOW I get it!"

posted by jimboses @ 9:39 PM 0 comments

Sister Tech/Politics Blog

posted by jimboses @ 9:38 PM 0 comments

New VF Article

I'll read it this weekend...now I'll settle down to listening to the Sox/Rays tilt...friggin Charter does not carry TBS in their basic tier...

posted by jimboses @ 10:06 PM 0 comments

People Strangely Think He's A Commie...

...yes, it's George Soros. Guy's worth $9 billion...that's a capitalist if I've ever heard of one...anyway, check out the story regarding what to do about the current financial meltdown...

posted by jimboses @ 9:48 PM 0 comments

The Commute: I feel like this guy

Watch the video on the linked page and see about this guy that gets up at 4 AM to go to work cause he lives 70+ miles from the office near San Diego...

Labels: economy, energy policy, PBS

posted by jimboses @ 9:44 PM 0 comments

Obama Predicted Smears...

Of course, it's an easy prediction, but ass this JedReport vid shows by mixing in a july stump speech with the recent McCain/Palin vitriol it's very amusing

posted by jimboses @ 5:12 PM 0 comments