Blue Versus Red, Part 2,983

Proposal Would Hit Blue State Taxpayers

Some conservatives want to kill the U.S. deduction for state and local taxes. Californians and New Yorkers would feel the strongest sting.

By Warren Vieth, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — As President Bush lays the groundwork for a possible overhaul of the U.S. tax code, one option under consideration would deal its biggest financial blow to citizens of blue states such as California and New York.

Some conservative activists are urging the Bush administration to scrap the federal deduction for state and local taxes as part of a broader plan to revamp the nation's tax system.

Although the proposal would hurt some taxpayers in nearly every state, it would hit hardest in states with higher-than-average income levels and bigger-than-average state and local tax burdens. High on the list are a number of blue states — those that were carried by Democrat Sen. John F. Kerry in last month's presidential election.

Taxpayers in California and New York, for example, which have top state income tax rates of 9.3% and 6.5% respectively, would be highly affected; residents of Florida and Texas, which have no state income taxes, much less so.

. . .

Supporters of the change insist the disproportionate effect on blue states is a coincidence, but they acknowledge that the proposal could hurt most in states that voted against Bush.

"Let me put it like this: It certainly isn't something that's a discouragement," said one prominent conservative. "Yes, we talked about this. The fact that it hits blue states is not something that's been missed among Republicans."

But in a political complication, some blue states that would be hit hardest by the tax change are led by Republicans. If the White House adopts the proposal, it could create a rift with some of the GOP's biggest stars in those states, such as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and New York Gov. George E. Pataki, among others.

. . .

The deduction for state and local taxes is one of the biggest tax breaks claimed by households. This year, the deduction is valued at $46 billion. That compares with $70 billion for the mortgage interest deduction and $30 billion for charitable contribution deductions, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

"The people who are going to be disproportionately penalized by this are high-income households, especially those in states with relatively high or progressive income taxes," said Kim Rueben, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.

Last year, 5.5 million California households, or 37% of all tax filers in the state, claimed deductions for state and local income taxes. In New York, 3.2 million households, or 37%, did.

Supporters of the deduction say people should not be required to pay a federal tax on taxes paid to state and local governments. The counterargument is that income used to pay for state and local government services is no different than income used to acquire anything else, and should be taxed the same.

In addition, some overhaul advocates say citizens in low tax states end up unfairly subsidizing services in high tax states because of revenue lost to the deduction.

. . .

This is from the December 5, 2004 Los Angeles Times and the full article can be found at this link, including a side bar which shows exactly how this deduction impacts the individual states: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-na-tax5dec05,1,1116585.story

http://www.gaydar.co.uk/francodisantis

The blue states voted for higher taxes, so a tax change which hits them disproportionately would seem appropriate.

It's just heartwarming to read the continuing flood of KKKrischin vengefulness.

WWJD? He's probably planning a red-hot reception for these selfish, hate-filled people in that well-known resort full of lakes of molten sulphur, flaming tiki torches, abusive staff wielding pitchforks, and not only no milk or mai-tais, but nothing else to drink for the rest of eternity. . .

>It's just heartwarming to read the continuing flood of

>KKKrischin vengefulness.

The current conservative Christian President has an unprecedented number of blacks and Latinos - not to mention women - as his closest and most trusted advisors.

In stark contrast, Democratic Presidents, including the most recent one, only had the most token black and Latino appointees, relegated to the most insignificant Cabinet posts - the ones reserved for minorities, like HUD.

Meanwhile, Republicans want to treat all individuals equally regardless of race, whereas liberals want to treat racial minorities differently based on their race and, when it comes to college applicants, apply lower standards to minorities because liberals disgustingly think that blacks and Latins are too dumb to get into college unless they have lower standards to meet than whites do.

Similarly, the new Democratic Minority Leader says that he's fine if WHITE conservative Justice Antonin Scalia becomes Chief Justice because he's really smart, but he's against BLACK conservative Justice Clarence Thomas because he's really dumb - all in line with the standard liberal practice of depicting Clarence Thomas to be a dog to his Master, Scalia.

And, liberals run around constantly making disgusting racist references to any black politician who doesn't obediently step into line like a good slave and spout liberal dogma, whether it be Condaleeza Rice (whom a liberal cartoonist recently depicted as Aunt Jemimah) or Colin Powell (whom countless liberals referred to as "Uncle Tom") or Clarence Thomas (who has been the target of innumerable racist ridicule from liberals who seethe over the fact that a Black man can exercise independent thought).

I think it's pretty clear where the KKKracism lies.

>WWJD? He's probably planning a red-hot reception for these

>selfish, hate-filled people . . .

LOL! "Hate-filled people" - this from the person who, in the very same post - indeed, in the very same fucking sentence - expresses the hope that Merlin burns in hell for eternity - all because Merlin said that it makes sense for blue states to pay more taxes since they voted for higher taxes. But it's the KKKrishins who are hate filled.

And "selfish" - that's even funnier - coming from the person who decides which political candidate he's going to vote for based upon who he thinks will make it easier and more pleasant for him to travel to third-world countries on prostitute-buying excursions - whose sole worry is what people in other countries think about Americans because he wants to make sure he can travel to buy prostitutes and have foreigners like him.

That's who is calling other people "selfish."

While I admit that it's not AS MUCH fun to highlight the corruption and decay of liberals now that they have been relegated to despised, minority status - since the fun is now tinged with a slight (and undeserved) amount of pity -- it's still quite entertaining.

Now, that was very astute, and I could not have said it better!

:7

>The current conservative Christian President has an

>unprecedented number of blacks and Latinos - not to mention

>women - as his closest and most trusted advisors.

>

>In stark contrast, Democratic Presidents, including the most

>recent one, only had the most token black and Latino

>appointees, relegated to the most insignificant Cabinet posts

>- the ones reserved for minorities, like HUD.

Let's see ... it seems Clinton appointed one or two black people to posts other than HUD:

Commerce Secretary Ron Brown

Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy

Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary

HHS Secretary Donna Shalala

Veterans Affairs Secretary Jesse Brown

Federal Highway Administrator Rodney Slater

Asst. Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence Emmett Paige Jr.

Department of Agriculture Undersecretary for Small Community and Rural Development Bob Nash

Department of Interior Assistant Secretary for Territorial and International Affairs Leslie Turner

Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders

Surgeon General David Satcher

Drug Policy Coordinator Lee Brown

He also appointed black people as budget director, chief of White House personnel, director of public outreach, deputy chief of staff, and other posts. His liaison between the White House and the Congress was Thurgood Marshall's son.

>Similarly, the new Democratic Minority Leader says that he's

>fine if WHITE conservative Justice Antonin Scalia becomes

>Chief Justice because he's really smart, but he's against

>BLACK conservative Justice Clarence Thomas because he's really

>dumb - all in line with the standard liberal practice of

>depicting Clarence Thomas to be a dog to his Master, Scalia.

Not a dog, exactly...

http://yuks.com/v1i12/img29.gif

One error. Donna Shalala isn't black. She's an Arab-American. But she's widely assumed to be gay, and supposedly an item with Janet Reno. You can read whatever you like into the fact that after the Clinton administration ended Shalala and Reno took off together on a cross-country motor home trip, and that Shalala took a position as chancellor (or whatever) at the University of Miami, in Janet Reno's hometown, afterwards. Of course, it could all be the sheerest of coincidences! }(

>One error. Donna Shalala isn't black. She's an

>Arab-American. But she's widely assumed to be gay, and

>supposedly an item with Janet Reno.

My bad. Thanks for the correction.

Re Donna and Janet as an item, the hints are all around once you look for them! On barnesandnoble.com, see who contributed the first blurb for Reno's book Counselors: Conversations with 18 Courageous Women Who Have Changed the World.

"Tapping into the deep reservoir of leadership provided by women throughout America, The Counselors shows that all of us gain when we open doors for women. The power and strength of these accomplished eighteen women can serve as a model for everyone across the nation." — Donna E. Shalala

Reno and Shalala naked together--not a pretty picture.

Merlin naked alone...how pretty would that be?

Not much worse than ...

http://www.ropesend.com/ropesend_politics/clinton/clinton12.jpg

... or ...

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/graphics/art2/robertreich.jpg

This one is real. From a calendar, "Cambridge Uncovered," in which notable locals semi-exposed themselves to benefit the community TV station.

>Let's see ... it seems Clinton appointed one or two black

>people to posts other than HUD:

I never claimed Clinton only appointed black people to HUD, so saying that he apppointed blacks to other cabinet positions is a complete non-sequitor.

What I said was that -- unlike Bush, who has filled the most significant and prestigious Cabinet positions, and the positions of advisors closest to the President with blacks and Latinos - prior Democratic Presidents, including Clinton, relegated blacks and Latinos to the lesser, second-teir agencies.

Don't you realize how completely your list proves that point, rather than negates it. Don't you see what's missing from your list of black and Latin Clinton appointees: Secretary of State, Attorney General, Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor, White House Legal Counsel -- all of the plum positions that are by far the most coveted and influential in an Administration.

The Bush Administration filled many - one could even say most - of those vital posts with blacks and Latinos - often making history to do so and sometimes filling those positions with minorities more than once.

By contrast, in the Democratic Administration, those crucial positions were filled by people who are lilly white. The blacks were put in the back of the Cabinet bus.

The record of the current President in having his most critical advisors who are closest to him be comprised of minorities is heads and shoulders above that of any President who preceded him, certainly including the Democratic Presidents.

Perhaps liberals overlook this because George Bush doesn't constantly run around referring to Condaleeza Rice or Colin Powell as an "African-American Secretary of State" or Alberto Gonzalez as a "Latino Attorney General," unlike Bill Clinton and other liberals who simply can't refer to minorities without some patronizing reference to their race.

That's because conservatives tend to view individuals as individuals without reference to their race, whereas liberals still see black people and latinos as the cute little token appointments who they get to pat on the head to prove how un-racist they are ("oh, look - I just appointed a black person to this position").

How ironic that, while liberals run around shrilly and pathetically referring to conservatives as racists and KKKrishans, it is the conservatives who have reached Martin Luther King's dream of judging people not based on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character.

Liberals seem to be headed rapidly in the opposite direction.

>That's because conservatives tend to view individuals as

>individuals without reference to their race, whereas liberals

>still see black people and latinos as the cute little token

>appointments who they get to pat on the head to prove how

>un-racist they are ("oh, look - I just appointed a black

>person to this position").

Trent Lott:

"I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either," Lott said at last week's party.

Thurmond ran as the presidential nominee of the breakaway Dixiecrat Party in the 1948 presidential race against Democrat Harry Truman and Republican Thomas Dewey. He carried Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and his home state of South Carolina, of which he was governor at the time.

During the campaign, he said, "All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches."

Thurmond's party ran under a platform that declared in part, "We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race."

*******************************************************************

Rep. Barbara Cubin (R-Wy) criticized a failed Democratic amendment that would have banned gun sales to drug addicts or people in drug treatment. After noting that her sons, ages 25 and 30, "are blond-haired and blue-eyed," she said: "One amendment today said we could not sell guns to anybody under drug treatment. So does that mean that if you go into a black community you can't sell any guns to any black person?"

During the campaign, he said, "All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches."

Thurmond's party ran under a platform that declared in part, "We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race."

http://www.dailykos.net/archives/002327.html

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Bush's cabinet most diverse in U.S. history

What a coincidence. There's a comprehensive aritcle in the USA TODAY today basically saying just how right I was about Bush's record of IMPORTANT minority appointments being the best BY FAR in U.S. history - and how misinformed and baseless those of are who run around calling conservatives "racists" and "KKKrishans".

Some nice excerpts (http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-12-09-diverse-usat_x.htm):

Bush is opening doors with a diverse Cabinet

By Susan Page, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — With little fanfare and not much credit, President Bush has appointed a more diverse set of top advisers than any president in history.

Bush has named his White House lawyer, Alberto Gonzales, right, to be the first Hispanic to hold one of the powerful "big four" Cabinet jobs.

. . . .

Bush has named his White House lawyer, Alberto Gonzales, to be the first Hispanic to hold one of the powerful "big four" Cabinet jobs, attorney general.

He named his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to be the first female African-American secretary of State, the Cabinet's senior position.

Some political analysts argue that Bush's appointments and his matter-of-fact approach to them signal a new stage in the racial history of the nation, one in which diversity in the top ranks is taken as a matter of course. Bush and Clinton, who don't agree on much, together may have set a new standard that future presidents in both parties will be expected to meet.

"Bush did not go out and say, 'I'm going to create an administration that looks like America,' which is how Clinton led off," says Paul Light, a political scientist at New York University who has studied presidential appointments. "He has just gone about recruiting a diverse Cabinet as an ordinary act. That's remarkable in the sense it sends to future administrations: 'This is just the way we're going to do business.' "

. . . .

Among Washington insiders, what's more significant is the demographics of a more amorphous group: the aides and advisers whose counsel Bush trusts most. He is the first president whose innermost circle — the people he relies on in a crunch — includes a woman other than his wife.

Among Bush's closest aides are Karen Hughes and Rice. Hughes, a veteran of his Texas campaigns and a onetime White House aide who is now an outside adviser, is one of the few willing and able to tell Bush when she thinks he has erred. Rice, a foreign policy aide in the 2000 campaign who worked in the White House for Bush's father, has become like a member of the Bush family.

Even some Democrats grumbled during the presidential campaign that Bush had more African-Americans and Hispanics among his closest advisers than did Democratic challenger John Kerry, who won a majority of black and Hispanic votes.

Before Bush, no person of color had been named to any of the four most prestigious Cabinet jobs — at the departments of State, Treasury, Defense and Justice. Now he has named two blacks as secretary of State and a Mexican-American as attorney general.

"The president has done more than diversify his Cabinet," Brazile says. "President Bush has opened new doors for minorities and women to consider the benefits of joining the ranks of the Republican Party."

>Merlin naked alone...how pretty would that be?

Well I don't know but he might be quite sexy. And leave Shalala alone. She is president of my beloved University of Miami!!!

RE: Bush's cabinet most diverse in U.S. history

I agree that Dubya should get some kudos for picking a diverse staff. Now if only the sheeple in the repiglican party would follow his lead.

Another thing this shows is that incompetence and corruption knows no racial or gender boundaries. Gonzalez was the one who said that the geneva convetion didn't apply to the war on "terra" and didn't see anything wrong with Abu Gharib. Where Ashcroft lives on the lunatic fringe religiously, Gonzalez is not far behind.

Condi and Rummy have been the most spectacularly incompetent SOD and NSA we've ever had, yet Bush keeps them around.

What a shame that the truly competent members of the misAdminstration, Whitman and O'Neil, left long ago. Powell would have fallen under that category too had he not allowed his integrity to be taken from him with the stupidity in Iraq.

Double taxation!

Property taxes, State Taxes, should be deductible!

Otherwise it is DOUBLE TAXATION! in a major way!

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