Posts Tagged ‘taxes’

For Want of a Nail

Friday, August 20th, 2010

For Want of a Nail
by
David Schlecht

For want of a nail the shoe was lost
For want of a shoe the horse was lost
For want of a horse the rider was lost
For want of a rider the  battle was lost
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost
All for the want of a nail.

Have you been to the DMV lately? How long did you spend there? Do you realize that for little more than a $1.25 annually in taxes you could have more offices and shorter waits? But, no, the conservatives have convinced us that we want lower and lower taxes.

So where does this mad race to the bottom end? When we have the cheapest government money can buy? Hello Somalia.

Are we getting to be such cheapskates that we don’t want to pay the price of a nail and will let the kingdom fall? We will gripe and complain about having to spend hours in line at the DMV but will complain even louder about having to pay an additional $1.25 to build more offices.

When will America wake up and realize the conservative ways are not in America’s best interests? Hacking away at our social safety net while giving the billionaires a free ride doesn’t help anyone but the rich. Stripping  our government oversight agencies are giving the billionaire foreign corporations a free ride while we Americans pay for their pollution and illnesses. We feel worse and worse about ourselves as we let the poor, elderly, and sick suffer.

But, still we let the media (representing the rich) get us riled up about considerably less important things like where they’re building a mosque or whether there’s an illegal alien having a baby while hundreds of millions of our jobs are shipped over seas. As long as we’re distracted the billionaires get richer and we get poorer.

When will it end? Will we let the kingdom fall for the want of a nail or will we wake up from this media-induced coma  and start refusing the failed conservative policies?

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Posted in Politics | 6 Comments »

What is Wrong With Nevada?

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

What is Wrong With Nevada?
by
David Schlecht

Nevada has been voting for republican governors for over a decade and during that decade Nevada has lost ground in so many ways it’s hard to keep count. But, let’s give it a try.

Nevada has become one of the lowest paid states in the union. Nevada has become one of the lowest in union membership. Nevada has become one of the least educated with the country’s worst schools and the highest dropout rates. Nevada has become the country’s leader in home foreclosures. Nevada has become the most unemployed and the longest unemployed. There are more things Nevada is leading on but this list should be long enough for anyone to realize we’re in trouble here in Nevada.

Nevada was not in this bad condition before the last 10 years of republican governors. All the ills defined above can be directly attributed to republican policies. The rest of the country has suffered from the past 30 years of failed conservative policies like free trade (brought to us in part by a democratic president, Clinton), smaller government, union busting, attacks on the minimum wage and other social safety nets like welfare and unemployment, higher taxes on the middle class and lower taxes on the rich. Nevada has been a proving ground for conservative policies for the past 10 years and look what has happened to Nevada.

You can be sure you’ll hear the same foolish argument by the conservatives about how it would all have worked perfectly if we had just pushed through these failed policies harder and faster. But, nobody is really believing this stuff anymore.

So why, then, is Nevada still voting for republican Governors? Isn’t it time we all came to our senses and said republican policies don’t work and ejected the republicans causing this disaster?

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Posted in Politics | 3 Comments »

Stop The Greed

Monday, August 16th, 2010

Stop The Greed

I got a plea from Senator John Cornyn today. Here’s what he has to say:

If the Democrats have their way, very soon our taxes will be going up.

They have been very busy in Washington spending your money on their radical liberal agenda. They have been financing these bloated government takeovers and spending programs by borrowing money from your children. We now have a more than $13 trillion national debt which is growing by an average of $6.534 billion per day. The American people have become outraged at this reckless and irresponsible path, and rather than dealing with their outrageous spending habits, President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are going to try to pay for their agenda by taxing you.

In 2001 and 2003, Republicans passed into law the largest tax cut in American history, and lowered taxes for all Americans. But that tax relief is set to expire very soon, and the Democrats have no intention extending them. They want to raise your taxes in the middle of the biggest economic downturn in generations. And this isn’t just any tax hike, we are talking about a $3 trillion tax hike.

If you are single and make $30,000 a year, expect to see your taxes rise by $426. If you make $50,000, you will owe an additional $602. The expiration of this tax relief will mean less hiring by small business, a 50% cut in the child tax credit, a return of the marriage penalty and a 164% hike in the tax on dividends. What do you think this will mean for our economic recovery?

Don’t let them get away with it. Go to [some website], and sign our petition to tell the Democrats not to raise our taxes. Tell Congress you want them to extend the tax cuts before they expire at the end of this year.

Sincerely,

Senator John Cornyn
Chairman, NRSC

Honestly, John, don’t you feel any shame? Talk about greedy and shelfish. It’s about time you millionaires and billionaires started paying your fair share again. The American people WILL NOT ask Congress to extend your selfish tax cuts. America is paying the lowest taxes we have paid in centuries and our government is going broke while you millionaires and billionaires bring home more and more money. The disparity between the ultra rich and the rest of America is the worst it has been, ever! And, you want it to continue. You want more tax breaks for the rich while the country and the middle class disappear.

Honestly, John, isn’t it time you started paying your fair share? Isn’t it time we brought this country back to the prosperity we had before the conservatives like you started telling us that greed was good and that some day, even we may be millionaires if we just gave more money to the richest in America.

I’m sick of the lies and I’m sick of the greed and I’m sick of the rich taking advantage of us. Pay your taxes John and quit asking me to help you with your selfish quest to avoid paying your fair share. The rich are not paying their share and you want me to help continue the mistake? What do you take me and the rest of Americans for? Fools? No more!

Honestly, John. Should you really be in Congress? You don’t represent America. You should be ashamed!

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How Big Should Your Government Be?

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

How Big Should Your Government Be?
by
David Schlecht

The republicans and the libertarians are mindlessly chanting for smaller and smaller government. In order to decide how much smaller our government should be, we need to decide how big is big enough and how small is too small.

Those who are incapable of thinking about the facts or are unwilling to admit the facts would argue that no government at all is the best target, well, maybe no government except the military. These same people will refuse to even let you talk when you explain that the military consumes the vast majority of our government. We spend more than 50% of our national tax dollars on military, not to mention the silly little pet projects like Iraq and Afghanistan that aren’t even included in the total.

If you add in all the local police, county police, state police, and state military reserves, it come up to way over 50%.

So for these unthinking zombies, they want to cut out the little things but leave the nanny state (military) untouched. Not too bright, huh?

How much military is too much? Face it! The bigger the military becomes, the more protection we need because the more of the world hates us because we’re so violent and militaristic. Personally, I’d like to see us reduce our military expenditures to no more than the international average.

Beside military, how big should the rest of our government be?

Should We The People ever be weaker than the strongest and richest corporations in America? Of course not. If a business gets stronger than our government, they become the government. The only protection we have from big business is government, is We The People.

The best way to reduce the size of the non-military government is to reduce the control business and aristocracies have in our country. We need to start enforcing our laws against monopolies. That would be a good start. We need to re-enact the taxes that were implemented to stop the landed gentry from becoming stronger than our country.

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Medical Costs

Friday, May 21st, 2010

Medical Costs
by
Captain Jack

In order to fix what we think is broken, we should try to understand how we got in this mess. The problem with our out-of-control medical costs exemplifies this handily. Knowing how we got in this mess will usually help us figure out how to get out of it and at the very least can help us avoid stepping in the same hole again once it’s fixed.

If you only have one power company, they can charge whatever they want for electricity and you can either pay through the nose or freeze to death. This is an example of supply and demand. There is a large demand and only a single supplier. That is why most of our power providers are tightly regulated — to prevent this type of abuse.

Computers were expensive at the beginning. I remember when my first desktop computer cost me $1300 for a run-of-the-mill computer. Now you can buy a computer for $300. Why the difference? Supply and demand, obviously. Now there are numerous companies trying to sell you a computer.

So let’s think back about 30 years. Medical care was expensive. You paid almost $30 for a doctor visit. No, not for the co-pay, not for the deductible. That was the cost of the visit. Sure, that was expensive then, but nothing like what we’re paying today.

What has changed since then? What has caused the prices to sky rocket?

Do you think that it might possibly have something to do with supply and demand? You’re right on the money.

We have a higher demand for medical care now than we did back then. There were more doctors available per patient than we have now. Considerably more. And, why is that? The reason is two fold.

1. The AMA restricts how many doctors get through a medical degree.  They control the supply. The AMA should be terminated. It is not benefiting society, but causing the deaths of many Americans due to unavailable affordable health care.

2. The second reason is along the same line. What else changed 30 years ago? What changed that affects how many people graduate from medical school? You’re probably way ahead of me on this one. Yes, it’s because the cost of education has gone through the roof. 30 years ago many colleges were free or close to free. Today, only the elite can afford to send their kids to medical school.

If we all paid $10 per year to provide free medical education to anyone interested and capable of graduating, we would save hundreds of dollars a year in medical costs. But, no, we don’t want to pay an extra dime on our taxes and see what this stingy attitude has done to our once great nation?

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Gibbons, the Child Governor

Monday, March 29th, 2010

Gibbons, the Child Governor
by
David Schlecht

Ah, Jim Gibbons. You make a tea bagger proud. Too bad that you disgrace the rest of the state of Nevada. I’ve seen five year olds act more mature and sensible than you.

Gibbons doesn’t think that we’re wasting enough of our bankrupt state’s money. He wants to cancel education and any investment in Nevada’s future but he certainly has some money to jump on the Republican Crazy Train and file yet another frivolous lawsuit against health insurance reform like one more lawsuit is going to make a difference. Just how stupid is it for Nevadans to pay our scarce Nevada tax dollars pursuing lawsuits that we will have to spend our federal tax dollars to defend. I know that this sounds awfully immature by anyone’s standards, but at a time like this, it has to make a tea bagger proud.

It’s really no surprise that the majority of Nevadans have been against Gibbons from the start, but this an obvious example of Nevadan tax payers getting what we deserve for not getting out there and voting. Now it’s costing every Nevadan cold hard cash because of this man-child.

Knock, knock — wake up Nevada!

Update:
You’ve just got to read the AG’s Response to Gibbons 3-26-10.

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Posted in Politics | 6 Comments »

Rory Reid Candidate for Nevada Governor

Friday, March 12th, 2010

Rory Reid Candidate for Nevada Governor
by
David Schlecht

I went to a house party for Rory Reid to find out what his candidacy really meant. Of course, one never gets the “truth” at these neighborhood parties, but it’s very interesting to talk with other Nevadans and even more interesting how the candidate addresses the issues everyone is talking about.

Let me be straight up, here. Nevada has been run into the ground by an endless list of Republican governors. That is the reason Nevada is dead last at everything that matters and almost last at everything that matters even a little.

This isn’t a coincidence and Nevada is waking up to this fact. Republican governors have destroyed this state and our current disaster of a governor, Gibbons, has been one of the worst. So, let me be clear, I’d vote for almost anyone before trusting the Republican with anything in this state ever again. However –

Rory Reid is not what I expect and not progressive enough to fix the disasters the decades of Republican rule have brought Nevada.

Two things make Rory sound just like any other REPUBLICAN candidate. If he doesn’t fix both of these (and hopefully many more) he has no chance as a serious Democratic candidate. Rory’s Republican rants that need to change:

1. No New Taxes. What is this garbage? This is the Republican sound byte that has caused this current economic disaster. No new taxes means we won’t expect the corporations or the wealthy to pay their share of the taxes. So, here, at a time when Nevada is hemorrhaging in red ink, the Democratic candidate is using Republican talking points for what has failed Nevada for so long. If we don’t start expecting the corporations and billionaires to pay their fair share, Nevada will cease to function as a state and Rory has no plan to fix it.

Hey, Rory, Nevadans will vote for a real Republican long before they’ll vote for a Democrat running as a Republican. Stand up and be a Democrat and denounce the Republican failed policies. Don’t embrace them. Nevadans want to vote for a true Progressive, a true Liberal, and it’s time someone stepped up and filled those shoes.

2. Bring in more jobs, any jobs. There is no shortage of jobs in America. If Americans and Nevadans would work for wages comparable to slave labor, there would be endless corporations flooding to Nevada to take advantage of the slave labor. If we all worked for free there would be no unemployment. So, bringing in just any job to Nevada is not helping Nevada.

Hey, Rory, we need real jobs that pay real wages. We already have enough poverty level jobs. Stop encouraging the bottom feeding companies to come to Nevada to exploit our near slave labor wages. Double our minimum wage limit, outlaw H1B and H2B visas and any other such schemes for bringing in cheap labor to compete with our already rock bottom wages in Nevada.

So, Rory, the bottom line is, do you want to be just another Republican and hand the state off to another blood sucking Republican governor or do you want to run as a true Democrat and quit with the failed Republican talking points.

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Posted in Politics | 6 Comments »

We’re Winning the Race to the Bottom

Monday, February 1st, 2010

We’re Winning the Race to the Bottom
by
David Schlecht

From the Las Vegas Review Journal:

Nevada’s budget outlook is so bleak that lawmakers doubt whether state government can remain afloat without drastic cuts to everything from prisons to schools to state parks and services for the poor and elderly.

Legislators met Tuesday with Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons to discuss how they will cope with a short-term deficit of about $900 million during an upcoming special session of the Legislature. Some Democratic lawmakers acknowledge options to bridge the gap probably won’t include tax increases.
…
Assemblyman John Oceguera, D-Las Vegas, said pay cuts and layoffs for state employees are probably inevitable.

“These are drastic, drastic cuts. I would be surprised if some folks didn’t lose their jobs,” Oceguera said.
…
Taylor said such a cut would hit lower-wage employees extremely hard, especially because some lower-paying jobs are held by single parents raising children. There had been talks that salary cuts would be made only to employees earning more than $40,000 a year.

Oceguera was uncertain whether it would be considered “a socialist type thing” to tailor pay cuts according to earnings.

A Chamber of Commerce study released earlier this month found state and local government employees in 2008 earned an average pay of $55,657 in 2008, sixth highest among states and $6,800 higher than the national average. For state employees alone, the average pay was $55,266.

Teacher pay in Nevada averaged $48,257 a year in 2008, below the $50,852 national average, according to the chamber study. University and community college faculty members in Nevada earn $69,282 on average, compared with the national average of $72,959.

The study also found that Nevada has the fewest number of public employees on a per capita basis in the country, at 43.7 per 1,000 residents.

But Gibbons, who sets the agenda for the session, has long said he would veto any tax increases.

“Our only real option,” Horsford said, “is to eliminate or reduce spending.”

This is absolutely shocking. Gibbons is leading us in a race to the bottom.

Nevada state and local government employees get paid more than the average. That means the local employees get paid more than the average and the state employees get paid considerably less than average. But, that’s not what the Chamber of Commerce says since they might have a little difficulty being objective in this matter. What on earth are they even involved for? They’re the enemy and part of what made our current mess.

This seems so terribly obvious to any casual observer to be a race to the bottom. Nevada has been groveling at the bottom of everything important for so long, we just don’t know what to do if we’re not dead last. We seem to be winning the race to be the first state to resemble Haiti. Let’s all compete to see how low we can pay our state employees. Soon we’ll all be greeted by illegal aliens at the state agencies because they’ll work for less than Americans will. Is that what we want in America?

They’re afraid to affect the rich more than the poor because they’re afraid it’ll sound Socialist? This has to be about the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard in a while. When was it considered Socialist to expect those who benefit the most from society to pay the most? Socialist? If this is Socialism, then America’s founding fathers were all Socialists. They expected everyone to pay their fair share. Shame on you for disparaging the names of our forefathers!

And, if you were paying attention, Nevada is paying our educators well below the average. Obviously we’re dead last in education. We only get back what we’re willing to invest. We should be having a race to see how much more money we can put back in the hands of the middle and lower class and we should be expecting the wealthy to start paying their fair share.

Gibbon, oh what a fine example of Republican principles. No new taxes. We wouldn’t want the billionaires to pay their fair share, now would we? No, let’s just take it out of the pockets of those who need it the most.

When will America start to realize that this Republican approach is destroying our country?

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Posted in Finance, General, Politics | 2 Comments »

The Pride of the Republican Party

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

The Pride of the Republican Party
by
Captain Jack

I get Tea Bagger email occasionally and it is never a disappointment. No wonder these poor deluded souls vote for Palin and still cling to the Republican party. There’s something seriously wron. Check out some the of the best for this week. This is from their touted expert on all thing tea-baggery:

Why? We have intentionally dumbed down our schools,
ignored our history, and no longer teach our
founding documents, why we are exceptional, and
why we are worth preserving. Students by and
large cannot write, think critically, read, or
articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers
are not picketing, school boards continue to
back mediocrity. Why?

Why? I”ll tell you why we’ve destroyed our education system and why we’re continuing to do so. Because the Republican party and the tea-baggers don’t want to have taxes to pay for a first-world country. Without a populous willing to pay tax dollars for a good country you end up with a Republican paradise, no taxes and a country like Somalia. Everyone but the tea baggers knows Reagan was wrong and government isn’t the problem. Lack of government is.

we have elected a man that no one really knows
anything about, who has never run so much as a
Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla
, Alaska . All of his associations and alliances
are with real radicals in their chosen fields of
employment, and everything we learn about him,
drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright
scary

Scary? Are the Republicans really so easily scared? No wonder they over reacted to 9/11 and gave Bin Laden everything he could have dreamed of. It’s time they became a little braver. But let’s get back to the point of not knowing who Obama is.

This author is correct, the Republicans have no idea whatsoever who Obama is. That’s because their news sources don’t tell them anything other than second-grade-level sound bytes. Please, turn off your TV for a few moments a day and actually try to find out what is going on in the world.

Obama is a constitutional scholar, an expert in thing that matter to America. Why weren’t you out there revolting against Bush? What did you know about him? Did he ever EVER run a successful business? Was he in bed with the Arabs? Was his crowning moments when he was a cheer leader or when her was AWOL from the military? We know a lot about Obama and about Bush. Just open your eyes.

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Conservative Bankrupt Policies

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Conservatives’ Bankrupt Policies
by
David Schlecht

Nevada’s governor, Jim Gibbons, is your typical Republican politician. He has joined the cult swearing allegiance to “no new taxes” when it is supposed to be allegiance to the state of Nevada. In fact, Nevada has been almost strictly Republican for decades and when not strictly Republican their governor has still been a conservative Democrat.

And, what has this voting record brought to Nevada? As stated in an earlier post, we’re first in discouraged voters, last in education, first in bankruptcies, almost worst in unemployment, and almost last in most other indicators of a first world state.

One would think that even the really bone headed would eventually get tired of sticking their tongues on the frozen flag pole, but Nevada proves that there is no end to the stream of illogical voting.

Gibbons swears “no new taxes” while the rich get away without paying their fair share and the middle class get straddled with supporting the lazy stingy or just unethical rich. The only solution Gibbons has for fixing the state’s tax revenue shortfall is to take it out of the budgets of the state workers.

The first string of cuts stole 5% from the paychecks of every Nevada civil servant and in most cases, over a thousand dollars in benefits. For anyone who knows anything about state pay scales, you know that state employees are generally paid considerably less than employees in the private sector.

By “considerably less” I mean it is common to see state employees getting 20% less than similar jobs in the private sector. One of the few reasons why employees agree to work for such low wages is that benefits can make up for the difference.

I’m not talking about benefits that the state pays for as much as I’m saying a large employer can self insure its employees. Once the employer controls the insurance, they can control the costs and avoid the problem with unethical insurance companies dropping coverage for people when they need it.

So, Gibbon’s first round of cuts was on the backs of the state workers. Today he says he’s planning to steal more money from hard working Nevadans while chanting the cult mantra, “no new taxes”.

If you don’t expect the wealthy to pay their fair share, you end up with a state like Nevada and a country like the USA.

When will Nevada and the rest of America realize that conservative policies are destroying America.

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Posted in Politics | 2 Comments »

Shrinking Tax Dollars

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

Shrinking Tax Dollars
by
Captain Jack

Expanding on David’s great post about Welfare for the Rich, I see services in our state shrinking and drying up. Snow plows are just one of numerous examples. Our entire country has been seeing infrastructure crumbling around us which is a direct result of lower tax revenues caused by tax breaks for the billionaires. Reagan’s and Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy are destroying our once-great country.

And, that was before the Bush recession.

Now that we’re suffering further reduction in tax revenue, the services we are paying for with yours and my tax dollars are shrinking. We’re getting less for our money. But, your taxes aren’t going down and neither are mine. So all you smart readers out there are probably wondering where your tax dollars are going since your services are being curtailed.

We’re seeing services stripped for the middle class and the needy but the services for the wealthy are still being provided, now, out of our tax dollars. That means there’s less left over to provide services to the real tax payers.

It is time to start expecting the wealthy to start paying their fair share.

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Posted in Finance, Politics | 1 Comment »

More Examples of Welfare for the Rich

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

More Examples of Welfare for the Rich
by
David Schlecht

This week I’ve seen a scenario played out in Nevada that I’m sure most Americans will recognize in their their own neighborhoods. In Nevada, we’ve had a week of cold and snow, the same cold and snow affecting most of the country about now. So what have we noticed during this weather?

In Nevada, the ability of the towns to clear the snow has been greatly diminished, mostly because of budget cuts. Many of the businesses are paying fewer taxes and the rich have been paying fewer taxes for 30 years now, and the tax revenues are drying up, so the civic services, like snow removal, are greatly reduced. But, who is getting the services and who is not? Look around your town and you will notice what I see here in Nevada.

The businesses get plowed first, followed by the wealthy neigborhoods. And, if at all, the middle class and lower class neighborhoods get plowed last. Is this because businesses and the rich pay a higher percentage tax than the real Americans? Of course, not, they’re paying considerably less. Corporations now pay less than 7% of the country’s tax burden. Who pays the rest? You and I do. The Rich have seen insane tax breaks over the last 30 years, down form 92% to as low as 15% in most cases.

How much do you pay? 25%? 30%? 35%? Include your income tax and your property tax and your sales taxes and you can bet you’re paying a higher percentage than the corporations or the rich. So, aren’t you glad that your neighborhoods aren’t getting plowed but theirs are?

Isn’t it time to start getting enraged by this theft? Isn’t it time to say enough?

The Tea-Baggers have it right. Something stinks in America and we have to get motivated to get it fixed. Unfortunately for the Tea-Baggers, though, nobody is telling them that it’s the rich that are stealing their money so they think it’s the Mexicans or the Liberals or the illegal aliens to blame. But, eventually they will realize, and we all need ot be ready to stand beside them and demand that this mess get fixed. Or better yet, it’s time we stood up ourselves and let the Tea-Baggers join us. Get motivated!

NO MORE WELFARE FOR THE WEALTHY!

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Posted in Finance, General, Politics | 8 Comments »