Aa
Who in the election will fight for our cause?
I didn't know how to title this post...
Without getting into a big political debate, can someone tell me, which candidates, on each side, will best be helping the Hep C research funding? It doesn't matter to me, whether you are saying Democrat/Republican/Indep., or whatever, I'm just curious if anybody knows from past history, researching this, or anything like that??? I'm not saying which party I'm affliated with, that doesn't matter in the general election anyway because you can vote across party lines in that election if you so choose. Anyway, I'm really curious about this. I'm also wondering if there's some website that might tell me where the various candidates stand in their past support of HIV, since I figure that if they have a good history with supporting HIV/AIDS research that they might care about HCV. Anyway, any info would be appreciated. I hope that this will not end up being a debate because that's not what I'm looking for.
Happy Holidays everyone.
Susan
Without getting into a big political debate, can someone tell me, which candidates, on each side, will best be helping the Hep C research funding? It doesn't matter to me, whether you are saying Democrat/Republican/Indep., or whatever, I'm just curious if anybody knows from past history, researching this, or anything like that??? I'm not saying which party I'm affliated with, that doesn't matter in the general election anyway because you can vote across party lines in that election if you so choose. Anyway, I'm really curious about this. I'm also wondering if there's some website that might tell me where the various candidates stand in their past support of HIV, since I figure that if they have a good history with supporting HIV/AIDS research that they might care about HCV. Anyway, any info would be appreciated. I hope that this will not end up being a debate because that's not what I'm looking for.
Happy Holidays everyone.
Susan
All I can say about the oil is I am damn glad John likes it cold in the house. Me, I get under my comforter. I always thought that oil should be taxed as it is in Europe. Perhaps we wouldn't use as much oil and gas. Again, I don't like you blaming liberals, the neo cons had plenty to do with this. Housing prices went sky high, ours doubled in a year and since it is a high end house most likely won't go down. But the house I own in Oakland and am renting is going down, rents are going way up. I didn't take advantage of that and am eating the high mortgages that they imposed on me. 1k a month over my rental. Doesn't see fair. Yeah I can deduct it in taxes. I feel for those that have to pay more rent and can barely make it by. Thankfully, I am not in that position yet, but we are getting there! Healthcare costs, energy, colleges and maintenance have taken a huge toll, even though John makes more now than he did when we got together. He used to make 1k now he makes 7k a month, doesn't seem to make any difference. But we are both liberal and Dems. We want to make sure that everyone has their fair share and can make it. Can it be improved. Damn straight!! How do we do it??/ That is the big question.
Also , yes, I think employers should be held accountable for hiring illegals. They just started this in Arizona. It will be interesting to see what happens....I think we need the labor they provide.
Also , yes, I think employers should be held accountable for hiring illegals. They just started this in Arizona. It will be interesting to see what happens....I think we need the labor they provide.
Just read your first post and you make sense, except for blaming in on liberals. I am liberal and had to pay $300,000. taxes on capital gains last year. Didn't like it one bit! We didn't make that much off of what we sold and it was a killer. So I dont' think you can say liberals did this. I certainly didn't want this and I don't know who would. You buy a house or stocks, as I have and then lose it all in capital gains? NOT FAIR, this is where you are supposed to have the American Dream, right? Not with these unfair taxes. I am liberal, but don't agree with all tax and capital gains that we are supposed to pay. I do agree with some taxes, not consumption!, but fair taxes. Not sure how this will work out.. I certainly don't mind paying for schools, libraries, parks, healthcare etc. but there has to be a better way.
hoisted on my own petard..dear me......you parse and refer to dictionary definitions and yet refuse to address my point..your tone and reference is arrogant,demeaning and righteous...none of which matters one whit...i merely question your glad tidings with regards this present economy...you like it-i don't......you see reason and measured response on the part of this administration and it's "war on terror" -i do not....You believe we must spend trillions attempting to build a missle defense system to protect us from n. korea(?)...i do not...you like geo bush....i do not...
i have never made indefensible statemnts and put them in your mouths..."You liberals make me laugh..." glad we can bring some joy to mudville...... i never mentioned anything about taxes whatsoever.but.what i would truly like to see is a massive increase in the inheritance tax- and make rich folk work for theirs too ..just might reduce the power of the leisure class..i wonder what george bush would have acomplished without daddy's money&influence? .i believe that our country has never been so poorly served..i believe that corporate interests(read:GREED) have undermined our democratic system and i do not think a corporation can be patriotic or loyal or humane-WE will just have to agree to disagree..i am a working class guy who just doesn't respect my betters
i have never made indefensible statemnts and put them in your mouths..."You liberals make me laugh..." glad we can bring some joy to mudville...... i never mentioned anything about taxes whatsoever.but.what i would truly like to see is a massive increase in the inheritance tax- and make rich folk work for theirs too ..just might reduce the power of the leisure class..i wonder what george bush would have acomplished without daddy's money&influence? .i believe that our country has never been so poorly served..i believe that corporate interests(read:GREED) have undermined our democratic system and i do not think a corporation can be patriotic or loyal or humane-WE will just have to agree to disagree..i am a working class guy who just doesn't respect my betters
But wait, it gets better. Liberals are also very big on other forms of taxation. They're not called "taxes" though, they're called permits and regulation (amongst other things). On a national level excessive regulation increases the cost of just about everything. For instance, excessive governmental regulations have played a big role in preventing any new oil and gas refineries being built within the US for about 20 years. This has constrained our capacity to refine the crude we need to fuel our cars, houses and economy. There is very little reserve refinery capacity within our current system. Once in a while, one or more of the refineries goes down and since there is precious little reserve refinery capacity, this results in fuel shortages. The shortages drive up the price of oil/gas (supply and demand being what they are), which socks it to all of us (unless you're rich of course). The governmental regulations which are largely at the source of this mechanism were and are born of liberal energy policies. Similar examples can be made for nuclear power and many other essential products and services that everyone needs (having a similar impact on low and middle income people).
And on a local level, don't get me started. Houses have gotten very expensive lately due to the massive real estate runup, and now the liberals come running in with reassessed house valuations AND simultaneously increased property tax rates. They also have an "impact fee" for anyone who wants to build a new house where I live. They raise this impact fee every couple of years. It's now up to $10,000. You must pay this fee in addition to all the other regulatory and inspection fees (some of which are reasonable and necessary) that are common within local districts throughout the US for constructing a new house. The county gives you NOTHING for paying this impact fee, they provide no service nor incur any expenses as a justification of this fee (the other fees pay for those things). And of course you still have to pay local income, sales and property taxes. And guess who levied this fee? Local liberal politicians. And guess what effect it has on the cost of housing? (which is already fantastically inflated) And guess who is hit hardest by it? And guess who can't own a home now and must continue to rent and enrich a landlord for the rest of their lives? That's right, middle and low income people. And who is it again who's looking out for the little people??? Gimme a break liberals.
"Being one of the so called rich, I would never buy into these awful plans to raise taxes only to hurt those people that they employ...and many of them are illegals btw. Shouldn't these employer's be held accountable?"
Should the employers be held accountable for hiring illegals? They certainly should, but that's another story for another time. In the meantime here's to your SVR, and lets hope Vertex has enough money to complete their Telaprevir testing before liberal tax policies go into effect and drive down investor input. Sounds like a joke, but I'm actually half serious.
And on a local level, don't get me started. Houses have gotten very expensive lately due to the massive real estate runup, and now the liberals come running in with reassessed house valuations AND simultaneously increased property tax rates. They also have an "impact fee" for anyone who wants to build a new house where I live. They raise this impact fee every couple of years. It's now up to $10,000. You must pay this fee in addition to all the other regulatory and inspection fees (some of which are reasonable and necessary) that are common within local districts throughout the US for constructing a new house. The county gives you NOTHING for paying this impact fee, they provide no service nor incur any expenses as a justification of this fee (the other fees pay for those things). And of course you still have to pay local income, sales and property taxes. And guess who levied this fee? Local liberal politicians. And guess what effect it has on the cost of housing? (which is already fantastically inflated) And guess who is hit hardest by it? And guess who can't own a home now and must continue to rent and enrich a landlord for the rest of their lives? That's right, middle and low income people. And who is it again who's looking out for the little people??? Gimme a break liberals.
"Being one of the so called rich, I would never buy into these awful plans to raise taxes only to hurt those people that they employ...and many of them are illegals btw. Shouldn't these employer's be held accountable?"
Should the employers be held accountable for hiring illegals? They certainly should, but that's another story for another time. In the meantime here's to your SVR, and lets hope Vertex has enough money to complete their Telaprevir testing before liberal tax policies go into effect and drive down investor input. Sounds like a joke, but I'm actually half serious.
"Who by the way will consumption taxes help?"
Excessive consumption taxes don't help anyone, especially when coupled with other forms of taxation, as they will stunt people's purchasing power. If everything from food to cars to gas to widget x become more expensive, the sales of these items will diminish. Reduced sales means the factories and distributors and vendors and employees who provide these products will shrink proportionally, or go out of business altogether. This means less jobs, which means higher unemployment. It also means simultaneously that ordinary people will have less money to survive on because more of their money is stripped from their pockets as it goes into the government coffer.
"The mid/lower class? How can they afford to buy anything?"
Exactly, it will hurt the mid/lower class, I'm glad you seem to understand this concept. And you're right, higher taxes of all types make it harder for ordinary people to afford to buy anything, including things they may really need (i.e. not just luxury items). This makes people who otherwise would be indepenent *dependent* on the government or some other external source of support in order to survive and make ends meet (including everything from charities to organized crime).
"Giving tax breaks to the rich to trickle down is ludicrous."
You're right, only giving tax breaks to the rich is ludicrous. But the first thing we need to do is to define what "rich" means. "Rich" used to mean being a millionaire (back when being a millionaire meant something), and perhaps also owning and/or trading stocks/commodities. However, liberals have ongoingly lowered the bar of what being rich means anymore. The reason they do this is because they want more money from all of us, NOT just the rich. Nowadays if you live in a household that makes more than ~$96,000 year, you're rich. And of course progressive taxation starts at income levels well, WELL below that. And if you own or trade stocks, you're also rich and you need to be taxed excessively for doing so. The current capital gains tax is reasonable (thanks to dubya), but its flipside is a very restrictive tax write off of only $3000 a year in the event you lose money on stocks. This means if you invest your hard earned money heavily into some company, and end up losing a large amount of money because the stock goes down, it can take you years and years to write those capital losses off of your taxes (and sometimes never writing off the entire amount depending on how long you live and how much you've lost). Liberals wish to raise the capital gains tax much, much higher as they view this as a free ride for the "rich." Many liberals also wish to further restrict or even outright eliminate capital losses on income taxes. But times have changed, and nowadays millions of ordinary people who are not rich buy and sell stocks all the time, and some people actually make their living this way. What this means is that both the rich AND the lower/middle income people who otherwise might invest in companies that (obviously) employ people and sell products or services people need, now will shy away from investing their money. Why would you want to take the risk of investing a large (or even modest) amount of money into a stock when you know that even if the stock goes up you'll have to pay substantial capital gains taxes on it, perhaps even well beyond 30%? Meanwhile, on the flipside if the stock goes down you cannot mitigate the risk you took and write off your capital loss, or even if you can it could take years and years to realize the writeoff. Guess what a large percentage of people both rich and ordinary will do if these liberal tax schedules are implemented? They won't invest anymore, and they won't invest because it's simply not worth it. On the one hand the investor takes all the risk and burdens all the loss in the event the stock tanks. On the other hand the government takes a very substantial chunk of the winnings in the event the trade is successful. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. No thanks, I'll just keep my money in the bank, and so will millions and millions of others. And what does this mean for the companies all those people (both rich and not rich) would have invested in if tax rates were reasonable, but now shy away from it due to excessive liberal taxation? It means they have less money to expand, to hire, to innovate - like Vertex Pharmaceutical for instance (THINK about it!). It may even mean they go under, or fail to get started in the first place. This means less productivity, less jobs, less prosperity and a decreased standard of living for all of us. And this is just one example out of many exemplifying how excessive taxation stunts and even reverses job growth and economic development.
And incidentally, even John F. Kennedy realized that raising taxes paradoxically actually ultimately REDUCES the revenues the government gets. He knew that when taxes were raised, especially to excessive levels, this stymies and stunts growth. And stunted growth likewise stunts the ability of corporations and individuals to pay taxes. Lower taxation stimulates growth, jobs and income levels which directly stimulates tax incomes of all types (including payroll, sales and corporate taxation) which of course means MORE money for the government (and MORE money for all those lovely liberal social programs). Who are you going to get more money from, a guy that has a job and is taxed at 22% or an unemployed guy that's taxed at 53%? I mean good heavens, it's not rocket science!
Also, it's a fabulous misperception to assert that the rich don't pay their fair share of taxes. You claim to be rich, and if you are you must know this to be true (assuming you actually manage your family's financial portfolio). Bottomline is that the tax breaks should be extended to all classes, which means lowering income taxes for ordinary people. And this is the thing that really angers me about liberals. They claim that they only want taxes to be raised on the rich, but it's NOT true. Liberals want taxes raised on EVERYONE. They want sales taxes to be higher, income taxes to be higher (yes for ordinary people making ordinary levels of income), generally they want exemptions and writeoffs curtailed or eliminated (like the capital loss I mentioned earlier), they want property taxes to be higher, they want gasoline and energy taxes to be higher, and generally want more tolls, fees, surcharges, levies etc - it goes on and on. All of these things directly hammer the lower and middle classes. Joe rich guy doesn't care if it costs a few more bucks to fill up his bmw or to heat his house because liberals have directly jacked up oil taxes, or indirectly raised "corporate taxes" on oil companies who will then simply pass them on to the consumer (I call this "trickle down taxation", incidentally). Joe rich isn't bothered if his property taxes increase a few thousand a year, but an old retired person on a fixed income can no longer buy his groceries because of something like this. But yet the liberals relentlessly levy these taxes and always do so with the very "best of intentions". (cont..)
Excessive consumption taxes don't help anyone, especially when coupled with other forms of taxation, as they will stunt people's purchasing power. If everything from food to cars to gas to widget x become more expensive, the sales of these items will diminish. Reduced sales means the factories and distributors and vendors and employees who provide these products will shrink proportionally, or go out of business altogether. This means less jobs, which means higher unemployment. It also means simultaneously that ordinary people will have less money to survive on because more of their money is stripped from their pockets as it goes into the government coffer.
"The mid/lower class? How can they afford to buy anything?"
Exactly, it will hurt the mid/lower class, I'm glad you seem to understand this concept. And you're right, higher taxes of all types make it harder for ordinary people to afford to buy anything, including things they may really need (i.e. not just luxury items). This makes people who otherwise would be indepenent *dependent* on the government or some other external source of support in order to survive and make ends meet (including everything from charities to organized crime).
"Giving tax breaks to the rich to trickle down is ludicrous."
You're right, only giving tax breaks to the rich is ludicrous. But the first thing we need to do is to define what "rich" means. "Rich" used to mean being a millionaire (back when being a millionaire meant something), and perhaps also owning and/or trading stocks/commodities. However, liberals have ongoingly lowered the bar of what being rich means anymore. The reason they do this is because they want more money from all of us, NOT just the rich. Nowadays if you live in a household that makes more than ~$96,000 year, you're rich. And of course progressive taxation starts at income levels well, WELL below that. And if you own or trade stocks, you're also rich and you need to be taxed excessively for doing so. The current capital gains tax is reasonable (thanks to dubya), but its flipside is a very restrictive tax write off of only $3000 a year in the event you lose money on stocks. This means if you invest your hard earned money heavily into some company, and end up losing a large amount of money because the stock goes down, it can take you years and years to write those capital losses off of your taxes (and sometimes never writing off the entire amount depending on how long you live and how much you've lost). Liberals wish to raise the capital gains tax much, much higher as they view this as a free ride for the "rich." Many liberals also wish to further restrict or even outright eliminate capital losses on income taxes. But times have changed, and nowadays millions of ordinary people who are not rich buy and sell stocks all the time, and some people actually make their living this way. What this means is that both the rich AND the lower/middle income people who otherwise might invest in companies that (obviously) employ people and sell products or services people need, now will shy away from investing their money. Why would you want to take the risk of investing a large (or even modest) amount of money into a stock when you know that even if the stock goes up you'll have to pay substantial capital gains taxes on it, perhaps even well beyond 30%? Meanwhile, on the flipside if the stock goes down you cannot mitigate the risk you took and write off your capital loss, or even if you can it could take years and years to realize the writeoff. Guess what a large percentage of people both rich and ordinary will do if these liberal tax schedules are implemented? They won't invest anymore, and they won't invest because it's simply not worth it. On the one hand the investor takes all the risk and burdens all the loss in the event the stock tanks. On the other hand the government takes a very substantial chunk of the winnings in the event the trade is successful. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. No thanks, I'll just keep my money in the bank, and so will millions and millions of others. And what does this mean for the companies all those people (both rich and not rich) would have invested in if tax rates were reasonable, but now shy away from it due to excessive liberal taxation? It means they have less money to expand, to hire, to innovate - like Vertex Pharmaceutical for instance (THINK about it!). It may even mean they go under, or fail to get started in the first place. This means less productivity, less jobs, less prosperity and a decreased standard of living for all of us. And this is just one example out of many exemplifying how excessive taxation stunts and even reverses job growth and economic development.
And incidentally, even John F. Kennedy realized that raising taxes paradoxically actually ultimately REDUCES the revenues the government gets. He knew that when taxes were raised, especially to excessive levels, this stymies and stunts growth. And stunted growth likewise stunts the ability of corporations and individuals to pay taxes. Lower taxation stimulates growth, jobs and income levels which directly stimulates tax incomes of all types (including payroll, sales and corporate taxation) which of course means MORE money for the government (and MORE money for all those lovely liberal social programs). Who are you going to get more money from, a guy that has a job and is taxed at 22% or an unemployed guy that's taxed at 53%? I mean good heavens, it's not rocket science!
Also, it's a fabulous misperception to assert that the rich don't pay their fair share of taxes. You claim to be rich, and if you are you must know this to be true (assuming you actually manage your family's financial portfolio). Bottomline is that the tax breaks should be extended to all classes, which means lowering income taxes for ordinary people. And this is the thing that really angers me about liberals. They claim that they only want taxes to be raised on the rich, but it's NOT true. Liberals want taxes raised on EVERYONE. They want sales taxes to be higher, income taxes to be higher (yes for ordinary people making ordinary levels of income), generally they want exemptions and writeoffs curtailed or eliminated (like the capital loss I mentioned earlier), they want property taxes to be higher, they want gasoline and energy taxes to be higher, and generally want more tolls, fees, surcharges, levies etc - it goes on and on. All of these things directly hammer the lower and middle classes. Joe rich guy doesn't care if it costs a few more bucks to fill up his bmw or to heat his house because liberals have directly jacked up oil taxes, or indirectly raised "corporate taxes" on oil companies who will then simply pass them on to the consumer (I call this "trickle down taxation", incidentally). Joe rich isn't bothered if his property taxes increase a few thousand a year, but an old retired person on a fixed income can no longer buy his groceries because of something like this. But yet the liberals relentlessly levy these taxes and always do so with the very "best of intentions". (cont..)
Just ventured over to the other one :}
I agree with you in that this community side is FOR talking about things other than Hep and we need that and that we are 'friends' here, thru an awful disease and need to think OUTSIDE hep c during tx and all. This site is saving my currently a recluse sanity (WAS a social butterfly before tx, love people, love conversing, etc.) and it's hard holding conversations with this brain with people that don't understand my all too often "what was I saying' blank stare! I have tried and tried to find a site like this for my sister with incurable cancer and can't find one that has 'community' and medical.
Guess everyone just has to keep in mind tx drugs and different opinions here, bound to disagree but can be done with a little more grace/tact/diplomacy...(oh jeezz, pick a word Lauri!:) when it happens.
Now wander back over to that other thread :}
LL
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