Monday, March 17, 2014

FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE RICH FUCKS, AND I DID NOT SPEAK...

Hey, look who the Wall Street Journal wants me to feel bad for:
The Internal Revenue Service's most intimidating weapon is the power to audit—and well-heeled taxpayers are more likely to be the target.
Gasp!
Audits are rare and getting rarer as the agency faces funding cuts. Fewer than 1% of taxpayers endured one last year, according to IRS figures.
Good news, but not for America's Neediest:
But while the audit rate has fallen over the past five years for taxpayers who earn less than $200,000, the rate has risen for those earning $200,000 to $1 million. 
The increase was particularly sharp for people earning $1 million or more. Nearly one in nine of those taxpayers was audited last year compared with fewer than one in 15 in 2009.
I would like to think that the IRS is simply hunting where the ducks are, since rich fucks are more likely to have been given effective means of evading the taxman by their financial factota than us poor schlubs.

But even if that's not the case, you know what? I think I can live with it.

Several of the brethren are shaken by the news, including National Review's Veronique de Rugy: "One does wonder," she says, shaking so with rage you can almost hear her jewelry rattle, "whether that is part of the soak-the-rich mentality that is so prevalent in this administration."

De Rugy also detects a grim irony: "More than $12 billion a year is improperly spent through the EITC," she reports; "or roughly 22 percent of the overall amount spent on the program." In other words, low- to moderate-income working taxpayers are getting a break, and the richest are not! I can see why she's upset. There does seem to be something un-American about it, at least as Americanism has been lately defined.

UPDATE. Another day, another rich fuck says this is Nazi Germany and he's Anne Frank:
“I hope it’s not working,” Ken Langone, the billionaire co-founder of Home Depot and major GOP donor, said of populist political appeals. “Because if you go back to 1933, with different words, this is what Hitler was saying in Germany. You don’t survive as a society if you encourage and thrive on envy or jealousy.”
Worse than this latest outbreak of Kristallnuts is the Politico article itself, in which the rich are hilariously posited as just another interest group, like soccer moms and unionized pipe fitters, that must haggle and sweat for political influence:
...the 1 percent fights back hard and the effectiveness of the populist approach comes into question...

...the pro-business wing of the [Democratic] party is ready to draw up new plans...

In two-dozen interviews, the denizens of Wall Street and wealthy precincts around the nation... say they see signs that the political zeitgeist may be shifting back their way and hope the trend continues.
Which simply means the rich fucks and the "political zeitgeist" have finally agreed on a price and -- surprise! -- it favors the rich fucks. Be not deceived, this outcome was never in doubt; these guys run everything and have all along. But into each life a little rain must fall, and they've been forced to endure some bad publicity (which they loudly decry as Hitler) because they've become bigger pigs about it than previously -- so much so that even ordinary Americans, eternal suckers for the rich and famous though they may be, began to grouse about it. I'm surprised they let it go on for as long as they did; maybe there was a yacht race or something distracting them.


192 comments:

  1. whetstone5:44 PM

    Man, if I'd known that, I would have offshored the $50 in interest my savings account made last year.

    ReplyDelete
  2. tinheart5:48 PM

    "Lucky Ducky!!" (throws top hat down in anger)

    http://boingboing.net/2014/01/28/tom-the-dancing-bug-lucky-duc-4.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. Pity the rick fucks. All they have by means of defense is wealth and connections granting them a massively disproportionate amount of influence over the political and media spheres.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Halloween_Jack5:54 PM

    shaking so with rage you can almost hear her jewelry rattle


    If only I could but get a recording of that rattling, it would be the sweetest, most relaxing lullaby.

    ReplyDelete
  5. She's bucking for the UEITC--the Unearned Income Tax Credit which will put a floor below which a Billionaire won't be audited.

    ReplyDelete
  6. M. Krebs6:00 PM

    ... the soak-the-rich mentality that is so prevalent in this administration."


    If only, if only.

    ReplyDelete
  7. JennOfArk6:03 PM

    You know what would get rid of that $12 billion improperly spent though EITC? Raising wages so that no one qualifies for EITC.


    Oh, wait...the WSJ opposes wage increases, too.

    ReplyDelete
  8. M. Krebs6:08 PM

    Hey, put that nest egg in CDs and you might have made nearly $200!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Umm…and also, too…catching one rich-rat-bastard cheating the rest of us on taxes, and the citizens get back as much as catching 1,000+ working poor guys cheating on theirs.


    It's efficient free-market opportunism. What's to bitch about?

    ReplyDelete
  10. too late! they've already closed that loophole.


    BUY GOLD

    ReplyDelete
  11. Bethany Spencer6:19 PM

    How do you think I feel? Betrayed, bewildered...

    ReplyDelete
  12. we're at that stage in Monopoly where the smartass cousin owns half the properties and most of the bank.


    Everybody's bored, except the cousin, who keeps trying to prolong the game by offering "deals" on his properties.


    At least we're not in the Risk mode at the moment, but give 'em time, and I'm sure they'll be dragging that worn box from under the bed.

    ReplyDelete
  13. "Would the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands. And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry…"

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  14. Shame the Republicans, pushed by Richie Riches, have gutted the IRS' funding, or the IRS would have the personnel to make sure EITC payments were done properly.

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  15. Is that Karl Marx¿

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  16. "More than $12 billion a year is improperly spent through the EITC,"
    she reports; "or roughly 22 percent of the overall amount spent on the
    program."



    you say tomato, i say citizens united.

    ReplyDelete
  17. smut clyde6:45 PM

    Nearly one in nine of those taxpayers was audited last year compared with fewer than one in 15 in 2009.
    I suppose the key figure here would be the proportion of those audits which found that the auditee had been underpaying his or her taxes.

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  18. TGuerrant6:46 PM

    Let's raise the capital gains tax and use the revenue to audit the crap out of poor people! It'll be almost as much fun as making them run obstacle courses while we shoot at them from blinds and toast Dick Cheney with Maker's Mark!

    ReplyDelete
  19. TGuerrant6:48 PM

    And maybe something to do with how much could be recovered if underpayment is discovered.

    ReplyDelete
  20. coozledad6:48 PM

    Veronique's job at George Mason is to lend a Little Bo Peep academy some black evening gown old world cred, but since they keep catching her loading shrimp cocktail into her handbag at the faculty luncheons, they've added a clause in her contract that says she has to publish. Something. Somewhere. Anywhere.

    Seems like she 's worked from this template before:

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2010/apr/01/us-politics-conservative-scholarship

    ReplyDelete
  21. smut clyde6:48 PM

    The Internal Revenue Service's most intimidating weapon is the power to audit
    HA the WSJ left out "surprise". And "ruthless efficiency". And "an almost fanatical devotion to Barack Obama".

    ReplyDelete
  22. TGuerrant6:54 PM

    .
    Paul Krugman:

    What will it take for pundits to realize that if Veronique de Rugy, for example, cites a number you can pretty much assume that it’s wrong?

    ReplyDelete
  23. JennOfArk6:55 PM

    I'm pretty sure Grampa John McCain keeps the board set up at all times.

    ReplyDelete
  24. M. Krebs6:58 PM

    Funny, I always thought that the IRS's most intimidating weapon was its power to throw your ass in jail.

    ReplyDelete
  25. JennOfArk7:01 PM

    I'll come in again.

    ReplyDelete
  26. coozledad7:02 PM

    Is John terrified in that picture, or hopped up on amphetamine?

    ReplyDelete
  27. mgmonklewis7:23 PM

    Gotcha!

    ReplyDelete
  28. Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq.7:38 PM

    It would certainly make a dent. In addition spending one food stamps, medicaid and several other fed and state programs would be lower. In other words: By forcing the ordinary tax payer to subsidize wages, the rich fucks stealing money from nearly everyone.

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  29. montag27:39 PM

    I am not so addled in my old age that I have forgotten that a Republican Congress during Little Boots' Reign of Error directed the IRS to concentrate its enforcement efforts on the working poor receiving EITC and child care credits, and that, contrary to the protestations of Little Miss de Rugy, analysis of that program indicated that the enforcement effort cost considerably more than the wrongdoing it revealed. The returns were, in fact, paltry, but the Republicans declared mission accomplished because it had succeeded in harassing poor people.

    At the same time, enforcement efforts against wealthy tax evaders had to be scaled back because of Congress' directive and its cuts to the IRS budget, which might explain why the auditing rate of the well-off was lower then than now. In fact, one could say that not auditing the rich was one of the prime objectives.

    it's not enough for these fuckers to incessantly petition for lower taxes on the obscenely rich--they also want them to get away with not paying the paltry taxes levied against them. No better case than that can be made for charging these journalistic frauds with lickspittleism, not to mention high crimes against decency. If your goal in life is defending the Koch brothers' right to pillage and plunder in the hope that they'll continue to fund your illegitimate brand of journalism, you've already sold your soul to the devil, and the devil got the best part of the bargain. You'll spend your life a slave to moral cretins and eternity being fucked in the ass by Westbrook Pegler's dog.

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  30. Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq.7:41 PM

    On the other hand the program saves a lot of money because LOTS of households are not claiming it. Roughly 3.5 to 7 million according to wikipedia. Would probably a nice stimulus if these housholds had more spending power.

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  31. Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq.7:50 PM

    Not only that but catching one big fish intimidates the rest of them and many of the smaller fish into paying their taxes.

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  32. MikeJ7:51 PM

    And he burned his Diplomacy set.

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  33. Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq.7:56 PM

    Lack of enforcement and large scale tax evasion also made Greece into the basketcase* that it now is. WHY DOES DE RUGY WANT THE US TO BE LIKE GREECE**.

    *Yes, yes there also are Merkel and the EU-commission (the name of my next band). Plenty of blame to go around here.

    **De Rugy would probably fine with that, as long as rich fucks don't have to pay there taxes.

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  34. Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq.7:58 PM

    Krugman is so uncivil.

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  35. M. Krebs8:04 PM

    I dunno, if I'm the devil, I'm thinking I got ripped off.

    ReplyDelete
  36. montag28:05 PM

    Not when you paid so cheaply for an eternity of entertainment.

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  37. M. Krebs8:06 PM

    He's shrill, that's what he is.

    ReplyDelete
  38. TGuerrant8:09 PM

    I want to add this comment to my annual deductions for children and tuck it into a comfy bed every night.

    ReplyDelete
  39. M. Krebs8:13 PM

    Holy shit, look what I stumbled up whilst googling DeRugy:

    http://venitism.blogspot.com/2014/02/granting-guaranteed-and-unconditional.html


    Now there's a blogger with talent.

    ReplyDelete
  40. smut clyde8:14 PM

    Having finally watched a certain movie, I find myself imagining Veronique de Rugy as Duchess Swana.

    http://dustedoff.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/pic147.jpg?w=560

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  41. Yes indeed. They also reduced attention to rich fucks in every possible way including laying off the auditors who were supposed to investigate them. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/business/23tax.html

    ReplyDelete
  42. TGuerrant8:17 PM

    .

    Jonathan Chiat (via Brad DeLong):

    People often ask, “Why is Jonathan Chait so mean?” It is a fair question…. The latest person to ask it is ubiquitous right-wing misinformation recirculator Veronique de Rugy.... an unqualified hack peddling demonstrable nonsense.

    Brad DeLong (at the end of Mr. Chiat's statement):

    I must say, I do find it very hard to see how, in her words, anybody professional, with good motives, and mentally stable could have written what Veronique de Rugy wrote in response to Chait. But I am anxious to be enlightened as to how this would be possible, if anybody cares to do so…

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  43. Christopher Hazell8:20 PM

    One of the things about the WSJ and their brand of rich person culture is that they make it very hard to agree with them.

    Okay, so, my dad, who makes low six figures, is currently getting soaked by the state of California. Basically, without informing him, they garnished some $13,000 from his wages on back taxes they claimed he owed from 1999. Once he figured out where that money had disappeared to, he and his accountant were able to demonstrate that, in fact, California owed him a $16 dollar refund for that year.

    So, he's getting the money back, right? Well, theoretically at some point in the future California will return some of it. They claim he never filed, and that amounts to a $4,000 fine, so they'll be keeping that. Also, while he was able to demonstrate that he didn't owe the money several months ago, they haven't gotten around to returning it.

    So, you'd think I could relate, except for the fact that

    A) My dad makes low six figures, which means he's not rich enough to actually be in the cohort the WSJ is talking about, and

    B) Both he and I have been actively poor. We're both counting our blessings that he makes enough where the god damned state of California withholding $13,000 isn't going to cripple him.

    It's still awful, mind you, but what if he were earning $26,000 a year? He's hard-working and lucky enough to be in a state where losing that amount of money isn't life-altering.

    So it's kind of hard for me to feel too awful about richer people dealing with less horrible problems.

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  44. TGuerrant8:20 PM

    Iz purple? Y?

    ReplyDelete
  45. mortimer20008:27 PM

    Two teeny points for La Kochista, Veronique du Rugy:

    1. Rich people are more likely to be audited because they are vastly more likely to take advantage of exotic deductions, loopholes, tax shelters, and the entire panoply of tax avoidance than people whose income is reported on a W-2. (The richer they are, the more the tax avoidance is legal since they also write the laws - see Perfectly Legal by David Cay Johnston)

    2. Over the past 10 years, the IRS estimates a total of $110.8 billion in improper EITC payments. In the same period, there has been roughly $3.8 trillion lost to the treasury due to tax evasion. This little discrepancy may have something to do with why the IRS spends slightly more of its enforcement budget on auditing rich people than chasing improper EITC payments. (At the same time, the estimated percentage of improper EITC payments is now at its lowest in 10 years, including all the years of the Bush administration, something du Rugy neglected to mention.)

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  46. XeckyGilchrist8:58 PM

    You must have quite a wad in there if you made $50, post-2008.

    ReplyDelete
  47. eohippus9:04 PM

    Maker's Mark? That peasant swill? It's a $375 bottle of Pappy Van Winkle or nothing.

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  48. coozledad9:42 PM

    You know at some level it broke her goddamned Vichy heart to have to cough up that hairball.


    The photograph, It is not the Negros!


    Maybe she consoles herself with the idea they are Gypsies.

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  49. M. Krebs9:50 PM

    Ah, I get it now! Damn, I really need to rewatch the entire Python canon.

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  50. Spaghetti Lee9:52 PM

    The Internal Revenue Service's most intimidating weapon is the power to
    audit—and well-heeled taxpayers are more likely to be the target.



    "IF YOU'VE DONE NOTHING WRONG YOU'VE GOT NOTHING TO FEAR!" - every law-n-order wingnut since J. Edgar Hoover, in unison.

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  51. Spaghetti Lee9:53 PM

    Taxes, hell, they want to be above all laws.

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  52. M. Krebs9:56 PM

    That's what I thought about saying. God knows I'm no financial advisor, but Mr Whetstone really ought to put that in a nice conservative mutual fund or ETF.

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  53. Spaghetti Lee9:57 PM

    One winning entry I remember from one of Cracked's funny photoshop contest was "30-Minute Monopoly: Everyone Won't Hate Each Other By the End!"

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  54. Spaghetti Lee9:59 PM

    "Venitism?" What is that, the state of constantly being venal?

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  55. M. Krebs9:59 PM

    http://youtu.be/yOjI-4S6TUA

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  56. Spaghetti Lee10:00 PM

    I would like to think that the IRS is simply hunting where the ducks are


    ...The IRS is trying to kill Phil Robertson! WINGNUTS, BATTLE STATIONS!

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  57. "Oh, but the tax code is SO COMPLEX, an' SO UNFAIR! That's why I have to hire an army of accountants to insure that starving kids get less food stamps make sure I take advantage of every loophole my lobbyists paid for stay above-board, totally above-board! NOT FAIR!"

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  58. M. Krebs10:10 PM

    Au contraire! Fighting Cock.

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  59. Spaghetti Lee10:16 PM

    Kinda obvious, but I've always thought it was ironic that the most expensive whiskey in the country loads on the affectations of being just regular ol' stuff that Pa brewed in the basement: the name, the label design, etc. And so on and so on with Trader Joe's and the like. There's probably some great sociology to be written about how authenticity is the most expensive thing there is, and how the rich are subconsciously trying to assuage their guilt by buying such affectatious stuff.

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  60. M. Krebs10:31 PM

    Looks like he's trying to remember where the back exit is.

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  61. William Miller10:32 PM

    Me an' this comment are gonna meet up after class for a little "regression analysis" of our own, heh heh.

    ReplyDelete
  62. M. Krebs10:43 PM

    A couple of porn actors, two chihuahuas, and an Airstream: it's a lot of trouble to go to for a welfare gag, no?

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  63. Duchess Swana had more class. Seriously.

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  64. California once put a lien on me when I owned no property, just in case I ever owned property and tried to sell it, for tax money I didn't owe because I wasn't living there and had filed in another state. I only found out when mr. aimai and I tried to buy our first house. Right at the closing. That was fun.

    ReplyDelete
  65. montag210:52 PM

    One would think so, from the rhetoric. It's a new libertarian movement supposedly based on the oratory of Basil Venitis, who is an Athenian libertarian with an anti-tax agenda (which is pretty fucking funny, given that the Greek government is now in dire straits for not collecting taxes from the wealthy).

    Idiocy squared, in other words.

    ReplyDelete
  66. Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq.10:53 PM

    And, did you like it?

    ReplyDelete
  67. XeckyGilchrist10:54 PM

    As M. Krebs points out below (or however Diqqus sorts this), those dogs are Chihuahuas. That's the race angle, then - them dogs is Messkn!

    ReplyDelete
  68. montag210:55 PM

    No argument from me on that assertion.

    ReplyDelete
  69. davdoodles10:57 PM

    "There does seem to be something un-American about it, at least as Americanism has been lately defined."

    There seems to be something un-American about how Americanism has been lately defined.
    .

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  70. davdoodles11:01 PM

    "Nearly one in nine of those taxpayers was audited last year compared with fewer than one in 15 in 2009."
    A good start.
    Here's hoping for the Chilled Speculum of Inquiry for the lot of them!
    .

    ReplyDelete
  71. smut clyde11:12 PM

    Now I want "The unfortunate product of a doomed culture" on a t-shirt.

    ReplyDelete
  72. marindenver11:13 PM

    " Which I suppose is a good way to keep the pesky poors from posting any opposing views."


    Somehow I think the pesky poors have way better things to do with their time than read the regular garbage that spews from the WSJ. No, this stuff is just fapping material for the paulryans who think that poor baiting is the height of intellectual discourse or what passes for it these days.

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  73. Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq.11:14 PM

    I take it as a yes.

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  74. A 20 oz drink at Starbucks?

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  75. marindenver11:19 PM

    True. The IRS frequently does random audits to measure compliance. If they determine that rich fucks are much more likely to cheat on their taxes (and by "cheat" I mean utilize highly paid advisers to figure out ways they can, you know "evade" conventional reporting of their sources of income) why, then, they will direct more of their resources to auditing said rich fucks. Bitching about it doesn't change anything. They Are The IRS. QED fuckers.

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  76. AGoodQuestion11:22 PM

    you've already sold your soul to the devil, and the devil got the best part of the bargain.
    I dunno. It doesn't sound like it would be one of his proud, showroom souls.

    ReplyDelete
  77. AGoodQuestion11:23 PM

    Ah, beat me to it.

    ReplyDelete
  78. AGoodQuestion11:25 PM

    It costs money just to talk to these people? There's no way that's not a ripoff.

    ReplyDelete
  79. It's like ventriloquism, except instead of a puppet you talk out of your ass.

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  80. How much do I have to pay to never have to talk to one of them again?

    ReplyDelete
  81. DocAmazing11:42 PM

    The shirt the guy is wearing is from Taqueria La Cumbre, as well.

    ReplyDelete
  82. AGoodQuestion11:44 PM

    If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

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  83. smut clyde11:45 PM

    If that is not the name of a Culture ship, it should be.

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  84. DocAmazing11:52 PM

    fucked in the ass by Westbrook Pegler's dog


    Being Westbrook Pegged?

    ReplyDelete
  85. AGoodQuestion12:09 AM

    Venitism is a new anarchist paradigm which integrates economics, ethics, and spirituality persecution complex, bad layout, and hacky Internet memes.


    Fixed.

    ReplyDelete
  86. Spaghetti Lee12:10 AM

    For an ideology that's in theory about individual freedom of thought and choice, they sure end up outsourcing their thinking and choosing to various philosopher-god-kings pretty often. "The only path to true freedom is to believe exactly what Ayn Rand/Hayek/Rothbard/Ron Paul/Barry Goldwater/Paul Ryan believes, and not a word of difference!"

    ReplyDelete
  87. montag212:16 AM

    I don't think Westbrook himself would be up to it.

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  88. Formerly_Nom_De_Plume12:23 AM

    And those of us in the cheaper seats can clap our hands.

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  89. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:27 AM

    How do we know it isn't a Spartan Imperial Mansion? Hmmmmm?

    ReplyDelete
  90. montag212:30 AM

    As JennofArk said the other day, they're not original thinkers. Consider them the antithesis of the Freethinker movement. Look, libertarianism, as a codified body of thought,--such as it is--was cooked up by Milton Friedman in 1948, with funding from the most rapacious corporate crooks in the country. Everything emanating from libertarianism is based on a fabrication concocted by the wealthy for the benefit of the wealthy.

    Libertarians are probably the single largest group of useful idiots ever controlled by a handful of billionaires... well, up until their advent of the Tea Party.

    It's a hierarchy of crackpots. The biggest crackpots lead the lesser crackpots in a philosophy of crackpottery. They're about 1.5% of the population. So are sociopaths. Coincidence? I think not.

    ReplyDelete
  91. stepped_pyramids12:34 AM

    Someone needs to introduce these guys to Sutton's Law.

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  92. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:35 AM

    I've been envisioning her as Mrs Teasdale, myself...

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  93. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:43 AM

    Well, it's always been the case that if you steal $100, you go to prison, but if you steal $1,000,000, they drop the charges and make the arresting officers apologize. This is SSDD, Tax Division.

    ReplyDelete
  94. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:54 AM

    So the IRS is going fuck hunting, eh? Hope they got good deals on all the equipmenrt they'll need, like fuck calls, fuck blinds, fuck decoys. That shit can't be cheap, especially the decoys. And the retrievers would all have to be AKC purebreds...

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  95. Halloween_Jack1:02 AM

    Verging on uppity.

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  96. AngryWarthogBreath1:04 AM

    They're STILL not wiping their tears away with all that money. I keep suggesting it as an option!

    ReplyDelete
  97. Daniel Björkman1:10 AM

    If only. If only.

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  98. Halloween_Jack1:10 AM

    Did he actually use de Rugy's work with her permission (it's appeared in Reason, among other places) or did he criticize the "takers" by taking someone else's work and salting it with his own contact information?

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  99. Daniel Björkman1:20 AM

    My lack of sympathy with rich fucks trying to hold on to their loot is literally off the scales. We will need to invent entirely new scales to measure the sheer extent of my not giving a shit.

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  100. davdoodles1:35 AM

    And of course what is being discussed here with such horror by de Rugy et al is not the aformentioned fucks hanging on to "their" loot anyway. What fills de Rugy with such outrage is that the monied classes might have to pay their full-and-fair fucking share.
    Not their money. If they are deliberately underpaying tax, they are stealing public money, and she thinks it's terribly mean not to let them get away with it.
    .

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  101. davdoodles1:48 AM

    Damned close, though I was actually riffing on the Hot Needle of Inquiry, the ship in Ringworld. OMG I think I just grew nerd hair, ingrown nerd hair.
    .

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  102. PersonaAuGratin1:57 AM

    That's there's some good taqueria knowledge!

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  103. sigyn2:05 AM

    They went after waitresses in a big way too. I knew 5 or 6 women, mostly single moms, that got audited, one of them twice. I'm not talking about $1,000 a week, fancy dining servers either. I mean people working in truck stops and small family diners.


    The IRS's total haul? $0, zip, rien, nada, zeeero. In fact, they must have pulled my file and looked it over hard; because one year I got a second check for $600 that I didn't know I qualified for.


    I don't think those returns were just paltry; I think they lost money.

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  104. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person2:28 AM

    many, if not most, of the people who proclaim themselves the Democratic
    “base” are [...] not the
    “base,” by any stretch.


    I'll note that both CPP and Shook put "base" in scare quotes. Pierce is no idiot, and this guy doesn't sound like one, either. I think they both realize these Enemies of the (common) Good really aren't the Base, so...who is? What I'd also like to know is how many of these people are there, really? I'd love to see em get their perfect asses to the polls, but if the few (hundred? thousand?) we see online is all there are, that seems like a perfect waste of energy.

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  105. smut clyde3:20 AM

    Rest assured that you are not alone,/A>.

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  106. Warren_Terra5:54 AM

    That was a really remarkable coup de asshole the Republicans pulled off back in ~2003 or so, when they insisted that the IRS Enforcement budget be cut, in order "to save money", even though money spent on Enforcement pays for itself in improved tax receipts and fines - a problem they fixed by rejiggering the Enforcement priorities so it did indeed cost money, by retargeting Enforcement to target poor folks, in actions that were not cost-effective.

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  107. Daniel Björkman6:45 AM

    I guess, but rightful ownership is an artificial concept anyway, so I don't think about it too much. I tend to assume that anything you've gotten hold of is "yours" for all intents and purposes. But that also means that you don't get to whine so damn much if you get forced to share with those who have less than you, like you should have done in the first place.

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  108. Jaime Oria6:49 AM

    I always imagined that after hearing her chatter away for a few minutes, the Scarlet Pimpernel pitched Lady Veronique de Rugy out of the carriage so as to make better time to the docks.

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  109. "I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator."

    -- Mary Harris Jones

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  110. He sure was't the quiet one.

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  111. Is theft as spongy a cocept as rightful ownership?

    ReplyDelete
  112. "whether that is part of the soak-the-rich mentality that is so prevalent in this administration."


    Heh. Yeah, the rich have had it so rough the last 5 years, haven't they.
    ~

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  113. Emily688:21 AM

    If the rich want to be safe instead of sorry, they can just take the standard deduction instead of all that itemizing.

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  114. Jeffrey_Kramer8:43 AM

    In addition to this -- and in addition to the points made above by Montag2 -- we have here an illustration of the systematic double standard about what counts as abusing or gaming the system.


    When someone gets the earned-income tax credit who doesn't quite fit the profile -- in spirit -- of "the people we were looking to help with that legislation," that's an outrage, even if the beneficiary did meet the letter of the requirements. This goes to prove that the whole program is rife with waste, fraud and abuse, and should be abolished or massively scaled back.


    But when someone gets a tax deduction who doesn't quite fit the profile -- in spirit -- of the people we were looking to help with that legislation, so long as the beneficiary did meet the letter of the requirements, then Reagan's in his heaven and all's right with the world. ("What are you envious class warriors complaining about, do you think people are obligated to turn down free money if they legally qualify?")

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  115. Helmut Monotreme8:53 AM

    Rookie mistake, souls aren't a luxury, they are a commodity, like grain futures or pork bellies (a lot like pork bellies). They are bought by the boxcar load, mortgaged, bundled as investments and sold to suckers who will be left holding the bag when the market collapses because if there's anything more useless than souls that can be bought that cheap, it's the suckers that buy cheap souls as an investment.

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  116. glennisw8:56 AM

    Oh fer fucks sake. People who earn over $200,000 per year are usually not simple wage-earners, whose employer withholds income taxes. Their earnings are more complicated and often require payment of estimated taxes. That's the simple reason they're more likely to be audited. It's been that way for years. But now it's Obama's fault!

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  117. LittlePig9:01 AM

    Black Krugman might possibly cause the mass strokes I've been hoping for amongst the fainting couch set.

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  118. El Manquécito9:01 AM

    The deflationary spiral in the value of souls is readily apparent to any level headed observer. TTDOSOTL.

    ReplyDelete
  119. LittlePig9:03 AM

    Mrs Drysdale for me.

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  120. Shakezula9:04 AM

    Next up: Police Brutality! - Police refuse to use servant's entrance when investigating Hopper DeFrotherington III's goat porn ring.

    ReplyDelete
  121. BigHank539:06 AM

    See also crop subsidies, which were originally intended to (a) save the family farm, and (b) stabilize commodity prices so consumers wouldn't get reamed on a yearly basis. They've now been turned into 90% corporate welfare. Check out the ethanol-in-gasoline subsidies sometime. Don't do it right after a meal, though: you'll find out that something like 80% of that money winds up the pockets of that sterling corporate citizen Archer Daniels Midland.

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  122. LittlePig9:14 AM

    He's busy making sure Hell's Canine Sodomy branch doesn't unionize.

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  123. BigHank539:17 AM

    California is/was also notorious for seizing "unclaimed" property in safety deposit boxes. Perhaps if a certain political party hadn't been trying to strangle the state government's income stream the taxmen wouldn't have had to turn themselves into syphilitic bungholes.

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  124. LittlePig9:39 AM

    Cause she's a girl, duh.

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  125. LittlePig9:44 AM

    I can only hope he meets some actual anarchists and begins discussing his bold new ideas...

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  126. LittlePig9:44 AM

    Magnificent!

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  127. LittlePig9:45 AM

    That's AGoodQuestion.

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  128. LittlePig9:50 AM

    I read it first as 'Ventitism', and thought it referred to the air space between the blogger's left ear and his right.

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  129. LittlePig10:12 AM

    I feel bad for not recognizing that. No tasp for me.

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  130. LittlePig10:15 AM

    It would make a great reality show! Fuck Dynasty.

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  131. redoubtagain10:37 AM

    Peters de Rugy Venitis, LLC: Catalysts for the Twelfth Century

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  132. M. Krebs11:02 AM

    Right after lining the pockets of ADM, its primary effect is to increase the price of corn, which then increases the price of beef, etc.

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  133. Magatha11:04 AM

    Everyone should totally drop in on the California State Controller's Office now and then and check their Unclaimed Property database. You can claim it and get it back.

    http://www.sco.ca.gov/upd_form_claim.html

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  134. M. Krebs11:05 AM

    San Fernando Valley, get to work on that immediately!

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  135. XeckyGilchrist11:17 AM

    Indeed, the first step toward taking the conservative position on an issue is to avoid having any understanding of it. Whether through genuine ignorance or willful, it doesn't matter.

    As OverThoreau said, "Oversimplify, oversimplify, oversimplify."

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  136. If they're so determined to make historical analogies; let's start talking about 1880s France. See how those assholes like that!

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  137. El Manquécito11:57 AM

    Dilute being the operative word here since the hydrophilic properties of the alcohol wreak havoc on small engine parts. Wrongness cubed.

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  138. mortimer200012:17 PM

    From the Politico article: "Certainly income inequality will continue to be a major topic and focus on the campaign," said Robert Wolf, a veteran investment banker, Democratic fundraiser and close friend of Obama’s. "But other issues will be important as well, including immigration reform, education reform, infrastructure and corporate and individual tax reform. These all have to be big issues for us again."

    The Rich Fuck Reformula:
    Immigration reform = more and cheaper workers for business ≠ citizens
    Education reform = Teacher pay cuts and layoffs + privatization and enrichment of ed-biz investors
    Healthcare reform = the elimination of Medicare and Medicaid
    Entitlement reform = cuts in SS + raising the retirement age
    Corporate & individual tax reform = more and bigger tax cuts for rich people and investors.

    Always the same. Election reform=you can't vote anymore. Labor reform=no more unions. It always means "More for me. You? Fuck you." Scariest word to hear come out of their mouths.

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  139. Susan of Texas12:22 PM

    Maybe more millionaires are being audited because there are more millionaires. The LA Times:



    There are more millionaires in the United States than ever before.

    The number of households with net worth of $1 million or more, excluding their homes, is at a record 9.63 million, according to a new report.

    http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-number-of-millionaires-in-us-reaches-a-new-high-20140313,0,6800023.story#ixzz2wKdo8uHa


    The poor rich. They suffer so.

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  140. Didn't Chicken George Bush say you can't tax the rich because they have loopholes to hide money and lawyers to fight the IRS?

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  141. Yup. At the same time he was saying that when the rich avoid their taxes, their tax bills get directly passed on to middle-class people. I'm sure it's just because he was briefly confusing modern American tax policy with ancient Roman tax farming ("Collect at least this sum. We don't care how.").

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  142. Mooser1:12 PM

    Came for the rich fucks,
    Could not speak!
    They taxed 'em two times,
    Yeah, my knees got weak!
    Tax 'em two times baby!
    Last us, through the week!

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  143. Mooser1:17 PM

    "hydrophilic properties of the alcohol"


    Ah-ha! So that's why boat-owners drink so much.

    ReplyDelete
  144. Howlin Wolfe1:42 PM

    Bewitched, bothered and bewildered, myself, with bemused thrown in for the 4th B.

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  145. Howlin Wolfe1:50 PM

    What a knob, that Veronique.

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  146. montag22:28 PM

    Can't seem to pinch off a logarithm, eh?

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  147. montag22:35 PM

    I hear "reform" these days and instinctively think, "deform."

    And, it really doesn't matter who says it--the lack of trust in the concept extends to all political persuasions. It truly has become a perversion of the language.

    Maybe it's a corollary of the way we treat elite corruption in this country. Our first inclination is to ignore it, and when we can't, we do our utmost to legalize it. "Reform" seems part and parcel of that tendency.

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  148. That's what she said.

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  149. montag23:20 PM

    Part of this is certainly a way of getting attention. During the Roaring Zeroes (now there's a band name for ya!), both the business and the mainstream press were singing their praises. They were all Masters of the Universe, there was nothing they couldn't do, their wealth was proof positive of their moral and mental superiority, etc., etc., etc.

    And then, 2008 arrived, the inevitable happened and, suddenly, adulation turned to "jump, you fuckers." They must have gotten whiplash from the change in opinion.

    Now that they're back to hoovering up most of the income gains and watching their share of the wealth climb back into the stratosphere, they figure the fanfare, the rose petals, confetti and royal ass-kissing ought to be forthcoming, and they aren't. Too many people got hammered by them, and that resentment won't go away for a long, long time, if ever. Job loss, foreclosure and living in one's car will do that to you.

    They were treated like aristocrats for so long that they now think it's their due. They are monstrous people, so it should come as no surprise that they possess monstrous egos, nor that they whine about a perceived loss of station.

    [Merrily humming a few bars of "Marat We're Poor."]

    ReplyDelete
  150. Love me two times
    I'm gone away...

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  151. sigyn3:55 PM

    Nummers are haaaard! Plus, I was kind of thinking in terms of build-up.

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  152. philadelphialawyer4:34 PM

    I have an idea about ending the reign of terror of IRS audits....
    Rich folks, like people who work for a living, should have to ask the IRS for their money back, after the IRS has withheld it during the year, if they think too much has been withheld. Just like every time Regular Joe draws a paycheck, Little Lord Fauntleroy should have a withholding taken out of every dividend payment, every interest payment, every payment from a partnership, every sale of a capital asset, etc, etc, that inures to his benefit. Very simple, really. Just as with workers, the IRS will estimate how much LLF is going to make for the year, do the hypothetical calculations, and withhold however much from each deal is necessary to reach that total. Then, in April, LLF has a chance to show, if he can, that the IRS got it wrong. And, if the IRS agrees, he gets that portion of his money back as a refund. But, if the IRS does not agree, he can sue the IRS, just like Regular Joe can, to try and get his refund.
    Because determining his own tax liability, but facing an audit, is too onerous for Little Lord Fauntleroy, he should have the luxury that the lucky ducky Regular Joes have. That is, the IRS does the withholding for him. Of course, that means, if there is arguably a discrepancy, he will have to try and get the money out of the IRS (just like the RJs have to do), rather than, as under the current regime, the IRS having to try to get the money out of him. But that is the price of fairness, equality and not having two different sets of rules for the rich and the rest of us.

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  153. TGuerrant5:11 PM

    If he'd just stop quacking, they'd stop shooting.

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  154. satch5:49 PM

    FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE RICH FUCKS, AND I DID NOT SPEAK...
    ...Because EVERY Amurkin thinks that one day HE'S going to be a Rich Fuck.

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  155. J Neo Marvin6:23 PM

    A little bit of both, I bet.

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  156. J Neo Marvin6:47 PM

    Must be a Bay Area tech-yuppie libertarian hating on the Mission District hipsters.

    ReplyDelete
  157. davdoodles6:49 PM

    Oblesse oblige, Muh-fuckers!
    .

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  158. J Neo Marvin6:49 PM

    All of which (anarchist pretensions, La Cumbre reference) makes me start to think he actually is a confused Mission District hipster.

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  159. J Neo Marvin6:51 PM

    Those colors just sent me on a bad late 90s flashback.

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  160. J Neo Marvin6:52 PM

    Ooooh, postmodern!

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  161. AGoodQuestion7:38 PM

    Merci.

    ReplyDelete
  162. AlanInSF7:39 PM

    Really, the tyranny of the Third Reich pales compared to the IRS asking to see your receipts.

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  163. BG, dismayed leftie7:58 PM

    “I hope it’s not working,” Ken Langone, the billionaire co-founder of Home Depot and major GOP donor, said of populist political appeals. “Because if you go back to 1933, with different words, this is what Hitler was saying in Germany. You don’t survive as a society if you encourage and thrive on envy or jealousy.”



    What words, exactly? Because I don't recall Hitler going after rich people.

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  164. JennOfArk8:26 PM

    No, what Hitler was saying in Germany is "this minority is the cause of all our problems." Which, shockingly, is what the handmaidens of the rich - the GOP and its media apparatus - are saying today.

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  165. tigrismus8:35 PM

    I guess the words were REALLY different.

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  166. davdoodles8:50 PM

    With Different Words,"people should obey tax laws" is exactly the same as "annex the Sudetenland!". Or anything else, for that matter.

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  167. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person9:15 PM

    with different words...

    The Bible is the IRS tax code
    "War and Peace" is "Henley's Formulas"
    The Constitution is a New Orleans Tru-Value hardware store's inventory
    "Mein Kampf" is "Das kapital"

    How does such an idiot get to be so rich...

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  168. smut clyde9:15 PM

    You don’t survive as a society if you encourage and thrive on envy or jealousy.
    You might want to do something about the entire advertising industry, then. But is people stop envying their neighbours, who's going to shop at Home Depot?

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  169. smut clyde9:22 PM

    the political zeitgeist may be shifting back their way

    I remember when a 'Spirit of the Age' actually lasted for an age, rather than shifting back and forth according to the distractable attention of journamalists and the shifting needs of their owners. Eras aren't what they used to be.

    What they're talking about here is more of a political Sekundezeit.

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  170. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person9:32 PM

    The number of households with net worth of $1 million or more...

    ...includes a lot of hard working (very) small businessmen and -women whose million entails everything they own on this earth, including the house they live in (usually a perfectly ordinary MC home), the physical plant of the little business that makes them a hundred thou a year or so (and employs maybe 3 or 4 people). And a lot of 'em are my age or older, because that's how long it took to get there. Thurston Howell they ain't. I mean, face it, "millionaire" doesn't mean nearly what it did when I was a kid, and Mike Anthony was still handing out those checks. Which by the way would have to be for $8,728,426.97 today...

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  171. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person9:36 PM

    It ruined three Toyota carbs in a row for me when it hit the stations in the '70s. Took forever to figure out what was going on.

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  172. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person9:39 PM

    Lemon Curry?

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  173. During Barney Frank's last run the republicans were trying to make big deal out of the fact that he lived in a million dollar house. Duh. He lives in Boston.

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  174. M. Krebs11:30 PM

    Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. -- Mark Twain

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  175. freq flag11:40 PM

    KERNERS ARE GO!

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  176. freq flag1:33 AM

    The poor rich. They suffer so.

    Ah yes, the classics never go out of style...

    Conservatives whine and
    Conservatives bitch:
    "Our rich are too poor!"
    "And our poor are too rich!"

    ReplyDelete
  177. JennOfArk8:22 AM

    Speaking of which, where is B^4?

    ReplyDelete
  178. M. Krebs10:40 AM

    Bedraggled, besotten, and befuddled.

    ReplyDelete
  179. Howlin Wolfe5:16 PM

    If they're porn actors, at least one of them works hard.

    ReplyDelete
  180. montag28:22 PM

    Re: Ken Langone, let's take a poll, with the following two options: a) Would you like to see whiny billionaire Ken Langone's head on a plate? Or, b) Would you like to kiss Ken Langone's Armani-swathed ass?

    I think the results of that poll would be dispositive.

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  181. PersonaAuGratin8:56 PM

    Though he is typically described as a "co-founder of Home Depot" it is important to note that Kenny Langone first made his bones on Wall Street back in the '60s by being the investment banker who (after umpteen others had failed) successfully talked Ross Perot into taking his fast growing and profitable company (EDS) public. And EDS got to be fast-growing and profitable by being at the forefront of providing data processing to health insurers grappling with the then-new Medicare and Medicaid programs.

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  182. BigHank5310:05 PM

    Why do the rich insist on $7500 suits and million-dollar Bugattis and $1200 bottles of champagne and $45,000 watches instead of cloth coats and a nice split-level? Are they trying to make other people jealous?

    That's a question that answers itself.

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  183. BigHank5310:06 PM

    Fucking metric system.

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  184. Spaghetti Lee3:21 AM

    Makes sense. I was a teenager in the RZ's, and all respectable teenagers hate rich old businessmen, so I guess I didn't notice the adulation.

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  185. mommadillo6:46 AM

    You don’t survive as a society if you encourage and thrive on envy or jealousy



    Damn straight. If you want your society to thrive, it needs to be based on selfishness and greed like God intended.

    ReplyDelete
  186. mommadillo7:43 AM

    Here you go:

    ReplyDelete
  187. mommadillo7:46 AM

    Are we not men? We are REFO!

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  188. wisconsinreader708:52 AM

    "We must stop being envious of our betters. . . We are so fortunate to have them. . . It is only through their generosity that we can survive. . . We are barely worthy". . . paraphrased. . . Fox News - David Brooks - Tom Friedman

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  189. linusbern10:05 AM

    Gosh, Veronica de Rugy really seems worked up about this. I'd say she is probably worth an audit, based on how worried she seems to be about it.

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  190. raypc80011:05 AM

    Wow paying taxes you owe is attacking the rich! I remember a time that paying taxes was considered PATRIOTIC! Now it is an attack and oh so evil.

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