Obama is refocusing his campaign on attacking the Top 5%.
As documented here in great detail, that’s where Obama started during the 2008 campaign.
Over time Obama narrowed the demonization to the Top 2%, then the Top 1%, then a few hundred people who might pay more under the “Buffett Rule.”
Apparently that narrowing didn’t work. The public wasn’t interested in a public flogging of a relatively few folks.
So today Obama refocused the campaign on those whose incomes put them approximately in the Top 5% (he says top 2%, but I think his math is off, see below):
With a torpid job market and a fragile economy threatening his re-election chances, President Obama is changing the subject to tax fairness, calling for a one-year extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for people making less than $250,000 [jointly]….
The president’s proposal could also put him at odds with Democratic leaders like Representative Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, who have advocated extending the cuts for everyone who earns up to $1 million….
Here’s a reminder of how good those Top 5% (based on individual returns) supposedly have it under our tax code (data through 2009 tax year):
The top-earning 5 percent of taxpayers (AGI equal to or greater than $154,643), however, still paid far more than the bottom 95 percent. The top 5 percent earned 31.7 percent of the nation’s adjusted gross income, but paid approximately 58.7 percent of federal individual income taxes.
They’re making out like bandits! That’s not fair!
Pathetic, divisive, agitational (my made-up word), any other words which come to mind from yet this latest ploy?
Feel free to make up words which capture the essence of our leader’s campaign, since the English language cannot fully explicate where we are as a nation on July 9, 2012.
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Well it also fits into the theme that Romney is too rich to be one of us. So he gets to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. As soon as Romney says that is a bad idea, Obama can hit him with his new Romney theme.
“Anti-American”, “suicidal”, “job-killer” come to mind easily, Prof.
Time to get our Breitbart on.
Covetational.
It really doesn’t help when former Democratic donors simply run away …
What do they know that we don’t ? .. or is it simply dollars and cents ?
Obama needs to be confronted by Romney with all this.
You cant talk about the economy so you change the subject Mr President. All you have in response to economic reports is you think I have too much money and you dont like how I earned it. That all you got?
Commututional.
I noted with CONSIDERABLE interest that my radio news said Obama wanted the Bush rates extended FOR ONE YEAR for all but the wealthy.
That is just transparently, cynically an invitation to support stupid.
“President Obama is … calling for a one-year extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for people making less than $250,000 [jointly]….”
“Feel free to make up words … since the English language cannot fully explicate …”
Perfect time for a miles-long, made-up German compound word:
DerpathetischespaltendagitatorischeDummkopfführend beschuldigteinenBushdannleihtsichdesBush’sSteuerermäßigungLösung.
Roughly translates as “A pathetic, divisive, agitational fool of a leader who blames Bush and then borrows Bush’s tax cuts as a cure.”
I should add that the unabridged word is
“A pathetic, divisive, agitational fool of a leader who blames Bush and then borrows Bush’s tax cuts as a cure, but refuses the most important part of the cure”
but the word was getting too long and people would have trouble remembering it.
Not a new term, but I used “Tyrannosaurus Barack” the other day, to describe Obama’s predatory ways. “Tyrant lizard” seems fitting, and most Americans would think this sort of lawless tyrant/fascist would be extinct, since we won WW2.
Obama acts as Supreme Leader, or Supreme Being. He overrules congress, and threatens SCOTUS … certainly this is ancient “might makes right” thuggishness, not progress(ive). Clubbing your successful neighbor to
stealredistribute his wealth, is going back to cave man days.What jobs report?
maximum cowbell
The great shaftoidinal thrust forward
The Wanker-in-Chief is oozing desperation. . . .
The 1% number has always seemed suspicious to me, especially when the OWS mob picked up on it and started calling themselves the 99%. I mean, were they really fine with the people with incomes in the 90 to 98th percentile range? My guess is that they would be the next target. After all, no matter how many people you dispense with, there will always be a top 1%.
choom logic
Envitational (inviting envy)
Envistructural (built/constructed upon envy)
————
Winston Churchill
Helmut Schoeck, Envy: A Theory Of Social Behavior (1966, tr. 1970)
Mitt Romney, Jan 12, 2012
And lets not forget these gems already heading our way
The new increases in Medicare taxes will apply to individuals making more than $200,000 a year, or $250,000 for married couples.
The first involves the Medicare tax on earnings. Today, workers pay 1.45% of their wages into Medicare. Starting next year, high-income individuals will pay another 0.9 percentage points on their earned income over $200,000 ($250,000 if married).
The second change pertains to investment income, which to date has never been subject to the Medicare tax. But next year high-income households will start paying a 3.8% tax on at least a portion of their investment income, such as capital gains, dividends and rental income.
Roughly 4 million households — or 2.4% — will be affected by the increase initially, according to new estimates from the Tax Policy Center. By 2022 that number will grow to 8.3 million, or 4.6%.
Why is no one paying attention to Obama’s marriage penalty? If you are single and make under $200K, no increase. But if you are married and you make say, $180K and your spouse makes $75K, BANG, you are part of the $250K crowd.
Actually, I really like agitational.
We need a new word of that caliber every week.
(To paraphrase my wife, because I can’t quite remember how she phrases it, you’re at Cornell, you’re allowed to make up new words.)
It seems about 138 million Americans file with the IRS. The average tax rate on the bottom 50% was 1.85% in 2009, and dropping. Probably near zero now, leaving 69 million to pay all the income taxes, and 14 million paying ~72%.
But that only counts filers.
Only 44% of the population files tax returns. So the top 5% of filers would be about 2% of the general population.
23.7% are 18 and under, leaving at least 100 million over 18, non-filers.
Is there any effort to bring that 100 million out of the tax free shadows? Victor Hanson talks of his CA community, where welfare recipients have cell phones and nice cars, and even operate a gray market roadside economy, free of hassle from “the man”. It seems they also already have their free health care. I wonder who pays for that?
Obama plays to that 100 million, and promises to give them even more free stuff. Meanwhile the guy going legit has to face volumes of government regulatory controls, masses of wasteful paperwork, and rising taxes. And now add expensive health care for all workers as part of the reward for giving a man a job.
Refudiatable.
[…] In today’s publicity stunt Barack Obama persistently claimed that he has cut taxes for the middle class by thousands of dollars. Unstated is the Obama health scam tax on millions of middle class and working class households to benefit Big Pharma and Big Insurance. […]
Reelecteflexible.
Often used with Negotiacquiescebowish.
Antonym: Discourtebibious. See also, Nyettonetanyahu.
Professor, LI should start its own language!
Like my Japanese wife says in English, “What a fun!!”
See also, “How fun!”
It is time for a Constitutional amendment limiting the taxing ability of the government at all levels. There is no reason for someone to be paying more than 10-20% of there income in tax, this would include property, sales, the whole bit. I understand that much of this is local or state, but taxes are killing us in more ways than one. All politicians want to soak the rich, at all levels. This usually means that everyone pays, but Americans are too stupid to figure that out.
The best years in the US were around the early 1900’s. We had financial ups and downs, but people had freedom to earn or have a business. I am sure that the low taxes had a significant influence at that time.
The early 1900s were pre-Nanny State, before child labor laws, before wage/hour rules, etc. I don’t think anyone wants to return to those days, but the pendulum seems to be taking larger and large swings to the Left.
If most ordinary Americans could travel to Europe and see just how people live, think and breathe in those “Social Democracies”, they would not want any of it. Ah, but they’re told how wonderful Socialism is by…the elites, the ones who transcend national boundaries, class and culture.
I challenge each of you to look at Feudalism and Socialism, and if you understand history, class structure and societal evolution, you will see that European Culture has come full circle. Socialism is Feudalism Lite.
Also, it’s no accident that Socialism and Communism came from Germany, the culture that never benefited from Roman culture and ideas. It was also a backwater of the enlightenment, and thus gave us this weird form of Teutonic egalitarianism.
Envidious
Bullshattery.
Anatruthiostical.