| Question 2: How much does a person who earns $50,000 per year pay in federal taxes?
Teabagger answer:
In short, no matter how one slices the data, the Tea Party crowd appears to believe that federal taxes are very considerably higher than they actually are, whether referring to total taxes as a share of GDP or in terms of the taxes paid by a typical family.
The facts.
OK - several ways to slice this. According to IRS tax tables, a single person with $50,000 in taxable income last year would owe $8,694 in federal income taxes, and a married couple filing jointly would owe $6,669.
As we can see fat cat and their tools in the GOP, talk radio and FOX have done a great job of convincing teabaggers that the federal government has been robbing them blind.
Question 3: Have federal taxes gone up since President Barack Obama took office?
Teabagger answer.
More than two-thirds thought that taxes are higher today, and only 4% thought they were lower; the rest said they are the same.
The facts.
As noted earlier, federal taxes are very considerably lower by every measure since Obama became president. And given the economic circumstances, it's hard to imagine that a tax increase would have been enacted last year. In fact, 40% of Obama's stimulus package involved tax cuts. These include the Making Work Pay Credit, which reduces federal taxes for all taxpayers with incomes below $75,000 by between $400 and $800.
Bartlett also argues that the stimulus bill reduced federal taxes by almost $100 billion in 2009 and $222 billion in 2010.
According to the JCT, last year's $787 billion stimulus bill, enacted with no Republican support, reduced federal taxes by almost $100 billion in 2009 and another $222 billion this year. The Tax Policy Center, a private research group, estimates that close to 90% of all taxpayers got a tax cut last year and almost 100% of those in the $50,000 income range. For those making between $40,000 and $50,000, the average tax cut was $472; for those making between $50,000 and $75,000, the tax cut averaged $522. No taxpayer anywhere in the country had his or her taxes increased as a consequence of Obama's policies.
Bartlett said it is hard to explain the divergence between perception and reality where teabaggers are concerned.
It's hard to explain this divergence between perception and reality. Perhaps these people haven't calculated their tax returns for 2009 yet and simply don't know what they owe. Or perhaps they just assume that because a Democrat is president that taxes must have gone up, because that's what Republicans say that Democrats always do. In fact, there hasn't been a federal tax increase of any significance in this country since 1993.
Mr. Bartlett, I can tell you everything you need to know about perception and reality where teabaggers are concerned. All you need to do is have a conversation your Republican colleagues like Frank Luntz, Karl Rove, G.W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Rick Perry, Dick Armey, Sarah Palin and every other right wing tool who serve the powerful corporate interests.
Bartlett goes on to suggest that the teabaggers distorted views might have something to do with an economic theory called Ricardian Equivalence.
While Ricardian Equivalence is a legitimate economic theory that economists continue to debate, one often hears a variation of it on talk radio shows and such, where it is said that deficits are a tax on the economy. The problem is that many people conclude from this arguably true statement that raising taxes to reduce the deficit would in effect constitute a double tax. We're being taxed once by the deficit, people think, so why should they have their taxes raised to reduce it?
Of course, this is a non sequitur. People can't be taxed twice by the expectation of a tax and again by the actual tax itself. But more important, the underlying assumption of Ricardian Equivalence--that taxes will eventually rise to pay off the debt--is now seriously in doubt.
Maybe Mr. Bartlett ought to let Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and FOX News know that the Ricardian Equivalence is seriously in doubt, not that Rush or Glenn would listen. These dudes do not do reality.
Bartlett goes on to suggest that perhaps teabaggers have grabbed on to the tea party movement not because they are against taxes but because they are angry. According to him, the movement is the only game in town where change might be possible.
Sorry, Bruce, but change happens at the ballot box, not at rallies that are thinly veiled hate fests.
A revolution happened at the ballot box in November 2008 when an African American with a funny name was elected President of the United States by a vast majority of the American people.
Some in the teabagger movement obviously have issues with the election's outcome.
Speaking of which, U.S. House Rep. Alan Grayson's family (D-FL) received a death threat this weekend.
And teabaggers beat up a protester at a McCain/Palin rally yesterday. Sarah surely does love to whip up the crowds in a frenzy of hate and violence. Perhaps her performance at the McCain rally is her one-way ticket to Palin's "It's all about me" reality show.
David Frum, G.W. Bush's former speechwriter, conservative and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute was fired by AEI yesterday. His crime? The truth. Frum said HCR is a Waterloo for the GOP, not for the Democrats.
From the prospective of a liberal journalist, Frank Rich of the New York Times.
The Rage is not about Health Care
Let's face it. The tea party hysterics over government takeovers, health care reform and taxes is not really about government takeovers, taxes or health care reform.
It has something to do with, well, first of all, ignorance.
How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn't recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht. The weapon of choice for vigilante violence at Congressional offices has been a brick hurled through a window. So far.
The notion of a government takeover of health care is a myth.
No less curious is how disproportionate this red-hot anger is to its proximate cause. The historic Obama-Pelosi health care victory is a big deal, all right, so much so it doesn't need Joe Biden's adjective to hype it. But the bill does not erect a huge New Deal-Great Society-style government program. In lieu of a public option, it delivers 32 million newly insured Americans to private insurers. As no less a conservative authority than The Wall Street Journal editorial page observed last week, the bill's prototype is the health care legislation Mitt Romney signed into law in Massachusetts. It contains what used to be considered Republican ideas.
Teabaggers cannot cope with changing demographics.
They can't. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven't had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.
Throwing bricks through windows, putting coffins in front yards, threatening to send sharpshooters after children, ramming cars, insulting and throwing money at a disabled man at a rally and sending death threats to those with whom you don't agree won't change a damn thing either.
Rich reminds us of the era in which Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law.
After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is "now on the books." Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin's "reload" rhetoric.
It seems that the Republican Party no longer has responsible grown ups in charge.
This includes Governor Rick, aka Mr. 39%, Perry.
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