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Sean_A

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #325 on: March 03, 2009, 12:13:35 PM »
Shivas -

I don't buy much of your theoretical politics because much of it doesn't jive with reality.  However, this last doozy about how cutting mortgage interest deductions will, how did you put it; "This tax is a kick in the crotch to the American dream." is above and beyond the call of duty of a good Republican.  

One of the over-riding issues which you seem to ignore is that of how to pay the debt off that this country whole heartily voted for when they decided to vote for Bush.  Of course, the debt was dramatically increased by recent troubles which I believe the government was implicitly responsible for because of its cheer leading on spending (or anything to pretend the war was having no effect on daily lives).  This sort of approach by the government was shameful and the citizens should be just as ashamed for falling for this simplistic mumbo jumbo and actually living their lives as if there wasn't a war raging.  However, regardless of these issues and more, the core of the issue remains no matter how deep the debt is or what caused the debt.  Not only that, but serious thinking on this issue had better come about soon because more bad times will follow until we at least get a finger tip or two on the debt.

Craig

You toss around tax percentages like its the government's god given right to take off people.  I hate tax, all tax because I don't trust the government to spend my money wisely.  I would rather the government have to justify line item by line item why the tax is justifiable and how it will help me and the country.  Show me a government that is worth 39% of my wage and I will gladly pay.  The problem is, I don't believe any such animal exists.  Its almost like we need to step back to square one and figure out what is what with no carryover assumptions about the military, health care, etc etc etc.  

Ciao

New plays planned for 2024: Nothing

jeffwarne

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #326 on: March 03, 2009, 12:53:12 PM »

  Show me a government that is worth 39% of my wage and I will gladly pay.  The problem is, I don't believe any such animal exists.  Its almost like we need to step back to square one and figure out what is what with no carryover assumptions about the military, health care, etc etc etc.  

Ciao



Sean-I would say living in the US is definitely worth paying 39% of my wage-and I don't discount the great priveledge/lucky break I got being born in this great country.

The problem is it we don't know where it stops. Every time we turn around he references taking more from what he calls the super-rich.
I'd be thrilled if my total tax bill was just 39%.

According to Obama I'm super-rich-that's OK  -but he tends to lump us working "rich" in with the billionaires/multimillionaires with multiple houses etc.
 I guess when you've been a community organizer and a Congressman you really don't get it. When I was naive and inexperienced I thought $100,000 was a fortune.
His lack of recognizing that $250,000 less taxes (more like 50-60+%) doesn't leave a lot in high cost of living area where property taxes on normal 3 bedroom homes can be $30,000 annually +mortgage (again for many a much higher int. rate because it's a "jumbo"i.e. not federally subsidized) , health ins. +social security+ self employment tax+ etc. (all of which we pay EXTRA to SUBSIDIZE-there's that word again- the guy who doesn't have the insurance or pay his mortgage)



« Last Edit: March 03, 2009, 01:09:03 PM by jeffwarne »
"Let's slow the damned greens down a bit, not take the character out of them." Tom Doak
"Take their focus off the grass and put it squarely on interesting golf." Don Mahaffey

Lou_Duran

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #327 on: March 03, 2009, 01:05:51 PM »
Craig,

You forgot to qualify my rant as "Limbonian".

As to who built those things you mention?  I suppose the folks who accepted the jobs paid largely by the small percent of the population that you seem to hate so much.  But I forgot that you think labor reigns supreme.  Maybe government should require that we each work 20 hours per week on a government endeavor for no pay as opposed to trying to take 50% plus of the capital of those who make it.  As far as I know, the periods in the annals of humanity are non-existant when capital was in ample supply and labor scarce.  And why do you thing that is?  I know, Darwinian greed and an inherent hate for the little guy.

Can someone please explain to me the psychology behind continually biting the hand that feeds you?  It seems that instead of cruciying enterprising, money making people, we should be holding pep rallies and doing everyting possible to help them in what they do best- "1-2-3, make more so we can tax you more!  40%+ of American FEDERAL INCOME TAX payers who don't pay FEDERAL INCOME TAXES appreciate our FEDERAL INCOME TAX cut!  Can we pick up your laundry so you and we can make even more?"  Oh, give me a minute to make sure that this is what "Limbo" E-Mailed me to say this morning.  Okay.  The message has been approved.  Nah, let's just call them the greedy assholes that they are and play on what V-G Biden said, their patriotic duty.

Now, Craig, the prior reply was an explanation.  This one was a rant.  I had a couple of other things to say to you on a personal basis, but deep down inside you already know what you are, don't you?  Sorry George Pazin, but I couldn't help myself this time.

And this time I am really done.  Finito.  Adios muchachos!     

Paul Stephenson

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #328 on: March 03, 2009, 01:14:57 PM »
Quote
Craig, look at it this way - since you believe in redistribution at the expense of the richest, this should offend you because the super rich are getting off scott free at the expense of  relatively poor "working stiff rich" who have mortgages and need that deduction to pay for their homes.

If you need that  deduction to pay for your home, should you be in that home in the first place?

No government bailout can counteract consumer logic like this.  This economic turnaround has to begin one household at a time.  "Paradox of thrift" be damned.

Mike_Cirba

Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #329 on: March 03, 2009, 01:28:43 PM »
I'm so glad I'm not in this thread but I do have to question the logic where the 33pct who are paying a mortgage are able to deduct interest payments while the 32pct who rent have no such relief?

Exactly what behavior are we trying to reward or punish?

Mike_Cirba

Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #330 on: March 03, 2009, 01:47:38 PM »
Mike, we haven't even gotten to the good part - the fact that "the rich" own a lot of property that they rent out and, in the end, this tax on "the rich" will increase property rents.

Being Robin Hood isn't easy.  When you rob the rich and dole the money out to the poor, rent and the price of mead go up...

When you rob the rich, then waste half of the money through ineffective bureaucracies, and then give half to the poor, rent and the price of mead go WAAAAY up!



Dave,

Without wanting to separate into our respective ideological corners, let's just simply talk tax policy.

I don't understand why as a homebuyer I get a deduction for paying a mortgage instead of paying a landlord which I did prior when I rented.   What's changed?   What behaviors are the governement trying to encourage or discourage?

I don't understand why the more kids I have the more deductions I get?

Again, what behaviors are we encouraging or discouraging?

Is this Little House on the Prairie and I need 20 kids to help me raise crops and livestock?

When "Welfare Moms" were given more money per child we called it rewarding bad behavior, didn't we?


jeffwarne

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #331 on: March 03, 2009, 01:54:12 PM »
Mike,
theoretically home ownership produces more stable neighborhoods than renting-so they're attempting to reward home ownership.
I happen to question this wisdom of such a deduction (or any deduction) but the realtor lobby is strong-so it stays.

as to the rest of your post, you're making the assumptions that how we're taxed is simple, fair, or even logical.
 ;D ;D

This country has never "rewarded" bad behavior-we simply subsidize it
"Let's slow the damned greens down a bit, not take the character out of them." Tom Doak
"Take their focus off the grass and put it squarely on interesting golf." Don Mahaffey

Mike_Cirba

Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #332 on: March 03, 2009, 01:55:53 PM »
JeffWarne,

Too True, too True.   ;D

Jeff Goldman

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #333 on: March 03, 2009, 02:31:08 PM »
Shivas and Lou,

[this is in part an attempt to get morality out of the way]

I would think that you both would be dead set against any deduction for mortgage interest because it distorts the market and favors one type of investment over others.  A believer in capitalism and the market must think that the deduction has led to too many folks owning houses, and that the houses are way bigger than should be produced by the market.  Since that is true, wouldn't getting rid of the deduction, even on the margins, get us closer to real market demand?

Jeff
That was one hellacious beaver.

RJ_Daley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #334 on: March 03, 2009, 02:52:17 PM »
It gets to be real entertainment when a fellow like Lou finally hauls out the good book, gets into a whole tizzy of secular VS theocracy based government value systems, all brought on by the notion of 'redistribution of wealth".  I didn't see Jesus sitting on the back bench of the halls of congress when the wealthy influenced party in power were deregulating the whole financial sector oversight, allowing all the loopholes and pass the legislation that let jobs go out of this country.  I did hear some rumblings of religious ferver invoked in justifying the war as curtailing the Islamic conspiracy to create weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, even though that Sadam regime wasn't so much an Islamic foundation, nor it turns out in possession of the WMD.  But, we had our leaders invoking protection of our "Judeo-Christian" values somehow mixed into the overall rationale, as it turns out was more about oil than culture or western religious preservation...

The anti-income tax squad running around in the woods in this country, the Posse Commitatis and all the other fringe anti-tax lunies always seem to get down to invoking the religious angle, it seems to me.  Now Lou is topping off his anti-governance rants and anti-tax - anti-16th ammendment philosophies with a screed on tithing and theology based notions as rationale to not make a collective and democratic attempt at governing ourselves and righting the ship that was sunk by those very people that are now unhappy with where the currently elected leadership want to take us.  

Dave, you weren't so vociferous in your opposition when the the reverse of your termed "Robinhoodian" concept of take from the rich-distribute to the poor; was the rich Wall Street Pirates buying legislation of dereg and taking hard earned investments placed in fiduciary trust of that wealth class and using the collective to spread their outrageous risks onto the collective to make even more money and exponentially create more of their own kind's wealth, that no-or very elete few middle or lower class people could ever pierce that closed club feast of corp execs.  

As an aside, I can't help but observe and mention that all this conspiracy of a redistributionist cabal is now being guided in policy formation and driven in legislation by people at the top of the economics world.   Does anyone think that the people at the very pinnacle of these proposed new policy directions of taxation, financial rescue, mortgage rescue, health care rescue, are from the lower or middle income class and are conspiring to make themselves more wealthy?  I can't help but think that everyone of the people on Obama's economic team are and have been well in excess of Dave's 'working rich' and thus will be even more effected by the new proposals they are planning, than the 260K a year stiffs Dave is worried about.  Yet, they do it... why?  Because Dave isn't there with another better plan, Lou is out tithing and praying for a flat tax somewhere and cursing the notion that we have moved on from the good old days when pain was more virtuous.

Gentlemen, it is a plan - it is our national democratically selected plan, and for now, it is all we have until next election.  Surely, you can wait your next turn, as many of us feel we endured the last 8 years.  Stand down for cripes sake.  You have added nothing that is being accepted for now, to help.  You are just perpetuating a harsh arguement and previously failed set of ideas, and you haven't come up with new ones that inspire the people enough to trust you anymore.   If you have come up with a new more workable idea, get your asses to Washington, and off GCA.com.
No actual golf rounds were ruined or delayed, nor golf rules broken, in the taking of any photographs that may be displayed by the above forum user.

Craig Van Egmond

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #335 on: March 03, 2009, 03:01:15 PM »

No offense RJ, I like you, but you are full of crap. You have no right telling anybody to stand down, after listening to you and others carp on endlessly for the last 8 years, second guessing everything the last administration did, turnabout is fair play. So suck it up dude, this is America, and the last I checked we still have freedom of speech.

Put me in the camp of those who would do away with the current tax system entirely with all its 1000's of pages, deductions and loopholes. I don't care if its flat tax, fair tax, just quit fiddling with the current broken system.



Craig Sweet

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #336 on: March 03, 2009, 03:11:08 PM »
Like I said about 20 posts ago...I don't think this change in mortgage deduction is going to change anything....the last numbers I could find say 67% of all filers use the standard deduction....
No one is above the law. LOCK HIM UP!!!

Lou_Duran

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #337 on: March 03, 2009, 03:11:39 PM »
Boy, I am a weak, weak man.  Ran, please, just shoot me!

Dick,

I see you added a new word to your vocabulary.  Did you look up "screed" after you read my reply to your new teacher?  Will we see it as often as "sophistries" and "Limbonian"?

Lock the doors and put a wreath of garlic around the children's necks.  Get out the wolf bane.  Bring in a little Christian theology into the discussion and the secular humanists go apoplectic!

As another GCAer IMed me earlier, posting on gca topics is not nearly as much fun.  So much tolerance and love that I am being told to shut up.  After more than eight years of nothing but the worst said about Bush and conservatives, now let's not be critical of the new man.  Really, if this wasn't so serious it would be as entertaining as escaping to the movies, and much cheaper too.

BTW, I got word earlier that Blockbuster (BBI) is in the process of filing a structured bankruptcy.  "Yes we can".

And this time I really mean it.  Adios muchachitos!    

Kalen Braley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #338 on: March 03, 2009, 03:15:45 PM »

No offense RJ, I like you, but you are full of crap. You have no right telling anybody to stand down, after listening to you and others carp on endlessly for the last 8 years, second guessing everything the last administration did, turnabout is fair play. So suck it up dude, this is America, and the last I checked we still have freedom of speech.

Put me in the camp of those who would do away with the current tax system entirely with all its 1000's of pages, deductions and loopholes. I don't care if its flat tax, fair tax, just quit fiddling with the current broken system.


Craig,

How dare you suggest such???  Didn't you know its perfectly acceptable to belittle, bitch about, moan, complain, gripe, point out inconsistencies, personally degrade, and utterly mock a Republican president in office?  This is not only morally right, but doing your ultimate duty to god and country to point out how the Replublicans are leading this country down a cess pool of which there is no return.

However when a Democrat is sitting president its vitally important to nay speak a discouraging word, question, belly-ache, point out a weakness, or otherwise identify where they are screwing it up.  To do such is an obvious violation of your duties as a good citizen and deemed to be unpatriotic.  And never ever ever ever point out when such Democrat goes back on thier word, breaks thier promises, and does the opposite of what they said would during thier campaign.  This is tatamount to heresy and you just need to bury the hatchet, move forward, and quit being so bitter.

Duh....

Craig Sweet

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #339 on: March 03, 2009, 03:26:14 PM »
Shivas...

Is this your blog?

http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/
No one is above the law. LOCK HIM UP!!!

RJ_Daley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #340 on: March 03, 2009, 03:34:34 PM »
That is OK Craig, I AM full of crap.  I did vociferously object to the policy that was perpetrated for the last 8 years.  (If I told my wife once, I told her a hundred times starting 8 years ago that I wasn't too confident America would even survive the Bush years)  Was I wrong?  Yes I was, by a narrow margin of 12 trillion debt that wasn't there when I first told her we may not survive.  We survived alright.  And what a wonderful survival it has been.  I have been vociferously railing against a corp exec class that was running wild in an unregulated atmosphere of outright piracy of compensations where weak or substandard stock and profit performance was rewarded with disproportionate compensations.  And conspicuous consumption of that class was disgusting to see justified next to an ever deteriorating middle and lower class who were constantly losing their jobs and health care options, and now homes.   And I railed against a neocon policy gang that was running us into an international quagmire of wars and its hidden debts and failed international support when we had widespread support after 9/11.  That was free speech as well.  You have a right to it, I have.  My free speech notions were ridiculed as quacky by the likes of Lou and others, but seemed to finally have translated to a more commonly accepted theory that calls for change.  The other side that I railed against, seem to be fading to the shadow world of c-pac conventions and tax protest rallies, for now.  You can always hope that this fails and you "think" you will get back on top.  (I personally doubt that a failure here will reward a failed set of values and policies that led to this) but that is my free speech right to say so.

I agree with you that the tax system is broke with its 1000s of pages of loopholes and favored directives, giving to one group at the expense of another.  It is all OK if you have the juice to get your legisatively approved tax loophole.  Would you agree that the healthcare system is totally broken too?  Can we fix your camp's tax system failure with my camp's healthcare system failure.  Are there 50million working rich stiffs being unfairly dealt with in this current set of taxing proposals are there are 50 million people with no safety net of health care, millions facing health care bankruptcies.  

There are many camps to align ourselves in, Craig.  We still seem to be practicing the governance system that the camp with the most votes gets to do it their way, with due respect to the folks exercising their freedom of speech from the minority.  

So don't stand down as I suggest, you have the absolute right along with Dave and Lou to stand up.  Just please come up with something real.  Reality isn't going to do away with the current tax system because too many of the right wing and wealthy or those unfortunate working rich stiffs benefit way more than the working poor in the system you'd like to gut.  Suck it up indeed...
No actual golf rounds were ruined or delayed, nor golf rules broken, in the taking of any photographs that may be displayed by the above forum user.

Mike_Cirba

Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #341 on: March 03, 2009, 03:40:03 PM »
I think RJ's point includes implicitly the idea that the right wing has failed and brought us to this point....they had full charge of all branches six of the past eight years, to be fair.

Barack Obama has been President for 5 whole weeks after 416 weeks with President Bush in charge.

If things are still royally fupped in another 100-200 or so weeks, I'll be right there with you all screaming for change.

Kalen Braley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #342 on: March 03, 2009, 03:48:15 PM »
Well that lastest development is a bit interesting.....

McCain who loses in this campaign despite claiming to be a reformer, loses to Obama who is also an alleged reformer.  So McCain sets in motion a proposal, in very reformer-like fashion,  to strip out the 8500 or so earmarks in this latest bill, yet gets voted down by the democrat controlled Senate so it can be passed on for "reformer" Obama's signature who claimed earmarks are a thing of the past and he won't support. 

Ahhh the irony of it all...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090303/ap_on_go_co/congress_spending

RJ_Daley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #343 on: March 03, 2009, 03:54:03 PM »
Here is another reality that you folks seem to be forgetting...

Last November, I - we, had a choice between an elequent (you can call him anything you like - snakeoil salesman - socialist - redistributionist - young black overclassman) who had in his high rhetoric and demonstrated ability to show complex thinking and basic intellect; and a older gentleman - war hero - yet by his own admission one who didn't know much about economics, dependant on a guy like Phil Gramm who felt we were a nation of whiners when considering the economic situation and a second in line to the significantly older gentleman-economic lightweight, Ms Palin, who is a damn feisty 'hockey mom'.  

Did we actually have any other choices?  Get real gents.  This is what we a significant majority were inspired to do.  We chose this one.  (mocking McCain's 'that one')  that is what we did and you'll have to live with it, and like Mike said, failure now will bring more change - perhaps tramatic rather than dramatic change.  Maybe not the change some of you hope for, however.  Personally, I'm rooting for the big O.
No actual golf rounds were ruined or delayed, nor golf rules broken, in the taking of any photographs that may be displayed by the above forum user.

Kalen Braley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #344 on: March 03, 2009, 04:02:09 PM »
Kalen, I really don't care about any of that sh*t.  That's blame-game nonsense. 

I care about the philosophy and mindset that gives a purported public servant the gall to put pen to paper and add the wasteful spending in the first place. 

Dave fair enough, the blame game thing does get old.

But how can you be surprised by any of this?  You called this out way back when as did a number of us that he wouldn't be able to contain his marxist tendencies once he got into power.  Throw in having a friend in both the house and Senate, and a 60% of the vote mandate and the guy has got feel like he can do whatever the hell he wants.

So spend, spend, spend away is what he's going to do, and he's going to stick it to the rich guy.  All this Robin Hooding is the basic tenet of what true "compassionate" Marxism is supposed to be about.

Why the surprise big guy?

John Kirk

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #345 on: March 03, 2009, 04:12:31 PM »

You know, the one where he promised to turn the entire economy on its ear with trillions of spending that doesn't solve the problem.

Go ahead, Dave.  Explain how you know this is so.

While you are at it, explain why the trillions in question are not the direct and necessary result of poor decision making by previous administrations.

Kalen, explain why a $1 trillion investment in national infrastructure is a bad investment.

My blood is starting to boil on this whole "blame Obama" train of thought six weeks into his presidency.

RJ_Daley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #346 on: March 03, 2009, 04:13:45 PM »
Quote
I did, however, see the one where he promised to end politics as usual and partisan laundry-list bickering to govern from the center, using the best and most efficient ideas from either side of the aisle...

Dave, honestly I did see that one too.  Do you think I'm happy with everything.  I'm not.  But, what is he to do in 5 weeks?  Can he shoot some of the congressional pork barrelers that are from BOTH SIDES OF THE AISLE,  or intern them?  I wish.  And, there is no line item veto as we all know.  What happens if he fails and we recognise that failure is systemic due to terminally ugly partisan bickering and hypocrisy's as you point out?  What next?  Do you think the government of the U.S. as constituted will survive a real and very omnipresent possiblity of deep depression?  What next, if not this?  

I like what I suspect is everyone here on GCA, am damn worried if not scared of this surreal world that is playing out.  I and you don't have the answers.  I'm full of crap and economically illiterate in the context of really understanding this steaming pile of dung.  I just have my gut to go on.  So do you, I think.  What next?
No actual golf rounds were ruined or delayed, nor golf rules broken, in the taking of any photographs that may be displayed by the above forum user.

Kalen Braley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #347 on: March 03, 2009, 04:14:10 PM »
Shiv,

Keep saying stuff like that last paragraph and you will indeed soon be the President of the Ayn Rand book club!!   ;D

BTW, I completely agree with everything you said in that last post.  I too want America to succeed but am not encouraged by what I'm seeing so far.

Craig Van Egmond

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #348 on: March 03, 2009, 04:19:52 PM »
RJ,

    Your disdain for all things Bush, corporations and wealthy people is well documented, but is this seriously the 'change' you expected/wanted?  

Craig Sweet

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Northern Trust under pressure...
« Reply #349 on: March 03, 2009, 04:27:45 PM »
Shivas...

"More idiocy and deflection.

Now it's "filers".  Last time, you were citing "homeowners" and I asked you to exclude those who don't even have mortgages and have paid them off or are within a few years of doing so.

Do you just make this stuff up as you go?"

Here's some more for you to chew on.....are you getting any work done today?

According to an analysis of 2005 IRS data by the nonprofit Tax Foundation, only 35.6 percent of taxpayers — tenants and homeowners — itemize on their returns.

In West Virginia, 18 percent of taxpayers itemized in 2005. Only in Maryland, a relatively high-income state, did more than 50 percent itemize.

Among homeowners nationwide, an estimated one-half itemize, but one-third of all homeowners have no mortgage debt against their property, and therefore do not claim mortgage interest as a deduction.
No one is above the law. LOCK HIM UP!!!