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Originally Posted by host
ace.... are you saying that anyone who bought Halliburton stock had connections, inside info, and influence that could be compared to "the juice" that the 3 Bushes, Cheney, and Erik Prince had with the folks who let the contracts, designated and appropriated the funds, and the knowledge that they all had, as to the timing of when and where to invest or to enter into business relationships?
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Publicly traded companies have to report transactions of "insiders" and "insider" have trading windows. A common indicator used by many investors is to monitor "insider" investment activity. The best indicator is CFO transactions.
In direct response to your question - no. However, it did not take an insider to know Haliburton's relationship with the government and the fact that the company had an inside track on very lucrative government contracts related to the war in Iraq. But so did Ceradyne (CRDN). It traded for about $3 per share at the start of the war and peaked in the $80 range and now is about $75. They specialize in ceramic armor or bullet proof vests.
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If, as you say, the rich have ways to avoid taxes, rendering them meaningless, why did the fifteen welthiest US families spend more than $100 million, in a secret campaign to attempt to eliminate inheritance taxes,
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Some people are simply greedy and would rather keep the money spent to set up expensive trusts and other tax avoidance shelters.
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and why do their politics seem obsessed with lowering taxes and elimination of progressive income tax? Are their efforts to help the rest of us? Where do the billions collected from inheritance taxes, come from?
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Warren Buffet is one of those guys(correction) who wants to raise taxes and increase the death tax. He could give away all of his wealth today and still maintain control of his company, but he doesn't. I wonder why? Rich people are often among the biggest hypocrites in my opinion. You have rich people on both sides of the issue. What do you believe? Many of the wealthiest people in the country are Democrats and many are Republicans.
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Why, after the Bush income tax cuts, did it take six for tax revenue to rise just six percent, vs. the amount collected in 2000?
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We had to turn around a recession and the tax cuts were not all implemented at once. There is a built in delay in the impact of tax policy. Depending on who you ask or how you calculate it, a tax policy change could take from 2 to 10 years before the impact is felt.
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Why do you almost never support your claims with linked references that the rest of us can consider, learn from, or attempt to rebut?
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When I do, they often get ignored or dismissed as right-wing propaganda.
In a case like this, I like to layout general underlying principles. If there is no basis in agreeing on the underlying principle, more data is pointless. For example - I say rich people easily avoid the "death tax" and I give two general examples. You don't believe it in principle, I could give pages of data on how they do it, etc., but it won't matter. So like I have stated in the past, often these discussions leads me to do research and to think of things I would not have ordinarily thought of, and when I do research, i do it for my education. If I felt others were interested I would share more of it.