Stare At The Sun

I am not trying to troll or anything of that nature, as I usually just lurk here anyways. But, I really want to know. Why is it that Bush is out doing all this fundraising, and campaining, when he should be in washington DC talking to prime ministers and diplomats, and flying around the world in Air Force One kissing ass and shaking hands.

When Clinton was president, that's all you ever saw, was diplomatic envoy's and shaking hands. I don't remember Bush doing anything like that.

And the same goes for Kerry, should he be in the Senate?

We elect and pay these people hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, and they are out campaining around the country when they should be pouring over law books, and improving the welfare of the nation.

How has it come to this? Since when was it OK for our president and senators to go around and campain for days on end, when the job that the taxpayers pay them to do, is back in washington.

It just boggles my mind how little I've actually seen Bush do in the means of progress, and how much time Kerry is spending away from the Senate.

I know they have to campain, but shouldn't the duty of doing their job come first?

Locobot

quoth the Washington Post:
"[Bush] has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office, according to a tally by CBS News. Adding his 78 visits to Camp David and his five visits to Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush has spent all or part of 500 days in office at one of his three retreats, or more than 40 percent of his presidency."

Pretty sweet for a job earning 400K a year huh? Now he wants us to believe he is a "wartime" president! This would be like if Churchill had decided to spend 1941 in the Bahamas.

llama8

I don't know why but that line cracks me up! I just have this image of Churchill puffing on a giant cigar laid back on a sun lounger while drinking a cocktail commenting on how the troops are doing good "in France".

Peetster

I think he's doing a fine job.

Much of the work of the president happens while at places other than the White House. Bush has hosted dozens of foreign leaders at his ranch in Texas and his retreat at Maryland. He's had the bulk of his staff with him on most visits.

Both Bush and Cheney took huge pay cuts to take the job they currently hold.

And yet you are.

reconmike

So this means that while he is not locked in the oval office, nothing is getting done?

There are phone and secure connections where ever he goes.

And I cant help myself but the reason Slick Willie was always in the White House was because thats where the interns were

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ARTelevision

Yes, both recent Woodward books on the GWB Presidency, make it crystal clear he and his team are dedicated, early-rising, diligent, hard workers who do the hardest jobs in the world.

Both "Bush at War" and "Plan of Attack" are solid and essentially non-partisan journalism. Check them out.

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ARTelevision

I'm reminded of something that is often clear here. Getting one's sense of what is going on in the world from instantaneous media produces some transparent ideas that are mirror images of the daily headlines.

There are many more in-depth analyses available on current and recent events. Much of the discussion in this forum revolves around non-partisan fact-based knowledge. Opinions are better formed around factual cores.

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onetime2

Clinton spent a considerable amount of time fund raising and if the President ignored campaigning and fund raising while in office we'd never have a President serve a second term.

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Stare At The Sun

No offense peester, but i'm not trolling. I rarely create a thread in this forum, and when I do, its about something that I either don't get, or am very interested in, or pissed off about.

With that being said, I agree that fund raising is needed, with the way the current setup is, I just wish it wasn't.

Peetster

None taken. Based on the civil conduct of the responders so far, I retract my comment.

seretogis

Welcome to the world of career politicians -- where getting re-elected is more important than forward progress for the nation, and accumlating power is more important than the wants and needs of the citizens. I think that you will see things get a lot worse before they get better.

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perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most, forgot how it feels well almost
no one to blame always the same, open my eyes wake up in flames

Rodney

One reason for the president to stay in Washington is to negotiate with Congress for what he desires. Since Bush has generally had a lock on both houses of Congress, he doesn't need to stay in Washington for as much "face time" as he might otherwise.

Bush is also a hands-off manager, unlike Clinton. He makes policy decisions and trusts that his subordinates will carry them out. I think that this is a large mistake, especially when your subordinates control or can temper the information that you receive. I am no fan of micromanagement, but if you don't have the means or desire to independently confirm what your subordinates tell you from time to time, you are asking for trouble.

As for fundraising, he'd need to spend time on such things even if the campaign funding system _wasn't_ broken. If you want people to give you money, especially big contributors, you have to assure them that they're important. Aside from promising them ethnical or unethical favors, this assurance means spending some face time with them and thanking them personally for support.

pig

I think I'd personally feel a lot better about the time spent out fundraising if it wasn't all spent at $10,000 a plate dinners. You can't really argue that either candidate is at least getting to meet the people when the entrance price is so selective. But that's just a symptom of problems with campaign finance, and no - I won't even pretend to have a real solution

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edwhit

Fundraising and getting to meet the people are two different things. What should he do, have a car wash?

The rich get a chance to meet the president. They also get those nice tax right offs and they of course hope he will listen to their "I-Want-This-Done-List". The president (or any runner) gets money. IT's a win win situation.

Last week GWB went to visit a little school in parkersburg WV to talk about education. There he met people and, of course, pushed his education agenda.

Perhaps not the best examples, but it works for me.

Peetster

90% of the tax bill is paid by the top 10% of the tax payers.

They're paying for these social engineering experiments, maybe they should get some input.

almostaugust

Im hearing you seretogis.

HarmlessRabbit

You know, if you're going to quote RushLimbaugh.com, you could at least get his already-distorted statistics right without exaggerating them even more.

irateplatypus

what are the correct statistics?

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~ Winston Churchill

Kadath

That's hard, irateplatypus, but here's what I get from the IRS. (2002) The top 10% is anybody making over $92,754 AGI. Given that there were 130,904,889 returns filed, that's 13,090,489 people. Estimating income is interesting, but the top 1% is $292,913, so if I average those and call that the average for the top 10%, I think that's reasonable. (92,754+292,913)/2 = 192,834. The problem now becomes how many of those returns are single and how many are married?
Single people making that amount are taxed roughly $51,000.
Head of household is just over $48,000.
Married(or qualified widowed) is not quite $45,000.
And Married filing separately is the highest, almost $55,000.

So let me assume worst case, and every single person in the top ten percent is married filing separately, and is taxed an average of $55K. The IRS collected $1,037,734,000,000. Just over a trillion dollars. And the top ten percent (just over 13 million people) are paying 55K a pop. That's 715 billion dollars, or 71.5%.

So not 90%, even with the allowances made toward the Limbaugh numbers.
I used this form:http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040es.pdf to estimate tax burden.

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Rodney

Whatever they're paying, they're getting their money's worth. The military is, what, 300-500 billion a year now? Yes, it helps to ensure world peace, unless policy goes off the rails. But it's also good, very, very good, for business, else conservative/big business types (as separate from other conservatives) would have no more attachment to it than social programs. Once upon a time, back in the '30s and '40s, to be a mainstream conservative was actually to be an isolationist: in favor of a small military, limited engagement with foreign affairs and wars, and so on -- as Geo. Washington himself recommended. What changed?

WWII, for one thing. It brrought American military might to the forefront and the old colonial powers, like the British, who had patrolled the world, to the rear. Moreover, America became an even greater exporting power in world markets, because in the years after the war a great portion of Europe's industrial capacity was out of action, and American companies stepped in to fill the vaccuum. American military power keeps the trade lanes open for American business. American military power, and the influence it brings by being a de facto policeman for the world, buys influence when negotiating trade contracts or helping favored American companies to gain access to new markets. American military power ensures access to cheap raw materials, oil, cheap labor, and a thousand other things we need to keep this country stoked and steaming. And at every turn, the rich and powerful skim their share. Yes, we need a military of some sort. But when you talk about funding for shaky "social experiments," I would personally lump the military into that category, inasmuch as it is meant to shape the society of the world to the benefit of America -- and of course the rich benefit the most.

matthew330

That's pretty impressive work Kadath, and pretty damn close. It seems in harmless' overzealousness at throwing a cheap shot a Limbaugh he wasted, what 15 mins of your time? it would have been much easier to go to his website and see what he actually said.....even your numbers are a bit more inflated that Rushs'.

Kadath

Thanks sweetie, that's kind. I guess I've always been of the sort to do my own work, and I was curious to see if the top 10% really do pay such an unfair burden. I wasn't trying to get back at Rush; irateplatypus asked for correct numbers and I did the math.

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matthew330

no - i was serious, that was impressive. I wasn't questioning what you were doing.

matthew330

Maybe it would have worked better if Peetster had gone the other way and noted that 50% of wage earners pay less than 4% of all taxes.

ARTelevision

While the topic has migrated way away from the original post, it's worth noting that we have an actual fact here in this thread.

It relates to who pays for what in this country.
It's indisputable.

It's not one that can be denied or wiggled out of - despite the fact that there's an old "populist" belief that refuses to die, which blames relatively wealthy individuals for economic realities and social ills.

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Superbelt

http://tiger.berkeley.edu/sohrab/pol...ealthdist.html

The USA is not being supported inordinately on the backs of the wealthy. In fact the most wealthy are actually paying BELOW their fair share,

Top 5% are paying 53% into the national coffers. But they control 57%.
(That MEANS that the "rest of us" are paying a larger percentage of our incomes to support this nation than the top 5.)

The top 20% control more than 80% of the wealth.
Our burden should be proportionate to the percentage of the country's wealth that an individual owns.

That's a very important bit of information that Limbaugh deliberately excludes from his charts. He fails to tell us that those percentages are the way they are because, generally those percentages CONTROL that amount of this nations earnings.

matthew330

yeah - and Berkley deliberately left out rush's figures.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/prtopincometable.html

I think what Berkley isn't accounting for are the wealthy like, say...Theresa Heinz Kerry, who's taxable income certainly doesn't reflect their wealth.

and i'll defer to Art, seeing as hw the last couple threads I've involved myself in have gotten locked. It has gotten quite a bit off topic, I just don't understand peoples obsession with Limbaugh, I frickin like the guy but apparently don't think about him half as much as those who hate him do...DON'T BE HATIN!!!

matthew330

http://tiger.berkeley.edu/sohrab/politics/ - and tell me these people don't have an agenda on par with if not surpassing Limbaugh's.

ARTelevision

The list of the benefits relatively wealthy individuals create for our society is long and vastly overwhelms the contributions of the relatively poorer individuals. "Shoulds" and "coulds" aside, we have a system more equitable than at any time in our history and it continues to benefit us all.

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Peetster

Not sure why I'm credited with citing Limbaugh. My numbers were a bit off, and thanks to the helpful people that pointed it out to me.

While not along the lines of the original post, I don't think you can argue that the wealthier pay for the bulk of social engineering programs. It should also be obvious that the top 20% "control" 80% of the country's wealth because they earned it.

The president will always be involved in the mechanics of politics. That includes fundraising.

Kadath

I know we're off topic, but I want to thank matthew330 for that link, and point out that half the taxpayers in this country make less than $28,528 a year. That is not a whole lot of money. Also, Superbelt, according to that link, the top 25% only account for 65% of the total AGI(which, I know, is not wealth, but still)
And finally, matthew330, I would like to add to your list of the wealthy George W. Bush, whose taxable income doesn't reflect his wealth either. He's only worth $15 million, which I admit is chicken feed compared to Heinz Kerry, but I think I'm worth about 10 grand, so it seems like a lot to me.

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matthew330

I wasn't suggesting democrats were the only ones that fall into that category - just the first one that popped into my head, for obvious reasons.

Superbelt

Well Matt, first let's drop limbaugh and why he is deserving of hate ie. his approval of the torture etc. and leave that for another thread.

Berkley's data comes from another source. They just transcribed it.
If you want to fact check you can borrow the book from your local library
http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/books_swa2000_index2
or Buy it off amazon

you say that the data from the Berkely site doesn't take into account wealth... of people like Heinz whose taxable income doesn't represent her entire holdings....
Um, that's exactly what Berkley is trying to show. Tax data (from tax foundation) isn't the whole picture. Exemptions are what skews the data down and Berkley is showing that.

It's wealth distribution, total holdings as opposed to strict earnings. I do believe that both links are good data for analyzing this tax burden issue though.

It goes to show. Data like this can be thrown in your face.

But it skips out on telling us that those classes pay in that percentage based on what they earned this year. They are paying their percentage.

It's all a matter of scale.

matthew330

I'm not the one who brought Limbaugh up.

Did your data tell the whole story? Did you want it to tell the whole story? No and No.

You said the "rest of us" are paying a larger percentage of our incomes, and provided a graph which i imagine was trying to support that. I don't see how anything here supports that claim.

Besides, the basis for this argument stems not from republicans screaming that the poor should be shelling out more, it comes from the democrats crying the wealthy aren't shelling out enough. I won't refer you to a library but i will refer you to arts post where he says " the benefits relatively wealthy individuals create for our society is long and vastly overwhelms the contributions of the relatively poorer individuals"

Hanxter

nighty night