Super idea! You go first.

Brilliant post Jonathan; loved the clip. "Taxes to beat the Axis (of evil)".

Pigs, cows, ducks... wouldn't campaigns be so much more exciting--and relevant--if the allusions were to modern literary archetypes (e.g. manbeasts, extra-terrestrials, genocidal protoplasmic blobs) instead of the staid emblems of agricultural yore?

As a single white male in his 30's I am already in the highest tax bracket possible due to gender and the color of my skin.  I make right about the median income in Oregon and could afford a 5% increase in taxes.

I personally would like to see the US in the Black but of course this would take some serious sacrifices that the vast majority of Americans and obviously Tep would be unwilling to make.

I like the pun, Iggy Pop.

I think real patriotism is not only refusing to pay your taxes, but rebelling against the US government like the Branch Davidians.

I think real patriotism is wrecking government in order to prove that government doesn't work.

The Republican party of Fonald Reagan and his ideological descendants have done enormous damage to this country by making it acceptable, and even honorable to believe that "government is the problem" and taxes are inherently evil.  Not because all taxes are good - no more than every use of the military is good - but because the right  taxes are both necessary and good - just as use of the military to actually defend the country, is necessary, good, and honorable.  Of course, we don't LIKE paying taxes.  I don't expect very many GIs LIKE losing limbs, or dying either.  But just because a sacrifice is unpleasant, doesn't make it something we should avoid at all costs.

So - it ought to be obvious to everyone who gives a shit about this country that we need taxes sufficient to pay for the services we need and expect from the government, and that paying them is the patriotic duty of every American.

There is plenty of room, of course, for debate about how much any individual should pay, and we ought to welcome such debate.  But we should all dismiss as lightweight treason the notion - whoever promotes it  - that taxes and government are inherently bad, and we that we are entitled to pay as little as we can figure out how to manage.  Avoiding taxes that you legitimately owe is the ordinary citizen's moral analog of  keeping a soldier who keeps his head down in a firefight while the shit flies all around, and others die in the advance.

TLaBorn - if I were still single and childless and young and healthy, of course I'd expect to pay a higher tax rate on the same income. And pay a higher share of my health care bills, too.

But I contend that families with small children need, and deserve, more favorable tax treatment than young able-bodied singles without children. At a minimum, stop f***ing penalizing married people.

Configure it however you like, but society should be helping the puppies, not the yuppies. The tax code is the best place to start.

Raise my taxes and give me excellent schools, access to affordable health insurance, and decent public services that are not overwhelmed by a semi-literate imported underclass: all for it. Raise my taxes and fail to deliver on the above: forget about it.

When this nation's political class gets serious about ending this insane and self-destructive Mexico policy-- which last time I checked adds an annual net burden of s.t. like $2,000 per year per taxpayer _in California state expenditure alone_ -- then we can get serious about raising taxes. Not before.

tep,

Which Mexico policy?  There's thousands.

[Peter Kirsanow]

The presidential candidate whose campaign purports to transcend race invokes race repeatedly and explicitly. No presidential candidate in at least forty years has played the race card as frequently and overtly as Obama.

Obama's Spanish language ad is an abomination. Not only does it malign and defame Sen.McCain and Rush Limbaugh, but it's calculated to stir racial/ethnic animosity for political gain. Anyone who thinks that an Obama presidency would usher in an era of racial  harmony should consider the candidate's casual use of race for political advantage. What evidence is there that he would cease using such tactics upon election?  Numerous times throughout the campaign he's suggested his opponents, Democrat and Republican alike, are racists. For twenty years he remained in a church where racialist bilge seemed to flow freely. He dismisses huge swaths of the American public as gun-toting, bible-thumping rubes.

Any  candidate for president of the United States of America should condemn that ad, cause its immediate removal from the airwaves and have a nice little talk with all associated with producing it. And the media that continues to condemn the Willie Horton ad from twenty years ago would press him on why he's failed to do so.

Tep,

But Obama & Biden aren't proposing to raise taxes on those struggling to pay for their puppies' health and education, who are already paying in other ways, e.g., rising cost of insurance and education.

Let's play JOHN or DONALD:

This Navy man has enlarged his family through adoption and is widely believed to have good intentions despite his occasional fits of rage and (regretted) past of communicating racially charged messages about Asian military foes.  His bumbling antics and incoherent sputtering when he gets angry are a source of national amusement

dylan - that policy which tacitly welcomes into this country millions of the most desperate and least skilled, least educated Mexicans so that Tweedledum can have a ceiling on low-end wages and Tweedledee can have a lock on the latino vote, while their Mexican counterparts export their economic failures and avoid an insurrection.

That's a lot of foreign economic and social policy--wrought both directly and indirectly by American voters--to just toss off the table and make the domestic tax issues easier for taxpayers.  You think our trade packages with EU countries, our debt to China, and our Mideast interventionalism don't have ramifications on a "Mexico policy"???

It is interesting that McCain is saying this now in light of the fact that as recently as four years ago he was singing a different tune.  According to an article by Elizabeth Sawhill of the Brookings Institute ('A Deficit of Political Will' 7/23/04 -- www.brookings.edu/.../0723budgetdeficit_sawhill.aspx) John McCain, in a speech in early 2004, spoke of the immorality and faulty logic of cutting taxes in a time of war.  As Ms. Sawhill put it when referring to the fiscal issues facing us then:

"As Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., noted in a recent speech, we have never before cut taxes in a time of war. Indeed, there is something immoral about asking only the young to sacrifice while people in comfortable circumstances are being rewarded with lower taxes."

Perhaps someone should ask the Senator which of these claims makes him the maverick...

It is interesting that McCain is saying this now in light of the fact that as recently as four years ago he was singing a different tune.  According to an article by Elizabeth Sawhill of the Brookings Institute ('A Deficit of Political Will' 7/23/04 -- www.brookings.edu/.../0723budgetdeficit_sawhill.aspx) John McCain, in a speech in early 2004, spoke of the immorality and faulty logic of cutting taxes in a time of war.  As Ms. Sawhill put it when referring to the fiscal issues facing us then:

"As Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., noted in a recent speech, we have never before cut taxes in a time of war. Indeed, there is something immoral about asking only the young to sacrifice while people in comfortable circumstances are being rewarded with lower taxes."

Perhaps someone should ask the Senator which of these claims makes him the maverick...

Jacob, you cultist. Are you seriously defending Rush Limbaugh?

Here's the actual quote from his May 2004 speech to the PPI:

"...nothing tops my confusion with the rationale for cutting taxes during wartime. I don't remember ever in the history of warfare when we cut taxes. I hope everyone can agree that the first duty of government is to defend the people. As you know, the Department of Defense just asked us for $25 billion. We were told we would not need to provide a supplemental appropriation until next year -- but they asked for it last week. It's fine -- we need to give them what the need to succeed. But look at what we passed that same week -- a $180 billion giveaway to the special interests in the form of a "corporate tax" bill that contained nearly $18 billion energy related provisions and tax breaks for the big oil and gas companies."

www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm

Joe

PS... sorry about the double post

roz,

It's interesting how fast someone can go from Hillary Clinton-liberal to Rush Limbaugh apologist.  It's kind of like meth.

rozenson, you cultist. Are you seriously defending Obama for his attempt to stir racial/ethnic animosity for political gain?

To draw attention to the stirring-up of racial/ethnic animosity is not the same as stiriring up racial/ethnic animosity.

Rush does the stirring, Obama has just drawn attention.

Stirring-up.

Attention.

Unfortunately, given what is going on with the bailouts and the U.S. being on the hook for virtually the entire financial industry (well, the bad part of it anyway), any talk by either side of cutting taxes for anybody is going to be laughable once they get a reality check after Election Day.  Somebody's taxes are going to be going up, for sure.  We can't keep this economy afloat on thin air forever.