Will this also apply to Oprah??? And all the administration's admirers in Hollywood?

I just think the whole thing is ridiculous. He gets on TV and talked about how we need to free up money so the banks will loan again. That is what TARP was supposed to be used for. People should be irate about that but are more concerned about some dumb remark about the special olympics and what DVDs he gave Gordon Brown.

From the article, I don't see anything about limiting what someone can make. It seemed to me that it was about more transparency and giving shareholders more power.

Lets face it, what these guys were doing was embezzlement. My understanding is they want to stop that. I don't see this as a way to cap random succesful executives from making big bucks.

I'm all for transparency. However, whenever the government decides it has the right to dictate or cap what someone can earn...it's musket time.

I'm not being a hypocrite, but I am guilty of poor judgment. It appears that makes me qualified to be president. I'm glad that larry found that comment and thereby decided that makes the argument null and void.

I'm totally embarrassed that I made that comment FWIW. Stupidity displayed at its finest.

Due to the post above Im willing to cut you 100% slack and hope you'll do so for the person who also made the stupid comment. Welcome back to the boards.

I agree. But is that what this is doing? From what I've read on the topic, it seems this is just being more transparent and giving more power to the owners of the company (shareholders). I don't see anything about setting a dollar amount of what someone can make, but avoiding the loopholes these guys use to embezzle money.

While Congress is running around coming up with stupid ideas for the AIG debacle, Andrew Cuomo has more or less gotten a lot of the money back. I don't know anything about Cuomo's beliefs or party affiliation, but it seems like he just laid the fuckin smackdown.

Cuomo Says Most Huge A.I.G. Bonuses Were Returned - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com

There are 50 threads I could post this in but since this is near the top it wins.

Stimulus package related news story last night on local TV. My county is hiring for dozens of positions now (fabulous government benefits the first thing to be pimped about it), they said it was directly linked to the stimulus money they are getting and the need to have more people to use it (via their salaries and the work those people will be doing).

I'm wondering what happens when the money from the stimulus package earmarked to pay for those positions is gone? Will the county or state start picking up the tab? Or do those jobs go bye-bye when the federal money is gone.

I don't get the Newspaper Revitilization Act.

Interesting battle between the government of England and the Bank of England over spending:

The Bank of England and No.10 at war: We can't afford Budget spending spree, Governor tells Brown | Mail Online

We'll just tax the richest people in America to continually pay for it until they aren't so stinkin rich anymore. They might have to fire their employees, but they can get govt jobs. And we'll tax the rich to pay for their salaries. So they won't have anymore employees or luxuries. Big deal! But that will put all those companies that make luxury items out of business. But those employees can go get govt jobs. And then we can tax the rich people to pay for them. Which will put those people out of work. But they can get govt jobs. Then we'll tax the middle class working man to pay for that. It will work perfectly, it worked in Russia and North Korea. It will work here too.

Maybe we should get some Stimulus money to revive steam engine technologies. Afterall, not taking care of that industry put thousands of people out of work.

I guess they figure that since none of them are making money, being non-profits really doesn't have any effect on the taxpayer. We allow churches to be non-profits so I don't really see why it couldn't be broadened to include newspapers. I'm against the non-profit or churche and newspapers, but just trying to give their perspective.

One problem would seem to be that laws on non-profits tend to not allow them to be political (although that's not enforced for churches). Does this mean no editorials and endorsements?

I believe the idea is that the county will be able to continue with the positions itself or there will be other positions available when the stimulus package has reversed the recession.

If it works then things will continue without a problem.

If it doesn't work then those employed will presumably resume their unemployment and at least they will have had a period of employment that they wouldn't have had otherwise.

That, I believe, would be the logic of the stimulus.

We're in uncharted economic circumstances and we simply don't know what will work and what won't but it is felt by some that it is better, in a crisis, to make some attempt to oppose it rather than drop down into the foetal position, whimper about irresistible natural forces, and do nothing ;)

right cuz I saw Armani tent cities under Clinton.

Let's try a quiz.

1) The top marginal tax rate was higher:

a) After Reagan's 1981 tax cuts
b) Now
c) After the Bush tax cuts expire in 2011

2) The overall income tax burden was higher:

a) Last year
b) This year

3) When Reagan modestly increased taxes in 1982, 1983 and 1984 the economy:

a) Didn't implode
b) Did implode

4) When Clinton modestly raised taxes in 1993 the economy:

a) Didn't implode
b) Did implode

It definitely means no endorsements, saw that spelled out specifically in a short recap of the proposal last night, not sure about editorials in general though.
edit to add: For that matter, no endorsements was mentioned in the linked article here as well.

For the record, I wasn't in the top 5% in the Reagan and Clinton administrations, so I didn't care as much back then. I was just worried about passing high school classes during the Clinton administration. :D

I don't see why editorials would be forbidden, as long as there was equal time provided.

You're probably not as far off the truth there as some people might think either.

Media Life Magazine - The tragedy that's not: Newspapers

a study released last week by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, which finds that 42 percent of those polled would not miss their local paper if it shut down, and only 33 percent would miss it “a lot.” Fifty-four percent say that the closure of the local paper would hurt civic life some or not at all, and that may be because fewer than half those surveyed rely on newspapers for their news. Forty-one percent said they get news regularly from newspapers, compared to 66 percent for television. Among young people, newspaper usage is even lower, and they care even less if they disappear. Just 23 percent of those under 40 said they would miss their local paper if it folded.

But then you get involved on measuring what equal time truly is. It's a waste of time and taxpayer funds when newspapers are going to be obsolete in the very near future anyway.

Speaking of newspapers, pretty big shakeup in the smaller Michigan markets this week, kind of illustrates where a lot of places are headed (some of them sooner rather than later).

Ann Arbor News goes online only starting in July, two small printed editions each week but just recapping the online content. Same owner reduces three papers - Flint Journal, Bay City Times, and Saginaw News - from 7 days a week to 3 days a week with combined staff starting in June. Consolidation of staff on four other papers - in Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Muskegon, and Jackson - also continues, with most of the experienced reporting staff in G.R. already out the door.

Among the notable tidbits in all this was the naming of the new boss for the Ann Arbor online startup, the former chief marketing officer for jointly owned Cleveland Plain Dealer. What seemed less than encouraging about that is the the CPD is one of the papers cited by industry watchers as a likely candidate to reduce print editions or even go online altogether by years end. In other words, the new boss ain't exactly been setting the woods on fire in his previous job.

And of course starting Monday, the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press reduce their home delivery to 3 days per week, with small editions routing readers to their website available the other four days.

Media Life Magazine - Ann Arbor News going online-only

I feel so bad for the rich. They have it sooooooooo rough.

The Ann Arbor News situation seems a lot different than Detroit's -- I don't get why they needed to shut down and start a new company, just to reduce the number of printed editions.

Mandate the return of elevator men. That's got to be, what, a quarter million jobs right there. And if we let them form a union, then they will be high paying jobs.

Seriously, this whole thing seems so . . . off because managing the economy to this degree is very very hard for the government to do. Put another way, if this were easy, then we would live in a world where communism worked.

That said, the government intervention in this case seems like the least bad option. My social contract with the good old U.S. of A. means, at a minimum, that I don't expect Congress and the White House to be fiddling while the economy burns. It turns out that the last decade or so of "economic growth" was really just us buying and selling houses to each other with money that we borrowed from the Chinese. Unwinding that reality with as little long term damage as possible to the greatest number of people strikes me as mind-bogglingly difficult. Considering this difficulty, I am happy with what the government has done so far. Again--the least worst option it seems. I am especially heartened by the fact that market solutions--to the extent possible--seem to be the order of the day. 3 months ago, I was afraid that this country would look a lot more socialist than it actually does today.

As for tax rates, the President's plan is a tax cut. I like that. Again--market based. Give us the money and let us start doing economic things with it.

But, what about "the wealthy?" Under the President's budget, tax rates on "the wealthy" are still near historical bottoms. I have no problem with that. Indeed, I'd like them to be a bit higher, but I am more liberal than the President. I really don't see the issue with tax rates going back to the rates that they were in the 90s--when we had real economic growth across all income brackets in the economy.

I think that people see the potential raising of these taxes as a problem because they see the Bush/GOP tax rates as the base from which to work. And I disagree with that. The Bush tax cuts were always designed to sunset in 2010. And that is because you could not make a realistic budget that assumed their continued existence. Even Bush and a GOP led Congress passed these tax cuts as a short term deal. Anyone who believes that they should be permanent is to the right of Bush on taxes and to the extreme right of historical tax rates and the vast majority of mainstream economic thinking.

A slight shift of tax relief from the top income brackets to the middle class brackets (which really operates as more of a correction to the mean and is still lower taxes than we have had in a long time) is a good idea for a country trying to invest in a non-bubble related economy.

The usual caveats about my not being an economist nor having stayed at a Holiday Inn Express apply.

I was reading an article on the budget reconciliation process that challenged this. According to the article anything brought to the floor under the reconciliation rules has to be temporary and the sunset is tied to the length of economic projections. At that point the projections went ten years, so the tax cuts went ten years. The cuts were so large that there was no chance of siphoning off enough votes to get past a filibuster, so reconciliation rules were used.

Instead of crafting a smaller package with more support, the Republicans decided to pass as a large of a bill as they could under the reconciliation process. The hope was that the Republicans would eventually have enough votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster and make the cuts permanent. That never happened and now the cuts will expire.

According to this author the reason the cuts have a sunset has to do with political reality and not concern with budget projections.

JPhil--

I'm not sure about that. The answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. I know that several people commented on how the sunset was how the President could present the upper bracket tax cuts to the people without having to explain deficits in the googleplex range. And, we don't know how many GOPers said that they wanted to make the cuts permanent, knowing that it would never happen, just to get the political credit for supporting it without the political fallout of actually doing it. (i.e. what happens every day in Washington).

But, was I too general when I implied that no one in the GOP wanted the tax cuts to be permanent? I am sure of it. Nice catch.

Yep. I just received my last three Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday editions of the Detroit Free Press ever. Last Saturday edition will come this weekend.

I will miss getting the daily paper. I tend to read it in the mornings more often than not. In particular, I will miss the daily coverage during the NHL playoffs and Mondays during the NFL season.

http://www.freep.com/

The biggest misconception we are getting is that people that have high salaries have always had high salaries. What about people that started off poor, busted their ass, worked their way up, and then are finally making good money at age 45 or 50?

That's where a snot-nosed 21 year old liberal activist won't ever get it. Because most 21 year olds aren't making that money. Not because somebody else is keeping them down, but because they don't deserve it yet. You have to work hard and earn it.

And even then, it's not forever. You might be in the upper salary range for 5, 10 years and then what? You retire. You hope the money you made during that 5-10 year span helps you out a bit when you are a senior citizen.

But what we are now doing is putting this blanket coverage "rich" label and applying it directly to "evil" or "greedy". That is exactly what the left wants you to think. But it's a ploy that really doesn't take into account those who have worked hard to make a decent annual salary for a small period of time.

While it's true that in places like Venezuela and Cuba there is an elite rich that hordes the money and there is no middle class, in the USA, their is a middle class that does reach the outer limits of annual salaries.

That's what makes America so much better and how we are still the only country that really makes capitalism work.

If you are tired of seeing rich people get all the breaks, work hard, make the right choices, and be rich yourself. But I'll bet once you achieve that goal, you'll might possibly be a little older, you might possibly have a family you are trying to support, and you might possibly being getting to retire pretty soon. Wouldn't it suck if you finally get there and realize that tax breaks have leveled the playing field and some snot nosed 21 year old liberal is making about the same as you? Maybe if you realize that all that hard work was for nothing, that if you had it all to do over again, that you wouldn't bust your ass so much next time. Because what's the point? That's the problem with socialism. There is no motivation once you take away something to strive for. The Soviet Union tried this.

Dutch, where in the hell did your take classes on Economics? Your post above contains so many inaccuracies and misconceptions, I don't know where to begin.

This thread needs a drinking game. Every time someone says 'snot-nosed', take a shot.

FWIW.....I can relate to the snot-nosed comment. I have a sick two year old at home.

Oh lord...Suddenly the whole system is going to crumble and a snotty nosed 21 year old liberal is going to be making the same as some CEO from a large company.

You've got your head so firmly planted up your ass it's not even funny.

Oh it takes them into account I think, otherwise there'd be no need for the ploy in the first place. They know that those folks among the hardest to fool with their misdirection, so they have to do what they can to demonize them as much as possible. And given the apparent discernment ability of their core audience, it's an easy tactic that has a good chance of success.

?

Is this biggest misconception false?


or how about this premise?


The rest you can take or leave but aren't there many examples of the above, including quite a few here? (i.e., not necessarily becoming rich but working one's way up and in time, you make enough to support a family and a decent living). In grad school, I was dirt poor where I had to beg for money to eat. 25 years later, working hard, I am definitely not poor anymore.

You said you were going to miss the daily coverage. It'll still be available on the website, will it not? Are they only updating the website three days a week as well?

My biggest problem is the standard, if you will, that a household making over $250K is a wealthy one. I don't care what that means in other parts of the country, but where I live that sort of income doesn't equate to high society. The fact that there's no distinctions for higher cost of living, housing prices, etc is mind-boggling to me.

Agreed. There's a huge difference between $250K on the coastal states and $250K in Kansas City/Houston. You don't realize just how great the difference is until you've lived in both places. Living in Baltimore for a year was a wake-up call in regards to finances.

But how is anything that is being proposed going to change ANY of those basic premises?

There's a difference between sitting down with the paper in print and reading it on the internet. That's what I was getting at. Thought it was pretty clear.

BECAUSE THE RICH ARE BEING TURNED POOR FOR ALL THEIR HARD WORK BY BARACK OBAMA-HOOD AND NOBODY WILL WANT TO DO ANYTHING CUZ GOVERNMENT WILL TAKE UR MONEY!1!!!

And the same morons that are absolutely horrified that we'd invest money on our country are more than happy to invest money in killing Arabs.

You're in the minority with that opinion, hence the reason the papers are being phased out. I do find it interesting that we're the same age, but differ so greatly on the need for newspapers. Usually it's an old/young issue, but not in this case.

Yes there is.

One of them actually has today's news instead of yesterday's history. And that will be the one that is still around in ten years.

You could at least use the proper term. It's "Overseas Contingency Operations".

Obama Scraps 'Global War on Terror' for 'Overseas Contingency Operation' - First 100 Days of Presidency - Politics FOXNews.com

:)

Thank you for the correction

Just cuz it's easier to read on the toilet does not make it superior. I wonder what they'll call the "sunday paper dump" in 50 years.