BudSniffer

I thought politcians were supposed to thrive on "serving the people", not being served by the people. Here is something I thought good from another site:

Salary of the US President...$400,000 . Salary of retired US Presidents...$180,00 0. Salary of House/Senate...$174,000. Salary of Speaker of House...$223,500.... Salary of Majority/Minority Leaders...$193,400.. ........Average US Salary...$33,000 to $77,000. HELLO! I think we found where the cuts should be made!

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"Nobody thinks the way that I do, I guess nobody dares. My head's so full of things, I set my mind free of them. I'm breaking the rules, breaking all the rules. " -Ozzy Osbourne

zerodown

So whats the plan?

You go left I go right...

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"I've seen people so poor all they got is money."

We have to learn to unlearn
Its not contradiction, its amendment
Not everything we see is reality
Not everything we hear is the truth
Not everything we're taught helps us grow
~Cultura Profetica

"La locura se lleva en la cabeza y las drogas en los bolsillos"
~Roberto Iniesta

BudSniffer

I go right down the middle

__________________
"Nobody thinks the way that I do, I guess nobody dares. My head's so full of things, I set my mind free of them. I'm breaking the rules, breaking all the rules. " -Ozzy Osbourne

RedEye Master

Yeah, because cutting these guys salary is going to free up billions of dollars.

How about we just cut the unconstitutional war on drugs and stop spending money on stupid shit like busting Barry Bonds for obstruction of justice?

How about we stop wasting time trying to legislate morality issues like abortion and gay marriage?

For the responsibility and work that goes into being the President or a Congressman, Senator, etc., you are going to have to pay people. I am pretty sure no one is going to give up their lives for a term of service if they are getting paid the same as a dude who manages a 7-11.

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You can find all you need in your mind, if you take the time.

BudSniffer

Well, how about the $200 million we just gave Central America in the last few weeks, to fight drugs? or the US foreign assistance of $2 billion we have given to Egypt every year since 1979, when their president had a net worth, more than Bill Gates?
F.A.Q. on U.S. Aid to Egypt: Where Does the Money Go—And Who Decides How It’s Spent? - ProPublica
Or the money we gave Iraqis to "be our friends", photographers showed photos, I saw them, of tribesmen holding up hands full of US dollars, to help us fight "terrorist".
Or the millions we were giving North Korea every year to "fight terrorist", until they started ramping up their nuclear program?
I could go on and on........but it's up to us to let them know, we won't stand for it anymore, or sit on our ass and take whatever they shove down our throats......

But it needs to start with them, so they know, we aren't going to take them, getting retirements they don't have to participate in and still draw, no matter if they are in prison or whatever. That they need to get rid of all the perks they have been raking in over the years. Gym and spa for $100 a year? private chefs preparing their meals? In Washington state a few years ago, they raised hell, because they were doing remodeling on the capital, and legislatures demanded that they keep there private french chefs to prepare their meals in another location?

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"Nobody thinks the way that I do, I guess nobody dares. My head's so full of things, I set my mind free of them. I'm breaking the rules, breaking all the rules. " -Ozzy Osbourne

RedEye Master

Well, if people keep voting for the stupid ass two party system that we have, we won't be able to tell them we won't take it at all, as both parties are bent on erasing what constitutional rights we do have. Both parties are up to the same bullshit and everyone wants to vote based on what one party says about abortion or gay rights.

I say we just let everyone nuke the shit out of each other and let nature sort it out. Obviously the human race is an abject failure.

"Monkeys killing monkeys over pieces of the ground."

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You can find all you need in your mind, if you take the time.

Roach

let's see if this will work...

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לזיין את הקופים

Roach

^ this does not include...

Michelle Obama's staff consisted of 18 employees who got paid nearly $1.5 million in salary in 2010, according to the administration's Annual Report to Congress on White House Staff.

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לזיין את הקופים

RedEye Master

That's a hell of an entourage.

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You can find all you need in your mind, if you take the time.

ionlylooklazy

400k isnt too much of a salary for the CEO of the united states

DdC

Ain't it obvious?



If you lower the government employees salaries
you end up with republican scab flunkies willing to work cheap.
Pay everyone a living wage and they will spend it.
Pay the rich in tax breaks and they will create jobs...
In India where they get more bang for the buck. Neocon Treason.

Republicans haven't balanced the budget since Eisonhower...

Isn't it interesting that the last Republican President to balance the budget was Dwight D. Eisenhower? Clinton gave Bush a balanced budget with a surplus and Bush squandered it and handed Obama a huge budget deficit.

Pure evil - 01/05/11

According to the Cato Institute, a liberatarian policy group in Washington, corporate welfare cost American taxpayers $92 billion in fiscal 2006, a figure that has grown to approximately $125 billion per year. And the beneficiaries include such major companies as Boeing, Xerox, IBM, Motorola, Dow Chemical and General Electric.

Brain structure differs in liberals, conservatives: study
Conservatives Have Larger 'Fear Centers' in Their Brains
Liberals have more gray matter in a part of the brain associated with understanding complexity, while the conservative brain is bigger in the section related to processing fear, said the study on Thursday in Current Biology.

The Wrecking Crew, on How Conservatives Rule
But the most insidious one, the most insidious scheme for permanence, the one that really strikes me, is the use of deficit spending by the right. OK, now, I don’t have a problem with deficit spending. You know, it’s—liberals have used it for decades very effectively. You know, it’s—if you’re a Keynesian—you know, it’s one of the tools that you use to, say, you know, get the country out of a recession or, you know, build low-income housing, or whatever it is that you want to do with the state, right? So, but the conservatives got into power in the early 1980s, and they’re handed this tool, the big old—you know, the power tool of deficit spending, and I’ll be damned, they run that sucker right into the ground, you know, and pile up the biggest deficit anyone has ever seen, short of, you know, World War II.



U.S. corporations continue to post strong profits quarter after quarter, even as the unemployment rate remains high and the U.S. economic recovery plods along in fits and starts. What gives?

Corporate profits grew 36.8 percent in 2010, the biggest gain since 1950, according to Friday's latest report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. No sign could be more clear that U.S. companies see the so-called Great Recession in the rearview mirror.

The strong profits, however, mask the continued difficult terrain for businesses. Yes, profits are high, but that doesn't mean business is strong.



"The food crisis is not about needing more food. We have plenty of food for everyone on the planet twice over at least...it is a hunger crisis brought on by POVERTY. We do not have a food problem, we have a hunger problem. That poverty is CREATED by multinational corporations (no more than a dozen) who control 80-90% of the GRAIN production. They are not growing food "for people", they are growing food for the greatest amount of profit they can accumulate!"
-- Urmas Kaldveer, Ph.D.

Tax Time? Not for Giant Corporations
Release: March 27, 2011
While hard working Americans fill out their income tax returns this tax season, General Electric and other giant profitable corporations are avoiding U.S. taxes altogether.



10 worst corporate income tax avoiders.

1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.

2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.

3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.

4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.

5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.

6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.

7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.

8) Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.

9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.

10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.



Corporate Welfare Rats - 03/21/09

Government waste of tax dollars equals $1 Trillion a year
Oil companies are getting a nice deal too. The country hands them more than $2 billion a year in tax breaks.

Hedge fund and private equity managers. Many of these moguls make vast "incomes" yet pay taxes on a portion of those earnings at the paltry 15 percent capital gains rate. By some estimates, this loophole costs taxpayers more than $2.5 billion a year.

Citizens for Tax Justice estimates that corporations reap more than $123 billion a year in special tax breaks.

Department of Defense's functions, including weapons procurement, have been deemed high risk by the GAO. That means there's a high probability that money - "tens of billions," according to Walker - will go missing or be otherwise wasted. Meanwhile, the Pentagon admits it simply can't account for more than $1 trillion.

The controversial U.S. farm subsidy program, part of which pays farmers not to grow crops, has become a giant welfare program for the rich, one that cost taxpayers nearly $20 billion last year.



National debt requires more government efficiency, not sweeping cuts

Welfare programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid account for $1.5 trillion. The problem is, making cuts to these programs would affect millions of Americans. A better option would be to reduce benefits for the wealthiest retirees.

Increasing revenue will easily reduce the deficit. One way to do this is to get rid of the Bush-era tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.

Defense spending also accounts for a huge part of the federal budget. In the president's proposed budget, security spending totals $881 billion. $100 billion (waste, fraud, unnecessary weapons)

The Federal Reserve and other holdings within the government own more than $5 trillion of the federal debt.

The New York Times reported that the government loses $1 trillion a year because of income tax loopholes



What we should avoid is cutting spending on education and other programs that promote a better future for the United States. If we allow government to slash spending on everything that's costing money, we won't be any better off than we are now.

CEO pay soars while workers' pay stalls
The heads of the nation’s top companies got the biggest raises in recent memory last year after taking a hiatus during the recession.

Compensation for corporate directors is rising sharply, a USA TODAY analysis of early 2011 proxy filings finds. Behind the gains: higher cash retainers, fees and rising values of stock and stock option grants.



A List of George Bush's Major Accomplishments

Boosted corporate profitability through the introduction of the best corporate welfare programs in the history of the world.

Kept thousands of very rich people off welfare roles by providing them the largest dollar-value tax cut in world history.

Increased corporate profitability and efficiency while simultaneously helping third-world economies by outsourcing millions of US jobs overseas.

Saved billions of tax dollars by cutting programs for poor, children and needy.

Increased corporate bottom line profits by limiting lawsuits and placing a cap on judgements against corporations.

Saved billions of tax dollars by cutting over 40 Federal educational programs.