DK's Jungle - Latest Comments

Re: Paradise lost?

Jen — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 09:53:47 -0000

You got a nook for Christmas!!!!

Re: President pushes liberal self-accountability agenda to school children

Jennifer — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 11:12:54 -0000

How dare he! Gosh, what is he thinking encouraging kids to stay in school and be a productive citizen! Man, what a bad President. Goodness gracious. Oh it's just so horrrribbbleee. What a bad influence on our kids!

Re: Arizona "pastor" demonstrates how NOT to be a Christia

David K. — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:06:27 -0000

Thanks, I fixed it.

Re: Arizona "pastor" demonstrates how NOT to be a Christia

Erika — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:51:41 -0000

FYI, your title is cut off to "how NOT to be a Christia"

Re: Vaya con Dios, Señor Montalban

Disneys — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 02:35:23 -0000

we shine even more brightly A hidden expense that people do not typically consider are side effects and cost to manage side effects of due to medications . The possible damage done to stomach, liver, and disney acting auditions kidneys and other organs when on prolonged use of powerful drugs. I am not against drugs and surgery, just unecessary drugs and surgery…aren’t you?

Re: Coolest T-Shirt Ever

calypteanna — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 22:09:17 -0000

I don't get it... ?

Re: You got your Google in my OS!

David K. — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:53:32 -0000

Objection duly noted. I shall refrain from re-butting because of your legal limitations, but I appreciate you sharing an opposing (if brief) point of view :)

Re: You got your Google in my OS!

ErikaRS — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:44:39 -0000

stagger and stumble like the Android OS appears to be doing so far.

Umm, I only feel legally comfortable making one point: the point quoted above is dead wrong.

Re: Condi in Wonderland

ErikaRS — Mon, 04 May 2009 13:49:31 -0000

You know, nobody ever accuses anyone of being in love when a man defends the actions of the Bush administration.

Re: Condi in Wonderland

{J — Mon, 04 May 2009 08:42:59 -0000

I hurt just seeing this woman Condi Rice defend the indefensible. She must be in love with
the Texas village idiot Bush. That administration was run with contempt to the US constitution and present laws. There is still hell to pay by all of them. She should be raising money for her legal defense. She is going to need it. Otherwise just go away like all the bushites should be doing.

Re: Condi in Wonderland

Reality — Mon, 04 May 2009 06:33:32 -0000

Wow, what a surprise! The worst Secretary of State in history defending the worst president in history. Will these morons ever go away and let us rebuild our nation in peace? In answer to your rhetorical question about Christians, American Christians are, by and large, false Christians. They know nothing about the pacifist they deify. Their religion has become politicized and in no way resembles a true faith.

Re: Condi in Wonderland

David K. — Mon, 04 May 2009 05:03:06 -0000

Except Article VI of the Constitution clearly states that treaties to which the United States is a participant are legal binding. As a signatory of the Geneva Conventions we are therefore Constitutional bound to refrain from torture, of which waterboarding is a clearly defined example.

Re: Condi in Wonderland

Sabina — Mon, 04 May 2009 01:20:49 -0000

The Bush administration legalized the water boarding and other forms of "torcher"...of coarse it is not illegal after you legalize it. It is a moral and ethical question as to where the line is to be drawn for torcher. I wonder if Condi, Cheney, Rummy and the like would be willing to be torchered by water boarding until they "tell us what we want to hear"?

Re: Unfair taxation? Not so much

David J — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:38:08 -0000

I'll take what you're saying and consider it. Of course, my personal preference stems primarily from my using loathing to spend money in the first place, and so it's difficult for me to say that it's worse for me given that I'd probably do well under it. An economics degree, however, I do not have. =)

Re: Unfair taxation? Not so much

David K. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:25:03 -0000

The zero savings rate is more a factor of the income disparity that would, according to a Presidential commision that studied the idea of a national sales tax, increase because the tax burden would be down shifted towards the middle class.

Even with some rebates, the rich under this system are going to pay less in taxes and the middle class are going to pay more. If its a choice between havign people in the middle class be taxed such that they move towards the lower income and even poverty line, and the upper classes being slightly less rich, i think the later is the better situation AND its better for the nation from both an economic and general good standpoint.

We have had periods in the past where wealth was controlled by a few very wealthy people, and what happened wasn't pretty. It took Teddy Roosevelt and the Trust Busters as well as Union and labor rights groups to make changes that prevented most monopolistic abuses and made it so a middle class could even exist in this country. I'd rather not see us go back to the turn of the century situation of wealth disparity and I think the FairTax being proposed would contribute towards that direction.

Re: Unfair taxation? Not so much

David K. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:20:00 -0000

In addition when I consider its supporters like Sean Hannity, and the involvement with the misnamed "Tea Parties" that recently occured it makes me even more skeptical. The people who support it in congress are largely the same people who supported the previous administrations economic policies making me even less likely to trust their judgement on financial matters.

Plus the idea of a tax increase on goods is a bad idea from a consumer spending standpoint. It de-incentivises spending. An income tax on the other hand does not make you less likely to work and earn money (and also pay for taxes).

Re: Unfair taxation? Not so much

David J — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:14:43 -0000

Without anything to compensate that, you're correct. The Fair Tax Plan at the very least attempts to compensate for some of that via tax (p)rebates in order to alleviate that; as a result, should someone ONLY be spending their money on basic necessities, regardless of income, they would have an effective tax rate of 0%.

Granted, there is no perfect solution to the problem; I think a major stickler in the quest to find any solution at all exists within the fact that America currently is faced with a negative or zero savings rate. But that's another story for another time.

Re: Unfair taxation? Not so much

David K. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:05:43 -0000

The problem with sales tax is its regressive. It burdens the lower income people even MORE than the current system, as they spend a larger portion of their income buying things, often things they need more.

Someone making $500,000 a year is not likely to be spending all or most of it.
Someone who makes $50,000 a year is.

Ergo, the people at the lower end of the income bracket would have a higher tax rate.

Re: Unfair taxation? Not so much

David J — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:52:40 -0000

I agree to a point. I think, as a general rule, that our tax code is overly complicated and allows for a lot of strange anomalies to sneak into the system. The general case may very well be that the rich aren't overburdened (which would make intuitive sense); however, I'm sure that there are cases of legitimate businessmen on the upper end of things that get screwed over by the system in some way or another.

Personally speaking, I'm against income taxes across the board and would prefer there to be a national sales tax (a la the Fair Tax Plan). It's one of the many reasons I prefer living in Washington over Ohio. =)

Re: Unfair taxation? Not so much

David K. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:31:27 -0000

When you take into account the fact that 10% of a someone who makes $10,000,000 still leaves them a millionaire whereas 10% of someone who makes $20,000 is a significant chunk of their living expenses I find it hard to sympathize with people who make so much money and complain about being "over taxed" especially when they have a significantly larger amount of influence on taxation through lobbying, etc. Not to mention they can afford to invest alot of that money in such a way as to make a significant gain on it, where as someone living from paycheck to paycheck can't.

Overall I'd argue that the wealthy benefit disproportionately and therefore deserve to shoulder a larger part of the tax burden under our current system. As it is they don't have to pay their proportional share of medicare and SS taxes anyway.

Re: Unfair taxation? Not so much

David J — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:17:22 -0000

I really don't know how accurate this chart -- for what it's worth -- actually is. The sum of the blue bars (which should be 100%) actually add up to 100.7%; with round-off error and whatnot, it needn't be exact, but proper rounding should at most contribute at most ±0.05% error per bar, which means a maximum error of ±0.25%. Your mileage may vary.

Regardless, taking these values as verified numbers, what we eventually see is the following breakdown:
Top Quintile = 69.4% of taxes vs 55.7% of income
2nd Quintile = 16.6% of taxes vs 19.5% of income
3rd Quintile = 9.1% of taxes vs 13.2% of income
4th Quintile = 4.1% of taxes vs 8.4% of income
Bottom Quintile = 0.8% of taxes vs 3.9% of income

Given this, the next question becomes whether or not this is a "fair" distribution (for some definition of "fair"), but therein lies the trouble because no two people will agree on the precise definition of fairness. Are the rich "overburdened" with taxes? Perhaps not, although it's difficult to say just from looking at gross statistical data without delving more into case studies of "rich" people who "are being overburdened by taxes." Given the American culture's constant focus on materialism, there are a lot of questions that are begged that these numbers don't answer.

Re: Unfair taxation? Not so much

David K. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:15:38 -0000

Damn you for looking more closely at the graph than I did. You are in fact correct. I completely mis-read the graph and therefor my conclusions from it are pretty much useless, thanks for pointing it out.

I still think the idea that the "rich" are somehow overburdened with taxes as the right wing would have us believe is absolute bull, but this graph and data doesn't really apply to that argument.

Stupid facts not being useful to me.

Re: Unfair taxation? Not so much

David J — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:48:09 -0000

Unfortunately, what you're saying isn't true.

Go to the graph, and sum up all of the percentages on the red bars. You arrive at 72.1%. This isn't 100%. Why? Because it's not supposed to be 100%.

All this chart says is that the top quintile of people pay 25.8% of THEIR INCOME, not 25.8% of the TOTAL FEDERAL TAXES.

Re: StarWars/MacGyver opening

Jennifer — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 01:57:24 -0000

It sounds completely ridiculous. You know why? Because part of Star Wars was dark and evil... this music has hint of a portrayal of that type of that type of movie. Yucky. I'm not even all that interested in Star Wars and this video was still completely ridiculous. Glad that it had a phenomenal soundtrack, I'll give it credit.

Re: Unfair taxation? Not so much

Guest — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 01:59:08 -0000

David! There's a "Followers" gadget that you can add to your blog now! Do it! Join mine too! Sorry for all the exclamation marks!