GOP. Rep Keith Self quotes Goebbels

@BohemianBabe And Hitler did some good things.

It really doesn't cost them much to throw Nazi stuff out in the open and it helps far more than it hurts.

Plus, its consistent, like rewriting history to paint the Civil War as not all about slavery, saying that Mueller totally exonerated Trump and proved that Russian interference was a hoax. Again, the big lie really works, and while the Nazis didn't invent all this stuff, they were famous for it.

The same people who have a thing for Hannibal Lecter have a thing for Hitler. Is it serious sociopathy or sociopathic joking?

Does it matter?

@BohemianBabe


Gee, Boo-Boo, not so long ago you were regaling me with what big fascists the Tankie Soviets were.

Oh, wait, I forgot... they weren't real communists, were they, Boo-Boo?

@Thinkerbell Communism is stateless. So yeah, the Bolsheviks weren't communist, they were Authoritarians that used left-wing imagery. Much like the BSW.

@BohemianBabe


Translation: a pipedream.

@Thinkerbell Yes, I said I don't think any form of Anarchy could work. Government will always exist in some form, so we should have the most democratic form of government, which is Socialism.

But the fact remains that the Bolsheviks weren't communist. Neither were the Nazis, even though the AfD Fascists will claim they were.

@BohemianBabe

And nothing inherent in Socialism would prevent a Socialist government from becoming authoritarian either. There will always be a Nomenklatura as long as there is a government.

That's why Bernie has always been at such pains to identify himself as a "democratic" Socialist (while busily making himself a multi-millionaire, like practically everyone else in Congress).

@Thinkerbell Any government can become authoritarian. But the more democratic a government is, the less of a chance it will become authoritarian.

Bernie understands that most Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that Socialism is what the Soviet Union and Maoist China had. So he differentiates himself. But yeah, "Democratic Socialism" is redundant. Socialism is inherently democratic.

Also, Bernie has been fighting for decades to get the government to raise his own taxes so that everyone can have healthcare. He's really the wrong person to accuse of hypocrisy.

@BohemianBabe

Bernie has nothing to fear from higher taxes. As an insider, he would be careful to exempt himself from their effects, like the rest of his colleagues.

@Thinkerbell Yes, he'll pass a bill that says we have to go back to how we taxed rich people in the fifties, but you're exempt if you're a hundred years old and have crazy hair.

@BohemianBabe

And practically no one in the 50s actually paid those maximal tax rates, as there were plenty of loopholes.

Meanwhile, "soaking the rich" made good political eyewash.

@Thinkerbell Absolutely not true. If nobody paid them, then Republicans wouldn't have cut them.

I do enjoy the irony here, though. For decades, the Right has idolized the fifties as America's golden age. But at the time, y'all would have claimed we were living under Socialism.

@BohemianBabe

Kennedy cut the high rates because the national debt had mostly returned to pre-WW2 levels.


And it stayed under control until 2010, then the bottom fell out. 🙄

And the 50s were a golden age because most of the US's natural economic competitors were recovering from WW2, from which the US emerged relatively unscathed.

@Thinkerbell If nobody was paying those taxes, why bother cutting them?

America being the only democratic superpower, and getting to rebuild Europe, did cause an economic boom. But without those taxes, the money would have just sat in the bank accounts of the 1%, which is what's happening now. An economy stays health when money is in circulation, but that doesn't happen as much when money is being horded.

@BohemianBabe

Why cut them? To move investments out of tax shelters and stimulate the economy. It was KENNEDY and JOHNSON who did this.

"The United States Revenue Act of 1964 (Pub. L. 88–272), also known as the Tax Reduction Act, was a tax cut act proposed by President John F. Kennedy, passed by the 88th United States Congress, and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The act became law on February 26, 1964.

Kennedy proposed the bill on the advice of Keynesian economist Walter Heller, who believed that temporary deficit spending would boost economic growth. The act was initially blocked by Democrats like Senator Harry F. Byrd, but Lyndon Johnson was able to guide it through Congress after the assassination of Kennedy in November 1963. The act cut federal income taxes by approximately twenty percent across the board, and the top federal income tax rate fell from 91 percent to 70 percent. The act also reduced the corporate tax from 52 percent to 48 percent and created a minimum standard deduction."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1964

Keynesian economics 101, Boo-Boo.

@Thinkerbell Bernie Sanders's net worth is around $3 million which is in step with a man of his age who makes $175k per year, has cumulated 3 houses and has written books. If he's on a get rich quick scam he's not doing it well.

@JonLosAngeles66

No, he's not doing it nearly as well as many of his colleagues, but he's very comfortably set for life, if not in the top 1%, then easily in the top 10%, maybe even the top 5%.

He used to grouse about the "millionaires and billionaires," until some reporter pointed out that Bernie himself was a millionaire.

After that, he only groused about "the billionaire class," which conveniently excluded his Senate colleagues who might only be worth a few hundred million. 🤣

@Thinkerbell
But you said nobody was paying those taxes anyway. So which is it?

@BohemianBabe

For your edification, Boo-Boo (and you urgently need it) 🙄:

"After Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) raised the idea of a marginal tax rate of 70% on income over $10 million, the progressive wing of the Twittersphere began pointing out that in the 1950s and early 1960s, the top marginal tax rate was over 90%.

The progressives’ point was that, despite this seemingly onerous level of taxation, the 1950s were a golden age for the U.S. economy, and the rich did just fine, thank you very much. According to records compiled by the Tax Foundation, a single person making $16,000 in 1955 — that’s $150,000 in today’s dollars — had a marginal tax rate of 50%; compensation of $50,000 ($470,000 today) moved you into the 75% tax bracket; and an income of $200,000 ($1.9 million today) put you in the 91% tax bracket. (Married couples filing jointly hit the 91% mark at $400,000.)

That meant that the federal government took 91 cents of every dollar over $200,000. When you added it all up, someone in 1955 who made $1 million a year paid over $800,000 in taxes.

At least they did in theory. Myself, I had a hard time believing that wealthy people in the 1950s had a different attitude toward the taxman than wealthy people do today. And guess what? I was right.They bridled just as much at what they viewed as confiscatory taxes. And they found — or created — enough loopholes that, according to the Congressional Research Service, the top 0.01% in the 1950s paid not 90% but closer to 45% of their income in taxes."

In case you want to read the whole LA Times article, here's the link:

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nocera-tax-avoidance-20190129-story.html

But of course, you won't read it; like Shady Corvus, you avoid edification like the plague. 🙄

@Thinkerbell That's not the claim you made. You said that rich people didn't pay taxes during that time.

Of course there were loopholes, there are loopholes today too. And yes, we should be working to close them. The point is still that the rich were paying more in taxes back then than they do now. That's why the Republicans cut taxes for the rich. Even with the loopholes, cutting taxes meant more money for the rich.
I say we go back to the tax rate of the fifties and we close the loopholes. But doing just one of those would still be much better than the situation America is in now.

@BohemianBabe

Now, in your desperation, you're trying to move the goalposts, Boo-Boo. 🙄

I said practically no one paid 90%, NOT that they paid no taxes at all.

@Thinkerbell No, moving the goalposts would be me changing the argument. My argument is still that we should go back to the fifties tax rate. I acknowledge that loopholes existed, but the rich were still paying more than they are now. And on top of raising their taxes, we should also close any loopholes.

Ah, so we agree. The rich did pay more in the fifties. Glad to have you on board. Now we just need to expel your Nazism.

@BohemianBabe

No, true to form, you have dodged, lied and tried to shift the goal posts throughout this 50s tax discussion, including incorrectly claiming it was Republicans who lowered the tax rates of that period, even after I pointed out to you (including a link) that it was KENNEDY and JOHNSON who lowered those tax rates. But no, even after that, you went back to your false claim, which by this time was either an outright lie, or else you have amnesia of the political kind. 🤣

@Thinkerbell Those are certainly a lot of words.

So yeah, like I said, the rich used to pay a lot more in taxes, even with the loopholes. So we should raise their taxes to how it was in the fifties, which was my original take.

@BohemianBabe

I invite anyone who may be interested to go back about 20 comments to see what your "original take" was, and how it changed in the course of the discussion.

The only "original take" in which you have been consistent is your false claim that it was Republicans who lowered those 50s tax rates.

But of course you (as usual) have dodged that point. Boo-Boo. 🤣