That may not make much sense to a northern state, but here in the South west, illegal immigration is both a joke and a problem. However, most of these “immigrants” are just young men who want to work in the US for awhile, and then go back home. Bush’s policy is to register them and allow it, instead of pretending to ban it, but really just winking.

As I see it, he’s ending the hypocrisy.

Peace and best wishes to you and yours.
Victor Deane
Skippack, (suburban Philadelphia) Pa.
West Philly origin

If you read the CBO report itself, you see that every quintile has had a tax DECREASE. Nobody has had their taxes increased. The 78 times # you quote has no bearing, since it doesn’t account for anything bu raw numbers, and doesn’t provide any background to make it relevent (such as how much money was given by each group in the first place)
Also, the AFL-CIO analysis fails to take into account tax breaks, rebates or shelters that are not available to the upper percentages. Putting money into a ROTH IRA, for example, grants a tax credit to those making under a certain dollar figure (I don’t recall the #, but I do recall the year that I could stop claiming it ).

Now, for Stan:
Stan, what about the CA legislature? With no power plants built to address the growing demand, and with some rather bizzarre price caps applied to the local producers… do they share no blame? How about the Clinton administrations energy policies, that also helped set the stage? Or the economic policies that put in place the incentive for a companies like Enron, WorldCom and others to jigger their books, and create a false stock market bubble?
None of this happened overnight. It took years (to decades) to build up into the crisis it became. For years, even before the sh!t hit the fan, CA was held up by the energy industry as the example not to follow. That it took as long as it did to come crashing down was the real surprise.
As for the tax revenues… playing games with already hinky numbers, to go on an irresponsible spending spree, that is the problem. When the numbers got adjusted, and the stock bubble was shown to be smoke and mirrors, of course the plans based on these numbers went to the pan as well.

That illegals fill jobs Americans won’t do is disingenuous? I think some of you don’t live in the real world. I managed a dry cleaning plant in San Diego in which most of my employees had what were probably forged documents. We did let one go that was obviously illegal. We would have had to close the plant down if it weren’t for those folk and the Cambodian refugees I hired. I hired several “real” Americans, including one black and one former Navy. They were abject failures, two were thieves. I wouldn’t trade one of my “illegals” for a hundred of you conservative Christian Social Darwinians. Its ALL about jobs and the business owners, mostly Republicans, who hire them. California’s financial problems stem primarily from the tax revenue lost in the stock market crash, especially high-tech companies, the rape of our citizens by Texas energy producers in collusion with the Bush-Cheney administration and the failure of the Federal government to reimburse us for the costs of imprisonment of illegals, who have been arrested for criminal activity.
We are all dealing with the legal, the theoretical, the Biblical here. As manager of that plant, what would you have done? What would you do now? How would you harvest the fruit and vegetables in CA that provide for half of what all the rest of you eat and also feed the world. Enough of theory…what do we do in the real world besides blog each other with the same repetitious and old arguments?

Fair enough, but maybe you should of looked at this statement before getting all zealous.

‘Ditto with accelerating the 2004 tax cuts: 64.4 percent to the top 5 percent of taxpayers; 7.7 percent to the bottom 80 percent.’

‘You want equality of income?’

What? Im a socialist, but this is besides the point. What i want im saying is Bush made tax cuts that BLATANTLY benefitted the top earners, while anyone below got unequal benefits from Bush’s sweeping tax cuts.

‘ The further up the income ladder you go, the more the tax burden grows.’

Well this goes without saying. This doesnt mean that higher earners pay more tax as a percentage of their income.

‘AS has been stated elsewhere, that top 5% pays over 50% of the tax burden.’

Since you seem so insistant on ‘facts’ why dont you provide some? Ive provided two sources backing up what i was originally saying, one of which was that infamous Republican megaphone – Fox news. So its not like they were ‘loony left’ ones either.

‘How has the tax burden gone up on factory workers and on retail workers? Again, some facts if you please.’

Since you asked, not a problem.

‘After four years of President George W. Bush’s tax cuts, the nation’s middle class pays a larger share of federal taxes while the portion paid by the wealthiest Americans has decreased, the nonpartisan CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE (CBO) reported Friday. The amount of tax cuts the top 1 percent of the country received is nearly 78 times that of the middle 20 percent.’

http://www.aflcio.org/issuespolitics/globaleconomy/ns08162004.cfm

Heres another interesting snippet.

‘The top 1 percent of the country, those earning $1.1 million or more, pay 20.1 percent of the total, compared with 22.2 percent in 2001.

While those at the top of the earnings scale are lowering their taxes, the nation’s middle class is bearing more of the cost of paying for government services. The share of federal taxes paid by households earning between $51,500 and $75,600 increased, with the highest jump coming for those making $75,600. Their share of all taxes rose from 18.7 percent in 2001 to 19.5 percent today.’

The CBO report is linked from this site.

And the rich getting rich and poor getting poorer… the standard of living for US poor has continued to go up, for decades. Even when income hasn’t increased, the non-cash benefits have. (that’s where money from the top 5% covers for the bottom).

Now, while I will not advocate that you move to Cuba (but if you do, bring me back some cigars, please), but if you think the system is unfair, how about helping implement the proposed Fair Tax system, where the whole IRS schema is tossed, and we go to flat sales tax based system.
No more wage taxes, no more hidden labor costs. Average costs of goods would drop, and we’d all have more in our pockets. And we all get a monthly credit to cover living expenses based on the poverty line.

The tax burden remains rough proportional parity to how it’s been for years; in fact, the upper brackets’ tax burden has actually gone up with the Bush cuts in proportion to the lower brackets, even as the rate that they pay has gone down. Look at it this way: all tax brackets received tax cuts. The top 5% shoulder more than half of the tax burden. It’s only natural that their cut looks “disproportionately large”; they pay a disproportionately large amount of taxes. You want equality of income? Go to Cuba. Everyone is equal there; it’s just that some Cubans are more “equal” than others. /

The top 1% (Which ironically includes Cheney and Bush, both BORN rich) benefit the most from the cuts. The 5% claim is from an article i provided already, showing how this group were getting a huge 70% of the benefits from the cuts.

‘benefit while the rest don’t.’

Dont put words in my mouth. I never actually said this. What i said was they benefit MUCH more than virtually everyone else. I also said this goes on as the people in poverty increases annually.

‘You also state that small buisness and job creators (look around, the biggest companies are always downsizing, the growing small and mediums are upsizing) are the big wigs. ‘

To be quite honest, anyone in the top 5% earner range is a big wig. They clearly arnt blue collar, or indeed white collar. These guys are the people that RUN businesses, small or large.

Nice case example, but what does it prove? Im arguing about unfair benefits given to people who already earn a huge income. Why should the tax burden be placed on people like factory workers, or retail workers? Why should the rich get richer because of Government cuts, as the poor get poorer? Trickle down economics is a failure at tackling the disproportion of wealth in America. And the disproportion is HUGE.

Of course the richest folks saw the most money come back to them… they paid the most money in the first place. HOWEVER, they got less, percentage wise, than people in the lower income brackets did.

Im not being insulting here, but that is the perfect definition of a bigot.

‘The Left is absolutely silent on this so please have at it! ‘

Silent? Not at all. I oppose illegal immigration and believe it should be clamped down on. I certainly dont think people who sneak into a country illegally have a right to stay there afterwards. What i dont agree with is racial profilling.

‘Omar, you need to start reading some economic blogs…’

Sandy, you have failed to address any of my raised points. The bottom line is, Bush’s tax cuts heavily benefit the top 5% income earners, while everyone else loses out. This goes on while those below the poverty line goes up annually.

‘but Bush has said those tax cuts benefit small business and other job creators’

In essence, by saying this Bush is saying his tax cuts are worked around the system of trickle down economics. Big wigs are benefitting.

‘How about the what, 4 million or more people we’ve taken in over the past 4 years’

The majority of which are asylum seekers or economic migrants….not illegal immigrants.

‘Or how about that the US poverty level for a family of 4 equals the per capita GDP of Portugal?’

Red herring. What is the relevance of this? There is non whatsoever. Aside from the fact cost of living in these 2 countries is vastly different, it doesnt address the fact that the number in poverty is increasing, as tax cuts benefit America’s wealthiest.

‘And doesn’t the bottom pay only 4% of the taxes? ‘

What do you mean by bottom? Pretty ambigious. The middle earners in America pay the most tax, in a crude sense.

Illegal aliens pay some taxes, but not enough to compensate for the drain on the economy. They have access to free government programs through their children even if the adults don’t qualify. This problem didn’t start 10 years or even 20 years ago. It started in the 60s when immigration quotas were considered “racist.” Now we’re in a real mess. Arab terrorists are smarter than we are. Do you think they’re dumb enough to attack us again the same way? Of course not, but they’re continuing to take advantage of our bleeding-heart, hare-brained, suicidal stupidity: crossing the porous southern border!

It makes me ill. It really does.

Politics is the art of the possible, and you have to start somewhere – and starting with, say, a plan to seal the borders 60 days before a national election is outside the realm of the possible.

Part of the reason we’re working to re-elect President Bush while at the same time working overtime to ensure him a Republican Congress in 2005 is because this will be our window of opportunity – and it will only last about 14 months, before the Congress starts working on the 2006 mid-terms and regardless of the result of that election, President Bush becomes a lame-duck in 2007 and will have steadily declining ability to shape events.

What we are working for is a Republican President with a friendly Congress unfettered by the need to worry at all about re-election (and its also pretty cool that there’s not much evidence that Cheney wishes for the top spot in 2008, so even he’s not really a factor). It will be that 14 month period from November of 2004 to January of 2006 that we’ll finally prove or disprove the Republican Party’s ability to strike at real reform – we’ve been hobbled this past four years by a very narrow Senate majority (which we actually lost for a bit) and the exingencies of wartime.

Give the President his due, and his chance.