Now that tea bagging has failed what is next for the right wing?

[rah]

And a million men marched in the million man march

[Darius871]

and a million men marched in the million man march

epic fail!

[DinoDoc]

BS. It was organized, funded, backed, and promoted by the usual GOP stooges. This was in no way a grass roots movement and instead was just your typical GOP astroturf group.

I'm seeing alot of hot air but little in the way of evidence from nutters like you that this was a Fox News/GOP/CNBC conspiracy.

[Zkribbler]

I have no doubt the 30% of Americans who don't pay income taxes think it is fair.

Ah! Now I understand why Bush's favorable ratings hovered around 30%

[Patroklos]

I am in the unfortunate position of agreeing with Patroklos. :sadnod:

I was just about t say that. Oerdin = THE UNITER

[The Mad Monk]

Where is MoveOn.org when you really need them?

[Zkribbler]

I'm seeing alot of hot air but little in the way of evidence from nutters like you that this was a Fox News/GOP/CNBC conspiracy.

True. While I watched Fox over the last few weeks, I never once heard any mention of tea parties. Their website did not link to upcoming tea parites. Their news anchors did not MC the events. Rove and Armey's organizations were not listed as sponsors. Nope. Never happened.

[Ben Kenobi]

Why would the media want to report 'right wing' protests? They never report the March For Life, ever.

The reason for that is the movement is already quite successful, and they don't want to give coverage to prolife groups.

That being said, this 'tea party' movement is just getting started. Give it time. 50,000 people is quite a few, despite all the sneers to the contrary about 300 million. The fact that they are trying to label the movement already is a sign to me that the movement is succeeding. They want to nip it in the bud right now, which is why they are giving the coverage.

Anyways, I think it's great that the left is resorting to insults rather then attacking the arguments that Americans have overspent are over tax and are over burdened.

[Ben Kenobi]

Ah! Now I understand why Bush's favorable ratings hovered around 30%

It's 40 percent, that receive more from the government then they pay out.

I'd wager good money that they are Democrat or they do not vote.

[chequita guevara]

From the Communist Party USA (a pro-Democratic Party group) Wow is this bad.

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/15240/

Tax Day rallies cry “Tax the Rich!”

“Tax Day” rallies were staged at post offices across the nation demanding that Congress enact President Obama’s 2010 budget which includes tax reforms that would close loopholes that enable corporations to escape billions in taxes each year.

As one labor movement economist told the World, “Our grandparents taxed the rich. We should too.”

Nicole Tichon, Budget and Tax Reform Advocate of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US-PIRG), said, “On the day that taxpayers are paying their taxes, facing our yearly responsibility to report all our earnings, we are reminding lawmakers that a lot of corporations are hiding their earnings.”

US-PIRG, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and others in the coalition, she said, released a report charging that the U.S. Treasury loses $100 billion each year or $1 trillion each decade from U.S. corporations setting up P.O. boxes in the Cayman Islands and other offshore havens. “The cost of that loophole is made up by ordinary taxpayers like you and me,” Tichon told the World in a phone interview. “Obama’s budget would recoup this windfall by closing that loophole.”

Among the corporations identified in the report are AIG, the insurance giant that has received $170 billion in taxpayer bailouts, American Express, Bank of America, Comcast, Coca Cola, Dell, Exxon-Mobil, Pepsi, and Pfizer.

Tichon said grassroots interest - more accurately, anger - has increased in recent months. “I think the financial meltdown has caused people to pay a lot of attention to where their tax dollars go, especially in light of the financial bailouts for the banks that their tax dollars are paying for. People are certainly engaged.”

ACORN organizer, Brian Kettenring, told the World “We have dozens of rallies around the country in support of President Obama’s budget which closes corporate tax loopholes that cost the Treasury hundreds of billions of dollars.”

He said the tax reform measures in Obama’s budget prove it is a “progressive and responsible budget.”

He scorned the Republican’s “Tax Day Tea Parties” instigated by the ultra-right “Freedomworks” and promoted by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox TV to muster support for ex-President George W. Bush’s trillions in tax giveaways to the rich, today’s equivalent of the economic royalism despised by the patriots who staged the real “Boston Tea Party” of 1773. “We’re not very worried by these events,” Kettenring said. “They just prove how marginal and out of touch they are.”

The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) released a report on Tax Day titled “Reversing the Great Tax Shift: Seven Steps to Finance Our Economic Recovery Fairly.”

In 1955, according to the report, the nation’s top 400 taxpayers reported an average $12.3 million in income and paid federal income tax at a 51.2 percent rate. Half a century later, in 2006, the richest 400 reported an average $263.3 million income and paid federal income taxes at a measly 17 percent rate. If these 400 super-wealthy taxpayers paid federal taxes at the 1955 rate, the report states, the U.S. Treasury would have collected $35.9 billion more in revenues. Apply the 1955 tax rates to all those earning over $2 million annually and the U.S. Treasury would have collected $202 billion more in 2006.

Sam Pizzigati, editor of the online economic journal, “Too Much,” and a fellow of IPS is a co-author of the report. “Real tax reform couldn’t be more urgent,” he told the World in an email. “To stage an effective economic recovery, we need to invest far more in our nation’s future than we are now. We can either borrow to pay for it…or tax the rich.

The report declares that since the year 2000, “Our federal government … has squandered hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars on tax cuts for the wealthy and militarized solutions to global problems. They have given massive bailouts for the Wall Street investment firms that created the current economic crisis.”

The report continues, “Without additional revenues, we as a nation will either have to shortchange long overdue investments in infrastructure, health, energy, and economic opportunity or leave an unsustainable debt to generations ahead.”

The report offers a list to begin reversing the tax burden that includes:

• Immediate reversal of tax breaks on households with annual income over $250,000 by raising the top income tax rate to 39.6 percent and increasing the capital gains tax to 20 percent, both proposed by President Obama.
• Tax financial transactions at the rate of a penny for every $4 in trading of stocks and bonds raising an estimated $100 billion annually in federal tax revenues.
• Eliminate tax preference for capital gains and dividends raising $80 billion annually in revenues.
• Levy a progressive estate tax on large fortunes raising $40-$60 billion per year.
• Create a top tax bracket of 50 percent for incomes of $2 million or higher. This would generate $60-$70 billion in tax revenues.
• End overseas tax havens raising $100 billion in annual revenues.
• Eliminate subsidies for excessive executive compensation generating $18 billion each year.

[Ben Kenobi]

And a million men marched in the million man march

Just like there were 1.8 million at the Obama Inaugeration.

The media never, ever overestimates when they cheerlead an event.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

nm

[Wezil]

1) The estimate was that 1.8 million people witnessed the Obama inauguration -- that takes in the crowd on the Mall, the number who watched it on TV, and the number who watched it live in the web.

Only 1.8 million? Seems way low if you are counting TV.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Only 1.8 million? Seems way low if you are counting TV.

It is; I was temporarily deranged.

However, I would note that the 1.8 million people on the Mall was not a media estimate, as Ben implies; it was the offical government estimate of a department that was still staffed by Bush administration folks when the estimate was released. It might be too high, but it's a stretch to suggest that ideological bias was involved, given who was doing the counting.

[Jon Miller]

I heard from people who were there that everywhere was so packed that even if you were hours early you often couldn't get close enough to see anything.

JM