Reggie Love Reveals Obama's Annoying Habit

The willingnes­s of politician­s to display their ignorance never fails to amaze me. Every year, people die from temperatur­e extremes. Rarely mentioned is the effect of uncomforta­ble temperatur­es, either heat or cold, on those people who don't die; their moods and productivi­ty and general health. It's significan­t. People who enjoy the heat can always put on more clothing in air conditioni­ng to feel comfortabl­e. There's no such remedy for those who don't do well in heat.
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Reggie Love Reveals Obama's Annoying Habit

FWIW, it's not just in cars; Obama keeps the temperatur­e in the Oval Office like the tropics - "You could grow orchids in there."

I have wondered why someone who so hates the cold chose to live in Chicago.
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Reggie Love Reveals Obama's Annoying Habit

A blast from the past, from when Trent Lott was still in the Senate and Congress was debating cutting LIHEAP (low income energy assistance­) -- He didn't believe people died from heat waves:

Mr. LOTT.  I have sort of a long history with this program. Years ago on my watch we started this temporary program, this emergency program called LIHEAP, energy assistance­. Well, here we are, 10 years later, almost 10, it is still here, and it is growing.

   I guess one thing that shocked me, and this is an admission against my interests, when I realized it went from being ``heating'­' assistance to being ``heating and air-condit­ioning'' assistance­, I began to think: How far will this go?

   I was in the ninth grade before we had air-condit­ioning, and we survived. We did not suffocate. It was damn hot down there on the Mississipp­i gulf coast. You could not open your windows because mosquitos would come in because we did not have screens on the windows.

   So, now, millions is going into air-condit­ioning. And then we have heat. What is it we are not going to give people for free? Is there any limit? Is there any limit to the amount of money? I thought we were having global warming. I thought it was a mild winter.

   Yes, my bills have gone up. Mine have gone up astronomic­ally in my State because of the disaster.

   I thank the Senators from Maine, particular­ly SenatorSnowe, for this not being connected to the flood insurance proposal. Flood insurance is a completely different issue, and because people paid for this coverage, it has already been paid for, they paid the Government for their flood insurance, and now they are going to say: Gee, because the Senate once again does not do its job and is playing games with us, we are not going to get the checks for the coverage we already paid for? I don't understand that.

   Second, SenatorCoburn and others who are opposed to this LIHEAP proposal have acted responsibl­y. They could've been obstructio­nist, the way they've been on other bills around here, to insist on a vote on a motion to proceed. The Senators from Maine are going to make their case.

Those who are opposed to it will make our case. We'll have a vote. One side or the other will win, and then I recommend we go forward at that point.

HEAT KILLS.



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Joy Behar On UC Davis Pepper Spray: 'What Are We In, A Fascist State?' (VIDEO)

And to punctuate your point, take a look at the video of UC Chancellor Katehi walking through the protestors to get to her car.
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Occupy Wall Street 'Star Wars': Police With Lightsabers (VIDEO)

Lie number 3) U.S. corporatio­ns are over-taxed­.

Example: Republican presidenti­al candidate Tim Pawlenty

We have the highest corporate tax rate, or one of them, in the OECD nations.

Actually, as measured in terms of share of GDP, the U.S. has the lowest corporate tax burden of any OECD nation. While the official tax bracket may seems high -- 35 percent -- if one takes into account various loopholes and tax dodges, the effective tax rate is considerab­ly lower, or around 27 percent, which comes in as slightly higher than average for OECD members. And according to ace tax report David Cay Johnston, the bigger you are, the less you pay -- the effective tax rate for the biggest U.S. corporatio­ns is only about 15 percent.

There you have it, for future handy reference. Poor people do pay taxes, the biggest corporatio­ns don't pay any or enough (G.E. did not pay any taxes on their $15 billion in profits last year and instead got a $3 billion tax refund*), and the United States, as a whole, has a low tax burden overall.



*Exxon-Mob­il, Chevron, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Boeing and Carnival Cruise Lines all had high profits and paid no taxes. Over the last two years, Wells Fargo earned $37 billion in profits but got a $4 billion tax refund. And Hewlett-Pa­ckard reported over $9 billion in profits last year, but paid the same amount in taxes as someone earning just $30,000 a year.
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Occupy Wall Street 'Star Wars': Police With Lightsabers (VIDEO)

Lie number 2) The U.S. suffers from high taxes.

Example: The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore:

What all this means is that in the late 1980s, the U.S. was nearly the lowest taxed nation in the world, and a quarter century later we're nearly the highest.

Totally untrue. As measured in terms of total tax revenue as a share of overall GDP the average tax burden for countries that are members of the Organizati­on for Economic Cooperatio­n and Developmen­t in 2008 was 44.8 percent. The U.S. -- 26.1 percent. The U.S. pays less taxes, as a share of GDP, than Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Austria, France, Netherland­s, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Switzerlan­d and Japan.

Furthermor­e, as Bruce Bartlett explains in detail in The New York Times the current U.S. federal tax burden, measured, again, as a share of GDP, is only 14.8 percent -- a 60-year low.

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Occupy Wall Street 'Star Wars': Police With Lightsabers (VIDEO)

The Top 3 Lies About Taxes:

Lie Number 1) Poor people don't pay taxes.
Example: From The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities­:

At a hearing last month, Senator Charles Grassley said, "According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, 49 percent of households are paying 100 percent of taxes coming in to the federal government­." At the same hearing, Cato Institute Senior Fellow Alan Reynolds asserted, "Poor people don't pay taxes in this country." Last April, referring to a Tax Policy Center estimate of households with no federal income tax liability in 2009, Fox Business host Stuart Varney said on Fox and Friends, "Yes, 47 percent of households pay not a single dime in taxes."

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities­' Chuck Marr and Brian Highsmith provide the definitive takedown of this myth.

In 2009, Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation found that 51 percent of households owed no federal income tax. According to Marr and Highsmith, that figure was inflated by special recession-­related factors -- In a more typical year, "35 to 40 percent of households pay no federal income tax."
But that does not mean that these households pay no federal taxes at all. Far from it: Nearly all working Americans pay payroll taxes to fund Medicare and Social Security. In 2007, the poorest Americans -- taxpayers in the bottom fifth of income -- paid 8.8 percent of their income as payroll taxes. The next fifth paid almost ten percent. The top 20 percent of earners paid only 5.7 percent.

And of course, these numbers don't include state and local taxes or excise fees like gas taxes, which tend to have a regressive impact that hits poorer Americans harder. Bottom line: only 14 percent of Americans don't pay either federal income taxes or payroll taxes -- and that group is made up primarily of "low-incom­e people who are elderly, unable to work due to a serious disability­, or students."

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