Differences between Kerry and Bush

[jokerswild]

1. Kerry is a war hero, thus brave. Bush is a dodger/deserter, thus a coward.
2. Kerry believes in the middle class. Bush shifts the tax burden to the middle class.
3. Kerry believes in fiscal responsibility. Bush believes that deficits don't matter.
4. Kerry believes that war is war, and peace is peace. Bush believes that war is peace.
5. Kerry has above average intelligence. Bush is at best average, and perhaps slightly below average.


The list could go on indefinitely.

[daryn]

this post is pretty stupid. i'm not even a bush supporter, but this is just dumb.

"Kerry is a war hero, thus brave."

since when is military service a prerequisite for being president? i believe it was kerry who argued that it wasn't when clinton's draft dodger image was being talked about.

"Kerry believes that war is war, and peace is peace."

what a genius.

"Bush believes that war is peace."

sometimes to make way for peace, war is necessary. i don't see how you can't think this is true.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

1. Kerry is a war hero, thus brave. Bush is a dodger/deserter, thus a coward.

Thus I'm certain in '96 you voted for Dole over Clinton.

2. Kerry believes in the middle class. Bush shifts the tax burden to the middle class.

You may rest assured that both parties are going to tax the living daylights out of the middle class.

3. Kerry believes in fiscal responsibility. Bush believes that deficits don't matter.

How will Kerry control deficits, by raising taxes or cutting programs? Those are the only two choices.

4. Kerry believes that war is war, and peace is peace. Bush believes that war is peace.

This is meaningless doubletalk.

5. Kerry has above average intelligence. Bush is at best average, and perhaps slightly below average.

This is just your opinion. It is useful to note that the most intelligent man to occupy the White House in my lifetime, Jimmy Carter, may have been the least competent President of that period.

Mind you now, I'm not voting for Bush, either, but I'm certainly not voting for Kerry.

[adios]

[andyfox]

[elwoodblues]

[ QUOTE ]
3. Kerry believes in fiscal responsibility. Bush believes that deficits don't matter.

How will Kerry control deficits, by raising taxes or cutting programs? Those are the only two choices

[/ QUOTE ]

Only if you see things in either/or terms.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Only if you see things in either/or terms.

"Both" is not a better choice.

[MMMMMM]

Actually, deficits can be reduced in percentage terms (relative to GDP) through economic growth. I don't think that's what Kerry has in mind, however (presuming that he has anything in mind in the first place).

[IrishHand]

[ QUOTE ]
How will Kerry control deficits, by raising taxes or cutting programs? Those are the only two choices.

[/ QUOTE ]
One would hope by raising taxes and cutting programs.

[CCass]

What is the definition of "middle class"? My tax liability has gone down during the Bush years, and I consider myself middle class. I have a 5 person family and we make less than 100K a year. So am I rich?

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Taxes are already too high and government already too wasteful. Cut programs, lower taxes.

[IrishHand]

Taxes are lower here than almost any other "democracy", while social programs are relatively underfunded. I guess it all comes down to priorities and values though - I value everyone having access to things like basic health care and welfare, while others value...ummm...other things, I guess.

[jokerswild]

Actually, I did vote for Clinton. I'd vote for Clinton again, if I could. I'd vote for Dole over Bush II. I did vote for Bush I against Dukasis. Clinton gave the country relative peace, and prosperity.

The deficits have grown so large that Alan Greespan has acknowledged that Social Security and Medicare are untenable in the future. The payroll taxpayer(i.e. the working middle) will be forced to pay for benefits that they won't receive. This projection did not exist prior to the current administration.

I believe that Bush's war is peace position is relevant. The neocons would have the public believe that the patriot act secures civil liberties(it actually destroys the IV amendment). Telling the public that a projected 10 trillion deficit by 2009 fosters prosperity is like telling a loose agressive degenerate gambler that he can blow 600 big bets per quarter and still make a profit.

Kerry does use verbs in the proper context when speaking. He doesn't confuse singular and plural.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Taxes are lower here than almost any other "democracy",

This does not change the fact that they are still too high.

I value everyone having access to things like basic health care

Health Care is not an entitlement. It is a service provided by the voluntary labor of others. Every single American has the right to health care, whether it is obtained through a health insurance plan or purchased directly from the provider. No one, and I repeat *no one* has the right to demand a service provided by others' labor for free. Any physician who wishes to set up a pro bono clinic is free to do so *voluntarily*.

I have no issue with those who desire to help the less fortunate. I have a big issue with those who want to *force* others to do so.

[CCass]

Kurn,

If Klingons were eligible, I would vote for you for President!!!

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Vote for the Libertarian candidate. That'll be as close as you can get. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[sfer]

Just because your taxes went down doesn't mean that people making more didn't have their taxes go down faster. If that's the case, then you're comparatively worse off and the "middle class," if it applies to you, is probably substantially worse off.

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
Just because your taxes went down doesn't mean that people making more didn't have their taxes go down faster. If that's the case, then you're comparatively worse off and the "middle class," if it applies to you, is probably substantially worse off.

[/ QUOTE ]

How so? I'm better off or worse off based on how much I've got in my pocket/bank account, etc., and on what it costs me to live...not based on how the other guy is doing.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
If that's the case, then you're comparatively worse off and the "middle class," if it applies to you, is probably substantially worse off.

[/ QUOTE ]

Huh? Explain please.

[sfer]

Over the long term, the "costs" of increased deficits will be paid for disproportionately by the middle class in the form of higher long term interest rates. Generally, the "rich" are more immune to cyclical changes in the economy.

Relieving taxes alone shouldn't be taken as an unambigious improvement.

[CCass]

M is dead on. Economically, my life is either better or worse now than it was 4 years ago.

If my income has risen faster than the rate of the increase in my cost of living (my individual cost of living, not the entire country's), and I am now paying less in taxes, than I was 4 years ago (as a % of income), then I must conclude that I am better off.

[James Boston]

[ QUOTE ]
You may rest assured that both parties are going to tax the living daylights out of the middle class.


[/ QUOTE ]

Thank you. I generally avoid the political threads, but this I enjoyed. There isn't a democrat/republican out there who has a clue about balancing tax structure. It's goin to be screwed no matter who gets elected, and the effects will always hit the middle class. It unavoidable.

[James Boston]

[ QUOTE ]
So am I rich?

[/ QUOTE ]

According to those who claim "republicans only wants to help the rich," yes

Realistically, you're doing well, but not rich.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
Over the long term, the "costs" of increased deficits will be paid for disproportionately by the middle class in the form of higher long term interest rates.

[/ QUOTE ]

This silly bull is promulgated so often that people start accepting it as fact. Give me demonstrative proof that deficits have lead to higher interest rates? In the late nineties while the deficit was shrinking, interest rates were rising. As deficits have expanded in the 2000's, interest rates have fallen considerably and are close to 40 year lows. There's this thing called inflation which is biggest factor in determining the level of interest rates.

[ QUOTE ]
Generally, the "rich" are more immune to cyclical changes in the economy.

[/ QUOTE ]

So what? A non sequiter if I saw one.

Your original post:

[ QUOTE ]
Just because your taxes went down doesn't mean that people making more didn't have their taxes go down faster. If that's the case, then you're comparatively worse off and the "middle class," if it applies to you, is probably substantially worse off.

[/ QUOTE ]

So by your logic if someone has more disposable real income from a tax break they're worse off because someone else got a bigger tax break? Does not compute, it's not a zero sum game.

[adios]

I've asked this question before, maybe you know, what qualifies someone as being rich?

[James Boston]

I honestly don't know the exact number, but it's smaller than what the average person would identify as rich. When you hear things like, "This tax break only helps that richest 5%," that's spin. That 5% isn't just Bill Gates and his peers. It includes the upper-middle class. Probably $80,000 and up. The poor end of the population are given government aid that isn't considered income, so while they might bring in the same as a middle class family, they are statistically considered poor. The figures politicians use are very misleading.

[MMMMMM]

Best discussions I have found on the subject, in two parts:

"Who's Rich

by Thomas Sowell (archive)

July 15, 2003

Congressman Patrick Kennedy, a Rhode Island Democrat, recently declared to fellow party members at a Washington night spot, "I don't need Bush's tax cut" and added that he had never worked a day in his life.

A number of other rich people have at various times likewise declared that they do not need what are called "tax cuts for the rich." But, whatever political points such rhetoric may score, it confuses issues that are long overdue to be clarified.

One of the most basic confusions is between income and wealth. You can have high income and low wealth or vice versa. We have all heard of athletes and entertainers who have earned millions and yet ended up broke. There are also people of relatively modest incomes who have saved and invested enough over the years to leave surprisingly large amounts of wealth to their heirs.

Income tax cuts apply to income, not wealth. So the fact that some rich people say that they do not need a tax cut means nothing because they are not getting a tax cut on their wealth, since their wealth is not being taxed anyway.

Looked at differently, high tax rates hit people who are currently earning high incomes -- usually late in life, after having worked their way up in their professions over a period of decades. Genuinely rich people who have never had to work a day in their lives -- people like Congressman Kennedy -- are unaffected by income taxes, except on what they are currently earning, which may be a tiny fraction of what they own.

In other words, soak-the-rich tax rates do not in fact soak the rich. They soak people who are currently earning the rewards of having contributed to the economy. High income taxes punish people for becoming prosperous, not for having been born rich.

Even estate taxes can be minimized by hiring ingenious lawyers and accountants. But people who have had to work all their lives may not be nearly as able to afford such expensive ingenuity.

Someone who eventually works his way up to $100,000 a year will qualify as "rich" in liberal rhetoric but, by the time you reach that level, you may have a child in college and need to put some money aside for your retirement years. You are very unlikely to be able to afford a yacht.

Another fundamental confusion over tax cuts is confusing lower tax rates with reductions in tax revenues collected by the government. One of the enduring political myths of our generation has been the claim that the rise of federal deficits during the 1980s resulted from President Ronald Reagan's "tax cuts for the rich."

Tax rates were cut. Tax revenues were not. More tax revenue was collected during every year of the two Reagan administrations than had ever been collected in any previous year in the history of the country. Nor was this experience unique.

When John F. Kennedy cut tax rates during the 1960s, tax revenues went up. The whole point was -- and is -- to encourage more economic activity, and more activity generates more tax revenues, even at lower rates. The same thing happened back in the 1920s.

Why then were there federal deficits during the Reagan administration? Because Congress spent even more money than the rising tax revenues brought in. There is no amount of money that Congress cannot outspend.

Although these were christened "the Reagan deficits," all spending bills originate in the House of Representatives -- and Ronald Reagan was never a member of the House of Representatives. Indeed, the Republicans never controlled the House of Representatives during either of the Reagan administrations.

Only after the Republicans gained control of the House in 1994 were there budget surpluses -- for which Bill Clinton took credit, even though he too had never been a member of Congress.

It is fascinating to see Congressional Democrats, who have for decades been spending the country into growing deficits, suddenly expressing shock at the current deficits that have occurred while George W. Bush was in the White House -- and the country was at war.

How serious are these deficits? As with all debts, the burden depends on what your income is. As a percentage of national income, today's deficits and national debt are far below what they were when Democrats were doing the spending."

©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20030715.shtml

"Who's Rich? Part II
Thomas Sowell (archive)

July 17, 2003

Someone once pointed out that there are at least 50 colleges that claim to be among the top 25 colleges in the country. There is a similar congestion among the 400 "richest" Americans, as shown in data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service.

While much of the liberal media emphasized that these 400 highest income-earners had increased their share of national income between 1992 and 2000, only the Wall Street Journal pointed out that there are more than 2,000 people among these 400 "richest" Americans. How can you squeeze thousands of people into the top 400?

The key to this -- as to so much other nonsense that is trumpeted in the media about "the rich" and "the poor" -- is that we are not talking about the same people when we are making comparisons of different income brackets over a period of years. Most Americans do not stay in the same income bracket for even a decade, much less over a lifetime.

In the case of the Internal Revenue Service data on the 400 highest income-earners in the country, only 21 people were in that category throughout the nine years covered by IRS statistics. In other words, more than 2,000 people passed through this category in the course of nine years but fewer than two-dozen actually stayed there the whole time.

Other studies of income over time have shown very similar patterns of mobility -- not only in the United States but also in Britain, Holland, New Zealand, and other countries. But such facts are simply passed over in utter silence in the media and in much of academia.

Why? Because there is on the political left a huge vested interest in the concept of "class." Class holds a sacred place in the new trinity of "race, class and gender" that has become a prevailing social dogma among the intelligentsia.

It is tough to admit that millions of people are constantly changing incomes and still talk as if we are all frozen into our classes or that we can be neatly divided into the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots.

Without that vision, what does the left have going for them? How can they justify seeking ever more power for the government, supposedly to redress our inequalities and injustices?

The outcries occasioned by the new IRS data are false in other ways as well. First of all, income is not wealth. People with much lower incomes than that earned by those passing swiftly through the top 400 can end up accumulating more wealth.

Indeed, some of the top 400 have high incomes in some years precisely because they cashed in some of the wealth that they had accumulated in previous years. They converted wealth to income and the media then verbally converted that income to wealth.

For most people, a home is their more valuable asset. Selling a house in California can make you instantly "rich" in statistical terms for that particular year. On the other hand, that matters only if you move to some place where you can buy another house much cheaper than in California.

My own income rose dramatically one year when I sold my house. But I bought another house with a bigger mortgage, so there was no real financial improvement. Still, briefly, I was part of the kind of statistics that so alarm liberals, though unfortunately not in the top 400.

As a result of inheritance taxes, many people who are left homes, farms or businesses have huge taxes to pay and not enough money to pay them -- unless they sell those homes, farms or businesses. That makes them "rich" -- for that year.

Moreover, any attempts to stop taxing assets that were already taxed when the original owner was alive are sure to be denounced as "tax cuts for the rich." Ironically, all this demagoguery is about people who in most cases are not rich at all.

Even when you look at people who are genuinely rich, there is still turnover. When Forbes magazine published its first list of the 400 richest Americans in 1982, there were 14 Rockefellers, 23 du Ponts, and 11 Hunts. Twenty years later, there were 3 Rockefellers, one Hunt and no du Ponts.

But facts make no dent on those who are fixated on the sacred trinity of race, class and gender."

©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20030717.shtml

[trippin bily]

joker I dont respond much to the bush haters of the world but the lack of almost any truth in your post has forced me to point out your total intellectual dishonesty. you repeat the same old drivel thats dems have been saying forever about every repub1.
1. kerry was a hero. he served for 4 distinquished months. got out early to work in politics. bush never deserted or dodged. you know he served like thousands of others and was discharged honorably. you know it but you wont say it.
2.kerry and his wife have 5 mansions,fully staffed year round a private jet, 3 yachts, 6 suvs the list goes on and on. despite bushs money he lives in a run down farm house and drives himself. you know kerry is a Mass. lib. you know bush comes across as real to all but the bush haters. you know it but you wont say it.
3.kerry believes in taking my money. no senator has voted for more tax cuts. clinton did not balance the budget repubs did. its called the contract with america.kerry and clinton went kicking and screaming. you know it but you wont say it
4. average intelegence? keep underestimating him, as he gets elected again. guess what his brother is after him lol.
5. war is war bush knows it which is why he is fighting a global war against the people who want to kill us for being us. no more. no less
like it or not...bush took the war to their back yard instead of ours against our trained soldiers instead of woman an children walking into a building.
bush has proven he will do what he thinks is right even if many dissagree. its called leadership. sometimes a decision has to be made. he made a tough one.
kerry has proven to be on the both sides of many issues.
the issue of protecting our country required a decision. one that kerry was not and is not capable of making.
you know it
you just wont say it

[sfer]

This is standard macroeconomics. Look in any macro textbook. The standard model is called IS/LM.

I said long term rates. The short end of the curve is controlled entirely by the fed. The short rate increased during the 90s as Greenspan tried to reign in the economy. The Treasury curve was flat during the 90s (the short rate was nearly equal to the long end). Now the curve is steep and the long end, in anticipation of future deficits, is 4-6x higher than the short end.

[MMMMMM]

So you're arguing that the costs to the individual of long-term interest rate hikes due to tax cuts, will more than outweigh the extra money saved (and invested) by the individual through tax cuts now?

Very hard for me to to believe, even if tax cuts do bring on higher interest rates (which sounds questionable as well).

[Stu Pidasso]

[ QUOTE ]
Clinton gave the country relative peace, and prosperity.

[/ QUOTE ]

The economic boom of the 90's ended under Clinton, So factually speaking, It was Clinton who brought recession upon us. We have since moved from the Clinton recession into the Bush Boom.

I don't know who I will vote for in Nov. Certainly not Kerry. Even though I am not particularly fond of George W Bush, I do believe has shown himself to have more intelligence than you.

Stu