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ORIGINAL: Sanity


No, you dont understand the argument and there isnt time enough to explain it to you

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ORIGINAL: Lucylastic

LMAO her figures havent been announced, so you are graspin at straws
no facts just innuendo

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Good for her. I think that's great. She shouldn't be punished for being successful.

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If WB thinks that he isn't paying enough taxes, then what the hell is he waiting for? Send in a check Warren. Until then, you're just a hypocrite calling for higher taxes when you yourself did everything to avoid them throughout your career.

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ORIGINAL: flexiblemike

lolwut? What is this argument even about? How to successfully be a right wing troll?

What does Buffett's secretary being in the top 1% have to do with anything whatsoever? Even if she is, that has nothing to do with Buffett's comments in his NYT op-ed that launched the current hubbub about the "Buffett rule" ("Stop Coddling the Super-Rich", 8/14/2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html ) where he wrote that "[his] friends and [he] have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress." The original quote:

quote:

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

Nowhere has Buffett, to my knowledge, said anything about his secretary until very recently. In this interview from 2007, he mentions his receptionist and a cleaning lady, but not his secretary: http://youtu.be/Cu5B-2LoC4s

I think that Buffett's secretary got picked on by the media and then made into a figurehead for the so-called "Buffett rule", probably because the image of a big important businessman with a female secretary is an easy to recognize cliche. Buffett and his secretary are in fact on record as having been surprised by the sudden interest in her. See this ABC interview: http://youtu.be/zB1FXvYvcaI

So please, don't turn Debbie Bosanek into more of a red herring than she already is. Buffett's comments are clear enough: he feels that he and other ultrarich Americans are not taxed enough, he thinks that capital gains should be increased and/or there should be a national progressive consumption tax, and he doesn't believe that taxing the ultrarich will hurt the economy by lowering their appetite to work. You can disagree with that if you like, but this fetishization of Buffett's secretary--on both the right and the left--is utterly pointless. If indeed you are on the right, then why falling for the left's tactic of focusing attention on one particular person? For all you know, she is not representative of the larger situation.

Why do I bother writing, though? Rational arguments about politics online are as common as three-horned unicorns.

P.S.: Buffett's secretary makes $60K/yr. Source: not some crackpot operation like Drudge Report, but an actual, internationally renowned news publication with professional editors and fact-checkers, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/how-rich-is-warren-buffetts-secretary/252056/

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He hasnt released his tax returns either has he?

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

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He hasnt released his tax returns either has he?

Why would he?

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ORIGINAL: SternSkipper
when ya get a chance PM me the variety of shroom ya gotta eat to have this shared right-wing hallucination that  Buffet's Secretary is being 'punished'. Unless you mean her being used by a talking head like Limbaugh f or attack politics. My understanding is she was invited to the State of the Union  address and accepted graciously. If she were being punished, she would have pulled a Tim Thomas and not showed.

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ORIGINAL: tj444

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ORIGINAL: flexiblemike

lolwut? What is this argument even about? How to successfully be a right wing troll?

What does Buffett's secretary being in the top 1% have to do with anything whatsoever? Even if she is, that has nothing to do with Buffett's comments in his NYT op-ed that launched the current hubbub about the "Buffett rule" ("Stop Coddling the Super-Rich", 8/14/2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html ) where he wrote that "[his] friends and [he] have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress." The original quote:

quote:

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

Nowhere has Buffett, to my knowledge, said anything about his secretary until very recently. In this interview from 2007, he mentions his receptionist and a cleaning lady, but not his secretary: http://youtu.be/Cu5B-2LoC4s

I think that Buffett's secretary got picked on by the media and then made into a figurehead for the so-called "Buffett rule", probably because the image of a big important businessman with a female secretary is an easy to recognize cliche. Buffett and his secretary are in fact on record as having been surprised by the sudden interest in her. See this ABC interview: http://youtu.be/zB1FXvYvcaI

So please, don't turn Debbie Bosanek into more of a red herring than she already is. Buffett's comments are clear enough: he feels that he and other ultrarich Americans are not taxed enough, he thinks that capital gains should be increased and/or there should be a national progressive consumption tax, and he doesn't believe that taxing the ultrarich will hurt the economy by lowering their appetite to work. You can disagree with that if you like, but this fetishization of Buffett's secretary--on both the right and the left--is utterly pointless. If indeed you are on the right, then why falling for the left's tactic of focusing attention on one particular person? For all you know, she is not representative of the larger situation.

Why do I bother writing, though? Rational arguments about politics online are as common as three-horned unicorns.

P.S.: Buffett's secretary makes $60K/yr. Source: not some crackpot operation like Drudge Report, but an actual, internationally renowned news publication with professional editors and fact-checkers, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/how-rich-is-warren-buffetts-secretary/252056/

So if she is in reality making only $60,000 and paying 17% of that in income tax (or whatever the rate is), then Buffet has grossly misrepresented the situation.. maybe he has a touch of alzhiemers..

Like I have said before, I dont like him and I dont trust what he says.. He hasnt released his tax returns either has he? (Yes, I know he released a few numbers on it.. I just want to see it in print for myself).. And if i was his secretary, i would be upset about the publicity she is now getting.. (but thats just me)

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ORIGINAL: provfivetine

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ORIGINAL: SternSkipper
when ya get a chance PM me the variety of shroom ya gotta eat to have this shared right-wing hallucination that  Buffet's Secretary is being 'punished'. Unless you mean her being used by a talking head like Limbaugh f or attack politics. My understanding is she was invited to the State of the Union  address and accepted graciously. If she were being punished, she would have pulled a Tim Thomas and not showed.

She's being punished because taxation is nothing more than institutionalized theft.

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He has released numbers on it, why would he not show proof of that

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taxation is nothing more than institutionalized theft

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She's being punished because taxation is nothing more than institutionalized theft.

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

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He has released numbers on it, why would he not show proof of that

If he's released the numbers, that's the proof. His point is overall taxation, not what his individual taxes, which are simply an example.

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So its all speciulation AGAIN
the smoking gun article says she just bought a house worth 144 000
The Bosaneks paid $144,000 for the four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath property (the purchase was financed, in part, by a $115,200 mortgage).
WHy does this assume she makes more than 200,000.
To me, a 115,000 mortgage is not a heavy burden.

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ORIGINAL: Owner59

Because sacrificing pallet loads of money to the gods of finance might produce a job or two?


Just a guess.....

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ORIGINAL: provfivetine

She's being punished because taxation is nothing more than institutionalized theft.