2012 Republican Presidential Candidate Race

[solanis]

True. Maybe capital gains tax rate should be indexed to income like other taxes are, so middle class people aren't too disincentived from investing but the wealthy can't pay a lower overall tax rate than their maids.

as a guess (calculating ideal taxation rates isn't my field of study any more than yours) it would have to be indexed from, say, 0-15%. I think it would be great to make cap gains de minimis for people under a certain net worth/income level to encourage participation, but that opens them up to vultures hoping to make good on their ignorance of investing. retail investors are already incredibly stupid, it's not a stretch to assume the people whose entry threshold has been reached will be even more ignorant. it would require extra regulation on non-taxed accounts, probably.

[Weeks]

cap gains/income on investments is double taxation, which is something retail investors don't take into account.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/6/9330340_c1b27d15b0.jpg

Hint: You are only good at playing Wall Street to other stupid college kids.

[solanis]

lol you have no clue what you're talking about. most retail investors (and a lot of professionals too) don't account for tax when calculating their rate of return. it's why you have to make explicit requests for tax-adjusted return statements from a lot of funds. cap gains has to exist, but most people don't remember to pop it into their excel sheets and it makes for inflated reports of success. nice try tho bro

[Drex]

Since I consider this unfolding drama the most entertaining aspect of these primaries, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich thwarted in attempts to bar printing of Virginia ballots

Texas Governor Rick Perry lost a bid to stop Virginia from printing ballots for the Republican presidential primary without his name on them.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, today rejected Perry’s request to block the state from printing ballots and sending out absentee ballots for the March 6 primary while his appeal seeking to be included on the ballots was pending.

Perry “had every opportunity to challenge the various Virginia ballot requirements at a time when the challenge would not have created the disruption that this last-minute lawsuit has,” judges J. Harvie Wilkinson III, G. Steven Agee and Albert Diaz ruled. His “request contravenes repeated Supreme Court admonitions that federal judicial bodies not upend the orderly progression of state electoral processes at the eleventh hour.”

Newt Gingrich, who also filed an appeal with the same court, sent a letter to the court yesterday saying he agreed with Perry’s request for an injunction.

The candidates are challenging a Virginia law requiring that people gathering signatures for a candidate’s petition to appear on the ballot be eligible to vote in the state.

U.S. District Judge John Gibney in Richmond ruled Jan. 13 that Perry, Gingrich and two other Republican presidential candidates waited too long to challenge the eligibility requirements. The candidates say the rule violates their rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Perry Reaction
“An orderly ballot access process is important, but of little significance if viable candidates are unconstitutionally kept off the ballot,” Joseph Nixon, a lawyer for Perry, said in an e-mailed statement.

He said Perry is weighing options for an appeal.

“We are disappointed with the ruling, naturally, and are in the process of studying it to determine what our options will be,” Stefan Passantino, a lawyer for Gingrich, said by e-mail.

He added that he was “disappointed that the Court of Appeals would find no reason to question the lower court’s finding that Virginia’s statute ‘is highly unlikely to withstand First Amendment challenge” and still deny Perry and Gingrich’s, bid to delay the process.

State Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli said by e-mail he was “pleased with the Fourth Circuit ruling and that Virginia’s orderly election process will be able to move forward.”

Candidates’ Challenge
Gibney denied a challenge by Perry, Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman, who argued Virginia’s primary rules requiring those seeking to have their names placed on the ballot submit 10,000 signatures from valid Virginia voters are improper and unconstitutional. Huntsman dropped out of the race yesterday and endorsed front-runner Mitt Romney.

Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, and U.S. Representative Ron Paul of Texas are the only Republicans to make it onto the ballot for Virginia’s primary on so-called Super Tuesday.

Cuccinelli argued in court papers last week that materials for the primary needed to go to the printer immediately to meet legal deadlines for getting ballots to absentee and overseas voters.

The district court case is Perry v. Judd, 3:11-cv-00856, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia (Richmond). The appeal is Perry v. Judd, 12-1067, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (Richmond).

[Weeks]

So you're also too stupid to understand the simple webcomic, gotcha.

Another hint: I'm sure you think this whole act is a hilarious bit of trolling, as if it's somehow impressive to get a half-dozen idiots on a message board to believe in the existence of Wall Street bankers (Or whatever exactly you were claiming to be), but it isn't. You're a sad moron who daydreams about being a societal parasite and parrots neocon talking points without even a hint of depth of understanding about any social or political issues. Grow the hell up.

[solanis]

no, I was merely commenting on your inability to read content without immediately googling the first response that comes to your uneducated head. nice tho, genuinely good effort on your part. I can link you to some good books on wealth management to help you out in future efforts, if you like

[Weeks]

Actually I got it from another forum but since you still don't get it, I'll summarize: Money is taxed when it changes hands. This is not double taxation, it is income taxation. And no thanks, I prefer getting my investment advice from professionals. Playing investment banker isn't one of my pastimes.

[solanis]

it's always best to get your investment advice from a professional you hire to manage your money, so congrats on at least one good decision kiddo

[archibaldcrane]

Actually I got it from another forum but since you still don't get it, I'll summarize: Money is taxed when it changes hands.

If you own a piece of a company, shifting dividends from said company of which you own a piece to yourself privately can easily be considered not "changing hands".

Not that I give "but it's double-taxation" whining any credence, but that's the argument.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

What's the point of that web-comic? I think the author doesn't know the context in which "double-taxation" is criticized. The only time i've seen it criticized is in business formation/taxation, i.e. is it fair for partner's in a partnership to be taxed once and shareholder's in a C-corp twice?

[Kuya]

Rival presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s Iowa coalitions director, Jamie Johnson, sent out an email saying that children’s lives would be harmed if the nation had a female president. [...]

“The question then comes, ‘Is it God’s highest desire, that is, his biblically expressed will, … to have a woman rule the institutions of the family, the church, and the state?’ ” Johnson’s email said...

[H]e refused to back away from the substance of the email, saying “I was sharing my personal reflections with a friend…[T]hey were reflections on over 25 years of formal, theological study [based in] classical Christian doctrine.”

After Bachmann left the race, several of her advisers pointed to sexism as a contributing factor. “We did believe that sexism — I use the stronger word misogyny — was at play,” said Peter Waldron, her faith outreach coordinator.

Waldron said that several influential pastors called for her to drop out of the race, reasoning “that a female could not be a civil magistrate.” Johnson himself is a pastor at a central Iowa church.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...ill/?mobile=nc

I suppose some social conservatives just couldn't deal with that kind of subversion of their preferred order, even if that subversive is also a conservative.

[RKenshin]

I never quite understood the arguments about 'double taxation' when it comes to investments.

I must not be looking at it the same way... but as far as I'm concerned it's an incredibly simple concept; you're taxed when your wealth increases (and likewise, often given breaks when it decreases).

Whether that wealth increase is in the form of paycheck, cash prize, or interest... it still counts (though at various weights). I think people tend to just convolute the whole idea in semantics.

[Weeks]

Exactly. Business income is taxed. Personal income is also taxed. It's just that simple. Pretending that it's a unique situation when the personal income is for owning the business instead of working for the business is utterly nonsensical.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

I think you guys are missing the point because your opinion is based on that pic which misses the issue entirely, but I can't tell.

"Double-taxation" is only criticized when comparing business structures. Why should partnership's, LLC's that elect to be taxed as a partnership, and S-corporation's escape entity level taxation while C-corps do not? I don't see what the pic has to do with that.

[Weeks]

The pic is just a joke about the double taxation canard that Gingrich is bringing up again. He says that capital gains should not be taxed because they were already taxed at the corporate level. I wonder when he's going to realize that my income was taxed at the corporate level too.

EDIT: BTW, to answer your question, the difference is that we are worshipping at the altar of small businesses and giving them preferential treatment.

[Mazmaz]

Colbert said on his show last night that you don't have to be a registered republican to vote in South Carolina primary and then called for all his supporters to vote for Cain which shows that they support him. I get what the ad meant now.
Anyone from South Carolina here? lol

[Headspace]

I saw something on reddit yesterday talking about how fox news is saying that it's a closed primary so democrats don't come out and fuck shit up. And that the guy saying it was closed was on Romneys 2008 campaign staff.

MEDIA

[Ragnus]

Yanno, I'd say that everyone knows that Fox lies about everything but to this day I'm still telling friends and family this fact.

[archibaldcrane]

The thing about Mitt Romney's situation is that a big chunk of his income doesn't even come from his investments, it comes from the fees he charges (or used to charge but still collects from his days at Bain Capital) for managing their investments for them. It's a gigantic, carefully crafted "loophole" for hedge-fund managers called "carried interest" (a misnomer - it's just regular income) - and yep, it's taxed at 15%, despite the complete absence of any sort of "double taxation".

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...ger-issue.html


About Carried Interest:

Investopedia explains 'Carried Interest'

Traditionally, the amount of carried interest comes out to around 20-25% of the fund's annual profit. While all funds tend to have a small management fee, the management fee is meant to only cover the costs of managing the fund, with the exception of compensating the fund manager.

Carried interest is meant to serve as the primary source of income for the general partner. However, the general partner must ensure that all the initial capital that the limited partners contribute is returned along with some previously agreed upon rate of return.

[quannum]

is it weird to have a 6 yr relationship with a doctor who is 30 years older than you and who delivered you?