Countdown: Markos Moulitsas talks Palin, violent extremism
March 29, 2010 11:06 pm

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You May Have Missed Your 'Tax Freedom Day'
March 30, 2010 5:58 pm

By Isaiah J. Poole

Are you gearing up for this year's "Tax Freedom Day" on April 9? If you've penciled in that date based on a report released today by the conservative Tax Foundation, you should know that you're probably scheduling your celebration much later than you should.

Tax Freedom Day is that annual gimmick that the Tax Foundation uses to, as it says in its report, provide "a vivid, calendar-based illustration of government’s cost," and each year it gets uncritical press attention. This year's report says, "Americans will work well over three months of the year, from January 1 to April 9, before they have earned enough money to pay this year’s tax obligations at the federal, state and local levels."

It makes for good imagery at Tea Party rallies and, like most things at Tea Party rallies, it's based on a distortion of the facts.

The report calculates the "tax freedom day" based on the total amount of federal, state and local taxes collected nationally and total national income, and comes up with an average tax rate of 26.89 percent. Unstated, but obvious, is the obvious disclaimer: Your tax rate may vary.

Citizens for Tax Justice used a recent Fortune Magazine column by former Treasury Department economist Bruce Bartlett (a former Reaganite turned critic of supply-side economics) to note the disparity between the perceptions fueled by such "tax freedom" reports and reality. Bartlett writes that a number of protesters at a Tea Party rally in Washington earlier this year were asked what they thought a typical family earning $50,000 a year paid in federal income taxes. The average of the responses was about $10,000. The actual amount? According to a Citizens for Tax Justice calculation, "After deducting the standard deduction and personal exemptions, a family of four owes only $1,965 in federal income taxes."

With a gross income of $50,000, you could have taken off New Year's weekend with much of the rest of America, started fresh Monday morning January 4 and would have fully paid your federal tax bill by lunchtime January 18—with Saturdays and Sundays off to boot. Your state and local tax bills would most likely be paid off by mid-February, and your Social Security and Medicare taxes a few days after that.

CTJ also notes that, contrary to the impression promoted by conservatives that tax burdens on average families are higher under President Obama than under President Bush, "the reality is that they are lower by every measure. For that working family, last year's stimulus bill reduced their federal income tax by $800."

In fact, average rates today for all taxes are much lower than they were under President Reagan in the 1980s, by the Tax Foundation's own admission.......

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Todd Tiahrt: GOP Deficit Hawk Blames Staff Salary Hike On Obama
March 31, 2010 6:09 pm

Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), a loud critic of government spending, has an explanation for the $1 million his office cost taxpayers last year: It's President Obama's fault.

Tiahrt's office payroll jumped 22 percent, or $196,000, in 2009, the Wichita Eagle reports. "We saw that spike with the election of President Obama," Tiahrt's spokesman said. "We had to employ a number of people to answer phone calls." Maybe so, but the bulk of that extra money went to five people, all of whom are also working on and receiving money from Tiahrt's Senate campaign. Four of those five are members of his "campaign leadership team."

Tiarht staffers are "very loyal," the spokesman said by way of further explanation. Tiahrt ought to hope so: He's responded to public outcry against the increased spending by freezing all his employees' pay for 2010, his spokesman said.

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The Evangelical "Mainstream" Insanity Behind the Michigan "End Times" Militia
April 1, 2010 5:10 pm

Frank Schaeffer

A federal prosecutor in Michigan says authorities decided to arrest members of the Hutaree Christian militia after learning "they were prepared to kill."

When I first learned of the news I went to the Hutaree Militia homepage and was struck by the fact that their site included links to a number of evangelical "End Times" sites like that of the Jack Van Impe ministries.

In the 1970s and 80s I appeared several times with Jack Van Impe on his TV program. His act was to predict the "imminent" return of Jesus. My act was to raise money for my latest far religious right effort to make abortion illegal.

As the son of well known evangelicals and far right leader Francis Schaeffer I was in the middle of the chain of events that led to the arrests of men prepared to kill cops for Jesus. The rhetoric we in the early pro-life movement unleashed combined, with the apocalyptic fantasies of the fundamentalist evangelicals, is a deadly brew.

As I describe in detail in my books Crazy For God and Patience With God this movement has a deep evangelical background. In fact I've been predicting violence from these people for years now, something I talk about in detail in Patience With God (from which I drew material for this article since I have a whole chapter there about the "Left Behind" cult).

My warnings have been largely ignored by the mainstream media who haven't a clue as to the sort of religious paranoia boiling in the Tea Party and other movements.

Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series of sixteen novels (so far!) represents everything that is most deranged about religion. What happened with this militia group is that their paranoid, deranged fantasy jumped from the page into sick brains and was turned into action........

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OutKast
April 4, 2010 8:03 am

This is pleasantly good:

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