Joe's not vetted. And his name isn't Joe. http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/10/16/joe_not_vetted.html

Just out, Rasmussen poll, Obama 54-McCain 41

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/oregon/election_2008_oregon_presidential_election

Not as big a gap as the SUSA poll, but a good one.

A close election seems to bring out these ugly tactics and rewards trickery. We need to get tough and publicly prosecute those who would game our democracy. Some serious prison time is what I'm thinking. More to the point, Obama needs to build a substantial lead to counter the possibility of the Florida debacle. That's reason to dig deep in my dwindling pocket, despite positive poll numbers. We can't afford a close call this time.

Ha ha! That's a great line, Jeff.

Hey Genop: if your pockets is bare, wander over to "Let's Win..." and post some new lies debunked -- let the redoubtable owner that that thread help you out! :)...

The McCain campaign will grasp at anything a this point - even making an unvetted voter the centerpiece of the final debate.

One of the cable news networks reported on emails received in several states instructing Democratic voters to vote for Obama before they vote the straight party ticket. This action would leave all down-ticket offices unvoted with some voting systems. This looks like an effort to keep other Republicans from going down the tubes with McCain and Palin.

Of course, no one who works for Republicans would run such a vote suppressing scheme, would they?

Thomas, in the spirit of parity and inquiry - are there any reports (beyond the ACORN situation) of Democratic manipulations of this stripe?

I ask because the reportage has been heavy on reports from ALL battleground states of active and multifarous strategies actively worked and, in some cases, acknowledged, by GOP to use suppression as an integral part of their process.

I'd like to know if anything is leaking through viz Democrats too?

I'm not finding it, not even as test-balloons in the tabloids, a favored germination place...

As to ACORN - knowing the ability of entrenched governing entities to collude to build cases that DO appear substantive until years later too late... is it REALLY possible that ACORN F*ed up THAT big?

I do feel their leadership needs to be taken to task for lacking the ability to know the limits of their capacities. They have done a lot of damage, no matter whether the issues are as HUGE as GOP likes to say, or much smaller, and can be addressed.

This is just not ok. Not by me.

And I'm the guy who first said, look under that rock three times for a lie and a trumped-up case against ACORN, yes, multistate. I've seen it done, fought in that war directly in another venue.

So - tell me, are you seeing anything on Dems in voter suppression?

OT - Mary Sorteburg (Jeff Merkley's wife) is blog-chatting at DailyKos right now!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/16/15424/820/821/632772

The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat:

The betters at Intrade give Obama Bid = 84, McCain't Bid = 15

The Irish are even more certain, they've already paid off the winning bet.

rw,

Democrats beleive that if turnout is high, they are advantaged, so they are not likely to find vote supprression attractive. It could happen, of course, but I think Republicans or their supporters] are responsible more almost all such efforts.

Jefffrane,

Point taken.

So, I hear you saying that other than ACORN's clear lack of gravitas in this critical turning point situation, there is no evidence of the suppression efforts that have been documented in battleground states in particular, and the nation as a whole; and that it is your philosphical "take" on it that all such activity is clearly GOP-instigated?

I agree from the kickstart here, but I'm checkin' on the bias here...

Rebecca,

Re: "So - tell me, are you seeing anything on Dems in voter suppression?"

Huh? I've been following election fraud issues since the infamy of the 2000 election and I'm not sure what in the world you are referring to here.

As close as I can parse of what is going on the most vexing aspect of voter suppression that the Democratic Party is engaged in is their utter contempt for the fine work of Rep. John Conyers et al in investigating the outrageous voter supression efforts of former Ohio Sec. of State Ken Blackwell in the 2004 Kerry loss in that corrupted state. As you may recall, the pusillanimous Pelosi, the hypocritical Hoyer and the excretory Emanuel all engaged in egregious voter suppression after the fact when they refused to stand up for democracy and electoral integrity.

What Went Wrong In Ohio?

Further reading:

Press Cracks Up When Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) Claims 'We'd Never, Ever Engage in Voter Suppression'

GOP Sheriff in SW Ohio Shadows New Voters

Ray: calm down. Sounds like you are going the wrong direction as to the motivations for my inquiry, into reactiveness. Have you not figured out that I engage conversationally when possible?

I am actually interested in the answer, Ray. A novelty, it's a question to check out the wholism of the landscape!

I'm a freekin' DEM, Ray! Hahahahah.

Worse yet, I MIGHT have asked that question to MAKE A POINT backwards! :).....

Anyway: Jefffrane - your point is taken on the surface as comradely swipes taken at a buffoonish adversary. However, good gawd! You'da thunk they'da learned!

One would think they WOULD vet the shill. And everything else too. They NEED to.

Deeply tragic blindness.

Jeff, I'm also reading that "Joe" is a close relative of Charles Keating's son-in-law.

Ray, take this as a chuckle and a poke onna arm: were you channeling Nader there for a second? Oy!

What is the income proper tax rate for the rich?

Jan,

The top income tax rate during the Eisenhower administration was 91%. At that time, the disparity between the richest and poorest was narrowing, unlike now. That seems about the correct Top rate to me.

Eisenhower claimed to be a Republican, but has certainly been disowned by the modern Republican Party as a RINO.

Joe el fontanero in Spain

EAT THE RICH and then tax their estates at 50%!

"top income tax rate during the Eisenhower administration was 91%...That seems about the correct Top rate to me."

Why not make 100% ??

Why not make 100% ??

We wouldn't want to blunt their drive to get ahead, would we? The 91% didn't do that, as the rich continued to invest all through the 1950's.

"The 91% didn't do that, as the rich continued to invest all through the 1950's."

Actually it totally screwed up paying upper income people. You are ignoring the fact that most upper income people shifted their income to get capital gains instead of salary & wages.

I even remember a friend, in a good union nob, refusing overtime because he only made pennies per hour after the tax

Good way to help the economy.

Are you are just jealous of successful people?

NPR reported this morning that "Joe" also owes $1,200 in back taxes.

I've heard that Joe the Plumber is a 5th removed cousin of Obama.

Joe, le plombier - the most celebrated plumber in the universe. Maybe with all this international publicity McCain can make Joe his secretary of state.

jan wrote:

Are you are just jealous of successful people?

Ha, ha, ha, it never fails that conservatives play the class-warfare card. No, Jan, I'm not jealous of successful people. I'm quite content with my economic situation, but I'm pissed as hell about the millions of Americans who never feel economically secure. I think it's shameful that such a wealthy nation should devalue it's people so.

I'm pissed as hell that our physical infrastructure is falling apart and that we are not investing in the infrastructure appropriate to the 21st century. I'm pissed as hell that millions of kids go to warn out, dangerous schools that lack needed resources. I'm pissed as hell that millions go without decent healthcare.

Shall I go on?

I just erased a huge, emotional post.

I cannot tell you how much it matters to hear those of you who are well enough off, secure, stable, own homes, have great educations and family and all that ... stand up for and speak with passion for those of us of goodly intellect as well who will be dismissed because we are not materially stable as are you.

That you CHOOSE to look and to see, OPTING INTO opening hearts and minds to unimaginable realities.

I have CHOSEN my good politics. IN that horrible hardship after 2000, I was terrified I might never come back from bitterness and fear, disappointment in things I will not speak of in a blog where one wrong word can injure, rot, fester or pierce.

But I can tell you that I also choose. But because of my position and parts of my story, I might be dismissed as merely self-referential.

There are times we must recognize our power in the heirarchy and CHOOSE to make our voices and deeds speak for others.

Thank you for that fire in your belly. THank you for the kindness in your eyes. And thank you for caring enough to wrestle and argue and piss and to moan over the troubles of the day. You could certainly choose to do otherwise.

Dunno waht others feel. But I can tell you many's been the time I used my place in my own worlds to ensure access and opportunity, bulwark and learning for another. It's my job where I walk. It's my job.

So I'm grateful to occassionally hear a vaulting paen to the truth of the Other Classes.

Since the rich already pays most of the income taxes in this country, taxing them more, even at 100% probably would not get the money you desire - you'll have to go where the big money is: the middle class (YOU)

I even remember a friend, in a good union nob, refusing overtime because he only made pennies per hour after the tax

Jan: I think you are another shill like Joe the plumber. I was involved for over 30 years with six unions and my colleagues grabbed all the overtime they could get. They were left with lots more than "pennies per hour." Why don't you give Joe a call and trade bullshit with him?

Jan: stop talking about your "friends" and talk about yourself for a while. Get real. What's motivating you? Get real about that. See if you can get a harmonic flow instead of merely creating a disturbance.

And, by the way, salt that down with some references to some articles in respected or respectable sources, some evidence that you have done more than masturbate to Rush Limbaugh's windy rants. In other words: substantivize yourself.

Right now you look and feel like an idler who just happened by and is bored.

The middle class actually pay most of the taxes in this country. The rich seem to have no problem paying theirs and still seem to have plenty left over to conspicuously consume. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But, schools and education cost money, our roads, bridges and infrastructure are crap and we could really use a better system of mass transit in this country. There is no magic fairy going to come to pay for and build these things no matter how many times we cut taxes.

There is, in short, no free lunch folks.

Oh, by the way according to reports that have surfaced, 'Joe the plumber' is a relative of Charles Keating. Hilarious.

I'd settle for a top bracket of 50% along with the establishment of a graduated capital gains tax to capture some of that investment income that jan mentions.

Remind me NEVER to have a conversation with a presidential candidate - the way Joe the Plumber, Gold Star mothers and others have become fodder for the news media and the campaigns has been pretty sad. Joe asked a legitimate question and has a right to his views, I'd hate to think what the national media would be saying about me if I was caught on tape expressing skepticism about a politician's plan. And by the way, I have no problem with ignorant racists, unreptant terrorists or divisive pastors being called out.

Is Jan a shill?

"Income tax proper". That is not a lay term, if it is not a mistake.

Tom Civiletti .... Adding Oregon's 9% tax rate to the 91% federal rate you mention above DOES make it a, let's see ... 100% marginal tax rate (minus the small effect of the $5600 federal tax subtraction on the Oregon return that would leave it at about 99.7%). I'm guessing that there would be some negative effect on productivity for people in this bracket.

Go ahead and hold to your moral position of "I got mine, screw the rest." It's an honest position.

Precisely. When you cut away the rest of the rhetoric, this is the crux of both big-L Libertarianism and the GOP version thereof (which is sort of Libertarianism with an imperial army and navy).

Taxes are your membership dues to be part of society. Of course, if you don't want to be part of society, you can go join the rest of those rugged individualists in Alaska, livin' off the land, huntin' moose, and collectin' their annual checks from the State of Alaska, by gum. You betcha.

rural resident,

A top federal bracket of 91% would require increased deductibility at the state level. But that's not your point, is it?

I was listening to tape of Joe the Plumber laying out his political beliefs for reporters. I noticed that his frame of reference never goes beyond himself. There is Joe. There is the government. There are other people. He has no concept of himself as part of a society. There is only the pseudo-patriotic disorder that sees everything done by the homeland as right and glorious.

This may be a consistent attribute of folks like Joe and jan: an infantilism that sees everything economic in terms of the ego and approaches the political as a fairytale. Should conservatism be considered a symptom of arrested psychological development?

Rural, Jan, et. al: are you suggesting that the mega-wealthy will quit their lives and become habitues of the undergirdings of our bridges should they be asked to give more of their material wealth above an amount I know that I shall never see? That the trauma of such would so disrupt their abilities to be motivated they would cease to arise from their beds to make more money, every morning?

This is what it seems you might be saying, beneath the heavy armor of what is becoming increasingly opaque reasoning to me.

oops. sorry about the tortured syntax.

"This may be a consistent attribute of folks like Joe and jan: an infantilism that sees everything economic in terms of the ego and approaches the political as a fairytale. Should conservatism be considered a symptom of arrested psychological development?"

Civiletti: I say yes, perhaps. I will not indulge in a personal aneCdote. But I'll tell you I have direct experience with the loss of one's good politics under the duress of survival.

These people seem to display a pathological and ingrained sense of survivalism. This is a fear-based economy of self. We all have it to one degree or another: but this is a social justice adjustment disorder indeed - continue working only to buffer Self, and do not face one's fear - that one may be forced to ask for help and receive it. From Others.

social justice adjustment disorder

well put!

... and actually, I misstated. The terror of scrambling for any gig, any project work, any manual labor you can win so as to get that last five bucks for the rent is actually the terror that if you MUST ask for help you will not receive it.

For those who have never faced true survival challenges and fought the good war to do your part and get it done, heh, well, the first terror for them is on the frontlines of ego. The humility / humiliation factors of even asking for help.

But behind this is another frontier: that you will not receive it - five bucks to make that last bit is literally how it gets. And there are people who live this way for years on end.

Man, I've seen good, honest, thrifty folks live their entire lives like this! And I was lucky not to be amongst the unwashed masses bogeyman of entitlements-minded impoverished [as the conservatives like to categorize those who finally cannot believe this is right and correct that they cannot get a breath to get a foot to get a hand to get themselves safe again] - I've been amongst those whose survival strategy was to ACCEPT this and deal with it to the end of their days.

Tom ...

A top federal bracket of 91% would require increased deductibility at the state level. But that's not your point, is it?

My point was that 91 + 9 = 100, and that 100% is pretty much a confiscatory tax rate. I'm curious why you think that Oregon would increase the amount of the deduction for federal taxes on the state return. As I think the upcoming election will show, there isn't much interest on the part of Oregon citizens for increasing the $5600 current limit.

Rebecca Whetstine ... No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm not against reworking the tax system and increasing marginal tax rates. I even favor raising the lid on Social Security and Medicare deductions if it would give us single-payer national health care.

However, we shouldn't go crazy about increasing tax rates to ridiculous levels. We want people to keep working and producing. In order to do that, they need to be able to hold onto a reasonable amount of the compensation for the marginal labor product they offer to society. Would you really be interested in going to work in November and December of each year if you knew that the result of that effort wouldn't net you any additional pay? If so, you're unlike most of us.

rural resident,

The current situation does not include a 91% top tax bracket, so that is not a reason for changing Oregon's rules for tax deductibility now.

Do you think there is much chance of returning to the 91% rate? I doubt it myself.

re: Joe being a shill, did anybody actually watch the video? Joe was playing football with his kid when bama stumped through the neighborhood and approached Joe. Just because someone is articulate and doesn't bow at the feet of bama doesn't mean they are a plant. Get a grip people.

As far as taxes, a principle of taxation is to tax what you want to limit, cigarettes, alcohol, etc, so let's tax success! In this age of irrationality that makes perfect sense. And what are these taxes for? So some artist that nobody would give the time of day to, let alone pay for their crap can get a gov'ment handout. There is so much waste, we could do all the social stuff they wanted if they got rid of the crap the government shouldn't be into. Anybody read Atlas Shrugged?

As far as overtime, I've personally been at edge of the next tax bracket so that a little overtime I got less money, I had to work a lot of overtime to make it worth it, so most of the time I didn't. So the person you're criticizing had a valid point.

<h2>By the way Acorn is doing questionable stuff in almost every state it's in, check it out. Acorn is funded by the dems and especially bama. I haven't heard of anything by the pubs, For you're info I watch the network news and I'm not a republican, I'm a constitutionalist. Both parties are concerned with preservation of their own power and screw the constitution.</h2>