Dean
 

I take it the whole group left in a huff as soon as he said it and ran to the warm embrace of the GOP?

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

Well, if we're looking for ways to encourage people to save, don't we actually need something to encourage it beyond suggestions that people save?

Besides, if you want people to save for retirement by putting funds away that they can't (easily) withdraw before retirement, there kind of needs to be a reason for people to opt for that kind of account rather than regular savings accounts.

Maybe we can solve the problem of the poor not saving enough by banning them from getting cable TV, big-screen TVs, season tickets to the NBA, and any other number of luxury items they should not indulge in.

Dean
 

I think that's reaching. If you do go to a R rally/meeting/whatever, you WILL mostly only see blacks in the waitstaff. We can call him racist about this when our tent gets bigger. Not now, though.

Dean
 

What is the racist part? Did he make some Holocaust jokes afterward, or what?

Dean
 

Judge for yourself:

• "You think the Republican National Committee could get this many people of color in a single room?," Dean asked to laughter. "Only if they had the hotel staff in here."
  
  His style ever will be blunt: "We have to never be afraid to say what we believe," he insists

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/02/15/122832.php

presidential fetish
 

This reminds me of the old story about George S. Kauffman, who was a screenwriter and playwright who worked with, inter alia, the Marx Brothers. Kaffman was eating in the NBC Commissary one day when a studio exec walked past him. The exec ran his head over Kauffman's bald head and remarked, "That's as soft as my wife's bottom."

"Yes. Yes it is," Kauffman replied.

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

Well, they can't buy NHL tix. Not sure if the effect will be an appreciable one.

Dean
 

You can't be serious

Dean
 

What was racist about it? The restaurant industry in this part of the country is entirely dependent on people of color (specifically Hispanics). I don't think it's much different in any other part of the country.

Go rent A Day Without a Mexican. Or better yet, go out to lunch and take a look at the people who are working in the restaurant.

ETA link to movie and statement that same applies for hotel industry.

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

Our entire governmental philosophy is based on the idea that we gently suade people to engage in "correct" behavior. Are you dissenting?

Dean
 

You are an incompetent fool, an offense
against the world.

Dean
 

Again, although Bilmore said it better. The comment wasn't racist; it was a slam on Republicans.

Dean
 

Not all mentions of race equate to racism.

Truth is a defense as to each side of that statement you might dislike. (Holy Crud -- Dean suggested that the wait staff at a convention hotel is likely to be largely people of color! The horror!)

What Bilmore said.

S_A_M

Dean
 

Club, I don't really like web lingo, but I am rolling on the floor laughing my ass off. Check out this righteous indignation:

"So, does Howard Dean believe that members of the Black Community are disproportionately represented as hotel staff in this country?

It's demeaning, it's belittling, and I'm completely floored that he would level such an insulting remark upon this community. "

Courtesy of: David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com

"All right, we'll give some land to the niggers and the chinks, but we DON'T WANT THE IRISH."

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0071230/quotes

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

People on hotel staffs do not watch hockey.

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

canadianist fuck

Dean
 

Not to detract from your point, which is a good one, but the comment would also be more objectionable if Blacks were not disproportionately employed in lower paid jobs.

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

Not this year, at least.

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

Why can't people who can afford to put away more than $15k a year just invest/save it? Why, bilmore, why?

Dean
 

I'm sure this is whiffing, but this is going a bit overboard. It's not like Hank said it.

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

As you get older, you realize that you can't afford to NOT put away $15k per year, even if your income would have made that a laughable prospect earlier in life.

Plus, we're speaking of trying to encourage socailly desirable behavior. So, yeah, people probably CAN do it - 401k's just make it more likely that they WILL do it.

Why can't we expect people to buy houses without a mortgage deduction?

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

If you make $50k a year, $15k, let alone $20k (if you are over 50) is really not doable. I assume given your groundedness and disdain for effete liberal snobs that you know people who make a piddly $50k a year. What is the median income in the US, anyway?

I think we can expect people to buy houses without the mortgage deduction.

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

And yet, we continue to allow it.

Why, fringey, why?

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

Though not as many, or as expensive.

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

I haven't watched this all season- what is going on? Is Bartlett still in office or did it jump forward 4 years? Last night Josh's old girlfreiend is working with all the Candidates because the Dems have to start winning- they own the WH- help me?

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

It's politically unpalatable to change it. Because many many people at the median income level actually use this, whereas very very few would not use the last $5k of a $20/25k 401(k) limit. People like you and me would use the last $5k. Just put your money in the bank and stop asking for special treatment, rich guy. If you want tax benefits, take out a second mortgage.

ETA also, the mortgage industry/realty industry/homebuilding industry makes a shitload of money off that tax deduction. It won't just be individuals protesting getting rid of the deduction.

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

I'm OK with that. But I might just be bitter. See above as to actual use by large numbers of people.

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

Bartlett's winding down his term, apparently with the aid of a stripped-down staff because half of them have joined competing campaigns for the Dem nomination. They occasionally have an episode featuring Bartlett, but the Prez has a much smaller role in the series these days.

Agree that the girlfriend's comment that the "Dems have to start winning" isn't entirely consistent with the show's internal history, but I imagine that it's one of those scraps of "reality" that is intended to draw in you conservative types as viewers.

(It's also one of those small hints that tells me I should search the board to see how the GOP did in the recent elections. I hear you guys did pretty well.)

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

you're also ignoring the principle of taxing consumption rather than income.

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

how--because people would pay cash otherwise? Or because people take out larger mortgages?

The real problem with eliminating it is that it would depress home values, and with 67% of americans owning homes, that's a pretty good constituency.

The only way to get rid of it without massive displacement is to phase it out--e.g., drop 5% of the deduction each year for 20 years (so only 95% of interest is deductible this year, 90% the following year, and so on)

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

Amen. Right now, it truly serves no purpose for the homeowners - it's priced into home values completely. And an abrupt end would be painful - like killing rent control in one day would be. We need to be weaned off of it - all it does now is make people think they're getting some benefit. They're not.

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

I'll be bitter too. No tax laws are immutable, but the endurance of the mortgage deduction is something that encourages people to make long term decisions like calculating in the deductions you earn from paying shitloads of interest. It's one thing to have that deduction unavailable as a going-forward proposition, but the prospect of having it yanked away after the purchase has been made is a real pain in the ass.

ETA, yeah, what Burger and bilmore said. Weaning it away would make it an easier experience.

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

See my and Bilmore's posts as to why the two are basically no different as problems. Unless negative equity doesn't concern you.

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

No reasonable person could look at the historical record and think that FDR wanted privately-funded annuities to replace the government-funded benefits.

Here's what FDR said:

• In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, non-contributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps thirty years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.

No one who reads this with any care could possibly think that FDR wanted the "voluntary contributory annuities" to replace the "compulsory contributory annuities" (i.e., what we call Social Security). The point of the last sentence is that the "old-age pension plan," for the benefit of people who would be retiring soon, would be replaced over time by "compulsory annuities," not -- as Hume suggested -- that either the pension plan or the government-funded Social Security would be replaced by voluntary contributions.

The only way you can read this and think Hume got it right is if your eyes glaze over when you first hit the word "annuity" and you stop paying attention. Which is exactly what Hume, FOX and other supporters of the President are hoping will happen.

Exactly as I said -- the only way to defend Hume on the substance is to pay no attention to the words FDR used, and what they meant. Hume certainly attributed "a notion" to FDR. That notion had nothing to do with what FDR said, but figuring that out would involve a little work, so don't bother.

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

Agree that they're joined as problems.

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

Were you a Puritan in a prior life?

She's a Democrat. I'm a Democrat. Income taxes are immensely preferable to consumption taxes.

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

No reasonable person would propose that that's what's been said here.

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

I know that you don't support what Bush is trying to do, so there's no need to pretend that I support what "every Dem leader" has said on the subject for "decades." I think it would be great if we could tweak SS to ensure that it will be solvent for decades to come. For example, (1) raise the retirement age somewhat, (2) raise the cap on earnings subject to SS somewhat, and (3) establish formulas based on economic data for the next many years so that (1) and (2) are automatically rejiggered if the economy does somewhat better or worse than expected.

If Bush did this, no one could really argue, and he would take away the Dems' refrain that the GOP is trying to end Social Security. But he'd rather kill the system than save it.

Brit Hume, deceptive hack
 

No, I'm not ignoring it. I think that income should be taxed. I'm OK with sales (consumption) taxes, but I don't in any way think they should replace income taxes.

Phasing out the mortgage deduction works for me. It will depress (or, in some areas, just slow the growth of) home prices, which will hurt mortgage lenders (smaller mortgages) and realtors (smaller commissions) and will fuck up places that depend heavily on property taxes for income (Texas). C'est la vie.

STP
 

Bitch, please. What he said was in no way racist.

Speaking to the Congressional Black Caucus, here's what Dean said:

• "You think the Republican National Committee could get this many people of color in a single room?," Dean asked to laughter. "Only if they had the hotel staff in here."

Here's what Ramesh Ponnuru said about the tired conservative attacks on Dean for saying that:

• Give me a break. Dean is saying, hyperbolically, that there aren't many blacks or other nonwhites in the Republican party. He's right. I've been to many, many Republican dinners where most nonwhites present have been serving the food. (Or giving the keynote.) If Republicans are bothered when people make that observation, they should try to make it less true.

linky

eta: Sorry not to STP. Clearly, bilmore has Ponnuru's proxy.