Comments for I HAVE HEARD THE MERMAIDS SINGING

Comment on To quote Mr. Thurber: my life and welcome to it. by Bill

Bill — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 15:03:07 +0000

Glad you have sight, glad Buddy is ok. I’ve had lifelong floaters (fascinated me as a kid lo those many decades ago), and yep, you’ll edit them out soon enough. Hang in there — in the words of Red Green, “Remember, I’m pullin’ for ya — we’re all in this together.”

Comment on The rich are very different from you and me. For one thing, they’re cheaper. by Bill

Bill — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 23:43:04 +0000

I work in fund raising, and I find it interesting that the middle 60% wasn’t discussed in that article. An obvious answer to the poorest giving a greater percentage of their income is that giving even tiny amounts when one is poor means it’ll likely be a greater percentage of one’s income. And as the poor are likely to be devoting less to savings, taxes, education, and frivolous purchases, money from the wealthy (and the unmentioned middle-class) goes into more buckets than does money from the poor. Further, there may be interesting issues with how “charitable giving” is defined: generally, that includes donations to one’s place of worship, and even tiny weekly gifts add up quickly if one is poor — it’s pretty easy to give a significant percentage of one’s income to charity when one doesn’t have much income.

I note the article doesn’t mention how income is defined: before or after taxes, say. It’s actually a pretty sketchy article — it quotes statistics w/o saying how folks arrived at them. As a fund raiser, both from a perspective of raising moderate amounts from lots of folks and from raising large amounts from individuals, I, um, ah, definitely don’t see folks suddenly targeting folks in the poorest zip codes: discretionary income to give to charities isn’t there. Or, rather, it’s there, but is already spoken for.

Comment on A “Must Read” about the history of the history we thought we knew. [UPDATED] by Bill

Bill — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 22:39:53 +0000

Glad you’re still posting!

Is the assumption that “Nixon’s emissaries” did this after LBJ announced he wasn’t running for re-election? Or did they undercut him before he became a lame duck?

Comment on One last once, because Paul Ryan just plain pisses me off. by Bill

Bill — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:36:22 +0000

Not sure — there are guys who do that and it seems they’re only looking at one small piece or narrow solution, and dialogue in the comment section rarely rises to the level of discussion.

Comment on One last once, because Paul Ryan just plain pisses me off. by Jack Curtin

Jack Curtin — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 13:05:09 +0000

You gotta love Facebook.

Comment on One last once, because Paul Ryan just plain pisses me off. by Paul

Paul — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:23:32 +0000

It’s a good thing you did post this here. It didn’t show up in my FB feed at all, and it’s a good article.

Comment on One last once, because Paul Ryan just plain pisses me off. by Jack Curtin

Jack Curtin — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:48:56 +0000

Maybe all those beer-drinkers over at Liquid Diet could benefit from a political rant or two, ya think? Best of both worlds?

Comment on One last once, because Paul Ryan just plain pisses me off. by Bill

Bill — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:46:26 +0000

I hope you keep the site running. I rarely comment here, but always read the posts and listen to the songs. If you stop, no worries — I’ll see you at Liquid Diet — but I do like the political rants.

Comment on One last once, because Paul Ryan just plain pisses me off. by Tracy Goodwin

Tracy Goodwin — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:51:28 +0000

I love how he is right back to those mystical revenue neutral tax cuts and without the details. If he really wants those tax cuts he needs to figure out where that money could come from. I bet he either doesn’t care to figure out where the money will come from or he doesn’t want to say because most people won’t like the answer.

Now I would bet we could get revenue neutral cuts if his proposed 25% tax bracket for the top were absolute. That is it actually took 25% of top earners income with no deductions or loop holes. That combined with an absolute 25% corporate tax rate without all the special tax breaks would probably be able to do revenue neutral tax reform. But I doubt that is what he wants.

Comment on Some things I have posted on the Facebook since last we met… by Jack Curtin

Jack Curtin — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 00:56:49 +0000

Indeed.

http://jackcurtin.wordpress.com/about-2/