Romney's Money | Taxes vs Tithe

[idea]

As far as Romney is concerned, he gave around another 7% to charity in addition to his 10% tithes.

He donated 17% - more than he was taxed. Sounds like a charitable guy to me.

I guess you have to ask yourself, would you rather decide which charities to donate your money to, or would you rather the gov decide which charities they want to donate your money to?

 

[angellous_evangellous]

He donated 17% - more than he was taxed. Sounds like a charitable guy to me.

I guess you have to ask yourself, would you rather decide which charities to donate your money to, or would you rather the gov decide which charities they want to donate your money to?

Sounds like a guy who likes tax deductions.

 

[Scott C.]

Sounds like a guy who likes tax deductions.

Or maybe a guy who likes to give to charity. If I were trying to save money, I'd come out way ahead by not paying tithing and not taking the tax deduction, but I assume you know that.

 

[Reverend Rick]

Sounds like a guy who likes tax deductions.

That's bull Nate. Romney has an accountant do his taxes and he just signs them and writes a check.

I do bet the government would prefer to spend his money rather than let him pick his charities.

 

[Reverend Rick]

At some point, but we're talking about the worst financial crisis in the US since the Great Depression. That took a decade and a world war to get out of; Obama's had 3 years.

good point.

I think that credit availability is better than it would've been if Obama hadn't implemented the measures he did. If you think it's hard to get a loan with the new lending rules, just think of how hard it would've been if your bank had gone under.

Another good point

But what does this mean? The only way I can make sense of it is as your way of saying that your bank account balance has gone down since Obama took office, but I don't see how you can make the leap from that to the conclusion that it went down because of Obama.

The same way you can blame Bush, it comes with the territory.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

The same way you can blame Bush, it comes with the territory.

I didn't say that he was entirely to blame, but I do think he shares in it. And this isn't just me being partisanly bitter or anything; there are good reasons behind my conclusion:

So who is to blame? There’s plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn’t fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn’t do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility … with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here’s a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:​

• The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.
• Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.
• Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.
• Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.
• The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.
• Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.
• Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.
• Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.
• The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.
• An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.
• Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) the crisis is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.

FactCheck.org : Who Caused the Economic Crisis?

These experts, from both political parties, say Bush's early personnel choices and overarching antipathy toward regulation created a climate that, if it did not trigger the turmoil, almost certainly aggravated it. The president's first two Treasury secretaries, for instance, lacked the kind of Wall Street expertise that might have helped them raise red flags about the use of complex financial instruments at the heart of the crisis.

Bush can share the blame for financial crisis - The New York Times


OTOH, I don't see how Obama was to blame for the financial crisis at all. It was already well underway before he was elected.

 

[Reverend Rick]

OTOH, I don't see how Obama was to blame for the financial crisis at all. It was already well underway before he was elected.

So he has has his whole Presidency and 6 trillion dollars of additional debt to turn this thing around.

He has surrounded himself with academics and tried many different ideas with little affect.

He ran for President as a uniter.

The economy is in turmoil.

Our country has never been so divided in a very long time.

If Obama was a ball player, he would be sitting on the bench just about now.

It's time to give the ball to someone else.

He is a good husband and father.

He is a good orator.

He is a poor leader however.

He has not learned the art of the deal.

Our country is standing in it's own way with no leadership.

You can say that he is not responsible for the economy, but he is suppose to fix it.

Not enough time, or just cannot meet the task?

 

[Jeremy Mason]

$12 Trillion Republican Debt Proof

 

[T-Dawg]

I'm no fan of Obama, but I don't see why you would want to intentionally make the problem far worse by putting a Republican in office. What we need is a real socialist, both a socialist congress and a socialist president, and of course a communist judiciary. Most of these "liberals" we get in the Democratic party are moderates at best.

 

[Mathematician]

The US credit rating was downgraded because Congress refused to come up with a suitable tax plan and was threatening to default, not because of Obama. This misinformation is really getting overwhelming. Read S&P's own report.

Although S&P's leadership should be in jail, but that's besides the point.

If you just don't want to vote for a Democrat, come out and say it.

 

[Reverend Rick]

I'm no fan of Obama, but I don't see why you would want to intentionally make the problem far worse by putting a Republican in office. What we need is a real socialist, both a socialist congress and a socialist president, and of course a communist judiciary. Most of these "liberals" we get in the Democratic party are moderates at best.

Dawg, you have just described my worse nightmare. :yes:

 

[Reverend Rick]

If you just don't want to vote for a Democrat, come out and say it.

I thought it went without saying. :yes:

Back at ya, do you ever see yourself voting for a Republican?

In many ways we are no different.

 

[Trey of Diamonds]

I'm no fan of Obama, but I don't see why you would want to intentionally make the problem far worse by putting a Republican in office. What we need is a real socialist, both a socialist congress and a socialist president, and of course a communist judiciary. Most of these "liberals" we get in the Democratic party are moderates at best.

No, no, no. What we need is Moderates in all these positions. Not one extreme or the other. I mostly vote republican because I felt, in the past, that their candidates were more moderate than the other guys. But that has flipped now. The republicans have nothing but extreme right religious nut jobs on the table.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

No, no, no. What we need is Moderates in all these positions. Not one extreme or the other. I mostly vote republican because I felt, in the past, that their candidates were more moderate than the other guys. But that has flipped now. The republicans have nothing but extreme right religious nut jobs on the table.

Wait - you thought that the Republicans were moderate? As long as I've been following politics, they've been extreme right and the Democrats have been centre-right.

American politics has a serious skew to it.

I thought it was funny how Gingritch called Canadian Prime Minister "a conservative" in a speech the other day. While he's far right by Canadian standards, he's probably left of Obama.

 

[Trey of Diamonds]

Wait - you thought that the Republicans were moderate? As long as I've been following politics, they've been extreme right and the Democrats have been centre-right.

American politics has a serious skew to it.

I thought it was funny how Gingritch called Canadian Prime Minister "a conservative" in a speech the other day. While he's far right by Canadian standards, he's probably left of Obama.

Perceptions. Also, more moderate than the other guy doesn't necessarly mean moderate. The democrats just didn't have any contenders in the elections against Bush. Now the republicans have no contenders. Strange cycles. Currently I have little to complain about with Obama and have been pleasantly surpised in some areas, so he's going to end up with my vote this time. Not that it will do much good in Louisiana as few folks here think about there vote, they just select republican and go about their business.

 

[T-Dawg]

Wait - you thought that the Republicans were moderate? As long as I've been following politics, they've been extreme right and the Democrats have been centre-right.

American politics has a serious skew to it.

I thought it was funny how Gingritch called Canadian Prime Minister "a conservative" in a speech the other day. While he's far right by Canadian standards, he's probably left of Obama.

Yes, that's what I'm getting at. It really pains me when people like Rick attack Obama, a moderate conservative, for being too far left. Makes me wonder how this country has survived for so long, with the "moderates" being blatantly capitalist and pro-Christian.