@unknownuser said:

Now that I have two children and can barely take care of putting money away for their future I'm less able to give to charity.

I would agree for myself, too (though it's wife & 1 child). If our taxes were lower, we could probably afford to give more to charities - which would be markedly better than giving it to the government.
Overall, charities averaged around 84% efficient in 2004 - meaning that 84% of the money goes to the needy, with 16% to administering the organization. The (US) government is the reverse of that - only 30% efficient, with 70% going to the bureaucracy! I don't know if other national governments are equally pathetic, but it certainly makes me doubt the efficacy of government programs (and the sanity of the candidates who propose/support them).

So, how about a flat 12% tax with a credit for charitable giving?
And prohibiting campaign contributions from sources other than private citizens (and then with caps)?
And as long as we're dreaming, how about balanced-budget legislation?

@tomsdesk said:

@rickw said:

tomsdesk, I'm asking a couple of honest questions:

1. do you believe the Obama campaign has not engaged in any questionable ads or accusations?
2. do you believe the mainstream media has treated the candidates equally?

The reason I ask is your earlier posts seem to indicate you think the only lies/innuendos/deceptions in this campaign come from the McCain campaign. Would you exert the same energy to combat the lies/innuendos/deceptions from the Obamedia campaign?

Rick, I'll answer your "honest" (I hope so?) questions...in spite of the baiting phrasing of your qualifying follow-ups: But only as far as an honest answer to a reasonable question, not as an opening statement to some sort of debate. I am quite impressed by Phil's eloquence about these matters, in several threads now, and I'd rather think about what he's been saying here than what you might want me to think about after this post.

1. Because I mistrust most of what all politians say, thus discounting 10 or 20% on either end of all their rhetoric, I usually only fact check the middle of what they spew; and because I don't at all search for "ammunition" (unless provoked :`), I get my gut's fill from the few ads played here in redder than redder Kansas, and the way too many played as "news" on the national news programs I watch: I have to say no, I have not seen any "questionable ads or accusations" by Obama (and yes I have fact checked some of Obama's claims as well).

Since I believe you're basically honest, I'll take it you were not aware of Obama's ad ridiculing McCain for not "knowing how" to use email (despite the fact that McCain's war injuries to his hands prevent him from typing, or that McCain was labeled "the most cybersavvy" candidate in Jacob Weisberg's Slate article in 2000). There are others, though O has had the luxury of letting the media do most of the smearing.

@tomsdesk said:

2. I have to answer an emphatic NO! to this one. I believe all the "mainstream" media, with maybe the exception of PBS, has become corporate media with an agenda of their own based on viewership and ratings: greed. Case in point: several well qualified democratic candidates were swept under the rug early on in favor of the novelty of the first female or the first black president.

I understand your point about the Dem primary race, but I was referring to McCain and Obama. So, to clarify, do you think the media has treated the McCain-Palin and Obama-Biden tickets equally? And as follow-up: I agree the MSM have their own agenda, but considering their ever-shrinking market share, I doubt it has to do with viewership and ratings so much as it has to do with ideology. I personally find it sadly amusing that Fox News is branded as "right-wing" not because it is right-wing, but because it isn't left-wing.

Also, I'm sorry that you felt there was a "baiting" tone in my follow-up (though I understand how you would take it that way, since we've traded barbs before), but that was a serious, honest question as well. However, since you said you only dig for dirt when provoked, I'll restate the question: Would you be as incensed about dishonesty in the Obama campaign as you seem to be with the McCain campaign?

My experience with other people (regardless of affiliation) is that if the "other side" does it, it's dirty, but if their side does it, it's excusable (if it even registers). For example, for how many years (decades?) has the Dem party played the class-warfare card against Rep proposals to control government spending on social programs (despite the fact that around 70% of the money in those programs goes to the machinery of the program - the bureacracy - rather than to the intended recipients)?

@unknownuser said:

I read the expression "predatory taxes" in one of the comments above (not one of yours, Ron). Made me cringe. For f*ck's sake, why is solidarity such a hard concept for some? At one point, I made roughly € 8000 ($ 10766.83) a month (ah! such a brief period of bliss it was! ), of which I got to keep (again: roughly) € 2000 ($ 2691.70). The rest went to the government. Did I mind? No. Roads need to be built, sick people need to be cared for, teachers need a paycheck, pensions need to be paid - the list goes on.

Man, I'm sorry you had to pay predatory taxes (and those certainly were predatory). I'd be puking, too, if I had to pay taxes like that. But I'm more dismayed that you didn't mind handing over your money to the bureaucracy.

I agree that the government provides some necessary services that need funding (defense and transportation infrastructure come to mind), but there are some services the government has no business providing - and when it tries, the results are dismal.

@unknownuser said:

@unknownuser said:

we start down the socialist/communist road.

I have seen the "free enterprise" model fail over and over. At least 4 times in my life...the recent (cash grab) is number four. Democracy?...what a farce. Freedom....what a farce. The free economy? - completely exploitive. It is a model that just cannot work.

Though the free enterprise model has had some failures, that is not the same as it being a failure in and of itself. I'm not aware of a free enterprise system that has collapsed the way the Soviet Union's socialist-communist system did (unless you are referring to post-WWI Germany, but even that was not the fault of the system so much as a result of the overly harsh punitive actions against Germany). Even China has recognized that the Soviet model is unworkable, and has permitted limited private enterprise.

You say it cannot work, but it has outlasted every other system.

I'll agree that direct democracy is a farce at the national level - it only works at the local level, and then only for selecting representatives. If the people directly decided every issue that came up, forget it.

@unknownuser said:

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

Freedom is a farce? Would you please elaborate?

Part of the issue is that CEO's are a commodity subject to the laws of supply and demand. But should we regulate their pay? If we try, we start down the socialist/communist road.

To take your $10M boat example - the sale of that boat pays the salesman and the manufacturer. The manufacturer pays their upper- and middle-management, employees, and suppliers. The suppliers pay their management, employees, and suppliers. And so on. The money doesn't all stay in one place. Relating to the bread example - it's not genetically coded for a single person, it gets shared.

As for the flat tax - I'm glad we agree that it's equitable (even desirable). What I don't understand is how the flat tax can be equitable, but the graduated tax (where more income = higher percentage) results in the rich "not paying their fair share". That one still gets me.

Anyway, here's something else that needs to be put to rest: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/terry-trippany/2008/10/12/nyt-pulls-misleading-account-palin-puck-dropping-ceremony

tomsdesk, I'm asking a couple of honest questions:

1. do you believe the Obama campaign has not engaged in any questionable ads or accusations?
2. do you believe the mainstream media has treated the candidates equally?

The reason I ask is your earlier posts seem to indicate you think the only lies/innuendos/deceptions in this campaign come from the McCain campaign. Would you exert the same energy to combat the lies/innuendos/deceptions from the Obamedia campaign?

Here's a freebie quote...

@unknownuser said:

We can't expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism.

@hfm said:

To this day the only innovative thing they did to the software was to create shiny buttons.

Sorry, but I disagree - in v6, WebDialogs and Observers opened up vast new territory for ruby authors, and we've still only scratched the surface of what is possible.

@tomsdesk said:

Rick, your comparison is coincidental at best without further data...deceiving is more the case.

I think the term you're searching for is "historically accurate". If you don't like CATO, try the Joint Economic Committee's report (1996).

@unknownuser said:

it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to lower the rates now.
and this (same person)

@unknownuser said:

[I propose] an across the board, top to bottom cut in both corporate and personal income taxes. It will include long-needed tax reform that logic and equity demand. [...] The billions of dollars this bill will place in the hands of the consumer and our businessmen will have both immediate and permanent benefits to our economy. Every dollar released from taxation that is spent or invested will help create a new job and a new salary. And these new jobs and new salaries can create other jobs and other salaries and more customers and more growth for an expanding American economy. (emphasis added)

Please, no posting the source until the poll has ended.

Using the data from the IRS, note that as the tax rate for the top 1% of earners dropped, their share of total income taxes increased. That's right - they paid a greater part of the tax burden when their average tax rate was lower (in particular, lower than 30%).

So, does that make any sense? Of course it does. dcke88 asked why his family should be penalized for earning more. And that's the question anyone in a higher bracket will ask. When the rich are demanded to "pay their fair share" (which they already do), two things happen:
First, there is less incentive to cross a threshold when the tax burden is greater, which could wipe out any gains in increased income (depending on the amount above the threshold).
Second, the top earners will do more to shield their income from predatory taxes (above 30% average rate), resulting in paying a smaller proportion of the total tax bill. This would be more evident if the data covered more than 20 years.

A similar phenomenon happens with capital gains taxes - the lower the rate, the higher the tax income.

If everyone paid a flat 10% tax, that would be equitable, would it not? Each person would pay the same proportion of their income - their "fair share" - right? So how is it that the graduated brackets we have now leave some with the impression that the rich aren't paying their "fair share"?

Answer: class-envy rhetoric from leftist politicians incites people to:

1. believe the lies that the rich are being carried by the poor and the middle class.
2. think that making the rich "pay their fair share" should mean reducing their net income (via hight taxes) to the same level as a person at poverty level (overstated to illustrate the point, but there are some - read "communists" - who probably do believe that).

So, what does that mean in terms of this thread? Obama's rhetoric on "irresponsible" tax cuts for the rich and increasing capital gains taxes for "fairness" is poor fiscal policy feeding on class envy - something that needs to be exposed and "put to rest".

Several of those requested items are already included in version 4.

@tomsdesk said:

Alinsky: thank for the heads-up, sounds like someone interesting to read...and kuddos to Obama for studying him!

Kudos for studying a Machiavellian? Horse puckey (to quote you). If you really think that the ends justify the means, then you have absolutely no business complaining about anything you've complained about or mentioned so far, and you have no business saying anything else about the campaign, period. In fact, if you really believe that, you should applaud any smear tactic against Obama OR McCain as an embodiment of that philosophy.

That is, unless you intend to claim hypocrisy...

@schreiberbike said:

Would you believe that the 400 richest American families have more wealth than the the bottom half of American families put together. Is this healthy? Inequality has never been this high before. The last time it was close was the year before the great depression. Could there be a connection?
Full image here: http://www.thenation.com/special/images/extreme_inequalitychart.jpg

There's no connection, and it's irresponsible (though not unexpected) for The Nation to claim one. Charts like that are only good for class warfare hysteria to support socialist ideologies of income redistribution. To analyze the graph, note how much the ratio dropped after the 1929 crash, despite an unchanged tax rate combined with 25% unemployment. As unemployment exploded, the ratio should have climbed - unless the super-rich were losing disproportionately more income than the poor were, and with the losses went the means for providing jobs. If the claim were accurate, then the Depression should have ended around 1932, once the ratio got back to "normal".

No, the only connection between then and now is that average people (not the super-rich) were overextended on debt-to-income. The question is how they got overextended. The [url=http://www.lewrockwell.com/suprynowicz/suprynowicz95.html:212zuz9f]current answer[/url:212zuz9f] is liberal social policy, specifically the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, pushed by a Democrat-controlled Congress and signed by a Democrat President, then broadly expanded by another Democrat President in 1995 - forcing lenders to approve large numbers of subprime loans (loans to people without the demonstrable means of paying back). This was exacerbated by Democrats stonewalling regulatory efforts throughout the first half of this decade that might have lessened the impact we are seeing now.

The problem is (generally) left-leaning politicians who think "economic growth" is higher taxes and massive government spending. It makes little sense for the fed to take money, filter it through a fed bureaucracy that doles it back out to state bureaucracies who then put it to work back where it came from, resulting in only a fraction of each dollar actually doing anything where that dollar originated. We as a society have become so entitlement-minded, thinking the government owes us handouts, that we forget it was the money we earned in the first place that is getting filtered back to us at a loss. I'm not giving a pass to Republicans, either, some of whom (especially G W Bush) have adopted the same "money is the answer" mentality.

@solo said:

um... If indeed Obama does win it will be the first time you 'pick up some slack' as currently you pay proportionately less taxes and the poor and middle class carry you thanks to Bush's tax cut for the rich.

That was a thoroughly uninformed statement. See [url=http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/05in05tr.xls:212zuz9f]the IRS data[/url:212zuz9f] on who is paying how much of the taxes, from 1986 to present, then get back with us on who's carrying whom.

@dcke88 said:

i know i am a newbie here, but under Obama's plan, why is my family being penalized for making more money?

FYI - my wife is the one who's job pushes us into the higher tax bracket.

It's not a penalty, it's an involuntary opportunity for you to be more patriotic. At least, that's the word according to Joe Biden.

@solo said:

WTF is up with all this marxist, communist, socialist talk, missing the cold war? need another McCarthy era?

We all remember (and are taught) the evils of the fascist Nazi Party in Germany during the 1930s-40s, but we seem to gloss over (or forget, or be ignorant of) the evils of communism/socialism. The fascists killed about 10 million in the 20th century - the communists killed about 100 million. Just for that reason alone, we should be much more seriously concerned about communism than we are. Paul Kengor had [url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/why_obamas_communist_connectio.html:212zuz9f]this to say[/url:212zuz9f] about it.

@unknownuser said:

The culture of greed has been allowed to progress to the point that the wealthy literally have more money than they know what to do with. They certainly are not trickling it down. And if the tax laws allow them to keep more of it than they are not pulling their proportionate share of the cart.

With all due respect: First, please check the IRS data for who is paying the bulk of the income taxes. Second, I'll agree that some of them probably have more money than they know what to do with (Paris Hilton comes to mind, who clearly has more dollars than sense), but many of them give away a considerable amount of money through foundations and charities, invest in enterprises that create jobs, and buy stuff (tons of stuff!), thus sending the money back into the economy. Trickling? Probably not. More like "pouring". And more and more families are getting "rich" (breaking the $250,000 bracket), too - through hard work, perseverance, and an entrepreneurial spirit, more are in the top tax bracket than 20 years ago, pouring more money into taxes. Yes, the rich are getting richer, but at the same time, more people are getting "rich" - and not by inheriting it.

Also, the "culture of greed" doesn't apply only to the rich - if it weren't for greed and envy, there would be no discussion of income redistribution.

Would everyone who volunteered to translate please PM me your email address? It will be easier for me to handle things that way.

Thanks,

@gaieus said:

Any chance for arched, Gothic windows with tracery and such?
(JK)

It's designed for storefront or curtainwall types of windows like Kawneer and so on. That said, it has been used for all kinds of things I did not expect (and which I have tried to maintain as best I could).

They have been aware of problems, but you have done a great job detailing the exact behavior. Waiting for a fix...

There is a way, I think. Just a matter of time...

Nice detective work!

@unknownuser said:

Funny thing Rick, I had never attached you to the Windowizer product. You know there is so much in the forum. It does explain a few things for me. The product looks just great!!

Thanks I'm thinking now, though, that I might have been better off sticking to the ruby forum These discussions are interesting, but time consuming...

@unknownuser said:

My personal observations re your character are of course just anecdotal.

No problem.

You need to prevent the observer from doing anything when using a ruby to modify the geometry, otherwise you will get the bug splat every time (at least in my experience). Google is aware of the issue.

Herodes' suggestion may work as well (or in addition).

I guess I should refrain from overbroad generalizations, eh?