"We lifted up the defeated nations of Japan and Germany, and..."

[JHB]

"...stood with them as they built representative governments."
-- His Squandership last night.

A little reminder about conditions back then:

At the time corporate income taxes provided 25-30% of Federal revenue (about 3-4 times what they do now), and the top marginal rate on personal income taxes ranged between 82 and 92% on incomes above $200K-400K (equivalent to several million dollars today after adjusting for inflation).

Needless to say, Chim-Chim isn't putting his (own) money where his mouth is.

[Punkingal]

1. I was furious when he said that......

to compare this mess to WWII is just disgusting, but of course no one in the media will point that out. Or that most of what we are rebuilding is what we destroyed with our "shock and awe" bombing campaign.

[glarius]

2. There is NO COMPARISON to what was done back then

The United States did a noble thing then...and THEY DID NOT START THE WAR!....All other countries (including mine, Canada) admire what America did at the end of world war 2....The nerve of that little moron in Washington to try to draw a parallel between that and this unlawful war he started!!!

[SpaceCatMeetsMars]

3. After the speech,

I saw Christiane Amanpour pointing out that Bush had invoked the Marshall Plan after the war in Afghanistan and said that they were going to rebuild that country. Look where that is, the whole country is in control of warlords except Kabul, and the Bush administration never followed through with funds or efforts on nation-building there. Why should anyone think they will actually nation-build in Iraq in that case?

It was offensive when Bush walked through the Normandy Cemetery and I thought him invoking WW II last night was offensive too. He is tearing down the progress made by the after WW II generation.

[LittleApple81]

26. I heard Rice is really putting the pressure (and the money)

to make things happen in terms of showing something off in Afghanistan. SHE WANTS TO BE ABLE TO CONTRADICT people who say nothing has been done, but you cannot do in 1 month what was not done in two years.

[Liberal Veteran]

4. One also should note that Germany and Japan....

Were not composed of three distinct ethnic groups that hate each other with a passion.

[Name removed]

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[Isome]

7. WE pay corporate income taxes...

Then I wonder why prices get higher as corporations pay less & less in taxes!

[Liberal Veteran]

8. Wow....two posts and already trotting out the old talking points?

Would those exhorbitant programs include the money we spend on the military budget which is more than the next 20 nations spend combined?

[Name removed]

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[Isome]

10. inflation has largely been restrained, over the years...

That doesn't answer the question. Bread, milk, eggs, butter, rent, clothes... those things still cost more today than they did 20 years ago, yet coporations pay less in taxes today than they did even five years ago.

• In 1965, U.S. federal, state and local corporate income taxes were 4.1 percent of our gross domestic product, compared to 2.4 percent of GDP in the other OECD countries.



• But by 2000, U.S. corporate income taxes had dropped to 2.5 percent of GDP, while corporate income taxes in the other OECD countries had risen to 3.4 percent of GDP. That placed us 22nd among the 29 reporting OECD countries.



• In 2002, the last year for which full federal, state and local figures are available, U.S. corporate taxes plummeted to only 1.5 percent of our GDP. That’s below the most recently reported corporate tax levels in any other OECD country except Iceland.



• Looking only at the U.S. federal tax system, corporate income taxes have fallen to only 1.2 percent of the GDP this year and last—69 percent below their 3.8 percent share of GDP in the 1960s.

So again, if what you said was true (corporate taxes are offset by higher prices for consumers) why have prices continued to go up, on everything, while the amount of taxes paid by corporations has continued to fall?

[Liberal Veteran]

11. I think you took a wrong turn....

How about we just worry about our own security and not trot off for little unnecessary adventures in the Middle East that only serve to settle old grudges and secure profits for Halliburton?

Then maybe we could take about 200 billion that we saved and spend it on the MILLIONS OF AMERICANS WHO GO WITHOUT HEALTHCARE? God forbid we take take care of Americans when we have such incredible boondoggles like "Missle Defense" to pour money into.

BTW. Did it ever occur to you that posting a link to your blog that seems primarily devoted to defending the Chimpy Fucktard we like to call * around here is perhaps not the best way in the world to gain a reputation on a progressive board?

[Isome]

12. We're short on money because of things like this:

Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee has made it clear that he favors a vast expansion in subsidies for offshore tax sheltering. Last year, via H.R. 5095, he proposed $83 billion in additional subsidies to encourage offshore tax avoidance, only slightly offset by the $14 billion in temporary tax-shelters curbs he felt forced to propose in response to public outrage over the Bermuda loophole.

The mythical beauty of the free market, or the government's supposed undue interference in it, are acceptable explanations to those who still believe in Laffer's supply side economics. The rest of us, are well aware of its utter failure.

[trumad]

13. With a blog like the one you're displaying

do you really think that your survivor rate on DU is more than an hour? Read this guy's blog my fellow DU'ers before you waist your time with him...

It's all Clintons fault huh? Idiot!

On edit...I'm referring to JohnHenke up above and here's his blog...
http://www.qando.blogspot.com/

[Name removed]

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[Liberal Veteran]

15. And let me guess: "proseperity is just around the corner"?

This should prove interesting.

[Name removed]

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[Isome]

16. The conclusion is correct...

"Well, this will probably be used as evidence that he's trying to "imply that Iraq was connected with 9/11!", by the people who like to claim that sort of thing.

You can safely ignore those people. Or, for fun, tell them that Democraticunderground ha a report on plans by the Bush administration to hunt Snipes to extinction."

You made it clear who you were, and why you were here with your first post. There's no reason to deny the truth!

[Name removed]

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[Liberal Veteran]

19. Nope.....just don't expect us to fall for...

...your Limbaugh talking points on the evils of taxation and how cutting taxes leads to real growth and how expensive military adventures in third world countries that pose no threat to us is good thing (you are aware we murdered over 7000 people in Iraq) in Bush's new imperialism (and invading a country, overthrowing it's government and installing a government friendly to the US is nothing else but imperialism).

[Name removed]

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[JHB]

22. You're welcome, but...

>- Of course, at the time, we didn't have the exhorbitant spending
>programs that we have now, so the budgets were a lot smaller,
>and the same tax rates would count for less revenue that they do now.

I guess that depends on which programs you consider "exhorbitant spending"

>Also....who do you think *pays* corporate taxes?
>Hint: It's the consumers. WE pay them, in the form of higher prices.

Clue: So what? Then th4e burden is spread throughout the structure. What is unbalancing is creating special priviledged centers that can accumulate great wealth while effectively immune from taxation, while the burden is increasingly put on those struggling to get a little bit ahead or just make ends meet.

> - And, once that rate dropped WAY down, revenue from those
> brackets increased precipitously, as more and more people
>were able to enter the bracket for the first time.

Which drop are you referring to? The Kennedy cut where it was dropped "way down" to 70%? The first Reagan cut, to 50%? Or the second Reagan cut, down into the 30s%? The Reagan-Bush deficits would argue against the latter two...

>Confiscatory taxation is not considered an effective means of
>raising revenue.

It does have the small advantage of discouraging multi-millionaires from chasing every last buck by looting their companies and employees; it also encourages the use of higher-pay carrots over fire-your-ass sticks as employee incentives.

[Bandit]

23. That tired argument has been proven wrong time and time again

They keep bringing it out with the idea if you repeat a lie often enough it will seem to be truth. It ain't the truth if you investigate at all.

[BiggJawn]

6. "...and gave Japan a Constitution written by MacArthur..."

They didn't build shit.
We set it all up for them and they picked it up and ran with it.

As another post has pointed out, Japan (or Germany) was not composed of different ethnic groups that hate each other...

This could be a Talking Point for us today. Because while the Sheeple can name every person who ever got kicked off "Survivor" and give you a synopsis for every episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies", they don't know anything about WWII. Chimpy SAID we "stood by" Japan and Germany, so that's plenty good enough for them. After all, FAUXNEWS says the pretzel-dent never lies....

[Art_from_Ark]

24. Chimpy also said that the US and Japan had had "good relations"

for a century and a half!

[Name removed]

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[redeye]

25. It doesn't matter really what the taxes are

What matters, however, is that Roosevelt and Truman, for all their (especially the latter's) vices, were internationalists who really wanted to do good to the world. You can't say that about Smirk, unless you define "good to the world" as "good to George H. W. Bush."

Besides, look at Germany and Japan. The USA had to do some good to them lest they fall to communism; the same can be said about Iraq and terrorism, but Bush is hardly the one to help people even if it benefits him in the medium-to-long run. Moreover, both nations had very high industrial potentials - now they're the 3rd and 2nd largest economies in the world respectively, the US being the largest - whereas Afghanistan is the world's hellhole and Iraq has nothing but oil and sand, especially after the Iran-Iraq war, Gulf War I, the sanctions, and now the Clone of the Attack.