Greatest Corruption Scandal in U.S. History

[Crazyhorse1]

Newsweek. This just in. Former Top Dog in re to Contractor Oversight in Iraq tells all. Newsweek refers to the Contractor scandal (How do you spell Halliburton? and Cheney? and Republican?) as possibly the largest scandal in U.S. History. So, it wasn' t just the oil the big guys were after. We should have known. Wonder who's going to pay the 2 trillion this fiasco is going to end up costing. Not the rich, of course-- they're getting tax cuts and richer by the minute. Not the poor. They are losing benefits. Must be me and you other dumb middle-class marks on this site who can't get it straight that the guy with the brown broom handle might not be our friend.
I came to the realization today that Charlie Sheen is probably less crazy for thinking the government arranged the destruction of the World Trade Center on 911 than I am crazy for not focusing on the fact that Bush is crazier than Charlie Sheen.
Ah well, who wants to live forever? I don't envy you forty five year old pseudo conservatives who believe man started in the garden talking to a snake your final 35 years or so of continued abject exploitable idiocy, or your foggy wars and programmed poverty. I'd rather go out mouthing off. Here the hidden truth in the following link: The current U.S. Government is corrupt and must go or you're going to end up pawning your teeth. Don't think the rich will let you join them. They have filters to keep out guys like you.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11965317/site/newsweek

[Brooklynskinsfan]

a few have been screaming this for a while but no one listeed. im glad its coming out now

[Larry]

It's from MSNBC. They're liberal.

And it's from an ex-government employee. They're always complaining about something.

And it's happening in an election year, so it's clearly political.

And I bet he's writing a book.

Therefore, there's no need to discuss a single thing in the article. Only discuss the byline.

[/sarcasm]

[Thiebear]

Crazyhorse: This is about the 20th time you've done this and I know you can read:

Post the Heading of the Article as the title of the thread (Breaking the Silence)
and put your opinion in the thread itself:

The sanity of Charlie vs. George is debatable...

[DeanCollins]

this will be known as the greatest embelzzelment of all time
since Cheney works for both Halliburton and the Govt.
shorty after dick's job in washington is over, he will officially resume his position at Halliburton and collect his "back pay".

[brewdogmike]

Not the rich, of course-- they're getting tax cuts and richer by the minute.

The wealthiest five percent in this country account for half the total tax revenue -- half!

[Crazyhorse1]

The wealthiest five percent in this country account for half the total tax revenue -- half!

Please cite source and include what percent of the wealth of this country they control. As you know, paying only half, for instance, would be a scandal is they owned more than half, or even much less...considering we believe in a progressive tax and fortunes are in fact made because of U.S. infrastructure paid for by all and used disportionately by corporations and business.

[FlyinO]

Please cite source and include what percent of the wealth of this country they control. As you know, paying only half, for instance, would be a scandal is they owned more than half, or even much less...considering we believe in a progressive tax and fortunes are in fact made because of U.S. infrastructure paid for by all and used disportionately by corporations and business.

Great point.

Let's keep our fingers crossed for possible convictions in the future.

[FullbackIsKey]

you know, it's funny how I agree with people who are a bit older, and can't agree on almost anything with a middle-aged person.

This has been a travesty since we took baghdad and they were trucking in concrete blocks at $800 a slab when they could have used iraqi labor at the iraqi concrete plants, and made concrete for $80 a slab.

[Crazyhorse1]

Your draft thoughts are excellent. I'd love to see GM's worry so much about Young's delivery he winds up in our pocket in the 2nd or we could trade up for him and have the wisdom to do it. Leinart's going to have a career on and off the bench. Bush will be a back up, third down back, maybe a receiver, a returner, but not as much a bust as Desmond Howard. We don't have a need for Jackson, but agree on his ability--consider him the equal of anyone we have but Moss.

[Seabee1973]

this will be known as the greatest embelzzelment of all time
since Cheney works for both Halliburton and the Govt.
shorty after dick's job in washington is over, he will officially resume his position at Halliburton and collect his "back pay".


He does not work for Haliburton anymore and mosy likely he will retire after he gets out of office.

[Zguy28]

He does not work for Haliburton anymore and mosy likely he will retire after he gets out of office.Don't bother...no one will believe you.

[brewdogmike]

Please cite source and include what percent of the wealth of this country they control. As you know, paying only half, for instance, would be a scandal is they owned more than half, or even much less...considering we believe in a progressive tax and fortunes are in fact made because of U.S. infrastructure paid for by all and used disportionately by corporations and business.

Cato has a handy chart (http://www.cato.org/research/fiscal_policy/facts/tax_charts.html). Can't link directly to it because it's a javascript. See "Share of Federal Individual Income Taxes Paid by Income Group, 2003." Top 5% of taxpayers paid 54.4% of the taxes in 2003. The bottom 50% paid 3.5% of the taxes. And it's IRS data, so don't anyone go whining about the chart coming from Cato. I don't have time to plow through IRS spreadsheets all day, but that data is freely available.

Now, there's no way to correlate those figures with "percent of the wealth of this country they control." That data does not exist. You would have to somehow correlate individual tax records with individual balance sheets, and I do not believe that that is legal.

My point was that, if you're asking who will pay when the government spends money, the answer is the wealthiest among us who earn the most, because they pay most of the taxes -- the people who you claim are benefitting the most are the ones who in fact pay out the most.

[altair4]

"And the newspapers, they all went along for the ride...."

These Konservatie Kompassionate Kristians are just killing me with their kindness....

[rincewind]

"And the newspapers, they all went along for the ride...."

These Konservatie Kompassionate Kristians are just killing me with their kindness....


I know that lyric. ;)

[brewdogmike]

"And the newspapers, they all went along for the ride...."

These Konservatie Kompassionate Kristians are just killing me with their kindness....

So it's not enough that Republicans are corrupt, they're bigots and insane religious fanatics, too, huh? Nice.

[Cskin]

In all this talk of taxes... have anyone of you ever thought what the forefathers intended? Do you think they wrote "all men are created equal", excluding negroes at the time which was wrong, yet envisioned a tax system in this country in which half the country's income earners pay 96% of all income taxes? HALF THE COUNTRY's INCOME EARNERS DO NOT PAY INCOME TAXES!!!!!

When you talk about taxes..... realize that those who received a tax break or credit PAYED TAXES. Giving tax breaks and credits to those who DON'T PAY INCOME TAXES is called CHARITY or WELFARE or an ENTITLEMENT PROGRAM.

As for the article itself... one man's 20/20 hindsight vision of how things went in Iraq and what could have been done differently. Do you think the reconstruction of Germany, or Japan, or Great Britian happened without corruption? WHen you wake up... please apologize.

[nelms]

Your draft thoughts are excellent. I'd love to see GM's worry so much about Young's delivery he winds up in our pocket in the 2nd or we could trade up for him and have the wisdom to do it. Leinart's going to have a career on and off the bench. Bush will be a back up, third down back, maybe a receiver, a returner, but not as much a bust as Desmond Howard. We don't have a need for Jackson, but agree on his ability--consider him the equal of anyone we have but Moss.
WTF? Uh, do you know what thread you're in? You started the damn thread after all.

[herrmag]

WTF? Uh, do you know what thread you're in? You started the damn thread after all.
:laugh: Sorry, but I agree with you. I get done reading the article, and then see that post.

However, I have to admit, this administration seems to overlook many things. We are performing on a world stage right now, and we're about to get the hook. This admin. seems to think that there will be no repercussions. I hope Dick and GW will enjoy their futures of attending Congressional hearing after Congressional hearing. :doh:

[Johnny Punani2]

look! it's a liberal circle jerk...

[gbear]

Cskin,
you ignore the point. Yes, 50% may pay 96% of the taxes. However if they make 98% of the income, they are paying a lower tax rate than the rest of the population. Taxes are based on percentages not on absolute $ value. I expect to pay more in absolute terms than the secretary. In all honesty though becuase I can afford to buy a house and a few other tax breaks, I probably pay slightly less as a percentage. Fair? The rich get richer and the poor get poorer...makes me happy to be on the side I am.

[Predicto]

The wealthiest five percent in this country account for half the total tax revenue -- half!


Good luck with the derail effort.

[gbear]

Predicto,

ah, I'm a sucker :-)

[brewdogmike]

Good luck with the derail effort.
Huh?

[Predicto]

Huh?

Classic internet debate tactic - if the main subject is awkward to debate on the merits, attempt to change the subject and get everyone talking about that. We all do it on this board, sometimes without even thinking about it. Your effort was just more obvious than most.

Of course, you are still an amateur when compared to the Master of all Masters in this area - our own beloved Kilmer :notworthy

[Baculus]

We have to remember that, under Paul Bremer, the Central Provisional Administration ("CPA") in Iraq lost track of $9 billion in reconstruction money. Let me repeat that - they lost track of NINE BILLION DOLLARS. And whose money was it? Ours.

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/30/iraq.audit/

Also, I remember I posted about this former member of the military who came forward with reports of gross abuse of US funding to private corporations such as Halliburton. What was the response? Basically, who cares. Or, "Don't criticize Halliburton who are feeding our fighting men and women! (Which wasn't true anyway since they used contractors.)

If little noise is made about losing $9 billion, what is going to happen here? Probably nothing.

[Kilmer17]

Classic internet debate tactic - if the main subject is awkward to debate on the merits, attempt to change the subject and get everyone talking about that. We all do it on this board, sometimes without even thinking about it. Your effort was just more obvious than most.

Of course, you are still an amateur when compared to the Master of all Masters in this area - our own beloved Kilmer :notworthy

Thank you P.

Now back to our debate about whether or not Hillary has a penis.......

[rincewind]

Thank you P.

Now back to our debate about whether or not Hillary has a penis.......


That's up for debate, i thought it was obvious. :whoknows:

[visionary]

Classic internet debate tactic - if the main subject is awkward to debate on the merits, attempt to change the subject and get everyone talking about that.


You mean like...uh talking about the draft in a thread about Halliburton and corruption...? :laugh:

[brewdogmike]

Classic internet debate tactic - if the main subject is awkward to debate on the merits, attempt to change the subject and get everyone talking about that. We all do it on this board, sometimes without even thinking about it. Your effort was just more obvious than most.

Of course, you are still an amateur when compared to the Master of all Masters in this area - our own beloved Kilmer

I didn't derail anything! I responded directly to something Crazyhorse said in the first post!

[RabidFan]

Thank you P.

Now back to our debate about whether or not Hillary has a penis.......


So they shared Monica? :laugh: :silly:

[DCsportsfan53]

We have to remember that, under Paul Bremer, the Central Provisional Administration ("CPA") in Iraq lost track of $9 billion in reconstruction money. Let me repeat that - they lost track of NINE BILLION DOLLARS. And whose money was it? Ours.

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/30/iraq.audit/

Also, I remember I posted about this former member of the military who came forward with reports of gross abuse of US funding to private corporations such as Halliburton. What was the response? Basically, who cares. Or, "Don't criticize Halliburton who are feeding our fighting men and women! (Which wasn't true anyway since they used contractors.)

If little noise is made about losing $9 billion, what is going to happen here? Probably nothing.

And that's the sad truth. People are so busy arguing amongst themselves or blindly defending their party or liberal/conseravtive agendas that in the mean time ALL politicians and corporations are getting away with ****ing highway robbery. They've driven such a wedge between two parties (both of which are too conservative if you ask me) that people no longer even stop to examine the issues. They just defend or repeat what their favorite party member says. Sad, really and on top of it the media is a bunch of spineless ******* who don't actually report anything, they just sell things.

[altair4]

So it's not enough that Republicans are corrupt, they're bigots and insane religious fanatics, too, huh? Nice.


You said it, not me. :)

[Predicto]

You mean like...uh talking about the draft in a thread about Halliburton and corruption...? :laugh:

I think that was more of a brain glitch.

[Predicto]

I didn't derail anything! I responded directly to something Crazyhorse said in the first post!


Yes. Yes you did. And the result was, we all ended up talking about relative tax burdens rather than about this corruption scandal. Kilmer himself could not have done it better. :)

[brewdogmike]

Yes. Yes you did. And the result was, we all ended up talking about relative tax burdens rather than about this corruption scandal. Kilmer himself could not have done it better. :)

Forgive me. I hate to let such assertions go unchallenged, and sometimes when Crazyhorse starts a thread, well, I hardly know where to begin.

[Crazyhorse1]

We have to remember that, under Paul Bremer, the Central Provisional Administration ("CPA") in Iraq lost track of $9 billion in reconstruction money. Let me repeat that - they lost track of NINE BILLION DOLLARS. And whose money was it? Ours.

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/30/iraq.audit/

Also, I remember I posted about this former member of the military who came forward with reports of gross abuse of US funding to private corporations such as Halliburton. What was the response? Basically, who cares. Or, "Don't criticize Halliburton who are feeding our fighting men and women! (Which wasn't true anyway since they used contractors.)

If little noise is made about losing $9 billion, what is going to happen here? Probably nothing.

Is Baculus the only guy on this site who can piss standing up?

I want that damned $9 billion back or Cheney's gonna be wearing stripes. What the hell's wrong with you friggin sheep! I want that damned $9 billion taken out of Bushy boy's hide.

[brewdogmike]

Is Baculus the only guy on this site who can piss standing up?

I want that damned $9 billion back or Cheney's gonna be wearing stripes. What the hell's wrong with you friggin sheep! I want that damned $9 billion taken out of Bushy boy's hide.

Ummm.. before you insult us further or have an episode, I'd like to point out this from the very article that Baculus linked to (http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/30/iraq.audit/):

The money came from revenues from the United Nations' former oil-for-food program, oil sales and seized assets -- all Iraqi money. The audit did not examine the use of U.S. funds appropriated for reconstruction.

[visionary]

Is Baculus the only guy on this site who can piss standing up?

I want that damned $9 billion back or Cheney's gonna be wearing stripes.

What the hell's wrong with you friggin sheep!

I want that damned $9 billion taken out of Bushy boy's hide.

BYE...:doh:

As for Baculus pissing while standing up, I'll take your word for it.

;)

[Baculus]

I am such an imperialist, considering Iraqi money as our own!

Either way, $9 billion is a lot of money to misplace, especially for a struggling nation.

Now, about my peeing habits...;-)

[Predicto]

Forgive me. I hate to let such assertions go unchallenged, and sometimes when Crazyhorse starts a thread, well, I hardly know where to begin.

I understand. Imagine how we liberal types feel around here. We only have Crazyhorse to aggravate you guys - you have a whole stable of hostile guys posting inflammatory articles from WorldNetDaily and flinging around the insults :laugh:

[Larry]

Cato has a handy chart[/url]. Can't link directly to it because it's a javascript. See "Share of Federal Individual Income Taxes Paid by Income Group, 2003." Top 5% of taxpayers paid 54.4% of the taxes in 2003. The bottom 50% paid 3.5% of the taxes. And it's IRS data, so don't anyone go whining about the chart coming from Cato. I don't have time to plow through IRS spreadsheets all day, but that data is freely available.

Now, there's no way to correlate those figures with "percent of the wealth of this country they control." That data does not exist. You would have to somehow correlate individual tax records with individual balance sheets, and I do not believe that that is legal.

OTOH, while Cato doesn't corelate % of income taxes paid (and funny: why is it, whenever some Republican source wants to whine about how unfairly the world is treating Bill Gates, do they always pretend that the income tax (which just happens to be the only tax in the US which applies progressively) is the only tax in the world?) to a person's "net worth", the IRS does corelate % of income taxes paid against % of total income received.

IIR, those same 5% who are being picked on because they pay 54% of the income taxes for the nation, also received something like 40% of the nation's income.

But if you say "a person who receives 8 times the average income (I think it's reasonable math to say that, if 5% of the people earned 40% of the money, then the average member of that 5% received 8 times the average income.) pays 10 times the average tax", then it doesn't sound like the poor millionaire is getting picked on so much.

Therefore, they ignore the "income" statistic, and only talk about the "taxes" statistic.

(And, FWIW, as to the 5% of the taxpayers paying 54% of the taxes, I have heard that something like 1/2 of 1% of the population of the US controll 90% of the privately-held stock in all of the US stock markets. However, the words "privately held" in that stat have the potential to make it a really distorted stat. That said, however: If 1/2 of 1% of taxpayers actually do controll 90% of the NYSE and the AMEX, then is it really unfair that they, along with another 4.5% of taxpayers, pay 54% of the income tax?)

[SteelerSkins]

how about the credit mobilier?

19th century anyone?

[Larry]

The wealthiest five percent in this country account for half the total tax revenue -- half!

No they don't.

They account for half of the income tax revenue.

That's because the income tax is deliberatly designed to be a "progressive" tax. (Meaning: "Richer people pay a higher percentage", not "newer" or "more moddern".)

OTOH, pretty much every other tax on the books, nationwide, is regressive. Poor people pay a much lower income tax (as a percentage of income) than rich people. But they pay a higher percentage of their income for sales tax. And gasoline. And medicaire and Social Security. And utilities. (For a lot of people, their utility bill is (partially) a tax bill. The utilities are owned by their government, and they operate as a profitable monopoly, feeding money to the government. This allows the government to get money that isn't labled as "taxes".)

That's how you gather public support for the notion that the big, bad, government is picking on millionaires: Pick the only tax in the country that's progressive, then complain that it's somehow unfair because it's progressive.

[Larry]

So it's not enough that Republicans are corrupt, they're bigots and insane religious fanatics, too, huh? Nice.

OK, who brought the Boy Scouts into this thread?

[mirtemp]

Larry, excellent response explaining to some of the "slower" , uneducated folk around here how it really works. Hopefully you enlightened a few but somehow I doubt it though. BTW, It's shocking so little outrage on 9 billion dollars missing. :applause: