Obama Announces Re-election Bid

[classicman]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

Really, Classic?

Really. Absolutely. You've been stalking him for months, if not longer... Let it go.

[Pico and ME]

Pete, back in the day Lookout use to tag team with Merc in the nastiness department of the politics threads. This is probably what is fueling Spex's 'vendetta'.

I have to say, though, he has seriously cleaned up his act this go 'round.

[Pete Zicato]

Originally Posted by Pico and ME

Pete, back in the day Lookout use to tag team with Merc in the nastiness department of the politics threads. This is probably what is fueling Spex's 'vendetta'.

I have to say, though, he has seriously cleaned up his act this go 'round.

Thanks for the background, P&M. I thought it might be something along that lines.

And if this is the new Lookout, I think UG and Merc could take a lesson. You catch more flies with honey etc. Scary Right is getting old.

[lookout123]

I personally find value in the homeownership/roots/community side of things but you aren't going to break my heart if you say ZERO deductions.

[lookout123]

Originally Posted by Pico and ME

Pete, back in the day Lookout use to tag team with Merc in the nastiness department of the politics threads. This is probably what is fueling Spex's 'vendetta'.

I have to say, though, he has seriously cleaned up his act this go 'round.

Bullshit. Tag teaming has never been my style and certainly not with Merc.

I have not seriously engaged in political threads in a long time. After the latest round of "why is the cellar so different now..." crap in the other thread I chose to reengage here. On topic. My early posts were on topic and while you may disagree with my replies to TW even those you should be able to see were an attempt to get him to read my posts rather than his usual copy and paste. He has done so and I thought we had a decent discussion. Spexx is Spexx. This is what he does, he throws grenades and then says "look look, that nasty conservative guy was nasty" before dredging up a years old post as if that settled the issue.

I haven't changed my style of posting from anywhere in the cellar. Over the past 7 years I've been in and out of most of the forums depending on what grabbed me. In my 10,--- posts I'm pretty consistant. You may think I'm a vindictive asshole or a reasonable poster (I'm probably both) but you get what you see.

If spexx wants to play his games that's cool with me. My only involvement in this thread will be on topic.

[Pico and ME]

Well sorry, Lookout...you didn't post as sophomoric as Merc sometimes does, but I have a lingering memory of you being pretty shitty at times...usually just directed at 'silly libs'. This goes pretty far back though. It was the way everyone was posting though, due to the election.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by Pete Zicato

'll give you an example. In post #183 Lookout includes defense as one of the departments that needs to be cut. In post #185 he specifically says that military R&D should be cut.

Then in #189 you say "There's a whole lot of waste in the military, but, because of your ideology, you don't want to cut there." Clearly you did not read or did not understand his posts.

Lookout calls you on it in post #191. Which you complain about in post #192.

I missed the reference is 183. I interpret his statement in 185 to separate military and R&D, it was a response to F&B's comment, which absolutely separated military and R&D. LO responded (you say calls me on it) with

I'll assume you didn't read any of my posts before responding with some witty comment so you can skip this before going on to crafting your reply.

Instead of saying

you must have misunderstood, since i said

he made a nasty, demening, dismissive, off-topic comment.

In light of the recent Kim fiasco, I let him know, without insult,

This is the kind of comment that causes unpleasant forum "discussions".

I promise that I will not police the politics forum again. I'll see yout in the next "the politics forum is full of nast, mean people, who shouldn't say those things" thread.

Originally Posted by Pete Zicato

Really? Seriously? All the UG, tw, and Merc posts on this board you've got to work with and this is what you want to complain about for meanness?

I've had ug and merc on ignore for ages, and try as I might, I can't get past the second sentence of a tw post. Disjointed sentence fragments are unreadable to me.

[lookout123]

I believe home ownership is a positive in that it encourages people to have roots. I believe people take pride in what they own vs what is just a temporary place to sleep. Areas with higher home ownership vs renters tend to benefit from better maintenance and lower crime. That results (over the long term) in higher property values. Desireable businesses tend to move into areas with well kept homes and low crime (which also tend to have higher levels of income) bringing jobs. Beyond that, home owners spend money on their houses and property. That is more money that flows into local businesses.

While an elimination of the deduction wouldn't result in every single family choosing to rent it would result in a larger number of renters. Some would look at the simple math and realize a home is no longer a strong asset in which to leave their money. Some would simply be unable to afford a home if they couldn't deduct it from their taxes. People choosing to rent over own would reduce the value of homes which would make them even less desireable to own. At some point only those who are absolutely hooked on the idea of ownership would continue to hold their properties.

[Clodfobble]

Do people really do that, though? Buy a house thinking, "Ooh, and this'll be a big tax deduction?" We certainly didn't. Didn't even occur to us until the first tax year after we bought it. But maybe we're weird.

[Griff]

Good question. It would seem to raise the value of a house... I'm an owner-builder though so it is just theory for me.

[lookout123]

A family who pays $12,000 in mortgage interest each year on a $80,000 family income would probably say that$2-2,500 really makes a big difference to their bottom line. Couldn't they survive without it? Probably but we've got a lot of empty houses and homes underwater right now. I think keeping an incentive on homeownership in place would be a positive. Over the long term I could see phasing it out to encourage more home owners vs those who carry mortgages for life, but the country just isn't there right now.

Griff, I believe the unnatural pressure to buy came from our government telling us everyone should be a homeowner and then dropping and keeping interest rates far too low for far too long. That created a mindset that houses were not homes but merely short term investments with 70-80% profits every two years. Not good.

[HungLikeJesus]

Rather like health insurance pushes up the cost of health care, perhaps the mortgage interest deduction artificially inflates housing prices. (This might be the same same thing Griff was saying in post #264.)

[Pico and ME]

It wouldn't hurt us any if that deduction was taken away as long as the standard deduction stayed the same. We didn't go for a mortgage that was out of our reach...and thank god for that. Our house isn't much, but it sure is within our means.

[lookout123]

In my view of things without the interest deduction there are ZERO deductions.

[classicman]

I'm all for eliminating the deductions, but have to admit that they were helpful in my paying off my mortgage early. If they hadn't been in effect, I may not have been able to keep my home given the $2 million+ in medical expenses I've incurred over the last 2 years. No, I didn't have to pay it all, but even 90% of 2 mil is a HUGE number for me personally.

As far as taxing income from different sources differently ... I think that needs to go as well. That will hit the wealthy much more than the rest of us.