Watching the Democrats - it's Fun and Macabre!

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Adak

I'm not familiar enough with the warrantless searches on people in cities back East, to know if it's unreasonable or not. Point is that ALL searches, according to the Bill of Rights, are NOT unreasonable - and therefore some are legal. Look at what the TSA is doing for air travelers, for crying out loud! THAT seems unreasonable to me.

That's unconstitutional too, IMHO. The idea is that public transportation is optional, therefor, it's OK to search anyone who uses public transportation. I think this is wrong thinking. Public transportation (buses, subways, trains, planes) is a way to get from one place to another, just as a public road or a public sidewalk is a way to get from one place to another. The founding fathers were very clearly opposed to just stopping people going about their business and searching them. They didn't want people to be searched simply because they were traveling. And it really is a slippery slope. If you can search people who have entered the publicly owned transit system because they have chosen to enter a system, you can also search people who have entered the public highway and road system. Nobody is safe. Or I should say, the only reason people aren't being searched on roads yet is because it's too difficult and the outcry would be too great. But if you just shrug and don't care that people commuting to work on the bus or a subway are being searched without warrants or probably cause, then you deserve to be searched in your car.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by glatt

Or I should say, the only reason people aren't being searched on roads yet is because it's too difficult and the outcry would be too great.

Not too difficult and no real outcry.

Stop and Frisk

The stop-and-frisk program of New York City is a practice of the New York City Police Department by which a police officer who reasonably suspects a person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a felony or a Penal Law misdemeanor, stops and questions that person, and, if the officer reasonably suspects he or she is in danger of physical injury, frisks the person stopped for weapons.

About 684,000 people were stopped in 2011.

"Terry Stop" Terry v. Ohio

The rationale behind the Supreme Court decision revolves around the understanding that, as the opinion notes, "the exclusionary rule has its limitations." The meaning of the rule is to protect persons from unreasonable searches and seizures aimed at gathering evidence, not searches and seizures for other purposes (like prevention of crime or personal protection of police officers).

So basically, if the cops want to frisk you just for the hell of it, they can. They can also detain you without charges.

People in middle class America do not see this. If the economy worsens and more of them move to lower income neighborhoods, this will change.

Note: Stop and frisk was recently challenged and overturned in some cases, but noone knows if this will stand.

[Adak]

Well Hooray! Obama appointments made without the approval of the Congress, (because Obama declared all by himself that Congress was NOT in session, when in fact, Congress WAS in session), has been overturned by the most important Appellate Court, in the country.

By unanimous agreement, the 3 judge court of Washington D.C., ruled that the President can't make appointments without the approval of Congress, even though it would be more efficient if he could do so.

"Where the language in the Constitution is clear, the President can not change it, to make things easier, or more efficient."

Obama made 4 appointments during that pro-forma session of Congress (where Congress is "in session", but not working on the floor, except to make the daily announcement that they are "in session").

Now those appointed, and everything they have done in the past year, is null and void.

Big slap in Obama's face, also.

Now a word about Tax Policy, from a brilliant CNN article today:

Editor's note: Edward J. McCaffery is Robert C. Packard Trustee Chair in law and a professor of law, economics and political science at the University of Southern California. He is the author of "Fair Not Flat: How to Make the Tax System Better and Simpler."

(CNN) -- Phil Mickelson, aka Lefty, is thinking of leaving California and perhaps America because, according to his own reckoning, he is facing tax rates of 62% or 63%. Mickelson, probably the second-most-famous professional golfer in the world after Tiger Woods, later backed off from his initial comments about making "drastic changes."

Reports suggest that Mickelson earned more than $60 million in 2012. In that sense, he appears to be doing better than the Romneys, and perhaps you are not all that sympathetic to him.

The Romneys (remember them?) paid so little tax. In 2011, Mitt and Ann Romney paid federal taxes of $2 million on reported income of $14 million, for an effective tax rate of 14%, all roughly. The Romneys even had to foreswear taking all of their available charitable deductions to make their tax rate seem so high for appearance's sake.
Edward J. McCaffery
Edward J. McCaffery

It does bear noting that Mickelson is doing something to earn his $60 million. Whoever is paying him that much believes that he is worth it. Who are we, really, to argue?

Mickelson's instinctive reactions to high tax rates, even if his math may be a bit muddled, are sound and sensible ones. Tiger Woods certainly agrees with him.

But that is not the problem in the story. Lefty faces such seemingly inescapably high tax rates that he might just pack up his golf bags and leave home. Mitt pays so little tax that he has to ignore the law to pay a higher rate for appearance's sake.
Become a fan of CNNOpinion
Stay up to date on the latest opinion, analysis and conversations through social media. Join us at Facebook/CNNOpinion and follow us @CNNOpinion on Twitter. We welcome your ideas and comments.



How can this be?

The Mitt-Lefty paradox has a simple explanation: In America, we tax work. And highly. We do not tax capital or wealth much at all. Indeed, if you have wealth already, taxes are essentially optional under what I call tax Planning 101, the simple advice to buy/borrow/die.

In step one, you buy assets that rise in value without producing cash, such as growth stocks or real estate. In step two, you borrow to finance your lifestyle. In step three, you die, and your heirs get your assets, tax free, and with a "stepped up" basis that eliminates all capital gains. That's it.

Romney, with a personal fortune estimated at $250 million (his five kids have another $100 million) has figured this out. When he pays taxes, at all, he does so at the low capital gains rate.

Not so with Lefty.

He is a wage-earner, albeit a very highly paid one, and he's going to pay over one-half of his income in taxes if he stays in California. We may not be shedding any tears for Lefty any more than we feel for Gerard Depardieu, who recently left France for Russia to escape taxes, or for the Rolling Stones, who many moons ago left England and recorded Exile on Main Street from France.

Yet one fact not making news is that it is still the case that the highest marginal tax rates in America do not fall on the highest incomes, like Lefty, but on certain of the working poor, many of them single parents, who are being taxed at rates approaching 90% as they lose benefits attempting to better themselves.

It's a "poverty trap" that works just like the severe marriage penalties for the lower-income classes. But the working poor do not have the options of going to Canada, Russia or France.

Lefty has a point -- high tax rates create disincentives. If the rates are high enough, people react by moving. This should not surprise us: American companies have been fleeing our shores for years, in droves. Ask Mitt.

But this should worry us, for two reasons.

One, the fact that the high incomers do flee jurisdictions, or flee from the productive activity of working, is a bad thing for the U.S.

Two, the very risk that the rich and famous might leave, aided by the appearance that some do, holds tax reform hostage. We have struggled to raise rates at all on the rich, blocked by the mostly mythical Joe the Plumber as much as by the realities of Mickelson or the Rolling Stones. When we do finally raise rates, as we did at the fiscal cliff, we do so on the wrong rich, in the wrong way. Lefty's taxes went up, Mitt's need not.

The problem -- and it is the same problem as with Mitt's taxes -- is that we are taxing the wrong thing, in the wrong way. In sum, we tax work, not wealth. This is backward.

We should be taxing the act of spending, not the socially beneficial ones of work and savings. Then we could raise tax rates without fear of ill effects.

Mitt's taxes would go up, for he is surely spending more than $14 million a year, as by running for president, and we wouldn't need any special capital gains preference under a consistent spending tax. Lefty's taxes would go down to the extent he saves some of his $60 million, helping us all by working and saving. When and if Mickelson or his kids spend, we could tax him or them then.

[... cutesy and stupid ending without merit, has been edited out. Wish they wouldn't add these endings to every article they publish.]

[xoxoxoBruce]

Now those appointed, and everything they have done in the past year, is null and void.

If they deport your gardener is everything he did null and void?
At least someone was running the show, while congress was playing who's on first.

I don't think anyone can argue with McCaffery, that the tax code is totally fucked up.

[Adak]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

If they deport your gardener is everything he did null and void?
At least someone was running the show, while congress was playing who's on first.

I don't think anyone can argue with McCaffery, that the tax code is totally fucked up.

If your gardener was a department head in the Federal gov't, who needed to be confirmed, and was not, then yepper!

Members of Congress were home for Christmas - except for the few needed to keep the Congress in a pro forma session. Obama has plenty of working days to make his recommended appointments to Congress. He is the very first President to ever "proclaim" that a Congress was not in session, over the stated fact of the matter. Congressional sessions are not a small matter. Neither house of Congress can stop a session, without the approval of the other house.

On the gun limiting bill, so far the Feinstein bill to ban some hundred plus models of firearms, doesn't have enough votes to pass - 51 and doesn't nearly have enough votes to override a Republican/Conservative filibuster - 60. For right now it's a no-go. There may be a consensus reached on limiting the capacity of magazines to 10, later on.

This is already the law in California, and I don't see an outcry against it**. Of course, this applies to FUTURE new purchases only. So you can still buy older high capacity magazines - if they were made before the bill went into effect, they're grandfathered in.

Even the staunchest Conservatives agree that background checks are necessary for gun purchases. The "militia" mentioned in the Constitution, was never meant to allow unfit and dangerous people, to buy firearms, whenever they please.


The hard core Conservatives don't like it, but what else is new, eh?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Adak

If your gardener was a department head in the Federal gov't, who needed to be confirmed, and was not, then yepper!

I don't think so, it's no different than having an acting chief stuck in there for a year, like they do in government agencies all the time.
Do you think the people in those agencies said, you're not the boss of me, I'm not doing what you say.

I'd had a letter exchange with the acting head of the Federal Flood Insurance Program. I certainly didn't disregard what he wrote because he was only the acting head.

[Adak]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

I don't think so, it's no different than having an acting chief stuck in there for a year, like they do in government agencies all the time.
Do you think the people in those agencies said, you're not the boss of me, I'm not doing what you say.

I'd had a letter exchange with the acting head of the Federal Flood Insurance Program. I certainly didn't disregard what he wrote because he was only the acting head.

An acting chief, IS a valid chief, albeit temporary. These "wanna be's", never were valid. Never.

Everything they did, is now void.