Dino, seriously, just give up. That chart is one of the worst examples of over-simplifying an issue for purposes of propanda that I've ever seen.

Just showing the top marginal rate for the "wealthiest americans" means absolutely nothing. For example, despite during Eisenhower's time, the marginal rate being 90%, the effective rate was much lower. You got a tax break for everything, including interest you had to pay for credit card companies. If you weren't just browsing Democratic propanganda sites, you have heard a 1,000 times by now that with the Reagan tax cutes, the "wealthiest Americans" were actually paying a higher effective tax rate, because he cancelled so many tax breaks.

Bust as to the headline of this graph which is probably the only thing you looked at before posting it, this "wealthiest Americans" thing, with Obama running around saying "if you're family makes less than $250K a year... blah blah blah". But then when he's not talking about wealthy families, but talking about small businesses (who create the vast majority of new jobs in this country), he's all for stimulating them, giving them tax breaks etc.

So, as it turns out, the vast majority of these "wealthiest American families" are in the top marginal tax bracket because they run small business. The reason they're paying the individual tax rate on the profits from their business because they're lower than the corporate tax rate.

Obama wanting to raise the income tax rate 3% on small businesses wouldn't bother me so much, if it were timed in any way that made any sense at all. This country's trying to get out of the worst recession since the Great Depression. Now's just not the time to be raising taxes, especially on small businesses that create most of our jobs.

There's similar propaganda lines Republicans float all the time, they're just not as pronounced now because it's the Democrats in power and they're the ones on trial. Just like in '02, '04, '06, and '08 it was the Republicans on trial. You've just got to look a little deeper than the ridiculous nonsense they throw out as party lines.

Man I wish there were an intelligent Liberal who posted here. Fatman is the closest thing. But, he rarely talks about politics and is way more interested in religion anyway...

I think the problem is the lack of popular Liberal commentators. Conservatives have the particularly outlandish Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity, all of which irritate me and I try not to listen to. But, beneath their screaming and yelling, they do talk about the basis behind the propaganda rather than just repeatedly throwing it out there. More thoughtful (less trying to be outlandish for the purpose of ratings) conservative commentators include David Brooks, George Will, Bill Kristol (the whole Weekly Standard magazine he runs is really great), Charles Krauthammer.

Let's change this thread from Dino's regurgitation of mindless Democratic propaganda nonsense to a thread discussing where the substantial information behind Liberal processes are. Do they have any entertaining commentators like the Conservatives do? Give me some links, I will read them.