[POLL] - Liberals, how much is a "fair share?" - Taxes

[RKMBrown]

So, you don't think that the wealthy have more freedom of choice than the poor? That's bizarre. Have you ever been either?

Yes, I do not think the wealthy have more freedom of choice than the poor. Money does not make one free, in some respects money, and more particularly assets, make one less free due to the responsibilities and burden of ownership. Freedom to me is, in part, the ability to do what I want when I want to do it, so long as I do not harm others, and without being burdened by an oppressive government, rules and regulations.

Yes, I started out broke earning minimum wage bagging groceries and cutting lawns. Now, I have hundreds of inventions, have run my own company, and worked for a few companies as an Engineer. I still work but I do so for much less money than I did during the dot com boom years. For me the act of deciding to earn less money, meant freeing myself up to do more things, such as spending more time at home with my family.

Why did you work to become wealthy if you'd rather be poor?

I didn't say I'd rather be poor. More I'd rather be comfortable. My definition of poor and yours are probably two different things I suspect. I can make as much money as I want to make, or as little as I want to make.

During the 80s I bought into the American dream is fancy cars, the biggest house you borrow money against, and throwing money away like it grows on trees. So I worked really hard and became very successful working with people that you would easily recognize. In the 90s I found I had more fun coaching my son's pop-warner football games than working overtime to pay for new corvettes, so I sold my software company for a profit and switched to a different career. It was easy to start over even though it was a lower income, there was little responsibility and I had more free time to spend with the family. I got too good at that new job and ended up making too much money again and spent most of it. Ok yeah I have a decent nest egg.. Then I decided to switch careers again, again cutting my income in half, it was that or take the promotion they wanted me to take and travel all over the damn place.. In short.. I've grown out of my desire to participate in the rat race. I've paid more taxes than most people will ever earn. I've gone the gamut of having a family income of 30k a year to what you would probably call semi rich and back again to just enough to cover the basics. The times I have the most fun are the times I've reset what I was doing to start over at a greatly reduced income level and a greatly reduced level of effort. Shedding the shackles of wealth and responsibility is an enlightening feeling, learning new things is fun. I've found that no matter how much I earn, I always managed to find ways to spend it all and no matter how much I cut back on my income, I always found ways to survive and actually thrive on the lower income.

The only thing I regret? Working so hard that my income fed the beast that enslaves others through wealth redistribution. Yeah it really sucks to know the government uses your income to make slaves of the poor.

 

[RKMBrown]

You either playing an idiot, or you really have no grasp on how the economy works. Health insurance is just another business expense. It will make your business unprofitable only if your competitors don't have to play by the same rules. Otherwise everyone would have to pass the cost on the consumers, and it will be OK, because people always need to eat.

Would you buy a $40 dollar pizza from a pizza hut, or a 20dollar hamburger from the golden arches? People need to eat but they don't need to pay for 20k a year pizza delivery boys that get 30k in Obama mandated benefits. You'll have to bag your own groceries and cook your own pizza.

 

[ilia25]

Ilia, I'm not going to respond to a chopped up post like that. It destroys the context and becomes just one liner talking points by rote and pretty well misses the point being made. I'll give you props for sticking like a terrier to one of the most exreme leftwing propaganda point of view I've seen in awhile.

Well, that not surprising, you were never able to argue your point when faced with facts and logic. Ad hominem attacks is all you are capable of.

Have fun with PMZ.

 

[ilia25]

You either playing an idiot, or you really have no grasp on how the economy works. Health insurance is just another business expense. It will make your business unprofitable only if your competitors don't have to play by the same rules. Otherwise everyone would have to pass the cost on the consumers, and it will be OK, because people always need to eat.

Would you buy a $40 dollar pizza from a pizza hut, or a 20dollar hamburger from the golden arches? People need to eat but they don't need to pay for 20k a year pizza delivery boys that get 30k in Obama mandated benefits. You'll have to bag your own groceries and cook your own pizza.

Well that's a good point -- there is of course a limit of what you can pass to the customers. However, I don't think that what you have described is a real world scenario. I don't think Obamacare would cost the consumers $30 dollars per pizza.

 

[RKMBrown]

Here's the problem that the syncophants have. There is probably nobody in the country who doesn't respect Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. They worked hard, were the right people in the right place at the right time, ended up fabulously wealthy, and are now doing the most good that they can do with the benefits of their good fortune and skills.

Wealth or poverty is more random luck than hard work.

Who works harder than, for instance, migrant workers?

But some people are born of natural priviledge, including their parentage, their brains, their looks, their status in their community, their opportunities, their being in the right place at the right time, their mate, their family, their skills and interests and so forth. Some are born of natural disadvantage.

Gates and Buffett accepted their good fortune, and with infinite grace, are paying it forward. They have everything that they want, and work to spread that good luck as far as possible.

At the other end of the spectrum is Rush Limbaugh. Made over a billion dollars without adding one penney of value to the world around him. Spends all of his good fortune recruiting folks to support his campaign to pay back less of what luck has brought him. A pure taker and load for the human race.

All of the above are wealthy but their worth spans the spectrum.

So, nobody is against wealth. What people are against is waste.

It's like insurance. The people who have benefited from good fortune pay for the people who have suffered from bad fortune, and the human race evens things out.

ROFL... you have no idea what you are talking about. Infinite grace? ROFL You think Bill and Buffet are "gods" because they fund democrat coffers?

Bill got rich by leveraging his mom's relationship with the IBM CEO's wife to get an exclusive deal on some software for the IBM PC, DOS and Basic. IBM funded the whole thing so they could avoid the government splitting them up like they had just split up ma bell. Then Bill is allowed to create a monopoly on PC operating systems and office software by our government through every PC manufacturer. The "angel" Bill you are talking about? Yeah he's the guy that made sure Windows is virus prone from the core so you'll have to keep buying new OS updates. The stuff I could tell you would make your hair stand on end. ROFL go back to sleep.

 

[Obamanation]

Oprah Ranked Most Generous Celebrity Pop Tags: Oprah Winfrey Posted on September 14th, 2008 by Eva Lam

Oprah Winfrey has been proclaimed the world’s biggest giver — again.

For the seoncd year running, the day-time host topped a list of the 30 most generous celebrities for giving $50.2 million US last year through the Oprah Winfrey Foundation and Oprah’s Angel Network, which fund education, health care and advocacy for women and children.

The list, now in its second year, was compiled by The Giving Back Fund, a charity that aims to encourage philanthropy.

Claiming the No. 2 spot was trumpeter Herb Alpert, who gave $13 million for education, including music lessons, through the Herb Alpert Foundation.

Three athletes also made the top 10, with cyclist Lance Armstrong, basketball star Michael Jordan and Canadian hockey player Eric Lindros giving $5 million each.

Here is the top 10 on The Giving Back Fund’s list of most generous celebrities (all figures in US dollars):

1. Oprah Winfrey, $50.2 million. 2. Herb Alpert, $13 million. 3. Barbra Streisand, $11 million. 4. Paul Newman, $10 million. 5. Mel Gibson, $9.9 million. 6. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, $8.4 million. 7. Lance Armstrong, $5 million. 8. Michael Jordan, $5 million. 9. Eric Lindros, $5 million. 10. Rush Limbaugh, $4.2 million.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Funny, but I don;t see either Gates or Buffett on that list...

 

[RKMBrown]

You either playing an idiot, or you really have no grasp on how the economy works. Health insurance is just another business expense. It will make your business unprofitable only if your competitors don't have to play by the same rules. Otherwise everyone would have to pass the cost on the consumers, and it will be OK, because people always need to eat.

Would you buy a $40 dollar pizza from a pizza hut, or a 20dollar hamburger from the golden arches? People need to eat but they don't need to pay for 20k a year pizza delivery boys that get 30k in Obama mandated benefits. You'll have to bag your own groceries and cook your own pizza.

Well that's a good point -- there is of course a limit of what you can pass to the customers. However, I don't think that what you have described is a real world scenario. I don't think Obamacare would cost the consumers $30 dollars per pizza.

A large pizza with 3 toppings no coupon plus tip is 20 here. I added 20bucks to pay for the doubled labor cost, for the guy who cooks the pizza, the guy who delivers the pizza, not to mention the extra cost at the pump for the guy behind the counter who takes your gas money, and the farmer's laborer that pulls the toppings... It all adds up. Maybe my guess is off.. fine add in the other stuff Obama wants to increase taxes for like carbon taxes. Can you just imagine how much CO2 goes into a peperoni pizza? Yeah sure Obama may decide to "bail" out some ff chains that have unions, for example, but don't you find it curious the thousands of Obama's selected friends who are being given "exemptions" from Obama care law? What happens to the businesses that don't get Obama's exemptions? What happens to taxes when the revenue is too low because Obama's friends don't pay? Yeah the taxes go up even higher on the ones that do pay, yet Obama's friends keep their exemptions. Why don't the democrats just make it illegal to be anti-democrat and get it over with. All this pussyfooting around is quite tiresome.

Just to add.. just look at Bloomburg for what's coming for the country. Large pizza? ROFL anything more than a small slice will be illegal.

 

[ilia25]

Would you buy a $40 dollar pizza from a pizza hut, or a 20dollar hamburger from the golden arches? People need to eat but they don't need to pay for 20k a year pizza delivery boys that get 30k in Obama mandated benefits. You'll have to bag your own groceries and cook your own pizza.

Well that's a good point -- there is of course a limit of what you can pass to the customers. However, I don't think that what you have described is a real world scenario. I don't think Obamacare would cost the consumers $30 dollars per pizza.

A large pizza with 3 toppings no coupon plus tip is 20 here. I added 20bucks to pay for the doubled labor cost, for the guy who cooks the pizza, the guy who delivers the pizza, not to mention the extra cost at the pump for the guy behind the counter who takes your gas money, and the farmer's laborer that pulls the toppings... It all adds up. Maybe my guess is off..

Yes, it adds up and you are off by an order of magnitude. In your calculation Obamacare would cost $10 per man/hour, which would add up to about $20,000 per year per worker. In reality the penalties for not providing insurance is $2000 per worker, with the first 30 employees being exempt.

And how many pizzerias employ more than 50 workers?

Just to add.. just look at Bloomburg for what's coming for the country. Large pizza? ROFL anything more than a small slice will be illegal.

Oh yes... Bikes. Horror.

 

[Redfish]

Here's the problem that the syncophants have. There is probably nobody in the country who doesn't respect Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. They worked hard, were the right people in the right place at the right time, ended up fabulously wealthy, and are now doing the most good that they can do with the benefits of their good fortune and skills.

Wealth or poverty is more random luck than hard work.

Who works harder than, for instance, migrant workers?

But some people are born of natural priviledge, including their parentage, their brains, their looks, their status in their community, their opportunities, their being in the right place at the right time, their mate, their family, their skills and interests and so forth. Some are born of natural disadvantage.

Gates and Buffett accepted their good fortune, and with infinite grace, are paying it forward. They have everything that they want, and work to spread that good luck as far as possible.

At the other end of the spectrum is Rush Limbaugh. Made over a billion dollars without adding one penney of value to the world around him. Spends all of his good fortune recruiting folks to support his campaign to pay back less of what luck has brought him. A pure taker and load for the human race.

All of the above are wealthy but their worth spans the spectrum.

So, nobody is against wealth. What people are against is waste.

It's like insurance. The people who have benefited from good fortune pay for the people who have suffered from bad fortune, and the human race evens things out.

Your bias is showing. Limbaugh gave more to charity than either Gates or Buffet.

How much did Obama and Biden give? How about Pelosi and Reid? How about Maher and Matthews? How about Michael Moore? Liberals never give like conservatives----they just demand that everyone else do it.

 

[RKMBrown]

Well that's a good point -- there is of course a limit of what you can pass to the customers. However, I don't think that what you have described is a real world scenario. I don't think Obamacare would cost the consumers $30 dollars per pizza.

A large pizza with 3 toppings no coupon plus tip is 20 here. I added 20bucks to pay for the doubled labor cost, for the guy who cooks the pizza, the guy who delivers the pizza, not to mention the extra cost at the pump for the guy behind the counter who takes your gas money, and the farmer's laborer that pulls the toppings... It all adds up. Maybe my guess is off..

Yes, it adds up and you are off by an order of magnitude. In your calculation Obamacare would cost $10 per man/hour, which would add up to about $20,000 per year per worker. In reality the penalties for not providing insurance is $2000 per worker, with the first 30 employees being exempt.

And how many pizzerias employ more than 50 workers?

Just to add.. just look at Bloomburg for what's coming for the country. Large pizza? ROFL anything more than a small slice will be illegal.

Oh yes... Bikes. Horror.

Yeah and SS started out as a 2% tax, now it's 15%. Pretty sure McDonald's and Dominoes have more than 50 employees.

 

[kaz]

But this is a different era. This economy leaves most people w/o decent wages, even when they are working hard (and by decent I mean 21st century decent, not just having the roof over your head and bread on your table).

Give me one reason why we should NOT try and fix that.

We should fix it. Fixing it means that government gets out of the way and allows people to make something of themselves. What you want to do is make it worse. Money does not come out of nowhere. Every dollar you give to Peter you stole from Paul. Peter's getting money for not working, Paul is losing money he worked for. Neither is incented to work.

Give me one example of government in the way and preventing people from making something of themselves

- The minimum wage prevents people not worth $7.25 from working. It is not a tide, it is a hurdle.

- As an employer, if I give someone a shot and they don't work out and I fire them, the government sticks me with a bunch of taxes to pay for their unemployment.

- The government jacks up the cost of every employee by piling on payroll, unemployment, workers comp, healthcare and other benefit mandates and taxes.

- There is no penalty for unemployment filings for people who don't qualify, so over and over I have to follow up and file paperwork and appear at hearings for people who keep filing. They lose every time, but they do it because there is no risk to them and if I don't file and appear at every hearing they win by default.

- Even though my business is in a "Right to Work" state (North Carolina), endless regulations like ADA, age, race, sex and other regulation applies and government like unemployment completely represents the employee and there is no consequence to their filing to try to extort money from me even when there is zero case. Again, I've won every time but what a monumental waste of money.

- If I take people from part to full time, a bunch of more regulations apply.

- Government forces everyone in certain jobs, industries or for companies to join a union and forces companies to bargain with them even when they have no market power behind them, just government force.

Sorry, you said give you "one." This is actually just a start. All employers hesitate to hire until we absolutely have to because you can't buy the milk, you buy the cow. Government should want to make us quick to hire, not make it our last resort.

 

[kaz]

You're probably an idiot, so let me repeat it for you: this economy does not create enough of decent paying jobs. If the government gets out of the way, most of people will have to work for low pay. That is what the 21st century economy does.

You two may be talking about different subjects. He's talking about government regulations that put a brake on the economy that we would all agree need to go away, and you are talking about necessary government intrusion that we would all agree needs to be there to stop certain corporations from monopolizing labor rates. What we need to do is refocus the government onto the things we need it to do and away from things like telling us what type of toilet we have to use and forcing us to invest in a zero return on investment retirement system.

You seem to be unaware that we are a democracy. We vote for the people that we believe will run the country in the way that we think that it needs to be run. If they don't, we fire them.

Feel free to vote for anyone that you think will do a better job. If enough others agree with you, maybe your guy will win. If more others disagree with you, you're going to lose.

That's not rocket science.

Actually we are not a democracy, we are a republic. We have a federal system of government. I know you don't know what those words mean and don't want to bother to look them up, but someone else may be reading your misinformation, this is for them.

 

[RKMBrown]

You two may be talking about different subjects. He's talking about government regulations that put a brake on the economy that we would all agree need to go away, and you are talking about necessary government intrusion that we would all agree needs to be there to stop certain corporations from monopolizing labor rates. What we need to do is refocus the government onto the things we need it to do and away from things like telling us what type of toilet we have to use and forcing us to invest in a zero return on investment retirement system.

You seem to be unaware that we are a democracy. We vote for the people that we believe will run the country in the way that we think that it needs to be run. If they don't, we fire them.

Feel free to vote for anyone that you think will do a better job. If enough others agree with you, maybe your guy will win. If more others disagree with you, you're going to lose.

That's not rocket science.

Actually we are not a democracy, we are a republic. We have a federal system of government. I know you don't know what those words mean and don't want to bother to look them up, but someone else may be reading your misinformation, this is for them.

To be fair, we started out as a republic, and the federalists have been tearing that down from the start. They want it to be a one payer one government rule tyranny by a simple majority democracy and they will stop at nothing to get there. The 14th Amendment basically ended the republic, we're just watching it happen in slow mo.

 

[kaz]

You seem to be unaware that we are a democracy. We vote for the people that we believe will run the country in the way that we think that it needs to be run. If they don't, we fire them.

Feel free to vote for anyone that you think will do a better job. If enough others agree with you, maybe your guy will win. If more others disagree with you, you're going to lose.

That's not rocket science.

Actually we are not a democracy, we are a republic. We have a federal system of government. I know you don't know what those words mean and don't want to bother to look them up, but someone else may be reading your misinformation, this is for them.

To be fair, we started out as a republic, and the federalists have been tearing that down from the start. They want it to be a one payer one government rule tyranny by a simple majority democracy and they will stop at nothing to get there. The 14th Amendment basically ended the republic, we're just watching it happen in slow mo.

Agreed. I was referring to our actual laws, not the current implementation of them. Today we really are a democracy. Which the founders opposed for the reason of what it created in this country, a tyranny of the majority. With of course the tyrannical majority being the self proclaimed protector of the minority. You can be black, female, gay or whatever and that's fine to the left. What you cannot do is think differently or want to make your own choices.

 

[RKMBrown]

Actually we are not a democracy, we are a republic. We have a federal system of government. I know you don't know what those words mean and don't want to bother to look them up, but someone else may be reading your misinformation, this is for them.

To be fair, we started out as a republic, and the federalists have been tearing that down from the start. They want it to be a one payer one government rule tyranny by a simple majority democracy and they will stop at nothing to get there. The 14th Amendment basically ended the republic, we're just watching it happen in slow mo.

Agreed. I was referring to our actual laws, not the current implementation of them. Today we really are a democracy. Which the founders opposed for the reason of what it created in this country, a tyranny of the majority. With of course the tyrannical majority being the self proclaimed protector of the minority. You can be black, female, gay or whatever and that's fine to the left. What you cannot do is think differently or want to make your own choices.

Yeah, and again to be fair, the right's tyrannical majority is the newly self proclaimed protector of the christian right moral prohibitionists, you can be any race cause that's in the book, but you can't get married if you happen to be gay, and you can only do "prescription" drugs in your home, ...

Both the left and the right are being run by authoritarians. It does not matter which side is in power, neither side has the desire to let the other side live in freedom.

 

[PMZ]

Yes, I do not think the wealthy have more freedom of choice than the poor. Money does not make one free, in some respects money, and more particularly assets, make one less free due to the responsibilities and burden of ownership. Freedom to me is, in part, the ability to do what I want when I want to do it, so long as I do not harm others, and without being burdened by an oppressive government, rules and regulations.

Yes, I started out broke earning minimum wage bagging groceries and cutting lawns. Now, I have hundreds of inventions, have run my own company, and worked for a few companies as an Engineer. I still work but I do so for much less money than I did during the dot com boom years. For me the act of deciding to earn less money, meant freeing myself up to do more things, such as spending more time at home with my family.

Why did you work to become wealthy if you'd rather be poor?

I didn't say I'd rather be poor. More I'd rather be comfortable. My definition of poor and yours are probably two different things I suspect. I can make as much money as I want to make, or as little as I want to make.

During the 80s I bought into the American dream is fancy cars, the biggest house you borrow money against, and throwing money away like it grows on trees. So I worked really hard and became very successful working with people that you would easily recognize. In the 90s I found I had more fun coaching my son's pop-warner football games than working overtime to pay for new corvettes, so I sold my software company for a profit and switched to a different career. It was easy to start over even though it was a lower income, there was little responsibility and I had more free time to spend with the family. I got too good at that new job and ended up making too much money again and spent most of it. Ok yeah I have a decent nest egg.. Then I decided to switch careers again, again cutting my income in half, it was that or take the promotion they wanted me to take and travel all over the damn place.. In short.. I've grown out of my desire to participate in the rat race. I've paid more taxes than most people will ever earn. I've gone the gamut of having a family income of 30k a year to what you would probably call semi rich and back again to just enough to cover the basics. The times I have the most fun are the times I've reset what I was doing to start over at a greatly reduced income level and a greatly reduced level of effort. Shedding the shackles of wealth and responsibility is an enlightening feeling, learning new things is fun. I've found that no matter how much I earn, I always managed to find ways to spend it all and no matter how much I cut back on my income, I always found ways to survive and actually thrive on the lower income.

The only thing I regret? Working so hard that my income fed the beast that enslaves others through wealth redistribution. Yeah it really sucks to know the government uses your income to make slaves of the poor.

"Yeah it really sucks to know the government uses your income to make slaves of the poor"

What enslaves the poor is poverty. I'm really surprised that you are not smart enough to understand that.

 

[PMZ]

Why did you work to become wealthy if you'd rather be poor?

I didn't say I'd rather be poor. More I'd rather be comfortable. My definition of poor and yours are probably two different things I suspect. I can make as much money as I want to make, or as little as I want to make.

During the 80s I bought into the American dream is fancy cars, the biggest house you borrow money against, and throwing money away like it grows on trees. So I worked really hard and became very successful working with people that you would easily recognize. In the 90s I found I had more fun coaching my son's pop-warner football games than working overtime to pay for new corvettes, so I sold my software company for a profit and switched to a different career. It was easy to start over even though it was a lower income, there was little responsibility and I had more free time to spend with the family. I got too good at that new job and ended up making too much money again and spent most of it. Ok yeah I have a decent nest egg.. Then I decided to switch careers again, again cutting my income in half, it was that or take the promotion they wanted me to take and travel all over the damn place.. In short.. I've grown out of my desire to participate in the rat race. I've paid more taxes than most people will ever earn. I've gone the gamut of having a family income of 30k a year to what you would probably call semi rich and back again to just enough to cover the basics. The times I have the most fun are the times I've reset what I was doing to start over at a greatly reduced income level and a greatly reduced level of effort. Shedding the shackles of wealth and responsibility is an enlightening feeling, learning new things is fun. I've found that no matter how much I earn, I always managed to find ways to spend it all and no matter how much I cut back on my income, I always found ways to survive and actually thrive on the lower income.

The only thing I regret? Working so hard that my income fed the beast that enslaves others through wealth redistribution. Yeah it really sucks to know the government uses your income to make slaves of the poor.

"Yeah it really sucks to know the government uses your income to make slaves of the poor"

What enslaves the poor is poverty. I'm really surprised that you are not smart enough to understand that.

Here's the problem that the syncophants have. There is probably nobody in the country who doesn't respect Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. They worked hard, were the right people in the right place at the right time, ended up fabulously wealthy, and are now doing the most good that they can do with the benefits of their good fortune and skills.

Wealth or poverty is more random luck than hard work.

Who works harder than, for instance, migrant workers?

But some people are born of natural priviledge, including their parentage, their brains, their looks, their status in their community, their opportunities, their being in the right place at the right time, their mate, their family, their skills and interests and so forth. Some are born of natural disadvantage.

Gates and Buffett accepted their good fortune, and with infinite grace, are paying it forward. They have everything that they want, and work to spread that good luck as far as possible.

At the other end of the spectrum is Rush Limbaugh. Made over a billion dollars without adding one penney of value to the world around him. Spends all of his good fortune recruiting folks to support his campaign to pay back less of what luck has brought him. A pure taker and load for the human race.

All of the above are wealthy but their worth spans the spectrum.

So, nobody is against wealth. What people are against is waste.

It's like insurance. The people who have benefited from good fortune pay for the people who have suffered from bad fortune, and the human race evens things out.

ROFL... you have no idea what you are talking about. Infinite grace? ROFL You think Bill and Buffet are "gods" because they fund democrat coffers?

Bill got rich by leveraging his mom's relationship with the IBM CEO's wife to get an exclusive deal on some software for the IBM PC, DOS and Basic. IBM funded the whole thing so they could avoid the government splitting them up like they had just split up ma bell. Then Bill is allowed to create a monopoly on PC operating systems and office software by our government through every PC manufacturer. The "angel" Bill you are talking about? Yeah he's the guy that made sure Windows is virus prone from the core so you'll have to keep buying new OS updates. The stuff I could tell you would make your hair stand on end. ROFL go back to sleep.

You have already made the point that you can't understand the world around you. This wealth envy is just icing on the cake.

 

[PMZ]

Oprah Ranked Most Generous Celebrity Pop Tags: Oprah Winfrey Posted on September 14th, 2008 by Eva Lam

Oprah Winfrey has been proclaimed the world’s biggest giver — again.

For the seoncd year running, the day-time host topped a list of the 30 most generous celebrities for giving $50.2 million US last year through the Oprah Winfrey Foundation and Oprah’s Angel Network, which fund education, health care and advocacy for women and children.

The list, now in its second year, was compiled by The Giving Back Fund, a charity that aims to encourage philanthropy.

Claiming the No. 2 spot was trumpeter Herb Alpert, who gave $13 million for education, including music lessons, through the Herb Alpert Foundation.

Three athletes also made the top 10, with cyclist Lance Armstrong, basketball star Michael Jordan and Canadian hockey player Eric Lindros giving $5 million each.

Here is the top 10 on The Giving Back Fund’s list of most generous celebrities (all figures in US dollars):

1. Oprah Winfrey, $50.2 million. 2. Herb Alpert, $13 million. 3. Barbra Streisand, $11 million. 4. Paul Newman, $10 million. 5. Mel Gibson, $9.9 million. 6. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, $8.4 million. 7. Lance Armstrong, $5 million. 8. Michael Jordan, $5 million. 9. Eric Lindros, $5 million. 10. Rush Limbaugh, $4.2 million.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Funny, but I don;t see either Gates or Buffett on that list...

They are not celebrities dumbo.

 

[PMZ]

Would you buy a $40 dollar pizza from a pizza hut, or a 20dollar hamburger from the golden arches? People need to eat but they don't need to pay for 20k a year pizza delivery boys that get 30k in Obama mandated benefits. You'll have to bag your own groceries and cook your own pizza.

Well that's a good point -- there is of course a limit of what you can pass to the customers. However, I don't think that what you have described is a real world scenario. I don't think Obamacare would cost the consumers $30 dollars per pizza.

A large pizza with 3 toppings no coupon plus tip is 20 here. I added 20bucks to pay for the doubled labor cost, for the guy who cooks the pizza, the guy who delivers the pizza, not to mention the extra cost at the pump for the guy behind the counter who takes your gas money, and the farmer's laborer that pulls the toppings... It all adds up. Maybe my guess is off.. fine add in the other stuff Obama wants to increase taxes for like carbon taxes. Can you just imagine how much CO2 goes into a peperoni pizza? Yeah sure Obama may decide to "bail" out some ff chains that have unions, for example, but don't you find it curious the thousands of Obama's selected friends who are being given "exemptions" from Obama care law? What happens to the businesses that don't get Obama's exemptions? What happens to taxes when the revenue is too low because Obama's friends don't pay? Yeah the taxes go up even higher on the ones that do pay, yet Obama's friends keep their exemptions. Why don't the democrats just make it illegal to be anti-democrat and get it over with. All this pussyfooting around is quite tiresome.

Just to add.. just look at Bloomburg for what's coming for the country. Large pizza? ROFL anything more than a small slice will be illegal.

So, you think that the country saves money by having people without health ins? And you claim to have been a successful businessman? I guess it's true that that must be a job that anyone can do.

 

[Foxfyre]

To be fair, we started out as a republic, and the federalists have been tearing that down from the start. They want it to be a one payer one government rule tyranny by a simple majority democracy and they will stop at nothing to get there. The 14th Amendment basically ended the republic, we're just watching it happen in slow mo.

Agreed. I was referring to our actual laws, not the current implementation of them. Today we really are a democracy. Which the founders opposed for the reason of what it created in this country, a tyranny of the majority. With of course the tyrannical majority being the self proclaimed protector of the minority. You can be black, female, gay or whatever and that's fine to the left. What you cannot do is think differently or want to make your own choices.

Yeah, and again to be fair, the right's tyrannical majority is the newly self proclaimed protector of the christian right moral prohibitionists, you can be any race cause that's in the book, but you can't get married if you happen to be gay, and you can only do "prescription" drugs in your home, ...

Both the left and the right are being run by authoritarians. It does not matter which side is in power, neither side has the desire to let the other side live in freedom.

Social cultural mores/policies/points of view have always been a factor in the American culture before the Revolution, after the Revolution, during the development of our Constitution, during the ratification process, and all the centuries since to present times. And they are as irrelevent to the intent and content of the Constitution now as they were then. Separate subject. Separate debate.

The Founders intended that all government influence or policy be unrelated to class, that property must be recognized as an unalienable right of the person who acquired it via legal means, and that the Constitution would allow the federal government to secure our unalienable rights and allow the various colonies/states to function efficiently as one nation, but would be strictly limited in what it would be allowed to do.

The intent is that the people would have their rights secured, meaning they would not be allowed to commit economic, environmental, or physical violence upon each other. And then they otherwise would be totally free to govern themselves and form whatever sort of society they wished to have unhindered by any monarch, papal authority, dictator, or any other form of authoritarian government.

The 14th Amendment could be seen as a correction of earlier flawed policy that did not protect the unalienable rights of all but allowed the people to pick and choose who would have rights and who would not and gave government greater latitude in enforcing that. If our politicians had stuck to that principle there would have been no problem.

It really began to fall apart when Teddy Roosevelt declared the Constitution allowed government to do anything the Constitution did not expressly prohibit rather than the Founders' intent that the Federal government was restricted only to what the Constitution allowed.

So now we have designated classes in our tax code, we have protected classes of people, we have political correctness, and we have a government that serves itself first meaning that it swells and bloats and becomes ever more expensive, ever more intrusive, ever more coercive as it drains more and more resources from the people while throwing them back a few crumbs to keep them quiet and obedient.

We need to bust the federal government back to its original purpose or we will lose our Republic as we have known it.