Hey Paul, Megan called…she wants her calculator back.

Can someone tell me why they let these idiots blog at Forbes?

I’m not making any claims to accuracy. I don’t have to. I’m a Republican. We just say shit.

That really could serve as a 2012 campaign theme.

What’s wrong with a secretary making a nice healthy salary?

Jesus, Republicans ca. 2012 might as well put on black tophats and grow twisty mustachios and monocles.

They just can’t _stand_ it when anyone other than themselves does well.

Buffet’s secretary ihas [sic] become a public figure and can release information on what Buffet pays her.

Mr. Paul Roderick Gregory has become a public figure contributor, also too, and Mr. Paul Roderick Gregory can therefore use his own salary as a baseline to determine Warren Buffetts secretarys salary. While he is at it, he can determine if he is worth less than, equal to or more than Warren Buttet’s secretary. Judging by the greenish tone of the article I am guessing it’s way less than. So how about it, Mr. Paul Roderick Gregory? Will you give it up as you expect Warren Buffets secretary to? Just exactly how much does Forbes pay a person of your caliber anyway, Mr. Paul Roderick Gregory?

Nothing short of bizarre that right-wing nuts would fixate on HOW MUCH DOES SHE MAKE!!!!! in an effort to deflect the argument that she pays more in taxes than her boss.

Guy like him must be a real delight to have around when disaster strikes. “Forget that little girl impaled by a fencepost! I have a splinter in my finger, damnit!”

They just can’t _stand_ it when anyone other than themselves does well.

The ones I’ve encountered seem to truly believe that someone else doing well means they are losing out.

Remember, for many conservative wealth is a finite quantity that is not created but simply moves around.

Adherents of a “gold standard” being the most gullible of the group.

“They just can’t _stand_ it when anyone other than themselves does well.”
Well, take away that and what do they have to make them better than anyone else? Using Mitt’s sparkling personality and natural charisma as a baseline…

A Facebook friend recently posted some variety of “Obama is a Kenyan/Socialist/Muslim/Trying to destroy the country/whatever”. When I took her to task, she, in a butthurt tone, replied:

I didn’t claim it was true. I just wanted to know what people thought of it.

Modern conservative “thought” in a nutshell.

in an effort to deflect the argument that she pays more in taxes than her boss.

I think at one point Republicans decided that making a “counter argument” just means screaming “granite”! at anything anyone says.

Right wing common wisdom is like natural stone; once it’s installed, you need a sledge hammer to remove it.

He has three first names, just like his brother David Michael Gregory. Three first names is always a problem. Three-first-named people think facts are stupid things. Watch your back around the three-first-named. You’ve been warned.

Oh gods! Now THIS poor woman has become a lightning rod for the far right
I wonder what His-Story will call our unique brand of totalitarianism?
I guess it’ll depend on what happens to the people citizens over the next few years.

I feel like I’m living in Atlantis in the final days

The ones I’ve encountered seem to truly believe that someone else doing well means they are losing out.

Or, “We have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion that the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one!”

Baloney often has three first names.

Thanks, Welt. Hey, wait a sec…

I’m not making any claims to accuracy. I don’t have to. I’m a Republican. We just say shit.
That really could serve as a 2012 campaign theme.

That could also be….

I’m not making any claims to accuracy. I don’t have to. I’m a Democrat. We just say shit.

Since neither Buffet nor the secretary are willing to prove Buffet’s assertion about tax rates, it’s safe to say that Buffet is a lying sack. As is his secretary.

You did gather the fact that the Republican at Forbes actually wrote the “I’m not claiming any accuracy in the accusations I’m making” line, right?

That’s what’s being made fun of here, in case you missed it. That isn’t the same as saying “Anything anyone says is bullshit if some right winger makes up assertions about it that even he admits are likely wrong”.

The Republican is honest and Buffet isn’t. Which part of that are you having trouble with?

Must be a hard life when irony eludes you.

And awaaaaayyyyy we gooo……….!

Another quote from the article from Mr. Gregory:

I have nothing against Debbie Bosanke earning a half million or even more. Buffett is a major player in the world economy. His secretary deserves good compensation.

Wow, that’s stupid…How about the fat one is a glutton? Try rational thinking

:-)

Consider changing to InsultingLiteralUnhumorusBev?

Oh I think the Republican was being honest when he admitted that he’s just making shit up in order to make unwarranted accusations. That was sort of the whole point.

Nothing to be particularly proud of, most people would say, but to each his own, your pride in his doing so is noted.

pooter242 – presumably Buffet would be in a much better position to know what his secretary’s tax rate is, since he’s the one who sets and pays her salary. So, obviously, we should take the word of a guy who admits he has no idea what Buffet’s secretary makes over the word of the guy who does know. Furthermore, we should conclude that the guy who does know exactly how much his secretary is paid is a liar, while the guy who just pulled some speculation out of his ass is honest.

Conservative “logic” in a nutshell, folks.

Great analogy, I think this is not or is a reality show!
Ho! I’m having a bad dream, good.

Wow, no less than two Forbes staff persons (women, too!) call bullshit on Gregory. Most rational people know when to acknowledge a mistake and move on. PRG, not so much.

It’s ok, my bad. This is only a puppet show, and we are the puppets!

“I did not make any claim to accuracy” deserves to become the new “not intended as a factual statement.” … Fuck, you said that. Note to self: always finish reading the goddamn post before commenting.

Yay! We have our own conservaTrolls coming to the clearly much-needed defense of the conservaLiar at Forbes! W00t! So many WINS so early in the morning. Pinch me: am I dreaming???

Making the argument that Buffett’s secretary must make a lot of money, or that her salary needs to be made public is the logical fallacy strawman.

RightWingers can’t come up with a publicly acceptable argument against the uber-rich paying a more fair tax rate, so they start chanting about an entirely different thing altogether.

What the Forbes Idiot is trying to do is incite the digital version of the Brooks Brothers riot.

Buffett boosted her tax rate by adding in payroll taxes she paid, and those her employeer paid to get her into the 30% tax rate level.

Buffy doesn’t pay payroll taxes on investment income. Just so everyone knows.

http://huelskamp.house.gov/images/stories/Buffett_Response.pdf

Yes, and what it really comes down to, as our new friend shooter illustrates, is that wingnuts cannot wrap their heads around the fact that Buffet, an uber-rich self-made man, is not acting in his own selfish interest, but for the greater good of the country. So he must be a liar and they latch on to any attack, even one where the attacker admits outright that he has no claims to accuracy.

According to an anonymous source, shooter242 regularly blows goats. Either he fails to deny this strongly enough, in which case his goat blowing proclivities are assuredly true, or his denials will impugn the integrity of my source which makes him a tremendously bad person. And, of course, a goat blower.

Source

Buffet said his secretary paid twice his rate in income and payroll taxes (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57366582-503544/buffett-secretary-continue-push-on-tax-rates/). Assuming Buffet is correct on his rate of ~11% and assuming she makes around the maximum FICA level, her FICA rate including employer contribution (which xonservative economists say should be counted) is ~15.3%. The income tax rate on $100,000 earned income is 20-22.3% depending upon how it is filed (single, married filing jointly etc., according to the schedules here http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm). Depending upon her deductions, her tax rate is around 35-40%, right where Warren said all his workers are. At a $50k salary her income and FICA rate are about 30%, still more than twice Buffet’s reported rate. I assume if Buffet even makes FICA contributions, the amount is inconsequential compared to the $4 Million in tax he pays

and those shouldn’t count as part of their federal tax burden for what reason?

Why the majority of conservatives, who are paying tax rates much closer to what Warren Buffet’s secretary most likely pays, wish to defend the 1% paying a way far lower tax rate, when making way much more money, defies logic.

Other than, as has been mentioned here before, such gullible conservative rubes citizens actually believe the Rush-driven fantasy that someday, somehow they, too, will strike it lucky, their ship will come in, and they, too, will be obscenely rich grifters. At which point, they will also not wish to be sullied by having to pay their fair share of taxes.

So it’s typical that conservatives would rush to defend an idiot like Gregory, who *outright admits* he’s lying, but hey: let’s pull some really stinky smelly shit out of my asshole and see if I can convnice the rubes citizens that it really smells like a rose!

See: worked like a charm for some conservaTrolls, now didn’t it???

As I said before: WIN!

Ooh, I know this one! It’s the same reason that low-income people who don’t pay income tax, but do pay payroll taxes, “don’t pay any taxes.”

As you point out, the sec. pays 15.3% of her income in payroll taxes, money she’ll expect to get back in retirement.

According to Buffet himself, he paid $15,300 in payroll taxes on $62,855,038 in adjusted gross income.

I’m not good at math, but I think that comes out to around two 100ths of a percent.

Seems like that’s where he’s short changing us.

Them people is real good at “defyin’ logic”.
Of course, down here in Texas we just say they “isn’t smart enough to pour piss out out of a boot.”

I’ve met a bunch of really sensible and honest people from Texas. That’s why I think it’s so brutally unfair that we now think Rove, Bush and Perry when we think Texas. Well, there it is. Of course, since 87% of Texans are registered Republicans, and 99 44/100% of registered Republicans are also registered sex offenders (note: I didn’t make any claim to accuracy in that last statement), I suppose it’s your own fault as a state.

ZING!

Meanwhile, Mitt, like most other hyper-rich, was born to rich parents. Yeah, he really worked hard for his grubstake. Not.

Being a planner is sort of like being a professional “Cassandra”. But thanks for nailing the sense of what life is like any more. “Atlantis in the final days”: yes. that’s pretty much it.

TIP

Don’t go getting all fact-y on him. It might get in the way of him having an opinion based on a rational thought process.

Also too, the “doesn’t pay payroll taxes on investment income” is fundamental to the sham/scam – see Jon Stewart’s connecting the dots on Mitt’s “I paid every dollar I was legally required me and my ilk ‘invested’ lots of money to limit our taxes to” showed us on Tuesday night.

The Republican is honest and Buffet isn’t. Which part of that are you having trouble with?

The part where you prove the Republican is honest, and the part where you prove Buffet is lying.

Just because you make up accusations, does not make it true.

Skipping comments because 1) Oh my freakin’lord. How do you find these people I’ve never heard of before but who make outrageous assertions, TBogg?

2) I’ve got an ad for granite countertops between the post and the comments.

LOL!

Well, she found out, didn’t she? (bright smile)

Not if the Conservatives get their way with cutting Soc. Sec. benefits, raising min. retirement age, means testing for Soc. Sec., etc.

Steps that are necessary to finance the tax cuts given to the Uber Rich

Even if the instructions are printed on the heel?

Having read the comments, gotta say – JennofArk, you are on fire lately!
UncertaintyVicePrincipal – you, too, as always. Hatmandu (may I call you Hat?), newcarguy, onitgoes…I come here for the comments as much as for our host’s patented snark. If I missed anyone, I’m sorry…well, except I do miss the days before shooter, notorious at several other blogs, discovered our poor humble abode. I notice he took himself off early…so many liberal sites to troll, he has such a busy work day.

Thanks, t-rusa.

I think shooter “left the building” when his/her clearly purloined Rushism was proven to be sheer idiocy, but I love it, so I’ll repeat it here:

The Republican is honest and Buffet isn’t. Which part of that are you having trouble with.

shooter242@17

Ladies & Gents: we have a WINNAH!

snort! ROTFLOL!!! Fucking fantastic, shooter! You go!

I’m not making any claims to accuracy. I don’t have to. I’m a Republican. We just say shit.

They know their drooler-followers don’t care about accuracy, they just believe it because they want it to be true.

Most of us grow out of this cognitive stage by the age of 7. Republicanism should be in DSM IV.

With all due respect to all you name, I think this thread had nowhere to go but down after the first comment. BTW Bosanke earned $60,000 (in 2006, I think), so when Buffett says she was taxed at 30 per cent, he’s probably including her Social Security contributions, etc, and quite right too.

Right. Ms. Bosanke should publicly respond to this bumblefuck’s bloviating, so she too can have Michelle Malkin show up at her domicile to make sure she’s appropriately poverty-stricken, not to mention being pilloried by various wingnut columnists.

I’d rather spend the rest of my life at a Liberace show, and he’s dead.

huh? From Buffett’s op-ed.
“Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.”

I’m all for adding a category when DSM-V comes out; “Republicanism” or, even better, “wingnuttery” certainly appears to deserve its own entry.

In the meantime, there’s this that I like to bring out every so often (theoretically, I could probably use it every day, but I like to save for special ocsasions like this).

I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.

John Stuart Mill, March 1866

Oh but according to shooter@17, Buffet, “the Democrat lies.” Ergo…

…any gentleman…

145 years and counting!

Right. My mistake. It’s a sure sign of lying when he wrote that he paid $6,938,444 — but left off how many CENTS.

Besides which, alan1tx actually makes the point for the liberal side when he points out how little Buffett paid in payroll taxes — because once you hit a little over $100,000 in income you don’t pay them any more. So Buffett paying $15k in payroll taxes is another example of how the tax system is hugely advantageous to the rich.

Republicans kick down and kiss up, so of course of all the characters in this story, it’s the secretary who will be attacked.

Sounds like the Op-ed is different info than the letter he wrote to some congressman. I linked to his letter at #30.

And in that letter he states that his calculation also includes the employee and employer payroll tax burden (about 15% of their salary) in his effort to determing the employee tax rate.

Mr. Buffett doesn’t pay much payroll tax, so if his employees have to pay 15% of their pay in government mandated payroll tax, it’s not to surprising that they pay more as a percentage of income than he does (paying nearly zero in payroll tax).

The numbers seem to be the same except for a typo in the cents area, and 30¢ isn’t going to change this discussion. Payroll taxes are a significant part of the point of the Op-Ed, and feature in the letter too.

If Social Security taxes paid in hadn’t been funding tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy for the past 30 years, you might have a little wiggle room on the payroll tax gambit, though we all know the ceiling on that should be raised. Leaving payroll taxes aside, at an effective rate of 17.4%, he’s still paying less than the average paid by employees in his office. At 36%, they’re paying federal income tax at a rate of 21%. Love to hear your defense of that.

Right! Like the secretary didn’t even *start* this whole truth telling about income & tax inequalities between the rich and the middle/working classes, but naturally bc she’s part of the 99%, conservatives are ready to lunge for HER jugular! Go figure.

Look, no one is “surprised” that Buffett isn’t paying at the same RATE as his employees. That is exactly why he brought the subject up.

Rush wants the secretary to release her returns.
Let’s see the returns for Rush, who is a million times larger a “public figure” than she is.

Really? Oh my aching back. What a freakin’ zoo.

Yet another act in the ongoing Kabuki Show, this one entitled:

Wherein overpaid fat dirty bastard Rush Limpdick demands that some innocent bystander be pilloried in the court of so-called “public opinion.” All done to pander to and *distract* his slavering dittoheaded foolish minions from the very obvious fact that they’re being incredibly ripped off by the 1%. Let’s jump on the secretary and make her really PAY for the indignity of having her boss tell us that she pays more in taxes than he does. Slaving minions: attack attack hate hate!

As pointed out many times above the Tax Rates vs. Taxable Income for the Wealthy, when compared to the rest of us are grossly unfair. If Buffet’s Secratary can manage to live off of only 70% of her Taxable Income then it shouldn’t be too much to expect Buffet (and the rest of the Monied Class) to be able to make it on only 70% of their taxable income.

But we shouldn’t even be using the tax rate as a percentage of taxable income for the baseline of this discussion.

The real baseline should be the tax rate as a percentage of “Disposable Income.” Disposable Income being the money left over after paying for the basic necessities required for a civilized, comfortable life (food, clothing, housing, transportation, healthcare and basic education at a minimum).

Using “Percentage of Disposable Income” as the baseline, the effective tax rates for working poor are at or greter than 100%, while the effective tax rate for the wealthy approaches 0%.

Boy this Gingrich surge sure has gotten nutters aroused.

Oh come now, Rush’s figure is probably no more than three or four times hers. Maybe five.

But Buffett isn’t counting the 35-brazilian-percent corporate income tax that his investments all have to pay. No double taxation without double representation!

Megan’s calculator is useless too.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/how-rich-is-warren-buffetts-secretary/252056/#comment-421950737

Sorry. It is very busy being wrong right now.

yeah, and the 24% I paid in federal taxes, I expect to get back as roads and safe planes that don’t fall out of the sky.

What is your point?