“Open for Questions” is a new experiment for WhiteHouse.gov, the President’s latest effort to open up the White House and give Americans from around the country a direct line to the Administration.
This first round will deal with a chief concern for all of us: the economy. We’ve created a few categories to better organize the questions, and encourage you to search for a specific question before you submit your own in case it already exists.
This experiment is about encouraging transparency and accountability, so ask the President exactly what it is you want to know – but let others do the same. It is a community-moderated system, but remember that even though you may not like the viewpoint behind someone’s question, everyone has a right to their opinion. Also remember that Americans of all ages will be participating in this event, so be thoughtful about the words you choose. Participants are asked to follow some basic guidelines for submitting their own questions and flagging other questions as inappropriate.
Leave your opinion on how it went.
Well, the streaming works OK. 🙂
It seems to be running smoothly. No doubt it is useful, politically. I’m just too much of a cynic to deal with it all at face value.
Yes, I’m confident all those video questions represent what a significant chunk of the body politic is asking.
Some of the schoolkids are so fracking cheerful and apple-cheeked I want to smack them. But, then, I ain’t about to run for political office in the United States. Or re-election.
Wow! What a surprise, every question I read looked like a liberal love fest. Everybody asking for a handout.
What a great country.
I think the people that really care were working instead of watching. Tech people might find this crazy but a lot of people don’t sit at a computer all day. On top of that those that do are not allowed to stream video from it.
Waste of taxpayers money.
This stuff should be charged to the committee to reelect Obama.
They should de-interlace video before scaling and streaming it. Video quality looks a little amateur.
Click on budget, and instead of questions about how he calls the Bush budget the most irresponsible in history and then does worse with his own budget, the first 5 questions are about marijuana.
(”tax on wealthy Americans = tax on business”)
not true.
JimR but it is true.
The income of a C corporation … income, or loss, is applied, Pro Rata, to each Shareholder and appears on their tax return as Schedule E income/(loss).
Most small business a C Corps so in fact they will be taxing the businesses.
I wonder why “DUH?B W U” never went online?
A well staged “Dog & Pony” show, just like the townhall meeting here in California.
So I guess there was no small business or entrepreneurship in the 90’s?
#11, it’s still not taxing the business. The cost of doing business via taxes does not go up. Only the personal taxes of each shareholder goes up. The profit margin of the corp remains the same after distributions.
#11, I can say right now that when my business taxes increase, I’m not going to take it on my bottom line.
My customers are. And guess who buys their products?
My customers are companies like the Water Districts, Electricity Generation Companies, Cosmetics, Lead Production Factories, Concrete, Food and Beverage, etc.
And when their taxes increase, guess what they are going to do?
The end consumer is getting the shaft here, not business or the rich.
Of course, politicians have this magical ability to masturbate into a microphone and make other people feel good, so I guess it’s ok.
MikeN:
WIRED has an article ( http://tinyurl.com/c37k57 ) about the heavy voting about Marijuana. Also check out the comments
J/P=?
Liberty, we are not talking about the same scenario here. Alfredi1 said ”tax on wealthy Americans = tax on business”.
That is simply not true. If you are a shareholder of a C corporation, and you are making say 300,000 / year, and your taxes go up 30%, the corporations taxes remain the same. The corp is taxed AFTER distributions. IF your greed decides that you are going to take a larger salary, then the distributions of the corp go up and its taxes due go DOWN.
I was a director of a corporation (Canadian equivalent of a C corporation) for most of my life… I should know.
I couldn’t find it online. I didn’t know the internet number!
#18, My comment was supposed to be directed at you in #10.
You are correct. The shareholders will get a smaller percentage — the first year. After that, if they want to keep their shareholders happy, they play catch up by raising their rates.
My company is Sub-S and the company profits show up on my personal tax form so I know about that as well.
Unless companies anticipate the increase and charge more for their services early to keep their shareholders happy, there will be smaller distributions. It’s rare but does happen.
I’ve been thinking about doing just that but the economy is so far in the shitter right now I am not sure I could get away with it and remain in business.
#18 – You go, JimR!
I was confused by the interchange regarding taxing individuals (wealthy Americans) = taxing business. I guess it depends on the business owner and how they set up their income disbursal.
Let’s take Steve Jobs as an example. I read a while back that he takes a $1 yearly salary from Apple and actually gets paid in stock (ownership). When he needs money I assume that he sells shares, which in turn is taxable income.
I understand that the tax on selling assets is a different animal than taxing income, but an increase in income tax wouldn’t affect a CEO handling their money like this because he’s largely keeping his wealth in the business and is therefore not getting affected by the higher income taxes. Does this make sense?
#22–Whats it all about Alfie?==gosh, this was a good thread until the very last post. You are sounding more like Paddy-O every day. Who knew he had the power to turn a small entrepreneur into an idiot?
“I’m not wealthy…but my small business raised my income just above 77,000…so I must pay an additional 9,000 to the irs, 3,000 to the state…”
What are the specifics? Corp, or partnership? Are you a shareholder, partner, sole proprietor? You say the business raised your salary, but then you say that it’s your business. So in effect, you raised your own salary. Why would you do that knowing that you were going to get hit with a $12,000 penalty?
Is a “(”tax on wealthy Americans = tax on business”) valid?
There are too many variables/undefineds thereby allowing agreement/disagreement as the fancy takes one.
For myself, I don’t see any issue here, but the statement strikes me as the dogma of some group that finds the statement highly important and meaningless to those of us who haven’t drunk the coolaid. It the type of statement made by dirtclods who think that taxation is theft and so forth==real stupid people.
Whats needed for people to survive can intelligently be discussed considering 10 people in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean. Scale the scenario up to any modern society and dogma controls the perceptions, but we are still in that lifeboat.
Amusing.
#21 Harry, “I understand that the tax on selling assets is a different animal than taxing income, but an increase in income tax wouldn’t affect a CEO handling their money like this because he’s largely keeping his wealth in the business and is therefore not getting affected by the higher income taxes. ”
I don’t know the finer details of American tax law, but in Canada, holding shares would be subject to capital gains or losses and taxed or deducted accordingly. Capital gains tax here is taxed at 1/2 the rate of your personal tax rate at the end of each year, whether realized through sales of shares or not. Sucks.
Jobs keeping his wealth in apple shares doesn’t finance Apple in any way. However the perception of him holding a lot of shares and not selling implies his belief that Apple is strong and his wealth will increase. As long as he doesn’t sell too many at one time, no one will care. So taxation of jobs doesn’t affect Apple… unless of course the Gov wiped him out with personal taxes and he had to sell all his apple shares… then the apple lemmings would all go over the cliff with him… maybe.
#15 JIM R – you are wrong
This is the scenario…
If I make $100k doing my job and I own 20% of the company, which makes $1M then the 20% i.e. $200k is put on my taxes even though I don’t see that money because it is used to try and help the company grow. So my tax return shows a total of 250k
This will puts me at the “Rich” tax rate. The company will pay the tax on the 200K via a dividend check at the higher rate and I pay the tax on 100k at the higher rate. So in the end the small company pays more and can’t hire more people and the 100k wage earner (ME) has less money to spend.
So explain to me how Obama taxing who he considers “wealthy” does not affect businesses?
“Whats needed for people to survive can intelligently be discussed considering 10 people in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean. Scale the scenario up to any modern society and dogma controls the perceptions, but we are still in that lifeboat.”
yup, that’s it in a nutshell bobbo.
Everyone has a hand on the tiller which is thrashing madly in the water, foreign debt owns the ocean, the corporate exec is shitting and pissing in the boat while wearing a Gucci wet suit and the only life preserver, the union member is trying to cut a large chunk out of said life preserver, Joe media is madly writing notes about the the whole debacle… sending them off in uncorked bottles, and amid in all the complaining, finger pointing and piddle, the oars have disengaged and are floating away.
Bob, I’ll have the appearance of being wrong only if you take my words out of context and shove them where they don’t belong.
You brought up C corporations before and that was what I was referring to… so what type of company are you talking about now? Generalities and vagueness just confuse the issue.
That is how a C corporation works. May be your Canadian equivalent is not so equivilent.
Ok Bob, maybe not. I’ll check it out and post later. Been vegging on the puter way too long for now…
For those who love/hate Obama
http://worth1000.com/emailthis.asp?entry=523128
Transparency and accountability…? This grabbing power and stealing freedoms seems to be a full time job. I just hope the real brains behind this new scheme – Omar the teleprompter – is up to such a barrage of deception.
Does anyone get the idea that Obama missed his real calling with books on tape?