SC Governor Reappears With New Story
Okay, this is the least important thing in the world, but it is really weird. The governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, disappeared and has re-appeared. First he was just gone. His wife, the Lieutenant Governor, his PR people, nobody knew where he was. Then his office said he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail, interestingly during Nude Hiking Day. Then somebody said they'd seen him getting on a plane in Atlanta, with clothes on.
Now he says he took a trip to Argentina.
I guess they think this guy might run for President in 2012. He's a Republican, some scandal isn't going to hurt him any, but ... don't you wonder what in the world is going on here?
This article says, a little farther down:
Yeah, sure.
[Note: Of course I have to update this one. Here's the headline and summary from the LA Times: South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford admits to extramarital affair: Sanford admits to a love affair with an Argentine woman. 'The bottom line is this: I've been unfaithful to my wife.' He apologizes to his family and the people of South Carolina.]
[I am shocked, I tell you.]
Now he says he took a trip to Argentina.
ATLANTA (Reuters) - South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford returned to the United States on Wednesday from a secret private trip to Argentina, ending days of speculation over his whereabouts and raising questions about his judgment.
Sanford is the chairman of the Republican Governors' Association and a prominent fiscal conservative who has been talked about as a potential Republican candidate for the 2012 U.S. presidential election.
Analysts said his mystery retreat to South America could damage his political career if he has presidential aspirations.
When media reported Sanford's whereabouts were unknown since last Thursday and that even his wife did not know where he was, his aides said he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail in the eastern United States to get away for a break after a tough state legislative session. "Missing" U.S. governor was on private Argentina trip
I guess they think this guy might run for President in 2012. He's a Republican, some scandal isn't going to hurt him any, but ... don't you wonder what in the world is going on here?
This article says, a little farther down:
Sanford flew to Atlanta early on Wednesday and told reporters for The State, South Carolina's biggest newspaper, he had decided at the last minute to go to Argentina and drive along its coastline.
"I wanted to do something exotic ... to get out of the bubble I am in," he told the paper, adding he had traveled alone.
Yeah, sure.
[Note: Of course I have to update this one. Here's the headline and summary from the LA Times: South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford admits to extramarital affair: Sanford admits to a love affair with an Argentine woman. 'The bottom line is this: I've been unfaithful to my wife.' He apologizes to his family and the people of South Carolina.]
[I am shocked, I tell you.]
posted by JimK at 11:58 AM
25 Comments:
South America...Republican...I think we know what's going on here?
We all know that's where all the former Nazis fled after WWII.
It's a plot, I tell you.
A plot.
news flash:
the guy had an affair
he's resigning
Political science expert Ann Coulter appeared on Bill O'Reilly's television program this week to discuss the murder of late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller.
Coulter offered the following ethical assessment of the crime:
"I don't really like to think of it as a murder. It was terminating Tiller in the 203rd trimester."
When pressed by O'Reilly on this statement, Coulter replied,
"I am personally opposed to shooting abortionists, but I don't want to impose my moral values on others."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/24/south.carolina.governor/index.html
Now Sanford. Following Ensign, Vitter, Craig, Jack Ryan, Gingrich, Livingston
I'm waiting for the new CW song, "Don't let your daughters grow up to marry Republican politicians."
In fairness, Elliot Spitzer, Bill Clinton, and Gary Hart were no great prizes, either. But among the Republicans, it seems to be an epidemic.
How many abortions has Coulter had?
Once again we are presented with a sterling example of the highly-praised "Family Values" agenda, in its full glory, that everyone is supposed to subscribe to along with the sacred credo: "We must preserve the sanctity of marriage" - which, of course is in the firm grasp of sanctimonious heterosexuals who, after all, are responsible for an abysmal 50% marriage failure rate. The GLBT community cannot be saddled with this sad state of affairs!
Well...one more hypocritical Republican "front-runner" for the Presidency in 2012 has fallen by the wayside...exposed by his own venality.
"When will they ever learn?"
Diogenes
let's not forget John Edwards who had an affair while he wife was going through chemo
and remember, Dems talk about family values as much as Repubs
Maybe Edwards learned that trick from Newt's fine example:
"Gingrich has been married three times. He married Jackie Battley, his former high school geometry teacher, when he was 19 years old (she was seven years his senior at 26 years old). They had two daughters and divorced in 1981. Jackie Battley Gingrich supported him through graduate school and two unsuccessful congressional campaigns. She had undergone uterine cancer surgery during the successful 1978 campaign, which Gingrich was not averse to mentioning in his speeches. Eighteen months later, they separated. While in the hospital recovering from another uterine operation, according to his friend Lee Howell, “"Newt came up there with his yellow legal pad, and he had a list of things on how the divorce was going to be handled. He wanted her to sign it. She was still recovering from surgery, still sort of 'out of it,' and he comes in with a yellow sheet of paper, handwritten, and wants her to sign it.” According to Howell, friends in her church had to raise money for the separated wife of the congressman and her daughters. Later, Jackie Battley Gingrich went to court for adequate support, before the divorce decree. In his financial statement, Gingrich reported providing $400 per month, plus $40 in allowances for his daughters. Gringrich claimed to be unable to afford more, but the same financial statement lists his expenditures for his food/dry cleaning etc. (one person) as $400."
==========
"The Charleston Post and Courier reports that Mark Sanford, as a congressman, called on Clinton to resign when his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky was revealed. Sanford is now Gov. Sanford. And, as just about everyone knows by now, he confessed today that he had an affair with a “dear, dear friend” in Argentina.
But back in 1998, according to the Post and Courier, he said of Clinton, “Very damaging stuff. This one’s pretty cut and dried.” Calling the overall situation messy, he added: “I think it would be much better for the country and for him personally [to resign]." "
Andrea- not anon
Here is what I don't get about the Bs of asking for forgiveness from his family. He and his wife separated some weeks ago and he was supposed to be repenting(or whatever). And then on Father's Day weekend, he goes to be with his girlfriend. And his wife issues a statement yesterday saying she loves him and will forgive him if he is truely repentant. Hey, Mrs. Sanford- what is there about your husband going back to his girlfriend on Father's Day weekend- that you don't get? But now that he has admitted it on national TV and cried- we know in his heart he is a good and loving family man.
And Haley Barbour as head of the GOP governors group - good move. Loving my GOP old fat Southern White guys-!
I am thinking Barbour/Wamp 2012- or Sanford/Ensign.
And Larry Craig for Secretary of Defense!
here's an interesting question:
both Dems and Repubs have been caught in affairs while promoting family values
is that any worse than these Dems who are always pushing for higher taxes and then cheat on their taxes?
"It is well past time that our government went hightailing after these corporate and wealthy individuals who hide their income in off-shore accounts to avoid paying taxes. President Obama is in hot pursuit of these tax cheaters so stand back and watch the sparks fly. The President estimates that Americans are being cheated out of $250 billion dollars every decade by these well-designed tax evasion schemes through which many American companies and wealthy individuals camouflage their true income by depositing it in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, Monaco, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg.
According to research released from the Office of Research at the IRS and The Citizens for Tax Justice, the art of tax avoidance or evasion has become a big business of its own. Most of our country’s major accounting firms, including Ernst and Young, Deloitte Touche, and Price Waterhouse have marketed abusive tax avoidance strategies and the general effort has been abetted by Bank of America, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, and other major banks.
Major American corporations are involved in these scams. ENRON paid no federal taxes in four out of five years between 1996 and 2000. Halliburton is reported to have hundreds of off-shore affiliates. Some of the most notable American companies, including Coca-Cola, have tax avoidance shelters in the Cayman Islands.
The tax scam business is not only off shore. Three years ago a Senate committee on Homeland Security found that tax shelter companies were using the Los Angeles Fire and Police Pension Fund as well as the Austin Fire Fighters in questionable scams to hide money.
In this country, corporate taxes paid to the federal treasury have fallen from 4.8% of the nation’s gross nation product in the 1950s to today’s paltry 1.5%. Another way to consider that freefall is to remember that if corporations had been paying the tax rate as when Dwight Eisenhower was President, the public’s treasury would have received an average of $380 billion per year more than we have."
actually, corporate earnings are taxed when they are distributed to their stockholders
why should they be taxed before they are distributed too
the corporate tax should be eliminated
it's distorts and deters economic activty
Most individuals pay both federal income tax and state income tax on their taxable income. When they spend their double taxed income, they often pay sales tax too. If individuals can be triple taxed, businesses can be double taxed.
businesses aren't independent entities, they represent groups of people
corporations pay state tax and sales tax too
try again
The sales tax is entirely regressive, and should be eliminated.
2008 US Senate report Tax Haven Banks and US Compliance
It reports that each year "the United States loses an estimated $100 billion in tax revenues due to offshore tax abuses."
2009 GAO report International Taxation: Large US Corporations and Federal Contractors with Subsidies in Jurisdictions Listed as Tax Havens or Financial Privacy Jurisdictions
It reports "Eighty-three of the 100 largest publicly traded U.S. corporations reported having subsidiaries in jurisdictions listed as tax havens or financial privacy jurisdictions. Sixty-three of the 100 largest publicly traded U.S. federal contractors in terms of fiscal year 2007 federal contract obligations reported having subsidiaries in such jurisdictions....the SEC only requires public corporations to report the number of significant subsidiaries, so the number or subsidiaries in jurisdictions listed as tax havens or financial privacy jurisdictions for each corporation may be understated in this report."
Many of those corporations are beneficiaries of billions in taxpayer dollars under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Morgan Stanley, for instance, boasts 273 subsidiaries in tax havens, with 158 in the Cayman Islands alone. Citigroup's got 427, with 90 in the Cayman Islands, and 59 of Bank of America's tax-haven subsidiaries are there as well.
The GAO found 18,857 businesses are registered at just one address in the Cayman Islands -- the "Ugland House." The report said that "Ugland House registered entities included investment funds, structured-finance vehicles, and entities associated with other corporate activities."
Huffington Post reports
"Many of those corporations are beneficiaries of billions in taxpayer dollars under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Morgan Stanley, for instance, boasts 273 subsidiaries in tax havens, with 158 in the Cayman Islands alone. Citigroup's got 427, with 90 in the Cayman Islands, and 59 of Bank of America's tax-haven subsidiaries are there as well.
The GAO found 18,857 businesses are registered at just one address in the Cayman Islands -- the "Ugland House." The report said that "Ugland House registered entities included investment funds, structured-finance vehicles, and entities associated with other corporate activities.""
actually, corporate earnings are taxed when they are distributed to their stockholders
why should they be taxed before they are distributed too
the corporate tax should be eliminated
corporations pay Federal income tax on their earnings and state imcome tax and sales tax and personal property tax and payroll tax and, after all that, the company distributes the remainder to the shareholders who pay Federal and state income taxes on it again
we have some of the highest marginal tax rates in the world
we should reward and encourage the production of income, not make it meaningless
we now know that he actions of FDR prolonged the depression for years
let's hope Sir Barry O is teachable
we have some of the highest marginal tax rates in the world
Here are some facts about marginal tax rates for you.
we now know that he [sic] actions of FDR prolonged the depression for years
Are you still stuck on the January, 2009 GOP talking points memo? Sorry, but Paul Krugman schooled George Will as he shot that argument down here. Be sure to watch the 1 minute video. Then you might want to study this graph and text.
You are mistaken. Sit back and watch President Obama, maybe you'll learn something.
the fact that Roosevelt prolonged the Great Depression is an accepted fact among economists
from this week's Time magazine:
"F.D.R.'s tenacity could not get the economy back to where it had been before the Great Depression began, in 1929.
Today we know that actions Roosevelt took to resolve the crisis actually perpetuated it.
At least five New Deal policies stalled recovery.
The trouble started with Roosevelt's erratic budgetary-spending patterns.
During his first term and especially in the lead-up to his 1936 re-election campaign, F.D.R. submitted budgets to Congress that called for unprecedented spending.
From 1933 to 1936, the federal budget rose from 6% to 9% of the nation's GDP.
Once safely past the '36 election, the President had second thoughts about outlays.
Soon, he, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury tightened money.
Those moves helped cause the infamous Depression Within the Depression, a sharp downturn in 1937 and 1938.
As much as the measures themselves, Washington's inconsistencies did damage.
Next came taxes.
Instead of reversing Hoover's tax-hike error, Roosevelt compounded it by raising taxes again and again.
His Treasury also cobbled together new business taxes.
Roosevelt, angered that firms were not spending to stimulate the economy, retaliated with an undistributed-profits tax on top of ordinary corporate taxes.
Beyond tax rates, a broader New Deal tax philosophy took its toll.
Tax authorities had once drawn a clear line between tax avoidance — the use of legal deductions — and criminal tax evasion.
Roosevelt blotted out that line, conflating evasion with avoidance.
Anyone who seemed to pay too little became a target of F.D.R.'s prosecutors.
New Deal labor policy also prolonged the Depression.
The centerpiece of the New Deal, the National Recovery Administration, supported minimum wages that employers often could not pay.
The 1935 Wagner Act gave John Lewis and what would become his Congress of Industrial Organizations the power to insist that wages stay high or rise while the economy was still fragile.
In the late '30s, joblessness rose yet again, and it became clear that double-digit unemployment would be the rule for the decade.
People began to realize that the government-jobs programs that Roosevelt had created did not amount to true recovery because those jobs disappeared when the government stopped funding them.
Most intimidating of all was not a fact but a prospect: What more might this President do as he aggregated authority?
In his 1937 Inaugural Address, F.D.R. told the nation outright that government was now fashioning itself into an "instrument of unimagined power."
That same year, when he sought to pack the Supreme Court, it became clear that F.D.R. meant what he said.
The bill to allow court-packing was defeated, but voters still wondered where Roosevelt would turn next.
During the Depression Within the Depression, industrial production collapsed and families hungered again.
Businesses went on "capital strike," choosing not to invest in the future.
Even British economist John Maynard Keynes, who believed in deficit spending, chastised the U.S. President. "It is a mistake to think businessmen are more immoral than politicians."
In those later years of the 1930s, the Dow gave up its previous gains, closing off hope that it would soon return to its 1929 benchmark level. (The market would not regain those heights until the mid-1950s.)
Per capita GDP reached pre-Crash levels only at the very end of the 1930s. But worst of all was the abiding unemployment, which gave the Depression its adjective — Great — in American memory."
"Here are some facts about marginal tax rates for you."
We were discussing corporate rates, you idiot.
Although, Sir Barry O would also like to increase individual marginal rates as well.
Unless he makes a quick about-face, he won't be re-elected.
It's the economy, stupid.
The big B.O. can change his mind though.
He now has the same national security policies as his esteemed predecessor. From AP:
"WASHINGTON -- The White House is considering whether to issue an executive order to indefinitely imprison a small number of Guantanamo Bay detainees.
Under the proposal, detainees considered too dangerous to prosecute or release would be kept in confinement in the U.S. or possibly overseas, two administration officials said Friday.
Civil rights advocates and constitutional scholars accused Obama of parroting the detention policies of former Republican President George W. Bush.
"Prolonged imprisonment without trial is exactly the Guantanamo system that the president promised to shut down," Shayana Kadidal, a senior attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a statement Friday."
Great selective editing of a conservative author's self-promotion article, Anon. For those interested in reading the full TIME Magazine article written by Amity Shlaes, which touts her own most recent book, you'll find it here.
Portions Anon omitted include (among many others):
-"The first bleak years of the Depression were no fault of his. After the historic market crash of 1929, his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, through a misguided sense of charity, took steps that kept the economy down. By insisting that companies continue to pay high wages at a time when they could ill afford it, Hoover made employers slow to rehire. He signed into law a tariff, Smoot-Hawley, that set off a global trade war. He also joined Congress in pushing the top income tax rate from 25% to a confiscatory 63%.
-Meanwhile, events abroad triggered further damage. In 1931, while Roosevelt was still governor of New York, Britain shocked the U.S. by going off the gold standard, meaning that Britons could no longer demand gold in exchange for paper currency at their banks. Foreign governments and individuals then rushed to redeem their dollars for gold. A banking panic ensued. To lure back cash, the Fed pushed up interest rates. Such actions worked to cause a whole new round of bank failures.
-In 1932, the year Roosevelt was elected to his first term, 24% of U.S. workers were jobless. As soon as he took office, in March 1933, Roosevelt made a number of positive moves. Brushing aside opposition from the financial glitterati, he created federal deposit insurance for banks. Knowing that they could retrieve their money even if the local thrift closed its doors so reassured small depositors that they were willing once again to leave their cash in banks. The following year, F.D.R. established the Securities and Exchange Commission, which, over the long run, bolstered U.S. competitiveness by promising clear rules for investors in American equities.
-Roosevelt also reassured seniors by creating Social Security. During his first term, the stock market rallied strongly, affording snapshots of robust growth for short periods. By the fall of 1936, when he was running for re-election, unemployment had dropped to about 10%, from 20%. Perhaps the Depression was history. Voters rewarded the President with a stunning electoral sweep — 46 of the 48 states."
Wikipedia reports Amity Shlaes is a former member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board. It also reports her book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of The Great Depression , has been found to be "revisionary" or "misleading" by such people as author John Updike, economist Paul Krugman, Professor Matthew Dallek, historian Eric Rauchway, and journalist Jonathan Chait.
If you'd like to discuss this, it would be nice if you could try to control yourself enough to omit the insults.
OK, so let's look at corporate marginal taxes rather than income marginal taxes. Figure 1 here shows that until Bush came to power, the US's corporate marginal tax rates were lower than most other countries', but since 2000, much of the rest of the world has surpassed the US at lowering them. Figure 2 shows similar data and dates for the "effective corporate marginal tax rate." And if you'll take a look at this PDF, you'll notice that the corporate marginal tax rate from 1932-1935 was zero. Did this three year elimination of corporate taxes save us from the Depression? No it didn't. The US didn't fully recover from the Depression until the huge stimulus package called World War II was appropriated and corporate marginal tax rates were raised.
"until Bush came to power, the US's corporate marginal tax rates were lower than most other countries', but since 2000, much of the rest of the world has surpassed the US at lowering them"
so, my original statement that U.S. marginal rates are among the world's highest is correct
long way for you to get there, anon-B
the reason the other countries have lowered them is because of wide recognition among economists that it will stimulate economic growth
Sir Barry O, no doubt, skipped that econ class and cheated on the final
"you'll notice that the corporate marginal tax rate from 1932-1935 was zero. Did this three year elimination of corporate taxes save us from the Depression?"
actually, things had perked up a little although if you'll read above you'll see tha other errors made by FDR
when he increased business taxes after 1936 is when the second wave of severe depression hit
so, my original statement that U.S. marginal rates are among the world's highest is correct
Well, your statement was partially correct. You meant "U.S. corporate marginal rates are among the world's highest." You also left out how and when they got that way, which was thanks to the policies of Bush/Cheney. You should be pleased that President Obama seems to be following another of their policies.
when he increased business taxes after 1936 is when the second wave of severe depression hit
And when FDR got Congress to appropriate the massive deficit spending necessary to fund World War II and to raise business taxes to help defray those costs, the Great Depression ended and the US enjoyed on a period of prosperity and growth.
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