Bush supporters' aftermath thread II

To those that accuse those tax cuts for ballooning the deficits, etc. there is this in today's papers:

Quote:

A flood of income tax payments pushed up government receipts to the second-highest level in history in April, giving the country a sizable surplus for the month.

Foxfyre wrote:

To those that accuse those tax cuts for ballooning the deficits, etc. there is this in today's papers:

Quote:

A flood of income tax payments pushed up government receipts to the second-highest level in history in April, giving the country a sizable surplus for the month.

Besides tax rates, what other determinants of government receipts did the article control for? Inflation? Working age population? Anything? If your point is that the Bush tax cuts increased income tax payments, the evidence in this article is extremely weak -- almost meaningless, considering the fact that it's a one-month effect.

Foxfyre, what do you think of a national retail sales tax to replace the income tax? I would be in favor conditional on 2 things, one that the income tax must be totally scrapped, and two, that food, energy, and housing (up to a threshold amount for housing) would be excluded. Roughly that would be my idea on it, but details would need to be worked out.

I realize such would probably never happen because too many special interests are vested in the current system.

This issue hinges on whether you fundamentally believe that tax structure should be a major player in social engineering and business, or if you believe that commerce should be responding primarily to market forces and that charities should prosper according to how willing people are to support them based on their merits without an artificial outside incentive. I believe the latter philosophy is more efficient and more tied to a results oriented economy.

Rove acknowledged a "disconnect" between consumer confidence levels and overall satisfaction with the economy, and he blamed the war in Iraq. [..]

"I'm sanguine ," he said. "The American people like this president. His personal approval ratings are in the 60s. Job approval is lower. And what that says to me is that people like him, they respect him; he's somebody they feel a connection with, but they're just sour right now on the war."

Whether you approve of disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as President, what is your impression of George W. Bush as a person? Do you approve or disapprove of him?

Approve/strongly....................................................42%
Approve/somewhat.................................................18%

And of course that's "personal approval" rating (as opposed to "job approval"), which is what Rove was talking about, not "favorability," which is probably a combination of the two.

There are apparently a couple of polls that put Bush's "personal approval" rating in the 60s. One is the George Washington University Battleground poll conducted by the Tarrance Group.

Ticomaya wrote:

And of course that's "personal approval" rating (as opposed to "job approval"), which is what Rove was talking about, not "favorability," which is probably a combination of the two.

Nope. The "favouribility" rating explicitly asks whether the respondent has a favourable or unfavourable opinion of George Bush - not of the job he's doing, but of him.

You would have known that, of course, if you'd bothered to click the link I provided - the wording of the question is included for each of the listed polls.

Ticomaya wrote:

There are apparently a couple of polls that put Bush's "personal approval" rating in the 60s. One is the George Washington University Battleground poll conducted by the Tarrance Group.

That poll is from last February. I admit: that's quite a bit later than August 2003. But all the five polls I listed - none of them job apprival ratings, all ratings of George Bush personally - are from the last two months. And all of them have the number at 30-40%.

And again, if there is one person in the country who would know about current polls, it's Karl Rove; pleading ignorance is implausible here.

Approve/strongly....................................................30%
Approve/somewhat.................................................15%

Approve/strongly.....................................................30%
Approve...................................................................16%

Having been called names, one looks back at one's own angry outbursts over the years, and I recall having once referred to Republicans as "hairy-backed swamp developers, fundamentalist bullies, freelance racists, hobby cops, sweatshop tycoons, line jumpers, marsupial moms and aluminum-siding salesmen, misanthropic frat boys, ninja dittoheads, shrieking midgets, tax cheats, cheese merchants, cat stranglers, pill pushers, nihilists in golf pants, backed-up Baptists, the grand pooh-bahs of Percodan, mouth breathers, testosterone junkies and brownshirts in pinstripes." I look at those words now, and "cat stranglers" seems excessive to me. The number of cat stranglers in the ranks of the Republican Party is surely low, and that reference was hurtful to Republicans and to cat owners. I feel sheepish about it.

Of course, this means nothing.

Cycloptichorn