Last night while hosting the O’reilly Factor, confirmed racist Laura Ingraham (see the “Laura The Racist” section) featured a “story” about two African American brothers who may have murdered a 12-year old white girl for her bike parts. Ingraham’s underlying argument is that the media is biased against whites. The media covers for the menancing black men who victimize innocent white children. Ingraham even went so far as to post a Willie Horton style photo of the two brothers on her Twitter page.
As I have said on my radio show, Fox News is officially a white rights network, so we can expect this type of racial nonsense, especially from someone like Laura Ingraham. However, what is even more egregious is the fact that Ingraham is using a deceased 12-year old girl to make a political point about the media. The story wasn’t about the murdered young girl. It wasn’t about the case itself; instead it was a two-fold attack: The media and blacks in America.
This is by far one of the worst cases of dishonesty I have ever seen from Ingraham. Among other things, she goes on to say, “The lower 50% pay 3% of the overall tax burden. The upper 2% pay 97.69%.” This is false and misleading. The top 1% of income earners earn nearly 24% of all the income, and have more wealth than the bottom 50%. In fact, 80% of the income growth from 1980 to 2007 has gone to the top 1%, so this idea that the wealthy are picking up the burden is ridiculous because they are accumulating almost all of the income growth and wealth. As far the idea that the bottom 50% are not paying their fair share, it’s the exact opposite. Our state and local tax systems are by far more dependent upon people with lower incomes. Here’s some statistics from Gainsville.com The article is titled: The 9 Things The Rich Don’t Want You To Know About Taxes.
1. Poor Americans do pay taxes.
Gretchen Carlson, the Fox News host, said last year “47 percent of Americans don’t pay any taxes.” John McCain and Sarah Palin both said similar things during the 2008 campaign about the bottom half of Americans.
Ari Fleischer, the former Bush White House spokesman, once said “50 percent of the country gets benefits without paying for them.”
Actually, they pay lots of taxes—just not lots of federal income taxes.
Data from the Tax Foundation show that in 2008, the average income for the bottom half of taxpayers was $15,300.
This year the first $9,350 of income is exempt from taxes for singles and $18,700 for married couples, just slightly more than in 2008. That means millions of the poor do not make enough to owe income taxes.
But they still pay plenty of other taxes, including federal payroll taxes. Between gas taxes, sales taxes, utility taxes and other taxes, no one lives tax-free in America.
When it comes to state and local taxes, the poor bear a heavier burden than the rich in every state except Vermont, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy calculated from official data. In Alabama, for example, the burden on the poor is more than twice that of the top 1 percent. The one-fifth of Alabama families making less than $13,000 pay almost 11 percent of their income in state and local taxes, compared with less than 4 percent for those who make $229,000 or more.
The Internet is awash with statements that the top 1 percent pays, depending on the year, 38 percent or more than 40 percent of taxes.
It’s true that the top 1 percent of wage earners paid 38 percent of the federal income taxes in 2008 (the most recent year for which data is available). But people forget that the income tax is less than half of federal taxes and only one-fifth of taxes at all levels of government.
Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes (known as payroll taxes) are paid mostly by the bottom 90 percent of wage earners. That’s because, once you reach $106,800 of income, you pay no more for Social Security, though the much smaller Medicare tax applies to all wages. Warren Buffett pays the exact same amount of Social Security taxes as someone who earns $106,800
Furthermore, the article points out, the burdern on the top 400 richest families in America has went down to the point of a 16.6% effective tax rate. The article explains further: Despite skyrocketing incomes, the federal tax burden on the richest 400 has been slashed, thanks to a variety of loopholes, allowable deductions and other tools. The actual share of their income paid in taxes, according to the IRS, is 16.6 percent. Adding payroll taxes barely nudges that number.
Compare that to the vast majority of Americans, whose share of their income going to federal taxes increased from 13.1 percent in 1961 to 22.5 percent in 2007.
You see, Laura? The tax burden is shifting from your class to the rest of us. Many of the nation’s richest people are paying no federal taxes at all.
I could go on and on here, but you get the point: Laura Ingraham is a corporate shill who will lie on behalf of her millionaire pupet masters to ensure things stay the way they are.
This time instead of calling McCain fat, Ingraham called her a “poor man’s Ron Reagan.” My advice to Ms. McCain would be not to stoop to Ingraham’s level. However, if you do decide to retaliate, this site is a great resource.