Riverside Info Tag: taxes

Riverside Info Tag: taxes http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/ Discussion Forum for Riverside Illinois en Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:35:51 +0000 mrt on "Latest (Feb, 2012) water bill seems high" http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/topic/latest-feb-2012-water-bill-seems-high#post-15922 Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:38:19 +0000 mrt 15922@http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/ <blockquote>Chicago's water rates are scheduled to increase 25 percent on Jan. 1, 2012 and increase an additional 15 percent each of the next three years.</blockquote> thanks, chris, for that info. mine went up accordingly - about 10 - 20 pct; but I probably do have a running toilet. maybe I vote for it this Novemeber! ChrisHajer on "Latest (Feb, 2012) water bill seems high" http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/topic/latest-feb-2012-water-bill-seems-high#post-15921 Sat, 04 Feb 2012 11:07:47 +0000 ChrisHajer 15921@http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/ It's been in the Landmark and E-Flash quite a bit recently: <a href="http://rblandmark.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=8398&SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&S=1" rel="nofollow">http://rblandmark.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=8398&SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&S=1</a> <a href="http://rblandmark.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=8302&SectionID=3&SubSectionID=46&S=1" rel="nofollow">http://rblandmark.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=8302&SectionID=3&SubSectionID=46&S=1</a> Chicago news as well: <a href="http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/8301414-418/city-reveals-water-rates-to-keep-going-up-after-initial-4-year-hike.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/8301414-418/city-reveals-water-rates-to-keep-going-up-after-initial-4-year-hike.html</a> The rates were low compared to other cities. The increase hurts because it's relative to where we were before. Sort of how North Riverside residents have to pay for vehicle stickers now. They're cheaper than almost anywhere else around ($30) but because they were free, it seems like a huge insult to charge $30 for them now. FWIW, my Feb water bill is lower than the last one. Maybe it IS a leaky toilet?? anonymous on "Latest (Feb, 2012) water bill seems high" http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/topic/latest-feb-2012-water-bill-seems-high#post-15916 Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:31:24 +0000 anonymous 15916@http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/ We should thank The Rahmster for lightening our wallets. mrt on "Latest (Feb, 2012) water bill seems high" http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/topic/latest-feb-2012-water-bill-seems-high#post-15914 Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:17:05 +0000 mrt 15914@http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/ Is it just me or did the water rates go up ? I just recvd my Feb 2012 water bill it seems extra high , especially during the winter, and either I have a toilet running ovetime, or there is some other culprit. spatny on "Taxes" http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/topic/taxes/page/2#post-15554 Thu, 22 Dec 2011 19:36:14 +0000 spatny 15554@http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/ Mess with Bo? You'll be sorry. McCain and that idiot Kanter have finally gone too far! Now they criticize the Pres for going shopping with Bo (his dog) while the family is in Hawaii. He stays to wait for these turkeys to get off the dime and then they criticize him for buying a few presents. Worse than pathetic! I hope Boehner has a bullet-proof vest that covers his back and his throat, because that poor excuse for a human being Kanter will stab him in the back - et tu Eric - and slit his throat at the first opportunity, which will be late January. Enjoy it while you've got it, Tan Man. You guys went too far when you bitched about Bo being on the White House Christmas card. Santayana was right: If you don't learn from history you will be compelled to repeat it. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqt7b9veFo8" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqt7b9veFo8</a> spatny on "Taxes" http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/topic/taxes/page/2#post-15552 Thu, 22 Dec 2011 18:08:19 +0000 spatny 15552@http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/ Uncle. "WASHINGTON -- Ending a dramatic political stand-off, House Republican leaders agreed on Thursday to pass a Senate-endorsed short-term extension of the payroll tax cut in return for House-Senate negotiations on a year-long package. The House could vote on the bill as soon as Friday at 10 a.m., a House GOP aide confirmed. The bill would come up under unanimous consent, which means it could pass on a voice vote without requiring members to be present. Under that scenario, the Senate could take up the bill and pass it as soon as Friday as well. The agreement ensures that a 2 percent tax break for about 160 million people will not expire on Jan. 1, and that Medicare payments will not be slashed for doctors. Emergency unemployment benefits also will continue. House GOP leaders had been adamant that they had to have a year-long extension, arguing that a two-month version would create economic uncertainty. They reaffirmed that position as recently as Tuesday morning. But pressure to secure the break kept rising, with everyone from Senate Republicans to the Wall Street Journal editorial page warning that their holdout was damaging the party's image. On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) became the latest to try and nudge House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) into backing down, urging him to take the two-month deal in exchange for a guarantee from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that he would appoint conferees to hash out a longer package. "I think the general mood was that this was bungled from early on," a GOP source said. "After what the Wall Street Journal and [Karl] Rove said, it became clear that Obama had the upper hand. "When people are living from paycheck to paycheck, it's tough to take the longview talking about trillion dollar deficits," the source added. "The leadership simply didn't understand that." Better late than not at all. spatny on "Taxes" http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/topic/taxes/page/2#post-15549 Wed, 21 Dec 2011 20:05:52 +0000 spatny 15549@http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/ If you're confused you need an intervention. Boehner slinking out of the House chamber says it all, but just in case, here's what your bible Chris, The WSJ, had to say today" Sound familiar? "GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell famously said a year ago that his main task in the 112th Congress was to make sure that President Obama would not be re-elected. Given how he and House Speaker John Boehner have handled the payroll tax debate, we wonder if they might end up re-electing the President before the 2012 campaign even begins in earnest. The GOP leaders have somehow managed the remarkable feat of being blamed for opposing a one-year extension of a tax holiday that they are surely going to pass. This is no easy double play. Republicans have also achieved the small miracle of letting Mr. Obama position himself as an election-year tax cutter, although he's spent most of his Presidency promoting tax increases and he would hit the economy with one of the largest tax increases ever in 2013. This should be impossible. Steve Moore on the House GOP scuttling the Senate's payroll tax cut extension. Related News Standoff as House Rejects Tax Bill House Republicans yesterday voted down the Senate's two-month extension of the two-percentage-point payroll tax holiday to 4.2% from 6.2%. They say the short extension makes no economic sense, but then neither does a one-year extension. No employer is going to hire a worker based on such a small and temporary decrease in employment costs, as this year's tax holiday has demonstrated. The entire exercise is political, but Republicans have thoroughly botched the politics. Their first mistake was adopting the President's language that he is proposing a tax cut rather than calling it a temporary tax holiday. People will understand the difference—and discount the benefit. Republicans also failed to put together a unified House and Senate strategy. The House passed a one-year extension last week that included spending cuts to offset the $120 billion or so in lost revenue, such as a one-year freeze on raises for federal employees. Then Mr. McConnell agreed with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on the two-month extension financed by higher fees on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (meaning on mortgage borrowers), among other things. It passed with 89 votes and all but seven Republicans. Senate Republicans say Mr. Boehner had signed off on the two-month extension, but House Members revolted over the weekend and so the Speaker flipped within 24 hours. Mr. Boehner is now demanding that Mr. Reid name conferees for a House-Senate conference on the payroll tax bills. But Mr. Reid and the White House are having too much fun blaming Republicans for "raising taxes on the middle class" as of January 1. Don't be surprised if they stretch this out to the State of the Union, when Mr. Obama will have a national audience to capture the tax issue. If Republicans didn't want to extend the payroll tax cut on the merits, then they should have put together a strategy and the arguments for defeating it and explained why. But if they knew they would eventually pass it, as most of them surely believed, then they had one of two choices. Either pass it quickly and at least take some political credit for it. Or agree on a strategy to get something in return for passing it, which would mean focusing on a couple of popular policies that would put Mr. Obama and Democrats on the political spot. They finally did that last week by attaching a provision that requires Mr. Obama to make a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline within 60 days, and the President grumbled but has agreed to sign it. But now Republicans are drowning out that victory in the sounds of their circular firing squad. Already four GOP Senators have rejected the House position, and the political rout will only get worse. One reason for the revolt of House backbenchers is the accumulated frustration over a year of political disappointment. Their high point was the Paul Ryan budget in the spring that set the terms of debate and forced Mr. Obama to adopt at least the rhetoric of budget reform and spending cuts. But then Messrs. Boehner and McConnell were gulled into going behind closed doors with the President, who dragged out negotiations and later emerged to sandbag them with his blame-the-GOP and soak-the-rich re-election strategy. Any difference between the parties on taxes and spending has been blurred in the interim. After a year of the tea party House, Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats have had to make no major policy concessions beyond extending the Bush tax rates for two years. Mr. Obama is in a stronger re-election position today than he was a year ago, and the chances of Mr. McConnell becoming Majority Leader in 2013 are declining. *** At this stage, Republicans would do best to cut their losses and find a way to extend the payroll holiday quickly. Then go home and return in January with a united House-Senate strategy that forces Democrats to make specific policy choices that highlight the differences between the parties on spending, taxes and regulation. Wisconsin freshman Senator Ron Johnson has been floating a useful agenda for such a strategy. The alternative is more chaotic retreat and the return of all-Democratic rule." Two months? This whiner wouldn't bring the bill to the floor to extend it for two months? These cretins are worse than pathetic. chrisrobling on "Taxes" http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/topic/taxes/page/2#post-15548 Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:43:46 +0000 chrisrobling 15548@http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/ confused -- i haven't a clue -- i suggest you ask someone who voted to allow it to expire 12/31. since majorities in both bodies have said "no" to that approach, i think your list of who to ask is not long. cheers, c spatny on "Taxes" http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/topic/taxes/page/2#post-15547 Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:10:07 +0000 spatny 15547@http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/ And from Deborah Weinstein: "When the House Republicans blew up a bipartisan Senate plan to continue unemployment insurance and the payroll tax cut for two months, they made it clear that they were willing to use the 99 percent as bargaining chips in their fight to protect the top 1 percent. I say "bargaining chips" advisedly. Rep. Thomas J. Rooney (R-FL) said of the stand-off, "It's high stakes poker," as quoted in the Washington Post. They are gambling with millions of lives. Most of the press coverage has been about the 160 million people who will start paying higher payroll taxes in January if the House intransigence is unyielding. A lot less attention has been focused on the long-term unemployed. After they exhaust 26 weeks of state unemployment insurance, people still out of work depend on additional weeks of help from the federal unemployment insurance program. More than 40 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for more than 6 months, so the federal program is desperately needed. But it will expire in January because of the House's gamble. According to the National Employment Law Project, nearly 1.8 million people will have to go without unemployment benefits in January alone, with millions more denied help in succeeding months. Economists have consistently ranked unemployment insurance expenditures as among the most successful means of boosting the economy. Of course, the $300 a week in an average unemployment check goes straight back out into the community, spent on food, rent, clothes for their children, and other basic needs. That's not much money, but it can mean the difference between paying the rent and being evicted. The consequences for families will be stark. After all, these lifeline benefits kept 3.2 million people out of poverty in 2010, 1 million of whom were children. Most of the families who lose their unemployment checks will not find jobs; there are still four job-seekers for every available job. They will fall into poverty if they aren't already poor. It is stunning that the House Republicans don't care enough about the jobless to protect them while negotiations go on for a year-long solution. But that's the point: They are doing this because they don't want to protect them. The House-passed bill that provided a year's extension of the payroll tax cut plus another year of federal unemployment compensation placed many restrictions on unemployment insurance. The bill slashed the maximum number of weeks available by 50 (and states with the highest unemployment rates were hit the hardest). It also threw up mean-spirited barriers meant to slam the door on unemployment insurance applicants. That would be costly and unnecessary: States already restrict eligibility for workers who lose their jobs because of drug use. In another cynical barrier, under the House bill unemployment insurance recipients would either have to have finished high school or be enrolled in a high school equivalency program. There is a waiting list of 160,000 people nationwide to get into such programs, and House Republicans have not been noted for expanding such educational opportunities. The Senate vigorously rejected these punishments for being out of work, passing a two-month extension with no policy changes with overwhelming support from both parties. House leaders were not confident that they could prevail in slashing unemployment insurance in a calm negotiation with the Senate. But the House leaders know that in a crisis environment, with the clock ticking on every long-term unemployed person's weekly check, they might wrest more concessions from the Senate. That's not all the House wants. Their bill paid for the payroll tax cut, federal unemployment benefits, and other extensions by cutting spending needed for the new health reform law, multi-year freezes on federal worker pay, and taking the Child Tax Credit away from poor children in immigrant families, even though the vast majority of those children are U.S. citizens. Above all, the House Republicans are intent on paying for the payroll tax cut and other provisions with spending or benefit cuts -- certainly not by raising taxes on the top 1 percent. It is a revealing moment for them. All the talk about never wanting to raise taxes and never needing to pay for tax cuts? That was vigorously asserted when it came to upper-income tax cuts. Speaker Boehner dismissed the attempt a year ago to end the tax cuts for the highest-earning Americans as "chicken crap." The Speaker and his caucus placed the country on the brink of default in order to preserve the high-income tax cuts. But there is no similar defense of the decidedly middle class payroll tax cut. It's a poker chip now. Both the Senate two-month bill and the House's year-long legislation extended a number of other low-income programs that are due to expire in December. These include income and child care assistance for the poorest families, Transitional Medicaid for families moving from welfare to work, and subsidies to help low-income seniors afford health insurance. It is shameful to leave these programs in limbo too, all in a reckless attempt to ratchet up the pressure to shrink federal programs." The zealots will do ANYTHING to defeat Obama, and don't care about who they hurt. That's the reality of where we are at. spatny on "Taxes" http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/topic/taxes/page/2#post-15546 Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:06:11 +0000 spatny 15546@http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/ Meant to post this here: What kind of person would put a "pledge" to Grover Norquist ahead of the country's well-being? This is who... (From Robert Reich) "Two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, the Republican crackup threatens the future of the Grand Old Party more profoundly than at any time since the GOP's eclipse in 1932. That's bad for America. The crackup isn't just Romney the smooth versus Gingrich the bomb-thrower. Not just House Republicans who just scotched the deal to continue payroll tax relief and extended unemployment insurance benefits beyond the end of the year, versus Senate Republicans who voted overwhelmingly for it. Not just Speaker John Boehner, who keeps making agreements he can't keep, versus Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who keeps making trouble he can't control. And not just venerable Republican senators like Indiana's Richard Lugar, a giant of foreign policy for more than three decades, versus primary challenger state treasurer Richard Mourdock, who apparently misplaced and then rediscovered $320 million in state tax revenues. Some describe the underlying conflict as Tea Partiers versus the Republican establishment. But this just begs the question of who the Tea Partiers really are and where they came from. The underlying conflict lies deep into the nature and structure of the Republican Party. And its roots are very old. As Michael Lind has noted, today's Tea Party is less an ideological movement than the latest incarnation of an angry white minority -- predominantly Southern, and mainly rural -- that has repeatedly attacked American democracy in order to get its way. It's no mere coincidence that the states responsible for putting the most Tea Party representatives in the House are all former members of the Confederacy. Of the Tea Party caucus, twelve hail from Texas, seven from Florida, five from Louisiana, and five from Georgia, and three each from South Carolina, Tennessee, and border-state Missouri. Others are from border states with significant Southern populations and Southern ties. The four Californians in the caucus are from the inland part of the state or Orange County, whose political culture has was shaped by Oklahomans and Southerners who migrated there during the Great Depression. This isn't to say all Tea Partiers are white, Southern or rural Republicans -- only that these characteristics define the epicenter of Tea Party Land. And the views separating these Republicans from Republicans elsewhere mirror the split between self-described Tea Partiers and other Republicans. In a poll of Republicans conducted for CNN last September, nearly six in ten who identified themselves with the Tea Party say global warming isn't a proven fact; most other Republicans say it is. Six in ten Tea Partiers say evolution is wrong; other Republicans are split on the issue. Tea Party Republicans are twice as likely as other Republicans to say abortion should be illegal in all circumstances, and half as likely to support gay marriage. Tea Partiers are more vehement advocates of states' rights than other Republicans. Six in ten Tea Partiers want to abolish the Department of Education; only one in five other Republicans do. And Tea Party Republicans worry more about the federal deficit than jobs, while other Republicans say reducing unemployment is more important than reducing the deficit. In other words, the radical right wing of today's GOP isn't that much different from the social conservatives who began asserting themselves in the Party during the 1990s, and, before them, the "Willie Horton" conservatives of the 1980s, and, before them, Richard Nixon's "silent majority." Through most of these years, though, the GOP managed to contain these white, mainly rural and mostly Southern, radicals. After all, many of them were still Democrats. The conservative mantle of the GOP remained in the West and Midwest -- with the libertarian legacies of Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft and Barry Goldwater, neither of whom was a barn-burner -- while the epicenter of the Party remained in New York and the East. But after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as the South began its long shift toward the Republican Party and New York and the East became ever more solidly Democratic, it was only a matter of time. The GOP's dominant coalition of big business, Wall Street, and Midwest and Western libertarians was losing its grip. The watershed event was Newt Gingrich's takeover of the House, in 1995. Suddenly, it seemed, the GOP had a personality transplant. The gentlemanly conservatism of House Minority Leader Bob Michel was replaced by the bomb-throwing antics of Gingrich, Dick Armey, and Tom DeLay. Almost overnight Washington was transformed from a place where legislators tried to find common ground to a war zone. Compromise was replaced by brinkmanship, bargaining by obstructionism, normal legislative maneuvering by threats to close down government -- which occurred at the end of 1995. Before then, when I'd testified on the Hill as Secretary of Labor, I had come in for tough questioning from Republican senators and representatives -- which was their job. After January 1995, I was verbally assaulted. "Mr. Secretary, are you a socialist?" I recall one of them asking. But the first concrete sign that white, Southern radicals might take over the Republican Party came in the vote to impeach Bill Clinton, when two-thirds of senators from the South voted for impeachment. (A majority of the Senate, you may recall, voted to acquit.) America has had a long history of white Southern radicals who will stop at nothing to get their way -- seceding from the Union in 1861, refusing to obey Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, shutting the government in 1995, and risking the full faith and credit of the United States in 2010. Newt Gingrich's recent assertion that public officials aren't bound to follow the decisions of federal courts derives from the same tradition. This stop-at-nothing radicalism is dangerous for the GOP because most Americans recoil from it. Gingrich himself became an object of ridicule in the late 1990s, and many Republicans today worry that if he heads the ticket the Party will suffer large losses. It's also dangerous for America. We need two political parties solidly grounded in the realities of governing. Our democracy can't work any other way." So that's what I've been saying - get a reasonable candidate that doesn't waffle and spit out whatever he thinks the far right wants to hear. I'm all for a responsible Republican Party slugging it out with the Dems when the ideas both parties proffer are reasonable. That ain't the T-Party zealots. They hate Obama because of what he is, and have offered no constructive plans for putting the country back in order. They have Faux News, Limbaugh, Sabage et. al. spitting out untruths and venom day after day that these p[eople lap up. Norquist openly states that he will use the millions his affluent supporters give him against anyone that raises revenue for the gov, because they hate gov regulation and want to be left alone to do just what they did for the past decade. Won't happen.