Links O' War: December 11, 2012 (OT: Politics)

No news that is worth reporting this morning, just some cliff notes about MSU not selling any tickets to our bowl game, no news on how TCU is doing.

Frogs O' War will kick off it's regular season review tomorrow with Grambling State, you will NOT want to miss this! You get to watch the entire game, you get to review the stats and numbers, and likely cry thinking about all the players you see in these early games that are only doomed to never make it past midseason.

Since there is no news, I will go ahead and jump in here with my commentary:

- The fiscal cliff is looming... Those of you who follow me on Twitter know I am a fiscal conservative-realist, liberal/independent on social issues. And yes, these fiscal cliff negotiations make me so angry. This is really simple folks, here is what we do:

------ Four tax brackets: 10%(0-$50k), 15%($50k-150k), 20%($150k-999k), 30%($1mill+)

- All income is taxed the same, including dividends/capital gains. Deductions are limited to $50k, charitable deductions are treated differently and are capped at 5% of taxable gross but cannot be deducted until you give at least 2% of your taxable gross.

- I also want to cap payroll taxes (medicare, ss) at 10%, meaning that the highest effective tax rate would be max 40% in a hypothetical sense, but in reality it is about 36% in my plan.

- SS needs to go back up to 90% of taxable gross, higher cap.

- Medicare tax increases have to go up, listen you can't pay 2% for Medicare but complain about it not being fiscally responsible... You have to pay if you want this to work, and I don't believe getting rid of the program is an actual solution.

- The gas tax has to go up, duh.

- Marijuana should be decriminalized at the federal level and taxed at the federal level.

- Starting in 2020, we need a national sales tax that will directly be used to pay down the national debt. By this point, we will have a balanced budget and we should be paying down the debt by roughly $30-50 billion a year, plus our budgetary surplus (if any). The sales tax would start at 2% (on top of all state taxes) and go up .25% a year until it gets to 4% by the end of the decade. The sales tax will expire when the national debt gets down to 3% of GDP.

------ Cut the following areas: Defense, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security

- All the details of my plan can be seen here: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=rml6fj5d

- Just ignore the tax part of this, it doesn't conform with my plan.

- All of this, taxes included, should be fazed in together over the next 5 years.

Feel free to jump in here and give you ideas... I am never opposed to talking politics on here, but please be respectful. Also, if you ever want to talk politics on your own, you can do so my making your own FanPost, but please mark it OT: Politics.