Ok, so I go onto First Read this afternoon and find this.
While I was entertained by a group led by Pat Toomey attacking John McCain, I found some of the content a little disturbing.
First of all, I should mention I have a very special hatred for Pat Toomey as he was formerly the US Rep for the district I grew up in. There were a lot of times I wished he and Rick Santorum would be caught double-teaming a dog. We can all dream.
I found it very amusing that his letter started out with so much "concern". Maybe Pat has been jumping around this site a little bit lately. Pat is of course very upset that John McCain would even suggest raising or eliminating the cap on social security withholding tax. How will the hard working people ever survive this new tax??? Pat smartly fails to mention that the withholding tax for social security only stops after the first $97,000 of personal, annual income. That means a household with $192,000 of income, disbursed evenly between two people, are completely unaffected by the removal of the cap. I'm not sure what percentage of households earn that kind of money, but I'm guessing that percentage isn't very high.
Then comes the real entertainment. Pat cites a quotation from John McCain from March of 2007. McCain apparently said that there would be "no new taxes". McCain followed that up with "I could see an argument, if our economy continues to deteriorate, for lower interest rates, lower tax rates, and certainly decreasing corporate tax rates, which are the second highest in the world."
I have listened to this bullshit over and over again throughout the Republican primary. One candidate after another either repeats this or says the US has the highest coporate tax rate in the world. Now I'm in finance, so I have some first hand knowledge of this, but why can't the media call bullshit on this. Just off the top of my head I know that Canada, Japan and Germany all have higher corporate tax rates than the US. I know a lot of companies that funnel their profits back into the US in order to pay lower taxes.
I suppose by strict definition they might have a point, as substantiated here. But apparently no one understands how to read end notes. This data for the US includes a 6.7% weighted average state corporate tax which has nothing to do with the Federal rate. I believe Delaware does not have a state corporate tax which is why many companies incorporate there. So the US Federal rate, pre-deduction of course, is less than 33%. This would put us 9th.
Maybe someday intelligence and integrity will come back into journalism. Until then I'll just keep reading here and throwing my computer against the wall when I venture back into main stream media.