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Pryor Said Something Offensive? Surely Not

EMAIL POURS IN TO COLUMNIST COMPLAINING ABOUT U.S. SENATOR’S ADDRESS TO ROGERS ROTARY CLUB

By John Brummett

Posted: August 28, 2011 at 3:30 a.m.

Afew email poured in late in the week to alert me that U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor had said offensive things in a midweek address to the Rogers Rotary Club.

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Opinion, Pages 15 on 08/28/2011

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Comments

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Brummett does a nice job covering for Pryor. Pryor either made or did not make those remarks, which constituted a lie. If he did not make them, why didn't he complain to the NWA Times and demand a correction? Only after Arkansas Media Watch confronted him did he back-pedal.

And Brummett should be naming his blog sources. He's using the research done by others without giving credit. Low.

Here's the original post: http://arkansasmediawatch.wordpress.c...

And why does Boozman get a free pass?

http://arkansasmediawatch.wordpress.c...

Posted by: ImUnarmed

August 29, 2011 at 11:15 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

Our senators and other representatives should be aware of the misleading conservative memes being bruited about-- and "half of Americans pay no taxes" is both very popular and very misleading-- and strive for accuracy in speech in order to avoid any semblance of repeating them.

Posted by: AlphaCat

August 29, 2011 at 1:25 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

It is easy to make this mistake, as i have in the past. All Americans pay some sort of tax unless they are destitute. Even then, they pay some sales tax.

The 'Spirit' of this debate is that 1/2 of Americans pay no federal income tax, and many of those actually receive a net welfare payment from the system.

The 'Payroll Tax' has been used as an argument against this argument. So beit. All Americans who are actually paid through a legitimate payroll system pay payroll taxes (AGAIN, I SAID ALL) up to a certain level. That is not the case for federal income taxation. We have turned this 'taxation system' into a 'welfare system' in many cases.

The 'welfare' payments do not show up as a deduction to federal income tax payments as the EITC is considered a 'welfare' payment. This distorts the numbers for the average reader.

The bottom line is that all of us pay payroll taxes that earn an income... Only 1/2 of citizens pay a federal income tax, and close to 20% of those receive more than they pay in in refunds (Welfare payments).

These are truly two different arguments which the left would hope you bundle into one in order to advance their agenda. Please be careful with this. When 1/2 of Americans pay no federal income tax (and 20% receive a net refund), then 1/2 of our population does not care how our federal dollars are spent......

Socialism in the making.....Wake up Arkansas!!!

Posted by: commonsense96

September 3, 2011 at 5:41 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

COM: "The bottom line is that all of us pay payroll taxes that earn an income...">>

Then how on earth could it ever be, under any circumstances, a fair consideration of the tax situation, to ignore this entire category by referring only to the "Fed income tax" category? Of course it wouldn't be. Ever.

So we see that even under the most charitable version of what Senator Pryor said, we are left with the bright and shiny distortion of an extremely misleading description of how Americans are taxed.

Maybe Senator Pryor should stand up for the hardworking taxpaying constituents who elected him (and are being smeared by this distortion) and put it more accurately:

"81.9% of the population pays federal taxes based upon income or payroll, and of the remaining 18.1% that don't, 95% of those are elderly or very poor."

Imagine the stir this would cause at the Rotary:

"Democratic senator stands up and slays favorite right-wing tax canard? Did he really do that?"

Certainly sounds better than what happened:

"Democratic senator passes along favorite right-wing tax canard."

Posted by: fayfreethinker

September 3, 2011 at 7:31 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

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