You're blaming the irresponsibility of local and state governments on Boomers?

I've got news for you: only a small fraction of "Boomers" have a cushy state or city pension. A small percentage of the rest have a fixed pension which will be rapidly diminished by even modest inflation. Everyone else might have a 401(k), if they invested wisely.

The Boomer's parents paid a fraction of what they received (and are still receiving) from Social Security and Medicare.

The Boomers will be lucky to receive a fraction of what they paid into Social Security. What they get from Medicare will largely depend on their personal medical situation.

My mortgage is paid was full, after 10 years. I don't have a pension, generous or otherwise. My retirement assets are in IRAs and a 401(k) -- and are substantial despite the gyrations of the market, because I have been contributing the maximum allowed on top of contributing to Social Security and Medicare.

If I had the opportunity to invest my contributions to Social Security alone into the prevailing long-term US Treasury Bonds (the same as the "trust fund") each year, I've calculated that I would have $730,000 right now, and nearly $1.5 million by the time I turn 65. You want me to give all that up? What are you offering in return?

Before you were even born, people like me were pointing out the problems with Social Security. We saw the train wreck coming, but the reason the Boomer's haven't done anything about it is because the Boomer's parents made the issue politically radioactive.

We were told to STFU. So, 30 years later, I have the same advice for you: STFU, at least until you come up with an exit strategy that spreads the pain equally over every generation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GZYNP3CZOw

Short version: it changed it from "Cina Bar" to "Cinnabon".

US banking regulations don't allow them to do so.

Financial institutions have all kinds of rules they must comply with. If there's any indication that the customer or the recipient of a payment is engaged in illegal activities, they are required to suspend the transaction.

You can complain about the rules being applied inconsistently or overzealously, but the banks are pretty much between a rock and a hard place: federal regulators get to scrutinize transactions with 20-20 hindsight and with knowledge the banks never had -- and then hold the banks responsible if they find something wrong.

I don't have that kind of rate overall, but I have had the experience of being dropped multiple times in about 10 minutes. Each time, I used AT&T's "Mark the Spot" application to report a dropped call. On the last couple of reports, I added a comment to the effect of "Please get out here and fix this cell base station!" -- I was at home and never had any problems with dropped calls until then.

A couple of days later, I noticed that the signal strength on my phone was 0-1 bars, instead of the usual 4-5. I'm a couple of blocks from the nearest cell base station, so I realized they had shut down that cell for repair. A few hours later, my signal strength was at the usual level and I haven't had problems with dropped calls since then.

Add in the lactose intolerant and people that avoid red meat, and I begin to wonder if anyone is left to eat bacon cheeseburgers.

If employees own a substantial percentage of the stock, it's required.

The purchasing company can also require that a high percentage of employees accept the offer to work for them before the sale is completed. And no, that's not hypothetical.

Obama has followed the plan to withdraw from Iraq that was put in place by the Bush administration.

Obama has also escalated the war in Afghanistan by sending more troops, but binding them with restrictive rules of engagement.

Did you bother to read the definition of capital income in your citation? It's only a subset of all income.

That one factor alone makes your following assertions demonstrably false. But, I'll leave it to you as an exercise: maybe you'll learn something. You can start with the CBO figures I started earlier.

And your citation is?

According to the CBO (in the same URL I cited above), there were 1.2 million households in the top 1% in 2007. That's 1.3% of the total.

The minimum adjusted income for the top 1% was $352,900 in 2007. That's normalized to a single person household. Multiply that number by the square root of the number of people in the household to calculate the amount for multiple-person households.

If we lower the threshold to the top 5%, then it's 5.9 million households, or 5% of the total. The minimum adjusted income was $141,900. That's closer to the $250,000 threshold for a couple with 2 children, but still not quite there.

Therefore, your assertion is demonstrably wrong, and I won't bother with the rest -- other than to point out that "wealth" is usually considered equivalent to "assets", neither of which are the same as "income".

I don't dispute that, and I don't remember saying that it was.

What I don't understand is how anyone can believe that the "rich" don't pay any taxes when the numbers clearly indicate that isn't the truth.

One can argue all day about how much the "rich" should pay. But, it's an outright lie to claim they don't pay a significant share.

He didn't read the column header. Those numbers are thousands.

Since I don't know how your citation's methodology compares to the methodology used by the CBO, I'll instead cite the CBO's table in the same URL that I provided earlier.

The first table on page 7 says there were 11.9 million households in the top 10% in 2007. There 5.9 million households in the top 5%, and 1.2 million households in the top 1%.

The last table on page 9 lists the minimum adjusted income for the various categories. For the top 10%, it was $102,900 for a single person household. The methodology is on the last page: multiply the number in the table by the square root of the number of family members. For married without kids, multiply by 1.414 = $144,500. For married with 2 kids, multiply by 2 = $205800.

It's not exactly $250,000 for a married couple, but I thought it was close enough for a rough estimate.

However, I think you might want to read your own citation a bit more closely. It's not 1,699 households. It's 1,699 THOUSAND households.

Leona Helmsley said: "Only little people pay taxes".

And she was stupid, too.