Why should only Rich be more patriotic?  I think that sucks of elitism.  Biden wants one segment of the population to be more patriotic than the rest.  He is an elitist!

I saw this on the news... as a US Taxpayer I'm fairly upset about this.

Obama said it to OReily as well... people who make 250k+ should pay more taxes to make up for the lower half paying less.  That upper half already DOES pay more taxes, what they're doing is asking for even more...

The "American Dream" is to make that kind of money... and it feels, as if, they are punishing those lucky enough to accomplish the status of the American Dream.

So are bankers apparantly.

Well it's easy for Biden to have this type of attitude. Has he ever held a regular job?

I've always been distrustful of people who devote their career to politics - and when you start out as early as he has, that's all the more reason to be distrustful!

I would argue paying your taxes is an act of patriotism. Patriotism is the act of serving the interests of the state above your own. Paying taxes benefits the state more than it does you. Ergo paying taxes is patriotic.

As for the charity thing, I have a deep mistrust of most charities. The ones with the most grunts tend to be either outrageously godbothering (and therefore morally questionable in my eyes) or outrageously eco-friendly (and therefore of questionable benefit). There doesn't seem to be much of a middle ground in the private sector. At least government is consistently down the middle. I'd much rather see aid distributed by a dispassionate, faceless government than a self-indulgent charity worker.

That might be a good defense for William Jefferson (LA -D) he was just holding the $90K in his freezer for aid distribution. I trust the government to do the right thing  too ! Not. Research any charity before you give.

Biden was such a great VP pick.  One idiot following another.

It shouldn't be the job of the government to distribute charities.  The fact is the people (liberals) who scream about "helping" people are the very ones who give and do less than anyone else. 

You all realize that elected officials don't pay taxes.

They decide for the rest of us, but don't live with the decisions.  I certainly wouldn't mind payng more taxes if someone was watching  the purse strings. There is way too much waste. Cut the waste! Then talk increases, but not until then.

Patriotism has nothing to do with serving the STATE. It has to do with serving your COUNTRY.

By that definition, the founding fathers, who rebelled against the STATE were not patriotic at all even as they said they were fighting for their country.

Wow. And this is why conservatives tend to be far more successful than liberals in the real world.

People who CARE how money is spent tend to do a lot better with it than people who don't care how it's spent.

When has the government ever been dispassionate?  People with faces make the decisions not some mythological faceless government.

I really don't think conservatives tend to be more sucessful in the real world, I think the wealthy generally become Republicans because Republicans are more interested in keeping more money in the hands of the wealthy.

Conservatives disguise the keeping the money with the rich as an Ideology of those who work hardest should get to keep what they make and not give their money to the lazy. Its really quite amazing how deep they have made this idealogy go into people. I'm from a VERY red state and in my hometown nobody there has a pot to piss in, yet they are the most conservative people you'll ever meet. Its a fishing area, in a world that doesn't support fihserman anymore. Over the years the fish have gotten hard to catch and the fisherman have been getting less money. Very few people work harder than these, yet they don't have much money.  Where I'm from the more wealthy tend to be Democrats actually. So perhaps I just live in bizarro world.

Something most people apprently don't realize is that only 1.5% of American households make more than $250,000 a year(Bracket Obama wants to tax). So by Republican logic 98.5% of America is just stupid and lazy, including...most Republicans.

As for Biden's comment, i knew an outrage was coming over that one. Bidens got a reputation as i said before for sticking his foot in his mouth. But the arguement he hasn't given much to charity doesn't fly.

Charity and taxes are not the same thing. and actually it is in a way patriotic. You are indeed serving your country by financing it. All of you government reducers out there should know unless you want to no longer have an army, social security, roads, leaders, police and a myraid of other things everyone takes for granted you have to pay taxes. Those things are not free.

You can best believe taxes are about to go up no matter who wins
 this election. We have an over 2 trillion dollar deficit and the goverments about to authorize a 700 BILLION dollar bailout for some buisness. Anyone who thinks taxes won't go for someone is kidding themselves. OUr expenses and the size of government have gone trhough the roof under this president. Its now just a question of whos going to pay the 98.5% or the 1.5%?

A country is an imagined community. I think it's telling that the founding fathers created a state quite early on in the piece as the manifestation of their patriotism. If it was simply the country that was the target of their patriotism, they wouldn't have needed to create a country-state at all - after all, they already had dozens of the things.

Have you ever worked for a charity? Do you know how they're run? From what I've seen and heard, through personal experience and through the experiences of my friends and family, very few charities are any more efficient than the government, and most of those tend to be the low-profile ones who no one donates to anyway and which slowly fall apart. They may care, but that doesn't mean they're good accountants or can afford good accountants.

As a public servant I don't care about you. If you fit the requirements, you get access to the programs run by my department. If you don't, tough luck, there's no grey areas. Charities are inefficient because they let good intentions or personal prejudice affect their day-to-day operations. The Government rarely has that failing. If anything it can be too effective in its pragmatic, unfeeling, dispassionate approach.

Damn!  Look at all those unpatriotic poor people!  What a bunch of bottom feeding scum suckers!

And how long do you think the democrats and the media would allow a republican to get away with implying that before roasting them?

The problem is that the premise of the statement was wrong, the implications are inflamatory, and the speaker an idiot,  But then is it Biden.

Yes, and your statement is really just plain stupid.  I thought you would drop it, so did not at first comment on it, but your defense of it is just making you look even supider.  Charities are single purpose and so allocate their funds to that purpose much more efficiently.  Government has all purposes, and no brains.  Just rules to follow, even when the rules are stupid.

There's been lots of studies on this. No, most people don't change their life philosophies simply because their economic situation has changed.  I would argue that the conservative philosophy leads to more success than liberal philosophy.

People who start businesses, for instance, are overwhelmingly conservative whether their business succeeds or not.

Spoken like a true liberal.

First, that most wealthy people tend to be Republicans isn't really debateable. It's not even a close call as polling and surveys have made clear over the years.

Secondly, conservatives simply don't like the government taking their earnings to give to other people. The conservative philosophy isn't the philosophy of "the rich" but it is a philosophy that tends to make people more successful.

It has nothing to do with helping the rich, it has to do with not believing the government has an inate right to your property or earnings.

That's quite a strawman. Conservatives (as studies have shown countless times) are much more likely to answer the question "Does the average person know what's best for them?" with a yes than a liberal.

The top 1.5% paying so much of the taxes is simply an indicator that the "rich" are doing more than their share and idiots like Biden should shut the hell up when it comes arguing that the rich should pay more as a "patriotic duty".

You say that the argument that Biden hasn't given much to charity doesn't fly and then proceed not to back it up.

Sure it "flies". Biden talks about patriotism which is inherently the voluntary choice of supporting your country in some way.  Biden is not putting his money where his mouth is.

Paying taxes isn't patriotic in the least unless you actually believe that there's such thing as forced patriotism. It's not patriotism unless it's voluntary.

Right now, half my work life is spent enslaved to the government:

• 35% federal
• 5% state
• 6% sales tax
• 9% in other taxes (property taxes, fees, gas taxes, etc.)

So by Biden's definition, the ultimate form of patriotism is being a slave. Which I guess makes sense to a Democrat since they were the party of slavery.

Conservatives believe that the more we are forced to work for the state, the less free we are.