Category Archives: Politics

March 29, 2011 · 6:43 pm

GE Pays No Incomes Taxes and Now Wants Workers to Make Concessions | AlterNet

Amazing…

It seems there is no sense of shame anymore…

And why should there be when no one holds anyone accountable?

This has all crossed from the absurd to the unbelievable…

The message coming from Washington can’t be taken any other way than that Corporations are not only “people”, they are more important than most people….

And this is barely being reported on MSNBC or NBC– because GE owns them…

You’ve likely already read Lauren Kelley’s piece from last week about how GE is milking the system like you’ve never seen before. The company made $14.2 billion, $5.1 billion of which came from the US, but, through some creative bookkeeping, GE paid no US taxes. That’s right, none. And to make matters worse they actually claimed a $3.2 billion tax benefit. So, that means we owed them money!

Can this story get any worse?

Apparently, yes. Mike Elk reports, “After not paying any taxes and making huge profits, ThinkProgress has learned that General Electric is expected to ask its nearly 15,000 unionized employees in the United States to make major concessions.”

via GE Pays No Incomes Taxes and Now Wants Workers to Make Concessions | AlterNet.

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March 29, 2011 · 6:36 pm

The Real Story of Our Economy: Why Our Standard of Living Has Stalled Out | | AlterNet

These facts cannot be repeated often enough…

Especially since the Corporate media chooses to ignore them…

The average real wage of the non-supervisory production workers (which comprise 82.4 percent of total private non-farm employees) actually declined by 9 percent between 1975 and 2010.

Meanwhile the top 1 percent saw their share of national income rise from 8 percent in 1975 to 23.5 percent in 2005

More amazing still, the wage gap between the top 100 CEOs and the average worker jumped from $45 to $1 in 1970 to an unbelievable $1,723 to $1 in 2006

Today after the crash, financial incomes are so enormous that in 2010, John Paulson, the top hedge fund manager, earned $2.4 million an HOUR (not a misprint), and his tax rate is less than yours

via The Real Story of Our Economy: Why Our Standard of Living Has Stalled Out | | AlterNet.

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March 29, 2011 · 6:33 pm

Cost shift seen in raising Medicare age to 67 – Yahoo! Finance

There are some interesting facts here…

If Congress raises the Medicare age, it would reduce government expenses, but cause each individual- including the young- to pay much more for health insurance.

I guess this is what the Republicans really mean by “trickle down” economics.

It’s worth clicking the link to read the detailed article…

Employers and even some younger people would pay more for health insurance if lawmakers raise the eligibility age for Medicare, a study to be released Tuesday concludes.

The findings suggest that the emerging debate over Medicare’s future matters not only to seniors and those nearing retirement, but to a broad cross-section of Americans.

The report from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation shows that federal taxpayers would save billions if the Medicare eligibility age, currently 65, is increased by two years. But people ages 65 and 66, employers — along with states, Medicare recipients and even some younger families — would see ripple effects that add to their costs.

Those costs could total more than $2,000 a year for some individuals.

via Cost shift seen in raising Medicare age to 67 – Yahoo! Finance.

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March 28, 2011 · 9:11 pm

The Real Reason Gas Prices Are Soaring – DailyFinance

Like I keep saying, our Financial system is totally screwed up…

It has become like an Atlantic City Casino with Las Vegas morals…

Dan Dicker, who has spent nearly three decades in the oil market, has a profoundly disturbing explanation of why the price of oil, and the gasoline that comes from the crude product, has risen so dramatically in recent months. It turns out, Dicker says, that the price has nothing to do with supply and demand for oil. It’s the financial market for oil, filled with both professional speculators and amateur investors betting on poorly understood oil exchange-traded funds, who have ratcheted up the price of gas to such sky high levels.

“There is no supply issue going on here – what you have is the perception of the possibility of a supply issue,” Dicker says. “A whole bunch of people are pouring money into an oil market trying to take advantage of what they perceive to be a real risk in supply. It’s a marketplace that I argue should not be allowed to be wagered on like a stock or bond.”

Dicker notes that Libya produces only 1.3 million barrels of oil a day, just a tiny fraction of the world oil market. Even if Libyan crude were lost to the world market in the current turmoil, and there is no sign that it is, Saudi Arabia has 5 million barrels a day to use in case of an emergency.

Dicker, who has just published a book called Oil’s Endless Bid: Taming The Price of Oil To Secure Our Economy, makes a strong case that if the government stepped in and regulated oil trading so that only investors with a genuine interest in the physical product, such as airlines and heating oil companies, could buy and sell oil futures, then the price of oil would fall by 50% overnight and our economy would be much better off.

via The Real Reason Gas Prices Are Soaring – DailyFinance.

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March 28, 2011 · 8:37 pm

The Bible vs The Koran, Christians vs Muslims

Very interesting column from Leonard Pitts….

You’ll have to click the link to get your results and read the rest of the column…

OK, put your books away. We’re having a pop quiz.

Below are four quotes. Each is from one of two sources: the Bible or the Koran, although, just to make things interesting, there’s also a chance all four are from one book. Two were edited for length and one of those was also edited to remove a religion-specific reference. Your job: identify the holy book of origin. Ready? Go:

1) “. . . Wherever you encounter [non-believers], kill them, seize them, besiege them, wait for them at every lookout post . . .”

2) “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

3) “If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods’ . . . do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death.”

4) “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.”

All right, pens down. How did you do?

via Here’s reason for us to fear fear itself – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com.

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March 28, 2011 · 8:14 pm

Two Thirds of US Corporations Pay No Federal Income Taxes

US Uncut held a National Day of Protest over the push to cut vital government programs while major, profitable Corporation pay No Taxes…

Sorry, but this just isn’t right….

From The Nation:

“I’m tired of people calling for shared sacrifice and it’s all coming from the workers and nothing’s coming from the top,” says protester Dave Sonenberg. “I’m sick of companies like Bank of America not paying their taxes.”

Bank of America hasn’t paid a nickel in federal income taxes for the past two years, and in fact raked in an additional $1 billion in tax “benefits.” The bank is enjoying these profits after accepting $45 billion from taxpayers, which the company then got to count as a deduction when they paid back the money.

Big corporations get to play by a whole different set of rules, says tax expert Bob Willens of New York-based Robert Willens LLC:

It’s also not unusual for a company to pay no federal taxes, while still paying state and local taxes, Willens said. Items that can be deducted for federal purposes aren’t always deductible for state and local returns, he said. State taxes can also be based on the amount of capital deployed in a state, not pre-tax income.

This is why two-thirds of corporations in America pay no federal income taxes. If they were forced to, we’re told, the whole country would suffer. Jobs would be lost, salaries slashed. Thank heavens we’ve avoided such calamity by allowing corporations to shape legislation in their favor.

In 2010, Bank of America handed out $2.2 million in campaign contributions to Congressional representatives and PACs (36 percent went to Democrats, 64 percent to Republicans). By throwing around that much cash, huge companies like BoA have a big say when it comes to crafting legislation that permits them to escape paying taxes, according to US Uncut organizer J.A. Myerson.

“The reason it’s not illegal is because they have bought and paid for the people who make the laws. The laws are made to accommodate this sort of nefariousness,” he says, adding that the process is wrong, and ordinarily that would mean approaching Congress to ask them to fix it, but there’s no point in attempting that when the system is so heavily rigged in favor of the rich and well connected. “So what US Uncut is doing right now is not Capitol Hill lobbying because that doesn’t seem like it’s a fruitful avenue. It’s trying to directly undermine the ability of Bank of America to earn record windfall profits by depleting the public trust that they are an upstanding member of society.”

via When Illegal Doesn’t Matter: US Uncut’s National Day Of Protest | The Nation.

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March 28, 2011 · 8:05 pm

GOP Puts AARP in its Sights

Now the GOP is going after the AARP…

This could be fun– and it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for the Republicans….

The elderly are the most dedicated voters out there and have predominately supported Republican Candidates lately…

The elderly and southern white men are about the only base the GOP has outside of Religious Conservatives and the Rich…

I truly hope the Republicans stick to their guns and go after the AARP…

Whatever issues I may have with the AARP, they will not go down without a fight and they can really rally the older Americans against the GOP if the GOP pushes them too hard…

They aren’t Acorn….

They will fight back and they have the resources to do it….

Let’s just hope the GOP thoroughly pisses off the AARP Members….

They can’t win elections without them…

The Republican chairmen of the House Ways and Means Health and Oversight subcommittees have trained their sites on AARP, the nation’s largest advocacy group for older Americans.

Health Subcommittee Chairman Wally Herger, R-Calif., and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Charles Boustany Jr., R-La., said they plan to press AARP over its insurance products, revenues, governance, and lobbying expenditures.

“This hearing is about getting to the bottom of how AARP’s financial interests affect their self-stated mission of enhancing seniors’ quality of life,” Herger said in a written statement. “It is important to better understand how AARP’s insurance business overlaps with its advocacy efforts and whether such overlap is appropriate.”

In 2010, AARP spent $22.05 million on lobbying efforts, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The hearing, set for April 1, comes a little more than a year after the group helped Democrats pass the expansive health care reform legislation, and just weeks before Congress is expected to begin in earnest a debate over entitlement spending.

Over the years, the group has ticked off lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. In 2003, its support of then-President George W. Bush’s effort to create a drug benefit in the Medicare program angered some Democrats who were opposed to the structure. It was the Republicans’ turn in 2005, when AARP lobbied hard against efforts to privatize Social Security.

“AARP is committed to transparency, and the hearing will provide us yet another opportunity to answer any questions as we continue to be a champion for the wants and needs of Americans” older than 50, said AARP spokesman Drew Nannis.

via NationalJournal.com – GOP Puts AARP in its Sights – Friday, March 25, 2011.

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March 28, 2011 · 4:52 pm

Words of Wisdom

I keep finding so many amazing comments from E.M. Forster as I continue to read the fascinating new Wendy Moffat biography and cross read his writings.

His world view and concerns from the early 20th Century are often still scarily relevant to the challenges and issues of the 21st Century.

From E.M. Forster in 1938…

I do not believe in Belief.  But this is an age of faith, and there are so many militant creeds that, in self-defence, one has to formulate a creed of one’s own.

Tolerance, good temper and sympathy are no longer enough in a world which is rent by religious and racial persecution, in a world where ignorance rules, and science, who ought to have ruled, plays the subservient pimp.

And this one, that I published in a blog a week or so ago, bears repeating:

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and bies:  school was the unhappiest time of my life, and the worst trick it played on me was to pretend that it was the world in miniature.  For it hindered me from discovering how lovely and delightful the world can be, and how much of it is intelligible.  From this platform of middle age, this throne of experience, this altar of wisdom, this scaffold of character, this beacon of hope, this threshold of decay, my last words to you are:  “there’s a better time coming.”

In other words:  It gets better.

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March 26, 2011 · 8:51 pm

Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now | | AlterNet

Very interesting article…

Well worth clicking the link to read in it’s entirety…

In 1975, a Democratic Party emboldened by civil rights, environmental, antiwar, and post-Watergate electoral successes was on the verge of seizing the presidency and a filibuster-proof congressional majority. That year, the Rocky Horror Picture Show and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest were two of the three top-grossing films — the former a parody using the late-sixties sexual revolution to laugh at the puritanical fifties, the latter based on the novel by beat writer Ken Kesey. Meanwhile, three of the top-rated seven television shows were liberal-themed programs produced by progressive icon Norman Lear, including “All in the Family” –a show built around a hippie, Mike Stivic, poking fun at the ignorance of his traditionalist father-in-law, Archie Bunker.

A mere ten years later, Republican Ronald Reagan had just been reelected by one of the largest electoral landslides in American history, and his party had also gained control of the U.S. Senate. Two of the top three grossing films were Back to the Future, which eulogized the fifties, and Rambo: First Blood Part II, which blamed sixties antiwar activism for losing the Vietnam conflict. Most telling, “All in the Family’s” formula of using sixties-motivated youth and progressivism to ridicule fifties-rooted parents and their traditionalism had been replaced atop the television charts by its antithesis: a “Family Ties” whose fifties-inspired youth ridicules his parents’ sixties spirit.

The political and cultural trends these changes typified were neither coincidental nor unrelated, and their intertwined backstories explain why we’re still scarred by the metamorphosis.

MORE:   Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now | | AlterNet.

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March 26, 2011 · 10:00 am

The Biggest Threat Facing the Country Today Is Fast Creeping Ignorance | | AlterNet

More on the theme of glorifying ignorance in America…

This acceptance and glorification of willful ignorance is really the greatest threat to our country…

There was a time we wanted the “best and the brightest” to run things…

Now we glorify mediocrities and dullards…

White people complain so much about Black people glorifying the Ghetto Culture of bling, profanity and baggy pants…

How can they talk when White folks glorify the willful ignorance of Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and Ann Coulter?

Both groups are glorifying the lowest common denominators of their culture.

If Whites argue ghetto culture brings down the Black race, they why can’t they accept the argument that willful ignorance does the same for the White race?

Both concepts glorify what used to be “negative” images that have become “positive” images in their societies…

Just my thoughts….

As a story from Alternet put it, “3/4ths of Senate GOP Doesn’t Believe in Science: The Tea Party and its allies had made it unacceptable to the GOP base to be anywhere except pandering to the anti-science crowd.” (Full Story)

The Right, which hated and feared commies and their (largely imaginary) infiltration into government, not only don’t seem to care about creeping ignorance in government, but have come to embrace this new breed of government infiltrators.

The explanation for this embrace is simple as the minds of the infiltrators: science, and for that matter any other factual analysis, tends to flatly contradict many of the Right’s most cherished fictions, such as:

The more you cut taxes the more tax revenue flows into federal coffers.

History proves America is a Christian nation.

Climate change is either not happening at all or, if it is happening, it has nothing to do with our use of fossil fuels. (“I personally believe that the solar flares are more responsible for climatic cycles than anything that human beings do. …” – Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, Wisconsin)

Slashing regulation of business and high finance is good for business, good for the nation and good for the American public.

If the rich are allowed to keep more of their earnings they will share it with everyone else, (trickle down.)

School science classes should be “fair and balanced,” like Fox News, when teaching the origins of life on earth by teaching the biblically-inspired “creationist” version alongside Darwin’s scientific theory of evolution.

President Obama “may not have been born in America” as he claims.

President Obama is “a secret Muslim.”

And the list of Creeping Ignorance goes on and on, growing longer with each passing month. Michelle Bachmann believes that the founding fathers “didn’t rest until the put an need to slavery.”  She also believes the first shot “heard around the world” that started our war of independence was fired in New Hampshire. It wasn’t. Did she care? Nope. Pointing out that it was fired in Massachusetts was, to her and her kind, just further proof of how the mainstream media picks on conservatives.

via The Biggest Threat Facing the Country Today Is Fast Creeping Ignorance | | AlterNet.

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