Tag Archives: The Economy

April 26, 2011 · 5:29 pm

No Inflation-Unless You Eat, Drink, Drive or Fly

Amazing how Government statistics exclude most of the things most people do every day….

From CNN.com:

Avoid all of the food and beverage companies that are raising prices and you’ll be shedding pounds in no time. Of course, you may not be eating or drinking much of anything. But that’s another story.

McDonald’s (MCD, Fortune 500), Hershey (HSY, Fortune 500) and Coca-Cola (KO, Fortune 500) all announced new price hikes or reiterated previous increases in their latest quarterly earnings reports over the past few days. The reason is obvious. Commodities are running amok.

It’s costing restaurants and food makers a lot more money to produce or buy food as the price of cattle, wheat, sugar, corn and just about every other agricultural commodity has surged in the past year.

And even though the Federal Reserve may think that higher commodity costs are “transitory” — which is the econobabble way of saying “Don’t worry about it!” — companies aren’t so sure.

That could be bad news for consumers, who are already coping with soaring gasoline prices.

MORE:   Food and beverage companies raising prices — The Buzz – Apr. 26, 2011.

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April 20, 2011 · 9:29 am

A Day in the Life of Joe Middle Class Republican

There are several versions of this floating around the internet.

This seems to be the original, written by John Gray of Cincinnati, Ohio….

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance — now Joe gets it, too.

He prepares his morning breakfast: bacon and eggs. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union.

If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment checks because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the taxpayer funded roads.

He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans.

The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that the beloved conservatives have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”

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April 19, 2011 · 12:01 am

FLASHBACK: Ronald Reagan Raised Corporate Taxes To Force Tax Dodgers To ‘Pay Their Fair Share’

As Tax Day draws to a close, I would like to leave us with this one last item…

It will be interesting to see how the GOP explains away these actions by their patron saint, St Ronnie of Beverly Hills…

From ThinkProgress.org…

Click the link and you can see the video- if you can stomach watching Ronnie in action….

This isn’t the first time Americans have had to deal with a tax code that lets the nation’s richest firms get away with shirking their tax responsibilities. In the middle of his presidency, then-president Ronald Reagan learned that a number of big corporations, including his former employer, General Electric, were completely escaping paying federal corporate income taxes. “I didn’t realize things had gotten that far out of line,” Reagan told his Treasury secretary, Donald T. Regan, according to his 1988 memoir.

So Reagan undertook a comprehensive tax reform effort that actually raised the corporate taxes and closed numerous loopholes that allowed big firms to dodge their tax responsibilities. As part of these reforms, Reagan passed the 1986 Tax Reform Act. This law “raised corporate taxes by $120 billion over five years and closed corporate tax loopholes worth about $300 billion over that same period.”

During the signing ceremony for the speech, Reagan explained that his goal in pursuing these reforms was to make sure “that everybody and every corporation pay their fair share”:

REAGAN: We’re going to make it economical to raise children again. Flatter rates will mean more reward for that extra effort, and vanishing loopholes and a minimum tax will mean that everybody and every corporation pay their fair share.

via ThinkProgress » FLASHBACK: Ronald Reagan Raised Corporate Taxes To Force Tax Dodgers To ‘Pay Their Fair Share’.

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April 18, 2011 · 9:44 pm

My Thoughts: On Tax Day and the Social Contract

Today is Tax Day, the deadline for filing one’s income taxes in the USA.  Even though I filed mine a while back, I still always stop and ponder our tax situation on the deadline day.

First of all, I pay a lot of taxes and I really don’t mind it.  I’m  lucky enough to have a good job, at least for now, so I don’t mind contributing to the good of the country.

I don’t mind paying Medicare and Social Security withholding taxes as they are a part of the social contract we have with the government to support today’s seniors now and ensure we aren’t destitute and without medical care when we get old.  I’ve kept my part of this bargain by paying into the system since I was 16 years old and I expect the government to live up to their end of the deal and not change things this late in the game.

I don’t mind paying taxes even though I’m a Gay man who can’t file a joint return with his partner.  I don’t mind paying taxes to support education even though we will never have children.  I don’t mind paying taxes to build high-speed rail and save our crumbling infrastructure.  I don’t mind paying taxes to prevent those people and their children not as lucky as me from starving or doing without medical care. I don’t mind paying taxes to build give poor children a head start or to create jobs by exploring clean energy and energy efficient cars.  I don’t mind paying taxes that support internet improvements and expansion so we can link the country to the world.  I don’t mind paying taxes to provide benefits to our Veterans who have served our country.  I don’t mind paying taxes to enrich our country’s cultural and artistic life.

I do mind that my taxes support unnecessary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  I do mind that I pay more taxes than Exxon Mobile, GE and Bank of America, who don’t pay any.  I do mind that my tax rate ended up being higher than the 17% tax rate that most of the wealthiest 1% of Americans paid- if they paid at all.  I do mind that so many Corporations don’t pay any taxes and spend billions lobbying Congress to keep it that way.

I guess my thought has always been that we have an obligation to give back.  It’s part of the social contract.

None of us will ever be completely happy with how our tax dollars are spent.  But we do need to realize the obligation we have to society to pay these taxes.  We also need to do our best to elect Representatives that will make everyone pay their fair share and use these  tax funds to the benefit of the nation as a whole-not just the lucky few.  That is becoming harder and harder to do as the Rich and the Corporations buy the Government piece by piece.

We have an obligation to learn the true positions of the people we elect to manage the nation’s finances.  We are not doing our duty as Americans if we fall for public relations campaigns and smoke and mirrors that hide a Candidate’s true agenda.  That certainly happened in last year’s Congressional Elections….

So on tax day, don’t resent having to pay.  Remember, death and taxes are the only two inevitabilities in life.

Just think about how you can best work to be sure everyone pays their fair share and our nations funds are used wisely.

And I know, that alone, is asking a hell of a lot…..

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April 18, 2011 · 9:03 pm

Half of households pay no income taxes, super rich see taxes fall | The Raw Story

More interesting information for Tax Day:

The Internal Revenue Service and the Tax Policy Center in Washington have some statistics that will likely make last-minute filers extra-irate today: The super-rich are paying less in income tax than they used to, and nearly half of all U.S. households don’t pay any income taxes at all.

The IRS tracks the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes, and how much they pay in income taxes, each year, reports the Associated Press. In 2007, the last available year for IRS data, the average income in that set was around $345 million, and they paid about 17 percent in federal income taxes. In 1992, the average income tax rate for the same set was 26 percent.

Think tank Tax Policy Center also has data that show that about 45 percent of households receive so many tax breaks that they won’t pay federal income tax at all for 2010. The tax code contains $1.1 trillion in credits, deductions and exemptions, around $8,000 per taxpayer.

“It’s the fact that we are using the tax code both to collect revenue, which is its primary purpose, and to deliver these spending benefits that we run into the situation where so many people are paying no taxes,” Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, told the AP.

via Half of households pay no income taxes, super rich see taxes fall | The Raw Story.

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April 16, 2011 · 9:47 pm

Big Mike Explains the Deficit…And How to Fix It

And he does it much more clearly than the traditional media or anyone in Washington does…

This is definitely worth watching.

It’s amazing how clear he makes things in only three minutes:

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April 16, 2011 · 10:43 am

GOP Budget Plan Very Unpopular

The Republican War on Medicare just might be their Waterloo….

A new Democracy Corps poll finds the Republican deficit reduction plan gets only 48% support, “but when voters learn almost anything about it, they turn sharply and intensely against it.”

Key findings: “When the budget is described — using as much of Paul Ryan’s description as possible — support collapses to 36% with just 19% strongly supporting the plan. The facts in the budget lose people almost immediately — dropping 12 points. Putting the spotlight on this budget is damning. A large majority of 56% oppose it, 42% strongly. The impact is much stronger with seniors where support erodes from 48% to just 32%, with 57% opposed. Support with independents drops from 55% to 43%.”

via GOP Budget Plan Very Unpopular.

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April 15, 2011 · 9:01 pm

The Republican Medicare Masacre

This is a very clear summary of the Republican Budget plan that they voted on today…

Basically, it ends Medicare for anyone currently under age 55.

Do you want to be old and at the mercy of insurance companies?

Do you have enough money saved to pay the additional $7000 per year it would cost you to pay for this insurance?  That is if the insurance companies will even offer it…

Think long and hard, folks…

Elections have consequences….

From the NY TImes:

Representative Paul Ryan and the House Republicans are portraying their budget proposal for the next fiscal year as a courageous effort to finally bring federal spending on Medicare under control. An analysis issued last week by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office finds that the Ryan proposal would sharply reduce federal spending — but at the price of shifting more of Medicare’s costs onto beneficiaries and their families.

How much more? Calculations derived from the C.B.O. analysis show that in 2022, when the Ryan plan would kick in, the typical 65-year-old would pay $6,400 to $7,000 more per year than would be paid for comparable coverage under traditional Medicare.

Mr. Ryan’s proposal would change Medicare from an entitlement program in which the government pays for a defined set of medical services into a “premium support” program in which the government would give beneficiaries money to help them buy private insurance. He contends that competition among health care plans and more judicious use of health care services by beneficiaries can help bring down the cost of health care and reduce the federal government’s burden.

But the C.B.O. says a private plan offering comparable benefits would be a lot more expensive than traditional Medicare because the private insurer would have higher administrative costs, would need to make a profit and, in an extrapolation of current trends, would pay hospitals, doctors and other providers substantially more than Medicare does. Beneficiaries would have to pay higher out-of-pocket costs or buy skimpier policies.

The Ryan plan has no chance of becoming law while the Democrats still control the Senate and the White House. But if health care becomes a defining issue in the 2012 elections — as it should — everyone under the age of 55 is on notice that Mr. Ryan’s plan would impose heavy costs on them when they reach age 65.

via The Republican Medicare Reshuffle – NYTimes.com.

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April 14, 2011 · 8:54 pm

Senate panel slams Goldman in scathing crisis report | TPM News Pages

Wow…

Goldman gets blasted by both the Democrats and the Republicans on this committee and both are referring it to the Justice Department for possible prosecution….

Not often you see this kind of bi-partisan criticism….

It will be interesting to see if this goes anywhere….

From TPM and Reuters….

In the most damning official U.S. report yet produced on Wall Street’s role in the financial crisis, a Senate panel accused powerhouse Goldman Sachs of misleading clients and manipulating markets, while also condemning greed, weak regulation and conflicts of interest throughout the financial system.

Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, one of Capitol Hill’s most feared panels, has a history with Goldman Sachs.

He clashed publicly with its Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein a year ago at a hearing on the crisis.

The Democratic lawmaker again tore into Goldman at a press briefing on his panel’s 639-page report, which is based on a review of tens of millions of documents over two years.

Levin accused Goldman of profiting at clients’ expense as the mortgage market crashed in 2007. “In my judgment, Goldman clearly misled their clients and they misled Congress,” he said, reading glasses perched as ever on the tip of his nose.

A Goldman Sachs spokesman said, “While we disagree with many of the conclusions of the report, we take seriously the issues explored by the subcommittee.”

The panel’s report is harder hitting than one issued in January by the government-appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which “didn’t report anything of significance,” Republican Senator Tom Coburn said at the briefing.

More than two years since the crisis peaked, denunciations of Wall Street misconduct are less often heard on Capitol Hill, with lawmakers focused on fiscal issues. But Coburn joined Levin at Wednesday’s bipartisan briefing, firing his own sharp attacks on the financial industry.

“Blame for this mess lies everywhere — from federal regulators who cast a blind eye, Wall Street bankers who let greed run wild, and members of Congress who failed to provide oversight,” said Coburn, the subcommittee’s top Republican.

“It shows without a doubt the lack of ethics in some of our financial institutions who embraced known conflicts of interest to accomplish wealth for themselves, not caring about the outcome for their customers,” he said.

The Levin-Coburn report criticized not only Goldman, but Deutsche Bank, the former Washington Mutual Bank, the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision and credit rating agencies Moody’s and Standard  Poor’s.

“We will be referring this matter to the Justice Department and to the SEC,” Levin said at the briefing, though he did not elaborate. A spokesman later said, “The subcommittee does not intend to reveal the specifics of any referral.”

via Senate panel slams Goldman in scathing crisis report | TPM News Pages.

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April 14, 2011 · 8:37 pm

Woe to You, Legislators! Or Ayn Rand vs the Bible

Great Blog post from Jim Wallis at Sojourners….

I’m not much for organized religion, but I like a lot of what this guy has to say…

I’ll let the excerpt speak for itself and encourage you to click the link to his full post…

It is reported that Congressman Paul Ryan makes every member of his staff read philosopher Ayn Rand, the shameless promoter of the gospel of aggressive self-interest. This makes sense to me as I read Congressman Ryan’s new budget proposal. I wish he had his staff reading the Bible instead.

While widely lauded by conservatives, Congressman Ryan’s budget isn’t really about deficit reduction. It’s about choices — choices that will determine what kind of a country we become. And Paul Ryan has made the choice to hurt people who don’t have the political clout to defend themselves. Two-thirds of the long-term budget cuts that Ryan proposed are directed at modest and low-income people, as well as the poorest of the poor at home and abroad. At the same time, he proposed tax cuts up to 30 percent for some of our country’s wealthiest corporations. Let me say that again: Two-thirds of the cuts come at the expense of already struggling people and families, while corporations posting record profits get tax breaks. In short, the most vulnerable members of society are being attacked by Ryan and his supporters. This makes them bullies.

In dramatic contrast, Ryan has chosen to help the people who need help the least. Wealthy individuals and companies reap a windfall of benefits in Ryan’s plan — with tax cuts and breaks, continued subsidies and loopholes for every powerful special interest, and increased corporate welfare payments from the government. Congressman Ryan and his supporters have carefully and faithfully rewarded the rich people who make their campaign contributions, and, in most cases, have also rewarded themselves as rich people. This makes them corrupt.

And, as self-professed budget hawks, they have completely ignored the most consistently egregious, wasteful, and morally compromised area of the whole federal budget — our endless and unaccountable military spending. Paul Ryan and the Republicans would cut nothing from the Pentagon profligacy. This makes them hypocrites.

via Woe to You, Legislators! – Jim Wallis – God’s Politics Blog.

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