TODAY'S TOPICS: Obama Back?, Taxing the Rich, Class Warfare, The Matrix, Sanders, Social Security, Climate Change v. Terrorism
Is Candidate Obama Back? Yes and No
Okay, let me say, regardless if this is all a cynical load
of shit coming from this guy in order to win re-election…I’m STILL happy to see
him take the gloves off and start arguing, ARTICULATELY, for higher taxes on
the rich.
Obama proposed, in a major TV press event, new taxes on the
wealthy — including a special new tax for millionaires, the closing of
loopholes and deductions for people making more than $250,000 a year, and an
end to the portion of the Bush tax cut going to higher incomes.
Of course, Republicans accuse the President of instigating
“class warfare” …which is probably the most ironic, Orwellian GOP talking point
in their quiver…because there is indeed a class war going on….and the top 1%
are winning. We should also be clear, it’s not warfare to demand the rich
pay their fair share of taxes to bring down America’s long-term debt and invest
in the future…warfare is giving more tax breaks to the top while cutting
education, public safety, health care and food stamps in order to pay for those
tax cuts.
After all, the richest 1 percent of Americans now takes home
more than 20 percent of total income…400 families have more wealth than the
bottom 60% of Americans combined, and the top 1% have more wealth than the
bottom 90% COMBINED. That’s the highest share going to the top 1 percent in
almost 90 years….YET, they now pay their lowest tax rates in half a century —
half the rate they paid on ordinary income prior to 1981.
Of course, as Robert Reich pointed out, the President didn’t
go far enough…particularly leaving out the most glaring tax loophole of all:
capital gains. Reich states, “Unfortunately, the President isn’t proposing to
raise the capital-gains tax — which, now at 15 percent, creates a loophole
large enough for the super-rich to drive their Ferrari’s through. About 80
percent of the income of America’s richest 400 comes in the form of capital gains.
Here’s where billionaire hedge-fund and private-equity fund managers make out
like bandits. As I’ve noted, I also wish he aimed higher — for more brackets
and higher rates at the very top. But at least he’s drawn a line in the sand.
The veto message is clear.)”
So, for the very richest Americans the successive capital
gains tax cuts from Presidents Clinton (to 20 percent) and Bush (to 15 percent)
have been "better than any Christmas gift":
While it's true
that many middle-class Americans own stocks or bonds, they tend to stash them
in tax-sheltered retirement accounts, where the capital gains rate does not
apply. By contrast, the richest Americans reap huge benefits. Over the past 20
years, more than 80 percent of the capital gains income realized in the United
States has gone to 5 percent of the people; about half of all the capital gains
have gone to the wealthiest 0.1 percent.
With U.S. income inequality
at its highest level in 80 years and the total federal
tax burden at its lowest in 60, the last thing America needs to do is
further reduce the capital gains tax. As a decade of data shows, the
Treasury-draining Bush capital gains and dividend tax windfall for the wealthy
not only failed to produce employment gains from America's
so-called "job
creators." As the Washington
Post detailed, "capital gains tax rates benefiting wealthy feed [the]
growing gap between rich and poor." Nevertheless, most Republicans are
calling for a new capital gains tax rate: zero.
Now, this could all be a ruse…setting us progressives up to
believe ‘the real Obama’ has finally come, and he’s had enough of the GOP
backstabbing, deceit, and disinformation…when in fact he knows full well NO tax
increases will actually take place (again….the REAL test will be whether he
extends the Bush tax cuts again)…and then, the Super Committee (which he
created) will DEVASTATE the New Deal and safety net as he lamely will protest.
And put that in some California context, more than 6 million
people in the Golden State, more than 2 million of them children, lived in
poverty last year, an increase for the sixth straight year. One in four
California families lack enough money to buy food at times for themselves or their
families. The poll also revealed that of the top 20 metropolitan areas in the
nation facing food hardship, four are in California.
I hope TO GOD that’s my cynical, skeptical mind at play…but being
that Obama has betrayed us about 1000 times now…I hope you don’t blame me for
this. What’s that saying, “fool me once, shame on you, fool me 10,000 fucking
times shame on me?”
But let’s stick to the positive…his plan, as
you can see him argue for here (again I ask…”where has this guy
been?????”), and you can go to my last blog for more details, has all kinds of
smart, specific, tax increases on the SUPER WEALTHY in this country. Without
such tax increases, there is NO SAVING any public programs, nor is there a way
to adequately invest in our future.
In other words, it’s either taxing the super rich and
corporations, or continue our slide into Banana Republic land.
The Dark Elephant in the Room: Super Committee, Foreclosures
I should also mention, that in his “deficit reduction plan”
(remember, this is the WRONG FRAME), included are some pretty devastating cuts
for those in the most trouble, including $3.5 billion cut to the Public Health
and Prevention Fund, which was just enacted last year as part of the Affordable
Care Act. This fund would “assist
state and community efforts to prevent illness and promote health”, and HHS
has already
started giving grants. It’s targeted at things like identifying chronic
diseases and targeting specific actions, like poor diet, tobacco and alcohol
use, or physical inactivity, that can lead to them.
What we REALLY need to watch for then, is the Super
Committee and the cuts it comes up with. Remember, those cuts DRASTICALLY
outweigh any jobs spending he’s proposing…thus WIPING out any “stimulus”. There’s
also another strangely absent point to all this “economic expertise” being
debated in DC: the foreclosure crisis!
AS David Dayen points out, there’s a strange contradiction
at work here, stating “It is a bit incredible that you can have a wide-ranging
jobs program, and major plans distributed by the White House on all areas of
the economy, and yet one of the major impediments to economic performance, the
sick housing market, barely enters the discussion. More bad news on the housing
front came today, with housing
starts declining. Housing starts have been flat for two and a half years,
with construction at the lowest pace since records began being kept in 1959
(around 600,000 homes are being built a year; in brighter economic times you
would see as much as 2 million). All of this is happening while the population
grows. The rot in the housing market and the collapse of the bubble has led to
a housing sector not filling the needs of the public, while the public reacts
to the Lesser Depression by moving into multi-family units. This is just a
small part of the problem.”
But let’s get back to the big fight now coming…taxing the
rich and the reality of “class warfare”….Because this IS THE FIGHT of our time
(among others). So let’s get our facts straight. As Joshua Holland points out,
“in 1979, those in the top 10th of 1 percent of the American economic ladder
took in 1.11 percent of the nation's
income, but by 2008, they were grabbing 5 percent. Those extremely wealthy few
didn't become five times smarter and
aren't working five times harder
than they were in the late '70s, and
the seismic shift in our economic structures wasn't
an accident: the upward redistribution of wealth in this country has been a
direct result of policies for which those at the top have lobbied hard – labor
policies, trade deals, cuts to the social services that lifted some of those at
the bottom out of poverty and a tax structure that shifted a big chunk of the
burden from corporations and the wealthiest to ordinary working families.”
Another CRITICAL point, is how our Matrix has so totally
mislead and deluded the American public…because most believe that we live in a
meritocracy...in reality, only around 3 percent of Americans are actually
millionaires (or were before the crash of 2008), but in 2003, almost one in
three told
Gallup that they expected to be millionaires at some point in their lives.
A 2006 poll found that more than half of those surveyed believed “Almost anyone
can get rich if they put their mind to it.”
As Holland again notes, this goes to the heart of the conservative
myth creators Matrix we live in, stating “Conservative discourse about the
“undeserving” poor being where they are because of some inherent personal
faults might make some sense if we were all born with the same opportunities to
get ahead. Tragically, however, in today’s economy, the single greatest
predictor of how much an American child will earn in the future is how much his
or her parents take home.
But, according to a study of
public opinion in 25 wealthy countries, Americans are almost twice as
likely as those in other advanced economies to believe that “people get
rewarded for intelligence and skill.” At the same time, fewer than one in five
say that coming from a wealthy family is “essential” or “very important” to
getting ahead—significantly lower than the 25-country average. It’s impossible
to overstate the impact these beliefs have on our policy debates. Americans are
less than half as likely as people in other wealthy nations to believe that
it’s “the responsibility of government to reduce differences in income.”
In reality, the United States’ much-ballyhooed upward
mobility is a myth, and it appears to be getting worse with each new
generation. Several
studies released in recent years suggest that Americans enjoy significantly
less upward mobility than do the citizens of a number of other industrialized
nations. German workers have 1.5 times the upward movement of Americans,
Canada’s economy is nearly 2.5 times as mobile, and Denmark is three times as
mobile. Norway, Finland, Sweden, and France (France!) are all more upwardly
mobile societies than the United States. Of the countries included in the
studies, the United States ranked near the bottom; only in the United Kingdom
was it tougher to shake off a low social status one had been born with.
What's more, an American
in today’s workforce is just as likely to experience downward mobility as he or
she is to move up in the world. A study
conducted by Julia Isaacs, a fellow with the Economic Mobility Project, used a
unique set of data that allowed her to directly compare the incomes of
Americans in the late 1990s and the early 2000s with the incomes of their
parents’ generation in the late 1960s. She categorized families as belonging to
one of four groups: the “upwardly mobile,” who do better relative to their
parents; those “riding the tide,” families that earn more than their parents
did but remain in the same relative position on the economic ladder; those
“falling despite the tide,” a small group who are earning more than their
parents did but who nonetheless fell into a lower position on the ladder; and
those who are “downwardly mobile.” The key take-away was that American families
are just as likely to be downwardly mobile—33 percent fall into this group—as
they are to join the 34 percent who move up.
The other part of the lie is that safety net programs are
THE SOURCE of our problems rather than a key solution…as they are. Again, the
facts tell the story: There’s also an inverse relationship between how robust a
country’s social safety net is and the degree to which working families face
the prospect of downward mobility. For example, countries that have generous
unemployment benefits show a clear trend: offering displaced workers more
assistance (a) extends the period of unemployment (which tends to be the focus
of most conservatives) and (b) also means that when working people do reenter
the workforce, they do so at a higher average wage.
There’s a similar dynamic in terms of health care: people
with access to paid sick leave and other health benefits switch jobs less
frequently than those who don’t enjoy those benefits, and as a result, they
have longer average tenure and higher earnings.
Now, back to Obama’s tax plan and what the battle he has set
off…because of course, the House GOP leadership, a fascist terrorist network,
has stated that they support 1/44th of the overall price tag, about 2% of the
total bill….and, it’s the worst part anyway.
And unfortunately, while I like the President’s tax plan…I
still am dumbfounded by the fact that the jobs plan is 57% tax cuts and 43%
spending initiatives. And, we’ll see if he backs down so much to the GOP (and
we knows how much he loves taking it from behind) that we end up with something
whittled down to what the GOP supports: an $11 billion tax cut plan.
Here’s the key though….yes, I’m happy that Obama has chosen
to make this election and this fight over taxes on the rich and jobs…but, is it
all just a “game” to keep us thinking we actually have a choice (think the
Matrix)? Will we ever see any of these tax increases? And, will he actually
fight for them post election? Or worse, what happens when the Super Committee
comes with its cuts?
The American Matrix
Many of the values Americans hold dear are at risk if this trend continues:
-- Land of equal opportunity? Some 27 percent of African
Americans were living below the poverty level, a 2 percentage point increase
from the previous year and nearly triple the rate of whites in poverty.
-- Generational advancement? The survey suggests a growing
number of young single people would be living in poverty if not provided refuge
with friends and relatives.
-- Hard work gets rewarded? The difficulty in finding a job
pervades the report: Payroll jobs fell by 600,000 in 2010, and 48 million
people between 18 and 64 did not work even one week during the year.
Perhaps the biggest toll is on this nation's innate sense of optimism that, no matter how
bleak or bullish the moment, better times lie ahead. Median household income,
adjusted for inflation, dropped to 1997 levels - the longest span of flat wages
since the Great Depression. Meanwhile, Washington remains mired in partisanship and finger-pointing.
If this report does not set off alarms, and instill a sense of bipartisan
urgency, then nothing will.
To understand how we got here we must go back to the roots of the right wing shift in the 1970's, particularly once Reagan took over...it begins
with the southern strategy...appealing to racist inclinations of the
south...add to that the "guns, gays, and abortion" appeals...largely
through appealing to peoples religious and bigoted inclinations.
Add to that
the takeover of mass media, particularly right wing talk radio and Fox
News...to keep a perpetual cacophony of lies and propaganda going...creating a
kind of "shell of false information" that people could live in. Add
to that the creation of corporate funded think tanks that spit out phony
studies to back up right wing ideological predispositions. Add to that the
giant tax cuts and giveaways to the rich and corporations....thereby giving
those interests FAR more power and influence over congress and the media than
ever before. Add to that the dismantling of unions...thus weakening the middle
class and stripping a lot of the influence they have over the Democratic party.
Add to that the continued deterioration of the corporate media's coverage of ISSUES and facts, not games and
corporate propaganda...and the list goes on and on.
You start putting all that together what you see is a
"matrix" created that plays to peoples fears and ignorance....keeps
them voting against their own interests...and associating their interests with
those of corporate interests...who were behind this entire strategy birthed in
the 1970's by right wing puppeteers
to come up with a way to take back control after nearly 40 years of domination
by the Democrats due to successful public policy achievements (all opposed by Republicans)
from the New Deal to the Square Deal to Kennedy to the Great Society.
The right and the corporate power brokers needed to figure
out how to get people to vote against things that benefit them, and for things
that benefit the top 1%...and that's
what has happened...in a nutshell....
All I’m saying is we must go into this GOOD NEWS with our
eyes WIDE OPEN…
Taxes and Social Security
I want to get back to this whole social security versus
taxes issue, because to the GOP’s great pain, their man Rick Perry has come out
and said what they all actually believe: it’s a ponzi scheme (they don’t really
believe that…but that’s what they want people to think so they can get rid of
it…because it doesn’t help the super rich and Wall Street can’t touch it). So
the GOP hierarchy is very worried about Perry…even though he has the W. strut
that appeal to the knuckle dragging base.
As for actually “fixing” (the most successful program in
history) social security…which is running a $2.6 trillion surplus and will
cover EVERYONE for nearly 30 years without tinkering with it at all…and its
paid, EVERY SENIOR, on time, for nearly 50 years, that’s easy…just adjust the
payroll tax - which finances BOTH Social Security and Medicare – which today
has a ceiling at $106,800. As Bernie Sanders has argued, just start
implementing that small tax again on incomes AFTER $250,000…so people that make
between those two numbers aren’t perhaps unduly effected by the tax increase.
Again, it’s a great gift for the GOP to make this election
about Medicare and Social Security…and now that Obama has taken to fighting for
taxing the rich, and has seemed to backtrack on cutting those programs, the
Dems are in a much better spot. Again though….is this all a ruse?
As David Dayen notes, “It is important to note for starters
that Social Security is not in crisis, despite Perry's
claims that the system is "a
monstrous lie" and "bankrupt."
With a $2.5 trillion surplus, as the New York
Times noted, "Government projections have Social Security exhausting
its reserves by 2037, absent any changes, but show that the payroll tax
revenues coming in would cover more than three-quarters of benefits to
recipients then." With simple changes to benefits, eligibility and most
importantly, funding, Social Security can easily be made sound for generations
to come. Citizens for
Tax Justice and the New
York Times each estimated that extending the payroll tax to income over
$250,000 a year (as candidate
Obama and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders proposed) would deliver about $50
billion annually in new revenue for the Treasury. And as the
Times suggested in November, the move is long overdue...
There simply is NO escaping the fact that privatizing social
security would divert
trillions of dollars from Social Security and thus build a new mountain of
federal debt….while enriching Wall Street and endangering seniors. The program
Rick Perry said was a “Ponzi scheme” kept 14 million seniors out of poverty last year.
Climate Change Versus Terrorism
Just a quick note on something I’ve become quite an expert
on in all my work on privacy issues…fear, and its power. As reporter Matthew
Stannard summarized, they
found that three things could be expected every time the Bush administration
talked up the threat of terrorism: “The media will repeat the president's remarks. Public fear of terrorism will increase.
And the president's poll numbers
will rise.”
As Crooks and Liars points out, “Such is not the case
talking about tornadoes, floods or hurricanes. That political calculus explains
why, if an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, we get a ton of
prevention to head off terror attacks and only crumbs to prepare for the far
deadlier threats represented by extreme weather events…. "
Last year, the National Academy of scientists surveyed 1,372
climate researchers and found
that 98 percent of them believe human activities are changing our climate (one
has to presume the other 2 percent are working for Exxon). For those of us who
aren't gullible enough to buy into
wild conspiracy theories about climatologists fudging their data in order to
push a socialist agenda on an unsuspecting world, the risks are very real.
According to Scientific
American, “A host of studies, including a recent one from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, have shown that global warming is already worse than
predicted even a few years ago. The only question is: Will it be catastrophic
or not?”
“But all of a sudden the European heat wave of 2003 comes
along and kills 50,000, [Hurricane] Katrina comes along and there's a lot of data about the increased intensity of
droughts and floods. Plus, the dramatic melting of Greenland that nobody can
explain certainly has to increase your concern...Everywhere we looked, there
was evidence that what was believed to be likely has happened. Nature has been
cooperating with [climate change] theory unfortunately."
Last year, 15 Americans were
killed in acts of terror. That's
worldwide. Here at home, 33 Americans – more than twice as many – succumbed to
fatal dog bites. And 19 died last year after being struck by lightning. In
fact, as I noted back in 2006,
American deaths from terror attacks outpaced those from lightning strikes in
only one of the 10 years prior to the invasion of Iraq – 2001, the year of the
9/11 attacks.
VIDEO SECTION
Back to solutions…and to Bernie Sanders who, courageous as
he is, has leaked confidential data about oil speculation to a number of media
outlets, including
the Wall Street Journal. Ordinarily, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission,
the regulatory body that oversees futures trading, does not provide identities
of speculators to the public. However, the data leaked by Sanders provides a
rare snapshot into the trading volumes by major speculators right before the
oil price spike in the summer of 2008.
As experts from Stanford
University, Rice
University, the University
of Massachusetts, and authorities
have concluded, rampant oil speculation was the prime driver of the record
high prices for crude oil three years ago.
Watch the piece…or read his o-ed:
More on Social Security from Robert Reich…because that’s
another BIG DEBATE coming this next election…the New Deal and whether to
destroy it…which Perry has clearly laid out this battleground:
Chris Hayes doing his thing as the new MSNBC host…one of the
REAL good signs of hope…that this network is giving people like him, Maddow,
and so forth a chance to reach the public:
Where are the Democratic representatives to advocate for the
President's plan?
FROM C&L: Stephen Colbert had a bit of fun with the
latest ridiculous attack on President Obama from Fox "News" -- Shockingly Petty: News
Corp. Outlets Attack Obama Over Paper Clip…
Our corporate media largely ignored the protests that are
still going on this week in New York…big protests against Wall Street, just as
there was at the White House a few weeks ago to stop the oil pipeline….yet
NOTHING…imagine if it was the teabaggers?
A good question from CNN’S Jack Cafferty (who has been
HUGELY disappointing of late): How
much will it hurt Rick Perry that nearly 1 in 5 Texans live in poverty?:
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