Wisconsin Right-wing Nut Governor Scott Walker Thinks Corporate Taxes Can Never be Low Enough and he is Willing to Kill Women to Prove It

Wisconsin Right-wing Nut Governor  Scott Walker Thinks Corporate Taxes Can Never be Low Enough and he is Willing to Kill Women to Prove It

First he gutted worker's rights [1], then slashed state education funding [2] and dumbed-down sex ed [3]. Next on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's hit list? Breast and cervical cancer screenings for women. Come January 1, Wisconsinites who rely on Planned Parenthood to access free cancer screenings may be out of luck.

The Wisconsin Well Woman Program [4] is an 17-year-old state service created to ensure that women ages 45 to 64 who lack health insurance can access preventive health screenings. It is administered by the Department of Health Services and provides referrals and screenings for breast cancer, cervical cancer, and multiple sclerosis at no cost. The state currently uses a number of contractors to coordinate and provide those services, including Planned Parenthood. But now, in a move that could leave many women in the state without access to the program, the Walker government is ending Planned Parenthood's contract.

In four Wisconsin counties, Planned Parenthood is the only health care provider currently contracted as a coordinator for the cancer screenings. Coordinators evaluate women for eligibility, enroll them in the program, and then connect them to health care providers that can perform the exams. The coordinators also do community outreach, letting women know that there are options for preventative care even if they don't have health insurance. Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin has been a contractor since the program began—including during the terms of previous GOP governors Tommy Thompson and Scott McCallum—but the group recently learned that its contract is being terminated at the end of the month.

Beth Kaplan, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health Services, told Mother Jones that no decision has been made on the contract and would not comment on why it might not be continued. But Tanya Atkinson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin, says they were told that the state is cutting them out of the program. "They have very clearly stated that they were ending the contract with us," she says. [UPDATE: Walker himself has confirmed [5] that the state is ending its contract with Planned Parenthood.]

Atkinson says the DHS cut is politically motivated; as far as she knows, her group was the only service provider whose contract was not renewed. The move puts in question what will happen to the more than 1,000 women that access the Well Woman Program through Planned Parenthood in Winnebago, Fond du Lac, Sheboygan, and Outagamie counties every year. Doctors found 15 cases of cervical and breast cancer in the 1,260 women screened in those counties in 2010—cases that likely would not have been detected if women didn't have access to the Well Woman Program. The county health officers in two of those counties have already issued statements decrying the state for targeting Planned Parenthood for the cut and for risking the health of their residents.

"If it's not Planned Parenthood, then who's going to coordinate? Where do women go?" Atkinson asks. "We don't have any indication at this point."

If Walker goes through with the cut, women like Laurie Seim might not get the services they need. Two years ago, the 52-year-old Seim discovered a lump in her breast and started feeling feverish and sick. Even though she had a part-time job as a medical assistant, she didn't have health insurance and had never had a mammogram. The doctor she worked for sent her to the Well Woman Program coordinator at the Outagamie office of Planned Parenthood. She was able to get a mammogram the next day as well as an ultrasound, and both were covered by the program. Thankfully, she learned she had a cyst, not cancer. But without the program, she says, she probably wouldn't have gotten that care.

"I didn't have to worry about anything. It was such a godsend," Seim says. "If I hadn't been referred to that program, I don't know what I would have done." She worked in the medical field but still didn't know how to navigate the system. "Well Woman was there for me."

Just another day among the fake patriots who call themselves conservatives. They honestly believe in having a dog-eat-dog survival of the lucky society. If you have health problems and cannot afford care, conservative Republicans believe you should die. They proved that to the entire nation when they applauded a question during the Republican debates about letting someone without health insurance die. 

To Fight Terrorism The US Senate Has Declared The Military Can Detain Americans Without Trial or Legal Representation

To Fight Terrorism The US Senate Has Declared The Military Can Detain Americans Without Trial or Legal Representation

Three years ago, former Guantánamo Bay detainee Mustafa Ait Idr cautiously sat with me in a Sarajevo café, spilling hot coffee as he brought the cup to his lips. Though it was seven months after his release, he was still nursing a broken finger – punishment, he said, for refusing to strip naked in his cell – and was unable to fully grasp the cup due to his loss of dexterity. His face was also partially paralysed from beatings, and he told me how his head was held in a toilet for prolonged periods of time.

Upon his release, he met his youngest son for the first time. Ait Idr was one of "the Algerian Six", a group of European (mainly Bosnian) citizens unlawfully detained at Guantánamo Bay for seven years. In 2008, a US federal judge ordered the release of five of the six men during the first-ever Guantánamo Bay habeas corpus trial. Just to obtain that trial, the men had to prevail in a 5-4 decision from the US supreme court. No charges were ever filed against them.

If the new National Defence Authorisation Act is enacted into law as it is currently written, many believe that American citizens would be in danger of enduring similar indefinite military detention without cause. Last week, the US Senate passed the NDAA, a massive $662bn defense bill with provisions that would amplify the role of the military in the seizure and detention of terror suspects, including US citizens. The act, a lovechild of Senators Carl Levin (Democrat) and John McCain (Republican), would permit the indefinite military detention of US citizens without charges or a trial. While the confusing bill is still a work in progress (the Senate and the House have yet to settle upon a final bill that will go to the president), it is already drawing fierce controversy across the country.

The NDAA holds that the military has the authority to detain "a person who was part of or substantially supported al-Qaida, the Taliban, or associated forces […] without trial" and authorises "transfer to the custody or control of the person's country of origin, any other foreign country, or any other foreign entity". This implies that a naturalised American citizen could be exiled to their country of origin, even if it endangers their life. It also implies that an American citizen born in the US could be transferred to another "foreign entity".

So, what exactly does "other foreign entity" include? No one is quite sure, but an "entity" akin to the new mercenary company in Abu Dhabi run by Erik Prince, former CEO of Blackwater, cannot be ruled out.

There is confusion as to whether the NDAA applies to US citizens; but Section 1031 of the bill does indeed authorise indefinite military detention, without trial, of US citizens accused – not yet proven guilty, just accused – of terrorist acts. This was clarified in the following exchange on the floor of the Senate:

    Senator Rand Paul (Republican): "Under the provisions, would it be possible that an American citizen then could be declared an enemy combatant and sent to Guantánamo Bay and detained indefinitely?"

    Senator John McCain (Republican): "I think that as long as that individual, no matter who they are, if they pose a threat to the security of the United States of America, should not be allowed to continue that threat."

Section 1032 of the bill would require mandatory military custody of someone accused of being affiliated with al-Qaida or plotting attacks against the US; American citizens would be exempt from this specific measure. Aside from the unabashed disregard for civil liberties, placing the burden of detention and trial upon the military, rather than civilian law enforcement, diminishes and delegitimises the FBI's role in counter-terrorism efforts. This could make it challenging to collaboratively gather intelligence on domestic terror cells.

The proposed changes would require the military to act as police, wardens and judges – jobs for which it is not equipped. Highly-decorated General Paul Eaton (US Army, retired), has affirmed this, saying:

    "After serving for more than 30 years in the military, I can attest to its ability to conduct warfare brilliantly. We prefer not, however, to serve as policemen. The armed forces are not staffed, trained or equipped […] Our police, FBI and prison system are designed to keep America safe."

Senator Mark Udall (Democrat) sponsored an unsuccessful pitch to omit the controversial detainee portions, but his motion was defeated. The Senate also rejected a measure by Senator Dianne Feinstein (Democrat) to limit mandatory military custody to those captured outside the US. It failed (by a 45-55 vote), with only three Republicans voting in favor. Senator Feinstein did, however, succeed in pushing through a measure that ensures that the bill does not affect "existing law".

It it some though thin solace that President Obama has promised to veto the bill as written. Any adult reading this has very likely been falsely accused of doing wrong during their life. False accusations are cheap by the dozen. If the new National Defense Authorization Act is passed a as written it is not just your reputation that might take a beating, you can be hauled off to a military prison and never given the chance to defend yourself. A nice gift to any personal enemies you have made in life, but not much justice as guaranteed under the 4th Amendment, for you.

Freedom is Only For the Elite - Welcome to Republican America Which is Willing To Raise Payroll Taxes On 113 Million Households To Spare 345,000 Millionaires From Tiny Surtax

Freedom is Only For the Elite - Welcome to Republican America Which is Willing To Raise Payroll Taxes On 113 Million Households To Spare 345,000 Millionaires From Tiny Surtax

Senate Democrats yesterday introduced legislation — as they’ve been promising to — that would extend a soon-to-expire payroll tax cut, and pay for it by implementing a surtax on income above $1 million. Republicans, of course, are opposing the plan, reviving their false claims that taxing the very wealthiest Americans will hit small businesses and job creators.

In essence, the GOP is saying that it’s willing to allow higher taxes on middle- and lower-income Americans in order to prevent tax increases on the very wealthy. According to an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, provided to the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, the surtax would affect exceedingly few taxpayers, while a payroll tax cut expiration would wallop more than 100 million households:

    The surtax would impact around 345,000 taxpayers, roughly 0.2 percent of taxpayers, or one in 500 of them. Those people would pay on average an additional 2.1 percent of their overall income, or just over 1/50th of that overall income, in taxes.

    In a majority of states, only one-tenth of one percent, or one in 1,000 taxpayers, would pay this surtax.

    And how many people would benefit from the payroll tax cut? According to the group, around 113 million tax filing units — either single workers or families that include more than one worker — would see their payroll tax cut extended. That’s a lot of people — well over 113 million workers, in fact.

Allowing the payroll tax cut to expire at the end of the year would hit middle-class families with a $1,000 tax increase, providing a substantial drag on the economy. In fact, according to Macroeconomic Advisers, allowing the payroll tax cut to lapse “would reduce GDP growth by 0.5 percent and cost the economy 400,000 jobs.” Other estimates are even worse, with Barclays’s estimating that a payroll tax increase could say 1.5 percent off of GDP growth.

The GOP has, time and again, blocked any legislation that would increase taxes by the slightest amount on the ultra-wealthy, even with tax revenue at a 60 year low, taxes on the rich the lowest they’ve been in a generation, and income inequality out of control. Instead, Republicans would prefer to raise taxes on the middle-class, knocking the economy where it can least afford it.

Be sure and vote conservative Republican in 2012 so the United States of America can look and operate more like 16th century France. When will conservatives start wearing flowing velvet robes and silk brocaded vests so we can all better distinguish the elite from the common folk.

Rupert Murdoch The Anti-American International Business Mogul and His Fox News:: Student Indoctrination Is OK, But Only If The Teacher's a Proto-Fascist Conservative

Conservatives and The 1 Percent Have Violated America's Most Basic Tenets

Conservatives and The Elite 1 Percent Have Violated America's Most Basic Tenets

For most of the last century, the basic bargain at the heart of the American economy was that employers paid their workers enough to buy what American employers were selling.

That basic bargain created a virtuous cycle of higher living standards, more jobs, and better wages.

Back in 1914, Henry Ford announced he was paying workers on his Model T assembly line $5 a day – three times what the typical factory employee earned at the time. The Wall Street Journal termed his action “an economic crime.”

But Ford knew it was a cunning business move. The higher wage turned Ford’s auto workers into customers who could afford to buy Model T’s. In two years Ford’s profits more than doubled.

That was then. Now, Ford Motor Company is paying its new hires half what it paid new employees a few years ago.

The basic bargain is over – not only at Ford but all over the American economy.

New data from the Commerce Department shows employee pay is now down to the smallest share of the economy since the government began collecting wage and salary data in 1929.

Meanwhile, corporate profits now constitute the largest share of the economy since 1929.

1929, by the way, was the year of the Great Crash that ushered in the Great Depression.

The full essay is at the link. Conservatives and their supply-side economics ( which some Democrats have also bought into over the last three decades) have not quite brought back the economics of the pre-Civil War plantation, but they have brought us closer. There is till a healthy middle-class, but half of America, about 52% are wage slaves. They can work hard year in year out and their chances of getting ahead are much slimmer then the chances of their grandparents. We have this America because conservatives want all the money that was produced ultimately by labor in the hands of the very wealthy. In America wealth is power. Why does the incredibly wealthy Rupert Murdoch use the Wall Street Journal and Fox News to spread absurd propaganda about health care reform, the minimum wage and the social safety net ( Medicare). Because they want the fruits of America's labor going to the top, not to workers. Power follows the money and conservatives want the American people to be as powerless as possible.

What Caused the Financial Crisis? Or What Some Call The Great Recession

What Caused the Financial Crisis? Or What Some Call The Great Recession

One group has been especially vocal about shaping a new narrative of the credit crisis and economic collapse: those whose bad judgment and failed philosophy helped cause the crisis.

Rather than admit the error of their ways — Repent! — these people are engaged in an active campaign to rewrite history. They are not, of course, exonerated in doing so. And beyond that, they damage the process of repairing what was broken. They muddy the waters when it comes to holding guilty parties responsible. They prevent measures from being put into place to prevent another crisis.

Here is the surprising takeaway: They are winning. Thanks to the endless repetition of the Big Lie.

A Big Lie is so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. There are many examples: Claims that Earth is not warming, or that evolution is not the best thesis we have for how humans developed. Those opposed to stimulus spending have gone so far as to claim that the infrastructure of the United States is just fine, Grade A (not D, as the we discussed last month), and needs little repair.

Wall Street has its own version: Its Big Lie is that banks and investment houses are merely victims of the crash. You see, the entire boom and bust was caused by misguided government policies. It was not irresponsible lending or derivative or excess leverage or misguided compensation packages, but rather long-standing housing policies that were at fault.

Indeed, the arguments these folks make fail to withstand even casual scrutiny. But that has not stopped people who should know better from repeating them.

The Big Lie made a surprise appearance Tuesday when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, responding to a question about Occupy Wall Street, stunned observers by exonerating Wall Street: “It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, Congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp.”

What made his comments so stunning is that he built Bloomberg Data Services on the notion that data are what matter most to investors. The terminals are found on nearly 400,000 trading desks around the world, at a cost of $1,500 a month. (Do the math — that’s over half a billion dollars a month.) Perhaps the fact that Wall Street was the source of his vast wealth biased him. But the key principle of the business that made the mayor a billionaire is that fund managers, economists, researchers and traders should ignore the squishy narrative and, instead, focus on facts. Yet he ignored his own principles to repeat statements he should have known were false.

Why are people trying to rewrite the history of the crisis? Some are simply trying to save face. Interest groups who advocate for deregulation of the finance sector would prefer that deregulation not receive any blame for the crisis.

Some stand to profit from the status quo: Banks present a systemic risk to the economy, and reducing that risk by lowering their leverage and increasing capital requirements also lowers profitability. Others are hired guns, doing the bidding of bosses on Wall Street.

They all suffer cognitive dissonance — the intellectual crisis that occurs when a failed belief system or philosophy is confronted with proof of its implausibility.

And what about those facts? To be clear, no single issue was the cause. Our economy is a complex and intricate system. What caused the crisis? Look:

*Fed Chair Alan Greenspan dropped rates to 1 percent — levels not seen for half a century — and kept them there for an unprecedentedly long period. This caused a spiral in anything priced in dollars (i.e., oil, gold) or credit (i.e., housing) or liquidity driven (i.e., stocks).

*Low rates meant asset managers could no longer get decent yields from municipal bonds or Treasurys. Instead, they turned to high-yield mortgage-backed securities. Nearly all of them failed to do adequate due diligence before buying them, did not understand these instruments or the risk involved. They violated one of the most important rules of investing: Know what you own.

*Fund managers made this error because they relied on the credit ratings agencies — Moody’s, S&P and Fitch. They had placed an AAA rating on these junk securities, claiming they were as safe as U.S. Treasurys.

• Derivatives had become a uniquely unregulated financial instrument. They are exempt from all oversight, counter-party disclosure, exchange listing requirements, state insurance supervision and, most important, reserve requirements. This allowed AIG to write $3 trillion in derivatives while reserving precisely zero dollars against future claims.

• The Securities and Exchange Commission changed the leverage rules for just five Wall Street banks in 2004. The “Bear Stearns exemption” replaced the 1977 net capitalization rule’s 12-to-1 leverage limit. In its place, it allowed unlimited leverage for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. These banks ramped leverage to 20-, 30-, even 40-to-1. Extreme leverage leaves very little room for error.

•Wall Street’s compensation system was skewed toward short-term performance. It gives traders lots of upside and none of the downside. This creates incentives to take excessive risks.

• The demand for higher-yielding paper led Wall Street to begin bundling mortgages. The highest yielding were subprime mortgages. This market was dominated by non-bank originators exempt from most regulations. The Fed could have supervised them, but Greenspan did not.

• These mortgage originators’ lend-to-sell-to-securitizers model had them holding mortgages for a very short period. This allowed them to get creative with underwriting standards, abdicating traditional lending metrics such as income, credit rating, debt-service history and loan-to-value.

• “Innovative” mortgage products were developed to reach more subprime borrowers. These include 2/28 adjustable-rate mortgages, interest-only loans, piggy-bank mortgages (simultaneous underlying mortgage and home-equity lines) and the notorious negative amortization loans (borrower’s indebtedness goes up each month). These mortgages defaulted in vastly disproportionate numbers to traditional 30-year fixed mortgages.

*To keep up with these newfangled originators, traditional banks developed automated underwriting systems. The software was gamed by employees paid on loan volume, not quality.

*Glass-Steagall legislation, which kept Wall Street and Main Street banks walled off from each other, was repealed in 1998. This allowed FDIC-insured banks, whose deposits were guaranteed by the government, to engage in highly risky business. It also allowed the banks to bulk up, becoming bigger, more complex and unwieldy.

*Many states had anti-predatory lending laws on their books (along with lower defaults and foreclosure rates). In 2004, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency federally preempted state laws regulating mortgage credit and national banks. Following this change, national lenders sold increasingly risky loan products in those states. Shortly after, their default and foreclosure rates skyrocketed.

Bloomberg was partially correct: Congress did radically deregulate the financial sector, doing away with many of the protections that had worked for decades. Congress allowed Wall Street to self-regulate, and the Fed the turned a blind eye to bank abuses.

The previous Big Lie — the discredited belief that free markets require no adult supervision — is the reason people have created a new false narrative.

All the right-wing conservative Anti-American presidential candidates have done their part in telling the Big Lie. They seem to anyone - working class Americans, minorities, government, liberalism. The truth hurts. The free market is great when it workers. It only works when properly regulated. That's not communism or fascism or any other ism, its common sense and an honest history of the greed that always kicks in when regulations are too lax or not enforced.

How Conservatism and Personhood Laws Could Make Women Servants to Government

How Conservatism and Personhood Laws Could Make Women Servants to Government

Tuesday’s ballot initiative in Mississippi regarding a constitutional amendment that would grant fertilized eggs legal personhood is polling right down to the wire, with 45% of Mississippians favoring it and 44% opposed. Gender influences opinion on this initiative somewhat, with men favoring it by six percentage points and women opposing it by four percentage points. Race and party affiliation has even more influence, with Democrats and African-Americans registering around 60% opposition to the amendment. This suggests that the racial and class-based aspects to this amendment that have passed national attention aren’t passing the attention of Mississippi voters, and hopefully fear of this law will be enough to keep personhood for fertilized eggs from becoming law. 

Most of the national attention to this ballot initiative has focused on the potential effects it could have on access to abortion and birth control, as supporters of the personhood amendment erroneously claim that hormonal birth control works by killing fertilized eggs. (All forms, including emergency contraception, work by preventing ovulation.) These are very real concerns, of course, but not out of the ordinary for an anti-choice movement that spends most of its time trying to restrict access to contraception and abortion. The personhood represents an even more disturbing shift rightwards, because if it’s passed into law it will turn women of reproductive age into a criminally suspicious class whose privacy will be invaded and basic rights ignored, all with the pretense of protecting this new class of “persons”. If this law passes in Mississippi, women who have miscarriages could be facing the handcuffs, and pregnant women could very well lose basic freedoms to a state that uses the fetus in their bodies as an excuse to control them. 

And the women who will be most affected will be those who are already targeted routinely by law enforcement: poorer women, young women, and women of color. 

The campaign for the personhood amendment fallaciously claims that they’re just trying to return Mississippi to a pre-Roe state, but this is simply and demonstrably untrue. Fertilized eggs didn’t have personhood status prior to 1973; bans on abortion and contraception were generally justified by the state arguing it had a right to control sexual morality, which is why the court decided Roe on the basis of sexual privacy rights. Under pre-Roe laws, doctors were mainly the ones prosecuted for providing abortion, but under personhood laws, a woman who procures an abortion has taken a hit out on a legal “person”, and can also be charged with a crime. At it’s foremost, this is about expanding the power of the state to throw women in jail for private medical choices. 

But there’s so much more at stake with this wild expansion of state control over women’s bodies. That’s why it’s ridiculous for personhood amendment supporters to wave off concerns that this law will lead to imprisoning women for miscarriages. If embryos count as “persons”, then it’s entirely possible and in fact likely that the state will start investigating women who miscarry. Like Will Saletan writing for Slate notes:

    A woman who suffers a miscarriage would be prosecuted not because she had a miscarriage, but because police and prosecutors suspect she might have had an abortion. You would certainly be investigated if your born child disappeared and you said it had died in an accident.

Much like everything conservatism stands for small government is just another myth, a fairy tale of epic proportions. Conservatives, given the chance and power to govern at the state or federal level have always increased the size and power of government and taken away more rights from individual Americans.

Did liberals cause the housing crisis? No.

How OWS Has Exposed the Militarization of US Law Enforcement

How OWS Has Exposed the Militarization of US Law Enforcement

As the number of Occupy Wall Street arrests nears 1,000, instances of police brutality continue to pile up. Felix Rivera-Pitre was punched in the face in New York during a march through the city’s financial district; Ryan Hadar was dragged out of the street by his thumbs at Occupy San Francisco; and at Occupy Boston, members of Veterans for Peace were shoved to the ground and dragged away for chanting and peacefully occupying a local park.

These efforts to intimidate the protesters are symptoms of three decades of policies that have militarized civilian law enforcement. Sgt. Shamar Thomas, a U.S. marine at the Occupy Wall Street protests, was so appalled by the behavior of the NYPD that he loudly confronted a group of 30 officers, shouting at them:

    "This is not a war zone. These are unarmed people. It does not make you tough to hurt these people. If you want to go fight, go to Iraq or Afghanistan. Stop hurting these people, man, why y’all doing this to our people? Why are y’all gearing up like this is war? There are no bullets flying out here."

Police repression in America is hardly new. Low-income neighborhoods, communities of color and political activists have always had to deal with unneccassary shows of force by some police officers. Thanks to a populist uprising threatening a status quo that benefits the top tier of American society to the detriment of the bottom 99 percent, many Americans for the first time are witnessing the U.S. police state in action.

As Occupation Spreads, So Does the Police State

A clear pattern has emerged in the response to occupations throughout the country, from San Francisco to Denver, involving midnight raids by heavily armed paramilitary units of riot police deployed to enforce park curfews.

Protesters at Occupy San Francisco are familiar with the routine. They have endured multiple late-night police raids on their encampment in Justin Herman Plaza, the most brutal of which took place Sunday, Oct. 16. Minutes before midnight and with the approval of Mayor Ed Lee (who is currently running for reelection and claims to be supportive of the movement's overall message), 70 police officers decked out in full riot gear marched into the encampment to enforce a 10pm curfew. They dismantled tents, tarps, the medical station and the kitchen, along with some personal belongings, all of which were loaded onto Department of Public Works trucks.

Some 200 protesters resisted peacefully, locking arms to prevent the police invasion, which was met with a frighteningly violent response. According to the San Francisco Bay Guardian, one protester received a lengthy beat-down for duct-taping his body to a pole inside the camp. The police allegedly "ripped him off the pole, threw him to the ground and struck him in the head and ribs. When he left by ambulance a few hours later, he appeared to be convulsing or seizing," reported the Bay Guardian.

Protesters using their bodies to block the DPW trucks from leaving were dragged out of the street, some by their fingers and thumbs. Those who locked arms to form a human chain were pulled apart and thrown onto the sidewalk. 

America's police departments might want to ask themselves - what are you going to do when they come for you. Most police in the US belong to unions. Who is going to defend your rights to organize. Who is going to defend your right to collective bargaining. Who is going to look out for your right to decent health care insurance. The very same people you're treating like garbage. By all means protect life and garb anyone you see do something like throw a brick threw a window, but otherwise ask yourself why you're acting like the goon enforcers of some despotic regime.

B-I-N-G-Oh Hell No: Judge Rules That Alabama Republicans Acted With Racist Intent to Suppress Voter Turnout

Associated Press Pushes False "fact check" of President Obama's statements on Buffett Rule

Associated Press Pushes False "fact check" of President Obama's statements on Buffett Rule

The conservative media have echoed the criticisms made by a misleading Associated Press "fact check" of President Obama's statements about taxation and the Buffett Rule he has been promoting. Progressive economists have rebutted the AP's criticisms and lent support to his proposals.
AP: Millionaires Already Taxed More Than Their Secretaries

AP: "The Data Say" Millionaires "Are Already Taxed At Higher Rates Than Their Secretaries." From an Associated Press "fact check" by Stephen Ohlemacher:

    President Barack Obama says he wants to make sure millionaires are taxed at higher rates than their secretaries. The data say they already are.

    "Warren Buffett's secretary shouldn't pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett. There is no justification for it," Obama said as he announced his deficit-reduction plan this week. "It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $50 million."

    On average, the wealthiest people in America pay a lot more taxes than the middle class or the poor, according to private and government data. They pay at a higher rate, and as a group, they contribute a much larger share of the overall taxes collected by the federal government.

    The 10 percent of households with the highest incomes pay more than half of all federal taxes. They pay more than 70 percent of federal income taxes, according to the Congressional Budget Office. [Associated Press, 9/20/11]

Progressive Economists Back The Buffett Rule, Refute AP

Krugman: "The Obama/Buffett Claim Is Absolutely, Totally True." From Nobel laureate Paul Krugman's New York Times blog:

    Well, it seems as if a number of people in the media have decided that Obama was fibbing when he said that some millionaires pay lower tax rates than their secretaries -- because, as the usual suspects triumphantly declare, on average millionaires pay higher average taxes than middle-income Americans.

    This is, of course, stupid: the operative word is SOME.

    And we're not talking about one or two exceptional guys, either. Look at the IRS data on returns for the 400 highest incomes in America (pdf) -- specifically, Table 3. If you look at the numbers since 2004, you'll see that in a typical year between 30 and 40 percent of those super-high-income players paid an average tax rate of less than 15 percent; most of them paid less than 20 percent. Bear in mind that for the very wealthy the payroll tax -- the main burden on working-class Americans -- is trivial, because of the cap on Social Security and the fact that it only applies to earned income. And what becomes clear is that the Obama/Buffet claim is absolutely, totally true.

    So why the attack? Probably because it's such an effective line. And we can't have populism that actually strikes a chord with the public, can we? [The Conscience of a Liberal, The New York Times, 9/21/11]

CEPR's Dean Baker: Obama "Made A Simple And True Statement In His Speech On The Budget." From Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research:
    President Obama made a simple and true statement in his speech on the budget Monday. He said that there were millionaires and billionaires who pay tax at a lower rate than middle income families.

    Many news outlets went to town to point out that on average millionaires and billionaires pay tax at a higher rate than middle income families. Of course this is not what Obama said. He was pointing out that some of the richest people in the country (Warren Buffet was his model), get most or all of their income as capital gains and therefore only pay taxes at the 15 percent capital gains rate.

    The NYT gets this right today. Other outlets could have saved a lot of trees and better served their readers if they didn't work so hard trying to refute something that President Obama did not say. [Beat the Press, Center for Economic and Policy Research, 9/21/11]

Jared Bernstein: Buffett Rule Is A "Principle," A "Guideline For Tax Reform." From Jared Bernstein, Senior Fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

    Actually, let's look at this principle for a moment, for "principle" it is--in fact, it doesn't factor at all in the $1.5 trillion in revenue raised in the President's budget plan.   The administration laid it out as a guideline for tax reform, a kind of tripwire in the tax code to avoid the problem identified by billionaire Warren Buffet: because much of his income gets special treatment in the tax code, he faces a smaller effective tax rate than many in the middle class.

    [...]

    Now, it's not the case that every millionaire pays a smaller share in taxes compared to middle class families.  But, as my colleague Chuck Marr points out on the CBPP blog, if much of their income derives from non-labor earnings, like capital gains and dividend payouts from their equities, then they likely do pay less as a share of their income.

    And in fact, Chuck features a graph showing that the effective tax rate (taxes paid as a share of income) on income and payroll taxes are about 15% for a middle-class family with mostly earned income, compared to 12% for a millionaire (or higher) household with at least 2/3 investment income.

    Here's another look at the same data from the Tax Policy Center.  This figure shows the effective tax by share of investment income.  The effective rate drops by half going from left (more labor income) to right (more capital income).

    Source: Tax Policy Center, link above.

    Is there a rationale for such favorable, and potentially distortionary, tax treatment?  As noted here, I don't see it, and the research is supportive of that view.  It's just another loophole (and another victory for the winning side in the class war, but that's another issue...) [On the Economy, 9/20/11]

CBPP's Tax Policy Director Chuck Marr: "A Significant Group Of Very Wealthy People Pay A Smaller Share Of Their Incomes In Federal Income And Payroll Taxes Than Large Swaths Of The Middle Class." From Off The Charts, a blog of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

 Funny how conservatives suddenly decide, when convenient, that facts matter. They have lied, distorted and told half truths for fifty years to manipulate the American public into voting against their own best interests. Now that they have left president Obama with few tools to fix the economy they broke, they're lying in their tactics to once again avoid responsibility for keeping millions of Americans unemployed. Keeping Americans unemployed is their major campaign theme heading into 2012. They figure the worse the economy, the more they can shift blame.

This is Why We Have Broken Government, The Utterly Insane Idiot Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) Calls for Higher Taxes on Middle-class

This is Why We Have Broken Government, The Utterly Insane Idiot Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) Calls for Higher Taxes on Middle-class

Paul Ryan Calls For Increasing Taxes On Middle Class But Dismisses Millionaires Tax As ‘Class Warfare’


Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) resumed his attacks on President Obama’s economic policy Sunday morning, suggesting that the President’s plan to tax millionaires’ profits from capital gains in order to fund job creation efforts constitutes “class warfare”:

    RYAN: It adds further instability to our system — more uncertainty — and it punishes job creation and those people who create jobs. Class warfare, Chris, may make for really good politics but it makes for rotten economics. We don’t need to divide people and prey on people’s fear and envy and anxiety. We need to remove the barriers so entrepreneurs can hire people. These tax increases don’t work. [...]

    This is a double tax… If we tax investment and tax more you will get less of it. It looks like to me not a very good sign. It looks like the President wants to move down the class warfare path. Class warfare will simply divide this country more, will attack job creators,  divide people, and it doesn’t grow the economy.


Ironically, Ryan was simultaneously calling for an end to the current temporary tax cuts, which would raise taxes by 50 percent on those making less than $106,000. While launching accusations of “class warfare,” Ryan is the one who would prefer that people with less money pay more, while those with more money keep more.

As Warren Buffett pointed out last month, the mega-rich pay “practically nothing” in payroll taxes and instead pay far lower tax rates on passive investment income. Congress has “coddled” billionaires, Buffett argued, rather than calling on them for serious “shared sacrific

There is a warfare based on economic classes going on in America. Conservatives have declared war on people who work for a living while defending people whose income has gone up 90% in the last twenty years. If wealth alone created jobs - well where are they. If tax cuts for millionaires created jobs, where are they. Ryan is a mental basket-case. Someone so out of touch with reality he should be under observation in a psych-ward, not pretending to represent the people in Congress.

Republican Wuss of the Week - Why is House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) Afraid of His Constituents

Republican Wuss of the Week - Why is House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) Afraid of His Constituents

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), the author of the House GOP plan to phase out Medicare, does not like it when constituents publicly challenge him. In fact, people who disagree with Ryan have a habit of getting arrested for it. A few weeks ago, several of Ryan’s unemployed constituents staged a peaceful sit-in at his Kenosha, Wisconsin office to protest his unpopular decision not to hold any free public town halls during the August recess. These constituents didn’t think they should have to pay to ask their elected representative a question. Instead of meeting with them, Ryan’s staff called the police.

So it should come as no surprise that this week, three people who paid to see Ryan speak were arrested and charged with trespassing for protesting the event. One constituent, a 71-year-old retired plumber from Kenosha, Wisconsin, was handcuffed and pushed to the ground by security:

    Video footage taken by an attendee at the event shows that one of them, Tom Nielsen, received particularly harsh treatment — he was pushed to the ground and handcuffed. Nielsen received an additional charge of resisting arrest.

    Ryan was speaking Tuesday afternoon at the Whitnall Park Rotary Club. Protesters gathered both outside his event and inside, standing up and disrupting the congressman’s remarks.

    According to Oak Creek Patch, as many as a dozen protesters were escorted out of the event. Another dozen or so left willingly.

Ryan seemed supremely undisturbed that a senior citizen worried about receiving the Medicare he’s paid into his whole life was treated so brutally. Indeed, Ryan made light of the arrest and quipped to the audience, “I hope he’s taking his blood pressure medication.”

Watch it, courtesy of Wisconsin Jobs Now:

Another woman was shown the door when she challenged Ryan’s claim that the jobs crisis is directly related to the debt crisis. “Our debt is out of control because of the tax cuts you’re giving,” she said. “Our unemployment in 2003 was 6.2% before the tax cuts went through. Now our unemployment rate is 9.1%. What are you doing to create jobs, Congressman?” Another woman was escorted out when she stood up while Ryan was speaking and said, “You won’t talk to us. How can we give our opinions when you refuse to talk to us?”

Ryan has consistently faced angry constituents at his events since his Medicare-killing budget became a top GOP priority. Tired of being publicly embarrassed by constituents who voice their disagreement and say his policies are hurting them, Ryan has resorted to increasingly harsh responses to deal with people who have the audacity to speak up at his events.

I do have a question for the local police. I'm sure you're good folks but why are you acting as strong-arm bullies for this wussball Congress critter. That really is not your job. If one of them tries to physically attack Ryan that is another story. This people are just trying to get straight answers.

Tim Pawlenty is the Perfect Republican Candidate for President

Tim Pawlenty is the Perfect Republican Candidate for President

"Truth" was Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty's buzzword Monday when he announced his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. He said he will tell the truth about hard choices facing the nation while others — President Barack Obama notably among them — do not.

A parsing of Pawlenty's opening-day statements shows they were not the whole truth.

Here is a sampling of his claims Monday and how they compare with the facts.

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PAWLENTY: "The truth is, people getting paid by the taxpayers shouldn't get a better deal than the taxpayers themselves. That means freezing federal salaries, transitioning federal employee benefits, and downsizing the federal work force as it retires." — Campaign announcement.

THE FACTS: A federal pay freeze is already in effect. Obama proposed and Congress approved a two-year freeze on the pay of federal employees, exempting the armed forces, Congress and federal courts.

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PAWLENTY: "ObamaCare is unconstitutional." — USA Today column.

THE FACTS: Obama's health care overhaul might be unconstitutional in Pawlenty's opinion, but it is not in fact unless the Supreme Court says so. Lower court rulings have been split.

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PAWLENTY: "Barack Obama has consistently stood for higher taxes." — Campaign announcement.

THE FACTS: Obama's record shows more tax cutting than tax raising. The stimulus plan early in his presidency cut taxes broadly for the middle class and business, and more recently he won a substantial cut in Social Security taxes for a year. He also campaigned in support of extending the Bush-era tax cuts for all except the wealthy, whose taxes he wanted to raise. In office, he accepted a deal from Republicans extending the tax cuts for all. As for tax increases, Obama won congressional approval to raise them on tobacco and tanning salons. The penalty for those who don't buy health insurance, once coverage is mandatory, is a form of taxation.

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PAWLENTY: "For decades before I was elected, governors tried and failed to get Minnesota out of the top 10 highest-taxed states in the country. I actually did it." — Campaign announcement.

THE FACTS: Minnesota remains among the 10 worst states in its overall tax climate, according to the Tax Foundation. In its 2011 State Business Tax Climate Index, the anti-tax organization ranks Minnesota 43rd, making it the eighth worst state. The ranking slipped from 41st two years earlier. The index considers corporate, individual, sales, unemployment insurance and property taxes.

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PAWLENTY: "I stood up to the teachers unions and established one of the first statewide performance pay systems in the country." — Campaign announcement.

THE FACTS: The system may be statewide, but it is voluntary and most school districts have not joined. Out of the 340 school districts and charter schools in the state, with 830,000 students, 104 districts and charter schools serving 254,592 students are currently enrolled in the performance-pay program.

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PAWLENTY: "There's only four governors in the country that got an A grade from the tough-grading Cato Institute for fiscal management. I was one of them." — ABC's "Good Morning America."

THE FACTS: Cato may be a tough grader, but it is hardly objective. The institute holds staunch libertarian views, including a passion for smaller government, and graded governors in 2010 according to their success in cutting taxes and spending. Pawlenty tied for third with Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, behind South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, both Republicans.

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PAWLENTY: "I could stand here and tell you that we can solve America's debt crisis and fix our economy without making any tough choices. But we've heard those kinds of empty promises before."

THE FACTS: Although politicians typically talk about the need for hard choices, Pawlenty actually does name several. He proposes to phase out ethanol and corporate subsidies, raise the Social Security retirement age for young workers and restrain cost of living increases for Social Security recipients who are wealthy.

Americans who liked George W. Bush, Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin and the most corrupt unpopular governor in the nation, Florida's Rick Scott, should love Pawlenty. Pawlenty is a serial liar, hates rights for workers, wants to cut education but give hugely profitable corporations yet more tax cuts, believes in Bush's supply-side economics, believes in cutting the kind of regulation that will protect America from another meltdown, has repeated every lie there is about Iraq and WMD. In other words Pawlenty is so high on the anti-American right-wing kool-aid it will be like its 2007 all over again.