NORTON META TAG

13 December 2012

Everyone is doing it & Unlikely Backers in a Battle Over Taxes 11&12DEZ12

65% of Americans want it, all Americans will benefit from it, and more Patriotic Millionaires are stepping up and demanding it. Who's against it? The millionaires and billionaires who are greedy and self absorbed, unwilling to curb their lust for more wealth and power and the Congressmen and women they have bought out and control. The pressure continues to mount on Pres Obama to hold fast to his pledge not to extend the bush tax breaks for the rich and to close corporate welfare tax loopholes so the 2% pay their fair share. This update from Patriotic Millionaires and the Agenda Project and the NYT article follows, and for more on this see my earlier post Top Two Percent To GOP: Tax Us & Defense Execs Say Deeper DoD Budget Cuts, Higher Taxes OK 5&3DEZ12 http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/top-two-percent-to-gop-tax-us-defense.html

The measure of a society’s progress is not whether it can give more to those who have more, but whether it can provide enough to those who have less.
- David Lim

I was delighted to open the New York Times this morning and see this article about all the NEW millionaires who have (finally!) joined the effort the Patriotic Millionaires started over two years ago to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans!! The Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength launched their campaign during the 2010 lame duck session of congress and have been aggressively demanding higher taxes (on themselves!) ever since. We are so excited so many more millionaires are coming forward to echo this important message. 
If you have a chance, watch this GREAT VIDEO where the Patriotic Millionaires take their “Tax Me!” message right to John Boehner. If every millionaire in this country agreed with the last line of this video, we would be MUCH better off.
And, maybe just maybe that is happening. The Patriotic Millionaires started with a few dozen people and now has over 200 members. Several of the people in the NYT’s story actually told me personally two years ago that they didn’t think their taxes should go up – but now they have seen the light! Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!
The NYT's story shows that when Americans want something they can make it happen. These Patriotic Millionaires have wanted their taxes to go up for the good of the country since 2010 and now, just two years later, they are going to succeed in making sure that our country has enough money for the things we want and need.
Now we just have to convince the Republicans in Congress. To that end, please call the Republicans in the House and ask them to do what 65% of Americans – and  hundreds of millionaires – want them to do!  Raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans!
The number to the House is 202-224-3121. To find the phone number for a specific Congress person, look HERE
If you would like more information on the Patriotic Millionaires or for press inquiries, please do not hesitate to contact Rachael at 212-481-8302 or rwall@agendaproject.org
Thank you!!

Erica

Unlikely Backers in a Battle Over Taxes 11DEZ12



Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Lloyd C. Blankfein, of Goldman Sachs, outside the White House. Administration officials have urged business executives to support higher taxes on the wealthy. 
A broad swath of the nation’s leading chief executives dropped its opposition to tax increases on the wealthiest Americans on Tuesday, while the White House quietly pressed Wall Street titans for their support as well.
Before Tuesday’s about-face, the Business Roundtable had insisted that the White House extend Bush-era tax cuts to taxpayers of all income brackets, but the executives’ resistance crumbled as pressure builds to find a compromise for the fiscal impasse in Washington before the end of the year.
“We recognize that part of the solution has to be tax increases,” David M. Cote, chief executive of Honeywell, said on a conference call with reporters. “That’s the only thing that allows a reasonable compromise to be reached.”
Even as the Fortune 500 leaders announced their shift, the White House continued to work behind the scenes to woo some of Wall Street’s most powerful financiers — a group that had largely abandoned President Obama in his bid for a second term after supporting him in 2008.
After seeking out corporate leaders from industrial companies last month, the White House has intensified outreach to Wall Street in December.
On Wednesday, several hedge fund managers, including Daniel Och, the billionaire founder of Och-Ziff Capital Management, will meet with Valerie Jarrett, a top adviser to the president, and members of the White House economic team.
Last Monday, White House officials sat down with a more than half a dozen top bankers and financiers, including Gary D. Cohn, president of Goldman Sachs, and Greg Fleming, head of wealth management at Morgan Stanley.
The differing strategies — highly public meetings with corporate America and private arm-twisting with Wall Street — both appear to be aimed at winning popular support for higher taxes on the wealthy. The trade-offs being roundly fought over in Washington, like what government programs may be cut and which entitlements may be spared, are less important in this effort to muster highly compensated chieftains whose support for tax increases will provide cover for Congressional Republicans wary of being seen as too quick to compromise on higher tax rates.
What’s more, the political symbolism of some of the wealthiest Americans’ saying they support higher taxes on the rich takes a bit of the sting out of the idea of raising rates, for both Democrats and Republicans. Indeed, by appealing to both camps and enlisting their support, President Obama hopes to neutralize potential critics, according to allies of the president on Wall Street.
President Obama’s supporters cited the example of Frederick W. Smith, the chief executive of FedEx. Last week, Mr. Smith signaled he was not angered by higher tax rates for the wealthiest individuals, a centerpiece of President Obama’s plan to reduce the deficit and a key sticking point for Republicans in Congress.
“If people who didn’t support the president believe the president is acting reasonably, they’re going to put pressure on the other side,” said Marc Lasry, a longtime supporter of the president who runs Avenue Capital. “You need both sides to be reasonable.”
For example, Mr. Lasry invited the real estate tycoon Barry Sternlicht, a onetime Obama supporter who raised money for Mitt Romney in the last election cycle, to the White House last week. Mr. Lasry, who has $13 billion under management, including $1.3 billion of his own money, is among a small group of Wall Street figures who stuck with the president before the election, even as those like Mr. Sternlicht deserted him.
This core group met with President Obama on Nov. 16, and included Tony James, president of the Blackstone Group, as well as Roger Altman, a Democratic stalwart who is executive chairman of Evercore Partners, and Robert Wolf, a longtime UBS executive who recently began his own firm, 32 Advisors.
Also in attendance were Blair W. Effron, co-founder of Centerview Partners, and Mark T. Gallogly, a Blackstone veteran who founded Centerbridge Partners in 2005.
To be sure, most executives genuinely fear the consequences of the automatic spending cuts and tax increases if a compromise is not found by Jan. 1, but the efforts by big business to press politicians in Washington could also pay large dividends in the future.
While most business leaders now say they are willing to support increases in tax rates for individuals as well as cuts in entitlement spending, their stance in favor of lower corporate tax rates could actually benefit their bottom lines in the long run.
For now, however, the focus is on reaching a deal by end of the year rather than a broad tax overhaul. At the White House, the outreach effort is being led by Ms. Jarrett, and she has been joined in the meetings with executives and bankers by Timothy F. Geithner, the secretary of the Treasury; Jeffrey Zients, the head of the Office of Management and Budget; and Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council.
The White House arranged calls on Dec. 3 and on Monday for chief executives who attended the earlier sessions with the president, updating them on the negotiations and reiterating the need for their support. Among the participants were Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs; Randall Stephenson, the chief executive of AT&T, and Marriott’s chief executive, Arne Sorenson.
Some chief executives, like Mr. Blankfein, who have been relatively outspoken in recent weeks about the need for tax increases, are viewed as relative liberals in the business community.
But others who reversed course Tuesday, like Doug Oberhelman of Caterpillar, are seen as more conservative politically and suggest an important shift in the political landscape in terms of tax policy.
Another more conservative executive who signed a letter to Congress and the president from the Business Roundtable was Rex W. Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon.
“Compromise will require Congress to agree on more revenue — whether by increasing rates, eliminating deductions, or some combination thereof — and the administration to agree to larger, meaningful structural and benefit entitlement reforms and spending reductions that are a fiscally responsible multiple of increased revenues,” said the letter, signed by more than 100 chief executives.
Besides Mr. Cote, several other prominent chiefs joined the call with reporters organized by the Business Roundtable, including Andrew N. Liveris of Dow Chemical, Jeffrey R. Immelt of G.E. and Alexander Cutler of Eaton.
Small businesses also appear anxious about the fiscal impasse. On Tuesday, the National Federation of Independent Business reported that its Small Business Optimism Index had one of its steepest declines ever in November.
The net percentage of business owners who said they expected better economic conditions in six months — that is, the share that expected improvement minus the share that expected deterioration — was negative 35 percent. That is the worst outlook since the federation began collecting this data on a monthly basis in 1986.
Bill Dunkelberg, the chief economist at the federation, attributed the pessimism to the stalemate in Washington, higher health care costs and “the endless onslaught of new regulations.”

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