THE VALLEY OF DEATH AND THE CROSS

"Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff -- they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long." - Psalm 23:4-6

"Why dost thou then dread to take this cross since it is the very way to the kingdom of heaven, and none but that? In the cross is health, in the cross is life, in the cross is infusion of heavenly sweetness; in the cross is the strength of mind, the joy of spirit, the highness of virtue, and the full perfection of holiness; and there is no health of soul nor hope of everlasting life but through virtue of the cross." -  Thomas à Kempis, from The Imitation of Christ

BOHICA!!!! Congress passes extension of Bush-era tax cuts 16DEZ10

BETRAYAL! CAPITULATION! HYPOCRISY! THANKS FOR NOTHING PRES. OBAMA AND DEMOCRATS!

Congress approved the most significant tax bill in nearly a decade late Thursday, overcoming liberal resistance to continue for two more years tax breaks enacted under President George W. Bush and to provide a fresh boost of federal support to the tepid economic recovery.
The package, brokered by President Obama and Republican leaders in the wake of the November elections, angered many Democrats, who have long argued that the Bush tax cuts were skewed to benefit the wealthy. But their last-minute campaign to scale back the bill's benefits for taxpayers at the highest income levels failed, and the House passed the measure.
"This bill, the president of the United States believes and I believe, will have a positive effect on the economy," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). "I will vote for this bill because I don't want to see middle-income working people in America get a tax increase, because I think that will be a depressant on an economy that needs to be lifted up."
The $858 billion package now goes to the White House. With his signature, expected as soon as Friday, Obama will prevent taxes from rising on New Year's Day for virtually every American household. The measure also will guarantee unemployed workers in hard-hit states up to 99 weeks of jobless benefits through the end of next year. And it will create major new incentives for business and consumer spending in 2011, including a two-percentage-point reduction in the Social Security payroll tax that would let workers keep as much as $2,136.
The package breezed through the Senate earlier this week on a vote of 81 to 19, giving Obama his strongest bipartisan victory on a major initiative since he took office. Opposition in the House crumpled in the face of that overwhelming showing, though House liberals insisted on offering an alternative that would levy a higher tax on estates than the Obama-GOP compromise will impose. That effort failed shortly before midnight, 194 to 233.
Liberals opposed the deal in part because they believe the temporary extension of the Bush breaks would eventually become permanent, setting lower tax rates far into the future. That would increase pressure on lawmakers to cut spending as a way of reducing record federal budget deficits, placing a host of cherished social programs in jeopardy.
But for Obama, the two-year window represents an opportunity to tackle the ambitious task of overhauling the federal tax code. By sunsetting current policies immediately after the 2012 presidential election, lawmakers in both parties said the measure sets a natural timetable for developing a tax-reform plan - an essential step toward reining in the rising national debt.
Obama placed numerous calls to House Democrats this week to urge their support for the deal, and got an earful in return. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said he told the president that one of his concerns was that "these tax cuts would not end in 2012, because in an election year, I think it's very, very difficult" to raise taxes.
Obama replied that the fate of the Bush tax cuts "would be part of his platform when he ran," Cummings said. "So it should be very interesting."
Republicans, too, have been pressing for a temporary extension of the Bush tax cuts as a bridge to tax reform. Like the last major tax overhaul in 1986, a new rewrite is likely to take years to draft and push through Congress. But White House officials have been encouraged by the level of engagement from Republicans, who will hold 47 seats in the Senate and take control of the House in January.
Key lawmakers in both parties have embraced a deficit-reduction plan produced by Obama's fiscal commission, which includes a tax overhaul that would lower rates across the board but raise additional revenue by closing dozens of long-standing loopholes, such as the mortgage-interest deduction claimed by many homeowners. Meanwhile, the relative ease with which Obama and the GOP were able to strike a deal over the Bush cuts has raised hopes on both sides for productive talks in the future.
"This is consensus on a very intractable issue: What do we do about expiring tax policy?" said Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the incoming chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, who was party to the tax negotiations. Camp, who has made comprehensive tax reform a top priority, said the talks were significant not only because of the policy that emerged "but also because of the process of coming together and reaching an agreement."
"I am very encouraged by what the president has been saying publicly. They do want to begin," Camp said. "And that is a big thing."
The bipartisan tax talks had another benefit: Unlike the pork-laden, $1.2 trillion annual spending bill that was jettisoned in the Senate late Thursday, the tax bill is virtually free of unrelated add-ons. Negotiators, in fact, excluded more than 70 temporary programs from the bill, including federal subsidies for state and local borrowing known as Build America Bonds, a sales tax deduction for new cars and trucks, a property tax deduction for people who don't itemize on their tax returns and an exemption from taxes for the first $2,400 of unemployment benefits. All those provisions will be allowed to expire.
Although Democrats were unhappy with the deal, Obama negotiated with Republicans only after Democratic lawmakers refused for months to address the issue of the expiring Bush tax cuts, raising alarm at the White House. Economists said a partisan standoff could wreak havoc on the economy by increasing withholding in virtually every worker's paycheck, raising taxes by about $3,000 next year on a typical family, according to White House estimates.
The concern was so great that Obama ultimately decided to break his long-standing vow to eliminate the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of taxpayers. But with unemployment stuck near 10 percent, he was able to negotiate a big new dose of support for the economy, which Republicans had vowed to oppose.
In addition to the payroll tax holiday, Obama won a $57 billion extension of emergency unemployment benefits that will keep the program, which expired last month, alive through the end of next year. Republicans also agreed to support the largest temporary investment incentive in U.S. history, which permits businesses to deduct 100 percent of equipment purchases in the 2011 tax year.
For Democratic lawmakers, the most objectionable provision was a deal to reinstate the estate tax at 35 percent and to exempt estates worth as much as $5 million. Republicans have long argued that what some call the "death tax" is a threat to family farms and small businesses, though the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that only 100 family farms and small businesses paid the tax in 2009, when a more restrictive $3.5 million exemption was in effect.
The votes Thursday night were likely the final major legislative actions by the House Democratic majority, a low note following the party's landslide losses last month. Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-N.Y.) called the estate tax provision "an atrocious giveaway in a nation riddled with debt and unemployment." And Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), one of the defeated Democrats, delivered an impassioned speech before the vote, ending with the question "How much debt is enough?"

Congress Sends Tax Legislation To White House

by The Associated Press

text size A A A

December 17, 2010

A massive bipartisan tax package preventing a big New Year's Day tax hike for millions of Americans is on its way to President Barack Obama for his signature.

The measure would extend tax cuts for families at every income level, renew jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed and enact a new one-year cut in Social Security taxes that would benefit nearly every worker who earns a wage.

In a remarkable show of bipartisanship, the House gave final approval to the measure just before midnight Thursday, overcoming an attempt by rebellious Democrats who wanted to impose a higher estate tax than the one Obama agreed to. The vote was 277-148, with each party contributing an almost identical number of votes in favor (the Democrats, 139 and the Republicans, 138).

In a rare reach across party lines, Obama negotiated the $858 billion package with Senate Republicans. The White House then spent the past 10 days persuading congressional Democrats to go along, providing a possible blueprint for the next two years, when Republicans will control the House and hold more seats in the Senate.

"There probably is nobody on this floor who likes this bill," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD). "The judgment is, is it better than doing nothing? Some of the business groups believe it will help. I hope they're right."

Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) said that with unemployment hovering just under 10 percent and the deadline for avoiding a big tax hike fast approaching, lawmakers had little choice but to support the bill.

"This is just no time to be playing games with our economy," said Camp, who will become chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee in January. "The failure to block these tax increases would be a direct hit to families and small businesses."

Sweeping tax cuts enacted when George W. Bush was president are scheduled to expire Jan. 1 — a little more than two weeks away. The bill extends them for two years, placing the issue squarely in the middle of the next presidential election, in 2012.

The extended tax cuts include lower rates for the rich, the middle class and the working poor, a $1,000-per-child tax credit, tax breaks for college students and lower taxes on capital gains and dividends. The bill also extends through 2011, a series of business tax breaks designed to encourage investment that expired at the end of 2009.

Workers' Social Security taxes would be cut by nearly a third, going from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent, for 2011. A worker making $50,000 in wages would save $1,000; one making $100,000 would save $2,000.

"This legislation is good for growth, good for jobs, good for working and middle class families, and good for businesses looking to invest and expand their work force," said Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Some Democrats complained that the package is too generous to the wealthy; Republicans complained that it doesn't make all the tax cuts permanent.

Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-FL) called it "a bipartisan moment of clarity."

The bill's cost, $858 billion, would be added to the deficit, a sore spot among budget hawks in both parties.

"I know that we are going to borrow every nickel in this bill," Hoyer lamented.

At the insistence of Republicans, the plan includes an estate tax that would allow the first $10 million of a couple's estate to pass to heirs without taxation. The balance would be subject to a 35 percent tax rate.

Many House Democrats wanted a higher estate tax, one that would allow couples to pass only $7 million tax-free, taxing anything above that amount at a 45 percent rate. They argued that the higher estate tax would affect only 6,600 of the wealthiest estates in 2011 and would save $23 billion over two years.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called the estate tax the "most egregious provision" in the bill and held a vote that would have imposed the higher estate tax. It failed, 194-233.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said he thought the White House could have gotten a better deal.

"When I talk to the Republicans they are giddy about this bill," he said.

 

How We Got From Estate Tax To 'Death Tax' 15DEZ10 & Sen. Bernie Sanders says 99.7% of American families would be exempt from estate tax 13DEZ10

IT is disgusting how how so many Christian politicians have lied, deceived and manipulated the public on this one issue, serving their greedy rich masters who control them through campaign contributions and promise of employment after their political career ends. And check out the truth about the estate tax from PolitiFacts.

by Wright Bryan

Listen to the Story

Morning Edition

[4 min 19 sec]

 

AP Teddy Roosevelt, a powerful proponent of the estate tax.

Update at 9:15 a.m. ET: We've added some material from Morning Edition's report to this post, as well as an audio clip at the end and a little background on the current proposal.
One sticking point in the ongoing debate over taxes in Washington is the question of estate taxes.
Don Gonyea speaks with Columbia Law School's Michael Graetz (update at 10 a.m. ET: he's also a professor emeritus and lecturer at Yale law School) about the history of the tax for Morning Edition. Graetz is co-author of the book Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight Over Taxing Inherited Wealth.
Graetz tells Don that the estate tax in its current form was passed by Congress in 1916, just three years after the start of the federal income tax. (Update at 1 p.m. ET: While Graetz said "Teddy Roosevelt ... was the one who got it passed by the Congress," it didn't happen while Roosevelt was president. Roosevelt pushed for the tax, but he left office in 1909. We've corrected the language in this paragraph. We thank the commenters who called this to our attention.)
Roosevelt supported the tax as an instrument for enforcing the equality of opportunity in the U.S. by making it more difficult to pass great fortunes from one generation to another. Graetz says that the public accepted the tax as a another progressive-era reform.
"It was the beginning of the progressive era," says Graetz. "The income tax had just come in, in 1913. So, the public was very interested in progressive taxation and the estate tax was a natural piece of that kind of system."
  Significant opposition first appeared in the 1920s when Andrew Mellon of Gulf Oil tried to repeal the estate tax during his stint as secretary of the Treasury during the Coolidge administration. Then, in the 1940s, Graetz says that opponents started labeling it the "death tax" in a bid to gain wider support for the repeal movement.
The movement never succeeded. But the 1990s saw a resurgence in efforts to kill the tax, with an emphasis on how it affects family farms and small businesses.
Graetz tells Gonyea, however, that the estate tax has rarely affected these types of small family operations and that opponents eventually fell back to the position of advocating a complete repeal.
In the end, Graetz says the debate over the tax seems more symbolic than anything else in light of the fact that it has never produced more than 2 percent of federal revenues in any individual year since World War II.
The estate tax was repealed for 2010. But if nothing happens, it will return in 2011 — individuals who inherit estates valued at $1 million or more would see them taxed at a 55 percent rate; couples who receive estates of $2 million or more would also pay that rate.
But under the framework of the deal struck between President Obama and Congressional Republicans, the first $5 million of an estate would be exempt — the rest would be taxed at 35 percent.
Many House Democrats would like to see a 45% tax on individuals' estates worth more than $3.5 million and couples' worth more than $7 million.
Still, "it is an issue that generates a lot more heat than the revenue it produces would require," says Graetz. "On the other hand, it is the most progressive tax in our tax system. And as a result, I think it plays a special role in terms of a number of people's views about a fair distribution of the tax burden."

Under the compromise tax agreement, "99.7% of American families will not pay 1 nickel in an estate tax."

Bernie Sanders on Monday, December 13th, 2010 in a Twitter message

Sen. Bernie Sanders says 99.7% of American families would be exempt from estate tax

Share this story:

While the debate over the compromise tax agreement proposed by President Barack Obama has focused mostly on Bush's income tax cuts and whether they ought to be extended to wealthy Americans, the issue of estate taxes has also become a sticking point for some legislators.

Under the plan, the estate tax rate would be set at 35 percent, with an effective exemption of $5 million.

Many Republicans had hoped to do away with the estate tax altogether, and Democrats last year had proposed a higher rate: 45 percent on the value of estates over $3.5 million.

The compromise has ruffled feathers on both sides of the aisle. Sen. Jim DeMint, R.-S.C., for example, said he would not support the plan because he considered the estate tax compromise a tax increase. We ruled that claim Half True.

Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont and a self-described democratic socialist, sent out a message via Twitter on Dec. 13, 2010, saying that under the estate tax plan, "99.7% of American families will not pay 1 nickel in an estate tax. This is not a tax on the rich, this is a tax on the very, very, very rich."

According to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Sanders is correct.

The Tax Policy Center estimated that about 99.7 percent of estates were exempt from the estate tax in 2009 when the first $3.5 million of an estate was exempt. Even fewer people would be subject to the tax if the threshold is increased to $5 million, as proposed in the compromise tax plan.

Under the compromise plan, less than 2/10 of 1 percent of estates would be subject to the estate tax next year, said Bob Williams of the Tax Policy Center. That means more than 99.8 percent would be completely exempt.

The Tax Policy Center estimates that about 3,600 estates would be subject to the tax under the $5 million threshold. Those 3,600 estates would have to pay an estimated $11.4 billion in estate taxes under the compromise tax plan.

Estate tax rates have fluctuated through modern history. In 2001, President George W. Bush signed a plan to gradually reduce the estate tax from 55 percent to 45 percent, while at the same time increasing the exemption value from $1 million in 2002 to $3.5 million in 2009. The estate tax disappeared altogether in 2010.

But the Bush plan only had a 10-year window because Republicans didn't have the votes at the time to permanently abolish the estate tax. It passed the Senate under budget reconciliation, which requires only a simple majority of 51 votes but which also limited it to a 10-year shelf life. Barring a new tax agreement, the rate was set to revert next year to a 55 percent rate with an effective exemption of $1 million.

Last year, Democrats proposed a plan to permanently set the estate tax rate at 2009 levels -- 45 percent on the value of estates over $3.5 million. But the plan never reached a vote in the Senate. Had that plan gone through, the Tax Policy Center estimates it would have subjected 6,460 estates to a tax (bring in an estimated $18.2 billion). If no tax plan passes, and the rate goes back to 55 percent on the value of estates over $1 million, an 43,540 estates would have to pay (bringing in an estimated $34.4 billion next year).

Sanders was correct that in 2009, when the effective exemption was $3.5 million, about 99.7 percent of all estates were exempt and didn't pay anything. The compromise plan -- which would set effective exemption at $5 million -- would push the number of exempted estates even higher, so that more than 99.8 percent of estates would not pay anything. We rate Sanders' comment True.

About this statement:

Published: Tuesday, December 14th, 2010 at 1:49 p.m.
Subjects: Taxes
Sources:
Tax Policy Center, Taxable Estates, Estate Tax Liability, and Average Estate Tax Rate, By Size of Gross Estate, 20111

Twitter, Message posted by Sen. Bernie Sanders, Dec. 13, 2010

Interview with Bob Williams of the Tax Policy Center, Dec. 13, 2010
Written by: Robert Farley
Researched by: Robert Farley
Edited by: Martha Hamilton

Top 5 Problems with the Tax Deal & Baffling Wave Of Tax-Cut Polling Produces Wildly Different Conclusions from MOVEON.ORG & HUFFPOST 14DEZ10

WE have to keep up the pressure on Congress to fix this tax deal and eliminate the huge concessions to the rich and corporate America. If they want tax breaks make them earn them by creating jobs here in America, after all, the argument from supporters for tax breaks for the wealthy will create much needed jobs (though they haven't during the current recession) so grant tax breaks based on American employment by the rich and corporate America! As it is right now, this legislation is immoral, rewarding the rich and greedy at the expense of the poor, working class, and middle class. REMEMBER, DEMOCRACY IS NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT! Keep on e mailing the White House with your opposition to Pres Obama's tax compromise here
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
and your Senators here
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm 
and your Representative here
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
Here are the top 5 problems with the tax deal from MoveOn.org (share this list by going to
http://pol.moveon.org/taxdealproblems?id=25497-17549061-1zLWuhx&t=3  
And check out the post by Jason Linkins of HuffPost following 

Top 5 Problems with the Tax Deal

Problem #1: The deal is a stealth attack on Social Security.

The deal will lower the payroll tax—the tax that funds the Social Security trust. This is a trap for Democrats. Republicans have been coming after Social Security for years and this cut is the biggest threat to the vital program in decades. It will cut one-third of Social Security's funding this year alone and when we need to restore the payroll tax back to its current level, Republicans will cry "tax increases" and could gut it permanently. ¹

Problem #2: For nearly one in three workers, it's a tax increase.

Nearly 50 million working Americans—including all workers making less than $20,000 per year—and millions of federal, state, and municipal workers will see their taxes go up because of the deal.²

Problem #3: The deal has not one but TWO millionaire bailouts. 

In addition to extending all the Bush income tax breaks for the top 2%, the deal will slash the estate tax. If Congress did nothing, next year the estate tax would be 55% and apply to everyone inheriting $1 million or more. But the deal reduces it to 35% and only people who inherit more than $5 million will have to pay. This second bailout will give a gigantic tax giveaway to a few thousand of the richest families in the country and add hundreds of billions to the national debt.³

Problem #4: Unemployment help is insufficient and inadequate.

While the deal extends unemployment benefits for another 13 months for people currently receiving it, millions of unemployed workers who've struggled the most and been out of work more than 99 weeks—since the giant Wall Street banks wrecked the economy—will get no help at all under the deal.⁴ It's a gamble that there will be jobs in the next 13 months when the insurance runs out, but the tax cuts will go well beyond that. Better to just pass a stand-alone unemployment extension to help all struggling Americans.

Problem #5: Tax giveaways to the rich are a terrible way to create jobs.

Tax breaks for the rich are the least efficient way to create jobs and help the economy grow. In fact the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says extending all tax cuts would lower unemployment only 0.1% to 0.3% over the next year⁵ and that the cost of the tax deal would be $900 billion over the next five years.⁶

We've got to stop this deal and make sure everyone understands what's really in it. Can you share this list now?

Thanks for all you do.

–Nita, Robin, Milan, Wes, and the rest of the team

Sources:

1."Tax Cut Deal A Hidden Threat To Social Security," The Huffington Post, December 8, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=205508&id=25497-17549061-1zLWuhx&t=6

2. "Obama-Republican Deal Could Mean Tax Hike For One In Three Workers," The Huffington Post, December 10, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=205509&id=25497-17549061-1zLWuhx&t=7

3. "Estate tax deal: worst part of a bad tax compromise," The Christian Science Monitor, December 7, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=205510&id=25497-17549061-1zLWuhx&t=8

4. "Unemployment benefits: Extension won't help '99ers'," The Christian Science Monitor, December 7, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=205511&id=25497-17549061-1zLWuhx&t=9

5. "The Deal," Paul Krugman, The New York Times, December 7, 2010
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/the-deal/

6. "CBO score shows tax plan ups deficit $900 billion in 5 years," CNN.com, December 10, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=205512&id=25497-17549061-1zLWuhx&t=10

Want to support our work? We're entirely funded by our 5 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.

Baffling Wave Of Tax-Cut Polling Produces Wildly Different Conclusions

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/14/tax-cut-polling-contradictory_n_796411.html

If you've been following the various polling reports on how the general public feels about the tax-cut package that President Barack Obama brokered and which might, in some form, make it through the legislative process, then you are probably lost and confused. Please fire a flare gun into the air, and we will send rescuers to your area.
Back on Dec. 2, CBS put out a poll that signaled a rough road ahead for anyone who wanted to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for everybody.
Twenty-six percent overall support! That's the same proportion of people who believe trees have spiritual energy. More people approve of the way BP handled the oil spill.
With all the effort being put toward getting this tax cut compromise passed, surely we could repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". Surely we could legalize weed. And, okay, I admit it: I am a little bit interested in exploring this whole "spiritual energy of trees" thing, because what if the Lorax was right?
But what if the Lorax is actually skewing that poll result? Because depending on how much time has passed, and who asks the question, and what question they ask, the support for the tax-cut compromise is all over the map. Let me pass the mike to HuffPost Pollster's Emily Swanson:

As is typical of any polling on specific issues, different wording can produce vastly different results, which can be quite difficult to interpret. For example, the option of extending the cuts for everyone is not the least popular option in the tax debate itself. While most public polls have shown that extending the tax cuts only for those making less than $250,000 is by far the most popular option, polls have shown that allowing all of the cuts to expire would be even less popular. The same CBS poll found that only 14 percent wanted to let the cuts expire for everyone.

As Emily goes on to note, when Crossroads GPS -- a Rove/Gillespie joint -- is asking the question, here's what happens: "when presented with only two options, 65 percent of likely voters would prefer to extend the cuts and only 29 percent would allow them to expire."
This brings us, inexorably, to Monday's Washington Post/ABC News poll on the matter. Good news for fans of tax-cut compromises: the package now has "broad bipartisan support" -- that is, "About seven in ten Americans back the tax deal negotiated last week by President Obama and congressional Republicans."

Story continues below

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Now for the twist:

The high bipartisan support for the package masks more tepid public approval for some of the main components of the agreement that comes before a key Senate vote Monday afternoon. A slender 11 percent of those polled back all four of the deal's primary tax provisions: an across-the-board extension of Bush-era tax cuts, additional jobless benefits, a payroll tax holiday and a $5 million threshold for inheritance taxes. Just 38 percent support even two of the components.

I guess this is why this tax-cut compromise is so brilliant: in terms of policy, it may be a turd sandwich, but most people are pretty convinced that they'll be getting the bread or the condiments.
I think someone should frame the question like this: "Are you in favor of the tax-cut compromise, even though we're all going to have the same old stupid arguments about this matter in 2012 and it will appear that nobody has learned a blessed thing about what America needs in terms of policy, or would you prefer we came to your house right now and shot you in the face?"
RELATED:
Most Americans Back Tax-Cut Deal Most Americans Hate [Wonkette]

Obama Goes Medieval on the Left from MOJO &DEZ10

I object to Pres Obama's attack on liberals like me. Yes, I wanted universal health care in the Affordable Care Act, but when it became obvious it wasn't going to happen I e mailed, called and faxed my members of Congress pushing for that legislation to be passed. I also have many post on this blog, and have e mailed to family and friends the accomplishments of the Obama administration. This tax plan is immoral and unacceptable and I will continue to fight for economic and social justice in the tax plan, e mailing my members of Congress and the President with my opposition to the plan in it's present form. The estate tax should be 55% not 35%. The payroll tax cut is not beneficial to the Social Security fund and should be removed from the plan. The bush era tax cuts should be extended only for the poor, working class and middle class. The wealthy have not used the tax cuts they have been receiving to create jobs during this recession and will not create jobs now. The CBO says extending tax cuts for the wealthy is the least effective way to create jobs during this recession. President Obama needs to amend his tax plan to make it a moral document that meets the needs of the nation during these difficult times and if the republicans and their tea-bagger and republicorp masters object and block progress let the tax cuts expire, unemployment benefits expire, and name names of the legislators who are responsible for the economic crisis that follows. E mail Pres Obama with your opinion on his tax plan here
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
Find your members of Congress e mail addresses here
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
and here
http://www.house.gov/

— White House photo/Chuck Kennedy (Government Work).

Damn. I skipped Obama's press conference today, but I guess that was a big mistake. If my Twitter feed is anything to go by, progressive heads were exploding all over the intertubes. Here is Philip Klein's summary:

Obama reserved some of his harshest criticism for liberals, who he scolded for being "sanctimonious" purists who wouldn't be able to accomplish anything if they got their way. To drive home his point, he complained about the way liberals behaved during the health care debate, sounding like an unappreciated lover.
"Somehow this notion that we are willing to compromise too much reminds me of the debate we had during health care," Obama said. "This is the public option debate all over again. So I pass a signature piece of legislation where I finally get health care for all Americans, something that Democrats have been fighting for for 100 years, but because there was a provision in there that they didn't get that would have affected maybe a couple million people, even though we got health insurance for 30 million people, and the potential for lower premiums for 100 million people that somehow that was a sign of weakness and compromise. Now if that's the standard against which we are measuring success or core principles, then let's face it, we will never get anything done. People will have the satisfaction of having a purist position, and no victories for the American people. And we will be able to feel good about ourselves and sanctimonious about ourselves about how good our intentions are, how tough we are."

At the same time, Obama also compared negotiating with Republicans to negotiating with hostage takers, and if I had more conservatives in my Twitter feed I'd probably be hearing a few winger heads exploding too.
Still, it's obvious that Obama is more personally stung by criticism from the left than from the right. His outburst about "purist" liberals was considerably more impassioned than his rather clinical description of Republican "hostage takers." In one sense, this isn't surprising: you expect the opposition to show no mercy and that hardens you to it. You really don't expect it from your putative allies. But in another sense it is surprising: even if Obama thinks his progressive critics are off base, he must know by now how they're going to react to compromises like yesterday's tax cut deal. So why was he apparently so unprepared for this? Why deliberately make things worse with his base during a press conference?
Answer 1: he just lost his temper a bit. It happens to everyone. Answer 2: it was all precisely calculated. He's convinced that Democrats lost in November because of defections from independents, not liberals, so he's trying to do everything he can to distance himself from the left and win back the center. My guess is that #1 accounts for 10% of his performance and #2 accounts for 90%. After all, we've seen this movie before in 1994.
Anyway, here's a few predictions. (1) Purist liberals better get used to rhetoric like this. I think we're going to see more of it. (2) Even so, everyone needs to give up on the idea of Obama being challenged by anyone substantial in the 2012 primary. Even Democrats aren't that suicidal. (3) Hated or not, Obama's tax deal is fairly good for the economy and it quite likely cements his reelection chances. If GDP growth is even in the neighborhood of 3% a year from now, I don't think he's beatable. (4) Looking at American politics from a 100,000-foot level, conservatives have won. Programmatic liberalism is essentially dead for a good long time, and small bore stuff is probably the best we can hope for over the next 10-20 years — though social liberalism will continue to make steady advances. I reserve judgment on whose fault that is.
POSTSCRIPT: Several people think #4 could use a wee bit of further explanation. Agreed! The short explanation is here. The longer version you'll have to wait a while for. It's coming in a couple of months or so. (Print lead times are a bitch.....)

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Tax Package Will Aid Nearly All, Especially Highest Earners from NY TIMES & You'll Never Guess Whose Taxes Are Going To Go Up Because Of The Tax Cut 'Compromise 7DEZ10

GEE, here's a big surprise...the only satisfaction in this proposal is so many of those stupid, ignorant, prejudiced lower income tea-baggers that voted for the republicorp republican and tea-bagger candidates are going to be paid back for their actions, their votes....to bad their children are going to suffer too....

By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

The deal to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for two years includes a bevy of additional credits and deductions that will reduce the burden on nearly all households.
But the tax benefits will flow most heavily to the highest earners, just as the original cuts did when they were passed in 2001 and 2003. At least a quarter of the tax savings will go to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population.
The tentative deal includes a two-year patch for the alternative minimum tax, a reduction in the payroll tax and a plan to reinstate the estate tax with lower rates and higher exemptions than in 2009 — all of which will offer far more savings for high earners than those in the low- or middle-income bracket.
The wealthiest Americans will also reap tax savings from the proposal’s plan to keep the cap on dividend and capital gains taxes at 15 percent, well below the highest rates on ordinary income.
And negotiators have agreed that the estimated $900 billion cost of the cuts will simply be added to the deficit — not covered by reductions in spending or increases in other taxes. That is good news for hedge fund managers and private equity investors, who appear to have withstood an effort to get them to pay more by eliminating a quirk in the tax code that allows most of their income to be taxed at just 15 percent.
In fact, the only groups likely to face a tax increase are those near the bottom of the income scale — individuals who make less than $20,000 and families with earnings below $40,000.
“It’s going to look like the rich are getting richer again,” said Anne Mathias, an analyst for MF Global Inc.
In the agreement, which breaks a campaign pledge to eliminate some tax breaks for the top 2 percent of American earners, President Obama won a few concessions from Republicans, including a 13-month extension in government benefits for the long-term unemployed. After several extensions, the maximum has been 99 weeks.
The administration also succeeded in extending several of the tax credits in last year’s stimulus plan to aid low- and moderate-income Americans: the earned-income tax credit, the child credit, the child and dependent-care credit and the tuition deduction.
As a result, families with an income near the median of $55,000 would owe about $2,700 less in taxes than if the Bush-era cuts had been allowed to expire.
A two-income couple earning $146,000 would owe about $7,000 less than if the tax cuts were allowed to expire, and about $3,400 less than they did in 2009.
The proposal does not include an extension of Mr. Obama’s signature tax cut, the Making Work Pay credit, which provided a credit of up to $400 for individuals and $800 for families of low and moderate income. Instead, the plan creates a one-year reduction in Social Security payroll taxes, which are generally levied on the first $106,800 of income. For an individual earning $110,000, that provision would reduce payroll taxes by $2,136.
Although the $120 billion payroll tax reduction offers nearly twice the tax savings of the credit it replaces, it will nonetheless lead to higher tax bills for individuals with incomes below $20,000 and families that make less than $40,000. That is because their payroll tax savings are less than the $400 or $800 they will lose from the Making Work Pay credit.
“It will come to a few dollars a week,” said Roberton Williams, an analyst at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, “but it is an increase.”
To the wealthiest Americans, however, an assortment of breaks is available.
The plan includes a two-year “patch” for the alternative minimum tax, which is now paid by about 4 million taxpayers with income in the mid- to high six figures. Without the patch, more than 20 million additional taxpayers would have been liable for that tax.
The estate tax — which was allowed to lapse this year and was scheduled to resume at a rate of 55 percent on most assets above $1 million — will be reinstated under less onerous terms. Estates over $5 million will be subject to a 35 percent tax.
The proposal will also maintain the current rates on dividends and capital gains, averting scheduled increases to ordinary income and 20 percent, respectively.
The marginal tax rate on high incomes will also remain unchanged. The top brackets had been scheduled to increase to 36 percent and 39.6 percent, from 33 percent and 35 percent.
Under Mr. Obama’s failed proposal, which would have raised the rates on income over $250,000 for families and $200,000 for individuals, the taxpayers at the top 1 percent of the income scale — those with incomes above $564,000 — would have received an average tax break of $28,000. Under the agreement reached with Republicans, the top 1 percent will receive breaks of about $70,000.

You'll Never Guess Whose Taxes Are Going To Go Up Because Of The Tax Cut 'Compromise'

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/07/tax-cut-compromise-whose-taxes-rise_n_793572.html
You know, with all the talk about who is mad at President Barack Obama and who stands to win or lose what election over this tax-cut deal, not as much attention has been paid to the practical beneficiaries of the deal. Well, over at The New York Times tonight, David Kocieniewski's got the hard numbers, and finds that the deal is actually a very good one, as long as one or more of the following terms describes you:
--"the highest earners"
--"the wealthiest 1 percent of the population"
--"the wealthiest Americans"
--"hedge fund managers and private equity investors"
--"an individual earning $110,000"
--"4 million taxpayers with income in the mid- to high six figures"
--"Estates over $5 million"
To those of you who fit the descriptions above, congratulations! Really, is anyone not making out like a bandit, with this tax-cut compromise?

In fact, the only groups likely to face a tax increase are those near the bottom of the income scale -- individuals who make less than $20,000 and families with earnings below $40,000.

There's probably a way of looking at this that doesn't make it seem so bad, right?

Although the $120 billion payroll tax reduction offers nearly twice the tax savings of the credit it replaces, it will nonetheless lead to higher tax bills for individuals with incomes below $20,000 and families that make less than $40,000. That is because their payroll tax savings are less than the $400 or $800 they will lose from the Making Work Pay credit. "It will come to a few dollars a week," said Roberton Williams, an analyst at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, "but it is an increase."

No worries! Poor people don't create jobs, anyway, I hear.

New Rule: Rich People Who Complain About Being Vilified Should Be Vilified 24SEP10

TELL IT LIKE IT IS BILL!!!!!
 
New Rule: The next rich person who publicly complains about being vilified by the Obama administration must be publicly vilified by the Obama administration. It's so hard for one person to tell another person what constitutes being "rich", or what tax rate is "too much." But I've done some math that indicates that, considering the hole this country is in, if you are earning more than a million dollars a year and are complaining about a 3.6% tax increase, then you are by definition a greedy asshole.
And let's be clear: that's 3.6% only on income above 250 grand -- your first 250, that's still on the house. Now, this week we got some horrible news: that one in seven Americans are now living below the poverty line. But I want to point you to an American who is truly suffering: Ben Stein. You know Ben Stein, the guy who got rich because when he talks it sounds so boring it's actually funny. He had a game show on Comedy Central, does eye drop commercials, doesn't believe in evolution? Yeah, that asshole. I kid Ben -- so, the other day Ben wrote an article about his struggle. His struggle as a wealthy person facing the prospect of a slightly higher marginal tax rate. Specifically, Ben said that when he was finished paying taxes and his agents, he was left with only 35 cents for every dollar he earned. Which is shocking, Ben Stein has an agent? I didn't know Broadway Danny Rose was still working.
Ben whines in his article about how he's worked for every dollar he has -- if by work you mean saying the word "Bueller" in a movie 25 years ago. Which doesn't bother me in the slightest, it's just that at a time when people in America are desperate and you're raking in the bucks promoting some sleazy Free Credit Score dot-com... maybe you shouldn't be asking us for sympathy. Instead, you should be down on your knees thanking God and/or Ronald Reagan that you were lucky enough to be born in a country where a useless schmuck who contributes absolutely nothing to society can somehow manage to find himself in the top marginal tax bracket.
And you're welcome to come on the show anytime.
Now I can hear you out there saying, "Come on Bill, don't be so hard on Ben Stein, he does a lot of voiceover work, and that's hard work." Ok, it's true, Ben is hardly the only rich person these days crying like a baby who's fallen off his bouncy seat. Last week Mayor Bloomberg of New York complained that all his wealthy friends are very upset with mean ol' President Poopy-Pants: He said they all say the same thing: "I knew I was going to have to pay more taxes. But I didn't expect to be vilified." Poor billionaires -- they just can't catch a break.
First off, far from being vilified, we bailed you out -- you mean we were supposed to give you all that money and kiss your ass, too? That's Hollywood you're thinking of. FDR, he knew how to vilify; this guy, not so much. And second, you should have been vilified -- because you're the vill-ains! I'm sure a lot of you are very nice people. And I'm sure a lot of you are jerks. In other words, you're people. But you are the villains. Who do you think outsourced all the jobs, destroyed the unions, and replaced workers with desperate immigrants and teenagers in China. Joe the Plumber?
And right now, while we run trillion dollar deficits, Republicans are holding America hostage to the cause of preserving the Bush tax cuts that benefit the wealthiest 1% of people, many of them dead. They say that we need to keep taxes on the rich low because they're the job creators. They're not. They're much more likely to save money through mergers and outsourcing and cheap immigrant labor, and pass the unemployment along to you.
Americans think rich people must be brilliant; no -- just ruthless. Meg Whitman is running for Governor out here, and her claim to fame is, she started e-Bay. Yes, Meg tapped into the Zeitgeist, the zeitgeist being the desperate need of millions of Americans to scrape a few dollars together by selling the useless crap in their garage. What is e-Bay but a big cyber lawn sale that you can visit without putting your clothes on?
Another of my favorites, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann said, "I don't know where they're going to get all this money, because we're running out of rich people in this country." Actually, we have more billionaires here in the U.S. than all the other countries in the top ten combined, and their wealth grew 27% in the last year. Did yours? Truth is, there are only two things that the United States is not running out of: Rich people and bullshit. Here's the truth: When you raise taxes slightly on the wealthy, it obviously doesn't destroy the economy -- we know this, because we just did it -- remember the '90's? It wasn't that long ago. You were probably listening to grunge music, or dabbling in witchcraft. Clinton moved the top marginal rate from 36 to 39% -- and far from tanking, the economy did so well he had time to get his dick washed.
Even 39% isn't high by historical standards. Under Eisenhower, the top tax rate was 91%. Under Nixon, it was 70%. Obama just wants to kick it back to 39 -- just three more points for the very rich. Not back to 91, or 70. Three points. And they go insane. Steve Forbes said that Obama, quote "believes from his inner core that people... above a certain income have more than they should have and that many probably have gotten it from ill-gotten ways." Which they have. Steve Forbes, of course, came by his fortune honestly: he inherited it from his gay egg-collecting, Elizabeth Taylor fag-hagging father, who inherited it from his father. Of course then they moan about the inheritance tax, how the government took 55% percent when Daddy died -- which means you still got 45% for doing nothing more than starting out life as your father's pecker-snot.
We don't hate rich people, but have a little humility about how you got it and stop complaining. Maybe the worst whiner of all: Stephen Schwarzman, #69 on Forbes' list of richest Americans, compared Obama's tax hike to "when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939." Wow. If Obama were Hitler, Mr. Schwarzman, I think your tax rate would be the least of your worries.
Bill Maher is host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher", Friday's at 10:00PM

 

5 Ways the Tea Party Agenda Screws Tea Party Supporters 3SEP10

THESE tea-baggers are so stupid one almost has to feel sorry for them. Blinded by their own prejudice, ignorance and fear, they remind me of the hysterical masses of Germans in the 1930s searching for their savior. History shows the Germans chose poorly...and the tea-baggers are on the verge of making the same kind of mistake this November. From AlterNet

 

In their quest to save the country from liberals, Tea Partiers signed on to an agenda that will cause them untold pain while granting unlimited powers to corporations.

If people could be counted on to vote in their own best interests, there would be no Tea Party movement, for if the economic agenda embraced by Tea Partiers -- a vastly pro-corporation, government-killing plan -- Tea Partiers would find themselves among the people most hurt by it.
To hear Tea Party activists tell it, they seek to save future generations from the crushing demands of big government. Yet the agenda they advocate, dictated by the big-money players behind the muscular interest groups that keep the movement growing, will likely render the Tea Partiers themselves the economically squeezed subjects of a corporate state, one in which the elderly will be left to scrounge for crumbs, small businesses will be crushed by lack of capital, and their own ground-level online organizing supplanted by the networks built by giant, corporate-funded astroturf groups.
As George Lakoff and Drew Westen remind us, people don't vote on the facts: they vote on emotion, according to Westen, and their notion of morality, according to Lakoff. The resentment of Tea Partiers toward liberals, East Coast elites, the poor and people who don't look like them has been effectively marshaled in service of a "free market" ideology cleverly packaged as "freedom." Never mind that free markets are anything but free for ordinary people. The packaging strikes the necessary emotional and moral chords: Free markets = freedom = liberty = endowed by the Creator, as written in the Declaration of Independence by the founders. It's the perfect exploitation of the worldview of conservative middle-class white people -- all in the service of enriching the super-rich at the expense of their unwitting, patriotic ground troops.
Casting themselves as an organic uprising in opposition to a federal government they see as the greatest threat to their freedom, Tea Party supporters conveniently look past the likely consequences of the no-holds-barred, anti-regulatory aims of Rupert Murdoch and David Koch, the billionaires whose dollars grease the skids on which the Tea Party movement rides. Murdoch leads News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, the movement's evangelists. Koch is a principal in Koch Industries, the second largest privately held corporation in the U.S., and heir to its fortunes.
The billionaires give the activists lots of entertainment to distract them from this reality, especially in the form of sideshows, such as Glenn Beck's travesty at the Lincoln Memorial, designed to fan the flames of racial resentment while making Tea Partiers feel holy about it. At other times, the demonization or infantilization of the nation's first black president serves up the same charge of adrenaline to the fearful, angry throngs who seek to blame their troubles on anyone other than the corporatist manipulators in whom they've placed their trust.
How else to explain the embrace of the billionaires' agenda by the middle-aged, middle-class folks of the Tea Party movement -- the very ones likely to find themselves screwed by it? Here we examine five positions advanced by Tea Party leaders, and what they would mean for Tea Party supporters.

1. Ending Social Security. Rep. Michele Bachmann, doyenne of the congressional Tea Party Caucus, has outlined a plan for an abrupt phase-out of Social Security. Speaking before an audience of Tea Party supporters at the RightOnline conference convened in July, Bachmann referred to Social Security and Medicare as "welfare" that had seen its day. The event was convened in Las Vegas by the Americans For Prosperity Foundation, whose board is chaired by David Koch. There, more than 1,000 Tea Partiers -- the majority of whom are over the age of 45 -- sat in rapt silence as Bachmann outlined a plan to end Social Security for all those who will be under the age of 65 at the time her potential dream Congress enacts the legislation.
The growth of the federal debt and deficit require a drastic cutback in federal spending, Bachmann said. "Spending comes first, so we have to cut it first," she explained, speaking of her plan to devastate Social Security. "And in my opinion, it'll take us about a long weekend to get that done, and then we'll be fine."
For those between the ages of 55 and 65 at the time Bachmann's Kill Social Security Plan hypothetically passes into law, there would be a means-tested program for "those who truly need it -- the truly disadvantaged, those who truly can't go forward." For everybody else, there would be unspecified "alternatives and adjustments." Those under the age of 55 would apparently be squat out of luck, regardless of how truly disadvantaged they are. From the assembled Tea Partiers, not a discouraging word was heard, even as Bachmann outlined a plan to essentially rob them of the money they've been putting into the system all their lives.
According to a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted in April, 46 percent of Tea Party supporters fall into the 45-64 age group. (Untouched by the Bachmann plan would be the 29 percent of Tea Party supporters the poll cited as being over the age of 64.) The same survey revealed that among 47 percent of self-identified Tea Party supporters, either they or a member of their household was receiving Social Security retirement benefits. When asked whether the outlay for programs such as Social Security and Medicare are worth the taxpayer expense, 62 percent said they were.
What to do with all those freed-up dollars? Why not give them back to the corporations and wealthy individuals who bankroll the Tea Party movement? Segueing out of her nuking of the social safety net for the nation's elderly -- and stealing the payroll taxes of all those Americans who paid into Social Security over the course of their lifetimes but would never see a dime of their contributions come back to them under her plan -- Bachmann launched into a pitch for a corporatist agenda that began with her call for a roll-back of the corporate tax from its current 34 percent to 9 percent, which, according to Bachmann, would make it "one of the lowest in the industrialized world."
Actually, make that possibly the lowest in the world (excluding the handful of mostly broken nations that have none), never mind "industrialized." I mean, even Kazakhstan and Burkina Faso have higher corporate tax rates than 9 percent. And India, where all the good jobs are said to be going? Try 43 percent.
Bachmann also called for zeroing out the estate tax -- even for the very wealthiest Americans -- and repeal of the Sarbanes-Oxley law, a bill passed in the wake of the Enron scandal that sets standards for corporate accountability. What would that mean for Americans under the age of 64 whose retirement savings would be entirely invested in the private sector after the demolishing of Social Security? That the same kinds of accounting tricks and corruption that destroyed the retirement savings of thousands in the Enron caper would become standard operating procedure. Sorry, Tea Partiers -- you're screwed.

2. Ending Medicare: See No. #1, Ending Social Security. "Within seven [years], Medicare is dead, bankrupt, broke -- broke," Bachmann told the Tea Partiers. Her solution? End it for everybody but "the truly needy and the truly disabled." (I shudder to think what constitutes "truly needy" in the Bachmann moral universe.) Her solution? You can buy your own health insurance policy on the private market with pre-tax dollars. Sure, you're 70 years old: How much do you think an insurance company is going to charge you for your coverage? Pre-taxed or not, you're going to need a whole lotta dollars to make that one work for you.
But Bachmann's fans likely found comfort in her sunny optimism. "It is possible for every American to be able to retire a millionaire," Bachmann told the Tea Partiers. "It's entirely possible to do that if you plan early and you put away money -- and there are alternatives that we can put forward." Just what those "alternatives" might be were left to the audience's imagination.
3. Opposition to Internet Freedom (aka Net Neutrality). Earlier this month, news media, ranging from mainstream to righty to lefty, breathlessly reported that leaders of 35 "Tea Party" groups signed a letter to the the Federal Communications Commission in opposition to any efforts made by the FCC to "regulate the Internet." At issue is Internet freedom and potential regulations that could prevent Internet providers from saddling small-time Web sites unable to pay for an added jolt of Web juice with slower loading speeds for their sites than, say, big-money players like Google. (This is the crux of the issue in the Google-Verizon deal.) Now, Tea Party supporters fancy themselves to be rugged individualists, dedicated to the preservation of individual freedoms. But it wasn't until the big-money groups that bankroll the national organizing of the Tea Party movement began garnering opposition to Internet freedom that you began to see any of those quaint, homely signs carried at Tea Party rallies dedicated to the subject.
Tea Party activists pride themselves on their movement's apparent leaderless state, reveling in the homegrown, local character of ground-level Tea Party groups, which often organize on hastily organized listservs and homemade local Web sites. But should they succeed in halting the FCC's net neutrality plan, they may find themselves with no decent option for Web-based organizing other than the big networking sites built by the national money groups that form the Tea Party Inc. uberstructure. So much for self-agency.
And what of those "35 Tea Party groups" whose leaders signed that letter to the FCC? Well, 24 of those entities are either part of or affiliated with Americans For Prosperity. Among the signatories was AFP president Tim Phillips, as well as the directors of 22 state chapters of Americans For Prosperity -- each counted as a separate "Tea Party group." In addition, the signature of AFP policy director Phil Kerpen (who is also a columnist for Murdoch's FoxNation) appears with the affiliation, "director, NoInternetTakeover.com." Also present was Linda Hansen, who leads the Wisconsin Prosperity Network and is the author of a "worker education" program that is a project of the Americans For Prosperity Foundation, and promoted by John Fund and Stephen Moore of Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal.
Others signatories aren't leaders of Tea Party groups at all, but heads of the old corporatist, anti-government groups such as Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and David Keene of the American Conservative Union. There are even a couple of stalwarts of the old New Right: Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum and Morton Blackwell of the Leadership Institute.
Bottom line for Tea Partiers: deviate from the AFP/Ayn Rand line on any issue, and you could see your little homemade Web site begin to load verrrry slowwwly.
4. De-Funding Public Education. While it's common knowledge that Tea Partiers hate all things government (except their personal Social Security checks and Medicare reimbursements), they hold a special contempt for public school teachers. This stems from a number of causes, but mostly from the fact that teachers are unionized government workers who have authority over one's children for a good chunk of the day. The very fact of their unionization implies a different value system from that of the Tea Partiers, who fear that value system having an influence on their children. Teachers tend to be more liberal than the general population. And to the worker wed to the private enterprise system, a teacher's deal can look pretty sweet by comparison: It generally comes with a pension, tenure and the prospect of early retirement.
That's why even candidates like Sharron Angle, the GOP/Tea Party contender for Nevada's U.S. Senate seat, can call for the elimination of the Department of Education and still be taken seriously by the Tea Party faithful. And that's why calling the federal jobs bill passed last month a "teacher bailout" was an effective means of summoning Tea Party opposition to the bill that provided $26 billion in aid to cash-strapped states to maintain all manner of services and programs, including money to prevent some 300,000 teacher lay-offs.
For the billionaires of Tea Party Inc., gutting public education is just another way to grab more marbles for themselves by marginalizing unions and shrinking the overall size of government -- not to mention the convenience of having a gullible and uneducated population to snooker down the road. They have little need for an educated workforce in the U.S., since they'll offshore whatever jobs they can.
Yet, according to the New York Times/CBS News poll, 65 percent of Tea Party supporters with children under the age of 18 have those children enrolled in public schools. And although parents of school-age children account for only 20 percent of Tea Party supporters, it's safe to assume that a sizable number of the older people who comprise the bulk of the Tea Party have grandchildren in public schools. The education those children receive will clearly suffer if schools are forced to lay off significant numbers of teachers but, for Tea Partiers, that fact pales beside the prospect of sticking it to the teachers they've been taught to resent. Better to short-change one's own kids than to keep one more teacher employed, despite all the rhetoric about the Tea Party movement being the guardian of the legacy owed to those yet unborn.
5. Opposition to Wall Street Reform and Financial Reform. Perhaps the most confounding aspect of the Tea Party agenda is its opposition to reform of Wall Street and banks. Even as Tea Party leaders and activists rail against the bailouts of U.S. automakers, and the minimal assistance offered homeowners with underwater mortgages, Tea Party leaders and those who follow them voice hostility toward any and all measures that would demand increased accountability from purveyors of financial instruments or the credit-card industry, like those contained in the financial reform bill passed by Congress in July (a bill that liberal critics regard as rather toothless).
In her speech to Tea Party supporters at the RightOnline conference, Michele Bachmann described the recently passed financial reform bill as nothing more than a punitive measure against Wall Street, when the real culprit in the nation's financial woes was the Housing and Community Redevelopment Act passed in 1977. Another particular object of scorn by the Tea Party set is the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection created by the bill.
Financial reforms such as those signed into law by President Barack Obama last month are designed to benefit the middle class, where 50 percent of Tea Party supporters locate themselves, according the the New York Times/CBS poll. The reforms are expected to be especially good for small businesses, whose fortunes Tea Partiers often claim to care most about.
Failure of Logic, Rule of Emotion

So, how do they do it, those unscrupulous billionaires? How do they get everyday Americans to embrace an agenda that runs counter to their own interests? Their mouthpieces -- people like Bachmann and Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck -- couch it all in the language of heroic patriotism, with the Tea Partiers cast as patriots at war with people set to defile the founders' dream of America. Do that, and a billionaire will find himself the general of an army of ground troops ready to do battle in his service, despite his unwillingness to share the spoils of his war on everyday Americans.
In her speech to the Tea Party faithful in Nevada, Michele Bachmann neither began nor ended her speech with her plan to rob the Tea Partiers (and the rest of us) of their Social Security. She began with a sustained attack on the nation's first black president (who was portrayed as immature, greedy, incompetent and corrupt). Her plan was explained just before she wrapped up the speech, which she ended with the truly poignant patriotic story of the sinking of an Army transport ship, the Dorchester, in World War II. Bachmann recounted how four Navy chaplains went down with the ship after giving their life jackets to younger soldiers. She made a point of citing the last names of two of them: Washington and Goode.
In Bachmann's telling, the brave chaplains gave up the lifeline that was rightfully theirs in order to save the younger generation. Kind of like giving up your Social Security to save your country for your grandchildren -- except that your sacrifice is more likely to line the pockets of a billionaire than save your grandson from a life of debt, a possibility you just don't consider.

How the fight over tax breaks affects your bottom line 18AUG10

THERE'S a lot of talk, and a lot of misinformation, or propaganda, depending on your point of view, about ending or extending the bush tax cuts......this is from the Washington Post, and it shows just who will benefit and who will pay, depending on the plan adopted by Congress. Obviously, most people, and the nation will benefit from the Obama plan, but you check it out and see which will be best for you. Click the header to go to the article and check out the interactive graph.
 Bush-era tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 are set to expire at the end of the year, and lawmakers are battling over whether to extend any or all of them before November's congressional elections. Most Republicans want to extend all of the cuts, saying that any increase in taxes will hold back the economic recovery. Obama and Democratic leaders are proposing to extend many of the cuts but say tax breaks for top earners should expire to help pare down growing national deficits. Each plan would affect average tax rates for income groups differently.

NOTE: The 20% income percentile groups contain an equal number of people, not tax units. The tax cuts that President Obama is proposing to extend for families earning less than $250,000 also apply to individuals earning less than $200,000.

SOURCE: Tax Policy Center, Joint Committee on Taxation, Office of Management and Budget | GRAPHIC: Wilson Andrews and Alicia Parlapiano / The Washington Post - August 18, 2010

The Small Business Dodge...THE TRUTH ON THE "DEATH TAX" from MOJO 16JUL10

ANOTHER example of the levels the gop will stoop to to deceive the American public and protect the wealthy. So many of these gop politicians are people of faith, so I have to wonder how they can justify deliberately lying about this?
 
Back in the day, one of the key Republican arguments against the estate tax was that it forced hardworking, salt-of-the-earth children of small farmers to sell the family plot in order to pay their taxes after dad died. It was a sad story, but with one problem: no one could find even a single small farmer who had been forced to liquidate in order to satisfy Uncle Sam's voracious maw. Even the American Farm Bureau Federation was eventually forced to admit that it couldn't come up with a single example, and a few years later the Congressional Budget Office estimated that under the now-current exemption level, only a tiny handful of small farms were likely to owe any estate tax to begin with — and of those, only about a dozen lacked the assets to pay their taxes. And even those dozen had 14 years to pay the bill as long the kids kept running the farm. In other words, the story was a fraud from beginning to end.
Good times. Today, though, we're getting a rerun. The subject at hand is the Bush tax cuts, and the question is who exactly will get hurt if we go ahead and keep the cuts intact for middle income earners but let them expire for the rich. The obvious answer is, "the rich," but it turns out that, just as there are small farmers begging for our sympathy, there are small rich too: namely an alleged army of hardworking, salt-of-the-earth small business owners who would also end up paying higher tax rates. "To those who are pushing the higher marginal rates," thundered Sen. Chuck Grassley (R–Iowa) earlier this week, "I say the burden is on you to show that you are not harming our primary job creators, small business."
OK then. Let's show it. Step 1: The Brookings Tax Policy Center estimates that only 1.9% of small businesses are in the two top brackets that would be affected. That's a little better than the dozen small farms affected by the estate tax, but not by much.
Step 2: About half of that 1.9% aren't really small business owners at all. They're high-income investors who get part of their income from investments in small businesses. So we're down to about 1% of small businesses that would be affected.
Step 3: The top brackets are just that: brackets. When the top rate goes up, it doesn't affect your entire income, just the portion in the top bracket. So if the top rate goes back up from 35% to 39.6%, it only affects the portion of income above approximately $400,000. A small business owner making $500,000 would see an increase of about $5,000. This is a fairly modest amount for someone making a half million dollars, and anything higher than that is hardly a "small" business to begin with. And the marginal effect is even smaller for the second highest bracket.
Step 4: The Office of Management and Budget estimates that the 10-year cost of these upper-income tax cuts is $678 billion, the vast majority of which hits wealthy individuals, not small businesses no matter how you define them. That's a fair chunk of change for anyone concerned about the deficit.
So that's the case. Letting Bush's tax cuts for the rich expire affects only a tiny number of small businesses; it doesn't affect them very much; and it generates revenues of $678 billion. If the only thing you care about is keeping taxes low for rich people, you won't be convinced. For the rest of us, it's a no-brainer.

Drill, Gamble, Loot, Starve: The Chamber of Commerce, the GOP, and the Politics of Plunder 15JUL10

MEET YOUR republican CONGRESS
The United States Chamber of Commerce has released an "open letter" to the President, Congress, and the American people which contains its blueprint for our political future. It lays out the current Republican playbook in stark terms, and it reads like the battle plan for those alien spaceships from Independence Day: Drain the resources, take everything from the population, strip the land to a husk... and then presumably sail away in mile-long spaceships toward the next targeted planet.
What we're seeing is the Politics of Plunder, revealed in all its nakedness. There will be another example of this corporate-driven mindset this week, possibly even today, when all but a handful of Republican Senators vote against a moderate set of curbs on Wall Street excesses. The Democratic Party may disappoint its supporters from time to time, but it seems that Republicans never do -- once you accept the fact that its real "supporters" are the mega-businesses represented by the Chamber of Commerce. Some of the delegates who chanted "drill, baby, drill" at the GOP Convention are staring out their windows at oil-soaked beaches, while others have gone broke in an economy ruined by Wall Street gambling. That won't stop the Politics of Plunder. (Come to think of it, "drill, baby, drill" would have been a perfect motto for those spaceships.)
To be clear, the Chamber of Commerce isn't the political lobbying arm of "business," as it sometimes claims. It specifically serves the interests of massive businesses, which are often at odds with the needs of small and medium enterprises. Any CEO of a smaller company who's pressured by one of the Chamber's sales representatives to join, as I was in my business life, is being asked to subsidize policies that will benefit the Chamber's mega-donors -- often at her or his own expense. The Chamber's letter serves those mega-interests well, and we can expect most Republicans to follow it in lockstep, no doubt with cheering crowds pumped up for the same old chants and a few new ones.
"Drill, baby, drill." The lessons of BP are lost on this crowd -- or, to be more accurate, they don't matter. The Chamber's letter says that "there are numerous oil, gas, and shale leases on our lands and off our shores that are currently inactive. Some estimates show that they could generate as much as $1.7 trillion worth of royalties over the next 10 years. (Note: We heard that using 10-year timelines to create impressive-sounding numbers was "cheating" when the Administration did it.) Tapping these reserves would create direct federal revenues and hundreds of thousands of jobs."
The devastation of our Southern coastlines has not dimmed the Chamber/GOP crowd's thirst for drilling in costly, inaccessible, and dangerous areas. This letter, purportedly about "jobs," ignores the many jobs that have been lost because of the spill, and the thousands of small businesses devastated by the loss of fishing and tourism. It doesn't matter: The Politics of Plunder demands revenue for the largest businesses -- most of which would be generated by foreign sales of these resources, and very little of which would be returned to the US economy.
"Gamble, baby, gamble." Millions of American jobs were lost because of Wall Street's reckless, runaway gambling binge. The Chamber/Republican response is to whine about the Dodd/Frank bill, which is nothing more than a simple first step on the road toward comprehensive financial reform. "The soon-to-be-finalized financial regulatory reform legislation creates over 350 regulatory rulemakings, 47 studies, and 74 reports," the letter reads, "dwarfing anything in Sarbanes-Oxley."
The use of these kinds of numbers is a common rhetorical trick for the megabusiness/GOP crowd. Somehow we're expected to believe that the leaders of major corporations are overwhelmed by the complexity of "350 regulatory rulemakings" -- as if they don't have people who handle that sort of thing. Remember, we're talking about Wall Street here: banks and hedge funds, here not Norman Rockwell small-town grocers who will be overwhelmed by paperwork. The real purpose of this complaint is to provide cover for all those "no" votes we will see this week - each of which is a vote to continue the enrichment of wealthy financiers at the expense of the American economy.
"Loot, baby, loot." The GOP and its Democratic Blue Dog sympathizers don't want to vote for unemployment benefits or stimulus programs because, we're told, they're so concerned about the deficit. But when it comes to preserving tax cuts for the wealthy it's "deficits be damned." Sen. Jon Kyl's recent comments on the subject expose the inconsistency.
Here, too, the Chamber slavishly serves the mega-wealthy at the expense of other businesses and the American people. "(J)ust six months from now," their letter reads, "Americans will be hit with the largest tax increase in history in precisely those areas that would have the greatest negative impact on investment and jobs -- individual tax rates, dividends and capital gains taxes, the death tax, and the alternative minimum tax." It's economic nonsense to say that these are the areas that most impact investment and jobs. What's more, these taxes on the wealthy have been artificially low in recent years, adding to the deficit while doing very little to stimulate the economy.
The Chamber's use of the ideological phrase "death tax" to describe the estate tax masks the fact that they're talking about a 2009 law that allows wealthy heirs to inherit up to $10 million while paying no taxes at all, while people who work for their money pay at the usual rates. (If you want to amuse yourself, do a Google search of right-wing "tax justice" websites that rail against lifting this exemption and try to find one that mentions the actual numbers involved. They don't want you to know who's actually getting this tax break. It should be called the "Poodles for Paris Hilton Act.")
"Starve, baby, starve." The letter says that "The Chamber looks forward to the report due later this year from the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform." (Yeah, you bet it does.) "However, we already know that mandatory spending, especially in entitlements, is the primary culprit." Now that its clients have devastated the economy, robbing people of jobs and much of their savings, the Chamber is targeting an "aging population" in order to slash Social Security and other entitlement programs. Social Security is solvent for many more years and minor adjustments would make it completely viable indefinitely. But the mega-wealthy Chamber/GOP agenda demands that Social Security payroll taxes be redirected toward other government programs so they can fund further tax cuts for the rich.
Voters care more about helping the unemployed and getting Americans back to work than they do about cutting the deficit. Budget-slashing is a Washington fixation only, fueled by the think tanks and lobbyists that the Chamber/GOP crowd funds and promotes. But Chamber-driven Republicans hope that the public won't understand what they're doing, counting on "fatigue" and confusion to provide a smokescreen for the Politics of Plunder.
Those shadows over the nation's cities aren't spaceships. They're the very real threats that continue to loom over us: Continued unemployment. A damaged environment in risk of even greater devastation. Generations of older Americans who might be left without financial security. Republicans and the Chamber of Commerce want to use our economic crisis as a "shock doctrine" moment to pass measures that will continue a massive transfer of wealth to the upper one percent, while mortgaging the country's future to the economic interests that have already served it so poorly.
As the vote on financial reform will once again illustrate, this is not a movie.
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Richard (RJ) Eskow, a consultant and writer (and former insurance/finance executive), is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future. This post was produced as part of the Curbing Wall Street project. Richard also blogs at A Night Light.
He can be reached at "rjeskow@ourfuture.org."
Website: Eskow and Associates