I like the title of this story -
The Public Overwhelmingly Wants It: Why Is Taxing the Rich So Hard?
The obvious answer is that rich people have political clout—but can it really be so simple?
And it's a dammed good question.....the article does a pretty good job of explaining how much political power the wealthy and the corporations have [it's actually more than we think], but unfortunately doesn't get into how they keep that power with the vast media machine that implicitly favours the interests of the rich, and of course Fox which works hard on social distractions for the less intelligent.....
Very good article, and after you read it you realise we are waaaaaay past the tipping point - the entire system is corrupt and is set up to reinforce corruption......
Don't know the answer folks......as they say, "read it and weep"......
Page and Jeffrey Winters estimate that the top 10 percent of income earners hold about 90 percent of materially based political power, and that “each member of the top 1 percent averaged more than 100 times the power of a member of the bottom 90 percent; about 200 times if the index is calculated in terms of the more politically relevant non-home wealth.” These numbers are staggering, and should be seriously troubling to anyone who thinks political equality worth defending. Indeed, by Page and Winter’s definition of oligarchy as “the extreme political inequalities that necessarily accompany extreme material inequalities,” it’s pretty hard to argue that the United States isn’t an oligarchic society.
The simple fact of the matter is that the people who can afford to fund and engage in Beltway politics, from idea-generating to legislation-drafting, are disproportionately wealthy, so it’s difficult to suss out just how much of politicians’ deference to the preferences of the wealthy is responsiveness to the wealthy themselves as opposed to the general alignment of rich people’s interests with those of influential elites, organized special interest groups, business lobbies, and those of policymakers themselves.
http://www.alternet.org/
Regular DDD readers know I am a fan of Rachael Maddow, but this clip of her Friday show is one of the best and most relevant things she has ever done.....timely and intelligent, and she asks the questions noone else is asking.
Excellent 14 minutes......
On last night's show, Rachel Maddow discussed how there is widespread distaste among Americans for the Ryan budget plan, as evidenced by angry crowds of constituents at town halls around the country (which have gone largely uncovered by the mainstream media). So Maddow asks a glaringly obvious question, but that no one really seems to be asking: why isn't the progressive budget plan on the table? A progressive budget plan exists -- it has been submitted and introduced -- and it is more fiscally responsible than the GOP plan. So what gives? Watch Maddow discuss the issue with Matt Miller, a senior adviser during the Clinton administration, here:
Tom Tomorrow has a commentary on the budget plan......President MiddleMan strikes again.....
A classic and very funny skit from Saturday Night Live - Dick in a Box......3 minutes....
Economics 101
I respect Simon Johnson, as he is a no nonsense economist with a knack for getting to the point. Here he takes the "deficit" discussion the scum in Congress are having and Johnson calls it like it is.....we haven't dealt with any of the financial issues and are worse off now than in 2008....
Washington is filled with self- congratulation this week, with Republicans claiming that they have opened serious discussion of the U.S. budget deficit and President Barack Obama’s proponents arguing that his counterblast last Wednesday will win the day.
The reality is that neither side has come to grips with the most basic of our harsh fiscal realities.
I suppose the title of this article counts as good news these days.......
April 20, 2011
America is not a third world country ... yet
Good column which makes the point that the Republican obsession with the deficit is just dumb....if we do nothing but let the Bush tax cuts expire we will be in balance in a few years......
Let’s start with the assumption that America is not a Third World country. In poor countries, many people never see doctors. Only the elite go to college. Rattletrap trains take two hours to go 70 miles.
Visit the Third World, and you see a struggling middle class shoehorned between shanty-town poverty and a jet-setting plutocracy — tiny in both numbers and tax burdens. The dirty air sickens the stomach.
What distinguishes poor from rich nations is that the latter invests in health care, education and transportation. They regulate what may go into the environment. These things don’t come for free. They are paid for with taxes and, in some cases, higher prices.
Republicans insist that we can’t afford these amenities — that government spending has become “unsustainable.” If we don’t do something radical, they say, America will go bankrupt. For them, ending Medicare as we know it is not too radical. Raising taxes from their lowest levels in decades is.
Government programs are sustainable only if you sustain them. That’s done primarily through taxes. Years of tax-cutting have helped drive revenues to a 60-year bottom relative to the gross domestic product.
Visit the Third World, and you see a struggling middle class shoehorned between shanty-town poverty and a jet-setting plutocracy — tiny in both numbers and tax burdens. The dirty air sickens the stomach.
What distinguishes poor from rich nations is that the latter invests in health care, education and transportation. They regulate what may go into the environment. These things don’t come for free. They are paid for with taxes and, in some cases, higher prices.
Republicans insist that we can’t afford these amenities — that government spending has become “unsustainable.” If we don’t do something radical, they say, America will go bankrupt. For them, ending Medicare as we know it is not too radical. Raising taxes from their lowest levels in decades is.
Government programs are sustainable only if you sustain them. That’s done primarily through taxes. Years of tax-cutting have helped drive revenues to a 60-year bottom relative to the gross domestic product.
Quite a funny article from The Onion, and yes this is meant as satire, but....is it?
Anyway, Mitt Romney has a skeleton in his closet.....
BELMONT, MA—Though Mitt Romney is considered to be a frontrunner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, the national spotlight has forced him to repeatedly confront a major skeleton in his political closet: that as governor of Massachusetts he once tried to help poor, uninsured sick people.
Romney, who signed the state's 2006 health care reform act, has said he "deeply regrets" giving people in poor physical and mental health the opportunity to seek medical attention, admitting that helping very sick people get better remains a dark cloud hovering over his political career, and his biggest obstacle to becoming president of the United States of America.
"Every day I am haunted by the fact that I gave impoverished Massachusetts citizens a chance to receive health care," Romney told reporters Wednesday, adding that he feels ashamed whenever he looks back at how he forged bipartisan support to help uninsured Americans afford medicine to cure their illnesses. "I'm only human, and I've made mistakes. None bigger, of course, than helping cancer patients receive chemotherapy treatments and making sure that those suffering from pediatric AIDS could obtain medications, but that's my cross to bear."
"My hope is that Republican voters will one day forgive me for making it easier for sick people—especially low-income sick people—to go to the hospital and see a doctor," Romney added. "It was wrong, and I'm sorry."
According to Romney, if he could do things over again, he would do everything he could to make certain that uninsured individuals got sicker and sicker until they died. Promising his days of trying to provide medical coverage to the gravely ill are behind him, Romney said that if elected president, he would never even think about increasing anyone's quality of life or trying to lower the infant mortality rate.
In addition, Romney repeatedly apologized for wanting to help people suffering from diabetes, Crohn's disease, and anemia.
"I don't know what got into me back then," Romney said. "Wanting to make sure people were able to have health insurance if they left their job. Providing a federally funded website so individuals could compare the costs of insurance providers. Making certain that somebody who earns less than 150 percent of the poverty level can receive the same health care coverage as me or any government official. All I can say is that I was young and immature, and I am not that person anymore."
"The only solace I can take is in the hope that some of the folks I helped were terminally ill patients who eventually withered away and died," Romney added.
Though Romney has apologized profusely, Beltway insiders said he would need to distance himself from his I-tried-to-help-sickpeople image. Sources noted that Romney's current promise to take away health care from anyone who can't afford it is a step in the right direction, but might not be enough.
"The major strike against Mitt Romney is that he not only tried to help people get medical care, he actually did help people get medical care," conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg said. "No other Republican in the field has that type of baggage. And in the end, in order to defeat President Obama, the GOP needs someone who has a track record of never wanting to help sick people."
Thus far, Romney is polling strongly in early primary states like New Hampshire and Iowa, but Republican strategists and voters agree that even in a general election, his sordid past would continue to dog him.
"I don't think I can vote for someone like that," Pennsylvania Republican Eric Tolbert said. "He says he's sorry, but how do I know that's the real Mitt Romney? What happens if he gets elected and tries to help sick people again?"
"I like Michele Bachmann now," Tolbert added. "Because what this country needs is a president who doesn't give a fuck about helping people."
Libya - why are we in this cesspit?
Ostensibly it's a humanitarian fight, but the reality is we are dipping our toes into this mess because of oil and finance. Long article, but the bottom line is one of the the REAL reasons we are in there is because Quaddafi threatened to demand payment for his oil in Euros instead of US dollars, which would cause chaos in the global world oil market.
So Omar pissed off not only the oil oligarchs, but the banks as well.....result - war!
In the context of banking, one that sticks out is that none of them is listed among the 56 member banks of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That evidently puts them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers' central bank in Switzerland. The most renegade of the lot could be Libya and Iraq, the two that have actually been attacked. Kenneth Schortgen Jr, writing on Examiner.com, noted that '[s]ix months before the US moved into Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein, the oil nation had made the move to accept euros instead of dollars for oil, and this became a threat to the global dominance of the dollar as the reserve currency, and its dominion as the petrodollar.' According to a Russian article titled 'Bombing of Libya – Punishment for Gaddafi for His Attempt to Refuse US Dollar', Gaddafi made a similarly bold move: he initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar. Gaddafi suggested establishing a united African continent, with its 200 million people using this single currency. During the past year, the idea was approved by many Arab countries and most African countries. The only opponents were the Republic of South Africa and the head of the League of Arab States. The initiative was viewed negatively by the US and the European Union, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy calling Libya a threat to the financial security of mankind; but Gaddafi was not swayed and continued his push for the creation of a united Africa. […] If the Gaddafi government goes down, it will be interesting to watch whether the new central bank [created by the rebels in March] joins the BIS, whether the nationalised oil industry gets sold off to investors, and whether education and healthcare continue to be free."
BP, Total of France, ENI of Italy, Conoco Phillips and Occidental have major fields in Libya......guess who's leading the fight? The Brits, the French, the Italians and the good ole USA.
Guess "the oil boys" told all of these governments to "do something!"......
Don't often use the phrase "defies description", but this music video from Katy Perry has elements of E.T, Wall-E, Battlestar Galactica and Hieronymus Bosch.....opens with a cameo from Kanye West.....
Looks like they had fun making this, and check out the makeup on Katy Perry....wow.....
Todays church joke
Tom's scrotum The pastor asked if anyone in the congregation would like to express praise for answered prayers.
Suzie Smith stood and walked to the podium. She said, "I have a praise. Two months ago, my husband, Tom, had a terrible bicycle wreck and his scrotum was completely crushed. The pain was excruciating and the doctors didn't know if they could help him.."
You could hear a muffled gasp from the men in the congregation as they imagine the pain that poor Tom must have experienced.
"Tom was unable to hold me or the children," she went on, "and every move caused him terrible pain. We prayed as the doctors performed a delicate operation, and it turned out they were able to piece together the crushed remnants of Tom's scrotum, and wrap wire around it to hold it in place."
Again, the men in the congregation cringed and squirmed uncomfortably as they imagined the horrible surgery performed on Tom.
"Now," she announced in a quivering voice, "thank the Lord, Tom is out of the hospital and the doctors say that with time, his scrotum should recover completely."All the men sighed with unified relief. The pastor rose and tentatively asked if anyone else had something to say.
A man stood up and walked slowly to the podium.
He said, "I'm Tom Smith." The entire congregation held its breath. "I just want to tell my wife the word is sternum"
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