Six banks – Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley together paid income tax at an approximate rate of 11% of their pre-tax US earnings in 2009 and 2010. Had they paid at 35%, what they are legally mandated to pay, the federal government would have received an additional $13 billion in tax revenue. This would cover more than two years of salaries for the 132,000 teacher jobs lost since the economic crisis began in 2008.
Category Archives: NADA – New American Dark Ages
New American Dark Ages
Raygun Was No Tea Bagger (but bad enough)
Former GOP Sen. Bob Bennett (UT), who lost his seat to a far-right primary challenger after holding it for over a decade, slammed the tea party in an interview with Fox News host Greta Van Susteren Friday. Saying the tea party movement “cost the Republicans control of the Senate,” Bennett warned Republicans to “be careful” about kowtowing to the narrow demands of the hard right when nominating a presidential candidate. Bennett went on to note that the GOP has shifted far to the right from previous Republican presidential candidates like Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
“Ronald Reagan would probably not recognize the description of Ronald Regan that is coming out of a lot of the tea party blogs. … [H]e said something that would be absolutely anathema to many of the tea party people when he said it’s better to get 80 percent of what you want than zero. And Reagan would compromise, Reagan would make deals.”
Indeed, as ThinkProgress has noted, the image of Reagan that many conservatives hold dear bears little resemblance to the actual man, who did many things these self-professed Reaganites would not like. Reagan raised taxes, increased government spending, and ballooned the size of government. And Reagan was a staunch defender of unions.
Thanks, Tom Udall
Democracy for New Mexico: Sen. Tom Udall Calls for Thorough Review of Patriot Act, Wants Our Input
Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) voted no on the initial enactment of the Patriot Act, as well as the extensions of various provisions that have been passed since the Act’s inception almost 10 years ago, including the latest one. Now Sen. Udall is calling for a thorough review of the law before anything more is done to extend any part of the post-9/11 legislation.
Democracy for New Mexico: Sen. Tom Udall Calls for Thorough Review of Patriot Act, Wants Our Input
Ronnie Raygun, Unionist
Yet conservatives may be shocked to learn that their idol Reagan was once a union boss himself. Reagan was the only president in American history to have belonged to a union, the AFL-CIO affiliated Screen Actors Guild. And he even served six terms as president of the organized labor group. Additionally, Reagan was a staunch advocate for the collective bargaining rights of one of the world’s most famous and most influential trade unions, Poland’s Solidarity movement.
Shock Doctrine, U.S.A. – NYTimes.com
From Chile in the 1970s onward, she suggested, right-wing ideologues have exploited crises to push through an agenda that has nothing to do with resolving those crises, and everything to do with imposing their vision of a harsher, more unequal, less democratic society.
Which brings us to Wisconsin 2011, where the shock doctrine is on full display.
Corporate Tax Dodgers
“I have one dollar in my wallet. That’s more than the combined income tax liability of GE, ExxonMobil, Citibank, and the Bank of America. That means somebody is gaming the system.” — Carl Gibson, the founder of US Uncut, which is organizing some of today’s UK-inspired massive demonstrations against tax dodgers
Indeed, as politicians are asking ordinary Americans to sacrifice their education, their health, their labor rights, and their wellbeing to tackle budget deficits, some of the world’s richest multinational corporations are getting away with shirking their responsibility and paying nothing. ThinkProgress has assembled a short but far from comprehensive list of these tax dodgers — corporations which have rigged the tax system to their advantage so they can reap huge profits and avoid paying taxes: [follow the link]
Mad yet? Ignore the Radical Wrong’s eternal whine about class warfare. The Rich can buy all the defense they need.
Conservatives Are Right-Nice Folk, Don’t’cha Know, Peaceable, Too
This past Tuesday Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) held a town hall meeting in Oglethorpe County, Georgia. During the question and answer session, one constituent asked a particularly outlandish question. As the Athens Banner Herald reports, the questioner asked, “Who’s going to shoot Obama?” The question apparently evoked laughter from the town hall meeting.
Rather than outright condemning the suggestion of violence, Broun tried to show empathy for the questioner by saying that he knows “there’s a lot of frustration with this president” and that he hopes we can “elect somebody who’s going to be a conservative” next year…
Blow Up Your TV
I sympathize with Michael Madore [ABQJOURNAL OPINION/GUEST_COLUMNS: Get Government Out of TV, Radio], who resents his tax dollars going to NPR, PBS, and other services with an “offensive liberal slant.” However, he errs in comparing NPR, etc, to Fox. I resent a single penny of my money going to the War Department. Perhaps, Madore would be willing to imagine every penny of his taxes going to kill people overseas, while I imagine all my contributions going toward people enjoying and learning about nature and culture. I’m even willing to overlook the disparity between the billions spent destroying and the mere millions spent airing “liberal” (?) views like those of the McLaughlin Group.
Leave aside the madness of every citizen earmarking his tax money, which would surely result in no money at all for things we don’t know we need until it’s too late (you know, like Public Health). Leave aside that conservatives resent every penny of tax, while liberals accept there is a cost to having a nation. The electromagnetic spectrum is a public property. We, the People, lease portions of that spectrum to private industry, which uses those resources to sell you things that are ultimately bad for you, including philosophies that pour money into the pockets of a relatively few people. Here’s where FOX enters the picture: “my” airwaves are used to poison the minds of citizens against the commonwealth and the notion that we all must compromise, contribute, and get along. Pull the funding on NPR, etc, but pull the plug on FOX at the same time. Stop drinking the kool-aid sold by a foreign dictator.