Posts filed under ‘Our Tax Dollars’
Iran Might Retaliate if Attacked? The Chutzapah!
What’s with countries who don’t do what we want, dammit:
Americans Would Cut Defense Instead of Social Programs
What a bunch of socialists:
This gives me hope.
For a larger version, go here.
Want the Rich to Pay More Taxes? Go With Obama
Here is a chart comparing taxes under Obama’s budget and Romney’s budget. Obama is blue, Romney is red.
Notice how, under Obama’s tax proposal, taxes go up dramatically for the top 90% income earners and then then very dramatically for the 95%-ers and higher. Romney on the other hand much nicer to the “job creators” his buddies.
See a larger version of the chart and get the details here.
Question for Conservatives: Who Is Going to Pay For a War On Iran?
Steve Clemons asks a good (and obvious) question:
While GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul is doing all he can in this election cycle to gin up a debate about U.S. foreign policy and a measure of the costs and benefits involved, the debate about Iran, China, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Israel’s security has been taking place in a gravityless environment.
Mitt Romney’s opening foreign-policy opus at the Citadel criticized President Obama for defense cuts and promised to boost America’s defense commitments abroad, to boost military spending on hardware and ships in the Pacific–to do everything we have been doing but more.
Where are the dollars going to come from?
I am one who thinks that war with Iran is far off and in the near term unlikely–unless Israel makes a tremendous mistake by triggering and forcing a geostrategic move by the United States, a choice that could very well ultimately dismantle the close U.S.-Israel relationship (another alternative: Forces inside Iran that would benefit from a war cause an escalation that produces a potential nightmare in the Persian Gulf and region).
That said, fewer and fewer people agree with me–and various of the GOP presidential candidates seem to be competing with each other to tell U.S. citizens how quickly they would deploy American military and intelligence assets to undermine Iran’s supreme leader and his government.
[...]
Wars cost lots and lots of money– and if a substantial chunk of the GOP crowd wants these wars and feels that it is in our national interest to have them, then by all means they should start lining up some of the wealthiest in the country who are helping to agitate for these conflicts to pay more in taxes for them.
Memo to the “liberal media:” The next time you’re in front of Romney, Santorum, Gingrich or any of the other conservatives who are advocating for aggression against Iran, ask them how they plan on paying for it. Hello!
Athens is Burning
People in Greece are reacting to economic cuts along the lines of what Republicans want to do here:
Photo: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece’s parliament has approved an austerity and debt-relief bill, crucial for the country to avoid bankruptcy and remain in the eurozone.
Lawmakers voted early Monday in favor of the bill that imposes harsh new austerity measures in return for a euro130 billion ($171 billion) new bailout agreement and related deal with private creditors to shave euro100 billion ($132 billion) off the country’s national debt.
The vote occurred after extensive rioting and looting swept through the Greek capital.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) – Demonstrators set buildings ablaze and fireballs lit up the night sky in Greece’s capital on Sunday amid widespread rioting before a historic parliamentary vote on harsh austerity measures designed to prevent the country from going bankrupt.
The clashes erupted after more than 100,000 protesters marched to the parliament to rally against the drastic cuts, which will ax one in five civil service jobs and slash the minimum wage by more than a fifth.
At least 10 buildings were on fire, including a movie theater, bank and cafeteria, and looters smashed dozens of shops in the worst riot damage in years. Dozens of police officers and at least 37 protesters were injured, and more than 20 suspected rioters were detained.
See more photos here.
Obama to Propose Cutting Corporate Taxes
OMG. Is this Obama talking or is this Obama under the influence of Citizens United talking?
(Reuters) – President Barack Obama, who has angered businesses with his plans to close corporate tax loopholes, is expected to call for cutting the top 35 percent corporate tax rate as early as this month, according to two sources close to the administration.
The president is likely to propose a rate close to an average of peer nations, the sources said.
Good thing it’s Friday. This is the kind of news that makes me want to take my head off and set it down for a while.
Bomb Iran? No!
Occupy and other groups are rallying today in New York City to protest sanctions on Iran, the murder of Iranian scientists, and the increasingly hostile rhetoric coming from the United States and Israel concerning Iran.
The intrepid reporter Tim Pool is sending out pictures of some of the signs people are carrying (see them at his link above). This is my favorite so far:
Ain’t that the truth.
Interesting isn’t it that the usual crowd that screams about cutting government spending isn’t screaming about not going to war again. When it comes to cuts, they only want to cut the programs that benefit we the people. Defense contractors? Not so much.
Good Luck With That Mitt
So now Romney thinks he’s going to gain traction with the public by criticizing Obama’s plan to withdraw from Afghanistan next year?
Republican front-runner Mitt Romney slammed President Obama on Wednesday night over Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s announcement that the United States would end its combat mission in Afghanistan next year.
Speaking in Las Vegas, Romney said that announcing a timetable to end the combat mission showed the president’s “naivete.”
“The secretary of Defense said that on a day certain, the middle of 2013, we’re going to pull out our combat troops from Afghanistan,” Romney said, according to reports from Las Vegas.
“He announced that. So the Taliban hears it, the Pakistanis hear it, the Afghan leaders hear it. Why in the world do you go to the people that you’re fighting with and tell them the date you’re pulling out your troops?” Romney said. “It makes absolutely no sense.”
Romney concluded that Obama’s “naivete is putting in jeopardy the mission of the United States of America and our commitments to freedom.”
“Our commitments to freedom?” Really? I think Americans are sick and tired of being at war and paying for war and they want the “mission of the United States of America” to focus on “commitments” here at home.
Yo Mitt. Good luck with that.
Poor, Suffering Chevron
This would be our Tweet of the Day:
Poor thing.
By the way, those subsidies come out of We the People’s pocket, as in Our Tax Dollars. We pay Chevron because, according to our screwed up tax code, it can make $51,00o every minute of every day of the year and still claim it needs our tax dollars to stay alive and be a “job creator.”
The Coalition of the Withdrawing
Maybe the US should take a lesson:
Photo: Philippe Wojazer/AP
France Will Speed up Troop Withdrawal from Afghanistan by One Year
France said Friday that it will accelerate the pullout of its combat forces from Afghanistan by one year, to the end of 2013, and in concert with Afghanistan urged NATO to hand over all combat operations to the Afghan army by the same date.
President Nicolas Sarkozy made the unexpected proposal with the visiting Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, standing at his side. The French-Afghan initiative, which would speed up the agreed NATO timetable by one year, dramatized growing uncertainty—in Afghanistan as well as NATO countries—over the wisdom and effectiveness of the U.S.-led military campaign to force the Taliban to submit to Karzai’s U.S.-supported government.
It’s No Wonder the United States is Imploding
A quickie here as a follow up to the posts I’ve put up about “American exceptionalism” of late:
Let’s burn this image into our brains. Is it any wonder our society is collapsing from within (see link above) given it spends so much money on the military relative to the rest of the world?
We’re letting everything else go — bridges, schools, housing, medical care — but hey, we can bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!
Oh, on that note:
Iran’s is not a big enough proportion of world arms spending to show up on this graph, which doesn’t show countries that are lower than 2% of the global total.
Regarding Romney’s “Projected” 2011 Tax Liability
Thom Hartmann made a good point today on his radio show about the 2011 income tax “projections” Mitt Romney released yesterday.
It was that the “projections” can basically say anything. A “projection” isn’t a binding document and it isn’t something that is filed with the IRS.
Again, that’s good and important point and we should keep it in mind. If Romney starts talking about any of the numbers in the “projections” we should let it go in one ear and out the other because until the actual 2011 return is filed with the IRS, the “projected” numbers are meaningless. They could change dramatically once the accountants do the math.
Mitt Romney’s Unfavorable Rating Skyrockets
Wow. Check out this chart from Talking Points Memo:
Wow. At the beginning of the chart, on October 6 (see interactive version at link above), Romney’s unfavorable rating stood at 33%. On Sunday, the last day of the chart, it was 49.3.
The “liberal media” is trying to convince us that ah shucks, paying just over 13% in taxes on millions of dollars ain’t no big deal but I hope this chart indicates that We the People aren’t buying it. Because it is a big deal. Romney is the poster boy for the lobbying the rich have done to change the tax code in their favor. No, Romney didn’t do anything illegal (far as we know), but the laws that give people like Romney such a break weren’t written on their own.
Romney Flip-Flops on Releasing His Tax Returns
This would be Willard Mitt Romney exactly one month ago:
Mitt Romney, who is one of the wealthiest men ever to seek the presidency, said on Wednesday that he had no intention of releasing his tax returns if he became the Republican presidential nominee, breaking with a long tradition in both parties.
“I don’t intend to release the tax returns. I don’t.”
This would be Willard Mitt Romney today:
Gov. Mitt Romney said Sunday he will release his tax returns on Tuesday as he tries to pivot from an issue that dragged him down in his South Carolina primary loss to Newt Gingrich.
Romney said he’ll post his 2010 tax return and 2011 estimate online Tuesday, after he was hammered by his rivals and gave awkward debate answers last week as he said he would release his tax returns in April.
“I think we made a mistake holding off as long as we did,” Romney said in an interview on Fox News Sunday. “It was a distraction. We want to get back to the real issues of the campaign.”
So, no, it wasn’t a “mistake.” It was a calculated strategy that blew-up in his face, and now he’s flip-flopping. Again, the Romney people think we’re idiots.
And by the way, I don’t think releasing his 2010 tax return and a “2011 estimate” will be enough. I think the pressure will remain for him to release at least three or four year’s worth of returns and we’ll be going through this all over again in a week or three.
What an arrogant gashole.
Welcome to Another Week of Crazy
Welcome to another week of crazy. This headline kicks it off: Republican Sponsor Of Bill To Require Drug Testing For Georgia Welfare Recipients Arrested For DUI.
Got that? A holier than thou Republican gets busted for the very thing he accuses others of doing:
A Georgia Republican [Rep. Kip Smith] who wants all welfare recipients subject to drug tests failed one himself after he ran a red light on Friday morning.
[...]
Smith told the officer he’d had the beer 45 minutes earlier, and the officer asked him to blow into a hand-held “intoximeter”. The officer said the lawmaker refused, stating he would prefer to go to a clinic or the hospital to get tested.
The officer said Smith finally agreed to blow into the device. The report stated that Smith blew a .091., which is above the legal limit of .08.
Smith is a sponsor of Georgia House Bill 464, which would “require random drug testing” for citizens on public assistance.
I’m thinking Kip Smith should concentrate on random drug testing himself.
Americans: You’re Paying For a Very Expensive Bat Mitzvah This Weekend
If you are unfamiliar with Matt Taibbi or you don’t read him on a regular basis, make a resolution right now to change that. The guy is a monster writer. Let me tease you with the opening paragraphs of his most recent great read:
If there was ever a news story that crystalized the moral dementia of modern Wall Street in one little vignette, this is it.
Newspapers in Colorado today are reporting that the elegant Hotel Jerome in Aspen, Colorado, will be closed to the public from today through Monday at noon.
(This is the Hotel Jerome:
I “collect” old hotels. Ten-or-so-years ago Mr. SayitAintSoAlready and I took a trip to Aspen. I called ahead to inquire about making reservations at the Hotel Jerome. When I learned that they only rented rooms for 2-day increments, I had to let go of the thought of staying there. Forking over the cost of one night was going to be a stretch; there was no way we could afford two.)
Why? Because some local squire has apparently decided to rent out all 94 rooms of the hotel for three-plus days for his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah.
The hotel’s general manager, Tony DiLucia, would say only that the party was being thrown by a “nice family,” but newspapers are now reporting that the Daddy of the lucky little gal is one Jeffrey Verschleiser, currently an executive with Goldman, Sachs.
At first, I couldn’t remember where I knew that name from. But then I looked it up and saw an explosive Atlantic magazine story, published last year, called, “E-mails Suggest Bear Stearns Cheated Clients Out Of Millions.” And then I remembered that piece, and it hit me: Jeffrey Verschleiser is one of the biggest assholes in the entire world!
NBC’s David Gregory Wants Americans to “Feel Pain”
I’m coming down from watching this morning’s GOP presidential “debate” on NBC/MSNBC, hosted by the elitist 1%er, David Gregory. During the first 15-minutes, Gregory seemed obsessed with hearing what the candidates would cut (as in Medicare and Social Security), repeatedly asking both Santorum and Huntsman what cuts they would make that “will make Americans feel pain,” and then, “What do Americans have to learn to live with less of?”
Seems to me we Americans are already feeling pain due to the games the banksters and the corporate elite played with our economy. The people who should feel “pain” and do the time are the people who committed the crime. Then again, I don’t suppose we can expect that perspective from Mr. Inside-the-Beltway Gregory, a guy who’s married to a lawyer whose expertise is defending white collar criminals…like banksters.
UPDATE: An hour after putting up this post, I come across this:
Bonus battles: Disgruntled bankers threaten to sue or walk
Wall Street bankers are fuming about the prospect of paltry payouts come bonus time — and plan to go nuclear.
They’re taking their cues from their disgruntled brethren in London, who are eyeing lawsuits to regain their over-the-top pay. Here at Jefferies Group, a group of brokerage executives reportedly threatened management that they would walk away from the firm if their year-end compensation was not up to par with The Street.
This hubris is just the beginning of much more to come as the downtrodden banking industry gets ready to dole out the most meager bonuses since the 2008 financial crisis.
Let’s talk about these guys feelin’ some pain David.
Iowans Applaud Rick Santorum for Saying He’ll Cut Social Security
I just watched (@ 7:52 p.m. ET) a live clip of Rick Santorum speaking to senior citizens in Iowa, telling them, when president, he will cut the deficit by $5 trillion, “including entitlements,” which means Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.
Like idiots being lead to slaughter, THEY APPLAUDED.
Ahhh!
P.S. Let’s start referring to “entitlements” as earned benefits. The money we get back for those things came out of our paychecks, dammit.
The SEC and Citigroup F**k a US District Court Judge and He’s Pissed
I’m making dinner (macaroni and cheeeeeeese!) so this is a quickie:
SEC Chided Again by Judge in Citigroup Fraud Case
(Reuters) – The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission got a fresh dressing-down from the judge who rejected its $285 million settlement with Citigroup Inc, as he said the regulator kept him out of the loop on its efforts to salvage the case.
In his latest sharply-worded order, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff chastised the SEC for not telling him it had filed an emergency request with an appeals court to put the case on hold, after making the same request to him.
So when Rakoff on Tuesday issued a ruling opposing any delay in the case, he was beaten to the punch; 78 seconds earlier, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had granted the SEC the temporary halt it sought.
He also accused the SEC and Citigroup of potentially “misleading” the court, saying they called him around 3:30 p.m. EST (2030 GMT) on Tuesday to discuss the case, without mentioning the filing with the 2nd Circuit.
Less than an hour later, the 2nd Circuit ruled, and so did Rakoff. That 2nd Circuit order negated the work Rakoff said he had done over the weekend to get a ruling to the SEC as quickly as he could.
Rakoff wrote that he “spent the intervening Christmas holiday considering the parties’ positions and drafting an opinion, so that (the court) could file it on December 27, i.e. the first business day after the Christmas holiday.”
To prevent a recurrence, Rakoff ordered the SEC and Citigroup to “promptly notify” him of any filings they make in the appeals court.
Regarding the text in bold, as a former paralegal, I can tell you that’s just dirty, low ball stuff on the SEC’s part. It’s also known as judge shopping.
And since when does a judge have to issue an order that parties to a case have to “promptly notify” him that they’ve filed a new case? That’s route and expected. No wonder he’s furious.
The arrogance of the SEC and Citigroup is indicative of a climate wherein the rich and powerful don’t think they have to follow the rules.
As for the rest of us? How about 12 years in prison for selling a $31 bag of pot.
The Pipeline to Our Tax Dollars
Another indication of just how screwed up our political system is:
National security advisers to the Republican presidential candidates have ties to defense, homeland security and energy companies that have received at least $40 billion in federal contracts since 2008.
Five of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s 41 national security and foreign policy advisers have links to companies that last year alone received at least $7.9 billion in federal contracts, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Government analyst Christopher Flavelle. Of that, $7.3 billion came from the Department of Defense.
Romney and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who are leading in the polls, have advisers who sit on the board of directors of BAE Systems Inc., which has received at least $37 billion in U.S. government contracts since 2008, the most of any of the companies with ties to Republican national security advisers.
William Schneider, an adviser to Gingrich, and Michael Chertoff, who counsels Romney, serve on the board of the U.S. subsidiary of BAE Systems Plc, Europe’s largest defense contractor. The American company makes the Army’s Bradley Fighting Vehicle and provides information technology systems to American intelligence agencies and repair services to the U.S. Navy.
This is crazy. A “national security adviser” who works for a defense, homeland security or energy company can’t possibly provide objective advice. They’re going to “advise” their candidate to go the route that sends the maximum amount of our tax dollars their way. I mean, if you make weapons and security devices, all you see are threats.
$10,000 Mitt Flip-Flops On This
Romney Says He Won’t Release Tax Returns
Mitt Romney, who is one of the wealthiest men ever to seek the presidency, said on Wednesday that he had no intention of releasing his tax returns if he became the Republican presidential nominee, breaking with a long tradition in both parties.
“I don’t intend to release the tax returns. I don’t.”
[...]
Presidential candidates from both parties — including John McCain, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Al Gore and even George Romney, Mr. Romney’s father, who ran in 1968 — have routinely released their tax returns.
Mr. Romney’s personal wealth — said to be between $190 million and $250 million — helped to fuel his first campaign for the presidency in 2008, when he contributed more than $40 million of his own money.
Photo via.
Start the flip-flop countdown clock.
Boehner Caves
House Speaker John Boehner announced Thursday that he had agreed with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on a two-month extension of a package including a payroll tax cut and an extension of unemployment benefits.
Boehner said in statement he and Reid “reached an agreement that will ensure taxes do not increase for working families on January 1 while ensuring that a complex new reporting burden is not unintentionally imposed on small business job creators.”
He said the Senate “will join the House in immediately appointing conferees, with instructions to reach agreement in the weeks ahead on a full-year payroll tax extension. We will ask the House and Senate to approve this agreement by unanimous consent before Christmas.”
[...]
This news of the accord came after two of Boehner’s GOP members called on him to allow the two-month extension to proceed.
It’s a Christmas miracle. Democrats stand firm for once.
John Boehner (R-OH) Cuts Mic on House Floor While Democrat is Speaking
Wow. Talk about stifling freedom of speech, on the hallowed floor of the United States House of Representatives no less, check out what happened there this morning:
During a quick pro-forma session of the House this morning, Republicans rebuffed a Democratic attempt to force an up-or-down vote on the Senate-passed payroll tax holiday extension.
Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA), who was serving as the speaker pro-temp, ignored shouts of “Mr. Speaker!” from Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD).
Moments later, the mic appeared to cut out. A few seconds after that, the video feed switched away from the House floor to a still image of the Capitol Dome. It appears someone in House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) office cut the feed, as C-SPAN tweeted afterwards: “C-SPAN has no control over the U.S. House TV cameras – the Speaker of the House does.”
Watch it:
(Via.)
Boehner is afraid of the American people knowing what he and his cronies have done. They want us to be ignorant so we’ll continue to vote for them. It’s called censorship.
House Republicans: It’s all About Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!
Remember how all we heard from Republicans prior to the 2010 elections was: We need jobs. Jobs. Jobs!
Well, they’ve controlled the House for 349 days and they haven’t created a single job. Instead, they’re dicking around with s**t like this, which was on the agenda last night:
While House Republicans couldn’t get their act together to approve an extension of the payroll tax holiday and unemployment benefits last night, they were able to do something far more frivolousness — commission a bust of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to be placed in the Capitol. The House “adjourned moments after” passing the bill.
So, hey, we got us a new statue Then again, in all fairness (wink, wink), maybe they did create or sustain a few jobs: The guy who makes the statue, the guy who drives it to the Capitol and the guy who sets it on the shelf.
I Don’t Want to Be Out Here — I Don’t Have Anywhere to Go
This is Robert. He’s 55-years-old and he’s homeless in Sacramento:
Speaking for myself personally, I don’t have no family and I have nowhere else to go so. I never thought I’d end up on skid row out here sleeping on docks and in back of businesses and everything but that’s what I guess I’m going to have to do. I don’t know.
Hits you right in the gut.
(Via InvisiblePeople.tv)
America’s Safety Net (Such As It Is), in 8 Infographics
The Nation magazine is out with eight infographics depicting the sorry state of the American social safety net. Check them out here.
This is the one that outraged me:
What are we thinking?!
Your Tax Dollars at Work
Unbelievable:
Photo: Daily News / Elizabeth Waldon
The United States is fighting terrorism — one snow cone at a time.
Montcalm County recently received a $900 Arctic Blast Sno-Cone machine.
The West Michigan Shoreline Regional Development Commission (WMSRDC) is a federal- and state-designated agency responsible for managing and administrating the homeland security program in Montcalm County and 12 other counties.
The WMSRDC recently purchased and transferred homeland security equipment to these counties — including 13 snow cone machines at a total cost of $11,700.
The machines were funded by a grant from the Michigan Homeland Security Program. The request for a snow cone machine came from another county, but all 13 counties received them.
Mind-Blowing Fact of the Day
There are times when I just want to take my head off and set it down:
In 2007 (the most recent SCF [Survey of Consumer Finances]) the cumulative wealth of the Forbes 400 was $1.54 trillion or roughly the same amount of wealth held by the entire bottom fifty percent of American families. This is a stunning statistic to be sure.
Upon closer inspection of the Forbes list reveals that six Walton’s—all children (one daughter in-law) of Sam or James “Bud” Walton the founders of Wal-Mart—were on the list. The combined worth of the Walton six was $69.7 billion in 2007—which equated to the total wealth of the entire bottom thirty percent!
And think about it. It’s not as if the Walton children are busting their butts stocking shelves. They accumulated their gargantuan wealth by virtue of an inheritance. They didn’t have to lift a finger.
Football Owner Buys $19 Million NYC Home While Asking for Public Assistance
The gall of some of the 1%ers is just staggering:
Photo: Getty Images
Minnesota Vikings team owner Zygi Wilf has purchased a $19 million luxury apartment in one of New York City’s most prestigious Park Avenue co-ops.
The purchase surfaced in the New York Observer newspaper on the same day Vikings team officials were at the Minnesota State Capitol, making their case for a new stadium that would require a public subsidy.
Isn’t that appalling? Some people are just manifestly oblivious.
Read more and see pictures of the apartment here.
