Tax the Super Rich now or face a revolution

Paul B. Farrell

 A ‘Super-Rich Delusion’ is leading us to ruin

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Yes, tax the Super Rich. Tax them now. Before the other 99% rise up, trigger a new American Revolution, a meltdown and the Great Depression 2.

Revolutions build over long periods — to critical mass, a flash point. Then they ignite suddenly, unpredictably. Like Egypt, started on a young Google executive’s Facebook page. Then it goes viral, raging uncontrollably. Can’t be stopped. Here in America the set-up is our nation’s pervasive “Super-Rich Delusion.”

U.K. workers protest turns violent

A splinter group is blamed for smashing windows and attacking police vans as tens of thousands march against government cuts.

We know the Super Rich don’t care. Not about you. Nor the American public. They can’t see. Can’t hear. Stay trapped in their Forbes-400 bubble. An echo chamber that isolates them. They see the public as faceless workers, customers, taxpayers. See GOP power on the ascent. Reaganomics is back. Unions on the run. Clueless masses are easily manipulated.

 Even Obama is secretly working with the GOP, will never touch his Super Rich donors. Yes, the Super-Rich Delusion is that powerful, infecting all America.

Here’s how one savvy insider who knows described this Super-Rich Delusion: “The top 1% live privileged lives, aren’t worried about much. Families vacation at the best resorts. Their big concerns are finding the best Pilates teacher, best masseuse, best surgeons, best private schools. They aren’t concerned with the underlying deterioration of America or the world, except in the abstract, because they aren’t directly affected by it. That’s not to say they aren’t sympathetic, aware, or don’t talk about the issues you bring up. They are largely concerned with protecting and enhancing their socio-economic positions, ensuring their families live well. And nothing you write about will change things.”

Warning, in 2011 that attitude is delusional, deadly, yet pervasive in America.

Super Rich replaying “Great Gatsby” age, won’t learn till it’s too late

Our top 1% honestly believe they’re immune, protected from the unintended consequences of beating down average Americans for three decades with the free-market, trickle-down Reaganomics doctrines that made them Super Rich.

They honestly believe those same doctrines will protect them in the next depression. Why? Because they have megabucks stashed away. Provisions for the long haul. Live in gated compounds with mercenaries guarding them.

They believe they’ll continue living just fine in a depression. But you won’t. Nor will your retirement. Neither will the rest of America. And still the Super Rich don’t care, “except in the abstract, because they aren’t directly affected.”

Warning: The Super-Rich Delusion has pushed us to the edge of a great precipice: Remember the Roaring Twenties? The Crash of 1929? Great Depression? Just days before the crash one leading economist, Irving Fisher, predicted that stocks had “reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”

Yes, he was trapped in the “Great Gatsby Syndrome,” an earlier version of today’s Super-Rich Delusion. It was so blinding in 1929 that the president, Wall Street, all America were sucked in … until the critical mass hit a mysterious flash point, triggering the crash.

Yes, we’re reliving that past — never learn, can’t hear. And oddly it’s not just the GOP’s overreach, the endlessly compromising Obama, too-greedy-to-fail Wall Street banksters, U.S. Chamber of Commerce billionaires and arrogant Forbes 400. America’s entire political, financial and economic psyche is infected, as if our DNA has been rewired.

The Collective American Brain is trapped in this Super-Rich Delusion, replaying the run-up to the ’29 Crash.

Nobody predicted 2011 revolutions in the oil-rich Arab world either

Warning: Mubarak, Gaddafi, Ali, Assad, even the Saudis also lived in the Super-Rich Delusion. Have for a long time. Were vulnerable. Ripe for a revolution. They, too, honestly believed they were divinely protected, chosen for great earthly wealth, enjoyed great armies.

Then, suddenly, out of the blue, a new “educated, unemployed and frustrated” generation turned on them, is now rebelling, demanding their share of economic benefits, opportunities, triggering revolutions, seeking retribution.

Still, you don’t believe there’s a depression ahead here in America? The third great market crash of the 21st century? A new economic revolution about to blow up in our faces? No, you don’t believe, can’t believe … you, me, we are all infected by the Super-Rich Delusion, just as Americans were in the Roaring Twenties.
Check the stats folks: The last time America’s wealth gap between the Super Rich and the other 99% was this big was just before the 1929 Crash and the Great Depression.

You can’t remember? Or you won’t? America is trapped in “terminal denial,” a setup for failure. Too many still live in the false hope of this Super-Rich Delusion. Do you believe government stats hyping a recovery? Believe Wall Street’s nonsense about a new bull market ahead? Believe Exxon-Mobile’s misleading ads about energy stocks. Believe Bill Gross’ when he says dump Treasurys, and buy his emerging country bonds? Dream on.

Start preparing for the third meltdown of the 21st Century, and depression

Denial and lies. Remember, 93% of what you hear about markets, finance and the economy are guesses, wishful thinking and lies intended to manipulate you into making decisions that suck money from your pockets into Wall Street. They get rich telling lies about securities. They hate any SEC fiduciary rules forcing them to tell the truth.

But the fact is, on an inflation-adjusted basis, Wall Street lost 20% of your retirement money in the decade from 2000 to 2010, over $10 trillion. And “Irrational Exuberance’s” Robert Shiller warns of a third meltdown coming. You better start preparing now.

Before you start betting any more at Wall Street’s rigged casinos, think long and hard about these six megatoxins lurking in America’s Super-Rich Delusion, a mind-altering pandemic infecting our nation’s leadership in Washington, Corporate America and Wall Street … but also “trickling down,” infecting many Americans. Listen:

1. Warning: Super Rich want tax cuts, creating youth unemployment
Bloomberg warns: “The Kids Are Not Alright.” Worldwide, youth unemployment is fueling the revolution. In a New York Times column, Matthew Klein, a 24-year-old Council on Foreign Relations researcher, draws a parallel between the 25% unemployment among Egypt’s young revolutionaries and the 21% for young American workers: “The young will bear the brunt of the pain” as governments rebalance budgets. Taxes on workers will be raised and spending on education will be cut while mortgage subsidies and entitlements for the elderly are untouchable,” as will tax cuts for the rich. Opportunities lost. “How much longer until the rest of the rich world” explodes like Egypt?

2. Warning: rich get richer on commodity prices, poor get angrier
USA Today’s John Waggoner warns: “Soaring food prices send millions into poverty, hunger: Corn up 52% in 12 months. Sugar 60%. Soybeans 41%. Wheat 24%. For 44 million the “rise in food prices means a descent into extreme poverty and hunger, warns the World Bank.” Many causes: Speculators. Soaring oil prices. Trade policies. Population explosion. But altogether they expose “the underlying inequalities and issues related to the standard of living that boil beneath the surface,” says a Pimco manager.

3. Warning: Global poor ticking time bomb targeting Super Rich
A Time special report, “Poor vs. Rich: A New Global Conflict” warned that a “conflict between two worlds — one rich, one poor — is developing, and the battlefield is the globe itself.” Just 25 developed nations of 750 million citizens consume most of the world’s resources, produce most of its manufactured goods and enjoy history’s highest standard of living.” But they’re now facing 100 underdeveloped poor nations with 2 billion people with hundreds of millions living in poverty all demanding “an ever larger share of that wealth.” Think Egypt. British leader calls this a “time bomb for the human race.”
4. Warning: Next revolution coming across ‘Third World America’


We are ripe for one: In “Third World America” Arianna Huffington warns: “Washington rushed to the rescue of Wall Street but forgot about Main Street … One in five Americans unemployed or underemployed. One in nine families unable to make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans on food stamps. Upward mobility has always been at the center of the American Dream … that promise has been broken… The American Dream is becoming a nightmare.” Soon it will implode. a meltdown, revolution, depression.

5. Warning: Super Rich must be detoxed of their greed addiction
In “Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You With the Bill),” David Cay Johnston, warns that the rich are like addicts, and to “the addicted, money is like cocaine, too much is never enough.” A few years ago an elite 300,000 Americans in “the top tenth of 1% of income had nearly as much income as all 150 million Americans who make up the economic lower half of our population.” The Super Rich Delusion is an addiction that requires a painful detox.

6. Warning: Politicians infected by Super-Rich Delusion, revolution
In “Washington’s Suicide Pact,” Newsweek’s Ezra Klein warns: “Congress is careening toward the worst of all worlds: massive job losses and an exploding deficit.” How bad? As many as 700,000 more jobs lost, says Moody’s chief economist, Mark Zandi. What a twist: Remember vice president Dick Cheney said “deficits don’t matter.” Today the GOP is so blinded by its obsession to destroy Obama’s presidency, deficits are now the only thing they say matters.

Wake up folks. The Super-Rich Delusion is destroying the American Dream for the rest of us. The Super Rich don’t care about you. They’re already stockpiling for the economic time bomb dead ahead. Don’t say you weren’t warned. Time for you to plan ahead for the coming revolution, for another depression.

Why I have No Respect For The Law ~ Prison for Peacemakers in Tacoma, Washington

Prison for Peacemakers in Tacoma, Washington | Common Dreams

Two Grandmothers, Two Priests and a Nun Go onto a Nuclear Base
by Bill Quigley

Two grandmothers, two priests and a nun were sentenced in federal court in Tacoma, WA Monday March 28, 2011, for confronting hundreds of US nuclear weapons stockpiled for use by the deadly Trident submarines.

Sentenced were: Sr. Anne Montgomery, 83, a Sacred Heart sister from New York, who was ordered to serve 2 months in federal prison and 4 months electronic home confinement; Fr. Bill Bischel, 81, a Jesuit priest from Tacoma Washington, ordered to serve 3 months in prison and 6 months electronic home confinement; Susan Crane, 67, a member of the Jonah House community in Baltimore, Maryland, ordered to serve 15 months in federal prison; Lynne Greenwald, 60, a nurse from Bremerton Washington, ordered to serve 6 months in federal prison; and Fr. Steve Kelly, 60, a Jesuit priest from Oakland California, ordered to serve 15 months in federal prison. They were also ordered to pay $5300 each and serve an additional year in supervised probation. Bischel and Greenwald are active members of the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, a community resisting Trident nuclear weapons since 1977.

What did they do?

In the darkness of All Souls night, November 2, 2009, the five quietly cut through a chain link perimeter fence topped with barbed wire.

Carefully stepping through the hole in the fence, they entered into the Kitsap-Bangor Navy Base outside of Tacoma Washington – home to hundreds of nuclear warheads used in the eight Trident submarines based there.

Walking undetected through the heavily guarded base for hours, they covered nearly four miles before they came to where the nuclear missiles are stored.

The storage area was lit up by floodlights. Dozens of small gray bunkers – about the size of double car garages - were ringed by two more chain link fences topped with taut barbed wire.

USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED one sign boldly proclaimed. Another said WARNING RESTRICTED AREA and was decorated with skull and crossbones.

This was it – the heart of the US Trident Pacific nuclear weapon program. Nuclear weapons were stored in the bunkers inside the double fence line.

Wire cutters cut through these fences as well. There they unfurled hand painted banners which said “Disarm Now Plowshares: Trident Illegal and Immoral”, knelt to pray and waited to be arrested as dawn broke.

What were they protesting against?

Each of the eight Trident submarines has 24 nuclear missiles on it. The Ground Zero community explains that each of the 24 missiles on one submarine have multiple warheads in it and each warhead has thirty times the destructive power of the weapon used on Hiroshima. One fully loaded Trident submarine carries 192 warheads, each designed to explode with the power of 475 kilotons of TNT force. If detonated at ground level each would blow out a crater nearly half a mile wide and several hundred feet deep.

The bunker area where they were arrested is where the extra missiles are stored.

In December 2010, the five went on trial before a jury in federal court in Tacoma charged with felony damage to government property, conspiracy and trespass.

But before the trial began the court told the defendants what they could and could not do in court. Evidence of the medical consequences of nuclear weapons? Not allowed. Evidence that first strike nuclear weapons are illegal under US and international law? Not allowed. Evidence that there were massive international nonviolent action campaigns against Trident missiles where juries acquitted protestors? Not allowed. The defense of necessity where violating a small law, like breaking down a door, is allowed where the actions are taken to prevent a greater harm, like saving a child trapped in a burning building? Not allowed.

Most of the jurors appeared baffled when defendants admitted what they did in their opening statements. They remained baffled when questions about nuclear weapons were objected to by the prosecutor and excluded by the court. The court and the prosecutor repeatedly focused the jury on their position that this was a trial about a fence. Defendants tried valiantly to point to the elephant in the room – the hundreds of nuclear weapons.

Each defendant gave an opening and closing statement explaining, as much as they were allowed, why they risked deadly force to expose the US nuclear arsenal.

Sojourner Truth was discussed as were Rosa Parks, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King.

The resistance of the defendants was in the spirit of the civil rights movement, the labor movement, the suffragist movement, the abolition of slavery movement.

Crowds packed the courtroom each of the five days of trial. Each night there was a potluck and a discussion of nuclear weapons by medical, legal and international experts who came for the trial but who were largely muted by the prosecution and the court.

While the jury held out over the weekend, ultimately, the activists were convicted.

Hundreds packed the courthouse today supporting the defendants. The judge acknowledged the good work of each defendant, admitted that prison was unlikely to deter them from further actions, but said he was bound to uphold the law otherwise anarchy would break out and take down society.

The prosecutors asked the judge to send all the defendants to federal prison plus three years supervised probation plus pay over five thousand dollars. The specific jail time asked for ranged from 3 years for Fr. Kelly, 30 months for Susan Crane, Lynne Greenwald, 7 months in jail plus 7 months home confinement, Sr. Anne Montgomery and Fr. Bill Bichsel, 6 months jail plus 6 months home confinement.

Each of the defendants went right into prison from the courtroom as the spectators sang to them. Outside the courthouse, other activists pledged to confront the Trident in whatever way is necessary to stop the illegal and immoral weapons of mass destruction.

Bill Quigley is part of the legal team supporting the defendants and was in Tacoma for the sentencing. You can learn more about the defendants at disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com.

14 Felonies Later, Gov Rick Scott Wants Taxpayers to Fund His Clinics

14 Felonies Later, Gov Rick Scott Wants Taxpayers to Fund His Clinics

March 27, 2011

By Sarah Jones

Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott better hope his wife doesn’t leave him any time soon.

Scott transferred 62 million dollars in Solantic stock (a chain of healthcare clinics) to a revocable trust in his wife’s name after he got elected. Now he’s passing a bill that will hugely benefit Solantic. He calls this privatization, which might ring a bell for you since Republicans have been singing its high praises ever since they discovered government contracts (i.e., socialized profits for their private companies, aka, welfare for the wealthy). Basically, your tax dollars will soon be going directly to Rick Scott’s wife’s bank account if his bill passes.

Perhaps in Republican circles, transferring your stock options into your wife’s name is distancing yourself from your personal profit. Sure, Republicans hate to empower a woman like that (hence, the trust is “revocable”), but it’s either give the stocks to her or heaven forbid, sell them just before you get into office and finally get to pass laws to enrich yourself, aka, the “Medicaid Reform Law.”

It sounds so Foxian, so “competition-oriented” – so “clean out government waste and fraudish.” Scott’s “Medicaid Reform” would give private health care companies unprecedented control over the government health care program for the poor, expanding on a pilot program started in Florida in 2005.

Mother Jones reported that the privatization pilot program was a total bust and caused huge delays in healthcare for patients:

According to a 2008 study by the Georgetown Center for Children and Families, participants experienced huge delays and restricted access to necessary treatments, says the center’s co-executive director, Joan Alker. Patients found the new system bureaucratic and confusing—and HMOs were prone to dropping out without warning. Dr. Aaron Elkin, president of the Broward County Medical Association, recently declared the program to be a failure. And Medicaid patients don’t have much better reviews. “It has taken four months to get a biopsy on a throat cancer due to the impediments placed by the HMOs for authorizations,” one participant in the program told NPR.

Gosh, that rings a bell, doesn’t it? These are the sorts of problems the Republicans claimed government healthcare would cause. Working with the SwiftBoat folks, Scott created the astroturf movement “Conservatives for Patient’s Rights” to oppose the Democrats’ healthcare reform act on the basis that it would be a “takeover” by “Washington bureaucrats” who would force patients to “stand in line” for care (also known as waiting 4 months for a throat biopsy).

And yet, these exact problems were caused by privatization. Perhaps it would be fair for us to call Scott’s privatization bill “Death Panels for Profit.”

Scott’s company, Solantic, does not take Medicaid, but they do business with private Medicaid HMOs. There are 32 Solantic clinics around the state of Florida, and they are growing rapidly – looking to do an IPO any day now. According to Scott’s female partner and former TV anchor, Solantic is the fourth largest clinic in the country.

In the 1990’s, Scott headed Columbia/HCA Healthcare, the largest for-profit hospital in America. Under Scott’s leadership, Columbia/HCA committed major Medicare fraud. They had to pay the government 2 billion dollars in settlement fees and interest, which made it the largest fraud case in history. The company was found guilty of systematically over-billing the taxpayer for services. Scott was forced to resign just before the judgment came down and Dr. Thomas Frist Jr., brother of U.S. Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., was brought in to replace him as chairman and CEO. Feel better yet?

Forbes reported that HCA “increased Medicare billings by exaggerating the seriousness of the illnesses they were treating. It also granted doctors partnerships in company hospitals as a kickback for the doctors referring patients to HCA. In addition, it gave doctors ‘loans’ that were never expected to be paid back, free rent, free office furniture, and free drugs from hospital pharmacies.”

Rick’s stewardship in one of the FBI’s highest priority white-collar crimes brought fraud not just to Florida, but also Texas, Georgia and Tennessee, in case you were feeling left out. This is what Rick Scott calls the competitive “free market.” And they wonder why we need regulators and we wonder why they don’t want them. Not to worry, though, Scott was paid $9.88 million in a settlement for being forced to resign as CEO, and he also left owning 10 million shares of stock worth over $350 million.

When Republicans tell you that private hospitals will be more “cost efficient,” they meant they are more cost efficient for the private company that has a deal with the government to get their hands on your tax dollars while denying services to the needy that you pay for. When they tell you these CEOs deserve their pay because they are “job creators,” it’s fair to ask just who paid for those jobs. When Republicans tout themselves as pro-business and claim that running a state or the country is like being the CEO, it’s probably best to look into their background and see exactly what they did with that company they ran. If they, like Scott, ran a company that admitted to committing fourteen felonies, you might want to think twice before turning your state’s coffers over to him.

A few years after the major fraud debacle, Scott started Solantic, a chain of urgent cares that quickly became one stop shopping for healthcare, sort of like the Wal-Mart of healthcare (an irony here is that urgent care clinics have grown as people are not able to take time off of work to see their regular doctors). Then Scott ran for governor, won, and refused to sell off his stock options or exclude his company from profiting from his legislation. Cue the stock transfer to his wife.

By the way, Solantic is currently under investigation by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for alleged Medicare fraud.

Do you want to turn your healthcare decisions over to a man who already had to step down for Medicare fraud once? I mean, do you think he has your best interests at heart?

Do you think anyone who stands to make a profit from not giving you services and who has already proven that profit rules his ethics and morals will suddenly want to do the right thing? Does it scare you when I say that Scott’s bill puts a “hard cap” on what these “private companies” can spend on their Medicaid patients? In other words, it’s not going to be about what you need anymore, but about what they can afford to give you within their profit model.

Leave it to a Republican governor to put a cherry on the insult. Scott signed an executive order ordering drug tests for state employees. And wouldn’t you know it, drug tests are one of the more popular services provided by Solantic. He’s also suggesting they do the same for welfare recipients.

“Floridians deserve to know that those in public service, whose salaries are paid with taxpayer dollars, are part of a drug-free workplace,” Scott said in a statement. “Just as it is appropriate to screen those seeking taxpayer assistance, it is also appropriate to screen government employees.”

Big daddy is in the house, and he’s cleaning up government fraud and waste by those awful, horrible, lazy, entitled state workers and the welfare bums won’t get away with it anymore! In other words, keep your eye over here, on the state workers and the welfare recipients while Scott dips his hands into the wide-open cookie jar of your tax dollars and just takes what he wants. After Enron, our non-activisty supreme court ruled that enriching oneself at the taxpayers cost is not illegal. So technically, Scott’s theft of the taxpayers to enrich himself is not prosecutable this time around.

No wonder he ran for office.

Florida does, however, have an ethics code that supposedly prevents them using their office for private gain. Scott spokespeople led voters to believe that Scott would recuse himself regulatory decisions that might impact his single largest financial holding, Solantic, since he refused to put the stocks in a blind trust.

Speaking of money, those drug tests will cost 2-3 million a year for taxpayers, plus the costs of the inevitable litigation. But it’s worth it, Scott’s administration assures us, for the peace of mind that your tax dollars won’t be paying for some drug addict to have a job.

Again, no need to concern yourself with Scott’s fortunes, as he owns a stake in S&S Family Entertainment as well as having been tied to Fox News via WebMD and Fit TV. Color yourself shocked. You might also like to know that Solantic has been subjected to numerous employment discrimination suits, stemming from an alleged Scott policy of not hiring overweight or elderly people. Also, Scott was once business partners with George W Bush.

And we wonder why things aren’t going well in Florida….

It seems that nosing into private healthcare decisions and playing hall-monitor to state employees is what Republicans do best. Of course, they do this best when they’re using your tax dollars to enrich their cronies and themselves.

If Scott wanted to put his money where his mouth is, he’d issue random drug tests for his doctors and nurses at Solantic, as well as monthly independent audits of the books. We can’t be too careful, after all. We have a known fraudster at the helm in Florida and he’s turning taxpayer money over to his private company. Kinda seems like we better keep an eye on him.

And he’d better keep an eye on his wife.

A Plea to the United States and Canada from Fitzwalkerstan

Daily Kos: A Plea to the United States and Canada from Fitzwalkerstan

In any other place on Earth, the actions undertaken by Scott Walker and the Fitzgerald crime family in the past few months would be called a military coup.

Walker has command over the Wisconsin National Guard, and with no provocation of any kind threatened to call them out to attack and intimidate his own people. The state legislature is controlled by one family, two brothers who report directly to the governor, effectively neutering an entire branch of government. Walker gained control of the State Patrol by appointing an unqualified puppet as its chief (another Fitzgerald, no less, who reports to nobody except Walker.) Walker, through his puppet, has co-opted the services of the patrol to form his own bloated private security detail and to illegally and forcefully remove peaceful protestors from public property.

The Capitol building is essentially closed to the people in violation of a court order and in violation of the state's Constitution. Laws are passed in the middle of the night with stealth 17-second votes, and by hastily arranged committees meeting in closed rooms with no public notice.

Today, Walker and the Fitzgeralds either bribed or threatened the bureaucrats of the Legislative Reference Bureau into publishing Walker's illegally passed and unconstitutional union-busting bill. They simply side-stepped the constitutionally elected Secretary of State and declared the bill to be the law, which they would enforce "as required." This despite a court order restraining them from publishing it and a letter from the Secretary of State to the Legislative Reference Bureau not to publish it without further instructions from him and the courts.

To recap, they control two branches of government and a majority of the Supreme Court, and they simply ignore any judge or any law they disagree with.

Checks and balances? There are none.

Walker's administration, through the Wisconsin GOP, is even harrassing a respected University of Wisconsin professor who dared to publish an article exposing a shadowy political action committee that writes boiler-plate laws introduced by Republican state legislators all across North America.

They are going after labor unions and intellectuals, restricting the voting rights of any group they consider liberal (young people and racial minorities), restricting or eliminating medical care and food assistance to the poor, and usurping the power of local town boards and school boards to set and fund their own budgets to meet their own local needs.

They are consolidating the power to govern in one office and in the hands of one deranged, unstable man who has admitted that he considered inciting violence to discredit his opposition.

They are steering money away from public safety and environmental regulations, raising taxes on poor people, and giving the money to large corporations.

In any other part of the world, we would call this a military coup, a fascist dictatorship, or a terrorist-sponsored government. We would issue economic sanctions while offering humanitarian aid. We would galvanize international opinion against this regime. One thing we would not do is recognize the regime as legitimate and continue to give it money or other support beyond what is necessary for the health and safety of the people.

Why not here? Why not now? What is the difference between Fitzwalkerstan and other banana republics? Palm trees?

When is a neighboring country outside Fitzwalkerstan going to step up and put limits on this insane leader? When?

US Uncut: Making Corporations Pay (Video)

US Uncut: Making Corporations Pay (Video)

Wednesday 23 March 2011

by: Laura Flanders  |  GRITtv | Video Interview

(Image: GritTV)

This Saturday, protests are planned in the UK, the US, and Canada against corporate tax avoiders and government austerity cuts. The UK Uncut movement has been going strong, occupying retail outlets as diverse as Vodafone and TopShop, and its solidarity movement in the US is just getting started. Using street theater and organizing largely on the web, the direct action movements aim to make tax dodging a whole lot less profitable for big banks like Bank of America and corporations like Verizon and FedEx. Allison Kilkenny has been covering the US Uncut movement for The Nation, and she joins us along with J.A. Myerson, a "tax avoidance consultant," to discuss the new resistance to paying for corporate welfare. 

More GRITtv

Corporate Tax Dodgers ~ Corporate Welfare

March Madness for Corporate Tax Dodgers | Common Dreams

Top seeds in the Tax Haven Tourney: banks and power companies
by Paul Buchheit

The small companies and public didn't have a chance in the early rounds. Now it's down to a few formidable corporate teams, the Cheat 16:

- General Electric made $10.3 billion in 2009, but received a $1.1 billion tax rebate.

- Forbes said about Bank of America in 2010: "How did they not pay any taxes on $4.4 billion in income?"

- Oil giant Exxon made a $45 billion profit in 2009, but paid no taxes in the United States.

- Citigroup had 4 quarters of billion-dollar profits in 2010, but paid no taxes.

- Wells Fargo made $12 billion but purchased Wachovia Bank to claim a $19 billion tax credit.

- Hewlett Packard's U.S. income tax rate was 4.3% in 2008 and 2.3% in 2009.

- Verizon's 10.5% tax rate, according to Forbes, is due to its partnership with Vodafone, the primary target in UK Uncut's protests against tax evaders.

- Chevron's tax rate was 1% in 2008.

- Boeing, which just won a $30 billion contract to build 179 airborne tankers, got $124 million back from the taxpayers in 2010.

- Over the past 5 years Amazon made $3.5 billion and paid taxes at the rate of 4.3%.

- Carnival Cruise Lines paid 1% in taxes on its $11.5 billion profit over the past 5 years.

- Koch Industries is not publicly traded, so their antics are kept private. But they benefit from taxpayer subsidies in ranching and logging.

- In 2008 CorporateWatch said Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp paid "astoundingly low taxes" because of tax havens.

- Google "cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years by shifting its money around foreign countries.

- Merck, the second-largest drugmaker in the U.S., last year brought more than $9 billion from abroad without paying any U.S. tax.

- Pfizer, the largest drugmaker in the U.S., erased $10 billion in taxes with an "accounting treatment."

All the above has been documented by US Uncut Chicago members on PayUpNow.org .

Who's projected for the Final Frauding Four?

Best Defense: Google uses a game plan called a "Double Irish Defense," which moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.

Best Offense: GE's 2010 SEC 10-K tax filing boldly states: "At December 31, 2010, $94 billion of earnings have been indefinitely reinvested outside the United States...we do not intend to repatriate these earnings.."

Most Steals: Citigroup: 427 tax haven subsidiaries

Best Trash talk: A General Electric spokeswoman: “G.E. pays many other taxes including payroll taxes on the wages of our employees, property taxes, sales and use and value added taxes."

Most game-ending bailouts: Bank of America received $45 Billion in tax payer bailout funds in 2008 and 2009. In 2009 the company earned a pretax income of $4.4 billion, but claimed a $1.9 Billion tax benefit from the government.

Teams with the most reserves:
General Electric: $77 billion
Google: $24 billion
That's 2 companies holding $101 billion that could be invested in jobs.

Tax Haven Tourney Champion? GE is the Duke of Tax Avoidance.

You won't hear about this from The Corporate Owned Main Stream Media~ Thousands take to the streets on the 8th anniversary of the Iraq war to demand:

 ANSWER Coalition

NOTE:  I didn't see anything about this on any of the news channels. Not CNN, not MSNBC, not ABC, NBC, CBS (I don't know about FOX as I'd rather gouge my own eyes out than watch even 4 seconds of FOX).   I didn't see anything in print on any of the news websites.  However, I did see plenty of coverage on some very import celebrity gossips.    There is obviously a Media Blackout on Anti-War, Civil Rights, Labor/Union demonstrations.  We no longer have even the illusion of a Democratic Government, The United States is now openly an Oligarchy Government.  

R.I.P. America

End the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan! Stop the bombing of Libya!

On March 19, thousands of people took to the streets to demand an end to U.S. war and military intervention abroad and funding for people’s needs at home. Mass demonstrations took place in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and many other cities across the United States and the world. Below are some initial reports.

Los Angeles

Los Angeles Photo: Travis Wilkerson

Thousands of people hit the streets in Los Angeles in a spirited, youthful demonstration to stop the wars. Led by Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, including active-duty soldiers and marines, the march of well over 4,000 people chanted, “Money for jobs and education, not for wars and occupation!”

A huge student contingent from high schools and community colleges in Long Beach, Orange County and L.A. participated, along with large numbers from the Muslim community. Speakers included Vietnam Veteran Ron Kovic, students, teachers, union leaders and anti-war activists. Chris Shiflet, the lead guitarist for the Foo Fighters, spoke and played a song.

The ANSWER Coalition initiated the March 19 protest in Los Angeles. Over 100 additional community and progressive organizations endorsed the action.

San Francisco

Despite cold, steady rain, 1,800 people marched and hundreds more rallied in San Francisco demanding an end to the wars and occupations around the world and the war on working people here. Speakers at the opening rally condemned the launching of a new war against Libya, which had begun just hours before.

A strong contingent from UNITE HERE Local 2, the SF hotel workers union, helped lead the march, which ended with a massive picket line in front of the boycotted Westin St. Francis hotel at Union Square. The demonstration was organized by the March 19 Coalition, which was initiated by the ANSWER Coalition.

Washington, D.C.

Members of March Forward! and Veterans for Peace are arrested in front of the White House Photo: Bill Hughes

Over 1,500 people participated in a veterans-led civil resistance action initiated by Veterans for Peace that led to the arrest of 113 people at the White House. The ANSWER Coalition, March Forward! and many other organizations supported the event.

At the rally in Lafayette Park, Brian Becker, the national coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition, said: “The U.S. government never tells the people that ‘we’ are going to invade or bomb another country in order to control and exploit its natural resources—especially oil and natural gas—or the labor of the occupied people. That is, of course, the truth. But no mother or father would allow their child to go to war for the crass function of exploitation. The U.S. government always states that each Pentagon invasion or bombing attack is for humanitarian rather than imperial objectives.

“Today, on the eight anniversary of the criminal invasion of Iraq, the United States, Britain and France are poised to begin a massive bombing of Libya--again, they say, for noble, humanitarian reasons. That is a lie that we must expose. Libya is the largest producer of oil on the African continent and the imperialists want to re-conquer the country and its resources. We, in the ANSWER Coalition, stand against any military action against Libya. The Libyan people, and they alone, must be the masters of their own destiny.”

Ryan Endicott from March Forward! speaks in Washington, D.C. Photo: Roger Scott

Caneisha Mills, an organizer with the ANSWER Coalition, also addressed Libya in her talk, saying: “The U.S. government claims it will bring democracy and freedom to Libya; these are the same terms used to invade Iraq! After the massive and ongoing slaughter in Iraq and Afghanistan we know that is not true!”

Ryan Endicott, a member of March Forward! and an Iraq war veteran who served in Ramadi, told the crowd: “We know firsthand that our enemy is not the people of Iraq, who for eight years have been struggling to survive a brutal occupation. It is not the people of Afghanistan who for over a decade have been struggling to survive a brutal occupation. The biggest threat to the people of the United States is not thousands of miles away, but hundreds of yards away, right here in the White House, in the Pentagon, on Wall Street. It’s the bankers that take our homes, the CEOs that lay off from our jobs only to take million dollar bonuses.”

Chicago

On March 19 in Chicago, 1,000 people marched on Michigan Ave. to demand an immediate end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Protesters carried signs that read "No War on Libya!" and "Stand Against War and Racism: Money for Jobs and Education, Not War!" A very popular chant was "End, End the War! Tax, Tax the Rich!"

The many contingents in the march included Palestine solidarity groups, free Bradley Manning activists, youth and student contingents, many neighborhood peace groups and the ANSWER Chicago contingent, which carried Egyptian and Wisconsin flags, and a banner that read: "From Egypt to Wisconsin to Chicago ... : Time to Fight Back!"

Protests also took place around the country, including in Phoenix, Arizona; Fort Bragg, Fresno, Laguna Hills, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz, California; Evergreen, Colorado; New Haven, Connecticut; Daytona Beach, North Miami and Orlando, Florida; Atlanta, Georgia; Chicago, Illinois; Dubuque and Iowa City, Iowa; Boston, Massachusetts; St. Paul, Minnesota; Biloxi, Mississippi; Kansas City, Missouri; Keene, New Hampshire; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Highland Park, New Jersey; Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus and Dayton, Ohio; Eugene and Portland, Oregon; King of Prussia, Pennsylvania; Hilton Head Island, South Carolina; Austin, Dallas and Houston, Texas; Salt Lake City, Utah; Seattle, Washington; Racine, Wisconsin.

The Contemptable: Scott Fitzgerald and Wisconsin Republicans

Scott Fitzgerald and Wisconsin GOP Pull Back From the Brink | Common Dreams

Scott Fitzgerald and Wisconsin GOP Pull Back From the Brink

by Brendan Fischer

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald has backed off a March 14 announcement that he would effectively eliminate Senate Democrats' right to vote during committee hearings and sessions. At first glance, it may appear that Fitzgerald and company are retreating from weeks of out-of-control decision-making, but the more likely explanation is that blocking votes may be unconstitutional and illegal. Plus, the move was completely contrary to Fitzgerald's prior claims that he was only trying to force the fourteen back into Wisconsin and "back to work." In a temporary win for legislative sanity, Fitzgerald seems to have backed down for now.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) and Glenn Grothman (L) before the start of a Senate hearing at the state Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, February 25, 2011. (REUTERS/Darren Hauck) Because citizens speak in the legislature through their elected officials, the 2.2 million residents of Senate districts represented by Democrats would have been silenced by Fitzgerald's new rules. At least one Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice has argued that, because citizen speech flows through their elected officials, voters' First Amendment rights are violated if a representative's vote is "cancelled by the acts of others."

While Fitzgerald would likely respond that residents in Democratic senate districts were already disenfranchised when their senator fled the state, that assertion is easily rebuffed: those senators, acting on their own volition, took an affirmative act to delay passage of a bill they believed would adversely impact their constituents. Fleeing the state is analogous to a filibuster or a decision to abstain from a vote. Democrats denying quorum was intended to influence the outcome of legislation and to shape public debate to favor their constituency's interests. In contrast, Fitzgerald's refusal to count Democratic votes would be prohibiting any action on behalf of the Democrat's constituents.

Additionally, Fitzgerald's decision raises 14th Amendment Equal Protection issues, as it will disproportionately silence the state's African American and Latino populations. Wisconsin's populations of color are concentrated in Senate districts represented by Democrats, particularly the 6th District (Spencer Coggs) and the 4th District (represented by Lena Taylor). A right-wing Majority Leader silencing the politicians who represent people of color sounds eerily similar to the Jim Crow era.

If Fitzgerald blocked Democratic votes, he himself could have been found in violation of Wisconsin's contempt laws.

Fitzgerald's March 14 memo asserted that votes from the fourteen Senate Democrats will not be counted because they remain in contempt. The original contempt order may not have been subject to legal challenge because it was passed under Senate rules, which courts will not enforce or review. It also did not mention any sanctions related to voting, instead effectuating unprecedented warrants calling for the arrest and return of the fourteen. Wisconsin Statutes have separate contempt laws for public officials, and Fitzgerald may have violated those laws had he actually blocked the voting rights of the Democratic Senators ( the contempt statute would also have been triggered had the arrest warrants been acted upon, according to a legal memo from Cullen, Weston, Pines & Bach).
Wis. Stat. § 13.26: "Each house may punish as a contempt, by imprisonment ... for one or more of the following offenses: (1)(d)… attempting by menace or other corrupt means or device to control or influence a member's vote or to prevent the member from voting."
Luckily for Fitzgerald, he did not follow-through with his threat to "prevent the member[s] from voting" by use of the arguably "corrupt means" of an impermissible punishment for a trumped-up contempt finding. While "corrupt" is not defined in this statute, it appears to refer to dishonesty or other generalized misconduct (like "menace") rather than quid pro quo corruption.

Faced with declining poll numbers and massive opposition protests, Scott Fitzgerald and Wisconsin Republicans have been panicking and making a series of legally problematic decisions (including a seventeen-second roll call in the Assembly, a committee meeting not properly noticed under the state's open meeting law, and violating court orders by conducting legislative action while the Capitol building was in virtual lockdown). While they pulled back from the brink this time, we'll see what they do during the budget debates.

It's Not About The Budget

Michigan's Republican Gov. Rick Snyder increases taxes to the tune of 1.7 billion dollars on the backs of seniors and the poor so that he can give back 1.8 billion dollars in the form of tax breaks to Big Business. Gov. Rick Snyder also proposes to give himself the power to dissolve elected government and put in place Wall Street Managers . Say Good-bye to Democracy: Rachel Maddow offers one of the best explanations I've heard to date.

Bank of America Is Bad For Americans

Daily Kos: All in a Month’s Work- Crashing BofA, Drawing Beck’s Ire & Shaming Corporate Tax Dodgers

Open your wallet. Take out a dollar bill, and feel it between your fingers. That thin piece of paper is more than Bank of America, Citigroup, Verizon and Boeing all paid in income taxes last year, combined.

Read on below the fold if you know that's just plain wrong, and if it makes you downright angry.

                                                                     *****

One month ago to the date, I was intrigued by an article my dad emailed to me with the subject line, “This looks right up your alley.”  That article was “How to Build a Progressive Tea Party” by Johann Hari, describing the rising UK Uncut movement that holds tax dodgers’ feet to the fire across the pond.  The implication was that we should do the same in the United States.

Little did my dad know that just 2 weeks later, we would hold events in 50 cities around the country with 2,000+ activists hitting Bank of America storefronts to protest the fact that they made $4.4 Billion in profits while paying $0 in taxes. We took to the streets to tell the people directly that if this one corporation alone paid their fair share, we could ‘uncut’ $1.7 Billion in early childhood education (Head Start & Title I).  Activists came, direct actions were held, and we persuaded the people.

The message is magnetic and it spreads like populist wildfire.  Everyone agrees.  We win.

Our message is a simple one- before you fire one more teacher, before you take one more police officer off the streets, before you close down one more fire station, before you sacrifice one more decent public servant upon the altar of deficit reduction, our political leaders have an obligation to make sure corporations are paying their fair share in taxes like the rest of us.

Right now, we're missing out on up to $100 billion per year in corporate tax revenue because of offshore tax haven abuse- that's $1 trillion each decade. Bank of America alone uses 115 tropical tax havens to hide their profits. Instead of Congress cutting higher education to the tune of $100 Billion this year (Pell Grants) or cutting low-income heating assistance for poor families, Congress could simply pass legislation that makes offshore tax havens illegal (see: Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act).

At the first BofA investors' conference in 3 years, US Uncut NYC found a way inside and called out a roomful of millionaire and billionaire hedge fund managers and bank executives to their faces. Glenn Beck has twice set aside time on his show to call us Marxists/Communists/Socialists who want to "end capitalism as we know it."  All we are saying, Mr. Beck, is that “we pay our taxes, why don’t they?”  Where’s the comrade in that, psychopath?

The media has begun calling us the ‘progressive tea party’.  Well, that’s handy for the attention span of the 24-hour news cycle, but let’s be clear about a few things.  First, we have no billionaires funding our movement, nor a bank account for that matter (your money’s no good here, only your capacity for action).  This ain’t Astroturf funded by oil executives busing us around the country along with a major cable news network providing free national publicity – this is grassroots pure and simple – by the people, for the people, and of the people (the way it should be).  Lastly, US Uncut is focused on action, and like the tea party, we prefer direct action in full view of the public instead of clicktivism and online petitions (you know who you are).  This is truly a people-powered movement, its showing no sign of slowing down, and we shall be heard.

US Uncut's message isn't one that endorses any specific candidates for office, or any major political party- we are a united group of citizens who believe its wrong to make the other 98% of us foot the bill for the greediest 2%. We're fighting for teachers, for police officers, firefighters, libraries, students, the unemployed, and everyone who has been victimized by corporate greed and a complicit government's manufactured budget crisis.

Our next global day of action is Saturday, March 26th. Uncut movements in France, Netherlands, Sudan, Canada, Mexico, Australia and Switzerland will be joining UK Uncut and US Uncut as we take to the streets to fight the most egregious corporate tax dodgers. Can we all shake off the chains of complicity and stand in solidarity for one cause, worldwide?

Wouldn't it be great if our legislators and the talking heads on TV all stopped their chatter about "spreading the pain around" and "shared sacrifice," and instead filled the airwaves with populist language that appeals to the rest of us? Perhaps another month from now, liberal and conservative pundits will capitalize on middle-class anger and use language like, "they caused this crisis- make them pay for it" or "this isn't a spending problem, its a revenue problem."

Wouldn't it be great if the geriatric rednecks sitting in red, white & blue lawn chairs while holding "STOP THE SPENDING, SUPER SECRET TERRORIST MUSLIM OBAMA" signs were replaced in the media? In another month's time, we might see scads of slightly younger folks along with ‘soccer moms’ and disabled veterans all standing together, waving flags, and holding signs like "CHOP FROM THE TOP – BANK OF AMERICA IS BAD FOR AMERICA!"

What if the progressive message of corporate accountability dominated the media coverage on Tax Day this year, instead of Fox News tea party rallies at the national mall? What if 10,000 people descended on Washington, D.C. on April 18th for a rally focused on egregious corporate tax dodgers and how their greed directly hurts We the People? What if these progressives presented a one-page bill to Congress that made it illegal to hide profits overseas, demanded action, and dared them to pass it?

This is our time to change the debate for once. This is our time to put aside our nitpicking and our petty ideological differences to stand together and demand our leaders act on this grave injustice that impacts us all.  This is our time for direct and meaningful action.

Instead of banks rewarding themselves with bonuses that could solve every state budget crisis and lower the unemployment rate by 4 percentage points, what if banks were all collectively forced to pay billions back to Uncle Sam for all those years of tax dodging? If we all stood together, united in this one cause and refused to relent until our leaders gave in and corporations finally paid up, we would quickly triumph.

Aren't you tired of wondering why the President we worked so hard to elect hasn't led a movement to drive a stake through the heart of the US Chamber of Commerce? Aren't you tired of clicking endless petitions to be sent to Congressmen already bought and paid for by Wall Street and K Street? Aren't you ready to finally be seen and be heard out in the streets, where we can't be ignored?

US Uncut is. Take a stand with us, and go to usuncut.org to find everything you need to get started.

The momentum is finally on our side.  Let's get to work.  #Winning

The revolution will be tweeted, liked, & shared.

What A Politician Sounds Like When He Works For The American People -and- Not For A Corporation

Dennis Kucinich and Berni Sanders. Politicians For The American People

Eight Civics Lessons from Governor Walker

Eight Civics Lessons from Governor Walker | Common Dreams

Published on Monday, March 14, 2011 by Huffington Post

by Diane Ravitch

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin has taught the nation some very important civics lessons. The price is high, but we should pay careful attention to what he teaches by example.

The first lesson: Citizens should not be hoodwinked by rhetoric. Governor Walker said that the state was broke. He said that public sector workers had to make larger contributions to the cost of their pensions and health care, even as he handed out generous corporate tax breaks for the same amount. Doing a reverse Robin Hood, he took from the middle class to enrich the powerful. The unions promptly agreed to pay what the governor proposed, effectively cutting their compensation, but the governor would not take yes for an answer. He insisted on breaking the unions, even though no financial issues were involved.

Lesson two: It is really important to vote. Only 51.7% of eligible voters in Wisconsin cast a ballot last November, and they ended up with a governor and a legislature who are wreaking havoc on state government and decimating vital public services.

Lesson three: Voters should listen carefully to the candidates and ask for details about what they will do if they win. Scott Walker promised to balance the budget but he didn't reveal his intention to strip away collective bargaining rights from public sector workers. Journalists and citizens should have asked how he planned to balance the budget.

Lesson four: Politics in a democracy is different from politics in an authoritarian state. When there is strong opposition to their decisions, they negotiate and compromise. Negotiation and compromise are not signs of weakness, but of the disposition needed to build consensus.

Lesson five: Leaders in a democracy do not crush their opposition. Politics is not war. Leaders may not agree with the people on the other side of the aisle, but at the end of the day, they recognize them as "my loyal opposition," not my enemy. That spirit of comity is at the heart of our democracy. Elected officials do not destroy those with whom they disagree.

Lesson six: Citizens should not believe politicians who talk "school reform" yet plan to cut $1 billion from the state's education budget, while privatizing public schools. Schools will be devastated by the cuts. Class sizes will soar. Programs that children need will be eliminated. And for-profit operators will find a way to make money from a dire situation. This is not school reform.

Lesson seven: Governor Walker's attack on teachers has galvanized millions of demoralized teachers across the nation. The fact that Wisconsin's teachers organized and protested in the face of insuperable odds has inspired their colleagues across the nation. Teachers realize that it is not only their collective bargaining rights that are at risk, but their profession. Wisconsin will lose many senior teachers -- the master teachers needed in every school -- who will retire to save their pensions, their old-age security.

Lesson eight: In his effort to destroy public sector unions, Governor Walker joins in common cause with other Republican governors, including those in New Jersey, Ohio, Idaho, Tennessee, and Indiana and elsewhere. It's time to remind them that the International Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, contains Article 23, section 4, which says: "Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests." When the Declaration was passed, only eight nations abstained, not only the Soviet bloc, but also South Africa -- which opposed the pledge of racial equality -- and Saudi Arabia -- which objected to the pledge of religious toleration.

So Governor Walker and his fellow anti-union governors have decided to demolish one of the pillars of a democratic society: the right to join a trade union for the protection of one's interests. Totalitarian societies ban unions outright or create faux unions without any collective bargaining rights. Not a club that good Americans should want to join!

By his negative example, Governor Scott Walker has reminded us about the rights and obligations of citizenship, about the importance of standing up for the right of children to attend a good public school, and about the dangers to our democracy of the path that he has charted for his state.

Now it's up to us to learn from those civics lessons and get our democracy back on track.

© 2011 Huffington Post

Diane Ravitch is a historian of education at New York University. She is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. She has written many books and articles about American education, including: The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform, (Simon & Schuster, 2000); The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (Knopf, 2003); The English Reader: What Every Literate Person Needs to Know (Oxford, 2006), which she edited with her son Michael Ravitch.

Thank You Supreme Court Justices; Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy

ThinkProgress » Big Oil Lobby Announces It Will Start Donating Directly To Candidates

Note: The Justices who voted in favor of Big Corporations against The American People in The Citizens United Ruling are:
Roberts
Alito
Scalia 
Thomas 
Kenned

Big Oil Lobby Announces It Will Start Donating Directly To Candidates

The American Petroleum Institute, the Big Oil industry’s chief lobbying organization, will start directly backing political candidates in the second quarter of this year. API, whose membership includes oil giants like Exxon-Mobil and Chevron, already spends tens of millions of dollars every year on lobbying, advertisements and Astroturf campaigns to support the the oil industry agenda. As CAP’s Dan Weiss wrote, API “wants to drill in fragile, sensitive places, keep government tax breaks, expand offshore drilling without reforms, and block global warming pollution reduction requirements.”

“This is adding one more tool to our toolkit,” Martin Durbin, API’s executive vice president for government affairs, told Bloomberg News. “At the end of the day, our mission is trying to influence the policy debate.” As Bloomberg pointed out, oil-supported political action committees like the Independent Petroleum Association of America overwhelmingly donate to Republican candidates.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, API spent $6.7 million on lobbying alone last year, after clearing $7 million in 2009. In 2010, API was the seventh most prolific spender in the oil and gas industry, following ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Shell, Koch Industries and BP.
API’s turn toward direct political donations is doubly problematic because, in addition to acting as the industry’s chief lobbyists, the institute runs technical committees that set standards for the oil industry. In its official report, the commission that investigated the BP oil spill found that API was too “compromised” to be setting industry standards. “Because they would make oil and gas industry operations potentially more costly, API regularly resists agency rulemakings that government regulators believe would make those operations safer, and API favors rulemaking that promotes industry autonomy from government oversight,” the commission found. And this was before API established a political action committee!
In its proposed 2012 budget, the Obama administration suggested, once again, removing the billions in subsidies that taxpayers give oil companies every year. API has been at the forefront of the lobbying fight to preserve Big Oil’s subsidies, demonizing the removal of them as new “energy taxes,” even while admitting that cutting the subsidies and plowing the money back into clean energy technology would create “a lot more jobs.”

Democracy In America ~ R.I.P. ~ America Is Now A Corporate Owned State

Union Protesters Being removed one by one from wisconsin Capitol

Racist Politicians Trying To Wipe Out Black History

NOTE:   This is why the GOP/Tea Party really want to defund Public Television & Public Radio.  Keeping The American People ignorant is advantages to The GOP agenda.  A real eye-opening video at the bottom of this post.

~~Patty

Texas school board approves controversial textbook changes

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/culture/texas-school-board-approves-controversial-textbook-changes/954/

By Need to Know Editor

May 23, 2010

The Texas State Board of Education adopted controversial new social studies textbook standards Friday, emphasizing the Christian influences of the nation’s founding fathers, highlighting conservative groups and personalities while downplaying liberal ones, and rewriting common terms such as “democratic” to fall more in line with standards the board deemed more conservative.
The news standards, approved 9 to 5 along party lines by the predominantly Republican Christian board, will affect 4.8 million children in the state of Texas over 10 years, and may influence textbooks published in other states, which often adopt Texas guidelines, where a large percentage of textbooks are published.
According to the Associated Press,

In one of the most significant curriculum changes, the board diluted the rationale for the separation of church and state in a high school government class, noting that the words were not in the Constitution and requiring students to compare and contrast the judicial language with the First Amendment’s wording.

The board also required that the U.S. be referred to as a “constitutional republic” rather than a “democratic” one.
Conservative panel members argued that the state curriculum had long been dominated by liberal ideas, and it was aiming to reverse the trend.

“I think we’ve corrected the imbalance we’ve had in the past and now have our curriculum headed straight down the middle,” Republican Don McLeroy, one of seven social conservatives on the board, said, according to the Dallas Morning News. “I’m very pleased with what we’ve accomplished.”

Rod Paige, a former secretary of education under President George Bush appeared during public testimony and requested that the board delay its vote on the standards. “We have allowed ideology to drive and define the standards of our curriculum in Texas.”
Among the controversial amendments adopted, according to the Texas Education Agency:

• Analyze Abraham Lincoln’s ideas about liberty, equality, union and government as contained in his first and second inaugural addresses and the Gettysburg Address and contrast them with the ideas contained in Jefferson Davis’s inaugural address.

• Examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America and guaranteed its free exercise by saying that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, and compare and contrast this to the phrase “separation of church and state.”

• Explain instances of institutional racism in American society.

• Discuss the solvency of long term entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare.

The final day of the three-day voting process began with an invocation given by Cynthia Dunbar, a conservative member on the board, who shared her views that Christianity is an integral part of the founding of the country. “I believe no one can read the history of our country without realizing that the Good Book and the spirit of the savior have from the beginning been our guiding geniuses. Whether we look to the first charter of Virginia, or the charter of New England, or the charter of Massachusetts Bay, or the fundamental orders of Connecticut, the same objective is present, a Christian land governed by Christian principles.”
Some other highlights from the debate:

• In a discussion about Barack Obama, one conservative board member, David Bradley, suggested his middle name, Hussein, be included. After heated debated, Bradley withdraws his amendment, and the board agrees to list the president’s name as Barack H. Obama, as it is on the White House website.
• A debate on the causes of the civil war was resolved  with the answer: “sectionalism, states’ rights and slavery.” Critics like the Texas Freedom Network argued that this list waters down the most important cause of the Civil War: slavery.
• Oscar Romero, a bishop from El Salvador assassinated in 1980, was added back to the standards in a unanimous vote. He had been removed a list of human rights activists when many board members did not know who he was. One member joked that there had been “no movie” made about him. He was later corrected. (Raul Julia starred in “Romero” in 1989.) The incident became fodder for the national news media, including “The Daily Show.”

A bill introduced into the California state Senate attempts to protect California schools from the decisions made in Texas by requiring California’s board of education to screen state curricula for any of the new standards adopted in Texas. According to the Associated Press:

The bill describes the Texas curriculum changes as “a sharp departure from widely accepted historical teachings” and “a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California.”

http://secondcivilwar.wordpress.com/

Programs At Risk To Fund The Tax Breaks For The Wealthy

Lose your house, lose your vote

Lose your house, lose your vote | Michigan Messenger

By Eartha Jane Melzer | 09.10.08 | 6:42 am

The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County, Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.

State election rules allow parties to assign “election challengers” to polls to monitor the election. In addition to observing the poll workers, these volunteers can challenge the eligibility of any voter provided they “have a good reason to believe” that the person is not eligible to vote. One allowable reason is that the person is not a “true resident of the city or township.”

The Michigan Republicans’ planned use of foreclosure lists is apparently an attempt to challenge ineligible voters as not being “true residents.”

One expert questioned the legality of the tactic.

“You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,” said J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based public-interest law firm. “I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.”

As for the practice of challenging the right to vote of foreclosed property owners, Hebert called it, “mean-spirited.”

GOP ties to state’s largest foreclosure law firm

The Macomb GOP’s plans are another indication of how John McCain’s campaign stands to benefit from the burgeoning number of foreclosures in the state. McCain’s regional headquarters are housed in the office building of foreclosure specialists Trott & Trott. The firm’s founder, David A. Trott, has raised between $100,000 and $250,000 for the Republican nominee.

The Macomb County party’s plans to challenge voters who have defaulted on their house payments is likely to disproportionately affect African-Americans who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters. More than 60 percent of all sub-prime loans — the most likely kind of loan to go into default — were made to African-Americans in Michigan, according to a report issued last year by the state’s Department of Labor and Economic Growth.

Challenges to would-be voters

Statewide, the Republican Party is gearing up for a comprehensive voter challenge campaign, according to Denise Graves, party chair for Republicans in Genessee County, which encompasses Flint. The party is creating a spreadsheet of election challenger volunteers and expects to coordinate a training with the regional McCain campaign, Graves said in an interview with Michigan Messenger.

Whether the Republicans will challenge voters with foreclosed homes elsewhere in the state is not known.

Kelly Harrigan, deputy director of the GOP’s voter programs, confirmed that she is coordinating the group’s “election integrity” program. Harrigan said the effort includes putting in place a legal team, as well as training election challengers. She said the challenges to voters were procedural rather than personal. She referred inquiries about the vote challenge program to communications director Bill Nowling, who promised information but did not return calls.

Party chairman Carabelli said that the Republican Party is training election challengers to “make sure that [voters] are who they say who they are.”

When asked for further details on how Republicans are compiling challenge lists, he said, “I would rather not tell you all the things we are doing.”

Vote suppression: Not an isolated effort

The issue of voter challenges is arising around the country. In Ohio, the Columbus Dispatch, in an July 6 article titled “Foreclosed-on voters using old addresses could snag election,” reported that Doug Preisse, a member of the board of elections in Franklin County and the chair of the local GOP, said he has not ruled out challenging voters before the election.

Hebert, the voting-rights lawyer, sees a pattern.

“At a minimum what you are seeing is a fairly comprehensive effort by the Republican Party, a systematic broad-based effort to put up obstacles for people to vote,” he said. “Nobody is contending that these people are not legally registered to vote.

“When you are comprehensively challenging people to vote,” Hebert went on, “your goals are two-fold: One is you are trying to knock people out from casting ballots; the other is to create a slowdown that will discourage others,” who see a long line and realize they can’t afford to stay and wait.

Challenging all voters registered to foreclosed homes could disrupt some polling places, especially in the Detroit metropolitan area. According to the real estate Web site RealtyTrac, one in every 176 households in Wayne County, metropolitan Detroit, received a foreclosure filing during the month of July. In Macomb County, the figure was one household in every 285, meaning that 1,834 homeowners received the bad news in just one month. The Macomb County foreclosure rate puts it in the top three percent of all U.S. counties in the number of distressed homeowners.

Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Kent and Genessee counties were — in that order — the counties with the most homeowners facing foreclosure, according to RealtyTrac. As of July, there were more than 62,000 foreclosure filings in the entire state.

Joe Rozell, director of elections for Oakland County in suburban Detroit, acknowledged that challenges such as those described by Carabelli are allowed by law but said they have the potential to create long lines and disrupt the voting process. With 890,000 potential voters closely divided between Democratic and Republican, Oakland County is a key swing county of this swing state.

According to voter challenge directives handed down by Republican Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, voter challenges need only be “based on information obtained through a reliable source or means.”

“But poll workers are not allowed to ask the reason” for the challenges, Rozell said. In other words, Republican vote challengers are free to use foreclosure lists as a basis for disqualifying otherwise eligible voters.

David Lagstein, head organizer with the Michigan Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), described the plans of the Macomb GOP as “crazy.”

“You would think they would think, ‘This is going to look too heartless,’” said Lagstein, whose group has registered 200,000 new voters statewide this year and also runs a foreclosure avoidance program. “The Republican-led state Senate has not moved on the anti-predatory lending bill for over a year and yet [Republicans] have time to prey on those who have fallen victim to foreclosure to suppress the vote.”

—-

REPORT: In 22 Statehouses Across The Country, Republican Conservatives Move To Disenfranchise Voters

ThinkProgress » REPORT: In 22 Statehouses Across The Country, Conservatives Move To Disenfranchise Voters

In statehouses across the country, Republican lawmakers are raising the specter of “voter fraud” to push through legislation that would dramatically restrict the voting rights of college students, rural voters, senior citizens, the disabled and the homeless. As part of their larger effort to silence Main Street, conservatives are pushing through new photo identification laws that would exclude millions from voting, depress Hispanic voter turnout by as much as 10 percent, and cost taxpayers millions of dollars. In the next few months, a new set of election laws could make going to the polls and registering to vote significantly more difficult — in some cases even barring groups of citizens from voting in the communities where they live.

Conservative legislators across the country have said these laws are necessary to combat alleged mass voter fraud. But these fears are completely overblown and states already have tough voting laws on the books: fraudulent voters face felony charges, hefty fines, and even lengthy prison time. In Missouri, for example, voter fraud carries a penalty of no less than 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Yet conservatives have insisted on finding a legislative solution to a non-existent problem. In states like Indiana, where an ID law passed in 2005, both nuns and college students have found themselves turned away from the polls. Similar laws are on the books in eight other states and that number could expand dramatically in coming months. ThinkProgress examined these efforts in eight states:

NEW HAMPSHIRE: In the most egregious example of voter disenfranchisement legislation in the country, state Rep. Gregory Sorg (R) has introduced a bill that would bar thousands of college students and service members from voting in the communities where they live and attend school. According to New Hampshire House Speaker William O’Brien (R) the legislation is nececessary because there “are kids voting liberal, voting their feelings, with no life experience.” A diverse coalition of young veterans, libertarians, conservatives, and progressives have organized against the bill. Both state politicians and local law professors have said the law is unconstitutional, citing “Newberger v. Peterson — a 1972 federal district court decision that ruled the state cannot bar college students from voting in New Hampshire even if they intend to leave after graduation.” Sorg told a public hearing that he had not read the decision and did not “care” for it.

MINNESOTA: Republican representatives have introduced two separate bills in the statehouse that would require voters to present photo identification at the polls. The more expansive of the bills would end same-day voter registration and create a large electronic database which would scan voter’s IDs. Conservatives have said the bill is necessary to end alleged voter fraud in the state, claims that the Minnesota County Attorneys Association have called “frivolous.” Other groups, including the ACLU and Common Cause, have raised concerns about the bill’s constitutionality, feasibility, and cost. Gov. Mark Dayton (R) has indicated that he will not sign the legislation.

NORTH CAROLINA: Republican legislators have introduced a photo ID bill that the Institute for Southern Studies estimates will cost taxpayers more than $20 million. Once again, the legislation’s target is phantom “voter fraud” — even though in 2008 authorities reported only 40 voting irregularities out of 4.3 million votes cast. The real targets of the bill would be the state’s elderly, disabled and college-aged voters. One state senator has called the legislation a “slap in the face” to the more than 35 percent 35 percent of registered voters who live in isolated, rural counties.

SOUTH CAROLINA: Despite dying in the state senate last year, a bill requiring voters to present a photo ID has passed both legislative houses in contentious party-line votes. The two houses will now have to resolve their two different versions. One local NAACP official called the legislation “Jim Crow Jr.” and said the law was “during President Obama’s election, lots of blacks were out voting and doing absentee voting. (Republicans) don’t want the African-American vote to come out that strongly again.”

WISCONSIN: In the midst of Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) showdown with the Main Street Movement last week, Republicans rammed through a voter ID bill that critics have said shows “zero respect for Wisconsin voters.” Some analysts have said that the bill also shows little respect for the Constitution. Salon’s David Weigel wrote from Madison that “the legislation, as written, appeared to have constitutional problems that would shred it in court.”

TEXAS: Despite facing a $10-11 billion budget shortfall, Gov. Rick Perry prioritized a voter ID bill as an “emergency item” last month — forcing the Texas legislature to act on the bill before dealing with the state’s budget crisis. Since then the Senate has passed a voter ID law that would be the most restrictive in the nation and almost certainly depress turnout among low-income Texans. That shift could make all the difference in a state where in the past seven years, more than half a dozen state house races have been decided by less than fifty votes. The bill is now being considered by the Republican-controlled House and is widely expected to pass the lower chamber.

MISSOURI: In a party-line vote, state senators approved both a constitutional amendment and a bill requiring voter identification at the polls. Afterwards, one Democratic State Senator tweeted that the Senate had “just voted to disenfranchise at least 230,000 voters.” The measure is now headed to the Missouri House, where it has traditionally enjoyed strong support.

KANSAS: Monday the State Senate approved legislation, originally proposed by Secretary of State Kris Kobach, that would require proof of citizenship upon registering to vote and photo identification at the polls. Democratic state senators have strongly objected to the proof of citizenship requirement, arguing that it is both unconstitutional and will depress voter registration. The bill now awaits action in the senate.

COLORADO: The House has passed a bill requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls. Secretary of State Scott Gessler (R) has called the measure his top legislative priority.

TENNESSEE Two weeks a go, the State Senate passed a bill requiring voters to present a driver’s license before voting. The bill would create a significant burden to voting for the state’s more than 500,000 adults without a driver’s license. One Democratic state senator called the bill a “modern-day poll tax… for these poor people who have to travel to another county to pay a fee in order to have an ID that will let you vote.” The bill is widely expected to pass the Republican-controlled House.

IOWA A bi-partisan group of county election officials have risen in opposition to a proposed voter ID bill that passed the Republican-controlled House in late January. The group told reporters they had never encountered voter fraud duirng their service in the state. One Republican election chief even told the Des Moinse Register, “she worries the bill would discourage voting unless the state paid for a widespread public education campaign to ensure Iowans understood the new rules.” The bill now awaits action from the State Senate.

OTHER STATES The Montana House passed a voter ID bill last month and similar laws have been introduced in Connecticut, Maine, Alaska, Maryland, Virginia, New Mexico, Alaska, Illinois, Iowa, Montana and Nebraska. And in a number of states — including Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina and Tennessee — conservative lawmakers have introduced bills requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.

Not only are many of these proposed laws too restrictive, they may also be unconstitutional. As the Brennan Center for Justice notes, legislators will have to fight an uphill battle to ensure their laws are held up in court and “in a difficult fiscal environment, citizens may reasonably question whether there are more pressing needs on which to spend their tax dollars than photo ID rules.” Yet conservatives have long shown little interest in the legality, fairness or cost of restricting voting. In 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt told union members that “there are some political candidates who think that they may have a chance of election, if only the total vote is small enough.” Seven decades later it seems that this strategy is once again in vogue for American conservatives.