Category Archives: Corporations

The Austerity Fraud.

Posted on by

For more than 30 years, conservatives have pushed for smaller government. Their battle cry is to “Starve the Beast,” the beast being our federal government. They have demanded more and more tax cuts, especially for the wealthy, and they finally got them under President George W. Bush. Yet, when the tax cuts led to large deficits, Richard “The Dick” Cheney and other conservatives famously stated that “deficits don’t matter.”

Of course, when President Obama took office, their attitude suddenly changed.

Despite having driven our economy off a cliff, conservatives demanded that the new administration cut spending in order to bring the deficit and debt under control. To prove their point that these were the biggest challenges facing our nation (bigger than rampant unemployment, the housing crisis, losses by pension funds and the depressed stock markets), conservatives cited a Harvard University study by Reinhart and Rogoff which stated that economies suffer whenever a nation’s debt surpasses 90 percent of GDP.

This study was cited over and over by conservative politicians and conservative media.

Unfortunately for conservatives, it was recently debunked by a graduate student who found numerous statistical and computational inaccuracies which completely altered the study’s conclusions. Turns out, there were numerous exceptions to the Reinhart-Rogoff rule.

As for the effects of austerity measures, one need only look to Europe to see what happens when concern over deficits and debt trump job creation. Following strict austerity measures in both Greece and Spain, unemployment among young people now exceeds 60 and 50 percent, respectively. Both countries are facing major upheaval as the unemployed have taken to the streets to riot. In England, France and Italy, the effects of austerity have been less dramatic. Nevertheless, austerity has pushed their economies back into recession.

Had President Obama followed the advice of conservatives, we, too, could be struggling through another deep recession. Despite conservative claims to the contrary, the economic stimulus worked. For the past 3 years, we have not only recovered the jobs lost as the result of the Bush recession. We have added 1.5 additional jobs, and we would have added many more if not for layoffs in the public sector forced by Republican-controlled state houses.

We might well be back on the road to full recovery had the Teapublicans not taken  control of the House in 2011.

Virtually every economist has stated that the budget restraints imposed by our Teapublican Congress have hampered our economic recovery. Indeed, a recent article in The New York Times states that deficit reduction has already cost our economy at least 2 percent growth and 1 percent employment. And the budget cuts forced by sequestration have yet to fully take hold!

But don’t look for conservatives to give up on austerity any time soon. Despite our fragile recovery, they’re still demanding severe cuts to federal programs. They have proposed cuts to “entitlements” such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They want to eliminate or severely reduce unemployment insurance, SNAP (food stamps), Pell grants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They even want to cut or eliminate the United States Postal Service!

During the last election, Teapublican candidates said they would target entire departments for elimination, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Education Department, the Commerce Department and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives. Some want to get rid of the Federal Reserve and return to the gold standard.

Given a limited (and false) understanding of history and our Constitution, today’s conservatives believe that the only constitutionally-allowed functions of the federal government are defense, homeland security, border security and highway construction. For everything else, you’re on your own.

It’s easy to see what these policies would do to our nation. Just look at Somalia.

A Message To Tea Party “Patriots.”

Posted on by

There’s simply no nice way of saying it. You are a bunch of self-serving, gun-toting, conspiracy promoting, anti-intellectual, anti-education, anti-evidence, anti-American nitwits.

You call yourselves Tea Party Patriots, but you’re neither patriotic nor even a party. You are the lunatic fringe. You wrap yourselves in the flag and spout quotes from a select few of our Founding Fathers all the while undermining the very principles they stood for. You say you’re strict Constitutionalists, but it’s apparent that the only part of the Constitution you’ve read is the Second Amendment (and you can only quote half of that). The other principles you attribute to the Founders are actually from the Articles of Confederation, the document our Constitution replaced.

You didn’t have the guts to stand on your own, so you decided to backdoor the Republican Party. Your angry rhetoric and Koch brothers’ millions managed to drive most moderate Republicans from office. As a result, you and your wealthy supporters have destroyed the party of Lincoln.

Now you’re trying to destroy our nation.

Your economic theories not only defy economics, they defy logic. They’re hurtful to children, the elderly, the poor, even veterans. You claim to be worried about the national debt, yet you sat idly by while the previous administration ran up enormous deficits through two ill-conceived wars and the collapse of our economy. Then you blamed President Obama for our economic ills. You watched as President Bush expanded the size of government by creating the government’s second-largest agency, the Department of Homeland Security, then screamed about the growth of government when the new administration took office.

You ignored the bailout of “too big to fail” banks, which saved the jobs of Wall Street millionaires and the assets of billionaires. But you howled in disgust when President Obama loaned money to US automakers, saving tens of thousands of jobs for middle class workers. You whined that you are “Taxed Enough Already” and blamed President Obama for raising taxes, even though tax rates were at a 60-year low.

You claim that you’re not racists, yet every single one of your rallies includes blatantly racist depictions of our democratically-elected president. You call him a Muslim, a socialist, a communist, a fascist and worse. You compare him to Hitler. You have even called him the leader of al Qaeda.

When you’ve failed to win elections, you’ve tried to change the rules. You have tried to suppress the votes of minorities and your political opponents. You have tried to deny women the right of equal pay for equal work. You have tried to deny women the right to control their own bodies. You have held our economy hostage in order to get your way. You have undermined democracy through use of the filibuster and gerrymandering. As a result, our nation now suffers from tyranny by the minority.

Thanks to your tactics, Congress has been turned into a venomous body devoid of compromise. Thanks to your representatives, the approval rating of our duly-elected Congress is lower than that of cockroaches. Thanks to your policies, the very wealthy have become wealthier while the rest of our citizens have suffered. Thanks to you, our nation is on the verge of becoming a plutocracy.

All of that is bad enough. But your real “triumph” is that you have made millions of Americans fearful of their government and of each other. Thanks to you, according to a new poll, 44 percent of Teapublicans now believe that an armed revolution against our government may be necessary…our own democratically-elected government!

Your entire movement is based on lies and meanness.

That said, it’s difficult to determine who is most at fault…you…or those who tolerate you, especially the media that give you undeserved credibility. One thing is certain…your movement would be more accurately called the Tea Not-Really-A-Party Traitors.

Proof That Greed Kills.

Posted on by

For some time, Americans have taken greed for granted. Many have believed that greed is an inevitable outgrowth of free market capitalism. Even following Mitt Romney’s speech about the 47 percenters and revelations of his offshore tax havens, many Americans said it didn’t matter.

But greed has real world consequences.

As the top one percent have gained more and more wealth, the other 99 percent have seen their incomes stagnate or diminish. As CEOs of multinational corporations have pushed for increased productivity and offshore manufacturing, working Americans have lost their jobs and their homes. Workers in the countries that claimed the jobs have been subjected to impossible hours and terrible working conditions.

Where will it end?

In the last few weeks, we’ve seen two deadly examples of the consequences. In West, Texas, a fertilizer company stored massive amounts of explosive ammonium nitrate in the middle of town. The company owners not only failed to notify the townspeople of the danger. They failed to notify Homeland Security that they had amassed 1,350 times the amount that is supposed to trigger investigations. As a result, many of the owners’ neighbors lost their lives. Many others lost their homes.

Halfway around the world, in Bangladesh, textile workers were packed into an unsafe building in order to cut production costs on clothing intended for retail stores in the United States. When the building inevitably collapsed, more than 1,100 people lost their lives.

Certainly, these events were the result of bad decisions made by unscrupulous people. But the real culprit was unfettered greed.

We need to understand that those who chase greater and greater wealth will not change unless forced to. We need to understand that safety regulations are a legitimate responsibility of government. We need to understand that many companies are bad citizens and neighbors. And we need to remember that an employer is not doing employees a favor by allowing them to work for him. All employees have a right to safe working conditions, respectful treatment, reasonable hours and a real living wage.

A Warning To Democrats:

Posted on by

From recent polls showing, among other things, that 13% of Americans believe the president is actually the Antichrist, you may correctly assume that the Republican Party is full of a bunch of crackpots (aka the Tea Party). You may rightly believe that the GOP platform is akin to something coming out of the north end of a southbound bull. You may also believe that Americans will figure this out and hand the next election to Democrats.

On the last point, you are most likely wrong!

You assume that most Americans actually follow the news and politics. (They don’t.) You assume the media will expose Teapublican ideas for what they really are. (They won’t.) You assume that voters will realize the superiority of Democratic ideas. (Unlikely.) And you assume that minorities, most especially Latinos, will recognize that Democrats best represent their interests. (Not necessarily.)

Too many Democrats are content to allow Teapublicans to define the Democratic Party and Democratic principles.

We cannot sit back and expect independents, union members and minorities to turn the country blue. All across the country, the GOP is hard at work trying to rewrite voting laws to ensure control of the House and the Senate in 2014, and the White House in 2016.

Even though the Great Recession was caused by Republican infatuation with deregulation, and even though our slow economic recovery is the result of Teapublican abuse of the filibuster and a refusal to compromise, it’s all too likely that voters will hold the White House accountable.

Democrats need to be working to register voters, working to fight voter suppression, working to fight gerrymandering, and working to fight attempts to change the Electoral College. We need to refine our message to make it clear that Democrats support fiscal responsibility, real job growth and the interests of all working people. Also, it wouldn’t hurt for Democrats to make it abundantly clear that we better adhere to the actual teachings of Christ; to show compassion for the poor and powerless; to resist the temptation of greed; to resist the calls for war.

That’s not a religious message. That’s a philosophy that has been largely abandoned by those who claim to be followers. And it’s a philosophy that is appealing to the largest portion of our population.

Democrats also need to make it clear what GOP stands for – Guardians Of Privilege. The GOP supports ever larger tax cuts for the rich and obscene profits for multinational corporations, along with diminished salaries for working people. These GOPstoppers have shown that they are against civil rights, women’s rights and religious freedom. While decrying big government, they want to enforce their own brand of “values” in the bedroom and every other aspect of our society.

Democrats, we’re at a critical juncture. Even if you reject this message, you must understand that we are now in a perpetual campaign cycle. We can’t afford to wait.

Getting Re-Elected Versus Doing The Right Thing.

Posted on by

You would think those two things would not be mutually exclusive. However, in today’s style of politics, our elected representatives seem to be more focused on the next election than on the problems in front of them.

Moderate Republicans (remember them?) are fearful of seeming to cooperate with the president and the opposition lest they be challenged by Tea Party candidates in their next primary. Moderate Democrats who represent conservative districts are fearful of seeming too liberal.

In these days of on-line petitions, no tax pledges, PACs, Super-PACs and year ’round fundraising, no legislative or congressional district is safe. One controversial vote can end a political career. Therein lies the problem.

Politics was never intended to be a career. It was intended to be public service!

If politicians weren’t thinking of making politics a career, they’d be more likely to vote their conscience. They would be less likely to pander to the wealthy and the powerful. They would be more concerned with their constituents’ interests than the interests of the oil lobby, the defense lobby, the pharmaceutical lobby, the insurance lobby, the medical lobby, etc.

They might even ignore the gun lobby in order to protect defenseless six-year-olds from madmen armed with the weapons of war.

It’s time to take the money out of politics. It’s time for public financing of elections. It’s time to place real limits on campaign contributions. It’s time to limit lobbyists. It’s time to eliminate Washington’s revolving door from government to lobbying and back. It’s time to recognize that, while corporations are owned by people, they most definitely are not people. It’s time for real ethics reform.

It’s time to end the endless campaigns.

West, Texas Disaster Highlights Our Regulatory Problems.

Posted on by

Those on the political right are fond of saying that business is over-regulated by the federal government…even after the economic meltdown resulting from the lax regulation of financial institutions; even after skyrocketing oil prices caused by deregulation of commodities; even after the ecological disaster involving BP Oil and the Deepwater Horizon caused, in part, by a shortage of inspectors experienced in deep water drilling .

Not surprisingly, the facts show that we have far too few regulators to make sure that greedy corporations and individuals live up to their responsibilities.

There is an estimated $70 billion in Medicare fraud because Medicare lacks enough investigators to check the more than $525 billion claims annually.  There are only a handful of ATFE agents to inspect our more than 58,000 gun dealers.  And their were apparently too few EPA and OSHA inspectors to discover that the West, Texas fertilizer plant stored 270 tons of explosive ammonium nitrate…more than 1,350 times the 400 pounds that requires the facility to be monitored by the Department of Homeland Security.  The facility hadn’t been inspected in 28 years and had apparently filed false reports indicating no fire or explosive hazard.

Why the lack of inspections and regulators?  In some cases, there is confusion over which federal agency is responsible.  More often, it’s the result of Teapublicans cutting budgets and convincing the public that we are all over-taxed and over-regulated.  So greedy corporations continue to break the law in search of greater and greater profits.  Even when caught, they’re able to pay a relatively small fine and continue to skirt the law.

Yet most studies conclude that the money spent to hire inspectors is money well-spent. In many cases, we recover five to ten times the investment.

Of course, the impact on the environment and public safety is far more difficult to measure…unless you like to breathe clean air, drink clean water or avoid being incinerated by an unnecessary explosion.

“We Can’t Afford That Anymore.”

Posted on by

We hear it all the time. There’s no money to improve our schools. There’s no money to rebuild our infrastructure. There’s no money to ensure that our citizens have access to food and medicine. There’s no money to care for the mentally ill and the homeless. There’s no money to give our veterans the care they deserve. There’s no money for pensions and retirement benefits.

The US is broke…at least that’s what Teapublicans want us to believe.

So what happened? How did we go from the richest, most powerful nation on Earth to a nation that can no longer afford the things that our citizens value most? For starters, our economic ills are the result of two costly wars, the unparalleled expansion of government immediately following 9/11, an expansion of Medicare drug benefits and the Great Recession that began as the result of unfettered gambling by the so-called “too big to fail” banks.

But none of those causes have been as devastating as runaway greed, the off-shoring of jobs and money (it’s estimated that wealthy Americans, including Mitt Romney, and US-based multinational corporations have stashed trillions in off-shore tax havens), subsidies for large corporations, and tax cuts intended to benefit the very wealthiest portion of our populace.

Following World War II, when we could afford to build things, our top individual tax rate was 91 percent for those making more than $200,000 per year. The capital gains tax was 25 percent. And the effective corporate tax rate was 50 percent.

Compare those rates with today’s: The top individual tax rate is now 39.6 percent for those making more than $400,000. The capital gains tax is 15 percent. And the effective corporate tax rate is 17 percent (that is, if large corporations pay any taxes at all). In fact, some large multinationals now have a negative tax rate!

See the problem?

For most working Americans, wages have stagnated over the past 40 years, while worker productivity has skyrocketed, along with incomes for the wealthy. Most Americans are working harder and earning proportionately less…if they’re lucky enough to have a job! And the only answer Congress (at least the Teapublican portion of Congress) has for these problems is to cut spending, to protect tax cuts for the wealthy, and to cut taxes for corporations.

Speaker Boehner, Minority Leader McConnell and the rest of the Teapublicans in office want to “starve the beast.” They consider investment and compromise dirty words. And they steadfastly refuse to agree to one more dollar of revenue.

To relate that to family finances as Teapublicans are so fond of doing: It’s as if parents, faced with growing credit card bills, decided to give up food for their children in order to cut their work hours!

Yes, we have to cut government waste and be efficient with our spending. But there isn’t enough fat in discretionary spending to eliminate the deficit and still meet the needs of our growing population. We already have seen that with the sequester cuts, and they’ve only just begun. If we want to reduce our nation’s debt without destroying our fragile economy, we must find new sources of revenue.

The GOP’s Continuing Attack On Voters, Workers, Women And The Constitution.

Posted on by

Still stinging from its losses in the 2012 election, the Grand Old Party is becoming a Grand Old Pain In The Ass.  Not just for Democrats…for everyone.

While opposing a bill that would raise the minimum wage, the GOP is attacking labor unions across the nation and successfully ending defined benefit pension plans.  Now the GOP is pushing a bill that would loosen the rules for overtime, allowing corporations to overwork and underpay employees.

Famously, the Ryan budget, which was passed by the House, would drastically cut Medicaid, repeal Obamacare and turn Medicare into vouchers.

Although 94 percent of Americans want comprehensive background checks for anyone purchasing a firearm, Teapublican senators are threatening to filibuster any bill that would limit the sale of guns.

In states across the nation, the GOP is pushing a variety of voter suppression laws through state legislatures under the guise of preventing voter ID fraud, a problem that has been proven to be non-existent.   After gerrymandering districts to all but guarantee a Teapublican-controlled House far into the future, the GOP now senses a way to control presidential elections by changing the Electoral College.  The idea is to end the “winner-take-all” approach to electoral votes for states and, instead, award each electoral vote district-by-Teapublican-controlled-district.

If successful, this would almost certainly ensure an endless reign of GOP presidents.

In North Dakota, Arkansas and elsewhere, GOP legislatures are attempting to make abortion illegal. (Of course, the bills will not actually end abortion.  They’ll just drive it underground, making doctors and patients criminals.)  Under the guise of religious freedom, they also want to eliminate contraceptives from health insurance plans and block sex education in public schools.

In Arizona and numerous states of the Old South, a variety of so-called nullification bills have been introduced in the state legislatures.  If passed, these bills would ostensibly give the states power to ignore any federal law the GOP deems unconstitutional.  (Of course, this power is reserved for the Supreme Court and the bills are in direct defiance of the Constitution’s federal supremacy clause.)

Finally, a bill introduced by North Carolina Teapublicans will allow the GOP-controlled state legislature to name an official state religion in defiance of the Constitution’s establishment clause.

Does anyone else get the feeling that the GOP would be happier if our Constitution didn’t exist?

Apocalyptic Politics.

Posted on by

Many Americans seem convinced that the Apocalypse is upon us.  Remember Y2K? Remember Nostradamus?  Remember the Mayan calendar?

There have been dead-enders around as long as I can remember.  Usually, they were part of some wacko religious cult that had bet its future on the book of Revelation.  But, in recent years, the dead-enders have become mainstream, especially after the election of our first president of African-American heritage.

Fueled by Teapublicans and the right-wing media, we are constantly told to be afraid…be very afraid.  Unless we do as they say and accept their ideology, we will suffer the consequences of a failed, bankrupt state and, quite likely, the wrath of God.  (You know, the God who personally created America by taking land from the natives and giving it to God-fearing Christians.)

All of this is disturbing enough.  But our media seem to have bought into these fear tactics in the same way they bought into the Bush administration’s lies leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

As a result, we’re exposed to Teapublican and Christian evangelical fear-mongering at nearly every turn.  Fire-and-brimstone pastors preach fear from the pulpit and tell their flocks that they will go to hell if they support Democrats.  Hate mongers such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Mark Levin spew apocalyptic nonsense daily.  And the gun manufacturers’ lobby, otherwise known as the National Rifle Association, tells you that your neighbors are out to get you and your government is coming to take your guns.

To make matters worse, mainstream cable channels offer studies in paranoia such as Doomsday Preppers.  Even the movie studios have gotten into the act with a never-ending series of disaster movies.  And, in the most egregious example, the History Channel recently produced a TV series on the Bible, casting an Obama look-alike as Satan!

The clear message is that we will all perish and go to hell unless we all become right-wing Christian Teapublicans who bow to multinational corporations, turn our backs on the poor, ignore the rights of women, show intolerance to minorities, and worship at the altar of intolerance and greed.

Now that would be a REAL apocalypse!

Let’s Create A New Tax System!

Posted on by

The US is a patchwork of federal taxes, state taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, capital gains taxes, gasoline taxes, tobacco taxes, etc. In addition, there are a myriad of tax loopholes allowing billionaires to pay lower tax rates than the secretaries who work for them. Worse yet, some of the world’s largest corporations are able to avoid paying income taxes, despite billions in profits.

If all of that isn’t confusing enough, taxes in some states are higher than in others, leading to competition between states.

For decades, states have spent more time trying to coax companies from other states than helping their own entrepreneurs to create new companies. Low tax states such as Arizona and South Dakota try to lure away businesses (and jobs) from higher tax states like California and Minnesota where the businesses began and grew, likely because of tax incentives and other state-funded investments in those businesses.

This kind of nonsense has to stop!

Businesses are not created by low taxes.  They are created and nurtured in states which value education, innovation, technology, infrastructure, and quality of life.

If states like Arizona and South Dakota want more jobs for their citizens, let them invest in the things necessary to create them. Let’s stop the competition to see which state can cut taxes to the lowest possible rate at the sacrifice of everything else. Let’s level the playing field. Let’s eliminate the multiple layers of taxes. Let’s create a single, federal tax system in which each state charges the same tax based on income and cost of living. (I think we can all agree that a $250,000 salary in Wyoming goes a lot farther than the same salary in New York.) The money would then be parceled out by the federal government based on population and defined need.

This system would end the free ride for low tax states and encourage real development and innovation.

After all, why should Minnesota, Delaware, New York and New Jersey have to contribute far more taxes per person to the government than they get back? And why should states like Alabama, Arizona, Mississippi, New Mexico and Wyoming get more out of the federal government than they pay in? And why should companies be encouraged to uproot their offices, production facilities and personnel just because another state offers a slightly lower tax rate?

Think about it.