Take a Pay Cut

There’s a clear difference between Manan Trivedi and Jim Gerlach.

And we are still waiting to hear about Gerlach’s jobs plan.  So far, all we are hearing are *crickets*.

Toomey Lies

Pat Toomey has a problem speaking the truth.  He claims that he never said “privatize” Social Security.  Instead he used the term “personalized” Social Security.  Does Pat Toomey think we are stupid?  Privatize and personalize are the same thing.  Stop insulting the voters, Mr. Toomey.  You are owned by Wall Street and all your votes will favor Wall Street just like they did in the past.  Pennsylvania doesn’t need a Wall Street Senator.

From Pat Toomey Watch.

I’m Shrinking!

Yes, the middle class has been disappearing.  It started with the Reagan years when the tax code was written with breaks for specific companies.  Some corporations received huge tax breaks while others had their taxes increased.  It was described as “trickle down” economics which actually started to gush money to the top 5% of Americans.  At the same time, the middle class, ever so slightly, began to diminish.

The economy had ups and downs over the years following the Reagan bandits (Savings and Loan bailouts) while the middle class continued to lose ground.  During his presidency, George H. W. Bush made an announcement that we are now a “global economy”.

Next came NAFTA which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.  The idea of NAFTA was born during the George H.W. Bush years and it was Ross Perot that brought the voters attention to NAFTA and “the sucking sound” of jobs leaving this country.  President Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law and American companies began building factories in Mexico.  This creation of manufacturing jobs in Mexico gave Mexicans the opportunity to earn a living wage.  Over the years, these same corporations that provided a living wage kept lowering the wages of Mexicans to the point where jobs in Mexico are now poverty jobs in sweat shops.  This decrease in income has fueled the drug cartels and has increased violent crime along the Mexican border.  That’s a story for another time.

So far, we have special tax breaks for specific corporations and NAFTA.  Then in the year 2000, the US Supreme Court appointed the rich man’s tool as president, George W. Bush.  His appointment accelerated the loss of jobs by providing tax incentives for corporations to send jobs overseas.  How unAmerican and unpatriotic.  The Bush administration also lowered taxes for the top 5% of Americans, the very rich, while keeping taxes high for middle class Americans.  Along with two wars, the Bush tax cuts created a huge Government deficit at the expense of middle class Americans.  Since the birth of Reaganomics, the wages of the middle class have slowly declined or remained stagnant.

Here are 22 statistics proving the decline of the middle class…

#1) According to a poll taken in 2009, 61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.

#2) The number of Americans with incomes below the official poverty line rose by about 15% between 2000 and 2006, and by 2008 over 30 million U.S. workers were earning less than $10 per hour.

#3) According to Harvard Magazine, 66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.

#4) According to that same poll, 36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything to retirement savings.

#5) A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.

#6) According to one new survey, 24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.

#7) Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.

#8) Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.

#9) For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.

#10) In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1.  Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.

Read more and all the supporting data here…

The negative effects of the Bush years washed over from 2008 into 2009.  It took eight years to destroy our economy and it will take at least eight years if not more to repair the damage done by the Bush administration.

President Obama’s stimulus package included a reduction in taxes for 95% of Americans.  As a member of this 95% grouping, I received a tax refund this year, the first one in many years.  My taxes increased during the Reagan years and this is my first tax break since then.

Trickle down economics is a joke on the American people.  It only increases the income for the top 5% while the rest of us struggle.

One more thing about the George W. Bush years, job creation remained stagnant.  For the first time in over 20 years, there were no job increases.  As a matter of fact, by the end of the Bush years, the job losses were on the rise and at the same time, the rich continued to get richer.

What is the Republican plan for job creation?  The Republicans still stand by their “trickle down” economics theory and they insist on continuing tax breaks for the rich while at the same time providing no tax breaks for the middle class.  If given the opportunity, the Republicans would repeal the Obama tax breaks for the middle class.  Don’t be fooled by their rhetoric because Republicans don’t have the welfare of the middle class in mind when they speak.  It’s all about Wall Street, big banks and corporations with them.

Trickle down economics… how is that working for you?  It’s working for the quitter, Sarah Palin and the cult leader Glenn Beck.  It’s not working for their followers and their followers are like the Branch Davidians or Heaven’s Gate.  They will do anything that their leaders, Beck and Palin, tell them to do, just like puppets on a string.  These money machines (Beck and Palin) are only interested in increasing their income, not yours.

Corporate Crybabies – People vs Corporations _UPDATED

Yesterday, President Obama addressed the tax breaks that corporations receive for sending our jobs overseas.  Yes, corporations are making millions and millions of dollars and NOT paying taxes and then sending OUR jobs overseas so that they can continue to not pay taxes to our government.  Keep in mind, these same corporations pay their executives millions and millions of dollars and pay their employees the low wages of India and China.

The proposal takes aim at what corporate executives consider to be one of the most critical features of the U.S. tax code: permission to indefinitely defer paying U.S. taxes on income earned overseas.

Currently, U.S. companies can avoid paying taxes on foreign profits until they bring the money back home. So a U.S. company doing business in Ireland, for example, must pay the Irish tax of 12.5 percent, like every other company doing business in Ireland. But the U.S. firm would owe an additional 22.5 percent to the U.S. Treasury (the difference between Ireland’s tax rate and the 35 percent U.S. tax rate) unless it reinvests the money overseas.

Hum, “permission to indefinitely defer paying U.S. taxes”, that sounds like a good deal.  What that means is there is no incentive to bring  jobs back to the United States.  It provides incentive to keep sending jobs overseas.

If we are to recover from this depression without continuing to bailout banks, then we need jobs, here, on the U.S. soil.

Some in Congress are hesitating support for this change in our Government tax plan.

“Further study is needed to assess the impact of this plan on U.S. businesses,” Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over U.S. tax law, said in a written statement. “I want to make certain that our tax policies are fair and support the global competitiveness of U.S. businesses.”

The American worker has always produced superior products.  Back in the ’70’s, the mantra was buy “Made in the USA” because purchasing products made here, gave an American a job and was always of high quality.  It’s difficult to find something “Made in the USA” anymore.  Most items are made in sweat shops that employ children in third world countries.   While these sweat shops produce cheap and inferior products, like all (slave labor) sweat shops do, the corporations make millions of dollars and do NOT pay U.S. taxes.

… (President) Obama proposes to move in the opposite direction. He argues that the current system gives tax breaks to U.S. multinationals at the expense of companies that operate solely on American soil. In 2004, the most recent year for which statistics are available, U.S. multinationals paid an effective U.S. tax rate of just 2.3 percent on $700 billion in foreign profits, according to the administration.

“It’s a tax code that says you should pay lower taxes if you create a job in Bangalore, India, than if you create one in Buffalo, New York,” the president said yesterday.

The President is correct.  Why should multinational corporations receive tax breaks while companies that operate solely on American soil not receive a tax break.  The Republicans are always chanting “small business”.  Most small businesses operate ONLY on American soil so they don’t get these tax breaks.

President Obama plans on helping small businesses.

To level the playing field, Obama would bar firms from taking deductions for expenses that support their overseas investments until they pay U.S. taxes on the profits. He would also crack down on firms that overstate their foreign tax bills. And he would reverse a Clinton-era rule known as “check the box,” which permits firms to more easily transfer cash between countries. In practice, Obama officials said, “check the box” has been used to shift income away from higher-tax countries and into tax havens such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, allowing firms to reduce their tax bills both at home and abroad.

Those provisions would take effect in 2011 and would raise about $190 billion by the end of the next decade. In return, Obama proposes to make permanent an existing tax credit for companies that spend money on domestic research and development programs, worth about $75 billion over the next decade.

Then there are the “tax shelters”, the banks where the “rich” hide their money from the U.S. Government.  They shelter their wealth while you and I pay taxes and they don’t.

Obama also proposes to crack down on wealthy people who evade taxes through offshore bank accounts, primarily by targeting financial institutions in tax-haven jurisdictions. That plan, which would net another $9 billion over the next decade, appears to have few opponents.

All this money being denied to the U.S. Government.  No wonder the Republicans are yelling that the U.S. Government can’t provide health care for all Americans.   All this hidden money in taxes and all this avoidance of paying taxes leaves the Government funds short.

UPDATE:  About those “green jobs”…

Now read the rest of this whiny fallacy….

President Obama’s Weekly Address – 18 April 2009

Mr. Smith goes to Washington… yeah!

No more sacred cows.

When Black Friday Comes…

Only, this time it’s Black Monday. This is part of the Bush Economic Plan, the very plan that John McCain supports and wants to continue. A couple of years ago, Dick Cheney dumped his stock investments and purchased Bonds. Cheney saw this coming. McCain won’t feel any of this pain. As a matter of fact, drug and alcohol use increases during times of financial depression.

The better tax plan…

Woohoo! A better tax break with Obama for Middle Class Americans, those of us that have to work for a living.

WAIT… There’s more

Three Fridays, three false attack ads

John McCain doesn’t want us to know the truth. He has no plan to reduce taxes for the middle class. McCain wants to keep the tax breaks for the rich, like himself and his wife and continue giving tax breaks to corporations for sending jobs overseas. Yes, the lobbyist love John McCain. He will give them everything that they ask for and we, the working poor and middle class will get nothing. We will continue paying more for goods and worrying more about keeping our jobs while the rich, including the McCains will be smiling all the way to their off shore tax shelters.

Celebrities don’t have to worry about their family budgets, but the middle class and the poor do. And John McCain has nothing to offer us.