Let’s Hold Them Accountable

Now that the tea party and Republicans have taken back the House and control Harrisburg, let’s hold them accountable.

We want jobs, jobs, and more jobs.  We want jobs in Pennsylvania that employ Pennsylvanians.

Maloney promised to finally get rid of our property taxes.  We want no more property taxes. 

Toomey promised American jobs.  We want jobs in Pennsylvania and not jobs off shored to another country.

Gerlach promised jobs.  We want jobs in Pennsylvania and not jobs off shored to another country.

Corbett promised to not raise taxes.  We don’t want any more money taken out of our pay checks to bail out the State.

Republicans promised that they will reduce the deficit without touching our Social Security.  We will hold them to that.

Republicans promised to lower taxes for EVERYONE.  We will hold them to that.

They have two years to deliver:

• Jobs, jobs and more jobs
• No more property taxes
• Deficit reduction
• Lower taxes

We don’t want to dismantle the health care reform.  We want either single payer or public option health care to replace mandatory private insurance.

We don’t want to spend two years wasting tax payers money on frivolous investigations.  We want Congress to work on jobs and more jobs.

We don’t want our Social Security handed over to Wall Street.  We want the Government to honor their promise to our seniors and to not use Social Security to reduce the deficit.

We don’t want endless wars.  We want our troops home NOW.

We don’t want bank bailouts.  We want responsible bank and Wall Street regulations.

We don’t want to keep drilling deeper and deeper for oil and gas which destroys our environment.  We want renewable energy like wind power and solar power.

We don’t want to keep supporting big agriculture which sends us dangerous foods.  We want safe food, produced by local farms.

Two years… that’s all they have.

Election Day – VOTE

This is crazy.  Life without taxes… A Tea Party Paradise

And then there is this…

From Jeff Seeman’s Diary

Let’s say that you’re a Teabagger and you want to get rid of taxes. I tell you it’s not possible, but you don’t listen to me. That’s cool.

So you win. Taxes are gone. No taxes in the USA. You win. The federal government and all the evils that go with it are gone forever.

Now let’s finish your scenario out, OK? Humor me.

You might think that with no taxes, you’ll make more money, right?

Wrong.

Let’s say that you make 40,000 dollars a year now. But your take home pay is only 30,000 dollars. Your employer knows that he doesn’t have to pay the federal government those nasty taxes anymore, but he also knows that you’ve been willing to come to work every day for a 30,000 dollar take-home amount. Guess who’s getting a pay decrease down to 30k a year? You are. The taxes are gone, did you really think that your employer wouldn’t choose to benefit from that first?

So now you make the same amount as before, but there’s no money going to social security anymore. The same amount of money you lived on before now has to get you beyond retirement.

Your 401k is gone too. The company that manages it has wiped the accounts dry. Who’s going to stop them from doing that now that the federal regulators have all been fired?

Perhaps you’d better start saving 10 percent of your paycheck for future retirement plans? Whoops, can’t do that. The FDIC doesn’t exist, so the banks have all been cleaned out. So have the accounts you used to have money in. Your consumer protections are gone, and the person nearest to the vault with a key is now racing towards Bermuda with sacks of your money.

We didn’t really want all those nasty regulations on the banks anyway, did we?

OK, so you can handle this. You don’t need help. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, right?

You’ll be OK, I’m sure of it. But your kids are hungry, so you’d better go to the store to get groceries. Be careful with the meat and the produce departments, though. Sometime last month, the farmer realized that his farm subsidies were gone and he’s gotta cut corners to survive, not to mention raising his prices. In the cutting of the corners, he stopped feeding his cattle clean food. Now those cows are all sick and their meat is packaged up nice for you to buy and feed to your kids.

There’s no FDA and no USDA to monitor the food your farmer provides to the grocery store, so you’re on your own.

Oh and by the way, the ground beef that will be in your digestive system soon just cost you double what it used to, if you’re lucky. Price controls have been dissolved altogether.

When your family gets sick from that tainted meat, you’ll have to rush them to the hospital. Pray that their illness has already been given a cure, because the Centers For Disease Control no longer can help your local hospital identify any viruses.

Also, don’t drink the water in your neighborhood anymore. The Environmental Protection Agency, as it turns out, was actually protecting the environment. You didn’t think Monsanto was going to stop chemical dumping in the streams and lakes of America on their own, did you?

On your way home from the hospital, drive slowly. The traffic lights no longer work because they were part of the local government control and there’s no more tax money left to operate the lights. This alone caused a lot of accidents, and most of the wreckage is left behind for you to drive around if you can. Ever noticed the people that sweep up the broken glass after even the most minor fender-benders? Guess what paid their salaries?

When you get home, pray it’s still there. Without police, what do you think the odds are that people just left it alone? Unless you left your husband/wife behind with a big gun 24/7, somebody’s coming in to take your stuff. And if they have a bigger gun, you just lost your husband and his 30k a year too.

Hopefully that house doesn’t catch fire too. No fire department. And even if there were friends willing to help put out the fire, where do you think they’re going to get the water to douse the flames? Those fire hydrants were not placed there by divine intervention.

Hopefully you prepared for all this by stockpiling on guns and assorted weaponry. Not like it’ll matter. There’s armies from about 2 dozen countries that either are ready to invade or already have. Who’s gonna stop them? Jimbo and his homemade militia? I’m sure the people in your neighborhood can fill in for the boys that used to be in our military, because you know….wolverines! I loved that film too. But let’s be honest….the Cubans and Russians were going to kick our ass, no matter how many high school football players Patrick Swayze can recruit.

Even if the world community takes pity on us and defends us from invading armies, it won’t take long for the airports to become havens of hysteria. Weapons on airplanes are easy as pie. The TSA that performs security checks at the gate…who do you think paid their salaries? They’re part of that massive government waste you’re so happy to be rid of. Maybe the federal marshalls on every plane will protect you….oh, wait. Never mind.

Aside from the easy pickings that terrorism will find in the skies, you won’t be safe on the ground either. Timothy McVeigh is about to be a happy memory compared to the chemical detonations that are possible now. The regulatory committees that monitored the sale and purchase of toxic materials are gone daddy gone.

So between the tainted meat, your pay cut, your 401k being wiped out, the hospitals being overrun by people who ate the same tainted meat, your house being an easy target, the threat of terrorism at all-time highs, and having to fight for your own survival on a hourly basis….don’t you think that maybe it’s better that you just shut up and pay your damn taxes?

Or are you willing to risk all that just because you once heard about a guy who was lazy and took 300 bucks a month in unemployment?

———————–

I don’t expect a response, but it felt good to write that.  Screw John Galt.

UPDATE – Thanks for the rec list.  I better fix all my typos.

UPDATE 2 – yes, I give you 110% freedom to republish my response, crib from it, whatever you wish.  What’s mine is yours.

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.

What Small Businesses Don’t Need

I’m a small business owner and Republicans have NEVER done anything to help my business.  If my business was a large corporation, it would be a different matter.  The “Club for Growth” is only about helping corporations at the expense of small businesses.  If you vote Republican in November, then big corporations win and you lose.

Now for a few laughs….

And you thought your cat wasn’t watching you   😆

This is Why Math is Important

This interview speaks for itself.  Americans no longer excel in math and this bozo proves it.  Imagine, paying 31% on everything you purchase.  That would slow down the economy even further.  Rick Barber, Republican candidate from Alabama, dumpkoft iss.

On Becoming A Poor Nation

Let’s face the facts.  Our local governments are in a financial crises.   With the loss of jobs, comes a decrease in State income tax revenues.  Smaller State revenues means that there is less money to help struggling cities and towns.  Add to this, the decrease in sales tax revenues that are the result of less purchasing power, and we have a State going bankrupt.  Now, multiple this by the number of States near bankruptcy and we have a nation of the edge of becoming a third world country.

As States become poorer, they need to make cuts to their spending.  One of the many areas where they choose to make cuts is in funding for education.  That means that our children suffer by not receiving a full education.  Poor education will not help these children when they become adults because they won’t be able to find a job that pays a living wage or better.  Ignorance is NOT bliss.  It leads to poverty.  The greater the poverty, the closer we are to becoming a third world country.

Even though only about 10% of Americans are heavily invested in stocks and bonds, our economy is driven by the DOW.  In order to grow, we need an economy based on jobs that produce goods.  Our nation has been slowly losing its goods based economy.  Instead, our economy is based on market gambling.  There is no bartering for goods and services in this country.  We can’t “take a chicken to the doctor” because banks won’t accept chickens as mortgage payments from the doctor.  (I’m curious about this “chicken”.  Is is a live chicken or a dead chicken?)

Do you see the pattern?  It a vicious cycle, one that Republicans claim can only be fixed by cutting taxes which decrease revenues.   Understand, the taxes that get cut are the taxes to the richest 1% of Americans and the services that get cut are the services needed by the other 90%.  The Republicans and Tea Partiers support Reagan economics.  It was during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, when the decline in the middle working class started.

The bottom line is this… we need jobs based on goods that pay a living wage or better so that the States and local municipalities can collect the revenue needed to keep our governments functioning.   This includes ample money for police, firefighters, educators, libraries and infrastructure repair and maintenance.  More tax cuts for the rich will not produce jobs and will not bring in more revenue.  Instead, it starves the masses.

One question before I end this thread, how is that “trickle down” economics working for you?

For All Those Teabaggers

Remember all those “teabaggers” whining on April 15th?

In 1955, the richest 400 Americans reported an average of $12.3 in income (in 2006 dollars) and paid 51.2% of it in taxes. In 2006, the top 400 averaged $263.3 million in income and paid a mere 17.2% of it in tax.

In 1986, the richest 1% of Americans averaged $507,520 in income (in 2006 dollars) and paid 33.1% of it in taxes. In 2006, the richest 1% averaged $1.3 million in income and paid just 22.8% of in taxes.

Over the past twenty years, the richest 1% of Americans doubled their share of the nation’s income (from 11.3% to 22.1%), but saw their share of the tax burden shrink by one-third.

If taxes on the richest 400 Americans were collected today at the same rate they paid under President Eisenhower, the Treasury would collect $35.9 billion more per year.

If the tax rate on Americans who make more than $2 million per year was restored to the 1955 level, the Treasury would collect another $202 billion per year.

And if the Bush tax cuts on the rich were repealed, lower tax rates for capital gains & dividends were eliminated, a progressive estate tax was enacted, overseas tax havens were ended, a small tax was added to financial transactions, and loopholes on huge executive- compensations was closed – the Treasury would collect another $450 billion per year!

Please share with those tax whiners you know!

Source: Tax Day 2009 – Institute for Policy Studies
Washington, D.C.

Include My Tea Bag

Yes, I, too, am angry about our current tax rates and I want to throw my tea bag in the barrel. Enough of the current tax breaks for the rich that George W. Bush and the Republican Party put into place. No more tax breaks to companies for sending American jobs overseas.

On Wednesday, April 15, 2009, I want my tea bag to be included in this protest against the current tax rates that George W. Bush and the Republican Party put into place. No more tax breaks for the rich. It’s time for us to embrace President Barack Obama’s tax plan which will bring tax relief to 95% of Americans.

By the way, does anyone really want to get rid of America’s leading Socialist program, Social Security?

________________________________________________________________>

UPDATE:  Cash prizes are now being offered by the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Prosperity.  Need a little extra cash?    😆

UPDATE 2:   Prime Example of the Tea Parties… really are anti-Obama rallies… VIDEO ..

CNN’s Roesgen grills tea party protestor who calls Obama a “fascist,” says protest “highly promoted by the right-wing conservative network Fox”

I’m Voting for Robin Hood in ’08

Remember the tale of Robin Hood, who robbed the rich and gave to the poor?  He was a “redistributor of wealth”.

John McCain accuses Barack Obama of being “Robin Hood” because Obama wants to lower taxes for the middle class and raise taxes for the rich back to the pre-Bush tax rate.  The poor don’t pay taxes so they won’t be getting any tax relief.  Compare the tax return that you will receive under Obama’s plan against the tax return that you will receive from McCain’s plan.

From AmericanProgressiveAction.org…

In 2001 and 2003, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) opposed the Bush tax cuts, arguing that they came “at the expense of lower- and middle-income Americans” and were too costly in a time of war. As a presidential candidate, however, McCain not only embraces the Bush tax cuts but also proposes massive additional tax cuts that are even more tilted against the middle class.

To assess the McCain tax proposals, we begin by defining five key characteristics of the Bush tax cuts: they cost an enormous sum, skew benefits to the wealthy, favor capital over work, protect tax shelters, and increase federal budget deficits. We then assess the McCain proposals against these five benchmarks. Finally, we compare both the Bush and McCain plans with the conservative tax agenda known as “Five Easy Pieces” advanced by Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform and other conservative tax groups.

Our analysis suggests that the McCain plan shares five key characteristics of Bush policies. First, it is enormously expensive, costing more than $2 trillion over the next decade and essentially doubling the Bush tax cuts. Second, the McCain plan would predominantly benefit the most fortunate taxpayers, offering two new massive tax cuts for corporations and delivering 58 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. The Bush tax cuts provide 31 percent of their benefits to the top 1 percent of taxpayers.

Third, the McCain tax plan continues the shift of the tax burden from investment income onto earned income. Fourth, the plan not only fails to address current tax shelter problems in the tax code but in fact will lead to increased sheltering. Fifth, McCain cannot pay for his tax cuts without massive reductions in Social Security, Medicare, or other key programs that benefit the vast majority of Americans.

Cindy McCain will receive an increased tax return (over $60,000.00 more) from her husband’s tax plan while the middle class will continue to receive little or nothing.  The McCain tax savings would go from $313,413.00 to $373,429.00.

From ThinkProgress.org…

In a new Center for American Progress Action Fund analysis, Michael Ettlinger documents how much the presidential candidates stand to personally benefit from the McCain and Obama tax proposals. The McCains — who report an annual income of over $6 million — would receive well over $300,000 from John McCain’s tax plan.

For further details about reported income and tax relief of both the McCains and the Obamas, visit the WonkRoom as it provides a more detailed analysis of the candidates tax plans.

WOW – can you say conflict of interest?  Read some more about the redistribution of wealth upwards which is exactly what John McCain’s tax plan will do in the “Reverse Robin Hood” at Homeless in LA.

What amazes me is that middle class McCain supporters shout “No” to Barack Obama’s tax plan even though they would benefit the most from Obama’s tax plan.  Why would someone from the middle class support paying higher taxes so that the wealthy could receive more tax relief?  Isn’t this like cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face?  Isn’t voting for McCain voting against one’s own best interest?  The middle class McCain supporters call Obama a “socialist”.  If any of the McCain supporters travel over public bridges and public roads, benefit from police and fireman, use the public library and use public water and sewer, then they too, are “socialist”.  Let’s not forget to include the recipients of Social Security and Medicare which is another “socialist” idea.

The McCain tax plan would eventually eliminate the middle class.  This would foster a return to the feudalistic state where the wealthy own everything and the poor support the wealthy.  John McCain’s plan rewards investments and corporations and punishes the worker who will see an increase in taxes because John McCain will tax health benefits for workers.

The choice is clear… I am voting for “Robin Hood”, the “redistributor of wealth”.  His name will appear as Barack Obama on the ballot.

Important Information

If you don’t know the location of your polling place, then go to Barack Obama’s website by clicking on this link…

If we are looking towards the future for this nation, then the choice is clear.  Only Obama/Biden have policies and plans to move our nation forward.

If we want to revisit the past and keep things just like they are, a failing economy and more wars, then vote McCain/Palin.  The McCain/Palin policies and plans will move our nation backwards.  John McCain is a backwards thinking person, trying to relive his life and Sarah Palin is a “Diva” who is only thinking about HER OWN FUTURE and not our nation’s future.  Oh, and by the way, Sarah Palin is a “Pinko”.  Read what she had to say a few weeks before her nomination to the VP spot.  Socialism is good for Alaska but not the rest of the nation.

Sarah Palin is Pretty in Pink

I don’t know about anyone else, but I could use a little help with my health insurance premium and my business would benefit if more people had decent paying jobs and it’s about time that I get a tax break, just like Bush gave to the richest people in our nation and McCain plans to make permanent.  John McCain and Sarah Palin want to relive the Reagan years where my TAXES INCREASED and big corporations received my tax break.  Reminder… the Reagan years were the Union busting years and as a result, many workers have lost benefits.

McCain/Palin – benefit BIG CORPORATIONS and LOBBYISTS

Obama/Biden – benefit MIDDLE AMERICA

Let’s start moving our nation forward.  Vote Obama/Biden ’08.

And just for the fun of it… visit Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub for some laughs.