America Split in Two: Five Ugly Extremes of Inequality

by Paul Buchheit

The first step is to learn the facts, and then to get angry and to ask ourselves, as progressives and caring human beings, what we can do about the relentless transfer of wealth to a small group of well-positioned Americans.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/03/25-3

This is exactly the type of representation I knew we would get,  that I, totally, expected, from Representative Rick Nolan:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/11/rick-nolan-citizens-united_n_2663128.html

These people are being absurd but they are, successfully, pointing out the absurdity of corporations being legally defined as a "person"!http://www.upworthy.com/watch-this-bride-dump-her-very-important-groom-at-the-altar?c=upw1

HORROR OF HORRORS!
What will they do? News outlets suggest that this is sending shockwaves around the world! The very, very wealthy among us, along with many mega-corporations, thought their money was safe in a Swiss bank accounts, in the past, but then the Swiss government started cooperating with our IRS. Cyprus, the Netherlands, and certain island locations, such as the Cayman Islands, had not... caved in and have now replaced Swiss banks, as a safe harbor, for their “extra” money. Evidently, the very, very wealthy, from Russia, have learned, from their American counterparts, and have been stashing their money in Cyprus bank accounts. And now Cyprus is going to bail out on them! Cyprus banks are threatening to do exactly what mega-corporations and so many other very, very wealthy individuals, have been trying to avoid, paying taxes, or an amount similar to taxes. They prefer to keep things working just as they have been. Cyprus banks are upsetting the apple cart! They are contemplating taking an amount from their Cyprus bank accounts, 10%, that is even more than they would have to pay if they claimed the money and were taxed on it! The nerve! Fortunately for those who want to stash money, undetected by our IRS, those other “safe” countries are still operating the way they want them to. You can check out how well this is still working for many mega-wealthy individuals and mega-corporations at:
http://eskoresident.blogspot.com/2012_08_01_archive.html
 

Please join us!
I am the spokesperson/contact person for our Duluth Area Move To Amend and we are having our monthly meeting at the Incline Station this week, on Thursday, March 21st, starting at 7:00 p.m., we wrap up by 8:30 p.m. Please feel free to join us!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/DuluthAreaMTA/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/DuluthAreaMTA/

Someone has to cover for them! Middle class taxpayers should, at the very least, be getting thanked by these very profitable Mega-coporations:

Do you have a problem with this?

Then add your name to the Daily Kos' congressional petition to end tax loopholes for corporations and the wealthy. (link to follow via comment)

https://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=587921117887325&set=a.361837760495663.95686.176963112316463&type=1&theater

You would like to think that Facebook was alone but you can add the likes of General Electric, Boing, Mattel, etc..  You would like to think that it didn't include many of the most wealthy  families in our country ...but you would be wrong......here are 26 of the most falgrent coprorations: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/09/460519/major-corporations-no-taxes-four-year/

Robert Reich Robert Bernard Reich is an American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997. He knows what he is talking about!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB_Yuo6XNAA&feature=player_embedded

Robert Reich

We’re creating a generation of American renters rather than home owners, reversing the trend since World War II. 

Yes, home sales and prices have been rising, which in turn has created lot of construction jobs, and made some home-owners feel a bit wealthier. All good for the economy, at least for now. But the reason the housing market has turned around isn’t because banks are issuing lots of new mortgages. Lending standards are still tight, and banks are reluctant to issue new loans – especially to younger people who’d otherwise be fueling the market for new homes. Unemployment remains high among millennials – more than 8 percent even for recent college graduates. And their student debts keep mounting, disqualifying them from home loans. As a result, the number of first-time home-buyers is still shrinking, and young buyers now make up their smallest share of the housing market in more than a decade.

The rise in home prices and construction is being fueled instead by big investors -- many of whom have no intention of living in the homes they buy or build. They’re getting a high return on investment by borrowing at rock-bottom rates and then turning the properties into rental units, which young individuals and families are moving into in record numbers. Last month, a Pew Research Center survey found that the share of millennials who own their homes has fallen from 40 percent to 34 percent since the start of the recession, with a similar decline in residential debt. Overall, the percent of Americans owning their homes continues to drop, while the percent renting is growing.

The housing market may be bouncing back, but not home ownership. And that’s a big change for a society once based on the ideal of owning your own place. To me, this is a disturbing trend -- paralleling the overall trend toward widening inequality. What do you think?

Defying predictions!

THE MARKET SPEAKS!

Four years ago, as a newly elected president began his efforts to rescue the economy and strengthen the social safety net, conservative economic pundits — people who claimed to understand markets and know how to satisfy them — warned of imminent financial disaster. Stocks, they declared, would plunge, while interest rates would soar.

Even a casual trawl through the headlines of the time turns up one dire pronouncement after another.

“Obama’s radicalism is killing the Dow,” warned an op-ed article by Michael Boskin, an economic adviser to both Presidents Bush. “The disciplinarians of U.S. policymakers return,” declared The Wall Street Journal, warning that the “bond vigilantes” would soon push Treasury yields to destructive heights.

Sure enough, this past week the Dow Jones industrial average was hitting all-time highs, while the current yield on 10-year U.S. government bonds is roughly half what it was when The Journal published that screed.

OK, everyone makes a bad prediction now and then. But these predictions have special significance, and not just because the people who made them have such a remarkable track record of error these past several years.

No, the important point about these particular bad predictions is that they came from people who constantly invoke the potential wrath of the markets as a reason we must follow their policy advice. Don’t try to cover America’s uninsured, they told us; if you do, you will undermine business confidence and the stock market will tank. Don’t try to reform Wall Street, or even criticize its abuses; you’ll hurt the plutocrats’ feelings, and that will lead to plunging markets. Don’t try to fight unemployment with higher government spending; if you do, interest rates will skyrocket.

And, of course, do slash Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid right away, or the markets will punish you for your presumption.

By the way, I’m not just talking about the hard right; a fair number of selfproclaimed centrists play the same game. For example, two years ago, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson warned us to expect an attack of the bond vigilantes within, um, two years unless we adopted, you guessed it, Simpson-Bowles.

So what the bad predictions tell us is that we are, in effect, dealing with priests who demand human sacrifices to appease their angry gods — but who actually have no insight whatsoever into what those gods actually want and are simply projecting their own preferences onto the alleged mind of the market.

What, then, are the markets actually telling us?

I wish I could say that it’s all good news, but it isn’t. Those low interest rates are the sign of an economy that is nowhere near to a full recovery from the financial crisis of 2008, while the high level of stock prices shouldn’t be cause for celebration; it is, in large part, a reflection of the growing disconnect between productivity and wages.

The interest-rate story is fairly simple. As some of us have been trying to explain for four years and more, the financial crisis and the bursting of the housing bubble created a situation in which almost all of the economy’s major players are simultaneously trying to pay down debt by spending less than their income. Since my spending is your income and your spending is my income, this means a deeply depressed economy. It also means low interest rates, because another way to look at our situation is, to put it loosely, that right now everyone wants to save and nobody wants to invest. So we’re awash in desired savings with no place to go, and those excess savings are driving down borrowing costs.

Under these conditions, of course, the government should ignore its shortrun deficit and ramp up spending to support the economy. Unfortunately, policymakers have been intimidated by those false priests, who have convinced them that they must pursue austerity or face the wrath of the invisible market gods.

Meanwhile, about the stock market: Stocks are high, in part, because bond yields are so low, and investors have to put their money somewhere. It’s also true, however, that while the economy remains deeply depressed, corporate profits have staged a strong recovery. And that’s a bad thing! Not only are workers failing to share in the fruits of their own rising productivity, hundreds of billions of dollars are piling up in the treasuries of corporations that, facing weak consumer demand, see no reason to put those dollars to work.

So the message from the markets is by no means a happy one. What the markets are clearly saying, however, is that the fears and prejudices that dominated Washington discussion for years are entirely misguided. And they’re also telling us the people who’ve been feeding those fears and peddling those prejudices don’t have a clue about how the economy actually works.

Paul Krugman writes a column for the New York Times.

Did you see today's news?......U.S. Corporations put over 168 billion....yes BILLLION....dollars into offshore banks, in a very legal way, lat year, to avoid paying taxes on that money. What will happen to a country that has 168 billion dollars removed from the economy...to sit in banks in the Cayman Islands? Who will cover for the taxes that go unpaid? What would happen if that money were invested in our economy, our citizens? Would they sock it away....or would the spend it on schools, cars, homes, furniture, vacations?and what would happen to the money they would spend.....people who earned it would ay taxes on it at rates much higher than the wealt.......and what would happen to that money?...... they would spend it.....people who earned it would pay taxes on it, at rates much higher than the wealthiest 1 %, and they would spend it on schools, cars, homes, furniture, vacations.....and what would happen to that money..... they would spend it.....people who earned it would pay taxes on it, at rates much higher than the wealthiest 1 %, and they would spend it on schools, cars, homes, furniture, vacations.....and what would happen to the money?....... they would spend it.....people who earned it would pay taxes on it at rates much higher than the wealthiest 1 % and they would spend it on schools, cars, homes, furniture,.........and what would happen to the money?....... they would spend it.....people who earned it would ay taxes on it at rates much higher than the wealthiest 1 % and they would spend it on schools, cars, homes, furniture, vacations...........and what would happen to that money?...... they would spend it.....people who earned it would pay taxes on it, at rates much higher than the wealthiest 1 %, and they would spend it on schools, cars, homes, furniture, vacations.....and what would happen to that money..... they would spend it.....people who earned it would pay taxes on it, at rates much higher than the wealthiest 1 %, and they would spend it on schools, cars, homes, furniture, vacations.....and what would happen to the money?....... they would spend it.....people who earned it would pay taxes on it at rates much higher than the wealthiest 1 % and they would spend it on schools, cars, homes, furniture,.........and what would happen to the money?....... they would spend it.....people who earned it would ay taxes on it at rates much higher than the wealthiest 1 % and they would spend it on schools, cars, homes, furniture, vacations.....

There is something you can do...

https://www.facebook.com/groups/DuluthAreaMTA/?ref=notif&notif_t=group_r2j

Corporate profits have never been higher! The stock market just hit an all-time peak. A typical CEO makes more in a day than an average employee makes in a year. All of the gains in our economy from 2009 to 2011 (the last year for which there is data) went to the richest 1% of Americans. For the rest of us, not even the proverbial trickle. Meanwhile, Congress and the White House are sinking in the quicksand of a completely false deficit “crisis.” Blind or indifferent to its impact on everything from meat inspections to airport lines to job losses, Congress drove the country into the sequester, unnecessarily jeopardizing critical public safeguards and services. Congress — and, it must be said, and with disappointment, President Obama — are seriously considering cuts to Social Security and Medicare, two of the most effective and vital public programs in our nation’s history. Millions of Americans who want and need work can’t get a job, while those with jobs see their wages stagnate even as they have become more productive than ever before. Millions of Americans go hungry and do not have health care. Millions of Americans lost their homes or their savings or their pensions to Wall Street’s pathological pursuit of profits. It just doesn’t add up. The mega-rich and corporatized are doing as well or better than ever. Yet the rest of us are being asked to continue scraping along. There is enough — more than enough — to go around. The key phrase there being “go around.” Prosperity doesn’t go around anymore. It is, instead, sucked up and socked away by the few who already have it as if it is their birthright and theirs alone. The greediest individuals and corporations maniacally rake in all they can grab while muttering “mine, mine, mine.” Why is this happening? Why can’t our politicians see what’s right in front of them: Over here, people are suffering; over there, people with more money than they could ever spend are demanding still more? The reason, while insidious and dispiriting, is quite plain: Our politicians have become beholden to those with the money to keep them in or out of office. The problem of money in politics affects every challenge facing us as a society. You know better than to ignore this systemic and fundamental problem for sounding too “inside-the-Beltway” or seeming to be a step removed from other issues you care about. Think it’s long overdue that we join our peers throughout the developed world who ensure that affordable, quality health care is available to every one of their citizens? The insurance and pharmaceutical industries put puppets in office who will shout “socialized medicine” and “death panels” at the merest mention of an expanded and improved Medicare-For-All program that will at last provide health care as a matter of right and end our inhumane infatuation with allowing a handful of giant corporations to profit at the expense of millions of our fellow Americans. Think we ought to enact some commonsense curbs on Wall Street’s basest impulses — to which it has shown a seemingly bottomless susceptibility — before the Big Banks barrel toward the brink of disaster again? The financial behemoths spend practically without limit to push their agenda in the White House and on Capitol Hill. That agenda basically boils down to “Trust us.” Do you trust them? Think we should look at whether some industries have offshored too many good jobs? Special interests with deep pockets are scheming to extend NAFTA-style trade pacts over the entire globe in a race to the bottom for health and safety standards, environmental protections and worker rights. Think we should talk more about the morality of using drones — even to target U.S. citizens on U.S. soil? Some politicians will put your life — and the Constitution — in robotic crosshairs if it means increasing the stock value of their military-industrial sponsors. Think we should invest even a little more in solar and wind energy before we open up every wild space to drilling, allow BP to crack open the ocean floor again, and pipe toxic sludge from Canada straight through our nation’s heartland just so more oil can be exported overseas? The oil industry spends and spends and spends to get politicians elected who will perpetuate our addiction to fossil fuels and deny the science proving that we’re endangering our planet’s ability to sustain us. What can you do about it? Join Move To Amend and PARTICIPATE! https://movetoamend.org/ Until we take back our democracy from the billionaires and multinationals, nothing is safe from their greed. That’s why Public Citizen devotes so much of our resources to researching, exposing and fighting — in all branches of government and at the grassroots; at the local, state and national levels — the ways corporate money corrupts our democracy. Together "We the People" can take back our country.  We can put people back in charge of our lives and our future. Mega-Corporations are not people.  Mega-Coporations should not be able to use their voice, their money, just as we have  Constitutional rights of "free speech".  A pathogen is rotting our democracy from the inside out. We can eradicate it. But only with your help. Get involved!  Move To Amend and Public Citizen need your help.  What are you willing to do to help them?

Targeted U.S. tax loopholes!

Fri Mar 9, 2013 4:30pm EST

(Reuters) - Tax "loopholes," were at the heart of a political battle over the $85 billion in across-the-board federal spending cuts that kicked in. Democrats wanted to kill many of these tax breaks. Republicans sometimes say they want to close tax breaks, too, but they have offered few specifics about which ones.

The Senate voted on a bill, a few weeks ago, to prevent the automatic cuts, known as the sequester, partly by ending tax breaks. That would have raised government revenues and prevented the need for some of the budget cuts. But the bill failed. Many Republicans opposed raising any new tax revenues, or eliminating any of these tax loopholes to stave off cuts.

Below are some of the tax breaks that had been targeted for closure in the past and the ones that were in that Senate bill.

TARGETED TAX BREAKS THAT COULD HAVE STOPPED SEQUESTER!

CARRIED INTEREST. Preferential treatment for private equity, venture capital and other financial managers that lets them pay the 20 percent capital gains rate on much of their income, instead of the higher individual income tax rate on wages.

OIL AND GAS SUBSIDIES. Energy sector tax breaks including the oil and gas well-depletion allowance; the domestic manufacturing deduction on oil and gas, and expensing of intangible drilling costs.

LAST IN, FIRST OUT (LIFO) ACCOUNTING. An accounting technique used in some industries, especially oil and gas. Companies say this change would force them to revalue old inventory to higher prices.

PROFIT DEFERRAL. A deduction for interest expenses on foreign earnings for deferred taxes.

FOREIGN TAX CREDIT POOLING. A loophole that lets companies claim more in tax credits than would be paid in U.S. taxes by altering which of their foreign units pay out dividends.

INTANGIBLE PROPERTY. A tax break that allows U.S. companies to shelter overseas profits derived from intangible property, such as royalties from drug patents.

CORPORATE JETS. A tax break used by corporate jet owners to depreciate fleets.

MINIMUM OVERSEAS PROFITS TAX. A minimum tax on overseas profits and using the revenues to help companies invest in the United States.

OTHER SENATE BILLS THAT COULD INCREASE REVENUE

BUFFETT RULE. Named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, a new 30 percent minimum tax would be applied on household adjusted gross income, phased in between incomes of $1 million to $5 million.

OIL FROM TAR SANDS. Oil derived from tar sands would be added to a list of petroleum products that pay into a liability trust fund to help clean up after oil spills.

DEDUCTION FOR MOVING OVERSEAS. This provision would end the ability of companies to take tax deductions for costs associated with moving plants and jobs overseas.

TAX FREE BREAKS THAT WERE SAVED BY FISCAL CLIFF AGREEMENT!

Even as partisans squabble over tax loopholes, some of the same types of tax breaks were included in the year-end "fiscal cliff" deal increasing most individual tax rates.

ZERO TAXES REMAIN – The agreement maintained the ability of very, very wealthy couples to give up to 10 million dollars, to anyone, tax free with zero percent tax rates.  It would have been reduced to 2 million dollars of zero percent taxes rates, per couple.

OFFSHORE FINANCING INCOME. Renewed a tax break on financing income abroad used by major corporations like General Electric.

WIND ENERGY. Extended a tax credit for wind energy.

BONUS DEPRECIATION. Extended, in part, a tax break that lets businesses immediately depreciate certain new capital outlays and equipment investments.

R&D CREDIT. Renewed a credit for research and development. Politically popular, the credit is heavily used by software, drug and aerospace companies. Some say the credit helps the biggest companies that would do the research even without it.

(Reporting by Kim Dixon; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Philip Barbara and V.Boehland)

 

Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, Democratic President Obama, Independent Senator, Bernie Sanders, the Green Party all agree! Money is not the same as speech! Corporations are not, and should not, be legally defined the same as an individual "person". Our U. S. Constitution starts with "We the PEOPLE....." It was never intended to be interpreted as "We the CORPORATIONS..........."!