Senator Bernie Sanders’ Guide to Corporate Freeloaders

And it’s not like they’re creating jobs…

Under Sanders’ legislation, a 5.4 percent tax on income of more than $1 million a year would yield up to $50 billion annually for the U.S. Treasury.

The same legislation would end tax breaks for big oil and gas companies. That provision would yield about $3.5 billion a year in new revenue.

Sanders voted yesterday against a House-passed spending bill that slashed Head Start, Pell grants, community health centers, LIHEAP, the Social Security Administration and many other programs that are vitally important to millions of middle-class families.

“The Republicans wanted to move toward a balanced budget solely on the backs of the middle class and some of the most vulnerable people in this country, but didn’t ask the wealthiest people, who are becoming much wealthier, to contribute one penny in shared sacrifice.”

I don’t think it’s out of line to ask the wealthy to start contributing their fair share.They’ve been raking it in at the expense of everyone else for over a decade.

Do you think this is something the ~~Teaparty ‘patriots’~~ teabaggers will address at their rally on Capitol Hill today? Me neither.

Paul Ryan’s “2012 Path to Poverty / Discounted Soylent Green For All” budget proposal

The very loud tea party Republican base won’t pay attention to the details of Ryan’s budget proposal or try to investigate it for themselves — Fox News and Rush Limbaugh will tell them everything they need to know. That’s how the very loud tea party Republican base will continue to support and vote for even more corporate wealth and power, ending the middle-class as we know it, all because of extreme CONSERVATIVE SOCIAL ISSUES.

Tea party Republicans claim to be all about the size of government and government spending and NOT about social issues. However, this latest fight over the 2011 budget and the extreme social conservative riders that their representatives in the House tried (and failed) to enact betrayed them. They screamed “Shut it down!” rather than compromise on items that really had nothing to do with spending and a budget. The GOP knows the chain they can always pull with this base is going to be variations of God, guns, and gays.

Mike Lux at C&L has a good summary of Ryan’s 2012 budget proposal, but begins with some common sense suggestions for reducing our deficit (emphasis mine):

I can get to a balanced budget a lot faster than that, and do it without dismantling Medicare and Medicaid, and without taking an axe to Pell Grants, Head Start, and meals for shut-in seniors and hungry children. Heck, Jan Schakowsky’s plan balances the entire budget except for interest payments on the national debt in five years. You can easily balance the budget in less than 10 years, even including those interest payments, simply by cutting the waste in military spending, reforming the government contracting procedures, ending tax loopholes for investment bankers and offshore companies, ending subsidies to oil companies and big agribusinesses, taxing speculative financial trades, and having millionaires pay taxes at the same rate they did under Ronald Reagan.

The Ryan budget has nothing — not a single frickin’ thing — to do with cutting the federal deficit. It is all about income redistribution, simple as that. If you take away the budget savings Ryan claims from projecting that the wars we are in will wind down soon, he has $4.3 trillion in budget cuts and $4.2 trillion in tax cuts. And I bet you can guess which fact comes next: the budget cuts are targeted almost 100 percent at programs that help low-income families and the working middle class, while the tax cuts are almost entirely directed toward the wealthiest 10 percent. Continue reading →

image source

How supply-side economics ACTUALLY works

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Related:

Where are the jobs? U.S. corporations are hoarding cash, giving themselves massive paychecks They are not going to create jobs (here) with extra money.

It’s not like they’re creating jobs…

Without labor nothing prospers: how far the Republican party has fallen.

19 Facts About The Deindustrialization Of America

Show me on the doll where the Benevolent Hand touched you

Tax breaks to the wealthy will never create jobs

someecards

Class War, Corporate-style

Where are the jobs in America? In the pockets of corporate CEOs:

As most American families continue to struggle with high unemployment and stagnant wages, CEOs at the country’s 350 biggest companies saw their pay jump 11% last year to a median of $9.3 million, according to a study conducted for the Wall Street Journal…

For the surveyed CEOs, the sharpest pay gains came via bonuses, which soared 19.7% as profits recovered, especially in some hard-hit industries. … Net income rose by a median of 17%; shareholders at those companies enjoyed a median return, including dividends, of 18%.

Of course to be fair, we can’t generalize and say these corporations are creating ZERO jobs. There are probably tons of new jobs in China and India. Just not here.

I wonder when the teabaggers will wake up from the spell of their corporate masters and quit voting for the party that wants to annihilate the middle-class?

Protip on corporate welfare: it costs money to buy a filibuster.

Think Progress reports on the terrific success that oil companies had last night with their purchased GOP senators:

[Last night the Senate majority tried] to repeal $21 billion in subsidies for the big five oil companies — the same companies that made over $30 billion in profits in just the first three months of 2011.

[…] An analysis of campaign contribution records shows the gusher of dirty cash that fueled the filibuster:

A Center for American Progress Action Fund analysis finds that the 48 senators who sided with Big Oil received over $21 million in career oil contributions, while 52 senators who sided with the American people received only $5.4 million in contributions. Each senator who voted for Big Oil received on average more than four times as much oil cash as those who voted to end the subsidies.

While eight Republican senators voted for a bill that included a repeal of tax breaks for big oil in 2007, only Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine voted with the Democrats in supporting ending taxpayer handouts to big oil tonight. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Mark Begich (D-AK), and Ben Nelson (D-NE) joined the Republicans to protect the oil companies’ corporate welfare.

Income redistribution the GOP way: continue Bush tax cuts, abolish Medicare

[S]imply letting the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule (or paying for any portions that policymakers decide to extend) would stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio for the next decade. While we’d have to do much more to keep the debt stable over the longer run, that would be a huge accomplishment. [OffTheCharts]

Jack Cluth — Lest any of us forget how we got to where we are:

It’s become almost an article of faith among the cognoscenti on the Right that Barack Obama’s policies are largely responsible for the mess we’re in. I suppose this only goes to prove two things:

Americans have a disturbingly short and selective memory, and

Americans are a highly suggestible, malleable, and an easily propagandized collection of barely lucid sheeple.

Follow the money: who’s benefited from Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy? Who’s benefited from the Afghanistan / Iraq wars? Certainly not working- and middle-class Americans. Isn’t it strange that the working- and middle-class GOP base continues to support those who rob from them to give to the rich?

While we’re busy throwing more of our tax dollars at rich people, oil companies and corporate CEOs (instead of into our own treasury), the GOP is trying to convince us that ending Medicare is the only option available to patriotic Americans who want to manage our deficit.

The truth of the matter is that in order to continue diverting trillions in potential federal revenue to America’s millionaires, we probably will need to abolish Medicare.

Video: The Gentleman from New York on the GOP’s plan to eliminate Medicare

“It [Ryan’s budget proposal] is not a construct to develop a plan; it is the proposal of the Republican Party of the United States of America to eliminate Medicare as a guaranteed entitlement. If you don’t believe me, go get the BOOK that they wrote. Go get the BUDGET that they wrote. Go get the BILL that they wrote…” ~ Rep. Anthony Weiner

Ten years ago, Bush said “Tax relief will create new jobs, tax relief will generate new wealth…”

Yesterday’s lies are today’s lies. A decade of FAIL, brought to you by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the GOP. From Pat Garofalo | Think Progress — read the whole thing, but here are some highlights on this 10-year anniversary of fail:

10 years ago tomorrow, the first of the Bush tax cuts was enacted. That 2001 tax cut was followed up by a second tax cut in 2003, passed after Vice-President Dick Cheney reportedly asserted that “deficits don’t matter.” The tax cuts were sold as necessary economic stimulus that would boost job creation and a moribund economy. “Tax relief will create new jobs, tax relief will generate new wealth, and tax relief will open new opportunities,” Bush said on April 16, 2001 as he was pushing for the passage of the first tax cut. Two years later he said, “These tax reductions will bring real and immediate benefits to middle-income Americans… …

DIDN’T CREATE JOBS:

During the decade after the Bush tax cuts were passed, “growth in investment, GDP, and employment all posted their worst performance of any post-war expansion.”

Following the Bush tax cuts, “Overall monthly job growth was the worst of any cycle since at least February 1945, and household income growth was negative for the first cycle since tracking began in 1967.”

“The economy boasted 132 million jobs in June of 2001, the month that the first of the Bush tax cuts was signed into law. Three years later, in June of 2004, there were just 131.4 million jobs.

The economy did not add a single new job during three years under the Bush tax cuts.” Overall, Bush’s job growth was just 4.8 percent, compared to the 16.2 percent job growth under President Bill Clinton…

BLEW UP THE DEFICIT:

During a 2001 address to Congress, Bush said, “At the end of those 10 years [in the 2001 budget], we will have paid down all the debt that is available to retire. That is more debt repaid more quickly than has ever been repaid by any nation at any time in history.”

However, thanks in large part to the Bush tax cuts, the debt ballooned under Bush, with debt held by the public increasing from $3.5 trillion to nearly $6 trillion and gross federal debt going from $5.6 trillion to nearly $10 trillion.

In fact, “From 2001 through 2010, the cuts added $2.6 trillion to the public debt, nearly 50% of the total debt accrued during this period.”…

TODAY’S GOP DOUBLES-DOWN:

Republicans only agreed to last December’s tax deal because it extended the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans.

Now, both the House Republican budget and the House Republican “jobs plan” released last week include further reductions in the top tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.

In fact, the “jobs plan” document calls for tax cuts to “Increase American competitiveness to spur investment and create more American jobs.”

REALITY:

Related:

WASHINGTON POST: "For years, statistics have depicted growing income disparity in the United States, and it has reached levels not seen since the Great Depression. In 2008, the last year for which data are available, for example, the top 0.1 percent of earners took in more than 10 percent of the personal income in the United States, including capital gains, and the top 1 percent took in more than 20 percent. ...Now a mounting body of economic research indicates that the rise in pay for company executives is a critical feature in the widening income gap."

Don’t throw grandma from the nursing home

Paul Ryan’s Path to Poverty budget proposal continues to stink up America (emphasis mine):

But the new polling by Anzalone Liszt Research, the Democratic-aligned polling firm, found an even more dramatic response on Medicaid if respondents are told of the impacts seniors face.

Told that the Ryan budget “would cut $750 billion from Medicaid, including funding for 80 percent of nursing home residents, forcing many seniors to be kicked out of their nursing homes,” 63 percent of respondents said they were “very” concerned. That figure was 69 percent for seniors and 64 percent for independents.

About 64 percent of senior nursing home residents depend on Medicaid as the primary means of paying for their housing. Still more rely on Medicaid for other expenses or to be able to stay in their own homes.

But remember in Ryan’s budget proposal, the rich should get ever larger tax breaks. The Koch brothers’ Teaparty is doing great!

Related:

The aim of the corporate state is not to feed, clothe or house the masses but to shift all economic, social and political power and wealth into the hands of the tiny corporate elite. It is to create a world where the heads of corporations make $900,000 an hour and four-job families struggle to survive. The corporate elite achieves its aims of greater and greater profit by weakening and dismantling government agencies and taking over or destroying public institutions. Charter schools, mercenary armies, a for-profit health insurance industry and outsourcing every facet of government work, from clerical tasks to intelligence, feed the corporate beast at our expense. The decimation of labor unions, the twisting of education into mindless vocational training and the slashing of social services leave us ever more enslaved to the whims of corporations. The intrusion of corporations into the public sphere destroys the concept of the common good. It erases the lines between public and private interests. It creates a world that is defined exclusively by naked self-interest.

Chris Hedges (via azspot)

Republicans walk out of budget talks over taxes

cognitivedissonance:

Negotiators had reached tentative agreement on more than $2 trillion in cuts covering wide swaths of the federal budget, according to an aide familiar with the talks, affecting health programs, annual spending, benefits like farm subsidies and tuition aid, and automatic limits on future spending. But Democrats would not relent on taxes, the aide said.

Republicans have said from the outset that any tax increases will not pass the House. Democrats saw an opening, though, after many Senate Republicans supported a move to repeal a tax break for ethanol last week over the objections of anti-tax activists.

In recent sessions, Democrats had pressed to close a wide range of tax breaks, from oil and gas subsidies to breaks that benefit wealthy individuals.

That’s right, kids. Democrats are offering to sacrifice the poor on the altar of ideology in exchange for teeny sacrifices from the rich and corporations in the form of their taxes going back to rates from the Clinton era. You know, before the ~~temporary~~ Bush tax cut package. The GOP is willing to risk US default over this. Remember this in 2012.

World's Millionaires Increased By 8.3% in 2010 - DailyFinance

Millionaires are back. The number of individuals worldwide with $1 million or more in assets aside from their residence grew by 8.3% to 10.9 million in 2010, topping pre-crisis 2007 levels, according to the World Wealth Report released Wednesday.

The United States remained home to most of what the financial services industry calls high-net-worth individuals. The ranks of U.S. millionaires grew from 2.9 million in 2009 to 3.1 million in 2010 — about 1% of the population.

The study, conducted by Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management (BAC) and Capgemini, found that women and investors 45 and younger helped propel the surge. Female millionaires increased from 24% to 27% of the count since 2008. The percentage of younger market players increased from 13% to 17%.

“The U.S. fabrication industry could [not] put a project like this together.” Right… ANYMORE!

Or ever again…? Gah!

Depressing post from Balloon Juice:

The new Oakland Bay bridge is being pre-fabricated in China by workers earning $12 for a 16-hour day, working at times 7 days a week:

“I don’t think the U.S. fabrication industry could put a project like this together,” Brian A. Petersen, project director for the American Bridge/Fluor Enterprises joint venture, said in a telephone interview. “Most U.S. companies don’t have these types of warehouses, equipment or the cash flow. The Chinese load the ships, and it’s their ships that deliver to our piers.”

He’s absolutely right: As long as government—which, after all, builds all the bridges—can outsource major projects like this to the lowest-bidding, most exploitative employer in the entire world, we’re not going to have an local industry able to build new bridges. Such is the monumental, self-serving stupidity of our Galtian/governmental confluence.

Thanks, state government ‘patriots.’

From the comments of that post: MikeBoyScout – June 26, 2011 | 10:13 am · Link

Ambridge, Pennsylvania where today about 16.4% of families and 17.8% of the population were below the poverty line.

American Bridge attracted thousands of immigrants who came to fulfill their dreams of work, freedom, and peace. The steel mills became the focal point of the town. Most of the employees were relatives of relatives and the small town grew, with wards separating the town into ethnic sections.

With the growth of the steel mills, Ambridge became a worldwide leader in steel production.[citation needed] The borough became known for bridge building, metal molding, and the manufacture of tubes (large iron pipes). During World War II, the American Bridge Company fabricated steel for the building of LSTs (Landing Ship Tanks). The steel was then sent by rail to the adjacent American Bridge naval shipyard in Leetsdale, PA where the LSTs were built. The area was also home to several other steel mills like Armco, the pipe mill which manufactured oil piping, and A.M. Byers, a major iron and tool fabricator. Eventually competition by foreign steel producers began to cause the share of the steel market for U.S. manufacturers to dwindle. With the shift of steel production overseas, the Ambridge Bridge Company ended operations in Ambridge in 1983. The legacy of American Bridge can be seen today from coast to coast, from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to the Brooklyn Bridge in New York.

But wait. Michele Bachmann has a solution!

You see? Americans, too, could proudly earn $12 a day for 16-hour workdays!

I’ll say it again: Watch The Company Men. The ending of this movie is really going to be the only solution for America.

Meanwhile in Minnesota: Government shutdown

Minnesota’s DEMOCRATIC governor wanted to increase taxes on people earning $1 million or more (3% of Minnesota’s taxpayers). The Minnesota REPUBLICANS would rather see the entire government shutdown and 22,000 state employees furloughed than agree to a tax increase on the wealthy. Who needs more state revenue when you can cut most of your state government programs and lay off employees?

Another example of: you can’t negotiate with “no.”

ST. PAUL, Minn., July 1 (UPI) — Minnesota’s government shut down Friday after Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton and Republican legislative leaders failed to settle their budget differences.

State parks closed and entrances to rest areas were blocked. Boaters using Department of Natural Resources public landings were informed the landings wouldn’t be monitored or maintained. First-time drivers will have to wait for their licenses, as will people facing a license renewal. Same with updating vehicle tabs.

Employees were told to take home any plants that couldn’t survive without water for a time.

Talks broke off abruptly Thursday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. Republican leaders rejected Dayton’s proposal that would have raised income taxes on people earning more than $1 million a year — an estimated 7,700 Minnesotans, or 0.3 percent of all taxpayers, state Revenue Department statistics indicate.

“This is a night of deep sorrow for me,” Dayton said late Thursday in an address interrupted by hisses from some Republicans.

Republican leaders said Dayton’s proposal for dealing with the projected $5 billion deficit would harm the state’s economy for generations.

“We will not saddle our children and grandchildren with mounds of debts, with promises for funding levels that will not be there in the future,” said House Speaker Kurt Zellers. “This is debt that they can’t afford. It’s debt that we can’t afford right now.”

(link to ABCNews video)