No more Texas governors for president
Today in things that are obvious but people pretend are not true. “Where Are All the Liberal Megadonors?”
Also: I meant to post this to my personal Tumblr but messed up. It’s still true, though. —Nick Baumann
(via motherjones)
(via motherjones)
It is astounding how significantly one idea can shape a society and its policies. Consider this one.
If taxes on the rich go up, job creation will go down.
This idea is an article of faith for Republicans and seldom challenged by Democrats and has shaped much of today’s economic landscape.
But sometimes the ideas that we know to be true are dead wrong. For thousands of years people were sure that earth was at the center of the universe. It’s not, and an astronomer who still believed that it was, would do some lousy astronomy.
In the same way, a policy maker who believed that the rich and businesses are “job creators” and therefore should not be taxed, would make equally bad policy.
I have started or helped start, dozens of businesses and initially hired lots of people. But if no one could have afforded to buy what we had to sell, my businesses would all have failed and all those jobs would have evaporated.
That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is a “circle of life” like feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of increasing demand and hiring. In this sense, an ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than a capitalist like me.
I would be letting you down here if I didn’t mention that there’s an artist called Mexican Mitt Romney who recorded a song with a chorus that goes “I’m rich, bitch / I’m the Juan Percent / I wanna be the first Latino president.”
Comic credit Clay Bennett / Chattanooga Times-Free Press.
You guys, I’m playing that song on my radio show next week.
House Republicans don’t actually cut the deficit, because they cut safety net programs to pay for tax cuts for the rich.
- Guns everywhere. Concealed guns everywhere.
- Women: if you get pregnant please stay pregnant because Jesus and God say so.
- Immigrants: get the fuck out of here. Unless you want to do my lawn, then please stay.
- Tax breaks for the rich in perpetuity. Fuck you, poor people, we earned this money….
Affordable: $1 TRILLION per year in tax cuts for the rich
Unaffordable: $6 BILLION per year to help millions of students
How Did Mitt Make So Much Money And Pay So Little in Taxes?
Now that Mitt Romney is the presumed Republican candidate, it’s fair to ask how he made so much money ($21 million in 2010 alone) and paid such a low tax rate (only 14.9 percent).
Not only fair to ask, but instructive to know. Because the magic of private equity reveals a lot about how and why our economic system has become so distorted and lopsided – why all the gains are going to the very top while the rest of us aren’t going anywhere.
The magic of private equity isn’t really magic at all. It’s a magic trick – and it’s played on you and me.
Jake Kornbluth and I have made this 2 minute video that explains it all in eight simple steps. (Thanks to MoveOn.org for staking us.)
By the way, the “other people’s money” that private equity fund managers (as well as other so-called “hedge” fund managers) play with often comes from pension funds that contain the savings of millions of average Americans.
The pension fund managers who dole out our savings to private equity and hedge-fund guys also take a hefty slice in bonuses. And like the others, they bear no risk if their bets later turn bad. They get their bonuses regardless.
Nor are any of them — private-equity, hedge-fund, or pension-fund managers — personally liable for doing adequate due diligence. They can bet our money on the basis of no more information than what they had for breakfast.
But if these funds lose, you lose. That’s what happened in 2008 and 2009. Some of the losses are also shifted to the government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation – which means taxpayers lose.
It’s a giant con game, and it continues to this day.
Here’s what has to be done to stop it:
1. End the “carried interest” loophole that allows private-equity managers like Mitt Romney to treat their income as capital gains, taxed at 15 percent, even though they don’t risk a dime of their own income. Their earnings should be treated as ordinary income.
2. Hold the managers of private-equity funds, hedge funds, and pension funds to a “due diligence” standard. So if the funds lose money and these managers didn’t exercise due diligence, the Pension Guaranty Corporation can claw back their bonuses.
3. Raise the capital-gains rate to match the tax rate on ordinary income – especially for short-term investments. Give a tax preference only to “patient capital” – that is, for investments held for, say, five years or more.
4. Resurrect Glass-Steagall.
Mitt and others like him won’t like any of these reforms. They’d eliminate the humongous profits they’ve enjoyed at the expense of the rest of us.
But these reforms are necessary if we’re to take back our economy. #BeyondOutrage.
John McMurtrie, San Francisco Chronicle Book Editor, reports that Adrienne Rich has passed away.
I am devastated. I took this picture of her when she visited my college in 2008.
Voters say “no” and “old” define the GOP field. I’m especially enjoying the ones for Newt Gingrich.
The short take (specifics at the link):
- SENIORS WOULD PAY MORE FOR HEALTH CARE
- ELDERLY AND DISABLED WOULD LOSE MEDICAID COVERAGE
- THIRTY MILLION AMERICANS WOULD LOSE HEALTH COVERAGE
- CORPORATIONS AND THE RICH WOULD GET A $3 TRILLION TAX CUT
- DEFENSE BUDGET WOULD GET A BOOST, WHILE THE SAFETY NET IS CUT
In other words, a perfectly Republican plan. More trickle down nonsense from the party that brought you the Great Economic Meltdown of 2008.
Bill Gates says it’s just justice for taxes to go up on the rich.
(via think-progress)
(via think-progress)
GOP jobs plan.
