sad sally
sad sally's JournalIf you want a smile or maybe even a little laugh, take a look at "A Devil's Dictionary"
...
Class warfare: a technique by which teachers, nurses, firemen, and cashiers are believed to be oppressing derivatives traders and CEOs, which includes unreasonably complaining that their wages aren't keeping up with the cost of their health insurance.
Conservative: a person profoundly respectful of heritage, tradition, and old-fashioned values while preaching the revolution and strip-mining the Grand Canyon for high-sulfur coal.
....
Elites: insufferable, overeducated snobs who are not real Americans and may in fact be French. Mitt Romney (Harvard MBA and JD) and George W. Bush (Yale, Harvard) have often criticized such scoundrels.
Empower: If an American worker loses his pension or Social Security, he is empowered.
more here:http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10739-mike-lofgren-a-devils-dictionary
Why Afghanistan Can't Wait
Wednesday, 08 August 2012 - By Kathy Kelly and Hakim, RootsAction
Ali and Abdulhai, members of the Afghan Peace Volunteers. (Photo: RootsAction)
Two days ago, we spent three anxious hours in an outer waiting area of the "Non-Immigrant Visa" section of the U.S. consulate here in Kabul, Afghanistan, waiting for our young friends Ali and Abdulhai to return from a sojourn through the inner offices where they were being interviewed for visas to come speak to audiences in the United States.
They are members of the Afghan Peace Volunteers and have been invited to travel with the U.S.-Mexico "Caravan for Peace" that will be touring the United States later this summer. We didn't want to see their hopes dashed, and we didn't want to see this opportunity lost to connect the experiences of poor people around the world suffering from war. The organizers of the Caravan envision and demand alternatives to the failed systems of militarized policing in the terrifyingly violent, seemingly endless U.S.-Mexico drug war. They want to connect with victims of war in Afghanistan especially since, as the top producer of opium and marijuana in the world, Afghanistan has a failing war against drugs as well.
It's an unprecedented invitation, at a desperately crucial human moment.
A friendly Afghan woman working there as a security guard suggested that the length of the wait might be a good sign - perhaps it meant that one of their interviewers had taken a special interest in our young friends' case. This was what we'd been hoping for. Ali and Abdulhai each carried packets containing letters of support from four U.S. Senators and three U.S. Congressional Representatives, along with the summary of a petition signed by 4775 people. Maybe some interviewer was taking time to read the letter from Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire -- and perhaps Ali and Abdulhai had been given a chance to mention that Mairead would be joining them in Kabul this coming Human Rights Day on December 10th for a campaign calling on 2 million friends worldwide to support a cease-fire mediated by the U.N., silencing the guns of all sides currently fighting in Afghanistan.
The kindly guard, at least, was interested to know more about who the boys were. In snatches of conversation throughout the morning, having little actually to do in the United States' fortress of an embassy, she seemed to welcome a slight relief from boredom.
To find out if their visas were approved:http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10783-why-afghanistan-cant-wait
Washington's Press is the Cabin Boy of the Political Class – Do Quote Me on That
by Bob Garfield
The weather here in Washington this week was hot and humid. That's on background, of course. Do not quote me. You can use the information only if you attribute to "a beltway source who could not be named because he is not authorised to speak about meteorology".
Here's what you can quote me on: such ridiculous, pusillanimous, deceitful attributions are a standard tool of the Washington press corps, which as a group is too caught up in its own self-importance and petty competition to understand it has become the cabin boy of the political class. In the name of supposedly informing the audience, Washington reporters are co-conspirators in an ongoing fraud. Here's what it looks like:
USA Today: "Mitt Romney is planning a bus tour ahead of the Republican national convention. A Romney campaign aide confirmed the bus trip to USA Today. The aide, who is not authorised to discuss the trip publicly, asked for anonymity because details have not yet been announced."
snip
At its worst, the game can allow the vice president of the United States to leak phony intelligence to the New York Times and later refer back to the leak as independent journalistic confirmation, leading to invasion and hundreds of thousands of deaths and a trillion dollars in squandered treasure.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/08/04
Latest Jobs Report Reveals Woeful Impact of US Austerity
Published on Friday, August 3, 2012 by - Common Dreams staff
The US jobs report released Friday showed the creation of 172,000 private sector jobs in July. Despite those nominal gains, nearly 9,000 public sector jobs were lost, a trend that many observers argue reveals the negative impact austerity measures and public sector budget cuts have had on economic growth.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report, Federal employment fell by 2,000 jobs, state government employment fell by 6,000, and local government employment fell by 1,000. Unemployment inched up to 8.3 per cent.
“The July jobs numbers highlight the folly of those who are demanding more cuts in government spending,” said Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future. “They are bleeding an economy that is barely in recovery – and then blaming those who are trying to provide relief.”
“Americans have been badly served by a tea party Republican right that has departed from the traditional policies of both parties in recessions, and demanded austerity in a time of trouble. As we head towards the fiscal cliff in December, when the sequester calls for cutting some 10 percent from discretionary spending, legislators in both parties should reconsider inflicting more pain on this very weak economy.”
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/08/03-5
Remember the record pace at which Bush ADDED government jobs?
Public sector employment is now down 608,000 workers since January 2009, a 2.7 percent decline. At the same point in President Bush’s term, public sector employment was up 3.7 percent.
Romney was happy to take $1.5 billion taxpayer dollars to "save" the 2002 Olympics
and greatly benefit Salt Lake City, Utah. Who would be the beneficiary if he were to get his hands on the US Treasury as president? Not 98% of Americans.
from today's Democracy Now on Link TV:
AMY GOODMAN: We are joined by Don Barlett and Jim Steele. They are the authors of the new book, The Betrayal of the American Dream. I want to go to the issue of the Olympics since they’re happening in London right now. In 2001, you wrote a story called "Snow Job" about the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, headed by none other than the Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney. In your investigation, "Snow Job," about these Olympics, which you published in Sports Illustrated, you reported, quote, "The $1.5 billion in taxpayer [dollars] that Congress is pouring into Utah is 1.5 times the amount spent by lawmakers to support all seven Olympic Games held in the U.S. since 1904—combined." Jim Steele?
JAMES STEELE: Well, it’s an interesting position for somebody who’s against new taxes and wants to cut the deficit, that here you had somebody heading an Olympic committee where that entire operation raided the federal Treasury like no other Olympics in history. And they got everything: Salt Lake—infrastructure around Salt Lake, sewer lines, land exchanges that transformed the average snow resort, ski resorts into world-class resorts. All of these things happened one way or another under Romney’s watch. And that’s what astonished us about this comment he made where he was dissing the London Olympics, I mean, because—that they’re not operating right, they’re not doing this right. I mean, the whole—I think he’s so vulnerable on that issue, and everybody who had anything to do with the Salt Lake Olympics is very vulnerable on that. The thing that struck us so much—and here was Utah, a state famously with a great antipathy to paying any kind of taxes, but they had absolutely no qualms whatsoever about raiding the federal Treasury to take care of all of their needs for really the next generation. So, the fact that he would make this point in London just, frankly, astonished us.
DONALD BARLETT: Jim’s right. I mean, Utah got out of this anything they wanted. The states—other states would have had to have paid for on their own, Utah got from the federal government. And so, it’s—the other thing is this hypocrisy of people like Romney who want everyone in the middle and the bottom to pay their own way, but they themselves have no trouble grabbing as much money as they can get out of Washington. And they do it all the time. And it’s just—it’s just astonishing. But people generally don’t know it. The news media does not do what it should do on this area—never has. And so, there—part of the problem here is because most people today get their news from TV, and it’s not public TV, as you well know, it’s commercial TV. And commercial TV is not about to do this kind of work. It just isn’t.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s interesting, with NBC covering the Olympics around the clock, we’re not seeing any of the protests that are taking place and the increasing anger of the small businessmen in East London who are getting wiped out, the whole issue of not criticizing the corporate sponsors, the corporate sponsors—
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/7/30/pulitzer_winning_reporting_duo_don_barlett
Romney's Innovative Economic Plan: Dubya 2.0
The linked article is a worthwhile (sad, pathetic, sad, not ha-ha funny) read. The part that really describes Romney's "innovative economic plan" makes a little nasty gag come up:
... "I know how the economy works," but he never actually explains what he knows that nobody else does, or how that hard-won knowledge translates into a unique set of policy moves that only he could bring about and that would pull America from its economic doldrums.
... Brian Williams asked it in an interview with Romney yesterday: "The major planks of your job plan, lower taxes, both corporate and marginal rates, and reduce regulation. Explain how that would be different from what George W. Bush tried to push through?" Republicans might say this is a "gotcha" question, since it brings up George W. Bush, whom today's Republicans like to pretend was not actually president for eight years. But it's a reasonable way to ask, since Bush's presidency was pretty recent, and he did in fact implement the entire Republican economic agenda, with the exception of drastic cuts in the size of government, though that's something Republicans are committed to in rhetoric only. So how did Romney respond?
"Well, let me describe—actually, there are five things that I believe are necessary to get this economy going. One, take advantage of our energy resources, particularly natural gas, but also coal, oil, nuclear, renewables. That’s number one. A huge opportunity for us, and doing so is gonna bring manufacturing back, because low-cost, plentiful energy is key to manufacturing, in many industries.
Number two, trade. I want tre– to dramatically increase trade and particularly with—with Latin America. Number three, take action to get America on track to have a balanced budget. Now those three things, by the way, are things which we have not been doing over the last few years, which I think are essential to getting this economy going again.
Number four, we’ve got to show better training and education opportunities for our current re– workers and for coming workers. And then finally what I call restoring economic freedom. That means keep our taxes as low as possible, have regulations modern and up to date, get health care costs down. These things will restore economic freedom.
So my policies are very different than anything you’ve seen in the past. They’re really designed for an America which has some new resources, energy being one of them, trade with Latin America being another, and the need for a balanced budget now more urgent than ever before."
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07/26-10
And this is the best guy the Republicans could find to run?
Don't Expand NAFTA: A Warning Against TPP
American, Canadian, and Mexican workers cannot afford another corporate-directed trade agreement
Published on Thursday, July 26, 2012 by Foreign Policy In Focus - by Manuel Pérez Rocha and Stuart Trew
The United States recently announced that Canada and Mexico will join negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a secretive U.S.-led multinational trade and investment agreement currently being negotiated with eight other countries in the Pacific Rim region.
On the other side of the Pacific, Japanese legislators are defecting in droves to try to stop the country’s entry into the negotiations. But the situation is much different in Canada and Mexico, which were admitted to the table with much fanfare during the G20 summit in June. The Japanese response is justifiable, and a recent statement of solidarity against the TPP by North American unions offers a good building block for resisting an agreement that for Mexicans and Canadians amounts to a neoliberal expansion of NAFTA on U.S. President Barack Obama’s terms.
Mexico and Canada had been trying to secure a spot at the TPP table for months prior to the G20, and it became a leading story in both countries. Their anxiety played nicely into Obama’s hands, allowing the U.S. trade representative to put humiliating entry conditions on both countries — essentially giving these NAFTA neighbors a second-rate status, or what in Spanish is called convidados de palo (to be invited but without a say). Neither Canada nor Mexico will be able to see any TPP text until they finally join the negotiations in December, following the required 90-day U.S. congressional approval process. Once at the table, they will not be able to make any changes to the finished text or propose any new text in the finished chapters. There is a very real possibility that the existing TPP countries, the United States in particular, will use the following months to fashion a trap for the TPP latecomers.
snip
The intense secrecy of the TPP negotiations is not helping the Obama administration make its case. In their statement, North American unions “call on our governments to work with us to include in the TPP provisions to ensure strong worker protections, a healthy environment, safe food and products, and the ability to regulate financial and other markets to avoid future global economic crises.” But the truth is that only big business is partaking in consultations, with 600 lobbyists having exclusive passwords to online versions of the negotiating text.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07/26-8
Break the Power of Big Money
Published on Sunday, July 22, 2012 by Eric Margolis - by Eric Margolis
Jamaica’s Port Royal used to be called the wickedest city on earth. During the 1600’s, it was a favorite lair for pirates, buccaneers like Henry Morgan, cutthroats, and assorted criminals.
To paraphrase Somerset Maugham’s wonderful quip about Monaco, “a sunny place for shady people.”
In 1692, a massive earthquake plunged most of this tropical Sodom and 2,000 of its inhabitants into the sea. God’s punishments cried preachers.
London’s financial center, the City of London, is the modern version of Port Royal. Every sort of financial chicanery, malfeasance, and systemic fraud has infested Britain’s wild west banking sector. Each day brings new outrages: collusion, LIBOR rate rigging, share manipulation, gouging clients, and reckless gambling.
snip
The big five US banks that were allowed to grow into Leviathans by corrupted regulators and government cronies and now control 40% of all deposits in the United States. They are all far too big to fail; and, it increasingly appears, too big to manage or supervise properly. The same applies to British Banks.
Second, America’s finance industry spent $3.7 billion from 1999 to 2008 lobbying and donating to Congress. Results were spectacular: bank’s abilities to loan were vastly increased, capitol reserves reduced, inspection almost ended. In this fevered atmosphere of casino capitalism, banking and finance – paper passing – became America’s leading industry.
rest of the article at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07/22-2
Mitt’s Offshore Shenanigans: The Bigger Story
Published on Sunday, July 22, 2012 by Inequality.org - by Sam Pizzigati
Are America’s rich getting richer? They’re certainly making much more than ever before. Every official income measure we have shows that America’s most affluent are upping their incomes at a much faster clip than everyone else.
How fast? Between 1980 and 2010, notes an analysis of IRS tax data this past spring by economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, incomes for America’s top 1 percent more than doubled, after inflation, to an average $1.02 million.
snip
But that doesn’t seem to be the case, at least not according to the best official wealth stats we have, the household wealth data collected by researchers at the Federal Reserve Board.
snip
So what can explain the disconnect between the extraordinary income gains of the rich and the modest rise in their share of national wealth?
The London-based Tax Justice Network has an answer. The world’s super rich, the international group has just reported, are stuffing — and concealing — phenomenal quantities of their cash in secret global tax havens.
The Network’s new global tax-dodging study, the most detailed ever conducted, “conservatively” computes the total wealth sitting in these havens, as of 2010, at $21 trillion. That total could plausibly run as high at $32 trillion.
complete article at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07/22
Did Mitt Romney pay any federal taxes at all in 2009?
Source: Washington Post
Posted by Ezra Klein on July 17, 2012 at 2:50 pm
On the issue of Mitt Romney’s tax returns, my colleague George Will put it simply: “The cost of not releasing the returns are clear. Therefore, he must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them.”
The question is what could be in them that would be so damaging to the Romney campaign. Right now, the most popular theory is that Romney simply didn’t pay any federal taxes at all in 2009. As Joshua Green wrote, ” It’s possible that he suffered a large enough capital loss that, carried forward and coupled with his various offshore tax havens, he wound up paying no U.S. federal taxes at all in 2009.”
But the tax experts I’ve spoken to are skeptical. “Romney had a $4.8 million capital loss carryover coming into 2010,” says Edward Kleinbard, a professor of tax law at the University of Southern California. “So that means no capital gain income in 2009. If you look on the first page [of his 2010 tax return], though, he had lots of ordinary income (interest mostly), and dividends, which are taxed at the same rate as capital gains but which cannot be sheltered from tax by capital losses. So presumably he had some positive income tax in 2009.”
Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, agrees. “It’s unlikely that his taxable income was zero or even close enough to zero that his credits would zero out his tax liability completely,” he says.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/07/17/did-mitt-romney-pay-any-federal-taxes-at-all-in-2009/
Read more: Link to source
Terms most "regular" tax-filers seldom use: “loss harvesting,” "unusual tax shelters"
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