dajoki
dajoki's JournalThe biggest story you've never heard about today's federal debt
The biggest story you've never heard about today's federal debt
America's wealthy used to pay taxes to support the nation. Now, they lend it money and collect interest from the rest of us
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-biggest-story-youve-never-heard?publication_id=365422&isFreemail=true
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The biggest recipients of these interest payments are not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts, and estates.
Hence the half-century switch: The wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.
This means that a growing portion of your taxes are going to the wealthy in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services everyone needs.
So, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.
Both are worsening America’s already horrific inequalities of income and wealth.
What should be done? Reduce the debt by raising taxes on the wealthy.
This back story needs to be told. Please spread the word.
I don't usually share stuff like this but...
I have been living with a heavy heart for months and need to say something. Today would have been our 44th wedding anniversary but my beautiful wife was suddenly taken away from me three months ago and I am very sad and miss her very much. My children, grandchildren and friends are wonderful and are helping me everyday, but the pain of losing her is sometimes overwhelming, and today is one of those days. Anyway, thank you for letting me get that off my chest, it helps to talk about her every now and then.
Rightwing group pours millions in 'dark money' into US voter suppression bid
Rightwing group pours millions in ‘dark money’ into US voter suppression bid
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/13/heritage-foundation-voter-suppression-lobbying-election-action-plan
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Part of Heritage Action’s two-year strategy is to promote what it calls “model election laws”, focusing initially on eight battleground states: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, Texas and Wisconsin. In a private meeting with donors in Tucson, Arizona, in 2021, the group’s executive director, Jessica Anderson, boasted about the role Heritage Action had played in pressing Republican-controlled legislatures to impose strict restrictions on voting, including limits on mail-in voting and early voting days.
In a video of that meeting obtained by Documented, Anderson told the donors that the group acted “quickly and quietly”, bragging that “honestly nobody noticed” their behind-the-scenes influence. Heritage Action staff have registered to lobby in at least two dozen states.
The laser-like focus on key swing states like Georgia appears to have had an impact. The New York Times found that one-third of the 68 voting bills filed in Georgia in 2021 contained policy measures and language that aligned closely with proposals from Heritage Action.
The group has publicly claimed that it had a hand in advancing 11 voting bills in at least eight states in 2021, though in some cases legislation was passed in only one chamber or went on to be vetoed by the state’s governor.
Heritage Foundation, under the auspices of its elections supremo Hans von Spakovsky, curates an “election fraud database”. It claims to expose the errors, omissions and mistakes made by election officials, but it presents incomplete and misleading information and underscores how exceptionally rare fraud is within the US system.
Its records stretch back 40 years, a period in which billions of votes have been cast. Yet the database records only 1,402 “proven instances of voter fraud” – a “molecular fraction” of votes cast nationwide according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
/snip
The crazy Q cult and the media
Watching the circus that is going on in the House, as the clowns of the Q cult can't even elect a speaker, is a sickening sight. What's even worse is that the media is doing their best to try to normalize this hot mess like they always do. We are in for a rough two years with this gang of insurrectionists controlling this chamber of Congress, and the bothsiderism of the press will not help.
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