Post by: Deborah on October 28, 2004, 04:28:00 PM
****
McKinley or Roosevelt? This election is as much about the past as the future...
by Thom Hartmann
From the Gilded Age to the Great Depression to today, the economic agenda of conservatives has been easily summarized in two words: "cheap labor." Nowhere was that more clearly on display than in the recent decision by Judge William S. Howard that "relieved" coal companies from
having to pay already-earned retirement benefits to coal miners in Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana, and Illinois.
While the coal industry spends millions on feel-good TV advertisements featuring an eagle impressed by how they're (ahem) cleaning up the
air, coal companies are cleaning up their balance sheets to give stockholders and CEOs better returns, and using bankruptcy laws to bust unions. The new scheme is for unionized companies with pension liabilities to declare bankruptcy - during a boom time in the coal business, particularly given coal's attractiveness compared to $55/barrel oil -
and then sell their operations to each other to re-open with non-union labor.
Thousands of miners - many with serious health problems - were forced to watch helplessly this month as their pensions and health benefits
evaporated into thin air with, as New York Times writer James Dao noted, "a swipe of Judge William S. Howard's pen..."
None of this could have been possible without generous corporate "reforms" to bankruptcy laws pushed through Congress in the last few years by conservatives, and the lifetime appointment of conservative judges to seats on federal courts by conservative administrations. Judge Howard, for example, was appointed during the reign of George H.W. Bush, and his decisions continue to destroy union jobs and reduce labor costs for mining companies under the reign of George W. Bush.
Unions have been a bulwark of the middle class ever since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Prior to Roosevelt's 1935 Wagner Act,
which guaranteed workers' rights to unionize, America had been mostly either very rich or very poor.
At the founding of America, the closest we'd had to a middle class was the "plowmanry" class Jefferson exalted - small family farmers - who
were a major force in American politics from the time of the Revolution until the Civil War. But the industrialization of America, and the formation of huge agricultural monopolies made possible by rail transportation, began to wipe out the farming middle class (leading to the
progressive Grange movement in the late 1800s), and from that time until 1935 America was increasingly a Dickensian nation of richer and poorer, with a rapidly vanishing middle class.
Workers protested, but conservatives of the Gilded Age held both economic and political power. Eleven workers were murdered in the
Great Railroad Strike of 1877 when the B&O Railroad cut wages: That year only three national unions existed, and all were under siege.
In 1886, Boston police fired into a crowd of protestors - part of 340,000 strikers nationwide -who were calling for a change in the national
workday from 12 hours to 8. One Boston worker died in the hail of police gunfire that injured scores of others, and four labor leaders were
hanged, seriously crippling the union movement.
Of the 12 million working families in America in the census of 1890, the average income for 11 million of them was $380/year (equivalent to
about $7900 today), keeping them deep in poverty. In 1893, federal troops did battle with railroad strikers in 26 states, breaking a
national strike and sending labor leaders to prison. Eleven years later, while the majority of American workers were still desperately poor, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish made society headlines by throwing a dinner party for her dog, who made a grand entrance wearing a $15,000 diamond collar.
Following the Wagner Act's implementation, and Roosevelt's raising of the top marginal income tax rate on multi-millionaires to 90 percent,
however, the first true American middle class came into being. By 1947, over a third (roughly 35%) of America's workers were unionized, and
for every union job there was a non-union job in the private sector with nearly identical pay and benefits, because unions had set the floor for
labor costs and employers had to compete for workers. This meant that about 70% of American workers were able to raise a family, put children through school, pay for health care, and plan a good retirement, all on a single wage earner's salary. During this era, CEOs earned, on average, around 30 to 35 times what their lowest paid employees did, and senior management salary ratio caps averaging 20:1 were put into place in civil service, the military, and most colleges.
But in 1947 the cheap-labor conservatives fought back. In the elections of 1946, Democrats lost control of both the U.S. House and the Senate, allowing Republican legislators to push through the Taft-Hartley bill, which essentially allowed individual states to opt out of portions of the Wagner act. It was an early domestic version of the "free trade" disaster we're seeing now with NAFTA and GATT/WTO - a race to the cheap labor bottom - that started to take root in the American south right after passage of Taft-Hartley. Although President Harry Truman vetoed the Taft-Hartley assault on labor, Republicans in the House and Senate overrode his veto and it became law.
From then until the end of the Jimmy Carter presidency, unionization - and, thus, average worker wages in the United States - only gradually declined. When Ronald Reagan came into office, a quarter of the American workforce was unionized, meaning half of Americans could raise a middle-class family on a single salary.
But then Reagan declared war on the middle class, starting with the air traffic controller's union (PATCO) during his first year in office. The conservative assault on labor has been unrelenting since then: Today only about 8 percent of the private-sector American workforce is unionized, and at the same time Education Secretary Rod Paige described the teachers' union as a "terrorist organization," George W. Bush
announced plans to lay off over 700,000 unionized government employees and replace them with non-union "contractors."
While gutting the American middle class, conservatives also launched a well-funded propaganda campaign - using right-wing "think tanks" and talk radio - to convince workers that their growing economic woes were the fault of minorities ("affirmative action") and the poor ("welfare queens"). At the same time, they began stacking federal benches with conservative judges, and passing thousands of federal, state, and local laws, ordinances, and regulations that further weakened the powers of organized labor and their ability to unionize.
It's just fine, they said, for capital to organize in the form of a corporation. It's great when corporations organize into trade
associations, chambers of commerce, industry groups, and lobbying consortiums. But to have workers organize to level the playing field?
Inconceivable.
The result has been an explosion in CEO and executive pay, a rush of wealth to the conservative elite (the top 10 percent of Americans now own 71 percent of the nation's wealth), and a cut in taxes to a maximum 15 percent for those who "earn their living" by sitting around the pool waiting for their dividend checks to arrive.
In 1999, Washington Post writer Dan Balz profiled Karl Rove, pointing to Rove's affection for the Gilded Age's most aggressive advocate for the strike-breakers and Robber Barons, and declarer of the Spanish-American war, President William McKinley (1896-1901). Writes Balz: "'A
successful party,' Rove says of the GOP under McKinley, 'had to take its fundamental principles and style them in such a way that they seemed to
have relevance to the new economy, the new nature of the country and the new electorate.'"
So too, today. Will it be Rove's McKinleyian Bush, with a "new economy" of terrified minimum-wage workers, an entrenched private-jet
conservative elite, and wars in faraway places? Or might John F. Kerry, who often quotes Franklin D. Roosevelt and is a friend of labor, return
America to its postwar era of a growing middle class, peace, and prosperity?
"The economy is booming," millionaire TV commentators tell us from their billion-dollar corporate studio empires. "The economy is
creating more and more wealth," say rich conservatives. And for them, it's true, as money continues to flow from the working class up to the conservative elite and billion-dollar corporate tax cuts head legislative agendas.
Americans have a clear choice in this election year, from national to local elections. But unless average Americans wake up to the scam
that's been foisted on them by the likes of Reagan, Limbaugh, and the Bush family, the American middle class will continue to evaporate just as fast as the now-stripped pensions of West Virginia coal miners.
Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated
daily progressive talk show. http://www.thomhartmann.com (http://www.thomhartmann.com) His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People: A Call To Take Back America," and "What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return To Democracy."
Post by: Polarbear on October 29, 2004, 01:20:00 AM
Enjoy-Polarbear
Post by: Deborah on October 29, 2004, 07:47:00 AM
Post by: Deborah on October 29, 2004, 11:56:00 AM
http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb105-9.html (http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb105-9.html)
Excerpts:
The federal government currently spends roughly $75 billion a year on programs that provide subsidies to private businesses. Two years ago both Congress and the Clinton administration pledged to attack that pervasive corporate safety net. They have had very little success. Virtually every corporate welfare program that existed in 1994 is still squandering taxpayer dollars today. Many have had their budgets increased. If the size and cost of the federal government are ever going to be reduced, those taxpayer rip-offs must be eliminated.
Terminating those programs could save taxpayers more than $400 billion over the next five years.
Perhaps the most egregious example of corporate welfare is the Agriculture Department's $100 million a year Market Access Program...
Another example is the Commerce Department's Advanced Technology Program ($200 million a year), which gives research grants to consortiums of some of the nation's largest high-tech companies....
The Energy Department's Energy Supply Research and Development Program ($2.7 billion a year) aims to develop new energy technologies and improve on existing technologies....
The Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ($1.9 billion a year) provides services such as mapping, charting, and weather forecasting that are beneficial to specific private industries. Furthermore, those services are already being provided by the private sector.
The Export-Import Bank ($700 million a year) uses taxpayer dollars to provide subsidized financing to foreign purchasers of U.S. goods.
Similarly, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation ($70 million a year) provides direct loans, guaranteed loans, and political risk insurance to U.S. firms that invest in developing countries.
From a different article that I can't find a link to:
Examples of Corporate Welfare
(sources: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa241es.html (http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa241es.html), http://www.citizen.org/congress/corwel/hitlist99.htm (http://www.citizen.org/congress/corwel/hitlist99.htm), and http://www.feminist.org/other/budget/we ... elfare.htm (http://www.feminist.org/other/budget/welfare/welfare.htm))
A. Direct Grants to Businesses
Texas Instruments
In 1994, Texas Instruments got a $13 million handout from the Defense Department's Technology Reinvestment Project. This money was used in research and development on "Field Emissive Displays"--part of the manufacturing of televisions and computer monitors.
Charles A. Heimbold,Jr., President & CEO, Bristol-Myers Squibb
By 1991, Bristol-Myers Squibb had been paid $32 million in taxpayer money to develop Taxol, an anti-cancer drug. Although the cost of developing the drug was already covered out of ordinary citizens' pockets, Bristol-Myers Squibb, with a monopoly on the drug, sold it at $1,320 for a monthly supply--a mark up of 6 - 8 times the drug's production cost.
Sunkist Growers
1992, Sunkist Growers received $10 million in taxpayers' money from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This money was allocated to the well-known citrus company to help advertise its products abroad.
Lockheed Martin
During fiscal year 1995, the Pentagon agreed to pay Lockheed Martin $850 million in "consolidation costs." The Pentagon also paid $100 million in bonuses to top executives of Lockheed and Martin Marietta for successfully completing the merger of the two giant military contractors.
Michael Eisner and Disney Co.
Taxpayers forked over $300,000 in 1995 to help Disney Co. put on a bigger and brighter nightly fireworks show. Through a Department of Energy program called "Cooperative Research and Development Agreements," the research took place at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Disney gets the commercial benefit of this publicly funded research, and if applicable, shares developments with the armed forces.
General Motors
From 1990 - 1994, General Motors (GM) received more than $110.6 million in federal technology subsidies as part of a program that was supposed to create jobs. GM benefitted from this program; in 1994 they netted $4.7 billion in profits. Yet during those four years, GM slashed 104,000 jobs--25% of their U.S. workers were laid off.
Other examples:
Colombia/HCA Healthcare Corporation
In April 1995, Colombia/HCA Healthcare Corporation received a $90 million tax break as a reward for locating its corporate headquarters in Nashville,TN. The Regional Medical Center in Memphis, TN used to get supplemental payments from Tennessee's Medicaid program. But in January 1993, the payments stopped and the Regional Medical Center immediately lost $42 million due to the allocation set aside for Colombia/HCA. Health services at this public hospital have been cut and the quality of treatment has declined due to lack of funding.
Archer Daniels Midland (ADM)
?The supermarket to the world,? Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) receives several different forms of Corporate Wealthfare. A federal law requiring automobile fuel to contain 30% ethanol (a corn derivative) also grants a $.54 per gallon tax credit kickback to ethanol producers. ADM controls 60% of the ethanol markets and siphons off about $550 million a year.
If you are interested, the welfare received by Archer Daniels Midland?and other corporations?is further chronicled at http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa241es.html (http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa241es.html)
Below-Market Timber Sales: U.S. Forest Service "commodity" timber sales provide timber to logging companies at below-market prices. Private timber companies end up paying only $5 per tree for timber taken from public lands. In fact, the federal timber sales program actually loses money because the amounts paid to the government by the companies buying the timber do not even cover all of the costs associated with preparing and administering the sales. The program resulted in a $111 million net loss to taxpayers in 1997 and has damaged many old growth forests and wildlife habitats. Cost to taxpayers: $111 million annually
Mining Giveaways: An archaic 1872 law allows big mining corporations to pay no royalties on the billions of dollars worth of minerals they extract from public lands; these royalties would come to an average of more than $200 million each year (based on an 8% royalty rate). Furthermore, mining companies are able to acquire public lands at only $5 an acre, paying 1872 prices for land that is today worth billions of dollars. In addition, taxpayers have been saddled with the financial burden of cleaning up the destruction left by private mining on federal lands, estimated at $32 billion to $72 billion. Legislative efforts to enact a mineral royalty and create a mine reclamation program have all been blocked in Congress. Cost to Taxpayers: $200 million annually
Oil Royalties: the Department of Interior's Mineral Management Service estimates that oil companies underpay by an estimated $66 million annually for oil extracted from public lands. Oil companies participate in an elaborate pricing scheme to undervalue the oil -- sometimes by as much as $2 per barrel from the actual market price -- to avoid paying the full royalties due. Attempts to end this situation and institute a market-based valuation program have been repeatedly thwarted in Congress. Cost to Taxpayers: $66 million annually
Corporate Welfare Vs. ?Social Welfare?
The figures reported above give us some basis for assessing how corporate welfare matches up with ?social? welfare?programs for the needy, such as TANF, food stamps, and the like?in terms of costs.
The nation's largest corporations and richest citizens receive more welfare money than our social welfare programs. In 1994, the United States spent $104.3 billion on corporate welfare, while spending only $14.4 billion on Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC; now TANF). If we add together recent federal monies spent on AFDC/TANF, food stamps and Medicaid, it comes to about $85 billion annually. The total cost of the corporate tax breaks and subsidies is hundreds of billions of dollars.
Federal aid to corporations and wealthy individuals include bailouts, export promotions, loans, loan guarantees, debt forgiveness, below cost sales, interest free financing and other benefits. Barrett and Steele (1998) estimate that in 1998 corporate welfare cost the federal government $125 billion a year (note: estimates often vary, as these depend on exactly what one counts as corporate welfare; you will read precise definitions and estimates when you access the Boston Globe link a bit later).
In general, social welfare programs account for a small amount of the national budget. AFDC [the program prior to TANF] is less than 1% of the federal budget and, on average, no more than 2% of each state's fund. (http://www.feminist.org/other/budget/we ... elfare.htm (http://www.feminist.org/other/budget/welfare/welfare.htm))
Post by: Polarbear on October 29, 2004, 12:06:00 PM
Post by: Deborah on November 04, 2004, 09:29:00 PM
http://www.maxiter.com/pic/bigcorporateflag.gif (http://www.maxiter.com/pic/bigcorporateflag.gif)
Post by: Anonymous on November 05, 2004, 12:05:00 AM
Quote
On 2004-11-04 18:29:00, Deborah wrote:
"New American Flag
http://www.maxiter.com/pic/bigcorporateflag.gif (http://www.maxiter.com/pic/bigcorporateflag.gif)
"
Shit Earned income credit is as bad as cororate wellfare, unemployed refusing to work lazy asses sponge off of anybody who strives to earn more.....Get a Job Deborah and quit whinning for your own wefare.I as a tax payer don't owe YOU OR ANYBODY ELSE. I work 70 hours a week....Get your own fucking job and quit sucking off mine LAZY FUCKERS!
Post by: Anonymous on November 05, 2004, 12:23:00 AM
Glad to see that they reject Socialism for the rich.
So what if Joe Blow works 70 hours per week? Does that make him
a) a better person?
b) a victim of exploitation by the corporate Welfare bums that employ him ---
or
c) really really stupid & inefficient.
Post by: thepatriot on November 05, 2004, 08:47:00 AM
Quote
On 2004-11-04 21:23:00, Anonymous wrote:
"It's really interesting that it's the Cato Institute, well known for its conservatism as well as its fairly doctrinaire approach to capitalist ideals should adopt such an enlightened attitude towards corporate graft.
Glad to see that they reject Socialism for the rich.
So what if Joe Blow works 70 hours per week? Does that make him
a) a better person?
b) a victim of exploitation by the corporate Welfare bums that employ him ---
or
c) really really stupid & inefficient."
Makes him somebody that has a good work ethic and one who is not dependent of government for handouts he should be earning himself. Just because we were born in this country does not entitle us to shit we have to work for it, or we should anyway, sounds like there are a lot of bitter, unemployable shit heads on this board that rather sit around and bitch about everything around them instead of getting off their ass and doing something for themselves
Post by: Deborah on November 05, 2004, 11:08:00 AM
I?ve had a job since I was 12. I?ve paid enough into this sink hole government that if I ever find myself dependent on welfare, I won?t feel a moment of guilt. I and many other family members have paid into OUR account. The government wouldn?t be GIVING me anything, but returning money they have been holding and capitalizing on.
And if it ever comes to that, rest assured, I will not be visualizing that money coming from your pocket. I will imagine YOUR taxes going to corp welfare whores and the murdering of innocents to ensure a steady supply of petroleum. And your money, every time you sink $60 in the tank of your SUV, going to help Exxon have another record breaking year of profit at your ignorant expense.
Your not paranoid, you are being fucked, you just don't realize who's doing the fuckin. The American Patriots Dream.... An SUV and a 70 hour work week.
Post by: thepatriot on November 05, 2004, 11:24:00 AM
Quote
On 2004-11-05 08:08:00, Deborah wrote:
"What inspires your delusional slander?
I?ve had a job since I was 12. I?ve paid enough into this sink hole government that if I ever find myself dependent on welfare, I won?t feel a moment of guilt. I and many other family members have paid into OUR account. The government wouldn?t be GIVING me anything, but returning money they have been holding and capitalizing on.
And if it ever comes to that, rest assured, I will not be visualizing that money coming from your pocket. I will imagine YOUR taxes going to corp welfare whores and the murdering of innocents to ensure a steady supply of petroleum. And your money, every time you sink $60 in the tank of your SUV, going to help Exxon have another record breaking year of profit at your ignorant expense.
Your not paranoid, you are being fucked, you just don't realize who's doing the fuckin. The American Patriots Dream.... An SUV and a 70 hour work week.
"
Deb, I am not the anon with the 70 hour week, SUV sure, I paid for it I pay to fill it up why is that a problem for YOU?, that's your issue not mine. You have major issues with corporate america, are you the real UNIBOMBER :lol: :lol: :lol: You are one uptight BIOTCH....relax already and enjoy your corporate fucking :lol: :lol: :lol: and by the way when did I accuse you of not working??
_________________
Sarasota Straight Escapee
Post by: Deborah on November 05, 2004, 03:26:00 PM
Unless your under the delusion that your the only Patriot posting here. The Unipatriot.
Post by: thepatriot on November 05, 2004, 03:34:00 PM
Quote
On 2004-11-05 12:26:00, Deborah wrote::nworthy: :nworthy:
"
Don't believe I addressed you Patriot?
Unless your under the delusion that your the only Patriot posting here. The Unipatriot."
Post by: thepatriot on November 05, 2004, 03:36:00 PM
Quote
On 2004-11-05 12:26:00, Deborah wrote::nworthy: :nworthy: God you are one miserable individual, ya know Deb I don't think you could ever be happy
"
Don't believe I addressed you Patriot?
Unless your under the delusion that your the only Patriot posting here. The Unipatriot."
Post by: Deborah on November 07, 2004, 07:16:00 PM
NEWS RELEASE For immediate release
When the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) celebrates biodiversity on World Food Day on October 16, Iraqi farmers will be mourning its loss.
A new report [1] by GRAIN and Focus on the Global South has found that new legislation in Iraq has been carefully put in place by the US that prevents farmers from saving their seeds and effectively hands over the seed market to transnational corporations. This is a disastrous turn of events for Iraqi farmers, biodiversity and the country's food security. While political sovereignty remains an illusion, food sovereignty for the Iraqi people has been made near impossible by these new regulations.
"The US has been imposing patents on life around the world through trade deals. In this case, they invaded the country first, then imposed their patents. This is both immoral and unacceptable", said Shalini Bhutani, one of the report's authors.
The new law in question [2] heralds the entry into Iraqi law of patents on life forms - this first one affecting plants and seeds. This law fits in neatly into the US vision of Iraqi agriculture in the future - that of an industrial agricultural system dependent on large corporations providing inputs and seeds.
In 2002, FAO estimated that 97 percent of Iraqi farmers used saved seed from their own stocks from last year's harvest or purchased from local markets. When the new law - on plant variety protection (PVP) - is put into effect, seed saving will be illegal and the market will only offer proprietary "PVP-protected" planting material "invented" by transnational agribusiness corporations. The new law totally ignores all the contributions Iraqi farmers have made to development of important crops like wheat, barley, date and pulses. Its consequences are the loss of farmers' freedoms and a grave threat to food sovereignty in Iraq. In this way, the US has declared a new war against the Iraqi farmer.
More at: http://www.grain.org/nfg/?id=253 (http://www.grain.org/nfg/?id=253)
Post by: Antny on November 07, 2004, 07:46:00 PM
Post by: Deborah on November 07, 2004, 08:03:00 PM
They are tampering with genetics so that plants will not reproduce. That renders farmers dependent, not on nature, but Monsanto for seed every year.
And it's one thing to tamper with the seed and quit another to make laws requiring the use of such impotent seed.
It's an outrage further that it would be illegal- A FUCKING CRIME FOR GODS SAKE- to save and use heirloom seed. Won't be long until we have a black market for them.
plant variety protection (PVP)= protection for monsanto to monopolize on life forms
Sickos.
Post by: Antigen on November 08, 2004, 07:05:00 PM
Quote
http://www.jlhudsonseeds.net/USDAComment.htm (http://www.jlhudsonseeds.net/USDAComment.htm)
USDA Plans Severe Gardening Restrictions
Direct quotes from USDA Action Plan
"Clean list" - Everything not on government approved list banned.
Penalties - $1000 for home gardeners, up to $250,000 for nurseries.
Interstate movement of seeds - To be prohibited without permit and inspection.
For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habits and mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion of our garments, depend on where we were born. We are molded and fashioned by our surroundings.
--Environment is a sculptor -- a painter.
Post by: Antigen on November 08, 2004, 07:29:00 PM
Quote
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.1 ... _tophead_6 (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/columbia.html?tw=wn_tophead_6)
The Mystery of the Coca Plant That Wouldn't Die
The war on Colombia's drug lords is losing ground to an herbicide-resistant supershrub. Is it a freak of nature - or a genetically modified secret weapon?
By Joshua DavisPage 1 of 5 next ยป
I've got 23 ziplock bags filled with coca leaves laid out on the rickety table in front of me. It's been seven hours since the leaves were picked, and they're already secreting the raw alkaloid that gives cocaine its kick. The smell is pungently woody, but that may just be the mold growing on the walls of this dingy hotel room in the southern Colombian jungle. Somewhere down the hall, a woman is moaning with increasing urgency. I've barricaded the door in case the paramilitaries arrive.
I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
--Thomas Carlyle
Post by: Deborah on April 14, 2005, 11:04:00 AM
Stroke the Rich
By David Cay Johnston
The San Francisco Chronicle
Monday 11 April 2004
IRS has become a subsidy system for super-wealthy Americans IRS winks at rich deadbeats.
"While millions of Americans in the last quarter-century debated about who shot J.R. and scurried for news about who would be Jennifer Lopez's next lover, Congress quietly passed tax laws that shift the tax burden from the 28,000 Americans in households with incomes of $8 million per year or more.
One 1985 law, promoted in the Senate as relieving middle class Americans, gave a huge tax break to corporate executives who make personal use of company jets. CEOs may now fly to vacations or Saturday golf outings in luxury for a penny a mile. Congress shifted the real cost of about $6 per mile to shareholders, who pay two-thirds, and to taxpayers who suffer the rest of the cost lost as a result of reduced corporate income taxes.
Since 1988, Congress has also cut in half the Internal Revenue Service's capacity to enforce tax laws, replacing it with extra effort to reduce audits of corporations and the rich. On March 30, Congress was told that 78 percent of known tax cheats in investment partnerships are not even asked to pay because there are not enough tax collectors to go after them. Congress and the Bush administration rejected the request by the IRS Oversight Board, a citizen panel Congress created, for extra money to pursue some of these tax cheats and stop about 1 percent of the $311 billion in estimated annual tax cheating. (That's Eric Cantor and George W. Bush, our congressman and our president--Brad)
While letting rich tax cheats run wild, Congress did finance a crackdown on the poor. The working poor, most of whom make less than $16,000, are eight times more likely to be audited than millionaire investors in partnerships.
The audits of low-income taxpayers found little cheating. Two-thirds of the poor get either their full refund or more than they sought.
These and other unseen changes in the tax system are major factors in profound economic changes that have caused so many in America to lurch from job to job, a fourth of which pay less than $8 an hour, while helping a very few grow very rich.
Because the news media focus on what politicians say about the tax system, rather than how it actually operates, few Americans realize that:
Corporate income tax laws reward companies that move jobs offshore, allowing them to earn untaxed profits as long as the money stays offshore.
Widespread cuts in health insurance and pensions for the rank-and- file are driven by a special law that lets top executives defer paying taxes for years, in a way that adds 35 percent to the cost of their bloated pay.
The 2001 Bush tax cuts included a stealth tax increase on the middle class and upper-middle class that will cost them a half trillion dollars in the first 10 years and, for 35 million families, wiping out part or all of their Bush tax cuts.
The stealth tax boost on people making $30,000 to $500,000 was explicitly used to make sure that the super rich would get their entire Bush tax cuts.
A California couple who make $75,000 to $100,000 and have two children face a 97 percent chance of losing part of their Bush tax cuts to this stealth tax increase and overall will lose 42 percent of their Bush tax cuts by next year.
If your child becomes seriously ill, Congress, under this same law, will raise your income taxes if you spend more than 7.5 percent of your income trying to keep your child alive.
Since 1983, under a plan devised by Alan Greenspan, Americans have paid $1.8 trillion more in Social Security taxes than have been paid out in benefits, money that is used to finance tax cuts for the super rich while robbing the middle class of their capacity to save.
A family earning $50,000 this year will have about $1,500 of its money funneled to the super rich because of the Greenspan plan.
Since 1993, the income tax burden on the 400 highest-income Americans has been cut 40 percent when measured the way that President Bush prefers, which is by counting how many pennies out of each dollar go to income taxes. In 1993 the top 400 paid 30 cents out of each dollar in federal income taxes. By the end of the Clinton administration in 2000 they were down to 22 cents. Under Bush, their burden is less than 18 cents. Everyone else felt their tax bite rise to 15 cents on the dollar from an average of 13 cents.
Over time, the impact of tax relief for the super rich and more taxes for everyone else is profound. The rich can save and invest more and more, increasing their incomes and political power over time through the magic of compound interest, while everyone else has less of their money to spend or save and millions of people are mired in debt.
While wage earners have every dollar of income reported to the government, the super rich control what the IRS knows about their incomes. But the rich are rarely audited anymore. Congress also gives them many perfectly legal devices to defer reporting income for years or decades. That means that the real incomes of the super rich are much larger than the IRS data show and their tax burden is even lighter.
IRS data, adjusted for inflation, show that the poor are really getting poorer and the super rich are getting fabulously richer, a trend enhanced by their falling tax burden. In 1970, the poorest third of Americans had more than 10 times as much income as the super rich, the top 1/100th of one percent. Back then the poor had more than 10 percent of all income and the super rich had one percent.
By 2000 the two groups were equal -- the 28,000 Americans at the top had as much income as the 96 million at the bottom. The poor's share of income fell by half while the super rich's share rose to more than 5 percent of all income.
Not only did the poorest third's share of income shrink, they actually had less money. The average 25-year-old man in 1970 made $2 per hour more, adjusted for inflation, than in 2000.
Over those three decades the bottom 99 percent of Americans had an average increase in total income of $2,710. That is an annual raise of less than $100 per year, the equivalent of a nickel an hour raise each year for 30 years. The super rich did fabulously better, their average incomes rising $20. 3 million to an average of $24 million each.
Plot these figures on a chart and the results astound. If the increase for 99 percent of Americans is a bar 1-inch high, the bar for the super rich soars heavenward 625 feet."
AND NOW, TAKE A LOOK AT WHAT THE MONEY GOES FOR! !
http://www.expertclick.com/NewsReleaseW ... fm?Action= (http://www.expertclick.com/NewsReleaseWire/default.cfm?Action=)"ReleaseDetail&";ID=8694&NRWid=5367
Post by: Anonymous on April 14, 2005, 11:18:00 PM
Post by: Deborah on April 24, 2005, 02:20:00 PM
April 22, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Passing the Buck
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The United States spends far more on health care
than other advanced countries. Yet we don't appear to receive more medical services. And we have lower life-expectancy and higher infant-mortality rates than countries that spend less than half as much per person. How do we do it?
An important part of the answer is that much of our health care spending is devoted to passing the buck: trying to get someone else to pay the bills.
According to the World Health Organization, in the
United States administrative expenses eat up about 15 percent of the money paid in premiums to private health insurance companies, but only 4 percent of the budgets of public insurance programs, which consist mainly of Medicare and Medicaid. The numbers for both public and private insurance are similar in other countries - but
because we rely much more heavily than anyone else
on private insurance, our total administrative costs are much higher.
According to the health organization, the higher
costs of private insurers are "mainly due to the extensive bureaucracy required to assess risk, rate premiums, design benefit packages and review, pay or refuse claims." Public insurance plans have far less bureaucracy because they don't try to screen out high-risk clients or charge them higher fees.
And the costs directly incurred by insurers are only half the story. Doctors "must hire office personnel just to deal with the insurance companies," Dr. Atul Gawande, a practicing physician, wrote in The New Yorker. "A well-run
office can get the insurer's rejection rate down
from 30 percent to, say, 15 percent. That's how a doctor makes money. ... It's a war with insurance, every step of the way."
Isn't competition supposed to make the private
sector more efficient than the public sector? Well, as the World Health Organization put it in a discussion of Western Europe, private insurers generally don't compete by delivering care at lower cost. Instead, they "compete on the basis of risk selection" - that is, by turning away people who are likely to have high medical bills and by refusing or delaying any payment they can.
Yet the cost of providing medical care to those
denied private insurance doesn't go away. If individuals are poor, or if medical expenses impoverish them, they are covered by Medicaid. Otherwise, they pay out of pocket or rely on the charity of public hospitals.
So we've created a vast and hugely expensive
insurance bureaucracy that accomplishes nothing. The resources spent by private insurers don't reduce overall costs; they simply shift those costs to other people and institutions. It's
perverse but true that this system, which insures
only 85 percent of the population, costs much more than we would pay for a system that covered everyone.
And the costs go beyond wasted money.
First, in the U.S. system, medical costs act as a
tax on employment. For example, General Motors is losing money on every car it makes because of the burden of health care costs. As a result, it may be forced to lay off thousands of workers, or may even go out of business. Yet the insurance premiums saved by firing workers are no saving at all to society as a whole: somebody still ends up paying the bills.
Second, Americans without insurance eventually
receive medical care - but the operative word is "eventually." According to Kaiser Family Foundation data, the uninsured are about three times as likely as the insured to postpone
seeking care, fail to get needed care, leave
prescriptions unfilled or skip recommended treatment. And many end up disabled - or die - because of these delays.
Think about how crazy all of this is. At a rough
guess, between two million and three million Americans are employed by insurers and health care providers not to deliver health care, but to pass the buck for that care to someone else. And the result of all their exertions is to make the nation poorer and sicker.
Why do we put up with such an expensive,
counterproductive health care system? Vested interests play an important role. But we also suffer from ideological blinders: decades of indoctrination in the virtues of market competition and the evils of big government have left many Americans unable to comprehend the idea that sometimes competition is the problem,
not the solution.
In the next column in this series, I'll talk about
how ideology leads to "reforms" that make things worse.
E-mail: _krugman@nytimes.com_
(mailto:krugman@nytimes.com)
Post by: Antigen on April 24, 2005, 06:30:00 PM
What we have is very nearly a monopoly. In defending the AG's office in Raich v. AG (since changed to AG v Raich) the government goes so far as to state outright that, among their reasons for enforcing federal prohibition on non commercial intrastate gardening operations is that the people who benefit medically from the stuff would be depriving the (international, never mind interstate) pharmaceutical industry of sales. :roll:
It (the Bible) is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.
--Samuel Clemens "Mark Twain", American author and humorist