by Sandor Stern

Dear Republican Friends,

Regarding Your Stand On Taxation…

Perhaps you can enlighten me because I just don’t get it. This nation is in a debt and deficit hole from which spending cuts alone cannot rescue us without doing irreparable damage to Medicare, Social Security, the military, and finally, to the entire economy. I know none of you earn $250,000 a year – you’re my friends, remember. You are part of the 99% of the population that earns less than $250,000 a year and yet you are willing to vote against a 4.9% tax increase on dollars above that income level. This is the same Clinton era tax level that wiped out the Reagan-G.H.W. Bush deficit of 1992 and ended with a surplus in 2000. So what’s the deal? Is it more than money?

Is it because you truly believe that taxing the top 1% is hurting the economy by penalizing the “job creators”? Remember we are not taxing business here. We are taxing the personal income generated from their own businesses by these “job creators.” Their personal income was given a tax break for Bush’s 8 years. According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center as of October 14, 2011 the Bush tax cuts had saved the top 1% of households over $700 billion and the next 4% of households more than $325 billion. The total tax savings for the top 5% totaled over $1 trillion. That’s money denied the federal government and extra money in the pockets of the “job creators.” So how many jobs were created in those Bush years? According to the Bureau Of Labor Statistics – 5.2 million jobs. According to that same bureau, Clinton’s 8 years of higher taxes created 23.1 million jobs. The irony, aside from the fact that higher taxes created more jobs, is that Bush’s job creation in the private sector was a loss of 563 thousand. More than 4.5 million jobs created during Bush’s years were government jobs. This from the party pushing smaller government and claiming that government does not create jobs. Since FDR’s term in office through all presidents up to January of 2011, the average private sector job creation under a Democratic President has been 1,463,220 and under a Republican President has been 642,000. You do the math. Because personal income is spent on personal needs and desires, perhaps the question of whether to lower taxes for the wealthy should be: is it better for the economy when one person buys a Bentley or 99 people buy Fords? Jobs are created through a demand for goods and services. That demand comes from personal income, which for 99% of workers is from wages. That’s not a trickle down economy. That’s a gushing up.

Is it because you have this notion that the government takes too big a bite out of your income? According to The Tax Policy Foundation the top marginal income tax rate in 1946 was 91%. The next 15 years “was one of the most successful eras in US economic history. The middle class boomed, the economy boomed, and the stock market boomed.” By 1965 the top rate had dropped to 70%. In 1982 Ronald Reagan dropped the top rate to 50%, in 1987 to 38.5%, and finally in 1988 he slashed it to 28%. The resulting federal deficit was so huge that GHW Bush had to break his campaign promise – “Read my lips: no new taxes” – and bump the margin up to 31%. For that he paid a huge political price from your party. But even Bush’s increased rate was not high enough to save the economy. Clinton arrived in 1992 and raised the top level to 39.6% and the economy boomed. Following his election, GW Bush lowered the top margin level to 35% and the economy went belly up. That Bush tax rate is still in effect and is lower than that of every other industrial nation in the world. So, in comparison to other countries and to our own history of higher tax margins, the bite does not square with your notion “big.” Nor does the bite square with the laments of the 1%. According to Who Rules America, in 2007 only 19% of income reported by the 13,480 individuals or families making over $10 million per year came from wages and salaries. So, a tax increase of 4.9% would only apply to one fifth of their total income. And remember, that bite is from taxable income not gross income. 80% of the income of these people is from capital gains and dividends which since 2003 have been taxed at a rate of 15% (lower than the income tax rate for a large percentage of middle class wage earners).

Is it because you believe that government spending is out of control? Based on a low tax rate it is. When in the history of the United States, or any country, has a war been fought without raising taxes to pay for it.? The costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars through 2011 was $1.26 trillion. How about compounding the problem by lowering taxes? Bush’s wars helped put us in this debt. Revoking the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act gave banks a free ride on depositor money and the housing market crashed. That banking and corporate bailout cost $1 trillion. Yes, it was Clinton who signed off on that bill, but it was passed and pushed by a Republican Congress. Yes, the debt is huge. Trying to erase it through spending cuts alone is like paying your way into heaven by selling your soul to the devil.

Is it because you believe in free enterprise? According to Who Rules America, the bottom 80% of the US population hold less than 10% of this nation’s financial wealth. In contrast, 1% of Americans hold a 42.7 % share. Since the election of Reagan in 1980 you have seen the rise of Corporate America and the demise of “mom and pop” America; the rise of monopolies and the demise of anti-trust laws; the rich getting ever richer and the workers struggling ever more to make ends meet. I know you belong in the 99%, so why this determined fight against your own interests?

Is it because you believe the persistent Republican cry that the Democrats will “tax and spend”? Do you prefer the Republican mantra of “borrow and spend” that began with the Reagan philosophy of “play now and pay later”? Anyone with a credit card knows the simple fact that borrowing money is renting money. The interest is rent and trillions of dollars will be paid by generations of tax payers to come. GW Bush handed the country a $455 billion deficit and a $10 trillion national debt. That’s over $32,000 owed by every citizen. You rant against increased taxes, but if that’s not a personal income tax hike what is? And FYI, that debt represents 3.2% of the nation’s gross domestic product – the second largest in history. The first was 6% set in 1983 after Reagan’s tax cuts.

Is it because Republican members of congress have signed a pledge to Grover Norquist to vote against tax increases under any circumstances? Do you not find this pledge a violation of their duties and obligations to uphold the constitution? What are Norquist’s bone fides that compel them to relinquish their free will? If a nation declared war on us and the President requested an increase in taxes to pay for the defense of this country, honoring Norquist’s pledge would be treasonous. Why is it not so now? Polls show that a large majority of Americans favor an increase in taxes on those earning over $250,000? Why are your Republican representatives going against a popular majority view? Is it because millions of dollars of campaign money is coming from corporations and billionaires who don’t want their taxes increased and who have the power to offer lucrative job opportunities to the congressmen who vote their way when they finish their terms in office?

Is it finally and ultimately because President Obama is anathema to the corporate power structure and for that reason the Republican goal for the past 3 1/2 years has been to limit him to a single term as President? Any reduction of the deficit that does not cripple Social Security and Medicare would be a win for Obama, and a loss of billions in profits for those corporations seeking to privatize pensions and health. Is that it?

Your inquisitive friend,

Sandy

by Lee Camp

Once upon a time there were a couple of boys named the Brothers Koch. They had a dream of owning the United States of America. Their dream is coming true. And call me a romantic, but I love watching dreams come true.

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by Steven Whitney

All of us take too many things for granted, the rights and rewards we enjoy for which others greatly sacrificed and often even died. On Memorial Day we do reverently honor our fallen, and we still wildly celebrate our nation’s birth on July 4th…but Labor Day, once a holiday that truly paid tribute to workers, has become just a three day weekend of boating, beaches, and barbeque, with nary a thought of the valiant, against-all-odds struggle of both individual and organized labor. These days it should probably be called a Bank Holiday, like in England, because the financial sector has had a great three decades at the expense of labor.

Long forgotten are the inhumane working conditions of the past – sweat shops, child labor, company towns, workplaces incubating extreme physical danger and biological disease, unbearably long hours for barely sustainable wages, and so much more. The many thousands of lives lost in union struggles over the past 200 years have faded in our memory like a sunset disappearing over a lost horizon.

In 1806, the Philadelphia Journeymen Cordwainers union went on strike for higher wages. These already poor shoemakers were bankrupted and convicted on charges of criminal conspiracy, setting a precedent of conservative governments combatting labor from that very first U.S. strike to the present.

Over the next century, the battles between owners and workers – let’s say the 5% against the 95% – were constant and bloody, with state militias, our national Army, city police forces, and hired goons all ganging up to inflict pain and punishment on workers. Men, women, and children alike were beaten, shot (sometimes mowed down by new-fangled machine guns), hanged, executed, imprisoned, and deported. The workers themselves – whether they were miners, carpenters, railway hands, dressmakers, auto or steel workers, skilled or unskilled – were branded as organizers, anarchists, socialists, and communists…all because they wanted a living wage and a better life.

In 1911, seamstresses – women and young girls – at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company threatened a strike for higher wages. Within a few days, their workplace – the top three floors of a ten-story building – was consumed by fire. 147 died – many by jumping out the windows, others burned or were trampled to death as they tried to escape through exits that had been locked. Two weeks later, the company owners were indicted not for murder, but manslaughter.

By the 1920s – an era of unchecked conservative policies advocating deregulation and a pro-business agenda – the U.S. Bureau of Investigation, the forerunner of the FBI, created a strike force called Palmer’s Raiders whose mission was to crush unions and workers under the guise of anti-communism. The violence and injustices visited upon workers was unprecedented, even when measured against the worst bloodbaths in labor’s history – the Haymarket Riot, the Tompkins Square Riot, the Bay View Massacre, the Thibodaux Massacre, the Ludlow Massacre, and literally hundreds more battlegrounds. The Republican congress even passed laws totally abolishing the right of workers to strike, assemble, bargain collectively, and picket.

It took the Great Depression and a Democratic congress to right the ship of state – and the state of unions in America. Early on, FDR recognized the role of labor in revitalizing a financially bankrupt economy when he said:

“It is one of the characteristics of a free and democratic nation that it have free and independent labor unions.”

A mere two months after taking office in 1933, FDR passed the National Industrial Recovery Act, which not only restored all the rights denied them by Republicans, but also contained provisions like minimum wage and maximum hours. Since that time historians have isolated its most important passage:

“Employees shall have the right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and shall be free from the interference, restraint, or coercion of employers.”

By empowering workers, America arose from the ashes of the Depression, our country’s infrastructure was built from the ground up, a World War was won, and the largest and most stable middle-class in the world was created. FDR’s pro-labor programs ended the Republican era of plutocratic “job creators,” trickle-down bubble economies, and in 1934 American voters gave Democrats the largest majority either party had (and has) ever held in Congress – 322 Democrats to 103 Republicans – leading to the Fair Labor Standards Act and the greatest period of wealth and job creation, productivity, prosperity, and income equality any nation has ever known.

Today, with the sweatshops and child labor camps gone, we all enjoy the fruits of the labor movement’s long struggle – the 8-hour workday and 5-day week, equal pay for equal work, 2 weeks’ vacation, sick days, higher wages, safe and regulated working environments, health care, collective bargaining, the rights of petition and assembly, worker’s compensation, non-discriminatory employment practices, laws protecting whistleblowers, pension and retirement funds, and, of course, the Family and Medical Leave Act, passed by Clinton’s Democratic congress in 1993. Labor was behind it all – and even aggressively backed Martin Luther King Jr.’s crusade for Equal Rights.

Predictably, starting when Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers in 1981, Republicans have consistently tried to turn back every one of those hard-won benefits. In this year’s GOP primaries, a return to child labor was even floated as a viable solution to the economic disaster caused by Bush-Cheney / Republican economic policies. For the last 30 years, the GOP has hacked away at labor and unions. Because of that, wages of American workers now make up the lowest percentage of GDP since 1947, even as corporate profits are the highest in 40 years. That obscene inequality is not a coincidence – it is the priority of the modern Republican party, this year led by Romney and the despicable hypocrisy of Paul Ryan.

So if we are to rebuild a strong Middle Class and keep America a land “of, by, and for the people” – if we are to avoid a dystopian Blade Runneresque future – we must continually recognize the importance of labor’s contribution to the growth and strength of our nation. Most of us – probably 95% or more – are, or came from, the working class, and now is not the time to lose sight of our heritage. Instead, we must pick up the cudgel of those who came before us. Too many of our ancestors actually died – sacrificed their very lives – to give us and not our wealthy overlords the power to determine our own destinies.

This Labor Day, September 3rd, instead of the all-day backyard barbeque, let’s take a few hours to mobilize our faith in ourselves and in the founding principles of our nation by hitting the streets once again to honor and support America’s two greatest assets – the worker and the Middle Class. They are one and the same.

Related Posts:
Chicken Shits: The Slippery Slopes of Chick-fil-A
The Vagina Solution
Fighting Back Part 4: The Big Liar, Intimidation And Revenge
Fighting Back Part 3: Fighting Fire With Fire
When The Past Is Prologue
Fighting Back Part 2: Defining Rovian Politics
Fighting Back
The Electoral Scam
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A Tale Of Two Grovers
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Gotcha!

by Lee Camp

In the 2008 election millions of votes were stolen or purged – and 2012 will make that election look cleaner than Mr. Clean’s ass after a Brazilian. Learn how your vote will be stolen. Then learn how to stop it. Then tell everyone you know.

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by Lee Camp

We already treat war like it’s some kind of game without real world consequences. So why not take it that next step? Introducing “War: The Gameshow!” If you’re the last to die, you win a camouflage Snuggie! Hosted by funnyman Howie Mandel!

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by Steven Whitney

During the past week, Republicans have fervently fanned the flames of our ongoing culture wars in order to distract, deflect, divide, and conquer. And, once again, it’s just in time to muddy the minds of an already half-hapless electorate just prior to a national election.

This time the battleground is Chick-fil-A – a chicken joint started in 1946, a time when taxes were high and small business start-ups flourished across the country. A few weeks ago, its President, Dan Cathy, publicly supported “the biblical definition of the family unit” and warned ominously that supporting same-sex marriage invites “God’s judgment on our nation.”

While I myself believe God looks very favorably on any marriage and family built on love and devotion, Mr. Cathy seems to think we’re in store for an apocalyptic display of His considerable wrath, not unlike Pat Robertson implying that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for legalized abortion.

Cathy’s comments caused a backlash among fair-minded consumers, which then created predictable blowback from the Religious Right. A successful “Kiss-In” was held by GLBT organizers while Mike Huckabee orchestrated an equally successful “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day” in response.

In a curious instance of parallel opposites, the last time fast food servers were in a big-time Human Rights skirmish was in 1960, when four young Black students began a sit-in at the local Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, spurring a nationwide challenge to racial inequality in the South. So a question must be asked: if he could fly back in time, would Mr. Huckabee have organized a “Segregated Lunch Counter Appreciation Day?”

At this point everyone on both sides has acted within the rights granted them by the First Amendment. And while some observers may seethe, as a nation we will stand tall or fall mightily on our protection and preservation of these primary rights.

Yet the most legally and morally troubling aspect of this brouhaha comes from two surprising sources: a handful of the nation’s mayors and The Huffington Post.

The only limitation in the First Amendment is that the government – local, state, or national – cannot restrict any of the rights granted within it.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

But as if on cue, just when a small Chick-fil-A crisis was about to pass almost unnoticed into history, mayors from Boston, Chicago, D.C., San Francisco, and other cities shoved it into the spotlight by grandstanding pro-GLBT platforms and actually threatening the chicken franchise with bans of various sorts. While politicos generally pander to the electorate, this time they made things worse, not only by igniting a firestorm, but by changing the conversation. Now, instead of having to defend the indefensible – homophobia – Chick-fil-A has been pushed into the more just position of defending its First Amendment rights. From the big bully on the block, the mayors transformed both Dan Cathy and Chick-fil-A into martyrs to the cause of “traditional” marriage – hence, the veritable firestorm.

Rather than abuse political pressure, the mayors would be better advised to launch municipal investigations to determine if Chick-fil-A practices discrimination in hiring or any other areas of its business…and to advocate for legislation favoring all human rights, including passage of Gay Marriage acts. That is a legitimate use of political power. Remember, everything has a flip side – if government can punish a chicken joint for speaking out today, it can punish you for expressing opposite opinions tomorrow. That is why the First Amendment is inviolate.

The second troubling aspect of this ruckus was Noah Michelson’s misguided piece in The Huffington Post, one of our most influential political website. If he was just an independent blogger, I’d pass on commenting, but Mr. Michelson is listed as the editor of their Gay Voices section, so when he’s wrong, a lot of readers walk away misinformed.

In his article, Mr. Michelson states that Chick-fil-A‘s stance is not a First Amendment issue because it makes a lot of money and then donates millions to anti-gay causes. But I would imagine that Mr. Michelson also donates money he makes from his employment to pro-GLBT advocacy groups…and that is his right, just as it is the right of a private business and those who work for it to donate a portion of their earnings to charitable or political causes they believe in, as wrong-headed as they may be.

Secondly, Mr. Michelson more or less makes the ages-old argument that Chick-fil-A’s speech is too terrible to be protected. In support of that, he urges readers to link to selected sites, gaze at photos of beaten and murdered GLBTs, and read the tragic stories that accompany them. While only sociopaths could not be saddened and outraged by his examples, he’s still dead wrong, understandably reacting only with his emotions. (In trials of heinous crimes, certain photos are deemed inadmissible because of the inherently prejudicial nature they would provoke on jurors’ emotions.)

Mr. Michelson states that he is “in love with the First Amendment.” But it’s a dubious claim from someone who obviously does not fully understand it.

Freedom of speech – indeed, the entire First Amendment – applies equally to the best, most moral people and the worst, most indecent racist, homophobic, pedophiliac motherfuckers under American jurisdiction.

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), as odious a group that has ever existed, marched 50,000 hooded members down Pennsylvania Avenue in our nation’s capital, protected by the First Amendment. Their supporters donated money to their evil brotherhood and the stories and photos of their torture, lynchings, and murders would turn the stomach of Hannibal Lechter.

An offshoot of George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi movement planned a parade in Skokie, Illinois, home to a large community of Holocaust survivors. Yes, there was outrage – the reports and photos of the murder of six million were almost incomprehensible – but, as documented in When the Nazis Came to Skokie, the swastika-bearing marchers won support from the ACLU, the Supreme Court (citing First Amendment rights), and, surprisingly, leaders of Skokie’s Jewish community. Apparently, refugees from a totalitarian state knew more than anyone the importance of free speech.

If any group’s speech was ever too terrible to be considered free, I’d put the KKK and Nazi-wannabes at the top of the list. And yet, they still held that right because they were Americans, and in America we let everyone have their say and hope that facts, common sense, and decency prevails – that is who we are, or at least who we are supposed to be, as a nation. Rightly or wrongly, a democracy ultimately believes in its people.

Journalists who make a difference are those who act, not whine or threaten to jump out of the window if they hear one more reference to their opponent’s rights. Especially when bullies, cowards – and, in this case, chicken shits – hide behind a First Amendment cloak. Over the last thirty years, the GLBT movement has engineered the smartest, most admirable and effective campaign for human rights anywhere in the world. They did it by being aggressive – by showing solidarity in boycotts and expressing their First Amendment rights to protest through outrage and ridicule – not by crying when somebody said bad things about them. Gay Pride was and is pure genius and its effect has been positively felt in every part of the globe. Yes, there are still many battles to win, but if any group can truly overcome, I’d bet on the GLBTs. And I’d also wager they’ll do it without impeding the rights of those who are hell-bent on denying theirs.

Related Posts:
The Vagina Solution
Fighting Back Part 4: The Big Liar, Intimidation And Revenge
Fighting Back Part 3: Fighting Fire With Fire
When The Past Is Prologue
Fighting Back Part 2: Defining Rovian Politics
Fighting Back
The Electoral Scam
Being Fair
Occupy Reality
Giving. . . And Taking Back
A Tale Of Two Grovers
A Last Pitch For Truth
America: Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.
Gotcha!

by Lee Camp

It all seems to be coming together into one. 90% of our media is owned by only six corporations. Every movie is about a super hero, and we act like the President is the only lawmaker who matters. How much further can things condense? Are we headed towards a cultural singularity? An end point?

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