Monday, July 26, 2010

Cut the tax cut for the rich

I just watched an hour long documentary on poverty in America. Not the people the fat cat republican Senators claim to be "living high on the hog", uninspired to work because unemployment is so appealing and such an easy life. Real life people working minimum wage jobs. Genuinely struggling- on every front- to have a place to live, to be able to feed their children, and to have a job that can support their families.
To know that Wall Street hacks saw fit to take their big bonus money- even in the year they took Federal Treasury money to bail them out, is to reach the last straw.

I dare any Senator to go live in the places I just watched in the documentary. An old trailer with no running water. A grandmother's house with 14 family members living under one roof in a very small house, on a very small Social Security budget. A single parent with two small children living in a car in the extreme winter months in Ohio. All those people living on the edge with small children, all seem to say the same thing- the kids get fed first, the kids needs are always at the forefront.

So now that ending the Tax Cut for the rich question is on the table, I want to scream YES. When did this nation become so selfish & careless? If you are fortunate enough to be making over $250,000 a year, then you can afford to be pitching in a greater amount.
Anyone profiting from the military industrial complex ought to belly up & pay for it. Same as those who are big oil profiteers (like the Bush family).... it looks like we have a little problem on our hands re the oil situation.

Because the "small people" always pay a disproportionate amount of income to taxes, it is time those most able to contribute pay their fair share.  Stop whining that you think someone on unemployment is getting free money. Realize that although the COBRA insurance gap program exists, it is mostly unaffordable for those without work. No work. No healthcare insurance. No easy life.

Although former president Bush called the ultra wealthy his "base", his tax cut for the wealthy was off base. Wrong & stupid as most of his policies were.  In the end, he was the one that came pleading to Congress to fix Wall Street because the floor was dropping out from the greedy & risky subprime mortgage mess.  The tax cuts for the rich are set to expire- but already there is clamor-- that they must sell it to the GOP, to let expire the tax cut for the very wealthy, but install a tax cut for the middle & lower income people.

Seriously? Let me share with them a secret--- it's an election year.  You think the general public is in favor of letting taxpayers making a quarter million or more, deserve more tax breaks?

The only reason this is a hard sell is because so many in the Senate are that wealthy.
They have a personal conflict of interest. But that is not the majority of We the People.

The median household income in the United States is $46,326


That means it would take the average American 10.7 years to make the bonus money of one Wall Street worker's annual bonus.  More than 20 years to make bonus plus salary- for 1 YEAR of your average Goldman Sachs employee. 


So yes, please tax the hell out of the $250,000 & above crowd. 
They all yammer about generational theft-- start paying down the National Debit oh you with lots of cash. 
It is about caring for & about your country in meaningful ways. 
We need to get real with budget issues. 


Meanwhile the old coot from  Utah has this to say:




"We are eager to oblige our friends on the other side of the aisle who want to have this debate," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) said in a statement Sunday. "This is about stopping a job-killing tax hike on small businesses during tough economic times."
Job killing? Someone please tell the Senator that ship has already sailed, back when Bush was in charge & the economy tanked. 
About 2% of U.S. households earn more than $250,000 annually, according to recent statistics. 
To answer the question when did the Bush tax cuts begin....
Bush-era tax cuts -
* The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA)
• The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (JGTRRA)
• The 2008 stimulus package, and a series of annual AMT patches — enacted since 2001. 
Together, the tax cuts account for $1.7 trillion in extra deficits in 2001 through 2008, and $3.4 trillion over the 2009-2019 period. Finally, we added the extra debt-service costs caused by the Bush-era tax cuts, amounting to more than $200 billion through 2008.
The point is, the "haves" have had a huge tax break for almost a decade. The "have not's" are suffering & in dire straits. 
This should be an easy thing for Congress to do. Because the voters are mad as hell & not going to take it anymore. For instance, the UK had the balls to impose a 50% tax on bankers with big buck bonuses, during a time of financial crisis. 
Bottom line: The GOP extension of Bush tax cuts would add $3.4 Trillion to the Deficit. 

These are the people calling for fiscal responsibility. That loathe the concept of generational theft.  The debt & the deficit are already causing a lot of pain & suffering right here in America, right now. 
A trillion dollar debt will financially strap many generations to come. 





8 comments:

Dada said...

test, testing. My previous comment was unsaved, unposted, lost by blogger. {sigh} probably just as well. it was pretty ugly.

Jerry Critter said...

Well said Fran. The tax cuts for those making over $250,000 per year should be eliminated. Plus, it has been shown in many places (here and here, among others) that increasing the tax burden will improve the economy faster. Hatch is flat out wrong.

D.K. Raed said...

I'm so glad the "old coot from UTE" wants a debate. There is no debate!

The bush-tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy automatically sunset at the end of this year. The way I understand it, unless Congress decides to open up that debate, it is a done deal. Much like congressional salary hikes that automatically kick in unless they vote otherwise, this is an automatic deal.

So Coot Hatch can debate with himself and his mean-spirited repubs and some cowardly dems who are facing a tp-riled up base for the mid-term elecs. For 2-yrs they have insisted the dems have 60 votes to do anything (therefore they mostly do nothing). Well let him scare up 60 votes to bring this turkey to the floor.

BTW, our nickname for Hatch is Snatch ... as in, he snatches what he can from the middle-class and hand it over to the wealthy. It's his legacy, a reverse robin hood! And he has puh-lenty of cump'nee ... and they will all scream "class warfare" when it is done in reverse ... you watcha, those words are are already forming on tp'ers lips, you betcha bottom dolla (if you still have one left).

ps, I wish dada would give us the gist of his lost "ugly comment". This is an ugly subject worthy of much ugliness.

nonnie9999 said...

i don't know what dada's comment was, but maybe it was something like my first thought--fuck the rich!

Fran said...

The documentary I watched brought me to tears. People working so hard on minimum wage, by the time they blew money on things like rent & gas to get to the job, they had $20 bucks left to feed 4 people- for 2 weeks.
The only banking they were doing was hoping the local food bank could keep them going.

Dada~ I hate it when that happens. You type out a righteous rant & it disappears. Ugh!
Well see now we all want to know the gist of it...
can you oblige us?

Fran said...

Wow Jerry ~ Those are some heavy duty charts & graphs & historic financial data you linked.
Bottom line is 10 years of tax breaks for those who least need the break, during a recession on the brink of a depression makes no sense.
They may have tried to sell the concept of a "jobless recovery"... but the jobless do not recover till they have work- and by work I mean a living wage.

DK ~ I knew you'd get a kick out of the Hatch reference.... great nickname you have for him!
The way I understand it, is The bush-tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy automatically sunset at the end of this year. But along with the cuts for the oober wealthy, goes some cuts for the middle class & in order to save the middle class cuts it must be voted upon.
The Dems are poised to fully play the election card.

But Hatch the Snatch gives us a glimpse of what is to come.... they want to play the jobs card.

I lost track of just how many jobs evaporated in the end of the Bush era, but it was epic & an epidemic. In the neighborhood of 8.2 million jobs already went away. Hatch wants to talk jobs NOW?
Please!

nonnie! Don't hold back! Say what you think!

Dada said...

I reread this blog hoping it would trigger some hint of a memory of my original lost comment. Nothing -- save for the anger it was written in.

@Nonnie - I think you were close to its gist!

But whatever my "inspiration" was, long-lived it wasn't, replaced daily by new sources of outrage. Like the outrage spilling over from citizens of little Blue [collar] Bell, CA (pop. 37,000) who just happened to discover what they were paying their part-time city council, police chief ($150K MORE than CofP of all of Los Angeles!) and the most expensive city manager in the state (who stands to make more in retirement than he was "earning" while "GAINfully" employed. (It's NOT illegal.)

Or last night's story of BP's intention to cut nearly $10 billion of its tax bill by taking credits for clean-up costs and financial obligations incurred for the destruction of lives, livelihoods, health and environmental damages. We the people will gladly subsidize your obligations you choose to ignore! (It's perfectly fine, it's on the books.)

Or there was the recent story of a BP cleanup contractor's abusive, exploitative treatment of displaced oil spill victims TRYING desperately to cling to subsistence while all stand in line for hours for late paychecks, some shorted, some with no paychecks (and no explanation!). Of shorted hours finally paid at a minimum wage rate. Of last weekend off because of Trop.Storm Bonnie (after 45 straight days on the job w/o a day off), and no word from their bosses when/if they are to return to work.
(From a worker speaking anonymously for fear she will otherwise lose her "job." Such employer insouciance at the plight or its workforce is becoming more and more common. Why, because they can get away with such shit.

And so poor Glenn Beck may be blind in a year. Sorry, but always I thought (mistakenly I guess) that the bastard was born blind. (Maybe it's his Clorox bleach or whatever works for him to induce tears of compassion for the rest of before his shows causing it? -- one can only hope.)

Meanwhile, how 'bout congressional Republicans approving Israel's war on Iran. Nice, since they ceded such oversight responsibility to their own fucking president to engage our own nation in wars anywhere he sees damn fit and they'll just rubber stamp the checks (while the homeland implodes!).

With such bullshit ongoing, it's easy to suspect their may be some credibility in 2012 or, 'end of the world' scenarios - so freakin' crazy it all seems. Maybe that's why, on my last visit to the library - I was compelled to check out a book on the subject. (One can always hope, can't they?)

Sorry I wasn't able to recapture memories of my original post. I suspect its because, in the interim -- from the irrational blathering herein, I've obviously, gone fucking insane. Sorry, sorry.

Fran said...

Dada~ Although you captured some important issues, you failed to mention Lindsey Lohan & what it;s like to be in jail. I mean the media tells us that is the top news story.

The people in the Gulf who are hurting because this summer's business was destroyed by BP.... well we already know, according to BP, those are the (and I quote) "small people".

Besides all this stuff is getting very expensive... the #1 rule in big business is to make the shareholders happy & keep the profit margins up.

I wonder how many small people will lose their homes & businesses because of BP's stalling?

I guess angry locals are not as exciting a story as BP fumbling about with more engineering
folly to kinda sorta see if one theory or the other might work.

Notice they released one reading of the cap test.... after that the cameras went blank, no more info released.
We deserve to see the well, and know the numbers.
Not enough to just let the seepage happen deep down in the dark murky waters, where they can keep their dark murky secrets.

As for Bell CA-- how long did those sky high wages go on for?

Well, it's back to business as usual..... the Senate rejected the House version of the $33 billion supplemental war fund. One dollar for teachers, to every $7 to war for was considered "pork" & they want it cut.
Apparently education is a wasteful luxury & war $ prevails.

WE are to call our congress Critters in the house to tell them NO.

My congressman seems to wield the APPROVED stamp every time war funding comes around.

So...... like what's going on with Lindsey Lohan? (In my best Valley Girl intonation!)