Open for Questions" is an opportunity to open up the White House to all Americans.
It's an experiment designed to encourage transparency and accountability by giving you a direct line to the White House.Here's how it works -- President Obama is inviting everyone to ask a question about the economy and to rate other questions up or down.
On Thursday morning, the President will conduct an online town hall on the economy and answer some of the most popular questions live.
There were quite a few questions from Californians. Interestingly a lot of the questions were about green energy. You only get a minimum amount of space for your question. Obama is going to answer some of them Thursday. Maybe we can discuss this at our meeting, Thursday.
I submitted the following question:
California needed your stimulus money, so they decided to take it and more from us. Most of the money spent by California for infrastructure will not go to citizens. 12% unemployment is predicted in 2010. Do you have plans to help California?
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
WTF? Really. The best and the brightest?
A.I.G. to Pay $100 Million in Bonuses After Huge Bailout - NYTimes.com
There is much more to the article, but this really struck me. They very people who are responsible for the toxic debt, need to be assured that their salaries are safe from renegotiation, because they are the best and the brightest? This is patently stupid by any measure. I would suspect, however, that it would cost us more to fire them, contractually.
“We cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent to lead and staff the A.I.G. businesses — which are now being operated principally on behalf of American taxpayers — if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury,” he wrote Mr. Geithner. The government owns nearly 80 percent of the company.
There is much more to the article, but this really struck me. They very people who are responsible for the toxic debt, need to be assured that their salaries are safe from renegotiation, because they are the best and the brightest? This is patently stupid by any measure. I would suspect, however, that it would cost us more to fire them, contractually.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
A Nation of Tax-Evaders by Lawrence S. Wittner
posted on Tuesday, 3 March 2009
The furor over the non-payment of taxes by Tom Daschle and a few other recent nominees for public office should not obscure the deeper truth that the United States has become a nation of tax-evaders.
On the simplest level, this tax evasion is exemplified by the fact that vast numbers of people, including some who are quite wealthy, under-report their incomes to avoid paying their lawful share of the nation’s taxes. And still others, especially millionaires and billionaires, avoid taxes quite legally through a range of obscure loopholes and other tax dodges, including deposits in offshore tax havens. Numerous giant U.S. corporations pay no taxes at all.
Even more striking, cutting taxes is wildly popular among Americans and, as a consequence, in recent decades tax-cutting is all the rage among politicians—whether in good times or in bad, in war or in peace. Taxes, it is assumed, are evil, and like evil should be driven out of American life.
But, in fact, taxes are not evil. They are a central means whereby citizens contribute to the welfare of their country. Taxes pay for public schools, hospitals, parks, libraries, roads, public safety, sanitation, mass transit, food stamps, public housing, regulation of food and drugs, environmental protection, and numerous other crucial facets of American life. What kind of civilized society can dispense with these things?
Of course, as tax evasion has gathered momentum, political leaders often seem quite willing to shut down public institutions in the interest of tax-cutting. The recent debate over President Obama’s economic stimulus package is revealing in this regard. Although the package contained hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts, that was not enough to offset its great crime: government spending on schools and other public services. As a result, only three Republicans in the entire Congress voted for the package—and even then only after it was stripped of substantial funding for education and aid to the states for the public services they provide.
According to Congressional Republicans, they are in favor of schools, hospitals, libraries, and other public institutions. They just don’t think Americans should pay for them. And, to be fair to these GOP solons, many Americans agree that, although they like their public institutions, they want to avoid picking up the tab.
How can one account for this failure to reconcile ends and means? Sadly, it looks very much as if large numbers of Americans are simply tax-evaders, eager to avail themselves of the benefits provided by their country but unwilling to pay their fair share. In short, they are selfish.
Of course, Americans have plenty to be angry about in connection with taxes. Thanks to tax cuts for the rich championed by Presidents and delivered by Congress, the progressive nature of the income tax structure has been sharply undermined, with the poor and the middle class shouldering an ever-greater share of the burden. On the state level, too, the weight of taxation has shifted significantly away from those with the greatest ability to pay. In New York State, for example, the income tax rate for the wealthiest residents has fallen in recent decades from 15.38 percent to 6.85 percent. When property and sales taxes are factored in, poor and middle class New Yorkers actually pay a higher percentage of their incomes in taxes than do the rich.
In addition, taxpayers might well object to the way a large portion of their money has been spent. How much benefit did Americans receive from the estimated trillion dollars that the Iraq War has cost them? How much benefit do Americans receive from annual U.S. military spending—by far the costliest item in the federal discretionary budget, equal to the military expenditures of all other nations combined?
Nevertheless, anger at the regressive nature of the tax structure and at the questionable priorities of the federal budget should not drive Americans toward tax evasion. Rather, it should spur them on toward restoring progressivity in taxation and toward the funding of programs that meet their public needs.
Ultimately, tax evasion, like selfishness, is a dead end. As U. S. Representative Barney Frank declared during the debate on the federal stimulus package, a tax cut never built a school, funded a playground, or put a cop on the beat. Only we can do that—through taxes.
Lawrence S. Wittner
Dr. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book, co-edited with Glen H. Stassen, is Peace Action: Past, Present, and Future (Paradigm Publishers).
The furor over the non-payment of taxes by Tom Daschle and a few other recent nominees for public office should not obscure the deeper truth that the United States has become a nation of tax-evaders.
On the simplest level, this tax evasion is exemplified by the fact that vast numbers of people, including some who are quite wealthy, under-report their incomes to avoid paying their lawful share of the nation’s taxes. And still others, especially millionaires and billionaires, avoid taxes quite legally through a range of obscure loopholes and other tax dodges, including deposits in offshore tax havens. Numerous giant U.S. corporations pay no taxes at all.
Even more striking, cutting taxes is wildly popular among Americans and, as a consequence, in recent decades tax-cutting is all the rage among politicians—whether in good times or in bad, in war or in peace. Taxes, it is assumed, are evil, and like evil should be driven out of American life.
But, in fact, taxes are not evil. They are a central means whereby citizens contribute to the welfare of their country. Taxes pay for public schools, hospitals, parks, libraries, roads, public safety, sanitation, mass transit, food stamps, public housing, regulation of food and drugs, environmental protection, and numerous other crucial facets of American life. What kind of civilized society can dispense with these things?
Of course, as tax evasion has gathered momentum, political leaders often seem quite willing to shut down public institutions in the interest of tax-cutting. The recent debate over President Obama’s economic stimulus package is revealing in this regard. Although the package contained hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts, that was not enough to offset its great crime: government spending on schools and other public services. As a result, only three Republicans in the entire Congress voted for the package—and even then only after it was stripped of substantial funding for education and aid to the states for the public services they provide.
According to Congressional Republicans, they are in favor of schools, hospitals, libraries, and other public institutions. They just don’t think Americans should pay for them. And, to be fair to these GOP solons, many Americans agree that, although they like their public institutions, they want to avoid picking up the tab.
How can one account for this failure to reconcile ends and means? Sadly, it looks very much as if large numbers of Americans are simply tax-evaders, eager to avail themselves of the benefits provided by their country but unwilling to pay their fair share. In short, they are selfish.
Of course, Americans have plenty to be angry about in connection with taxes. Thanks to tax cuts for the rich championed by Presidents and delivered by Congress, the progressive nature of the income tax structure has been sharply undermined, with the poor and the middle class shouldering an ever-greater share of the burden. On the state level, too, the weight of taxation has shifted significantly away from those with the greatest ability to pay. In New York State, for example, the income tax rate for the wealthiest residents has fallen in recent decades from 15.38 percent to 6.85 percent. When property and sales taxes are factored in, poor and middle class New Yorkers actually pay a higher percentage of their incomes in taxes than do the rich.
In addition, taxpayers might well object to the way a large portion of their money has been spent. How much benefit did Americans receive from the estimated trillion dollars that the Iraq War has cost them? How much benefit do Americans receive from annual U.S. military spending—by far the costliest item in the federal discretionary budget, equal to the military expenditures of all other nations combined?
Nevertheless, anger at the regressive nature of the tax structure and at the questionable priorities of the federal budget should not drive Americans toward tax evasion. Rather, it should spur them on toward restoring progressivity in taxation and toward the funding of programs that meet their public needs.
Ultimately, tax evasion, like selfishness, is a dead end. As U. S. Representative Barney Frank declared during the debate on the federal stimulus package, a tax cut never built a school, funded a playground, or put a cop on the beat. Only we can do that—through taxes.
Lawrence S. Wittner
Dr. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book, co-edited with Glen H. Stassen, is Peace Action: Past, Present, and Future (Paradigm Publishers).
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
"Scrapping" the First Amedment, ca. 2001: And you thought a market crash was scary...
Here's where George W's gang was at mentally when they had all the "political capital"... and even later.Wow.
Via Newsweek, Michael Isikoff writes re: a Bush-era memo in the immediate post-9/11 mood co-written by John Yoo, at the time a deputy attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel—and just released Monday:
In perhaps the most surprising assertion, the Oct. 23, 2001, memo suggested the president could even suspend press freedoms if he concluded it was necessary to wage the war on terror. "First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully," Yoo wrote in the memo entitled "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activity Within the United States."
This claim was viewed as so extreme that it was essentially (and secretly) revoked—but not until October of last year, seven years after the memo was written and with barely three and a half months left in the Bush administration. ...
Sunday, March 01, 2009
California tax on Obama's economic stimulus
I can’t believe what this state just did to Obama’s stimulus plan. The federal government worked very hard to pass a stimulus plan to boost the economy and the first thing the state did was to undermine the federal government and take it away. From what I can gather, with my circumstances, I was going to save approximately $400 this year from the IRS, but with the just passed state plan I will pay approximately $1000 more. How does that stimulate the economy? Either this was an ingenious federal plan to give the state money or the state saw it as an open opportunity to take money from the feds. Either way it won’t stimulate the economy. California was the world’s 7th largest economy. If California doesn’t recover, then it’s going to be very hard for the country to recover. Also, other states are in financial trouble and may be proposing the same plan. Maybe it was a Republican conspiracy to make Rush Limbaugh’s wish for Obama to fail come true. It’s middle class spending that will stimulate the economy faster than any other stimulus. Taking money out if their hands is not the answer and the federal government has to let the states know that they won’t stand for it. Maybe the federal government might have to go to the extent of lowering federal aid to the states by the amount of tax, charges and fee increases they are imposing. Maybe the banks should start paying the property taxes and penalties on the foreclosed homes they now own.
CPAC - where the Right-Wing Nuts grow
Ailing G.O.P. Risks Losing a Generation - NYTimes.com
Americans identifying themselves as Democrats outnumber those who say they are Republicans by 10 percentage points, the largest gap in party identification in 24 years.
The gap has widened significantly since President George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004, when it was a mere 3 percentage points. But by the time Mr. Bush left office in January, less than a quarter of Americans approved of his performance.
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