To contact us Click HERE The Institute for Justice is reporting that a woman in Nebraska could face up to 20 years in prison for massaging horses without a license.
“That’s the absurd fate Karen Hough could face if she wants to continue her business in Nebraska. A certified instructor, Karen has been massaging horses for years. Massaging a horse is believed to deliver many health benefits, including relieving tension, improving circulation, and alleviating muscle fatigue.”
“Earlier this year, she applied for a license in equine massage but was told only veterinarians can become licensed. A 2007 memo from Nebraska’s Board of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery asserted that “no health professional other than licensed veterinarians and licensed veterinary technicians may perform services/therapies on animals.” This means Karen would need to spend thousands of dollars and seven years of her life just to acquire a government permission slip to do what she’s been doing for years.”
To contact us Click HERE Read this CD post from last Wednesday on North Dakota oil output in July, and then read this news report posted yesterday by TV station KTVQ in Billings, Montana, and notice these similarities (especially the last comparison):
CD: North Dakota pumped another record amount of crude oil during the month of July at a rate of more than 674,000 barrels per day. KTVQ: In July, North Dakota pumped a record amount of crude, at a rate of more than 674,000 barrels a day.
CD: The state’s oil production in July was 59% above a year ago.
KTVQ: Compared to a year ago, July's production level was up 59%.
CD: North Dakota produced 62% more oil than Alaska in July, marking the fifth consecutive month that North Dakota has out-produced Alaska. The Peace Garden State surpassed Alaska’s oil production for the first time in March to become the country’s new No. 2 oil state, behind only Texas now. KTVQ: July marked the fifth month in a row that the state of North Dakota produced more oil than Alaska. It was back in March that North Dakota surpassed Alaska's in oil production for the first time to become America's second biggest oil state.
CD: North Dakota continues to lead the nation with the lowest state unemployment rate at 3 percent in July, and more than five percentage points below the national average. KTVQ: North Dakota also continues to lead the nation with the lowest unemployment rate at just 3 percent - more than five percentage points below the national average.
To contact us Click HERE The chart above provides evidence of the significant recovery going on in the Minneapolis Area real estate market, based on new data for market activity there in August:
1. Closed home sales during the month of August in the Twin Cities increased by 12.3% above last year, and by 45.6% above two years ago. On a year-to-date basis, the 27,413 homes sold so far this year is the highest for any January-August period since 2006.
2. Pending home sales in August (4,877) were 19.5% higher than the same month last year, and 36.3% higher than August 2010.
3. The average marketing time for houses sold in August was 107 days, down from 141 days last year and 131 days in 2010, and was the shortest average marketing time since at least 2006 (except for the 106 days in July of this year).
4. The median sales price in July was $179,000, a 15.5% increase over last year and a five-year high for the month of August. The median price increase in August was the largest year-over-year gain since January 2004 and the sixth straight month of year-over-year increases.
5. The average sale price as a percent of list price in the Minneapolis area was 95.1% in August, the highest percentage for an August since 2007, and above the 91.2% average for the months of August in 2010 and 2011.
6. The "months supply of inventory" in August was down to only 4.1 months, the lowest level in almost 7 years, since the fall of 2005.
7. The inventory of Twin Cities homes for sale in August was only 16,806, the lowest inventory level since December 2003.
MP: By every relevant measure (double-digit increases in median sales price, closed sales and pending sales; ongoing decreases in average marketing time and increases in the percent of list price received, etc.), the real estate market in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Area is experiencing a strong and robust recovery this year, and the housing market conditions there are reflected very closely in many other metro areas around the country. To quote Brian Wesbury et al. at First Trust, "This is what a housing recovery looks like."
In fact, with the home inventory level in the Twin Cities currently at a nine-year low and the months supply of homes at a seven-year low, the biggest challenge for the Minneapolis-area real estate market is now a shortage of homes for sale relative to the increasing demand as rents rise and interest rates remain near historically low levels. With the tight supply of homes listed for sale and more buyers coming into the market, we can expect multiple offers and further increases in home prices going forward in the Minneapolis area. Continued increases in home prices will eventually result in more homes being put on the market for sale, which will boost inventory levels and contribute to a sustainable cycle of recovery for the Twin Cities housing market.
Here's how the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors concludes its comments on the August sales report:
"There's reason for optimism going into the last third of 2012 and even into 2013, and housing is actually playing a large role in that positive outlook."
To contact us Click HERE Here's another reason that the U.S. housing recovery is real and sustainable - buying a home is now 45% cheaper than renting, according to an analysis done by Trulia and reported here by its chief economist Jed Kalko:
Methodology: Trulia looks at homes listed for sale and for rent on its website, and compares the average rent and asking price for an identical set of properties in a metro area, for a direct apples-to-apples comparison. Then, Trulia factors in the total costs of homeownership (e.g., closing costs, maintenance, insurance, taxes, etc) and total cost of renting (e.g., renter’s insurance and security deposit).
The starting assumptions are that a prospective homebuyer can get a low mortgage rate of 3.5 percent, itemizes their federal tax deductions, is in the 25 percent tax bracket, and will stay in their home for seven years. To account for the opportunity costs, Trulia calculates the net present value of the payment streams for renting and owning.
Conclusion: With a 20% down payment, a 30-year fixed mortgage rate at 3.5% and at the 25% federal tax bracket, Trulia finds that homeownership is cheaper than renting in all of the 100 largest metros by a wide margin. There is no market where the financial decision is even close, so long as you plan to stay in the home for at least seven years, finance with a 3.5% mortgage, and itemize your tax deductions.
Based on asking prices and rents during the summer of 2012, buying is now 45% cheaper than renting in the 100 largest U.S. metros, on average – that’s a monthly savings of $771. If you plan to stay in a home for 7 years, which is the average time that Americans traditionally live in a home before moving again, it is more affordable to buy than to rent in ALL of the 100 largest metros in the U.S.
MP: Trulia's analysis would indicate that the incredible affordability of buying a home today compared to renting will provide some support to the ongoing housing recovery over the next few years. Of course, rising home prices and mortgage rates could eventually reduce some the current huge advantage of buying versus renting, depending on how fast rents rise compared to home prices. And as Trulia's economist points out, many would-be homebuyers don't have the 20% down payment assumed in this analysis, and might not be able to save up that amount in the short run to take advantage of the historical affordability of homeownership. But on the other hand, FHA is providing mortgages with only a 3-5% down payment, so the lack of a 20% down payment might not be much of a constraint.
Also, the 45% advantage for homeownership versus renting is the average. In metro areas like Oklahoma City, the monthly cost of owning a home ($590) is as much as 63% lower than renting a comparable home ($1,576). It make sense that such a huge cost difference would have to start translating into increased demand for home purchases, and that's probably one of the factors contributing to increased home sales around the country. Another example is Minneapolis - the monthly cost of buying a home there ($751) is 52% cheaper than renting ($1,558), which translates into monthly savings of $807 for homebuyers compared to renters (of a comparable house), and that huge savings is likely what is driving home sales higher in the Twin Cities (see CD post below).
To contact us Click HERE From Terry Anderson's editorial in today's WSJ "Environmental Protection Up in Smoke":
Environmental laws since the 1970s require public input into federal land-use decisions including logging on national forests. This has led to lawsuits challenging efforts by the U.S. Forest Service to prevent forest fires by thinning out trees (most of which are dead or diseased) and brush by machines and carefully controlled burns. This dead wood is the fuel that feeds catastrophic wildfires.
Removing the fuel reduces the likelihood of fires, and if fires do break out, makes them easier to fight. Meanwhile, the suppression of fires costs the federal government nearly $2.5 billion annually.
A fuels-management project to log and thin 4,800 acres in the Bozeman, Mont., watershed exemplifies the problem. This project has been held up since 2010 on grounds that the environmental-impact assessment did not adequately protect the habitat of the Canadian lynx and the grizzly bear, both listed as threatened species.
Now a wildfire threatens the watershed, burning over 10,000 acres and costing more than $2 million to fight. As one firefighter put it, "fire is the environmentalist's way of thinning the forests."
To contact us Click HERE "The American news media continues to report the body count in Mexico’s “War on Drugs” at more than 50,000 dead. But Molly Molloy, a researcher at New Mexico State University, tallies more than 100,000 Mexicans killedto wage a war financed and mandated by American authorities and led by Mexican president Felipe Calderón."
From the article "Mexicans Pay in Blood for America's War on Drugs." Note: That would be a casualty count that approaches the U.S. body count during WWI (116,500 deaths) and more than the combined American casualties during the Korean War (36,500 deaths) and the Vietnam War (58,000 deaths).
To contact us Click HERE From Don Boudreaux's open letter to Mitt Romney:
Your wish to “label China a currency manipulator” means that you seek a pretext to impose (as your website says) “countervailing duties” on imports from China – which is to say, you seek a pretext for raising taxes on Americans who buy goods and services from China. Yet in other episodes of your campaign you promise (as you did here* last month) “I will not raise taxes on the American people. I will not raise taxes on middle-income Americans.”
If you keep your promise to impose countervailing duties on imports from China you will thereby break your promise to not raise taxes on the American people. (Americans who buy imports from China are, after all, American people.) But if you keep your promise to not raise taxes on the American people, you must – as I hope you will – break your promise to punitively tax those many Americans who buy imports from China.
MP: It's a simple, but often neglected point that a tariff or duty on imports is just another word for a sales-type tax on imported goods, and those tariffs/taxes/duties are not imposed on China or other U.S. trade partners, they are imposed on, and paid for by, Americans (consumers and businesses) who purchase foreign-produced goods.
To contact us Click HERE From the Bloomberg article "Why Is It So Hard to Become a Cosmetologist in America?"
"The average cosmetologist in the U.S. trains for 372 days before earning a license. The average emergency medical technician spends 33 days in training. From this, one might conclude that Americans are obsessed with primping but tragically unprepared for emergencies."
"Actually, the disparity merely confirms what a muddle the process of occupational licensing is. In 1952, fewer than 5 percent of U.S. workers required a state license. By 2006, according to a survey that year by the Gallup Organization, 29 percent of workers said they needed a government-issued license to do their job."
"A study released in May by the libertarian Institute for Justice makes a compelling case that occupational licensing requirements in many states have run amok. Some licensees, including EMTs, have life-or-death responsibility. Others handle hazardous chemicals. Too many, however, are in occupations for which a natural inclination and a short apprenticeship should provide more than sufficient preparation. Why, for example, do florists, funeral attendants or shampooers need a license to work?"
To contact us Click HERE In the above 1978 lecture at Kansas State University, Milton Friedman discusses free trade, and explains why trade protection and interference in international trade are so widespread, despite the almost universal condemnation of such measures by the economics profession.
Professor Friedman also addresses the political obsessions with: a) increasing exports (e.g. President Obama’s goal to double exports by 2015) and b) achieving a “favorable balance of trade.”
Here’s a quote from Friedman’s lecture, demonstrating the timeless nature of his economic wisdom, which is as relevant today as it was in 1978:
In the international trade area, the language is almost always about how we must export, and what’s really good is an industry that produces exports. And if we buy from abroad and import, that’s bad. But surely that’s upside-down. What we send abroad we can’t eat, we can’t wear, we can’t use for our houses. The goods and services we send abroad, are goods and services not available to us. On the other hand, the goods and services we import, they provide us with TV sets we can watch, automobiles we can drive, with all sorts of nice things for us to use. The gain from foreign trade is what we import. What we export is the cost of getting those imports. And the proper objective for a nation as Adam Smith put it, is to arrange things, so we get as large a volume of imports as possible, for as small a volume of exports as possible.
This carries over to the terminology we use. When people talk about a favorable balance of trade, what is that term taken to mean? It’s taken to mean that we export more than we import. But from the point of view of our well-being, that’s an unfavorable balance. That means we’re sending out more goods and getting fewer in. Each of you in your private household would know better than that. You don’t regard it as a favorable balance when you have to send out more goods to get less coming in. It’s favorable when you can get more by sending out less.
MP: Here’s a formula summarizing Milton Friedman’s insights:
1. The stuff we import
MINUS 2. The stuff we export =
3. Our standard of living
In other words, in economic terms, our standard of living is highest when we maximize imports and minimize exports, which is exactly the opposite of the political thinking and policies, which generally seek to maximize exports and minimize imports.
To contact us Click HERE From Terry Anderson's editorial in today's WSJ "Environmental Protection Up in Smoke":
Environmental laws since the 1970s require public input into federal land-use decisions including logging on national forests. This has led to lawsuits challenging efforts by the U.S. Forest Service to prevent forest fires by thinning out trees (most of which are dead or diseased) and brush by machines and carefully controlled burns. This dead wood is the fuel that feeds catastrophic wildfires.
Removing the fuel reduces the likelihood of fires, and if fires do break out, makes them easier to fight. Meanwhile, the suppression of fires costs the federal government nearly $2.5 billion annually.
A fuels-management project to log and thin 4,800 acres in the Bozeman, Mont., watershed exemplifies the problem. This project has been held up since 2010 on grounds that the environmental-impact assessment did not adequately protect the habitat of the Canadian lynx and the grizzly bear, both listed as threatened species.
Now a wildfire threatens the watershed, burning over 10,000 acres and costing more than $2 million to fight. As one firefighter put it, "fire is the environmentalist's way of thinning the forests."
Mitt Romney’s proposed energy blueprint, which he says will wean America off foreign oil in seven years, dovetails with what Utah Republicans have wanted: empowering states to control the permitting of oil and gas drilling on federal lands.
Mitt Romney unveiled an energy plan that is heavy on oil and low on regulations.
CBS News: "Romney predicted that his administration would be able to increase the amount of oil barrels produced per day from 15 million to 28 million, by increasing drilling - offshore, in Alaska, and through hydro-fracking - as well as boosting the production of natural gas and bio-fuels and importing more energy from neighboring Canada with the pipeline.
His campaign released a 21-page white paper outlining his energy strategy, which was broken into six steps. In addition to giving states control over energy development on federal lands within their borders and expanding off-shore drilling on the coasts, a Romney administration will pursue a North American energy partnership that will include the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. They also plan to overhaul the permitting and regulation process and promote private-sector energy development through investments in research."
The federal government owns vast portions of states like New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Alaska. Giving states control over the energy resources on millions of acres of federal lands would be a radical shift from decades of policies under both Democratic and Republican presidents, dating all the way to Theodore Roosevelt.
Salt Lake Tribune: "The Utah Legislature is already several steps ahead of Romney in trying to wrangle control of federal lands, which make up some 60 percent of the state. Lawmakers passed a law this year directing the federal government to hand over most lands, except national parks, to the state by 2014 — and the state is prepared to take the battle to court if federal officials balk."
It's all part of the Romney Covenant.
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According to the Labor Department, from January 2009 through December 2011, 6.1 million workers were displaced from jobs they had held for at least 3 years. In January 2012, 56 percent of workers displaced from 2009-11 were re-employed (but it's mostly younger workers).
Last week, Mitt Romney declared that with his one-page economic plan, the country would add “12 million new jobs by the end of his first term.”
But in its semi-annual long-term economic forecast released last April, Macroeconomic Advisers projected that the economy would add 11.8 million jobs from 2012 to 2016.
Moody’s Analytics, another forecasting firm, projects similar job growth. Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, emphasized that he actually expects the economy to remain on the same path, regardless of who is elected.
The Congressional Budget Office’s latest long-term economic forecast, released last January, showed that employment would grow by 10 million from the first quarter of 2013 to the first quarter of 2017, the dates of the next presidential term. The CBO’s jobs numbers would probably look stronger if they assumed Congress does not allow taxes to go up on the middle-class after the Bush tax cuts expire in January 2013.
And consider this: Mitt Romney, in his stump speeches on the campaign trail, has blamed President Obama for all our low-paying jobs, even though it was his time at Bain Capital that was all about down-sizing and outsourcing jobs. (Does the pot call the kettle black?) One of Mitt Romney's most boasted accomplishments was Staples, which is nothing but a mass of low-paying jobs.
Pew Research says that since the beginning of George W. Bush's administration, the middle class has shrunk in size, and has fallen backward in both income and wealth. During that time 52,000 factories fled our shores, costing the U.S. over 8 million jobs during that time.
But young people still have a chance. It's the older ones that have to worry (especially if Romney and Ryan are elected in November).
Americans nearing retirement age have suffered disproportionately after the financial crisis: along with the declining value of their homes, which were intended to cushion their final years, their incomes have fallen sharply. The typical household income for people age 55 to 64 years old is almost 10 percent less in today’s dollars than it was when the recovery officially began three years ago, according to a new report from Sentier Research.
Across the country, in almost every demographic, Americans earn less today than they did in June 2009, when the recovery technically started. As of June of this year, the "median household income" for all Americans was $50,964, or 4.8 percent lower than its level three years earlier. (That's $25,482 per person in earnings, since most households now have two incomes --- 50% of all Americans earn less than $26,000 a year; the poverty threshold for a family of four is $ 22,000.
Two Income Households, 'Mean' and 'Median' Income Statistics
Will 2 Paychecks Be Enough in 2012? Ask Elizabeth Warren
Sustained unemployment among older workers may be partly to blame for this decline. Once older workers lose their jobs, they have an unusually hard time finding re-employment. And even when they do find new work, they usually have to take a pay cut.
Single unemployed people have since gained back 90% of the jobs, according to the Labor Department. Whereas married people, who make up a slightly larger part of the adult population, have only recouped about 22%. People under age 35 have been gaining far more jobs than those over 35.
Younger workers are more likely to be single than those over 35; and younger people had been much more likely to experience unemployment, but they've also been returning to work far much quicker.
Single people are more likely to take low wage positions because they are able to --- they don't have ties to mortgages, and can move to a new location in order to take a job.
Among workers near retirement — ages 55 to 64 — few found re-employment. And nearly a quarter were no longer counted as part of the labor force. Some, who qualified, went on disability.
Those 65 or older were even more likely to "drop out" of the labor force (the "unemployable", because of age), and about half did so. Although, people in that demographic have a relatively easier time getting by without a job because they can receive their full Social Security benefits and pensions at 65. Many others were financially desperate and were forced to take less benefits at age 62.
The GOP wants to raise the full retirement age to 70...which is bad if someone breaks their back every day for 50 years at a very labor intensive job. (Some people with cozy desk jobs, like members of Congress, can retire at 55.)
There's been legislation for age discrimination on the books for many years, but under the Civil Rights Act, there's a loophole regarding "bona fide occupational qualifications" which allows employers to skirt the law.
So many older workers are forced to take low-wage jobs like greeters at Wal-Mart (America's largest private sector employer), earning a poultry salary with no healthcare benefits.
Minimum wage workers today (in today's dollars) are taking home almost $7,000 less over the course of a year than minimum wage workers took home in 1968.
The 50 largest employers of low-wage workers are in strong financial positions, and their top executive compensation averaged $9.4 million last year --- and they have returned $174.8 billion to shareholders in dividends or share buybacks over the past five years.
The Waltons of Wal-Mart have a combined net worth of over $100 billion (not counting the money they hide). How do you think they became, so rich? Paying slave wages (for the same reason why jobs are outsourced.)
Read: $1 Trillion a Year in Personal Income is not Taxed at all for Social Security and Medicare
An Informative Report From Pew Research: The Lost Decade of the Middle Class
My newest video: "Mitt Romney's Money"
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But it wasn't always so. Have you guessed which party?
Thomas Jefferson founded what is now the Republican Party. A very interesting debate once took place between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson had argued that corporations and manufacturing would result in the concentration of too much property and power in the hands of banks and the wealthy elites.
That sounds very much like what President Obama might say today. But the Tea Party calls him a Socialist.
I once wrote about Woodrow Wilson's and Theodore Roosevelt's "Hamiltonian" and "Jeffersonian" philosophies, because these ideas had morphed into opposing political views today.
In 1912 Theodore Roosevelt, leader of the Republican Party and founder of the short-lived Progressive Party (and subscribing to the Hamiltonian philosophy) had called for a broad range of positive social welfare programs. He was the one and only (and perhaps the last) Republican president that's ever endorsed a federal government healthcare plan.
Now we have "ObamaCare", but Mitt Romney and the Republicans want to repeal it. They and the Tea Party call it "European" and "Socialist."
Ideologies have changed over the course of history and time. Neither Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln nor Thomas Jefferson could run as a Republican today.
Now we have a flip-flopping opportunist like Mitt Romney running for President, representing the New Republican Party of hate, bigotry, selfishness, ignorance, and greed. And they are not promoting the "kinder and gentler nation" that President George H.W. Bush had once envisioned.
Disregarding Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal, the administration of George W. Bush may have marked that moment in time when the New Republican Party was ushered in, and after Glenn Beck and the Koch brothers stoked the new "Tea Party" in 2009...which is more like the party of the old Dixicrats in 1948.
The Republican Party Today
If taxes are already historically low, and we already have too much government debt, and the rich are paying a lower tax rate than the middle-class, would you vote for a very wealthy man to be president if he's also a man who doesn't want to pay any taxes at all, but at the same time, cut Social Security and Medicare for you and your parents?
Mitt Romney and the Republicans said that the American people are more concerned about jobs and the economy than they are about seeing Mitt's tax returns...he said it was "simple minded". But his tax returns are directly connected to the debate about the economy, debt, spending, and jobs.
Romney and the Republicans are saying how concerned they are about the national debt, about "the crushing burden that our children and grandchildren will have to bear." But as the leader of our country, and considering the great debate about tax policy, Romney's tax returns are very much at the center of the discussion.
If Mitt Romney only paid 13.9% in federal income taxes on $22 million in income he earned in one year, and we are discussing the viability and solvency of Social Security, Medicare, and defense spending, it would seem that whatever reforms we need in the tax code would be better understood if the American people knew what loopholes should be eliminated.
I find it disingenuous, gluttonous, and hypocritical for someone such as Romney to complain about government spending, as though people like he were paying the lion's share in taxes.
It's almost evil for the wealthy to accuse others of not "having enough skin in the game" when it comes to the poor paying their fair share of taxes, because the poor don't have expensive lobbyists going to Congress on their behalf to influence the tax laws.
As a percent of their total annual income, the poor and middle-class pay much more in taxes and living expenses than someone with Mitt Romney's money. And the poor and middle-class can't afford to hire tax attorneys or take advantage of the same loopholes in the tax code as Mitt Romney does.
Romney's tax returns are very much at the heart of the problem on tax reform because most of Romney's income is derived from "capital gains", and both he and his running mate, Paul Ryan, wants to eliminate the capital gains tax entirely. Mitt Romney doesn't want to put ANY skin in the game.
Every year, almost $1 trillion dollars in personal income (that the top 1% earns with capital gains) is not taxed at all for Social Security and Medicare; and it is also taxed at a lower rate (15%) than a middle-class wage earner pays for income taxes (25%).
So essentially, the super-rich Mitt Romney, after already paying less as a percentage of his income in taxes than most other people, he now wants to pay no taxes at all. And then, even when he personally isn't contributing to the government treasury, he wants to dictate to others the cuts in government spending for everyone else who IS paying into the system (and not gaming it the way the top 1% has been doing for decades).
Mitt and his wife are lying when they say they won't release any more tax return because the Democrats will only "attack" them. Why would Mitt, a leader in the Mormon church, sell his soul to lead the Party of hate, bigotry, selfishness, ignorance, and greed to be President of the United States? Because his first loyalty is to his church, not to this country. And less tax revenues for the government would equate to more revenues into the coffers of his church, and may the "gentiles" be damned.
And then there's the matter of jobs.
During Mitt Romney’s time as owner and CEO of Bain Capital, he cleverly invested in, and made enormous profits from, companies that The Washington Post describes as “pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components.”
Where pioneers have gone, settlers have followed. Today, outsourcing by the country’s largest multinational corporations has become routine. The result is a process of strategic investment that often yields high profits without generating jobs or tax revenues in the United States.
Many American companies (e.g. Apple, etc.) rely heavily on subcontractors in other countries, minimizing both their production costs (cheap labor) and their tax liabilities. They can also pollute the water and air in places like China.
Pew Research says that since the beginning of George W. Bush's administration, the middle class has shrunk in size, and has fallen backward in both income and wealth. During that time 52,000 factories fled our shores, costing the U.S. over 8 million jobs during that time.
Mitt Romney, in his stump speeches on the campaign trail, has blamed President Obama for all our low-paying jobs, even though it was his time at Bain Capital that was all about down-sizing and outsourcing jobs. (Does the pot call the kettle black?)
One of Mitt Romney's most boasted accomplishments was Staples, which is nothing but a mass of low-paying jobs. Just like Domino's Pizza. And slave labor wages are also paid at Wal-Mart and McDonalds, two of America's largest employers.
Now 50% of all Americans earn LESS than $26,363.55 a year, just above the poverty line for a family of four. These are the people that Mitt Romney says should pay more, while he eliminates his own tax liability completely -- by not taxing capital gains.
Over the years, wealthy taxpayers have found countless ways to game the system, and every time the Internal Revenue Service has moved to plug a loophole, the code has become more and more complicated.
And it doesn't help that Congress (mostly Republicans) have de-funded the IRS so much that they can't hire more tax auditors to investigate massive tax evasion.
Mitt Romney also uses foreign tax credits to game the system. Maybe Mitt Romney should renounce American citizenship and move to Singapore, as did the Facebook co-founder Eduardo Savarin) rather than run for President of the United States. That would end Mitt's obligation as a citizen to pay federal income tax.
It was estimated that the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 cost the U.S. Treasury $1.5 trillion in lost revenues. Now corporate America is sitting on a colossal $2.5 trillion in un-taxed cash in foreign banks from profits made overseas.
The CEOs are earning record multi-million-dollar salaries with stocks and stock-options and paying a very low 15% capital gains tax rate (and no Social Security or Medicare taxes at all on those capital gains. About another $1 trillion a year is lost in tax revenues here as well.).
Over a quarter century ago, in 1984, the Washington, D.C.- based Citizens for Tax Justice released its first in-depth report on how much America’s top profitable corporations were actually paying in taxes. America’s top companies, this initial study found, were paying only 14.1% of their profits in taxes, less than a third of the corporate tax rate then in effect.
Their last study shows that America’s top corporations are now getting what essentially amounts to a 50% discount off their tax bills.
The STATUTORY corporate tax rate is currently 35%, but for many companies, the EFFECTIVE tax rate is half of that. So, if the tax rate was 90%, what would it matter if the loopholes allowed them to pay a mere 18%? But still, Mitt Romney and the Republicans are asking for lower corporate taxes too.
Am I the only one who gets suspicious when everything a person proposes is something that they themselves would always personally benefit the most from? If for no other reason, this should be why no one should vote for Mitt Romney. Where is HIS "shared sacrifice" for the country?
Capital gains and corporate taxes are already historically low, but the Republicans keep saying "now is not a good time to raise taxes." So then, let me ask, when is it EVER a good time to raise taxes? Would it have been back in 2001 when Bush lowered them?
The New York Times writes that "both political parties say they agree on the absolute necessity of reforming the addled and inefficient American tax code. But that would mean eliminating much of the underbrush of credits, loopholes and expenditures (such as Romney's foreign tax credits), and then maybe reducing marginal tax rates.
Of course, the devil is in the details...and Mitt Romney always provides so few. Just about every tax expenditure has a powerful interest group behind it. That is part of the reason why neither party has gotten specific about what they would put on the chopping block, and both anticipate a drawn-out fight during the tax reform process.
And of course it's usually always the middle-class and poor making all the "shared sacrifices".
And one can't help but help wonder if Congress has personal reasons for not acting sooner on reforming the tax code for the past 90 years (when capital gains was first introduced). Almost half the House and two thirds of the Senate are millionaires themselves. The fox guarding the hen house?
And then of course, there are the banks. They control our economy and Congress (big business and our government). In 1802 Thomas Jefferson wrote, "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property - until their children wake up homeless in the continent their fathers conquered."
Maybe Thomas Jefferson was also a prophet. What would he think about Mitt Romney?
* Use this link to fact check the statistics I quote in the video.
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When accused of blatantly false campaign ads, Mitt Romney’s pollster Neil Newhouse said, "We will not let the fact checkers get in the way”.
I've learned an awful lot about Obama after listening to all the Republican speeches during their convention this week. I was shocked and awed to learn that Obama, who -- as just a "community organizer", and who "doesn't understand how America works", and who "had no business experience", and who is a foreigner-- he sure has done a lot of harm to this country in just a short 3 years by signing a record-low number of bills coming out of Congress since becoming President.
Besides learning about legitimate rape this week, I've also learned from the Republican speeches that:
Obama is to blame for losing America's "exceptionalism".
Obama is to blame for 25 million under-employed and unemployed people.
Obama is to blame for leading from behind.
Obama is to blame for creating millions of low-paying jobs.
Obama is to blame for home millions of foreclosures.
Obama is to blame for 46 million Americans on food stamps.
Obama is to blame for being weak on defense.
Obama is to blame for our national debt.
Obama is to blame for high taxes.
Obama is to blame for "big" government.
Obama is to blame for 11 million illegal immigrants.
Obama is to blame for a failing education system.
Obama is to blame for too much government spending.
Obama is to blame for punishing success and job creators.
Obama is to blame for class-warfare.
Obama is to blame for the high cost of living.
Obama is too blame for high gas prices.
Obama is to blame for dividing the country.
Obama is to blame for over-regulating BP oil
Obama is to blame for violating the U.S. Constitution.
Obama is to blame for a war on religion (with contraception).
Obama is to blame for infanticide (with abortion).
Obama is to blame for a declining middle-class.
Obama is to blame for putting people on welfare.
Obama is to blame for the high cost of healthcare.
Obama is to blame for destroying Medicare.
Obama is to blame for taking our guns away.
Obama is to blame for losing our global respect.
Obama is to blame for Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Obama is to blame for the downgrade in our credit rating.
Obama is to blame for Syria's, Egypt's, and Libya's civil wars.
Obama is to blame for NOT helping to create an Iranian civil war.
Obama is to blame for burdening our children and grand-children in debt.
Obama is to blame for making us a "European" and "Socialist" nation.
Obama is to blame for teacher's pensions.
Obama is to blame for 52,000 factory closings since 2001.
Obama is to blame for record poverty.
Obama is to blame for high college tuitions.
Obama is to blame for borrowed, wasted, and spent stimulus.
Obama is to blame for killing small businesses.
Obama is to blame for making us dependent on big government.
Obama is to blame for crony capitalism, which we never had before.
Obama is to blame for not fixing roads and bridges.
Obama is to blame for "you didn't build that!"
Obama is to blame for giving billions of dollars to oil companies.
Obama is to blame for falsely blaming the Republicans for all this country's woes.
Shame on this man! He should be tried and hung for treason!!!!
The Republicans have been very gracious in saying that Obama inherited a bad situation from the previous Republican administration; but then they blamed Obama for making a bad situation much worse...or for not fixing everything that was wrong since he first took office 3 years ago. Or, if something DID go right, the Republicans said the situation had only improved "despite" of Obama and his failed policies (policies that were always filibustered by the House Republicans).
I've also learned that Obama was to blame for the hurricane that struck New Orleans, exactly 7 years to the day from the last time a hurricane hit New Orleans when George W. Bush was sight-seeing in a Marine helicopter.
I was so shocked to learn that Obama was soooooooo evil, and that this one man could cause so much carnage and destruction to such a strong and great nation like the United States of America. Boy, was that un-nerving!
Before I had heard all those Republican speeches this week, all I knew about Obama before that was:
Obama was not American (born in Kenya).
Obama had a counterfeit birth certificate (Donald Trump told me so.)
Obama was a Marxist and hung out with terrorists (Because Sean Hannity said so.)
Obama didn't believe in the "real" God, so he was anti-religion and the anti-Christ.
Obama was a Manchurian Candidate who was out to destroy America.
Obama wanted to spread the billionaire's wealth around.
Obama was half black, not half white.
And that Obama was a Muslim.
But after listening to all the Republican speeches this week, I was also very reassured to know that, because Mitt Romney was a good family man and had a loving wife and five well-groomed sons, he would be fit to lead the nation during these desperate times...and that Mitt could fix everything that Obama had single-handedly destroyed (or made much worse), and that Mitt could "save America".
I did notice one thing though. Besides Obama being to blame for everything that's wrong with America, not one single detail was ever revealed about how the Republicans would fix everything that is so very wrong with this country...except for the fact that all the Republicans agreed that we should cut spending on the poor and lower taxes on the rich. That much was very clear.
And then I realized that I am also very blessed to have a brain just slightly larger than a peanut, because if I didn't, I might have actually believed everything the Republicans were saying in their speeches at their convention this week (and I wouldn't have noticed all their "token" minorities either).
But what makes me very sad and very ashamed was, after looking at all those goofy faces in the convention's audience, I was appalled and overcome by a feeling of melancholy when I realized just how stupid Americans really are.
But fear not folks, American "exceptionalism" is still alive in America. Exceptional stupidity. Personally, I would prefer a draft-dodger and a tax dodger over an evil community organizer to lead this nation.
From the Seattle Times: Meet the Real Mitt Romney
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To contact us Click HERE Corporate execs and billionaire ideologues are creating — at taxpayer expense — a network of schools where learning takes a back seat.
The sounds of September: school bells ringing, looseleaf binders snapping open, sneakers squeaking on gymnasium floors. Next to apple pie, what could be more American than sounds like these — and the public schools where we hear them?
But times change. Blackboards and chalk no longer grace every classroom. We have whiteboards and classroom computers. We have the Internet, the capacity to share lessons across borders.
In this new Information Age, are local public schools now somewhat obsolete? Do we need a new model for educating our young? Some sort of educational revolution in teaching and learning?
Questions like these demand thoughtful and patient democratic deliberation. But we’re not getting that deliberation. In today's deeply unequal America, we’re rushing instead toward a national educational future that profits the awesomely affluent few at the expense of America's many.
The most striking manifestation of this rush: the near quarter-million students enrolled full-time in the “virtual schools” that now operate — at taxpayer expense — in 27 states. These schools have no physical classrooms, no playgrounds, and no in-person teachers.
In these online “academies,” young students sit in front of home computers. Their parents serve as “learning coaches,” following instructions they read on screen. Remotely located teachers monitor and grade the students. One of these remote teachers at the elementary level can have as many as 60 students.
The results from this “learning” process can be ugly. A New York Times investigation last December concluded that K12 Inc., one of the nation’s top two online school providers, “tries to squeeze profits from public school dollars by raising enrollment, increasing teacher workload, and lowering standards.”
In Tennessee, where a 2011 law let local school systems contract with for-profit online schools, about 1,800 K-8 students “attended” K12’s Tennessee Virtual Academy last year. Virtual Academy students, data from the state education department show, “performed in the bottom 11 percent of schools statewide.”
Other studies — out of Stanford and Western Michigan University — have shown similarly dismal academic results.
All these online schools owe their existence to our public tax dollars. How could local and state education officials allow public tax dollars to underwrite these virtual schools? Don’t we have rules and regulations designed to protect students from commercial exploitation?
We do. But in more and more states these rules don’t apply. What one analyst has described as a tight-knot network of “right-wing millionaires and billionaires, bankers, industrialists, lobby shops, and hardcore ideologues” is carving out an ever-growing space where “virtually” anything goes.
In Maine, for instance, the state’s right-wing governor has “formally embraced” a ten-point plan that sweeps away hard-won protections for students — and taxpayers.
The plan the governor backs axes “restrictions on online student-to-teacher ratios” and requires taxpayers to pay online providers by the same per-pupil funding formula that covers students in regular brick-and-mortar public schools.
The text for the Maine governor’s executive order earlier this year on behalf of online providers, the Portland Press Herald last week revealed, came directly from a Florida think tank funded by the online virtual school companies “that stand to make millions of dollars” as the governor’s new initiative goes forward.
These same corporations are spending a bundle more on lobbying and political contributions. And behind them lurk a host of super-rich conservative ideologues with a deep animus toward traditional public schools, facilities that they consider “islands of socialism in a free-market sea.”
Among these super rich: Dick and Betsey DeVos, heirs to the Amway fortune. They’re bankrolling the American Federation for Children and an assortment of other innocent-sounding groups that push public funding for private schools.
Meanwhile, regular public schools are facing massive budget shortfalls. In 35 states, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports, state education funding for the current school year has dropped below 2008 finding levels.
School districts have had to eliminate over 328,000 jobs — at the same time the nation’s K-12 student population has increased by 535,000 students.
Schools today don’t just have more students to educate. In today’s depressed economy, they have more poor students. But corporate-friendly education “reformers” don’t like to talk about poverty.
For good reason. If you don’t talk about poverty, the absence of wealth, you don’t have to talk about wealth’s concentration — and the private power over public policy that this concentration inevitably forges. Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook
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Before President Obama recently lowered the Social Security tax rate to 4.2% for most working Americans (those who are paid a salary or earn an hourly wage) it used to be 6.2%. The Medicare tax rate is still 1.45%.
These payroll taxes (FICA) are not collected on "unearned income", which includes interest on savings deposits, stock dividends, and capital gains -- such as profits from the sale of stock or real estate. CEOs of corporations like to pay themselves a greater part of their compensation with stock options rather than a regular wage to avoid the higher personal tax rate.
The proportion of total income which is exempt from FICA taxes as "unearned income" tends to rise with higher income brackets -- such as Mitt Romney and everyone on the Forbes Fortune 400 List -- and all those earning over $110,000 a year (because of the "cap" on Social Security taxes).
The bottom 47% that Mitt Romney referred to (those who pay no federal income tax) earn less than $26,363 a year, but they pay FICA taxes on 100% of their wages if they work -- and in many cases, they also pay state, city, excise and property taxes.
And they all pay a greater proportion of their earnings on sales taxes too -- and that's why a flat tax, or a value-added tax, would tax the poor more disproportionately than the very wealthy.
So most of that 47% pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes. And as a percentage of their income, they also pay a greater proportion of their income in other taxes as well.
The rich are different. Mitt and Ann Romney paid virtually no payroll taxes in 2011, because nearly all their income came from investments on which payroll tax was not owed. And most of their federal income tax was paid at the lower rate of 15% for capital gains, not the top marginal rate of 35% if their income had been earned through regular wages.
Because of the current tax code, about $1 trillion a year in unearned personal income from the wealthy is exempt from payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare taxes) and about $500 billion a year is taxed at the low rate for capital gains instead of the higher rate for regular wages.
But starting next year, high-income taxpayers will pay a little more in taxes. A tax was passed as part of the health care bill enacted by Congress and signed by President Obama in 2010 – the law known as “ObamaCare.”
Married taxpayers with income over $250,000 will pay a 3.8 percent Medicare tax rate on income over that amount, and all income will be covered, including capital gains that make up most of the Romneys’ income. That's why Romney and wealthy Republicans want to repeal "ObamaCare" and extend the Bush tax cuts -- so that they can continue to keep THEIR tax rates LOWER than ours.
This Medicare tax on the rich will in no way alter the top one percent's standard of living, and it will help provide healthcare for those who cannot afford to pay for the ultra-expensive healthcare policies that are sold by insurance companies to the poor (the bottom 47%).
Mitt Romney thinks these people are "moochers" who just want "free stuff". His distain for half the country could not have been made any clearer at that fundraiser last May. And his ultra-rich donors all seemed to be in total agreement with him (They paid $50,000 per person to hear Romney bash the poor).
In other words, Mitt and wealthy Republicans don't want to contribute anything at all to the "moochers" who worked all their lives making profits for the top one percent before they got too old or sick, and could no longer work any more.
Mitt and wealthy Republicans don't want to contribute anything at all to the "moochers" who became disabled in military conflicts after defending the top one percent's interests abroad.
Mitt and wealthy Republicans don't want to contribute anything at all to the "moochers" who had their fair-paying jobs outsourced to China for ever more profits, only to be replaced with minimum wage part-time jobs without healthcare insurance at Staples, Godfather Pizza, McDonalds, and Wal-Mart -- while trying to keep pace with an ever rising cost-of-living.
Mitt and wealthy Republicans don't want to contribute anything at all to the "moochers" (half the country who earn near-poverty or poverty level wages), but instead claim that the bottom 47% prefer to be "dependent on government" and refuses to take responsibility for their lives.
The money that Romney gives to his church charity (of which he is a very high ranking member) does little to help poor non-Mormons, and his generous contributions to the Mormon church does absolutely nothing at all for the funding of roads and bridges, schools, the FDA or the FAA. But because Romney gave to his church, he feels he's done everything to fulfill his moral responsibilities to this nation.
When Mitt and wealthy Republicans complain about government spending, they don't mean the fraud and abuse in the very profitable corporate defense industry that's funded by taxpayers. They really mean healthcare, veterans benefits, and Social Security for everybody in the bottom 47% -- those "moochers" who USED to pay federal income taxes, but no longer do, because now they are too old, sick, and/or poor.
Mitt and wealthy Republicans feel about the bottom 47% the same way aristocrats once thought of the peons, and that's what Romney and his rich friends really think of regular working Americans today. Now Mitt wants to be our king.
Money hoarders like Mitt Romney earned $13 million last year. It would take someone in the bottom 47 percent 4,931 years to earn that much money; but Mitt wants to pay them less in wages and Mitt wants to tax them more -- and all while he himself pays less in taxes.
Revolutions, uprisings, and civil wars have plagued humanity all throughout history because of greedy economic policies such as Mitt Romney's that overwhelmingly favor the very rich.
Who's the REAL moocher?
Leona Helmsley, the very wealthy hotelier who was once known as the "Queen of Mean," was quoted as telling one of her housekeepers, "We don't pay taxes, only the little people pay taxes."
The billionaire was later convicted of 33 felony counts of trying to defraud the government, including mail fraud, tax evasion and filing false tax returns. She served 18 months in prison.
Five years ago after she died at the ripe old age of 87, she left $12 million to a dog named Trouble, her beloved poodle.
Mitt Romney doesn't want to tax these people for capital gains or inheritances, but instead wants to tax low-income Americans to help fund a $700 billion military budget, two wars, and tax cuts for the rich.
Huffington Post: The Romney-Ryan Budget: Who Are the Real Moochers in Their Medicaid Scheme?
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