Thursday, July 23, 2015


News Clips For The Day


http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/7/donald-trump-the-bigoted-elephant-in-the-room.html

The bigoted elephant in the room
Donald Trump’s popularity reveals racism of Republican base
By C. Robert Gibson
July 22, 2015

While waiting at a red light a few days ago, a pickup truck decked out in Confederate flags pulled up in the lane adjacent to mine. The driver had two flagpoles attached to his truck bed, each adorned with the flag of the Confederacy, along with Confederate flag bumper stickers and a Confederate flag license plate frame.

I was in New Hampshire, mind you — not South Carolina — and the pickup truck’s license plate was from the Granite State. The only logical explanation left for the driver’s loud display of the Confederate flag after that flag has been universally condemned as a symbol of hatred and racism is that the driver is endorsing the same.

I didn’t ask the pickup truck driver who he supported in the primary, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he favored Donald Trump, based on his recent surge in the polls and outspoken bigotry. As Republican presidential candidates begin to set their sites on New Hampshire, they will need to come to grips with the party’s racial animosity that Trump’s surge represents.

In May, before announcing his campaign, Trump was only polling at 3 percent. Even after he was unilaterally condemned in headlines for his June remarks accusing almost all Mexican immigrants of being drug dealers and rapists, Trump doubled down on his remarks, and weeks later, he quadrupled his polling position, putting him just behind Jeb Bush. Trump’s popularity has since skyrocketed amongst Republican primary voters. According to polling data from Friday, July 17, Trump held the lead with 18 percent of Republicans preferring him, compared to 15 percent for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and 14 percent for former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. A Monmouth University poll of Tea Party supporters revealed that Trump had flipped a 55-percent net negative to 56 percent approval since June, when he made his racist remarks. This kind of immediate swing in the wake of such comments isn’t necessarily an endorsement of Trump, but an endorsement of the hateful values he openly espouses.

Trump is able to win over that core group of Republican supporters by speaking to their sense of loss in an era of white privilege slowly but surely coming to an end. Census data from the 2012 election revealed that white voters — the GOP’s largest demographic – will no longer play a major role in deciding future presidential elections. It’s also estimated that by 2045, whites, who currently account for 62 percent of the population but 78 percent of deaths, will be a minority in America. When combining this reality with an electorate that elected and re-elected the first African-American president, aging white Republican voters are feeling outnumbered, and are looking for a candidate willing to say all the things they secretly think about President Barack Obama and America’s growing immigrant population.

Even the Republican candidates who recently distanced themselves from Trump only did so after he made insensitive remarks about Senator John McCain’s military career.

The animosity that Trump and his supporters harbor for President Obama is based on his race, not his policies, as Obama is even further to the right than even conservative hero Ronald Reagan on immigration, having deported more immigrants than any other president in history, while Reagan granted amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. Obama is also more hawkish than Reagan on foreign policy, as seven predominantly Muslim countries have been bombed without Congressional approval under his administration (Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Pakistan and Somalia). Even on the economy, Obama has proven to be far friendlier to the corporate establishment than Reagan, presiding over record quarterly profits and multiple record high stock market closings while wages have simultaneously hit their lowest point in 65 years.

Even the Republican candidates who recently distanced themselves from Trump only did so after he made insensitive remarks about Senator John McCain’s military career. Candidates Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Jeb Bush, Rick Perry, Rand Paul, Chris Christie and the rest of the Republicans who publicly criticized Trump’s comments about McCain were silent after he bashed Mexican immigrants. Carly Fiorina even tacitly supported Trump’s anti-immigrant tirade. If anything, Republican silence in response to Trump’s bigoted comments proves these candidates are taking pains not to offend racists among the GOP base. The only leading Republican who said anything about Trump’s racist statement about immigrants was Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, who only encouraged Trump to “tone down” his remarks.

While it’s easy to mock Donald Trump over his brash attitude, insensitive comments and unfortunate comb-over, his candidacy is not to be taken lightly. The Confederate flag debate showed that racism is still alive and well in America, and a candidate with a bigoted message will attract a lot of support. Racists are becoming more emboldened after the terrorist attack at Emanuel AME church in Charleston, holding pro-Confederate flag rallies at the South Carolina statehouse in which attendees don neo-Nazi garb and SS uniforms. Predominantly black churches have burned across the South; several of the incidents have proven to be arson.

Trump has said he wouldn’t rule out running as an independent if he doesn’t win the GOP nomination. Such a campaign would be reminiscent of segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace’s 1968 campaign for the presidency on the American Independent Party (AIP) ticket, in which his racist message won over Electoral College votes in the Deep South and threatened to have the presidential election decided in the House of Representatives. The AIP’s 1967 platform — based largely on fervent nationalism and opposition to “big government” — is eerily similar to what Trump and other Republican candidates are proposing today.

The field of GOP presidential candidates, as well as national GOP organizations such as the Republican National Committee and the Republican Governors Association need to quickly and decisively condemn Trump’s racism and convince the electorate that bigotry is not welcome in the party that abolished slavery. Donald Trump and any other openly racist candidate must be relegated to obscurity if our country is to have true racial progress.

C. Robert Gibson is an independent journalist and a co-founder of the anti-austerity group US Uncut.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy.



https://movetoamend.org/us-uncut

US Uncut

US Uncut is the United States sister movement of the British anti-austerity group UK Uncut that ties corporate tax dodging to public service cuts. US Uncut's official beginning was an international day of action on February 26, 2011 with their overseas partner and protested in over 100 US cities on Tax Day in 2011. Since then, the group has grown to over 80,000 members online and has been featured in the award-winning documentary “We're Not Broke,” which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerity

Austerity
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In economics, austerity is a set of policies with the aim of reducing government budget deficits. Austerity policies may include spending cuts, tax increases, or a mixture of both.[1][2][3] Austerity may be undertaken to demonstrate the government's fiscal discipline to their creditors and credit rating agencies by bringing revenues closer to expenditures. In most macroeconomic models, austerity policies generally increase unemployment in the short run, as government spending falls reducing jobs in the public and private sector or both, while tax increases reduce household disposable income and thus consumption. The U.S. Congressional Budget Office illustrated this when comparing unemployment under alternative fiscal scenarios.[4]

Unemployment increases safety net spending and further reduces tax revenues, partially offsetting the austerity measures. Government spending contributes to gross domestic product (GDP), so reducing spending may result in a higher debt-to-GDP ratio, a key measure of the debt burden carried by a country and its citizens. Higher short-term deficit spending (stimulus) contributes to GDP growth particularly when consumers and businesses are unwilling or unable to spend. This is because crowding out (i.e., rising interest rates as government bids against business for a finite amount of savings, slowing the economy) is less of a factor in a downturn, as there may be a surplus of savings.[5][6]

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, austerity results in Europe have been as predicted by macroeconomics, with unemployment rising to record levels and debt-to-GDP ratios rising, despite reductions in budget deficits relative to GDP.




“Trump is able to win over that core group of Republican supporters by speaking to their sense of loss in an era of white privilege slowly but surely coming to an end. Census data from the 2012 election revealed that white voters — the GOP’s largest demographic – will no longer play a major role in deciding future presidential elections. It’s also estimated that by 2045, whites, who currently account for 62 percent of the population but 78 percent of deaths, will be a minority in America. When combining this reality with an electorate that elected and re-elected the first African-American president, aging white Republican voters are feeling outnumbered, and are looking for a candidate willing to say all the things they secretly think about President Barack Obama and America’s growing immigrant population. Even the Republican candidates who recently distanced themselves from Trump only did so after he made insensitive remarks about Senator John McCain’s military career. …. If anything, Republican silence in response to Trump’s bigoted comments proves these candidates are taking pains not to offend racists among the GOP base. The only leading Republican who said anything about Trump’s racist statement about immigrants was Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, who only encouraged Trump to “tone down” his remarks. …. . Racists are becoming more emboldened after the terrorist attack at Emanuel AME church in Charleston, holding pro-Confederate flag rallies at the South Carolina statehouse in which attendees don neo-Nazi garb and SS uniforms. …. . Such a campaign would be reminiscent of segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace’s 1968 campaign for the presidency on the American Independent Party (AIP) ticket, in which his racist message won over Electoral College votes in the Deep South and threatened to have the presidential election decided in the House of Representatives. The AIP’s 1967 platform — based largely on fervent nationalism and opposition to “big government” — is eerily similar to what Trump and other Republican candidates are proposing today. …. need to quickly and decisively condemn Trump’s racism and convince the electorate that bigotry is not welcome in the party that abolished slavery. Donald Trump and any other openly racist candidate must be relegated to obscurity if our country is to have true racial progress.”

This article has gone to great efforts to prove what has been obvious to me for years. The South when I was young was primarily the territory of the Democratic Party. The ultraconservative Democrats, or “Dixiecrats” always voted for racist policies and the tried and true “States rights” beliefs that go back all the way to the Civil War. In 1964 the Civil Rights Movement was fully underway and President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed through racial policy reforms. The Dixiecrats in the party pulled out of our party shifted then into the Republican. For a history of how this happened, see “Lucinda’s Blog” at website http://cjonline.com/blog-post/lucinda/2013-02-05/how-dixiecrats-became-republicans, “How Dixiecrats Became Republicans,” Tue, 02/05/2013.

Lucinda says, “I grew up and registered the first time into the old Democratic Party, which was a remnant of the old Dixiecrat Party. They hated blacks. They hated Jews. They hated Catholics. I grew up listening to it. I personally knew KKK members. In fact, a boy I dated had an older brother in the KKK (big time Democrats). That older brother's name is online in articles that talk about the Bogalusa Race Riots of the 60's. He had his white sheet on, with at least a half dozen other KKK members that worked for my father and were at our home a lot. He tried to pull a black man out of a car to beat him up and the black man shot him. You certainly don't have to tell me about the old Dixiecrats. I lived amongst them. Today those same people I knew who hated black people and Jews and hated everything about civil rights are all Republicans. They're not JUST Republicans, they're far right extremists. I get their emails almost daily - emails full of lies about Obama, with caricatures of Obama and his family - and so much more. Lies, hatred and ugliness that is hard to imagine that a person can carry around in his or her heart. Kansas, do a little research and find out how and when they all switched to Republican after the Civil Rights laws came around. You think Eisenhower's actions mean that the Republican Party is the one for civil rights because you missed a major shift in politics that happened twenty years after Eisenhower. Btw, today if Ike ran for president, the Republican Party of today would not have him. You know it, and I do, too. Start your re-education on politics by googling Dixiecrats. I won't do it for you because you need to choose your own source. Civil Rights laws passed in the 1950s and especially in the 1960s, were championed by NATIONAL Democrats, but caused splits in the Democratic Party. Many in the South switched allegiance to the Republican Party which was seen as more conservative. With Reagan the shift in the South was fairly complete. …. Will there be shifts in the future between parties, again? Hell, forget the future. It's happening right now. You've got moderate Republicans all over this country dumping the GOP and registering as Independents. It's only a matter of time that they'll go all the way into the Democratic Party. Of course, as history repeats itself, in time the Democratic Party will, like the Republican Party has done, get too full of itself - try to go to the extreme as the Republican Party has tried to do. Then the tide will begin to ebb the other way. What you need to recognize today is that the parties have had a sea change over the last 60 years. None of us belong to the same party that they were when Civil Rights was rearing its head - from Lincoln to Reagan. It's all different. And from any given year to any given year, you can find evidence of small ebbs and flows in the parties. As a Republican, you need to ask yourselves, are you happy being a member of a party that rivals the old Dixiecrats and their Jim Crow laws and attitudes? If so, then stick with it all the way to the bottom, 'cause, my friends, you are going down.”


I personally was just graduating from high school and studying English Lit at UNC-CH when the Republicans won the racists over and the Democratic Party became the "L word" -- liberals. UNC-CH was a “hotbed” of liberal activity in those days. I joined the National Organization for Women and worked for the anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy. Unfortunately he split the Democratic Party at the time and Richard Nixon was reelected. That’s why I’ll never vote for a third party candidate again. If Bernie Sanders should possibly win the Democratic Party nomination I will vote for him. If not, I will vote for Hillary. She has “a lot of baggage,” but she is basically an intelligent and progressive Democrat. She also has lots of pure “intestinal fortitude,” which is a good thing in politics.

It’s interesting that somebody from al Jezeera wrote this article. When I first heard of them they were only known to me for publishing the publicity materials from al-Qaeda, but they clearly are interested in politics from a purely American viewpoint also. It’s like Mother Jones and DailyKos. They are clearly liberals, but offer good basic information on the issues at hand. I had to cut some soft-core profanity from the last DailyKos item that I published, but other than that I find them a good news source. Like Huffington Post sometimes they tell a story before any of the mainstream traditional publishers will, including even NPR. If a story sounds as though it may be fabricated or exaggerated I look at the whole Internet for backup articles which will verify the truthfulness of the story. That’s all part of my fun, of course.




SWITZERLAND VS THE US – JOBS, TAXES, VACATIONS


http://www.vox.com/2015/7/21/8974435/switzerland-work-life-balance

Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture
by Chantal Panozzo on July 21, 2015


Photograph -- The author and her daughter in Urnaesch, Switzerland, watching the cows come home. (Brian Opyd) Note: These cows are all walking single file down the center line in a paved road with no border collie or human guiding them or pushing them. I’ve never seen anything like that before. They seem to know that if they do that they won’t be hit by a car coming through.


THE FOLLOWING ARE EXCERPTS FROM THIS VERY LONG ARTICLE. SUGGESTED READING FOR YOU IF YOU HAVE THE TIME. --

“I was halfway through a job interview when I realized I was wrinkling my nose. I couldn't help myself. A full-time freelance position with a long commute, no benefits, and a quarter of my old pay was the best they could do? I couldn't hide how I felt about that, and the 25-year-old conducting the interview noticed.

"Are you interested in permanent jobs instead?" she asked.

"I could consider a permanent job if it was part-time," I said.

She looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language and went right back to her pitch: long commute, full-time, no benefits. No way, I thought. Who would want to do that? And then it hit me: Either I had become a completely privileged jerk or my own country was not as amazing as I had once thought it to be. This wasn't an unusually bad offer: It was just American Reality.

Now that I'm back, I'm angry that my own country isn't providing more for its people.

Before I moved to Switzerland for almost a decade, American Reality was all I knew. I was living in a two-bedroom apartment making $30,000 a year in a job where I worked almost seven days a week with no overtime pay and received 10 days of paid time off a year.

In other words, for the hours worked, I was making minimum wage, if that. The glamour of this job was supposed to make up for the hours, but in reality, working every weekend is a ticket to burnout — not success.

My husband and I were so accustomed to American Reality that when he was offered an opportunity to work in Switzerland, we both thought about travel and adventure — not about improving our quality of life. It hadn't occurred to us that we could improve our quality of life simply by moving.

But without realizing it, or even asking for it, a better life quality came to us. And this is why, now that I'm back, I'm angry that my own country isn't providing more for its people. I will never regret living abroad. It taught me to understand another culture. And it taught me to see my own. But it also taught me something else — to lose touch with the American version of reality.

Here are seven ways living abroad made it hard to return to American life.

1) I had work-life balance

I spent 2 years cleaning houses. What I saw makes me never want to be rich.

I spent 7 years working in retail. I’ll never complain about a long Starbucks line again.

The Swiss work hard, but they have a strong work-life balance. According to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the average Swiss worker earned the equivalent of $91,574 a year in 2013, while the average American worker earned only $55,708. But the real story is that the average American had to work 219 hours more per year for this lesser salary.

Which brings us to lunch. In Switzerland, you don't arrive to a meeting late, but you also don't leave for your lunch break a second past noon. If it's summer, jumping into the lake to swim with the swans is an acceptable way to spend your lunch hour. If you eat a sandwich at your desk, people will scold you. I learned this the hard way.

"Ugh," said Tom, a Swiss art director I shared an office with at a Zurich ad agency. "It smells like someone ate their lunch in here." He threw open the windows and fanned the air.

"They did. I ate a sandwich here," I said.

Tom looked at me like I was crazy.

"No. Tomorrow you're having a proper lunch. With me," he said.

The next day, exactly at noon, we rode the funicular to a restaurant where we dined al fresco above Zurich. After lunch, we strolled down the hill. I felt guilty for being gone for an hour and a half. But no one had missed us at the office.

Lunchtime is sacred time in Switzerland. When I was on maternity leave, my husband came home for lunch to help me care for our daughter. This strengthened our marriage. Many families still reunite during weekdays over the lunch hour.

Weekends in Switzerland encourage leisure time, too. On Sundays, you can't even shop — most stores are closed. You are semi-required to hike in the Alps with your family. It's just what you do.


2) I had time and money

The Swiss have a culture of professional part-time work, and as a result, part-time jobs include every benefit of a full-time job, including vacation time and payment into two Swiss pension systems. Salaries for part-time work are set as a percentage of a professional full-time salary­ because unlike in the United States, part-time jobs are not viewed as necessarily unskilled jobs with their attendant lower pay.

During my Swiss career, I was employed by various companies from 25 percent to 100 percent. When I worked 60 percent, for example, I worked three days a week. A job that is 50 percent could mean the employee works five mornings a week or, as I once did, two and a half days a week. The freedom to choose the amount of work that was right for me at varying points of my life was wonderful and kept me engaged and happy.

When I took only 10 days for a trip to Spain, my colleagues chastised me for taking so little time off

Often, jobs in Switzerland are advertised with the percentage of work that is expected. Other times, you can negotiate what percentage you would like to work or request to go from working five days a week to four days a week, for example. There is normally little risk involved in asking.

One married couple I knew each worked 80 percent, which meant they each spent one day a week at home with their child, limiting the child's time in day care to three days a week while continuing full professional lives for both of them. According to a recent article in the New York Times, "Why U.S. Women Are Leaving Jobs Behind," 81 percent of women in Switzerland are in the workforce, versus 69 percent in the US. I believe attitudes toward professional part-time work — for both men and women — have a lot to do with this.

3) I had the support of an amazing unemployment system

About three years into my Swiss life, I lost my job. And I discovered that in Switzerland, being on unemployment meant you received 70 to 80 percent of your prior salary for 18 months. The Swiss government also paid for me to take German classes, and when I wasn't looking for jobs, I could afford to write a book.

In the United States, on the other hand, unemployment benefits generally pay workers between 40 and 50 percent of their previous salary, and these benefits only last for six months on average. However, thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009, some unemployed people now receive up to 99 weeks of benefits.


4) I witnessed what happens when countries impose wealth-based taxes

Compared with taxes in the United States, Swiss taxes are easy on the average worker. For example, a worker earning the average wage of $91,574 would pay only about 5 percent of that in Swiss federal income tax. Instead of taxing salaries at high percentages — a practice that puts most of the tax burden on the middle class, where most income comes from wages and not from capital gains — Switzerland immediately taxes dividends at a maximum of 35 percent and also has a wealth-based tax.

While the American tax system is supposed to be progressive — so the more you earn, the more taxes you pay — up to 39.6 percent tax for the highest income brackets, the superrich escape paying these kind of taxes because they aren't making most of their money in wages.

Zurich at night. Beautiful! (Kamil Porembiński)

For example, in 2010, Mitt Romney, whose total income was $21.6 million, paid only $3 million in taxes, or a tax rate of about 14 percent, which is amazing when you consider this is the same tax rate American families earning wages from about $16,750 to $68,000 paid in 2010.

The Swiss taxation method leaves money in the pocket of the average worker — and allows them to save accordingly. The average adult in Switzerland has a net worth worth of $513,000 according to the 2013 Credit Suisse Wealth Report. Average net worth among adults in the US is half that.

* * * *

Chantal Panozzo is the author of Swiss Life: 30 Things I Wish I'd Known. She has written about Switzerland and expat life for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.




This is a long article with several more pages. I have clipped the most important sections, and added a section on the American taxation system for the wealthy versus the Middle Class (based on two earners). In previous years I might have been guilty of harboring “envy” as some Tea Partiers have accused Progressives and Liberals of entertaining. At this point, and especially after reading this article, I am merely angry, however. This “land of opportunity,” only works for certain people – and not my people. The system is clearly rigged to be not merely in favor of the wealthy, but directly against those who don’t have investment income as opposed to wages, which is composed of the poor and the Middle Class. That financial punishment of most of the people in this country should be outlawed by a Constitutional amendment, and then carefully reformed on a line by line basis. During the last five to ten years Middle Class people have been involuntarily dropping out and into the poverty range for several reasons – they can’t afford their mortgages, they have lost their job and unemployment is insufficient, they have had medical bills to pay or can’t work due to illness, college costs drain their budget, etc. Those are not outrageous expenses due to a life of gambling, etc., but normal life problems that occur to all people. The following clips summarize the article.

“Before I moved to Switzerland for almost a decade, American Reality was all I knew. I was living in a two-bedroom apartment making $30,000 a year in a job where I worked almost seven days a week with no overtime pay and received 10 days of paid time off a year. In other words, for the hours worked, I was making minimum wage, if that. The glamour of this job was supposed to make up for the hours, but in reality, working every weekend is a ticket to burnout — not success. …. But without realizing it, or even asking for it, a better life quality came to us. And this is why, now that I'm back, I'm angry that my own country isn't providing more for its people. I will never regret living abroad. It taught me to understand another culture. And it taught me to see my own. But it also taught me something else — to lose touch with the American version of reality. …. I spent 2 years cleaning houses. What I saw makes me never want to be rich. I spent 7 years working in retail. I’ll never complain about a long Starbucks line again. The Swiss work hard, but they have a strong work-life balance. According to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the average Swiss worker earned the equivalent of $91,574 a year in 2013, while the average American worker earned only $55,708. But the real story is that the average American had to work 219 hours more per year for this lesser salary. …. The Swiss have a culture of professional part-time work, and as a result, part-time jobs include every benefit of a full-time job, including vacation time and payment into two Swiss pension systems. Salaries for part-time work are set as a percentage of a professional full-time salary­ because unlike in the United States, part-time jobs are not viewed as necessarily unskilled jobs with their attendant lower pay. …. About three years into my Swiss life, I lost my job. And I discovered that in Switzerland, being on unemployment meant you received 70 to 80 percent of your prior salary for 18 months. The Swiss government also paid for me to take German classes, and when I wasn't looking for jobs, I could afford to write a book. In the United States, on the other hand, unemployment benefits generally pay workers between 40 and 50 percent of their previous salary, and these benefits only last for six months on average. However, thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009, some unemployed people now receive up to 99 weeks of benefits. …. ) I witnessed what happens when countries impose wealth-based taxes. Compared with taxes in the United States, Swiss taxes are easy on the average worker. For example, a worker earning the average wage of $91,574 would pay only about 5 percent of that in Swiss federal income tax. Instead of taxing salaries at high percentages — a practice that puts most of the tax burden on the middle class, where most income comes from wages and not from capital gains — Switzerland immediately taxes dividends at a maximum of 35 percent and also has a wealth-based tax. …. While the American tax system is supposed to be progressive — so the more you earn, the more taxes you pay — up to 39.6 percent tax for the highest income brackets, the superrich escape paying these kind of taxes because they aren't making most of their money in wages.”

“For example, in 2010, Mitt Romney, whose total income was $21.6 million, paid only $3 million in taxes, or a tax rate of about 14 percent, which is amazing when you consider this is the same tax rate American families earning wages from about $16,750 to $68,000 paid in 2010. The Swiss taxation method leaves money in the pocket of the average worker — and allows them to save accordingly. The average adult in Switzerland has a net worth worth of $513,000 according to the 2013 Credit Suisse Wealth Report. Average net worth among adults in the US is half that.”


I used to think that above all we need to increase the rate of taxation on the wealthy, but this shows that it is the fact that only wages are taxed at the higher rate in this country that gives them such an inordinate advantage. The wealthy, especially if they inherited their money primarily rather than making it by the sweat of their brow in “the old fashioned way,” have very little in wages to be taxed, so they just don’t’ pay as much as a couple with three children making a moderate amount. In addition to that the Republican-formed economic system we have favors businesses with tax write-offs – “corporate welfare -- some of which favors their moving the company center of operations overseas, which takes away well-paid factory, IT, or call center jobs from US citizens. That’s why all the telephone computer techies have an Indian accent.

See the excerpt from the following article below on US taxation. http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/its-good-to-be-rich-you-get-a-lower-tax-rate/?_r=0., By TERESA TRITCH NOVEMBER 24, 2014.

“In 2010, the top rate for dividends and most capital gains was 15 percent; for high-earners with dividends and for long-term capital gains, it has since increased to 20 percent, with an additional 3.8 percent tax to help pay for health-care reform.

But even those bolstered rates on investment income are still lower than many of today’s tax rates on income from work, which top out at 25 percent to 39.6 percent. As a result, many merely affluent two-earner couples, especially professional couples, are bound to pay a larger share of their income in taxes than multimillionaire investors.

That is wrong. And yet the obvious corrective – taxing income from investments at the same rates as income from work – is not on any the agenda of either political party. President Obama has rightly called for getting rid of special low investment tax rates for private equity partners. But they are only a subset of the far larger universe of very wealthy investors who pay tax at lower rates than less wealthy working Americans—simply because they live off of investments rather than paychecks.”





http://www.salon.com/2015/07/22/obama_gives_iran_hawks_the_smackdown_they_so_richly_deserve_they_bungled_iraq_and_theyve_learned_nothing/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Obama gives Iran hawks the smackdown they so richly deserve: They bungled Iraq, and they’ve learned nothing

President Obama argues for diplomacy with Iran by reminding everyone of his detractors' biggest failure
SIMON MALOY
WEDNESDAY, JUL 22, 2015

Photograph Montage -- Tom Cotton, Barack Obama, Dick Cheney (Credit: AP/Reuters/Danny Johnston/Jonathan Ernst/Luis Alvarez/Photo montage by Salon)

President Obama has not exactly been patient with Congress when it comes to the multilateral diplomatic framework with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. After the agreement was announced last week, Obama called a press conference and used the event to methodically rip apart each argument critics have deployed against the deal. Time and again he challenged Republicans, conservatives and hand-wringing Democrats to put up or shut up: to lay out their alternative plans for keeping Iran from going nuclear. He promised to veto any measures the Republican-controlled Congress might send to him blocking the easing of sanctions on Iran. He wasn’t making a sales pitch; he was defying Congress to get in the way of potentially one of the most important diplomatic breakthroughs since the end of the Cold War.

Of course, by using pointy words and a confrontational tone of voice, Obama upset some members of the press who seem to think that bipartisan consensus may still be achieved when it comes to Iran and nuclear weapons:

Ah yes, if there’s one thing Republicans in Congress have made their hallmark during the Obama years, it’s the “fair hearing.” We’ve already seen 47 members of the Senate Republican caucus attempt to preemptively sabotage the deal with a provocative letter to the government of Iran. Many of those senators are also running for president, and they’re trying to out-hawk one another by accusing the administration of engaging in Neville Chamberlain-like appeasement. Most Senate Republicans have been taking their Iran cues from Tom Cotton, who is already planning bombing runs against Iranian nuclear facilities. Sen. Mark Kirk, Republican of Illinois, said “this agreement condemns the next generation to cleaning up a nuclear war in the Persian Gulf.” He does not represent a minority viewpoint. Who exactly is going to give the “fair hearing” in this situation?

The reason Obama’s not banging his head against the wall and trying to get Congress to approve the deal is that he’s fairly confident Congress can’t actually do anything to stop it. The 60-day period for congressional review has already begun, and as the New York Times noted, “the numbers suggest Mr. Obama will prevail; if Congress rejects the Iran accord, he promised on Tuesday to veto the legislation, and he has enough Democrats to win that contest.” Instead of getting Congress on his side, Obama’s working to convince the public that the Iran deal is the right course of action, and that his critics are wrong.

To make that case, he’s deploying a simple and effective argument. “The same politicians and pundits that are so quick to reject the possibility of a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear program are the same folks who were so quick to go to war in Iraq and said it would only take a few months,” Obama said yesterday at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention.

He’s absolutely correct. Conservatives who backed the Iraq War and also complain that the nuclear deal does nothing to curb Iranian meddling in the Middle East don’t really have too much credibility on this score. Nothing has done more to bolster Iran’s influence across the region than the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Before the war, the hawks theorized that a swift and decisive war against Saddam Hussein would either scare the Iranians into better behavior or spark an internal uprising that would topple the regime. Instead, we eliminated one of Iran’s regional counterweights and in its place we set up a chaotic power vacuum that Iran filled with money, political influence, and weapons. Put simply, if you backed the neocon adventure in the Middle East, you don’t get to claim expertise when it comes to reining Iranian influence.

And when you look at some of the more prominent critics of the Iran deal – particularly those running for the Republican presidential nomination – you see a lot of people who still argue that the Iraq war and justified and a terrific idea overall. For most of them, the preferred alternative to diplomacy with Iran is “crippling” sanctions, bellicose posturing, and the “credible threat” of military action – a policy smorgasbord that hasn’t succeeded in curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions and will almost certainly lead to war. A good number of hawks, represented John Bolton, want to start bombing Iran yesterday."




Personally I’m reminded of the lovely old fable about a contest between the North Wind and the Sun. Both bragged that they would be able to make a traveler who happened to be walking down the road take off his coat. The North Wind had his turn first. He blew his hardest until he was exhausted and still the traveler not only failed to remove his coat, but pulled it tighter around him instead. Then it was the Sun’s turn. He shone more and more strongly for some half an hour. Suddenly the traveler removed his coat with apparent relief.

The combined actions proposed by the US under the Republican Party for more than a decade -- “crippling” sanctions, bellicose posturing, and the “credible threat” of military action – have only caused Iran to increase its military efforts and desire for a nuclear deterrent, calling us the enemy in particular rancorous terms, “the Great Satan,” specifically. I don’t consider that result to be success. See the following NYT article from 2013 for an update on this and other hostilities.


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/opinion/sunday/what-iranians-say-now-about-the-great-satan.html?_r=0

What Iranians Say Now About ‘the Great Satan’
SundayReview
DEC. 21, 2013

Editorial Observer
By CAROL GIACOMO

TEHRAN — The old American Embassy building in the heart of this capital city was recently opened to tours for Westerners. It is now a museum run by the Revolutionary Guard and its Basiji paramilitary allies, where they keep alive a paranoid narrative of American malice and deceit by showcasing dust-encrusted spy equipment and a modern mural of alleged American perfidies.

Chants of “Death to America” remain a feature of Friday prayers at Tehran University, even though they seem more of a perfunctory ritual than a real display of rage.

On a visit to Iran this month, I attended the weekly prayer session at the university and sat near a woman who appeared to be in her 70s. She had made the journey from one of the far corners of the city to honor her son, killed in the Iran-Iraq war more than 20 years ago. As we chatted, a female security guard glared at me and delivered her version of the chant: “Death to America ... America doesn’t keep its promises.” The elderly woman was unfazed by the security guard’s outburst. She showed me a photo of her son and said she wished only for “God to help us and make things better.” Another woman nearby smiled and rolled her eyes, as if to dismiss the guard’s tirade.

Ibrahim Asgharzadeh, a leader of the American embassy takeover, is now a leading voice for political reform. Credit Maryam Rahmanian for The New York Times

The reactions I received as an American traveling for 10 days in Tehran, Isfahan and Qum mirrored Iran’s politics and posture in this moment — there is a serious, even eager, interest in reconnecting with the West, even as Iranians struggle with three decades of poisoned relations.

In theory, no Islamic country is better positioned to play a leading role in the tumultuous Middle East, given Iran’s geographic location, oil wealth, territorial cohesion and the sophistication of its elites. But its potential has been stunted for 30 years because of the misunderstanding and deep mistrust in its relations with the United States.

The scars created by a history of foreign invasions, an American-British coup against a democratically elected leader in 1953 and American support for the last shah are not forgotten. Likewise, the United States has not gotten over the 444 days of captivity for the American hostages seized in the embassy during the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In the decades since, Iran’s support for extremist groups like Hezbollah, the anti-Israel diatribes of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the country’s dogged pursuit of a nuclear program have only made it more isolated from the rest of the world.

But the election this year of a more moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, and the recent interim nuclear deal with Iran, the United States and other major powers have raised hopes in Iran for change.

One important voice in advancing that transformation is Grand Ayatollah Youssef Saanei, who was sidelined during Mr. Ahmadinejad’s presidency and this month was allowed to give his first interview in at least four years. Mr. Saanei, the leading progressive clerical supporter of Mr. Rouhani, criticized Mr. Ahmadinejad for damaging Iran and Islam and preached a reformist political line. He endorsed the nuclear deal and said that, “today the people in power in Iran and the people in power in the United States should forgive each other, should forget the past and start the friendship.”

Reformists like Ibrahim Asgharzadeh, a leader in the American Embassy takeover, are another important force. Mr. Asgharzadeh now advocates better ties with America and is working to reform Iran’s political system so that the role of the military is diminished and ordinary citizens have more freedoms and a greater say in politics.

A third factor is the huge population of young people (more than half of Iran’s 80 million people were under 35 in 2012) who worry most about getting jobs in an economy crippled by international sanctions and Mr. Ahmadinejad’s mismanagement and corruption. In one of Iran’s paradoxes, technology stores in Tehran are jammed with the latest Apple laptops and iPhones (or good imitations) despite punishing international sanctions, yet the state coffers are nearly empty.

The shift created by Mr. Rouhani’s election does not, however, alter the regime’s radical underpinnings or erase the power of hard-liners working against international engagement and any loosening of the Iranian system. Among them is Hossein Shariatmadari, whose business card describes him as the “Supreme Leader’s representative” at Kayhan, Iran’s leading conservative newspaper. He did not support Mr. Rouhani, does not believe in compromise with the United States and warned, in an interview this month, that if nuclear negotiations fail and America or Israel takes military action against Iran’s nuclear program, “Iran will retaliate.”

Even the most optimistic advocates of Mr. Rouhani’s agenda are convinced that if the nuclear deal fails and he is unable to get sanctions lifted in time to revive the economy, radical Islamists will resurge more powerfully than before. While rigid controls on socializing, head covers for women, music and political discourse have relaxed somewhat in recent months, people are still fearful. Street musicians and student activists, for instance, were willing to talk about their activities but did not want their last names published.

Still, these dark forces were not the dominant impressions of my trip. At a mosque in the ancient city of Isfahan, I met two dozen male college students, all of them enthusiastic about speaking to an American. They were eager to debate United States policy and expressed remarkable affinity for the country some Iranians still call “the Great Satan.” Their generation represents Iran’s best hope for opening its future to the world.




http://www.cbsnews.com/news/upward-mobility-much-steeper-climb-in-us/

How much more will rich kids earn as adults?
By ROBERT HENNELLY, MONEYWATCH
July 23, 2015

It may came as no surprise that the children of wealthy parents have greater economic prospects than kids from more humble beginnings. But a new analysis by The Pew Charitable Trust and the Russell Sage Foundation shows that these advantages are even more skewed in favor of richer families than previous research suggested.

In a related finding, the report also found that children born into lower-income households are far more likely to stay poor when they reach adulthood. Taken together, these trends confirm earlier studies that have documented the diminishing economic and social mobility in the U.S. as the nation's wealth and income gap continue to widen.

The upshot?

"Children who are born toward the bottom of the [income] distribution aren't getting full access to the economy," said David Grusky, director of Stanford University's Center on Poverty and Inequality and one of the authors of the report, in a conference call to present the findings. "That means we're wasting their talents and that our economy isn't exploiting all of their talents. There's a big economic cost."

The report, "Economic Mobility in the United States," is also important because of its rigor. Researchers used tax return and other data to gain a more comprehensive view of how wealth is transferred from one generation to the next, and conversely, how economic disadvantages are effectively handed down.

The research found that roughly half of parental income advantages were passed on to children. "These estimate are at the high end of previous estimates and imply that the United states is very immobile," the report states.

As a result, the projected income for children of families in the top 10 percent by income is about 200 percent higher than the projected adult income for children born into the lowest 10 percent (see above chart). Children from well-off households can be expected to earn about 75 percent more than kids from middle-class families, according to the report.

The research also shows that the growing tendency of wealth and its perquisites to pass down from one generation to the next may also be re-enforcing long-standing income disparity between men and women, with males who are born into high-income households benefiting far more later in life in terms of their adult earning power.

Such findings jibe with other research pointing to the growing difficulty Americans climbing the socioeconomic ladder. And they represent a direct hit on the long-held view of the U.S. as a classless society, especially with the country comparing poorly with other industrialized nations on standard measures of economic mobility.

A June poll by CBS News and The New York Times found that 61 percent of Americans think only people at the top can get ahead, while just a third believed that the playing field is level. Roughly two-thirds of people think the gap between the rich and poor in the U.S. is widening.

The issue of wealth and income disparity is expected to figure prominently in debate as the 2016 Presidential race heats up. Candidates from both parties have offered policy proposals they say are aimed at reviving the middle class, reducing inequality and more generally restoring the American dream.




“Taken together, these trends confirm earlier studies that have documented the diminishing economic and social mobility in the U.S. as the nation's wealth and income gap continue to widen. The upshot? "Children who are born toward the bottom of the [income] distribution aren't getting full access to the economy," said David Grusky, director of Stanford University's Center on Poverty and Inequality and one of the authors of the report, in a conference call to present the findings. "That means we're wasting their talents and that our economy isn't exploiting all of their talents. There's a big economic cost." …. Researchers used tax return and other data to gain a more comprehensive view of how wealth is transferred from one generation to the next, and conversely, how economic disadvantages are effectively handed down. The research found that roughly half of parental income advantages were passed on to children. "These estimate are at the high end of previous estimates and imply that the United States is very immobile," the report states. As a result, the projected income for children of families in the top 10 percent by income is about 200 percent higher than the projected adult income for children born into the lowest 10 percent (see above chart). …. that the growing tendency of wealth and its perquisites to pass down from one generation to the next may also be re-enforcing long-standing income disparity between men and women, with males who are born into high-income households benefiting far more later in life in terms of their adult earning power. ….. Roughly two-thirds of people think the gap between the rich and poor in the U.S. is widening. …. Candidates from both parties have offered policy proposals they say are aimed at reviving the middle class, reducing inequality and more generally restoring the American dream.”

“And they represent a direct hit on the long-held view of the U.S. as a classless society, especially with the country comparing poorly with other industrialized nations on standard measures of economic mobility. …. 61 percent of Americans think only people at the top can get ahead, while just a third believed that the playing field is level.” So what do we do about this problem? I can’t wait to see what the 2016 candidates have to say about a set of solutions that might really be effective. It seems to me the efforts need to be aimed at the local level and offer improvements such as science labs, supervised nature walks, required reading in the classics, exposure to classic art and music via local theaters and field trips to other cities if necessary to get to a collection of art. Kids need enriched intellectual experiences, not “teaching to the test,” and firm classroom management. Too many classrooms are ruined by outrageous misbehavior in the form of harassment and noisy interference with the teacher’s lessons. If teachers have to totally separate the well-behaved kids from the naughty ones in separate classes that would be acceptable to me, and if a kid is violent he should go to a special school for the problem kids. There is a place for stricter discipline and even “reform school” if the experience of most of the kids is to be safe and oriented toward learning. Small or disabled kids are being tormented in the hallway and even in some classes in too many schools now. We didn’t have that problem when I went through except with a few “rough” boys who were emotionally disturbed or from very poor homes. There was a Baptist Orphanage there and some of the rough kids were from there.

Unfortunately learning is and always has been an individual matter. Children have to study. They also need to be encouraged to try harder to succeed, not allowed to spend all their time on sports, given cultural education and basic skills education. Kids from poor homes run by uneducated parents will not have access to a high level of knowledge from vocabulary skills (thus reading skills) to moral and ethical thinking. I wouldn’t begin to say that the poor are all or even mostly of low moral/ethical development, but there is a greater chance that they will join a street gang and start a life of crime. Those kids also will often need things like lessons on etiquette and personal hygiene. The “rich girls” when I went to school attended something called “Charm School.” Anybody could benefit from that, it seems to me. There was also the local Country Club, guaranteed tuition in a major university,

I believe that the gifts the wealthy are able to pass down to their children are interpersonal skills, basic educational skills learned at home in in the larger community, advanced training in things like debating classes and the arts, personal self-confidence and certain other wealth oriented things like more expensive clothing and how to dress well. They also generally teach their kids how to manage money and invest effectively. Then there is always the interpersonal network of successful people, by which young people get higher positions in life on an ongoing basis. The most obnoxious, but probably helpful, thing that many and maybe most wealthy parents do is to interfere actively with the friends that their kids make at school or around the town. They want their offspring to “marry well” and avoid picking up bad habits. They tend to isolate their kids along economic lines. That is the thing that I don’t believe is really necessary, and that a kid who grows up learning a respect for those who are less well placed in life will be at an advantage later in life when they have to get along with others successfully. They will also be more likely to become morally and emotionally involved with an effort to treat everyone well rather than upholding instead a wealth-based social stratification system that in the end will damage our civilization rather than improving it. We are not and have never succeeded in being a “classless” society, but we can have economic and social justice at every level. Those who are poor shouldn’t have to starve. If that were achieved, no person because he is black or because his father works in a coal mine would be scorned and mistreated. I believe that if we don’t have that as our goal, our improvement of American education and citizens interactions will fall flat – “separate but equal,” you know. As long as the upper classes continue to push individuals from poor backgrounds out, the motto “Love thy neighbor as thyself” will not be achieved.