Liberals Are Killing This Country? No, We Have Taxation Without Representation!

Liberals are not killing this country. Taxes are not evil. Stop listening to the propaganda of corporate-controlled Fox News and drinking the extreme right's Kool-Aid. If you recall, Bush came into the White House with a Democratic President-created budget SURPLUS, and rapidly changed that into a deficit. FACT!

Tax = revenue. When you don't tax, you have no revenue with which to run the infrastructure of this country. As I've posted here and, especially on Facebook, multiple times with charts and graphs and actual numbers to defend my case - the true facts (not buzz words, propaganda, lies, and rhetoric), the wealthiest Americans and corporate persons pay little to no taxes and less proportional Social Security tax compared to their income than do middle class Americans. With all the tax cuts, tax breaks, loopholes, and corporate welfare for corporations making record-breaking profits every quarter, that's one heck of a lot of revenue missing from our "baseline budget." Add to that the trillions of dollars we've spent on 3 wars, thanks for the first 2 to Bush and the third to Obama, we are STILL living in a war economy. When that happens, we usually increase taxes to pay for our war spending. What did Bush do? He cut taxes!

Baseline budgeting - get out of the wars, increase taxes (progressive, not regressive as it is now) on ALL Americans and corporations (which for the wealthiest Americans after WWII was a 90% tax rate, not the current 0-15% most actually end up paying these days) to pay for the wars, then reduce the taxes once you've paid off the war debt.

Yes, it is about budgeting. You want war? You need to raise taxes to pay for it. You want a government infrastructure so your country doesn't collapse? You make sure that ALL Americans are paying their fair share in taxes, because we all benefit. Want a viable, thriving middle class and economy? Create jobs in the USA and stop outsourcing where you can get away with paying slave wages and little to no benefits in order to increase your profits and CEO wages to ridiculously high amounts - morality and ethics be darned.

If the GOP extreme right were truly interested in helping America and Americans, they wouldn't have simultaneously introduced bills in multiple state legislatures to repeal minimum wage and child labor laws, and destroy labor unions and collective bargaining that protect the average worker from economic and personal abuse at the hands of their corporate masters. Average Americans are losing jobs, are underemployed, have their salaries frozen or cut, while the Lords of Industry have increased the income disparity (Gini coefficient) in this country to be close to that of Egypt. The average CEO earned 24x the average worker's pay in 1965. By 1979, they earned 35x more, in 1989 it was 71x more, in 1999 it was 300x more, in 2005 it was 262x more. Those same CEO's pay lower income tax rates than the average worker, and pay no Social Security tax on income over $106,800.

The people in power purposefully repealed the Glass-Steagall Act with the prior knowledge that deregulation would open the door for them to rape the economy through rampant speculation and mortgage-backed securities at the risk of another depression or recession. They did the dirty deed, and they got exactly what they wanted. It was the largest transfer of financial (including the speculative dollars, securities and bailouts) and property wealth (foreclosures) in history, and the transfer of wealth is still ongoing. The S&L debacle was their dry run.

So, don't tell me the Liberals are killing this country. We live in a corporate-controlled America. If you're an average American, you live like a vassal or serf under the watchful eyes of not-so-benevolent masters. To me, that is taxation without representation!
 
http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/webfeatures_snapshots_20060621/

Teachers in the Trenches!

When good teachers get tired of being demonized and scapegoated, their collective bargaining rights attacked or shredded, and are so adversely impacted by salary, benefit and retirement cuts they leave the profession, that negatively impacts education. Teachers can't pay their bills or live on their goodwill towards their students.

Lots of teachers in my district have retired or quit in the past few years. Many of them have left the state. Even more teachers are thinking about retiring or quitting, and many of them want to leave Nevada. Teachers have been surplused, RIF'd. The Clark County, Nevada unemployement rate is about 14%, and we are #1 in the nation in foreclosures. Teachers are a part of these statistics, too. There are teachers living on food stamps. Teachers are also now homeless.

After our salaries were frozen for the past couple of years, my school district has now decided to unilaterally cut our salaries beginning this month, going against our negotiated contract. They also want to get rid of our health trust in favor of a less-expensive (for them), lower quality of care provider. This will increase my monthly premiums to almost match my mortgage payment! I'm unable to afford this, so if they get away with this, I'll be joining the ranks of the tens of millions of medically uninsured Americans.

Teachers have to pay back tens of thousands of dollars in school loans for our education degrees. We also pay thousands of dollars to acquire the additional education credits mandated by our state in order to maintain our licenses. In addition, we pay thousands of dollars out of our own pockets for additional education in order to meet the non-funded No Child Left Behind federally-mandated requirements in order to reach Highly Qualified status. We pay thousands of our own dollars in education to move over in salary scale so that we can finally attain a living wage. We supplement the education of our state's children out of our own pockets when we buy classroom supplies, and books for our classroom libraries. Food, energy and other prices have skyrocketed around us. Yet, we found we had no choice in good conscience but to agree to freeze our own pay for the past two years, due to State and District budget constraints, so that WE could save other teachers' jobs in order to keep our students' class sizes lower. Oh, and we also pay for our students' education with our own tax dollars. Then, we get asked to "share the sacrifice?" Really?!!!

If Nevada's Governor Sandoval and state legislators really want to attract new business to our state in order to diversify and improve our economy, look at how you're negatively impacting educators and education. Your bottom line shouldn't include cutting our children's education and their future by slashing their education funds and attacking their educators.

To all educators:
When people get pushed up against a wall, and they want to survive, they'll find any way they can to get around, under, or over the wall. Hopefully, they'll be smart enough to join together, help each other, and lift each other up to find a way to survive. When we all work together, we can accomplish miracles. When we fight each other, only a few win, and we create a lot of losers. It is when there are too many losers that organizations, societies and governments fall. History tends to repeat itself. Let's work to lift each other up for ourselves, our families, and our students.

In Honor of Labor Day: Freedom and Prosperity! For Whom?

Free, freedom, and prosperity are wonderful words and concepts with life-altering implications. Of course, these words also deeply and favorably resonate with most Americans. The key question is are they applied equally to all, or to just a few with crumbs thrown to the rest as placation? Freedom, prosperity, benefits, and jobs have been the buzz words for the past 20 years; they've even been used to describe recent wars.

In reality, the free market economy, free (vs. right to work) states, free trade agreements, prosperity to work and innovate, as well as anti-unionism, deregulation, outsourcing, corporate subsidies, corporate personhood, too-big-to-fail corporations, monopolies, and media/propaganda megaliths have been created and used by the top 10-20% of the world's elite to maintain and consolidate their financial and net worth, as well as their power. They misuse "socialism" as a rallying cry against public health care, unions, and worker benefits.

Worker's jobs, salaries and benefits have been reduced or eliminated to increase the wealth, benefits and golden parachutes of the top 20%. Then, those same 20% point to unions and union workers who still have decent wages and benefits and make them the bad guys. 'See! They have what you don't. Go after them!' 'They're socialists!' These are emotional appeals, not facts.

What should be happening is that we bottom 80% should all be working together to demand a major reduction in the CEO-to-worker wage and benefit ratio. CEO's now earn over 300% more than the average worker, compared to 25% in 1965. Our wages, benefits, pensions, and jobs, have been reduced or elimated to increase their wealth and power. It is a simple, and perverse, inverse relationship.

Freedom? Nevada is a Right to Work state where businesses are free to work and innovate, and it has both the highest unemployment and foreclosure rate in the country. We're now reaping the benefits of "free," unregulated businesses.

Of course, corporations have been subsidized by us for decades and they've recently been bailed out by all of us (a "socialist" collective supporting the ones who failed?). For whom has all of this been free? Certainly not most of the bottom 80% of us who only hold 7% of our country's financial wealth! The elite who have benefited from all of this "freedom" and "prosperity" of the past twenty or so years should also be held responsible and accountable for the current economic situation.

If people appreciate and want to continue to enjoy 5 day work weeks, weekends off, benefits, pensions, eight hour work days, holidays, vacations, living wages, safe jobsites, and continued restrictions on child labor; thank and support the unions. Union members and organizers literally gave their lives for you to benefit from these labor laws, practices and policies that weren't in existence before unions.

Those in power have outsourced our jobs, shut down our worksites, stripped us of our wages, benefits, and pensions. They have caused the massive under- and unemployment in this country. They created the tax structures that further increased their wealth and reduced ours. They gave themselves and their buddies free money through cost-plus, no-bid contracts. They have cut corners on worker safety, while cutting costs to increase profits. In doing so, they have also created the largest environmental disaster in our country's history. They have bought public offices and votes, and influenced policies and laws to their benefit at the cost of our own current and future wealth and health, as well as a clean environment. They have exponentially increased their power and influence by getting our Supreme Court to create corporate persons. They use their wealth to run for and change term limits on public office in order to maintain their status quo. Again I ask, who benefits from all of this freedom and prosperity while our Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, our wealth, our prosperity and our jobs have been sacked?

The elite want to keep the other 80% of us down. They want unions broken so we can go back to pre-union corporate practices. They want to keep us focused on blaming unions for the loss of jobs, wages, pensions, and benefits, rather than look at them as the true culprits with their outlandish wages, pensions, benefits, personal holdings, and corporate profits! The top 20% own 93% of our nation's wealth and use it to attack and create propaganda against some of the most powerful in the bottom 80% of the population. They want to get rid of collective bargaining and privatize public jobs to increase their wealth, power, influence, and control. They've already done a wonderful job with our economy! Read history, read other economic research, and read between the lines. Don't buy into their propaganda.

Instead, let's work together to vote, lobby, write, educate each other, influence public policy, demonstrate, and do everything legally in our power to stop this imbalance of freedom and prosperity and improve the lives of ALL Americans! We are in the fight of our lives, for ourselves and our children. The elite don't want us to work together, because unity creates power, even among the poor and disenfranchised. They are afraid of us becoming united, which is why they're trying to break the unions. Feedom and prosperity do not belong just to the elite few. Freedom and prosperity should not be won by climbing on the backs of 80% of the population. Freedom and prosperity should be shared. Freedom and prosperity rightfully belong to us all!