Spintested: 09/30/11

Muffingate's Sad Story: 178 Articles Perpetuate DOJ Myth, 37 Correct It

Friday, September 30, 2011

There are a couple of points I should address, the first being that we're not actually broke. We are a rich country, but the elites are trying to make even more for themselves. Just take a look at what Bank of America is doing with the new debit card fees -- That's 1000% profit.

I happen to agree with you in that the government has no business throwing soirees (even catered business meetings) with taxpayer money. Meetings, no matter what city they're in (if they can't be teleconferenced), should be held in public buildings and participants can attend to their own food and beverage needs.

If we want to have that conversation, let's just have it. But to frame it as a $16 muffin is deceptive and inflammatory and doesn't lead to thoughtful decision-making.
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Obama's Approval Rating Is Underwater, But Don't Try To Predict 2012 Yet

The "modernization" that needs doing isn't what Obama is proposing. What Obama has done is put Social Security on the path to bankruptcy. Payroll tax holiday. Extending that payroll tax holiday. That's not a solution.

Then there's what Obama's done and is doing to Medicare/Medicaid. Cuts and more cuts. Instead of Obama's health insurance windfall act, he should have expanded Medicare to cover everyone.

And where did Hillary come in to this? I'm no Clinton fan.
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Wall Street Protests: Which Side Are You On?

No m'am.

"NO PERSON", not even the candidate himself, can contribute.

Yesterday I just happened to have heard Ratigan respond to that exact question.

:-)
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Frank Lautenburg: Chris Christie A Bully, 'Abusive To Women' (VIDEO)

Just imagine with the precedent just set by Obama in killing al-Awlaki (of a president killing an American citizen, with no due process, no charges, no oversight) what a bully like Chris Christie would do if he became president.

Do you remember in the days before Bush's launching war on Iraq when Lynn Cheney made the cable news show circuit calling for the blacklisting and arrest (for treason) of professors (and any other person of public stature) who publicly questioned the Bush administration's plans?
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Frank Lautenburg: Chris Christie A Bully, 'Abusive To Women' (VIDEO)

Everything about Christie, from his weight to his aggressive bullying and hostile speech, is an indicator that he doesn't handle stress well.

That's not exactly a trait you want in a Commander-in-Chief.
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Muffingate's Sad Story: 178 Articles Perpetuate DOJ Myth, 37 Correct It

It wasn't just a continental breakfast -- Sam Stein didn't even get it right. It was the tab for the hotel that hosted the conference, everything from the rental for the conference room itself to the janitorial staff to clean up afterwards.
About Bill O'Reilly
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Muffingate's Sad Story: 178 Articles Perpetuate DOJ Myth, 37 Correct It

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Marcospinelli/muffins-justice-department-muffingate-myth_n_988928_110688036.html
About Bill O'Reilly
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Muffingate's Sad Story: 178 Articles Perpetuate DOJ Myth, 37 Correct It

Even Sam Stein hasn't gotten it right.

The $16 per muffin/person was for everything at the conference, e.g. the venue (the hotel's conference room where the event took place) as well as the food, the plates and utensils, the coffee and tea urns, the service staff, the janitorial staff clean-up, etc.
About Bill O'Reilly
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Wall Street Protests: Which Side Are You On?

Get a clue: It's A Lie That The Working Poor Don't Pay Taxes

About Occupy Wall Street
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Wall Street Protests: Which Side Are You On?

Lie number 3) U.S. corporations are over-taxed.

Example: Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty

We have the highest corporate tax rate, or one of them, in the OECD nations.

Actually, as measured in terms of share of GDP, the U.S. has the lowest corporate tax burden of any OECD nation. While the official tax bracket may seems high -- 35 percent -- if one takes into account various loopholes and tax dodges, the effective tax rate is considerably lower, or around 27 percent, which comes in as slightly higher than average for OECD members. And according to ace tax report David Cay Johnston, the bigger you are, the less you pay -- the effective tax rate for the biggest U.S. corporations is only about 15 percent.

There you have it, for future handy reference. Poor people do pay taxes, the biggest corporations don't pay enough, and the United States, as a whole, has a low tax burden overall.
About Occupy Wall Street
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Wall Street Protests: Which Side Are You On?

Lie number 2) The U.S. suffers from high taxes.

Example: The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore:

What all this means is that in the late 1980s, the U.S. was nearly the lowest taxed nation in the world, and a quarter century later we're nearly the highest.

Totally untrue. As measured in terms of total tax revenue as a share of overall GDP the average tax burden for countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2008 was 44.8 percent. The U.S. -- 26.1 percent. The U.S. pays less taxes, as a share of GDP, than Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Austria, France, Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Switzerland and Japan.

Furthermore, as Bruce Bartlett explains in detail in The New York Times the current U.S. federal tax burden, measured, again, as a share of GDP, is only 14.8 percent -- a 60-year low.
About Occupy Wall Street
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Wall Street Protests: Which Side Are You On?

The Top 3 Lies About Taxes:

Lie Number 1) Poor people don't pay taxes.
Example: From The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

At a hearing last month, SenatorCharlesGrassley said, "According to the JointCommitteeOnTaxation, 49 percent of households are paying 100 percent of taxes coming in to the federal government." At the same hearing, CatoInstituteSeniorFellow AlanReynolds asserted, "Poor people don't pay taxes in this country." Last April, referring to a TaxPolicyCenter estimate of households with no federal income tax liability in 2009, FoxBusiness host StuartVarney said on Fox and Friends, "Yes, 47 percent of households pay not a single dime in taxes."

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' Chuck Marr and Brian Highsmith provide the definitive takedown of this myth.

In 2009, Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation found that 51 percent of households owed no federal income tax. According to Marr and Highsmith, that figure was inflated by special recession-related factors -- In a more typical year, "35 to 40 percent of households pay no federal income tax."

But that does not mean that these households pay no federal taxes at all. Far from it: Nearly all working Americans pay payroll taxes to fund Medicare and Social Security. In 2007, the poorest Americans -- taxpayers in the bottom fifth of income -- paid 8.8 percent of their income as payroll taxes. The next fifth paid almost ten percent. The top 20 percent of earners paid only 5.7 percent. And while the government has that money, they use it and make money off of it.

And of course, these numbers don't include state and local taxes or excise fees like gas taxes, which tend to have a regressive impact that hits poorer Americans harder. Bottom line: only 14 percent of Americans don't pay either federal income taxes or payroll taxes -- and that group is made up primarily of "low-income people who are elderly, unable to work due to a serious disability, or students."

The rich have gotten rich off of the sweat and labor of others and then have taken those profits to buy politicians who've gamed the system so that they wouldn't have to pay taxes through all manner of tax schemes not available to the poor and middle classes. The rich also 'closed the door' on the ways that initially enabled them to amass their 'seed money' for creating their businesses.
About Occupy Wall Street
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Wall Street Protests: Which Side Are You On?

Dylan Ratigan kicked off the campaign to GET MONEY OUT OF POLITICS this week.

Ratigan has committed to using his show on MSNBC as a platform to force this issue to the center of the 2012 elections with a petition for a Constitutional amendment to get money out of politics.

Here is the proposed Constitutional amendment:

"No person, corporation or business entity of any type, domestic or foreign, shall be allowed to contribute money, directly or indirectly, to any candidate for Federal office or to contribute money on behalf of or opposed to any type of campaign for Federal office. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, campaign contributions to candidates for Federal office shall not constitute speech of any kind as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution or any amendment to the U. S. Constitution. Congress shall set forth a federal holiday for the purposes of voting for candidates for Federal office."

Sign the petition, tell friends, Facebook it, Tweet it. #GetMoneyOut.

Or Text SIGN to +19177206888 to sign
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Obama's Approval Rating Is Underwater, But Don't Try To Predict 2012 Yet

Why do you believe Obama cares about the middle class? Let's remember that it was Obama who put SS and Medicare on the table, not the Republicans.

When politicians say that "SocialSecurity is the third rail of politics", they mean it with a hostility that should be reserved for their CorporateMasters.

You don't see politicians putting CampaignFinance and ElectionReform on their agenda from year to year as you do their continuing assaults on SocialSafetyNet programs for the People.

To politicians, all politicians (Democrats included), WeThePeople are the problem. If only they didn't have to deal with making us happy to get our votes that keep them employed. If only they didn't have to serve us, they'd be able to give large to BigBusiness, privatizing national resources owned collectively to us all, WeThePeople, and deregulate so that corporations wouldn't be constrained by anything, could become profit-making machines on steroids, unobstructed by piddling voter concerns, such as health, safety, environment, etc. And for accomplishing this, politicians would be amply rewarded, perhaps even enter the ruling class themselves.

You can choose to believe what you will about Democratic politicians, but the fact is that the DLC controls the DemocraticParty, and that Democrats in Congress and in the WhiteHouse have signed on to privatize public resources, utilities and deregulate (Democrats in Congress, despite all their campaign promises, have refused to regulate or perform their Constitutionally-required role of oversight, both in the Bush and Obama administrations -- What little regulating they've put in legislation the last 2 years is ineffective for a whole array of very sneaky moves). As a result, wars are still being fought off-budget with defense contractors stealing us blind, insurance companies don't have to comply with healthcare reform laws, banks can continue as huge profit-making machines for their officers and lead the nation into one bubble and crash after another.

You can choose to think of Obama and his intentions in whatever way makes you happy. What you can't do is explain how any of what Obama's done these past two years has been in the People's and not the Corporations' interests.

What's gotten lost in the news cycles these past months is Obama's new NAFTA-like treaties that means more Americans' jobs will be outsourced overseas. Then there's Obama's CatFoodCommission (and its plan for gutting SocialSecurity and Medicare), along with the renewed push on TheDreamAct, which means a flood of immigrants working for slave wages.

WeThePeople are being transformed, from sheep to sacrificial lambs.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama's Approval Rating Is Underwater, But Don't Try To Predict 2012 Yet

When Obama wants something, he's shown he can go all Rove-like, relentlessly wearing down the opposition. The problem is that he and the DLC-controlled DemocraticParty don't want what the Democratic voters put them into power to get.

We already know that cutting taxes does not create jobs and creating jobs is what is needed and what will solve our fiscal problems. Yet Obama has already capitulated to Republicans, caving to (at minimum) a $1 trillion plan that paves the way to slashing (and ending) Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.

Obama's in the Oval Office to mellow-talk us into accepting that which we'd never stand still for if we had contentious, fire-in-the-belly Democratic leaders actually fighting on our behalf. Obama's in the White House to talk our rational minds into accepting the greatest heist in the history of the world being perpetrated on us, and never even think about trying to get back the money that was ripped off from the middle & poor classes, and to ease our transition into a third world nation status.

Obama is the grifter leading off the second half of the con game, which is to squeeze the rest of the dimes from the poor and middle classes. It began with part 2 of Bush's Medicare Reform Act of 2003 (high-priced junk health insurance that has no cost controls), and has continued with his push for more *AFTA treaties (outsourcing more Americans' jobs) and the Deficit (Cat Food) Commissions, 1 and 2 (and the 'Super Congress').

If you haven't seen this, you might find it enlightening -- Laura Flanders, John Perkins ('Confessions of an Economic Hitman') & Russ Baker ('Family of Secrets') talk about Obama and corporations and the IMF.
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Obama's Approval Rating Is Underwater, But Don't Try To Predict 2012 Yet

Ditto for the head of his NationalEconomicCouncil. Although appointing LarrySummers might have been a bit of a stretch, despite his yeoman work in destroying financial regulation—thus enriching his old boss RobertRubin and helping cause the Crash of 2008—McCain could easily have found a JackKemp-like Republican “supply-sider” who would have duplicated Summers’ signal achievement of expanding the deficit to the highest level since 1950 (though perhaps with a slightly higher percentage of tax cuts than the Obama stimulus). The economy would have continued to sputter along, with growth rates and joblessness levels little different from today’s, and possibly even worse.

But McCain’s election would have produced a major political difference: It would have increased Democratic clout in the House and Senate.

Read more here.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama's Approval Rating Is Underwater, But Don't Try To Predict 2012 Yet

If McCain Had Won

McCain would probably have approved a failed troop surge in Afghanistan, engaged in worldwide extrajudicial assassination, destabilized nuclear-armed Pakistan, failed to bring Israel’s BenjaminNetanyahu to the negotiating table, expanded prosecution of whistle-blowers, sought to expand executive branch power, failed to close Guantanamo, failed to act on climate change, pushed both nuclear energy and opened new areas to domestic oil drilling, failed to reform the financial sector enough to prevent another financial catastrophe, supported an extension of the BushTaxCuts for the rich, presided over a growing divide between rich and poor, and failed to lower the jobless rate.

Nothing reveals the true state of American politics today more, however, than the fact that has undertaken all of these actions and, even more significantly, left the DemocraticParty far weaker than it would have been had McCain been elected. Few issues are more important than seeing behind the screen of a myth-making mass media, and understanding what this demonstrates about how power in America really works—and what needs to be done to change it.

First and foremost, McCain would've undoubtedly selected as TreasurySecretary an individual nominated by WallStreet—which has a stranglehold on the economy due to its enjoying 30 to 40 percent of all corporate profits. If he didn’t select TimGeithner, a reliable servant of financial interests whose nomination might have allowed McCain to trumpet his “maverick” credentials, whoever he did select would clearly have also moved to bail out the financial institutions and allow them to water down needed financial reforms.

About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama's Approval Rating Is Underwater, But Don't Try To Predict 2012 Yet

By Chris Hedges:

Barack Obama’s politically expedient decision to betray and abandon his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, exposed his cowardice and moral bankruptcy. In that moment, playing the part of Judas, he surrendered the last shreds of his integrity. He became nothing more than a pawn of power, or as Cornel West says, “a black mascot for Wall Street.” Obama, once the glitter of power fades, will have to grapple with the fact that he was a traitor not only to his pastor, the man who married him and Michelle, who baptized his children and who kept him spiritually and morally grounded, but to himself. Wright retains what is most precious in life and what Obama has squandered—his soul.

Read more here.
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Obama Speaks At Mike Mullen Retirement Ceremony

How appropriate -- A Goldman Sacks ad before Obama's remarks.
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