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Van Jones: Bank Settlement: $25B Down, $675B to Go

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Van Jones - Feb. 12 (News Analysis) - 'We must not forget the more than 14 million homeowners (one in five) whose homes are underwater, beneath a crushing total $700 billion in negative equity. We must not forget the more than 4 million families who have lost their homes.' Van Jones, Reader Supported News

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Mind-Blowing Charts From the Senate's Income Inequality Hearing

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - By Josh Harkinson - Feb. 10 (News Report) - In another sign that Democrats have embraced income inequality as a cause célèbre, the Senate Budget Committee held a hearing on the subject today. The committee's ranking Republican, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, managed to look concerned during two hours of testimony about the kneecapping of the Middle Class—not that it should have been all that difficult. Here are some of the hearing's most striking charts ...

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57% of Republicans Should Just Be Democrats

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Andrew Belonsky - Feb. 04 (Poll) - 'The White House hopeful should really consult with his party's less fortunate members: according to a Pew Research poll, 57% of lower-income Republicans - families that make less than $30,000 annually - think the government does 'too little' for their ranks.' Andrew Belonsky, Death and Taxes

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6 Shocking Ways Capitalism Is Failing Working America

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Les Leopold - Feb. 01 (News Analysis) - Capitalism is coming apart at the seams and the middle-class is paying the price.

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Raj Patel: In Attacks on Obama, Food Stamps, Newt Gingrich is “Racially Coding Poverty”

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jan. 23 (News Analysis) - what is really needed is a conversation about poverty and why the need for food stamps is so high. "It’s true that disproportionately people of color are affected by food insecurity. But what Gingrich is doing, of course, is racially coding poverty by calling President Obama 'the food stamp president,'" Patel said. "He’s invoking these ideas of racialized poverty. Of course, if you look at the people who are on the food stamp program, you see that the majority of them are white and poor." Patel is author of the popular book, "Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System."

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300 Chinese Foxconn Workers 'Threaten Mass Suicide' At XBox Plant, Reports Claim

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

huffingtonpost.co.uk - By Michael Rundle - Jan. 11 (News Report) - Around 300 Chinese workers who manufacture XBox consoles took to a factory roof and threatened bosses with mass suicide over a dispute about pay, unconfirmed reports have claimed. The workers were employed at the Foxconn Technology Park in Wuhan in Hubei province. Foxconn is an independent, global manufacturing partner to companies including Apple, Microsoft and Sony.

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Occupy New Hampshire Member on His Exchange With Mitt Romney Over Support for Corporate Personhood

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jan. 06 (News Report) - Occupy New Hampshire activist Mark Provost made national headlines Wednesday when he attended a town hall meeting hosted by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and asked about his past comment that "corporations are people." Provost's question to Romney came Occupy New Hampshire is preparing for a series of events leading up to the state’s Republican primary to highlight the disproportionate impact corporations and wealthy donors have on the political process. We play an excerpt of the town-hall exchange and get Provost's response to Romney reply. "I think his response, really, again is this denial that there's this class in the country, and that there are some people within the corporation — specifically, the workers — that are taking it on the chin so that the United States' executive management can make massive bonuses and serve their shareholders rather well too, because the profits largely go to capital gains and dividends." [Rush transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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Medicare Madness: Baby Boomers At Center Of Possible Changes

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Richardo AlonsoZaldivar - Jan. 01 (News Analysis) - Baby boomers take note: Medicare as your parents have known it is headed for big changes no matter who wins the White House...

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It's the Inequality, Stupid

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - By Dave Gilson, Carolyn Perot - Jan. 01 (News Analysis) - How Rich Are the Superrich? A huge share of the nation's economic growth over the past 30 years has gone to the top one-hundredth of one percent, who now make an average of $27 million per household. The average income for the bottom 90 percent of us? $31,244.

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10 Ultra-Rich Congresspeople Who 'Represent' Some of the Most Financially Screwed Districts

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Sarah Jaffe - Dec. 28 (News Analysis) - According to a Washington Post story this week, “Between 1984 and 2009, the median net worth of a member of the House more than doubled, according to the analysis of financial disclosures, from $280,000 to $725,000 in inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars, excluding home equity.”

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The Whoppers of 2011

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson - Dec. 21 (Fact Check) - Despite what you may have heard in 2011: The new health care law won’t cost many jobs (and they’ll be poorly paying jobs at that). Republicans aren’t proposing to “end” Medicare (and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden has signed onto a modified version of the GOP plan). Most of the “millionaires” who would pay higher tax rates under a Democratic proposal aren’t job-creating small-business owners. President Obama’s mother didn’t really fight to get health insurance coverage as she was dying. And there was plenty more spin and deception in 2011. Obama claimed he pays a lower tax rate than a teacher. Michele Bachmann endorsed a claim that HPV vaccine causes mental retardation. Joe Biden claimed rapes quadrupled in Flint, Mich., after police layoffs. And that’s just some of the nonsense we debunked.

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Crippling the Right to Organize: GOP Inaction May Leave National Labor Relations Board Inoperable

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Dec. 20 (News Report) - The National Labor Relations Board -- the government body that oversees labor complaints -- is on the verge of being shut down. Under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from last year, the NLRB must have a quorum of at least three of five members in order to operate. But one member's term expires at month's end, and meanwhile, Republicans have refused to confirm President Obama's two replacement nominees. Unless a solution is found, the NLRB would be frozen come January. Without the NLRB, workers would lose their legal recourse to defend their right to organize and to protect themselves against anti-union activity by employers. We speak with Standford Law School Professor William Gould, former chair of the NLRB. [Rush transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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The Remarkable Political Stupidity of the 'Street' - you know, Wall Street

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Robert Reich: - Dec. 10 (News Analysis) - 'Wall Street has blanketed America in a miasma of cynicism. Most Americans assume the reason the Street got its taxpayer-funded bailout without strings in the first place was because of its political clout. That must be why the banks didn't have to renegotiate the mortgages of Americans - many of whom, because of the economic collapse brought on by the Street's excesses, are still under water. Some are drowning.' Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

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Income Inequality Rising In Most Wealthy Countries, OECD Finds

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Alexander Eichler - Dec. 05 (News Report) - Income inequality -- the gap between a society's richest members and its poorest -- is rising not only in the United States but in most of the world's major economies, according to a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Since 1985, income inequality has grown more pronounced in 17 of the 22 countries for which the OECD has long-term data, including Mexico, Italy, Japan, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.

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The Moral Force of OWS is Tackling the Devastating War on the Poor

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Frances Fox Piven - Nov. 07 (News Analysis) - We’ve been at war for decades now -- not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here at home. Domestically, it’s been a war against the poor, but if you hadn’t noticed, that’s not surprising. ... The Occupy Wall Street movement has already made the concentration of wealth at the top of this society a central issue in American politics. Now, it promises to do something similar when it comes to the realities of poverty in this country.

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DHS seeks intelligence on "domestic threats" from Twitter traffic

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Boing Boing - By Xeni Jardin - Nov. 01 (News) - Popular uprisings in the Mideast and North Africa, and now, Occupy Wall street: all examples of popular unrest powered in part by Twitter and other online social networks. In response, the U.S. government is reported to now be developing guidelines for culling intel from social media, according to a Homeland Security official.

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Income for top 1 percent skyrocketed over last 30 years

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

yahoo.com - By Zachary Roth, Liz Goodwin - Oct. 26 (News Report) - So you already know that the gap between rich and poor has been widening lately. But some new numbers from the Congressional Budget Office put the issue into stark relief.

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Millionaires Control 39% of Global Wealth

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

blogs.wsj.com - By Robert Frank - Oct. 19 (News Report) - Here’s another stat that the Occupy Wall Streeters can hoist on their placards: The world’s millionaires and billionaires now control 38.5% of the world’s wealth. According to the latest Global Wealth Report from Credit Suisse, the 29.7 million people in the world with household net worths of $1 million (representing less than 1% of the world’s population) control about $89 trillion of the world’s wealth. That’s up from a share of 35.6% in 2010, and their wealth increased by about $20 trillion, according Credit Suisse.

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Occupy Times Square: Occupy Wall Street Protesters Swarm Midtown

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Whitney Snyder - Oct. 16 (News Report) - Thousands of anti-Wall Street protesters rallied in New York City's Times Square Saturday, buoyed by a global day of demonstrations in support of their monthlong campaign against corporate greed.

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Occupy Wall Street Protests Spread To Europe, Asia

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Alessandra Rizzo, Meera Selva - Oct. 15 (News Report) - bright autumn sunshine and a social media campaign brought out thousands across Europe. In Spain, the Indignant Movement that began around-the-clock "occupation" protest camps in May which lasted for weeks held evening marches Saturday that converged on Madrid's Puerta del Sol plaza. "There is a huge crowd here," said Elsa Varona, whose choir sang an excerpt from Giuseppe Verdi's Nabucco overture as the marchers arrived. Organizers said 300,000 people took part, but police did not offer an estimate. Other Spanish cities including Barcelona, Seville, Valencia and Malaga hosted similarly well-attended gatherings."

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10 Things to Know About Wall Street's Rapacious Attack on America

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Les Leopold - Oct. 07 (News Analysis) - We are the 99 percent, and we demand our fair share. The irrefutable fact is that 99 percent of us really are being screwed by the 1 percent who are looting our country (actually it’s more like the top 1/10 of one percent). So if you still harbor any doubts that Wall Street is the right target, here are 10 reasons to consider:

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"We Are the 99%": Voices From the Occupy Wall Street March

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Juan Gonzalez, Amy Goodman - Oct. 06 (News Report) - People of all ages and backgrounds were on hand for Wednesday's Occupy Wall Street march that drew tens of thousands into the streets in downtown New York City. Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman reports from the street to bring you some of their voices.

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Obama’s Teacher Tax Whopper

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson - Sep. 29 (Fact Check) - President Obama’s claim that he pays a lower tax rate than a teacher making $50,000 a year isn’t true. A single taxpayer with $50,000 of income would have paid 11.9 percent in federal income taxes for 2010, while the Obamas paid more than twice that rate — 25.3 percent (and higher rates than that in 2009 and 2008). And if the $50,000-a-year teacher were in Obama’s tax situation — supporting a spouse and two children — he or she would have paid no federal income taxes at all.

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Barack Obama says construction workers pay higher tax rate than someone earning $50 million a year

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Louis Jacobson - Sep. 27 (Fact Check) - The Truth-o-Meter says: Half-True | Barack Obama says construction workers pay higher tax rate than someone earning $50 million a year In several appearances recently, President Barack Obama has emphasized tax fairness across the income spectrum. In remarks in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Sept. 22, 2011, Obama sought to promote his American Jobs Act by visiting a "functionally obsolete" bridge spanning the Ohio River. The bill, he said, "would put people back to work rebuilding America -- repairing our roads, repairing our bridges, repairing our schools." During the speech, Obama said that "a construction worker who’s making $50 or $60 grand a year shouldn’t be paying higher tax rates than the guy who’s making ... >> More

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Progressivity in United States income tax

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wikipedia - Sep. 25 (Special Report) - The United States federal income tax is considered to be progressive because rates of tax increase as taxable income increases. In general, the U.S. income tax is progressive, at least with respect to individuals that earn wage income. The lowest earning workers, especially those with dependents, pay no income taxes as a group and actually get a small subsidy from the federal government because of child credits and the Earned Income Tax Credit.[citation needed] "Progressivity" as it pertains to tax is usually defined as meaning that the higher a person's level of income, the higher a tax rate that person pays. In the mid-twentieth century, marginal tax rates (the rate applied to the last bit of income) in the United States and United Kingdom exceeded 90%. As recently as the late 1970s, the top marginal tax rate in the U.S. was 70%. In the words of Piketty and Saez, "... the progressivity of the U.S. federal tax system at the top of the income distribution has declined dramatically since the 1960s".[1] They continue, "... the most dramatic changes in federal tax system progressivity almost always take place within the top 1 percent of income earners, with relatively small changes occurring below the top percentile." Progressivity, then, is a complex topic which does not lend itself to simple analyses. Given the "flattening" of tax burden that occurred in the early 1980s, many commentators note that the general structure of the U.S. tax system has begun to resemble a partial consumption tax regime.[2]

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