Romney’s Plan to Put More Cash In His Pockets

In a desperate (and cynical) attempt to buy last minute votes at the presidential debates last night, presidential hopeful Mitt Romney proposed an across the board income tax cut of 20% for everyone. To sweeten the deal, he said he would balance the cuts by eliminating deductions and loopholes so there would be no net loss in federal revenues.

What could be fairer or more generous?

20% might seem like a lot, and it is if you are rich. Even after the loopholes are closed, it is estimated that the average wealthy American will still save $250,000 per year under Romney’s plan. Thus, Romney’s tax plan will give wealthy Americans a gift worth more than quadruple the yearly income of most Americans.

For most of us, however, Romney’s tax cut would provide little relief and, for many of us, it will actually translate into higher taxes, not lower. This is because his plan includes ending all deductions over $17,000. For working class or middle class homeowners in California, who have mortgages of $300,000 or more, the state income tax and mortgage interest deductions, alone, come to more than $17,000. Thus, many moderate income residents would have to pay more in taxes, even with the 25% tax cut, because they will lose so many of the deductions they had previously used to lower their tax liability.

Another problem with the Romney plan is that it is not possible to entirely balance out the cost of the tax cuts by closing loopholes and deductions. Without any offsets, it is estimated that it would add another $5 trillion to the federal deficit over the next 10 years and this is in addition to the $5 trillion the Bush tax cuts are currently adding. Since the Romney plan would be layered on top of the Bush tax cuts, which will also continue for the next ten years, the total bill under Romney’s plan would be far more than $5 trillion, even with the offsets. Obama’s plan, which is essentially just an extension of the Bush tax cuts just for middle-income Americans, would increase the deficit by $4 trillion over this same time period.

Stealing From the Poor to Subsidize the Rich

The following chart is from the FU Corporate Media website. While it gives a pretty good sense of how much gratuitous money the rich take home in tax breaks and subsidies and how much the safety net is being sliced up to pay for it, the chart does not tell us how or why this is happening, or how to change it.

 

The fact is that the rich have always used the political system to protect their property and wealth. They are the only ones with the wealth to win a political campaign. They control the flow of information to the public. They use their wealth and lobbying power to push through legislation favorable to their interests. They make sure that the laws are written and enforced to maximize their profits. And they do it through both parties.

Voting cannot change this. The rich never give away anything unless they are forced to. When strikes and direct action cuts into their profits, they may make a few concessions, throw a few bones, whatever the minimum they think it will take to get their workers back on the job and their businesses making money again. However, the same system remains in place, with the wealthy making the rules for their own benefit. They might have to wait a little before they can grab back what they conceded, depending on the strength of the labor movement, but they remain wealthy all the while.

This is what has been happening for the past 30 years. As unions have become weaker and represent fewer workers, the bosses realize they can demand more work for less pay and get away with it. They attempt and succeed at policies that would have seemed preposterous not too long ago, like financing 4 wars simultaneously while also granting and maintaining huge tax cuts.

CTA’s State of Emergency Misses the Mark, But Come Anyway, The Occupation Will Be Fun

Even after California shaved $13 billion off its deficit by slashing Community College, CSU and UC budgets, as well as services for the poor, elderly and disabled, the state is still $12 billion in the hole and is now threatening to cut K-12 education by $4 billion and fire up to 20,000 more teachers. In response, the California Teachers Association’s (CTA) State Council has declared a “State of Emergency” for the week of May 9-13, approving a series of actions including a limited one-week sit-in at the state Capitol, in Sacramento, and local rallies in various cities. Their short-term goal is to pressure lawmakers to approve tax extensions to protect schools, colleges, and essential public services from further cuts, while their long-term goal is to implement a “fair” tax structure that ensures “stable” education funding.

While some delegates proposed increasing taxes on the rich and corporations during the planning stages, neither the rich nor corporations are mentioned in the union’s literature for the May actions. Furthermore, their nebulous long-term goal of tax “fairness” is not even being promoted as a goal of the May actions. Even if it was, a week of sit-ins and rallies would not be sufficient to force legislators to increase taxes on anyone, especially not the rich (and themselves). On the other hand, while the short-term objective stands a better chance of succeeding, it is a terrible goal, as the tax extensions are regressive and will force poor and working class people to bail out the state, while letting the rich off the hook. Ironically, around the same time that the CTA came out with their State of Emergency plan, the CFT released a poll showing that 52% of California voters blamed the rich and corporations for the budget crisis (while only 32% blamed public employee compensation), suggesting the time is right for going after the wealthy.

Making those who have so little pay even more in taxes is cruel and stupid, especially considering that poverty is the number one cause of poor academic achievement (see here, here and here), and especially considering that millionaires and billionaires can afford to pay a little more without suffering a decline in their living standards. Furthermore, even if the tax extensions pass it will merely be a bandage over a gushing wound. They will not recoup the $18 billion that has been slashed from K-12 education over the past three years, nor will they prevent continuing huge budget deficits in the future.

If the CTA really wants to protect teachers’ interests and help improve academic achievement, they need to demand increased progressive taxes, with the wealthy paying most or all of the increase. Furthermore, anything short of a state-wide work stoppage is unlikely to make lawmakers feel any need to change their stance. A rich guy who spends his life insulated from (and exacerbating) poverty will not be swayed by signs and chanting.

Despite these criticisms, these baby steps by the union could be seen as a hopeful sign. The fact that they have even started talking about the greed of the wealthy is a positive change for an organization that has spent most of its existence bending over backward to comply with the demands of the ruling elite. On a more practical level, the May actions are an opportunity for students, teachers and public sector workers to take the lead and, instead of accepting the CTA’s weak demand to impose regressive tax increases on themselves, reset the agenda and demand the rich bail themselves out. At the very least, it is an opportunity to change the terms of the debate and radicalize participants.

Therefore, following in the tradition of the Wobblies or IWW, it is time to call on all labor radicals, students, activists, wages slaves, and hobos to “ride the rails” to sunny California and join the class struggle.

Class War: Tax Breaks for The Wealthy Vs. Service Cuts for the Poor

From Center for American Progress

Authentic School Choice for Virtually No One

The school choice and voucher movement is heating up again, with the new Republican majority in congress and pressure from their Tea Party supporters. They want less “Big Government” intervention (read: less support for publicly funded and publicly controlled local schools that serve the vast majority of American children) and more “parental choice” (read: less of their own money going to public schools for the rabble and more tax breaks, incentives and vouchers to subsidize their kids’ elite private schools). At the vanguard of this movement are Wisconsin, New Jersey and Florida, where  Governor Rick Scott is calling for universal vouchers that would provide families with money for private schools, taking a portion of those funds from the pool of tax dollars that would have gone to public schools.

According to a 2003 Heritage Foundation survey on school choice, 41% of U.S. representatives and 46% of U.S. senators who responded have sent at least one of their kids to a private school. Politicians, like their super rich patrons, have the wealth, power, social connections and status to send their kids wherever they wish. Of course, with the continuing underfunding of public schools, and the damage done by a decade of NCLB, along with the thirty year decline in income for the majority of Americans, it is no wonder that public schools seem so undesirable to the wealthy. More importantly, the majority of Americans do not have the power, wealth and connections to get their kids into and pay for elite schools. Even with vouchers, the top elite schools will remain largely out of reach for most Americans due to location, entrance requirements and cost. Consider that under Rick Scott's Florida plan, families would get about $7,700, which isn't even enough for decent childcare for a toddler, let alone an elite private or charter school.

While virtually anyone who lives in a state that provides vouchers can use a voucher to attend a private or parochial school, very few are getting a better education as a result, and even fewer are attending elite private schools. While voucher advocates love to cite the slightly higher graduation rates for Milwaukee’s voucher students (Milwaukee has one of the highest percentages of students in voucher schools), as compared to those in traditional public schools, the data is unconvincing. First, there are only 20,000 voucher students in Milwaukee, compared with 80,000 in public schools. Smaller cohorts often have skewed data compared to larger ones. Second, those who take the time and effort to utilize the voucher system and research alternative schools for their children are more likely to put more time and energy into their children's education, provide more support at home, and hold their children to higher expectations, making their children more likely to do well in any school environment. Third, Milwaukee schools are among the lowest performing in the country, which is just the opposite of what one would expect from the city that has such a high percentage of voucher students.

According to a recent article in The Daily Censored, “Public servants and private schools: private school choice for the very elite,” Jimmy Carter was the last U.S. president to send his kids to public school.

Here is a list of where some politicians send their kids:

• Obama’s kids attend Sidwell Friends School at a cost of $29,000 per year.
• Biden’s grand-daughters  also go to Sidwell
• Rahm Emanuel’s kids currently attend private schools in D.C. He has not yet admitted where they go when they move back to Chicago, but Emanuel is a strong advocate of privatization.
• Michael Bloomberg’s daughters attended Spence School, an all-girls private academy that costs $34,000 per year.
• Adrian Fenty, former mayor of D.C. and supporter of Michelle Rhee, who sent is kids to private school.
• Jersey Governor Chris Christie, another supporter of privatization and vouchers and overall anti-public sector crank, sends his children to parochial schools.

Slashing Education is Good for America

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Public education always has and continues to be a means of social control, one with the specific function of perpetuating a status quo in which a tiny minority rules over the overwhelming majority in order to sequester increasing amounts of wealth. The hysteria over the deplorable state of our schools is a deliberate deception, as schools never really got worse at this function. They still reproduce a well-educated elite minority and vast numbers of poorly educated, compliant workers with just enough training to run their machines and offices and purchase their goods.

One goal of this deception is to convince the public that it is in their best interests to relinquish local control, and allow private companies to take over and turn a profit. Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, Michael Bloomberg, Broad, Walton, and others promulgate this trickery by repeatedly reminding us about terrible test scores and graduation rates, blaming it on recalcitrant and selfish unions, and promising us perfection if only more charter schools and corporate management were allowed. What’s good for Bill Gates is good for America.

Divide and Conquer

However, the deception is not just about privatization. As more and more tax dollars get diverted to wars, tax cuts and corporate bailouts, there is less available for social services, like education, and there needs to be a scapegoat other than Halliburton, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. As children become more impoverished and consequently do poorer in school, and as schools lose funding and consequently provide fewer services, the schools and teachers (and occasionally the parents) get the blame for low student achievement, rather than the ruling elite who are the real culprits. It is classic divide and conquer: the public continues to support their bosses and the wealthy, some dreaming of joining their ranks, while attacking members of their own class, like teachers and other government workers, under the mistaken perception that they are the ones responsible for their misery. What’s good for Wall Street is good for America.

Downsizing and Streamlining

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

A more immediate goal of slashing education budgets is to obtain the same productivity from educators for less money, thus freeing up tax dollars for more important needs (like bailouts and tax cuts for the wealthy). The same numbers of children must still be taught. The same delusional outcomes are still required, such as 100% proficiency on NCLB exams by 2014. Yet all this must occur with fewer teachers, custodians, nurses, librarians and money. Worse, those who are lucky enough to still have their jobs are expected to do more despite this reduction in funding. They must do their own jobs, plus those of their former colleagues who were fired, furloughed or not replaced. Additionally, they must work harder and longer to create and implement new programs that are supposed to raise test scores. What’s good for the boss, is good for America.

Business as Usual

The transfer of wealth from the public to the ruling elite (through tax cuts, subsidies and bailouts, all financed by cutting programs that help the poor and working class) should be seen as evidence of the true nature of our economy and the political system that serves it. The interests of banks, speculators and the war machine are far more urgent and necessary than the needs of regular people, especially teachers and students. After all, both parties have supported continued military funding, corporate bailouts and tax cuts for the rich, while allowing or promoting cuts to education, Medicare, food stamps, and social security. The notion of political expediency, the “stalemate” in D.C., the “necessary” compromises that must occur as a “natural” part of our political system, are all cover-ups: the corporate rulers run the show and make the decisions. Politicians who even consider not playing by their rules not only lose their office, they lose all hope of a cushy corporate job after being termed out. Their interests are the same as corporate interests

America’s Stockholm Syndrome

60% of Americans support the extension of the Bush-era tax cuts, despite the fact that 25% of the savings from the plan will go entirely to the richest 1% of Americans, while the changes to the estate tax will only benefit the richest ¼ of 1%. Meanwhile, the poorest Americans will actually get a tax increase. Even more perplexing is supporters’ lack of concern for how much this will worsen an already record deficit and increase the level of austerity that will be imposed on them to fix it when congress finally settles on a deficit reduction plan. (Over the past ten years, tax cuts have been the single largest contributor to budget deficits, surpassing even defense).

Why do so many American’s support this insanity?

My hypothesis is that they are suffering from the world’s largest case of Stockholm Syndrome, the paradoxical psychological phenomenon that causes hostages to adore and identify with their captors. According to the FBI’s Hostage Barricade Database System, close to 27% of victims exhibit this syndrome.

However, the FBI data only applies to small scale hostage situations, like the SLA’s abduction of Patty Hearst. When hostage-takers go for broke and abduct an entire nation, the percentage that goes “Stockholm” is much higher. Psychologist Dee Graham argues that all women suffer it to some extent in order to survive in a sexist society. Today we have millions of Americans being held captive by a small band of terrorists known as “The Ruling Elite,” AKA “The Richest 1%.” They held us hostage before by threatening to allow the financial system to collapse if we didn’t put up trillions of dollar to bail them out. Now they’re demanding more.

Stockholm Syndrome occurs when captives are seriously threatened, but then shown kindness by their captors. In this case, the captors have insisted that if we hand over the money, they will create new jobs and hire us, a seeming act of kindness for the millions who’ve been unemployed for months or years. Years of intimidation and abuse has effectively brainwashed us into believing that jobs are the ultimate goal, rather than material and social well-being, even when those jobs are mind-numbing, back-breaking and poverty-inducing.

Psychologists believe that this illogical behavior stems from our natural need to form attachments to the nearest powerful adult, like babies do with their parents, to increase the chances that we will be fed and cared for or, in this case, provided with work. These powerful adults, sometimes referred to as bosses, make us work so hard that we no longer have the time and energy to maintain healthy relationships and attachments to our significant others and children. So we start to attach to them instead, aspiring to become rich ourselves, lusting after them.

Doctors Gabor Mate and Gordon Neufeld argue that when children replace their natural and healthy attachments to parents with attachments to peers, the effects can be devastating for families and for the children’s development. When this happens, parents must work toward restoring their child’s attachment to them. The same applies to grownups suffering from this collective Stockholm syndrome. They need to seek professional help at once. They need to break their dysfunctional attachments with the rich and powerful and lose their unhealthy desires to dress like Bill Gates in the bedroom, so they can be healthy and whole once again.

Obama's Delusion of Grandeur: Robin Hood in Reverse

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

He Robs From the Poor and Gives to the Rich!

In a glaring example of Reverse Robin Hood Syndrome, President Obama signed off on an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and agreed to a reduction in the estate tax, while eliminating the Making Work Pay credit, which benefited the poorest Americans.

Over 25% of the savings from these initiatives will go directly to the richest 1% of Americans. The only group who will see their taxes go up are the poorest Americans, individuals earning less than $20,000 per year, and families earning less than $40,000.

Obama, "It's tempting  tempting not to negotiate with hostage takers, unless the hostage gets harmed. Then, people will question the wisdom of that strategy. In this case, the hostage was the American people, and I was not willing to see them get harmed." 

Yeh, right.