When members of Congress proposed paying for expanded health care
with a tax surcharge on America's wealthiest citizens, the attack was
swift but predictable. Taxing the top was labeled "class war," an
attack on the successful, and bad for business and the economy.
WASHINGTON - As President Barack Obama and other world leaders meet in Italy, a global survey released Thursday reflects wide concern that governments won't meet their budgets in this economic climate - and a universal preference to respond by cutting services rather than raising taxes.
WASHINGTON - Across the country, Republicans and their conservative allies sought to ignite a grass-roots rebellion against President Barack Obama on Wednesday, staging scores of Tax Day "tea parties" to demand tax cuts, lower federal spending and smaller government.
But the effort came with a risk: In the current economic crisis, with half a million or more jobs vanishing each month, many Americans seem less concerned about how much Washington deducts from their paychecks than whether they will have a paycheck at all.
CNBC Correspondent Rick Santelli called for a "Chicago Tea
Party" on Feb 19th in protesting President Obama's plan to help homeowners in
trouble. Santelli's call was answered by the right-wing group FreedomWorks,
which funds campaigns promoting big business interests, and is the opposite of
what the real Boston Tea Party was.
Many people object to any 'redistribution' of income through taxes, because that, in their view, is socialist. It penalizes hard work and success, and it stifles the spirit of innovation.
But a great redistribution of wealth has already occurred, in the other direction. From 1980 to 2006 the richest 1% of America nearly tripled their after-tax percentage of our nation's income, while the bottom 90% has seen their share drop over 20%.
That's TRIPLED, AFTER-TAX.
It gets tiring to hear arguments based on emotion rather than facts.
Like Rush Limbaugh saying: "The top 1% is paying nearly ten times the federal income taxes than the bottom 50%!" This is true. But AFTER TAXES, the top 1% keeps 20% of the nation's income, while the bottom half of earners retain just 14%.
BOSTON - Mary Ritchie, a Massachusetts State Police trooper, has been married for almost five years and has two children. But when she files her federal income tax return, she's not allowed to check the "married filing jointly" box.
That's because Ritchie and her spouse, Kathleen Bush, are a gay couple, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act makes them ineligible to file joint tax returns.
Something as simple as a metaphor can mean the difference between shared prosperity and widespread suffering.
It's time to tell the truth about tax cuts. This phrase dominates
political discourse and is coughed out every time a conservative public
figure opens his mouth. It is treated like the basis of sound
reasoning, yet no one points out what should be obvious - that "tax
relief" and "tax cuts" are just code words for destroying the capacity
of government to serve the public.
Eight years ago, President Bush entered office with some bipartisan credibility on education, rightfully proclaiming that schoolchildren suffer from the soft bigotry of low expectations. He and the Republicans quickly discredited themselves with low federal funding for reform.
