April, 14 2009, 06:28am EDT
New Tax Day Report on Obama's Tax Proposals
Obama's Tax Proposals Could Raise More Revenue, Be More Progressive and Clamp Down Harder on Wall Street Speculation, New Tax Day Report Finds
BOSTON
A new report from United for a Fair Economy (UFE) concludes that
President Obama's tax proposals could be sharply improved to raise $300
billion more per year in revenue. The report also finds that
improvements would make the taxes more progressive and reduce
incentives for extreme financial risk-taking.
Designed to be accessible to average taxpayers, "Safe, Fair and Sustainable: Do President Obama's Tax Proposals Measure Up?" studies a selection of tax proposals contained in Obama's budget and rates them on key criteria.
"As Congress decides the specifics of tax plans that will impact
whether and how we fund bold new initiatives for the country, taxpayers
need to advocate for what they want," said Lee Farris, Federal Tax
Policy Coordinator at UFE and co-author of the report. "The economic
hardship facing ordinary Americans right now makes evaluating the
impact of important tax policy choices all the more vital."
The report analyzes the proposals in President Obama's FY2010 budget
that focus on high-income taxpayers and compares them to a set of tax
proposals from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in its report,
"Reversing the Great Tax Shift: Seven Steps to Finance Our Economic
Recovery Fairly." UFE's report finds that with increased taxes on the
wealthy, Obama's plan would be able to raise about $300 billion more
per year. It also finds that Obama's proposals could be more
progressive, making taxpayers who have more wealth and income pay a
higher rate. Finally, UFE finds that Obama's proposal could do much
more to reduce the tax incentives that led to the recent crisis on Wall
Street.
The UFE report is available from UFE's website at https://faireconomy.org/reports/tax_day_2009.
The IPS report is available at https://www.ips-dc.org/reports/#1207.
United for a Fair Economy is a non-partisan organization that helps
people of all races, ethnicities and classes work to reduce economic
inequality.
United for a Fair Economy challenges the concentration of wealth and power that corrupts democracy, deepens the racial divide and tears communities apart. We use popular economics education, trainings, and creative communications to support social movements working for a resilient, sustainable and equitable economy. United for a Fair Economy believes another world is possible. We envision a global society which respects the humanity, rights, and creativity of all people.
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Bernie Sanders to Netanyahu: 'It Is Not Antisemitic to Hold You Accountable'
"Please, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government," said the Vermont senator to Israel's prime minister.
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Jewish U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a scathing statement Thursday pushing back against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's characterization of burgeoning protests on American university campuses as "antisemitic," declaring, "It is not antisemitic to hold you accountable for your actions."
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"Antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people," continued Sanders, who lost family members to the Nazi Holocaust. "But, please, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government. Do not use antisemitism to deflect attention from the criminal indictment you are facing in the Israeli courts."
No, Mr. Netanyahu. It is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months your extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000 – 70% of whom are women and children.
You will not distract us from this immoral war. pic.twitter.com/oDaiyU4ipD
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 25, 2024
Sanders' statement came a day after Netanyahu
falsely described student protesters speaking out against Israel's catastrophic war on Gaza as "antisemitic mobs" and likened the demonstrations to "what happened in German universities in the 1930s."
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Jeremi Suri, a professor of history at UT Austin, toldAl Jazeera that contrary to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott's claim, there was "nothing antisemitic" about Wednesday's protests.
"These students were shouting 'free Palestine,' that's all," said Suri. "They were saying nothing that was threatening. And as they were standing and shouting, I witnessed the police—the state police, the campus police, the city police—an army of police almost the size [of] the student group... many were carrying guns, many were carrying rifles, and then, within a few minutes, this group of police stormed into the student crowd and started arresting students."
In his statement Thursday, Sanders emphasized that criticism of Israel's massively destructive assault on Gaza cannot be conflated with antisemitism.
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A Holocaust survivor opposed to Israel's war on Gaza on Wednesday told U.S. student protesters they're on the right side of history, and that the global wave of demonstrations against the slaughter and starvation of Palestinians will soon force Western leaders to face up to their complicity in genocide.
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Holocaust Survivor Message to US Campus Protesters:
This survivor of the Holocaust is against Genocide in Gaza & conflating Jewishness with Zionism, which does nothing but increase antisemitism.
Your protests are so persistent, large and global that eventually the Western… pic.twitter.com/IDCH0NTO6m
— Double Down News (@DoubleDownNews) April 24, 2024
Kapos' comments came amid a growing wave of pro-Palestine student protests—many of them Jewish-led—on dozens of U.S. university and college campuses in response to Israel's U.S.-backed war on Gaza, which the International Court of Justice in January found "plausibly" genocidal and which many Israeli and international experts say is undoubtedly a genocide.
According to Gazan and international officials, more than 122,000 Palestinians have been killed or maimed during 202 days of near-relentless Israeli attacks. This figure includes around 11,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out buildings. Around 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced. Starvation and dehydration caused by Israel's bombardment and blockade of Gaza are killing children and other vulnerable people.
Instead of condemning Israeli leaders, the Biden administration has lavished them with billions of dollars in U.S. military aid while providing diplomatic cover for Israeli crimes and blocking recognition of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.
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Kapos predicted that "today's marches are having a very hopeful aspect that is so large, so persistent, so global that eventually the Western leadership—which are trying to deny what is actually going on—will be forced to face up to it, and I think we are not far from that."
"Today's marches are having a very hopeful aspect that is so large, so persistent, so global that eventually the Western leadership—which are trying to deny what is actually going on—will be forced to face up to it."
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