progressive

Taxing thoughts for Progressives

Joseph M. Firestone — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 01:08:31 -0400

Headline progressives, due to their lack of understanding of MMT, are losing the battles for entitlements and social programs and the austerity war, at a time when, in fact, the progressive agenda has never been more affordable. With Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), and perhaps only with MMT, can the good fight be won.

Five Progressive Tax Increases that Washington Won't Talk About

Daniel Marans — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 18:15:19 -0400

Ten years ago today, the first Bush tax cuts were signed into law. The fiscal damage they have inflicted is still unparalleled. But while the tax cuts for the top 2 percent of American earners will stay off the table until December 2012, there is any number of other progressive tax increases that Washington could adopt, but won't even consider. The public deserves to know what they are. Here are my picks:

1. Scrap the cap on earnings subject to the Social Security payroll tax. Did you know that millionaires and billionaires only make payroll tax contributions on earnings of $106,800? If you didn't, it could be because you are among the 94% of American earners who make less than that amount--and are taxed on all of their earnings as a result. Social Security payroll taxes are only paid on wages up to $106,800 with employees and employers contributing equally. Scrapping the cap on earnings subject to the payroll tax, while not counting earnings above the cap toward benefits, would eliminate Social Security's entire long-term shortfall. Since Social Security doesn't contribute to the deficit, scrapping the cap won't reduce the deficit. It will make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years, and tie its financial health to growth in earnings in the upper strata, which continue to grow more rapidly than middle- and lower-income earnings. (Click here for a complete fact sheet outlining different options for scrapping the cap.)

2. Enact a modest financial speculation tax. If we levied a 0.25 percent tax on every purchase and sale of stock, and a 0.02 percent tax on every purchase and sale of a future, option, or credit default swap, we would raise $1 trillion in revenue in the next decade. (Credit to Dean Baker for all the data.) It would have the added advantage of discouraging financial speculation, since its effect would be minimal on people holding investments for long periods of time.

3. Increase the corporate income tax rates by 1 percentage point. CEOs love to complain about how high the top corporate tax rate is in America. They say it discourages competition. They say we should have a rate that is closer to Ireland's 12.5 percent. (How's that doin' for Ireland?) But the truth is that all their whining is just empty bravado. While the top corporate tax rate is officially 35 percent, thanks to countless tax loopholes and accounting tricks, 115 out of the 500 companies on the Standard & Poor's index paid a total rate of less than 20 percent over the last five years. Maybe if we jack up their rate a little bit it will offset the effect of some of the loopholes. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that, despite the loopholes, raising all corporate tax rates by 1 percentage point will generate $101 billion in revenue over the next ten years.

4. Impose a fee on large financial institutions. Remember the bailouts of 2008 and 2009? Good times. We gave the big banks over $1trillion in interest-free loans. The banks paid back the money they owed, but never paid interest on the principal. Nor do they pay for the implied guarantee that if they go under, the taxpayers will pick up the tab. A 0.15 percent tax on all financial institutions with assets of $50 billion or more is one small way to fix that. It will also provide the treasury with $71 billion over the next ten years, according to CBO.

5. Tax carried interest as income. The carried interest loophole is how hedge fund managers claim a portion of the earnings on funds they manage--typically 20 percent--and it is taxed at capital gains rates, which are much lower than income taxes. That's why, among other reasons, Warren Buffet pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. Taxing those earnings as income would net $21 billion over the next ten years. Again, my source here is CBO.

Runner up: Increase tariffs on imports from developing countries with lower labor and environmental standards. It's a great idea. It would strengthen American exports, protect our patented technology, and bring the government much-needed revenue. I just could not find a scored proposal of how much it would save.

I left out a carbon tax and a value-added tax, because absent significant correctives, neither is progressive. (Though both may be necessary.)

There you have it. Five progressive tax increases buy you an end to Social Security's funding gap, and more than $1.2 trillion in revenue. Bring income tax rates back to Reagan levels, and throw in a millionaire's surtax, and we could be enjoying single-payer health care aboard our high-speed trains.

Oh, well. It's nice to dream.

Mainstream Media, Air The Voices Of The American Majority

Josh Ney — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 13:26:42 -0400

Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has a voice that is noticeably absent from the Sunday morning news programs. He is opposed to cutting Social Security. He is in favor of raising taxes on the wealthy. He stands firmly for economic views that have the support of majorities of working people in poll after poll. Yet, why is he not on "Meet the Press" or "Face the Nation"? Why would someone who has long advocated for what the American majority wants not be on these shows week after week, month after month?

Meanwhile, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona voted for gutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security when he voted in favor of the Senate version of the Republican-Ryan budget. He is clearly out of touch with the majority of Americans, yet why is he the one who is out front and center on the Sunday morning talk shows? Since the beginning of the year, he has been on the Sunday shows a whopping 10 times, three more times than the Senate minority leader and more than any other member of Congress.

In his piece today, Robert Greenwald sums it up perfectly: “The Sunday shows often set the tone for the upcoming political week. As the same voices drone on, the senator's absence means the political and media elites are overlooking the forces squeezing working and middle class Americans.”

Progressive members of Congress such as Sanders have the ideas that are so desperately needed in our country’s current economic situation and the ability to articulate them. While McCain provides excellent sound bites, having him appear on Sunday talk shows ad nauseum does nothing but ensure his talking points will be repeated over and over again, while forward-thinking alternative policies from such legislators as Sanders will be forced into the closet, never to see the light of day.

Sanders is far from the only powerful voice for the American majority in Congress missing from the airwaves. Sens. Al Franken of Minnesota, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Barbara Boxer all voted against the Senate version of the Republican-Ryan budget, and should also be front and center in the Sunday news programs. But they are not.

Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) co-chair Representative Keith Ellison has only appeared on the Sunday morning shows one time this year, while CPC co-chair Rep. Raúl Grijalva, has not been on at all. And neither has former CPC co-chair Representative Barbara Lee.

At the end of his column, Greenwald posts the names and numbers of people to contact, to urge them to put Sanders and other elected officials who proudly stand up with the American Majority on their Sunday morning shows. I am sharing them as well, at the end of this post, in the hopes that those in the majority come together and respectfully ask to put these great heroes of the American majority on their news programs.

Getting these heroes of the American majority on television is just one step. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has launched a petition drive to get the media to focus on “The People’s Budget,” a budget proposal crafted by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Their budget provides common sense solutions to current problems all while saving the integrity of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The budget also offers sound solutions that will ensure jobs for the unemployed. No one in the mainstream media is focusing their attention on this positive solution.

I urge you to sign the FAIR petition, and let the news agencies know that, frankly, this type of one-sided reporting is not acceptable; that “The People’s Budget” deserves the same amount of coverage as the Republican-Ryan so-called budget plan.

Face the Nation: Carin Pratt, (202) 457-4481, ftn@cbsnews.com
Meet the Press: Iliana Drimmer, (202) 885-4598, ilana.drimmer@nbcuni.com
This Week: (212) 456-7777 (push 5 and address your message to Rick Kaplan, executive producer of This Week)
State of the Union: Michelle Jaconi, (404) 827-1500, michelle.jaconi@turner.com

To members of the mainstream media who want to air the voices of these heroes, Campaign For America’s Future has put together polling data about what the American majority is really saying. You can find all the information here.

The End of an Era: Nation-Building at Home After Bin Laden's Death

Daniel Marans — Tue, 03 May 2011 10:03:37 -0400

In uncertain times like these, there is a thrill to be had in the occasional moment of moral clarity. Osama bin Laden’s death on Sunday was one such moment. Let’s hope it marks the close of an era lived in the shadow of September 11th, and the start of a period devoted to the more complex, but equally patriotic task of solving our country’s stubborn domestic problems--even if it rarely evokes the same sense of national unity as hunting a Bin Laden.

September 11th is a buried memory for me. But the shocking news Sunday night brought it vaguely back to life. We were still looking for that guy? Has it really been ten years?

September 11, 2001 was my second day of ninth grade at the Ramaz School in Manhattan. I was in the throes of freshman jitters, still getting used to waking up at 6 am for my school bus commute from Teaneck, NJ. Shortly after getting to school that day, though, the principal announced the attack on the World Trade Center over the loudspeaker. My adolescent anxieties were immediately supplanted by more pressing fears. Were we safe? Were our parents safe?

Bad news awaited me at home in New Jersey. The parents of two elementary school friends were missing. It would take months to confirm their deaths. The mood in my house was somber and anxious.

Almost ten years later, my friends’ loved ones are still gone. Nothing can bring them back.

I like to think of Bin Laden’s death not as closure for their deaths, but as the closing of a chapter in the country’s history. For nearly a decade we have turned our vast resources outward, pursuing enemies the world over—some real, some imagined. Even as our nation grew more unequal, Wall Street speculation steadily engulfed the economy, and the health and standards of living for most of our nation’s citizens deteriorated, we drew a sense of unity and pride, for a while at least, from our commitment to “defeating the terrorists” who had perpetrated 9/11. We were still a great nation, it seemed, because we could take it to the bad guys, and make them pay for their crimes.

In the end, our national obsession with avenging 9/11 failed both to catch the criminal responsible for the act (we spent billions of dollars and inestimable amounts of human life in wars that, arguably, until now, had not resulted in Osama bin Laden’s death or capture), and to bolster our national self-esteem (the world viewed us, and we felt, like failures). It allowed us to be swept up into the horrific and misbegotten Iraq War, as well as tolerate significant rollbacks of our civil liberties and a dangerous rise in Islamophobia. Terrorists emboldened; country dejected.

Meanwhile, the damage of neglecting the home front has been incalculable, including to the service men and women who risked their lives at Ground Zero and in Iraq and Afghanistan. Could it be any more ironic that Bin Laden’s death comes only five months after Congress passed the law paying for the health care expenses incurred by the cancer-stricken 9/11 rescue workers?! Then again, maybe it is poetic that the former only happened after the latter came to be.

The fight against terrorism must no doubt continue. But maybe with Bin Laden gone, we can turn our formidable attention to the more contentious and less euphoric pursuit of domestic nation-building. Our biggest priorities right now should be ending unemployment, reforming our financial and health care systems, and fighting climate change and other environmental disasters. Accomplishing those tasks will require us to work together in unprecedented ways to challenge entrenched interests. It will not always unite us as a country, or give us a warm and fuzzy feeling inside the way the hunt for Bin Laden did.

Consider the healthcare reform battle. There was no health care crisis moment akin to 9/11 for the country to rally around. It took years of momentum, and a watershed presidential election, followed by months of tense partisan wrangling, compromising with special interests and town-hall shouting matches that almost tore the country apart. When the President signed the law giving 30 million Americans health insurance, crowds massed outside the White House—only they were protesting, not celebrating, as they were after Bin Laden’s death. And yet there is no doubt that is was the right thing to do. We are a better country for it.

Likewise, if we succeed in providing relief to the million families whose homes were foreclosed upon, and the 14 million Americans who remain unemployed, or reducing our deficit by taxing the rich, rather than slashing Social Security and Medicare, it will be because of persistence and good organizing, not because of heart-rending footage we see on TV.

The mundane work of building a stronger, happier and more compassionate country is far less of a rush then nailing the bad guy. And frankly, it is also more divisive. But it is no less of a patriotic duty. Our fellow Americans need us. Once the understandable joy over Bin Laden’s death peters out, we should embrace domestic nation-building with the dedication of genuine patriots.

Social Security: Where's Our Tahrir Square?

fake consultant — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 15:58:31 -0500

We have seen some amazing days in Egypt, and it’s provided a better lesson than anyone could have ever wanted for how taking action, against long odds, can really get something done.

A secret police mechanism has been pushed aside, an Army has chosen not to attack The People, and a President who was backed by the “full faith and credit” of the US Government on Friday was being told by that same US Government on Tuesday that it’s time to go.

The People, in fact, spoke so loudly that Mr. Mubarak has informed Egyptians that he’s going to “pursue corruption”, which, if taken literally, could eventually look like a puppy chasing its own tail.

The People, however, are unhappy with his answer, and they’re speaking even louder yet...even to the point of being willing to take beatings, gunfire, and, believe it or not...camel charges...to make their voices heard.

And that got me to thinking about Social Security.

You know, we are facing the potential for a great big Social Security fight for pretty much the entire term of the 112th Congress—and it seems to me that a series of great big “Cairo-style” marches might be the way to make our voices heard, so that this Congress understands that great big benefit cuts are something that we will not tolerate.

Oh, Vanity of vanities!
How wayward the decrees of Fate are;
How very weak the very wise,
How very small the very great are!

--William Makepeace Thackeray, from the “Vanitas Vanitatum”

It’s a simple point I make today: we want a Social Security program that’s in fiscal balance, and raising the income tax cap can do that without changing the retirement age, or means testing, or anything else...so let’s just do it, already.

(Raising the tax cap? If you make over $107,000 a year, that income is tax-exempt when it comes to Social Security. Taxing that income would fix the entire financing problem, with money left over, which means you could actually cut payroll tax rates for all workers at the same time.)

On the other side are those who seek to cut benefits for future recipients, and there is no logical reason why, when we have a simple fix in hand—but there is still such a community of folks, and they have considerable influence in all the right places.

But as we have learned this week, even when the other side has considerable influence—even in the wrong places—people can beat the odds and change the political dynamic, and they can do it in a way that can’t be turned back, even if the other side is willing to kill you where you stand...and the women and children you brought with you as well.

And if pro-democracy demonstrators in Liberation Square can do it...why can’t we, who want to make Social Security work for everyone, do the same?

Now I’m not suggesting that we gather up our camels and bottles and gasoline and head for the barricades—but I am suggesting that if we do not make the same kind of assertive showing the “Tea Party” folks did during the runup to the health care debate, then we are missing a huge opportunity, and if we fail we’ll have to wonder if not acting on this kind of strategy cost us support we badly need.

And we can even do it in an alternative way: let’s schedule friendly Town Halls with members of Congress who would like to help, and let’s hear from constituents—of all persuasions—about how they would absolutely not like to see their Social Security cut.

And who, exactly, is going to show up to demand they get their benefits cut?

My guess, it’ll be just the opposite: I would expect to see lots of folks, of all ages, who are tired of getting screwed, and who don’t want to get screwed again—and how much you wanna bet they’ll be nice and enthusiastic about expressing that point of view?

Get it on the TV, build a bit of momentum, and by summer you could be scheduling a nice “Social Security Flat Tax Now!” march on the National Mall, kinda like what Stewart and Colbert did last year.

Once you do that...as we learned during the health care debate...Democrats and Republicans alike can be “managed” more effectively, and those “paid for by Pete Peterson” deficit commission staff members end up being a less profitable investment than a credit default swap denominated in Icelandic krona and executed with the Central Bank of Greece as a counterparty and a consortium of the Central Banks of Portugal and Iceland as guarantors.

It may be snowing today, but the blossoms will be on the cherry trees in just a few weeks, and if we’re going to get this together, we better get started right away.

So...my Social Security friends and allies...anyone know some cooperative Members of Congress?

Author’s Note: We spent some time in December working to help Betsie Gallardo, who was trying to have her Florida prison sentence commuted so that she could end her life at home with a bit of dignity.

That effort was successful, and we now know that she did pass away January 31st, surrounded by friends and family, and we wish her adoptive mother, Jessica Bussert, and all those friends and family all our warmest thoughts.

It will soon be spring, and the flowers will again bloom, and when they do perhaps we’ll see in them, as we did with Betsie, a reminder of the beauty that life can bring—and just how fragile that beauty can be.

Bob Simley

Archie1954 — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 18:38:24 -0400

I earned a JD and practiced law for thirty years in the oil & gas industry and then in securitiies. I am now a business consultant and manage public companies. I am a Protestant Christian, married for 39 years with two sons, both of whom are mining engineers. I consider myself a progressive and believe that government has a place in leveling the playing field for all members of society. I do not believe in pre-emptive war, torture or illegal activities to satisfy a given goal. I am very much a supporter of justice for all regardless of race, colour or creed, or for that matter wealth or lack thereof. I believe that in a democracy you get the government you deserve.

Tild Dallelie

Tild Dallelie2 — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:44:59 -0400

Bob Jacobson

Bob Jacobson — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:24:24 -0400

I currently blog for Huffington Post and Smirking Chimp. I am deeply involved in exposing corruption in the State Department's outsourcing of its public diplomacy function.

I enjoy most of all good reading, travel, and bodysurfing.

Too much else to go into here. Ask.

Ramona G.

Ramona Grigg — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:47:43 -0500

I am a published writer who found my voice again when Barack Obama was inaugurated and put out a call to action. My blog, Ramona's Voices, began on that day and has been gaining speed ever since. I'm 72 years old, so there's no time to dilly-dally. We've got a country to save.

Gigi Jones

G Jones — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:57:08 -0400

Community developer interested in empowering communities to be their best, providing education and safety for children, decent affordable housing, and good jobs with good pay and career ladders.

I do not put personal information on the web because I never know where it may end up or who may want to use it for some nefarious reason. However, I am a political junkie who loves blogging and writing comments on issues of importance to me. I hope you won't hold that against me.