Stand with Warren Buffett

It's nice to see there's a wealthy American who actually has some common sense.

As most of you know, Warren Buffett recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times, titled, "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich":
"Stop Coddling the Super-Rich" by Warren Buffett

While most of America is smart enough to know what our politicians are too stupid to figure out, while there are too many wealthy people bankrolling said politicians, there are millionaires who do care, who do understand that raising taxes on people who are struggling and giving tax breaks to those who can afford it the most is economic suicide for America.

The fact is, like it or not (and for most of the wealthy, that's "not"), the government still runs on revenue.  You can cut all you want, but eventually, it's like your car...you can refuse to change the oil, the tires, leave all of the problems unfixed because you're "cutting spending," but eventually, even if it becomes a total clunker, you've got to at least put in some gas, or that thing isn't going anywhere.

Our economy is going nowhere, because the wealthiest insist they should be completely subsidized by those who have the least.  Those who have the least end up with higher taxes, which they can ill afford to pay.  It means these are people who can't afford food, rent, mortgages, utilities, transportation and anything else one needs to survive.  That meager income, subsidized by their higher taxes, has to cover the entire country's needs, including things wealthy people also use, such as highways, fire departments, police departments, etc.

Do you think the money to even keep up your state's legislature comes from the sky or is growing on a tree?  Nope.  It comes from tax revenue.  Do you think your state legislators would want to work in a building with crumbling floors and ceilings?  Of course not.  Do you think that's on the table for "cutting spending"?  No way.

Someone has to subsidize every last thing the government pays out.  Who do you think pays the salaries of those such as Speaker Boehner, Paul Ryan, Rand Paul, Eric Cantor and any of the GOPers who are quick to say tax increases or even closing of loopholes for the wealthy must be off the table...but do you think they've decided they're making too much money and should sacrifice good portions of their hefty salaries?  Do you think they might give up their expense accounts in the name of belt tightening?  Of course not.

These are things they can personally afford to do...but they won't do it in the name of "cutting spending," when they can afford it more than someone who was laid off of their now-outsourced job and can't find another that pays even half as well as their previous job.  Needless to say, even raising taxes on the person now making $15,000/year (as opposed to that same person previously supporting his family of four on $80,000/year) not only hurts that person, but even as the percentage of that fairly minuscule amount of money taken by the government increases, it definitely doesn't give the government the healthy revenue that person once paid into the system.

Our government is corrupt and broken, backed by the interests of the wealthy 1% at the top, the Koch brothers and those of their ilk, who would prefer to see Americans starve than to themselves pay the tiniest bit, the least painful extra tiny percentage of taxes, not because they don't have it to spare, not because they really need it, but because holding onto it gives them power and prestige.  It's not burning a hole in their pockets, they're certainly not spending everything they've got...instead, they're sitting onto it, like the goose that laid the golden egg.  That golden egg sits in the nest, they keep it warm, but it remains there, doing nothing, not hatching, not contributing to anyone in any purposeful, meaningful way.

As citizens, we need to let our government know this is unacceptable.  We need them to know we understand basic economical principles: without income, without revenue, the government can't be solvent, no matter how much spending is cut.  Just like you can't get blood from a stone, without income, the government won't be able to pay the equivalent of its rent, mortgage, utilities, food, etc.  A tiny income from the few who are underpaid isn't enough to pull us out of this: it will take true dedication and patriotism, not bogus flag-waving, from the wealthiest in this country to share the sacrifice, to contribute that income to the government in a way that is painless to them and mighty painful for everyone else, not to mention dangerous to the very survival of those who are currently expected to sacrifice, in order to save the wealthy the trouble.

As part of the Rebuild the Dream movement mentioned in an earlier post, we need to stand with Warren Buffett and demand the wealthiest, who are doing better than ever, despite an economy that's hurting everyone else, give their fair share to a system that has been very, very good to them.
I stand with Warren Buffett

This is what America needs, not a crazy economy based on a few dollars from the poorest and a fictionally-based economy.  America needs real numbers, not fictional math as imagined by an author (rather than a mathematician) with no expertise whatsoever in economics.

If corporations are people and fetuses are people, why are corporations getting away with murder?

Here in the US, you are a taxpayer.  Which means you have the right to work hard, be underpaid, lose your job to someone an ocean and more away, you get no right to health care…but there are two new things that are just as certain as death and taxes: Increasingly, a fetus is given as many rights as a person—and more so.  Should an unborn fetus have a health problem, it must be provided with the finest health care available, often saved at the expense of the mother’s life, not to mention the medical expense itself, which shall fall upon the hapless, unwitting family.  It doesn’t matter if said family loses their home over these expenses or anything; as people, their rights are limited to working, paying taxes, paying their own way through health issues, whether or not they can afford it, and screw everything else.  Worse, the family has zero right to health care, even if they’ve paid all of their taxes faithfully up to date.

Then we have the other side of the coin…corporations.  Which are people.

Except for the fact that corporations don’t have health expenses, they can’t get pregnant, they don’t bleed, they don’t think for themselves…so for all intents and purposes, corporations are inanimate objects, yet have been given the rights of people.

They’ve been given the rights of people, but not the responsibilities.  Therefore, they make plenty of money…but if they don’t pay taxes on that income, no big deal.  (A person, on the other hand, must pay taxes.)

So I propose this.  We have “personhood” amendments popping up everywhere, to deter women from getting abortions.  If corporations are people, too, then “personhood” applies to them, as well.  When a corporation decides to lay off or fire a lot of people, that is akin to abortion.  A CEO calling for these workers to be summarily dismissed is akin to an abortion doctor.  In other words, a “person killer.”  “Murderer.”

We know what the penalties are for abortion in many states.  We know corporations were given personhood by the US Supreme Court.  In this case, the personhood laws should apply just as well to corporations.  I see a lot of future arrests of CEOs, hefty fines paid by corporations for “aborting” said “persons.”  They already oddly get a pass on paying taxes, where the government can’t stop tripping over its own feet about getting that money.

Why are we letting corporations getting away with murder?

Stuck with them for now...but perhaps not for the long run...

Are the members of Congress who didn't try to fight at all for raised revenues or jobs or anything to help the majority of Americans going to be welcomed back with open arms?  Perhaps not:
The poll figures are pretty revealing...

Now, it could be that people will forget by the time elections roll around, although this time, I have to say I doubt that will happen.  While people do tend to have notoriously short memories at times, the kind of behavior from the Republicans, particularly that displayed by the Tea Party, is totally unforgivable to most.  They were willing to throw grandma under the bus, for crying out loud.  When grandma is worried about whether she's going to have to eat cat food in order to be able to afford her expensive medications, when she worries about keeping the roof over her head, the very people who have made her worry aren't exactly at the top of grandma's warm-fuzzies-I-want-to-bake-cookies-for-them list.  Actually...they're a lot lower than that.  It's also something that's pretty hard to forget when it affects your very survival.  People can overlook only so much.  They can overlook the promises of a party that conveniently "forgot" about their lofty promises of jobs after over half a year in office, but what they can't overlook is something that affects them directly.  That's a whole different problem, and there's no way someone struggling can't take it personally.

So for the politicians, particularly GOPers and Tea Partiers (but also Blue Dog Democrats) who are staunchly standing for their right to gut the social safety net, to appease puppet masters like the Koch brothers and the dead author who made up a fictional economy on which they're attempting to gamble base the entire economy of the US, they may find that all of these things they're doing in a bid for re-election will totally fail them, anyway.

Let's hope so.

"But wait...I thought this debt ceiling deal was supposed to make it all better!"

Did the GOP's strategy backfire?

Well, it looks like after holding the economy hostage and getting "98%" of what they wanted--what John Boehner, in particular, wanted--Republicans are now feeling the wrath of the people:
Latest numbers on GOP approval ratings

I'm surprised if this is a surprise to the GOP.  Everyone, except for bureaucrats in Washington, are saying the American public really cares little about the debt ceiling debate or the downgrade, and more about what our government is doing about the situation with our jobs, which is to say...nothing.  And instead of addressing jobs along with the debt ceiling debate, the government decided to hurt people who are already hurting, by slashing what they deem "entitlement" programs, in order to get a deal to raise the debt ceiling.  And ironically, the two don't even go together.

Republicans have decided that when the vehicle known as the US economy is stalled and is completely out of gas, to not spend another dime on it.  So rather than give it a little gas to make it go, they're abandoning it at the side of the road, and who the hell cares if it's vandalized?

You can't run a car without fuel.  You can't run a government without revenue.  If too many of your citizens aren't working, they can't afford to pay hefty taxes when they need money for basic survival.  Once again, we come to very basic economic principles, like that stalled car.  The economy is stalled, not because we're spending too much money, but because we're not bringing in enough money.  Ask any small business owner what keeps their business going...it's not that they've cut spending on the products they sell or by turning off a few lights, it's that they're doing well when they're actually selling product, in other words, making income.

Of course, voodoo economics, "trickle down" economics, fictional Randian economics, etc., are based on the principle that the little people owe the big shots their lives, the pittance the big shots allow them to earn, their firstborn (as slaves)...whatever it takes to make the big shots happy, at whatever the cost to the little guy, whether or not he can actually afford it.  It's not based on math, science or anything that makes much sense in this world...but it's certainly presented as a cure-all for modern problems...so much, the entire Tea Party base of the House worked feverishly to sell this deal with the devil...and succeeded at it so well, the majority of Washington bought it, hook, line and sinker.  Probably added a little sugar and a cherry on top, too, just to make it palatable enough.

The truth is, though, it wasn't palatable to the masses, not even with the sugar or the cherry on top.  Instead, it was a bitter pill, and a message engraved in stone, "YOU ARE NOT IMPORTANT."  Nowhere was there any attempt to crack down on anything that plagues the majority of today's underpaid, overwhelmed citizens.  The GOP didn't even want to bother stopping tax loopholes on private planes and yachts to millionaires to generate a teeny-tiny bit of revenue, even though neither of these items would affect any poor or middle class Americans.  No, raising the tiniest bit of revenue was "too much" to ask of those doing obscenely well.

You reap what you sow.  People are angry.  And what did the GOP do after pushing through a vote to dismantle everything good about the US and not doing a damn thing to fix all of the bad stuff?

Congress went on a five week vacation.  A paid vacation.

In times of austerity, when you're cutting down everything people need in a massive deforestation of the social safety net...you take a paid vacation, for over a month...but you don't cut spending on that, right?

Let's hope this disapproval rating is a wake-up call to the GOP to start creating jobs, rather than screwing around with the American social safety net.  Maybe if they at least cracked down on outsourcing, if they simply cut out the hefty tax cuts companies get for buying foreign workers on H-1b visas or shipping jobs overseas, they might not make their puppet masters very happy, but wow, what job growth we'd have here in the US!  But no, I'm guessing that would require admitting to the facade of "job creators" would cause the job creators to actually create jobs here in the US, rather than pocketing money and buying more luxuries, and that might make them mad.

And then they wouldn't be willing to pay for those candidates anymore.  Which would mean the candidates' days of taxpayer-supported perks (not to mention high-paying jobs where one doesn't have to listen to his/her constituents anymore) would be long over.

If this was a strategy, it doesn't seem like a very good one.  But then, maybe there's a clue to how it works in "Atlas Shrugged" or "trickle-down" economics.  A fictional happy ending is as good as a real happy ending, right?  Just like basing a country's entire economy on the fictional is working so well for all of us already.

I See Your Hypocrisy and Raise You More Hypocrisy...

If you can stomach the following video, my sincerest apologies for the actual source of the link (Faux Noise):
Faux Noise video of Trump complaining about China
(So you don't have to watch the whole thing, the pertinent part appears at about 3:40.)

Somehow, this seems to have flown in under everyone's radar, but I wanted to share it.  I doubt I even need to comment on it.

I refer to some of Trump's statements, such as, "China is our enemy," China is "ripping us!" and "We are rebuilding China!"

The latter may be true...our money may indeed be rebuilding China, but here's the hypocrisy:
Where Donald Trump's menswear line is manufactured

Really?  You're complaining about rebuilding the country and how China is allegedly "ripping us"--yet you've offshored your manufacturing to...where was that?  Something starting with a "C"...Canada?

Oh, wait...that was China.  Meaning it's your money that helps "rebuild China."

Trump's suggestion here was to tax Chinese goods that we import.  Now, that's not a bad idea.  Let's place a hefty tax on all of your menswear as it comes into the country.  Sure, it will come out of your pocket, but maybe that will be an incentive to...oh, I don't know...bring your manufacturing back to the good old USA.  You know...American made.  Not that I'm saying to single you out.  That would be unfair.  Definitely, we should place a good, solid tax on all Chinese-made and Taiwanese-made and any other items made outside the US for US companies.

Actually, Trump has a super idea here, proving himself quite the genius.

Still, what is it with wealthy people these days who bitch and whine about how we're helping other countries...yet who contribute to these same countries with American jobs, stolen from Americans?  I don't recall Trump asking Americans if it was okay for him to pocket the nice tax breaks he got for shipping his jobs off to China...so why is it he can complain about the money he himself spends to pump into China's economy?  We don't manufacture much of anything here, because US companies--and let's be perfectly clear, Trump's is not the only one--found out years ago that it was far more profitable to send that work overseas.

I have an easy solution that will resolve the entire problem to both Trump's satisfaction and ours: bring that manufacturing back to the US.  We can put Americans back to work and closely control manufacturing processes (particularly quality control) right here.  Win-win!  Better yet, we won't be building any other country's economy and here in the US, company owners like Trump will know for a fact whether or not they're getting "ripped."