Progressive Thought

Republicans Before and After Occupy Wall Street

Charles Willis — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 01:06:36 +0000

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

Charles Willis — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 02:09:21 +0000

Working class Americans are waking up. They’re marching in the streets and joining protests. The government has pampered the rich for long enough. The people that caused the financial crisis should be on trial, not rewarded with bailouts and tax breaks. Protestors are demanding social justice.

The financial elite have been eroding the working class for decades. The economic top one percent of the population now owns over 70% of all financial assets, an all time record. Tax rates for the wealthy are the lowest they’ve been since the 1950s and now CEO pay is between 250 and 500 times that of the average worker.

You have corporations like General Electric, ExxonMobil, Dupont, Wells Fargo, and Verizon (among others) that actually pay a negative tax rate despite making billions in profit. If those companies would have been taxed at a 35% rate the income from corporate taxes would have been 12 percent higher. A majority of Americans want the tax rates to increase for the rich. They’ve realized that trickle down economics is a sham. As tax rates have decreased the gap between the rich and poor has grown astronomically. Now the income disparity is the largest it has been since the census started collecting information about income.

The political and financial elite have been scrambling to ostracize and marginalize these protestors. The corporate media has mocked the protestors using Apple devices and Facebook as a way to organize. Pundits have attacked their appearance and even the fact that they’re at a protest instead of working. If they can’t be ignored they have to be ostracized to protect the status quo.

The internet has been the key component in the spread of information and the organization of these protests. People are waking up to the class warfare that has been going on for decades and Occupy Wall Street is now too big to ignore. If Occupy Wall Street is so wrong, what are the financial elite so worried about?

More Political Gridlock Ahead

Charles Willis — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 09:19:26 +0000

How can we stop the bickering on Capitol Hill and work together for the future of the US? The republicans are clearly the party of solidarity here and aren’t afraid to put the country in a state of political gridlock. With the recent debt ceiling debacle they’ve shown that they are willing to threaten the entire country with economic disaster to just get their way. Until the current democratic administration took over they were willing to raise the debt ceiling every year since 1997.

President Obama recently announced a $450 billion jobs plan to stimulate the economy, which includes $150 billion for infrastructure projects. This sounds like it’s politically too much and effectually too small. Removing certain itemized deductions from individuals making over $200,000 a year (and families making more than $250,000 per year) is projected to generate $400 billion of the required funds. The rest is to be generated by closing tax loopholes for gas and oil companies, changing corporate jet depreciation rules, and altering hedge funds to be taxed as income rather than capitol gains.

Of course the republicans aren’t happy about the way the president has proposed funding the bill. Increasing taxes even marginally is sacrilege. They seem to think the answer to everything is cutting taxes. If taxes are the problem why aren’t the so called “job creators” hiring? Taxes are the lowest they’ve ever been for these corporations and yet the gap between the richest and poorest Americans is the biggest it’s been since the census started recorded household income in 1967.

“Anything that is akin to the stimulus bill I think is not going to be acceptable to the American people.” Cantor told reporters shortly after Obama’s Rose Garden speech. ”The country cannot afford more spending like the stimulus bill.”

It’s obvious that the republicans don’t want the economy to recover. They’re ready to do anything that makes it easier to get the presidency back, even if that means letting the country sink further into the current recession.