Smoking Guns?

Gawker's John Cook reports on a trove of information they've uncovered concerning Willard "Offshore Mitt" Romney's elaborate gyrations to avoid paying a fair income tax on the bazillion dollars he has parked in various account in the Cayman Islands:

"Mitt Romney's $250 million fortune is largely a black hole: Aside from the meager and vague disclosures he has filed under federal and Massachusetts laws, and the two years of partial tax returns (one filed and another provisional) he has released, there is almost no data on precisely what his vast holdings consist of, or what vehicles he has used to escape taxes on his income. Gawker has obtained a massive cache of confidential financial documents that shed a great deal of light on those finances, and on the tax-dodging tricks available to the hyper-rich that he has used to keep his effective tax rate at roughly 13% over the last decade." (our emphasis)

If there was ever any wonder why Offshore Mitt didn't want anyone looking through his tax returns, this information might explain why Willard and his fellow plutocrats are so eager to change the subject: they don't want people focusing on the fact that they're playing with rules they fixed while the middle class is getting poorer and poorer.

Rethug Tax "Reform:" Reverse Robin Hood

A study by Senate Democrats and reviewed by non-partisan tax experts, shows that the effect of the Rethuglican's tax "reform" plan would be raising much larger taxes on the middle class while sharply cutting taxes for the wealthy. It would also reduce federal tax revenues by $4.5 trillion over the next decade, exacerbating the deficit issue that the Rethuglicans and other squirrels claim is so important to address ("Austerity!"). (To see the best graphic of the impact of the tax "reform" plan, be sure to click on the chart in the linked article.) You couldn't find a starker example of the "reverse Robin Hood" Rethuglican/ Ayn Rand philosophy that the "productive" (a.k.a., the "wealthy," the "job creators") are to be rewarded with more wealth at the expense of a shrinking and declining middle class. You also couldn't find a starker contrast with what the Democrats believe and fight for.

Class Warfare Quote of the Day

Floyd Norris tells us why the Occupy/ 99% movement has it right. (Low-wage) "Job Creators," my ass!

"In the eight decades before the recent recession, there was never a period when as much as 9 percent of American gross domestic product went to companies in the form of after-tax profits. Now the figure is over 10 percent.

During the same period, there never was a quarter when wage and salary income amounted to less than 45 percent of the economy. Now the figure is below 44 percent.

For companies, these are boom times. For workers, the opposite is true."

Cartoon of the Day

(click to enlarge)
The 2012 Presidential election will be the first to allow unlimited corporate contributions. The nation's wealthiest plutocrats and biggest corporations already own a major political party, and employ thousands of lobbyists and lawyers to ensure their continued prosperity. Not satisfied with this advantage, they're also going after labor unions nationwide, trying to limit or destroy their political power and organizing. We live in a different country than even a decade ago, and until the middle class realizes that economic war is being waged against it by the plutocrats, it won't change.

Cartoon of the Day

(click to enlarge)

Krugman Takes on Ryan's Nonsense

In today's New York Times, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman highlights the differences between the radical and selfish budget proposal developed by the Rethuglicans' newest shiny object, Rep. Paul "Lyin'" Ryan, and the President's balanced view. It's well worth reading. Krugman quotes Obama's rejection of the Beltway conventional wisdom that Lyin' Ryan's proposal was somehow "courageous" and "serious":

"On Wednesday, as I said, the president called Mr. Ryan’s bluff: after offering a spirited (and reassuring) defense of social insurance, he declared, 'There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. And I don’t think there’s anything courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill.' Actually, the Ryan plan calls for $2.9 trillion in tax cuts, but who’s counting?"

Several Rethugs, in response to the President's speech, used code words like "job creators" for the wealthiest 2%, and implied that this was Dems using "class warfare." As billionaire investor Warren Buffett noted a few years ago, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” The Rethuglican right serves as the shock troops for the very rich in that war, as Obama made very clear on Wednesday. Now it's time to keep pressing that message over and over.

The Rethug's Plan for a Diminished America

Harold Meyerson has a column worth reading in today's Kaplan Daily. In his column, Meyerson shows that the plan offered by Rethug budget whiz kid Paul "Lyin'" Ryan is not a budget plan, but a right-wing ideological attack on middle class Dem programs of the last century. As Meyerson says,

"The cover under which Ryan and other Republicans operate is their concern for the deficit and national debt. But Ryan blows that cover by proposing to reduce the top income tax rate to just 25 percent. He imposes the burden for reducing our debt not on the bankers who forced our government to spend trillions averting a collapse but on seniors and the poor. The reductions in aid to the poor, says the budget blueprint that Ryan released, will be made 'to ensure that America’s safety net does not become a hammock that lulls able-bodied citizens into lives of complacency and dependency.' That’s a pretty good description of America’s top bankers, but Ryan’s budget showers them with tax cuts."

Did you catch Lyin's petty dig at those lazy middle class people looking for a hammock? Why next thing you know, those Negro bucks will be jumping in their Cadillacs, getting t-bone steaks with food stamps.

It's worth noting -- even if the Beltway media avoids it -- that Lyin' Ryan's budget plan doesn't hold water in terms of the claims it makes. It's the same Rethug formula: cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations, slash regulations for environmental protection and health care, and ditch sustainable energy initiatives. What taxes that are collected come disproportionately from over-burdened middle and lower income citizens.

If America buys this repugnant con job, we're in a world of hurt.

Collective Bargaining and the Republican War on the Middle Class

Professors Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson have a must-read Kaplan Daily article on the Rethuglican attempts in Wisconsin, Ohio, and elsewhere, to destroy the power and influence of America's labor unions. The authors survey post-WWII history to demonstrate how the war on the middle class by the wealthy, corporation-loving Rethugs has evolved. Money quote:

"In moments of candor, critics of unions reveal that their agenda transcends budget concerns. House Speaker John Boehner, for instance, decried an economic rescue package for states last year as a 'payoff to union bosses and liberal special interests.'

But the goal of union opponents is not to exorcise 'special interests' from American politics. It is to protect the special interests that represent corporate America and Wall Street from any serious challenge."

Which brings to mind a related joke: A CEO, a teabagger and a union worker are sitting around a table. A plate with a dozen cookies is brought in, and the CEO immediately takes 11 of them. When the other two look at him in surprise, the CEO locks eyes with the teabagger, nods toward the union worker and says, "You'd better watch him; he wants a piece of your cookie!"