Economy

The White House has a handy website to mislead you about your tax dollars at http://www.whitehouse.gov/taxreceipt

It claims that only 26.3% goes to "National Defense". This is similar to the claim in the 1040EZ US income tax form booklet (see pages 36-37). Here are those two pages in a PDF. There the claim is that the U.S. government only spends 22% of its money on "National defense, veterans, and foreign affairs." The form admits that you could leave out the "foreign affairs" part and still be at 21%.

The White House website claims to calculate both veterans' expenses and foreign affairs separately and still put "defense" alone at 26.3%.

However, take a look now at the pie chart created by the War Resisters League, which shows 51% of the budget going to the military.

In this I will just add a few reports I've come across this morning while waking up, might add some more as they trickle in.

Dishonored Americans: That's All of Us When A Vet Is Left Homeless

April 20, 2011 - L. Tammy Duckworth came to Hartford on Monday and told a sad story.

Duckworth was a Black Hawk helicopter pilot in 2004 when she lost both legs and the partial use of one arm in combat. Now, she's assistant secretary of veterans affairs in D.C., and recently, she was in Vermont talking to a man who was staying with his family at a homeless shelter.

That's sad enough, but the man was excited. A member of the Vermont National Guard, he was getting ready to deploy, and his family had received permission to stay in the shelter for the duration of his tour overseas.

Imagine. Excitement that your family could stay in a homeless shelter.

How do you get politicians living off legalized bribery to criminalize bribery? How do you persuade the corporate media to report on the interests of flesh-and-blood, non-corporate people? How do you take over a political party when the only other one allowed to compete is worse? These are not koans, but actual problems with a single solution.

It might seem like there are a million solutions: pass state-level clean election laws, build independent media, build a new party, etc. But the fundamental answer is that when the deck is stacked against you, you insist on a new deck. Power, as Frederick Douglas told us, concedes nothing without a demand. We cannot legislate our way out of plutocracy. Instead, we the people must seize power.

Credit Rating Agencies Have No Authority to Dictate Terms to Congress

Washington D.C. (April 19, 2011) – Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today released the following statement after Standard & Poor’s (S&P) threatened the fiscal health of the nation by announcing the possibility of a future downgrade of the United States’ credit rating.

“No nation, agency or organization has the authority to dictate terms to the United States Government,” said Kucinich. “S&P and its compatriot Moody’s were a direct cause of the near collapse of the economy of the United States. That industry should be subject to greater oversight, regulation and fundamental overhaul as Washington gets serious about the deficit.”

By Dave Lindorff

Today’sbreathless anxiety-inducing headline was that Standard & Poors, the rating agency, has issued a “negative outlook” warning on US sovereign debt, claiming that the US, in comparison with other countries with a top AAA credit rating, has "very large budget deficits and rising government indebtedness and the path to addressing these is not clear to us". S&P warned that there was a “a one in three chance that the US could lose its AAA rating in two years because of its mounting debt.”

The ratings firm--one of three global companies that Wall Street relies upon to establish the credit ratings of companies and nations around the world--said its analysts had “little confidence” that the Obama administration and the divided Congress would reach any agreement on a deficit-reduction plan before the next national election in the fall of 2012, and that they doubted that any such plan would be adopted until after 2014, two whole Congressional elections away.

Striking miners and their families being evicted from company houses

April 18 1912 - Members of the United Mine Workers of America on Paint Creek in Kanawha County, West Virginia, demanded wages equal to those of other area mines. The operators rejected the wage increase and miners walked off the job. Miners along nearby Cabin Creek, having previously lost their union, joined the Paint Creek strikers and demanded:
• the right to organize
• recognition of their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly
• an end to blacklisting union organizers
• alternatives to company stores
• an end to the practice of using mine guards
• prohibition of cribbing
• installation of scales at all mines for accurately weighing coal
• unions be allowed to hire their own checkweighmen to make sure the companies' checkweighmen were not cheating the miners.

Obama’s Deficit Plan Starts at the Center Right; Where Will He End Up?

By Kevin Zeese

President Obama announced the outlines of his deficit plan, leaving a lot up for negotiation. He planted his poll at the center right and where he ends up, with his history of compromising to bring right wing Republicans and Democratic corporatists together, can only be worse.

USA Today, AP fall for US Uncut ploy; GE stock loses billions

Washington, DC - US Uncut, a burgeoning grassroots movement pressuring corporate tax cheats to pay their fair share, posted today a fake GE press release announcing that they would return their illegitimate (but legal) $3.2 billion tax refund, and that they would lobby to close the sort of corporate tax loopholes that had allowed them to skip taxes in the first place. Several major media outlets, including USA Today, ran the story as true. (Here is a link to the original USA Today story; here is the first article debunking the release.)

By Betsy Ross

We are now on the brink of the mother of all meltdowns in more ways than one.

Last weekend, The Times quoted Alan Hansen, a nuclear engineer and executive vice president of Areva NC, a unit of Areva, a French group that supplied reactor fuel to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plan, who spoke before a private gathering at Stanford University. “Clearly,” he summarized, “we’re witnessing one of the greatest disasters in modern time.” What the on-going release of cancer-causing radioactive fragments means in terms of human health and the environment is only beginning to come to light.

Anybody know of a state, or national mega, that has a lottery, playing mostly to the lower income citizen, dedicated to prison spending, me neither!

SUMMARY

A new report from the NAACP shows states are devoting increasingly larger portions of their budgets to prisons, while education gets smaller and smaller portions. Judy Woodruff discusses the report with NAACP President Benjamin Jealous and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. Transcript

By Michael Collins

ProPublica just sent out the following, with some 886 Government Documents that were released by the Federal Reserve:

Search the Fed’s Documents Detailing Their Lending to Banks During the Crisis

Veterans For Peace Endorses the April 15th Rally and Protest in Union Square Park

By Kevin Zeese

Veterans For Peace has joined in endorsing “Sounds of Resistance,” a concert and protest against Wall Street banks that draws the connections between militarism, Wall Street, the wealth divide and the downward spiral of the wealth of most Americans. The event, on April 15 at 11:00 a.m. in New York City’s Union Square Park, is part of a democratic awakening that more and more Americans are joining.

Government must stop doling out ever-larger tax breaks to the superrich and vast corporations.

by Chuck Collins
www.otherwords.org
www.commondreams.org

Have you heard? America is broke, according to many governors and lawmakers.

They're calling for deep cuts in teacher pay, firing cops, slashing medical services for working-class kids, and scrapping other essential services to narrow state and federal budget deficits.

There's a better and fairer way to tackle this situation. Government must stop doling out ever-larger tax breaks to the superrich and vast corporations.

Around the country, states and towns are gutting their budgets, undermining the quality of our lives.

AFL-CIO blog site about rallies-link in graphic

If you thought you didn't have a reason to participate in the April 4th "We Are One" {face book page link} rallies around the country this report will certainly plant that needed seed as they continue trying to destroy what America once was building successfully, through it's workers!

60min. 3 April 2011, if you missed this it's a must watch and or read!

(to hear the song, go to ThisCantBeHappening! and click on the link.

New Song by Dave Lindorff:

That Tea Party Racket (Ain't Playin' So Well No More) Blues

Governor Scott Walker tried to
Take union rights away
But the workers of Wisconsin
Are gonna make him pay
We’re working on those recalls
Gonna show those bums the door.
That Tea Party racket
Ain’t playin’ so well no more!

Oh here in Pennsylvania
Corbett’s slashing aid to schools.
That means more local taxes.
They’re playing us for fools
But meanwhile with natural gas
He’s giving away the store.
This Tea Party racket
Ain’t playin’ so well no more!


Over in Ohio
The legislature threw
Union rights of cops away
And firefighters too.
What happens if a fire
Starts on the capital floor?
Then that Tea Party racket
Won’t play so well no more!

There’s twenty percent unemployed
Home prices in the the gutter

By David DeGraw, AmpedStatus Report - Contrary to rumors being spread around, I do not know what our friends at Anonymous have planned for Operation Empire State Rebellion (OpESR). However, I wholeheartedly agree with the goals they presented in their "Communication #1" video. They are very similar to reports I have been writing and the movement we have been calling for on our social network.

The current global economic cataclysm is not an anomaly. It is the 11th major financial disaster visited on the poor and working class by U.S. capitalism: Panic of 1785–1788, Panic of 1792, Panic of 1819–1822, Panic of 1837–1843, Panic of 1857–1861, Great Depression or Panic of 1873–1878, Panic of 1893–1897, Panic of 1907, Great Depression 1929–1941, Recession of the mid 1970s and now the Neoliberal Depression of 2008-? On average every 21 years U.S. capitalism provides the people with the gift of personal and financial disaster for many and severe hardship for many more.

For the rest go to
http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/1323

Americans Across the Country are Joining the Culture of Resistance – You Are Needed!

By Kevin Zeese

Are you tired of big banks making record profits, paying giant executive salaries and bonuses and then cooking the books so they avoid paying taxes? We are. And, we are responding. Join us.

On April 15 in Union Square Park in New York City at 11:00 AM we are holding a “Sounds of Resistance Concert” and protest against the big corporate banks that have undermined the U.S. economy and displaced families from their homes. Big Finance has taken more than a trillion from the Department of Treasury and Federal Reserve to pay for their casino gambling on Wall Street but they are still forcing people out of their homes, not lending to small businesses and choking the economy.

Dear Friends,

Yumi Kikuchi & Gen Morita are our good friends who live in Japan. They are anti-war & anti-nuclear activists who have done so much good work, both in Japan & internationally on these issues. Yumi & Gen translated "ADDICTED To WAR" into Japanese and were responsible for over 70,000 copies being sold in Japan. They also put Japanese subtitles on my film “What I’ve Learned About U. S. Foreign Policy” and screened it at the first ever Tokyo Peace Film Festival, which they organized. I could go on & on listing many of the things they have done to promote Peace in the world. Below is what they are asking us to do to help them now.

Frank Dorrel
Veterans for Peace, Chapter 007 Los Angles, CA
-----------
The petition can be accessed through Yumi Kikuchi's blog below or contact her at yumik@fine.ocn.ne.jp

You Can Help Japan : STOP HAMAOKA and TOKAI Nuclear Power Plants Now

Cleaning up our environment is not only related to climate change, it means cleaning up the damage done, and in many cases known to be damaging by the businesses and corporations who caused it, all around us, especially that which kills over time, shorter times!

{This may not be put together well as I've got some thirty plus years of thoughts rushing through my head, have since watching this last night, as I lived in and watched all this go down and the growth of their total control, not only here but across this planet, as compared to the first some thirty years of growing into and starting in the working professions.}

That own our Government, now are covered under the First Amendment, and 'our' representatives fighting so hard for while now gaining millions in campaign contributions, from their real employers, because corporations are now individual citizens and can give unlimited funds to garner what all they want!

I thought foreign contributions to political campaigns were illegal, that's what all the tepublicans were screaming about any Democratic Candidate from President on down for these past decades!

New Book on the Peril of Nuclear Weapons Highlights the Archive's Nuclear Vault

Ron Rosenbaum's How the End Begins Lauds "Astonishing Compilation" of Declassified Documents on the Bomb

Physicians for Social Responsibility Calls for a US Moratorium on New Nuclear Reactors, Citing Medical Risks

Warns Any Radiation Exposure Is Unsafe

Washington, DC - March 19, 2011 – Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) today called for a nationwide
moratorium on new nuclear reactors in the United States and a suspension of operations at the nuclear reactors with a similar design as those involved in the disaster in Japan, as well as those on fault lines. PSR cited the medical risks associated with any level of radiation exposure regardless of how small. Lower doses result in less chance of harm than higher doses, but any dose level can put an individual at risk.

Garment workers around 1900. (Credit: Kheel Center, Cornell University, photographer unknown)

23 March 2011 - Turn back the clock on New York City’s garment district to around the year 1900.

“The average work week was 84 hours, 12 hours every day of the week,” said Ellen Rothman with the Jewish Women’s Archive in Brookline, Mass. “During the busy season, the grinding hum of sewing machines never entirely ceased day or night.”