Only [in America] can [you] be Pro-Death Penalty, Pro-War, Pro-Nukes, Pro-Land Mines & Pro-Torture but still call yourself ‘Pro-Life.’
Then wrap it all up in fake religion for the full Right Wing hypocrisy.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Pro-Life FAIL
Effective Tax Rates Rand Paul Would Like You To Forget About
"Rand Paul says “the wealthy do pay most of the taxes in this country” claiming that the rich pay 38% of taxes. But again, he is including only federal income taxes, which is one-fifth of the taxes we pay. Other federal taxes, including payroll taxes, are capped at $106,800 of income, and so are actually regressive taxes where the poor pay a significantly higher share.Fun Tax Day FactsThe federal income tax rate on the richest Americans may be 38%, but that doesn’t take into account tax shelters and loopholes that let the rich avoid paying taxes. The richest Americans actually have a lower effective tax rate (17%) than the middle class and even the poor (22.5%). And many of the richest pay no income taxes at all, like hedge-fund manager John Paulson, who made $9 billion in two years but paid zero in taxes on it. In more than one year Donald Trump has paid zero in federal income taxes."
Friday, April 15, 2011
Taking Credit Shamelessly
For eight years under Bush, Republicans could never boast of jobs creation. Ever. In Bush’s last month in office, the country was LOSING 800,000 jobs per month.
Two years into Obama’s term, and after The Recovery Act was passed in February 2009, the country is again adding jobs. The Party of No is now trying to take credit. WTF?
Shameless.
The same party who was ready to shut down the government and put people out of work?
Seriously, Cantor is the kind of guy who says “we won” when talking about his sports team. What number are you, Eric? BTW, you’re not on the winning team, but thanks for tweeting how effective Democrats are at running the government.
Wait wait wait, how were jobs created under the *jobs-crushing healthcare law*?
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Lest We Forget
"Many of you have talked about the need to pay down our national debt. I listened, and I agree. We owe it to our children and our grandchildren to act now, and I hope you will join me to pay down $2 trillion in debt during the next 10 years. At the end of those 10 years, we will have paid down all the debt that is available to retire. That is more debt repaid more quickly than has ever been repaid by any nation at any time in history,"
George W. Bush, in his first major address to Congress in 2001.
The complete bullshit legacy of conservatives and Republicans.
GOP record = 100 days, 0 jobs
Also: 16 bills to repeal all or parts of the Affordable Care Act, 5 bills to repeal the estate tax, a bill to repeal Wall Street Reform, a bill to prevent US-born children of undocumented immigrants from being designated as U.S. citizens, a bill to allow employers that provide health insurance to count that toward their minimum wage compensation, a bill to permanently reduce individual income tax rates, a bill to require that Gitmo be kept open, a bill to prevent the posting of signs indicating work being done/paid for under the Recovery Act and a bill to rename two buildings after Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
12 Tax-Dodging Corporations Spent $1 Billion To Influence Washington Over The Last Decade
A new report by Public Campaign examines how these major corporations have influenced Congress to craft a tax code that lets them get away with making so much money and paying so little taxes in return. In its report, “The Artful Dodgers,” Public Campaign juxtaposes the limited tax liability of dozen major corporations with the companies’ campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures, which amount to more than a billion dollars over the last decade:
EXXON MOBIL: The oil giant that was the world’s most profitable corporation in 2008 has spent $5.7 million in campaign contributions over the last ten years and $138 million in lobbying expenditures. Its federal corporate income tax liabilities for 2009? Absolutely nothing. Not only did it pay nothing, but it also received a tax rebate the same year of $156 million.
CHEVRON: Chevron spent $4.4 million in campaign contributions and $91 million in lobbying expenditures over the last decade. It received a tax refund of $19 million in 2009 while making $10 billion in profits and $324 million in government contracts in 2008.
CONOCOPHILLIPS: The Texas-based gasoline giant spent $2.5 million in campaign contributions and $63 million in lobbying expenditures over the last decade. It received “$451 million through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction,” a special tax break, between 2007 and 2009, despite $16 billion in profits over the same period of time. [read more]
The GOP thinks helping the most wealthy stay wealthy is a special achievement.
Can they do a tougher job of helping the most vulnerable? Not only can they not do that, they try to stop anyone else from trying, too. Pure evil.
The Bleak Financial Numbers From The MySpace Sale Pitch Book
Back in 2008 MySpace was on a roll. They racked up $900 million in revenue and the company was still growing. But a year later top execs started to bail (the smart ones went early). Within two months cofounder and CEO Chris DeWolfe was gone.
We’ve gotten a copy of the confidential MySpace pitch book that parent company News Corp. has distributed to potential buyers. Notably, that pitch book doesn’t include any historical financial or user data about MySpace at all. Everything is projected out and forward looking, and even then it’s bleak.
Revenue for fiscal 2011, ending June 30, 2011, is expected to be just $109 million. Expenses for the year are projected to be $274 million, and the company will lose a whopping $165 million for the 12 month period. That’s after massive waves of layoffs, although I expect much of the costs of the layoffs are included up front in 2011 expenses.
After 2011 the pitch book turns to pure fiction. After losing $165 million this year, they expect to actually have $15 million in ebitda in fiscal 2012. How? Revenue will decrease to $84 million, but expenses will fall from $274 million this year to just $69 million. The company will then be profitable, says the pitch book.
That means about $205 million would need to be found in operating cost savings in the next 14 months. That means even more massive layoffs. And yet somehow News Corp. argues that revenue will only fall 23% in the next year. Costs will decrease 75%, and revenue will fall just 23%.
Believable? Nope. But at least on paper it makes MySpace profitable.
via techcrunch.com
Rupert Murdoch deserves a lot of credit for buying and destroying Myspace. Knowing he is losing millions makes it all tolerable.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
One Tenth The Effort Towards Real Children
“If the anti-abortion movement took a tenth of the energy they put into noisy theatrics and devoted it to improving the lives of children who have been born into lives of poverty, violence, and neglect, they could make a world shine.”
- Michael Jay Tucker (via stfufauxminists)
Pro-fetus, anti-baby, anti-women, control freak scumbags.
Low Tax Rates Create A Spending Problem
Rogue Columnist (via azspot)Thirty years of tax cutting has snowballed into disaster. Combined with two wars that have lasted longer than World War II, military deployments in more than 150 nations, corporate welfare and the cost of the Great Recession, voodoo economics has left America with a substantial deficit and debt. Tax cuts have not delivered on their promise of job creation or widespread prosperity. Quite the opposite.
But the American mentality now is that taxes can only be cut. In fact, at every level of government taxes are too low. The United States has the lowest taxes among advanced nations, and in this survey only Mexico and Chile are lower, nations that are hardly analogous to America or role models.
Contrary to the widespread propaganda, the deficit and debt are not an immediate emergency. Yet they are serious enough to attract attention, and become useful ammo for demagogues on the right who peddle the notion that we face disaster because of spending on poor gay union people of color seeking foreign-aid abortion earmarks.
That the solemn obligations of Social Security and Medicare are the root cause.
Our supposedly liberal/socialist/Islamofascist president has bought into the right-wing narrative: America has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. In reality, low tax rates are most to blame. They have finally been reduced, at every level of government, to crisis-inducing levels.
"
Spending is only a problem for Republicans when a Democrat is in office. And their base is too foolish to even notice.
Get Over It!
Some Christians are gay. And the rest are called parishioners. Doh! Respect to this priest for representing love and the teachings of his Lord.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Fervor Of Wisconsin Debate Shifts To Recall Elections
MADISON, Wis. — Nearly a month after the Wisconsin standoff over union rights ended, some of the fervor from that debate has shifted to recall efforts targeting lawmakers in both parties – Republicans who voted to cut back collective bargaining and Democrats who fled the state to try to stop them.
Now that the law has passed, organizers are focusing on signature-gathering efforts. But of the 16 state senators who were originally targeted, only six appear likely to face an election threatening removal. And before recall elections can be held, supporters need to find candidates to run against the incumbents.
Real grass roots vs Astro-turf corporate-backed Republicans.
Authority
“An authority isn’t a person or institution who is always right — ain’t no such animal. An authority is a person or institution who has a process for lowering the likelihood that they are wrong to acceptably low levels.”
—
via tumblr.com
America Becoming The Mexico Of Europe
"It’s ironic that Ikea looks on the U.S. and Danville the way that most people in the U.S. look at Mexico."— In Sweden, IKEA factory workers start at $19 an hour with five weeks of paid vacation. At the company’s only American plant, workers get $8 an hour and 12 vacation days — eight of which are chosen by the corporation. via the L.A. Times.
Tags: ikea cheap labor
Exploiting cheap labor is the American way. It's not working harder, it's exploiting more. Slaves, Chinese for railroads, European immigrants, Mexicans, current Chinese for everything, India for outsourcing. You name it, we have exploited them.
The chase to the bottom in full effect.
Boehner Abandons Call For An "Adult Moment"
Boehner Abandons Call For An “Adult Moment”
The comments seem to have been largely forgotten, but five months ago, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) took a fairly responsible line when it came to the debt ceiling. If only he’d kept it.
Two weeks after the massive Republican gains in the midterms, Boehner said he’s well aware of the fact that his chamber would to have to extend the federal debt limit. He noted that he’d already “made it pretty clear” to his own caucus that Republicans are “going to have to deal with it as adults.” Boehner added, “Whether we like it or not, the federal government has obligations and we have obligations on our part.”
In December, he was equally sensible. Boehner said at the time, in reference to his own party, “We’ll have to find a way to help educate members and help people understand the serious problem that would exist if we didn’t do it.”
All of that appears to have gone out the window.
Emboldened by the budget skirmish, Boehner has changed his tune, signaling over the weekend that the debt limit vote the nation needs will be freighted with an array of concessions. “The president says, ‘I want you to send me a clean bill.; Well guess what, Mr. President: Not a chance you’re going to get a clean bill,” Boehner said at a fundraiser in Connecticut Saturday night. “There will not be an increase in the debt limit without something really, really big attached to it.”
In other words, Boehner’s first hostage strategy worked pretty well, so he’s decided to try it again. The first time, the risk was a government shutdown. This time, the Speaker is risking a global economic crisis.
This is nothing short of madness.. Dealing with this as “adults” is, by GOP design, no longer an option.
(Source: washingtonmonthly.com)
Sideshow Don
via brooklynmutt.com
"There is zero chance that Donald Trump would ever be hired by the American people. I saw Donald Trump kind of rising in the polls and given his behavior and spectacle the last couple of weeks, I hope he keeps rising. There may be a small part of the country that believes these things, but mainstream Americans think it’s a sideshow. That’s not leadership, that’s kind of sideshow behavior." - David Plouffe
Who Is Really Duped?
"Yes, Obama duped the young people of this country by not doing every single thing they want, so now they’ll all vote Republican. It’s like when I want some bread I will not settle for half a loaf, I will instead have a muffin made of broken glass."— Stephen Colbert responding to Republican Tim Pawlenty when he said that Obama has duped young people.
Republicans love to think they have this amazing program that young voters will embrace: a platform of exclusion, anti-women, anti-poor, anti-immigrant, anti-union, anti-gay marriage, anti-LGBT, anti-choice, pro-gun, pro-corporations, pro-wealth disparity is not that alluring. Trust me.
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