I'd pay a Billion Dollars to see THAT

This is true, funny, and slightly entertaining, too!

Got that from HuffPo, where they have an interesting article on how corporations are tailoring their products to rich and poor, leaving out the middle:

"The economy is in evident peril, with unemployment high, wages falling, the housing market treading water and growth so slow as to be nearly imperceptible. Yet the rich are doing just fine. Some statistics make clear the size of America's affluence disparity: As of 2010, the richest 20 percent of the U.S. population control 84 percent of the wealth. And the 400 richest Americans have a higher net worth than the full bottom 50 percent of households.
As the wealthy continue to accrue capital -- helped by policies like a low tax on profits from stock and real estate sales -- and the less well-off classes try to make do in a pitiless economic climate, corporations appear to be finally recognizing the reality of the prosperity gap, and tailoring their product lines accordingly. Manufacturers like Procter & Gamble, the household-goods giant responsible for everything from Charmin and Old Spice to Tide, are concentrating their efforts on luxury and bargain items, putting less emphasis on products aimed at the middle class, the Wall Street Journal reports."

Is it wrong to suggest that without a strong, large and vibrant middle class, that our economy will fail?  

Excuse me while I whip this out

Watch "the new sheriff scene from blazing saddles" on YouTube

In anticipation of Obama unveiling his Big Package tonight, a classic clip from Blazing Saddles.  I'd give anything to hear Obama kick off the speech with the subject line, anything! 
Other thoughts... I really hope that other Joe Walsh, the congressman who owes over $100k in child support, gets on TV and talks about Obama ramming his big package down our throats.  It's just too good not to note online, and this blog is where I note this kind of stuff.  I'd like to put it on facebook, but I have a wide range of friends, and I am sure some would be offended.  But c'mon, it's just too perfect.

Unfettered Capitalism at work

Show of Force: Images From the Abu Dhabi Arms Fair | Magazine
We can all get along, well, to buy things to kill each other. 

Defending the President

Nominally conservative/libertarian Reason writer Steve Chapman gives a rundown of Obama's accomplishments as President:

"... by any objective standard, Obama has plenty of achievements. He approved a daring raid that killed Osama bin Laden. He's on his way to ending the Iraq war. He brought about a health insurance overhaul aimed at fulfilling the Democratic dream of universal coverage.
He saved General Motors and Chrysler and the jobs they provide. He scrapped the military's policy against gays. He put new regulations on financial institutions and the credit card industry.
He signed a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. He launched a major initiative to promote innovation in schools, winning praise even from conservatives. He stopped the use of torture against suspected terrorists.
Love it or hate it, this is not the record of a dithering dunce or a confused wimp. It's all in keeping with the vision Obama offered during the 2008 campaign. It's all historically significant. None of it was preordained."

All this in an article with the headline "Why Obama Looks So Bad". 

Time to drop the mortgage interest deduction

REALTORs and mortgage folks will hate me for this, but this article (Reason writer Anthony Randazzo) gets some facts straight, about the Mortgage Interest Deduction. Dare I say, it is time to get rid of it? As a realist and a supporter of the Simpson/Bowles framework, this is a break I'd be willing to give up to help balance the budget:

"When considering the actual tax savings of the mortgage interest deduction, the benefits to the middle class become even more meager. The average tax savings for households with income between $40,000 and $75,000 is just $152 a year. That's $12.66 a month. Compare that to the highest earners, those making $200,000 or more, who see an average of $1,862 a year off their tax bills because of the MID benefit."

Solar System

Andy Griffith on the Patriot Act

Even Atlas Al is "Getting It"

Ex-Fed Chief Greenspan Favors Clinton-Era Tax Rates

You know, he's married to Andrea Mitchell :-)

Bono Hitches a Ride

Oiler Brule gave lift to hitchhiking Bono

This was better than Spidey on AI.  So, Paul McGuinness is Bono's assistant?  Heh.

Don't hack on me

News Republic: http://bit.ly/kK53bB

This is why we threatened to bomb hackers.  It's a new world.

Reason Gets Torture Right

Steve Chapman at Reason had a great piece on torture, back on May 9th, and what really led to bin Laden:

"But it turns out that Mohammed also lied about the courier, saying he was a retired nobody. From this, CIA officials now claim, they knew the guy had to be a big deal. It was a crucial clue.
That's right: When tortured detainees provide truthful information, they prove torture works, and when they lie, they prove it works. If Mohammed had broken into a chorus of "Y.M.C.A.," that would have proved the same.
This bizarre reasoning is one of the many oddities about the defense of torture. Another is that the advocates never, ever refer to it as torture."

 And this is a good place for one of my favorite torture videos, enjoy:

Professional Militaries and Mercenaries

 William Astor of TomsDispatch asks: Are we not unlike 18th Century European Monarchs?  

"Our wars and their impact are kept in remarkable isolation from what passes for public affairs in this country, leaving most Americans with little knowledge and even less say about whether they should be, and how they are, waged. In this sense, our wars are eerily like those pursued by European monarchs in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: conflicts carried out by professional militaries and bands of mercenaries, largely at the whim of what we might now call a unitary executive, funded by deficit spending, for the purposes of protecting or extending the interests of a ruling elite."

And who's right on top of the new mercenary money binge?  Erik Prince, formerly known as founder of Blackwater, (a company that changed its name to a symbol that only the artist formerly-and-now-once-again-known as Prince can pronounce), has pounced on the opportunities in the Middle East "uprisings" and stands prepared to act in whatever manner the top dollar brings:

Two UAE government officials contacted by Reuters declined immediate comment on the New York Times report, and the U.S. embassy in the UAE also had no immediate comment. It was not possible to locate Prince for comment.
The Times quoted a U.S. official who was aware of the program as saying: "The Gulf countries, and the U.A.E. in particular, don't have a lot of military experience. It would make sense if they looked outside their borders for help."
State Department spokesman Mark Toner told The Times the department was investigating to see if the project broke any U.S. laws. U.S. law requires a license for American citizens to train foreign troops.
Toner also pointed out that Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, had paid $42 million in fines in 2010 for training foreign forces in Jordan without a license, the Times said.
According to former employees of the project and U.S. officials cited by the Times, the troops were brought to a training camp in the UAE from Colombia, South Africa and other countries, starting in the summer of 2010.
They were being trained by retired U.S. military, and former members of German and British special operations units and the French Foreign Legion, the Times said.
Prince had insisted the force hire no Muslims, because they "could not be counted on to kill fellow Muslims," the paper said.

Reading these two articles together makes me think that the first article didn't go back far enough.  This is much more like the Crusades in the Middle Ages.  Plus, as a Doobie Brothers fan, I'm super mad at Mr. Prince for giving the term "Blackwater" a nefarious connotation. 

EXXon Pays Too Little

Wow, turns out, EXXon pays about the same percentage in tax as the Top 400, about half what they should pay:

"Exxon Mobil registered an average 17.6 percent federal effective corporate tax rate on its annual earnings in the three years spanning 2008 to 2010. Its average domestic profits exceeded $6.8 billion. And as a 2011 Citizens for Tax Justice report points out:

Over the past two years, ExxonMobil reported $9,910 million in pretax U.S. profits. But it enjoyed so many tax subsidies that its federal income tax bill was only $39 million -- a tax rate of only 0.4 percent.

Even when Exxon Mobil had a record profit of $40 billion in 2008 due to record oil prices it had only a 31 percent effective tax rate. That’s 13 percent lower than the maximum 35 percent despite being Exxon Mobil's fifth year as the top corporate earner in Fortune 500’s annual listing. The company paid no taxes at all to the U.S. federal government in 2009 on its domestic profits of nearly $2.6 billion. It appears that they avoided the tax man that year by legally funneling their profits through wholly owned subsidiaries in countries like the Cayman Islands, and reinvesting their earnings overseas."

It looks like the ultra rich and most profitable corporations have found a way to pay only the percentage they think is fair.  I mean, if you asked them what they thought would be fair, wouldn't they jump at 17-18%?  What a deal!  But we all have to pay more taxes than we want to, at least, those of us in the bottom 99% that are people do.  

Top 400 Pay Way Too Little

Sam Pizzigati has an interesting article over at Alternet that shows how little the Top 400 actually pay in taxes as a percentage of their income.  It's about half of what the government should collect, 18% rather than 35% (the supposed tax rate for the top bracket):

  "In 2008, the IRS revealed last week, 400 Americans reported at least $110 million in income on their federal tax returns. These 400, in a year that ended with millions of Americans out of work and home, averaged $270.5 million each, the second-highest U.S. top 400 average income on record."