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Friday, November 25, 2011
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Why “Occupy Wall Street” – Redux
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The Top 0.1% Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains
by Robert Lenzner
Capital gains are the key ingredient of income disparity in the US – and the force behind the winner takes all mantra of our economic system. If you want even out earning power in the U.S, you have to raise the 15% capital gains tax.
Income and wealth disparities become even more absurd if we look at the top 0.1% of the nation's earners – rather than the more common 1%. The top 0.1% – about 315,000 individuals out of 315 million – are making about half of all capital gains on the sale of shares or property after 1 year; and these capital gains make up 60% of the income made by the Forbes 400.
It's crystal clear that the Bush tax reduction on capital gains and dividend income in 2003 was the cutting edge policy that has created the immense increase in net worth of corporate executives, Wall St. professionals and other entrepreneurs.
The reduction in the tax from 20% to 15% continued the step-by-step tradition of cutting this tax to create more wealth. It had first been reduced from 35% in 1978 at a time of stock market and economic stagnation to 28%. Again 1981, at the start of the Reagan era, it was reduced again to 20% – raised back to 28% in 1987, on the eve of the October 19 232% crash in the market. In 1997 Clinton agreed to reduce it back to 20%, which move was an inducement for the explosion of hedge funds and private equity firms – the most "rapidly rising cohort within the top 1 per cent."
Make no mistake; the battle that is to be fought over the coming attempt to reverse this reduction in capital gains will be bloody and intense. The facts are clear according to the Congressional Budget Office more than 80% of the increase in income inequality was the result of an increase in the share of household income from capital gains. In fact, you can go so far as to claim that "Capital Gains income is the most unevenly distributed – and volatile – source of household income," according to Laura D'Andrea Tyson, University of California business professor and former chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton.
No wonder the super wealthy plutocrats obtained the largest share of national income – 25% of the nation's wealth – greater than any other industrial nation in the period of 1979 to 2005. Make no mistake; after unemployment – this disparity between the 1% – 3 million – or the 0.1% – the 300,000 – and the other 312 million citizens of the U.S. has become the major theme of the Occupy Wall Street movement – and an important national debate.
I commend you to the late Justice Louis Brandeis warning to the nation that "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." We have to make up our minds to restore a higher, fairer capital gains tax to the wealthiest investor class – or ultimately face increased social unrest. [emphasis added]
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Friday, November 18, 2011
Airline Demands On-Board Passengers Kick In for Fuel
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Airline passengers asked for extra cash for fuel
by DANICA KIRKA
LONDON (AP) — Airlines have already begun charging for food, drinks, seat assignments and baggage. Now one is demanding that passengers cough up extra cash on board for fuel.
Hundreds of passengers traveling from India to Britain were stranded for six hours in Vienna when their Comtel Air flight stopped for fuel on Tuesday. The charter service asked them to kick in more than 20,000 pounds ($31,000) to fund the rest of the flight to Birmingham, England.
The situation may represent a new low in customer care in an era when flyers are seeing long lines, long waits and few perks.
Britain's Channel 4 news broadcast video showing a Comtel cabin crew member telling passengers: "We need some money to pay the fuel, to pay the airport, to pay everything we need. If you want to go to Birmingham, you have to pay."
Some passengers said they were sent off the plane to cash machines in Vienna to raise the money.
"We all got together, took our money out of purses — 130 pounds ($205)," said Reena Rindi, who was aboard with her daughter. "Children under two went free, my little one went free because she's under two. If we didn't have the money, they were making us go one by one outside, in Vienna, to get the cash out."
Amarjit Duggal told the BBC she was flying from the Indian city of Amritsar on Comtel after scattering her mother's ashes. Her father, sister and uncle were still in Amritsar and did not know when they would be able to return home.
The situation was highly unusual in Europe, where airlines are tightly regulated, said Sue Ockwell, a crisis management expert at Travel PR.
"It's a bit like, well, boarding a train and saying that you can't go on because they've cut the electricity off because they haven't paid the bill," Ockwell said. "You just really don't expect it. This is patently not going to do that airline any good at all."
The passengers did eventually reach Birmingham, but many expressed anger.
"It is absolutely disgusting," said Dalvinder Batra, who is from the West Midlands. "There are still people stuck out there."
Bhupinder Kandra, the airline's majority shareholder, told the Associated Press from Vienna that travel agents had taken the passengers' money before the planes left but had not passed it on to the airline.
"This is not my problem," he said. "The problem is with the agents."
But Kandra insisted Thursday the company was still solvent.
"We have not run out of money," he said. "We have enough."
Late Thursday, the Civil Aviation Authority stepped in to protect passengers after a company that sold flights on Comtel Air went out of business. Astonbury Ltd., trading as Skyjet, ceased trading. The authority will ensure that passengers get home in the coming days.
A similar Comtel situation was taking place back in Amritsar. Some 180 passengers on another Comtel flight were told they would not be taking off until they come up with 10,000 rupees (about $200) each, Kandra told the BBC on Thursday.
It was not clear when that plane was supposed to have taken off. The passengers in Amritsar were not stuck on the plane or at the airport, according to British diplomats in India. Most were booking flights on other airlines to get to Britain.
Ockwell dismissed Kandra's explanations, saying it sounded like a bad credit issue.
"One really does wonder," she said.
Airport officials in Birmingham said Thursday that Comtel's flights this weekend had been canceled, but Kandra insisted all would be operating as normal.
Kate Hanni, the executive director of FlyersRights.org, a nonprofit advocacy group for airline passengers, said she would be anxious to see how government handled the situation — and whether there would be punishment for the airline involved.
"I have never heard anything like that on a Greyhound — and there is no rest stop in the sky," she said, referring to a North American bus company. "The airlines are only competing on the lowest fares. They have reduced customer service to an afterthought.
"There's plenty of absurdity in airline land," she said.
Ravi Nessman in New Delhi contributed to this report.
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Are You Genetically Compassionate?
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Strangers Spot People With Compassionate Genes in Seconds
by Jennifer Welsh
Strangers can "see" a persons trustworthy genes through their behaviors, suggests a new study finding that a single genetic change makes a person seem more compassionate and kind to others.
The gene in question is the "love hormone," or oxytocin, receptor. A single change in the receptor can result in higher or lower empathy, or how much you can emotionally relate to others. These changes can be detected by strangers from just 20 seconds of soundless video; these strangers could literally see the person's genes manifesting in their behavior.
Read the full article here:
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Thursday, November 10, 2011
Republican-to-English Dictionary
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Received by email, author unknown.
~~~ Please post your suggested additions to the dictionary in a comment ~~~
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Talking to a Republican can be frustrating. Often, it seems like they are speaking an entirely different language – and in many cases, they are For this reason, in the hopes of facilitating cross-party dialogue and mutual understanding, I have compiled what I believe to be the first comprehensive Republican-to-English dictionary, featuring words commonly used by Republicans, and their English translations, alphabetized for your convenience:
- America (United States of): A country located in the N. Western Hemisphere that is #1.
- Bible: A sacred text that provides incontestable answers when thumped.
- Birth Certificate: An official birth record required of all US Presidents, regardless of race, since 2008.
- Capitalism: A system of economic organization that has never been attempted.
- Christmas: A holiday commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, now rarely celebrated due to persecution by atheists.
- Compromise: (uncommon) A form of political suicide.
- Coast (East): A very bad coast of the continental United States.
- Coast (West): Another really inexcusable coast.
- Communism: The belief that the government should never do anything.
- Condescending: Accurately informed.
- Constitution (U.S.): The hallowed founding document of the United States, the text of which must be interpreted strictly and amended immediately.
- Corporations: Large people who are overtaxed.
- Deficits: 1) Fiscal shortfalls incurred by Democrats that threaten to bankrupt the country. 2) Fiscal shortfalls incurred by Republicans that don't matter.
- Democrat: A political party.
- Election: A method of selecting representatives, the fraudulence of which may be determined by the outcome.
- Elitist: Qualified.
- Endangered Species: Animals that have it coming.
- Evolution: A theory of human origins that is out there.
- Extremist (Liberal): Espousing or adhering to political beliefs that are held by only a majority of Americans.
- Fact: Information that has been verifiably posted to a Red State comment board.
- Forest (National): Trees that have it coming.
- Gut: Region of the body from which decisions should be made.
- Homosexuality: A membership-only lifestyle organization that perpetuates itself through youth recruitment.
- Hitler: A man to whom it would be inappropriate to compare President Obama in spite of the many uncanny similarities.
- Jesus: Charismatic religious leader and son of God; born in Bethlehem in the year 0; beliefs include love, charity, enhanced interrogation, privatized healthcare, elimination of the estate tax, and the right to carry concealed semiautomatic weapons.
- League (Ivy): an association of eight Eastern universities and colleges, the lack of a fancy education from which qualifies a candidate for political office.
- Liberal: A person who should be rounded up and shot but not really.
- Marxism: A political and economic philosophy developed by Karl Marx and promulgated by Paul Krugman.
- Media (Mainstream): Where you won't hear things.
- Medicare: A fraudulent, socialistic boondoggle that is sacrosanct.
- Mexicans: Brown people who have it coming.
- Mountaintops: Ancient rock formations that have it coming.
- Muslims: Brown people who have it coming.
- News: Fox News
- Obamacare: A Federally-mandated policy to address the national oversupply of grandparents through euthanasia.
- Organic: Eaten by lesbians.
- Party (Tea): A grass-roots movement of patriotic Americans fighting for the principle of "No Taxation With Representation."
- Poll: A survey used to determine, to within a margin of error, what percentage of Americans are right.
- Poverty: The condition of having inadequate financial or material resources due to not trying hard enough.
- Propaganda: The politically motivated dissemination of biased information, opinion, or data through its publication in the New York Times.
- Punishment (Capital): The legally authorized killing by the State of someone who is definitely guilty.
- Racism: A form of discrimination that typically happens in reverse.
- Regulation: Rules issued by a government agency for no reason.
- Ronald Reagan: A fictional character based loosely on President Ronald Reagan.
- Scientist: A person who employs a rigorous system of observation, experiment, measurement, and verification to perpetuate his Godless left-wing agenda.
- Social Security: A redistributionist Ponzi scheme that is sacrosanct.
- Socialism: An economic system invented by FDR.
- Taxes: Levies imposed by the government that raise more revenue the lower they are.
- Torture: A method of interrogation that does not rise to the level of torture.
- Terrorist: A person to whom a person who threatens to destroy the U.S. economy unless his demands are met should not be compared.
- Unbiased: Giving equal weight to both sides of the looking glass.
- Wealthy (the): People who earned every penny.
- Up: A direction which, depending on circumstances, is down.
- Warming (Global): An anomalous, anthropogenic increase in the earth's atmospheric and oceanic temperatures that isn't happening.
- Welfare: A government program to distribute Cadillacs to unwed mothers.
- Yes: (no translation available)
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Sunday, October 30, 2011
Why “Occupy Wall Street”? Here’s Why
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October 29, 2011
Did You Hear the One About the Bankers?
CITIGROUP is lucky that Muammar el-Qaddafi was killed when he was. The Libyan leader’s death diverted attention from a lethal article involving Citigroup that deserved more attention because it helps to explain why many average Americans have expressed support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. The news was that Citigroup had to pay a $285 million fine to settle a case in which, with one hand, Citibank sold a package of toxic mortgage-backed securities to unsuspecting customers — securities that it knew were likely to go bust — and, with the other hand, shorted the same securities — that is, bet millions of dollars that they would go bust. [Emphasis added]
It doesn’t get any more immoral than this. As the Securities and Exchange Commission civil complaint noted, in 2007, Citigroup exercised “significant influence” over choosing $500 million of the $1 billion worth of assets in the deal, and the global bank deliberately chose collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s, built from mortgage loans almost sure to fail. According to The Wall Street Journal, the S.E.C. complaint quoted one unnamed C.D.O. trader outside Citigroup as describing the portfolio as resembling something your dog leaves on your neighbor’s lawn. “The deal became largely worthless within months of its creation,” The Journal added. “As a result, about 15 hedge funds, investment managers and other firms that invested in the deal lost hundreds of millions of dollars, while Citigroup made $160 million in fees and trading profits.”
Citigroup, which is under new and better management now, settled the case without admitting or denying any wrongdoing. James Stewart, a business columnist for The Times, noted that Citigroup’s flimflam made “Goldman Sachs mortgage traders look like Boy Scouts. In settling its fraud charges for $550 million last year, Goldman was accused by the S.E.C. of being the middleman in a similar deal, allowing the hedge fund manager John Paulson to help choose the mortgages and then bet against them without disclosing this to the other parties. Citigroup dispensed with a Paulson figure altogether, grabbing those lucrative roles for itself.” (Last Thursday, the U.S. District Court judge overseeing the case demanded that the S.E.C. explain how such serious securities fraud could end with the defendant neither admitting nor denying wrongdoing.)
This gets to the core of why all the anti-Wall Street groups around the globe are resonating. I was in Tahrir Square in Cairo for the fall of Hosni Mubarak, and one of the most striking things to me about that demonstration was how apolitical it was. When I talked to Egyptians, it was clear that what animated their protest, first and foremost, was not a quest for democracy — although that was surely a huge factor. It was a quest for “justice.” Many Egyptians were convinced that they lived in a deeply unjust society where the game had been rigged by the Mubarak family and its crony capitalists. Egypt shows what happens when a country adopts free-market capitalism without developing real rule of law and institutions.
But, then, what happened to us? Our financial industry has grown so large and rich it has corrupted our real institutions through political donations. As Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, bluntly said in a 2009 radio interview, despite having caused this crisis, these same financial firms “are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they, frankly, own the place.”
Our Congress today is a forum for legalized bribery. One consumer group using information from Opensecrets.org calculates that the financial services industry, including real estate, spent $2.3 billion on federal campaign contributions from 1990 to 2010, which was more than the health care, energy, defense, agriculture and transportation industries combined. Why are there 61 members on the House Committee on Financial Services? So many congressmen want to be in a position to sell votes to Wall Street. [Emphasis added]
We can’t afford this any longer. We need to focus on four reforms that don’t require new bureaucracies to implement. 1) If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big and needs to be broken up. We can’t risk another trillion-dollar bailout. 2) If your bank’s deposits are federally insured by U.S. taxpayers, you can’t do any proprietary trading with those deposits — period. 3) Derivatives have to be traded on transparent exchanges where we can see if another A.I.G. is building up enormous risk. 4) Finally, an idea from the blogosphere: U.S. congressmen should have to dress like Nascar drivers and wear the logos of all the banks, investment banks, insurance companies and real estate firms that they’re taking money from. The public needs to know.
Capitalism and free markets are the best engines for generating growth and relieving poverty — provided they are balanced with meaningful transparency, regulation and oversight. We lost that balance in the last decade. If we don’t get it back — and there is now a tidal wave of money resisting that — we will have another crisis. And, if that happens, the cry for justice could turn ugly. Free advice to the financial services industry: Stick to being bulls. Stop being pigs.
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Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Congressman John D. Dingell’s 1999 Prediction of the 2008 Financial Collapse
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In a speech on the Floor of the House of Representatives in 1999, Congressman John D. Dingell of Michigan’s 15th District warned against repealing the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. Glass-Steagall prohibited banks from engaging in non-banking business. Its repeal allowed banks to get into the insurance, investment, real estate and other markets.
He argued that repealing the law would allow banks to become “too big to fail,” which would cause instability in financial system. His prediction was routinely ignored, resulting in Congress repealing the law. The repeal led to the tragic consequences of the 2008 financial crisis from which the US and the world are still suffering.
Prescient? I think so.
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