Senator Bernie Sanders Introduces Bill to Apply Payroll Tax to High Incomes
Posted: March 7, 2013 Filed under: Barack Obama, Medicare, Social Security, The Media SUCKS, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: payroll tax cap, Senator Bernie Sanders, Social Security 31 Comments
I’m sure most of the corporate media will ignore this, but Senator Bernie Sanders today introduced a bill to “strengthen Social Security” by applying payroll taxes to all income–including from self-empoyment–to people earning more than $250,000 annually. So far I’ve only seen this reported by one national media outlet.
Sanders and other liberals are concerned Obama may strike a deficit-reduction deal with Republicans that would reduce Social Security benefits by adopting a less generous way of adjusting benefits for inflation.
Sanders on Thursday introduced legislation co-sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to raise payroll taxes on the wealthy to extend the solvency of Social Security.
Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Al Franken (Minn.) and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) have co-sponsored the bill as well.
Representative Peter De Fazio is introducing a companion bill in the House.
“Social Security is facing an unprecedented attack from those who either want to privatize it completely or who want to make substantial cuts,” said Sanders at a press conference. “The argument being used to cut Social Security is that because we have a significant deficit problem and a $16.6 trillion national debt, we just can’t afford to maintain Social Security benefits.
“This argument is false. Social Security, because it is funded by the payroll tax, not the U.S. Treasury, has not contributed one nickel to our deficit,” he said.
Sanders estimates switching to a chained-CPI formula for determining benefits for Social Security would result in the average 65 year old living on about $15,000 a year receiving $650 less each year when they turn 75 and $1,000 less a year when they turn 85.
The bill is supported by (PDF) “The Strengthen Social Security Campaign, comprised of more than 320 organization throughout the country representing more than 50 million Americans, including the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare; AFL-CIO; United Steelworkers; Alliance for Retired Americans; Social Security Work; Campaign for Community Change; The Arc.”
The AARP announced yesterday that it is going to be running ads
If you haven’t read the op-ed by Thomas Edsall (The War on Entitlements) in today’s New York Times, I hope you will take the time to do so now. Thanks to RalphB for posting the link on the morning thread! Here’s the introduction:
The debate over reform of Social Security and Medicare is taking place in a vacuum, without adequate consideration of fundamental facts.
These facts include the following: Two-thirds of Americans who are over the age of 65 depend on an average annual Social Security benefit of $15,168.36 for at least half of their income.
Currently, earned income in excess of $113,700 is entirely exempt from the 6.2 percent payroll tax that funds Social Security benefits (employers pay a matching 6.2 percent). 5.2 percent of working Americans make more than $113,700 a year. Simply by eliminating the payroll tax earnings cap — and thus ending this regressive exemption for the top 5.2 percent of earners — would, according to the Congressional Budget Office, solve the financial crisis facing the Social Security system.
So why don’t we talk about raising or eliminating the cap – a measure that has strong popular, though not elite, support?
I think we all know the answer to that question, don’t we?
Thursday Reads: Will Obama Pull off A Grand Betrayal? And Other News…
Posted: March 7, 2013 Filed under: Barack Obama, morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: Grand Betrayal, paranoia, sequestration 58 Comments
Good Morning?
We weren’t supposed to get any snow until late this afternoon, but it’s already coming down. The snow from the last two storms was just about gone and you could see the ground in places. Now they’re saying we may get up to a foot of snow. I’m hoping that’s not going to pan out.
Let’s see what’s happening out there in the world.
Call me paranoid, but I’m beginning to get the feeling that we’re being gamed by both Democrats and Republicans. Late last night, I was listening to a 24-hour politics station Sirius-XM radio, called POTUS radio.
Now I didn’t get the name of the man being interviewed, but he said that President Obama had asked Lindsey Graham to help him organize last night’s dinner with Republican Senators weeks ago! According to this guy, everything is coming together for Obama and for the Republicans–they are each getting what they wanted, which is serious austerity. Obama will get his “entitlement reforms” and the Republicans will get–what? Will there be any new revenue at all, or will the full burden for deficit cutting in the “grand bargain” fall on the social safety net?
From The New York Times Caucus blog:
For Washington-watchers looking for positive signs from President Obama’s unusual dinner with Republican senators on Wednesday night, there was this: Senators John McCain of Arizona and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma each gave waiting reporters a thumbs up as lawmakers exited the private dining room….
Besides Mr. McCain and Mr. Coburn, the diners were the Republican Senators Bob Corker of Tennessee, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Dan Coats of Indiana, Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, Mike Johanns of Nebraska, Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Hoeven of North Dakota, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and – the only woman – Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire….
The president insists that any alternative package must combine a balance of spending cuts and new revenues, while Republicans generally oppose new taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
In the Senate…a number of Republicans are known to support higher tax revenues if Mr. Obama and Democrats agree to significant long-term reductions in future spending for the fast-growing entitlement programs, chiefly Medicare and Medicaid but also Social Security – just the trade-off Mr. Obama supports. Mr. Coburn and Mr. Chambliss, for example, are members of a bipartisan group that has supported a deficit-reduction plan with more additional revenues than the president has proposed.
I haven’t yet been able to find confirmation of the report I heard last night, but it would not surprise me. If Graham organized the dinner, it would also explain why the invitees included the three stooges, Graham and his pals John McCain, and Kelly Ayotte–who have been inseparable since they decided to raise hell over the attacks on the Benghzi consulate.
That the outcome described in the highlighted passage from the Caucus blog (see above) was either expected or deliberately planned would also explain why the latest meme in the media for the past week or so has been that Obama is suddenly weak and has no leverage and so much go hat in hand begging the Republicans for mercy.
Late Night: Guitarist Alvin Lee Has Gone Home
Posted: March 6, 2013 Filed under: just because | Tags: Alvin Lee, blues, British Invasion, Obituaries 4 Comments
Sad news today…
Alvin Lee, lead guitarist and vocalist for the 1960s group Ten Years After, died this morning of complications from routine surgery, according to his website. He was 68.
Lee’s blues-rock group Ten Years After already was big in England before rocketing to international fame with its wild show at Woodstock in 1969. The band’s 10-minute rendition of Lee’s “I’m Going Home” became a cornerstone of Michael Wadleigh’s film about the festival and its soundtrack album, which would spend four weeks at No. 1 in the U.S. in 1970.
Having grown up on his family’s jazz and blues records but inspired by ’50s rock ’n’ roll, Lee, born Dec. 19, 1944, formed the Jaybirds in his midteens in his hometown of Nottingham, England. The group had some success after following The Beatles to Hamburg, Germany, but took hold after changing its name and relocating to London.
The newly christened Ten Years After played a residency at Marquee Club, where The Rolling Stones had debuted a half-decade earlier. A gig at the 1967 Windsor Jazz & Blues Festival led to a record deal with Denam. The band’s 1967 self-titled debut album — an innovative mix of rock, blues and swing jazz that featured “I’m Going Home” — failed to chart but received some airplay in San Francisco’s burgeoning FM radio scene.
That led legendary promoter Bill Graham to bring the band across the pond for a U.S. tour — the first of more than two dozen American jaunts during the next seven years.
Woodstock propelled Ten Years After into the forefront of the second-wave British Invasion, whose emphasis often was on flashy guitar playing with extensive solos.
Lee told the BBC in 2012 that he still had the 335 he played at Woodstock, but that he didn’t use it much any more, “because it’s too valuable.”Lee also later said he was ambivalent about the band becoming headlining stars, saying it took away some of the intimacy he enjoyed playing for smaller audiences in closer quarters….Lee, like his friend John Mayall, always said he wanted to stay true to the blues, country, jazz and rock roots he heard in his youth, and he spent much of his musical time going back there.
Back to The Hollywood Reporter:
Ten Years After ultimately released 10 albums before splitting in 1973. Lee soon teamed with American gospel singer Mylon LeFevre for a country rock album, On the Road to Freedom, which featured such guests as George Harrison, Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Mick Fleetwood and Ron Wood. Lee would spend the rest of the ’70s touring and making solo records. During the decade’s waning years, he formed Ten Years Later, which released a pair of albums, and he continued to play gigs in the U.S. and Europe.
During the ’80s, he teamed with Rare Bird vocalist Steve Gould and toured with ex-Stone Mick Taylor in his band, and his ”90s albums include Zoom and 1994 (I Hear You Rocking).
In 2004, he released the rootsy Alvin Lee in Tennessee, teaming with Scotty Moore and D.J. Fontana from Elvis Presley’s band. His most recent record, 2007’s Saguitar, flowed from hard rock to slow blues to a take on rap. His 14th solo album, Still on the Road to Freedom, was released in August. A new compilation album, Best of Alvin Lee, was issued in May.
Rest In Peace, Alvin. You’ve left us too soon.
It’s Not our Imagination: Right Wing Cults at all time High
Posted: March 6, 2013 Filed under: right wing hate grouups | Tags: Southern Poverty Law Center 24 CommentsI had almost convinced myself that the level of right wing hatred and ignorance that I’d noticed recently on the web was due to the increasing number of 
people using social media outlets that used to be fairly exclusive little clubs when I started using them. Just to give you an idea, when I got on Facebook, you had to have an email address with an .edu ending or you were basically SOL. I was also on the internet when most of the folks you bumped into were in the high tech business or were some how connected to universities. I still consider the day the internet went to pot as the same day AOL let loose their population of subscribers. Now, I get some pretty cool graphics and content but that certainly comes with the added expense of added contact with idiots and tons of businesses looking for suckers with ads.
However, I’ve just recently found out that there are actually a larger number of radical right wing groups being formed and it’s just not my inability to avoid contact with them on line. Libertarian Cults and “Patriot” style militia groups have come along with the Teabutts. I hesitate to call them patriots because most of what I read from them sounds more like crap you read right around the Civil War days coming from the Confederates.
While the more mainstream anti-government Tea Party movement faded from view as the GOP co-opted it in the past few years, the action has moved to the fringes, where the number of radical right-wing Patriot groups reached an all time high in 2012, according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center. What’s more, it’s the fourth year in a row that the record has been broken.
Conspiracy-minded Patriot groups first entered the public consciousness in the 1990s with the rise of the militia movement, and then the Oklahoma City bombing. Now, the SPLC is warning government officials that they see eerie similarities between the current era and that leading up to the bombing.
“As in the period before the Oklahoma City bombing, we now are seeing ominous threats from those who believe that the government is poised to take their guns,” the group’s president, Richard Cohen, wrote in a letter sent Tuesday to Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
The number of Patriot groups peaked after the bombing in 1996 at 858, before falling off steeply and remaining low under George W. Bush. However, since the election of Barack Obama, the number of groups tracked by the SPLC has skyrocketed and continued to climb.
Last year, the SPLC found 1,360 Patriot groups in the country — up more than 500 over the ’96 peak — including 321 militia groups.
The report does indicate which factors seem to be contributing to this rise. 
“Now, in the wake of the mass murder of 26 children and adults at a Connecticut school and the Obama-led gun control efforts that followed, it seems likely that that growth will pick up speed once again,” the center noted.
The report also cites the election of Obama, efforts to grant more than 11 million undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship, and a troubled economy as contributing factors in the growth of the far-right groups.
“We are seeing a real and rising threat of domestic terrorism as the number of far-right anti-government groups continues to grow at an astounding pace,” said Mark Potok, Southern Poverty Law Center senior fellow and author of the report. “It is critically important that the country take this threat seriously. The potential for deadly violence is real, and clearly rising.”
The SPLC also has identified other interesting trends in the groups that they follow.
August Kreis, a longtime neo-Nazi who in January stepped down as leader of an Aryan Nations faction after being convicted of fraud related to his veteran’s benefits, told the Intelligence Report that it was all about income inequality.
“The worse the economy gets, the more the groups are going to grow,” he said. “White people are arming themselves — and black people, too. I believe eventually it’s going to come down to civil war. It’s going to be an economic war, the rich versus the poor. We’re being divided along economic lines.”
At the most macro level, the growth of right-wing radicalization — a phenomenon that is plainly evident in Europe as well as the United States — is related directly to political and, especially, economic globalization. As the nation-state has diminished in importance since the end of the Cold War, Western economies have opened up, not only to capital from abroad but also to labor. In concrete terms, that has meant major immigration flows, many of which have drastically altered the demographics of formerly fairly homogenous populations. In Europe and the U.S. both, white-dominated countries have become less so. At the same time, globalization has caused major economic dislocations in the West as certain industries and kinds of production move to less developed countries.
The sorry U.S. economy also may offer the best single explanation for the huge expansion in the so-called “sovereign citizens” movement, a subset of the larger Patriot movement. Although the size of the sovereign movement is hard to gauge — sovereigns tend to operate as individuals rather than in organized groups — law enforcement officials around the country have reported encounters. The SPLC, for its part, has estimated that some 300,000 Americans are involved.
I hate to be in the position of agreeing with a NAZI but I do think income inequality and the ability of many southern and republican politicians to scapegoat minorities problems they created has contributed to this problem. Rather than looking at the policies of the government and the role of the rich in usurping legislative agendas, right wing populists groups frequently turn their outrage on others. It would be nice they focus on the root cause of their issues like corporations having bought their representatives. We’ve see many left wing populist groups with similar economic justice issues recently but they don’t appear to be heading towards the same types of violent agendas that many leftist groups took in the 1960s. This does not appear to be true of right wing populists. They tend to like paramilitary organizations because of their love of guns.
Anyway, I’m going to be interested to see if the conversation on this study find its way to congress. Last time we had this conversation, congress scapegoated the nation’s Muslim population. The Sandy Hook massacre might make this less possible. However, I do think you should go look at the list of groups. They’re in nearly every state.
Muck Mills and teh Derp
Posted: March 5, 2013 Filed under: The Media SUCKS, We are so F'd | Tags: ACORN, Daily Caller, Jame's O'Keefe, Muck Mills, Red State, Tucker Carlson 35 Comments
I came of age during the Watergate hearings and the fall of Saigon. I’d like to say that the constant bombardment of news surrounding incredible levels of deception during my status of adult-in-process gave me a jaded eye and sensibility. I have to admit that I haven’t trusted much of anything coming from self-appointed authority figures since I figured out the Santa/Easter Bunny scam some where around nursery school. I’ve since extrapolated those lessons to any concept of a ‘supreme’ being and a noble fourth estate. I might as well worship and read the World According to the Great Pumpkin.
The entire Clinton penis obsession in the 1990s sewed up a lot of my earlier hypotheses. Recent events have caused me to consider them good theory. There is way too much evidence now. We even know now that Woodard of Woodard and Bernstein might as well sport a set of fluffy ears and hop on down that bunny trail. I seem to have a friend in Charles Pierce. There are no more Studs Terkels or Jack Andersons and we might as retire the term muckraker and create a new one, say, Muck Mill.
Derp.
Pierce writes about the Conservative News Media–e.g. Muck Mills–that exist to Donald Segretti our policy conversations, news, and current events. As always, his blog post is glib and biting. It is also a disconcerting reminder of the power, audacity, and hubris of Muck Mills like Fox “News” and what ever it is that republican court eunuch Tucker Carlson has created in his out-of-the-mainstream media reincarnation. Carlson’s lack of genitals and gray matter has been out on display all week.
Pierce believes the Muck Mills are imploding. Afterall, Limbaugh has lost many patrons after attacking a young law student who argued that all insurance policies should include access to birth control, Rove is trying to remain relevant since his meltdown last election season, and Snowflake Snookie can only get a gig at CPAC now. Some of these things do carry the frankincense whiff of the beautiful hands of a divine and just goddess. However, I prefer the wisdom of the great American Saint P.T. Barnum and the catechism of “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Wherever there are suckers, there will be religious viewers of Fox News and readers of Red State.
First, there was the embarrassing revelation that a host of rightwing bloggers — and one from the port side, Jerome Armstrong — were on the fiddle with the Malaysian government to the tune of almost 400 large. (One of them, Ben Domenech, was a recidivist embarrassment, having previously lost a sweet gig with the endlessly credulous Washington Post because he was a proven thief of other people’s work.) Then, last night, it was revealed that Tucker Carlson’s vanity project, The Daily Caller, appears to have been caught trying to sucker its audience regarding the tale of New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez’s patronizing of prostitutes. (TDC is standing by its reporting for the moment, although its explanation is rather heavy with the squid ink.) This is hardly the way you want to celebrate Holy Week commemorating The Passion Of Andrew Breitbart. On the other hand, maybe it is.
This has been coming for some time. The conservative media establishment is so self-contained as to be positively incestuous, so it can’t be any surprise that, sooner or later, there are some two-headed cousins gamboling over the public landscape. There is no internal governor to its enthusiasms; there are only wealthy sugar-daddies pushing the boundaries gleefully outward. There is the very strange and self-fulfilling sense of both victimhood and outlawry, that the people who cash checks from the Koch brothers, or from some shadowy Malaysian fixer, are the true revolutionaries. There has been no accounting because there has been nobody to call them to account, and that is not entirely the fault of the conservative movement. Actual journalists have taken a dive as well.
There’s been a little crowing in the establishment media over the accumulated comeuppance. On the liberal MSNBC last night, Lawrence O’Donnell went to dinner on the Menendez material. But return with us now, if you will, to those thrilling days of yesteryear — to the 1990s, to be precise, because that’s where it all began, and it began with the complicity, and the active participation, of the respectable press. This is one of those moments in which Bill Clinton must chuckle ruefully to himself before he gets on with his day.
The pursuit of the Clintons — which morphed into the pursuit of the president’s penis — is where it all began.
I guess I don’t quite feel the white hot cleansing heat of the implosion quite yet. Let me offer up a few chomps and bits just from searching around the headlines today. For example, Pierce offers up the the clown car side of the Muck Mills. This is James O’Keefe who has to be the posterboy for the DSM of Mental Disorder’s entry on pathological narcissism and lying. He’s the edit happy pimp court enuch of ACORN fame. Now, we all know that ACORN disappeared from the face of their flat earth after the Muck Mill Meme production spit out a lot of its usual lies and outrage. Why on earth should poor people be allowed to vote or have an advocacy group? However, sucker exhibit one is this weird item: ACORN, In New GOP Budget Bill, Would Be Defunded Again, Even Though It No Longer Exists. One can only reason that defunding of the Friends Of Hamas and the Junior League of Al Quaida is next.
Rogers’ bill also explicitly bars the use of the funds it appropriates for computer networks that do not block the viewing and exchange of pornography. It further bans the transportation of detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to facilities in the United States, even though the Obama administration has not transferred any detainees from Guantanamo since 2009 and has announced no plans to do so.
What can you say to the ongoing placement of conspiracy theories into US Law by crazed Republican Congresscritters? Derp.
Meanwhile, we continue to watch The Daily Caller try to weasel its way out of the Menendez Prostitute Fantasy. If only they were around to actually chase David Vitter who really did have a series of paid liaisons to investigate and likely use of public funds or assets supporting his diaper fetish. Vitter has gubernatorial ambitions now while Elliot Spitzer still can’t get a real job. Derp.
Then, there’s the current Pressketeer Anything can Happen Day where MSNBC declares Joe Scarborough an obvious winner of a Charlie Rose finagled debate between Dr. Paul Krugman, acclaimed economics professor and said morning hack. Yes, Joe clearly won because he can interrupt folks with gusto and read decades old news and declare them Bazinga! worthy. This quote is an example of Joe’s debating skills? Derp.
Krugman: If it wasn’t for me and a few people who are loudly saying, ‘the deficit is not a problem’ without first qualifying it with three paragraphs of–’well, you know, longer term it is a problem.’ I don’t think this message that spending cuts are hurting the economy would be getting across at all.
Scarborough (laughing): By the way, Paul, it’s very important to note: Paul just agreed that only three people agree with him and are saying this.
Krugman: No, no, only three people–I said only three people are saying it without prefacing it with the obligatory three paragraphs. On the substance–Ben Bernanke gave a speech last week that was, for all practical purposes, saying the same thing I’m saying. He said–you know, the deficit–the outlook looks relatively okay for the next ten years. Now, we would like it to be lower, but it’s relatively okay. But spending cuts right now are a really bad thing.
Yes. It some point we had real intellectuals writing and editing newspapers. Ben Franklin comes to mind. Now, we are regaled by the random Muck Mill-inspired propaganda of news readers–like Tom Brokaw–who would prefer they were the only ones with serious answers. Yes, even when those serious answers are clearly made-up, invented, woven from thin air, and against all data, evidence, and reality. I’m sticking to my atheist, science-based, jaded sensibilities. Here, there be Muck Mills.
Derp.
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