The New Retirement? You’re Better Off Dead. The Kochs And The Waltons Got Your Money. March 3, 2014

From Common Dreams:

Seven Numbers that Add Up to a Death Tax for Retirement

by Paul Buchheit

The dream of a comfortable retirement is dying for many Americans. It’s being extracted as a form of tribute to the very rich, a redistribution of our nation’s wealth, a "tax" imposed on the middle and lower classes and paid for with their retirement savings.

1. A $6.8 Trillion Retirement Deficit in America. But $8 Trillion in New U.S. Wealth Was Created in 2013.
The problem is that most of the new financial wealth went to the richest 10% (almost 90 percent of all stocks excluding fast-disappearing pensions). Basically you already had to be rich to share in the new wealth, and the people taking the wealth can defer taxes as long as they want, and then pay a smaller rate than income earners. Meanwhile, according to the National Institute on Retirement Security, Americans are at least $6.8 trillion short of what they need for a comfortable retirement.

2. $6,500 is the Median Retirement Fund for Upper-Middle-Class 50- to 64-Year-Olds
That’s based on an analysis of the second-highest quartile of Americans by the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. It may get worse before it gets any better. The percentage of 75- to 84-year-old seniors falling into poverty doubled from 2005 to 2009. That was BEFORE the recession. And the number of elderly Americans, notes the Administration on Aging, is steadily rising, likely by 75 percent between 2010 and 2030, to almost 70 million people.

3. ZERO Wealth Gained among 93% of Us, While the Richest 12,000 Families Made $100,000 EVERY Day
It’s estimated that the richest .01% each made at least $40 million last year. A work day for many of them consists of logging in to their portfolio to see how many tens of thousands of dollars were added in the previous 24 hours. A stunning 93 percent of Americans LOST wealth, on average, in the post-recession "recovery."

4. TWICE the Cost of Pensions — That’s What Ten States Pay in Corporate Subsidies
This comes from a study by Good Jobs First of ten states with severe pension issues. The study found that "in all 10 states, the total annual cost of corporate subsidies, tax breaks and loopholes exceeds the total current annual pension costs."
Americans who have worked all their lives, dutifully paying for their retirement years, continue to be accused of greed and threatened with pension cutbacks. David Cay Johnston calls it "nothing short of theft."

5. 40 Cents of Every 401(k) Dollar Goes to the Banks
Saving $1,000 a year for 30 years in a non-fee 401(k) fund and then holding the accumulated sum for another 20 years would net an investor $269,000. With a smallish-sounding industry average fee of 1.3%, the same investor would net just $165,000, a 39% reduction.

6. Two Dollars: The Approximate Wealth of Black Families for Every $100 of Wealth for White Families
According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), median wealth for black families in 2009 was $2,200, compared to $97,900 for white families. (Pew Research reported $5,677 for blacks, $113,149 for whites).
It doesn’t seem possible that this number could get worse. But since the recession, black and Hispanic wealth has dropped further, by 30 to 40 percent, as the wealth of white families dropped 11 percent.

7. Almost 10 Percent of an Underserved Household’s Retirement Money Goes for Financial Fees
A U.S. Office of Inspector General survey reports that "The average underserved household has an annual income of about $25,500 and spends about $2,412 of that just on alternative financial services fees and interest." That includes fees for payroll cards, prepaid cards, subprime auto loans, and numerous other financial products that are sold to over 68 million financially underserved U.S. households.

A Death Tax? It’s not the tiny amount paid on multi-million dollar estates. Instead, it’s the slow death of millions of baby boomers, the victims of 35 years of deregulated greed at the very top of our nation’s mountain of wealth.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

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Ronald Reagan Redux, America In His Darkness August 23, 2012

It’s evening in America.

Today fewer men and women will go to work than ten years ago.

With banks paying virtually no interest on savings, with a financial sector filled with thieves, hucksters, and con men drawing astronomical salaries as they destroy American’s ability to take care of their families, Americans are more fearful and less secure than ever.

Hundreds of young men and women will marry today, and they can look forward to a nation that values weapons more than education; that values scientific ignorance more than facts and evidence; that values people with money more than people struggling with three jobs to support their families; that sends American jobs overseas to enrich wealthy owners who pay little or nothing in taxes; that gives pride of place to religious superstition and ignorance instead of knowledge and understanding; that seeks to degrade women to the status of farm animals.

It’s evening in America, and under the cover of darkness the forces of wealth, amorality, and ignorance, the forces of forty years of Republican and Conservative political deceit and lies, our country is weaker and worse off than ever.

Ronald Reagan told us it was morning in America and then he started turning out the lights.

Today in America, night is falling and the lights are still going out. Why would we ever want to put Republicans back in power?

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Kindergarten Creates Criminals, Says New Hampshire Republican July 4, 2012

No, really, it’s true. The story’s in the Huffington Post. Read the interview.  Bob Kingsbury is a representative in the New Hampshire legislature.

But here’s the interesting part:

Kingsbury’s comments, which came during a meeting of the county’s state lawmakers, have caused a stir, leading both Democratic gubernatorial candidates to say they believe in kindergarten. The Republican candidate for governor, Ovide Lamontagne, declined to address Kingsbury’s comments during a radio interview last week.

No one called this jackass out on his ludicrous comments. Candidates for governor ‘believe in kindergarten’. That’s the best they can come up with. Not ‘Kingsbury’s a loon’. Not ‘Children in those towns drink milk. Therefore milk turns them into criminals.’ Not ‘Kingsbury needs to be removed from office and replaced with someone whose brain still works’.

This assumption that people who make these incredibly stupid remarks shouldn’t be criticized is one of the things that underlies the resurgence of the right wing lunatic fringe that has infested and rotted American politics.

Kingsbury, 86, did acknowledge that other factors can contribute to higher rates of crime and kindergarten classes are just one of them. But he mentioned having read an article showing the impact of moving young children out of London during World War I. "In World War I, London was being bombed by the Germans and they sent the children out of the city," Kingsbury said. "That was a disaster for England."

Right. Better the children should have stayed in London and been blown to bits or exposed to the sight of people being blown to bits. Or spent the whole time cowering in fear of being blown to bits. Of course that would have been better for their development.

"Children go to kindergarten at the point of a gun," Kingsbury said. "Children go to day care and it’s not the same; there is no point of a gun." Kingsbury said he believes that teachers are partially to blame but the rise in crime is not the fault of teachers. Instead he blamed attorneys and the courts for what he called a lack of discipline and rules in schools and for prohibiting teachers from disciplining students as in previous decades.

Awww, all those poor little kids being marched off to school by gun-toting educators. Poor babies.

So state law mandating that children go to school is apparently evil. Perhaps Kingsbury is just pissed because the little tots aren’t available to work in factories?

The old loon may have a point in that discipline is weaker in schools than in the past, but that hardly points to kindergarten as being a breeding ground for rapists and hit men. Or hit tots. But to proclaim that kindergarten causes crime, that’s more than a reach – that’s probably about to become Tea Party dogma.

All this guy has is a possible correlation, not a proven cause and effect. He’s given no consideration to other possible causes, and in fact can’t even state that there is any legitimate cause for the crime rates. He hasn’t asked if crime rate reporting is consistent from county to county, from town to town. He hasn’t asked qualified statisticians to look at the data. He hasn’t examined any other data. He didn’t look for other research. All he’s done is collect some numbers and proclaimed that kindergarten creates criminals. His conclusion is ridiculous on its face and remains ridiculous the more you think about it.

And yet he remains a member of the New Hampshire legislature, giving the Southern loon legislators of places like Tennessee, Alabama, and Texas a run for their money.

Kingsbury represents the kind of shallow, illogical, thoughtless, careless blithering that passes for thinking among todays Republican Tea Party. They don’t believe in science or logic or evidence. They believe what they want to believe, or what they are told to believe by loudmouth ignoramuses like Limbaugh and Hannity and Ingraham et al.

That’s criminal.

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The Crazies Who Want To Rule Us And Why They’re Not Qualified July 3, 2012

Here’s the transcript of an interview by conservative radio jock Laura Ingraham. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to write an essay explaining why Ingraham and the other Conservacrazies, including those already in government, are not fit to be involved in governance at any level, including washing toilets in the local State House. This post will self-destruct in five seconds.

LI: Welcome to our show.

RT: Thank you for inviting me.

LI: You are a minister so I take it you follow the teachings of Jesus.

RT: Yes, that’s true.

LI: If Jesus were here today do you think he would counsel a woman to have an abortion?

RT: Jesus always showed compassion to women. He acted with respect even to the ones who were accused of sexual impropriety. I’m sure Jesus would do the same thing today, and that’s my model.

LI: [Angrily] You didn’t answer my question. So you think Jesus would applaud the murder of millions of innocent children, in the first, second, and third trimester?

RT: We know that abortion existed during the time Jesus was on earth, and for thousands of years before that. If he were opposed to abortion he would have said something about it.

LI: [More angrily] Where do you get the idea that Jesus knew about abortion?

RT: We know that abortion has existed for thousands of years, so I’m confident that Jesus would have been aware. There were many plants used as medicinal abortifacients in that part of the world. And yet his concern was for the way women were being treated.

LI: [Nearly screaming] What part of “Thou shalt not kill” don’t you understand?

RT: The Bible actually says “Thou shalt not murder.” I’m sure you would agree that every ending of a life is not murder.

LI: [Frustrated] Well you have your 40 prayers. I’ll pray for you and this interview is over!

LI: [Hangs up.]

The full story at Religion Dispatches. The comments there are interesting too.

This is a sample of why the Founders insisted on separating religion from the state. And it is a sample of why none of the current crop of Republicans should be allowed anywhere near the White House.

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Texas Republicans Choose To Make Texas Children Stupid July 1, 2012

 

From Common Dreams:

Here is the actual language from a position statement in the 2012 Texas Republican Party Platform:

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

The heart of Republicanism:

1) Fear intelligence

2) Fear intelligent people

3) Promote and praise stupidity

4) Keep people ignorant and uninformed

5) Eschew thinking and reason

6) Cripple schools and education

7) Keep our boots on the necks of the peons by denying them a decent education – that would be the niggers, the spics, the slants, the gooks, the redskins, and all the mud races

8) Get that damned nigger out of our White House

That about sums it up. Or as another famous Southerner said, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

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The Persecution and Assassination of Democracy as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Washington Under the Direction of the Supreme Court June 28, 2012

The Supreme Court decides on the Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’) today – well, they’ve already decided, they’re just going public today. I suspect they’ll uphold it because the ‘conservative’ justices are intellectually corrupt, if not in fact corrupt in other ways. It would have been better for the country and the world if the right-wing justices had been strangled in their cradles and never been allowed to hold high office. They crossed the Rubicon into corruption when they savaged the 2000 election to put their choice in office. That decision cost thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani lives and the loss of trillions of dollars from the U.S. treasury.

Later, their Citizens United decision broke the back of democracy in this country. The supporting Montana decision Monday sealed the fate of freedom and sold the United States to its most venal, morally bankrupt citizens, people like the Koch Brothers and the financial backers of the Tea Party, as well as the corporate barons whose only interest in America is how to corrupt democracy to line their pockets.

It is likely that the Court will support the ACA, if for no other reason than that it puts vast sums of money into the pockets of the insurance companies and the already wealthy elites who will then buy more politicians and judges, ensuring that corruption will become absolute. These so-called conservative justices curry favor with the wealthy and the powerful. Their corruption ensures that their decisions conserve nothing of democracy, conserve nothing of liberty, conserve nothing of the Constitution, conserve nothing of what it means that the United States has existed at all.

At some point these, or other, justices may decide that Citizens is a bad decision and seek to overturn it. By then it will be too late. Their decision will be ignored by the corporate lackey government that Citizens is right now creating. Future justices who seek to right the wrongs of Citizens will either be ignored or they will be spoken to harshly by the new barons ruling the country or they will be assassinated, either physically or in reputation.

Fair repayment indeed for the Supreme Court’s persecution and assassination of democracy in America.

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What the Right Really Believes… May 29, 2012

What follows is the complete text of an email I received recently.

This really is priceless!!

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away"

THE FIRE CHIEF SAID..PRICELESS

The Fire Chief Said…

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.
Not fair to make judgment of this, until you see what the Fire Chief says!!!!

In South Los Angeles , a 4-plex home was destroyed by a fire.

A Mexican family of six, all welfare recipients and gang members,
Lived on the first floor, they died.

An Islamic group of seven welfare cheats,
All illegally in the country from Kenya , lived on the second floor,
And they, too, all perished in the fire.

6 LA, Hispanic, Gang Bangers, & ex-cons,
Lived on the 3rd floor and they, too, died.

A lone, white couple lived on the top floor.
The couple survived the fire.

Jesse Jackson, John Burris and Al Sharpton were furious!!
They flew into LA and met with the fire chief, on camera.
They loudly demanded to know,
Why the Blacks, Black Muslims and Hispanics,
All died in the fire and why only the White couple lived?

The Fire Chief said,
"They were at work"

This has just got to keep on circulating… it’s too good…

This is how the right wing thinks. This is Tea Party. This is Republican conservatism. This is the heart of the modern Republican party.

Nineteen people burned to death in a house fire. None of them were white. The white people survived because they were at work.

Nineteen people burned to death.

And that’s funny. Because they weren’t white. Because their lives were different. Because they were, what, morally defective?

But the white couple? Apparently very virtuous. They were at work, of some kind.

This is virulently racist stereotyping. It’s the sort of thing that serves to confirm the beliefs of the shallow ‘thinkers’ on the right.

It’s the sort of thing that leads to concentration camps and furnaces, all run by the ‘right people’, the good people, the moral people, the people who think it funny that nineteen people burned to death in a house fire.

And it is the sort of thing that appears to be very popular on the right. The party of Boehner. Of Palin. Of Kantor. Of the Koch brothers. Of Romney. Of Limbaugh and Hannity. Of fundogelicals. The party of morality and family values.

It is now an American value that people of color burn to death in house fires. That’s a family value today.

And it’s funny. Pricelessly funny.

Isn’t it?

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Michelle Bachmann Not An American? She’s Swiss! May 10, 2012

Politico is running a story about Bachmann admitting now that she has been a Swiss citizen for thirty-four years.

Devious wench, eh?

She’s claiming dual citizenship since she married the Swiss guy who runs the anti-gay clinic with Medicaid money. Problem is neither she nor he notified the Swiss government, nor the United States government.

But really, who cares? She’s just another mindless fundogelical freak out to corrupt the United States and make as much money as she can while doing it.

But maybe we ought to see her birth certificate. You know, just to make sure she really is an American and not a Swiss spy. And after all, if she ‘forgot’ to notify the United States government that she held dual citizenship while serving as a Representative in Congress, and serving on the freaking House Intelligence Committee, what other little details has she conveniently ‘forgotten’ to reveal?

And really, folks, she ran for President, remember? Do we really want a Swiss person sitting in the Oval Office? A faux Swiss person at that? After all, those people enable wealthy tax criminals like Mitt Romney and the like to hide money from the United States Internal Revenue service while the rest of us pay their tax tab. Kinda makes you wonder how much she and the Doctor have squirreled away in one of those secret numbered accounts, eh?

She claims she was born in Iowa. But hey, anybody can say that about themselves. And she does have that weird accent that speaks of something not really American. I dunno, folks, I dunno.

Yeah, let’s see the birth certificate, Michelle. The real one. How about it? Come on! Obama showed you his. Now you show us yours.

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Tennessee: Where children go to get stupid and reason goes to die April 30, 2012

Here’s the latest from the pit of dumbassery and ignorance (one of them anyway – the South seems to have several):

TPM

It’s too pathetic to even comment on.

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Why America Is Going Down The Tubes… February 29, 2012

Everybody’s favorite fat fatheaded drug addict, the bouncing baby-brain of the Republican Tea Party, that wishful wonder who vomits hatred, bigotry, and illogic as easily as the rest of us breathe, has demonstrated once again how and why he’s leading America down into the sewers of irrelevance, ignorance, and genuine, deep, profound stupidity. That would, of course, be Rush Limbaugh, disgusting depraved diva of the right.

The other day a Georgetown University law student named Sandra Fluke testified before a House committee about hormonal contraception and the medical need it serves for purposes other than preventing pregnancy.

Her appearance and testimony followed the perversion of the issue by Rep. Darrell Issa, who held a hearing on President Obama’s regulation requiring religious-affiliated entities to provide contraception in their health care plans. Issa and his Republican Tea Party conspirators invited no women to testify and explicitly refused Ms. Fluke from testifying, declaring that the issue was religious liberty and not contraception.

It is rumored, though unconfirmed, that after the hearing Mr. Issa swallowed a Viagra paid for by his taxpayer-funded health insurance policy and banged an intern in the chapel as an expression of his religious liberty.

And here’s what the fat boy, the sucker of microphones, the Pied Idiot of the Republican Ratboys of the Raging Right, had to say about Ms. Fluke:

"What does it say….that she essentially says that she must be paid to have sex. What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right?It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex, she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the tax payers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? The pimps."

Ms. Fluke gives honest testimony about an important issue to a Congressional Committee and the best argument, the best reasoning that the bouncing druggie can provide to his legions of brain dead followers is to pervert her testimony and call her a slut.

That’s all he’s got. Name calling. No facts. No thought. No logic. No reason. Just schoolyard name calling. Just ‘nyah nyah nyah slut’.

And for this behavior his corporate advertisers see that he makes tens of millions of dollars a year. For leading the country into a sewer of ignorance, hatred, bigotry, and unfettered stupidity, his sponsors, who apparently do not care for America, do not love the country, are not in the least patriotic, reward him handsomely.

Fat boy sucks up the money he’s paid to act like an idiot. He gets on his knees every day before his golden microphone, opens his mouth, and spews out hatred and sucks in money.

So who’s the real whore?

And what does it say about all his johns – corporations and listeners? Real flag wavers, every last one, waving flags that look like Old Glory, but are made of a tissue of lies and ignorance and greed that disgraces the real flag and shames the nation.

It’s simple. If you listen to Limbaugh, if you take him seriously, if you believe anything he says, you hate the United States of America.

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