The returns weren't all in yet on Tuesday's Republican primaries but President Obama didn't wait. He kicked off his 2012 campaign against Mitt Romney with a hard-hitting speech centered on the House Republicans' budget plan -- which Romney has enthusiastically endorsed.
That plan, by the way, is the most radical reverse-Robin Hood proposal propounded by any political party in modern America. It would save millionaires at least $150,000 a year in taxes while gutting Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, transportation, child nutrition, college aid, and almost everything else average and lower-income Americans depend on.
Here's what the president had to say about it:
"Disguised as a deficit reduction... it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It is thinly veiled social Darwinism."
We are likely to hear a lot more about social Darwinism in the months ahead. It was the conservative creed during the late 19th century -- legitimizing a politics in which the lackeys of robber barons deposited sacks of money on legislators' desks, and justifying an economy in which sweat shops were common, urban slums festered, and a significant portion of America was impoverished.
Social Darwinism encapsulated the idea of survival of the fittest (a phrase Charles Darwin never actually used) as applied to societies as a whole. Its chief apostle in America was Yale Professor William Graham Sumner.
Here's what Sumner had to say in his social-Darwinian classic What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883):
Let it be understood that we cannot go outside of this alternative: Liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society forward and favors all its best members; the latter carries society downwards and favors all its worst members.
Could there be a better summary of what today's regressive Republicans believe?
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
Follow Robert Reich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RBReich
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 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
We can't turn to government because they are for the most part lackeys for that 1% are government was not overthrown by a military coup but by graft and corruption. We the common man and women have lost are government to the influence pedlders. The 99%r's rally and protest and mayors like bloomberg have them arrested. They complain about regulations promote privatization, they don't want to be accountable to anyone, let corruption reign supreme. Who will stop them? They have bought their childrens school grades. the colleges that they attend they at one time bought the children out of the military draft. WAKE UP AMERICA, WHILE YOU STILL REMEMBER WHAT AMERICA WAS ONCE LIKE, WHEN WE HAD A HARD WORKING MIDDLE CLASS.
Good question. It's about the myth of individuality and success in America.
We can trace it in large part to the 19th-century myth of Horatio Alger:
His novels, most notably Ragged Dick (1867), were infused with the message that honest hard work can overcome poverty.
People still believe it. It speaks to the failure of American education.
And we consider America a great country. What a LIE.
I agree that it boggles the mind that so many are falling for GOP statements. We are allowing our democracy to fade away.
Conservatives: Remember the great leaders that formed your roots: Lincoln would never be in your party today. Reagan would never make it on the ticket today. Teddy Roosevelt would cringe at your disrespect of environmental concerns today. Ike would be ashamed of your party’s belligerence (ie, warmongering). They would all be appalled at the inequality present now in so many parts of society. Learn what these men stood for – not division, but unity; not acquiescence, but conscience; not the rule of gold, but The Golden Rule.
Understand that the Constitution is a living document, only to the extent that you can AMEND IT.
As it exists though, it ALL has a specific meaning including the commerce clause which has been twisted to give the governement all sorts of powers that were never enumerated in the Constitution.
Meanwhile, multi-billion dollar corporations get fined 10 million dollars for doing crimes that made them 150 million dollars in profits. “Please don’t throw me in that briar patch, Brer fox!” And now the corporations have unlimited power in the form of donations to manipulate the people who make the very laws surrounding those fines! “Mr. Fox, please guard this chicken coop.” Is that really what the Founding Fathers wanted? Hmmm:
“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” --Thomas Jefferson.
The founders were Locke liberals fighting the Burke conservative 1000 richest families of the British Empire. Our founding fathers were secular progressives. The Conservatives , called Tories were on the side of King George and Aristocracy. Somethings never change.
If people like the current Republican Party were in charge in 1776, the U.S. would be a member of the British Commonwealth. Some of us act like we are anyway. Notice those having British titles bestowed on them, a la Sir Alan Greenspan, et. al.
http://ukinusa.fco.gov.uk/en/about-us/faqs/knighthood-honours/americans-honoured
http://articles.cnn.com/keyword/knight-commander
And those I've found probably aren't all there is. I find it distasteful that former U.S. Presidents Reagan and Bush have received such. Our country was founded on the premise that we're all created equal.
Congress needs to draft a law that prohibits foreign titles, such as those bestowed by the British monarch, and their implied classism. It's okay to be a friend or ally to foreign powers, but those honors that imply British subjects should address recipients as "Sir" or "Lady" should be prohibited. It further implies fealty of the recipient.
Ab Lincoln: "I hope we shall crush ... in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country".
This happened under the robber barons which repub policies return us to, and not unlike now.
AP) President Bush(another silver spoon Harvard MBA) said Saturday that the most important number in the budget he sends to Congress next week is the $5.6 trillion surplus it projects over the next 10 years.
That huge projected surplus provides the underpinning of all the administration's tax-cut and spending plans, Mr. Bush said in his recorded weekly radio address.
"A surplus in tax revenue, after all, means that taxpayers have been overcharged," the president said. "And usually when you've been overcharged, you expect to get something back." The surplus figure "counts more than any other" in the budget, he said.
Democrats cautioned that surpluses projected over so long a period can turn into elusive fool's gold. And they continued to insist that as it stands the Bush tax-cut plan unfairly favors the wealthy over those of more modest means."
Yes, we were on schedule to be debt free by 2011, paying off the Reagan debt! Instead repubs used up the 5.6 trillion surplus, they acknowledged( and now try to deny), and turned that into 6 trillion in new debt(11.6 trillion swing) and then on top of that handed Obama 1.7 trillion deficit and ten trillion in new projected debt over the next decade along with losing 800K jobs per month, 60,000 closed factories, no private sector jobs created in a decade.
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-274334.html
From the actual report itself (.pdf file), the following thirty companies paid ZERO income tax, as well as receiving millions...oh wait, I meant billions in tax rebates from the government.
(1) Pepco Holdings
(2) General Electric
(3) Paccar
(4) PG&E Corporation
(5) Computer Sciences
(6) NiSource
(7) CenterPoint Energy
(8) Tenet Healthcare
(9) Atmos Energy
(10) Integrys Energy Group
(11) American Electric Power
(12) Con-way
(13) Ryder System
(14) Baxter International
(15) Wisconsin Energy
(16) Duke Energy
(17) DuPont
(18) Consolidated Edison
(19) Verizon Communications
(20) Interpublic Group
(21) CMS Energy
(22) NextEra Energy
(23) Navistar International
(24) Boeing
(25) Wells Fargo
(26) El Paso
(27) Mattel
(28) Honeywell International
(29) DTE Energy
(30) Corning”
For the 400 U.S. taxpayers with the highest adjusted gross income, the effective federal income tax rate -- what they actually pay -- fell from almost 30 percent in 1995 to just under 17 percent in 2007, according to the IRS. And for the approximately 1.4 million people who make up the top 1 percent of taxpayers, the effective federal income tax rate dropped from 29 percent to 23 percent in 2008. It may seem too fantastic to be true, but the top 400 end up paying a lower rate than the next 1,399,600 or so.
AVG Corp effective Tax rates: 12%... Multinational just 5%.
http://money.msn.com/taxes/latest.aspx?post=26d490bd-7317-4f93-8b43-e1da1151ea5f&ucsort=4
Percent of GDP coming from Tax Revenue, by nation:
1) Denmark - 48.3% - with a GDP per capita of $62,100 (#8 in the world)
2) Sweden - 47.1% - with a GDP per capita of $51,950 (#14 in the world)
3) Belgium - 44.3% - with a GDP per capita of $47,090 (#19 in the world)
4) Austria - 42.9% - with a GDP per capita of $49,600 (#17 in the world)
5) Finland - 42.8% - with a GDP per capita of $51,320, (#15 in the world)
6) Norway - 42.1% - with a GDP per capita of $94,760 (#2 in the world)
7) Luxembourg - 38.3% - with a GDP per capita of $109,900 (#1 in the world)
8) The Netherlands - 37.5% - with a GDP per capita of $52,960 (#11 in the world)
9) Australia - 30.8% - with a GDP per capita of $47,330 (#18 in the world)
10) Switzerland - 29.4% - with a GDP per capita of $64,330 (#6 in the world)
........
31) United States - 27.1% - with a GDP per capita of $46,350 (#20 in the world) and we are 14th in wages, a drop since Reagan from number one.
Source: The Economist Intelligence Unit 2011 World Book In Figures
+++++++
There are ten nations out there with a HIGHER tax burden than the US (some cases MUCH higher) AND HIGHER GDP per capita (some cases MUCH higher).
"Republicans favor tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, but these had no stimulative effect during the George W. Bush administration, and there is no reason to believe that more of them will have any today," writes Bruce Bartlett. He's an economist who worked for Republican congressmen and in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
As for the idea that cutting regulations will lead to significant job growth, Bartlett said in an interview, "It's just nonsense. It's just made up."
Government and industry studies support his view.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks companies' reasons for large layoffs, found that 1,119 layoffs were attributed to government regulations in the first half of this year, while 144,746 were attributed to poor "business demand."