How Much Does Rupert Murdoch Own? Too Much
Here’s a handy graphic published by Reuters, which provides a quick reference for all things Murdoch. After looking it over, all I can say is, “Hulu? Who knew?”
Tag: Republican Lies
First Twitter Town Hall is Today
Kids, don’t forget to log on to America’s first Twitter-hosted* town hall meeting. It takes place today at 2 p.m. Eastern time, and Twitter is going large by having Pres. Obama field questions and comments on how to get the economy going and how to put people back to work.
Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) fired a preemptive shot with this tweet:
Republicans #askobama to outline plan #4jobs that doesn’t involve more spending, taxing, regulating http://j.mp/o1bpzE @townhall
Why is it Republicans feel the government should leave everything to the private sector except job creation, the one thing the private sector is best suited to provide? To Republicans, when employment is high, it’s because business is masterful. When employment is low, it’s because government is screwing up. I’m not in the right party to be able to follow this logic.
But to follow the town hall, search for @townhall and use the hashtag, as Speaker Boehner did, #askobama.
* Yes Buck, I know AP style says “host” is not a verb but Twitter itself is calling it that.
Raising Taxes on the Rich Would In Fact Fuel Job Growth
We’ve all heard the Republican argument that if we continue to keep personal income taxes low for Scrooge McDuck, he will take this personal money he would otherwise pay in taxes and which he could spend on any number of things – a newer car, travel, really, really expensive and delicious june bugs – and invest it in enterprises that produce jobs.
Republicans tells us, as did former Gov. Mitt Romney, “With over 20 million people who are unemployed or who have stopped looking for work, the last thing we should be doing is raising taxes on job-creators, entrepreneurs, and small business owners across America.”
Except they’re dead wrong. Michael Linden, at the Center for American Progress, crunched the numbers.
In the past 60 years, job growth has actually been greater in years when the top income tax rate was much higher than it is now.
For instance, in years when the top marginal rate was more than 90 percent, the average annual growth in total payroll employment was 2 percent. In years when the top marginal rate was 35 percent or less—which it is now—employment grew by an average of just 0.4 percent.
And there’s no cherry-picking here. Pick any threshold. When the marginal tax rate was 50 percent or above, annual employment growth averaged 2.3 percent, and when the rate was under 50, growth was half that.
In fact, if you ranked each year since 1950 by overall job growth, the top five years would all boast marginal tax rates at 70 percent or higher. The top 10 years would share marginal tax rates at 50 percent or higher. The two worst years, on the other hand, were 2008 and 2009, when the top marginal tax rate was 35 percent. In the 13 years that the top marginal tax rate has been at its current level or lower, only one year even cracks the top 20 in overall job creation.
Remember When?
This graphic is offered by Being Liberal and MoveOn.org for people to post as their Facebook status. We liked it so much we thought we’d post it right here. Enjoy.
This Week Marks 10 Years Under the Bush Tax Cuts
In addition to being the day that the word “weiner” stopped being naughty and started being tiresome, June 7 was another milestone. According to self-proclaimed “Corporate Person American” William Rice, it deserves commemoration as the 10th anniversary of the Bush tax cuts.
Rice: ‘The Bush tax cuts created the deficit now being cited as a reason to pretty much scrap Medicare and once again make a college education a pleasant, impossible dream among the lower classes’
It was on June 7, 2001, that President Bush signed into law the high-end tax cuts that added $2.6 trillion to the national debt. It was these tax cuts, along with two wars and a recession, that created the deficit now being cited as a reason to pretty much scrap Medicare and once again make a college education a pleasant, impossible dream among the lower classes.
Rice’s modest proposal says that government is for pansies, unless you’re a corporation and in that case, government is here for you.
We expect the government to continue providing certain vital services, of course, such as huge, no-bid defense contracts; and 24-hour, drive-through patent courts for us to fight over the profits of questionably-useful and semi-dangerous but very well-promoted new drugs. But all the peripheral activities of government — such as ensuring adequate childhood nutrition and repairing drawbridges — merely create a strain on the natural ecosystem of corporations and Corporate-Person Americans.
If Republicans continue to run the economy into the ground by refusing to look at the revenue side of the budget equation, Obama will have to borrow Pres. Reagan’s line when he ran for re-election in 1984, but with a slight adjustment: Are you better off now than you were ten years ago?
Warning: Rick Scott Ahead
$8,800
Amount spent by Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R/Tea) to add his own name to the 35 highway signs which welcome visitors to the state. No governor has ever placed his name on the signs, but Palm Beach Post columnist Frank Cerabino applauded the move. “When travelers cross into the state and see ‘Governor Rick Scott,’ he wrote, ‘it works on the same level as ‘Low Flying Aircraft,’ ‘Rock Slide Area’ or “Slow: Children Playing.'” Scott slashed other state spending, recently vetoing $615 million from the state budget that included 500 jobs at the Department of Children and Families.
Republican Path to Victory in 2012: Take Down the Economy
We get that Republicans don’t care about folks like us. We know they are willing to stop Social Security payments, and payroll for the members of America’s armed services rather than raise the debt ceiling. We get it, we really do.
But to tank the American, and likely the global, economy just to give their lame candidate (whoever it might be) a chance at taking down Obama in 2012? Exactly that is starting to look to like their best strategy.
The Economist: ‘America is undermining its economy for no good reason’
It’s not just Americans drawing a line between a House vote not to extend the debt ceiling and economic setbacks. Our friends across the pond are making the same observation.
Blogger “R.A.” at Britain’s The Economist predicted with exact accuracy on June 1 that such moves would mire economic growth, and decried these self-inflicted wounds. Our stock markets dropped that same day.
R.A. begins with the big picture, the one tea partiers and FOX News miss.
RPOF Talking Points, in Case Scott’s Budget Left You Speechless
If you weren’t among the select few invited to Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R/Tea) ceremonial re-enactment of the signing of the hot mess that is this year’s state budget at a gated, tea party haven retirement community in the most land-locked part of Florida, we can help.
There is no reason for anyone to be at a loss for words when it comes to Florida’s new budget, which cuts money for fire protection in a drought-stricken region, law enforcement in the nation’s leading pill mill state, and services that keep the elderly in the community instead of much more expensive nursing homes in the state with the most older residents.
Thanks to the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF), which recently got the message that Floridians care about education, you can simply refer to this handy list of talking points, conveniently located on the Rick Scott for Florida web site. At least, you can access it after you supply your name, email address, and zip code, watch a video in which Scott’s mom says she still loves him, and do a search for “budget talking points.” What could be easier?
But all that work is worth it, when you can get these gems.
You Actually Could Solve the Deficit Problem with Tax Increases
Maybe you heard this recent assertion, which swept through rightwing media outlets: Raising taxes on high income earners can’t solve the federal deficit problem because the deficit is higher than the entire taxable income of Americans who earn more than $100,000. But you likely didn’t hear that it’s not true.
Here’s what the Wall St. Journal said in an editorial, which got the ball rolling.
According to Internal Revenue Service data, the entire taxable income of everyone earning over $100,000 in 2008 was about $1.582 trillion. Even if all these Americans – most of whom are far from wealthy – were taxed at 100%, it wouldn’t cover Mr. Obama’s deficit for this year.
According to Internal Revenue Service data, the entire taxable income of everyone earning over $100,000 in 2008 was about $1.582 trillion. Even if all these Americans – most of whom are far from wealthy – were taxed at 100%, it wouldn’t cover Mr. Obama’s deficit for this year.
And here’s what the WSJ said when it was pointed out by FactCheck.org that they were wrong.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the total taxable income of Americans earning over $100,000 in 2008 was $1.582 trillion. The correct figure is $3.4 trillion.
The projected deficit is $1.645 trillion. You do the math.
But Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Ok.), apparently can’t, because he repeated the false claim on a recent FOX News Sunday segment, with an added twist about the futility of including those who net between $100,00 and $250,000 after deductions. The point was to show that the deficit problem can only be solved by cutting spending, not by also increasing revenues. People who are not mathematically — or ideologically — challenged see that it will take both.
Pres. Obama is proposing $2 trillion in spending cuts and $1 trillion in additional tax revenue over 12 years. Seems reasonable to us.
