Colombia Taxes Their Rich. Why Can't We

Colombia Is Taking On Its Billionaires - Why Can't We?

Thursday, 18 September 2014 13:52By The Daily Take Team, The Thom Hartmann Program | Op-Ed

• 19
• font size   
 
• Print 
• Email

The boundary line between the middle and lower classes in Bogota, Colombia. (Photo: Matt Lemmon)America's billionaires are driving this nation's poverty epidemic. But it doesn't have to be that way.

As we speak, working-class Americans are getting screwed over by policies that favor the wealthy elite, and leave everyone else in the dust.

As a result, more and more Americans are living in poverty.

In 2013, over 45 million Americans were living in poverty, including one in five children, and today, around 4 percent of our population lives on $2 per day or less.

Unfortunately, our lawmakers in Washington would rather continue pandering to the needs of the rich and famous, than confront the very real poverty epidemic that is crippling our country.

Like America, Colombia is struggling with its own poverty epidemic brought on by extremely high levels of wealth inequality and by wealthy Colombians who aren't doing their fair share to help the economy.

Colombia is the seventh most unequal country in the world, with a staggering 32 percent of Colombians living in poverty.

In rural areas of that country, the poverty rate jumps to just under 47 percent.

Meanwhile, just like here in America, there is a small number of very wealthy people who are doing very little to help the Colombian economy and working-class Colombians.

But that's changing.

More and more Colombians are being lifted out of poverty each year because the Colombian government isn't afraid to ask the wealthy elite to do their fair share to help the economy.

Last week, the Colombian government, under the direction of President Juan Manuel Santos, extended a wealth tax that was first introduced in 2002.  Speaking about the wealth tax, Colombia'sFinance minister Mauricio Cardenas told the Financial Times that, "It is very important to collect revenues from the wealthiest Colombians to be able to invest in security and defence on the one hand, and in social sectors on the other hand."

What a novel idea: taxing the rich to help improve an economy.

Naturally, Colombia's rich and powerful are arguing that the wealth tax will hurt the Colombian middle-class and hamper investments in the country.

But the results of Colombia's wealth tax over its first 12 years speak for themselves.

Over the past decade, Colombia's economy has become one the fastest growing economies in Latin America.

Meanwhile, unemployment in that country has been steadily decreasing, and inflation has remained relatively low.

Now, imagine what could happen to our economy, and to working poor people in America, if our lawmakers weren't afraid to make the wealthy elite pay their fair share.

According to CNBC, if we were to bump up the top marginal Income Tax rate to 39.6 percent - where it was during the Clinton era - for all Americans making $250,000 or more per year, our economy would take in an extra $40 to $45 billion per year. 

Just imagine how much good that money could do, and how many Americans it could help lift out of poverty.    And if we rolled the top tax rate back to where it was from the 1950s through the 1980s, we could actually do away with our deficit and fully fund necessary social programs.    (Some call for a 92% Tax, c.f. FDR - editor)

Ever since Ronald Reagan stepped foot inside the White House, we've seen the devastating effects of putting too much wealth in the hands of too few people.

While the wealthy elite continue to get richer and richer, working-class Americans are finding themselves sinking deeper and deeper below the poverty line, struggling to survive day-to-day.

It's time for this insanity to stop and to make America's millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share to support our economy.

We are the wealthiest and most developed country in the world.

There is no reason why one in five children should be struggling with poverty, or why 12.5 million Americans should be living on $2 per day.

Let's take a page out of Colombia's playbook, stand up to the wealthy elite, and finally eliminate poverty in America.

FED PILOT PROJECT for Jobs in Southern California

FEDERAL RESERVE PILOT PROJECT

Keynes Economic Engine Experiment

Janet Yellen is new CHAIR of the FEDERAL RESERVE, and an avid scholar of John Maynard Keynes.  Keynes’ economic cure for deep recessions is clear. When Corporations are afraid to hire, Government must be the employer of last resort.  In California, there are over 1.37 million Unemployed.

We propose employing a FED PILOT sample of 200K jobs. This small a sample should not raise reasonable inflation fears. Yet, California could provide a vibrant model for many Cities in America.

100,000 Jobs to rebuild our Infrastructure.  We need also to hire more Women and Youth, who are often forgotten. They are the guarantors of our next generation.    

25,000 ASST. TEACHERS.   Our schools have faced traumatic cuts.

25,000 NURSE ASSTS. Low hospital Ratios are a danger to patients.

25,000 YOUTH HIRES. Job training: computers, beach and inner city.

25,000 SENIORS helping other Seniors, and Children at risk

To achieve these goals a BLUE RIBBON PANEL should meet with FED Chairwoman Janet Yellen. This Panel could consist of our uniquely, very popular Mayor, Eric Garcetti, Council Member Mike Bonin, and Congress Members from the Congressional "Progressive Caucus."

The injection of the these Jobs and salaries into the Southern California Economy will spark a consumption revival.  It should lead our entire sputtering Nation into a real recovery.

William Floyd, Council Member Mike Bonin
These are the strongly held convictions of 2500 + Democrats on the Westside (WLA, Brentwood, Pac Pal, Palms, Mar Vista, Venice, 
Marina del Rey, and Playa del Rey)

_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________

Office Locator | Forms & Publications | Online Services | en Español

e California

Overview - California Labor Market Information

The EDD promotes California's economic health by providing information to help people understand California's economy and make informed labor market choices.

Top Statistics - July 2014

• Cal Labor Force: 18,579,800 - 39,500
• Employment: 17,208,600  - 31,400 
• We're losing jobs

Keynes said Gov’t must CREATE JOBS

• Unemployment Rate: 7.4% 
• (REAL Unemployment rate 16%)

• Unemployment: 1,371,200

• Workers and Teens hurting since 2008. 

Desperately need:

• Federal Pilot Project of 200,000 Jobs 

for Los Angeles and Southern California

Barack Obama cannot bring Jobs because of the GOP and their leader John Boehner .

Chair Janet Yellen can and will show the good side of the Federal Reserve.

Fuller Employment. 

Only the FED can create 200,000 Jobs.

Public Will Never See CIA Torture Report

New Sparks Fly Between CIA, 

and Senate Intelligence Committee

Wednesday, 17 September 2014 10:21By Ali Watkins, McClatchy DC | Report

• 30
• font size   
• Print 
• Email

Washington — Tensions between the CIA and its Congressional overseers erupted anew this week when CIA Director John Brennan refused to tell lawmakers who authorized intrusions into computers used by the Senate Intelligence Committee to compile a damning report on the spy agency’s interrogation program.

The confrontation, which took place during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, came as the sides continue to spar over the Report’s public release, providing further proof of the unprecedented deterioration in relations between the CIA and Capitol Hill.  After the meeting, several Senators were so incensed at Brennan that they confirmed the row and all but accused the Nation’s top Spy of defying Congress.

“I’m concerned there’s disrespect towards the Congress,” Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who also serves as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told McClatchy. “I think it’s arrogant, I think it’s unacceptable.”

“I continue to be incredibly frustrated with this director,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M. “He does not respect the role of the committee in providing oversight, and he continues to stonewall us on basic information, and it’s very frustrating. And it certainly doesn’t serve the (CIA) Agency well.”

Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., said he was “renewing my call” for Brennan’s resignation.  CIA spokesman Dean Boyd said that Brennan declined to answer the Committee’s questions because doing so could have compromised an Investigation into the Computer intrusions by an Accountability board headed by former Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind.   Moreover, the (CIA) Agency’s leadership has asked the CIA Inspector General’s Office to respond to the questions, Boyd said.

“Commencing a new, parallel investigation to compile answers to these questions could negatively impact the integrity of the ongoing Accountability Board process,” Boyd wrote in an email.

Hours before Tuesday’s meeting in the Committee’s secure offices, the panel received a letter in which Brennan said he wouldn’t respond to written questions he’d received in January from the chairwoman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper joined Brennan for the meeting, which had been expected to focus on the threat posed by the Islamic State.    But tempers flared as some lawmakers challenged Brennan on his decision not to answer Feinstein’s questions, witnesses said.

At one point, said a person familiar with the meeting, Brennan raised his voice at Feinstein.  

Feinstein sent the questions after Brennan told her that agency personnel investigating a security breach had searched computers her staff used in a secret CIA facility. The questions included a demand to know who ordered the intrusions and under what legal authority they were conducted.

Brennan “shouldn’t get away with not answering questions,” said Levin. 

“Nobody in the Executive branch should get away with not answering questions to a legitimate Legislative Inquiry.”

Feinstein described the questions in a scathing March speech on the Senate floor. In her address, she confirmed an earlier McClatchy report about the Computer intrusions and suggested that the CIA might have violated the Law and the Separation of Powers provisions of the Constitution.

The Committee Staff used the Computers to compile a report on the Agency’s use of Torture on suspected Terrorists under the George W. Bush administration.   Bush ended the program, in which detainees were abducted and held in secret overseas prisons, in 2006.    The CIA and former Bush administration officials deny that the interrogation Techniques, which included simulated drowning known as Waterboarding, constituted Torture.

For its part, the CIA accused Feinstein’s staffers of removing without permission Classified documents from the Secret facility in which the Agency required them to review millions of pages of Operational cables and other Highly Classified 

materials on the (Torture) program.

Both sets of charges were referred to the Justice Department for criminal investigations.

At the time, Brennan adamantly denied Feinstein’s allegations that the CIA had spied on her committee.    But in July, he was compelled to apologize to her after a review by the CIA Inspector General’s Office confirmed that CIA Personnel gained Unauthorized access to her Staff’s computers and combed through their Emails.

The Inspector General's report also revealed that the Agency’s contention that the Staff had removed Classified documents without permission from the top-secret facility was Unfounded and based on inaccurate information.

Levin dismissed Brennan’s defense that CIA Inspector General David Buckley was the appropriate person to answer Feinstein’s questions.

“It may or may not be appropriate for the (CIA) IG to answer, but it’s not appropriate for Brennan to refuse to answer.     If he doesn’t know the answers, he can say so,” said Levin.

Levin continued, “He either knows the information or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t know the answers, OK, tell us. It’d be kind of stunning if he didn’t know the answers to those questions, but if that’s what he wants to say, he should tell us.”

In June, the Justice Department cited Insufficient Evidence and declined to launch Criminal investigations into the CIA computer intrusions or the allegation that the Staff had removed top-secret documents without authorization.

But Levin said that the answers to Feinstein’s questions could yield new information that could prompt the Justice Department to reopen an inquiry into the CIA’s Computer Monitoring.

The committee spent $40 million and five years compiling its more than 6,000-page report on the CIA’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (torture) Program.      It submitted the 500-page Executive summary to the CIA and the White House for a Declassification Review in April, but the sides have been locked in a contentious debate over how much to black out prior to its public release.

Read more here:http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/09/12/239712_new-sparks-fly-between-cia-senate.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

© 2014 McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. Truthout has licensed this content. 

Regulators Flunk 11 Big Banks - Slim Down

Dear William,

Wall Street banks have immense power in Washington, so it's worth noting when Federal Regulators start to push back.   That's why we were pleased to see the FDIC and the Federal Reserve send the big Banks a message: they are still too big, still too complicated, and still have a long way to go in reassuring the public that the failure of one of these institutions would not cause disastrous economic damage.

First some back story:  Under the Dodd-Frank Act each of the nation's largest Financial Institutions is required to submit a "living will" - a plan for the company to wind down its operations in the event of failure.   Advance planning for an orderly “resolution” is a crucial backstop against pressure for more government bailouts like those we saw during the 2008 financial crisis. 

The idea here is simple:  the onus is on the big Banks to show that they are truly not ”too big to fail” – that their failure would not drag down the broader U.S. economy.

Earlier this month, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve completed their review of 11 living wills submitted thus far. Their verdict: not good enough.  These Banks, they concluded, are still too Big and complex to fail without severe Negative impacts on the Economy.

What happens now?  The Banks must go back to the drawing board.  Eventually, if the Regulators remain unsatisfied, they have the Authority to Break up the biggest Banks or take other steps to reduce the risk they pose to the Economy.

This warning is just a first step. We still don’t know what will happen in the next round, or whether the Regulators will have the backbone to tell Banks that they must genuinely downsize and simplify their operations.   In fact, we don’t know nearly enough about this entire process, because so much of what the living wills say is kept secret. The public needs to be able to see more so we can hold the banks and regulators accountable.

That’s why we need to keep paying attention, and keep calling for change. In the meantime, it's worth pausing to appreciate moves in the right direction: the FDIC and the Fed gave a failing grade for failing work. Sometimes Wall Street doesn’t get its way. We're going to keep fighting to make sure this won't be the last time.

Lisa Donner
Executive Director
Americans for Financial Reform

Foreclosure Activists Disrupt CA Bureaucrats

Protesters say California

too Slow in Spending

$2 Billion to Aid Homeowners

BY HUDSON SANGREE

hsangree@sacbee.comSeptember 16, 2014 Updated 1 hour ago

www.keepyourhomecalifornia.org 

Two dozen protesters wearing yellow T-shirts marched through a downtown Sacramento conference room and chanted slogans Tuesday during ameeting of the California Housing Finance Agency’s board of directors.

The members of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowermentdemanded that the agency’s Keep Your Home California program move faster in distributing $2 billion in federal aid for struggling Homeowners.

Keep Your Home California still has about $1 billion of the money it received from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Hardest Hit Fund several years ago. It must spend that remaining amount by 2017.

Critics say the program has been dragging its feet as more homes are lost to foreclosure.

“What do we want? Principal reduction! When do we want it? Now!” the protesters chanted as they marched in circles around the room at the Holiday Inn on J Street, disrupting the meeting.

Group member Jose Vega and others addressed the Board during its Public comment period. Vega, who had his own loan Payments greatly reduced, said there were Thousands of other Homeowners who are unable to qualify for aid because they owe so much more than their homes are worth.

“The money is there. It needs to be used,” he said.

At the meeting, CalHFA executives assured the Protesters they’d been heard, but later took issue with the group’s message.

“We’re absolutely on track,” said Diane Richardson, head of Keep Your Home California and the housing agency’s director of legislation.

So far the program has helped more than 43,500 homeowners and distributed $790 million in aid, with an additional $75 million in payments scheduled to be distributed, Richardson said.

On Tuesday, Richardson gave The Sacramento Bee a copy of a letter that Tia Boatman Patterson, the agency’s new director, sent to ACCE organizers in response to their demands that Keep Your Home California do more to help struggling homeowners.

The letter contends the program has continually adjusted its criteria since it started in 2011, in order to include more homeowners.

Last year, for instance, Keep Your Home California loosened the rules of itsPrincipal Reduction Program, which can slash the amount borrowers owe by up to $100,000. Previous rules required applicants to prove a hardship such as adeath in the family or unemployment. After the changes, homeowners need to show only that they owe 40 percent more than their home is worth.

“In September 2013, California was able to implement a change to PRP that made severe negative equity (on its own) a hardship indicative of imminent default,” Boatman Patterson wrote.

Requirements that lenders modify loans – matching state principal reductions dollar for dollar – were removed.

The letter also noted that anyone who receives unemployment benefits in California is given information about the agency’s Unemployment Mortgage Assistance program, which covers loan payments up to $3,000 a month for 12 months.

Those changes and others have made the program more inclusive over time, officials said.

More information about the state’s homeowner assistance programs is available www.keepyourhomecalifornia.org 

or by calling (888) 954-5337.

Read more here: http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2014/09/16/3851925/protesters-say-california-too.html#storylink=cpy

Birds Are Dying

The Great Avian Die-Off: 

Two Reports Point to 

Grim Future for US Birds

Monday, 15 September 2014 12:34By Patrick Glennon, Truthout | News Analysis

• 94
• font size   
• Print 
• Email

Eastern meadowlark. (Photo: keeva999 )Billions to None

Many Americans living today cannot conceive just how innumerable the passenger pigeon was. Until the late 19th century, the species' numbers were biblical in proportions. It flew in flocks up to a billion strong, stretching for hundreds of miles and blackening the sky with its immensity. For people living at the time, the prospect of such a creature becoming extinct would probably have been equally hard to conceive. 

But it happened.

In September 1914 - a hundred years ago this September - the last passenger pigeon died in captivity in Cincinnati. The last confirmed wild passenger pigeons were shot down over a decade earlier, in 1902. Over the course of several decades, a creature that once comprised up to 40 percent of the continental bird population ceased to be. 

Common bird species nowadays face a similar fate - over half of them, in fact, could end up like the passenger pigeon.

Two September reports tell a dark tale about the future of North American avian species. The State of the Birds 2014 report and the Audubon Society's Climate Reportenumerate the ongoing problems contributing to a precipitous decline in bird populations across the United States. From irresponsible management of private land to climate change, these reports draw a connection between the fate of birds and the overall well-being of the environment. Their findings - in conjunction with previous research connecting chemical contamination with declining bird populations - foretell a bleak, parallel future for humanity.

Industrial Agriculture and Development Up, Meadowlarks and Bobolinks Down 

Around half of US bird populations live on private land. This reality complicates the effective management and regulation of essential living spaces for habitat obligates (non-migratory birds that live exclusively in one environment). When Big Ag and private developers buy up and ravage large swaths of land, habitat obligates face a permanent loss of living space. Conservation is thus paramount for ensuring these birds' future. 

As the State of the Birds report discusses, however, destructive practices continue unabated. Common avian species, including the meadowlark and bobolink, are witnessing the destruction of their habitats as family farms give way to industrial agriculture and suburbs continue to stretch their tentacles into hitherto untouched grasslands. Similarly, birds of the western Great Plains - such as the Sprague's pipit and chestnut-collared longspur - are threatened by overgrazing and industrial farm expansion. Arid lands have seen a 46 percent population drop in 17 different species since 1968 due to unsustainable land use and energy development. The report lists 230 different birds facing endangerment due largely to these development and land use trends.

Climate Change: Birds Can Only Fly So Far North

As the oceans grow warmer, the ice caps melt and governments continue to kick the climate change can down the road, birds are gradually being pushed out of their climatic ranges. The Audubon Society's Climate Report explains that global warming poses an existential threat to the nation's birds. Using the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count and the North American Breeding Bird Survey, the report outlines the "climatic suitability" (i.e., where a bird can survive in summer and winter) for individual species. The report compares this information to internationally recognized projections of climate change scenarios to detail how the climatic zone of each species will change with increasing temperatures. 

The report states that 76 birds face "severe declines" by 2050, and that more than half of US bird species will witness a 50 percent loss of their climatic range by 2080. The American bald eagle is expected to lose 73 percent of its breeding ground by 2080. Minnesota can expect the loon - an iconic presence in the state - to disappear in the same time period. There is only so much landmass for birds to thrive in, and as the number of habitable territories shrink and drift farther north, birds will have no place to go.

What Dying Birds Mean for the Environment - and Humanity

Birds are a meaningful barometer for the general health of an ecosystem. They are high up on the food chain, meaning that contamination at the bottom will travel its way up the ladder. In Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), the author connected thetransference of the pesticide DDT between the insects it was meant to destroy and the animals that ate them. By the 1980s, academic research gave birth to the theory of the"endocrine disruptor": the idea that chemicals - including the pesticide DDT and industrial chemicals, such as PCBs - were spreading throughout ecosystems and interfering with the normal function of birds' endocrine systems, significantly limiting their hormone production and debilitating their reproduction cycles. 

Research has shown the negative effects of other chemicals on avian species: Mercury has not only stunted reproductive abilities in certain birds, but has actually altered birds' songs due to neurological damage; a single kernel of corn contaminated with neonicotinoids (insecticides that are widely used and minimally regulated) is enough to kill songbirds. The pervasiveness of human-made chemicals in the natural world manifests in these cases, and points to potential harm caused to other wildlife - including human beings. Studies have linked DDT and PCBs to neurological damage in humans, as well as to prostate and breast cancers. At the top of the food chain, people can expect chemical pollution to affect them adversely as it does predatory birds.

The consequences of irresponsible land use and climate change will also affect more creatures than birds. Overdevelopment will lead to the destruction of entire ecosystems, along with the biodiversity that makes them work. While global warming accelerates, island nations will battle the ocean level's rise and coastal cities will be battered by superstorms. Climate change is beginning to displace people, just as it has begun to displace birds by the gradual destruction of their environments. 

Humanity must see itself - and its fate - in the destruction of the natural world. While ensuring the future of humanity is a hugely important task, so too is the moral responsibility to cease the crimes committed against the natural world and to rectify the damages already wrought.

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

PATRICK GLENNON

Patrick Glennon is an independent writer based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His work has been featured in Truthout, In These Times and The Occupied Chicago Tribune.

RELATED STORIES

Climate Change in Alaska and Hawaii: Roadmaps for Federal Adaptation Policies

By Christine Shearer, Truthout | News Analysis

"Birds of Paradise Lost:" A Conversation With Author Andrew Lam

By Anna Challet, New American Media | Interview

Jane Goodall on Climate Change, Technology, and What Makes Us Different From Chimps

By Katrina Rabeler, YES! Magazine | Op-Ed

Dahr Jamail | From Pine Beetles to Disappearing Glaciers, NASA Scientists Tell of "Dramatic" Planetary Changes

By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | News Report

World's Last Remaining Forest Wilderness at Risk

By Stephen Leahy, Inter Press Service | Report