Tag: Chris Hayes

Income equality in the United States continues to widen between the 99% and the 1%. It was one of the main issues that Occupy Wall St. brought to the forefront of the conversation on the economy and the phony concern over the deficit. One of the big issues is tax inequality, the poor and middle class pay a greater percentage of their income to the government than do the top earners. President Obama and the Congressional Democrats have proposed a minimum tax of 30 percent to individuals making more than a million dollars a year, called the Buffet Rule, after billionaire Warren Buffet who thinks that it is unfair that he pays less in taxes than his secretary. Although it has been pointed out that revenue generated from the increase would only minimally help reduce the deficit, it is wildly popular with 67% of Americans in support of its passage. Unfortunately, it didn’t have the votes in the Senate to even get to the floor for a vote. Even if it did it would never see the light of day in the intransigent House. We mustn’t tax the job creators who haven’t created jobs in the US for over a decade. We must continue to allow millionaires, like Romney, to give their children millions as a gift tax free, thanks to a tax loophole on “carried interest,” presumably one of the loopholes that would have been closed:

When the Romney campaign disclosed in December that the couple’s five sons had a $100 million trust fund, I suspected that, in setting up the fund, the Romneys used a tax strategy that allows some very rich people to avoid paying gift taxes. But it was impossible to know if this was the case without seeing their tax returns going back years. [..]

Reuters emailed the Romney campaign spokeswoman to ask how much the Romneys paid in gift taxes on assets put into the sons’ trust over the last 17 years. The spokeswoman, citing Brad Malt, the Romney family tax lawyer, answered: none.

The idea that someone could pay zero gift taxes on contributions to a $100 million trust fund may surprise people who have heard arguments that the wealthy are overburdened by gift and estate taxes. But the Romneys’ gift-tax avoidance strategy is perfectly legal.

A good discussion on whether Obama’s ‘Buffett Rule’ would bridge tax divide was had on MSNBC’s Up with Chis Hayes with University of Pennsylvania Wharton professor Betsey Stevenson, Reuters columnist David Cay Johnston, former Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Va., and Demos Vice President Heather McGhee.

This bill had very little chance of passing and was in all reality merely a political gambit to make the Republicans look like they are out of touch with the average American voter. How well that will work this early in the campaign remains to be seen.

Last week Congress passed the Jump Start Our Business Startups Act (pdf), the JOBS Act, which is set to be signed into law with much fanfare by President Obama despite the fact that it will in all probability create an explosion of financial fraud. The act rolls back many of the regulations that were passed under Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002. Professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Bill Black wrote an outstanding article for the New Economic Perspectives that was cross posted at naked capitalism, explaining with clarity how the jumpstart Obama’s Bucket Shops Act is just another in a long series of fraud-promoting legislation. He closed with this analysis:

We have trashed a regulatory system that was the envy of the world. It helped bring us prosperity, far greater economic stability, fewer and less severe recessions, and reduced income inequality. It made freer enterprise possible because the regulatory cops on the beat helped limit the Gresham’s dynamic in which bad ethics drives good ethics out of the marketplace. When frauds prosper honest businesses are among the victims. The three de’s have brought us recurrent, intensifying financial crises, the end of any material gains by the middle class, losses for the working class, the expansion of poverty and extreme inequality, and the domination of our political system by crony capitalism. Elite fraud and corruption are now common in America.

The entire article is a must read.

During a panel discussion on Up with Chris Hayes, Prof. Black and Alexis Goldstein of Occupy the SEC “educated” Democratic Representative Carolyn Maloney, who represents the the Upper East Side constituency of top Wall Street earners, on just how bad this bill is. As Yves Smith observes, “it is pretty hard to imagine that Carolyn Maloney would do anything that would seriously inconvenience her constituency”:

You need to watch the full segment to get the effect, but Maloney starts out by saying that the JOBS Act probably won’t create many jobs, but she was nevertheless getting complaints about how costly it was for “small” businesses to hire auditors (earth to base, if they are public, they would not qualify as “small” in most people’s book). Goldsmith devastates Maloney with her command of the bill, pointing out that it covers companies of up to $1 billion in revenues, that the tech companies its backers keep invoking have VC firms ready and willing to invest, and the new format well be used by PE firms flipping companies they had taken private back to public investors. By the end, Maloney is telling Goldsmith to send her suggestions for improved legislation and she’ll put it forward (I’ll believe her sincerity when I see action).

Yves is right, Alexis shreds Carolyn. Watch this segment, it is a thing of beauty.

Prof. Black also explains “stump & dump” scams and “cloud financing” that can cause devastating losses and won’t create any jobs.

The tragic murder of a 17 year old black walking home in the rain by a so-called neighborhood watchman who apparently chased him down and shot him because this young black man “looked suspicious” has dominated the news this past week. It has the media and the country enraged about the law in Florida that allowed the perpetrator to not just walk away, but walk away never having been questioned by the police about what occurred and walk away with the gun that killed an unarmed child. This man is still free, still unquestioned by authorities and still armed.

MSNBC’s Up with Chris dedicated its entire two hours to a discussion about the public call for justice, how these “Stand Your Ground” laws that allowed his assailant to walk were passed by state legislatures and the ramifications. The Up w/ Chris Hayes panel, The Atlantic‘s Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Nation‘s Liliana Segura, the Bernard Center’s Michelle Bernard, and former police officer Peter Moskos, discuss the case in detail and the national cause it has become.

The Emperor has no clothes and must be exposed.

Jon Walker at Firedoglake says that the negotiations on the debt ceiling keep moving right:

In the beginning, the idea that any political party would actively hold the debt ceiling hostage to reduce the deficit was considered absurd. Mainly because all the top politicians have admitted they don’t want the country to default and that actually forcing a default would have the exact opposite affect of sending Treasury bond rates up, making the deficit problem dramatically worse. Only a year ago, the idea the debt ceiling must be raised was not just the broad centrist position, and it has been the common sense position for decades.

Instead of holding a firm line and pointing out that Republicans were flirting with incoherent madness related to the debt ceiling, Democrats ,lead by President Obama, choose to feed the Republican deficit hysteria by actively refusing to take a stand. This moved the debate radically to the right. It made it acceptable to hold America credit worthiness hostage to demand deficit reductions despite massive unemployment.

John Amato at Crooks and Liars gives a tutorial in Negotiating for Dummies:

Every “cut” is on the table, but not revenue increasers. This is all kabuki and the debt ceiling isn’t the same type of game they played with as shutting down our own government was. But if Democrats use meaningless military cuts to justify massive cuts in education, food safety, health research and criminal justice as some kumbaya moment, then this will be not a deal, but a ritual sacrifice.

Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes, Washington Editor of The Nation magazine, discussed the lengths to which the Republicans have gone to undermine President Obama, calling it “craven shameless, unprincipled partisan hackery”

At this point, I call it insanity on the part of the President and the Democratic leadership.