Simple, Intelligent Things We Need to do on Taxes

Republicans are frequently concerned about deficits and deficit spending. At least they are when there is a Democratic Party President like now. Herwith, 3 easy and intelligent things we could do to help solve this problem.

--Raise the corporate tax rate so they pay the same as small businesses. --Raise the tax rate on the rich so they pay the same as the middle-class. --Remove loopholes and increase enforcement. --Dan Price @DanPriceSeattle

Quote of the Day -- On Capitalism

We have to grasp, as Marx and Adam Smith did, that corporations are not concerned with the common good. They exploit, pollute, impoverish, repress, kill, and lie to make money. They throw poor people out of homes, let the uninsured die, wage useless wars for profit, poison and pollute the ecosystem, slash social assistance programs, gut public education, trash the global economy, plunder the U.S. Treasury and crush all popular movements that seek justice for working men and women. They worship money and power.

Chris Hedges

The Many Benefits of Higher Wages and a Better Paid Employee

Companies and people in companies seem to, more often than not, only think of the costs of higher wages to and for a company. They seem to virtually never consider the benefits of them. So herewith, at least some of those benefits. They are at least several, if not many, and they are huge.

--First, if a company offers a higher, better wage than other companies, they will attract better employees. They will attract employees who are more experienced, who have more and better education and who, frankly, have better manners. These are no small things. The benefits of those, alone, to the company are great. The company gets that better employee, then may have to, likely, train them less because they already have both the knowledge and experience needed, so the company reduces costs and expenses already.

--Second, with a better, higher wage, the company can KEEP that better employee, those better employees. The cost savings here are, again, huge, and many. With keeping that employee, instead of having high turnover in the company, the company can cut the costs of advertising for new employees--no small thing---and the company can also reduce the costs of constantly training new employees since fewer people needed to do the work are going out the door. These are, again, huge costs cut and so, much more money can go to either growing business or straight to the bottom line, straight to profit and profits, the goal of all companies.

--Third, better, retained employees create a far better experience for the customers. With a better, more experienced, more educated, even more mature, more well-adjusted employee, one that is also retained, the experience for the customer is far more consistent and projects more and better just what, exactly, the company is about. This employee, these employees project the company culture and rules far better. There is far better and greater consistency for the customer and their experience with the customer. This ensures things are done right, the first time, and far more ensures that the customer will stay with the company but that they will also far more likely grow with the company and then that they will also help the company grow by seeing to it others come to the company. With their good and positive experience, they're far more likely to recommend the company to others. This helps to ensure growth, clearly.

These are just three quick but great reasons and examples of how a better paid employee creates a better company, a better company experience and so, finally, a more profitable company.

Companies that only look at the costs of employees and not the benefits, not looking at how a good employee, better paid, can actually help the company and help the company grow and help the company's profit and profits is a foolish, short-sighted company, for sure.

In employees, as with all products, the age old saying is also true here:

You get what you pay for.

And you pay for what you get.

Companies can't get or keep employees, good employees, if those employees can't afford, literally, to work there.

Links:

How Paying Employees More Can Make You More Profitable

Pay Higher Wages, Earn More Profit

Ten Reasons Workers Should Be Paid More

Higher wages for higher corporate profits 

Raising Wages to Raise Profits

The American Worker Doesn't Know What He Doesn't Have---But Could

Wil Wheaton:

I was at work today for Labour Day and on TV was Good Morning America. The theme was celebrating the American worker and their accomplishments. I’ll tell you how it went down.

Kelly put on her glasses, smile wide, and pulled out a piece of paper which she read from. The paper was from an article (which I have issues with, but I will leave alone for now) by ABC news. Kelly proceeded only to read the opening of it, which reads: ‘Americans work more than anyone in the industrialized world. More than the English, more than the French, way more than the Germans or Norwegians. Even, recently, more than the Japanese. And Americans take less vacation, work longer days, and retire later, too.’

And everyone cheered.

And they kept cheering when Kelly put her paper down and smiled at everyone. (not continuing with the rest of the article which suggests that this may in fact be a problem).

And I just couldn’t BELIEVE that anyone was cheering. America. AMERICA you work more than the French, who are entitled by law to have 5 weeks off a year for vacation and can not work more than 35 hours per week. You work more than Norway, who average 33 hours per week and 44,000 dollars a year. Germany, where AGAIN, we see a shorter work week and better pay! And all of these countries have health care and better pay and free/affordable education!

WHY ARE YOU CHEERING?

I have a different interpretation of this information: the American worker is the most taken advantage of worker in the industrialized world. It’s plain and simple. You work long hours and get horrible pay. You take multiple jobs and work and work and work just to get by. Unions are disappearing, jobs are always looking for part timers and all you are doing is giving up your time for less money, less vacation, less safety and stability and less education than anyone else on the list.

Celebrate Labour day. Celebrate the accomplishments of the common worker, but don’t let these people trick you into thinking you should celebrate the theft of your time and energy, or the fruits of your labour.

They are using you. Stop cheering.

(via wilwheaton)

The Real Reason America Doesn't Have Universal Health Care

Happy Labor Day

Thank a Union.  #Strongertogether

Update For Trump Voters

1. He told you he’d repeal Obamacare and replace it with something “beautiful.” 

You bought it. 

But he didn’t repeal and he didn’t replace. Just as well, too, thank goodness. His plan would have knocked 32 million off health insurance, including and maybe especially many of you.

2. He told you he’d cut your taxes. 

You bought it. 

But tax “reform” is stalled. And if it ever moves, the only ones whose taxes will be cut are the wealthy. That "Trumpcare" the Republicans came up with was little more than yet further tax cuts for corporations and the already-wealthy.

3. He told you he’d invest $1 billion in our nation’s crumbling infrastructure.

You bought it.

But his infrastructure plan, which was really a giveaway to rich investors, is also stalled. And a lot of his fellow Republicans want no such spending on infrastructure.

4. He said he’d clean the Washington swamp. 

You bought it. 

But he's brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses, along with former lobbyists, lawyers and consultants who are crafting new policies for the same industries they recently worked for.

All The President's Billionaires: 

A Guide To Trump's Gilded Inner Circle

5. He said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. You bought it. But he created the most chaotic, dysfunctional, back-stabbing White House in modern history, in which no one is in charge.

6. He said he’d close “special interest loopholes that have been so good for Wall Street investors but unfair to American workers." 

You bought it. 

But he picked a Wall Street financier Stephen Schwarzman to run his strategic and policy forum, who compares closing those loopholes to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.

7. He told you he’d “bring down drug prices” by making deals with drug companies. 

You bought it. 

Now the White House says that promise is “inoperative.”

8. He said that on Day One he’d label China a “currency manipulator.” 

You bought it. 

Then he met with China’s president and declared "China is not a currency manipulator."

9. He said he wouldn’t bomb Syria. 

You bought it. 

Then he bombed Syria.

10. He called Barack Obama “the vacationer-in-Chief” and accused him of playing more rounds of golf than Tiger Woods. He promised to never be the kind of president who took cushy vacations on the taxpayer’s dime, not when there was so much important work to be done. 

You bought it. 

But in his first 6 months he has spent more taxpayer money on vacations than Obama did in the first 3 years of his presidency. Not to mention all the money taxpayers are spending protecting his family, including his two sons who travel all over the world on Trump business.

Trump on track to spend more on travel 

this year than Obama did in 8 years

11. He said he’d force companies to keep jobs in America. 

You believed him. 

But despite their promises, Carrier, Ford, GM, and the rest are shipping jobs to Mexico and China. Meanwhile, he and his political party have done and will do nothing to take away tax credits for those expenses incurred to offshore those jobs and that manufacturing.

12. He said he’d create coal jobs. 

You believe him. 

He hasn’t. 

But here's what he has done: Since 1965 a federal program called the Appalachian Regional Commission has spent $23 billion helping communities in coal states fund job retraining, reclaim land, and provide desperately needed social services. A.R.C. helped cut poverty rates almost in half, double the percentage of high-school graduates, and reduce infant mortality by two-thirds. Trump’s first proposed budget eliminates A.R.C.

At what point do you all realize his promises are never going to be fulfilled and that he's only in this for himself and his own gain?

Soon?

Could it be soon?

Please?

(And mind you, the above is only a partial, abbreviated list).

Source:  Mostly from Professor Robert Reich on his original broadcast, June 30, 2017.

Facebook Wouldn't Let Me Post a Link to This Article Last Evening

I was reading and also on Facebonkers last evening when I ran across this article.

Open thread for night owls: The corporate disinformation campaign against net neutrality

I wanted to post it on a page, a group I belong to. This one:

Defend Net Neutrality

Facebook said it "didn't recognize the url." I tried to post it, also, from the source, The Daily Kos, but that wouldn't work, either.

I've never felt I was being censored out there until this.

Big, corporate brother?

Think We Don't Need to Raise the Minimum Wage?

Many people say we don't need to raise the minimum wage in America. I see it repeatedly.

It made me think.

I remember, distinctly, how I was proud of making $21,000 per year as assistant manager of a men's retail store I worked at in 1979. It didn't make me rich, no way, but I very clearly remember that wage landmark at that time.

So I took that amount and time and put it in a inflation calculator online. The results were stunning.

It showed that that amount, $21,000 per year in 1979 would be the equivalent of earning over $74,000 today. In fact, it would be nearly $75,000 in today's money.

Don't believe it? See for yourself.

CPI Inflation Calculator

Mind you, a great, great deal has changed since, what with retail stores continually being hit and hit hard by "big box" and now online stores, these wages, at least from retail positions, are no longer possible. That said, other industries could, in fact, pay far more reasonable, fair and living wages.

The statistics prove this out.

For most workers, real wages have 

barely budged for decades

2014 Continues a 35-Year Trend 

of Broad-Based Wage Stagnation

The Average American Worker 

Earns Less Today Than 40 Years Ago

And corporations have made out very, very well.

Corporate Profits Grow and Wages Slide

As have the CEOs and executives.

CEO Pay Has Grown 90 Times Faster 

than Typical Worker Pay

Corporate Executives Are Making 

Way More Money Than Anybody

The problem is especially American, too.

American CEO pay: U.S. executives are paid 

way more than foreigners

It's pretty outrageous what is happening and what we're letting happen to and with the nation's wealth.

The Richest 1% Have Captured 

America's Wealth

The Top 1 Percent's Share of Income 

from Wealth Has Been Rising for Decades

We need to fight. We need to fight back. We need to end the Citizens United ruling and end campaign contributions entirely. It's the only way we'll get it back where the government and nation work for the people again, for all the people and not just for the already-wealthy and corporations.

Links:

This is why your CEO makes more than 300 times your pay

Rich People | IT - International Times

The Republican Tax Plan

Republicans: The Party of Cruelty

This was written, as it shows, by James Kunstler, back in 2010, when the ACA, the Affordable Care Act, what became known as "Obamacare", was being considered and created.  I found it true then. I find it still true to this day, as those same Republicans are trying to dismantle the bill.

James Kunstler-- "The Party Of Cruelty"

Modernization Act of 2003, then regarded as the most reckless giveaway of public funds in human history. Along the way, they enlisted an army of nay-sayers representing everything dark, disgraceful, and ignorant in the American character. If the Republicans keep going this way, they'll end up with something worse than Naziism: a party that hates everything but believes in absolutely nothing.

The most striking elements of so-called health care in America these days is how cruel and unjust it is, and in taking a stand against reforming it the Republican party appeared to be firmly in support of cruelty and injustice. This would be well within the historical tradition of other religious crusades which turned political -- such as the Spanish Inquisition and the seventeenth century war against witchcraft. Whatever else the Democratic party has stood for in recent history, it has tended to oppose institutional cruelty and injustice, and notice that it has also been the party for keeping religion out of government.

Now a health care reform act has passed and there's some reason to hope that insurance companies will be prevented from doing things like canceling the coverage of policy-holders who have the impertinence to actually get sick, which has been their main device for revenue enhancement, and we'll see how they cope with the idea that being alive in a treacherous world is the fundamental pre-existing condition.

I surely don't know if the nation can afford to pay for what this law requires, but then can we really afford to pay for anything? -- including the salaries, retirement benefits, and health insurance of congressmen, not to mention two wars, bailout life support for banks, rising unemployment benefits, shovel-ready stimulus projects, et cetera, blah blah? Probably not.

My guess is that the health care "industry" will unravel in the years ahead under the weight of its own hypercomplexity just as all the other hypercomplex systems of normal American life (such as it is) groan and collapse under their own unworkable immensities -- and I speak here of industrial-style farming, Big Box "consumerism," Happy Motoring, too-big-to-fail finance, centralized public education, and the pension racket. All the activities of daily life in this country have poor prospects for continuing in their current form.

At least this once a workable majority in the government has stood up to the forces of cruelty and injustice, and whatever else happens to us in the course of this long emergency, it will be a good thing if the party of fairness and justice identifies its adversaries for what they are: not "partners in governing," or any such academical-therapeutic bullshit, but enemies of every generous impulse in the national character.

I hope that Mr. Obama's party can carry this message clearly into the electoral battles ahead, painting the Republican opposition for what it is: a gang of hypocritical, pietistic sadists, seeking pleasure in the suffering of others while pretending to be Christians, devoid of sympathy, empathy, or any inclination to simple human kindness, constant breakers of the Golden Rule, enemies of the common good. In fact, the current edition of the Republican party has achieved something really memorable in the annals of collective bad intentions: they have managed to create a sense of the public interest whose main goal is the destruction of the public interest.

This is exactly what the Republican majority on the Supreme Court did earlier this year by deciding that corporations -- which are sociopathic by definition in being answerable only to their shareholders and nothing else -- should enjoy the same full privileges in election campaign contributions as human persons, who are assumed to have obligations, duties, and responsibilities to the common good (and therefore to the public interest). This shameful act by the court majority only underscores the chief defining characteristic of Republicans in their current incarnation: an inability to think. And so, naturally Republicans gravitate toward superstition and the traditional devices of improvident religious authorities -- persecution of the weak, torture, denial of due process, and dogmas designed to spread hatred.

I hope the American public begins to understand this, because they have been manipulated in their own pain and hardship by these dark forces, and their thrall to the likes of John Boehner, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush, Hannity, and the rest of these vicious morons could easily increase as their economic hardships deepen. We're facing a comprehensive contraction of wealth and economy that is going to challenge every shared virtue in our national soul, and we're not going to meet these difficulties successfully without a sense of mutual obligation and sympathy for each other. The Republican party is just itching to turn a giant thumbscrew on the US public -- that is, before they try to start burning their enemies at the stake. We understand that the Health Care Reform Act is a first stand against that.
Thank you, Mr. Kunstler, for putting it into words, all of it, for the rest of us.

Link to original post: 

http://monkeyfister.blogspot.com/2010/03/james-kunstler-party-of-cruelty.html

Additional links:    What's Up - KUNSTLER

James Howard Kunstler - Wikipedia

Quote of the Day -- On Our Nation and Concentrated Wealth

Quote of the Day -- On Gross Inequality

“ It’s one thing to recognize capitalism for the powerful economic tool it is and to acknowledge that, for better or for worse, we’re stuck with it and, hey, thank God we have it. There’s not a lot else that can produce mass wealth with the dexterity that capitalism can.

But to mistake it for a social framework is an incredible intellectual corruption and it’s one that the West has accepted as a given since 1980—since Reagan.

Human beings—in this country in particular—are worth less and less. When capitalism triumphs unequivocally, labor is diminished. It’s a zero-sum game. People paid a much higher tax rate when Eisenhower was president, a much higher tax rate for the benefit of society, and all of us had more of a sense that we were included.

- David Simon

What Trump's Proposed Economic Plans Already Did To Kansas and Oklahoma

Donald Trump's plans of cutting taxes further for businesses and corporations and the already-wealthy have already, famously been tried before. Heck, we've seen this for some time, right next door in Kansas, since 2012 and Governor Sam Brownback's and the Republican's "trickle down economics."

Kansas expects budget shortfall 

around $350 million this fiscal year

As if that isn't and hasn't been horrible enough, check out what the rocket scientist Republicans have done in their beloved red state Oklahoma.

Oklahoma budget hole nearly $900 million

And besides these plans, of cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations, Mr. Trump also wants to beef up our military and their budget, as though they don't waste millions and billions enough already.

Trump appears to subtweet Putin as both express desire to beef up nuclear capabilities

US Army fudged its accounts by trillions 

of dollars, auditor finds

So get ready, America. Those pesky, hard-headed Republicans, with their ideas of shoveling yet more money to corporations and again, the already-wealthy and the military are now coming at the entire nation.

God help us all.

And thanks, Republicans, once again, in advance!

The Trump Administration

What you get when you place people against government, IN your government.

Insanity.

Link:  Oh Dear God. They're Giving Rick Perry Nukes.

Betsy DeVos and the Plan to Break Public Schools

An Insightful Article, Dealing With Kansas City's Own Now-Gone Twinkies Plant

Remember Kansas City's Twinkies plant? The Hostess plant?

Sure you do.

And remember how, just before it closed and was sold off, the owners said it wasn't profitable because of the Unions and because of the workers' demands?

Yeah, well, bullshit.

How the Twinkie Made the Superrich 

Even Richer 

Here's your "class warfare" for you, folks. And I can tell you, the "upper class" is winning.

Again.

Some more.

If anyone, anyone is in the middle- or lower-class and against Unions, they're at least mistaken. Wildly mistaken.

If not stupid.

"Vashington Been Beddy, Beddy Gud" for Senator Blunt

Roy Blunt has gotten rich in Washington.

How is that working out for you?


Vote Jason Kander

Vote Blue 2016

Country Club Plaza Blight??

Here we go again.

Yet another company on the Country Club Plaza wants tax breaks. This time, it's a huge luxury hotel corporation, The Intercontinental, and they're claiming that their Intercontinental on our Plaza--you know, the old Alameda, is suffering from "blight."

InterContinental, a premier KC hotel, 

seeks 'blight' designation

What chutzpah. What corporate chutzpah. What nerve.

Intercontinental should break the news to their customers, that the hotel where they're staying suffers from "blight."

As an example, check out how the Intercontinental Hotel chain describes their local hotel, on their website.

LANDMARK ELEGANCE AT KANSAS CITY’S BEST ADDRESS

It is today and always has been presented as a luxury hotel, first. Second, they've updated and redecorated the hotel since taking over from the Alameda. And the rooms start at $200 per night. How much blight can they suffer at those rates?

Check this out. As further proof. They list themselves on at least a few sites on the internet as a Five Star Hotel, too.

The 5 Best Luxury Hotels in Kansas City, MO

 - Five Star Alliance

Five Star Luxury Hotels in Kansas City

The chain lists themselves on their official website (see below) as having $1,803,000 last year in "group revenue" with an operating profit of $680 million.

This is just like when the law firm, some years ago, wanted to take over an apartment building on the Plaza. They asked for tax breaks, too. Fortunately, the people of Kansas City rose up, made their voice heard and it was struck down. The site is now an ongoing, successful hotel.

That's what needs to happen here, now, on this, again. That is, the citizens of Kansas City need to rise up, speak up and tell Intercontinental "HELL NO" on this whole idea and proposal.  

They want to be a top of the food chain, luxury hotel?  Fine. Do it.

They just shouldn't do it on the backs of the citizens of Kansas City.

Links:  InterContinental® Hotels - Official Site

InterContinental Hotels Group PLC

Thoughts On A Labor Day Weekend

The Labor History Americans Forget

The Labor Union struggles and fights that brought us to where we are today. Here's one of them. The companies and corporations don't have the people in mind, not even their own needed employees.