With the April 18 tax filing deadline fast approaching, we’ve assembled these charts to provide a big-picture look at the U.S. tax system.
http://www.offthechartsblog.org/top-ten-tax-charts/
Saturday, April 16, 2011
The Y Article
On Friday, April 8, as members of the U.S. Congress engaged in a last-minute game of chicken over the federal budget, the Pentagon quietly issued a report that received little initial attention: "A National Strategic Narrative." The report was issued under the pseudonym of "Mr. Y," a takeoff on George Kennan's 1946 "Long Telegram" from Moscow (published under the name "X" the following year in Foreign Affairs) that helped set containment as the cornerstone of U.S. strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/13/the_y_article
The piece was written by two senior members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a "personal" capacity, but it is clear that it would not have seen the light of day without a measure of official approval. Its findings are revelatory, and they deserve to be read and appreciated not only by every lawmaker in Congress, but by every American citizen.
The narrative argues that the United States is fundamentally getting it wrong when it comes to setting its priorities, particularly with regard to the budget and how Americans as a nation use their resources more
broadly. The report says Americans are overreacting to Islamic extremism, underinvesting in their youth, and failing to embrace the sense of competition and opportunity that made America a world power. The United States has been increasingly consumed by seeing the world through the lens of threat, while failing to understand that influence, competitiveness, and innovation are the key to advancing American interests in the modern world.
Courageously, the authors make the case that America continues to rely far too heavily on its military as the primary tool for how it engages the world. Instead of simply pumping more and more dollars into defense, the narrative argues:
By investing energy, talent, and dollars now in the education and training of young Americans -- the scientists, statesmen, industrialists, farmers, inventors, educators, clergy, artists, service members, and parents, of tomorrow -- we are truly investing in our ability to successfully compete in, and influence, the strategic environment of the future. Our first investment priority, then, is intellectual capital and a sustainable infrastructure of education, health and social services to provide for the continuing development and growth of America's youth.
Yet, it is investments in America's long-term human resources that have come under the fiercest attack in the current budget environment. As the United States tries to compete with China, India, and the European Union, does it make sense to have almost doubled the Pentagon budget in the last decade while slashing education budgets across the country?
The report places considerable emphasis on the importance of achieving a more sustainable approach to security, energy, agriculture, and the environment. Again, it is important to stress that this narrative was penned by senior military thinkers, not the Sierra Club. The simple fact is that any clear-eyed analysis pretty quickly comes to the same conclusion: The United States has established an incentive system that just doesn't make any sense. It continues to pour tens of billions of dollars into agricultural and oil subsidies every single year even as these subsidies make the gravity of the environmental, health, and land-use problems the country faces in the future ever graver. As the report argues, America cannot truly practice the use of "smart power"
until it practices "smart growth" at home. While some may be quick to
argue that the Pentagon should not be considering issues like smart growth and investments in America's youth, this goes to another key point from the
authors: America won't get its approach to policy right if it leaves foreign
policy and domestic policy in tidy little silos that ignore the interconnection
between the two.
The paper argues persuasively that the tendency of Americans to broadly label the rest of the world has been hugely counterproductive. The authors point out that the tendency over the last decade by some Americans to view all Muslims as terrorists has made it more difficult to marginalize genuine extremism, while alienating vast swaths of the global Muslim community. In a world where credibility is so central to America's national interest and reach around the globe, the overheated domestic debate about the war on terror has never served it very well.
Lastly, the narrative makes a clarion call for America to look forward, not back, in today's interconnected world:
And yet with globalization, we seem to have developed a strange apprehension about the efficacy of our ability to apply the innovation and hard work necessary to successfully compete in a complex security and economic environment. Further, we have misunderstood interdependence as a weakness rather than recognizing it as a strength. The key to sustaining our competitive edge, at home or on the world stage, is credibility -- and credibility is a difficult capital to foster. It cannot be won through intimidation and threat, it cannot be sustained through protectionism or exclusion. Credibility requires engagement, strength, and reliability -- imaginatively applied through the national tools of development, diplomacy, and defense.
The budget deal over the weekend lopped $8 billion off of funding for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International
Development. Defense spending was left untouched. Congress doesn't seem to have gotten the wake-up call.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/13/the_y_article
Share the FACTS on our defict, taxes, & the national debt
Wed, 04/13/2011 - 11:21am — Coffee Party USA
political donations,
Get the facts with NPP
Last time we directed our members to National Priorities Project (NPP), their site actually crashed because so many taxpaying Americans wanted to know how their money is being spent. Now, NPP's website is back with a vengeance, and, more bandwidth.
Below are the four charts sited in the video we produced with Jo Comerford, NPP's Executive Director. Click on them and you'll be directed to a National Priorities Project web page with the same graphic, and lots more information.
Source: Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2012, Analytical Perspectives, Table 28.1, "Receipts, Outlays and Surplus or Deficit by Fund Group," and Table 15-5, "Revenues By Source."
Where is the “borrowed” 53.2 percent borrowed FROM? Click HERE for the answer to this and other FAQ's.
Please note that the rapid increase in the national debt started in the 1980's, when we began allowing large corporations to contribute less than their share. With income levels for We the People stagnant — actually, after taxes, our income has decreased during this period — it's little wonder that our deficit and our debt have grown. Corporations decided to lobby and bully our government so they could contribute less to America. We the People have worked hard and done all we can, but we just haven't been able to make up the difference.
This national debt can no more be blamed on We the People than the Great Recession, but corporate interests and the politicians who serve them are trying to make us pay for both. We will not stand for this.
Coffee Break Action Items
Coffee Party members have designed actions you can take on your coffe break, every day for the month of April. CLICK HERE to see the calendar. Given that 2/3 of the mega-corporations in America do not pay taxes on their earnings, those of us who do pay taxes have a right to be (not just angry) but informed and engaged in the decision-making process about how our tax dollars are collected, and how they are spent. The first step is making our collective voices heard. For the month of April, Coffee Party members are collaborating on 30 ways to do just that.
This video is a follow-up to the one above, featuring 108 Americans ready to stand up to the corporate elite.
Call (202) 224-3121. That's the Capitol Switchboard. Put it on speed dial, because you're gonna need it! To find out more about your representatives in Congress, click here.
Tell them to stop focusing solely on cutting vital programs like public safety and education, and start discussing our revenue problem. Tell them to ask more of the companies and executives enjoying record profits and bonuses.
The recession may be over on Wall St. but on Main St, millions of us are going homeless and hungry. Stop pandering to the fat cats who caused, and then profited from the recession! Trickle-down economics has failed us. Time to invest in America.
April 18th Tax Day Action
1) Determine which U.S. Post Office in your city or town is staying open the latest on April 18th to post mark tax filings, and grab the address.
2) Enter the address when you create an event using our event page (this way others in your area can contact you and/or join you).
3) Print out FACT SHEETS from our Coffee Break Tool Kit, and hand them out to people filing their tax returns on the evening of Monday April 18th.
- Fact Sheet 1: Tax Breaks & Budget Cuts (Download PDF)
- Fact Sheet 2: 9 Worst Corporate Tax-dodgers (Down load PDF)
- Fact Sheet 3: Citizens United One Year Later (Download PDF)
- Fact Sheet 4: Military Spending (web link)
Use your creativity!
Watch our previous Survivor video and CLICK HERE to find out how you can be part of the next installment in the series.
____________________________________________
http://www.coffeepartyusa.com/facts
Friday, April 15, 2011
House Republicans Pass Plan To Phase Out Medicare, Slash Medicaid
Brian Beutler | April 15, 2011, 2:23PM
House Republicans voted Friday in favor of a vision of the future without Medicare, with a significantly eroded Medicaid, and with lower taxes on wealthy Americans. By a vote of 235-193, they passed their budget resolution -- an opening bid in a broader partisan fight about spending and taxes that will dominate politics in Washington, DC for the rest of the year.
Four Republicans voted with all Democrats against the so-called "Path to Prosperity." Two Republicans and five Democratsdidn't vote.
It's also political poison. The GOP plan would slowly phase out the current Medicare system and replace it by offering beneficiaries partially subsidized private insurance (ironically, much like Obamacare). It would turn Medicaid into a block-grant program, allowing states to roll back currently guaranteed benefits for the poor and disabled. And it would eliminate most of the savings achieved from cutting these entitlements lowering the tax burden on wealthy Americans.
It was almost worse. Earlier in the day, Republicans fell prey to a Democratic procedural tactic and nearly voted to replace the plan they passed with an even farther-reaching one. Republicans didn't whip any of the alternative budgets, and were caught flat-footed when Democrats voted "present" on a more conservative proposal, leading to pandemonium on the House floor.
As an early salvo in his re-election fight, President Obama criticized Republicans for creating the looming fiscal crisis with reckless policies in the last decade, and for proposing to fix it on the backs of the most vulnerable Americans
"We contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, those with disabilities. We're a better country because of these commitments," Obama said. "I'll go further. We would not be a great country without those commitments."
Though the budget has no future in the Senate, House Republicans have put themselves on the line for a political whipping as severe the one they received when they tried to privatize Social Security in 2005.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/house-republicans-pass-plan-to-erode-medicare-medicaid.php
House Republicans voted Friday in favor of a vision of the future without Medicare, with a significantly eroded Medicaid, and with lower taxes on wealthy Americans. By a vote of 235-193, they passed their budget resolution -- an opening bid in a broader partisan fight about spending and taxes that will dominate politics in Washington, DC for the rest of the year.
Four Republicans voted with all Democrats against the so-called "Path to Prosperity." Two Republicans and five Democratsdidn't vote.
It's also political poison. The GOP plan would slowly phase out the current Medicare system and replace it by offering beneficiaries partially subsidized private insurance (ironically, much like Obamacare). It would turn Medicaid into a block-grant program, allowing states to roll back currently guaranteed benefits for the poor and disabled. And it would eliminate most of the savings achieved from cutting these entitlements lowering the tax burden on wealthy Americans.
It was almost worse. Earlier in the day, Republicans fell prey to a Democratic procedural tactic and nearly voted to replace the plan they passed with an even farther-reaching one. Republicans didn't whip any of the alternative budgets, and were caught flat-footed when Democrats voted "present" on a more conservative proposal, leading to pandemonium on the House floor.
As an early salvo in his re-election fight, President Obama criticized Republicans for creating the looming fiscal crisis with reckless policies in the last decade, and for proposing to fix it on the backs of the most vulnerable Americans
"We contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, those with disabilities. We're a better country because of these commitments," Obama said. "I'll go further. We would not be a great country without those commitments."
Though the budget has no future in the Senate, House Republicans have put themselves on the line for a political whipping as severe the one they received when they tried to privatize Social Security in 2005.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/house-republicans-pass-plan-to-erode-medicare-medicaid.php
Release: Tax Time? Not for Giant Corporations
March 27, 2011
http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=67562604-8280-4d56-8af4-a27f59d70de5
BURLINGTON,
Vt., March 27 - While hard working Americans fill out their income tax returns
this tax season, General Electric and other giant profitable corporations are
avoiding U.S. taxes altogether.
With Congress returning to Capitol Hill on Monday to debate steep spending cuts, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the wealthiest Americans and most profitable corporations must do their share to help bring down our record-breaking deficit.
Sanders renewed his call for shared sacrifice after it was reported that General Electric and other major corporations paid no U.S. taxes after posting huge profits. Sanders said it is grossly unfair for congressional Republicans to propose major cuts to Head Start, Pell Grants, the Social Security Administration, nutrition grants for pregnant low-income women and the Environmental Protection Agency while ignoring the reality that some of the
most profitable corporations pay nothing or almost nothing in federal income
taxes.
Sanders compiled a list of some of some of the 10 worst corporate income tax avoiders.
1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings. (Source: Exxon Mobil's 2009 shareholder report filed with the SEC here.)
2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion. (Source: Forbes.com here, ProPublica here and Treasury here.)
3) Over the past five years, while General
Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1
billion refund from the IRS. (Source: Citizens for Tax Justice here and The New York Times here. Note: despite rumors to the contrary, the
Times has stood by its story.)
4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009. (Source: See 2009 Chevron annual report here. Note 15 on page FS-46 of this report shows a U.S. federal income tax liability of $128 million, but that it was able to defer $147 million for a U.S. federal income tax liability of $-19 million)
5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million
refund from the IRS last year. . (Source: Paul Buchheit, professor, DePaul University, here and Citizens for Tax Justice here.)
6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction. (Source: the company's 2009 annual report, pg. 112, here.)
7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department. (Source: Bloomberg News here, ProPublica here, Treasury Department here.)
8) Citigroup last year made more than $4
billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5
trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury. (Source: Paul
Buchheit, professor, DePaul University, here, ProPublica here, Treasury Department here.)
9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil
company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2006 through
2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas
manufacturing deduction. (Sources: Profits can be found here. The deduction can be found on the company's 2010 SEC 10-K report to shareholders on 2009 finances, pg. 127, here)
10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent. (Source: The New York Times here)
Sanders has called for closing corporate tax loopholes and eliminating tax breaks for oil and gas companies. He also introduced legislation to impose a 5.4 percent surtax on millionaires that would yield up to $50 billion a year. The senator has said that spending cuts must be paired with new revenue so the federal budget is not balanced solely on the backs of working families.
"We have a deficit problem. It has to be addressed," Sanders said, "but it cannot be addressed on the backs of the sick, the elderly, the poor, young people, the most vulnerable in this country. The wealthiest people and the largest corporations in this country have got to contribute. We've got to talk about shared sacrifice."
http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=67562604-8280-4d56-8af4-a27f59d70de5
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Goldman Sachs Misled Congress After Duping Clients, Levin Says
By Robert Schmidt, Clea Benson and Phil Mattingly - Apr 14, 2011 12:00 AM ET
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) misled
clients and Congress about the firm’s bets on securities tied to
the housing market, the chairman of the U.S. Senate panel that
investigated the causes of the financial crisis said.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) misled
clients and Congress about the firm’s bets on securities tied to
the housing market, the chairman of the U.S. Senate panel that
investigated the causes of the financial crisis said.
Senator Carl Levin, releasing the findings of a two-year
inquiry yesterday, said he wants the Justice Department and the
Securities and Exchange Commission to examine whether Goldman
Sachs violated the law by misleading clients who bought the
complex securities known as collateralized debt obligations
without knowing the firm would benefit if they fell in value.
The Michigan Democrat also said federal prosecutors should
review whether to bring perjury charges against Goldman Sachs
Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein and other current and
former employees who testified in Congress last year. Levin said
they denied under oath that Goldman Sachs took a financial
position against the mortgage market solely for its own profit,
statements the senator said were untrue.
“In my judgment, Goldman clearly misled their clients and
they misled the Congress,” Levin said at a press briefing
yesterday where he and Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma
Republican, discussed the 640-page report from the Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations.
Goldman and Deutsche
Much of the blame for the 2008 market collapse belongs to
banks that earned billions of dollars in profits creating and
selling financial products that imploded along with the housing
market, according to the report. The Levin-Coburn panel levied
its harshest criticism at investment banks, in particular
accusing Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank AG (DB) of peddling
collateralized debt obligations backed by risky loans that the
banks’ own traders believed were likely to lose value.
In a statement, New York-based Goldman Sachs denied that it
had misled anyone about its activities. “The testimony we gave
was truthful and accurate and this is confirmed by the
subcommittee’s own report,” Goldman Sachs spokesman Lucas van Praag said.
“The report references testimony from Goldman Sachs
witnesses who repeatedly and consistently acknowledged that we
were intermittently net short during 2007. We did not have a
massive net short position because our short positions were
largely offset by our long positions, and our financial results
clearly demonstrate this point,” van Praag said.
‘Divergent Views’
In a statement, Deutsche Bank spokeswoman Michele Allison
said, “As the PSI report correctly states, there were divergent
views within the bank about the U.S. housing market. Moreover,
the bank’s views were fully communicated to the market through
research reports, industry events, trading desk commentary and
press coverage. Despite the bearish views held by some,
Deutsche Bank was long the housing market and endured
significant losses.”
The panel’s report also examined the role of credit-rating
firms in the meltdown, lax oversight by Washington regulators
and the drop in lending standards that fueled the mortgage
bubble and ultimately caused hundreds of bank failures.
The subcommittee’s findings show “without a doubt the lack
of ethics in some of our financial institutions who embraced
known conflicts of interest to accomplish wealth for themselves,
not caring about the outcome for their customers,” said Coburn.
“When that happens, no country can survive and neither can
their financial institutions.”
Final Assessment
The report is likely Washington’s final official assessment
of the turmoil beginning in 2007 that froze credit markets, took
down investment banks Bear Stearns Cos. and Lehman Brothers
Holdings Inc. (LEHMQ), sent housing finance giants Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac into government conservatorship and caused the worst
economic collapse in the U.S. since the Great Depression.
The $700 billion taxpayer bailout that followed in October
2008 upended the relationship between Wall Street and the
federal government, turning CEOs like Blankfein and Lehman’s
Richard Fuld into political punching bags. Populist anger at
high-paid bank leaders helped fuel the passage of last year’s
Dodd-Frank law, which set out the biggest changes to financial
oversight since the 1930s.
The Senate report comes less than a year after Goldman
Sachs paid $550 million to resolve SEC claims that it failed to
disclose that hedge fund Paulson & Co was betting against, and
influenced the selection of, CDOs the company was packaging and
selling.
Goldman Sachs, in its settlement with the SEC, acknowledged
that marketing materials for the 2007 CDO deal contained
“incomplete information.”
Documents and Footnotes
The Senate subcommittee’s bipartisan report, buttressed by
2,800 footnotes and thousands of internal documents from Goldman
Sachs and other firms, may have more impact than previous
investigations into the crisis.
It’s an open question whether the Justice Department and
the SEC will review its findings. Levin does not have the power
to refer the allegations to federal authorities on his own. The
subcommittee has a formal process for making referrals, which
requires Levin to get the support of Coburn before making an
official referral. Levin is going to recommend that the
subcommittee make referrals, though he has not done it yet,
staff members said.
The Levin report will be examined by policy makers
including the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission,
which are writing hundreds of Dodd-Frank rules governing
derivatives, mortgage securities and proprietary trading.
Coburn, the senior Republican on the subcommittee, said the
review carries more heft than the three separate reports issued
earlier this year by a politically divided Financial Crisis
Inquiry Commission.
Goldman Practices
“We don’t need commissions to do our job and this proves
it,” Coburn said. The FCIC “spent $8 million and 15 months”
on its inquiry and “didn’t report anything of significance.”
The panel said Goldman Sachs relied on “abusive” sales
practices and was rife with conflicts of interest that
encouraged putting profits ahead of clients.
“While we disagree with many of the conclusions of the
report, we take seriously the issues explored by the
subcommittee,” van Praag said.
Van Praag pointed to the firm’s recent examination of its
business practices that prompted it to make “significant
changes that will strengthen relationships with clients, improve
transparency and disclosure and enhance standards for the
review, approval and suitability of complex instruments.”
In the case of one CDO, Hudson Mezzanine Funding 2006-1,
Goldman Sachs told investors its interests were “aligned” with
theirs while the firm held 100 percent of the short side,
according to the report.
Gemstone CDO
The report detailed a $1.1 billion Deutsche Bank CDO known
as Gemstone VII, which was backed with subprime loans that its
then-top trader, Greg Lippmann, referred to as “crap.” The
head of the bank’s CDO group, Michael Lamont, said in an e-mail
cited in the report that he would try to sell the CDO “before
the market falls off a cliff.”
On lending, the panel alleges that executives at failed
thrift Washington Mutual Inc. (WAMUQ) dumped its bad loans on clients
while misleading them about their value.
“WaMu selected delinquency-prone loans for sale in order
to move risk from the banks’ books to the investors in WaMu
securities,” Levin said.
Compounding that problem, the subcommittee found, was an
apparently cozy relationship between WaMu and its regulator, the
Office of Thrift Supervision.
WaMu E-Mail
The report cited a July 2008 e-mail from then-OTS director
John Reich to WaMu CEO Kerry Killinger, in which Reich said the
regulator would issue a memorandum of understanding regarding
the bank’s problems.
“If someone were looking over our shoulders, they would
probably be surprised we don’t already have one in place,”
Reich wrote, apologizing twice for communicating the decision in
an e-mail.
Under the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul, the OTS will be
folded into other regulators in July.
“The head of OTS knew his agency had been providing
preferential treatment to the bank,” Levin said. “The OTS was
abolished by Dodd-Frank, and for good reasons.”
At yesterday’s press briefing Levin called credit rating
firms Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s “a key
cause to the crisis.”
Triple-A Ratings
The raters, which the report says stamped the highest
Triple-A grades on securities they knew were souring, were
hamstrung by a system that has a built-in conflict of interest,
Levin said. The Wall Street banks pay the firms for their
ratings, leading to competitive pressure between the firms that
may have pushed them to more readily place a high rating on a
product.
The panel released nine “findings of fact” on the
failures of the credit raters, including inadequate resources,
inaccurate rating models and a failure to reevaluate old ratings
when they recognized they might be inaccurate.
The raters also “shocked the financial markets” with mass
downgrades of thousands of residential mortgage-backed
securities and CDO ratings, according to the report.
“Perhaps more than any other single event, the sudden mass
downgrades of RMBS and CDO ratings were the immediate trigger
for the financial crisis,” the report said.
To contact the reporters on this story:
Robert Schmidt in Washington at
rschmidt5@bloomberg.net;
Clea Benson in Washington at
cbenson20@bloomberg.net;
Phil Mattingly in Washington at
pmattingly@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Lawrence Roberts at
lroberts13@bloomberg.net
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2011-04-14/goldman-sachs-misled-congress-after-duping-clients-over-cdos-levin-says.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
