http://www.alternet.org/story/150868/the_devos_family%3A_meet_the_super-wealthy_right-wingers_working_with_the_religious_right_to_kill_public_education?akid=6932.250061.1Bs__z&rd=1&t=2
The DeVos Family: Meet the Super-Wealthy Right-Wingers Working With the Religious Right to Kill Public Education
By now you've surely heard of the Kochs. Meanwhile, the powerful, wealthy DeVos family has remained largely under the radar, while leading a stealth assault on America's schools.
May 6, 2011
Photo Credit: woodleywonderworks
Since the 2010 elections, voucher bills have popped up in legislatures around the nation. From Pennsylvania to Indiana to Florida, state governments across the country have introduced bills that would take money from public schools and use it to send students to private and religious institutions.

Vouchers have always been a staple of the right-wing agenda. Like previous efforts, this most recent push for vouchers is led by a network of conservative think tanks, PACs, Religious Right groups and wealthy conservative donors. But "school choice," as they euphemistically paint vouchers, is merely a means to an end. Their ultimate goal is the total elimination of our public education system.

The decades-long campaign to end public education is propelled by the super-wealthy, right-wing DeVos family. Betsy Prince DeVos is the sister of Erik Prince, founder of the notorious private military contractor Blackwater USA (now Xe), and wife of Dick DeVos, son of the co-founder of Amway, the multi-tiered home products business.

By now, you've surely heard of the Koch brothers, whose behind-the-scenes financing of right-wing causes has been widely documented in the past year. The DeVoses have remained largely under the radar, despite the fact that their stealth assault on America's schools has the potential to do away with public education as we know it.

Right-Wing Privatization Forces

The conservative policy institutes founded beginning in the 1970s get hundreds of millions of dollars from wealthy families and foundations to develop and promote free market fundamentalism. More specifically, their goals include privatizing social security, reducing government regulations, thwarting environmental policy, dismantling unions -- and eliminating public schools.

Whatever they may say about giving poor students a leg up, their real priority is nothing short of the total dismantling of our public educational institutions, and they've admitted as much. Cato Institute founder Ed Crane and other conservative think tank leaders have signed the Public Proclamation to Separate School and State, which reads in part that signing on, "Announces to the world your commitment to end involvement by local, state, and federal government from education."

But Americans don't want their schools dismantled. So privatization advocates have recognized that it's not politically viable to openly push for full privatization and have resigned themselves to incrementally dismantling public school systems. The think tanks’ weapon of choice is school vouchers.

Vouchers are funded with public school dollars but are used to pay for students to attend private and parochial (religious-affiliated) schools. The idea was introduced in the 1950s by the high priest of free-market fundamentalism, Milton Friedman, who also made the real goal of the voucher movement clear: “Vouchers are not an end in themselves; they are a means to make a transition from a government to a free-market system." The quote is in a 1995 Cato Institute briefing paper titled “Public Schools: Make Them Private.”

Joseph Bast, president of Heartland Institute, stated in 1997, “Like most other conservatives and libertarians, we see vouchers as a major step toward the complete privatization of schooling. In fact, after careful study, we have come to the conclusion that they are the only way to dismantle the current socialist regime.” Bast added, “Government schools will diminish in enrollment and thus in number as parents shift their loyalty and vouchers to superior-performing private schools.”

But Bast's lofty goals have not panned out. That's because, quite simply, voucher programs do not work.

The longest running voucher program in the country is the 20-year-old Milwaukee School Choice Program. Standardized testing shows that the voucher students in private schools perform below the level of Milwaukee’s public school students, and even when socioeconomic status is factored in, the voucher students still score at or below the level of the students who remain in Milwaukee’s public schools. Cleveland’s voucher program has produced similar results. Private schools in the voucher program range from excellent to very poor. In some, less than 20 percent of students reach basic proficiency levels in math and reading.

More at link above

9 Things The Rich Don't Want You To Know About Taxes | Economy | AltWeeklies.com

9 Things The Rich Don't Want You To Know About Taxes | Economy | AltWeeklies.com
How long does it take to conclude that a policy has failed to fulfill its promises? And as you think of that, keep in mind George Washington. When he fell ill, his doctors followed the common wisdom of the era. They cut him and bled him to remove bad blood. As Washington's condition grew worse, they bled him more. And like the mantra of tax cuts for the rich, they kept applying the same treatment until they killed him.

•1: Poor Americans do pay taxes.
•2: The wealthiest Americans don't carry the burden.
•3: In fact, the wealthy are paying less taxes.
•4: Many of the very richest pay no current income taxes at all.
•5: And (surprise!) since Reagan, only the wealthy have gained significant income.
•6: When it comes to corporations, the story is much the same -- less taxes.
•7: Some corporate tax breaks destroy jobs.
•8: Republicans like taxes too.
•9: Other countries do it better.

10 of the Biggest Corporate Tax Cheats In America | AlterNet

10 of the Biggest Corporate Tax Cheats In America AlterNet
Google fun-fact: Google rents 200 goats, complete with goatherd and a border collie, to keep the grass nicely trimmed at Google HQ. Oh, and this week Bloomberg reported that the Federal Trade Commission is considering launching a major investigation into Google's anti-competitive practices.

The GOP Budget's Attack On Older Americans: Their Most Radical Move Yet, Explained With Six Slides | OurFuture.org

The GOP Budget's Attack On Older Americans: Their Most Radical Move Yet, Explained With Six Slides OurFuture.org The GOP Budget's Attack On Older Americans: Their Most Radical Move Yet, Explained With Six Slides By Richard (RJ) Eskow April 5, 2011 - 1:43am ET Back when I analyzed health plans and other benefits for a living, I asked a famous CEO what his goals were for the corporation's employee benefit plan. "I want to give them less and make them think it's more," he said. The new Republican budget proposes to radically restructure the country's relationship with its citizens. They're using bogus economics to confuse people into thinking these extreme cuts will somehow leave them more money. But they're really offering less - much less. We'll deal with the politics later. The policy is astounding enough. But we'll throw in a little context: The top 25 hedge fund managers made a collective $22 billion last year. If they had been taxed under the same rules as cops, firefighters, nurses, and teachers, and if the President's proposed tax changes for the wealthiest earners had passed, these 25 people alone might reduced the Federal deficit by more than five billion dollars in a single year! But Rep. Ryan and his party prevented that from happening. "Party of deficit reduction"? Gosh, I don't think so. A Radical Attack Since all the specifics aren't in, we ran some rough preliminary numbers. Here's what we found: Within ten years of this plan taking effect, most Americans would be spending all of their Social Security income just to pay for their health care or going without coverage. The Republicans claim their budget will cut $4 trillion from the Federal budget. But it will take much more than that out of everyone's pockets. The Republican proposal wouldn't just end Medicare as we know it - although it would certainly do that. It would also end Social Security as we know it. In the end America's seniors would pay more and get less as their social safety net was gradually eliminated. Their Social Security income would essentially evaporate as they were forced to spend it on previously-available health care coverage. That also means it would be redirected into the large corporations that dominate our health care system. Slow Bleed The new budget is being presented by Rep. Paul Ryan, based on a proposal he co-wrote with economist (and long-time "entitlement" opponent) Alice Rivlin. It would dismantle Medicare and Medicaid starting in 2021, when Medicare's system of guaranteed, comprehensive health coverage would be replaced with "vouchers" under what's known as a "defined contribution plan" - exactly what that CEO foisted upon his hapless employees. The "voucher" would be based on Medicare's 2012 cost per enrollee, increased by the general rate of inflation plus 1% every year. How would this change affect Medicare-eligible people? Read the rest a link above

Why We Must Raise Taxes on the Rich, ASAP! | | AlterNet

Tax cuts for millionaires = pay cuts, job cuts, and benefit cuts for everybody else!

Why We Must Raise Taxes on the Rich, ASAP! | | AlterNet

The Social Security Scam: How Media-Driven Misdirection is Being Used to Hijack Your Future | | AlterNet

The Social Security Scam: How Media-Driven Misdirection is Being Used to Hijack Your Future | | AlterNet
The Social Security Scam: How Media-Driven Misdirection is Being Used to Hijack Your Future
The assumption that deficit reduction can be achieved through cuts to Social Security benefits is ubiquitous -- and also totally false.
March 30, 2011 | LIKE THIS ARTICLE ?
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TAKE ACTIONPetitions by Change.org|Get Widget|Start a Petition � As the budget battle rages in Washington, calls to cut Social Security benefits are ramping up. Pundits pushing ‘conventional wisdom’ say that doing so is prudent for a nation facing large deficits. This solution is endorsed by congressional majorities, along with virtually every talking head on television (with varying degrees of rhetorical eagerness or caution, depending on party affiliation). The assumption that deficit reduction can be achieved through cuts to Social Security benefits is so ubiquitous that most Americans would be dumbfounded to learn that this assumption is totally false.

In terms of our deficits and debt, cutting Social Security benefits is exactly like raising the limit on one of our credit cards. You can transfer other balances using the Social Security surpluses, or buy new stuff, but it won’t change total debt. While you’d expect this to be a major issue in the debate, it’s not. It is ignored because debate starts with the assumption that this “solution” works. Here we can thank our media, which obscures debate rather than illuminating it.

The presentation of views from a limited cross-section of our two political parties (usually conservative Democrats and most Republicans) typically creates the impression of full coverage — “both sides” — while leaving key information and assumptions unexamined. With Social Security, this is done by marketing, as gospel, the idea that there is broad agreement from the left and right about the efficacy of cutting it, best exemplified by the media worship of the “bipartisan” deficit commission. So questions concerning the fairness or feasibility of reducing deficits with cuts to Social Security are moot, and debate can jump straight to political soap-opera mode: “Does Congress have the guts to go after Social Security? Will doing so help raise the political capital of Republicans or Democrats?” The protagonists and antagonists are the parties and their personalities, with the only point of consideration being whether there is sufficient political will “to do what must be done.”

More at link

NationalJournal.com - Senate Passes Resolution Calling for No-Fly Zone Over Libya - Tuesday, March 1, 2011

For all those who claim that the President didn't consult anyone in the Congress on this matter.

NationalJournal.com - Senate Passes Resolution Calling for No-Fly Zone Over Libya - Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Senate Passes Resolution Calling for No-Fly Zone Over Libya
By Dan Friedman

Tuesday, March 1, 2011 | 9:19 p.m.
The Senate unanimously approved a nonbinding resolution on Tuesday calling for the United Nations Security Council to impose a no-fly zone over Libya and urged Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi to resign and allow a peaceful transition to democracy.

The resolution, offered by Sens. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Mark Kirk, R-Ill., has no force of law. And its symbolic impact on U.S. posture toward Libya is uncertain. But the resolution puts the full Senate on record behind an aggressive posture and could bolster a growing number of calls for the United States—which has already sent warships carrying hundreds of Marines into the region—or its allies to take limited military steps in support of Libyans seeking to overthrow Qaddafi. Earlier on Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told lawmakers that all options to address the Libyan crisis are on the table.

“There is a bipartisan consensus building to provide assistance to liberated areas of Libya and to work with our allies to enforce a no-fly zone," Kirk said in a statement.

The resolution condemns "gross and systematic violations of human rights, including violent attacks on protesters demanding democratic reforms," by Qaddafi and urges him to "ensure civilian safety" and "guarantee access to human rights and humanitarian organizations." It also applauds a move by the U.N. Human Rights Council to recommend Libya's suspension from the council and calls for the U.N. General Assembly to vote in support of that step.

More at link above

Tennessee residents fear nuclear radiation to blame for cancer cluster

Tennessee residents fear nuclear radiation to blame for cancer cluster
Tennessee residents fear nuclear radiation to blame for cancer cluster
March 18th, 2011 joshua

While one part of the world fears nuclear radiation contamination, one small town in Tennessee is working to hold a power company accountable.

The residents of Erwin, Tenn., recently gathered to discuss the possibility of joining a class-action lawsuit against Nuclear Fuel Services because of nuclear contamination in the area.

According to the Bristol (Tenn.) Herald-Courier, some residents are blaming their recent cancer diagnoses. At least 50 people attended the meeting.
An attorney who led the meeting believes Nuclear Fuel Services’ constant non-compliance with federal regulations and citations for numerous safety violations gives residents more than enough ammunition to join a lawsuit against the energy company.

He added that Erwin’s “cancer epidemic” is “extremely relevant” to Nuclear Fuel Service’s rogue way of conducting business.

A spokesperson for Nuclear Fuel Services told The Herald-Courier that it doubts its business practices have led to a cancer outbreak in the Erwin area, and claims to operate within state and federal regulations.

BBC News - China 'to overtake US on science' in two years

BBC News - China 'to overtake US on science' in two years
Professor Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, chair of the report, said he was "not surprised" by this increase because of China's massive boost to investment in R&D.

Chinese spending has grown by 20% per year since 1999, now reaching over $100bn, and as many as 1.5 million science and engineering students graduated from Chinese universities in 2006.

"I think this is positive, of great benefit, though some might see it as a threat and it does serve as a wake-up call for us not to become complacent."

The report stresses that American research output will not decline in absolute terms and raises the possibility of countries like Japan and France rising to meet the Chinese challenge.

"But the potential for China to match American output in terms of sheer numbers in the near to medium term is clear."

The Real Story of Our Economy: Why Our Standard of Living Has Stalled Out | | AlterNet

The Real Story of Our Economy: Why Our Standard of Living Has Stalled Out | | AlterNet
From 1947 to 1975, our output per worker hour grew by more than 75 percent. At the very same time, the real wages of the average worker rose by nearly the same amount. The rise of productivity and the rise in real wages turned our working people into the largest, most vibrant middle class in the history of the world. This dramatic upward movement in material conditions gave America its supreme bragging rights in the Cold War. No one could deny that democratic capitalism delivered the goods to working people, not just to elites.

Until it didn’t.

Neo-liberalism and the stalling of middle-class income

This upwardly mobile economy changed during the 1970s, and it wasn’t an accident. That’s when our nation’s leaders embarked on a series of policies that were supposed to break down stagflation and rebuild our economic miracle. We now call it neo-liberalism. That’s when we decided to unleash innovation through deregulation, especially financial deregulation. That’s when we lowered taxes on the wealthy. That’s when we pushed forward globalization. That’s when we stopped raising the minimum wage. That’s when we undercut the labor movement. All this was supposed to make the economy boom and reignite the post-WWII economic miracle.

These policies, not the blind actions of markets, broke open the cookie jar of productivity. And there was plenty in there to take: Since 1975, productivity increased by nearly 180 percent – meaning that we almost tripled what we could produce per hour of labor. But unlike the post-WWII period, it wasn’t shared. Here are the brutal facts:

Maddow: It's Not About the Budget; Republicans Take Care of Their Own on the Backs of the Poor and Middle Class | Video Cafe

Maddow: It's Not About the Budget; Republicans Take Care of Their Own on the Backs of the Poor and Middle Class | Video Cafe
Maddow: It's Not About the Budget; Republicans Take Care of Their Own on the Backs of the Poor and Middle Class
.Rachel Maddow took a whack at the hypocritical Republicans in Wisconsin and the Republican governors across the country who will spare no expense when it comes to taking care of their own -- especially big business and their wealthy campaign donors -- and at the same time are willing to raise taxes on the poor and the middle class.

Case in point, we have Stephen Fitzgerald, the father of Wisconsin State Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald and State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald. The elder Fitzgerald, who after losing his election for Dodge County sheriff by a 2-to-1 margin, somehow got appointed as the head of the State Patrol.

And as Rachel noted, in the midst of the potential recall of a number of Wisconsin Senators, there is "another patronage scandal blossoming today."

Senator's girlfriend had help getting job:

Even though the state is supposedly broke, top officials in Gov. Scott Walker's team were able to scrape together enough money to give a state job to the woman identified as Sen. Randy Hopper's girlfriend.

Anything for a political ally.

Valerie Cass, a former Republican legislative staffer, was hired Feb. 7 as a communications specialist with the state Department of Regulation and Licensing. She is being paid $20.35 per hour. The job is considered a temporary post.

Cass previously had worked in the state Senate and for the GOP campaign consulting firm Persuasion Partners in Madison. She also was paid for campaign work for the state Republican Party and U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner before that.

"Ms. Cass' name was among many forwarded to DRL by the Governor's Transition Team as potential candidates for positions with the department," said David Carlson, the agency's spokesman. Read on...

Rachel summed this up rather nicely.

MADDOW: But apart from the awkwardness for the State Senator here, there's also the awkwardness of whether or not Wisconsin state government is so broke because of all those greedy state employees, right? I mean for the Senator already facing the likely prospect of recall, this is not a positive development. But is also really handy as a reminder about the whole nature of this fight in Wisconsin, and why it is resonating nationally.

The Republican justification for the union stripping business in Wisconsin is that it was all about the budget, right? But then something like this comes along and we're all reminded that if it were all about the budget, people hired by the state would not be getting $12,000 raises, whether or not they were State Senators' girlfriends.

She wrapped it up with letting her viewers know about some of Think Progress' Wonk Room reporting on the GOP governors out there and their willingness to raise taxes on the working class while giving their wealthy campaign donors a break -- REPORT: In 12 States, GOP Plans To Slash Corporate Taxes While Increasing Burden on Working Families:

ThinkProgress has been documenting conservative efforts to shift the burden of record budget shortfalls onto middle-class Americans, while simultaneously doling out tax cuts to corporations. While progressive governors have proposed raising revenue from those who can afford it, alongside painful cuts to programs, Republican governors have unveiled budgets that cut taxes for corporations and raise them on the middle-class and working poor. In this report, ThinkProgress evaluates the priorities conservatives have set in twelve states:

NEW JERSEY: Last year, Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) budget raised taxes on the working poor and middle-class by cutting the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit and homestead rebates — yet still found money for lucrative corporate tax cuts. This year, Christie’s budget calls for $200 million in business tax cuts, while cutting mental health services, $540 million from Medicaid, and witholding property tax rebates for seniors until public workers give up many of their health and pension benefits. Many New Jerseyans have said they prefer a tax on millionaires to Christie’s draconian cuts.

MICHIGAN: Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) budget would make Michigan’s already regressive tax system even more unfair for the state’s poorest residents. The plan cuts taxes on business by more than 86 percent while slashing $1.2 billion in funding for “schools, universities, local governments and other areas.” Snyder also wants to raise personal taxes by 30 percent — an increase that will fall disproportionately on Michigan’s lowest income residents.

GEORGIA: Last week, the Georgia House passed an austerity budget that will increase health insurance costs by more than 20 percent for state workers, teachers and retirees and cut funding for state universities by $75 million. The House has already gutted the state’s HOPE scholarship program, and is now considering implementing a regressive new tax system that would lower income taxes for the rich while raising the sales tax on basic necessities. House Majority Leader Larry O’Neal (R), meanwhile, has introduced a bill that would implement a flat income tax rate and cut corporate taxes by 33 percent.

FLORIDA: At a Tea Party rally last month, Gov. Rick Scott (R) unveiled his budget, telling supporters he would make the state the most “fiscally conservative” in the nation. The budget would slash corporate income and property taxes, lay off 6,700 state employees, cut education funding by $4.8 billion, and cut Medicaid by almost $4 billion.

OHIO: Gov. John Kasich (R) has proposed cutting 25 percent of schools’ budgets, $1 million from food banks, $12 million from children’s hospitals, and $15.9 million from an adoption program for children with special needs. A Kasich staffer revealed yesterday that these cuts are more about politics then budget-balancing, telling the Cincinnati Dispatch that “even if there weren’t an $8 billion deficit, we’d probably be proposing many of the same things.” The plan includes tax cuts for oil companies, a repeal of the estate tax and an income tax cut for the rich that former Gov. Ted Strickland (D) halted last year because of the state’s fiscal crisis.

IOWA: Gov. Tom Branstad (R) began this year proposing a budget that included a $200 million tax cut on commercial property taxes and corporate income but would freeze spending on schools, cut $42 million to state universities and lay off “hundreds” of state workers. Since then, the Governor has already begun laying off state nursing home workers and frozen funding for mental health services. The budget is now moving through the politically divided legislature, where Republican-controlled House committees have gone even further, approving tax refunds for upper-income Iowans while cancelling infrastructure investments, eliminating preschool for 4-year-olds, closing Iowa workforce development offices, and making even deeper cuts to public universities.

PENNSYLVANIA: Gov. Tom Corbett (R) presented a budget last week that would cut taxes for corporations, while freezing teacher salaries, cutting dental care for Medicaid recipients, and eliminating more than half of the state’s universities. Yet the state has lots of revenue potential in northern Pennsylvania, where out-of-state energy companies’ “fracking” of natural gas has reaped them hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. Corbett has refused to tax these companies, many of which helped fund his gubernatorial campaign, and has instead opted to lay of more than 1,500 state workers.

MAINE: Despite calling for “shared sacrifice” Tea Party Gov. Paul LePage’s (R) budget would cut income taxes for Maine’s wealthiest one percent, while actually raising property taxes for the state’s middle class. This so-called “jobs budget” freezes healthcare funding for working parents, cuts money for schools and infrastructure and raises the retirement age for public workers. Yet LePage was still able to find more than $200 million in tax cuts for large estates, business and the rich.

WISCONSIN: The tax cuts Gov. Scott Walker (R) signed earlier this year worsened his state’s fiscal condition, so now Walker is planning to raise taxes on the poor, eliminate $26 million in tax credits for seniors and single mothers and cancel property tax rebates for low-income Wisconsinites making less than $24,000 a year.

SOUTH CAROLINA: Gov. Nikki Haley (R) has proposed ending the state’s corporate income tax, even while she calls for cutting physical education, K-12 schools, and Medicaid. Haley has received pushback from Republican colleagues: last week the legislature rejected her plan to force state employees to pay more for health insurance.

KANSAS: Facing a $493 million budget shortfall, Gov. Sam Brownback (R) has called for eliminating the corporate income tax while proposing a $50 million cut to education. With majorities in both Houses, Republicans have proposed a cut to the federal Earned Income Tax Credit that would push 6,500 families below the poverty line.

ARIZONA: Last October, as she ignored 26 other possible funding solutions, Gov. Jan Brewer (R) implemented painful cuts to the state’s Medicaid program, which resulted in 2 deaths and left 98 Arizonians waiting for transplant funding. After months of protests, Brewer finally agreed to set aside $151 million in an “uncompensated-care pool to pay health-care providers for ‘life-saving’ procedures, including transplants.” However, House Republicans refused to restore funding for organ transplants because, as House Appropriations Committee chair Jon Kavanagh (R) said, “not enough lives would be saved to warrant restoring millions in budget cuts.” Then, while peoples’ lives were in danger, Brewer eagerly signed tax cuts for businesses that will cost the state $538 million.

As they noted, I'm not sure how that's anyone's idea of "shared sacrifice" when the only ones being asked to sacrifice are the working class.

If anyone here is a regular reader of Think Progress' site, and you don't check into the research being done at their sister site, The Wonk Room, you''re missing a whole lot of great information that their site posts daily and that doesn't always get front paged.

Why Does Gas Cost So Much Right Now? Shameless Wall St. Betting on the Price of Oil | | AlterNet

Why Does Gas Cost So Much Right Now? Shameless Wall St. Betting on the Price of Oil | | AlterNet

How You End Up Bankrolling Fox News: News Corp. and Rupert Murdoch Weasel Out of Paying Taxes | | AlterNet

How You End Up Bankrolling Fox News: News Corp. and Rupert Murdoch Weasel Out of Paying Taxes | | AlterNet
How You End Up Bankrolling Fox News: News Corp. and Rupert Murdoch Weasel Out of Paying Taxes
When giant, prosperous, multinational corporations get out of their tax obligations, ordinary citizens are the ones who are forced to make up the shortfall.
March 21, 2011 | A few weeks ago video pimp and propagandist, James O’Keefe, released heavily edited and deliberately deceptive video that purported to expose an institutional bias at National Public Radio. It was quickly debunked and denounced as a fraud by analysts across the political spectrum, including those at Glenn Beck’s web site, The Blaze.

Nevertheless, partisans in Congress and agenda-driven conservatives in the press continue to behave as if the video were legitimate. The House of Representatives, on a party-line vote, passed a resolution to defund NPR -- a purely symbolic gesture as the Senate is not likely to concur.

The latest attack comes from former NPR correspondent, and confessed bigot, Juan Williams, in an op-ed for The Hill. After first conceding that “NPR is an important platform for journalism,” Williams joins his conservative comrades in calling for federal defunding of NPR. But he also reveals his self-serving and vengeful motivation by slandering NPR in saying that…

“They’re willing to do anything in service of any liberal with money. This includes firing me and skewing the editorial content of their programming.”

Nowhere in the article did Williams support his contention that “liberal money” was behind either his termination or any of its reporting. This is nothing more than a personal vendetta on Williams’ part. He is merely using the funding debate to strike his own blows against a former employer for whom he obviously bears a deep resentment.

However, if the right wants to introduce the issue of federal funding of the media into the public debate, they should be prepared to see their own Fox gored. Fox News has been the beneficiary of government largess for years and it is time stop it and make Fox pay its own way. As far back as 1999, there have been reports documenting how News Corp, Fox’s parent company, exploited loopholes in tax laws that permitted them to avoid levies that all other citizens have to pay. From The Economist:

“…News Corporation and its subsidiaries paid only A$325m ($238m) in corporate taxes worldwide. In the same period, its consolidated pre-tax profits were A$5.4 billion. So News Corporation has paid an effective tax rate of only around 6%. By comparison, Disney, one of the world’s other media empires, paid 31%. Basic corporate-tax rates in Australia, America and Britain, the three main countries in which News Corporation operates, are 36%, 35% and 30% respectively.”

The article goes on to describe how News Corp used a complex network of accounting dodges including as many as 60 shell companies that were incorporated in such tax havens as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the Netherlands Antilles and the British Virgin Islands. More recently, an investigation by the New York Times revealed that…

“By taking advantage of a provision in the law that allows expanding companies like Mr. Murdoch’s to defer taxes to future years, the News Corporation paid no federal taxes in two of the last four years, and in the other two it paid only a fraction of what it otherwise would have owed. During that time, Securities and Exchange Commission records show, the News Corporation’s domestic pretax profits topped $9.4 billion.”

When giant, prosperous, multinational corporations weasel out of their tax obligations, ordinary citizens are the ones who are forced to make up the shortfall. That is effectively a tax subsidy for the corporations funded by you and me and all of the indignant Tea Partiers who claim to oppose special interest favors for the elite.

What’s more, federal bailouts to corporations like General Motors and Citigroup provided them with billions of taxpayer dollars, some of which are eventually spent on advertising that appears on Fox News, in the Wall Street Journal, and other Murdoch assets. Additionally, financial institutions that receive bailout funds use some that money to acquire shares of News Corp and to finance and insure News Corp activities including billion dollar motion picture projects like Avatar and capitalizing mergers and expansions.

USUncut is mounting a campaign to expose this sort of corporate welfare. They should add News Corp/Fox News to their list. But why aren’t there more voices objecting to these handouts? Why aren’t Democrats in Congress drafting legislation to prohibit bailout and stimulus funds from being used to enrich partisan political operations like Fox News by funneling cash into their accounts disguised as advertising expenditures. Every time you see a commercial on the Fox News Channel for a Chevy Tahoe or a Citibank Visa you are watching your tax dollars flow into the pockets of Rupert Murdoch and his wealthy associates.

The right wants to defund NPR despite the fact that they have utterly failed to demonstrate any journalistic bias on the part of NPR. On the other hand, Fox News has been documented to be brazenly one-sided over and over again, yet they receive hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer financed subsidies. The American people should not be forced to bankroll right-wing PR on Fox News.

IRS Would Audit Abortions Under GOP Anti-Choice Bill | AlterNet

I thought these Republicans were all about small government, keeping the government and the IRS out of our lives, but obviously they only meant a select few elite.

IRS Would Audit Abortions Under GOP Anti-Choice Bill | AlterNet

Class Warfare, the Final Chapter

Class Warfare, the Final Chapter
From the article;
Wealth is the value of everything you own minus debt.
Disparity of Wealth
In 1933, the wealthiest one percent of the population held 33.3 percent of the wealth. In 1974, the wealthiest one percent held 19.9 percent of the wealth.
In 2007, the wealthiest one percent held 65.4 percent of the wealth.
In 1933, the bottom 90 percent held 66.7 percent of the wealth.
In 1974, the bottom 90 percent held 80.1 percent of the wealth.
In 2007, the bottom 90 percent held 34.6 percent of the wealth.
Federal Tax Rates (after custom-made individual deductions)
1974 Capital gains tax rate: 35 percent
1950 Highest marginal tax rate: 90 percent
2005 Capital gains tax rate: 15 percent
2005 Highest marginal tax rate: 34 percent
Average Real Income Change 1973-2000
Average real income of bottom 90 percent: -7 percent
Average real income of top 1 percent: + 148 percent
Average real income of top 0.1 percent: + 343 percent
[4]

Average Amount of Wealth Held by Persons: 2009 Census
Single Black Women: $100
Single Hispanic Women: $120
All White Men: $43,800
All White Women: $41,500
All Black Men: $7,900
Amount of Wealth Held by Families: 2009 Census
1986 Black Family Wealth: $2,000
2009 Black Family Wealth: $5,000
1986 White Family Wealth: $22,000
2009 White Family Wealth: $100,000
Full-Time Minimum Wage, Adjusted for Inflation
1968: $18,262
2004: $10,712