THE LATEST
« »

Monday, March 28, 2011

Stories to Watch: 3/28/11

Man, the mayoral race has got me stumped. I get to choose between liberal incumbent Dave Cieslewicz and liberal former incumbent Paul Soglin. I'm having a hard time caring who wins here, so I don't know who I'll vote for. I'd be happy enough with either. This strikes me as the sort of problem you want to have. Now here's the news...


The latest in government shutdown news, from Brian Beutler: "The parties have until April 8 to reach agreement, and the odds of a government shutdown are higher now than they've been since this process began." Harry Reid blames the impasse on freshman Republican Tea Party crazies.

***

Speaking of Tea Party crazies; a short-lived story on the wingnutosphere had Bill Ayers -- of "paling around with terr'ists!" fame -- admitting that he'd written Obama's Dreams from My Father. This had something lunatics had speculated on during the presidential campaign. This time, they had video to prove it!

And then people actually watched the video. Long story short, wingnuts are too stupid to get obvious sarcasm.

***

Here's a crazy idea: maybe revenues in states are so low because taxes have been cut to the bone.


Just when you thought the GOP's 2012 field couldn't get any crazier... Remember Judge Roy Moore? Yeah, he thinks he's got a shot at the White House.


People don't like like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.


Finally, President Obama will address the nation tonight on the subject of Libya.
Enhanced by Zemanta

Comments (4)

Loading... Logging you in...
  • Logged in as
"Here's a crazy idea: maybe revenues in states are so low because taxes have been cut to the bone."

That's exactly correct. Something I've been looking into today as a matter of fact, and that was a helpful link, but I'd like to add that Illinois is an interesting case study in corporate extortion right now.

We just narrowly elected Governor Pat Quinn over wingnut challenger Jim Brady, but since Quinn has been in office corporate taxes were raised a couple percentage points, as well as income and property. But for corporations like Caterpillar(CAT), currently residing in Illinois with 23,000 jobs to claim, 2% is a step too far!

But here's the thing, read this and tell me corporations haven't been robbing the state blind, effectively harming the very infrastructure and vibrancy of the state economy leading to the shock doctrine violence they're eager to support.

Amazon played the same hand after state law was passed basically charging them with sales tax dodging, which was pricing local businesses out contention and harming the state's revenues, sales, and overall local economy.

I was just driving through a town called Long Grove, a small, Norman Rockwell like business community where their businesses have suffered because of internet sales-- and if they're being put under even in part because of Amazon's sales tax advantages, it's a tragedy and greedy vulgarity that anyone would call Quinn's modest proposals and targeted fixes into question.

Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk referred to Quinn's moves as a "grievous error," but also outright lied when he said, Illinois now has “the highest corporate taxes in the industrialized world.”

A corporation like CAT, which(who?)has received hundreds of billions in U.S. taxpayer contracts threatening to go where the labor's cheap, the environmental regulations are nil, and where the champagne rooms in state houses across the country are giving privatized free for alls to keep their effective 2% tax rate is the dirty little lie of this whole right wing propaganda effort.

Republicans in Illinois keep warning of a $20 billion budget deficit buy 2016, but if we'd been collecting 7% from the 22 corporations in Illinois that have gotten away with the lowest effective rates over the past 12 years, we'd have collected about $20 billion dollars.

Republicans warn that we're not sufficiently kissing further the asses of those who threaten the state today with economic turmoil and political smearing.

It really is a beggar society they propose.
1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago
Thanks for the link, I might use that.
1 reply · active 718 weeks ago
Thanks. Turns out I didn't need it. I just linked to the McClatchy piece. The post shaped up to need a broad point, not a specific one.

Post a new comment

Comments by

Search Archive:

Custom Search