Taxes

We have a jobs emergency. We have a stagnant economy. We are falling behind in economic competitiveness. We have developed a terrible concentration of income and wealth. We can address all of these at once.

Robert Kuttner, writing in The Economic Relapse at the American Prospect, more »

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The House is voting on a “clean” debt ceiling bill this evening -- a bill to raise the debt ceiling without any "hostage-taking" conditions. This is the right thing to do for the country and every Democrat should vote for this. more »

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The debt limit has been reached. The President should be demanding a "clean" debt ceiling bill instead of letting hostage-takers force negotiations over their ransom. For deficit reduction The People's Budget is the right approach. It's the budget that polls show the majority of the public wants, but the media and Washington elite are ignoring.

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You hear it again and again, variation after variation on a core message: if you tax rich people it kills jobs. You hear about "job-killing tax hikes," or that "taxing the rich hurts jobs," "taxes kill jobs," "taxes take money out of the economy, "if you tax the rich they won't be able to provide jobs." ... on and on it goes. So do we really depend on "the rich" to "create" jobs? more »

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Real policy wonks bore people. The phony wonk from Wisconsin now driving Congress seduces, with a patter that leaves our wealthy almost completely disappeared.

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The President's plane touched down at Tuscaloosa Regional Airport at 10 am this morning, local time.

That's Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA.

These are the moments that bring us together as a nation, and as people. Just like 9/11 did, before people used it to divide us. I lost friends when those planes struck the towers near my old office. We felt love and support from every part of the country back then. Hopefully the people of Alabama feel ours today. We are so sorry for your loss.

Back then the country singer Alan Jackson, who has his share of fans around Tuscaloosa, asked: "Where were you when the world stopped turning? Did you look up to heaven for some kind of answer, and look at yourself and (at) what really matters?"

What really matters. We spend so much time vilifying one another that it takes a tragedy to bring us together. As bitterly divided as we get, most of us still care for each other in time of need. When President Bush spoke from the rubble of the World Trade Center, it seemed in that moment that he spoke for all of us - even those of us who questioned the way he became President. When President Obama came to Alabama, the hand he offered was our hand. The help he's sending comes through the government, but it comes from us. That's all a government really is, when democracy's working: It's just us. So hold on, Alabama. Your country's here for you.

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It's almost like they had a plan. The right-wing has been trying to dismantle the New Deal since its inception, but after decades of failure it's found a new path to success. They're already persuaded quite a few Democrats to support the first steps toward dismantling Medicare and Social Security. They've also convinced a lot of journalists to ignore detailed economic analyses, and accept the ideological platforms of the far right as "moderate" and "reasonable."

How do you do it? How do you sell a nation on dismantling its most popular programs at a time when they're more needed than ever? How do you convince an entire class of people - the middle class - to voluntarily surrender their health and financial security to benefit those who are far wealthier than they are?

Well, we found it! We found the twenty-year-old PowerPoint presentation that outlines the whole thing - the radical agenda, and the 12-point marketing plan that made it possible. Here it is, available to the public for the first time anywhere: more »

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Conservatives sure do get silly when they talk about taxes. I don't just mean the expressions they get on their faces, or how red their faces get, or the way their hair sticks straight up and their eyes get all big. And I don't mean the way they shake and sweat or even the stuttering. I mean the silly things they actually say. more »

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Conservative ideology says cutting taxes makes the economy grow. This Tax Day let's explore whether this is, in fact, the case. In the last few decades we as a country have conducted textbook scientific experiments with taxes. Under Reagan we dramatically cut taxes at the top, under Clinton we raised them a bit, and then under Bush we cut them again. So now we can look at what happened: Did cutting taxes make the economy grow?

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Conservatives have been saying lately, "We're broke," and need to cut back on the things we (government) do to protect and empower each other. They have a unique definition of the word "we" when applied this way to Americans. For them "we" doesn't mean "We, the People," it means something different. more »

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