Commerce, Education, and oops. He is offered Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which he says needs to be reformed. Later on he comes up with Energy. As a Republican from Texas, I am guessing he hates the EPA, and he is pro corporations in the energy sector (oil industry is huge in Texas). Why wouldn’t he get rid of the EPA and keep Energy? That just doesn’t make sense!

-Josh

I suspect that this doctor is hanging out with the mom’s whose daughter became mentally retarded after taking the HPV vaccine, and also with Paul Bunyan and the Loch Ness monster.

I am also confused about how the doctor is prohibited from asking a person for their residential status, but have to get wait over 2 hours to get a number from the IRS to see someone.   So can’t ask one thing, but must have number to even see someone.

And a doctor would assign staff to wait with the IRS for the number.  If the part about the IRS was true, which it isn’t.

Maybe it should be in search of sanity or reality.

-Josh

Lucky ducks–these are the folks that file income tax returns, but whose income after deductions and credits owe no income tax.  The Wall Street Journal editorial pages started this term, and have been using it since 2002.

Job creators–in the past few years this term has been thrown around to describe the wealthy, and defend the lower tax rates that they deserve.  You may have heard something like this, “you don’t raise taxes on job creators during a down economy.”

Why are these terms being used, basically to convince people that the Republican’s economic agenda isn’t class warfare, but fairness.

So let’s breakdown the myth of the Lucky Ducks, these folks don’t make enough to pay federal income tax.  Sadly in the down economy, the percentage of the population that falls into this category has been rising.  As average employees wages have stayed stagnant, this is an inevitable result.

However, when Lucky Ducks is talked about, it is a not used to point out the stagnant wages for the majority of Americans.  It is used to make tax payers think that there are a bunch of freeloaders that aren’t paying taxes.  That those who aren’t Lucky Ducks have been supporting those lazy freeloaders.

But are they lazy freeloaders?  While the statistic that is used is the number of people who file federal income taxes (those with an income) who don’t owe federal income taxes.  People who have no income don’t have to file taxes, so this is measuring people with income, generally workers, who aren’t generally lazy or freeloaders.

In the US working people have to pay payroll taxes, 6.2% to Social Security and 1.45% to Medicare (or 7.65%) and double that if you are self employed as you are paying employee and employer shares.  While these Lucky Ducks are not paying income tax, they are still paying payroll taxes on their income.  Not as Lucky as they want you to think, and be angry about!  That doesn’t get into state income, property or sales tax that these folks likely are paying too (double taxation!!!).

What about the myth of the job creators?  For a few years, I have been hearing this statement, “no poor person employed me!”  In the last few years as the Bush tax cuts were set to expire, and Democrats were looking to let the tax rates go up on the wealthiest Americans the job creators became the endangered species of the Republicans.  To paraphrase a familiar line, “Won’t somebody please think of the  Job Creators?”

But I want to think about this for a moment?  They are trying to say that wealthy American tax payers, individuals or couples, are job creators.  Now I believe that wealthy people do hire other people directly, maybe a housemaid, butler, driver, nanny, exercise coach, dietitian, publicist and so on.  But how many people do they hire?  Does a change in 3% marginal tax rate mean they go from hiring 3 people to 4?  To that 4th person, that is huge, but I don’t call these people Job Creators.

I think we need to start asking Republicans, do you consider yourself wealthy (Mitt Romney), if yes, how many people do you employ.  And when I say employ, you pay the employer share of payroll taxes!  If you hire a service who employs a person who provides a service for you, the service is the employer, not you.  If you create a company and that later employees people, than I will agree you are a job creator, but that isn’t a ton of the wealthy.

I have been thinking about this a for a long time, because we are all job creators if we are actively involved with the economy.  When I go shop at Target or the grocery store I am buy products, along with the other customers.  Our demand for those products are creating jobs for the people extracting the resources that are manufactured (more jobs), then transported (jobs) to a store (jobs).  My demand along with my fellow consumers are creating that demand and those jobs.

Not only that, but the average consumer probably creates more jobs than the super wealthy in most sectors (not Lear Jets).  Think about this, you have a wealthy family that makes $5,000,000.  Maybe they have a principal residence and two vacation properties, a housemaid and a driver.  Then you have 100 families who make $50,000 (same as that $5,000,000 wealthy family) who don’t directly hire anyone and just have one home.  Now those 100 families are going to buy more toilet paper, more toothpaste, food, etc… than the multi millionaire with their 3 homes and 2 employees.  For the people who make toilet paper or toothpaste, those employee’s jobs are based on the demand (job creation) of all them, but it is the demand of the average family collectively that is creating more jobs than the multi millionaires.

It is time for us to think past the language that is being used to support tax policies that benefit the ultra wealthy.  Average Americans are struggling enough in the current economic climate.  We need jobs, not class warfare, but we have been getting attacked for years and usually don’t even realize the Black Ops/Psy Ops that have been waged against us workers.

Lucky Ducks who may not pay any federal income tax definitely pay taxes, and usually are pretty hard workers.  All of us that are buying things are job creators.  The ultra wealthy may create jobs in the luxury industries, but they are not the only job creators and for a large part of society create less jobs (collectively) than the average American, including those who are not working, but still consuming.

-Josh

Thinking back to these early comics, most of which started in the 60s, we can see how, with the comics as an example, society really celebrated the scientists.  Fantastic Four has Richard Reed, Avengers had Hank Pym (Ant-Man and later names), Hulk is Bruce Banner, Iron Man is Tony Stark, and Spider-Man was teen scientist Peter Parker.  Now many of these scientist, especially Bruce Banner and Tony Stark were serving the nation and their battle on the Red Menace of communist Soviet Union.  Back then, our society saw science as leading the way forward to developments for our society and winning the Cold War.

Yet today, what was once seen as the part of the solution to winning the battle for democracy in the free world and not so free world is now viewed very differently.

• The theory of evolution is to be challenged by intelligent design (aka backdoor creationism).  Note:  a scientific theory can not be proven, but is basically undisputed as explaining how things work, you may have heard of another theory, the theory of gravity
• Climate change science is challenged because it threatens corporate profits of the dirtiest and most profitable industry in the world, Big Oil

We need to take value of our science, we have to fund research and development.  We need science to lead to all those discoveries that help humanity, not just further enrich corporations with patents on the fabric of nature, like seeds.  On issues like stem cell research we need to have honest discussions of moral and ethical implications of research.  But equally those discussions must encompass all viewpoints and not be driven solely by those with a religious agenda that may be trying to silence voices of progress and truth like Galileo was for saying the earth revolved around the sun by the Church.

-Josh

Of course the Kim Jong-il was really hoping for Don King, but he is less likely than Trump to be a candidate.

What I don’t get is how they thought this is a good idea.  Why would anyone want a car to end up at the bottom of the lake.  And if that car isn’t drained of its fluids (which would probably still leave some residue) you are creating a source of pollution in that lake.  Even if they drain the fluids and then get the car out of the lake, it is a stupid and wasteful idea.

-Josh

For those of you that think this is all about the state budget crisis and that alone, you are very mistaken.  This is about destroying the last institution, the last guardian for middle class and poor Americans from the ruling elites.  This is about destroying unions, so there is a weakened support organization for the Democratic party.  Not that the Democratic party has been the best friend of unions, I often think that many Democratic politicians play them lip service, but it is better than the outright hostility that they face from Republican politicians.

Remember in the spring of 2009 and 2010 when we heard about the on-going obscene bonuses going to folks on Wall Street?  We had funded the bailout of their industry, keeping them employed.  But that wasn’t enough, they had their contracts and we had to pay them bonuses.  But when the outrage over the bonuses came out, I didn’t hear from Republicans asking to make them re-adjust their contracts because of the bailout.  No, they said it was dumb for Wall Street to give huge bonuses, tried to lay blame on Democrats (many which are as beholden to Wall Street as Republicans), but never once pushed for a clawback on bonuses.

Yet, when it comes to bailing out a union industry like big auto, they ask for union members to take a cut.  When they are facing state government deficits, they ask public government unions to alter their contracts and take a cut.

It is not because unionized employees have more income in which to give, no that is what you find on Wall Street.  Wall Street can give more, but are not asked to because they are special, they represent the wealthy class that has an exaggerated importance in our country.  They demonstrate the lie that is supposed one person one vote democracy with their lack of sacrifice and exaggerated importance.

Republican hatred of unions is very clear to those who are willing to listen.  Their willingness to violate contracts in some circumstances and say they are inviolate in other cases shows that they have a political agenda, destroying unions.  As Rahm Emanuel has said, and Governor Walker and his fellow Republican state politicians are taking to heart, “don’t let a crisis go to waste.”

-Josh

Far and away the worst example of this was the 2009 Christmas storm.  This was one where we got a lot of wet snow, then the temperatures dropped.  That time, I pulled into a slushy unplowed parking spot, and after the temps dropped my axle got frozen to the cooling snow/ice mix.  My only remedy was a plow.

I realize the city must consider the cost of and effectiveness of when to plow.  However, these decisions that are to help us, often can be quite a nuisance for us citizens.  I don’t know what the solution is, but I expect that we will see Minneapolis call a snow emergency later than the rest of the twin city municipalities.

Granted, Minneapolis typically does a better job than St Paul who will usually call the emergency quicker, so maybe there is a method to their madness.  However, I think that disparity in effective snow removal predates the frequently delayed snow emergencies.

-Josh

So my options were to upgrade directly from Norton it would have cost me $49.99 for 1 year for the same service.  Or I could buy a CD from Amazon.com with the same service for $29.99.  So I can be green, not paying for a CD nor its shipping and packaging, or I can save $20.  Sadly in these economics times I went with the extra $20 in my pocket.

Why doesn’t Norton offer existing customers a renewal license that is competitive with Amazon’s price?  It saves the production costs and makes the world a little greener.

-Josh

P.S.  Granted, I don’t download mp3s, but rather buy CDs to rip them to my computer, which could be considered a little hypocritical.  However, those are CDs that I own until lost, given away or destroyed, whereas anti-virus is really a one year license.

So when we talk about letting the Bush tax cuts expire on income that is higher than $250,000 (those wealthy folks still get the same tax cut as everyone else on the income below $250,000), we need a new frame.  I suggest we go with the Fox News/Republican/Tea Party bogey name to get us there, it is time to call it the George Soros tax cut.  I want to hear John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, not to mention Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin to defend the George Soros tax cut.