MSNBC host Rachel Maddow observed Friday evening how the Republican Party may have a growing schism in their views on social issues, especially in regards to same-sex marriage and LGBT rights.

Maddow discussed former Vice President Dick Cheney’s pushing marriage equality to pass in Maryland and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie vetoing his state’s version.

“On domestic social issues, the Republicans are becoming split,” she said. “Time has passed, the river has risen. And today, not all Republicans — not even all really, really, really conservative Republicans, are on board with the whole ‘God, guns, and gays’ agenda.”

“If you are a Republican in 2012, yeah, you can use gay rights as a cudgel to hit Democrats. But you have to know that when you do that, you are hitting Dick Cheney.”

Maddow later interviewed GOP presidential candidate Fred Karger, the first openly gay candidate running for president, who agreed that his party was changing its tune.

“There wasn’t even a split that many years ago,” Karger said. “We’re seeing Gerald Ford, who came out for gay marriage in 2001, at 88 years old, the first former president to do so. So within the Republican Party, we’re starting to get some numbers, like Laura Bush, and Barbara Bush, their daughters and Cindy McCain. The list goes on, even Governor (Arnold) Schwarzenegger. We’re hoping President Obama comes around to, he’s evolving on the issue.”

WATCH: Video from MSNBC, which was broadcast on February 17, 2012.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Health Professionals – $89K

Alex Padilla can be contacted in Sacramento at 916-651-4020 or in Van Nuys at 818-901-5588
Insurance – $137K
Health Professionals – $105K
Pharma – $67K

Michael Rubio can be contacted in Sacramento at 916-651-4016 or in Bakersfield at 661-395-2620
Health Professionals – $94K
Insurance – $36K

Juan Vargas In Sacramento at 916-651-4040 or in Chula Vista at 619-409-7690
Insurance – $115K
Health Professionals – $46K
Pharma – $28K

Rod Wright can be contacted in Sacramento at 916-651-4025 or in Inglewood at 310-412-0393
Insurance – $87K
Pharma – $45K
Health Professionals – $43K

Thank Senator Mark Leno for championing SB 810 at Senator.Leno@Senate.CA.gov. We do not want to tie up his phones. It is important to thank legislators when they champion our cause, and not just spank them when they do not.

Help Build a Stronger Movement – Order SB 810 Postcards, direct new people to our website, and consider becoming a monthly contributor to Single Payer Now.

Please order SB 810 postcards. They ask Governor Brown to pass SB 810. The legislation will again be introduced in 2013. Asking new people to sign a postcard is wonderful way to have a discussion about the merits of single payer healthcare. We add the names to our action alert list to keep activists engaged in the campaign for universal healthcare.

His new tax plan calls for an increase of the dividend tax to a maximum of 40% for households earning $250,000 a year. Coincidentally, that is equal to the higher maximum income tax rate set to go into effect in 2013.

According to the Obama administration, the increase in the dividend tax rate is needed to pay down the federal deficit and to make the tax code more progressive.

“Choices had to be made,” a senior Obama administration told reporters, explaining the bid to raise more than $200 billion over a decade with the steeper dividend taxes on the wealthy.

In addition to an increase in the dividend tax rate, the Obama administration is proposing to raise the current 15% long-term capital gains tax to 20% for the wealthiest Americans.

If you look closely, the Obama tax plan to tax the rich seems like an election year campaign ploy to win the lower and middle class vote. Fortunately for the wealthy and big corporations, it is extremely unlikely that Obama’s tax provisions will be become law, including his dividend tax increase.

“This is a reversal of what was a very specific policy feature of the first three budgets to keep dividends and capital gains taxed at the same rate,” said Michael Mundaca, a former top Treasury tax official under Obama, now at the accounting firm Ernst & Young.

“Companies may be more likely to retain earnings or seek alternatives ways to distribute their earnings such as by buying back stock,” Mundaca said.

Tax experts believe that big corporations may accelerate 2013 dividend payments into 2012 to dodge tax hikes.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we see moving all their 2013 dividends into 2012,” Kies said. “A lot of U.S. companies are sitting on cash.”

source: reuters.com

Tags: budget deficit, dividend tax, dividend tax increase, Income Tax, obama administration, obama tax, obama tax plan, Tax Experts, tax increase, tax plan

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February 13, 2012
Obama Tax Plan Calls For Buffet Rule

After four consecutive years of one trillion dollar-plus deficits, the U.S. administration predicts a budget deficit drop below 1 trillion. That’s what President Obama’s budget plan calls for based on his proposed tax and spending policies.

One of the biggest contributors to reducing the deficit calls for a raise in the income tax rate on the wealthy. The so-called “Buffett Rule” would guarantee that households making more than $1 million a year pay at least 30% of their income in taxes.

This proposal was actually presented by America’s wealthiest businessman, Warren Buffett. To support this tax proposal, he used the real life example that it’s unfair that he (being a billionaire) pay a lower tax rate than his secretary.

The implementation of the Buffet Tax would raise approximately $1.5 trillion dollars. Additional sources of revenue to reduce the deficit would come from a tax reform plan that includes the expiration of the Bush Tax and the elimination of various tax preferences.

Will Obama’s tax plan work, or will it backfire?

Maybe the focus of cutting the deficit should be on creating jobs. New jobs mean more tax revenue and less expenditures to pay the unemployed.

Tags: budget deficit, buffet rule, buffet tax, obama tax, obama tax plan, tax plan, tax proposal, Tax Rate, tax revenue

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February 10, 2012
Free Tax Help For Preparing Your Return

The IRS has a new online tax tool to help low and middle income taxpayers find local sites to get free tax help. The free tax help is made available by individuals in the IRS Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) and the Tax Counseling for the Elderly (TCE) programs.

The tool, available 24 hours a day, makes it easier for qualified individuals to find free tax help directly from the Internal Revenue Service. Taxpayers with incomes of $50,000 or less can get their taxes done for free by IRS volunteers. Senior citizens aged 60 and older can get free tax help from volunteers in the Tax Counseling for the Elderly (TCE) program.

Taxpayers can access the application by clicking on this free tax help tool link or by going to irs.gov and entering the letters “VITA” in the search box. Next, click on the “Free Tax Return Preparation For You by Volunteers” option, then select the “Find a VITA site near you” option.

Once there, an easy-to-use locator prompts users to enter a zip code to search thousands of free tax preparation sites, narrowing the results to a selected radius. VITA sites are listed by location name, address, phone number, days and hours of operation, and the language-assistance options offered. Finally, taxpayers select a specific tax preparation site to get a map to provide step-by-step directions.

More than three million tax returns were prepared by VITA and TCE volunteers in during the 2011 tax season.

The IRS is continually improving its website to provide the latest tax information to taxpayers.

source:irs.gov

Tags: free tax help, irs tax help, irs volunteers, Tax Help, Tax Preparation, VITA

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Brad Johnson posted from ThinkProgress Green on Feb 13, 2012 at 12:30 pm

A broad coalition of the grassroots progressive movement is launching a 24-hour effort to mobilize 500,000 people opposing Republican efforts to approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. GOP senators “plan to file an amendment mandating the project to the Senate transportation package Monday,” the Hill reports. In a Daily Kos diary, 350.org founder Bill McKibben — who led thousands of Americans who got arrested last summer in front of the White House in opposition to the pipeline — explains the “powerful, unified fight” to “keep this pipeline dead“:

We’re going to war at noon eastern today–non-violent war, but a powerful, unified fight against the heart of right-wing power, the fossil fuel industry. We’re out to collect half a million emails in 24 hours telling the Senate: back up the president and keep this pipeline dead. It’s going to be the most concentrated burst of environmental activism this millennium–and it needs you.

This effort includes a diverse coalition of the national environmental movement — including the Environmental Defense Fund, Rainforest Action Network, the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Wildlife Federation and Green For All. As McKibben said, it’s “everyone else who’s ever tried to save a whale, clean a lake, build a park, find a solar job.”

The 24-hour push isn’t just a “green” cause, but one of the American progressive movement. Other organizations participating in the petition drive include MoveOn, Credo, Democracy for America, Public Citizen, Change.org, the Labor Network for Sustainability, and businesses like Patagonia.

Bill McKibben will be on the Colbert Report tonight to discuss the effort to prevent the destruction of our climate for the profit of foreign oil companies.

OccupyKXL: The 99 Percent Takes A Stand With 24 Hours Against Keystone.

Except that in reality, lower average propensity to consume (APC) results from significantly increased real income.¹ Who has how much matters because people tend to spend different portions of their income at different levels of wealth. Wealth and income distributions make a significant difference to effective demand. We’re not concerned with what people would like to have if they had enough money; we’re concerned with what people will spend with the money they’re getting. If Warren is a wealthy person and John is a poor person and over time Warren attains a higher share of the available money, total spending — effective demand — generated by those two consumers will drop.

If there’s $1,000,000 of total income between the two at time T1 and Warren gets $950,000 while John gets $50,000 and Warren spends 33.33%² of income to John’s 100% of income, then total spending by these two individuals at time T1 will be:

T1: $316,635 + $50,000 = $366,635.00

When income ratios shift and there’s an inflation-adjusted $1,000,000 of total income at time T2 and Warren gets $975,000 while John gets $25,000, Warren’s spending ratio (APC) will likely have fallen slightly from the previous propensity, but we’ll stick with 33.33% for simplicity and understatement. Meanwhile, John can’t spend as much as before because John’s available funds have dropped. Even if Warren still spends at the same rate — which is unlikely — then total spending would be:

T2: $325,967.50 + $25,000 = $349,967.50

That would be a drop from time T1 to time T2 of $16,667.50 in inflation-adjusted spending. I’ve picked an arbitrary APC for Warren, but herein we’re just showing the rough effect. The dollar values are merely for illustration of the concept. Even if the exact average amount might vary slightly from the $16,667.50 of our illustration, the point remains that there would be a shortfall. With more of the money shifted to those with a lower APC, you get lower consumption which is to say lower effective demand.

Debunking The Notion That Inequality Wouldn’t Impact The Economy | Addicting Info.

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That’s how the Washington Post fact checker, Glenn Kessler, put it in his review of the following assertion used in the Super Bowl ad (watch below) by the Center for Union Facts*: “Only ten percent of people in unions today actually voted to join the union.”

Kessler dug in to see where that came from and apparently it is an “estimate [of the] the proportion of employees who both would have voted for the establishment of a union at their companies and were still in their jobs.” As Kessler points out, this has no bearing on the extent to which workers currently covered by collective bargaining would vote to maintain collective bargaining. It is as relevant, as Jared Bernstein points out, as “saying Virginia isn’t a state because none of its current residents voted for statehood.”

What are the facts? Richard Freeman (Harvard University) and Joel Rogers (University of Wisconsin) report on page 69 in their book, What Workers Want, that 90 percent of union workers wanted to keep their union based on their answer to the question, “If a new election were held today to decide whether to keep the union at your company, would you vote to keep the union or get rid of it?”

Union workers have many special legal rights and protections. For instance, union workers by law have the right to vote for union officers and any dues increase, initiation fee or
assessment. The laws protecting internal union democracy are far stricter than those for corporate governance and shareholder rights. Plus, workers also have clear rights to decertify unions. This ad and this “fact” do not capture what union worker rights are nor even attempt to reflect what union workers’ views are of collective bargaining.

In fact, a much larger share of the non-managerial workforce wants a union than has a union. Freeman wrote in 2007:

“Given that nearly all union workers (90%) desire union representation, the mid-1990s analysis suggested that if all the workers who wanted union representation could achieve it, then 44% of the workforce would have union representation.”

So, if workers could freely have a union when they wanted one, union representation in the United States would be on par with that of Germany.

_{*By the way, the CUF is just a small part of an array of misleading public relations efforts conducted by Richard Berman on behalf of special interests.}

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 One of the most annoying things about being a professor is the day you realize that your graduate students are smarter and more articulate than you are. At first, it bothers you terribly. Then, as time goes on, you come to accept it more gracefully. At least that’s how it’s been for me.

Perhaps you’ve noticed a few comments on my last posting on unions for graduate research assistants at the University of Minnesota. Some were in favor, some objected, but all were thoughtful and worthy of our attention.

I sent out a call for help in putting together my response. Sara Nelson, a graduate assistant and doctoral student at the University of Minnesota, offered something that I can’t improve upon.  So, I will simply quote verbatim:

“The bargaining unit is defined in Minnesota law – the only way to have a union is to have a union for all teaching and research assistants and graduate instructors.

“It is true that, as grad assistants, our work across the university varies greatly – but we are all grad assistant employees, and we are all affected by terms and conditions of our employment determined at the level of the upper administration (though the specifics of our employment are – and would continue to be with a union – determined at the department level). A union would give us the opportunity to negotiate on equal footing with the administration over these basic terms and conditions; a contract would be able to establish base pay, benefits, and job protections for all workers, but this does not mean a flattening of wages across the bargaining unit – above these minimums, diversity among departments is maintained and the functions of individual departments in setting competitive compensation is not curtailed. The fundamental point is that all graduate assistants across campus have the opportunity to provide their input on an initial contract and to vote on this contract, and grad assistants will not approve a contract that is not beneficial to them.

“Further, regardless of differences in pay and benefits, the union is able to give all graduate assistants democratic control in setting the terms and conditions of their employment, which are enforceable in a legally-binding contract.  Regardless of whether we feel satisfied with the status quo, the fact is that it can be (and has been) changed at the whim of the administration. My biggest concern, personally, is less increasing my compensation (though a cost of living increase every few years would be nice) than gaining this democratic control.

“Regarding strikes: strikes are extremely rare (more than 98% of contract negotiations are settled without a strike), and involve a sacrifice for any worker – they are a serious decision that no one takes lightly. Those of us in the social sciences and humanities who may not be funded on external research grants are still required to make progress in order to maintain our positions, and take our work as research and teaching assistants seriously enough not to abandon it except under the most dire of circumstances. A strike requires a 2/3 majority vote, in order to make sure that a super majority of members feel that a strike is absolutely necessary. Further, in the extremely rare case that grad assistants decide they need to strike, no one can be forced to participate in a strike or to discontinue work. The 2/3 majority is designed to ensure that a strike would have strong enough support to succeed.”

I thank Ms. Nelson for her help with this posting. More than that, I thank her and all of you graduate students who are working to find ways that a union can give each and every one of you a stronger voice in administrative decisions. You need it now and, believe me, you will need it much more when you take the next step in your careers.

shareshareshareshareshare

This entry was posted in Economic Policy, Labor Unions and tagged graduate student assistants, graduate student union, Richard Levins, UAW by Richard A. Levins. Bookmark the permalink.