by Chris
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July 29, 2010
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Back in 2006 Republicans – the folks who shed crocodile tears over Big Intrusive Government – banned online gambling by slipping a provision into a port security bill. The results were predictable. Online gambling continued as online casinos moved their operations off-shore, away from Uncle Sam’s regulations and tax collectors. Now that Washington is looking for ways to shore up the deficit those missing tax dollars are an enticing target, so online gambling may be coming back:
On Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee approved a bill that would effectively legalize online poker and other nonsports betting, overturning a 2006 federal ban that critics say merely drove Web-based casinos offshore.
The bill would direct the Treasury Department to license and regulate Internet gambling operations, while a companion measure, pending before another committee, would allow the Internal Revenue Service to tax such businesses. Winnings by individuals would also be taxed, as regular gambling winnings are now. The taxes could yield as much as $42 billion for the government over 10 years, supporters said.
I’ll say what I said back when this ban still smelled like fresh ink, “government has no business banning gambling, online or otherwise. Government should only step in to punish gambling vendor fraud.” But since the ideological argument concerning freedom doesn’t seem to be working, I’m glad the economic one might. The same might work for marijuana.
Flickr photo by Jamie Adams.
by Chris
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July 28, 2010
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Yeah right:
“I’m not a class-warfare guy. That’s the Democrats’ gig. They like to divide and play the class card. We don’t have classes in America — I don’t even like the term ‘middle class.’ People are lower income or middle income, and the dynamism of this country is that you can rise, and sometimes fall, but you are not stuck in classes. We should not get into that kind of rhetoric, or showing some sort of prejudice.”
Rich former Senator Rick Santorum (link NSFW) explaining an illusion that helps him sleep at night.
by Chris
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July 26, 2010
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In the coming days we’re sure to be subjected to complaints and hand-wringing over the publication of these classified reports from our glorious War in/on Afghanistan by WikiLeaks. Keep in mind that the complainers are mostly interested in protecting themselves and their powerful friends from embarrassment. Embarrassments like this:
Among the ninety-one thousand or so documents from the Afghan war released by WikiLeaks Sunday is an incident report dated November 22, 2009, submitted by a unit called Task Force Pegasus. It describes how a convoy was stopped on a road in southern Afghanistan at an illegal checkpoint manned by what appeared to be a hundred insurgents, “middle-age males with approx 75 x AK-47’s and 15 x PKM’s.” What could be scarier than that?
Maybe what the soldiers found out next: these weren’t “insurgents” at all, at least not in the die-hard jihadi sense that the American public might understand the term. The gunmen were quite willing to let the convoy through, if the soldiers just forked over a two- or three-thousand-dollar bribe; and they were in the pay of a local warlord, Matiullah Khan, who was himself in the pay, ultimately, of the American public. According to a Times report this June (six months after the incident with Task Force Pegasus), Matiullah earns millions of dollars from NATO, supposedly to keep that road clear for convoys and help with American special-forces missions. Matiullah is also suspected of (and has denied) earning money “facilitating the movement of drugs along the highway.”
That is good to know. The Obama Administration has already expressed dismay that WikiLeaks publicized the documents, but a leak informing us that our tax dollars may be being used as seed money for a protection racket associated with a narcotics-trafficking enterprise is a good leak to have.
As citizens of a “democracy” we have a right to know how the war is going. How else are we to make an informed decision with respect to supporting it?
Stupid question… I know…
by Chris
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July 26, 2010
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Not in your pocket:
[...] the globalism and “free trade” that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn’t tell us that the “global economy” would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.
Here are the statistics to prove it:
- 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
- 61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
- 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
- 36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything to retirement savings.
- A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
- 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
- Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
- Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
- For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
- In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
- As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
- The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
- Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
- In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
- The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America’s corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
- In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
- More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
- or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
- This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
- Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 – the highest rate in 20 years.
- Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
- The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.
And remember, now they want nix your Social Security and unemployment checks because the country is out of money. We aren’t out of money, we just aren’t looking in the right pockets.
(h/t Balloon Juice)
by Chris
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July 22, 2010
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by Chris
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July 21, 2010
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Yesterday, the Obama Administration fired Shirley Sherrod, a USDA employee, because a right-wing smear artist released a speech from Sherrod that was edited to make it look like she was racist against white folks.
It goes without saying that Sherrod should be reinstated (Update: The Obama Administration has apologized to Sherrod). But there’s a larger story here.
It’s embarrassing that the Obama Administration fired her so quickly based on reports from a known liar. What happened to giving people a fair chance to defend themselves and their livelihood? And let’s not pretend her firing was out of character. Obama has a history of throwing friends and allies under the bus. There’s ACORN, his church and his pastor, William Ayers, Van Jones and Samantha Power, to name a few. If you’re a liability in the media (the right-wing noise machine included), consider yourself gone.
If Obama won’t defend people in his administration from obvious lies, then he will wither in the building Republican storm. The GOP could take control of the House of Representatives this fall. And the last time Republicans controlled Congress during a Democratic administration, they launched investigation after investigation in an attempt to bring down Bill Clinton. Sure most of the charges were bullsh*t, but it didn’t matter. They just wanted to grind Clinton down and make him politically ineffective, and, with the help of our petty media, they succeeded.
With our country and our economy in such sorry shape, we can’t afford to limp along with a neutered government. Obama needs to work on his defensive game, and fast.
by Chris
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July 19, 2010
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It’s Pakistan:
[...] in Pakistan, the lack of a workable tax system feeds something more menacing: a festering inequality in Pakistani society, where the wealth of its most powerful members is never redistributed or put to use for public good.
[...] Much of the tax avoidance, especially by the wealthy, is legal. Under a 1990s law that has become one of the main tools to legalize undocumented — or illegally obtained — money made in Pakistan, authorities here are not allowed to question money transferred from abroad. Businessmen and politicians channel billions of rupees through Dubai back to Pakistan, no questions asked.
That’s the paradise we can expect in the United States when Republicans are finished giving tax cuts to the rich and slashing essential public welfare services like Social Security. Hell, the situation here is already pretty bad. But what else do you expect when the rich get to write all the rules so they keep all the money even when they f*ck up?
by Clint
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July 18, 2010
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Jon Stewart deftly wicks away antagonism. His skill with socially-conscious satire allows him to handle weighty political issues, while his status as a half-baked comedian frees him from being burdened by them. On the Progressive Left, he’s been all-but-beatified for embracing liberal values and acting as a counterweight to Fox News.
This is why there was a major splash when he was recently accused of running a sexist work environment. The accusations come from an article at Jezebel – a women’s interest blog – which opens by stating that The Daily Show (TDS) is a “boys’ club where women’s contributions are often ignored and dismissed.” Specifically, Jezebel highlights the lack of female correspondents and writers, while suggesting that off-air Jon Stewart is testy, or, in his words: “Jezebel thinks I’m a sexist prick.”
The female employees at TDS responded, noting that, while the on-air talent is predominately male, 40% of the show’s total staff is female. They were adamant in their defense of Stewart. ”Jon has worked hard to create an environment where people feel respected and valued regardless of their gender or position,” they said.
From these exchanges, it’s difficult to determine much about the actual work environment at TDS. Jezebel’s article cites disgruntled former staffers, while the response comes from employees who have a vested interest in staying employed.
One of those is newly-hired ‘correspondent,’ Olivia Munn, whose career has included (non-nude) photo shoots for Playboy and Maxim. “It’s hard not to conclude that looks mattered more for women than for men,” the article says. It’s ironic that Jezebel criticizes TDS for being sexist, while simultaneously belittling their newest female addition as eye candy.
But there’s another far more striking irony. Jezebel takes TDS to task for its scarcity of female writers/correspondents. But a review of the Jezebel staff (listed on the left of their page) reveals that the number of male writers/editors is quite low. Zero.
by Chris
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July 14, 2010
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As a follow-up to Clint’s post yesterday about Afghanistan, I’d like to note that our own government estimates that there are only about 100 al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and only about 300 in neighboring Pakistan. Just so you know, we have somewhere around 100,000 of our troops in Afghanistan.
Let that sink in.