The rich have been taking advantage of loopholes for a long time. Here's a link to a magazine article by Tom Bates from Oregon Times, April 1977 (6 pdf files, about 14 MB each)

http://quackabout.com/pdf/ Click on each pdf as you are ready.

This weekend Michelle Bachmann was asked what she meant when she said that wives should be submissive to husbands (she was quoting a verse from the Bible) and she weaseled out with an untruthful answer. She said submissive means respectful. Most synonyms for submissive sound more like abject, bowed, bowing, meek, spiritless, cringing, groveling, wormlike, dominated, henpecked. This is typical of those who want to foist their religious beliefs on others. They quote from the Bible and then give their special interpretation. And no one can prove them wrong, since they are quoting unverifiable statements to begin with.

Published in The Oregonian August 4, 2011

Now that the sideshow is over it is time for both parties to get down to creating jobs for the 14 million unemployed who are no longer able to contribute anything to the economy. We have been distracted by the talk about the deficit but not one person in Congress has put forward a jobs bill. If the tea party people can create jobs without spending money, now is the time for them to step forward. If they can’t then it is time for them to be quiet and let some government spending create jobs the way it always has in past depressions. Free enterprise can either put up or get out of the way.

Published in The Oregonian Friday, July 22, 2011

“U.S. could learn from Latvians” says Robert J. Samuelson in The Oregonian’s Monday edition.
He points out that Latvia came out of its economic crisis “through tax increases, layoffs, salary cuts and other spending reductions.” So why does he not point out that it is the Republicans who are blocking use of the first item in his list of cures? Tax increases are vital if America is to move ahead, and the Republicans, in their political aim to destroy the Obama presidency are showing their willingness to make us all suffer on the road to that partisan goal. None of their rhetoric makes any sense unless you factor in their hatred of Obama. It is an old trick, wrapping a nefarious plan in high-sounding words.

The Republicans are using the admirable goal of lower taxes as something we can all get behind, but it is a cover for their obvious goal of not letting Obama succeed at anything, even if it hurts the middle and lower classes. The workers without jobs number 14 million now and lower taxes are not going to help them. FDR spent millions to get us out of the Great Depression and he had to fight the Republicans for every dollar. If Obama is not prepared to fight for the unemployed then we are lost.

Letter in The Oregonian Tuesday, July 12:

It has been said before but it needs to be repeated: Social Security is not a drain on the Federal Budget. It is funded by workers’ payroll taxes. The erroneous idea that it is a drain on the budget was perpetuated again in The Oregonian by the columnist Samuelson in his Monday contribution. What needs to change about Social Security is the funds must remain in the trust fund and stop the use of the funds by other branches of government. That should not necessitate any reduction in benefits. If benefits are reduced then that is comparable to stealing from the trust fund.

May 27, 2011

It won’ t matter who becomes the Republican presidential candidate because they all promulgate three basic canards. One is that Social Security is broken. This is not true because all that is needed is to increase the cap and thus keep it solvent. It is one of the only government programs that has paid for itself, accumulating over a trillion dollars in surplus funds that are being borrowed to fund other programs.

Two is that Medicare is broke. It is not, it is underfunded, and as with Social Security the under funding can be simply taken care of with an increase in withholding taxes. Prices have gone up, so should taxes. A new mid-sized car cost less than $4000 in 1967, but now it costs $40,000. So how is it that anyone can think that medical costs will stay the same as years ago?

Three is that single payer health insurance is “government takeover of medicine in America.” Delivery of health care remains mostly private, there is no government takeover of your doctor’s office. Most doctors in America are in favor of single payer government sponsored insurance which could save $400 billion a year, making it cheaper than what we have now, not more expensive.

Single payer coverage

MAY 26, 2011

SINGLE PAYER HEALTH COVERAGE IS NOT A GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER. REPUBLICANS SCARE WITH MISINFORMATION. READ THE TRUTH HERE:

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single-payer-resources

“Single-payer national health insurance is a system in which a single public or quasi-public agency organizes health financing, but delivery of care remains largely private.”

“The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care, $8,160 per capita. Yet our system performs poorly in comparison and still leaves 50.7 million without health coverage and millions more inadequately covered.

“This is because private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third (31 percent) of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $400 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.”

Jobs or budget?

May 6, 2011

When we last faced massive unemployment the president, FDR, did not get bogged down in arguments. He pushed job creation and jobs were made for thousands. We are in a similar situation and Congress has got to stop getting sidetracked on the budget and the deficit and start spending (yes, borrowing) to create jobs. That is the only way out of this mess. What good is it to have a balanced budget if you have millions unemployed? That is a Hoover-like solution that has already been tried and been found useless. Back in the 1930s the private sector did not and could not create jobs for the millions of unemployed and today it is the same. You have to spend money to create jobs. Borrowing for good reasons has never been bad economics.

Justice for all?

April 30, 2011

The Pledge of Allegiance contains the words “with liberty and justice for all.” Why can’t Congress get that as a goal and move America ahead instead of bogging down in partisan bickering? Liberty for all, what a concept! Justice for all, but that is what some folks fear the most, alas.

Adam Smith  and J.M. Keynes

April 20, 2011
Paul Ryan’s salary: $174,000 at least.

He is in the upper 10% who has it made in our economy. What to do about those on the bottom of the heap who have no job (thanks to capitalism failing) and who can’t count on any “socialist” help from the Republican Congress?

Republicans say “I am on board the ship, pull up the gang plank.”

The increased clout of corporations in American politics and the diminished power of working/nonworking people means that America is headed to a Corporatocracy. If you have a good job and if you work for the government you survive. If not, then you depend upon the whims of the big corporations. When companies lay off workers they do it with steel in their eyes, because the only value that matters is profit.

Anything that gets in the way of profit is bad. Nice philosophy. Ayn Rand loves it. So did Alan Greenspan, one of her disciples. He admitted after the last melt down that he did not see it coming… he thought the market would take care of itself and need no regulation. He needs to go back and read Adam Smith and J.M. Keynes. Not just Adam Smith.

Labor has to have power to negotiate wages and hours. Without the power to do so labor will start a downward slide back to a buck an hour. At the current $7.36 minimum wage the buying power is 1/3 less than mine when I worked at JC Penny while in high school for $1.05 an hour.

The buying power of wage earners is less now than in 1960, as is their share of the wealth. The opposite is true of the top 10% so it is time for them to start paying higher, not lower, taxes.

Social compact

April 19, 2011

I agree that the government is running out of money, but it is not because of spending on needed programs and services. The main reason is because the tax rate on the upper income brackets has dropped by half since the 1990s. We can’t afford good schools for workers’ children because the rich are no longer part of the social compact that created our nation. Workers provided the wealth that the rich have accumulated when manufacturing was part of the American economy. Now that manufacturing has fled to cheaper overseas labor sources, the rich have abandoned American workers whom they no longer need.

The unemployed and the underemployed, which count for most Americans, do not make enough income to be able to pay for the highways we all drive on, the health care safety net, the wars to protect “our” oil in foreign countries, nor the schools that are supposed to be educating the great minds of the future. Those who earn the most should pay the most, but instead they get the tax breaks and the offshore tax havens and other loop holes. Trillions of dollars are sitting in private accounts, hidden away long before the tax man knew about the stash. America isn’t broke, the tax rates have just shifted the burden from the haves to the have-nots.

Republicans milk the working class

April 7, 2011

Why are people, who are in the bottom 80% of income earnings, voting for Republicans? Every vote for a Republican goes against the interests of anyone who is not already a millionaire. By cutting government spending at a time when the private sector is not making any new jobs is what Hoover tried and he failed. Tax rates on speculators are lower than on workers. Tax rates on millionaires who make money on investments, not job creation, can be raised a few points and we would be able to fund needed social programs.

The fundamental problem is that Republicans see the working class as their cash cow and the upper class as a sacred cow.

The elite don't need public parks

April 7, 2011

Two ways to reduce the deficit: reduce expenditures or increase revenue. The best way to increase revenue is to create more jobs, but the Republicans want to cut programs that serve the poor, elderly and the sick. We can’t create more jobs by cutting spending in a time when the private sector is not expanding. Republican reforms cut needed jobs and services.

The defense department is spending money on weapons that don’t work on enemies that don’t exist. The Cold War, for which most of our weapons were made, ended long ago but spending on Cold War weapons has not. Meanwhile the enemy holds us in Afghanistan with simple weapons and methods.

Reduce the deficit by job creation and cutting DOD spending.

The Republicans can afford their own health care, don’t need public parks and schools, have no need for jobs since they have investments, so of course they don’t want tax money to pay for traditional public programs that help the poor, sick, old and jobless. Republicans have taken themselves out of society by de-funding public programs.

Hoover Road

April 1, 2011

Our economy is on a familiar road. It is the one that President Hoover created following the collapse of the stock market in 1929 and it is leading to the same place: increased unemployment and continued mortgage failures. The private sector is not creating jobs and 15 million Americans are not taking part in the free-enterprise system since they have no jobs, no money, and increasingly, no place to live.

As long as Congress values deficit reduction above jobs the situation can only get worse. The private sector cannot create enough jobs. The only way out, and there is a way, is for the Federal Government to shake off the mistaken restrictions on deficit spending and start a massive public spending equal to the effort of FDR’s administration which put millions to work. The spending has to be at least as much as we are spending on wars, but instead of destruction it has to be on rebuilding our schools, highways, bridges and other projects that benefit the nation.

Republican economic policies benefit the rich, for now, but soon the economic death spiral they have put us in will affect everyone. History is being repeated, lessons have not been learned.

Terrorism is not a country

March 26, 2011

Why, when we fight ignorance or poverty, we try to educate and get at the causes of these problems, but when we fight terrorism we kill the terrorists instead of attacking the causes of terrorism?

The point is not to educate the terrorists, but to educate ourselves about the causes of a problem and go after the causes instead of the symptoms. Our current foreign policy chases after the symptoms and makes the problem worse, not better.

Nuclear trap

March 16, 2011

By the time it is finally gone, it is going to cost as much to demolish Trojan as it took to build it ($.5 billion) and when it was running it provided 12% of Oregon’s power. The tower is gone but a bunch of stuff underground remains and radioactive waste is still stored there. Along a fault line. The earth shrugs and our plans go awry. Wonder how much a typical Columbia River dam can take? Makes coal-fired plants look safer, with wind and solar more necessary than ever.

Does anyone believe that “it can’t happen here” is valid still?

Help the billionaires

March 14, 2011

Let’s see a list of what government spending can be cut without hurting people who really need help, and then compare that to raising taxes on a bunch of millionaires and 400 billionaires who don’t need any help. The poor did not cause the economy to melt down so why are they the ones paying to get it started again? The Republicans want to cut back on social services and hand tax breaks to the rich.

Right ignorance

March 12, 2011

The new right, in the form of the tea party folks, likes to think that it has a lock on history, the Constitution, and what the Founding Fathers said and thought.

The April 2011 issue of Harper’s Magazine has a column, Easy Chair, by Thomas Frank

You can read it yourself, but here are the fun parts.

One tea party “historian” claimed Reagan was in office when Gorbachev conceded the Cold War. Actually it was GHW Bush and Yeltsin.

Another claims that Ben Franklin said “The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.” In fact, Franklin did not say this and he would not have gotten the Constitution mixed up with the Declaration of Independence in any case.

Another attributes this quote to Thomas Jefferson: “The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.” Nope, Jefferson did not say that. The small elite are the billionaires of today, anyway.

What is happening is that ignorant folks are making stuff up that sounds good to them, tacking the name of some revered person to it and then trying to fool other people into thinking they have the word from the respected oracle and you had better wise up and get on the tea bagger’s band wagon. This works with other ignorant folks, I guess.

World economy

March 7, 2011

14 million workers unemployed, through no fault of their own, could be a potent force for going after the people who caused the breakdown in our economy. It is easy to see why Republicans are afraid of labor unions.

Corporations are in a world economy and so their policies do not necessarily benefit American workers and the American economy. The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that corporations and unions can contribute unlimited funds to their favorite politicians. Unemployed and de-unionized workers are being beat by the ruling class.

Banks as betting associations

March 7, 2011

The budget shortfalls at the national and state levels are being caused by tax cuts for the wealthy and spending on wars. And these manufactured shortfalls are being used as an excuse to cut back social programs that benefit the poor, the unemployed, the sick, and even the environment.

American taxpayers handed over trillions of dollars after the 2008 collapse of the economic system. They paid for the government bailouts. The banks, which are now less like savings and loan entities and more like betting associations, received bailouts. Workers of America saved the economy from going over the cliff. Now it is time for the rich to pay back the debt.

A simple tax increase of a few points on the upper income classes will do the trick. America is not broke, it is just that some people are not paying their fair share. 400 Americans at the top of the economic heap have more wealth than the bottom 155 million Americans. Did those top 400 get wealthy in a vacuum? No, their wealth is based upon the work of the rest of us.

A corrupt government gets U.S. support

March 7, 2011 (in The Oregonian March 7, 2011)

The Oregonian had two news items Thursday that make a nice contrast. Helicopter gunners killed 9 children gatherings sticks, in a case of mistaken identity. And just below that item was the report that two U.S. soldiers were killed by IEDs.

We are using our best weapons, killing kids by mistake, while being held at bay by an enemy using IEDs. High tech vs. low tech, and this is the war in Afghanistan. We will lose this war because we are not on the side of the people. We are supporting a corrupt government in a civil war as our unmanned drones kill 10 civilians for every known “enemy.” Time to leave.

The Trojan Horse

March 3, 2011

Republicans are using an economic crisis, largely of their own making, to demolish social programs and bargaining power of the under and middle classes. A trillion dollars of our national debt is due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which continue to bleed us 104 billion dollars a year.

Instead of making the profiteers pay to reduce the debt, the Republicans give the rich a tax break and cut programs that aid the poor, the unemployed, the sick, the uneducated. Since these programs are not a big part of the budget in the first place their demise will not reduce the debt by much.

As the rich draw away to their gated communities who will Americans be? Those on the outside, wanting only a home and a good job, or those who caused the problem and then withdrew to their yachts and multiple homes? The Republicans are laying the foundation for class war.

There was a time when we were all Americans, working together. The gap between the haves and the have-nots is widening.

Cutting jobs a result of Republican aims

February 16, 2011

President Obama presented his budget, balanced on cuts in programs for those in need, rather than cuts in programs spending billions on armaments we don’t need in a world where are worst enemies are tossing homemade bombs at us. And they are keeping us tied down that way, too.

So here we are, spending ourselves into bankruptcy and not able to admit that the biggest unnecessary expenditure is the sacred cow of defense spending. Obama even added to that column.

Meantime, Republicans want to cut spending even more and they will cut jobs to attain that goal, because the jobs are in the government sector. As if that made it OK. Consider for a moment the conservative solution to problems: ignore the unemployed and the sick, just let them starve and die. That is the Republican solution. No government help for those on the bottom of America’s heap.

Instead, Republicans want to continue giving tax breaks to the top one percent, those who already have everything and need nothing. How do Republicans sleep at night? Where is the outrage from the rest of us?

Religions are alike

February 8, 2011

Pundits prod our fears of the Muslim Brotherhood as Egyptians seek self-rule. As Americans seek to hang on to secular society they need only look to Muslim theocracies to see what is in store if the religious right ever gets political control here. Both religions depend strongly upon Old Testament stories to light their path. Both religions condemn unbelievers to a burning hell. Both religions reject evolution and other scientific findings in favor of Biblical stories and pronouncements. It is ironic that, given the parallels, they have such antipathy for each other.

Not part of the economy

January 21, 2011

Republicans and other conservatives offer solutions which usually demand less government support for protecting the environment and in favor of exploitation of resources based solely on the profit motive. As if a clean and safe environment was worth nothing. Just look at the history of industry and the problems faced by environmental clean-ups.

Conservatives also have an economic model that assumes everyone is part of the economy, and everyone isn’t. Thus they ignore the millions who are jobless because of the recent round of unregulated speculation in housing, finance and stocks.

Why is it that poor and out of work people vote Republican? Because Republican policies are wrapped in patriotic and emotional language that short-circuits the thinking process. “Small government” has an appeal that goes beyond reality. How can a nation of 300 million have a small government when the economic system, free enterprise, fails to keep workers employed?
There would be no government regulation or assistance needed if free-enterprise could do the whole job. But it can’t. Unbridled self-interest is not good morality and neither is it good economic policy.

A health care plan that is similar to the ones that members of Congress enjoy, a single payer health plan, is by far the most economical in the long run because it covers everyone, even those who are unemployed. A for-profit health care system ignores the unemployed because they drag down profits. But they are still citizens of our nation, and a solution that ignores them, or that shunts them to the emergency hospital for every illness, is not economical. It actually costs more than a single payer government health care system that is enjoyed by everyone in government.

Running out of jobs

January 19, 2011

If our economic system can’t supply jobs for Americans then it is up to the people, acting through the government to take up where the system failed. Government job projects, single payer health insurance and Social Security are all part of the safety net needed to catch those who fall through the holes in the system.

Republicans are acting as though the system is not broken and everyone can take care of themselves. They want to keep an expensive for-profit health insurance system that only serves those with jobs. Their plans do not help the millions of unemployed who have no jobs, not because they are lazy, but because manufacturers have gone overseas, seeking lower labor costs. This is seen in local corporations such as Nike. Nike produces shoes with cheaper labor in Asia and the owner is a billionaire as a result. Another result is fewer jobs in America.

Corporations are free to go where they please in search of profits, but the result is a skewed economy here at home. Jobs have gone overseas, but former workers are still here in America. The ranks of the unemployed do not fit pristine economic models promoted by free enterprise libertarians and Republicans, as they keep giving millionaires the tax breaks that make it impossible to keep the safety net in place. Millions of American workers are no longer part of the economy.

Death Panels a hoax

January 14, 2011

The right wing talking heads lie. There are no “Death Panels.” The government isn’t coming to take your kids if you don’t inoculate them. Obama’s health care program doesn’t take away your right to see your doctor. It was Reagan and Bush who created the budget deficits. The economy tanked when speculators ran rampant. Obama is a citizen of the United States and he is not a Muslim. But he is an African-American and that is what they hate, that is why the right wing lies. It can’t find a truthful argument to run with so in desperation they make up stuff that will get the emotions flowing in people that can be counted on not to read and research on their own. The kind of people who believe the preacher in the pulpit and the demagogue on TV. The facts don’t matter when you are ready to believe anything that supports your prejudice.

Slave drivers for liberty

January 13, 2011

American History: At the time of the original Tea Party, 1773 (it wasn’t called that in print until 1834) the cry was “no taxation without representation,” and a lot of talk about liberty. This caused one critic in England, Samuel Johnson, to ask “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?”

Abigail Adams was one of the few outspoken women at a time when men ruled everything outside the home, and she wrote “I wish most sincerely there was not a slave in the province. It always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me – to fight for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.”

And over at George Washington’s plantation his cousin observed about the slaves: “There is not a man of them but would leave us if they believed they could make their escape. Liberty is sweet.” Washington and Jefferson were slave breeders, not the simple “plantation owners” that we have been told a partial truth about.

People of good conscience knew that slavery was wrong right from the start and that the colonists’ pleas for their liberty sounded hypocritical, even to their own ears. Jefferson tried to write the freeing of the slaves into the Constitution, but his fellow Southerners talked him out of it.

So what was wrong, why could slavery not be abolished, as it had been in England? It was the good Christians in the South who owned human beings and used the slave labor to build their wealth, who could not let go of their earthly riches. The problem was solved with a war that killed about 600,000. The American Civil War was fought because the South would not drop its slave culture. The official reason was to preserve the Union, but the only reason there was a problem is because of slavery. Nothing else threatened our nation.

So when you see the Confederate flag waved you know what it really means. There are still people who think that slavery was OK. Therein lies most of the opposition to Obama. When he won the popular vote and the Electoral College vote he shocked those people. Now they use all kinds of bogus arguments, claiming to be on the side of small government, less taxes, and anything else they can think of that sounds good. But all those claims are simply code words for their real agenda: they don’t like non-whites in power. Never have. Never will. They cover themselves with flags and slogans but their real ideas show through.

The right-wingers like to say “the people have spoken” while they ignore the fact that the majority of the people elected Obama. In trying to get rid of “Obamacare” are they going to tell the truth, that they are going to turn health care insurance over to those who make a profit by not providing coverage? The same ones who spend millions and millions of dollars on lobbying and on ads? Ads paid for by excessive premium prices. Taxation without representation comes in many forms and the worst is the price paid to keep for-profit health insurance companies among the richest in the nation.

Fringe politics

January 10, 2011 (in The Oregonian January 14)

The trend toward aggressive speech in political debates is epitomized by use of the Don’t Tread on Me flag. The implied threat is a violent strike back if tread upon. The difference is that while on the one hand you have someone advocating a law, on the other hand you have an implied violent retaliation if the law is not to the person’s liking. This appeals to the grand dreams of nut cases on the fringe of our politics.

Science is what we know

January 8, 2011 (in The Oregonian )

The question was asked, “Why is it OK for grown-ups to be fact-seeking and prudent about some things, but not about God…?” The simple answer is that God is a belief, not a fact. People either believe in God or not, but no one can show you God, like they can show you 2 + 2= 4. To paraphrase Bertrand Russell, “Science is what you know, beliefs are what you don’t know.” People say they can “see” God in the trees or other bits of grand Nature. Or they say that they feel God in their hearts guiding them in decisions. But that kind of seeing and feeling is not empirically verifiable, and is simply the belief of the individual. Fact seeking, prudent people, can have beliefs but they should be treated as optional and not necessary to force on others.

Progress hindered

January 6, 2011

Would those who want to go back to the “original Constitution” want to dump the USAF?

http://documents.nytimes.com/annotated-constitution?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1

“Witness, they note, these provisions, which establish Congress’ powers to raise and support armies and to provide and maintain a navy. Under strict interpretation of the Constitution, there would be no Air Force — there is no mention of it because, of course, the framers weren’t counting on the existence of those modern flying contraptions we know as airplanes.”

This shows the whole argument about some provisions which we have in the amended Constitution being “unconstitutional” to be stupid to the nth degree.

Amendments were passed because the framers could not predict modern needs and they assumed we would look out for each other. Instead, conservatives down through history have supported slavery, supported making corporations human, prevented women from voting, were against child labor laws, and so on.

All the new group is doing is using the cover of property rights and balanced budgets (where were they during Reagan’s reign?) to promote their white/male supremacist agenda. Scalia’s judgment that women are not protected by the 14th Amendment from sexual discrimination is an example.

If conservatives had their way we would have no child labor laws, no food and drug protections, no clean air and water laws, no anti-slavery laws, no women voting, no non-property holders voting. And so on right back to the 18th century. Only property owning white males would have a say in the government being promoted by the new crowd in Congress. The women who are involved don’t see what they are doing because they believe their own propaganda, as the Fat Cats sit back and smile.