OBOF TYMHM & MORE PART 60

WELCOME TO OPINIONS  BASED  ON FACTS (OBOF)

&

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (TYMHM)

YEAR THREE

 

	Published
OVERVIEW
OBOF & TYMHM PART 14	Dec  18, 2012
OBOF & TYMHM PART 15	Jan.  02, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 16	Jan.  08, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 16 EXTRA	Jan.  11, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 17	Jan.  15, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 18	Jan.  22, 2013
Gbtre  OBOF & TYMHM PART 19	Jan.  29, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 20	Feb.  05, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 21	Feb.  14, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 22	Feb.  20, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 23	Feb.  27, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 23 0SPECIAL	Mar.  06, 2013
saOBOF & TYMHM PART 24	`
OBOF & TYMHM PART 25	Mar.  12, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 25-EXTRA	Mar.  14, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 26	Mar.  19, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 27	Mar.  26, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 28	Apr.  02, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 29	Apr.  08, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 30	Apr.  17, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 31	Apr.  23, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 32	Apr.  30, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 33	May  07, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 34	May  18, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 35	May  21, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 36	May  30, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 37	June 05, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 38	June 11, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 39	June 18, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 40	June 25, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 41	July  02, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 42	July  09, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 43	July  16, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 44	July  23, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 45	July  30, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 46	Aug.  06, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 47	Aug.  14, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 48	Aug.  20, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 49	Aug.  27, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 50	Sept. 05, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 51	Sept. 11, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 52	Sept. 18, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 53	Sept. 26, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 54	Oct.  02, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 55	Oct.  09. 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART  56	Oct.  16, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 57	Oct.  23, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 58	Oct.  31, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 59	Nov.  07, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 60	Nov.  14, 2013

 

 

IN THIS ISSUE

1.  Taking stock of the most affluent among us.

2.  Release of TPP content.

 

 

FROM FLOYD:

 

Having a pretty rough time.  I don't say that for sympathy or even empathy.  It's just a way to tell you why, again, I am so late in getting this to you.  Never the less, I think you will find these two articles of real interest.  I'll try harder next week to get back near the scheduled time.

~~~

Taking Stock of the Most Affluent Among Us 

Sam Pizzigati

OtherWords / Op-Ed

Published: Wednesday 13 November 2013

 

How unequal have workplaces in the United States become?  Our best answer happens to come from a source you might not expect: the Social Security Administration.

Social Security statisticians each year tally up how much compensation gets reported on W-2s, the forms that employers have to file for all their employees, clerks and chief executives alike.  Social Security reports these numbers by income level once a year — and in the process paints an incredibly detailed pay-portrait of the contemporary American workplace.

For typical Americans workers, this workplace has become steadily less rewarding.  The latest Social Security figures, released last month, show annual wages for the median — most typical — American worker down $980 in 2012 from five years earlier. In effect, notes analyst David Cay Johnston, these typical workers are now working 52 weeks a year for what would have been — in 2007 — 50 weeks of pay.

But these numbers don’t tell the full story of America’s income inequality.  Social Security statisticians only tally paycheck data. Their work doesn’t count income from dividends, interest, capital gains, and profits from business operations.  Over in America’s elite corner offices, by contrast, the pay keeps pouring in. The ranks of Americans making over $5 million a year grew 27 percent in 2012.  The actual compensation this cohort collected soared 40 percent over what the $5 million-plus crowd pocketed in 2011.

For income totals that take these and other non-wage income streams into account, we need to dive into data the IRS collects.

University of California economist Emmanuel Saez has done that diving. His latest calculations, released this past September, show that taxpayers in America’s most affluent 0.01 percent grabbed an average of 993 times more income in 2012 than taxpayers in America’s bottom 90 percent.

 

In 1975, this lofty top 0.01 percent only averaged 114 times the income of America’s bottom 90 percent.

 

These IRS numbers tell us a great deal about America’s grand income divide.  Do they tell us everything?  Not quite.  The IRS figures on high incomes only count what America’s rich want the government to count. They don’t count all the income the wealthy harvest from hoarding their money in secret overseas tax havens.

How much income are these secret stashes generating?  We’re slowly getting a better idea, thanks in part to a federal amnesty program for tax evaders.

Affluent tax evaders can currently avoid criminal prosecution if they pay up all their taxes overdue on their secret income, plus interest and penalties.  With this amnesty in effect, The Wall Street Journal reports, IRS officials are now seeing “a new rush by U.S. taxpayers to confess to their secret offshore accounts.”

 

What’s driving this rush?  To a surprising degree, Swiss banks. Four years ago, the long-standing Swiss bank secrecy wall started cracking when officials at the Swiss banking giant UBS reluctantly admitted that they’d been helping wealthy Americans conceal assets. UBS had to pay out $780 million in penalties.

Other Swiss banks, eager to avoid a similar fate, are now pushing their American depositors to end the error of their tax-evading ways, and this banker pressure is apparently having an impact.

Just one New York attorney has already handled over a thousand confessions, many from taxpayers with over $10 million in their secret stashes and a few with over $100 million.

We don’t know yet how many billions the current amnesty will eventually produce.  As of last year, 38,000 U.S. taxpayers had revealed undeclared offshore assets.  The declarations from these tax evaders, the IRS reports, figure to bring in $10.5 billion.  But this total doesn’t cover the recent confession surge.

The final collections will undoubtedly dwarf the sums so far collected — and fill in still another chapter in America’s deeply distressing inequality story.

~~~

Wikileaks Releases TPP Text

 

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

Popular Resistance / Op-Ed

Published: Thursday 14 November 2013

 

 

The TPP has been shrouded in secrecy from the beginning because the Obama administration knows that the more people know about it, the more they will oppose the agreement.  The release of the full Intellectual Property chapter today by Wiikileaks confirms what had been suspected, the Obama administration has been an advocate for transnational corporate interests in the negotiations even though they run counter to the needs and desires of the public.  

This is not surprising since we already knew that 600 corporate advisers were working with the US Trade Representative to draft the TPP.  This means that for nearly four years some of the top corporate lawyers have been inserting phrases, paragraphs and whole sections so the agreement suits the needs of corporate power, while undermining the interests of people and planet.

  Now from these documents we see that the US is isolated in its aggressive advocacy for transnational interests and that there are scores of areas still unresolved between the US and Pacific nations.  The conclusion: the TPP cannot be saved.  It has been destroyed by secret corporate advocacy.  It needs to be rejected.  Trade needs to be negotiated with a new approach — transparency, participation of civil society throughout the process, full congressional review and participation, and a framework that starts with fair trade that puts people and profits before planet.

 

From Floyd:

 

I think they surely mean "people and planet before profits."

Congress needs to reject Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority as these documents show the Obama administration has been misleading the people and the Congress while trying to bully other nations.  This flawed agreement and the secrecy essential to its becoming law need to be rejected.

 

I urge you to take a look at the link listed below.  I could not get it to copy into my blog.  It really gives some important information you need to know.

 

For more on the TPP visit www.FlushTheTPP.org

 

 

ABOUT Kevin Zeese

 

 Kevin Zeese is an attorney who has been a political activist since graduating from George Washington Law School in 1980.  He works on peace, economic justice, criminal law reform and reviving American democracy.  His twitter is @KBZeese.  Zeese has used his law degree to work to end the war on drugs, stop the use of the military and National Guard in drug enforcement and allow the medical use of marijuana. He has filed bar complaints against lawyers in the Bush and Obama administrations who used their legal degrees to justify torture, as well as against Justice Clarence Thomas for conflicts of interests.  He has also filed complaints against attorneys at Hunton and Williams who worked with the Chamber of Commerce and HB Gary Federal to target him for his work criticizing the Chamber.  Zeese serves on the steering committee of the Bradley Manning Support Network.  Zeese filed a complaint with the Justice Department against Rupert Murdoch and News Corp for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act as well as with DOJ against Karl Rove’s American Crossroads for violating the non-profit tax laws and the federal election laws.

 

ABOUT Margaret Flowers

 

Margaret Flowers, M.D. is a pediatrician and mother of 3 teens from Baltimore, MD.  Margaret left medical practice in 2007 to advocate full-time for single payer health care.  She served as Congressional Fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program and is on the board of Healthcare-Now.  She is co-director of Its Our Economy.us. She has organized and participated in protests for health care, peace, and economic justice which have included arrests for nonviolent resistance.

 

~~~

If the good Lord is willing and the creek don't rise, I'll talk with you again next week.  Hopefully, by November 12, 2013.

 

God Bless You All

&

God Bless the United States of America.

Floyd