ElGranFrijol

by Richard Henley Davis
http://www.economicvoice.com

Decorated war hero, Marine Sergeant Shamar Thomas voiced his objection to the New York Police Department’s treatment of Occupy Wall Street protesters.

Sergent Thomas’s impassioned speech to the officers was caught on video by various protesters who were being moved on by police officers who were allegedly threatening protesters if they did not move along.

Shamar pointed out to the mob of police officers who were intimidating the protesters that there was “No honour” in their actions and said “It takes a coward to harm an unarmed civilian” he went on to say “This is not a war zone, these are unarmed people, it does not make you tough to hurt these people.“

“If you want to go fight, go to Iraq and Afghanistan, Leave these people alone, they are US citizens, why are you doing this to our people?” said Seargent Thomas who then asked where in their (The NYPD officers present) contract does it justify hurting US citizens.

“I’ve been to Iraq 14 months for my people and you come here to hurt them, they don’t have guns, it doesn’t make any sense, how do you sleep at night? there is no honour in this, your here to protect them, protect us.“

“You’re all walking around in riot gear like this is a war, these people don’t have guns.”

Sergent Shamar Thomas is now an American hero not just for his service to his country but for his service to his country in defending civilians at home.

He may not be the last American soldier to find the oppression of the American government distasteful seeing as many soldiers have watched their friends and family pay the ultimate sacrifice for their country only to come home to find their country is no better than the one they have been away fighting against.

Whatever your feelings about America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, there are brave young men and women out there fighting for what they were told was freedom, justice and the American way……….what happens if they come home and feel the same way as Sergeant Thomas?

By Sarah Anderson, Chuck Collins, Scott Klinger, Sam Pizzigati
ips-dc.org

Guns don’t kill people, the old saw goes. People do.

By the same token, corporations don’t dodge taxes. People do. The people who run corporations. And these people — America’s CEOs — are reaping awesomely lavish rewards for the tax dodging they have their corporations do.

In fact, corporate tax dodging has gone so out of control that 25 major U.S. corporations last year paid their chief executives more than they paid Uncle Sam in federal income taxes.

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WASHINGTON — Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) voted against beginning debate on a measure that would have the Senate declare the rich should share the pain of debt reduction Thursday, a day after arguing that it’s the poor and middle class who need to do more.

“I hear how they’re so caring for the poor and so forth,” Hatch said in remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, in reference to Democrats. “The poor need jobs! And they also need to share some of the responsibility.”

Hatch’s comments were aimed at a motion that passed 74 to 22 to start debating a non-binding resolution that says millionaires and billionaires should play a more meaningful role in reducing the nation’s debt.

Just one Democrat, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), voted against having the debate. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who had previously called the resolution “rather pathetic,” nevertheless voted to move ahead on it.

But it was Hatch whose remarks Wednesday raised the idea that the wealthy are already doing too much, even as the nation’s effective tax rates are at modern lows since the Bush administration slashed rates in 2001 and 2003. In his view, it seems, the middle class and poor should be picking up the slack.

“The top 1 percent of the so-called wealthy pay 38 percent of all income tax. The top 10 percent are paying 70 percent of all income tax,” Hatch said. “The top 50 percent pay somewhere near 98 percent of all income taxes. 51 percent don’t pay anything,” Hatch said, suggesting the payroll taxes that the poor and middle classes pay towards Social Security yields them an especially generous benefit.

“Democrats say they [the 51 percent] pay payroll taxes. Well, everybody does that because that’s Social Security. They pay about one-third of what they’re going to take out over the years in social security,” Hatch railed. “Obamacare — a family of four earning over $80,000 a year — gets subsidies. Think about that. That’s what we call the poor?”
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Hatch hedged that the the poorest of the poor shouldn’t have to pay taxes. But he was clear that people who qualify for subsidies because they can’t afford things like health care should dig deeper.

“Now, we don’t want the really poor people who are in poverty to have to pay income taxes,” he said. “But 51% of all households. And that’s going up, by the way, because of our friend down in the White House and his allies.”

By Ben Smith, Maggie Haberman
Politico.com

Rep. Michele Bachmann’s prospective 2012 campaign appears increasingly set on a collision course with former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

The coming confrontation is being driven by a belief in Bachmann’s camp that the same grassroots, conservative primary voters and caucus-goers may have to choose between the two women—and that they will choose Bachmann if she presents herself as a more seasoned, reliable, and serious conservative than her high-profile rival. The apparent effort to draw distinctions broke into the open Tuesday when her new top strategist, Ed Rollins, dismissed Palin as “not serious” in a radio interview.

He suggested in an interview with POLITICO that Bachmann would profit from the contrast.

Bachmann will “be so much more substantive,” Rollins said. “People are going to say, ‘I gotta make a choice and go with the intelligent woman who’s every bit as attractive.'”

“I’m not afraid of Palin,” he said, adding the strategy would have been the same for Mike Huckabee.

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By Arthur Delaney
Huffingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON — Paul Egerman isn’t certain how many millions he’s saved from the tax cuts enacted during the George W. Bush administration in the early 2000s and extended by President Barack Obama in December of last year.

“I do not know how much I’ve saved over 10 years but I’m sure it is several million dollars — probably in excess of $10 million,” said Egerman, founder of a medical transcription company called eScription.

And what, HuffPost asked, have you done with all that cash?

“I’ve kept it,” he said. “I have not done anything with that money.”

Egerman is part of a gang of self-described Patriotic Millionaires who wish the federal government would help itself to more of their money to address its big budget deficits. Nearly 200 millionaires have signed a letter asking congressional Republicans to consider healing budget gaps with increased revenue — in particular, higher taxes on millionaires — instead of just reduced spending.

The group is coordinated by the Agenda Project, a New York think tank, and Wealth for the Common Good, a network of business leaders and wealthy people that promotes “fair and adequate taxation” to support the economy.

Other millionaires on a conference call Monday morning said they had more fun with their extra money than Egerman did.

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By Spencer Ackerman
wired.com

You think you understand how the Patriot Act allows the government to spy on its citizens. Sen. Ron Wyden says it’s worse than you know.

Congress is set to reauthorize three controversial provisions of the surveillance law as early as Thursday. Wyden (D-Oregon) says that powers they grant the government on their face, the government applies a far broader legal interpretation — an interpretation that the government has conveniently classified, so it cannot be publicly assessed or challenged. But one prominent Patriot-watcher asserts that the secret interpretation empowers the government to deploy ”dragnets” for massive amounts of information on private citizens; the government portrays its data-collection efforts much differently.

“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says,” Wyden told Danger Room in an interview in his Senate office. “When you’ve got that kind of a gap, you’re going to have a problem on your hands.”

What exactly does Wyden mean by that? As a member of the intelligence committee, he laments that he can’t precisely explain without disclosing classified information. But one component of the Patriot Act in particular gives him immense pause: the so-called “business-records provision,” which empowers the FBI to get businesses, medical offices, banks and other organizations to turn over any “tangible things” it deems relevant to a security investigation.

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By GRETCHEN MORGENSON and LOUISE STORY
New York Time

It is a question asked repeatedly across America: why, in the aftermath of a financial mess that generated hundreds of billions in losses, have no high-profile participants in the disaster been prosecuted?

Answering such a question – the equivalent of determining why a dog did not bark – is anything but simple. But a private meeting in mid-October 2008 between Timothy F. Geithner, then-president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Andrew M. Cuomo, New York’s attorney general at the time, illustrates the complexities of pursuing legal cases in a time of panic.

At the Fed, which oversees the nation’s largest banks, Mr. Geithner worked with the Treasury Department on a large bailout fund for the banks and led efforts to shore up the American International Group, the giant insurer. His focus: stabilizing world financial markets.

Mr. Cuomo, as a Wall Street enforcer, had been questioning banks and rating agencies aggressively for more than a year about their roles in the growing debacle, and also looking into bonuses at A.I.G.

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Sanders Calls for Shared Sacrifice from Giant Corporations
http://sanders.senate.gov

BURLINGTON, Vt., While hard working Americans fill out their income tax returns this tax season, General Electric and other giant profitable corporations are avoiding U.S. taxes altogether.

With Congress returning to Capitol Hill on Monday to debate steep spending cuts, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the wealthiest Americans and most profitable corporations must do their share to help bring down our record-breaking deficit.

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By SCOTT BAUER

MADISON, Wis. — Everything from taking away computers to denying a year of service in the state retirement system was considered to punish the 14 Wisconsin Democrats who fled to Illinois for three weeks to block passage of a bill taking away union bargaining rights, newly released emails show.

Members of Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald’s staff bounced ideas off one another and the Legislature’s attorneys for days about how to penalize the Senate Democrats for leaving and pressure them to return, according to records released Wednesday by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The watchdog group obtained the emails from Fitzgerald’s office under Wisconsin’s open records law.

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