Sanders is Running for President

Meagan Day February 19, 2019 Jacobin Bernie Sanders is running for president again. His message is simple: there's a class war raging and working people need to win it.

Bernie Sanders speaking at an event in Phoenix, Arizona on July 18, 2015., Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia

It’s finally happening. Bernie Sanders just announced that he’ll be running for president again. Judging from its early entrants, the politics of this upcoming Democratic presidential primary will be the most progressive in decades. All of the confirmed contenders claim to support Medicare for All, for example — an idea that most in the party ignored or outright rejected as recently as three years ago. Some candidates are also running on ideas like universal child care and a Green New Deal, a notable departure from the pro-corporate politics that have characterized the party’s program for years. That leftward shift is a positive development, and there’s a reason for it. The reason is Bernie Sanders. Now Sanders has announced that he’s throwing his hat in the ring with them. Some progressive voters may want to gravitate toward another candidate in the crowded field. But don’t be fooled — if you seek economic and social justice, you should support Bernie Sanders for president. Why? Because there’s a class war raging, and Sanders is the only one running who sees it, and who wants to build working-class forces to fight back. For four decades, neoliberal politicians in both parties have shamelessly and relentlessly deregulated corporations, cut taxes on the rich, stymied unions, starved social services, privatized public goods, and bailed out economic elites while imposing austerity on everyone else. The result for ordinary working people has been stagnating wages and ballooning debt, heightened anxiety and lowered expectations. All the while, there’s been a tacit prohibition on making sense of all this using the language of class conflict.

Amazon paid no federal taxes in 2017

Amazon, the e-commerce giant helmed by the world’s richest man, paid no federal taxes on profit of $11.2 billion last year, according to an analysis of the company’s corporate filings by the ... 

Those wondering how many zeros Amazon, which is valued at nearly $800 billion, has to pay in federal taxes might be surprised to learn that its check to the IRS will read exactly $0.00.

According to a report published by the Institute on Taxation and Economic (ITEP) policy Wednesday, the e-tail/retail/tech/entertainment/everything giant won’t have to pay a cent in federal taxes for the second year in a row.

This tax-free break comes even though Amazon almost doubled its U.S. profits from $5.6 billion to $11.2 billion between 2017 and 2018.

To top it off, Amazon actually reported a $129 million 2018 federal income tax rebate—making its tax rate -1%.

Washington Post.

https://itep.org/amazon-in-its-prime-doubles-profits-pays-0-in-federal-income-taxes/

‘Impeachment should start immediately’: Why Trump’s dictatorial decree must force Congress to act

‘Impeachment should start immediately’: Why Trump’s dictatorial decree must force Congress to act: A president who claims he has an absolute right to declare a national emergency and spend government funds that Congress has explicitly refused to appropriate for the ends he seeks, is assuming the role of a dictator.

A president who shuts down government in order to get his way on a controversia



Robert Reich.

Let me be very clear. We cannot allow this country to become an oligarchy in which a handful of billionaires control our economic and political life.

At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, when the three richest people own more wealth than the bottom half of the country and when 46% of all new income goes to the top 1%, we need a progressive tax system which demands that the very wealthy and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes.

That is what I want, and that is what poll after poll shows the American people want.

We will no longer tolerate huge tax breaks for the one percent while children in this country go hungry.

We will no longer tolerate massive tax loopholes which allow profitable corporations to stash billions in profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens, while veterans sleep out on the street.

A US Tax on Wealth Is Long Overdue

A US Tax on Wealth Is Long Overdue



Thomas Piketty.

One of the world's foremost economists.

Wealth concentration returning to ‘levels last seen during the Roaring Twenties,

 according to new research

(Christopher Ingraham/The Washington Post) (Illustration by Christopher Ingraham for the Washington Post)

By Christopher Ingraham

February 8

The 400 richest Americans — the top 0.00025 percent of the population — have tripled their share of the nation’s wealth since the early 1980s, according to a new working paper on wealth inequality by University of California at Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman.

Those 400 Americans own more of the country’s riches than the 150 million adults in the bottom 60 percent of the wealth distribution, who saw their share of the nation’s wealth fall from 5.7 percent in 1987 to 2.1 percent in 2014, according to the World Inequality Database maintained by Zucman and others.

Overall, Zucman finds that “U.S. wealth concentration seems to have returned to levels last seen during the Roaring Twenties.” That shift is eroding security from families in the lower and middle classes, who rely on their small stores of wealth to finance their retirement and to smooth over economic shocks like the loss of a job. And it’s consolidating power in the hands of the nation’s billionaires, who are increasingly using their riches to purchase political influence.

Washington Post 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/02/08/wealth-concentration-returning-levels-last-seen-during-roaring-twenties-according-new-research/?utm_term=.ec39fad23974

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dissects America's 'fundamentally broken' campa...

Trump Versus the Socialist Menace

Paul Krugman

What Americans who support “socialism” actually want is what the rest of the world calls social democracy: A market economy, but with extreme hardship limited by a strong social safety net and extreme inequality limited by progressive taxation. They want us to look like Denmark or Norway, not Venezuela.

And in case you haven’t been there, the Nordic countries are not, in fact, hellholes. They have somewhat lower G.D.P. per capita than we do, but that’s largely because they take more vacations. Compared with America, they have higher life expectancy, much less poverty and significantly higher overall life satisfaction. Oh, and they have high levels of entrepreneurship — because people are more willing to take the risk of starting a business when they know that they won’t lose their health care or plunge into abject poverty if they fail.

Read more

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/trump-socialism-state-of-the-union.html

Green New Deal

Green New Deal Calls For National Climate Solutions

Keynesian economics. 

Green New Deal resolution calls for ‘national mobilization’ on climate, economy. Politico:“Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) will release a blueprint for a Green New Deal on Thursday urging a “10-year national mobilization” for a speedy shift away from fossil fuels and calling for national health care coverage and job guarantees in a sweeping bid to remake the U.S. economy. The burgeoning left-wing faction within the Democratic Party has sought to persuade the 2020 White House contenders to sign onto the Green New Deal’s tenets in a bid to push climate change and the broad economic platform up the ladder of party priorities. And so far, several presidential hopefuls, such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), have endorsed at least the concept of a Green New Deal. The six-page, non-binding resolution from Ocasio-Cortez and Markey is an attempt to add substance to the proposals that have fired up a wave of new activists who are planning to barnstorm lawmakers’ offices in the Capitol in the coming days — and to set an agenda for the Democrats in the 2020 election. “[A] new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal era is a historic opportunity … to create millions of good, high-wage jobs in the United States; to provide unprecedented levels of prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States; and to counteract systemic injustices,” the resolution, which was shared with POLITICO, states.”

California Corporations Pay Less Taxes Than in the 1980s

Fact Sheet: Corporations Pay Far Less of Their California Income in State Taxes Compared to the Early 1980s

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), signed into law in 2017 by President Trump, provides corporations substantial cuts in federal tax rates and other tax breaks at a time when they already contribute far less of their California income in state taxes than they did a generation ago. A new Fact Sheet  from Senior Policy Analyst Jonathan Kaplan shows that since the early 1980s California lawmakers have enacted a number of corporate tax breaks and cut corporate tax rates. This helps to explain how the share of California corporate income paid in state taxes declined by more than half during the past three decades. This Fact Sheet points out that California’s state budget would have received $10.9 billion more revenue in 2016 had corporations paid the same share of their income in taxes that year as they did in 1981.   This analysis also underscores that corporations are likely to pay far less of their income in federal taxes beginning in 2018 than they have in recent years due to the TCJA. As a result, they can afford to contribute more to support California's public systems, such as higher education and workforce development. These kinds of investments would not only help improve the lives of Californians, but also boost the state’s economy and produce an educated workforce that would benefit the state’s employers, including major corporations. Get the Fact Sheet. Share the new Fact Sheet by clicking on the button below.

There is No Wall in El Paso

antiracismdsa: There is No Wall in El Paso: Mr. Trump. There is no wall in El Paso.  Its a fence ! Quick facts.   People are fleeing once again. They are fleeing hunger,  and v...

Fact check Trump's State of the Union.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/us/politics/fact-check-state-of-the-union.html?

Corporate Buy Backs are a Problem

From the mid-20th century until the 1970s, American corporations shared a belief that they had a duty not only to their shareholders but to their workers, their communities and the country that created the economic conditions and legal protections for them to thrive. It created an extremely prosperous America for working people and the broad middle of the country. 

But over the past several decades, corporate boardrooms have become obsessed with maximizing only shareholder earnings to the detriment of workers and the long-term strength of their companies, helping to create the worst level of income inequality in decades.

Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumur 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/opinion/chuck-schumer-bernie-sanders.html