Fuck the Poor
Feb 2nd, 2006 at 2:28 pm by Susie
Hell, fuck anyone who isn’t already rich!
David Cay Johnston in today’s Times:
New government data indicate that the concentration of corporate wealth among the highest-income Americans grew significantly in 2003, as a trend that began in 1991 accelerated in the first year that President Bush and Congress cut taxes on capital.
In 2003 the top 1 percent of households owned 57.5 percent of corporate wealth, up from 53.4 percent the year before, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the latest income tax data. The top group’s share of corporate wealth has grown by half since 1991, when it was 38.7 percent.
In 2003, incomes in the top 1 percent of households ranged from $237,000 to several billion dollars.
For every group below the top 1 percent, shares of corporate wealth have declined since 1991. These declines ranged from 12.7 percent for those on the 96th to 99th rungs on the income ladder to 57 percent for the poorest fifth of Americans, who made less than $16,300 and together owned 0.6 percent of corporate wealth in 2003, down from 1.4 percent in 1991.
And in not-unrelated news:
The House yesterday narrowly approved a contentious budget-cutting package that would save nearly $40 billion over five years by imposing substantial changes on programs including Medicaid, welfare, child support and student lending.
With its presidential signature all but assured, the bill represents the first effort in nearly a decade to try to slow the growth of entitlement programs, one that will be felt by millions of Americans. Women on welfare are likely to face longer hours of work, education or community service to qualify for their checks. Recipients of Medicaid can expect to face higher co-payments and deductibles, especially on expensive prescription drugs and emergency room visits for non-emergency care. More affluent seniors will find it far more difficult to qualify for Medicaid-covered nursing care.
College students could face higher interest rates when their banks get squeezed by the federal government. And some cotton farmers will find support payments nicked. State-led efforts to force deadbeat parents to pay their child support may also have to be curtailed.
Yesterday’s 216 to 214 vote, largely along party lines, gave a much-needed boost to President Bush, who is trying to reassert his control over domestic policy despite a series of legislative setbacks and near-record-low approval ratings. Bush had pushed many of the changes since he unveiled his 2006 budget proposal a year ago.
And then we have the permanent tax cuts looming. But even some Republicans are finding that one hard to swallow, as practiced as they are at knob-gobbling:
Bush called for preserving the tax cuts in his State of the Union address Tuesday, but Voinovich, a fellow Republican, said that lawmakers must devise ways to slash the federal deficit. Without reducing spending or allowing many tax cuts to expire, the national debt will grow to a staggering $11.2 trillion by the end of 2010, he said.
“This will not be politically easy, as I understand,” Voinovich said. “The simple, undeniable fact is that we can’t have it all.”
Voinovich spoke as the Senate opened debate on a tax-reduction measure that includes shielding more than 17 million Americans from the alternative minimum tax, which originally was designed to make certain that the wealthy paid at least some tax. But throughout the years, the tax has taken an increasingly larger bite out of middle- and upper-middle-income taxpayers.
Senate Republican leaders want to move the bill into a conference committee, where it could be combined in some fashion with a House version approved last year. The White House and conservative Republicans back the House bill because it would extend through 2010 lower federal taxes on corporate dividends and capital gains, the latter being the profit from the sale of stock and real estate.
the good news is those numbers don’t factor in how much worse it is going to get for 2006 when energy prices take affect for a full year.
wheeeeeeee
House clears budget cut bill for Bush’s desk…
The House on Wednesday narrowly approved Congress’ first attempt in eight years to slow the growth o…
Welcome to Google America - “Google shares dropped 15% today based on low earnings reports - ‘It was our plan all along said Page and Brin’”
And the President is quoted as saying “Bazeeboll has been berry berry guud to mee!”
WTF - go have a beer.
“More affluent seniors will find it far more difficult to qualify for Medicaid-covered nursing care.”
Things are going to be hitting the fan when this goes into effect. Forget the “death tax”, “Medicaid Estate Recovery” is going to take the inheritance of many middle income people when thier parents have to seel the house to pay for a nursing home.
This is a bit like the subtefuge with the Alternate Minimum Tax which is cancelling out the tax cuts for more and more middle income people. It would have been simple enough to amend it years ago, but somehow the Republicans have never got around to it.
Its their way of using the rhetoric of tax and budget cuts to cover their explotation of the people dumb enough to keep voting for them.
We’re headed, apparently, for Mexico, to be like them where 1% of the population owns most everything and people wonder why their economy sucks.
There should be a law that says tax rates for the wealthy kick in when the top 1% own more than 40% of the wealth and lower when their stake drops below 30%.
It cannot be good for the economy to have that much wealth in so few hands. While I sympathize with people who make that wealth from scratch (they should get cut some slack for their risk taking, starting businesses), it seems increasingly like their kids and grandkids will soon get all of the wealth passed on. That’s bad.
Well eventually Bushco will start secretly moving the poor to concentration camps being built across the U.S.
Don’t believe me? Go to http://www.alternet.org/rights/32647/
Or do a search on Google for Kellog, Brown & Root / concentration camps or Halliburton, concentration camps.
Zeig Heil!
Mystic
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