Fund the schools. Vote Yes on Prop 30

by Duane Campbell

According to a Sacramento Bee article the AVID program budget was cut from the state budget by a line item veto by Governor Brown. http://www.sacbee.com/2012/08/02/4684182/hed-here.html AVID is one of a dozen or more practical programs in the schools to try to prepare working class kids for college.  Similar programs existed to reduce drop outs/ push outs and other problems in our schools.  Avid was a good program as were dozens of other good programs cut from the budgets.  For example, California has the largest class sizes in the nation and the least number of counselors per children – these program cuts  too produce drop outs and violence.

When you and I address the legislature about these pragmatic programs they say- we agree, but we just don’t have the money.  The state does not have the money only if we continue the massive billions of dollars presently given to corporations in tax dodges and tax benefits.  A simple Millionaires tax, or a Financial Transactions Tax would resolve that, but Governor Brown and the Democrats are unwilling to fight for fair taxation.  See the video below, “Which CEO made $5 million stealing your kids lunch money?” And, see how the global elite  like Mitt Romney hide 32 Trillion in off shore accounts.  This money could be brought back to the U.S. and invested.

http://sacramentopa.blogspot.com/2012/08/exhaustive-study-finds-global-elite.html

Education is vital for the future of California.  Without a quality education, our children will not be able to compete in a global economy.

Why We Must Raise Taxes on the Rich - Reich

Why We Must Raise Taxes on the Rich, ASAP!

America's wealthiest are paying a pittance in taxes, while the country is chipping away at its central foundations to meet budget shortfalls.

 It’s tax time. It’s also a time when right-wing Republicans are setting the agenda for massive spending cuts that will hurt most Americans.

Here’s the truth: The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protect Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich. Even if we got rid of corporate welfare subsidies for big oil, big agriculture, and big Pharma – even if we cut back on our bloated defense budget – it wouldn’t be nearly enough.

The vast majority of Americans can’t afford to pay more. Despite an economy that’s twice as large as it was thirty years ago, the bottom 90 percent are still stuck in the mud. If they’re employed they’re earning on average only about $280 more a year than thirty years ago, adjusted for inflation. That’s less than a 1 percent gain over more than a third of a century. (Families are doing somewhat better but that’s only because so many families now have to rely on two incomes.)

Yet even as their share of the nation’s total income has withered, the tax burden on the middle has grown. Today’s working and middle-class taxpayers are shelling out a bigger chunk of income in payroll taxes, sales taxes, and property taxes than thirty years ago.It’s just the opposite for super rich.

Cut head start while giving tax subsidies to big oil ?

Robert Creamer 

Earth to Boehner... come in! When you look carefully at Republican Speaker John Boehner's spending proposal for the rest of 2011 you'd think these guys must have been hanging out on one of those newly-discovered exo-planets on the outer edger of our solar system.

The Republican proposal, HR1, actually proposes cuts in the Head Start program that would mean:

• 218,000 children from low income families will lose Head Start/Early Head Start services;
• 16,000 Head Start/Early Head Start classrooms will close;
• 55,000 Head Start/Early Head Start teachers and staff will lose their jobs;
• 150,000 low-income families and their children will lose assistance in paying for child care.

They say they need to make these cuts because we must "tighten our belts" to cut spending because "America is broke." But at the very same time they voted to cut Head Start, the Republicans voted tocontinue $4 billion worth of subsidies to Big Oil. That's right, they want to continue to hand over $4 billion of the taxpayers' money to companies like Exxon-Mobil, the most profitable company in human history.

These subsidies are suppose to provide an incentive for them to produce more oil -- as if the price of oil that closed yesterday at $105.02 per barrel does not do the trick.

In the last quarter of 2010, Exxon-Mobil's profits surged 53% to $9.25 billion on the strength of rising oil prices and increased demand for petroleum products. That means Exxon-Mobil is earning profit at a rate of about $37 billion per year.

It was a hold up. Hostages were taken.

It was a hold up.  The rich held us all hostage.  In order to get the votes needed to extend unemployment benefits for the out of work and to keep the current tax rates for 95% of families, the Republican Party and 4 Democrats and Joe Lieberman blocked passage of reasonable bills for unemployment extensions and tax extensions.

The current deficit was caused by three major items, the Bush era tax cuts, the two wars,  and the economic crisis.

Finance capital- that is to say rich people- caused  the crisis, this recession and this unemployment. Now, they continue to insist on profiting from their heist.  They insist on tax breaks for millionaires.

End Tax Cuts for the rich !

by Tula Connell
A majority of the American public thinks Bush’s tax cuts should continue for families that make less than $250,000 a year but should rise to the previous level for those making more than that amount, according to a new CNN poll. Some 51 percent say the tax cuts, which expire at the end of this year, should end for the rich.

Wise. Because as Dave Dayen points out, George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are thought to cost $830 billion over 10 years, adding massively to the nation’s budget deficit. Overall,

it’s generally considered that extending all the tax cuts would increase the deficit by $3.1 trillion dollars over the next 10 years.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich is among those calling for an end to Bush’s tax cut for the rich, noting it has been a “huge windfall for the wealthy. About 40 percent of its benefits went to the tiny sliver of Americans earning over $500,000.”

A final reason for allowing the Bush tax cut to expire for people at the top is the most basic of all. Although Wall Street’s excesses were the proximate cause of the Great Recession, its fundamental cause lay in the nation’s widening inequality. For many years, most of the gains of economic growth in America have been going to the top—leaving the nation’s vast middle class with a shrinking portion of total income. (In the 1970s, the top 1 percent received 8 to 9 percent of total income, but thereafter income concentrated so rapidly that by 2007 the top received 23.5 percent of the total.)

Barack Obama on costs of health care

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California Budget Crisis: Business tax breaks

Business the big winner in California budget plan
Firms would get nearly $1 billion in breaks, while the average person would pay higher taxes five ways. Republicans say the plan would create jobs, but others dispute the claim.
By Evan Halper
February 14, 2009
Reporting from Sacramento -- The average Californian's taxes would shoot up five different ways in the state budget blueprint that lawmakers hope to vote on this weekend. But the bipartisan plan for wiping out the state's giant deficit isn't so bad for large corporations, many of which would receive a permanent windfall.

About $1 billion in corporate tax breaks -- directed mostly at multi-state and multinational companies -- is tucked into the proposal. Opponents say the breaks will do nothing to create jobs, and the Legislature has rejected such moves repeatedly in the past. But now, to secure enough Republican votes to pass a budget that would raise taxes on everyone else, the Legislature is poised to write them into law with no public hearings at a time when the state treasury is almost out of cash.


The tax breaks were inserted into the spending plan during private meetings between legislative leaders and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Less than 24 hours before today's scheduled vote, the proposals had not yet been printed in bills and made available to the public, but legislative leaders acknowledged them.

Most of the cost to the state -- or $690 million -- would come from changes in the way corporate taxes are computed, lowering the amount owed by many large companies. Smaller tax breaks are included for Hollywood production companies and small businesses that hire new employees.

"This is a pure giveaway for the vast majority of corporations that will benefit," said Lenny Goldberg, executive director of the California Tax Reform Assn., a union-backed nonprofit. "They will walk away with a great deal of money at everybody else's expense."
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