Texas Two-Step: How Many Republicans Does It Take To Screw Up A Light Bulb?

By Manifesto Joe

As budget-deficit and debt-limit talks between the president and the Congress are stalemated, and the future of little things like Social Security and Medicare may be hanging in the balance, isn't it comforting to know that lawmakers like Joe Barton of Arlington, Texas, are in there fighting for the rights of Americans to buy cheap-ass light bulbs?

Barton, a veteran Republican House member, already had the dubious distinction of being the member of Congress who most strikingly resembles a victim of Down's syndrome. His "valiant" battle for the cheap incandescent light bulb didn't do much for his image. Here's what The Christian Science Monitor had on this issue Tuesday.

But wait -- the issue isn't burned out yet. After Barton failed to get a supermajority for his bill in the House, Michael Burgess came to the rescue. Politico.com reported that:

Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) on Wednesday filed an amendment to the Energy and Water spending bill that would prohibit the Energy Department from requiring traditional incandescent light bulbs to be 30 percent more energy efficient.

Here's a link to the entire article.

Seems that presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, Retarded-Minn., has climbed aboard this issue as well. It's supposed to be unbelievable government intrusion into people's lives. How dare the government try to tell people that they shouldn't waste electricity!

Step Two: Texas State Board of Education needs more conservative Christians?

That's according to Barbara Cargill, a Republican from The Woodlands (Houston area), the new chairperson of the state board. Cargill has drawn criticism for a speech she made to a friendly audience, saying:

"Right now there are six true conservative Christians on the board, so we have to fight for two votes. In previous years, we had to fight for one vote to get a majority."

Here's a link to the entire article.

This affronted some other members of the 15-member board, who consider themselves Christians but don't seem to want to force "intelligent design" materials into public school biology classes. Ms. Cargill doesn't consider them, even the Republicans among them, to be reliable votes.

Since we're on the subject of "intelligent design," don't look to the Texas Legislature or any other entities of this state's government for evidence of that. Thanks to public policies toward education, schoolchildren will begin this school year in August without new textbooks. Yep, that's right. Here's a link to a story on the subject.

But hell, who needs them thar books? It's the humanity in the classroom that matters, right?

(That was often what seemed like the very problem to me.)

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Hoping Murdoch Shuts Down More Of His Sleazy, Journalism-Sullying 'Outlets'

By Manifesto Joe

"Weirdo tries to seize girls"

"Woman attacked by frozen turkey"

While I was in college in the mid-1970s, the San Antonio News, one of the last of the old p.m. newspapers, was among those on the stands. Above are examples of the headlines one would see on Page One. Inside, there were pictures of bloody wrecks, crime scenes, etc. (The "turkey" headline, run around Thanksgiving, topped a story about a woman who had a frozen turkey slip off a supermarket counter and break bones in her foot.)

The News was one of Rupert Murdoch's early newspaper ventures in the U.S., his journalism-debasing empire having already engulfed his native Australia. Who would have guessed, way back then, that Murdoch would eventually dominate U.S. "news" media with huge outlets such as Fox "News" and The Wall Street Journal?

The Murdoch approach to "journalism" -- sensationalism, wide-open reactionary political bias -- has proved very profitable, and has become so pervasive and popular that a whole generation of Americans may not even remember what real, principled journalism was like.

Now, in Britain, it's been said that we may just be seeing the tip of the iceberg. No sooner had Murdoch shut down News of the World in London that a couple more of Murdoch's British newspapers have been implicated in the spreading telephone-hacking scandal.

I, for one, hope this spreads so far that Murdoch's grimy "news" empire in other countries is affected as well. His philosophy goes far beyond "yellow journalism" -- one friend of mine described it as "purple journalism."

Cultural decadence from an army of one

Arguably, no one person has done more to contribute to the West's current cultural decadence than Rupert Murdoch.

He has taken many once-respectable newspapers and, under his ownership, transformed them into lurid right-wing tabloids. In Fox "News," he has created a popular cable TV news network that resembles a far-right version of the old Soviet newspaper Izvestia. To anyone who understands what real journalism is, this is propaganda, not news. As for The Wall Street Journal, I never took it very seriously, anyway. But under Murdoch's ownership, the bias will be much more open and will spread to Page One, if it hasn't already.

Now we may be seeing that the Murdoch approach to "journalism" may far exceed what we already knew about it. Not only is the content foul -- the methods may be toxic as well, and may be standard throughout this man's septic global empire.

To read the latest on the Murdoch telephone-hacking scandal, go to http://news.yahoo.com/british-government-lawyers-look-block-bskyb-bid-paper-011132041.html

Here's hoping that much more of this guttersnipe's enterprises will be forced to close as well. I just feel sorry for the various reporters and line editors who will lose their jobs -- but they should have known that they were working for pond scum, anyway.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

On July 4, Thoughts About How Fatcats Ripped Us Off Again In The Great Recession

By Manifesto Joe

Leave it to the likes of me to rain on your parade. Today is Babe Ruth Diet day (hot dogs and beer), which is fine with me, but I thought you might want to know why they both cost more than they did four years ago.

Any big change in the economy brings winners and losers, and it's been a long time since working- and middle-class Americans could count themselves among the former. Although The Great Recession was supposed to have ended two years ago (economists say), unemployment lingers at 9.1%, and shareholders and CEOs are raking in more moola than ever.

Surprised? You shouldn't be -- that's the way these folks have been gaming the system for most of our country's 235-year history. What's frustrating for many of us watching this is that history has shown that We the People can stop this, but sadly, "We" usually don't.

Here's a link to a story that goes into detail about the latest ripoff.

The problem is the people who took $700 billion in bailouts because they were too big to fail, then turned around and eliminated jobs upon jobs to make their bottom lines look better.

I offer some passages from the story:

"The spoils have really gone to capital, to the shareholders," said David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff + Associates in Toronto.

Corporate profits are up by almost 50 percent since the recession ended in June 2009. In the first two years after the recessions of 1991 and 2001, profits rose 11 percent and 28 percent, respectively.

But wait, there's more:

The jobs that are being created pay less than the ones that vanished in the recession. Higher-paying jobs in the private sector, the ones that pay roughly $19 to $31 an hour, made up 40 percent of the jobs lost from January 2008 to February 2010 but only 27 percent of the jobs created since then.

We seem to have a generation of people -- ironically, many of them baby boomers -- who have not only forgotten how to fight the fatcats, they don't even know which political party is at least marginally more on their side. Granted, the Democrats' performance over the past 35 years has been generally lame. But by either not voting or voting for Republicans, Americans have put government largely in the hands of people who want to end Medicare as we know it and have even proposed privatizing Social Security.

And even as the outsourcing has continued, and money has poured into Swiss bank accounts and shelters in the Cayman Islands, they would have you believe that any tax increase on them is going to be a job-killer. So you ultimately pay more tax, and you get laid off anyway.

I suppose none of this should be surprising nowadays. We live in a time in which two politicians being seriously considered for the presidency are so ignorant, one thinks Paul Revere was warning the British, and the other insists that John Quincy Adams was one of the Founding Fathers.

The times cry out for citizens with enough guts to fight the powers that be, at least through voting and organizing, if nothing else. You know -- sort of like they did on July 4, 1776. Unfortunately, I see little of that spirit on the horizon, other than Tea Partiers who are foolish enough to compare themselves with the likes of Jefferson.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Bachmann's Right-Wing Hypocrisy: Family Took Government Money

By Manifesto Joe

I remember a conversation with a peer who, after being liberal and hippieish as a teenager, was turning conservative in his early twenties. I had been a libertarian for years and was finally seeing all the problems inherent to that ideology, especially from the working-class point of view.

It was not lost on me by then that I was in the middle of attending a good private college on what's called a "full ride," a package combining loans, grants and scholarships that was paying for everything except side expenses. And because my father was a disabled veteran, I was also getting VA and Social Security stipends, as long as I stayed in college, until I turned 22.

I started seeing, at long last, what liberals were really up to, after all. I was a son of a relatively poor family. I had performed well in high school and had high test scores. An alliance of government liberals and private benefactors was making it possible for me to get the same kind of education that a son of an affluent family would be able to take for granted. (It took a while to pay off the loans, but what the hell. ...)

In a libertarian world, or in a conservative one, for that matter, most of this would not have been possible. In fact, college might not have been possible at all, because none of these people were too keen on paying taxes to support public universities, either.

When I pointed all this out to my friend, he did not exhibit any of the same dissonance I was experiencing. To him, he told me, this was just your good luck.

No, it wasn't. It was the culmination of decades of changes in public policy, aimed at mitigating the circumstances of the deserving poor. But it struck me then, and has remained with me since, that the economic ideology of libertarians and conservatives is, at its core, opportunism. They certainly wouldn't turn down a "full ride," or any of those government payments, either. They just wouldn't want to pay the taxes to keep them going for young people 30 years later. Just kick the ladder down after you've ascended it. That's their tough luck.

Now on to Michele Bachmann

With this in mind, now comes the revelation that U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann's family took lots of government money from a couple of sources. The far-right Republican lawmaker, who is running for the GOP presidential nomination with plenty of Tea Party and other anti-government support, has been on record as wanting to cut the corporate income tax rate to as little as 9%. And here her family is, slopping at the government trough much more lucratively than any welfare loafer ever imagined.

The Chicago Tribune reported yesterday that:

An examination of her record and finances showed that a counseling clinic run by her husband received nearly $30,000 from the state of Minnesota in the last five years, with part of the money coming from the federal government. And a family farm in Wisconsin, where she is listed as a partner, received some $260,000 in federal subsidies.

Here's a link to the complete story.

When one reads on down, to her denials and such, it seems clear that this "fiscal conservative" is not only a hypocrite, but a liar as well. She's denying things that are explicitly on record. But, hey -- she wouldn't be the first presidential candidate to have done that, nor will she be the last.

Thinking about it, such hypocrisy and opportunism isn't unusual among right-wingers. They'll take government money, and plenty of it, as long as it is for their benefit. They're just against it when it benefits anybody else.

Former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm, allegedly of this fair state (he was actually born and raised in Georgia) comes to mind.

This piece of pond scum got a Ph.D. with the help of government loans and grants, then spent most of his career on the public payroll, as an economics professor at Texas A&M and as a member of Congress. As a lawmaker, he consistently voted against anything that benefited poor people, and was a driving force behind the financial deregulation that has proved calamitous for America and the world during The Great Recession. How many people have lost jobs and homes because of this contemptible toad? And yet he had the gall to oppose the very kinds of programs that aided his toxic, verminous ascent in life.

So, Michele Bachmann's family slopping at the government trough should be no surprise. Now let's see her lie her way out of this as the campaign heats up.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

With Two-Tier System, Credit Bureaus Make Joke Of 'Free Market' -- Again

By Manifesto Joe

There are many things that make a mockery of the notion of "free markets." But a new twist on this, courtesy of our three beloved major credit bureaus, has been made public -- the bureaus operate two systems, one for the rich, powerful and famous, and another for the rest of us.

Economic folklore has it that in a "free" marketplace, there's no room for "politics" or favoritism. Everything is strictly facts and cold, hard cash. That kind of marketplace exists in economics textbooks and nowhere else. Deregulation has never put lobbyists out of their business, which is clearly to influence public policy in a manner favorable to whichever sector they represent.

On to the credit bureaus: In a "free" marketplace, treatment is also supposed to be fair -- just the facts, ma'am. Everybody is supposed to be dealt with the same.

The New York Times reported last month that Equifax, Experian and TransUnion all keep a sort of "VIP" list, according to consumer lawyers and legal documents.

Here's a link to the story.

The favorable list includes people such as celebrities, politicians and judges. It's the Orwellian wisdom that all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

So, what did the credit bureaus themselves have to say? Transunion and Equifax said all consumers can speak to a live representative. Don't you just love doing business over the phone with Dennis from Bangalore?

Experian was different, denying that they have such a list. According to the story:

David Szwak, a consumer lawyer in Shreveport, La., provided sworn testimony from former Experian employees that the category existed.

At least all the above is consistent with one's experience. It seems like when you call any company or agency nowadays, they either deny the situation or they give you over to some phone jockey who has no firsthand knowledge of anything.

So, what is the practical effect of such a preferred list? Preferential treatment, of course. If there's an error on your credit report, it's much easier to fix it if you're a VIP. As a result, a VIP's credit score is likely to be higher than it is for the rest of us, no matter what the individual has done. And then, it's easier to get loans, mortgages, credit cards, etc. It's the old story of the more you have, the more you get.

A classless society?

That's the toxic and pernicious idea that "free-market" enthusiasts would generally have market participants believe.

Although this idea is a delusion, it has very deep roots in American culture. In 1981, economist Robert Lekachman discussed this phenomenon in simple terms. The United States is a young country that, through most of its history, has had a frontier. "Political" equality, at least for white males, was considered a given, not something that was part of what workers had long been fighting to win.

"A worker seemed to have every opportunity to become independent, to rise from his class rather than with it," Lekachman wrote.

He went on to discuss a 1906 classic by German economist Werner Sombart, Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? Lekachman quoted Sombart:

"The economic success of American capitalism has made the average worker into a sober calculating businessman without ideals. ...

"America is famous for its rags-to-riches stories. But how many Carnegies are there? The self-made man is largely a myth. 3 in 10 sons of blue collar workers will make it to white collar status. But only 1 in 10 will achieve longer-range mobility."

Lekachman wrote, "Sombart observed that the United States was 'born Bourgeois.' It didn't inherit any of Europe's pre-capitalist social groupings -- peasants, artisans or aristocrats. The U.S., more than any other country, enshrines the individual aim of owning property. ..."

That is, if you can get a loan or a mortgage. Here, class will tell, and the folklore of American equality of opportunity is rendered nonsense. Being rich and powerful counts, and it always has. If you think you're on a level playing field ... well, I guess you can call up one of the major credit bureaus for a report. They will let you talk to a live representative.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

With Obama Impersonator, Republicans Show Their Usual Ribald Sense Of Humor

By Manifesto Joe

I've looked at this video, and it looked to me like Reggie Brown was just doing Mark Russell type of stuff, knowing that he was playing to a Republican audience.

But apparently that wasn't enough for them (The Republican Leadership Conference). At some point in the performance, the music was turned on and Mr. Brown was ushered off the stage.

Here's some of the performance, courtesy of Huffington Post:

Check it out here.

Yep, that Republican sense of humor just keeps going and going. ...

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

25 Years Ago, I Was Telling People That This Was Happening

By Manifesto Joe

I'm including multiple links to make sure that folks can somehow get this.

http://youtu.be/JTzMqm2TwgE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTzMqm2TwgE



I was saying all this 25 years ago. I don't think this necessarily makes me a visionary, because some other people were saying it, too. We just couldn't get very many people to listen, nor can we now. At least now an economist and former Labor secretary is saying it, too.

And, he's being far too nice. Regarding the American middle class, he never uses the word "stupid." I have, and often.

Qaddafi Apparently Thanks Republican Yellowbellies For Their Support

By Manifesto Joe

These are people who are, in essence, ready to put anyone in jail who doesn't support a U.S. military action -- that is, as long as it's a military action being led by Republicans.

They couldn't wait to put American troops in harm's way over those mythical "weapons of mass destruction" that were supposed to have existed in Iraq. They were just peeing in their pants to get the U.S. involved over there, just as long as it wasn't them or their kids who were going to do any of the bleeding. And in so doing, they killed something like a million and a half Iraqis.

Now, suddenly, dealing with an oil-rich lunatic in Libya presents a complex issue. Muammar Qaddafi has ruled that country despotically and maniacally for 42 years, but since it's not considered a sure thing to just go in there, knock off the dictator and steal all the country's oil, it's a moral gray area. Suddenly, the U.S. just can't afford to be the policeman of the world.

I'm not sure whether U.S. involvement in the Libyan conflict, via NATO, is a good idea. The U.S. has come to reflexively get involved in the affairs of other countries, in areas regarded as strategic, for far too long. I'm a bit nostalgic for isolationism, and even at my age I don't remember it. At least if you don't get involved, there's no "blowback," as the CIA quaintly phrases it.

But I find it poisonously funny when I see erstwhile superpatriots, the very assholes who would have gladly put my rear in a federal prison if The Bill of Rights didn't forbid it, passing resolutions questioning a military initiative by a Democratic president.

And, it seems like a Democrat can never quite hit the right note with them -- Sen. John McCain, the would-be U.S. president, is on record as saying that he thinks the problem was that the U.S. didn't use enough force in Libya. Meanwhile, for Obama, it's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

I've heard enough bellowing by Republican yellowbellies, for long enough. They just HAD to get us mixed up in a generation-long quagmire in Iraq, ostensibly because of that strutting dictator. Now, when faced with another one, and a Democratic president decides for the U.S. to participate in a NATO campaign, he's usurping the Congress. Anyway, it's too hard to steal their oil because there are too many competitors.

Here's a link to this story, courtesy of TGUAR's nightly news roundup. Of course, House Speaker Boner's office says it can't vouch for the authenticity of the letter from Qaddafi. And I'm sure they never will.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Congressman Weenie And Damage Control

By Manifesto Joe

This kind of thing seems to go full circle in politics. John Edwards. John Ensign. David Vitter, etc., etc. ... And now, Congressman Weenie.

I don't know what it is about politicians that, at some point, makes them think that they are bulletproof, especially in these times. Many used to be able to get away with numerous indiscretions, but the glass house has become much thinner and far less opaque. These people can't do much weirdness, for very long, without having it catch up with them.

As I indicated, right, left and center can point fingers all over the place, endlessly. The problem is that it all diverts attention away from that which needs it the most.

The United States appears to be about 30 years into what could easily be described as a Second Gilded Age. Two-thirds of corporations pay zero income tax, and some big ones even get refunds. Wealthy individuals have seen their tax burden dramatically decrease, even as the national debt skyrockets. I'm just some ordinary schmuck, and I just got through paying the IRS much more tax than ExxonMobil will have to pay for years to come.

And with the Fairness Doctrine on the scrap heap, Americans are continually bombarded in mass media with all manner of lies and obfuscation to keep them from understanding how badly they are being screwed.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are all under siege, even as private "health insurers" are raking in record profits and corporate pension plans are being abandoned. It's coming to a time in which a person 55 or 60 with pre-existing health conditions may as well just put a bullet in his or her brain. It's cheaper, and anybody can buy a gun.

With conditions such as this, what's left of the center-left coalition in America doesn't need to have to do damage control over some lawmaker's stupid sex antics. There's a lot more at stake in this country than anything that has to do with some schlemiel sending young women pictures of himself with a hard-on in his shorts.

Whatever needs to be done, such as Congressman Weenie resigning, let's get on with it. This country has problems that are daunting to say the least, and it's going to take generations to solve them. Let's get this in the past ASAP.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Sen. Wendy Davis' Filibuster Derails Texas School Finance Bill, Forces Special Session

By Manifesto Joe

It wasn't exactly a scene out of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Wendy Davis only had to filibuster for an hour and 15 minutes Sunday night, because of Texas Senate rules. But in so doing, she at least temporarily derailed the $4 billion gutting of the state's public education system by stopping the Texas Senate from passing a revenue measure on the next-to-last day of the regular biennial session.

On Monday, the regular session's last day, Republicans had to muster 25 out of 31 Senate votes (80%) to resurrect the bill, and even with their 19-12 majority in that body, they could not. Apparently, everybody goes back to work in special session today.

School officials across the state have been dreading this action by the Legislature. And it will likely come to pass anyway -- the Republicans can come up with simple majorities, most certainly, in both houses. What it will mean is layoffs, layoffs, and more layoffs, in large districts and in small.

On the issue of education, when you confront a Republican with the old bromide, "You get what you pay for," their stock response can be, "No, you don't." (I actually had one say that to me.) To a Republican, the quality of teaching has nothing to do with class size, and the quality of the teacher has nothing to do with how much teachers are paid. A good teacher will work for cans of beans, they "reason," and will be just as effective in a classroom with 40 students as in a classroom with 20.

I suppose this is why we've seen so many good teachers leave the field, one might think. But no, this is not the Republican way of "thinking." Really dedicated professional educators will work for peanuts, they seem to think, and will stay no matter if they have to teach 60 in a classroom.

(At this point, I have an aside question for self-interested followers of Ayn Rand: Who is John Galt, and why does he keep saying these moronic things?)

Anyway, Texas Republicans would have one believe that slashing $4 billion from state spending on education will have no effect on quality. Let's just get rid of the deadbeats, they seem to think, and all will be dandy.

It's not as though Texas was ever very generous toward public education. In a decade, the state slipped from 25th among 50 states in per capita spending on students, down to 37th. That's about to get worse.

As deadlines approached, that's when Davis, a first-term Democrat from Fort Worth, decided to throw a monkey wrench in the works.

Governor Goodhair for president?

And this "unpleasant" development comes just as Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry tells reporters that, in essence, he's starting to believe his own bullshit press. After Rush Lardbaugh carried on about him so over the air (a mancrush, Rush?), Goodhair told the news media that he's "thinking" of running for president.

Hell, for over a decade, we've been waiting to see whether Goodhair is even capable of governing this state. With a record budget shortfall confronting Texans, all he could do was tell everybody that budget cuts hurt, but hey, things are tough all over. This is from a man who is living in a house that leases for $9,900 a month, and has become suspiciously wealthy during his time as a "public servant."

He even had the chutzpah to say that school district cuts in personnel are "a local decision." Trustees across the state would have laughed out loud at that if they hadn't been so busy deciding where to cut when state funding is dramatically reduced. One school board member did call Perry's comment "comical."

Well, if the Republicans could get Il Doofus "elected," (appointed?) and if Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are actually considered viable prospects for their presidential nominee, then I suppose Karl Rove is probably confident that he could sell an Aggie who pulled a 2.3 GPA majoring in animal husbandry.

Anyway, Davis' filibuster to force a special session comes at a sensitive time.

Now back to Wendy

Davis apparently decided that she couldn't stay on the sidelines while this feasting on seed corn was taking place. This is from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram report:

Rumors had circulated that throughout the day Sunday that Davis had planned to filibuster against the bill, but the Fort Worth senator declined to confirm the reports and avoided contact with reporters.

But shortly after the Texas House passed SB1811, Davis rose to begin assailing the bill, saying it would mark the first time in state history that Texas has failed to fund student population growth.

She also read letters from constituents questioning the cuts and urging lawmakers to dip into the state's Rainy Day Fund to help finance education.

"We are going to permanently reduce funding to public schools in Texas," she said, clutching a microphone as she stood near her desk at the front of the chamber. "I don't think there is anything to celebrate in that."

Here's a link to the entire article.

It will be interesting to see what soon happens to public education in Texas, and especially if Rick Perry decides to toss his hat, or hair, or something, into the presidential ring.

I hope that in the grim years to come, Texans won't forget one courageous senator who decided to lead a likely futile fight against the triumph of ignorance.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Poll Shows Texans Want Services But Don't Want To Pay For Them

By Manifesto Joe

As the Texas Legislature nears the end of its biennial session, an enlightening new poll from The Texas Tribune has been released.

There's one thing for certain that the poll findings suggest: The lawmakers had better avoid any cuts they can in public education. Among Texas voters, there appears to be a remarkable degree of ignorance about the basics of public affairs.

In short, the poll indicates that Texans want services from their state government, but largely don't seem to want to generate new revenue to pay for them.

Here's a link to the poll's particular findings.

Tea Party foolishness on parade

This Texas Legislature is about 2-to-1 Republican, due in large part to Tea Party success in getting right-wingers to the polls last November. The new members are generally against any and all new taxes, and some of the old ones as well. Their solution to the state's record budget shortfall has always been to take a meat ax to state government.

They are not above lies and distortion to achieve this. Here's a link to a previous post of mine showing Young Republican deceit regarding spending on education.

The poll shows that voter intelligence, or lack thereof, lies behind their electoral success. Far more voters in Texas want to deal with the budget shortfall through cuts than through boosting revenue. But when presented with specific areas, such as public education, for such cuts, the poll respondents became very unclear and frequently contradicted themselves.

Texas has never been generous toward its public schools. Here's a link to a story from earlier this year. In short, about a decade ago, Texas was 25th among the 50 states in spending per pupil. It's now 37th. And now, clearly, that's going to get worse.

A frequent right-wing mantra is that you don't solve problems just by throwing money at them. But there seems to be some correlation between education spending and the quality of teaching that emerges.

Scoring No. 1 on the Report Card on American Education, released in 2010, was Vermont (incidentally, the home state of the only avowed socialist in Congress, Sen. Bernie Sanders). That state was also No. 1 in percentage of state expenditures on public education, with 36.7% of its budget going there. It makes a difference in quality of teachers, availability of technology and equipment, and in class size, among other factors.

Although one obviously doesn't want to pay needlessly for things, quite often what you get is what you're willing to pay for.

Cutting spending on public education in Texas? This new poll demonstrates that we already have a problem here, as so many likely voters seem to believe that 2 plus 2 can be made to equal 5. For God's sake, we don't need to slash public education -- we clearly already have a deficit in that area!

So, who, then, will pay the new taxes? How about those who have the ability to pay? This state already has one of the most regressive tax structures in America. My wife and I have a very ordinary family income, and yet we pay thousands a year in sales taxes and user fees. How about making some of the big shots, like Irving, Texas-based ExxonMobil, pay up?

Where will the corporate scofflaws go?

Another right-wing mantra is that if taxes start going up sharply on big business, they will pull up stakes and head for someplace more hospitable.

And where would that be? Canada? They actually tax their corporations up there. The rates are rather low, but they don't exempt two-thirds of them from paying. Seems that Canadians have figured out that if you want services, you have to pay for them.

Mexico? Would corporate executives want to send their kids to those schools, drive on those roads, and hope that none of their relatives got beheaded by drug-cartel gangsters?

Venezuela? I'm sure that Hugo Chavez would just love for ExxonMobil to relocate its executive suites to Caracas!

What we're witnessing is ignorance on a mass scale, and it goes well beyond Texas' borders. Last night, I got a comment on a post that's a few months old, from a man who has an Internet Tea Party radio show. This was the final paragraph:

Oh and unlike you, I have the balls to post under my own name. Perhaps that comes from knowing that my ideas are corrects and your ideas are nothing more than BS you picked up on MSNBC or from the New York Times. Oh how easily the stupid and naive or fooled by the mainstream media.

This semiliterate man has a radio show? Oh well, I suppose one doesn't have to be able to write and spell coherent English sentences while doing a broadcast. It still gives one pause, though.

It's been said that if you think education is expensive, wait until you see how much ignorance costs. I think that the wait is over.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Donations Show Fox News, WSJ Are Propaganda Wing Of Republican Party

By Manifesto Joe

In case there's still anybody out there who genuinely believes that Fox "News" is "fair and balanced" and that The Wall Street Journal is an evenhanded, objective news source, information is coming out about where and how much Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is donating to political recipients.

News Corp.'s board of directors has decided to come clean about all this and start releasing details about political donations, starting in earnest this summer. But there's already information about where these donations have been going before this. Here's a link to a related story.

What's been happening before now is not exactly shocking to those who understand what Fox, WSJ and the rest of Murdoch's "journalism" holdings have been up to. This is from the aforementioned story:

News Corp., which includes Fox News Channel and the Wall Street Journal among its holdings, last year contributed $US1.25 million to the Republican Governors Association, which was disclosed, and $US1 million to the US Chamber, which wasn't. The second sum was reported by Politco in October.

Such corporate donations are separate from the contributions made by a company's political action committee, which are regularly disclosed to the FEC.

Unlike their PACs, corporations can't contribute to the political parties, though they can help fund political groups such as the RGA and so-called super PACs. While super PACs can take in unlimited donations, they can't contribute directly to federal candidates. They can explicitly urge voters to support or oppose candidates.

Whither objectivity?

None of this should come as a surprise to anybody with half a brain who has tried to watch Fox "News." It's clear that the complaints about bias at news outlets like CBS and PBS, dating to the Reagan era, were less based on real bias and more based on insufficient bias of the kind that meets with conservative approval.

I would concede that, during the 1980s, I saw a few things on outlets such as CBS News that seemed to me less than objective. But such moments tended to be the exception rather than the rule. When one tries to watch Fox "News" with a "straight face," intellectually speaking, one witnesses a stream of straight news heavily blended with undisguised opinion, without much in the way of labeling or transition. There, it's the rule, not the exception.

I think that perhaps it's time that journalism organizations just flat-out disposed of the principle of objectivity. The purpose of it seemed like a noble, albeit unattainable, goal during the 20th century. But when one goes back and examines the newspaper journalism of the late 19th century, there was little or no pretense of objectivity. In fact, many U.S. newspapers were called the "Republican" or the "Democrat," in plain declaration of their party preference. At least you knew beyond much doubt what you were getting when you put your nickel down at the newsstand.

Maybe it's time to dispense with any pretense. Some of the best "real" journalism around right now is being done by Truthout, a Web-based organization that exists on reader donations and makes absolutely no pretense of not being a progressive, muckraking outfit.

What is bugging conservatives so much, from what I've seen as a 33-year veteran of the news business, is that not very many of their ilk go into the field. Most people who go into journalism fit one of these descriptions: (1) People who want to write for a living, but realize that very few make a living from writing. (Yeah, you guessed it. I'm one of those fools.) There aren't very many conservatives in that group. (2) People who, like the generation who went into the field inspired by Woodward and Bernstein, and other crusading journalists who actually had a impact on history, hoped to make a difference. Not many right-wingers there, either. (3) People who wanted to be sportswriters but couldn't get a break in that area. Sorry to be so blunt, but chuckle-heads and jock-sniffers like this are where some of the conservatives in the field come from.

So, generally, the rank and file of schmucks who go into journalism tend to be center-left in their political sentiments. That shouldn't surprise anyone, any more than it should surprise anyone that most people who go into more lucrative fields like banking or accounting tend to be politically conservative.

Since there's such a tempest over politics and its seepage into journalism practices, why should any of us go on pretending? I've always done my best to be "objective" in my regular job, because that's expected of me. I work for the mainstream media, and I know who signs the checks. They expect a certain kind of product, and I try to deliver it for them.

But I've seen a gradual shift in journalism, from subtle bias toward the left, to blatant bias toward the right, with groups like AIM cracking the whip at MSM outlets until they cave and actually start showing a de facto bias toward the right.

Let's all come out of the closet, boys and girls. Then we'll see where the real bias is -- and I'd bet a fair sum of money that it isn't left-leaning.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Texas Republican Crybabies Will Pout While Obama Visits

By Manifesto Joe

This is the state whose governor talked in thinly veiled terms, in 2009, about secession. It's probably at a risk to life and limb that President Barack Obama will come here at all.

He's coming Tuesday to El Paso and Austin, two places where he has actually had good voter support -- but the Republicans will be pouting and reviling him.

It seems that his administration didn't approve federal emergency funds after wildfires burned up a lot of acreage, and more than a few posh vacation homes, in the state. Some ranchers are going to lose money, too, because of the destruction.

It's been bad here, but Obama has had a lot on his plate lately. I'd say, given the devastation and loss of life seen in places like Alabama, that the FEMA money is probably being better spent there. (By the way, I've never heard of Alabama being an especially pro-Obama stronghold, either.)

But Texas Republicans seem to think that Obama has a political vendetta against the state, and that he's taking it out on Texas now, amid scorched earth.

Bear in mind, it's not like he's going to be losing a lot of votes over all this. He wasn't getting Republican votes in Texas anyway, ever, so what's there for him to lose, politically?

Here's a McClatchy newspapers piece on the subject, at this link.

When you've got a brat governor who's talking secession, is it a surprise that Texas isn't high on the federal priority list? But I doubt that this is even the reason for the denial. The federal government is dealing with an enormous deficit right now, and decisions have to be made. With all the untaxed money there is here in this state, I suspect that Texas has plenty of money to deal with this situation, without the help of the federal government at this particular time.

Get over it, Republican crybabies.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Bin Laden Isn't Qualified To Be Dead Until Donald Trump Sees The Death Certificate

By Manifesto Joe

The problem is, how would we know that it wasn't a fake?

I guess that means that "The Donald" and all the rest of us will have to see the bullet-riddled body. But if the face has been shot to pieces, how would we know that Special Forces didn't just dredge up some 6-foot-4, skinny Arab for target practice? How would we know that Osama isn't actually still alive, scarfing hummus and falafel and advising that closet Muslim in the White House?

Well, by now I suspect you get the point of this sarcasm.

Any credit here for Obama?

Barack Obama seemed downright presidential Sunday night while announcing this big score of scores. But will he get any credit? If you watch Fox "News" during the next week, I'll bet that Il Doofus gets much more credit than Obama will. And Bush 43 couldn't get this guy for over seven years -- in fact, Bush diverted U.S. attention away from bin Laden and the Afghanistan-Pakistan region with his rogue-nation invasion of Iraq. That cost this country countless billions, some of which should have been focused on a terrorist network that actually attacked us. And according to some estimates, it cost over a million Iraqi lives.

I hope that the American people have sense enough to know that this day should have come much sooner, and likely would have, if the country's priorities hadn't been grotesquely and viciously distorted by ruthless, self-serving people.

This post is going to strike some people as irreverent and brutal. Sometimes honesty has an unfortunate way of sounding like that.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

'Birther' Imbeciles Don't Have Everyone Fooled: They Hate President N****r

By Manifesto Joe

Right-wingers are forever accusing their foes of playing the race card, and thereby crying wolf. But I've been watching the bile being spewed at President Barack Obama for a few years now -- going back to the early days of his 2008 campaign -- and there seems to be no other explanation for all this hatred in the absence of any reasoned discourse.

To phrase it in the most direct way, a lot of people who hate Obama do indeed hate his policies, but what they hate much more is the fact that there's a n****r in the White House.

You'll notice that I'm expurgating that word. Even Richard Pryor and Muhammad Ali weren't doing that in the 1970s. I'm doing it because I respect the fact that, over time, it has become much worse than crude slang. It's an expression of pure, unadulterated hatred for a large group of people.

Bill Clinton was the target of a lot of venom while he was in office, and much of it seemed ridiculous. Remember those bumper stickers with the "C" in Clinton incorporated in a communist hammer and sickle? Hell, I actually knew a couple of misguided people who were avowed communists, and they both thought Clinton was a neoliberal, corporate-friendly jerk.

Obama has governed little different from how Clinton did, and how Hillary would have. The far left doesn't claim him and is more than a little upset with him. But, considering that this is pretty obviously a family man without most of the personal baggage that Bill Clinton had, the attacks on him from the right have been even more ruthless. Race hatred seems to be the only way to explain it.

I don't seem to be alone in this conclusion. Here's a link to a story that appeared after Obama called a news conference to release his long-form birth record.

Now, of course, Donald Trump and others are also questioning Obama's academic record. They are pointing out that he didn't graduate from Columbia University with honors, which means that his cumulative GPA would have been less than 3.3. They are alleging that he could only have gotten into Ivy League schools as an affirmative-action student.

Do these people remember Il Doofus?

I do, and not at all fondly. This is a guy who got into Yale only because of the first, most corrupt affirmative-action program -- the "legacy" one for rich little shits. Bush II was said to have gotten through Yale largely with the help of "gentleman's C's." Then he gets into Harvard Business, where one professor remembered him as a guy who would say something in class quite explicitly and clearly, and then have the nerve to say, just a couple of minutes later, "I didn't say that."

I went to a private college as an undergraduate, someplace about on a par with Occidental College, where Obama went his first two years. I was a straight "B" student most of my first two years -- I didn't go to a good high school, and there seems to be a sort of social grace associated with making "A's" at a tough college that doesn't permit grade inflation. By the time I was a junior I started making the dean's list, but I had made so many "B's" by then that I finished with something over a 3.2 GPA, short of the 3.4 needed to graduate with honors. I can identify very much with a student like Obama probably was.

I would say that, in hindsight, it seems like a terrific investment in human capital that Obama was accepted by Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude. He went on to become a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago. All that amounts to one hell of a lot more than Il Doofus ever thought of doing.

And as for Donald Trump -- his daddy was the "self-made" man, not him. "The Donald" got a business degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, then followed daddy into the real estate/developer business. Like all the recent Bushes, Trump is a son of a bitch who, as Texas legend Jim Hightower phrased it, was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.

Trump has always been an opportunist. I doubt that he harbors personal malice toward Obama; he's just "capitalizing" on the vast amount of race prejudice that's out there. Living in Red State America, I've seen and heard ample evidence of it. I can remember standing in line to be seated at a restaurant, and hearing some festering redneck who was leaving talking about "Barack Osama" and the like, on the eve of the 2008 election.

I understand exactly what this is all about. It's about President N****r.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Franklin Graham Interview Reminds Me: Maybe It's Time For God Inc. To Start Paying Taxes

By Manifesto Joe

Did I hear somebody mention the First Amendment after reading that title? Here's the text:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I don't see anything in there about religious organizations of any kind being exempt from paying income taxes, or any other taxes.

For literally generations, the Graham family has been lording it over a multimillion-dollar evangelical and charity empire. International though they are, these organizations enjoy the protections and privileges of U.S. corporations. And -- unfortunately, like two-thirds of American-based corporations -- they pay not 1 cent of federal income tax.

I'll give the old man, Billy Graham, credit for having stayed out of partisan politics for his entire career. He has lived comfortably but not opulently, in contrast to many other televangelists, drawing a fixed salary from his enterprises. Although it has certainly come out, such as in his tapes made with Tricky Dick in the early '70s, that he has right-wing political and cultural views, he was shrewd enough to keep his trap shut publicly on certain topics. In the 1970s, he declined to join Jerry Falwell in the Moral Majority, staying admirably above the political fray.

Franklin Graham doesn't have quite the same compass. He ran into problems in the past with his right-wing sentiments, and also with his personal greed. This is from Wikipedia:

In 2001, The New York Times criticized Samaritan's Purse for having "blurred the line between church and state", in the way it had distributed publicly funded aid to victims of the El Salvador earthquake. Residents from several villages stated they first had to sit through a half hour prayer meeting before receiving assistance. In a statement, USAID said Samaritan's Purse had not violated federal guidelines, but emphasized the need for the organization to "maintain adequate and sufficient separation" between prayer sessions and publicly funded activities.

In 2003, Samaritan's Purse was widely criticized after its president, Franklin Graham, stated that Islam is a "very evil and wicked religion", leading to opposition campaigns by Islamic leaders. Samaritan's Purse responded to accusations of being anti-Islamic by highlighting their long history of non-denominational cooperation and charity work in Baghdad without attempting to preach or proselytize.

Franklin Graham has also been criticized in the United States, for drawing a full-time salary from Samaritan's Purse, while at the same time receiving a full-time salary from Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Non-profit experts have doubted that one person can do two full-time jobs leading organizations that employ hundreds and spend hundreds of millions around the world.

Now, Franklin seems to have really crossed the line when it comes to partisan politics. Following is an interview that aired yesterday on CNN:

http://youtu.be/lx2E286GAcE

You'll have to watch it using the link, because embedding has been disabled on YouTube by request. I couldn't imagine why.

To hit the high points, Franklin Graham said that President Barack Obama is "a nice man" and "a gracious person," but added that, in political terms, our country is in real trouble. He also seemed to indicate that he could support Donald Trump as a presidential candidate and lent some credence to Trump's embrace of "birther" conspiracy theories.

Our country is in trouble because a lot of rich people don't pay taxes

That includes you, Franklin. And your family's enterprises.

This year, I owed a lot more to the IRS than I expected. I've already paid a big chunk of it -- well, big by my standards -- and expect to be until fall paying off all of it. And I'm offended to find out how many entities that bring in megabucks are paying nothing, and even getting refunds.

That includes you, Franklin. And your family's enterprises.

I'd say, in view of the size of the current deficit, that it's time to revisit this notion that religious organizations should be tax-exempt. There are televangelists and megachurch pastors out there who are fabulously wealthy. Why shouldn't they be willing to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's? (Even if it is merely John "Orange Julius" Boehner?)

Churches and the social safety net

Another area that Franklin Graham got into was the social safety net, which he lamented about becoming so secular in the past century. A century ago, he said, if you were jobless and/or had nothing to eat, you went to the local church, and the pastor would help you. Since government has taken this function over, he said, it would take time to retrain all those people of God out there, so that whey would again know how to do all that.

Pardon me here, preacher -- some years back I happened to read a little book called The Jungle, published in 1906, and heavily based on novelist Upton Sinclair's personal experiences from a couple of years before, observing the Chicago slaughterhouses and such up close. It didn't seem as though churches were doing that much for society's poor back in those days.

In fact, about a third of the American people were living in grinding poverty back then. That was one thing that gave rise to a little something called the Progressive Movement, to try to get some things done in the public arena that churches and private charities obviously weren't succeeding in doing.

In addition to churches, I also seem to recall a little institution, common in those days, usually called the county poor house. The destitute would go there for three hots and a cot, in exchange for whatever they could do -- wash dishes, work in the fields if they were able, etc. It was sort of like a minimum-security prison, and it was supported with taxpayer money at the local level.

Unfortunately, it took until the 1930s for the U.S. to do much at the federal level to make up for what wasn't being done for the poor and the elderly. If you go back and read honest accounts of what was happening back then -- food riots, the churches and private charities being overwhelmed with demand, etc. -- then it becomes pretty clear why the federal government did, and had to, step in.

Franklin Graham and his family will never have to rely on Medicare or Medicaid, or Social Security for that matter, to eat, clothe and house themselves adequately. It's easy for this sanctimonious little SOB to sit back and pontificate thusly. Neither he nor his will ever have to suffer.

Make the pious little shit pay taxes. Now.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Income Tax Day Special: Who Wants To Be A Millionaire (And Pay Next To Nothing)?

By Manifesto Joe

The Republicans just don't get it, and it looks like they won't in the foreseeable future. With 40 cents of every federal dollar spent now being borrowed, they want to give yet more tax bonanzas to the rich while essentially abolishing Medicare and Medicaid.

This isn't what Americans voted for in 2008. A lower percentage of them, those who bothered to vote in 2010, voted for such folly whether they knew it or not.

The numbers cry out for a tax hike on the wealthy. Here's Robert Reich on the issue, courtesy of Truthout.

When one talks to earners at the upper-middle level, they are quick to point out the marginal rate of 35%, arguing that with progressive tax brackets, many of them end up paying more than lower earners as a percentage. (That's what comes of a steady mental diet of Fox News. That stuff rots brains.)

Yet such people seem to get amnesia when one points out that just 10 or so years ago, when the marginal rate was 39.6%, the U.S. was running a surplus. This was no accident. Even with the modest Clinton tax hike on the rich that barely passed in 1993, we didn't have the structural deficit we have now.

And the Mainstream Media are quick to obfuscate, talking to selected economists who keep telling the victims that raising taxes on the rich won't be enough. And who owns the MSM? Giant corporations -- and how much income tax do they pay?

Two-thirds of corporations pay no income tax

That's not news -- the first of the stories broke in 2008. Here's a link to one of them.

Although it's not news, many people don't seem to "get it," so it bears repeating, and repeating some more. Most of these "legal persons" are getting a free ride. They use the infrastructure (such as it is now), and have vast resources to fleece ordinary, unsuspecting victims out of many billions, yet they pay nothing.

In case you thought I was joking, here's a link to a more recent story about this, courtesy of Alternet.

In their 1990 book America: What Went Wrong?, investigative journalists Donald Barlett and James Steele cited IRS statistics that show that, in 1959, corporations accounted for 39% of federal tax revenue. By 1989, that was down to 17%. And it's
probably gotten worse since then.

Here's a brief roll call of Corporate America's tax slackers:

General Electric -- Last month, The New York Times reported that, in addition to paying no federal income taxes this year, GE, the largest U.S. corporation, is to get a tax credit of $3.2 billion. GE made $14.1 billion in profits in 2010, $5.1 billion of which came from its U.S. operations. The story was conspicuously absent from NBC News, part-owned by General Electric.

Goldman Sachs -- Bloomberg News, in December 2008, reported that Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which got $10 billion and debt guarantees from the U.S. government in October, expects to pay $14 million in taxes worldwide for 2008 compared with $6 billion in 2007. The company’s effective income tax rate dropped to 1 percent from 34.1 percent, Goldman Sachs said. The firm reported a $2.3 billion profit for the year after paying $10.9 billion in employee compensation and benefits. U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who serves on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said steps by Goldman Sachs and other banks shifting income to countries with lower taxes is cause for concern. "This problem is larger than Goldman Sachs," Doggett said. "With the right hand out begging for bailout money, the left is hiding it offshore."

ExxonMobil -- In March 2010, Forbes magazine reported that the oil giant, "which last year reported a record $45.2 billion profit, paid the most taxes of any corporation, but none of it went to the IRS":

Exxon tries to limit the tax pain with the help of 20 wholly owned subsidiaries domiciled in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands that (legally) shelter the cash flow from operations in the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi. No wonder that of $15 billion in income taxes last year, Exxon paid none of it to Uncle Sam, and has tens of billions in earnings permanently reinvested overseas.

Mother Jones magazine noted that, despite benefiting from corporate welfare in the U.S., Exxon complains about paying high taxes, claiming that it threatens energy innovation research. It was noted at the Wonk Room that big corporations' tax shelter practices similar to Exxon’s shift a $100 billion annual tax burden onto U.S. taxpayers.

This list could grow to tedious proportions. You should get the picture by now.

Let's start sharing some sacrifice

Nobody likes to pay taxes. I owed the IRS far more than I expected to this year, and will probably be until fall paying it all off. But when some common slob like me is paying Uncle Sam more, year after year, than GE is, then there must be something dreadfully wrong with this system.

But alas, our Republican brethren still don't get it. They are promoting the idea of still more tax bonanzas for the wealthy. And, although a corporation enjoys the status of a "legal person" in our psychopathic system, two-thirds of them pay nothing, and even get refunds and billions in corporate welfare on top of that.

The latest news on this was from The Associated Press. It's not just corporations that are the problem. About 45% of U.S. households will pay no income tax at all, thanks to all the breaks that people, especially the super-rich, are getting.

It should be clear, if one looks at the numbers honestly, that our structural deficit has much more to do with what needs to be raised than with what needs to be cut.

Yet, the Republicans persist in their policies of the past 30-plus years, to defecate all over ordinary people while cutting sweet deals for their rich campaign contributors. And the Democrats haven't been very much better. Even President Barack "Change you can believe in" Obama hasn't been nearly candid enough on this issue.

So, what is to be done? Giant corporations and the super-rich clearly have politicians by the balls and have been gaming the system accordingly for the past 30-plus years. What can an ordinary person do?

(1) Stop believing the MSM. They obfuscate, and sometimes outright lie. And that shouldn't be surprising, given that they are generally owned by the very corporations that have been getting a free ride.

(2) Vote in the primaries. This is where people can get real Democrats, not just more corporate lackeys, to be candidates in the general election. The one positive that came out of the 2010 midterm debacle was that now, the Democrats left in Congress are more progressive on these kinds of issues. Ironically, it was largely the "Blue Dogs" and Democrats-in-name-only who went down in defeat to Tea Party challengers.

(3) Vote in the general elections. As frustrating as DINOs can be, and as agonizingly placating as Obama has been, we're better off with them than we are now, with right-wing Republican ideologues writing the agenda. President Clinton, Republicrat though he often was, presided over the last balanced federal budget, and that was largely because he demanded that the rich pay at least a modestly higher percentage of their hefty incomes in taxes. And back then, there was little talk of privatizing Medicare.

(4) General strike. In contemporary America, it will be very hard to float this idea. But if most of the work force in this country were willing to "sick out" just one day, and a few spokespeople made clear to the powers that be that this was an organized protest, it might perk up some ears.

This country is far from broke. The trick is going to be getting the rich slackers who have the bucks to fork some of them over. There are people out there who have it -- but they aren't going to let go of any of it without a fight.

Just pay your taxes today, chumps. Serious training starts tomorrow.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

From Joe's Vault: IRS Tax Gestapo Loves To Pick On Poor People

Originally posted in April 2007.

By Manifesto Joe

 

"... In 1976, my mother owed $300 in taxes. They were not paid due to the fact that she was diagnosed with cancer and given 12 weeks to live. In May, as she lay dying, two IRS agents showed up at my house where we had moved my mother to take care of her. They told me they were friends and had come to visit. I took them to the room, where they introduced themselves as IRS agents and served her papers to confiscate everything she owned. She was to (sic) weak to sign the paper but did make an X and I signed for her. On that day, they took everything she owned ... even the soda bottles at her place of business! She died within the week. ..."

 

-- IRS Abuse Report #193, from legalminds.lp.findlaw.com

 

Those were supposed to be the bad old days of the IRS. After countless complaints like this, in the late '90s there was a bid to reform the service into something BusinessWeek called, a bit facetiously, a "kinder, gentler IRS." The Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998, signed by President Clinton, was gauged to make "significant structural changes in the management and oversight ..." and strengthen and enhance "the rights of and protections applicable to taxpayers ..."

 

There were a few meaningful changes in the new law. But it didn't take long for the IRS to revert to stonefaced abuse of poor and financially distressed taxpayers -- while ignoring most of the cheating by the rich.

 

Under the Bush regime, the working poor have come under special attack over their claims of the Earned Income Credit. This is an especially valuable tax credit for people coming off the welfare rolls and into the low-wage job market, because it can bring a refund of all income tax and Social Security tax withheld from their paychecks. The bottom line: This credit is an incentive for welfare recipients to go to work. Wasn't that what the Right-Wingers wanted when they "reformed" welfare in 1996?

 

But, being a conservative means never having to say you're sorry. In the conservative world, the poor are a sub-species, basically faceless and worthless. If people are poor, then they must be lazy, drink too much and gamble, rent their kids to pedophiles, or such. It most certainly has to be their fault; and if you honestly try to help them, I'm told that they'll spend the money on a console and play Nintendo all day. So, as the thinking on the Right goes, we might as well kick this sort of gutter trash around a whole lot more.

 

So, this is where the IRS comes in. David Cay Johnson reported in this story, first published by the New York Times on Jan. 10, 2006, that:

 

Tax refunds sought by hundreds of thousands of poor Americans have been frozen and their returns labeled fraudulent, blocking refunds for years to come, the Internal Revenue Service's taxpayer advocate told Congress today.

 

The taxpayers, whose average income was $13,000, were not told that they were suspected of fraud, the advocate said in her annual report to Congress. The advocate, Nina Olson, said her staff sampled suspected returns and found that, at most, one in five was questionable.

A computer program selected the returns as part of the questionable refund program run by the criminal investigation division of the Internal Revenue Service. In some cases, the criminal division ordered that taxpayers be given no hint that they were suspected of fraud, the report said.

 

Most of the poor people whose returns the computer flagged as fraudulent were seeking the earned income tax credit, a benefit for the working poor. The credit can return all of the income taxes and Social Security taxes withheld from the paychecks of poor people. Without the credit, many poor people coming off welfare and going to work would receive less money because of taxes taken out of their paychecks and the loss of health benefits, I.R.S. data and other government documents show.

 

The average refund sought was $3,500, which under the rules for obtaining the credit means that the vast majority of those suspected of fraud were single parents or married couples with children. The maximum benefit for singles is less than $400.

 

Ms. Olson said the I.R.S. devoted vastly more resources to pursing questionable refunds by the poor, which she said cannot involve more than $9 billion, than to a $100 billion problem with unreported incomes from small businesses that deal only in cash, many of which do not even file tax returns.

 

Let's forget any discussion of "small" businesses here. And, going into the way the rich and corporate giants get by without paying taxes is a whole different post. There isn't nearly enough room here.

 

Suffice it to say that some of us know what this is about, from schoolyard memories. It's a lot easier to pick on little kids than to take on the big ones. The IRS is just one of many bully magnets in our society. I haven't got time or space to describe all the others. It is merely one manifestation of a rising bully culture. And conservatives seem to be leading the swagger.

 

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

 

 

From 1944: 'Jammin' the Blues'

Featuring the great Lester Young on sax and the great Barney Kessel on guitar, among other immortals of the period. Lester's the one with the pork-pie hat who's always got a cigarette going -- it looks like he's going to burn his fingers. (But, having read about Lester, he might not have even realized it.) Barney was the only white dude there, and they kept him in the shadows a lot, sort of a role-reversal.



Dig it, kats.

A Death In The Family

I lost someone very close to me Wednesday afternoon. This blog is doing pretty well now, and I'm grateful for all the response. But I'm going to have to take some time off. Sometimes a loss like this clarifies things, makes you realize what's important. I think it's having that effect on me. I enjoy doing this, but I think it's going to be a couple of weeks before I can post again. I thank all you visitors, and please do come back.