ABC’s Broken Tax ‘Factcheck’
World News bolsters Republican myths

One of the core debates about federal tax policy concerns the expiring Bush tax cuts. A September 8 “factcheck” segment on ABC World News did more to propagate myths than to set the record straight.

The White House position is that the Bush tax cuts, which under current law expire in 2010, should be extended for the vast majority of the population. Rates would go up only for taxable income above $195,550. The Republican counter-argument is that increasing the taxes paid by the wealthy will actually harm small businesses. As anchor Diane Sawyer put it: “Republicans say raising taxes even on the wealthy will hurt too many small businesses, and that will stall the creation of jobs. So, who is right? We asked Jonathan Karl to check the facts.”

But Karl’s factcheck only served to muddy the debate. Karl interviewed two small business owners who claimed they would be adversely affected. One said an increase in his personal tax bill would cost his company between $20,000 and $40,000. Karl’s second source claimed a potential tax bill increase of $120,000; when Karl asked him to predict how many jobs would be lost, he replied: “It would be a minimum of two. Up to probably four.”

If the point was to illustrate how the tax changes would affect small businesses, ABC chose what appear to be remarkably unrepresentative examples; those estimated tax bills would suggest that both of these small business owners are bringing home what most people would consider to be enormous personal salaries. If their numbers on how much the tax changes will cost them are accurate, then the first business owner makes roughly $700,000-$1.1 million a year in taxable income, while the other takes home about $2.9 million annually. (These incomes were calculated based on tax bracket information from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 8/13/10.) The Washington Post (8/12/10) published a graph using data from the Joint Committee on Taxation that illustrates just how rich you have to be in order to be seriously disadvantaged by Obama’s tax proposal.

And the focus on jobs was misleading. The Congressional Budget Office (1/10; cited by CBPP, 8/3/10) found that “increasing the after-tax income of businesses typically does not create much incentive for them to hire more workers in order to produce more, because production depends principally on their ability to sell their products.”

Karl claimed that the first business owner “says raising the top rates would cost his company $20,000 to $40,000 next year…because his company’s profits exceed $200,000 and are declared on his personal tax return.” The owner, Drew Greenblatt, is quoted, “Well, this is gonna pull cash out of our company, so we’re gonna have less money to invest.”

But personal income is by definition money that’s been taken out of the company; if he wanted to invest it in the company, he could leave it in the company, and not put it into his personal bank account where he’ll have to pay personal income tax on it, regardless of what the rate is. Taxing Greenblatt’s personal income doesn’t cost his company anything–unless he decides to pay himself a larger salary to maintain a lavish standard of living.

Likewise, taxing the multi-million dollar personal profits of the second business owner doesn’t force him to cut two to four jobs; the company’s profitability doesn’t have anything to do with what percentage the boss pays on his personal income.

After spending ample time on these issues, Karl finally turns to “factchecking” the question–will Obama’s proposed tax changes “hurt too many small businesses”?–that Sawyer posed in introducing the segment: “Democrats say only a tiny fraction of small businesses would be affected. That’s true, according to the Tax Policy Center, which says only 2.5 percent of small businesses would see their taxes go up.” So after giving viewers misleading anecdotes about the harm that might come from allowing tax cuts for the wealthy to expire, ABC’s Karl finally delivered data that might be useful for assessing this policy question.

But then he found a way to try to overstate the impact of the tax increase: “So, 2.5 percent affected. We asked the Tax Policy Center how many businesses that is. Their answer? 894,000 small businesses that would see their taxes go up. A small percentage, but a large number of small businesses.”

Transforming a percentage that perfectly illustrates the effect a policy will have into a much larger, out-of-context number seems designed to reinforce the Republican side of this debate. Why would ABC’s “factcheck” aim to mislead viewers?

ACTION:
Tell ABC World News that their September 8 “factcheck” report on the tax cut debate was misleading.

CONTACT:

ABC World News with Diane Sawyer

Web form:
http://abcnews.go.com/Site/page?id=3271346&cat=World%20News%20with%20Diane%20Sawyer

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Wall Street’s greatest heist: the Tarp

The notion that without the $700bn bailout we would be reduced to bartering was a ruse by the banks to get taxpayers’ money

 Dean Baker

Women carrying boxes leave the Lehman Brothers headquarters in New York on 15 September 2008. The day the investment bank choked by the credit crisis and falling real estate values, filed for bankruptcy Photograph: Louis Lanzano/APTwo years ago, the top honchos at the Fed, Treasury and the Wall Street banks were running around like Chicken Little warning that the world was about to end. This fear-mongering, together with a big assist from the elite media (thatis, NPR, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, etc), earned the banks their $700bn Troubled Asset Relief Programme (Tarp) blank cheque bailout. This money, along with even more valuable loans and loan guarantees from the Fed and FDIC, enabled them to survive the crisis they had created. As a result, the big banks are bigger and more profitable than ever.

Now, the same crew that tapped our pockets two years ago is eagerly pitching the line that their bailout was good for us. It may be the case that the history books are written by the winners, but that doesn’t prevent the rest of us from telling the truth.

Let’s step back to where we were two years ago. The huge investment bank Bear Stearns had collapsed. So had Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants. Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest investment bank had also gone down. AIG, the country’s largest insurer, had been put on life support by the government.

At this point, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, the three remaining independent investment banks, all faced runs that would quickly sink them without government intervention. Citigroup and Bank of America, two of the three largest commercial banks, were also almost certainly insolvent. Many other banks also faced insolvency, especially if they took big losses on their loans to other institutions that were about to go bankrupt.

This was when the Wall Street boys made their mad rush for the public trough. They enlisted everyone that mattered in the effort, including Treasury secretary Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner, then the head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank.

The line was that the economy would collapse if congress did not immediately rescue the banks. They were prepared to make up anything to save the banks in their hour of need. Bernanke was probably caught in the biggest fabrication when he told congress that the commercial paper market was shutting down.

If true, this would have been disastrous, since most major companies rely on selling commercial paper to meet their payroll and other routine expenses. If this market shut down, it would mean that even healthy businesses could not pay their workers and suppliers, which would quickly cause the whole economy to grind to a halt.

Bernanke did not bother to inform congress and the public that he had the ability to single-handedly support the commercial paper market. He waited until the weekend after congress approved the Tarp to announce that he would establish a special Fed lending facility to buy commercial paper.

In reality, the Fed almost certainly had the ability to keep the economy going by sustaining the system of payments, even if the chain of bank collapses was allowed to run its course. In the 1980s Latin American debt crisis, the Fed had an emergency plan to seize the money centre banks, and keep them operating, if a default by a major Latin American country pushed them into insolvency.

By the time of the Lehman crisis, the financial markets had been severely stressed for over a year. The first major bank collapse had occurred more than six months earlier. It would have required a degree of unbelievable incompetence and/or irresponsibility for the Fed not to have devised a similar emergency plan to keep the systems of payments operating in a worst-case scenario.

Furthermore, even if the Fed had been as incompetent as many claim, it would not have taken long for it to improvise a system whereby certain payments would be prioritised and the system of payments would again be up-and-running. The notion that we would be sitting in a 21st-century economy and reduced to barter payments was an invention of the bank lobby to get the taxpayers’ money.

The first Great Depression was the result of a decade of failed policies, not a single bad mistake at its onset. There was absolutely nothing that we could have done back in September-October of 2008 that would have required that we experience a decade of double-digit unemployment. The spectre of a “second great depression” is a fairy tale invented by the bank lobby to make the rest of us feel good about having given them our money.

We are also supposed to feel good that the vast majority of the Tarp money was repaid. This is another effort to prey on the public’s ignorance. Had it not been for the bailout, most of the major centre banks would have been wiped out. This would have destroyed the fortunes of their shareholders, many of their creditors, and their top executives. This would have been a massive redistribution to the rest of society – their loss is our gain.

It is important to remember that the economy would be no less productive following the demise of these Wall Street giants. The only economic fact that would have been different is that the Wall Street crew would have lost claims to hundreds of billions of dollars of the economy’s output each year and trillions of dollars of wealth. That money would, instead, be available for the rest of society. The fact that they have lost the claim to wealth from their stock and bond holdings makes all the rest of us richer, once the economy is again operating near normal levels of output.

Instead, we have the same Wall Street crew calling the shots, doing business pretty much as they always did. The rest of us are sitting here dealing with wreckage of their recklessness: 9.6% unemployment and the loss of much of the middle class’s savings in their homes and their retirement accounts.

And the lackeys of the Wall Street crew are telling us that we should be thankful that we didn’t have a second Great Depression. Maybe we don’t have the power to keep the bankers from picking our pockets, but we don’t have to believe their lies.

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For more info see my essay entitled: Where’s My F*ckin Bailout?!

THEOCRACY REIGN IVINE ORDER OF THE NYAH BINGHI TRIBUTE TO ANCIENT BONGO ROCKY
by Ras Flako

Incient Bongo Rocky had repatriated to Ethiopia a decade ago with his Iloved Queen Baby I, since then he has served with distinction as Elder Statesman and Ambassador of the Rastafari Nation. He has headed delegations and meetings with Heads of State, politicians, AU representatives, as well as local and regional dignitaries on behalf of the Shashamanie community and the Nation of Rastafari.

‘Bongo Rock’, as he was fondly called was an inspiration to all those came before his presence , many were blessed by his word sound in cyberspace ,he set the example for Reparation with strong determination and was the focal point for to visitors to the Shashamanie Tabernacle

The wonderful works of the Ancient was manifested on the Shashamanie Nyah Binghi grounds whereby he used his small funds to decorate the place making it show piece to behold, Incient Congo Rock was unrepentant and declared the divinity of Qadamawi Haile Selassie without apology, his global appeal was for mass repatriation to Africa and the continuous struggle for African liberation and redemption from Neo-colonialism

Congo Rocky had multiple ailments and had being been suffering for some time and had lost considerable amount of weight. It is hardly necessary to say more of his suffering however we express ourselves profoundly about the greatness of his character, and about his dedication to a purposeful life, his selfless devotion to help those in trouble, his respect for truth and justice and his burning patriotic zeal for Ethiopia all of which touch our heart deeply at this hour

So when the flesh is down InI will keep his memory high, knowing that Qadamawi Haile Selassie is forIver Even though the storm of aggression that upset the tranquility of the world was a severe test of ancient Congo Rocky moral endurance, it did not overwhelm him, it was to him a test of faith to obey the great and merciful Qadamawi Haile Selassie

Now is the Iwah of transition, as life journey closes .Ancient Congo Rocky, you have slept but although you depart from us physically, your works and your name will always remain among us

Dry up your tears and chant Rastafari, dry up your tears and chant fear well to Incient Priest, Patriarch and Iloved Ancestor Congo Rocky

Guidance and blessings

Ras Flako Tafari

Nyah Binghi Ancient Council

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THE DEFINITION OF ADAMARI

Adamari (Qedamawi or Qadamawi) is Ethiopian for ‘first’, and may also mean ‘old’ or ‘holy’. Haile Selassie was often reffered to as Qadamawi Haile Selassie I, The First, by reknown artists such as Bob Marley, Dennis Brown & Garnett Silk.

Global ‘internet treaty’ proposed

Deal would enshrine in law the founding principles of open standards and net neutrality, and protect the web from political interference.

By Claudine Beaumont, Technology Editor

Proposals put before the Internet Governance Forum would enshrine in law the principles of free speech and net neutrality for the web Photo: ALAMY

Under the proposed terms of the law, there would be cross-border co-operation between countries to identify and address security vulnerability and protect the network from possible cyber attacks or cyber terrorism.

It would also uphold rights to freedom of expression and association, and the principle of net neutrality, in which all internet traffic is treated equally across the network.

“The fundamental functions and the core principles of the internet must be preserved in all layers of the internet architecture with a view to guaranteeing the interoperability of networks in terms of infrastructures, services and contents,” reads the proposal.

“The end-to-end principle should be protected globally.”

The proposal was drawn up by the Council of Europe, an organisation, based in Strasbourg, with 47 member states that aims to promote human rights, the rule of law and democracy in Europe.

Senior figures within the internet industry have become increasingly concerned about the potential for government interference in the running of the web.

William Dutton, director of the Oxford Internet Institute, told technology blog Thinq that the recent Digital Economy Bill, in which the government sought to regulate and manage the internet unilaterally, was a good example of this.

“Everyone’s worried about national governments asserting regulatory authority over the internet,” he said.

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“I don’t concern myself with award. I’d been to the party enough times to know it really didn’t matter.” – Denzel Washington

Denzel is giving back to the babies as he has for many years in this vid CNN highlights his work to help children stay in school.

How Coke & Pepsi Could Save Us From High Fructose Corn Syrup by Robyn O’Brien

On November 6, 1984, a bomb went off in the food industry that forever changed the course of consumption: Coca-Cola and Pepsi announced plans to stop using sugar in their soft drinks, instead replacing it with high fructose corn syrup. With the launch of two press releases, U.S. sugar consumption decreased by more than 500,000 tons a year, according to historian James Bovard, driving sugar prices so high that it wrecked the market for sugar and replaced it with a thriving marketplace for high fructose corn syrup.

For decades, the government’s tariffs not only propped up the price of sugar but also the value of the plantations on which it was grown and the slaves that worked them. And then further distorting the marketplace for sugar, in 1934, the U.S. government went on to impose sugar import quotas.

So by the time 1984 rolled around, sugar had become an exorbitantly expensive sweetener in the United States and corporations like Coca Cola and PepsiCo were tired of paying the inflated price for this product ingredient.

So in a consolidated effort to manage costs, both corporations announced in November 1984 that they were going to replace high priced sugar with cost-saving high fructose corn syrup in their beverages. It was an unprecedented move that not only rocked the sugar industry, but also dramatically changed the history of food.

Today, over twenty years later, the jury is still out on the impact of this move. While members of the Corn Refiners Association fund ads urging us to believe that high fructose corn syrup is “natural” and presents little to no risk to our health, scientific evidence, unpopular in the corn industry, continues to mount that suggests otherwise.

As a result of this consumer concern, Coca Cola and Pepsi very often don’t use high fructose corn syrup in the products that they manufacture and sell in other countries, as reported in the June 2009 Consumer Reports magazine. They’ve simply taken high fructose corn syrup out of their products in other countries (or in some cases, never used it in the first place).

Now can you imagine if they were to do the same thing here in the United States and removed high fructose corn syrup from their beverages? What if Coca Cola and PepsiCo executed a strategy, much like they did in 1984, only in reverse, in a unified effort to remove high fructose corn syrup from their beverage lines in response to consumer demand?

Can you imagine how that press release might read?

Let’s consider what it might look like, just for a moment…..
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A Moment in Time–
New York City, New York and Atlanta, Georgia

In an unprecedented move to restore the integrity of the food supply, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo today announced that they will remove high fructose corn syrup from all of their beverages sold in the United States. The move is a surprising reversal of their 1984 decision in which both companies announced that they would include high fructose corn syrup in beverages.

In response to consumer demand and in recognition that high fructose corn syrup is often not used in beverages in other developed countries, Coca-Cola and Pepsi are removing high fructose corn syrup from their beverage lines in the United States beginning today.

With the move, Coca-Cola’s CEO said, “Coca-Cola has done a tremendous job of feeding the world as an established leader, creating an enormous opportunity to lead this change and restore the integrity of our food system.”

To launch the initiative, the corporations announced the “Make It Happen” campaign which has quickly caught fire, with both Coca-Cola and PepsiCo attracting creative and intellectual talent from around the world as individuals, partners and providers sought to be part of the solution to restore the integrity of the food supply.

As part of the “Make It Happen” campaign and in a wave of collaboration never before seen in the food industry, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo launched the “Do One Thing” initiative, recognizing that while no one can do everything, everyone can do one thing. The initiative urges its employees to suggest simple solutions to restoring the integrity of the food supply.

In an enormously well-received move, the corporations have called upon moms around the country to join them in taking action to restore the integrity of the food supply. Through social media tools that include Facebook chats, Twitter parties and email campaigns, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola have invited mothers to join them in encouraging Congress to repeal the sugar quotas put in place in the 1800s and the sugar tariffs put in place in the early 1900s in order to help restore an equilibrium to the price of these sugar in the marketplace, making it more affordable than high fructose corn syrup for both consumers and corporations alike.

With the launch of the initiative, PepsiCo’s CEO said, “We recognize the role all of us can play in restoring the integrity of the food supply, and we value the power of moms and the important role that they play to help make this happen.”

With skyrocketing rates of obesity, diabetes, cancer and allergies impacting the bottom lines of corporations and consumers, the launch of the “Make It Happen” campaign brings to light the depth of concern that consumers and corporations now share about the American food system and the industry funded science and the price distorting quotas, tariffs and subsidies upon which so much of it is built.

To learn more about the “Make It Happen” campaign, consumers are invited to visit their website, where Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have created tools and resources for beverage drinkers to learn more, “Do One Thing”, take “Baby Steps” and also contact members of Congress encouraging them to restore the market price of sugar by removing sugar quotas and tariffs that have been in place since the War of 1812.

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Now while this may only be a dream, can you imagine if all of us were to actually do this? If we were to collectively lend our voices to efforts urging Congress to restore the health of our food system? Can you imagine the impact that it might have?

It conjures up the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“The invariable mark of a dream is to see it come true.”

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America’s Six Most Hated Athletes Are All Black

© AP Photo

Bob Marley

WENN

The family of reggae legend Bob Marley has lost a lawsuit seeking ownership of his most famous tracks.

Executives at UMG Recordings were declared the rightful owners of copyrights to five albums that Marley recorded between 1973 and 1977 for Island Records.

The decision, which came down in Manhattan on Friday, is a defeat for Marley’s widow, Rita, and nine children, who had sought to recover millions of dollars in damages over UMG’s effort to “exploit” what they called “the quintessential Bob Marley sound recordings.”

The albums in the haul include “Catch a Fire,” “Natty Dread” and “Exodus” and were all recorded with Marley’s band the Wailers.

Watch: Bob Marley

Marley died of cancer in 1981, at age 36.

The Marley family accused UMG of intentionally withholding royalties from them and ignoring a 1995 agreement assigning them rights under the original recording agreements.

UMG also was accused of failing to consult with the family on key licensing decisions, including the use of Marley’s music as ringtones on AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile phones, court papers show.

But U.S. District Judge Denise Cote ruled that Bob Marley’s recordings were “works made for hire” as defined under U.S. copyright law, entitling UMG to be designated the owner of those recordings, for both the initial 28-year copyright terms and for renewals.

“Each of the agreements provided that the sound recordings were the ‘absolute property’ of Island,” Cote wrote. “Whether Marley would have recorded his music even if he had not entered the recording agreements with Island is beside the point.”

She said it was irrelevant that Marley might have maintained artistic control over the recording process. What mattered, she said, was that Island had a contractual “right” to accept or reject what he produced.

Cote also denied the family’s request for a ruling upholding its claims over digital downloads, citing ambiguity in a 1992 royalties agreement.

She directed the parties to enter court-supervised settlement talks and scheduled an Oct. 29 conference.

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Though it did shock many it doesn’t shock me one bit.

Charges That a Civil Rights Hero Was an FBI Spy Shouldn’t Shock Us

Photographer Ernest Withers at an exhibit of his photographs at the Art Institute of Philadelphia Photo: VICKI VALERIO/MCT/Newscom

by Barbara Ransby

I was up late the other night going over barely legible copies of declassified FBI documents from the 1940s and 1950s. I’m researching Eslanda and Paul Robeson, and the FBI documents reveal the enormous resources the government expended to spy on the Robesons for more than two decades. I was not surprised, then, when I woke up the next day to this week’s blockbuster news about Ernest Withers, a distinguished black photographer who died in 2007 and who, the Memphis Commercial Appeal declares, was paid by the FBI to spy on civil rights movement leaders during the 1960s.

The news came as a shock to many who knew Withers, including close friends and allies of Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a trusted photojournalist who was allowed into private, intimate gatherings where others could not go. But as I think of how government surveillance schemes have worked over the years, Withers’ story should not be too much of a surprise. I don’t know if the allegations against Withers are true; I have not seen the original documents. But I can say, from what I know of other informants and other cases, that it is wholly plausible.

In my research on civil rights movement organizer Ella Baker years ago, I scoured hundreds of letters, memos, and reports from various anonymous FBI informants. As I read, I wondered to myself, did she know she was being spied upon? Who were these people prying into her life and work? What a betrayal! Many of the documents explain why the informants were credible. They explain that he or she was “trusted” by the subject and therefore was a reliable source. Some documents explain that “the informant called the subject under the pretext of inviting her to dinner, and asked…” some detail the FBI needed to undermine Baker’s activism. Reading these documents, you have the unsettling feeling that her spies were not unfriendly strangers or hostile interrogators, but people who were friends and even confidants. Such was the the unsavory nature of the FBI’s work on the civil rights movement, and it mirrors how the anti-communist witch hunts of the McCarthy era unfolded.

Still, it was hardly unique. The Black Panther Party, an anti-police brutality group that grew into a larger political organization in the late 1960s, was a special target of FBI surveillance. The COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence) unit of the FBI was set up to focus largely on monitoring and undermining the activities of the Panthers, whose chapters eventually stretched from New York to Detroit to Oakland. They often reached out to disaffected urban youth who were angry and beaten down by the system, and didn’t know where to direct their frustrations. The Panthers offered a target for that anger, and an analysis to explain it. However, the nature of their work meant their recruits were often vulnerable. So, when the FBI looked to for spies, it turned to the Panther members themselves.

The tragic police killing of young Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Carter in their home in Chicago in 1969 was one result. The person who later admitted to setting Hampton and Carter up, telling the police all the details of where they were sleeping and how the apartment was laid out, was viewed as a committed organization insider. Informant William O’Neal was so trusted that he was one of party chair Fred Hampton’s bodyguards in 1969. Twenty-one years later, on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, O’Neal killed himself. His relatives speculated that he spied on the Panthers to save himself from prison time for an unrelated offense.

These stories remind us not only that our government has routinely violated the basic civil liberties of so many black activists over several generations, but it reminds us of the complexities and limitations of presumed racial loyalty. The Black Press was given access to movement events and meetings in the 1960s that white reporters were not. Why? It was assumed that a level of racial solidarity and loyalty existed. Maybe that was true. But maybe it wasn’t. We continue to project false expectations onto politicians and self-appointed race leaders because of phenotype rather than politics, ideas and other more tangible markers of “loyalty” to oppressed people. Everyone who looks like “us” is not a friend, and everyone who looks different is not automatically the enemy. This is a simple lesson that some of us still have to learn.

Who knows what motivated Ernest Withers, if the reports are indeed true, to use his access to the civil rights movement’s inner circles to aid the FBI and undermine the movement. Was it naivete, fear, greed or a combination of all three? Whatever the motives, his case is not unique.

Anyone interested in a glimpse into the extensive FBI surveillance of 1960s black leaders and activists, and many others, can go to the electronic reading room of the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) section on FBI.gov. Commonly requested files are online. Searching Dr. King’s name yields tens of thousands of documents. Others who were secretly investigated by the FBI include: United Farm Workers leader Ceasar Chavez; the venerable scholar, writer and activist, W.E. B. DuBois; and even the Black contralto, Marian Anderson. The agency cast its net widely.

Perhaps the best contemporary parallel to rampant and often unchecked governmental surveillance of activists in the 1960s is the current and persistent hype about the threat of terrorism. There remains much fear-mongering about domestic terrorists—lurking in sleeper cells, living next door, waiting to leap into action to cause untold havoc and mayhem at any moment. This kind of hysteria recruits spies, some who might have only their suspicions to offer, suspicions often animated by racism and xenophobia. Since 9/11, Arab Americans and American Muslims have suffered some of the results of overzealous citizen spying. We know that there was also illegal warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. peace groups in recent years by the National Security Agency. And “Democracy Now!” and other alternative media reported in June that the State Department is reviving its domestic spying program under a new name, replacing the TALON (Threat and Local Observation Notice), which was deemed illegal and shut down several years ago.

Withers may be gone, but government spying on American citizens engaged in many kinds of oppositional activity seems to be alive and well.

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Egyptian papyrus discovered in Irish bog