McDonald’s Workers Arrested at Protest Near Headquarters
More than 100 McDonald’s (MCD) employees and some labor and clergy members were arrested after protesting for increased wages near the fast-food chain’s headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois.
The event, the latest in a series of demonstrations by workers demanding $15-an-hour pay and the right to form a union, began at 1 p.m. local time yesterday, on the eve of McDonald’s Corp.’s shareholder meeting.
About 2,000 protesters, including about 325 McDonald’s workers in restaurant uniforms, stormed though the company’s campus entrance at Jorie Boulevard and Kroc Drive in Oak Brook, according to the organizers, holding signs that said, “We Are Worth More” and “My Union My Voice.” The Oak Brook Police Department estimated the number was 1,000 to 1,500.
Detroit not alone, expect more bankrupt cities: Expert
Michelle Fox | @MFoxCNBC 11 Hours AgoCNBC.com
Expect more U.S. cities to face bankruptcy like Detroit, former New York Lieutenant Gov. Richard Ravitch told CNBC’s “Street Signs” Thursday.
“There are many more [cities] that are facing enormous fiscal squeezes… who are cutting education, cutting infrastructure investments and borrowing as long as the bond market permits,” he said.
Ravitch, who is advising Detroit’s bankruptcy judge, wrote about his prediction in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week.
Millennial Vote/FacebookLast week Youth Engagement Fund and Project New America released a new survey on millennial ideology. Millennials—roughly defined as those aged 18 to 33—are my people. I tend to stick up for us. I tend to take heart in this generation’s support for marriage equality and ending the drug war, among other things…
But holy geez Gen Y, this is a poor showing. On measures from “creating jobs” to “making college affordable” to “protecting the rights of women,” millennials overwhelmingly said they favored greater government involvement. And when asked whether they would rather have government “off their backs” or “on their side,” 59 percent of millennials voted for friendly paternalism.
For the survey, Harstad Strategic Research polled more than 2,000 18- to 31-year-olds in March and April 2014. Of course, it should be noted that Youth Engagement Fund, Project New America, and Harstad are all progressive organizations. Maybe there’s some subtle linguistic bias driving these results?
Analyst says politicians who oppose Common Core are being rewarded at the ballot box
May 13, 2014
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Opposition to Common Core is proving politically beneficial, at least in the states of Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina.
PJMedia.com’s Tom Blumer writes in his latest blog, “At least a half-dozen victorious candidates in GOP state legislative contests in those three states … discovered that the key to motivating voters on their behalf was expressing genuine and vocal opposition to the federal government’s stealth imposition of the Common Core and testing regime in their schools.”
Blumer cites “a reliable longtime” activist who says Common Core opposition helped four Ohio Republicans win their primary races for the state House of Representatives last Tuesday.
“In the Buckeye State, Common Core polled as the number one issue of concern in the GOP primaries, even ahead of Gov. John Kasich’s authoritarian expansion of Medicaid,” Blumer notes.
The most stunning example of Common Core leading to political success was Tom Brinkman’s seven-point victory over incumbent Peter Stautberg.
“Brinkman’s trump card over the wishy-washy incumbent was his vocal opposition to Common Core,” Blumer writes. “Stautberg claims to have not taken a position (on the nationalized learning standards). My source calls BS on that; but in any event, convenient neutrality doesn’t cut it. It instead allows force-fed ‘Fed ed’ to become a permanent fixture of the educational landscape.”
Ignoring dramatic changes in tax rules since 1980 creates the false impression that income inequality is rising.
By MARTIN FELDSTEIN May 14, 2014 7:31 p.m. ET
Thomas Piketty has recently attracted widespread attention for his claim that capitalism will now lead inexorably to an increasing inequality of income and wealth unless there are radical changes in taxation. Although his book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” has been praised by those who advocate income redistribution, his thesis rests on a false theory of how wealth evolves in a market economy, a flawed interpretation of U.S. income-tax data, and a misunderstanding of the current nature of household wealth.
Mr. Piketty’s theoretical analysis starts with the correct fact that the rate of return on capital—the extra income that results from investing an additional dollar in plant and equipment—exceeds the rate of growth of the economy. He then jumps to the false conclusion that this difference between the rate of return and the rate of growth leads through time to an ever-increasing inequality of wealth and of income unless the process is interrupted by depression, war or confiscatory taxation. He advocates a top tax rate above 80% on very high salaries, combined with a global tax that increases with the amount of wealth to 2% or more.
His conclusion about ever-increasing inequality could be correct if people lived forever. But they don’t. Individuals save during their working years and spend most of their accumulated assets during retirement. They pass on some of their wealth to the next generation. But the cumulative effect of such bequests is diluted by the combination of existing estate taxes and the number of children and grandchildren who share the bequests.
The result is that total wealth grows over time roughly in proportion to total income. Since 1960, the Federal Reserve flow-of-funds data report that real total household wealth in the U.S. has grown at 3.2% a year while the real total personal income calculated by the Department of Commerce grew at 3.3%.
The second problem with Mr. Piketty’s conclusions about increasing inequality is his use of income-tax returns without recognizing the importance of the changes that have occurred in tax rules. Internal Revenue Service data, he notes, show that the income reported on tax returns by the top 10% of taxpayers was relatively constant as a share of national income from the end of World War II to 1980, but the ratio has risen significantly since then. Yet the income reported on tax returns is not the same as individuals’ real total income. The changes in tax rules since 1980 create a false impression of rising inequality.
In 1981 the top tax rate on interest, dividends and other investment income was reduced to 50% from 70%, nearly doubling the after-tax share that owners of taxable capital income could keep. That rate reduction thus provided a strong incentive to shift assets from low-yielding, tax-exempt investments like municipal bonds to higher yielding taxable investments. The tax data therefore signaled an increase in measured income inequality even though there was no change in real inequality.
The Tax Reform Act of 1986 lowered the top rate on all income to 28% from 50%. That reinforced the incentive to raise the taxable yield on portfolio investments. It also increased other forms of taxable income by encouraging more work, by causing more income to be paid as taxable salaries rather than as fringe benefits and deferred compensation, and by reducing the use of deductions and exclusions.
The 1986 tax reform also repealed the General Utilities doctrine, a provision that had encouraged high-income individuals to run their business and professional activities as Subchapter C corporations, which were taxed at a lower rate than their personal income. This corporate income of professionals and small businesses did not appear in the income-tax data that Mr. Piketty studied.
U.S. businesses are being destroyed faster than they’re being created
BY CHRISTOPHER INGRAHAM
May 5 at 2:51 pm
The American economy is less entrepreneurial now than at any point in the last three decades. That’s the conclusion of a new study out from the Brookings Institution, which looks at the rates of new business creation and destruction since 1978.
Not only that, but during the most recent three years of the study — 2009, 2010 and 2011 — businesses were collapsing faster than they were being formed, a first. Overall, new businesses creation (measured as the share of all businesses less than one year old) declined by about half from 1978 to 2011.
US economy slowed to 0.1 percent growth rate in Q1
Apr 30, 9:38 AM (ET)
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy slowed drastically in the first three months of the year as a harsh winter exacted a toll on business activity. The slowdown, while worse than expected, is likely to be temporary as growth rebounds with warmer weather.
Growth slowed to a barely discernible 0.1 percent annual rate in the January-March quarter, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. That was the weakest pace since the end of 2012 and was down from a 2.6 percent rate in the previous quarter.
Many economists said the government’s first estimate of growth in the January-March quarter was skewed by weak figures early in the quarter. They noted that several sectors — from retail sales to manufacturing output — rebounded in March. That strength should provide momentum for the rest of the year.
And on Friday, economists expect the government to report a solid 200,000-plus job gain for April.
(AP) In this March 26, 2014 picture, Jon Wyand works on a truck engine assembly line at… Full Image “While quarter one was weak, many measures of sentiment and output improved in March and April, suggesting that the quarter ended better than it began,” said Dan Greenhaus, chief investment strategist at global financial services firm BTIG.
Still, the anemic growth last quarter is surely a topic for discussion at the Federal Reserve’s latest policy meeting, which ends Wednesday afternoon. No major changes are expected in a statement the Fed will release. But it will likely announce a fourth reduction in its monthly bond purchases because of the gains the economy has been making. The Fed’s bond purchases have been intended to keep long-term loan rates low.
How Obama lost friends and influence in the Brics By Edward Luce
The president’s real pivot is not to Asia but to America, inspired by domestic sentiment
When Barack Obama took office, he pledged a new overture to the world’s emerging powers. Today each of the Brics – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – is at loggerheads with America, or worse. Last month four of the five abstained in a UN vote condemning the fifth’s annexation of Crimea. Next month India is likely to elect as its new leader Narendra Modi, who says he has “no interest in visiting America other than to attend the UN in New York”. As the world’s largest democracy, and America’s most natural ally among the emerging powers, India’s is a troubling weathervane. How on earth did Mr Obama lose the Brics?
Some of it was unavoidable. Early in his first term Mr Obama called for a “reset” of US relations with Russia. His overture was warmly received by Dmitry Medvedev, then Russia’s president, who was considerably less anti-western than his predecessor, Vladimir Putin. Unfortunately for Mr Obama, Ukraine, Pussy Riot and many others, Mr Putin repossessed the presidency. The US president can hardly be blamed for that. Things have gone downhill since then.
The trajectory of US relations with China has also been in the wrong direction. Within his first year in office, Mr Obama made his much-feted “G2” visit to China, in which he offered Beijing a global partnership to solve the world’s big problems, from climate change to financial imbalances. Alas, the Chinese did not feel ready to tackle problems on a global level that they were still struggling with at home. Mr Obama was rudely spurned by his hosts.
‘Ridiculous’: Administration punts on Keystone, Obama faces Dem revolt
The Obama administration once again has punted on a final decision for the Keystone XL pipeline, announcing ahead of the holiday weekend it is extending a key review period indefinitely — a move that could push off a determination until after the midterm elections.
Republicans, as well as red-state Democrats who want the proposed Canada-to-Texas pipeline approved, slammed the administration for the delay. Democrats even threatened to find ways to go around the president to get the project approved.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous that this well over five year long process is continuing for an undetermined amount of time,” Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., said in a statement.
Republican Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry called the decision “shameful,” noting that another spring construction season will come and go without the project.
The administration had been in the middle of a 90-day review period for federal agencies assessing an environmental study from the State Department.
But the State Department said Friday it is giving agencies “additional time” to weigh in, in part because of ongoing litigation before the Nebraska Supreme Court which could affect the pipeline’s route. If the route changes, officials made clear the State Department reserves the right to conduct another environmental impact study to include more public comments, which could delay the process more.
Buried deep on the website of the U.S. Census Bureau is a number every American citizen, and especially those entrusted with public office, should know. It is 86,429,000.
That is the number of Americans who in 2012 got up every morning and went to work — in the private sector — and did it week after week after week.
These are the people who built America, and these are the people who can sustain it as a free country. The liberal media have not made them famous like the polar bear, but they are truly a threatened species.
It is not a rancher with a few hundred head of cattle that is attacking their habitat, nor an energy company developing a fossil fuel. It is big government and its primary weapon — an ever-expanding welfare state.
First, let’s look at the basic taxonomy of the full-time, year-round American worker.
Obama has Proposed 442 Tax Hikes Since Taking Office
Since taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama has formally proposed a total of 442 tax increases, according to an Americans for Tax Reform analysis of Obama administration budgets for fiscal years 2010 through 2015.
The 442 total proposed tax increases does not include the 20 tax increases Obama signed into law as part of Obamacare.
“History tells us what Obama was able to do. This list reminds us of what Obama wanted to do,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.
The number of proposed tax increases per year is as follows:
-79 tax increases for FY 2010
-52 tax increases for FY 2011
-47 tax increases for FY 2012
-34 tax increases for FY 2013
-137 tax increases for FY 2014
-93 tax increases for FY 2015
Perhaps not coincidentally, the Obama budget with the lowest number of proposed tax increases was released during an election year: In February 2012, Obama released his FY 2013 budget, with “only” 34 proposed tax increases. Once safely re-elected, Obama came back with a vengeance, proposing 137 tax increases, a personal record high for the 44th President.
In addition to the 442 tax increases in his annual budget proposals, the 20 signed into law as part of Obamacare, and the massive tobacco tax hike signed into law on the sixteenth day of his presidency, Obama has made it clear he is open to other broad-based tax increases.
During an interview with Men’s Health in 2009, when asked about the idea of national tax on soda and sugary drinks, the President said, “I actually think it’s an idea that we should be exploring.”
During an interview with CNBC’s John Harwood in 2010, Obama said a European-style Value-Added-Tax was “something that would be novel for the United States.”
Obama’s statement was consistent with a pattern of remarks made by Obama White House officials refusing to rule out a VAT.
“Presidents are judged by history based on what they did in power. But presidents can only enact laws when the Congress agrees,” said Norquist. “Thus a record forged by such compromise tells you what a president — limited by congress — did rather than what he wanted to do.”
Read more: https://www.atr.org/obama-has-proposed-442-tax-hikes-taking-office#ixzz2ywy1aEkN
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Why America’s poisonous politics makes ‘Market Leninism’ an attractive alternative
By John Avlon
1:09PM GMT 29 Mar 2014
“Market Leninism” has become the biggest challenge to our society, writes John Avlon. And the problem with this alternative to Western governance is that it promises prosperity at the expense of individual freedom – while dismissing democracy as ineffective
So much for the end of history. Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall gave rise to the idea that liberal capitalist democracy would carry the human race inexorably toward broad sunlit uplands, we are confronted with the ugly fact that culture outlasts politics.
The ideology of communism may have ended up on the ash heap of history like Nazism before it, but now “Market Leninism” is taking its place as a challenge to liberty in the 21st Century.
The fault lines reflect Cold War regions.
Russia and China and some of their old satellite states have traded Marx and Lenin for Market Leninism.
The militaristic one-party state endures – but the nomenklatura now attracts global capital, swilling champagne in jet set nightclubs instead of behind dacha walls.
Vatican Chief Justice: Obama’s Policies ‘Have Become Progressively More Hostile Toward Christian Civilization’
March 24, 2014 11:14 AM
VATICAN CITY (CBS St. Louis) — The Vatican’s chief justice feels that President Barack Obama’s policies have been hostile toward Christians.
In an interview with Polonia Christiana magazine –and transcribed by Life Site News — Cardinal Raymond Burke said that Obama “promotes anti-life and anti-family policies.”
“It is true that the policies of the president of the United States have become progressively more hostile toward Christian civilization. He appears to be a totally secularized man who aggressively promotes anti-life and anti-family policies,” Burke told the magazine.
The former archbishop of St. Louis stated that Obama is trying to “restrict” religion.
Data shows millions of Americans falling out of the workforce
The number of native-born, working-age Americans who aren’t working has shot up by almost 9 million since 2007, and by almost 15 million since 2000, according to a new report by the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that favors reduced immigration.
By late 2012, roughly 50 million native-born working-age Americans weren’t working, up from 40 million in 2000, according to the March 13 report, titled “Still No Evidence of a Labor Shortage.”
The army of idle Americans is important for the immigration debate, because advocates for greater immigration say foreign workers are needed to fill slots that can’t be taken by Americans.
Insurers Seek Healthy Enrollees, Doctors Educate New Patients, Employers Wrestle With Added Costs
On Jan. 1, the key provisions of the Affordable Care Act took effect. Americans gained access to new health plans subsidized by federal dollars. Insurers no longer can turn away people with existing conditions. Millions are now eligible for new Medicaid benefits.
But the federal law also upended existing health-insurance arrangements for millions of people. Companies worry about the expense of providing new policies, some hospitals aren’t seeing the influx of new patients they expected to balance new costs and entrepreneurs say they may hire more part-time workers to avoid offering more coverage.
Tell Us
How Has the Health Law Affected You?
The law’s true impact will play out over years. It will depend in part on whether backers overcome serious early setbacks, including crippling glitches in the new online insurance marketplaces and many states’ rejection of the Medicaid expansion. But another obstacle the law faces is pushback from some consumers and industry over the higher costs, complex rules and mandatory requirements it imposes. ( Watch doctors, business owners and patients share their stories about the health law, and tell us your own. )
So far, 3.3 million have signed up for plans through the new government marketplaces, federal officials said Feb. 12. About 6.3 million were determined eligible for Medicaid through the exchanges over the final three months of 2013, including people who might have been able to enroll without the law.
The law’s potential for change can be seen in the lives of people like Jaime Hood, a 37-year-old in Belton, Mo. She suffers from hemophilia and had been rejected for coverage until this year. Now, she will have access to drugs and other treatments she sometimes skipped.
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