Millionaire’s tax is on target is other one of the two stories that MichaelK really wanted me to look at. (Instead I jumped on The Occupied Wall Street Journal.)

The story starts off well:

Here’s one idea that could unite Main Street voters with Occupy Wall Street protesters — raise taxes only on individuals making more than $1 million a year and use that revenue to pay for President Barack Obama’s jobs bill, which is made up of bipartisan policy proposals to get the economy moving again.

It is an audacious idea, brewed first by Sen. Charles Schumer and backed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as preferable to the president’s repeated call to roll back the Bush tax cuts on any household making more than $250,000 a year.

There are several reasons that this new millionaire’s tax is both smart politics and smart policy.

First, an astounding 75% of Americans back raising taxes on individuals making more than $1 million a year, according to an October 5 Washington Post/ABC News poll. This includes 89% of Democrats, 75% of independents, 57% of Republicans and 55% of Tea Party supporters. This isn’t subtle — it’s a slam-dunk.

In my opinion it really veers off with:

The best option of all in my book would not be a targeted surcharge but broad-based tax reform that could actually lower all rates to spur growth while closing some (but not all) loopholes to raise revenues. This is the broad goal set out by the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission, a vision championed by Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and even once campaigned on by a candidate named Barack Obama.

Whoa! Whoa! and Whoa!.  This is the kind of proposal where the devil really is in the details.  First of all it implies a buy-in to the idea that we need to lower taxes to spur growth.  It is actually the balance between tax collections and government spending, and the exact nature of that spending that probably has more to do with growth than just the level of taxation.

Secondly, without knowing the details, we don’t know who really gets to pay more and who gets to pay less.  If the plan shifts more of the tax burden onto the middle class and off the super wealthy, then I would definitely be against it.  If the plan shifted the tax burden more fairly to the people who have lots of money but don’t invest it in our economy, then I would say yes.

I just get the nervous feeling whenever I hear “Lower the tax rates and close loopholes” that this is code for lessening the taxes that the ultra-wealthy and corporations pay.  The proponents of such an action would have to go a long way to convince me that my fears are not warranted.

Companies use fuzzy math in job claims; candidates still buy in is one of the two stories that MichaelK really wanted me to look at. (Instead I jumped on The Occupied Wall Street Journal.)

Oil companies aren’t the only ones promising jobs if Washington gives them their way. A wide array of businesses are saying they can help solve the country’s unemployment crisis if only the government would roll back some regulations, approve their big mergers or lower their taxes.

Yet the industry often touts debatable jobs numbers. Mergers between big companies, for instance, tend to result in layoffs rather than new positions overall. And a closer look shows that API’s ads exaggerate the effect that looser drilling policies would have on employment; more than half of its projected job growth would come between 2015 and 2030.

Nonetheless, some policymakers and presidential candidates have cited these statistics as they echo companies’ claims about creating jobs.

“We just learned today that if the federal government would pull back on all of the regulatory restrictions on American energy production, we could see 1.2 million jobs created in the United States,” Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) said at a Sep. 7 Republican presidential debate.

An article in CPA Letter Daily sent to me by MichaelK finally got me to look at The Occupied Wall Street Journal.  I had seen links to it before, but had always had other priorities and never got around to looking  at it.  The fact that this is using Kickstarter to get funding for this is a novel idea to me.

You can also see a copy of the first edition of The Occupied Wall Street Journal from this blog.

This is the precis to one of the courses being taught at the Free School Univeristy at OccupyBoston.

TAKING BACK OUR ECONOMY!

By Julie Matthaei in Occupy Boston: Free School University ·

This video gives you Elizabeth Warren’s story in her own words.

I know, she can’t really say stuff like this.

Several people have posted this on the real Elizabeth Warren’s Facebook page.

Here are a few snippets from the article A New Bush Era or a Push Era? by Amy Goodman posted on Nation Of Change,

Back when Barack Obama was still just a U.S. senator running for president, he told a group of donors in a New Jersey suburb, “Make me do it.” He was borrowing from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used the same phrase (according to Harry Belafonte, who heard the story directly from Eleanor Roosevelt) when responding to legendary union organizer A. Philip Randolph’s demand for civil rights for African-Americans.

…

When forces used to having the ear of the most powerful person on earth whisper their demands in the Oval Office, the president must see a force more powerful outside his window, whether he likes it or not, and say, “If I do that, they will storm the Bastille.” If there’s no one out there, we are all in big trouble.

That last paragraph in particular, that’s all I have been saying, folks.

It may come as no surprise that the story by Harry Belafonte was told to Amy Goodman in an interview I have posted on this blog, Harry Belafonte Discusses President Obama.

I wish that Elizabeth Warren would acknowledge that Occupy Wall Street is doing her and Obama the favor that both FDR and Obama asked for.

This is our Elizabeth Warren speaking out the way we like to hear her.

Now if she could just say, “That too big to fail problem that I said needs to be corrected, that’s exactly the point that the OccupyWallSt movement is trying to make. If their activism is needed to help get the message across, then I am all for it.”

Raw Story has provided the transcript for Robert Reich’s video 7 Lies.

1. Tax cuts for the rich trickle down to everyone else.
2. Higher taxes on the rich would hurt the economy and slow job growth.
3. Shrinking government generates more jobs.
4. Cutting the budget deficit now is more important than boosting the economy.
5. Medicare and Medicaid are the major drivers of budget deficits.
6. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.
7. It’s unfair that lower-income Americans don’t pay income tax.

Van Jones: ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protesters have moral clarity provided the replay of the video and these quotes:

In an interview with MoveOn.org, former Obama adviser Van Jones said that “Occupy Wall Street” may lack message clarity but had great moral clarity.

“They’ve got moral clarity,” Jones, leader of the new American Dream Movement, said “They’re as clear as a bell, and that’s what’s been missing.