Cain’s 9-9-9 Windfall for the Wealthy Deepens Debt and Hikes Middle Class Taxes
October 13, 2011 No Comment
If nothing else, Herman Cain is a man who is very sure of himself. This week, Cain once again declared God told him to run for President . But on the same day Senate Republicans continued their unprecedented obstructionism by blocking President Obama’s jobs bill, Cain’s own 9-9-9 plan finally started to come under scrutiny. As it turns out, Cain’s simple scheme -like virtually every other recent GOP proposal – would produce mountains of debt and massively shift the tax burden to middle class Americans as the wealthy received yet another windfall from the U.S. Treasury. Of course, you’d never know from Cain’s confident prediction during Tuesday night’s Bloomberg GOP presidential debate . His prescription? Two things. Present a bold plan to grow this economy, which I have put my 9-9-9 plan on the table, and it starts with throwing out the current tax code and putting in the 9-9-9 plan. Secondly, get serious about bringing down the national debt. The only way we’re going to do that is, the first year that I’m president and I oversee a fiscal year budget, make sure that revenues equals [sic] spending. If we stop adding to the national debt, we can bring it down. The former pizza magnate might want to check his math. Because even Herman Cain never cut a slice so big. To “make sure that revenues equal spending,” Herman Cain would have to cut roughly $1.8 trillion (or 47 percent!) from the nation’s $3.8 trillion budget . Because as Bloomberg News explained, Cain’s two-step plan to blow up the current income tax, end both the capital gains and estate taxes and replace them with flat 9 percent individual, corporate and sales tax rates would unleash new rivers of red ink: Following the broad contours of Cain’s plan, the U.S. would have collected almost $2 trillion in 2010, according to a Bloomberg News calculation based on data from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. The U.S. actually collected almost $2.2 trillion that year, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget… Using 2010 figures, Cain’s plan would have collected $922.1 billion in revenue from the national sales tax with no exemptions, $912.7 billion at a 9 percent individual income tax with few deductions or other tax benefits, and $127.7 billion from a 9 percent tax on U.S. corporate income with no deductions. The federal government in 2010 actually collected $898.5 billion from individuals, including levies on capital gains; $191.4 billion from the corporate income tax; $864.8 billion from Social Security and retirement taxes; $141 billion in other taxes, such as estate and gift taxes; and $66 billion in excise taxes. This doesn’t include the taxes levied by states on retail sales and property. If anything, Bloomberg’s analysis understates the magnitude of the revenue problem. For example, in pre-recession 2007, total tax revenue was $2.6 trillion. The Center for American Progress estimated Cain’s 9-9-9 plan would have brought in only $1.3 trillion and thus “cut federal revenue in half.” It’s no wonder CAP’s Michael Linden concluded President Cain’s would be “bigger than any deficit since WWII, including the deficits of the past three years.” But that’s hardly the only poison in pizza man Herman Cain’s secret sauce for Americans. As Center for American Progress Vice President for Economic Policy Michael Ettlinger put it: “[Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan] would be the biggest tax shift from the wealthy to the middle-class in the history of taxation, ever, anywhere, and it would bankrupt the country.” Because Cain’s 9 percent national sales tax makes no mention of a personal exemption , as economists including former Reagan Treasury official Bruce Bartlett : This means that the 47 percent of tax filers who now pay no federal income taxes will pay 9 percent on their total income. And elimination of the payroll tax won’t even help half of them because the earned income tax credit, which Mr. Cain would abolish, offsets both their income tax liability and their payroll tax payment as well. Meanwhile, the reduction of the top income tax rate from 35% to 9%, the zeroing out of the capital gains tax, and the elimination of the estate and gift taxes would mean yet another payday for the gilded-class, courtesy of working Americans. As Bartlett pointed out : Mr. Cain would abolish all taxes on capital gains. Such taxes typically generate more than $100 billion in federal revenue annually, according to the Tax Policy Center. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, two-thirds of all capital gains are reported by those with incomes over $1 million. The result, as CAP’s Linden concluded , would be an unprecedented downward shift of the tax burden coupled with a jaw-dropping upward redistribution of wealth in the United States: Someone in the bottom quintile of earners — who currently pays about 2 percent of his or her income in federal taxes — would pay about 18 percent under Cain’s plan (9 percent on every dollar they make, plus 9 percent on every dollar they spent, which would likely be close to all of them). A middle-class individual would see his or her taxes go from about 14 percent to about 18 percent. But someone in the richest one percent of Americans would see his or her tax rate fall from about 28 percent to about 11 percent. As ABC News concluded, the “9-9-9 Plan Would Almost Double Taxes on Middle Class”: If you have a family of four with an income of just under $50,000, they would pay more under the Cain plan. Currently, they are taxed at just less than 7 percent and pay $3,400 in income tax. Under Cain’s plan, they would be taxed at 9 percent or pay $4,500. That’s $1,100 more. Although the family would save almost $4,000 in Social Security taxes, it would have to give up the child tax credit of $4,000. Furthermore, it would pay an additional national sales tax of 9 percent on everything purchased, including groceries and clothes, which totals about $2,000. That means under the Cain plan that family would be almost doubling its taxes, going from $3,400 to $6,500. Of course, if you have a sinking feeling that you’ve seen this movie before, that’s because you have. The Bush tax cuts , after all, siphoned off over $2 trillion from the U.S. Treasury in their first decade, and if made permanent, would drain another $4 trillion in the years to come. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities ( CBPP ) found that the Bush tax cuts accounted for almost half of the mushrooming deficits during his tenure. As another CBPP analysis forecast, over the next 10 years, the Bush tax cuts if made permanent will contribute more to the U.S. budget deficit than the Obama stimulus, the TARP program, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and revenue lost to the recession put together . And while those upper-class tax cuts produced the lowest federal tax burden 60 years in the highest income inequality in 80 , during Bush’s days in the Oval Office America’s so-called “job creators” produced a meager one million jobs. And now, Bush’s would-be Republican successors would make things much, much worse. 235 House Republicans and 40 GOP Senators voted for the Ryan budget would deliver $4.2 trillion in tax cuts while raising the onus on working Americans. Mitt Romney’s plan would cost the Treasury an estimated $6.5 trillion over the next 10 years even as he and his fellow One Percenters pocketed massive tax breaks. (Tim Pawlenty’s $11 trillion budgetary disaster was even worse.) But when it comes to red ink and wealth redistribution, Godfather’s pizza man Herman Cain takes the cake. Which is why Cain’s God apparently wanted him to run for President. As Edward Kleinbard , a former chief of staff to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation put it: “Either Herman Cain is the tax messiah or is proposing a system that has no correspondence to real-world tax systems.” On that second point, Americans can be certain.
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I was thirty-five when I had my first child. This means I had thirty-five years (give or take) to fantasize about who that child would be. I had lists of baby names when I was in elementary school and dreamed of bringing my daughter home from the hospital and cooing over her every expression. A closet full of adorable dresses was a given, as was a bookshelf full of Nancy Drew mysteries and the entire Little House on the Prairie collection. I knew that we’d be thick as thieves and she’d share her secrets with me. There wasn’t a thing about her and her life that I hadn’t considered, except the chance that “she” might be a “he.” When I got pregnant, a rudimentary understanding of probabilities would have prepared me for the possibility that I’d have a boy, but it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t get my XX chromosome swaddled in pink. I am certain my husband, who generally has a better grasp of reality than I do, understood the odds, but he doesn’t like to crush my dreams, so he kept his mouth shut. (I was also a very hormonal pregnant woman, which may have had something to do with it). To say I was stunned when my doctor’s assistant told us we were having a boy would be an understatement. To my credit, when I heard the word “penis” I managed not to break down sobbing until the woman waving the magic sonogram wand left my husband and me alone in the examining room. But once the door shut, I lost it. What the hell was I going to do with a boy? I had no interest in cars or trains. I was incapable of building anything and preferred Dirty Dancing or Steel Magnolias to football. With the exception of Farmer Boy, the Little House series was out. This was NOT what I had planned. I had planned on tea parties and pigtails, dammit, not mud pies and ripped jeans. To help ease me into my new reality, my husband suggested we hit a local store to pick out some baby clothes. This was a well-intentioned, but seriously misguided idea. This level of shock was not going to be fixed by a cute hoodie and a pair of miniature corduroys. This called for vodka (which I couldn’t have), a box of chocolate (which, given the amount of weight I had gained even in this early stage of my pregnancy I shouldn’t have) and a long, long phone call with my oldest friend (which I did have, and, God love her, she got it). Has anyone else felt this way, or was I alone in my sense of disappointment? Polls have found that people do have preferences for the sex of a child, which suggests that someone out there knows what I’m talking about. I’m not saying that people aren’t happy to have whatever children they have – but do parents have expectations that they have to realign when they discover that they’re bringing home a son when they expected a daughter (or vice-versa)? For my part, I knew how lucky I was – I was able to get pregnant, my baby was healthy and I had the resources to take care of him. It still took me about three days to pull myself out of my funk. I ate that box of chocolate, cried on my husband’s shoulder and used piles of Kleenex. (I did not, however, have the vodka.) But, I was going to be a mom. I was going to get it together. So I did. And I started dreaming about my son. I bought Legos, jeans and polo shirts, and covered the nursery with car decals. I found books about pirates and things that go zoom and learned who Bob the Builder was. (I still find him a little creepy). People gave us camouflage swaddling blankets and Ugli dolls instead of Raggedy Ann. We ditched the list of girl’s names and agreed on a name we loved for our little guy. When he was born, I had the rush of instantaneous love that everyone only tries to describe…. The biggest surprise of it all, however, is that having a boy is better than I could have ever imagined. My son and stepson can fill the house with teeth-chattering amounts of noise, but my son idolizes his big brother and his big brother adores him in return. Their need to wrestle (and my husband’s need to join in) baffles me, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve replaced the books of my childhood with funnier ones about bugs, aliens, bodily functions and monsters. I still suck at building things, but I’ve learned the proper name of nearly every construction vehicle in existence and take great pride in my boy’s ability to name them from the backseat of our car while speeding along the interstate or puttering around town. I’ve discovered a love for ripped jeans, dirty hands, and miniature tool boxes and don’t mind that, although I give him every opportunity to bake cookies and play with dolls, my son prefers race cars and climbing on things to more sedate pursuits. Even though I am completely outnumbered in every way as the lone woman in our house, I don’t long for pigtails or pink dresses. Instead, I safely packed away that first pair of cords and hoodie as a reminder of everything that was perfect and small and surprising about the first year of my son’s life and each unexpected joy since. Maybe I finally learned what a great philosopher, Mick Jagger, knew all along — you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.
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Sometimes movement conservative actors perform deeds that are so dark and disgusting that it makes me ashamed. Ashamed of their cruelty towards their fellow human beings. I won’t trace the roots of the movement conservatives players here or repeat the stories of their bowing to the shrine of Ayn Rand narcissistic greed and arrogance, but we know the major players. Just think of Jack Abramoff , Paul Ryan, Alan Greenspan, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist. For all his many transgressions against American families, Grover’s K Street Project ranks up there with the worst of the worst. At this moment in time, the U.S. has an incredibly bad economy, punctuated by high unemployment and staggering wealth inequality throughout the country. Students, recent and older college graduates, working class families and just about every one under the sun has been affected by the global financial collapse. As the Occupy Wall Street protests began to expand around the country, the conservatives tried to downplay the protests by saying the protesters were just too lazy to work. As a response to this unparalleled financial inequality that now pervades our nation, a small minded conservative pundit tries to counter the protests with his own idiocy. You know him because CNN hired him: Erick Erickson. His response to the ” We are the 99 percent ” website, in which regular people document all the hardships they’ve had to endure as the top one percent sits fat and happy is to create his own site, named ” The 53%ers ,” or something ludicrous like that. Gawker has a nice rundown on it . Did you know that if you are uninsured or jobless, you should just suck it up? That if you’re overworked or underemployed, you should be thankful? Learn all that—and more!—at “We Are the 53%,” the right wing’s incredibly depressing response to Occupy Wall Street! “We Are the 53%” was created thought up by CNN’s chief goat-fucking correspondent Erick Erickson as a response to ” We Are the 99 Percent ,” an Occupy Wall Street-affiliated blog that collects the stories of the underemployed, overworked, debt-ridden and uninsured victims of the recession. The blog, run by conservative filmmaker Mike Wilson, gets its name from the popular (and wildly simplistic !) Republican talking point that only 53 percent of households pay federal income taxes, and Erickson himself sets the tone: The poor dear has to work three jobs. Notice he doesn’t say what they are. My father had to work twelve hours a day down in Manhattan’s Flower Market from 5am, then drive a cab for about eight hours a night part time and then he took every carpentry job he could find on the side, but hey, going on CNN is really a heavy burden to behold. I haven’t seen anything this moronic in a long line. Clearly, Frank Luntz’s hands were nowhere to be found on this one. We’ll be honest: when your three jobs include “appearing on CNN” and “starting Tumblrs,” our sympathy is… somewhat limited. Also, if your house can’t sell, you probably should blame Wall Street, because the subprime mortgage crisis and housing market crash really is Wall Street’s fault. And the thing about “complaining” is that it’s kind of how politics works! But what makes “We Are the 53%” so heartbreaking isn’t that its contributors are enormous jerks—it’s that so many of them could just as easily be writing in to We Are the 99 Percent. Like the guy on the left, who can “barely afford” his rent. Or the “former marine” in the center who hasn’t had “4 consecutive days off in 4 years.” The phrase “I don’t have health insurance” pops up frequently on “We Are the 53%,” but not as a cry for help or an indictment of a broken system. Here, it’s a badge of pride… Really, this is what you’re going with, Erick? Alex Pareene has a nice take down of EE’s lamebrain exercise in gibberish-conservative thinking. The tragic, hilarious “We Are the 53 percent” movement The project was kicked off by Erick Erickson, who announced that he works “three jobs,” by which he means being a professional television pundit, radio pundit and Internet pundit. There is a stunning amount of cognitive dissonance, misplaced resentment and class revulsion going on, even for a conservative Web project. The site can’t even manage to correctly represent that 53 percent, with multiple contributors very clearly belonging to the 47 percent of people who make up the supposed parasite class. There is a blog dedicated to this confused minority. The best example is obviously this dog. Let’s get this out of the way early: Pretty much every adult American pays taxes. Workers who are too poor to pay federal income taxes still pay payroll taxes, and property taxes if they own their home. Even the unemployed pay sales taxes. The poorest Americans — people who make an average of $12,500 a year — pay, on average, 16 percent of their paltry income in taxes. That is less than every other demographic, but the point of a progressive tax system is that 16 percent of a poor person’s income is a hell of a lot more meaningful to that person than 30 percent of a millionaire’s. It’s a simple concept, and one that most Americans agree with. And that simplicity and popularity is why the conservative movement has spent 100 years attempting to muddy the debate with misinformation. (They are quite dedicated, actually, to class warfare, in that they seek to align the shrinking middle with the elites in a war against the downtrodden.) So a good number of people who pay no federal income taxes are simply lucky enough to be impoverished. The rest are beneficiaries of tax breaks and loopholes championed most vocally by Republicans. A member of “the 1 percent” (or, more accurately, the tenth-of-1 percent) likely considers these harried taxpayers Talk radio, Fox News and other transmitters of movement conservatism have fostered in a generation of hatred directed squarely at the left. It’s not just that they have to disagree with progressive policies, it’s that they train millions to reject the notion that the Democratic Party should exist. And they wish to delete us out of existence in the same way Glenn Beck eloquently wished that I would be wiped off the face of the map in a mudslide. Government programs like The New Deal were designed and implemented because the country witnessed the decades of destruction inflicted upon the American people who were not fortunate to be part of the upper class and they couldn’t bear it anymore. Most of these lunatic 53%ers probably have prospered from at least one government program already in their lives. Shame on Erick Erickson, Shame, shame, shame. enlarge Credit: connectthedotsusa. Family Income Growth
Continue reading …President Obama scored a victory with the passage of a trio of free-trade pacts yesterday, marking America’s biggest trade expansion in nearly 20 years. The House and Senate both approved the pacts with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama. While the Latin American pacts may have little impact, the South Korean…
Continue reading …MSNBC’s Schultz: ‘Damn Democrats’ Not Supporting Obama Enough, ‘Damn Right I’m a Tax and Spend Liberal’
October 13, 2011 No CommentOn Wednesday's the Ed Show, MSNBC host Ed Schultz berated centrist Democratic Senators Ben Nelson and Jon Tester as “turncoast Democrats” for voting against President Obama recent economic plan, lambasted Democrats for not doing more to call out their centrist colleague and support and Occupy Wall Street Movement, and advised Democrats to embrace the term “tax and spend liberal.” Schultz: Here's what the Dems need to do. You're damn right I'm a tax and spend liberal. It's time to tax the top one percent and spend it on the working folk of America who need a job, who need a school, who need some health care, all of this. Yes, I like that. I'm a tax and spend liberal. I want to tax those who've had all the breaks over the past 30 years and I want to make sure the working folk of America have a shot. He ended up accusing Democrats of letting down the 20-somethings who supported Obama: How many new people were brought into the process, the 20-somethings that lived with Bush, that lived with Cheney and saw what they did to this country. And president obama brings in all these new people and you damn Democrats, all you've done is let them down. A lot of these protesters down at Wall Street and around the country are 20-somethings who feel disenfranchised because they were meant to believe that they could make a difference. And then they see all this obstruction, and then they see Democrats who don't have the guts to stand up to the wealthiest americans in this country and tell them they need to pay more. Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Wednesday, October 12, The Show on MSNBC: ED SCHULTZ: Senate Republicans and two turncoat Democrats – and that's exactly what they are – turncoat Democrats are standing in the way of creating millions of Americans jobs. Late Tuesday night, the Senate stopped the American jobs bill dead in its tracks. The 99 percent, I think, have every reasonin the world to be out on the streets after this vote. Washington is completely dysfunctional because elected officials, they are brain dead to what the American people really want and need. It's no wonder that congress has a record low approval rating of 13 percent. Not a single Republican voted to fund schools, build roads, or give middle class Americans a freaking tax break. Just a little tax break. Freshman Democratic Senator John Tester along with all-time sellout Senator Ben Nelson voted against taxing millionaires in their back yard of Montana and Nebraska respectively. Nelson didn't vote for the $447 billion package because, quote, “it represents billions of dollars in new spending and more taxes.” You know, that reminds me of the old bullet point, so we got to hold it right there, folks. This is the, I think, perfect time for liberals to destroy the tax and spend bullet point that the Democrats have had to put up with for years. Here's what the Dems need to do. You're damn right I'm a tax and spend liberal. It's time to tax the top one percent and spend it on the working folk of America who need a job, who need a school, who need some health care, all of this. Yes, I like that. I'm a tax and spend liberal. I want to tax those who've had all the breaks over the past 30 years and I want to make sure the working folk of America have a shot. President Obama, although, is not focused on Nelson or tester. He's laying the blame on the feet of the Republicans. [PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA] SCHULTZ: President Obama needs to just keep hammering the Republicans for their record number of filibusters. Lay it out there every day, Mr. President. Tonight on the Ed Show, we're making every no vote accountable for the American jobs they rejected. For the next hour, watch the ticker at the botto of the screen to see how many jobs are being obstructed by the Senate. The numbers come from WhiteHouse.gov. California Congresswoman Linda Sanchez nailed the obstructors in the Senate on my radio show today. REP. LINDA SANCHEZ (D-CA) AUDIO: These are not patriots. People who love this country want to see jobs created. SCHULTZ AUDIO: They don't love this country? SANCHEZ AUDIO: No, I don't think they love this country. They're not concerned about the economic well being of the country as a whole. SCHULTZ AUDIO: And they are so infatuated with defeating President Obama that they have, you would label them as not patriotic? SANCHEZ AUDIO: Yes, absolutely. SCHULTZ, BACK ON SCREEN: You know, if you had every Democrat talking like that, maybe there wouldn't be any Wall Street outcry protests around the country. I completely agree with Congresswoman Sanchez. These people are not patriots. Now, the people I met in the streets of Chicago and lower Manhattan, you know, they do love this country. They want a break. The 99 percent, they're the patriots for taking it to the streets to fight for economic and social justice. Republicans in the Senate along with Tester and Nelson are completely ignoring what the American people really want. Look at the numbers. According to a new Bloomberg/Washington Post poll, 68 percent of Americans want to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Over 80 percent of Americans want Congress to protect Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. Even Republicans want to tax the top two percent and protect the social safety net. The public is with you. Over in the House, John Boehner praised the Senate for turning their backs on the American people. HOUSE SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: Yesterday, the Senate acted in a bipartisan manner to reject the President's tax increase on job creators in our country. SCHULTZ: Bipartisan? So that means that the stimulus package that President Obama got, that was bipartisan too, right? Boehner has completely failed to bring one job to America in ten months. That's all he's been crying about. But he hasn't created anything. The entire Republican Party is morally corrupt on the jobs issue.
Continue reading …Police yesterday helped one of convict Warren Jeffs’ numerous wives flee the polygamous community on the Utah-Arizona border that he still leads from behind bars . The woman, 25, “asked for assistance in leaving the community, and a deputy responded and facilitated that request,” said a spokesman for Utah’s Washington County…
Continue reading …Time Mag’s Fizzy Light Interview with Emanuel Slips In a Leftist Critique
October 13, 2011 No Comment
Time magazine offered its “Ten Questions” interview to Chicago Mayor (and former Obama chief of staff) Rahm Emanuel, but Time's Belinda Luscombe largely stuck to light, airy questions like when the mayor talked of getting ideas on his swim, she asked, “Are you a Speedo or board-shorts kind of guy?” She also asked if he gets more sleep now, which kid was the favorite in his house growing up, and “Do you miss Oprah?” Somehow, there wasn't space in Time for questions about Obama scandals like Solyndra or Fast and Furious, and when it briefly turned serious about national policy, Time pestered from the left about how Emanuel wasted that economic crisis he talked about: TIME: A new book [assume Ron Suskind] says the Obama Administration has done that thing you said you should never do, which is to let the economic crisis go to waste … EMANUEL: First of all, remember what my quote is: “Never allow a good crisis to go to waste—because it's the opportunity to do the big things you've avoided …” TIME: … like reforming Wall Street? EMANUEL: Now wait a second. Let's go through it. The stress tests forced the banks to finally raise their private capital. That was seizing the moment of that crisis to fix something. Now, there's a lot of warts in it. Turn the page. Look at Europe today. They had a financial problem two years ago. They put it under the rug, and now we are all dealing with that. From there, Luscombe returned to “Do you miss Oprah?” Typically, Time is basically awarding Emanuel a page of the magazine while they organize a joint liberal intellectual venture. Earlier, Time revealed their “Ideas Week” plan while Emanuel sells himself as Chicago's centrist sage: EMANUEL: We've got to put more police on the street, get kids and guns and drugs off the street, so there's a level of public safety. I've got to strengthen not only K through 12 but our community colleges so we have a trained and educated workforce. We're the first school system that has top-to-bottom—from corporate suite down to the classroom—performance pay. Principals now have performance pay. TIME: Law and order, performance pay for teachers—are you sure you're a Democrat? EMANUEL: I'll take any idea—left, center or right—as long as we're moving forward, not sideways or backward. TIME: In fact, one of your initiatives is to start a Chicago Ideas Week (TIME is a co-partner) with Brad Keywell from Groupon. Where do you get your ideas? That led to the swimsuit question.
Continue reading …US Congress backs free trade pacts with South Korea, Colombia and Panama
October 13, 2011 No Comment
Obama wins bipartisan support for agreements he says will boost US exports but some fear will send jobs overseas The US Congress has approved free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, ending a four-year drought in the forming of new trade partnerships and giving the White House and Capitol Hill the opportunity to show they can work together to stimulate the economy and put people back to work. In rapid succession, the House of Representatives and Senate voted on the three trade pacts, which the administration says could boost exports by $13bn (£8.25bn) and support tens of thousands of American jobs. None of the votes were close, despite opposition from labour groups and other critics of free trade agreements who say they result in job losses and ignore labour rights problems in the partner countries. President Barack Obama said passage of the agreements was “a major win for American workers and businesses”. “Tonight’s vote, with bipartisan support, will significantly boost exports that bear the proud label Made in America, support tens of thousands of good-paying American jobs and protect labour rights, the environment and intellectual property … I look forward to signing these agreements,” Obama said. The agreements would lower or eliminate tariffs that American exporters face in the three countries. They also take steps to better protect intellectual property and improve access for American investors in those countries. The last free trade agreement completed was with Peru in 2007. The House also passed and sent to Obama for his signature a bill to extend aid to workers displaced by foreign competition. Obama had demanded that the worker aid bill be part of the trade package. Years in the making, the votes come just a day after Senate Republicans were unified in rejecting Obama’s $447bn jobs creation initiative. The agreement with South Korea, the world’s 13th largest economy, was the biggest such deal since the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada in 1994. The votes were 278-151 for South Korea, 300-129 for Panama and 262-167 for Colombia. The Senate votes were 83-15 for Korea, 77-22 for Panama and 66-33 for Colombia. “We don’t do much around here that’s bipartisan these days,” said Republican senator Rob Portman, who was US trade representative during the George W Bush administration. “This is an example of where we can come together as Republicans and Democrats realising that with 14 million Americans out of work, we need to do things to move our economy forward.” Despite the strong majorities, the debate was not without rancour. Republicans criticised Obama for taking several years to send the agreements, all signed in the President George W Bush administration, to Congress for final approval. Many among Obama’s core supporters, including organised labour and Democrats from areas hit hard by foreign competition, were unhappy that the White House was espousing the benefits of free trade. Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, said the “job-killing” agreements were a “complete flip-flop for President Obama, who won crucial swing states by pledging to overhaul our flawed trade policies”. In Cartagena, the Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, said: “Today is a historic day for relations between Colombia and the United States.” He added that the agreement with his country would “generate much wellbeing for our peoples”. But Tarsicio Mora, president of Colombia’s CUT labour federation, said Colombia’s economy was not ready to compete with the US. “Our country isn’t developed. It does not have the expertise much less the requirements for trade at this level,” Mora said. “The country should be clear as to who is responsible for the coming massacre, because industry, large and small businesses are going to be hit because we are not in a condition to compete.” The Panamanian president, Ricardo Martinelli, said the trade agreement would help to attract foreign investment and increase commerce with the US, contributing to the creation of new jobs. “We, Panamanians, have to prepare to take advantage of this agreement,” Martinelli said. Panama’s Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture called it “a historic moment for Panama”. “A treaty with the largest trading partner in the world has been ratified and this will open the doors to a very important market,” said chamber president Federico Humbert. “We hope this agreement will bring great opportunities for Panama, while encouraging competitiveness and attract more foreign investment to our country,” Humbert added. The US House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, said that before taking up free trade agreements the House should be considering legislation passed by the Senate on Tuesday that would punish China for keeping its currency undervalued, a practice that makes its exports cheaper and contributes to China’s huge trade surplus with the United States. House Republican leaders oppose the currency bill and a Democratic attempt to attach it to the Colombia agreement was rejected. Democratic opposition was particularly strong against the agreement with Colombia, where labour leaders long have faced the threat of violence. “I find it deeply disturbing that the United States Congress is even considering a free trade agreement with a country that holds the world record for assassinations of trade unionists,” said representative Maxine Waters. To address Democratic objections to the deals, the White House demanded that the trade bills be linked to an extension of a Kennedy-era programme that helps workers displaced by foreign competition with retraining and financial aid. The Senate went along; the House passed it on Wednesday, 307-122. But with the focus in both the White House and Congress on jobs, the trade agreements enjoyed wide bipartisan support. The administration says the three deals will boost US exports and that just the agreement with South Korea, America’s seventh largest trading partner, will support 70,000 American jobs. US economy Economics South Korea Panama Americas Colombia United States guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Eric Cantor says Wall Street protesters are ‘mobs’ as Democrats offer support
October 13, 2011 No CommentThe Wall Street protesters are finally getting the attention they have been seeking, it seems. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, denounced the Occupy Wall Street protests Friday as “mobs,” and Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, charged demonstrators with “trying to take away the jobs of people working in this
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Shelter reveals that families are being priced out of the ‘out-of-control’ rental market in 55% of English local authorities Families have been priced out of rental property in the majority of local authorities in England, according to the homeless charity Shelter . The Shelter Rent Watch found that average private rents were unaffordable for ordinary working families in 55% of local authorities in England. Typical rents charged by private landlords were more than a third of median take-home pay, the widely accepted measure of affordability. Shelter said research showed that 38% of families with children who were renting privately had cut down on food to pay their rent. Although renting has traditionally been regarded as a cheaper alternative to home ownership, the credit crunch and high house prices have forced many potential homebuyers to remain as tenants. At the same time, growing numbers of people who would normally qualify for social housing have been pushed into the private sector by an acute shortage of local authority and housing association property. The number of tenants renting privately has increased by nearly one million in the past five years. The increased demand has pushed up rents , particularly in London boroughs, which are the most expensive in England. At £1,360, an average rent for a two-bedroom home in the capital is almost two-and-a-half times the average in the rest of the country (£568). The least affordable local authority area outside London is Oxford, where typical rents account for 55% of average earnings. Tenants on benefits in these areas are already having problems finding properties to rent within the new local housing allowance limits , implemented in April for new tenants and from the beginning of next year for those in existing tenancies. Shelter said tenants in many rural areas were also bearing the brunt of high rents and low earnings. It found it is cheaper to rent in Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham than in north Devon, north Dorset or Herefordshire. In Yorkshire, properties in Bradford and Sheffield are more affordable to rent than in the rural areas of Ryedale and Richmondshire. Shelter’s analysis showed that in England 8% of local authorities were extremely unaffordable to rent in, with a median rent of 50% or more of median full-time take-home pay; 21% were very unaffordable with a median rent equivalent of 40% to 49% of median full-time take-home pay; and 29% were fairly unaffordable with the median rent equivalent to 35% to 39% of the median full-time take-home pay. Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter, said: “With huge differences in affordability across the country, there are now worrying signs that families are likely to be displaced by our out-of-control rental market. “We have become depressingly familiar with first-time buyers being priced out of the housing market, but the impact of unaffordable rents is more dramatic. With no cheaper alternative, ordinary people are forced to cut their spending on essentials like food and heating, or uproot and move away from jobs, schools and families.” Robb said it was time for the government to urgently consider how private renting could become a stable, affordable option for families “and not a heavy financial burden that makes parents choose between buying food for their children and paying the rent.” Alice Barnard, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance , said the lack of affordable housing to rent or buy was one of the most pressing issues facing rural communities. “The countryside has seen its population grow at twice the rate of urban areas, which has driven up prices, forcing families to make sacrifices to meet spiralling rental costs and pricing young families out of the communities in which they have grown up,” she said. “If we want our rural communities to flourish then the government needs to urgently review the rental market in rural areas to enable rural communities to meet their housing needs.” Melissa Brown, a part-time yoga teacher, and her husband David*, a college lecturer, found it impossible to rent a decent affordable property when their landlord decided to sell their existing home. The couple, who live in Brighton with their three children, had been renting a three-bedroom terrace house for £1,250 a month for two-and-a-half years but last January were told they had to move out because the landlord wanted to sell up. It took them six months to find somewhere that was still close enough to their children’s school and they ended up moving in September into a three-bedroom house for £1,550 a month. The house is in a poor state of repair with damp and needs decorating and other work, but Melissa said that most of the properties they looked at was “eye-wateringly bad”. “Most of the rented houses around here are not suitable for families because the lounges have been turned into bedrooms so landlords can put students in there and make more money. Even groups of professionals are living in shared houses with no lounge,” she said. “We’ve been renting for years and it’s never been as bad as this. It’s all driven by greed.” She added: “We did ask about repairs to this house and the landlord is paying for paint, but she has been told she could rent the house out to students for £1,650 a month and already thinks she’s doing us a favour.” Their couple’s household income is about £2,000 a month and they are already really struggling to make ends meet. The family is planning to use the loft area as an extra bedroom for a lodger to raise money. Melissa said: “The landlord doesn’t mind how we raise the rent, so we are considering becoming landlords ourselves. If you can’t beat them join them.” *The names have been changed in this case study Renting property Property First-time buyers House prices Housing Housing benefit Jill Insley guardian.co.uk
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