President’s suggestion unprecedented but Communist party congress likely to endorse ‘Thatcherite’ reforms Raúl Castro has proposed term limits for Cuba’s rulers, including himself, in an unprecedented effort to rejuvenate the island’s political leadership. The 79-year-old Cuban president told the Communist party congress that senior positions should be rotated at least every 10 years to shake off the inertia and “self-delusion” that has crippled the economy. “We have reached the conclusion that it is advisable to recommend limiting the time of service in high political and state positions to a maximum of two five-year terms,” he said. The four-day congress, which ends on Tuesday, is expected to endorse most – if not all – of 311 proposals to liberalise Cuba’s stagnant, centrally planned, economy with cuts and privatisations. Castro sprung a surprise in a speech on Saturday, which opened the congress, by denouncing a tendency towards geriatric leadership. Veterans of the 1959 revolution dominate senior posts. The first vice president, Juan Machado Ventura, is 80 and the second vice president, Ramiro Valdés, is 77. Raúl’s brother and predecessor, Fidel, 84, still retains influence. The congress, the first in 14 years, was likely to be the last for the Castros and their generation, said the president, adding that efforts to promote young people to top jobs had failed. “Life proved we did not always make the best choice … it’s really embarrassing that we have not solved this problem in more than half a century.” His call for systematic rejuvenation will be debated not at the congress but at a party conference in January. Raúl succeeded Fidel in 2008, suggesting he could stay in charge at least until 2018, when he would be 86. The congress is expected to confirm the president as the party’s first secretary but it remains unclear whether the second secretary – and possible successor – will be from a younger generation. The congress, which has gathered 1,000 delegates, coincided with a parade of military hardware and hundreds of thousands of marchers to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs, when the revolution defeated a CIA-backed invasion of exiles. The stirring speeches about the continued fight against imperialism reinforced official rhetoric that liberalising the economy was about saving socialism, not abolishing it. Even so, some western diplomats in Havana say there is a Thatcherite agenda of cutting rights and welfare, and of emphasising personal responsibility and hard work. Across Havana and the countryside slogans on old government billboards have acquired some irony: “Revolution means the historic moment.” “Revolution is to change everything that can be changed.” The state, which dominates the economy, accounts for about 80% of jobs, which pay on average about $20 a month. Agriculture and industry are anaemic. Castro criticised a sclerotic bureaucracy which stifled initiative and buried problems. “No country or person can spend more than they have. Two plus two is four. Never five, much less six or seven as we have sometimes pretended.” Of late, about 171,000 licences have been acquired for small businesses. The government hopes a partially unshackled private sector will soak up about a million state-sector workers soon to be jobless. Many formerly black-market hustlers have become legitimate traders with licences pinned to their chests. “Before I used to have a zipped bag under my shoulder and say ‘pssst, want some flowers?’” said Rodolfo Mera, with a cartload of blooms. “Now the cops don’t bother me.” Castro said the universal monthly food ration, already whittled down, would be restricted to the neediest. It had become “an unsupportable burden for the economy and a de-stimulus of work,” he said. He promised that Cuba would avoid “shock therapy” and not allow a concentration of property in private hands. It was unclear whether this meant a continued ban on selling cars and houses. “Little by little this place is opening up. It’s getting a bit easier to get by,” said Angel Morales, a 23-year-old who drives his father’s Lada taxi. Cuba Communism Fidel Castro Rory Carroll guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Framing The Debate: This Week Give Tea Party Reps Unchallenged Air Time. When Do Progessives Get A Turn?
April 17, 2011 No Comment
He who frames the debate, controls the debate. There’s a reason that this saying exists–it’s absolutely true and there’s no greater evidence of it than watching the Sunday news shows. Case in point: the Tea Party Caucus in the House. Now this group of newcomers rode into Congress last year on a wave of fear, lies and dissatisfaction with the pace of economic recovery. Their understanding of how government and the economy works is simplistic and single-minded, counting on the ignorance of voters. I’m more than a little annoyed by the overused analogy of running the country is like running a household writ large. Really? How many households have to negotiate trade agreements with other households? How many households issue bonds (which is where most of our debt lies)? Yet Christiane Amanpour allows Reps. Renee Ellmers, Steve Southerland, Joe Walsh and Allen West talk in exactly these terms without challenge or interruption. Okay. I’m sure that if the executive producer of This Week responded to my emails, he would say that having representatives from the majority party is an appropriate booking and that the Tea Party caucus is a notable movement of today. That’s an arguable position to take. However, how many freshman Democratic reps did ABC book after the Democratic sweep of 2008. None. I would also suggest that the media seems more enthralled by the tea party movement than most Americans. Why else would they cover exhaustively a few dozen protesters in Boca Raton and ignore the thousands protesting BP’s environmental violations ? Furthermore, is it too much to ask Amanpour to have her research done to be able to point out that cutting spending in a fragile economic recovery would send the country spiraling into a depression and that any threat of not raising the debt ceiling will extend the economic crisis worldwide ? How about merely pointing out that cutting taxes on corporations has not actually helped the economy over the last 10 years? Since ABC sees their role as simply a platform for ideas, the obvious question to ask is when will the Progressive Caucus get their turn? They’ve offered up a budget alternative to Paul Ryan’s. When’s their turn in the sun, ABC? Or is it that you just don’t want to frame the debate that way?
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Foreign Office issues call following Bahraini targetting of participants in peaceful protest outside BBC in Manchester The government has called on Bahrain to respect the right to peaceful protest. The move follows claims that families of students studying in Britain, who were photographed attending a peaceful protest in Manchester in solidarity with the country’s pro-democracy movement, had been targeted. The Foreign Office said it was aware of the actions of Bahraini citizens living in the UK campaigning against the regime and said they had a right to voice their concerns without intimidation or retaliation. “We have made clear to the Bahraini government that, unless these individuals commit a criminal offence in the UK, they will be free to carry out their activities in line with UK laws.” Students told the Guardian the Bahraini authorities had stripped government-funded scholarships from those who attended the event outside the BBC building last month and told parents to order their children home. Students said they had “strong and well-founded” fears they and their families could suffer beatings and torture following Bahrain’s crackdown on the protests 3,000 miles away and they were likely to be arrested on their return. The Foreign Office said: “We continue to urge the government of Bahrain to respect the right to peaceful protest and respond to the legitimate concerns of the Bahraini people. It is also vital that those protesting respect law and order and refrain from intimidating and provocative acts.” The students said at least nine people studying in Manchester, Huddersfield, Newcastle, Reading and London had seen their £850-a-month subsistence grants removed and had been told their tuition payments would be stopped. Some said they were homeless as a result and were considering requesting asylum in the UK when their student visas expired. One student, who said his scholarship had been revoked, said the ministry of education in Bahrain called his father to order him home a couple of days after the protest, in a pattern repeated for many of the protesters. The students believe some images from the protest were taken by Bahraini or Saudi “spies” alerted to the event on the Facebook. The demonstration was disrupted by interventions from supporters of the Hahrain government and others the protesters identified as being from Saudi Arabia. Some of the students’ families have also received visits from the Bahraini authorities, according to Amin Elwassila, an Arab activist in Manchester who is supporting the group. Bahrain Protest Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Foreign policy Students Higher education Matthew Taylor guardian.co.uk
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Inspired by artist’s installation with 1001 Qing dynasty seats, curator suggests taking chairs into street in silent protest Demonstrators all over the world were sitting outside Chinese embassies on Sunday demanding the release of the detained Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. Hundreds of protestors brought chairs onto the street tocall for the immediate release of Ai, and in support of the rights of all Chinese artists. In Hong Kong there were scuffles as 150 protestors came up against lines of police, with reports of at least one detention. In Berlin, about 200 people took part in a largely silent protest. There was also a gathering outside the Chinese embassy in London. Ai was arrested on 3 April at Beijing airport and is being investigated by the Chinese authorities for tax evasion, bigamy and spreading pornography on the web, according to a Hong Kong newspaper. His whereabouts remain unknown. “Missing” was written across images of the artist, held up by Berlin demonstrators, as they sat on wooden kitchen chairs in the sunshine. Ai’s sister, Gao Ge, doubted the protests would help her brother, “but I don’t think they will make his situation any worse,” she told the German news agency, dpa. Inspired by one of Ai’s installations, a Canadian curator appealed to artists worldwide via social networking sitesto take chairs out onto the street and sit in silent protest. In his 2007 installation, Fairytale, Ai took 1,001 Qing dynasty wooden chairs to the German city, Kassel, along with 1,001 Chinese citizens for the Documenta 12 exhibition. The curator of the Kassel show, Roger Bürgel sat outside the embassy yesterday, perched on a small wooden stool, his son on his knee. “It’s crucial to exert pressure now, before they come up with a verdict,” he said. “It’s really important for the people to realise they have the power to change things. German politicians are being lazy and the west is too easily seduced by China’s economic clout. The regime needs to be confronted,” he said. The protest had a special significance for Berlin artists. Ai had intended to open up a studio in the German capital and had an exhibition planned for the end of the month. In growing political embarrassment for Berlin, two days before Ai’s arrest, Germany’s foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, opened The Art of Enlightenment exhibition, at China’s National Museum on Tiananmen Square. Westerwelle has demanded Ai’s immediate release, but critics say the exhibition should be cancelled. “The red line has been crossed. They need to bring the paintings back,” said Agataki, a young Berlin artist at the sit-in. “The Chinese set them one trap after another,” said Inge-Ruth Markus, a Berlin pensioner. with fiery red hair. “We are ashamed by the blindness of the German delegation in Beijing.” Ai Weiwei Art China Germany Protest guardian.co.uk
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Senior official says German engineering giant supplied US and Israel with details of control system used by Tehran Iran has accused the German engineering firm Siemens of helping Israel and the US launch a computer worm designed to sabotage its nuclear facilities. A senior Iranian military commander said that the company facilitated the Stuxnet worm cyber-attack against Iran by providing Washington and Jerusalem with information about a Siemens-designed control system, SCADA, used in Iran’s nuclear sites. “Our executive officials should legally follow up the case of Siemens SCADA software which prepared the ground for the Stuxnet worm,” Gholamreza Jalali, Iran’s civil defence chief was quoted by the IRNA state news agency as saying. “Siemens should explain why and how it provided the enemies with the information about the codes of the SCADA software and prepared the ground for a cyber attack against us,” he added. Iran initially played down the impact of the malware after its first appeared in July 2010, but in November President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad admitted that the nuclear programme had been affected . However he said that the issues had been resolved without any serious damage. According to Jalali, an internal investigation revealed that the worm had been disseminated from sources in the US and Israel. “It was a hostile action which could have inflicted serious damage on the country if it had not been dealt with in a timely manner,” he said. Last year, Iran assigned an expert group to combat the computer worm. Both the US and Israel, which are reported to be conducting covert operations against Iran’s nuclear programme, have not denied computer experts’ claims that they were behind the development of the Stuxnet worm. The New York Times reported in January that intelligence services in both countries collaborated in a joint project to develop a malware which targeted the industrial management software that Iran uses to run its centrifuges. In March, Ralph Langner, a leading security expert told a conference in California that in his opinion the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, was involved but that “there is only one leading source, and that is the United States.” Siemens did not respond to the Guardian’s request on Sunday for an interview over Iran’s allegations of its involvement in developing the malware. Last year, apart from the Stuxnet worm, Iran’s nuclear programme suffered from the assassinations of three of its scientists in operations that some analysts asserted might be a part of the convert war against Iran. Siemens was also caught in another row involving Iran when an imprisoned Iranian activist filed a suit against the company and its joint venture with Nokia, NSN, in August 2010 over allegations that they have provided Iran’s state-run telecommunications company with a monitoring system that it has used to spy on its opposition. Iran Germany Middle East United States Israel Worms Data and computer security Malware Saeed Kamali Dehghan guardian.co.uk
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Six more killed and dozens injured in Misrata, as rebels face renewed attacks from government troops Muammar Gaddafi’s forces mounted a heavy assault on Libyan rebels holding the key town of Ajdabiya on Sunday in a sign that the regime is stepping up efforts to regain territory in the east of the country. Explosions were heard for several hours in the morning, forcing some of the few remaining families to flee to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, 90 miles away. Dozens of vehicles, some of them rebel trucks with heavy machine guns mounted in the back, were seen leaving Ajdabiya for Benghazi. Rebels were also seen laying anti-tank mines at the eastern gate of the city, highlighting their fears that Gaddafi’s forces could retake the town. In the besieged town of Misrata in the west, rebels said that six civilians were killed and dozens injured on Sunday in attacks by Gaddafi’s forces. Misrata has been under heavy attack for seven weeks, with hundreds of civilians killed in the effort to rout the rebels, who are reportedly better organised and disciplined than in the east of the country. Witnesses in the city have backed up reports from Human Rights Watch that Libyan government troops have been using cluster bombs as part of their offensive. The government has denied this. Ajdabiya in the east is situated at a strategic highway junction and has changed hands several times since the conflict began. Last month, Gaddafi’s troops encircled the town with tanks, armoured personnel carriers and heavy artillery. Nato air strikes enabled the rebels to more or less hold their positions, but their inexperience and inferior firepower has prevented them from advancing west towards Tripoli. Assisted by sandstorms, which have provided cover for air assaults, Gaddafi’s forces have increased their attacks near Ajdabiya’s western gate in recent days, mostly through long-distance shelling. On Saturday, eight rebels were killed and 27 injured on the road leading west to the oil port of Brega, according to Dr GS Mohamed, the head surgeon at Ajdabiya’s hospital. Many of the casualties occurred when a shell struck one of the rebels’ improvised rocket launchers outside the town, causing horrific burn injuries, Mohamed said. “On the open road, Gaddafi’s troops are stronger and better trained. Our [rebel] forces shoot and stay in the same place, which is why they got hit yesterday. But in the town, which we know, we have the advantage.” During a lull in the fighting around midday, more than 20 rebel vehicles – pickup trucks mounted with heavy machine guns, rocket launchers and anti-aircraft guns – sped into Ajdabiya to provide reinforcements. “Gaddafi is trying to clear the city before sending his troops in,” said Ahmed Shomi, 30, a rebel volunteer driving a battered pickup with no windscreen. “But with God’s help we will never allow that.” As the humanitarian situation there and in other towns worsens, international development secretary Andrew Mitchell is to travel to the United Nations on Monday for urgent talks. He said he would discuss plans to improve lead times and access for medical supplies and other aid. At the same time, David Cameron denied that a joint letter he published with the presidents of the US and France saying that Gaddafi would have to go meant that regime change was main goal of the international allies’ mission. In an interview with Sky News, the prime minister said that the three men had merely been expressing what was on every world leader’s mind. Cameron said that there was “no question of an invasion or an occupation” under the terms of the UN resolution and that this was making fighting the conflict “more difficult in many ways” for the coalition. But he said that the allies were supplying the rebels with non-lethal material, such as body armour and communications equipment. “There’s no doubt in my mind that Colonel Gaddafi is still intent on murdering people in Misrata and taking control of that large city and also pushing towards Benghazi, where I’m sure, if he ever got there, there would be a bloodbath,” Cameron said. “We should be taking all the necessary steps to stop that from happening and to save civilian life.” Libya Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Muammar Gaddafi United Nations David Cameron Foreign policy Xan Rice guardian.co.uk
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Analysis of unmanned aircraft in combat urges Britain to establish policy on ‘acceptable machine behaviour’ The growing use of unmanned aircraft in combat situations raises huge moral and legal issues, and threatens to make war more likely as armed robots take over from human beings, according to an internal study by the Ministry of Defence. The report warns of the dangers of an “incremental and involuntary journey towards a Terminator-like reality”, referring to James Cameron’s 1984 movie, in which humans are hunted by robotic killing machines. It says the pace of technological development is accelerating at such a rate that Britain must quickly establish a policy on what will constitute “acceptable machine behaviour”. “It is essential that before unmanned systems become ubiquitous (if it is not already too late) … we ensure that, by removing some of the horror, or at least keeping it at a distance, we do not risk losing our controlling humanity and make war more likely,” warns the report, titled The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems. MoD officials have never before grappled so frankly with the ethics of the use of drones. The report was ordered by Britain’s defence chiefs, and coincides with continuing controversy about drones’ use in Afghanistan, and growing Pakistani anger at CIA drone attacks against suspected insurgents on the Afghan borders. It states that “the recent extensive use of unmanned aircraft over Pakistan and Yemen may already herald a new era”. Referring to descriptions of “killer drones” in Afghanistan, it notes that “feelings are likely to run high as armed systems acquire more autonomy”. The insurgents “gain every time a mistake is made”, enabling them to cast themselves “in the role of underdog and the west as a cowardly bully that is unwilling to risk his own troops, but is happy to kill remotely”, the report adds. Pakistan last week demanded that the US stop drone strikes and the CIA drastically cut its officers there. David Cameron said in December that British drones had killed 124 insurgents in Afghanistan since June 2008, hailing them as a “classic example of a modern weapon which is necessary for today’s war”. The drones, known as Reapers, have to date fired 167 missiles and bombs in Afghanistan. The report was drawn up last month by the ministry’s internal thinktank, the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC), based in Shrivenham, Wiltshire, which is part of MoD central staff. The centre’s reports are sent to the most senior officers in all three branches of the armed forces and influence policy and strategy. The concept of “fighting from barracks” or the “remote warrior” raises such questions as whether a person operating the drones – sometimes from thousands of miles away and “walking the streets of his home town after a shift” – is a legitimate target as a combatant. “Do we fully understand the psychological effects on remote operators of conducting war at a distance?” ask the officials. There is one school of thought, they note, that suggests that for war to be moral, as opposed to just legal, “it must link the killing of enemies with an element of self-sacrifice, or at least risk to oneself”. “The role of the human in the loop has, before now, been a legal requirement which we now see being eroded,” the MoD report warns. It asks: “What is the role of the human from a moral and ethical standpoint in automatic systems? … To a robotic system, a school bus and a tank are the same – merely algorithms in a programme … the robot has no sense of ends, ways and means, no need to know why it is engaging a target.” Chris Cole, a campaigner who runs the Drone Wars UK website , which monitors the development of unmanned weapons systems, welcomed the MoD study while calling for a halt to the use of drones by British forces. “There needs to be an open and public discussion about the implications of remote warfare, and it may be that a parliamentary select committee inquiry would be the appropriate forum to begin this discussion,” he said. The report notes that the MoD “currently has no intention to develop systems that operate without human intervention in the weapon command and control chain”. However, the MoD, like the Pentagon, is keen to develop more and more sophisticated “automated” weapons, it admits. The report also identifies advantages of an unmanned weapons system, such as preventing the potential loss of aircrew lives, which mean it “is thus in itself morally justified”. It adds: “Robots cannot be emotive, cannot hate. A robot cannot be driven by anger to carry out illegal actions such as those at My Lai [the massacre by US troops of hundreds of unarmed civilians in South Vietnam in March 1968]. “In theory, therefore,” says the MoD study, “autonomy should enable more ethical and legal warfare. However, we must be sure that clear accountability for robotic thought exists, and this raises a number of difficult debates. Is a programmer guilty of a war crime if a system error leads to an illegal act? Where is the intent required for an accident to become a crime?” The technology The US-manufactured General Atomics Reaper is currently the RAF’s only armed unmanned aircraft. It can carry up to four Hellfire missiles, two 230kg (500lb) bombs, and 12 Paveway II guided bombs. It can fly for more than 18 hours, has a range of 3,600 miles, and can operate at up to 15,000 metres (50,000ft). The Reaper is operated by RAF personnel based at Creech in Nevada. It is controlled via a satellite datalink. Earlier this year, David Cameron promised to increase the number of RAF Reapers in Afghanistan from four to nine, at an estimated cost of £135m. The MoD is also funding the development by BAE Systems of a long-range unmanned aircraft, called Taranis, designed to fly at “jet speeds” between continents while controlled from anywhere in the world using satellite communications. Richard Norton-Taylor Unmanned drones Military Defence policy Ethics Weapons technology Rob Evans Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …CNN and Fox Ignore Small Crowd Sizes and Palin Being Booed in Their Coverage of ‘Tea Party’ Tax Day Protests
April 17, 2011 No Comment
After two years of watching CNN and Fox play up these “tea party” rallies as some huge grass roots political movement that’s taking over the country and doing live wall to wall coverage of these events when they had some decent crowds show up, now we get this on the two year anniversary of the first tax day protest by these astroturfers. Sarah Palin gives a speech while being booed by most of the crowd that showed up in Wisconsin to greet her. And the Donald and his comb-over show up in Florida to throw some red meat at a rally there, and both CNN and Fox choose to only show a few minutes of both events and do not let anyone see what the size of the crowd was at either. Gee, I wonder why? Could it be that showing that either event didn’t have a big turnout would not be good for their narrative that this is some actual, large, grass roots movement? Could it be that they didn’t want their audience to hear Palin being booed if they showed the entire speech she gave? Could it be that they really didn’t want the American public to hear all of what either of them had to say? Could it be that they didn’t want the public to know that most of the people who showed up at the Wisconsin rally who were against Palin, and from the accounts I’ve read, far outnumbered the ones who showed up in support of her? And why no coverage of Andrew Breitbart out there telling everyone to “go to hell” and screaming that “class warfare is un-American.” Could it be that they don’t think it’s too good for the Republican Party to let most of America hear from that raving lunatic as well who was out there introducing Palin? Here’s the footage of the “tea party” events today from CNN. Click here to view this media And here’s Fox’s coverage. Click here to view this media As Susie already noted, here’s what they didn’t want you to see in their coverage . And here’s Breitbart and The Wall Street’s John Fund throwing some red meat to the crowd in Wisconsin from the link above at The Political Carnival. UPDATED: And here’s the latest video I came across which shows Andrew Brietbart and Sarah Palin being booed in Wisconsin that really gives you an idea of just how loud the crowds were there.
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As NewsBusters has been reporting, since President Obama once again proposed letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the highest earning Americans, the media have been supporting it almost 24 hours a day. Doing his part this weekend was Chris Matthews who after the introduction of the syndicated program bearing his name actually began the show, “Why is taxing the rich so hard?” (video follows with transcript and lots of commentary): CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: First up: Why is taxing the rich so hard? Americans know we're going to all end up feeling the cuts in what our government can do no matter what plan finally gets signed. So why is ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy a stumbling block? Ending those Bush tax cuts would bring in at least $700 billion over the next ten years. That's substantial. It’s roughly the same amount Obama would get from all his domestic spending cuts. That's substantial? The Congressional Budget Office claims the budget Obama proposed in February would add $9.5 trillion in debt in the next ten years, and Matthews thinks cutting $700 billion by raising taxes on everyone making $250,000 or more is “substantial”: MATTHEWS: So, take a look at history. The top tax rate now is 35 percent, but back in the New Deal in the ’30s it was 79 percent. Under Ike in the ’50's it was 91 percent. Under Richard Nixon, the top rate was 70 percent. Then things began to come down under Reagan, when the top rate was still 50 percent. Under Bill Clinton it was down to 39 percent. Under George W. Bush, down to 35 where it is. Becky, what is this historically low? Why is it so hard for the Congress, when they get together, to actually raise the top rates back up a bit for the rich? It's amazing how liberal media members always want to bring up the top tax rates of the past as if they really mean anything. The 79 percent rate that started in 1936 was for folks that made $5 million or more. That would be $80 million in today's dollars. The 91 percent rate first introduced in 1954 was for people making $400,000 or more. Today that's $3.3 million. As for the tax rates during the Nixon years, what Matthews and most folks ignore is that in those days, earned income and unearned income – meaning from interest, dividends, capital gains, etc. – were taxed differently. Starting in 1971, the top rate for unearned income was 70 percent, but only 60 percent for earned income of $200,000 or more. This actually dropped to 50 percent in 1972. $200,000 then is equal to $1 million today. Another thing Matthews got wrong: the top rate was dropped to 28 percent in Reagan's final year in office. George H.W. Bush was pressured by a Democrat Congress to raise this to 31 percent in 1991 with Clinton increasing it to 39.6 percent two years later. With the record straighter, let's continue: BECKY QUICK, CNBC: Because the tax code is a mess right now. If you look at all the deductions that have been taken, if you look at all the loopholes that people and corporations can slide right out of, it's a complete mess. MATTHEWS: But if they have all those loopholes, why do they need a lower rate besides? QUICK: Why don’t you get rid of loopholes and create an actual rate? Right now, 47 percent of Americans don't pay any taxes at all, income taxes. So, if you’re looking… MATTHEWS: But aren’t they the poor people? QUICK: Well, if you’re looking at, sometimes, yeah, but if you're looking at a system where half the tax, half the people don't have any skin in the game, you're talking about a very unfair situation. Indeed, which is a fact most liberal media members typically choose to ignore: in 2009, a little over 47 percent of Americans paid no federal income taxes whatsoever. As the Tax Foundation reported in 2005: Despite the charges of critics that the tax cuts enacted in 2001, 2003 and 2004 favored the “rich,” these cuts actually reduced the tax burden of low- and middle-income taxpayers and shifted the tax burden onto wealthier taxpayers. Tax Foundation economists estimate that for tax year 2004, a record 42.5 million Americans who filed a tax return (one-third of the 131 million returns filed last year) had no tax liability after they took advantage of their credits and deductions. Millions more paid next to nothing. As Figure 1 and Table 1 show, the number of Americans who paid no income taxes because of the preferences in the tax code has varied greatly since 1950. While the number of these “non-payers” has averaged about 22 percent of all filers over the past five decades, it has spiked to record levels in recent years and the trend line does not appear to be slowing. In the '50s when the top tax rate was 91 percent, the percentage of Americans paying no federal income tax was in the low 20s. In 1969 when the top tax rate was actually 77 percent, 16 percent of Americans paid no federal income taxes. Yet now with the top rate of 35 percent, combined with reductions in the lower brackets as well various credits for low income earners such as the earned income credit, the number of people not paying federal income taxes at all has exploded to almost half the nation. What this really means is that calling the Bush tax cuts “for the rich” is absurd. In reality, since the number of people not paying taxes skyrocketed as a result, these cuts had a monstrous impact on the folks that aren't rich who now have no federal income tax burden whatsoever. Let's continue: MATTHEWS: Well, I worry about this reform first thing. Go ahead, Joe. JOE KLEIN, TIME: Wait a second. You know, the big items in this budget are the entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, and everybody pays those taxes. In fact, they are quite regressive, because the poor pay the same rate as the rich. QUICK: Which I agree. But why don't they do means testing on that? KLEIN: Well, alright. Means testing wouldn't be a bad idea. Indeed. That's why means testing for Medicare is in Congress Paul Ryan's (R-Wisc.) budget plan. Isn't it interesting Klein's for it when Quick proposes it? On the other hand, Klein was about to prove the point concerning why referring to Ike's 91 percent bracket is very misleading: KLEIN: The other thing is this: no one ever paid 91 percent during Eisenhower. There were always huge, huge loopholes. Remember when you didn’t, you'd get reimbursed for sales taxes and things like that? I think that a good tax reform would, you know, is due. We get them every 25 years. The last one was in 1986. Hmmm. Isn't tax reform in Ryan's plan? I guess that's another thing Klein forgot: MATTHEWS: Well, let’s go back to the reason this became a hot issue, Andrew. Back under Reagan, who was the great fire breather when it came to, when he went into acting, everyone knows this story. He looked at his first check. It probably was $100,000 or something. He was paying 90 percent. He didn't have all those loopholes and all those shelters. So he became a fire brand for lowering rates, and now the Republicans have big philosophical stakes here. What are the best Republican arguments for lower tax rates for the rich? What's their case? ANDREW SULLIVAN, DAILY BEAST: Well, simply because the less government takes, the more individuals have, and individuals are better judges of how to spend their money than government. That's the core basic idea, and I agree with it. It just so happens that when you have this kind of debt and deficits and you rule out any revenue increases, you make your cuts so much more Draconian. I mean, in England, where the Tories are really doing a real austerity spending cut package, they also have tax increases. MATTHEWS: So they’re balancing it out. SULLIVAN: They had an increase in sales tax. They kept the top rate at 50 percent. These are people cutting more deeply than Thatcher. For the Republicans to move the entire question of taxes off the table is a non-starter I think for most people. MATTHEWS: You know, one of the things we talk about is the fact that a lot of the rich, as you would probably point out, you have the numbers that a lot of the rich pay a lot of the taxes, they do pay a bigger share. But we also see studies, Norah, that there's a big gap growing in this country. Everybody knows about it. The very wealthy are doing incredibly well, the zillionaires and below that level, really well, and the poor people are getting pushed down, pushed down, pushed down. Isn't that a case where a higher rate for people who make big money? Okay, so let's really understand the depths of the stupidity on display here. As a result of the Bush tax cuts, the percentage of people paying no federal income tax has skyrocketed. As Matthews said earlier, these are largely poor people, although some are in the lower-middle as far as wages. In reality, this has been a good thing for the bottom half of the income scale in our nation. If this hasn't acted to change the income disparity in the country, the conclusion should be that tax rates aren't the cause. As such, raising taxes on the rich not only won't increase the income of the bottom half of the population, but since the $700 billion this will generate in the next ten years represents only seven percent of the projected deficits, it's likely taxes will have to be raised on everyone thereby further harming the less fortunate. Enter NBC News's Norah O'Donnell stage left:
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Carnival procession will celebrate restoration of Regency mill now poised to grind home-grown barley once more Halfway up Brixton Hill, in a small park hidden away behind terraces of tall Victorian houses, one of the most startling historic buildings in London has sprouted gleaming white sails. Brixton Windmill , now restored, is ready to start grinding flour again, as soon as the wheat and barley being planted around it by local volunteers is ready for harvest. “It’s a joy to see it, it’s just so beautiful,” Annick Alet said, straightening up for a moment from the back-breaking work of picking stones from the new field. On 2 May there will be singing and dancing as a carnival procession from the centre of Brixton heads towards the mill. It will be the first time many people learn of the mill’s existence. Built in 1816, and run until 1934 by generations of the Ashby family, the south London mill was a sad wreck when Florence Nosegby, a local councillor who was brought up on an estate nearby, first saw it. Many of the hundreds of residents who joined the campaign to save it, raising thousands of pounds and donating years of work, lived a few streets away but had never heard about the building. “It was so sad when I first saw it 13 years ago,” said Richard Santhini, an actor, vice-chair of the Friends of Windmill Gardens, and now a trained miller. The park had been a no-go area after dusk, the mill vandalised and littered with drug users’ needles. “I thought, we have to bring this wonderful treasure back to life,” he said. The structure is the last survivor of a small regiment of mills that once stood in open countryside on the hills of Lambeth, producing food for London. Even by the 1860s the city had crept so far up the hill there was no longer enough wind to turn the sails; the Ashbys installed first steam and then gas power to keep the mill grinding until 1934. Its importance was recognised as early as 1951 with a Grade II* listing, but its inexorable decline continued. It passed into the ownership of London county council and then Lambeth council. In the 1960s, Carmela Zucconi, who owns the flower stall outside the station, climbed the mill’s narrow winding staircase with her excited twin sons; she recalls, too, the little buildings and shops that surrounded it. By the 1970s the miller’s cottage and outbuildings were flattened, and the building was judged too dangerous for the public, though one local man remembered hiding out there from the police. By the 1990s the mill had taken up what looked like a permanent place on the Buildings at Risk register, until the Friends of Windmill Gardens were founded and took up the cause. Despite ominous cracks in the walls, and the fact that the building turned out to have no foundations, being built straight on to the London clay, the mill proved surprisingly sound structurally. Most of the machinery and millstones, much of the woodwork, and the timber cap that rotates to bring the sails into the wind, are the restored originals. The small provender mill the Ashbys added is ready to run, now powered by electricity, but Santhini is determined to continue until the wind-powered 1.5-tonne millstones are also working again. The restoration cost just under £600,000, including help of £400,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund and £55,000 from the council. “It’s a living part of our history,” Santhini said. “If we lose buildings like this, we lose something of ourselves as human beings.” Heritage London Communities Maev Kennedy guardian.co.uk
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