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You know what was going on in the “good ol’ days”? The marginal tax rate for the top-income earners (the top 1%) was above 70%. That’s right, just like Article I, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution states, the U.S. Congress collected taxes to pay for our roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, and on and on. We, the United States of America, invested in the majority of Americans in the “good ol’ days.” If you want to imagine America like a Rockwell painting – I’m talking to you Republicans and Conservatives – then pay your taxes. Of course, the year is actually 2012 – when taxes for the Superwealthy are historically low. This ain’t the “good ol’ days.” Bush/Cheney and the rest of the neo-conservative nutjobs, with their “Trickle-down” economic fantasies, have put our economy in the shitter. It is time to wake up to reality, Republicans. It is time to end the Bush Tax Cuts for the Superwealthy, and start reinvesting in the majority of Americans.

Oh yeah, we’re not going back to the 1980s either. Great music, for sure, but we already had the 80s.

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We’re not going backward. We’re going forward into the 21st century. Don’t give me any remixes of the 1980s either. I’m talking to you, Republicans.

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According to the Congressional Budget Office and the Tax Policy Center, top-income earners paid a marginal tax rate of around 70 percent starting in 1917…which dropped from 56 percent to 46 percent to 25 percent in the 1920s…under three consecutive Republican Presidents – Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover – whose economic mismanagement led to the Great Depression of the 1930s, when top-income tax rates rose again into the 60 percent, 70 percent region during that “Grapes of Wrath” decade. During WWII, top-income rates were in the 80 percent, 90 percent region, and stayed thereabouts until 1964, when the top-income tax rate dipped into the 70 percent region again. Top-income tax rates stayed in the 70 percent region until 1981, when Ronald F*ckin’ Reagan became President…when the marginal tax rate for top-income earners dropped to 50 percent, 38.5 percent, and then 28 percent by the time that misguided, B-movie actor left office. Of course, Bush 1 raised taxes, despite his lips. And Clinton raised taxes again on the top-income earners. Reminder: during Bill Clinton’s presidency, the United States enjoyed the longest stretch of economic prosperity for the majority of Americans ever in our country’s history; and Clinton balanced the budget as well as left U.S. a surplus of approximately $200-300 billion cash-in-hand that was projected to be a $5.7 Trillion surplus over the next 10 years (if not for the dot-com bust, 9-11, and the virtually simultaneous 2002 bankruptcies of WorldCom, Tyco and Enron – the single largest campaign contributor to the Bush/Cheney campaign in 2000.) Then Bush/Cheney proceeded to waste $1 Trillion on a false war in Iraq (as well as waste thousands of human lives), waste $1 Trillion on the Bush Tax Cuts for the Superwealthy in 2001 and 2003, and allow self-regulation by the Wall Street banks concerning the buying and selling of subprime-mortgage-backed securities that required a $700 billion bailout of the Wall Street banks with taxpayers’ money and $9.1 Trillion in emergency loans at 0.01% from the Federal Reserve ($7.7 Trillion of that went to Wall Street banks). It is time to raise the marginal tax rate on top-income earners…it is time to readjust tax rates to the levels of the Clinton-era, when everybody was flush with $CASH$.

SOURCES: 

* Graph source = The Tax Policy Center, “a joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution. The Center is made up of nationally recognized experts in tax, budget, and social policy who have served at the highest levels of government.”

From the Tax Policy Center…

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=213

http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=11976

http://theweek.com/article/index/221883/the-federal-reserves-breathtaking-77-trillion-bank-bailout

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marginaltaxrate.asp#axzz1kjNATzJz

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/effectivetaxrate.asp#axzz1kjNATzJz

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Read more:

http://parkwestgallery.wordpress.com/category/artists-special-collections/norman-rockwell/

picture source = http://www.museumsyndicate.com/item.php?item=14143

The Constitution of the United States

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

Article I, Section. 8.

“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;–And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

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Click the link to see the video from Moyers & Company…

http://billmoyers.com/segment/jacob-hacker-paul-pierson-on-engineered-inequality/

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http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/covering-america-the-beautiful/?hp

EXCERPTS from The New York Times in bold:

“Katharine Lee Bates was not only a poet, but a social activist, an American patriot and world pacifist who wanted to unite people ‘from the Pacific to the Atlantic, around the other way … and that will include all the nations and all the people from sea to shining sea.’ That Mitt Romney loves this poem is encouraging; that he misses the ironies is disquieting.

It’s been called a hymn, a prayer – written by a rebel against religious dogma who nearly quit her job when Wellesley insisted that faculty members sign a pledge confirming their Christian beliefs. She was raised poor but educated, by a single mother (her father, who was a minister, died when she was 5), in Falmouth, Mass., which she later described as ‘a friendly little village that practiced a neighborly socialism.’

Bates spent most of her adult life in a household that included, over time, her female partner, one parrot, and two collies – neither of which is known to have traveled on top of her car.

She was also born and bred a Republican, but in 1924 her presidential vote went to John W. Davis, the candidate who supported the League of Nations, which she saw as ‘our one hope of peace on earth.’ Davis was a Democrat.

Lynn Sherr, a broadcast journalist and writer, is the author of ‘America the Beautiful: The Stirring True Story Behind Our Nation’s Favorite Song.’”

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picture source: http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3029383424/tt1655442

“Yeah?” answers the tall, Democratic man. “What is there to clean up?”

“Well, there’s the banking system,” they say. “And Iraq…and Afghanistan…and Osama bin Laden may still be out there…and there are  a whole bunch of unemployed people in the U.S.”

Three years later…

- The financial system is functioning, banks are lending more than before, and the stock market is off its Great Recession low of below 7,000.

- We are ending the war in Iraq.

- Osama bin Laden is dead.

- Unemployment decreased to 8.6%.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re still working on Afghanistan.

Four out of five ain’t bad for a clean-up hitter. Albert Pujols is just like Barack Obama, except one plays baseball and one is President of the United States. But they’re both consummate clean-up hitters.

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Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/03/business/economy/us-adds-120000-jobs-unemployment-drops-to-8-6.html

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source: http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/spend-baby-spend-ru-prof-makes-case-income-140953958.html

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Watch and hear:

http://www.jewishtvnetwork.com/?bcpid=533363107&bctid=802338105001

Read more:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16212418

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/books/review/arguably-essays-by-christopher-hitchens-book-review.html?_r=1

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/books/10-best-books-of-2011.html

“The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” – Samuel Clemens, also known as Mark Twain

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source: http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=Twa2Huc.sgm&images=images%2Fmodeng&data=%2Ftexts%2Fenglish%2Fmodeng%2Fparsed&tag=public&part=2&division=div1

EXCERPT:

“WE went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of the widow’s garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn’t scrape our heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a noise. We scrouched down and laid still. Miss Watson’s big nigger, named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty clear, because there was a light behind him. He got up and stretched his neck out about a minute, listening. Then he says:

‘Who day?’

He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right between us; we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there warn’t a sound, and we all there so close together. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I dasn’t scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right between my shoulders. Seemed like I’d die if I couldn’t scratch. Well, I’ve noticed that thing plenty times since. If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain’t sleepy — if you are anywheres where it won’t do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places.” – Mark Twain

source: http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/projects/kiernan/FlorenceItaly.html

“The situation of the villa was perfect. It was three miles from Florence, on the side of a hill…to see the sun sink down, drowned on his pink and purple and golden floods, and overwhelm Florence with tides of color that make all the sharp lines dim and faint and turn the solid city to a city of dreams, is a sight to stir the coldest nature and make a sympathetic one drunk with ecstasy.”- Mark Twain