Unfortunately, our government has decided corporations are people too. Now, their records are no longer a matter of public record. And that certainly is absolutely everybody's business.
You're correct and I apologize. In my complete lack of knowledge of what idiots think, it did not occur to me that you would focus in on that.
We absolutely should. The main reason we don't is because our political system is corrupt and moneyed interests control everything.
Citizens United did nothing to change whether or not corporations' records are public. For privately held companies, most things do not have to be public. For publicly traded companies, some things, such as executive compensation and various other pieces of financial data, have to be reported on quarterly or annual filings with the SEC.
I am saying I want all tax records to be public. That way researchers actually have reliable data to work with and the truth can be exposed. Sunshine is the best disinfectant so it is time to shed light on those murky corners and find out exactly how badly some people are cheating this nation and which politicians are corruptly enabling it.
That would be Hillary. From the Atlantic Hillary Helps a Bank—and Then It Funnels Millions to the Clintons ... “A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts,” the newspaper reports. “If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court. Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement—an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS.” Then reporters James V. Grimaldi and Rebecca Ballhaus lay out how UBS helped the Clintons. “Total donations by UBS to the Clinton Foundation grew from less than $60,000 through 2008 to a cumulative total of about $600,000 by the end of 2014, according to the foundation and the bank,” they report. “The bank also joined the Clinton Foundation to launch entrepreneurship and inner-city loan programs, through which it lent $32 million. And it paid former president Bill Clinton $1.5 million to participate in a series of question-and-answer sessions with UBS Wealth Management Chief Executive Bob McCann, making UBS his biggest single corporate source of speech income disclosed since he left the White House.” How blatant does the corruption have to be before a Democrat is willing to see it?
This is the problem. Republicans think Democrats are the cause of, and don't see the corruption. Democrats think Republicans are the cause of, and don't see the corruption. How blatant does the corruption have to be before EVERYONE realizes our government has been sold lock, stock, and barrel to the 1%. How blatant does the corruption have to be before EVERYONE realized Bernie Sanders is the only candidate whose interests are solely in the people which is why he has consistently refused to take money from the 1%?
It takes a special kind of naivete to believe that the solution for corrupt government officials is giving those officials even more power and control.
It takes a special kind of naiveté to believe that returning the power to the people equals giving a corrupt government even more power. Even more special kind of naiveté to believe capitalism is the answer. And yet, an even more special kind of naiveté to believe trickle down economics actually works.
We will return power to the people! We will abolish evil capitalism! We will establish economic justice! What could go wrong?
The government will wield it in the name of the people and to serve their best interests. Because, y'know, they've done a bang-up job with that so far.
I get tired of lies from people who claim no reform is possible. Most countries, the first world ones anyway, have figured out how to control corruption yet the anri-government folks say it is impossible. The first step is outlawing any gifts or donations to politicians and having 100% publicly financed campaigns.
Where there are humans, there is always the possibly that something will go wrong. All we can do is hope to learn from the past. And, you think businesses controlling everything will do better? You do realize, our government DID do a bang up job for nearly 200 years before corporations started the propaganda against unions. Eventually, Ronald Reagan was able to sell us the biggest fakeout in all human history and convinced the American people that "trickle down economics" was the solution. So, tell me, how'd that work out for us so far? With corporations making record profits for the last 15 years, the GDP growing ..., we should be swimming in jobs, there should be no reason for the government to increase the minimum wage. It was all supposed to trickle down. Yet it hasn't. Your way not only doesn't work, it's sent us backwards - we are now living in feudalism again. It's time for a new direction.
Not just talking about those big bad corporate boogeymen that scare you at night. We're talking about making everyone, including the 99 percent you claim to care about, throw open their tax records for all to see. My tax records, your neighbors records nor anyone else's records are any of your business. Period.
You've got to know the past before you can learn from it. Wow, you've got so much wrong there it's hard to know where to begin. You seem to think things were just jim-dandy pre-Reagan; clearly you don't remember the 1970s. Reagan beat the incumbent, Carter, by 440 electoral votes in 1980. And things got so much worse under Reagan, he beat Mondale by almost 500 votes in 1984 (49 states!). As for unions, ask the people in Detroit how well that union thing is working out for them. It has, and that's why no one--other than a few wingnuts and those who unquestionably accept their rhetoric--want to undo it. Everyone is much better off. You think the guy flipping burgers for $10/hour is getting a bad deal? You should see what your grandparents and great grandparents had to do for their daily bread. You wouldn't have lasted a day. Feudalism? You're cracked. A bunch of serfs laboring for a lord in exchange for his "generous" protection much more resembles the liberal ideal. But, hey, the serfs are equal and they get subsidized health insurance so it's all good. People live longer, they're richer, and they have more opportunities than ever before. The idea that we've gone backwards is laughable.
Unions are weak because workers eventually chose not to join them. If you're organization is a good one, you shouldn't need the government to force people to join you. Despite the revisionism attempts and pointing finhers of pro-unionists, that really is the crux of their problem. The NRA, AARP and other organizations are able to succeed and advocate their cause without forcing all gun owners or seniors to join them.
Wingnuts? Yes, people who actually understand economics are few and far between. People who buy into the propaganda put out by the 1% are much more common. Just because you make more now than your 1980s counterpart does not mean you are better off. In fact, you are not. Your 1980s counterpart had about 40% more purchasing power than you have.
No. He was paid in dollars that were worth more, but I'm paid many more of them. And as most goods and services have gotten far cheaper (or been invented!) in the intervening decades, I can buy many things my 1980s counterpart couldn't. So, you're complaining about inflation. If you're curious, here's what the U.S. historical inflation rate looks like: Where the graph is high, things are bad. Prices of goods increase far faster than people's salaries. People get angry. You see that peak at 1980? That's why Reagan beat Carter so badly. You see that relatively flat area that begins around 1982 and continues up to recent times? That's a good thing. That's inflation under control. So, if your complaint is inflation, it's never been as much under control as has been in recent decades. Thank you, Ronald Reagan. Thank you, Alan Greenspan.
It's revealing that you make that specific comparison. How about comparing him with his parents rather than his grandparents? It's incontrovertible to anyone with an ounce of objectivity that median incomes have stagnated for a generation (the low tax period) and that new wealth has been going into a few pockets at the top. That is, the wealth is very clearly not trickling down.
Inflation only takes into account a small fraction of all factors determining purchasing power. And ..., if you're hanging your hat on Alan Greenspan's economic ideas ..., well, that explains your lack of understanding the entirety of the situation.
I can't edit the quote from my phone, but one of the other factors surrounding Detroit's decline was the fact that their economy relied almost solely on car manufacturing. Union demands didn't help, but this is the big scale version of what happens in those coal mine towns that go bust--towns which vote conservative more often than not--and I would expect something similar in Los Angeles if and when California taxes the film industry out the state.
The seniors aren't quite so laissez faire about their membership. Perhaps you haven't been directly targeted yet, bu they'll one day give you an ultimatum saying "You will join us or DIE!" And sure enough, those are your only two options.
Detroit's problems are not due to Unions. First, they put all their eggs in one basket - auto manufacturing, So, when auto manufacturers finally succeeded in opening up trade laws that favored businesses that moved jobs outside the US, many businesses in Detroit went bust. Also, Michigan is a peninsula. It's not not a through state. That's why distribution centers are at the bottom of the state - Toledo, Gary, even Chicago. Unions have been blamed for the problems in Detroit to make it easier to push the propaganda that "the people" are bad and "business" is good.
Pretty sure I said all that. Just saying some of the union stuff didn't help that situation, but you're right that it's not all on them. This happened when Kodak went outta business and the city who depended on them for jobs went tits up.
